Cicadas. She always knew the time and the weather from to the sound of the cicadas. They were humming, no-buzzing, again in the distance. Though with the lack of proper windows and walls and general sounds from the settlement, it wasn't very difficult to hear them from within the house. It was already early evening, and although she had started the day off early this morning, she put herself right back in bed sometime around noon. She probably could have tried to leave town, but once the echoing cracks of thunder and sickly glow starts to set it, it's hard to tell which direction it's coming from, therefore hard to tell which way she needed to go. Sleeping was the only other way to ride out a radiation storm once it decided to come through.
Nora Pendragon, the Sole Survivor of Vault 111, pulled a heavy lead-lined comforter up a little more. Sleepily noting she could hear cicadas over her geiger counter, she wondered how many rads she had sucked up this time. Fourty, maybe fifty? She felt her face and checked it for any ghoulish pockmarks. Nothing of the sort. So far so good, she noted, despite feeling very much less than 100 percent. Ugh. Does Rad-X work at all? She kept her eyes shut, refusing to acknowledge the outside world. More importantly, she was refusing to look and acknowledge the thick-needled syringe she would need for Rad-Away that sat atop a pile of leather next to the mattress, amongst other things.
"'You plannin' on taking another nap?"
Nora stretched and threw the quilt off, in a motion of defiance to her body. It probably would have been easier to just sleep through the night and start over again the next morning, but that all went out the proverbial window once duty called. Duty, that went by the name of Nick Valentine.
"Well, I do need my beauty sleep," she retorted, grabbing the side of a nearby armchair to pull herself up from the floor.
Nick snorted. "If that's the case, you're gonna need more than just a few hours." Nora paused, turning her head sharply to shoot him a confused but obviously dirty look. "Er, that was pretty tactless, even from me. Sorry." Her expression softened again, accepting of the apology. That was their relationship: one sarcastic remark toeing the line of yet another sarcastic remark; there were times she couldn't be sure if it was the old Nick's personality, or the synth's lack of human that caused him to slip up in his judgement. She honestly couldn't tell which Nick the apology came from.
It had been probably a month since the thaw. The Pipboy said it was sometime into November, and she wondered if Thanksgiving had passed yet. Without proper recorded weekdays, it's hard to count to the third Thursday. Hell, it was hard to tell what seasons are now in Boston, given the surely different personality the atmosphere had taken on from nuclear devastation. Perhaps someone, somewhere, was keeping a record of these tedious pre-war things, but it wasn't widely available.
Nora glanced out at the sky, trying to remember if it looked like it had before-in her childhood, when the weather had its freedom. Sometime after she turned 15, Boston was one of the first major cities to have a completely controlled weather system put in place for testing. Weather was mild year round. It rained when they wanted, so sports could plan practice and games accordingly, farmers knew when not to water their crops, and local businesses knew how to manipulate the market ahead of time. Winter was somewhat special; every evening it snowed for the enjoyment of the citizens, and began to thaw out after midnight so they would be able to get to work by morning. Only on Christmas would the system allow continuous light snowfall for 16 hours. The technology behind it wasn't one she tried to comprehend at that age, nor admittedly into her adult years, but it was things like that that lead to...
She looked away, pushing her leg through some dented metal that barely covered her thighs. In this month, a lot had happened-she met a group of people that got held up by Raiders in Concord, discovered what it was like to become a human mecha using Power Armor, saw a sort of shanty town formed into the old Fenway Park, met a Paladin that wasn't from D&D, fought a large thing living in Swan Pond (therefore finding out what a Super Mutant was), killed off a bunch of zombies, killed a lot of heavily mutated animals and insects, launched a rocket, and recently gave her missing child case to a robot man she dug out from an old vault filled with mobsters on the an old woman whom she had given drugs to (twice) because she claimed to have visions.
"You find the heart that leads you to your boy," she said, "So bright against the dark alleyways it walks."
She looked at Nick, who put down a screwdriver he'd fished from his pocket and looked back immediately. "Follow the signs to the bright heart." Nora had taken Mama's Murphy's words with a grain of salt, but she really had meant to follow the signs to the bright heart. Nick's Detective Agency signs really had been bright neon with the last one a literal heart and arrow. A bright heart.
"What?" he asked, and she realised she had been staring a tad too long to stay unnoticed. She returned her gaze to the window for a moment without answering. From outside the window, she could hear the bustle of Sanctuary Hills going through the motions of living. Surviving mostly, but it almost sounded like thriving. Marcy Long could be heard snapping at someone (she was glad it was not her for once), a water pump was being used somewhere, and the DJ from "D-Diamond City Radio" was giving updates on Commonwealth rumors.
Nora rolled her shoulders, and began folding up the quilt to be put into a corner that used to be a closet. Maybe today, should would make a door. Or, maybe today, Preston will send me out on yet another settlement complaint, she thought to herself.
Oh. That sounds a bit bitter. "'Meant to ask if you heard anything from Garvey while I was out," she said in earnest, trying to suppress her small feeling of guilt at her last thought. It wasn't as though she didn't feel like these settlements really needed her, but thought the organisation was called Minutemen, not Minuteman (or Minutewoman for that matter).
Nick handed her the dose of Rad-Away as she reached for it. "Not since the last one, no."
"Right, that place up near Ballardvale," Nora said, nodding towards a Pipboy on the dresser, mentally noting the place as Tenpines Bluff as Preston had mapped for her. The synth laughed dryly.
"Haven't heard anyone outside of Goodneighbor refer to it as that," he said, "If anyone even does anymore."
The name sparked up an interest in her lawyer memory bank, but it had nothing to do with place names. "Goodneighbor?"
Nick nodded and said, "Yeah. Scollay Square." He paused, most likely waiting to see if Nora would recognise the name before continuing. "Goodneighbor's where a lot of ghouls went after the mayor kicked them out of Diamond City. The whole setup is run by an ex-drug addict going by the name of John Hancock. 'Don't know if that's his real name, though." Nora smiled, lacing up her second boot. Of all the people she could have met in this new world, she was so very grateful to find someone who knew the old ways; someone who would have been to Scollay Square, who knew the difference between this Tenpines Bluff and Ballardvale, and even had something to say about someone parading around under the name of John Hancock. Through Nick, Boston lives; without him, there is the Commonwealth.
She felt her smile fade as something her mother used to say started to creep in: "When the past calls, don't answer. It never has anything new to say." Things like Ballardvale and Scollay Square and the original John Hancock don't matter in this world, she told herself. Things like weather control and Thanksgiving, they don't matter now. Though one thing was to be certain for her: with Nick, the hope of seeing her son again lives; without him, there is nothing but the Commonwealth. She glanced at Nick as he watched her face, obviously calculating what she may be thinking. She'd only known him for a few weeks, but seeing as he was the only person who frequently traveled with her, they caught each other doing this quite often.
'Guess those are things you notice when you have television to distract you. "Look at us," she said picking up a rather heavy-looking ballistic rucksack. She slung it onto the desk and began rifling through it. "Just a pair of Old-timers, and not a wrinkle to show for it."
"Speak for yourself," Nick replied, "I'm 247 years young, thank you very much. And you left the Rad-Away on the pillow."
"I'm checking to see if I have any more," she replied, "I might just need to save that one until it gets really bad."
"Maybe we should find you one of those hazmat suits to sleep in, since you're not acclimated," he thought aloud, "I wonder if you could pick it off of an old body in the ruins."
Nora cringed in disgust. "I'm not taking clothes from skeletons," she nearly sputtered, horrified at the thought. Taking armor and guns from freshly dead corpses is one thing, but apparently she drew the line at looting dusty old bones. When she couldn't find what she was looking for, Nora sighed, clipped the sack closed and slipped her arms through the straps. "Anyway, Raiders or Ferals?"
"Garvey said it was Raiders, down in the Fens," Nick yawned (though Nora was almost sure it out of habit or was for her benefit, as she was not sure synths actually breathed).
"Oh, please try to sound a bit more excited than that," she said, shifting past him through the door, "After all-it's another beautiful day in the most dangerous place in the world."
-
A/N: Hey, Charlie here. Taking a break from FO4, I started this while stuck during a game breaking bug most people get from Underground Undercover (I'm also a huge fan of ladywyntre's personal journal for Nick Valentine, which inspired me to write and you should go check out.) I eventually figured out how to get past it and played on to finish with my prefered faction, but the idea of writing a piece involving my Sole Survivor stayed with me. I want to write about some backstory about pre-war according to Nora, talk about Vault experimentation and the 'whatever-happened-to's of the past, introduce an OC so I can write without having my character fret about finding her son, and (of course) most likely romance Nick because who doesn't want that? If not Nick, it'll be Hancock, but it's too early in to say where it'll go.
Anyway, this took me a little to write and I'm not sure how this website works, so I'm also looking for some constructive criticism on my writing style and will probably message back anyone who seriously provides any. Also, I will most likely roll through these again after gaining a fresh set of eyes (read: SLEEP) and check it out for grammar, continuity errors, and overall editing.
Thanks for reading, and have a good winter solstice, folks. Stay safe out there.