A Grim Task

After showering to counter the bloodbath she'd taken at Railroad HQ, Nora went out to the vault kitchen wearing her new Vault 111 suit. She found X6-88 tampering with a toaster. She decided to eavesdrop on him, briefly, halfway hiding behind the kitchen entrance. She watched him push the lever down, then look inside, before he forced the lever up and looked inside. Then he placed the toaster upside down and analyzed its bottom. When he found nothing of interest besides the ancient, burnt, bread crumbs that fell out, he picked the toaster up and shook it.

Inquisitiveness, Nora observed. And she was wonderstruck by it. X6 -88 was showing inquisitiveness. If there was ever, even a little bit of a doubt about a synth's sentience in Nora before, it was completely gone at this point. But even still, coming from X6-88, inquisitiveness was… abnormal. Significant. The Courser was only ever interested in completing a mission, and made snide comments when Nora side-tracked to look around or collect pre-war things. Did that mean there really was a glitch in his programming?

"X6?" she timidly asked, not approaching him.

X6-88 put the toaster down, turned, and greeted her with a level, "Nora."

Despite the levelness, she smiled at hearing him speak her name. She remained where she was, half hidden from his view. "Oh, umm… " This wasn't a good start, and she looked down becoming aware of her twiddling thumbs—an old habit that she thought she'd broken during her first years of college. To stop, she had to take a deep breath and forcibly part her hands from each other.

"The reason… " she tried starting again.

Years ago—over 200, actually—Nora had taken several speech classes to try and overcome lack of confidence. She couldn't be a very good lawyer if she couldn't appeal to the jury and judge. Nervous habits and any form of lack of confidence had to be fixed, or unnoticeable. She had to learn to wear a poker-face, in a manner of speaking, much like X6-88's routine expression.

"The reason I came to Vault 111 was a personal errand. And… "

But there was something about asking X6-88 for a personal favor that humbled her to no end. Her face wasn't going to allow lack of emotion. "Since you're here… I was wondering if… if you'd help me."

She could feel his eyes watching her, though she couldn't see them. He was always wearing those darn sunglasses. And his mouth only ever moved when he spoke or scowled. Fortunately, X6-88's brow went up to indicate that he was listening and awaiting an explanation.

"I'll explain if you follow me," she told him and turned to scurry off. However, immediately she turned on her heels and hurriedly added, "But you don't have to. I set out to do this by myself. It's kind of a… grim task." Then she ran off.

Nora knew exactly where she was going and she didn't wait to see if X6 was going to follow. She went through Vault 111's generator room and made her way into one of the cryogenic rooms down another hall. She stopped running when she got to the cryogenic pods.

It was cold, as cold as a walk-in freezer. She held her arms close to her and counted her steps as she walked down the line of pods, avoiding the ghostly faces showing through each one.

Pod C6. Down the hall near the end, she grievously remembered.

When she reached Pod C6, she stopped. That day, when she was permanently released from her frozen slumber, Nora had kept Pod C6 closed. She hadn't needed to open it to know that the man inside—the man she loved—was dead. She hadn't needed the computer in the corner to tell her that she was the only survivor—the Sole Survivor. Nora had known by look on his face, through the icy, round window that Nate was… gone.

Not only then, but Nora had relived the memory of Nate being shot more than once—too many times. Besides actually living in the moment—which seemed more recent than it was—Nora relived the moment at the Memory Den when she tried one of Irma's memory loungers without understanding what it would actually do.

But the second time… The second time was the most memorable, because it had been from Kellogg's point of view—the man who shot Nate. She watched her husband get shot up-close—she'd even tried blocking the bullet, but… it was only a memory. Nate's death was not something that could be stopped. Nor the kidnapping of baby Shaun.

And Nate's face was frozen in that moment of pain, panic, and death. Forever. As if he was going to eternally suffer. Unless… Nora did something about it. No, she couldn't save him—she'd never be able to undo what Kellogg had done. But she could, at least, dignify Nate's body.

X6 caught up with her as Nora was pulling the pod's access lever. She wasn't even sure if it would open and she exclaimed, "Come on, come on, come on!" until it released and opened.

A new burst of cold hit Nora as it opened and she gasped, putting her hand over mouth as she took fullness of Nate's death in, yet again. Maybe for the last time—hopefully for the last time.

This time, though, she had no tears to shed. Nora hugged herself tighter as she looked at Nate's icy torment. "So cold," she said, shivering. Then she reached a trembling hand up to Nate's frozen cheek and caressed it. "So cold. And defiled by ice."

X6-88 stood and watched her, silently.

Nora closed her eyes and pulled her hand away, back to hugging herself. She turned away and took a few steps toward the open pod in which she'd been in. For a few seconds, she just stood there, eyes closed and brooding. Recounting memories of a different time.

Finally, X6-88 stepped closer and modestly said, "My condolences."

Nora had almost forgotten that X6-88 was there, until he spoke. Her eyes blinked open, and she looked at the Courser. She painstakingly asked, "Will you help me cremate his body?"

X6 looked from her to Nate's body. "Will cremating the body help you feel better?"

"Yes," she softly hissed. "I can't stand to see him frozen as he is. Stuck in a moment of… torment. He didn't deserve to be—" she halted herself, feeling rage coming on. "It doesn't matter. Burning his body is the best way I can think of to honor him. It's the best way… To ease my own torment of how his death happened."

"Then I will help you," X6-88 agreed.


Hours later, the two of them stood outside Vault 111 on the surface, watching Nate's body disappear into fire. It was dawn of the next day—Nora thought it was the perfect beginning of a new day. A new beginning, but so much more. It was a farewell to Nora's old life. A farewell to Nate. And with this farewell to Nate, Nora felt there was more room for her in Wasteland. More room for her to breathe and adapt.

"You know," she said to X6, never taking her eyes off the pyre they had made. "For the longest time I thought of how easily it could have been me who grabbed Shaun, and thus get shot by Kellogg. What would it have been like if Nate was the one who survived? What choices would he have made? I think it was one of the things that tormented me. I was so afraid of making the wrong choices, because he wasn't there to make them with me. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wouldn't have mattered. The outcome would be the same. The world would still be a wasteland. People would still be killing each other. There'd be no way to go back to how it was."

She sighed, leaned into X6, and put her head on his shoulder. "That's the bigger picture. The world is going to be terrible no matter what. No matter who you save, who you kill, the world won't change. Because it's full of individuals. Maybe far less than before. But that doesn't change that everyone thinks for themselves. No one is innocent of that."

X6 lifted one of his gloved hands and stared at it, not saying anything. But his face looked pained.

"What is it, X6?" she asked, pulling her head away. "Is there something wrong?"

"I… feel… that you're not completely right," he said with shock and awareness etched on his face.


AN: Thank you for all the comments, fellow Fallout fans. This chapter is for all the fans who played through Fallout 4 as Nate. Because I do feel that if you're roleplaying your way through the game, Nate would choose much differently than Nora would. Nate is military. Nora is a lawyer. I just felt the difference was important somehow.