"And here we are, Goodneighbor. Named after an, um, exotic dancer in the days of yore, originally known as Scollay Square. Not a nice area if you plan to settle down and raise a family, but it has a hotel with hot and cold running water. It's a place without laws. That doesn't mean it doesn't have certain unwritten rules." Nick opened the gate for Raina.
"And those are?" she asked, glancing up at him.
"Mind your own business, treat others as you hope to be treated, and do whatever you like as long as you don't spook the horses. It's worth pointing out that there are no horses. Oh, and pay your bar tab promptly. I should also add that it's one of the lowest points in the entire Commonwealth, and everything not nailed down moves through here sooner or later." Together they stepped over the threshold.
"Well, well, well. It's the detective. Tracking down another wayward husband to his mistress?" Nick had encountered Finn before, a small time hood and grifter.
"Why?' Nick parried. "Someone stand you up?"
"Tryin' that, what do they call it? Evasive language? On me?" Finn blustered. Then he looked Raina over. "And who are you, huh? Valentine's new dick-in-training? Of course, in your case, 'dick' would be the wrong word."
"I don't see how it's any of your business," Raina replied, cool words and cool eyes to match.
"You don't, huh? With your attitude, you're gonna need insurance around this town." He shifted into an even more threatening pose.
"Oh, extortion," Raina said, dismissively. She swung her shovel from her shoulder to a defensive position in front of her, and said, "Right now, you are standing between me and a bath where I don't have to haul and heat the water myself. Today started with raiders and supermutants. Then it was ghouls and gangsters. At this point I think I've killed at least thirty people today. One more won't make a bit of difference."
"Uhhh..." Finn was not the brightest or the sharpest crayon in the box, but he still had some instincts when it came to self-preservation. "Okay, you know what? I'm gonna let you go. This time. No hard feelings, huh?"
At that moment, Hancock, self-appointed mayor of Goodneighbor, sauntered out of the shadows to address Finn, "Whoa, whoa! Time out! Nick Valentine pays one of his rare visits to town, and you go hassling his friend with that extortion crap? Good to see you, Nick."
Nick returned the greeting with a nod, and watched.
"The first time somebody walks through that gate, they're a guest," Hancock informed the petty thug. "We don't shake down guests like that around here."
"She's an outsider. She'll prolly never come back again, so what do you care?" Finn stuck out his prognathous chin.
"Everybody starts off as an outsider, Finn. Lay off the penny-ante extortion racket," Hancock's tone of voice had steel under the humor.
"You're soft, Hancock. You keep letting outsiders walk all over us, one day there'll be a new mayor." Finn didn't bother cloaking his bellligerence.
"C'mon, this is me we're talking about here. Let me tell you something..." Hancock put his arm around Finn's shoulders, leaned in as if to whisper a secret-and then he shanked the man twice in the gut, wiped the knife on Finn's shirt and let the body fall to the pavement like a bundle of dirty laundry. The knife went back out of sight. He turned his attention to Raina and Nick.
"Sorry you were treated to that bit of unpleasantness. Welcome to Goodneighbor," Hancock swept his arm around in a gesture of welcome. "The freest community in the Commonwealth. Don't let this little incident taint your view of us. Goodneighbor's of the people, for the people, ya feel me? Everyone's welcome."
"Thank you," Raina smiled, with her eyes as much as with her mouth, a real smile, not a ghastly desperate baring of teeth. "I like that philosophy. People ought to help each other and acceptance is a good start. Nice suit, by the way."
It was hard to tell given Hancock's characteristic ghoul skin, but Nick could have sworn the mayor of Goodneighbor reddened.
"Ya like it? My way of thinkin' is, just because you look like a zombie doesn't mean you have to give up style, ya know? I go for the 'Undead, but with sex appeal' look It really draws the ladies," Hancock preened, adjusting his lapels to a slightly more jaunty angle.
"I'm sure," Raina turned up the wattage on her smile. "I always thought Erik would have had more girls than he could handle if he only stopped hiding and was more honest."
"Erik?" Hancock raised an eyebrow, or where his eyebrow would have been if he still had them.
"Yes," Raina faltered. "The, um, Phantom of the Opera. You know. From the book by Gaston Leroux."
"Haven't had the pleasure," Hancock's tone of voice hinted that he was not just talking about the book.
Now Raina was turning redder. "Ahem," Nick broke in. "Raina, this is John Hancock, mayor of Goodneighbor. John, may I introduce Raina Queen, who hails from Sanctuary. This is her first visit to the big city, such as it is these days. "
"Really?" Hancock glanced from the one to the other. "What brings you to Goodneighbor?"
"Necessity," Nick replied. "This is not the hour to try and get to Diamond City with any hope of doing so alive. Or in my case, functional."
"Well the Hotel Rexford is this way," Hancock pointed. "It isn't what it was, but then what is?"
"You'd be surprised," Raina told him happily.
"Believe me, sister, I already am."
"In a good way, I hope," she replied.
"Maybe in the best way," was his response. Their eyes met.
Nick noticed that they were almost the same height, but Raina was a hair taller. Not that it was relevant. Not yet, anyway. "Ahem!" he was louder about it this time.
"Well, don't let me keep ya from that hot bath," Hancock recovered first. "Nick, drop by the state house later...no, let's make it the Third Rail, and we'll get caught up."
As they walked away, Nick had the feeling that the mayor of Goodneighbor was still watching them.
"Nicely done,"Nick told her. "I was a little afraid at the start that you were going to clock him one with your shovel just for being a ghoul, given your recent experiences."
"The stabbing was disconcerting but then he was quite charming-Wait. What did you say? He's not a ghoul."
"Yes, he is." The synth detective eyed her.
"No. Ghouls smell horrible and they try to gnaw and bite you to death," Raina argued.
"You're thinking of feral ghouls. What do you think Hancock is, if he's not a ghoul?"
"Someone with massive radiation damage," she stated.
"That's true as far as it goes, but when someone is that damaged, they're called ghouls," Nick eyed her again, curiously. "Eventually, if he lives long enough for his mind to deteriorate, he'll be just like the ferals. It's inevitable. You really didn't see the resemblance?"
"No. Everyone looks strange to me. The first time I saw a face that wasn't one of my sisters, I was horrified. It looked so wrong. I've gotten over that, for the most part, but...I still can't...can't judge faces. Anyhow, it's wrong to call someone who is lucid and doesn't eat human flesh a ghoul."
"Really..." Nick said, his mind working. Or his CPU, anyway. "How do you think of me? Be honest, I can take it."
"What? As a person, of course," Raina replied.
"Yet I'm a synth," Nick Valentine pointed out.
"You are a person who happens to be a synth. I am a person who happens to be a...woman." He was sure she nearly said 'clone', but changed it at the last second.
He was silent a moment. "I wish more people thought like you," he said.
"I'm not sure I'd wish this on anyone else," she said. "Mostly what I feel is...lost, confused and lonely."
Nick Valentine smiled. "That's called 'being alive.' Or being self-aware, anyway. But you see this world with the eyes of someone who's new to it, and you haven't soaked up any of the crap people spout about each other." Yet, he added mentally.
He saw her checked into the hotel and up to her room before he left to meet Hancock in the Third Rail.
There, Magnolia was laying down a smoky track in the smoky room, and Fahrenheit was watching her with her desire in her eyes. Hancock was at the other end of the bar, waiting. Nick crossed the joint to join him.
"Where did you find her?" was the mayor's first question.
"I didn't. She found me," Nick replied. "Y'see, two weeks ago, I went looking for this dame named Darla, whose family thought she had been abducted by Skinny Malone. Heh. Turns out she was a ditzy two-face who lives for, and on, drama. She created the situation in the first place and was leading Skinny around by the nose...um, sorry, it's a figure of speech."
"No offense. It's ain't like I'll ever have that problem," Hancock knocked back a shot and raised a finger for Charlie to pour him another.
"In which sense of the phrase?" Nick quipped. "Anyhow, Ellie knew where I was going, so when Raina showed up wanting my help, she saw someone who was armed, dangerous, and motivated. She sent Raina after me. By the way, Raina is a former Vault Dweller and brand new to the Commonwealth. She only came Topside about seven months ago. I hardly know what to make of her yet. If she'd been along when I went to see Skinny in the first place, I'd never have wound up in the hole for the best part of a month. In two sentences she pointed out to Skinny that Darla was the cause of all the trouble in the first place, and why. Yet for all of that, she's greener than grass, as straightforward as an arrow, and as harmless as a radscorpion."
"That's quite a combination," Hancock glanced at him. "Good looking, too."
"If you like the type," Nick said noncommittally.
"I could, given a chance. What's with the Phantom of the Opera stuff, do ya know?"
"Umm," The original Nick Valentine's memory coughed up a photo in an old book about the early days of movies, Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera. He looked, it had to be said, remarkably ghoul-like. He told Hancock about it, finishing with, "but that's all I can recall."
"Well, since it's about books, I know somebody who probably remembers. Hey, Daisy!" he called to a female ghoul at the other end of the bar. "Lemme buy you a drink and pick your brains."
"All right," the shopkeeper agreed, and joined them. "Oh, the Phantom of the Opera. Yeah, I read that. Read it and reread it a lot, too, when I was like fourteen. It's a love story and a horror story, and a comedy too. It's set in the Paris Opera House. Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, lives there, because he was one of the building contractors and put in secret rooms and passages. He-come to think of it, Erik could have been a ghoul, from how he's described. No nose, deep black holes instead of eyes, strange skin, looks like death, not a lot of hair... I never connected it until now. They'd discovered radium by that time, so it's possible there were ghouls back then."
She downed her drink and continued, "Anyhow, this girl Christine joins the opera as a singer, and Erik falls in love with her. She can't afford singing lessons, so he teaches her, saying he's the Angel of Music. She was very innocent and maybe not that smart, so she believed him. Of course there's another man, her childhood sweetheart, Raoul, and he's rich and handsome so Erik gets jealous. He kidnaps Christine, Raoul goes to find her-I'm leaving out a lot of the story, but that's what happens eventually-and Erik threatens to not just kill Raoul but blow up the whole Opera House if she doesn't marry him. She says yes, and he immediately lets her go, and Raoul too. Christine and Raoul live happily ever after, and Erik dies." Daisy sighed. "It's very romantic."
"Is it? Erik doesn't get the girl, and he croaks," Hancock said.
Daisy smacked his arm. "It's romantic because it's tragic," she scolded him. "Every girl who ever read it wanted to be with Erik, not Raoul, who had all the personality of oatmeal. This about that smoothskin who came in with Nick?"
"Maybe," the ghoulish mayor bluffed.
"She's led a very sheltered life, apparently around a lot of books," Nick supplied. "She was genuinely shocked when I told her people like you are considered ghouls just as much as ferals."
"She doesn't? What does she think we are, then?" Hancock asked.
"People," Nick said. "As simple as that."
"She sounds like a nice kid," Daisy said. "It'll be a shame when this world breaks her."
"Well, I owe her one for hauling me out of Skinny's clutches," Nick lit a cigarette. "Plus, I have to say I like her. I think I may hang around until she isn't wet behind the ears anymore."
A/N: I quote from POTO: 'He (Erik) is extraordinarily thin and his dresscoat hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man's skull. His skin... is stretched across his bones like a drumhead. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can't see it side-face, and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at. All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears.'
So am I setting up a Raina/Hancock romance? I don't know. There are a lot of companions she hasn't met yet and I like things to happen organically. The romance, if any, with whoever it may happen, will never take precedence over the mission of revitalizing the Commonwealth.
Now: Guest, there is no self-destruct setting on the Vault, luckily. However, while R. has been Topside for seven months, she met Garvey and the settlers only two months ago, and they had a lot to do to make Sanctuary livable first. Now, however, word is going to spread about the settlement where they have foods and things seen nowhere else, and that they do a lot to help others. When spring comes, things will really get interesting!
Guestman: The compound poison with the ricin would work on third-gen synths. The new poison, which is basically curare, would not be fatal, because their hearts and lungs wouldn't become paralyzed. It would put them out of action for at least an hour, though. You again spotted what I'm up to, as I can just hear this happening: "You're here for more seed potatoes? What happened to the sacks of them we gave you last time? You ate them? You were supposed to plant them!"
Thank you to my other Guest and to all my readers!