Nick Valentine
Personal journal
Dec. 22, 2292
Sheila's handling a few things with that Minuteman, leaving me back in Diamond City for now. You'd think I'd be upset, but I need some time to think about what she told me. I'm not sure I can move past it. I'm not sure I want to move past it. Since I woke up in the Institute's trash, I haven't wished that booze still worked for me, 'til now. I could stand to be sauced for a bit, but this is the bad part about being a synth. Thoughts won't turn off. Can't sleep, can't even quite distract myself.
We were on the verge of getting sappy, just two drifters against the various pushes and pulls of the Commonwealth. She's had a finger in way too many pies. I thought she was trying to balance allegiances until she figured out where the kid is, but now I'm starting to see this habit more darkly, this tendency to insinuate herself everywhere she goes. Brotherhood knight, Minutemen general, Railroad whatever the hell she is—and now, she's even doing a side job or two for the Institute? Something wasn't adding up. And then she told me. Still can't believe it.
Back before the war, things were clear. I knew who the good guys were. I knew who the bad guys were. People liked to talk about nuance even then, but maybe for cops it's easier to keep it simple. I remember this one case clearly. Eugene Watts. Dated a little bird and put her into a coma, killed her mom and dad and brother. My partner and I, we worked the case. We sent up the evidence to prosecution. Nice and tight, clean and clear and obvious. Witnesses placed him there. That new luminol stuff revealed blood on the clothes in his house—way too much blood. We knocked his head in the office and got him to sing a confession, easy. But when we went to court, the guy's lawyer was a master of twisting everything. Confession? Inadmissible. Witnesses? Unreliable. Blood on the clothes? He hit a dog with his car and tried to save it. Seriously. Luminol just said there was blood, didn't say whose. So the lawyer with a straight face told the jury it was dog blood. Right. The jury bought him. Maybe they liked the slicked-back hair and bow tie. Maybe they were just mad at us police. They wouldn't be the first. But Watts went free, totally off the hook for everything he'd done, smirking at me on his way out of the courtroom… and I just sat there like a meatball. An angry meatball, but a meatball.
So Sheila and I are spending the night in one of the settlements when we start talking about the good old days. It felt good to talk to someone about what baseball was really like. She told me about dating her husband at the drive-thru, some movie she remembers seeing about war, and how she worried that it bothered him. Then she dropped the bomb on me. She kept talking, and I wasn't listening anymore. I couldn't have been more gobsmacked when the actual bombs dropped. 'Cause this dame I've fallen for? She's the enemy. Of all the things she could've done before the war… she was a lawyer.
And this brings me back to being concerned about her post-war choices. Never met a stranger, I wrote before. That's rich. How the hell do you work for both the Institute and the Brotherhood of Steel? And then add the Railroad? And the Minutemen? And she does odd jobs for people in Good Neighbor, and those kooks in Cabot? And actually, anybody else we meet around? This is going to sound nuts, which is why I'm not telling anyone about my suspicions, but I'm starting to think she wants to take over the whole Commonwealth.
I'd feel a damn fool if I let a nice pair of gams blind me to someone slowly becoming a major player in the morass of the Commonwealth, but I have to go with my gut. My gut says she's good because she's done nothing but good… and she's compassionate. She's been a force for good. I've tried to calm myself down and remember that it's about what people do, not what people are. I know that more than anybody—of course I do. And what she's done is a helluva lot of good. That trick she did for the Institute was nothing more than taking down raiders. The Brotherhood's had her shooting supermutants and ferals. The Railroad's had her helping synths like me who haven't done anything wrong escape from people who want them dead or wiped (upgraded models, yeah, but ultimately? Synths like me). And the Minutemen… she's been helping settlements gain defense and self-sufficiency. So if I cut through the BS and just look at what she's done and not who's asking—or paying—her to do it… it's gold. She's gold.
Hell, just watching how she handled that feral ghoul that knew her before the war… he was nobody before the war and is still nobody today, but she treated him like somebody. Spoke kindly to him. Offered him a place to belong, a job, a home, a life. Nobody paid her for that. Nobody else cared about that ghoul one way or another. Of course, if she needed that ghoul, he'd give his life for her now. And he's working for her now. Not even for caps, just for a bed and some kindness. And that's what gives me pause.
Last thing the Commonwealth needs is some damn lawyer charming up the place like they're Eugene Watts's jury. Now I'm arguing in circles with myself. If I don't stop ruminating on this, I'll really have myself convinced that she's trying to consolidate power, and that's not the vibe I get from this dame. I've been with her for weeks at a time, every moment, barely turning my back for her to do her business. You can pretend to be kind for kicks now and then, but you can't fake it all the time.
If anyone could fake it all the time, though, it'd be a lawyer.
I gotta think about this some more.
Sheila's going to have to make some decisions. Soon these groups are going to ask her for more than the kinds of missions she'd take on anyway. I'm going to watch her. She said she'd be back in a couple of days. I'm torn between asking her about all of this and playing it closer to the vest. Love aside, I have to protect the Commonwealth. I just hope I don't have to protect it from her.