July 28, 2293

I almost deleted these entries, all of them. But I didn't, and she found them, and she left me a note. I've left it intact. We had our first real fight when I finally did as she asked and met her to talk.

Maybe a straight-up narrative is the best way to tell this tale. I went back to Diamond C and sure enough, there was a case. Valerie Lord asked me to look into her daughter Gina's disappearance. It was after the Institute's demise, after all, so surely they weren't still abducting people. Her daughter had taken up with a ghoul in Goodneighbor. The two of them are in love. Bully for them. Told her mama, got slapped for my trouble, but then she paid me, and I reunited mother and daughter. Pretty sure Gina was slapped same as I was but a few more times.

It wasn't the case I was craving, though. I'm glad to have alleviated Val's worries, but come on. I gave the caps to Ellie and went back to Goodneighbor to see if anyone there had a need for a detective. Hancock obliged. I'd barely reentered the city when he approached, falling into step beside me.

"Twice in one day?" he asked. "Is this a record, Mr. Valentine?"

"That case is closed, but I find myself a little restless," I said.

"Heard you took up with the woman who brought down the Institute. Heard you were actually there when it went down. Heard you were part of that team."

"Your information network continues to surprise," I replied.

"I could use a hand with a sensitive matter," he said, not looking at me. "Might be dangerous, and you might not want to take anyone else with you—leastways not anyone alive. I figure me and you, maybe a few other ghouls, we could go together. Radiation won't hurt you or us."

"What's this about, then?"

"Well, one other thing I heard. I heard that your girl's hoping to start a college. Kind of appropriate given that she destroyed the only remaining seat of learning. Did I hear that right, too?"

"You did."

"Then I know what you can get her for Christmas."

"Christmas is six months away."

"So?" Hancock looked over at me. I honestly don't know if I'd rather be a ghoul or a synth. Pros and cons to each.

"She's… not my girl."

"Figure of speech. You want to help her or not?"

"Okay, John, tell me what you're proposing."

"Southeast of Sentinel in the Glowing Sea, I've got a lead on a library that had a paranoid librarian. There may be some undamaged college textbooks in what may be a fallout shelter that may have kept important texts in lead-lined safes."

I absorbed this for a moment, nodding. "I'm in. Let's go."

I won't bore you with the details, but Daisy came with us as well as a half-dozen other ghouls, all paid by Hancock. Took us the better part of a month to get there and back, but I had sixty-two books to give to the college. One is the complete works of Shakespeare. The trip was even more worthwhile than I'd anticipated. We didn't lose anyone, everyone was well paid by the mayor, and Hancock found a pen and wrote all our names in the front cover of the Bard's text under the heading "Donation by." He made me promise that I would tell Sheila that he did this and wanted to thank her again for that Bobbi matter. I have no idea what the Bobbi matter is. Hancock wouldn't tell me, and Sheila just grimaced and shook her head.

Did Sheila kill Bobbi No-Nose? It's not like her, but I suppose it's possible.

So I lugged a trunk of books from Goodneighbor to the Castle. That seemed to attract the raiders as more than the usual number came out to play. I killed 18 of them in that one trek.

When I got back to the Castle, Sheila was meeting with Shaw and the two historian ghouls. I took the trunk inside the walls and went for a walk. I hadn't walked for five minutes before she came up to me.

"Thought you were in a meeting," I said, maybe a bit gruffly.

"I heard you came back. They don't really need me at this point anyway. How have you been? Where have you been?"

I looked at her. She looked good. She always looks good. "Took a case in Diamond City, helped Hancock with a cockamamie plan, came right back here. What's it to you?"

I'd be lying if I said I didn't see some hurt flash in her eyes. "Nick, please promise me something."

"Anything specific?" I growled.

"Yes. You talk to me before you leave again. That's all I'm asking."

I hesitated, but it was warming to know she cared and I love the dame, after all. "Next time I'm about to head off, I'll talk to you first if you're here."

She reached up and touched my face—really. Her soft hand closed in on the skin of my cheek. "Thank you." I didn't understand the look on her face, but I felt her hand in a gentle slide down my cheek before she pulled away.

I had to change the mood. I was feeling a strange sensation—tightness in my chest that was clearly illusory, as I don't have the organs to react to the brain that way. Felt it nonetheless, and it wasn't comfortable. I wasn't comfortable. "I brought you something. Are you ready to see it? It took me, Hancock, Daisy, and five other ghouls to carry it out of the Glowing Sea." She agreed, and I continued, "It's for you. We went out there to get it for you. I think they want you to kind of consider it a donation from Goodneighbor for your college project." I led her to the alcove where I'd left the trunk.

"Nice trunk… classic steamer…" She knelt beside it, and then she opened it. The look on her face… She gingerly picked them up, one by one, and opened them, checking spines and text. "They're pristine," she whispered. She smiled at the collection of Dickens and oohed at the history textbooks and the Federalist Papers and laughed aloud at the Kama Sutra (in which Hancock had been particularly interested). A translation of the Bhagavad Gita, the King James Bible, poetry compilations, Frankenstein, Dracula, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe… she went lovingly through each one, growing more and more excited.

Then she found the Shakespeare, and she clutched it to her chest and cried. I didn't know what to do. I knelt beside her and put a hand on her shoulder, and she turned to me, wrapped her arms around me, wouldn't let go. This actually happened. This was real. This was me holding a weeping Sheila for 32 minutes, 48 seconds. I've seen her kill people, I've seen her say goodbye to her disappointment of a son, I've seen her destroy an entire organization, I've seen her organize other organizations, I've seen her comforting parents who have lost children, I've seen her with the corpse of her beloved Nate, and this is the first time, the first time, I have seen her cry. Something about these books opened a piece of her that she had locked away. I tried to stroke her hair, but I don't think she noticed. After 32 minutes, I said, "You are happy about this, right?" And she laughed finally, lifting her head from my shoulder, not releasing me from her arms.

"I'm going to have to wash your coat," she said with another laugh.

"Check the inside cover of the Bard," I told her, and she opened it and read Hancock's list of names.

"We're going to have a library at this college," she said, joy in her reddened eyes. "We'll name it for Hancock, and everyone who accompanied him will have a separate bookcase named for them. Nick… Thank you. Thank you so much."

"That's swell. He's going to like that. Probably too much." Something about making her laugh makes me feel light enough to fly.

"I…" She looked at me and shook her head. "I don't deserve you," she said.

I didn't know I could still snort as a synth, but guess what?

She went back to Shaw to share the news of new books, and I could hear them oohing and ahhing. I happened to go back to my terminal, and that's when I saw it. You know. Her message. She read the journal. She wants to talk.

Well, shit.

I immediately ran through the conversation we just had, refiltering every moment with the new knowledge that she knew how I felt. That promise she asked me to make. Her look of hurt when I snapped at her. Her wanting to know where I'd been like a—like a lover. Or a partner. Like someone who deserved to know. The way she clung to me and cried. What did it mean? Did it mean anything? Why didn't she mention this when we talked just now? What's she going to say? Dammit.

I didn't realize I was heading for her until I was. I saw her showing off the books to Shaw—the ghouls were engrossed reading the text about the Middle Ages—and I slowed my approach. I didn't know what I wanted to say.

"Nick!" She waved me over enthusiastically. "Ronnie, Nick was with Hancock when they got them."

"That's good work, Valentine," Shaw said, clapping my shoulder in approval.

"Thanks, but it was Hancock's idea and he led the team." I didn't want to talk about books just then. I wanted—I wasn't quite sure what I wanted, except that I couldn't have it.

"You probably carried more than your share of the books, though, eh?" At that, I just smiled.

Sheila looked at me and saw something in my face, or maybe she heard it in my voice. "Oh, Nick… did you want to talk?" she asked directly.

"Sure," I said, not meeting her eyes. "We probably should."

"Ronnie, I'll be—"

"Take your time, General," Shaw said. "I have plenty to read. I think we need to record these on holotapes, maybe broadcast them on Freedom Radio."

Sheila's eyes widened. "Travis might want to broadcast some too… Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. Nick?"

"Right here as usual," I said. She took my hand and led me down into the abandoned tunnels. There was a bench seat that she patted as she sat down.

"I wanted us to be able to… talk," she said as I sat next to her gingerly.

"You read what I wrote. What's there to say? Probably a hundred people you've met feel the same way. Garvey and Danse, for starters. And Virgil, as I mentioned…"

"Garvey and Danse?" She laughed. "Nick!"

"What?"

"Preston and Danse are together. They have been for months." She laughed again at the look on my face. "And they're good for each other, too." I still am having trouble believing this, and it makes me look differently on those times Preston took my side against Danse. I was processing this when she shook her head. "Even if they weren't, they're both dear friends and nothing more."

I nodded, not sure what to say, but she continued.

"Nick…"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I… wrote about you like—"

"Stop it. Just stop. Why couldn't you be honest with me? Why didn't you just tell me how you felt?"

"I don't even have a proper body. I'm certainly no Nate. I'm in no position to woo you." I lifted my skeletal hand and flexed it in front of her. "You deserve better. You deserve more."

"I could hit you, you idiot." She's never spoken to me like that before. I looked at her and saw genuine anger in the quirk of her mouth downward, the narrowness of her eyes. Who knows what to say to that? I didn't. I waited her out. "Nick, you are my everything. When I stumbled out of the vault, I kind of tripped into my new life. I happened across the last of the minutemen, and one of them happened to tell me to go to Diamond City and when I was there, I was told to find you. Everything from then on… you were with me at every moment. You were with me when I joined the Brotherhood of Steel. You were with me when I joined the Railroad. You were with me when I quit the Brotherhood. You took Kellogg's memories into yourself just to help me. You went with me into the Glowing Sea to find Virgil. You went back with me into the Glowing Sea. You were the one at my back when I took down the Institute. You are the one who goes with me to help settlements. Do you think you're disposable? Do you think I keep you around because you're convenient?" She was getting louder and, it seemed, angrier. She stood up, stood over me, and kept yelling. "I have missed you the last few weeks! It didn't feel right not having you to talk everything through with me! I love you, and you weren't here! And then I find your journal? Your journal of fantasies? You should call it Nick Valentine's Journal of Missed Opportunities! So many times you could have touched me and you wanted to touch me and I wanted you to touch me—but you didn't because you have been a bloody coward! She pointed at me and hit my chest with her fingertip. "And then you go into a ridiculous self-pity rant, poor poor me the broken synth, and in so many words you are threatening to seek out danger because you don't value your own damn life? You're going to pull away from me because I don't return the feelings you haven't spoken aloud?" She poked me again. "I won't have it, Nick. I won't. You—"

Look, I love her speeches. She's damn good at speeches. She must really have been one helluva lawyer back in the day. She controls her voice and her pitch and knows how to build tension. She grows increasingly dramatic, and it's captivating to watch. But not only did I not particularly like this speech, I was also concerned that poking might graduate to shoving and her volume might attract other attention. She was right there in my face, so I did the only sensible thing when faced with the woman I love screaming about how much of a coward I am not to have made a move. I grabbed her, pulled her close, and kissed her as hard as I could with my synthetic mouth, which also involved my synthetic tongue.

I appreciate how she had taken us into the closest thing approximating privacy at the Castle.

I'm not going into details—oh ho, definitely not, especially since my terminal is apparently hackable. (Are you reading this, woman? Honestly, you are a nosy one. It's nothing you don't already know). But we were down there for a couple of hours, talking and—not talking.

Word spreads fast at the Castle. A green Minuteman recruit giggled when she saw me approaching that evening, and that was the beginning of the end. Knowing glances, stifled snickers, the occasional elbow… but worst of all was Danse. A few days later after Sheila had made our partnership a little more public, Danse pulled me aside and gave me an hourlong lecture on prewar wedding customs. Ridiculous! I lived before the war—he didn't! Hell, back in the day, I was in the process of planning a wedding... That synth is insufferable. Annoying. Pushy.

Yes, I had been planning a wedding before the war... Which I suppose brings this back around to Jenny. Jenny would've been in awe of Sheila's forceful personality, and Sheila would've been as protective of sweet Jenny as she is of the rest of the Commonwealth. Seems weird to wish they could've met, but I do. But Jenny wouldn't have begrudged me this happiness, and I hope whatever's in the afterlife, she's found peace. Hell, old Nick might be there with her. Cheers to them.

I love my fiery lawyer. Yeah, soon enough, I'll ask her to make it official. Garvey can preside. I'd pay a hundred caps to see Shaw wearing a dress and carrying a floral bouquet.

I'm toying with the idea of asking Doc Amari if she's got another synth body that could house me like she did for that French-sounding robot. But that's for another day. Today, I'll just enjoy what is. Kellogg said you only know you're happy when you look back on it. I'm proving him wrong every day.

-30-

Author's note: Thanks again to the reviewers. Suile Glas, ReluctantInquiry, Ulura, Sherlockian082994, Lonelyroad68, twistedrosalia, starliequinn, FalloutGamerGirl, Wingedmidnight88, Cris, Marianne Bennet, PandaGirlPlaysTheTuba, Stone-coldRose, Countess of Monleigh, themisticmist2000, ThePurpleDragoness, TBM1, BecTheBurger, BenRG, QQuina, K, coduss, elinska, OrionAlphaCentauri—and all the guest reviewers, too. I was going to stop with chapter one, but the responses encouraged me to see it to completion. Maybe I'll write another fanfic in the future—after I finish this dissertation (hopefully in time for spring Ph.D. graduation). I teach media studies and speech at a public university, and the -30- is a bit of a nod to my journalism background. It signals the completion of a story.