A/N: Recommended listening: Nothing Left to Say by Imagine Dragons.

Space was what Valentine gave her after the Institute rebellion, so Kaelyn returns the favor. When they reach The Last Plank, she takes care of the mundane tasks of human survival. What she doesn't anticipate is how hard it is to keep her distance when she knows he's hurting. The impulse flits across her mind like a colorful bird that begs to be chased: what if I can help? What can I say? What is there to say?

Sitting in a booth with roast mirelurk and tatos, along with a bottle of Vim!, Kaelyn tries to convince herself that circling over the day's revelations is in any practical. Searching for a new angle, some missed detail. Something that can vindicate DiMA, if only for Valentine's sake. The holotape burns a hole in her pocket. She imagines the smell of it, that acrid tang of burning plastic, of smoke curling about her nose. The fabric of her jacket charring a rectangle of black where it touches the holotape, her skin roasting underneath.

DiMA replaced Avery with a synth. Just like the Institute replaced Mayor McDonough and countless others.

Just like the Institute.

Kaelyn is on her feet without realizing she's risen, checking Deliverer is loaded, pressing a hand to her pocket. It bulges with not just the holotape but the locket, too. Tossing a handful of caps on the table for Debbie, she eases past a trio of drunken fishermen celebrating their morning catch and slips out the door.

Avery sits in her office on the second floor of her house, behind a desk that looks far too big to have ever been hauled up the rickety stairs. She glances up at Kaelyn's knock on the door frame, dropping her feet from the table with a clunk. "Mainlander. Although, according to Doc Teddy, no one can call you that anymore. Something you need?"

Avery looks the same as she always has, with the brown age spots dusting her face, her silver hair neatly combed, and her canny eyes that are starting to narrow, sensing danger in the air.

Kaelyn steps into the room, surreptitiously checking for any possible eavesdroppers. Best this conversation stay between the two of them right now. "What's the penalty for murder in Far Harbor?"

Her white eyebrows arch. "We're too independent to really have laws. But if it can be proven, tradition is the culprit is executed. Extreme, but it keeps the peace." She leans forward, planting her hands on the table top. "That's never an idle question. If you've found something, I hope you have unquestionable proof."

Reaching into her pocket, Kaelyn draws out the locket and flings it onto the table. It hits the wood, bounces, skids to a halt in front of Avery.

"What's this—my locket?" She runs a finger over the tarnished silver; it comes away black. A wistful look steals across her face, but a sudden tightness tugs her eyebrows together. "I lost this in a fire, years ago." Then she looks up, now sharp: "How did you know this is mine? Where on earth did you find it?"

"I found it," Kaelyn answers, impassive, "in a grave. Captain Avery's grave."

Avery blinks. "What? A grave? Just what are you trying to say, mainlander?"

"That DiMA killed the real Avery and replaced her with a synth. You."

An old trick Kaelyn learned in law school: humans are, generally, poorer liars than people think, but their expressions can be distracting. Therefore, look away from their face and listen for the lie.

So she watches the black collar of Avery's vest, heaving in time with her breaths, and hears only the cold ring of truth. "No— no, that can't be! You're wrong! I can't be a synth! I'm me. I'm human."

Ice fills Kaelyn's stomach. She dares a glance at Avery's face—and the captain's utter shock, eyes wide and white-ringed, is the final nail in the coffin. "No, he didn't—he didn't. You have no idea, do you? You're not sending reports back to DiMA? You don't know anything about his scheme." The last one isn't a question.

DiMA's recorded words take on a new meaning: it will be like having everything you are stripped away and replaced with something else. Someone else.

Kaelyn prowls from one edge of the room to the other, avoiding the splintered floorboards that have been patched with a sheet of plywood. Why go to all the effort of replacing someone with a synth who isn't self-aware? What can a synth do if she doesn't know who she serves?

She wonders. Some kind of unconscious suggestion, perhaps?

"No." Avery shakes her head back and forth. "No, I barely have anything to do with DiMA. I remember everything, from the time I was a girl on the farm!"

Watching Avery's desperate bid of denial, thrashing in a snare that only grows tighter, Kaelyn realizes how badly she misjudged the situation. "I'm sorry, Avery."

"You're wrong! I can't be… can't be…"

Kaelyn takes a careful turn around the desk to crouch beside Avery's chair. "Look. Personhood is a thorny question at the best of times, let alone when you throw foreign identities in the mix. You are whoever you choose to be. If that's Avery—that's fine."

Avery's voice is very quiet. "Just tell me why."

She closes her eyes. "Manufacturing goodwill between synths and humans is easier than earning it. He wanted a moderate voice. An ambassador, if you will."

Avery clenches her jaw. "Confront DiMA. Make the old synth pay, if you can. But don't tell anyone about— about this. Far Harbor already stands on the brink, and this could could tip everyone over the edge."

"I can't see anyone in Far Harbor harmed. Nor anyone in Acadia. I don't know what they'd do to you if this got out and—" Kaelyn draws in a long, thin breath through her nose and rises to her feet. "I won't tell anyone. Just—there are innocent synths in Acadia, too. Please don't hate them, or yourself, for what DiMA did."

The old captain says nothing more, her baleful gaze fixed on the damning locket, and so Kaelyn takes her leave.

But Avery calls after her, "This isn't justice you've done here. It's mercy."

Mercy.

Kaelyn halts on the threshold, head bowed, hand clenched around the doorknob. For all the centuries civilizations have spent trying to determine the boundaries of justice, carving law after law into stone until it wallowed in the minutiae that had seen her spending hours in the library, pouring over every half-relevant act while building a case—

If justice had been difficult to find then, it's all but impossible now.

When Kaelyn pushes open the door with the green fish, Valentine is already in their room. He sits at the cramped writing desk with his fedora in his lap and a screwdriver in hand, performing routine maintenance. Shutting the door behind her, she treads on light feet to breach the space between them. His auditory receptors are keener than human ears, as she's long since learned, so he has to know her exact location. He doesn't react when she rests her hands on his shoulders.

"Hey, Nick. How are you feeling?" Kaelyn digs her thumbs into his shoulders but meets the resistance of rubbery polymer stretched over steel instead of stiff muscle. It hits her then that she can't give him a massage to ease some of the tension in his frame. Disappointment wells in her stomach, but she shoves the surly flare away.

Pausing his work, Valentine rests one hand atop her own. "Tossing up the hard questions is tiring work. Where have you been?"

"Chatting to Avery. She—doesn't know, Nick. All this time she thought she was the real Avery. Suffice to say she isn't in league with DiMA."

Since they're so close, she can feel Valentine twitch at the name. DiMA, at once gentle and terrible, compassionate and ruthless.

"I still can't wrap my head around it, ya know. DiMA—he's a good person. Or so I thought. But blast it, this isn't how you go about building peace between synths and humans."

"What he did—it's like the Institute," she whispers, and he flinches as if she dealt him a blow. "I guess the apple didn't fall far from the tree there. Maybe he learned more from the Institute than he would like."

Valentine toys with her fingers on his shoulder. Light filters over the desk from the grimy window, cool and blue, evicting shadows to the corners of the room. Kaelyn barely notices the salt stains anymore. "I've got a question for you, doll, and it ain't an easy one. Please don't retreat from me."

She pulls free and folds her hands over her stomach, spine stiff. "Go on."

"When you found your boy in the Institute—learned what he was—how did you… cope with it?"

Her laugh is brittle. "You were there. You were the first person I went to after I came back that first time. I didn't deal with it, and you know that. I just... kept going, followed orders, focused on the people I could still help. Hoped for anything other than a bad ending."

Valentine turns, chair scraping on the floor, and pulls her into his lap. Kaelyn wraps her arms around his neck and presses against him while he cards his fingers through her hair. The comfort he offers can't reach the lump in her heart, but she presses her nose into his collar all the same. Although, from the way he tucks her head under his chin and tightens his hold on her, she wonders if this is more for her or him.

"Helping the innocents about to be caught in the crossfire—that might be all we've got. If you have any advice, doll, I'm all ears."

"I can't decide what to do with DiMA. My—" the words catch in her throat. "My hands are no cleaner. Besides, he's your family."

"That doesn't make me any better equipped to decide what to do with him," Valentine retorts, his voice a shade too sharp. "There's no one else in the world like him. There's no other DiMA in the world. We're the only two prototype synths the Institute made. All the other gen twos? Dumber than a box of rocks. DiMA understands things about being a synth that even you can't. He's done all he can to give those synths a home. And what will happen to Acadia in all this? But hell, Kaelyn, he murdered someone."

She runs her knuckles down the side of his face from temple to jaw. "Whether it's an imprint of the old Nick's personality or by your own choice, you are one of the most morally upstanding people I have ever met. You know that, right?"

He makes a noise low in his throat. "Right now, that doesn't feel like a compliment. Murder's a capital offense. Always has been. And I don't know if I can..."

"Is the only possible justice down the barrel of a gun?"

"How do you figure?"

Kaelyn's palms dampen with sweat. She rises to her feet to drift around the confines of their room. "You said, before, that you don't stop caring about someone because they're gone. Sometimes you can't stop because they've done bad things, either." She pauses, looks down. "You remember before we came here, when I asked you about justice?"

Valentine's acknowledging grunt is too neutral; she wonders what he recalls about that night.

"Before I went to Diamond City—to you—I wandered on my own. I found a Railroad safehouse that had been hit by raiders. They killed everyone. The agents. The synths. I tracked the gang to their hideout and—slaughtered them. Every last one."

What was it Avery said? It isn't justice you've done here, but mercy.

What she did to those raiders was neither of the above.

Kaelyn presses her fingers to her temples. "I don't want to be the executioner. Not anymore. I am tired of death, Nick. We could argue about intent and mitigating factors until we die, and it won't change the fact that those people—the raiders, Avery—are dead. So I'm left wondering if there's any justice out here that doesn't involve more blood."

Valentine says nothing, face tight, the circuits in his cranium no doubt operating in overdrive. His processing time has always been shorter than a human's, so as the seconds drag into a minute Kaelyn wonders what he's thinking.

"Tomorrow," he says at last, "we'll talk to DiMA. If we're doing this the proper way, he gets his turn to defend himself. And maybe there'll be something... maybe we got something wrong, and it isn't what it looks like."

"Nick—"

But he continues, at once weary and determined. "Sometimes the truth is all we've got. I have to get to the bottom of this."

They lie together in the quiet, her back pressed against his chest, his arm draped over her waist. What wakes her is not a stray kick from her bedmate but his utter stillness, alerting a quiet instinct in the back of her mind that says, this can't be right. Valentine isn't even breathing.

Kaelyn stretches her legs, her heels brushing against his shins, and presses more firmly against his chest. Without opening her eyes, she covers his hand with her own. "What's up?"

His voice, while quiet, doesn't rumble with lethargy. Fatigue, maybe, of a different sort to the biological process that drags her eyelids down. "My memories, my experiences—none of them were ever really mine. Jenny was never really my fiancée. I've lived in the old Nick's shadow for so long I never realized what it was like to have something that's not recycled from him."

Her eyes are open now, staring at the wall, and she wills her mind to engage. "Where are you going with this?"

"The old Nick never had any siblings, you know. But DiMA—he's something I have the old Nick didn't. So I don't know if I can make the hard call like you did."

"I don't follow."

"Justice over family. Your boy."

Oh. With lethargy draped over her like another blanket, she's haunted only by numb echoes of pain. "You are not me and DiMA is not— is not Shaun."

"Even so, you set one heck of an example. He could be my only family, but I have to—"

"Shh. Now's not the time to worry about that. Go back to sleep." It takes her muddled mind several moments to work out what's wrong with that statement. "Oh. Sorry."

Valentine tightens his arm around her waist so she can't roll over, and presses his lips to the soft skin below her ear. "'S fine."

It's not, she wants to say, but sleep beckons with feather-light fingers and the impulse jumbles somewhere between her brain and her tongue. She thinks she hears herself say something, but it's garbled to her own ears; she's already sinking below the tides of sleep.

Since it had been Kasumi who put them up to the investigation in the first place, they check in with her first.

"Dammit." Kasumi runs a hand through her hair and grabs a fistful at the roots. She paces three quick steps and turns on her heel. "I knew there was something. But... you said he had good intentions. That he wants peace. Does this mean we should help him?"

"It takes more than good intentions to do the right thing, kid," Valentine says, but his voice is quiet. "DiMA's heart's in the right place, but his plans need some serious work. To say the least."

"So what do we do, then? This island is ready to explode—maybe literally. DiMA hid those codes to stop anyone from using them, right?" Kasumi worries her lower lip. "There are good people—good synths—here. What happens to them?"

Kaelyn says, "Acadia is their haven. Their home. This place is worth protecting, Kasumi. War— war is the last thing I want."

There's little more to say after that. Kasumi asks them to confront DiMA before making up their minds, but her eyes are dark and worried.

In the stairwell, out of view from any passersby, Kaelyn slows to a halt and, after a glance around, takes Valentine's hand. Rubbing her thumb in circles over his, she stretches to press her lips to his cheek. "Ready?"

He links their fingers together and squeezes. "As I'll ever be. Let's get this over with."

Before they climb the stairs, she says, "Whatever you decide, I won't blame you."

DiMA unfolds from his chair with an eerie grace when they enter his room. Despite the hour, the telescope room seems so much colder. The terminals with their flickering blue text are more ominous now she knows the buried truth. His gentle expression is incongruous with the ruthlessness that lurks underneath, like a shark in dark waters. "I hope you don't mind," he says by way of greeting, "but I had Chase shadow you. She saw you enter and leave the Nucleus. Did you recover my memories?"

One by one, Kaelyn hands the holotapes over. One by one, DiMA remembers.

One by one, DiMA trembles at his deeds.

She lets him sweat proverbially for a minute before saying, "We've recovered the kill switch and launch key. Far Harbor and the Nucleus aren't going to be destroyed."

"Oh," DiMA sighs. "Thank you."

Kaelyn trades a look with Valentine. His mouth slashes in a thin line across his face and he says, "Not so fast. There's one more skeleton in this closet. You murdered Captain Avery and planted a synth in her place so you could influence Far Harbor."

DiMA stares at his brother in horror. "What? No! Give me that."

So Kaelyn passes him the final holotape. She settles on one leg and folds her arms across her chest. Valentine drags one foot, the sound loud in the quiet observatory. A shaft of light in the center of the room fades as a passing cloud covers the sun, softening the shadows in the room to shades of blue and brown.

DiMA covers his face with his hands. "I— I did it. A human and a synth are both gone because of me. If Far Harbor finds out, they won't just demand my life. They'll destroy Acadia. Dozens of innocent lives. Without us, the Fog condensers will fall into disrepair and everyone will die."

"Do you really think so?" Valentine asks.

In one moment, she can hear Harborfolk scratching their heads and shrugging over Brooks. In the next, she sees Allen Lee and his assault rifle.

DiMA's opalescent eyes are so very sad. "They were willing to kill the Children of Atom for far less."

Kaelyn glances towards Valentine, and he cocks his head, just slightly. She sighs. "I already agreed to protect Avery. She'll be the first to die if this gets out."

"You are correct." DiMA retreats, half-turning to take in the room at large. "As horrifying as it might be to suggest, this memory you've recovered gives us... a new option. If Far Harbor could be made more tranquil by our intervention, then perhaps the same trick will work twice on the Children of Atom. We could replace Confessor Tektus with someone more—"

All the blood drains from Kaelyn's face. That odd prickle washes over her cheeks, even if her skin is too dark to show it. She feels hot, then cold, then hot. "No. No!" She stares at him, aghast. "DiMA, you can't actually— again? You want to replace someone with a synth? Again?"

This—isn't a part of the plan.

Valentine steps past her, touching her shoulder along the way, and she subsides. He says, "DiMA, you said you were allowed to develop your personality based on experience. And you know what the definition of insanity is? Repeating an action and expecting a different outcome. All these data banks can't free up some space on the old processor to come up with a better plan? You've already murdered someone. Unlike yours, my personality is a transplant—of a cop. I can't let you kill anyone else."

DiMA's face softens as he considers Valentine. "Believe me, brother. I wish there was another way. This goes against all of Acadia's ideals. But if we do nothing, everyone will die. This forces us to consider what serves the greater good."

Kaelyn's lip curls. "You're no better than the Institute, DiMA." She didn't bleed to stop the Institute from terrorizing the Commonwealth only to be complicit in this. "The only difference is you feel guilty about it."

Valentine cuts a glance back at her. "Easy, doll. We've still got a chance here for a resolution that doesn't involve taking a page from the Institute's book."

DiMA covers his face with his hands in an unnervingly human gesture. "Maybe you're right. All the compromises I've made without even knowing..."

"Yeah, it's called willful ignorance for a reason." But after a moment, Valentine eases up, his expression shifting into something beseeching. "You've got a chance now to do things differently. This is your albatross, DiMA. Shoot it and death may gamble on the lives of your people."

DiMA's optics slide out of focus, in that distant gaze Kaelyn has learned to recognize as intensive internal processing. Then his face shifts into something akin to a frown. "But if it will bring peace to the island... more people, perhaps everyone, will die if we do not act. If we replace Confessor Tektus with someone willing to forgive Far Harbor, we can work towards reconciling the Children with them."

She wants to laugh. "It's so much easier to just be a monster, isn't it?"

As she knows, it's easier to be lost in the momentary thrill, guided by nothing but instinct, negating herself in the rush. Kellogg's self-dug pit of nihilism, Shaun's willfully-blind justifications, DiMA's well-intentioned compromises. Kaelyn fled the Commonwealth to escape that, and now DiMA attempts to drag her back with the same excuses Shaun used. If her own son couldn't persuade her then, nothing on earth can shake her now.

DiMA is still speaking. "—the Confessor's authority is absolute. The Children won't see the need for peace unless he... changes his mind."

"No. Do your own dirty work." Kaelyn turns on her heel and strides out of Acadia. Over her shoulder, she flings, "If I wanted to decide who's to be murdered and replaced with a synth, I would have taken the Institute's bloody directorship!" She smacks the doors out of the way. They rattle and slam behind her with a satisfying bang.

Fury drives her past the barricades, through the gates and between the Fog condensers. Today the Fog is violet-tinted where the sun hits it, curling between the branches of the pines high above her head while the sky burns behind it.

The Fog closes around her. It's a gray-hearted monster that feasts on the island, rippling across the peat, licking at her calves in anticipation of its newest meal. Dour blue-toned light filters through the murky greens and browns, occasionally alleviated by the soft irradiated glow of blight. Clammy air presses around her face, burns cold in her nose. Her lungs fill with its damp, intoxicating chill.

Not today, she thinks grimly. You can't have me.

Her gait shifts to a jog, the Fog rippling away on the air currents, and she runs, feet smacking against peat, branches clawing at her clothes, until her lungs burn and the blood pounding in her ears is from something other than anger. She can feel her heartbeat tremble in the tips of her fingers, her neck, the soles of her feet, radiating heat for the cold forest to snatch away.

Without anger to bolster her, Kaelyn crumples. Palm out, she smacks against the rough bark of a nearby pine. It's a silent companion as her first cry cuts through the forest.

Shaun, I'm so sorry. I can't do this. I can't. I wish there had been another way. Dammit, why wasn't there another way?

The scabs over her heart itch and crack and weep. With no heed of lurking predators, she gasps around the stone in her chest, doubling over when its weight becomes too much. Tears blur the world to brown and gray, leaving hot streaks down her cold cheeks.

When at last the shakes subside and the ache behind her breastbone recedes to something manageable, Kaelyn drags a sleeve over her face and casts her eyes about. One hand strays to Deliverer, its grip cool and smooth against her skin. She has no idea where she is.

The first rule of being lost in the woods: don't panic.

Okay. Okay. Think.

A task easier said than done with her hot, itchy eyes and throbbing temples. She has to find the road and follow it; it will lead her back to Acadia or Far Harbor. Kaelyn unslings her laser musket from her shoulder, alert for any animals attracted by her racket, and tries to retrace her path. The Fog swallows the evidence of her passage, coating the ground in a soft carpet and curtaining any broken branches from view. Still Kaelyn walks through the ferns, peering this way and that, trying not to be taken in by the subtle colors and mesmerizing tendrils.

A black-gloved hand shoves her into the trunk of a tree. Twists her arm up behind her back, flirting with pain. Kaelyn manages to turn her head enough to see—

Chase.

Her eyes glitter with the restrained violence of a courser. "You said you could have been the Institute's next director. Explain."

Now, of all times. In another moment Kaelyn might understand the cause for concern, but now grief curls and lashes under skin; it's a whip desperate for anything to flay besides herself. She draws in a deep breath of the Fog and snarls, "I destroyed the Institute. I did it. I pushed the button. It was me."

Chase presses her back with more force. Bark grinds into Kaelyn's chest. "You claimed the Institute abducted your son—"

"They did—!"

"And yet you were to be Father's successor? I never saw you once during my time in the Institute, but you know too much about its inner workings. If you pose the slightest threat to my people here—"

"And you were a courser," Kaelyn hisses. "What did you do in service of the Institute?"

Her eyes flicker. As good as a flinch from a courser. Her restraining grip neither loosens nor tightens. "Explain this. Now."

Kaelyn swallows. Resentment burns in the pit of her stomach, stoking her blood to beat fast and loud in her ears. "I sacrificed the last of my family to free all synths. To free every last one of you. Show some gratitude."

"I will when you prove you have no allegiance to the Institute and pose no threat to Acadia."

So she grits out: "Shaun was my son. They kidnapped him for his precious DNA. He was the perfect candidate, with parents as a backup in case he died. That's why he named me his successor."

Chase's grip tightens reflexively and Kaelyn bites back a pained noise. For a half-second, shock tightens her facial features. "That's not possible. Father is an old man while you are—"

Abruptly tired, Kaelyn closes her eyes and rests her cheek against the roughened tree trunk. Sighs. "Can't it? Because that's the least strange part of this story. You're a synthetic human backwards engineered from my son's DNA. What part of that strikes you as possible, besides the fact that it happened?"

Chase inspects her slowly, thoroughly, and Kaelyn wonders what she sees. The courser releases her. Her coat barely ripples as she steps back. "If you did turn against him to destroy the Institute, then I thank you. It couldn't have been easy. Losses must have been high."

Kaelyn shakes herself out and swallows. "Yeah. If you're satisfied, we should leave. Sooner rather than later." She swipes a hand through the Fog that wafts in front of her face; she knows what causes her head to ache now.

A lingering moment, then Chase nods with tight eyes and jerks her chin towards a gap between two bent saplings. Kaelyn sets off, but the other woman doesn't follow, and the muted sounds of her rifling through her belt pouch bounce off the Fog. "One last thing."

"Yes?" Kaelyn glances behind her—

And that same hand closes over her face. A thick cloth presses against her nose and mouth.

She struggles, tries not to breathe the eye-stinging fumes. But the world grows heavy, heavier still, her brain sinking between her ears.

Then dark.

"I am sorry about this."