A/N: The chaotic writing style was intended.

24. Resolution

Beth POV

See You Again by Elle King

Robert and Curie are talking, but it's hard to focus on what they're saying.

"—do you need? I'll go get the—"

"—best chance to find those are at—"

Robert moves next to me and I look up at him despite my limited consciousness. "Hon, you have to stay here. I'm gonna go get Danse or someone to help me find this stuff. I'll be right back." He kisses my forehead and leaves the room quickly. No, wait…

I feel a prodding. Opening my eyes, I see Curie looking at me with an optical lens. "Madame?" I move my arm from sitting on my leg to the armrest. "Madame, do you need anything?" I think for a moment then shake my head. "Okay. Let me know if you do." She floats away and starts messing with some science equipment, as if prepping for something.

I look around the room, but it seems like it's turned sideways. I don't remember the room looking like this before…

Waking up suddenly, I look around a bit frantically before trying to move and failing. "Do you need something, Madame?" Curie asks. I swallow down the heaving in my gut.

"Bucket," I say simply, still looking around for one. She finds one and brings it to me as I thank her, "Merci." Then I vomit into it.

Once I'm finished, she says quietly, "I did not know you knew any French."

With my arms resting on the side of the bucket, I reply, "I know very little." I see a rag not too far from me and wipe my mouth with it. "I couldn't hold a conversation in the language—especially right now." I set the bucket to the side and lay my head back on the chair. I drift within seconds.

I wake to see Curie typing at the terminal. In a low voice, she says, "If only I had fingers…" She's typing, but with an incredibly slow speed, considering her appendages are metal claws—so to say.

"I can help you," I offer weakly.

"Oh. I did not mean to wake you, Madame."

"You didn't. What are you typing?"

"I am locating the file for the—" She says something, but the word—or words—are garbled in my head. I decide not to ask her to repeat herself.

"I can help," I suggest again.

"Madame, I do not wish to trouble you in a time like this. You are ill."

"I feel fine," I counter. Yet as I say this, the room is spinning to the point where I swear I'm not in a vault, but rather a fun house.

I go out again.

At first, I don't say anything when I gain consciousness. I just watch Curie as she floats around, continuing to prep some science equipment like she was earlier. As she floats in my direction to grab a flask, she notices my eyes are open. "Madame?"

When I clear my throat with a cough, my gag reflex almost makes me hurl. After settling this, I speak. "So you'd like to have a body?" The noise she emits sounds confused. I explain. "Earlier, when you were at the terminal, I heard you mention fingers. Do you wish you were human?"

Her three "eyes" stand a bit taller, like she perked up at my mentioning of the topic. "Oui!" She floats toward me more, temporarily forgetting her flask pursuit. "I would so love to have a body. It would make my job as a scientist so much easier. It took me over a century to make the cure for the diseases carried by the mole rats. It would have been much sooner, if only I had had access to a body…"

"What if I told you I think I can get you a body somehow?"

"Oh, Madame! I would be ecstatic! Over the moon!" Her movements are jerky, excited.

"I'll try to get it done. Consider it a gift for taking care of me while Robert's gone."

"…If you get better, Madame. You are very ill at the moment—and getting worse as time passes."

"Thanks, Curie." That's encouraging.

"—there you go. How soon can it be—"

"—anyday now—"

"I got it!"

I register that Robert is back and talking with Curie. But as it was before he left, they're conversation is hard to follow, and I can only catch bits and pieces of it. It's even difficult to tell their voices apart at times. Especially as I—yet again—lose awareness.

It feels like hours have passed when I finally come around. I open my eyes to see Robert right next to me. He's pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand, his other atop mine on the armrest. He looks tired as hell, as if he's about to pass out himself. I see Curie on my other side, one of her "arms" extended with a Stimpak-looking thing toward me.

As he rubs his eyes with his one hand, Robert asks Curie, "How much longer until she comes around?"

"It will not be long, Monsieur. I think she is awake now."

His head snaps up at her words and he looks at me with an expression mixed with the odd combination of both fear and happiness. "Beth?" I turn my hand over under his, and grip it, however weakly. "Oh, my God!" He stands from the fold up chair he had placed next to me—even knocking it over in the process—and bends down, hugging me around the shoulders, despite the chair back being in his way. He moves back and looks me in the eyes, seeming to measure my health from them. "How do you feel?"

I think for a moment, as my head feels foggy. Finally, I assess the answer to his question and simply nod. He looks immediately relieved—immensely so. Although the sadness is still in his eyes, he cracks a smile.

"I was almost sure I was gonna lose you there for a while." He picks the chair back up and sits down, putting his forehead on my arm, and breathes a sigh of relief. After he brings his head up, he looks to Curie and says, "Thank you. So much."

If robots could blush, I'm sure she would be, as she turns and floats away, leaving us more space.

He looks back to me, his smile still present, as he starts to play with my fingers that are in his hand. "She remade the cure… and saved you from that disease." He turns my hand over and continues to play with it as he stares downward. "I didn't want to leave you, but she needed the stuff to make it, so…"

"How'd you find the ingredients?" I ask, to which he brings his head up quickly.

After a second, he replies, "She gave me a list, and I took it to Danse. I didn't know who else to ask help from.

"The Brotherhood doctor—Cade, or whatever—had most of the things on hand. So, Danse and I just had to pick up a couple of the things from Med-Tec. The doc said that was probably the best place to find them—and thank God he was right."

I chuckle, to which he grins. I say, "Sounds like you and Danse are getting pretty close. Do I need to worry about competition?" He just throws his head back in laughter. If I hadn't nearly just died—from the sound of things—he probably wouldn't have responded so positively like that.

Robert insists on leaving as soon as possible. Soon as I feel like I can walk, we're outta the vault and headed home.

When we get there and I'm laying down on the bed upstairs—Dr. MacCready's strict orders—I remember what I had talked to Curie about one of the times I was actually conscious. "Hey, babe?"

Robert comes bounding up the stairs from the kitchen—from making his own rendition of vegetable stew. He pokes his head around the corner. "Need something?"

"Not really. Just wanted to tell you that I need to go to Goodneighbor soon, and ask if you wanted to come. See Daisy or something."

He nods. "Sure. Wait, why do you need to go to Goodneighbor?"

"I told Curie I'd check on something, and I need to go to Goodneighbor to do it."

"Okay?" He looks confused, but accepts it regardless as he leaves to continue his stew. Nice to have a break from cooking every now and again—even if I have to almost die to get it.

Naturally, when I went to Goodneighbor, Robert didn't let me go alone. You don't know those people like I do, he'd said. They're animals, and I'm not taking that chance.

We went to Dr. Amari in the Memory Den. Nick had said that she knew about stuff pertaining to synths and just robots in general. She said there was a donor and to bring Curie in about a week. Robert and I went straight to Vault 81 to tell her, to which she was, as she put, "over the moon."

Now the week has passed, and Robert and I stand in the lower part of the Memory Den with Curie.

"This is so exciting!" Curie says, her accent as prominent as ever.

Dr. Amari looks up at her from her terminal. "You're very lucky this synth is available. Most choose to go ahead with the memory wipes—she just had enough of life altogether. Her caregiver is no longer here, but she gave us full consent to use G5-19's body." She looks back to her terminal. "Well, let's get started. This shouldn't take too long."

Not twenty minutes later, the synth body—now belonging to Curie—moves in the memory lounger. She speaks for the first time with an actual mouth. "I feel… strange. Very strange." The pod opens up and the new Curie steps out.

"Let's test your cognitive functions," Amari says. "What is one of your most recent memories?"

Curie thinks for a moment before replying, "I saved Madame from the mole rat disease in Vault 81. She was very ill. Monsieur helped me quite a bit."

"Very good." Amari looks to me. "She seems to be all there, so to say. It may take a little while for her to get her bearings, so be patient with her. Just keep your eye out for anything negative concerning the data transfer."

"Will do," I respond.

"C'mon, Curie. Come with us to Spectacle Island for now," Robert suggests.

"Whatever you say, Monsieur."

After we've been home for no more than a few minutes, Curie goes off to look around the island. Her scientific side is definitely dominant. As she walks away, I see her nearly fall and mutter something about not being used to legs. I can't help a small chuckle.

Robert gets my attention by touching my arm. "Since she's off doing her thing, can we talk?"

"Yeah?"

He looks at her as she bends down to inspect some kind of plant. "She took good care of you when I was gone. Right?"

"Uh-huh."

"So, she's clearly a good caretaker. Plus, she did save your life."

"What are you getting at?" I'm confused at his words.

"What I'm proposing is we move her here, to live on the island with us.

"One, it'd be the ultimate 'thank you' for her saving you. She's nice—a bit odd—but nice enough to live with. And two, what about when we move Duncan here? We can't always be home, and it's probably best if he doesn't go out into the wasteland for a while. She can take care of him when we're gone."

I nod my head, thinking about it. "You do have a point. She did save my life, and she can watch Duncan when needed." I make my decision. "Alright. We can talk to her about it later when she's done doing… that." I glance over to see her smelling a picked gourd blossom. "Yeah. She is odd."

"Curie?"

"Do you need something, Monsieur?" She curiously looks up from the weed in her hand to Robert's face. For some reason, she'd wondered into our "garden." More like a decent sized space marked off by picket fencing, populated by only a few tato plants and a single mutfruit tree.

"Yeah," he replies. "We'd like to talk with you for a minute."

"Is there something wrong?" She glances to me. "Is Madame okay?"

"Beth is fine," he assures. "It concerns you going back to the vault."

She looks down to the ground, disappointment clear in her features. "Oh."

I speak up for the first time. "Do you want to go back?"

"No. Well, not really. There hasn't been anything to do—anything to research—since I finished developing the cure eighty-three years ago. I find the vault to be simply boring, and I wish to remain in the Commonwealth to further my scientific research.

"I do not know where I will go. I am not sure where danger is and where it is not. Can you tell me a place I can benefit from inhabiting?"

Robert looks to me with the tiniest of grins. "Do you find Spectacle Island a fit for you?"

"Yes, I do. But you have made your home here, and I do not wish to interfere with your living."

"You won't be," I say. "We're offering you a place to live here with us. If you say yes, we'll build you your own house and everything."

Robert continues with my thought. "It's a way of us saying thank you for saving Beth's life. We know you don't like the vault and that you don't wanna go back. If you want to live here, we'd be happy to have you."

I chuckle. "Plus, you can look at the plants here all you want. Seems like you like gardening. You could do that if you wanted. I mean, look at those poor plants. We're hardly here enough to take care of them."

She gets a sparkle in her eye. "You really mean it? I could live here with you and farm like humans do?"

"Absolutely."

She looks so stunned, like she can't believe her own ears. "This is great news!" She drops the weed she'd all but forgotten about. "Yes, I would love to live here!"

"Great," Robert responds. "We'll get materials to build you a house tomorrow." He looks at me. "Might need some more help from the Atom Cats."

"Hey, you never know," I counter, "Danse might help, too."

"True." He looks like that hadn't ran through his mind until I said it.

All this time, Curie has been just standing there, the look of absolute exhilaration in her expression. I smile widely at this, pleased with the outcome. She looks at us suddenly.

"Is there anything else I can do here? What else can I do to contribute?"

Robert looks at me then her. "Well, there was one thing I forgot to bring up."

"Oiu, Monsieur?"

"My son is living in the Capital Wasteland. We're planning on bringing him here to live with us—we already have a room for him built in the house. Whenever Beth and I are away, can you watch him, keep an eye on him?"

"Of course! I love children—they are the future and deserve the best." She smiles like she can't wait to meet him.

Although Robert's smile was happy before, after she says this, his smile grows even bigger and sincerer than ever. "Thank you, Curie. I'm glad we found you."

"Oh, believe me, Monsieur—the feeling is mutual!"

Although the Atom Cats were unavailable at the time, we did end up getting help from Danse in building Curie her house—which we put on the north end near the wrecked barge so she could have more privacy. Danse was not too thrilled about helping a robot have a lifestyle and all, but ultimately helped us due to his gratitude of her saving my life two weeks prior.

With everyone pitching in—Danse, Robert, myself, and surprisingly, Curie—her house was erected in just a week's time. Impressive in comparison to how long ours took, even though it was much larger and had more people working on it.

A week or so after Curie settled in, Robert and I have the discussion.

"How surprised do you think he'll be?" I ask.

"Oh, Duncan will be ecstatic," he says as we pack a few changes of clothes, food and water, extra ammo of various sorts, and spare fuel for the boat. He smiles largely as he packs.

"I can't wait to meet him." I realize my voice is really small, and I sound nervous as if I was a schoolgirl again.

"He's going to love you." Robert drops the shirt in his hands and comes over to me as I pack my own. Placing his hands on my shoulders, "He's shy, sure. But once he comes around—and he will—he'll be a whole new kid. One that you'll love so much that you'll feel he's your own. I hope." Now he sounds nervous.

I chuckle. "It'll all work out."

As we finish packing, he suggests, "We should probably get some sleep. DC isn't exactly close, and I don't want to be tired tomorrow. Tired and travel—not a good combo."

I laugh. As we climb into bed, he lays his head on my chest as I play with his hair. "I can't wait," he says, his words slurring slightly from being drowsy. He falls asleep with a smile on his face.