The Commonwealth makes monsters out of men. It's a phrase he's rather fond of, having seen that very thing happen so many times. Sixty years is a lifetime and a half in the Wasteland, and Nick's watched his share of people, good and bad alike, walk out his door or the gates of the Great Green Jewel never to return. Maybe someone with their face and name, maybe a description in a new case file, but never the same.
Most of the time, the dead he finds are just that - dead. Couple of rounds in the torso, maybe, else a shot through the head, if they're bloodied at all by people. Once, he'd tracked down the missing sister of a kid. She was about six or seven, and her sister was all she had. Two nights previous, she and her sister go to bed, but when the kid wakes up the next day? Window opened, blankets torn, obvious signs of a struggle, and Big Sister's nowhere to be seen.
A couple interviews and late nights later, he'd tracked her to Goodneighbor. Suddenly, an open-and-shut case turns into a serial missing persons that would've had the Boston Police Force up in arms in it's entirety. But it was just Nick, the metal man, and his PA.
Thank God for Ellie Perkins. She'd gotten all the way to Goodneighbor by herself, and courtesy of Hancock, set up shop. She gathered information while he was searching leads, keeping careful records on every single one of the twelve missing women - all mid-twenties, all smoothskin, all within inches and pounds of each other. Hair color, name, or history didn't seem to matter to the perp, just the very basics.
Coupla' not-so-subtle name drops (and more than a few caps) bought him an audience with Whitechapel Charlie, who let in that all the women had signed onto caravans. The name couldn't be bribed out, but a description of the guy who'd been hiring was.
From there it had been a piece of cake, so to speak. Two weeks later, Nick'd found him in a basement of an old department store, posing corpses like mannequins with wire hangers and old stands, gaudy jewelry and two-hundred year old clothing sitting motionless on bits and pieces of Goodneighbor's women. Would've turned his stomach, if he had one. As is, he put down a serial killer and gave the kid his condolences. Ellie'd handled getting her to someone that could take her; she'd never been one to leave children to the deathclaws.
The look on that man's face still haunts Nick. Eyes blank, a soft smile on his lips as he carefully draped an ancient string of pearls around the neck of a dame that looked weeks dead. There was a danger there, something barely restrained, and Kellogg had had it too. Anger.
At least Angela's rage had manifested in movement. Movement can be controlled, put towards other ends. Kellogg and that serial killer, they had stagnated. Whatever made them snap, it stopped their forward motion and they'd festered.
Still, he'd never seen her so… vicious. Nick's had more than his fair share of revenge cases in the Commonwealth. It's ugly, more often than not, and he tries his damndest not to get tangled up in them when he can. He wants to do good in this brave new world, not be the hired gun that ends up on the wrong side of that revenge mission sooner or later.
But this… goodness, Nick had no idea what he was signing up for when he took this one. Angela always seemed the exception, not the rule. Snarky comebacks in the face of ruthlessness, compassion in a world with so much cruelty. She wouldn't hesitate to stick it to a raider, but he never thought her capable of disembowelment.
Even so, the Commonwealth makes monsters out of men. He's seen it happen.
He hopes that her reaction to the aftermath is a sign that he's not watching her go down that rabbit hole next. That this revenge, deserved as it is, doesn't make her stagnate.
Nick sighs in his chair, taking a drag off his half-smoked cigarette and blows lazy halos of smoke to the ceiling. He forces himself not to blame her - he'd do the same thing, if he were in her shoes. Maybe not as… extravagant, but all the same. There's a part of him that wants to leave nothing behind of Winter's face for what he did to Jenny, to Nick. He doesn't know if he'll be able to control that urge when he finally confronts the man.
There's a weight in his pocket, light but unfamiliar enough to notice. Wire and flesh, pulled from a corpse. He tries not to think about it, about what it means or what it is. Out of sight, out of mind, and better in his possession than in Angela's backpack, but it weighs like lead.
On the threadbare office couch, Angela twitches fitfully. It's been about an hour and a half since she collapsed, and she still hasn't woken. She's tossed and turned, almost fallen off the couch at one point, but no signs of consciousness. It's concerning, to say the least.
If she had a concussion, her brain would be swelling, right? If that happened, wouldn't she be tossing - or dead? Nick doesn't know; he was a cop, not a doctor, damn it.
She groans, face contorted, curling in on her wounded shoulder - it must still hurt, even though the stimpack healed the burn. Whatever dream she's having, it's not a good one.
He passes the time tightening the screws in his right hand, scowling at a new hole in the back of his coat, and the company of another cigarette. Nick's been a chain smoker for as long as he can remember, which might not have been that great for him back when he still had lungs, but now it helps him relax. Or something like it, anyways - his processors almost run a little easier with one in his hands, a little placebo for the nicotine he can't feel anymore.
He's in the middle of a diagnostic, scanning databases and checking the status of his background programs, when Angela jolts up, wide awake and terrified.
"Nick!"
It comes as a strangled gasp, the first breath of air after a near-drowning. He stalls for a second, trying to pause the diagnostic and respond to whatever the threat must be. When he opens his mouth, intending to speak, all that comes out is a drawn-out beeping.
"Sh-" his voice fades to static and he clears his throat, sits back down from his half-raise off the chair, and wills his synthesizer to cooperate with him, "Dammit, Angela, give an old synth some warning, will ya'?"
"You're here," Angela says, relief plain on her face as she sags into the couch. "Gracias a Dios, you're still here."
"Why wouldn't I be?" he snaps, harsher than he means, but stalling is never a fun experience. At least his systems had the good graces not to crash.
She sighs, rubbing an eye with the heel of her hand. "I…"
Deep breaths, Nick, he thinks. Not that he needs it, but the action's calming nonetheless. Another leftover human habit, just like the rest of him.
"What?" He's more even now, gentle if not relaxed, in tone and body as the programs in his head catch up to the rest of him. "Thought I'd leave ya' here? After a fight like that?"
"Y-yeah. Well, no? I mean, I'd hope not?" She laughs, a hiccuping, choking sound lacking any humor. Her hand doesn't leave her face, and between that and her hair, falling in thick chunks in front of her, he can't see her expression. "I had a nightmare. I think. Parts of it were real, and then… too real? Or not real enough. I don't know. I don't remember."
She pauses, body going stiff with some sort of realization. Slowly, her hand lowers and she looks around the room: a large, decayed office, probably a generals or commanders, long since scavenged of anything useful.
"Nick, tell me we're not in Fort Hagen right now."
Nick stands, hands twitching with a burst of nervous energy in his pockets. The metal and grey matter, wrapped in his handkerchief as it is, feels like it's made of lead in his pocket.
"Sorry to say, doll, but we've been here all day." He resists the urge to pull out a smoke, just to occupy his hands. Instead, he grabs Angela's bag by the foot of the couch and starts rummaging for something to eat. Evisceration's gotta take it out of someone, after all, and she did lose her breakfast all over government property.
What he misses, perhaps on purpose, is the look on Angela's face. Like someone just punched her in the gut, eyes wide, breath short, fingers turned claws grasping her stomach.
"Wait-" she cuts herself off, tries to regulate breathing that's quickly getting out of hand. "All day? What about…"
"Kellogg won't be bothering anyone anytime soon," Nick says, soothing as he pulls out the Med-X, water, and a packet of mac and cheese. She's shaking, the old scar on her hand pressed against her lips while the other digs it's fingers into her side, eyes glassy and distant.
"Oh God," she whispers through her fingers, voice shaky and barely audible. "That - that was real? I killed him?"
He nods, finally able to look at her as she doubles over, not crying but shuddering, like her soul is trying to eject itself from her body.
It's all the proof he needs that she's still his Angela, still empathetic, still human. The Commonwealth hasn't gotten to her yet. Relief and guilt almost blow a spark plug; of course she would regret it. He doesn't know why he ever thought she wouldn't.
He kneels beside the couch, water bottle in his metal hand. He half expects her to throw herself over him, to take whatever semblance of human contact he can offer for comfort. Touch is Angela's constant, her stress relief, what grounds her, and all her friends have gotten their fair share of impromptu hugs or hand holding. It's something that Nick, convinced nobody would ever want to lay a finger on his uncanny figure, had to get used to. Still is getting used to.
But she doesn't. She doesn't touch him, and she doesn't cry, just curls in on herself and shakes. He's sure she doesn't know she's doing it, that she's not even in the room with him. He's seen it before, as a member of the Boston Police Force and as Diamond City's own private eye. Witnesses to murder, victims of violence, they all get the same look in their eye. Lights are on, but nobody's home.
So he drapes his trenchcoat over her and gives her space. Lights another cigarette, and makes use of an archaic coffee pot to heat water for some instant Blamco Mac and Cheese.
When the food's ready and his cigarette is down to the filter, she still hasn't moved, hasn't made any indication that she will anytime soon. His internal clock reads six-thirty at night, and Angela hasn't eaten since early that morning. Even then, it wasn't much, just some razorgrain toast and half a Nuka Cola.
Nerves, she'd said when he asked her. Stomach's queasy. I'll eat when we get home, after we get this over with.
"Angela," he says, bowl of pasta in hand and voice low, cautious.
No response. Not a glance, not even a twitch. Poor girl's going down the rabbit hole, and if she doesn't snap out of it soon she might never.
"Angela." He puts a hand on her shoulder, a ghost of a touch. She jumps as if he'd burned her, lurching up from her slouched position, eyes huge and panicked, searching his face without recognition.
"Woah, hey now." His hand hovers over her shoulder, unsure if he should try for contact again, and he hopes his tone is akin to soothing because he's never been good at this. "'S just me."
She takes him in, and slowly familiarity flickers in her brown, coffee eyes. Her whole body relaxes much as it had when she first woke up, shoulders slumping, a tired frown on her dark lips as she pulls his coat tighter around herself.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare ya'," she says, voice as exhausted as the rest of her.
"Not a problem, doll. Didn't mean to jolt you out of your reverie, but," he holds the bowl in front of him, a peace offering, "here. Can't say it's home-cooked, but it's better than nothing."
She leans back against the armrest of the couch, wincing when she tries to run a hand through her partially blood matted and very sleep-tangled hair. "Ouch, joder. What did I do, make friends with a hammer?"
"No, but you and the floor had a nice chat," Nick replies, wary grin on his face as he hands her the food. She's a bite and a half in before she starts scarfing the food down. For her small stature and picky eating habits, she eats like a Yao Guai after hibernation when her body demands it.
She's all but licking the bowl before she slows, and just like that she's out of steam. The dish rests in her lap, her head bowed. A heavy sigh escapes her, and it doesn't take a detective to figure out what's coming next. He sits back down in his armchair, legs crossed, metal digits fidgeting with the frayed ends of his shirtsleeve.
She doesn't look up, doesn't meet his eyes, and when her voice comes after a moment of tension, it's small, broken. "I killed Kellogg."
"Yeah, sweetheart. You did." It's matter-of-fact, honest truth. "Do you remember?"
He sees the flash of a grimace through the braided locks of her hair, but otherwise she doesn't move. Kid's getting too still for his liking, way too still. Angela's a creature of movement, tactile and loud. The last time he saw her this withdrawn, she burnt the hell out of her hand just to change something. There's a tightness in his throat at her silence now, and he can't quite swallow it away.
"Bits and pieces," she answers, jolting him out of his thoughts. "I remember talking with him, about Shaun. He's at the Institute," and she growls in frustration, the hand he can see balling into a fist. "Because of course he is. After that? Nada."
She looks at him, then, eyes haunted and confused. There's a helplessness about her person, something lost and set adrift, and it pains him to see it.
"Nick," her voice breaks, shatters like glass, "what did I do?"
She knows something, if not the whole story, he can see it in her face. And she's giving him the power to make or break her, to tell her it was all a bad dream or let her in on the whole ugly truth.
Nick coughs, breaks eye contact and he couldn't breathe even if he needed to. All the air leaves the room, and she knows.
The next silence is long and pregnant, the difference from the last being that Angela is still aware, still alive. She hasn't sunk in on herself, she isn't lost to her own head. She swings her legs off the couch, places the now-empty bowl beside her, rests her elbows on her knees and thinks. Trying to remember, he'd wager by the furrow in her brow.
After a long while, Angela reaches in her shirt, pulls out a chain, a thick golden ring dangling on the end of it. One he's always seen her wear, seen her ponder, but never seen her without. Without a word, she unclasps it and pools the silver and gold in the palm of her hand, considering.
Nick desperately wants to grab a cigarette, ease the anxiety knotting the cables in his torso, but he doesn't. Even if his pack were in his pants instead of his coat, he wouldn't. If there's one thing both detectives and synths were built to do, it's be still and observe, gather data. And so he watches her consider the little piece of gold in her hand, watches her fingers form a loose fist over it, as she presses that fist to her lips. He tucks it away in his memory banks, keeps it.
"It was Nate's," she whispers, and the room fills with air again, tension snapping as a dry twig might. "His was the only pod I could get open, and I wanted, needed really, something to remind me. Of my family, my life. To keep myself from forgetting they lived at all, I guess." She laughs softly, a bare, hopeless, breathy sound.
"Nate, he… he was a soldier. In the Resource Wars. In the Great War, too, just for a minute." She reclasps the chain and lets the ring dangle from her fingers, glinting in the dim light. "I remember, I was eleven and I asked him what it was like to kill people. You know what he told me?"
She looks at him again, meets his eyes, and Nick, for all his fancy personality, his databanks full of human words and sentences, doesn't know what to say.
"He said it wasn't something he enjoyed. That there was a certain measure of respect you had to give the person you were about to kill, because they had lives. Families, just like ours, passions and pets and lives. You had to realize they were human, and that you were taking that away from them. Too many people distanced themselves from that, he thought. And he taught me three things," she holds up a fist, index finger in the air.
"One: make it quick." Another finger joins her index. "Two: make it painless," a third finger, "and three: make it merciful. Never do more damage than you have to." The hand falls, and so does Nick's heart.
"This ring, it was a promise, from Nate to Nora. From me to them. To keep what they taught me, to be someone they would recognize when I finally died and met them at the pearly gates."
Her whole body quakes, face crumpling in on itself, hands gripping the lapels of his borrowed coat so hard her knuckles turn white. She takes a deep, shaky breath, holds back tears, and Nick's on his feet in less than a second. His processor's running at a mile a minute, fans kicked up a setting, memory drives whirring as he searches for a relevant situation to fall back on. Nick the Cop didn't have many friends, Nick the Synth even less, and the tears of his clients are different than the tears of the people he knows, people he can touch.
"Hey now, it's gonna be alright," he soothes, kneeling in front of her, hands brushing down her arms as she lets out a single, broken sob. He lets her come to him, an unspoken offer, and she does. His plastic shoulder can't be comfortable but she rests her head there anyways, tears squeezing through her eyes and onto his dress shirt.
"I broke my promise." She cries into his shirt, and he rubs her back, holds her as she rambles, switching from English to Spanish and back again seemingly at random. He doesn't catch all of what she says, can't understand half of it to begin with, but he's there, and that's what matters.
It's the effort that counts, with her.
Over time, her shaking and rambling slows and stops. She doesn't pull away from him, instead opting to wind her arms around his chest in a hug of her own.
"Feelin' better, doll?" He leans back just enough to catch a glimpse of her face, the yellow glow of his eyes shining on her wet cheek.
She chuckles weakly against him, real humor lacing it despite the day she's had. "I think getting hit by an A-Bomb hurts less, actually." She meets his eyes with her own, puffy and bloodshot and filled with grief. "And trust me, I would know."
"I think those freezers burned you more than the bombs did," Nick drawls, releasing her to reach to the end of the short couch, where he left the Med-X and water. There's a small distance between them as he shakes out another dose of the painkiller, and he watches her down the pills with ease. The rest of the water follows suit immediately after - shock, combat, and vomiting will leave a girl her size dehydrated, after all, and he's glad to see her taking care of herself.
He takes a seat next to her on the couch, one arm slung over her shoulders. She's so much shorter than him, he can only see the top of her head even at a slouch, and he misses the steel in her eyes, the tension in her face before she speaks.
"I don't regret it. Killing Kellogg. I don't." She's cold, suddenly, as ruthless as she was during the chat with the merc.
He catches the jump in his systems, the surprise that must be on his face and stops it before it creeps into his synthesizer. "After everything he put you through? I don't blame ya'."
She sags into the couch, exhausted. "I don't regret killing him, but I wish-"
"Don't say it. You'll hold it against yourself for the rest of your life if you do." He goes for casual as he says it, but Jenny's face, teeth dazzling against her deep brown skin, laughing at something he said (but it wasn't him), flashes behind his optics and his voice comes out hard instead, his hand tightening on her shoulder unconsciously. "We can't change what's happened. Don't beat yourself up over it, or you'll get stuck in the past."
"There something you wanna talk about, Valentine?" she asks, all tired concern and questioning eyes. She grabs his metal hand, and he realizes what she's asking. She knows about Nick, his memories, the disconnect between human and synth.
And despite her broken vow, the hell of a day she's had, the man lying in a pool of his own blood and her vomit mere rooms away, she wants to help him, Nick Valentine, who's so obviously a robot, a poorly-rendered copy of the real deal.
Something like humanity flashes through his wires, just for a moment, like waking up from a dream.
"Not today, I don't," he says, reaching into the pockets of the coat draped over Angela's shoulders for a distraction. It takes him a minute to find the pack of cigarettes and lighter - only distraction on her part and the shadow of his hat on his keep her from seeing the face he pulls when his fingers brush the handkerchief in his left pocket (he'll tell her about Kellogg tomorrow, he thinks, after she's rested) - but when he does, her face lights up with that grin of hers, lopsided and small but there.
He pulls out a smoke and she snatches his flip lighter to ignite it for him in one fluid motion. It's a habit, for them, since that day six months ago on the stands of Diamond City: one of them finds a cigarette, the other lights it, and they share. Another casual intimacy for the human, another small bit of humanity for the bot.
The cigarette's only half-smoked when Angela leans against him, head on his shoulder, one hand holding his, a loose fist gripping the lapel of his coat, and sighs herself into sleep.
Nick takes a long, hard drag of his cigarette, pretends the smoke burns as it fills lungs he doesn't have.
Tomorrow, they'll be back in Diamond City, and with any luck, Kellogg's wires will lead them to Angela's brother. He only hopes she'll still want to hang around after the case is closed, come what may.