Chapter Text
She finds him hiding away in the shooting range.
Hiding is the wrong word. He’s not concerned with keeping his presence secret, a steady BANG BANG BANG as he fires off the current clip into a target at the 10 yard line. Without the proper ear protection, the sound of each shot reverberates in her head as she closes in, almost loud enough to drown out the angry pulsing in her ears.
It took her 15 days. Fifteen days of keeping her eyes open and her mouth shut in this unidentifiable cabin somewhere in the middle of the woods for the pieces to all line up.
“Nate” had handed over her obituary and an article on her funeral on the 7th, sliding it across the table during breakfast that morning with the same casual motion he had made when he had pushed the non-disclosure agreement into her hands on the first day they had met.
Her death hadn’t made front page news, she couldn’t help but feel a little relieved about that, but it had made enough of a splash for the article to include pictures of the funeral. She ignored the byline and the baiting title, “FUNERAL FOR FIANCEE OF BPD STAR DETECTIVE-” yelling up at her in block print, focusing instead on the main photo on the spread. Someone had snapped a photo at the end of the service, as most of the attendees had turned away and taken their leave, with a singular figure still standing at the grave, facing the headstone. You couldn’t see his face clearly in the photo, his head bowed and hair covered by a dark hat. You could see the bouquet of sunflowers held limply at his side and the way his fingers curled around the top of the headstone, as if he was reaching out to grab someone’s (her) wrist, not as if he was supporting his weight on a cold slab of granite.
He was wearing a black suit.
“A man should save wearing black for a funeral or a wedding. No sense in lending unneeded severity to the world when it’s got enough of that on it own.” Nick had remarked one morning over coffee, while the two of them glanced over a case file and she had asked him why he only ever wore suits in blues and grays. If their hands brushed when he handed over her mug, both acted as if they were none the wiser.
“Well then, aren’t you lucky you look good in blue, detective.” She has replied, flipping through a few pages.
She let the words sink in, turning another page nonchalantly before glancing up as she took a sip from her mug. His eyes were on the case book spread before them but she still noticed the warm rosy undertones around his ears and across his cheeks.
That wasn’t how she planned on finally seeing him wear it.
That first picture had hurt, the second picture, the one she found this morning as it slipped out of a folder, was the one that made her realize. It was a full page photo, taken at the station after business hours. Nick was front and center in the photo, the door to his office wide open as he sat slumped in his chair surrounded by case files. You could see his face clearly in this photo. His onyx eyes were dull, glancing down at the paper held in one hand, his skin was ashy and his eyes looked sunken and dark around the rims, more so than she had ever seen before when he had stayed up late working a case. His navy suit jacket was thrown over the back of his chair and his tie was slightly undone. He had no idea someone was taking this picture. Jen had stared at it for several minutes before it occurred to her to flip the picture over and look for a date. One had been scribbled in on the back left corner: 6/13/77 in a compact script.
Here was a picture of Nick, looking closer to death than she was, and it had been taken yesterday.
Nick wouldn’t be pushing himself this hard, obviously skipping sleep and probably skipping meals, if he knew she could see- oh. But that was it, wasn’t it? He didn’t know.
Nick Valentine didn’t have a single damn clue.
Dimly, she was aware of the sound of papers flapping through the air and the folder the photo had been hiding in bouncing against the wall.
She got to work tracking Nate down once she stopped seeing red, leaving the folder and it contents spread across the floor where she had thrown it. She held on to the photo.
By the time she found Nate at the shooting range, she had cooled off just enough to know that grabbing him by the shoulder and slapping him would be an unwise decision seeing as he was holding a loaded weapon.
Instead she allowed herself to lean into the wall next to his stall roughly, catching the corner of his vision and giving him time to recognize her presence. He frowned at her appearance, the sound of his last shot hanging in the air as he removed the magazine and cleared the chamber of his gun before pushing his headphones back to hear her. “You shouldn’t be down here without earplugs-”
“You didn’t tell him.”
The concern on his face pulls back into something blank and professional as his eyes flicker down momentarily to the photo in her grasp then back up again. “Ah.”
It’s neither and admission or a denial and Jenny is hoping for Nate’s sake that he’s got more to say than that.
He frowns and lets out a small exhale, motioning towards the door with his free hand, “Look. Let’s go upstairs, then we’ll talk.”
—
She’s sitting at the table in the Safehouse’s kitchen before he enters the room, and just barely gives him time to sit across from her before she’s speaking again.
“Why hasn’t my fiancee been told I’m alive?”
The word fiancee drips down like its venomous, and Nate suppresses a flinch. No better way to cut to the chase than to remind your bodyguard-slash-fake-husband that there’s another man that should be filling that role. He likes Nora, he really does. She’s a nice-enough gal (According to her file) and sharp as a tack but she’s making both their lives harder by being so damn observant.
This was one of those things he hadn’t planned on her finding out.
He considers lying to her and playing the “He’s just one hell of an actor with whats at stake” card but based on what he’s seen of Mr. Valentine and the glare Nora is giving him, he’s pretty sure they both know that the only good actor out of the three is himself.
Partial-truth it is then.
“Because we all need this to be authentic as possible. For your sake, and for his safety.” Nate replies calmly. Nora is doing the “are you lying to me” death glare and Nate still hasn’t really gotten used to the former psychologist’s evaluating looks. He’s read her file. He knows there’s a reason she was snatched up by Parsons State Asylum right out of school with little experience but a lot of potential, and why BPD got their hands on her as soon as they could after that. A woman who could accurately identify and read emotions on faces better than the people experiencing them was one hell of an asset to an asylum, never mind what a walking, talking lie detector meant for BPD.
Nora’s eyes narrow and Nate’s thoughts bounce away for a second as a quiet little "fuck" flits through his mind.
“It’s been a week since the funeral. Two weeks since my death. The newspapers have probably moved on and aren’t focused on a tragic murder of a detectives fiancee anymore. The case isn’t public knowledge so Winter has no reason to keep up the fanfare. He wanted to make his threat, and now he’s made it. The only additional scrutiny Nick should be under is the watchful eye of protection assigned by who ever you work for, agent.”
“Never underestimate someone looking to gloat.” Nate offers, though it sounds fake even to his ears. She’s still staring at him, waiting for him to continue. Something about this doesn’t add up all the way and she knows it.
Well. Damn. Full truth it is.
“Look. Do you know how many confessions Valentine managed to grab from low-level crooks even distantly related to Winter in the first three months since this case started?” Nate shoots back, “One. Entry level guy. Lots of blank looks and talk of instructions being passed down from other nameless goons. Want to know how many confessions Valentine has snagged this week alone?”
The silence in the room is its own answer.
“Two. Two confessions. Both of which had names and places and explicit details that the BPD didn’t have before.” Nate continued, ignoring the look of absolute loathing the woman across from him is sending his way. “Yeah, we haven’t be absolutely honest with Detective Valentine, and part of that is safety but part of it is that right now, contrary to whatever Winter thought would happen, Nick Valentine is doing his job so damn well we might not even need the rest of his department to close this investigation.”
It’s not the answer she wants but it is the honest answer, and Nate hopes she can respect that at least. She doesn’t speak again and after a few minutes of silence he finds himself getting up from his spot at the table with no further ceremony.
Her voices catches him at the doorway.
“He’s going to burn out. Or rush head first into something stupid and get himself killed.”
Her voice is mournful, honest and resigned in a way he never hears when she’s talking to him face to face.
“You should give your man a little more credit than that, Lands.” He remarks, letting the pretenses of her situation slip away for a second. “I told you going into this that he’s in safe hands. I meant it.”
He hopes she can read the sincerity in his voice as easily as she would be able to see it on his face.