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Valentine cycled out of his diagnostic at the sound of Ellie's chair scraping against the floorboards as she pushed back from her desk, and glanced up at her as she let out a quiet groan of pain as she stretched for the cane she had forgotten she had propped against the filing cabinets just out of reach.
"Heading out early?" he asked, leaning forward to pick up the cane and hold it out to her.
Her wrinkles added a still pleasing softness to her smile, even if it didn't reach her eyes. "February fourteenth, Nick," she reminded, leaning heavily on the wooden aid. "I know you've been waiting all day for me to go home so you can visit her. Besides, I'm awfully tired and that chair isn't doing these old bones any favors."
His own smile was more than a little chagrined. "I'm sorry, Ellie. I really should have gotten you a better one by now." He stood to escort her to the door. "I'll go see Percy this evening about one."
"Oh no, you won't," she huffed, waving a dismissive hand at him. "You, sir, have an important date tonight. I can wait. One more day isn't going to make that much difference."
"The same could be said for my 'date'," he sighed, looking down at his shoes as he opened the door.
"Nick..." She reached up to put a hand on his cheek. When he looked back up, her eyes had taken on a shine that was more than the glassiness of age. She opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it again. Finally, she gave him a soft pat, and hobbled out the door. "Worry about the chair tomorrow. I'll see you in the morning."
As was his habit these days, he stood and watched until she had turned the corner toward the marketplace and her home. He indulged the human urge to sigh, then stepped back inside the office, closing and locking the door behind him.
February 14th.
Valentine's Day.
Part of him could appreciate the irony.
Moving to his desk, he clicked off the lamp and picked up his packet of cigarettes. Then he paused. Though she had never complained or even commented on it, Nora didn't like it when he smoked. Didn't like the smell.
He tossed the cigarettes back onto the desk and turned toward his bedroom.
She had asked him once why he even had a bed, much less a bedroom. He didn't really have a good excuse back then other than to say it was an old habit from human-Nick. Like everything else about him, she just accepted it and moved on.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he bowed his head for a moment. He wondered if he should say a prayer or something, or if this was just another way he was putting things off. Shaking his head at himself, he slapped his hands against his knees in frustration and slid off the bed to crouch down and reach under it.
Pushing aside musty old cardboard boxes of ancient case files, he easily found what he was looking for: an olive drab footlocker.
Setting it and himself back on the bed, he stared at it for several long minutes.
Then he opened it.
"Hey, doll," he whispered, reaching in to take out a battered old field journal stamped with an almost completely faded Brotherhood of Steel emblem.
Turning to the first page, he ran the tips of his metal fingers over Danse's name in silent thanks again -- and sent another to Scribe Haylen for giving it to him -- before flipping to the second half of the notebook. Past handwritten notes and gun mod diagrams, was at first fairly crude sketches of a female figure in a vault suit. As he continued to turn the pages, there were less words and more sketches, each better than the last. Some were of Nora talking to some formless other person, one of her with her head bent over a workbench, and many of her looking off into the distance, her features becoming clearer corresponding with the dates the (former) Paladin had begun traveling with her. The last two, Valentine could tell how much Danse had grown to love the woman. One of her asleep, looking almost angelically peaceful, and the other the only one facing head on, eyes so dutifully detailed it was as more like a photograph than drawing. Both dated the same day Nora had marked on Danse's makeshift tombstone; the day of his execution.
"Another year gone by," he whispered as he brushed his thumb over the cheeks of the drawing.
Setting the open notebook down next to him, he reached into the box again, this time pulling out a holotape. He turned it over in his hands before holding it up as if the picture could see it. "From Preston," he explained. "Your recruitment message. Your little towns... yes, towns now... don't need it anymore, so he wanted me to have it. It's all that's left of that gorgeous voice of yours, you know." He chuckled half-heartedly. "I'm surprised he didn't wear it out himself, he missed you so much."
Setting the tape down, he next picked up the old copy of Piper's newspaper article.
Close to a century and a half after waking up in a trash heap, Valentine had lived longer than he ever thought he would, especially after taking up with the Woman Out of Time. Time, however, caught up with her, as it must do to all living things.
Nora was the first to go.
No one ever expected to die of old age, not in this post-war era where it was still uncommon despite growing stability. But no one expected cancer either. By the time Curie had run the tests, Nora had become bedridden. The damnedest thing was, she had already known.
"I had hoped it'd be a bullet to the head, or some other quick and clean death," she wheezed. She didn't even have the energy to open her eyes anymore. "When it took Shaun, I knew it was only a matter of time before it got me, too."
She didn't last the night.
The next morning, February 15th, 2293, they put her in the ground next to Nate and the empty grave of her son.
Putting aside the newspaper, Valentine picked up the slightly squashed tricorner hat of Hancock. "And hello to you, too, sir."
Of all Nora's companions, he had hoped Hancock at least would be the one to be here with him today. Naturally turned or not, ghouls were virtually immortal, but the mayor didn't even last a month. It took almost that long to find what was left of the body, ravaged by ferals.
"World ain't worth livin' in without her, Nick."
They buried him wrapped in his coat and flag, next to Nora.
Valentine kept the hat... and a Mentats tin, it's paint rubbed off from near-constant handling, with a thick lock of coppery-red hair inside.
"Don't know how he got your hair, doll, but I can't even feel ashamed how glad I am that he did," he said as he pulled out the tin and opened it. "This old CPU is starting to fail me, I think. It's hard for me to remember the color of your eyes anymore." After the tin came a pair of tinted eyeglasses. "Not that I got to see them much behind these. I don't think I mentioned Deacon actually apologized when he gave them back. I suspect he's gone now, too. And MacCready. I hope they at least made it to wherever they were heading down towards D.C. Never heard anything more from either of them."
The last thing in the locker was a pair of gold rings on a leather cord.
Laying them out in his palm, he stared hard at the glinting metal.
"Ah, doll..." he sighed. "Could you have forgiven me for how much I hated the way you clung to these back then? I know... I know I'm just a broken down old synth. Nothing human about me except memories... And stolen memories, at that. But I did love you, sweetheart... That was me, and not human-Nick." He clenched his fist around the rings. "Could you have loved me, too, if I had been brave enough to tell you? Would it have been enough to make you let these go?"
Probably not, he realized. Maybe she could have loved him as well, but she would have never stopped loving Nate.
He would have been okay with that, given the circumstances.
A quiet yet sudden knock at the door jerked him out of his reverie.
He checked his internal clock and realized it was almost eight o'clock. "Just a minute," he called. Then lowering his voice again, he said as he began placing all the items back into the box, "Miss Curie still insists on our yearly drink to remember you. After this long, doesn't seem right to brush her off."
Everything else secure in its place, he picked up the field journal last, tracing the outline of the picture's lips with a finger tip. "God, I miss you."
He closed the notebook and carefully put it in the box, shutting it and sliding it back under his bed.
"Good night, sweetheart."
Turning the corner back to his office, he grabbed his coat and hat from the rack, pulling them on as he headed for the door.
"I'll see you again next year."