Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Of all the places for humanity to find a foothold in this merciless new world, it just would be a baseball stadium, wouldn’t it? Nora scoffed and shook her head. It seemed that America’s favorite pastime had been some use after all, at least two hundred years down the line. 

The competitive spirit that once lived in Fenway Park was still haunting the place like a vengeful ghost; it took the form of steel-eyed umpires who appeared less concerned with impartial calls than their predecessors had been. 

“Hey, scavver,” one addressed her as she glowered at the enormous green eyesore. “No funny business in the Jewel, got it? If you’re plannin’ on makin’ trouble, go make it somewhere else.”

Nora turned to appraise her accoster. His sandy hair was a haystack, his sharp expression the needle. He looked a little too scrawny for the tough talk, and he gripped the bat in his hands like he thought someone might try to steal it.

At one time, the smile on her lips would have been disarming. These days it was a smirk that packed more heat than she actually carried, but the guard didn’t need to know that. She saw his bat and raised him one 10mm semi-automatic, holstered at her side. Her fingers brushed over the butt of the gun as she settled one hand on her hip.

“Why? You boys got a monopoly on it?” she shot back. If these goons were anything like the others she’d met, big and loud was the only language they spoke.

Mr. Bat tightened his grip and grit his teeth. Another ominous umpire had been leaning against a wall nearby, and now he lifted off his perch like a shadowy bird. Bat boy’s bravado perked up noticeably with his approach.

“Smart ass, huh?” His eyes flickered between her and Mr. Shadow as he walked on over, slow and silent. “That kinda attitude ain’t gonna get you nowhere in a place like this—nowhere but a ditch.”

“Wouldn’t that be a shame,” Nora lamented. “But I’ll bet your ditches are real nice.” 

Thug number two was close at hand now. Unlike his buddy, this guy didn’t need the macho talk; the automatic in his hands did that for him. 

“Scram,” was all he had to say, brandishing his gun as a punctuation mark. His baritone was flat and no-nonsense. 

“The Jewel,” his shorter compadre provided in snarky translation, “don’t need drifters like you bringin’ in more trouble and no caps, so beat it. Before I beat it for you.”

Nora might have laughed at him if she hadn’t been so put out. Damn.... What a rotten development. The wayward threats hadn’t thrown her, but being denied entrance altogether was something she hadn’t anticipated. Now what? Apologize? To the likes of these bullies-turned-bouncers? Not a chance. 

She shrugged like it didn’t matter. So much for those hopeful lights on the horizon. She had thought that any place with enough electricity to power a stadium’s blinkers was bound to be civil, but nope. If anything, it had the same barbed wire vibe as the Starlight Drive-In did, complete with gun-toting goons posted outside of rusty walls. That was one of the first things she’d noticed leaving Sanctuary Hills: the drive-in had been converted into a veritable blockade topped with lunatics and gunmen. Raiders, Garvey had called them, just like the welcoming committee she had met at the statehouse. 

The guys in war paint and makeshift armor who she’d seen on Starlight's ramshackle ramparts, they had looked a good deal more feral than the thugs in front of her now. At least these fellas weren’t taking pot shots at her just for fun, and nobody had tried to bash her head in with a security baton...yet. But it still went to prove her suspicions about this brave new world. Anyone with a fort to guard, whether it was a big screen or a big wall, was a raider. And hell if she was going to ask anyone like a raider for help.

She gave one last look to the rusty patchwork wall. The sunbeams, which had made it look just a little nicer as she approached, were gone now, and the clouds above were bruised with dusk. It was a long way back to Sanctuary. The stadium was lit up all welcoming and bright, but Nora wouldn’t be staying to watch any games. ...Yep, so much for those lights.... 

She thought about spitting on Captain Bat Lover’s shoes before she left, just to cheer herself up. It might’ve earned her a lot more than a bloody nose, however, and if Nora was going to die on a hill, it sure wasn’t gonna be this hill of green beans. She turned her back on the two umpires and began to walk away without so much as an “up yours.”

There wasn’t anyone big and strong to tend to her nosebleeds anymore. Still, Nate would’ve cheered her for the impulse to pop that little guy in the mouth. He hated bullies as much as she did. If he were here, he.... 

The warning prick of pain was a delayed but dangerous thing. Its familiar sting made Nora quickly switch her thoughts to easier fare, like the burn of hatred in her gullet. Bullies really were the same no matter what century you stood in. They were the only kind of people left in this world. ...Well, with a few rare exceptions, like Preston Garvey and one surprisingly loyal dog.

The former had been rather vague when he told her what she would find in Diamond City. 

“It’s a safe place,” he’d said, hastily cutting off chunks of death claw while he talked. “Safer than anywhere else in the Commonwealth, anyway.” 

He laid the slabs of meat on top of a red coat, one taken off a British soldier from the exhibit. The blood soaked in and made it darker, covered his hands and stained his clothes, but Preston didn’t pay any attention to the mess. He looked up and around every few seconds, keeping a sharp eye out while he butchered the scaly beast as fast as he could. Nightfall was bearing down on them, and Garvey’s small group of survivors looked tired and frightened.

“That's a very comforting comparison, thank you,” Nora deadpanned. 

“Maybe it isn't, but there’s bound to be someone who can help you there, at least.”

Her voice was thick with skeptic scorn when she asked, “Oh, really?”

He glanced at her with dark eyes and the hint of a dimple in his cheek. It reminded her of another smile, and her heart lost just a little of its ice.

“Yes, really. But don’t set out right now. It’s too dangerous in the dark. Stay the night with us in Sanctuary, rest up—”

“No thanks,” she interrupted.

“—and Sturges can draw you up a map in the morning. He knows the way.”

“I already have a map,” she insisted, raising the arm with the Pip-Boy on it.

Preston just nodded and went back to making lunch meat out of the Death Claw as smoothly as if he’d worked at a deli all his life. His deep voice was smooth as well, nothing like the panicked plea for help she had first heard. “It’s a little under a day’s walk from here to the river,” he said, “and maybe half of that from there to the city. You won’t have many places you can stop and rest, but there’s a couple. Graygarden. Oberland Station. Sturges’ll tell you. If you let him take a look at your Pip-Boy, he’ll—” He sliced the knuckle of his left index finger, but he simply shook it, stuck it in his mouth for a few seconds, and went back to cutting. “He’ll mark ‘em on your map. Now, I’ve only been to Diamond City a couple of times myself, but once you’re inside the Wall—”

The hotheaded harpy interrupted him then with a snappy, “Come on, Preston. That’s got to be more than enough for all of us.”

Garvey made the mistake of disagreeing with her, and suddenly they were embroiled in a discussion of spoilage and portions and who was going to carry the red coat full of red meat all the way to Sanctuary.

“Once you’re there, just ask for help,” was the last remotely useful thing he managed to say to Nora, although she could barely catch his words over the other woman’s shrill remarks.

What a novel idea, she’d wanted to snark, not that he would have heard it anyway. She’d been asking for help ever since she woke up in this hellhole. It just brought her more trouble every time she did. The only one who hadn’t given her grief so far wasn’t even a person. 

Mr. Welding Goggles asked if she was going with them. Nora ignored him as she walked over to her dog—no, not her dog. She hadn’t even been the one to name him. Just a common mutt with kind eyes who’d made her life a little easier. That’s all he was to her. ...But still she knelt and scratched behind his ears, resisting the urge to tell him where she was going and that he would have to stay when she left. He whined anyway.

A voice sluggish with age said, “Dogmeat’s a good boy. He’ll be of more help to you in the future, I can tell. He’ll wait for you faithfully...just like someone else is waitin’ for you, right now...out there, beyond the lights.”

Nora looked up at Mama Murphy, one of the only people in the group whose name she even remembered. The old lady didn’t look like the type to remember much herself. Her face sagged as heavily as her words did, and her eyes were distant like a blind man’s.

“Beyond the lights, huh?” Nora didn’t manage to keep the derision out of her voice. Yeah, she knew exactly who was waiting for her out there, but thinking of her baby in a stranger’s arms was the last thing she needed to do. The old woman’s inexplicable knowledge of this tragedy was like a rough hand running over a wound, and it irritated Nora immensely—especially when it was the reason these folks knew who she was and when she was from to begin with. 

Mama Murphy didn’t seem to notice anything amiss in her tone. She just hummed encouragingly and said, “That’s right.”

Nora scoffed.

“Is that a metaphor, or does this have to do with ‘destiny’ again?”

“Destiny...the future...the past.... I can see it all runnin’ together for you, and it starts...with the lights on the horizon,” she finished dramatically, if not promptly.

“You mean Diamond City, Mama?” Mr. Goggles asked. Apparently he was an eager listener in this next installment of The Adventures of a Senile Fortune Teller. 

The old woman’s smile was grandmother-mild, and its warmth prodded at Nora’s stale heart just the smallest bit. 

“That’s right,” she said again, nodding her head like it was too heavy for her neck. “The Great Green Jewel. Bright lights...but a whole lotta shadows.” Her voice sank over the foreboding words, and her eyelids appeared to droop with the same melancholy weight. She tilted her face up to the darkening sky and continued, “They make the city afraid. People keep their hearts locked tight...along with the answers you need. But there’s one heart that ain’t chained up. It’s...oh, it’s bright. So bright against the dark alleyways it walks. ...You find that heart. Set it free, and it’ll lead you to your son...your future.” 

Boy, what a crock. 

Nora’s thoughts were scornful and her smile was just shy of mocking, although there were goosebumps on her arms. No reason for that beyond the chill wind that blew down the street. Of course not. There was also no reason, apart from indulging an old lady’s fantasies, for her to ask, “And just how am I going to find this heart?” 

“Diamond City,” Mama Murphy answered, still staring up at the sky. Her words were a little breathless now. Her chest rose and fell like a swell on the sea. “Your path starts there in the light...and leads into darkness...but that heart, it’ll shine. And...and when you see it...you’ll know.” 

The thin chest heaved and sagged. Mama Murphy slumped backwards, but Goggles seemed like he’d been waiting for that all along. 

He caught her gently with an arm around her back and an “Easy now!”

“Sorry, kid,” the old soothsayer sighed. “That’s all I got. The Sight...it needs chems, like I said. Maybe if—” 

“Come on, Mama. You know it ain’t worth what those things do, no matter whatcha might see.”

While Mama Murphy wearily warned Goggles about doom and disaster, Nora turned back to Dogmeat. He trotted forward like she had called him, sat in front of her with a nervous yawn, and looked up at her expectantly. He was all sad eyes and slow blinks, as if he could tell that she would be leaving him behind. Maybe dogs could have the Sight too.... She shook away the errant thought and tried to shake the ache in her heart along with it. Nora knew she shouldn’t be getting attached; that’s why she hadn’t named the doggone mutt in the first place. Still, she couldn’t help but give him a placating pat on the head, and when he licked at her hand, she mumbled a silly explanation like it mattered.

“You’ll be safer with these folks anyway, boy. Lord knows you don’t need my luck....”

Nora didn’t believe in luck. Not really—at least no more than her parents ever had, the hypocrites. Contradicting their otherwise devout pragmatism was a liturgy of pessimistic proverbs she’d been taught since she could talk. “Nothing gold can stay.” “Misfortunes come in threes.” “Tomorrow brings sorrow as sure as the wind.” Her mother and father scoffed at superstition, and yet they constantly warned her about terrible tomorrows and anything that seemed to “tempt ill luck.” Maybe that’s why Nora was always so aware of the imaginary balance: she had counted its duality across the years, bad and good....

Having parents who were too concerned with their daughter’s future to spare any time for her present? Bad luck. Having wonderful neighbors who kept their door open and table set for her every night she was alone? Good luck. Her mother and father died before they could see her graduate high school, but she got to move in with a family she adored more than anything. Bad luck and good. 

All her life it was like that. When it seemed that she would die a spinster, Nate finally spoke up. When it looked like their house would be empty forever, Shaun finally came along. But even when good luck appeared to cancel out the bad, her parent’s words rang true in the end—nothing gold can stay. Tomorrow always came with misfortunes in threes, and now all Nora could do was keep count of the names she had loved and lost. 

Sometimes it seemed like her good luck had been up long before the bombs had come down. 

Well, it was a good thing she didn’t believe in luck then, wasn’t it?

...What a crock.

Fortunately for Nora, pessimism was as lifesaving as bullets out here—her good luck in all of the bad. It meant staying a step ahead of the shoes that were always waiting to drop. It meant expecting a villain around every corner and having her gun ready when one popped out. And when a friendly-looking girl locked eyes with her from the shadows of the baseball barricade, it meant turning up the collar on her jacket and walking faster to avoid any kind of hassle.

At least Nora tried to do that. The stranger simply sidled up alongside her like she hadn’t just been snubbed.

“Hey there.”

Nora ignored the tagalong’s greeting. She kept walking until her path was suddenly blocked by dusty freckles and sharp green eyes below a tattered cap.

“Hold up a minute!” This was the young lady she had seen—and heard, definitely heard—arguing with an intercom at the gate. Now she was standing in front of her and leaning in to whisper, “You want in...right?” They were well away from the wall now, but she whispered anyway. Nora didn’t.

“What does it matter to you?”

“Shhh!” She looked around like an anxious nut and then, “You and I have something in common,” she said with a conspiratorial smile. “Frustration with the local authority. ...I got an idea that can get both of us past those mutt-duds.” She jerked her head towards the two guards who were too busy preening to take notice of them. Well, Mr. Bat was preening; Nora couldn’t tell if the big fella was watching or not, and it made her nervous.... 

“No thanks,” she answered. 

“Aw, come on. You’ve got nothin’ to lose and free entry to gain.”

“I don’t take help from strangers.”

“Well then,” the brunette chirped and held out her hand. “The name’s Piper. Piper Wright. I’m a member of the press here in the Jewel. ...Well, the only member of the press. We’re working on that.”

A glance down at the waiting hand revealed fingers black with faded ink beneath a grubby glove. Nora didn’t shake it, but Miss Press wasn’t deterred. She turned the failed handshake into a snap, her thumb up and index finger out like a gun. Nora’s fingers brushed along the reassuring grip of her hip-side 10mm. This stranger’s overeager eyes and the inscrutable stare from Mr. Umpire’s helmet had her on edge. A woodpecker and a vulture, both waiting for a worm. Well, they weren’t gonna catch one from her.

“And now you’ll say we aren’t strangers anymore, I suppose.” Her patronizing tone made Piper’s expression fall flat. Nora knew better than to feel sorry for any offense. “Pardon me,” she took a pointed step around the girl, “but I was just leaving.”

Her shadow wasn’t deterred—she kept pace and wheedled as they walked.

“Look, we’ve got the same problem and the same goal. Kindred spirits, both thwarted unjustly, meeting by perfect chance? What’s not to like about that?”

What Nora didn’t like was owing a blank check of obligation to someone she’d just met. A kind soul simply helping out strangers on the streets? Please. She could practically smell the quid pro quo.

“Okay, okay, maybe it does sound kinda sketchy, but I don’t want anything from you except your help getting inside, honest,” pleaded Miss Member of the Press. “Nothing after that. No catches.” 

The young lady had hit right on Nora’s line of thought. Perceptive. Probably a journalist, rather than editor or paper jockey—or maybe she was all three, being the sole member of the press. Or...maybe Nora still had a piss-poor poker face that any wannabe con man could see through. 

“Reporters always want something.”

Piper sighed and flipped her dark hair out of her collar, muttering something about typical hatred of the press. Then, “Yeah, I am, and, yeah, maybe we do. But. If I did want something else from you,” she continued in a voice that was a lot more bossy than begging now, “you could just, y’know, say no? Whenever I asked? It’s not like we’re makin’ a contract here, so what’s the harm in helping out?”

The harm in helping out? It was something Nora had learned to calculate down to the decimal. So far the figure had come up in nothing but zeroes for her, and a zero for her was a negative number for Shaun. She’d wasted the first crucial forty-eight hours helping out wounded dogs and confused robots. All that precious time, lost. And then she’d gone and lost even more time helping out a bunch of refugees with nothing but bullet holes and the equivalent of fortune cookies from a kook for all her trouble. She was living on borrowed time, Shaun’s time, and she wasn’t going to waste it anymore by helping out anyone but herself.

Nora stopped walking, but it was only with the intention of dismissing Miss Press for good. 

“Wait, wait,” Piper hurried, holding up both hands as if to stave off a blow. “You’re here for a reason, right? You...you’ve got the look of a worried parent. I can help you—I’m sure I can!”

Nora’s mouth shut with a snap. Her hand closed reflexively around the butt of her gun. 

In a rough voice, she demanded, “How the hell do you know that?”

It was a foolish thing to ask—a foolish mistake to react like that. There might have been a dozen ways the reporter could surmise such a thing, and Nora’s response only confirmed the guess. A moment of weakness, the familiar surge of desperation, and Miss Press had her right where she wanted. Damn it.

To Nora’s surprise, the young woman’s bright, almost manic expression demurred. 

“I’ve seen it too many times. Especially in the Jewel. This is where people come when someone goes missing...but it’s also where they go missing the most....” Piper shook her head. The somber look faded from her youthful face, and a more determined one took its place. “My paper cares about missing people. If you help me, I promise I’ll do whatever it takes to help you.”

Nora might have thought the girl was sincere, if she hadn’t known better. ...And she hated it, but she couldn’t say that she did know better. Piper looked for all the world like she was telling the truth. Of course, if Nora had learned anything so far, it was that she couldn’t read people for shit anymore. One nuclear bomb, and boom! She was blind, a dead radar. No more stepping into strangers’ shoes, no more guessing motivations and leaning on a cause. This world and its inhabitants were a brutal mystery to her. Miss Press could have been lying through her teeth, for all Nora knew. But at least it didn’t look as if this interaction would end up with her being shot at or stabbed the moment she let her guard down—a refreshing change of pace.

“All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “I’ll help. Just to get in, though. I don’t care what you do after that.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Reporter’s honor!” 

Piper flicked a salute off her cap and about-faced. 

“Follow my lead,” she whispered to Nora as they neared the wall, the intercom, and Mr. Masked Goon. Then, in a voice that was all bold font and capital letters, Piper proclaimed, “Oh yeah. They never bother asking who people are outside the gate. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve seen these boneheads turn away traders like you. All those caps down the drain.”

“Pity,” Nora said and shifted her satchel as if there were something more valuable in it than a couple of Stimpaks and minor explosives. Maybe she was a bad liar, but at least she caught on quickly. “And I was so looking forward to doing business.”

“Yeah, the Jewel sure does need it,” Miss Press practically yelled. They were almost at the gate again now. Nora could see the umpire’s head swiveling to watch them. She could see the badly tarnished intercom box; the little red bulb wasn’t glowing after two hundred years, so it was anyone’s guess whether anyone was listening. Piper seemed to think someone was, judging by the way she leaned towards the box. 

“Medicine and ammo, and all the way from Quincy too! Everybody will be so put out when they hear that Danny Sullivan didn’t let you in. Crazy Myrna’s gonna be madder than a mole rat! ...Ya hear that, Danny?”

A groan crackled through the intercom. 

“All right, all right,” came the staticky young voice. “Geez Piper, just get in here without making a scene, will you? McDonough’s gonna be down any minute.”

“Well I’m not the one who calls for backup over one little....” The mutter trailed off, and Piper stuck out her tongue at the box for good measure. She looked like a child, but Nora’s thoughts were more envious than scornful at the moment. It hadn’t been so long ago that she’d been quite the smooth-talker herself. A silver tongue, as some had called it, had been one of her few redeeming qualities in the courtroom. But it was gone now; neither gold nor silver could stay, it seemed.

“Who’s McDonough?” Nora asked in a low voice. There was a deep, metallic grinding, and the gate began to move, slow as an elephant.

“Ugh. Fat cat bureaucrat. Runs the city under the guise of ‘mayor.’” Piper’s air quotes were aggressive enough to take out someone’s eye. “If we’re lucky, he’ll still be stumbling down from his office by the time we’re through the check. ...By the way, what’s your name?”

Nora’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

For one long moment, an answer from a different lifetime hung on her tongue, the way a pair of wedding bands hung on a shoelace around her neck. Hidden away like those rings was Nate’s name. Unsullied. Unused in this world of rust and blood. Nora Howard was a title that went with white picket fences and roses on yellow brick walls, precious dreams that lay peaceful and departed. Using it now would be akin to disturbing a grave—or, more aptly, to stealing from one. 

Nora Howard was as dead as the husband she couldn’t bear to think of. Dead like all the dear hearts and gentle people she’d barely had a chance to mourn. 

“Nora Pelowski,” she answered instead. Her maiden name, at least, was still familiar, like an old and well-worn coat, and the face it conjured was one she could actually think about without threatening to collapse.

“Huh, like those blue pods?” 

Piper’s words snapped her away from the picture of kind gray eyes and a dimpled smile.

“...No,” Nora answered, the lingering grind of machinery covering up her sigh. Two hundred years later and people were still going to ask her that question, weren’t they? 

There was just as much rust within the stadium as without. Vendors and ticket takers had been replaced by more bat-toting goons, each with their own special take on the umpire uniform. A girl with a sandy colored ponytail had bright wads of chewing gum all over her body armor like neon polka dots. The padding on a couple of guards had different hues and designs, from a shiny silver dusting to crudely painted flames. The redhead who came to meet Nora and her odd companion had a plain uniform in comparison to the others. Below his left shoulder was the white diamond all the guards seemed to have, and on his right was a D in dark blue; monogrammed or painted, Nora couldn’t tell—she was too busy meeting his appraising glare—but it reminded her of a little boy’s pajamas. This must be Danny Sullivan.

“You don’t look like a trader to me,” he groaned. “Piper, what the hell?”

“Well what was I supposed to do, Danny? What with your boss barring me from the city and all!”

“You coulda stayed away till Mayor McDonough cooled off, that’s what.”

“Oh yeah, that would make a wonderful headline, wouldn’t it? ‘Member of the press starves outside city walls! Who will be wrongfully exiled next?’” 

Nora shook her head at the drama. More wasted time. She was about to walk past Miss Press and leave her arguing with Danny Sullivan when another voice broke into the quarrel.

“Sullivan! What is she doing here? Didn’t I just say—”

“I’m sorry, sir. She and this—”

“Well well , the tyrant deigns to make an appearance!”

Through the cacophony, Nora gleaned that this newcomer was Mayor McDonough. He had a face that looked more prone to congeniality than to wrath, a flimsy mustache that faded into obscurity at both ends, and a suit that had once been either too meek a brown or too muddy a yellow. Completing the ensemble was an ugly little hat which she felt more inclined to call a pork pie than a trilby. Pork pie looked like a favorite of this particular politician in more than mere fashion. Nothing ever changed, did it? Bureaucrats eating their weight twice a day while people starved out on the streets. Her walk along the walls had yielded more glimpses of thin young urchins than the grizzled bruisers she’d expected—kids scrambling for scraps while this ‘mayor’ and his cronies had a nice hot feast inside their walls, no doubt.

Bullies of the sleaziest persuasion: cowards. 

She felt a thread of kinship with Miss Press for the first time as she pictured what kind of man this might be. Men like him were the reason the world had gone to hell. Of course, there could’ve been nothing more to her gut instinct than bitterness and bias, but Nora’s skin still crawled knowing she’d have to grease this guy up for information. Not even a month ago, kowtowing to a bigshot would have been a snap for her, regardless of retirement; flattery and figureheads were supposed to be a lawyer’s bread and butter—even a decently honest one such as herself. Even retired, she still could have managed that much.... Well, she wasn’t decent or honest anymore, she hadn’t been a lawyer in an actual age, and she wasn’t sure how much charisma she had left over for this blowhard. 

Nora cleared her throat, and it sent McDonough into a paroxysm of politeness.

“Oh! Pardon me. I didn’t see you there, madam—terribly sorry. I hope you will excuse my rudeness and this trouble maker. You see,” blah blah blah….

He simpered on for an endless minute, every bit as ingenuine as she had assumed him to be. Instead of proving convenient, this overdone acquiescence made it all the more difficult for her to hold a smile. Nora had been charming, once...before she’d exchanged her silver tongue for lead bullets.

“And that’s no way to make a first impression,” the mayor continued to grovel, “oh no. You look like real Diamond City material!" Even Danny Sullivan was looking bored. “I can assure you that whatever she’s told you is merely the groundless fear-mongering of a devious mind.”

Piper practically jumped Mayor McDonough then, and Nora didn’t bat an eye. It was up to Danny Sullivan to hold her back as she snarled a self-righteous snarl, if it was possible for a snarl to be such a thing. The politician tried to speak over her.

“No no no, nothing but slander and—”

“Corruption and deception and oppression and—” Piper’s string of accusations cut off like an alarm clock when Danny Sullivan’s hand clamped over her mouth. Her green eyes were fiery, and they pinned Nora with an obvious bid for assistance.

Nora looked between the three of them.

“This really isn’t any of my business,” she concluded. 

“Oh, dear me, no. I didn’t mean to bring you into this argument, Missus, uh, Miss....”

“Pelowski.”

“Like the blue door things?” Danny Sullivan asked amicably, his hand still over Piper’s mouth. The young lady’s eyes rolled as if she hadn’t just made the same mistake herself. 

“P-E, not P-U,” Nora corrected without any earthly idea why she bothered. “Anyhow.” She turned her attention back to the sleazy little man. “I understand you’re the mayor of this...place, Mr. McDonough?”

“Yes, indeed I am!” He took this as an invitation for a big warm welcome that curled Nora’s toes. Boy, she was lucky not to be in the courtroom anymore. No patience with windbags meant no progress as a public servant, the uncomfortable but rock-solid truth. 

McDonough gave her a spiel about Diamond City being safe, clean, warm, and lucrative. All the things a politician loves for himself and his posters. He finished by telling Nora not to let any rabble-rouser tell her otherwise. If Mayor McDonough had posters, Piper looked like she’d be plastering her papers all over them. 

“Yowch!” Danny Sullivan pulled his hand away from the reporter’s teeth and shook it urgently. 

“Safe and warm for who?” she demanded. The redhead’s other arm was still wrapped around her in a way that might have made anybody else blush, but it appeared to be old news to Piper. This must have been a usual routine. “You and the Stands? What about the orphans, the outskirters—”

“That’s enough out of you! That muckraking paper of yours would have everyone believe that I...I eat children for supper.”

“Ha! Well it certainly wouldn’t come as a shock. Nice new belt you’ve got there, mayor. Outgrown your other one already? All while kids are starving to death and their parents disappear without you lifting one finger to find them!”

McDonough’s face was turning a vague shade of magenta. He jabbed the aforementioned finger in Piper’s face—she looked like she might bite it off—and shouted at her.

“Consider yourself and that little sister of yours on notice, Wright! One more article like the last, one more ounce of nonsense about synths, and I’ll have the pair of you thrown out permanently. ...Sullivan. Escort this troublemaker to a cell.”

“On what charges?” Piper demanded shrilly as Danny Sullivan took her by the arm and began leading her away.

“Disturbing the peace, that’s what! Insurrection! Inciting—”

Nora cleared her throat once more, and there was silence.

“I’m sure,” she began, again not knowing quite why she bothered, “that this kind of commotion isn’t at all commonplace in your city, Mayor McDonough.”

“No no, of course not,” he insisted. “Not commonplace at all. Highly unusual, truly!” 

“Then I’m sure you could let the young lady off with a warning, couldn’t you? Considering how infrequent such occurrences are, as you said.”

Mr. Politician sputtered, torn between appearing superior and feeling superior. Piper just grinned.

“Uh, yes, of course.” He cleared his throat—a weak, phlegmy little sound—and Danny Sullivan let go of his captive’s arm.

“So nice to find a public leader who cares about even his more outspoken citizens,” Nora said, conjuring up her best courtroom smile. It was too rusty, though. She could feel the unpleasant tightness in her lips and around her eyes. McDonough looked put off rather than charmed. Still, she did her best to at least sound charming when she continued with, “Now then. You’re the big man around this place. You must know everyone who comes through and everything that goes on, mustn’t you?”

“Why yes, as a matter of fact.” Mr. Politician preened, and it reminded Nora of the bat boy outside. At least this jerk was a lot easier to work over. “I know each of our proud residents by name, and I’m sure any one of them can help you with your needs. New clothes, good food, it’s all here in Diamond City.”

“Miss Wright said people come here when someone goes missing. Is that true?”

“Oh, well...yes. That’s right.” McDonough coughed a little and slid a finger around the inside of his collar. Gee, he must’ve been one hell of a poker player. “Naturally, it isn’t possible for our security team to follow every case that comes through....”

Piper snickered scornfully, earning dirty looks from every party present. 

“Naturally,” Nora agreed in an effort to keep the bureaucrat’s thoughts on her preferred track. He returned his gaze to her with an easy smile that said, That’s right. You get it. You’re one of us . Her silver tongue may have been tarnished as all get out, but at least she could still persuade a pompous nincompoop like this.

“So, who can help me then, Mayor? As you said, there must be someone in your community able to lend their assistance.” Hopefully someone who was ten times sharper than this clown and his so-called security team, or Nora would be in real trouble. If this proved to be nothing but a big waste of time, she was going to march right back out there and slug bat boy just for kicks.

“Ah, hm....” He hemmed and hawed for a moment, and it sounded more reluctant than uncertain. “Ahem. Well. As it so happens, there is one private citizen who specializes in, er, tracking people down. A...detective, of sorts, by the name of Nick Valentine.”

McDonough kept on talking after that, but Nora didn’t hear what he said—or rather, what he said didn’t make much sense to her. Any sense. She stared without blinking, utterly disoriented. It took her a long moment just to realize why.

Nick Valentine....

The name hit her like a sack of bricks and had her staggering backwards under its weight.

“Come again?”

The mayor blinked in surprise as his blabber stuttered and died.

He was all politeness when he asked, “What’s that?”

“You said.... Did you say Nick Valentine?”

“That’s right,” he replied. 

Nora grabbed him by his grubby lapels and stared him down like she’d shoot him for such a blasphemous lie. 

“Nick. Valentine.” She ground the words out like a face into a grindstone. The planet had stopped spinning beneath her. Hell, it was doing a handstand on its axis. In spite of the suddenly upside down world, however, she demanded, “A detective?” It was little more than a whisper this time.

“That’s right,” the mayor squeaked.

Nora felt her face turn to stone. Her words were made of something similar as she whipped out, “Tall? Sarcastic? Heavy smoker? Gray eyes?” 

Her eyes must have been the size of saucers, but the politician’s pair were even wider. She didn’t care. Nora could have shaken him until he rattled, especially when his answers were all stammer and no substance.

“Ah, well I—gray? I, uh, don’t....” McDonough seemed to think better of whatever he was about to say. “Um, yes. I suppose that does sound something like Mr. Valentine, somewhat. Do you, er, know each—” 

“Bullshit,” Nora spat. “Bullshit.” Her voice cracked desolately. When he’d first said that name, there had been one minute of insane hope.... But then she’d remembered the facts. 

“He’s dead . He’s been dead for two hundred years.”

“Um, er, that isn’t, uh....” 

Nora’s blood was boiling. She glared down at the perspiring politician, daring him to tell her she was wrong. He couldn’t possibly. Nobody knew Nick Valentine like she did. Nobody on earth. They were all gone now anyway, like her best friend and her husband and the rest of her world. Nicky was dead...and so was the bastard who had stolen his name. 

“You are...welcome to see for yourself,” the little man offered fearfully. 

Oh, she would do that. She would most definitely do that.

Piper told her to take it easy, but she didn’t. Piper called for her to wait up, but she didn’t do that either. Nora stormed into the city like a one-woman invasion, tossing her head bullishly with a furious snort to match. The idea of someone in this shithole impersonating her best friend.... Sure, it could be a coincidence, unlikely as it was. Sure, it could be an innocent imitation, and wouldn’t Nicky just love the joke of such odd, posthumous flattery? She could see him laughing so clearly, all dimples and dancing eyes. Well, she didn’t think it was funny, and neither would this faux Nick Valentine. She’d make sure of that. 

Underneath the fury, Nora knew how irrational and insane such anger was—but underneath that was the old pain, one she hadn’t come to terms with even before the bombs had dropped. She couldn’t bear to stick a finger in that minefield. Not when she’d been so steadfastly avoiding tears this far. Picturing his smile was something gentle, something that bolstered her spirits in spite of the grief which tiptoed behind it, but this? His name stolen like a trinket off a head stone? The chasm called up by such a bereft thought was too similar to the one she felt when she thought of Nate, and that wouldn’t do at all. Nicky was one of the few faces she could bear to think of these days, and she’d be damned if some nobody changed that for no damn reason. 

Anger was a much better deal than grief, and she was going to let it all loose on whoever thought that parading around with her best friend’s name was a good idea. Detective? They’d need a detective just to find his remains when she was done with this son of a bitch. 

Clouds above her and dust below, Nora stood at the top of a long metal staircase and looked down on the city, bright with lights all over. It looked less like a jewel than it did an oxidizing crown. Ruddy and rusted. The tetanus germ’s paradise. Good thing she had all her shots—and a kinder person might have hoped that everybody else did too, but Nora just scoffed at the pitiful sight of browning metal and shabby shacks. Then she launched into the town like a missile out of the silo.

“Excuse me,” she said to a woman passing by. The suit-pants blonde sneered, called her dirt, and kept walking.

“Excuse me,” she demanded of another. She tried harder this time to sheath the daggers in her eyes, but the girl must have seen them anyway; she ran off like an animal on an active volcano.

“Pardon me,” Nora tried again with a man who kept his gaze firmly on the ground until she stepped into his path.

“Outta my way, scavver,” he said and raised a fist that was wreathed with brass knuckles. Nora knew she couldn’t afford to take a crack at that kind of manicure. She stepped out of the way without a word while her insides burned with the urge to show Mr. Knuckles a sandwich of her own. That wasn’t going to get her anywhere, though. She needed a point in the right direction, not a punching bag. She needed to calm the hell down, that’s what she needed.

She planted her feet and tried to block out the drone of the crowd and the call of a nearby papergirl. Fury bubbled in a volatile froth, and beneath it? The oddest sort of panic. That wasn’t any good. Focus on finding the soon-to-be former impersonator. It was nice to have a goal she could actually lay hands on...preferably a neck to lay hands on, too. Where the hell could she get directions in a dump like this?

Like an answered prayer, there came a rich, mellow voice which asked her, “Can I help you with anything, ma’am?”

The question was sincere, and so were the pair of watery brown eyes and the rugged brown face that belonged to them. A man of the cloth, judging by the dirty collar at his throat. If anything was going to inspire more civility in her, it should have been a clergyman. Someone comforting and familiar in a world gone to hell. But Nora knew better. She didn’t trust him, not an inch, not even with those kind eyes. 

“You can give me directions, if you like,” she answered, trying not to sound too cautious. Her smile was an attempt to hide walls behind roses, withered though they were. She thought better of the expression half a moment too late, remembering McDonough’s wary reaction.

If her smile shook him, there was no sign of it in his welcoming one. Not ingenuine like the mayor’s or mischievous like the reporter’s. It settled something in her chest, if only for a few moments.

“Call me Clements. I’m pastor here.”

The stranger set aside the broom he was holding—his muscular build looked more suited to boxing than sweeping—and dusted off his hands before offering one to her. 

Nora shook the large hand. It was warm and calloused.

“Nora Pelowski.”

 “Ah, yes, just like those Pulowski preservation pods.”

Nora felt her smile drop away. Fortunately, the pastor didn’t seem to notice; his pleasant expression held steady.

“They’re still preserving people to this day, you know. Mighty helpful when you’re being chased by sinister creatures. It’s an honor to meet someone who shares the name.”

“No relation,” she informed him. 

Clements nodded his bald head. “Good to meet you all the same, and an honor to help you, if I can. You said you needed directions?”

If her smile had dropped before, it plummeted now and even succeeded in dragging the pastor’s down along with it, when she told him who she was looking for. One strong hand came up to rub over his stubbly chin. His broad lips drooped, and the lines on his forehead deepened like scars; beneath them, dark, watery eyes stayed glued to hers.

“Nick Valentine, you say. ...May I ask what you want with him?”

Telling a preacher that you wanted to kill somebody was an absurd notion. Instead, Nora replied, “I wanna ask him where he got his name, and then I’m gonna make him give it back.”

Clement’s face went from concerned to reproachful.

“Whatever your business is with Detective Valentine—” boy oh boy, it took all of Nora’s self control not to bust a gasket right then and there— “I hope it’s not unpleasant. Nicky’s a good man.”

Nicky. That was the cherry on top that pushed her sundae over the edge.

Foam practically flew from her mouth as she snarled, “He is not Nick Valentine! He’s nothing but a bastard with no respect for the dead!”

The pastor either saw this sort of mania all the time, or he had a very good poker face. He could clean out McDonough in a single game.

“You won’t find many in the Jewel who have an unpleasant opinion of our detective,” he said with gentle but unmistakable warning, like a priest tenderly admonishing one of his flock. “He’s one of the best men this city has ever seen, full of love for his neighbor, whether they appreciate it or not. A real Samaritan.”

Nora felt her face twitch. It wasn’t in anger this time. 

“Samaritan?”

Clements nodded. He turned around to get his broom, and once he had resumed sweeping, he told her, “If there were ever a man who was truly living out that parable, it’d be Nick Valentine. He’s saved a lotta lives over the years—and most of them for nothin’ but charity. He turns the other cheek and always helps folks out, even when he has no reason to. Anyone who finds cause to hate someone like that, well....” He looked up from his sweeping. His eyes were wary, but they softened as he glanced over Nora’s expression. 

She wasn’t sure what the pastor had seen in her face to make him smile at her so gently. She wasn’t quite sure what her face was doing at the moment. It felt pale and slack; maybe he thought she was penitent. Dumbstruck is what she really was. Her mind buzzed like a seasick fly from one thought to another, never settling comfortably. She felt her heart about to burst with pain, her certainty and anger slipping away. That insane little flicker of hope echoed his words: a real Samaritan.... 

Okay.... Okay, so maybe it wasn’t some malicious impersonator like she’d wanted to believe. Maybe it really was nothing but a bizarre do-gooder paying tribute to a prewar cop. And yet, distinguished as Nicky’s career had been, it certainly hadn’t earned him any monuments apart from a headstone with a star on it. Why should someone pluck his name out of the annals of history?

She jumped at the broad hand that landed on her shoulder and just managed to resist slapping it off. Pastor Clements was far too close for comfort, but the saintly warmth she saw in his eyes seemed genuine. He stood with one hand on her shoulder and the other clasping his broom like a shepherd’s crook, and Nora found that she couldn’t bear to step away.

“I can see,” his deep voice rumbled, kinder than Christmas, “that you don’t really mean any harm. It’s all right. Detective Valentine would be the first to tell you how understandable it is to have some...initial reservations, especially if it’s your first time seeing him. I assume you’ve had it bad with the Institute before. Course, who hasn’t? Shadowy monsters even God can’t save us from. I assure you, Nick Valentine has nothing to do with anything like that, no matter how he looks.”

Nora was losing patience with the pastor, his inscrutable words, and herself. Warring thoughts had her fists clenching and unclenching in the urge to smack some sense back into the world. As it was, all she could do was tap her foot and wait for the moment when Clements finally said, “Talking might do you some good on that subject. Not many can talk to Nicky without some good comin’ out of it. Just down that alley there, and a little ways on, you’ll find his door. All you’ve gotta do is follow the signs.”

The hand on her shoulder tightened suddenly, just as she was turning away. 

“And Nora?”

For the first time, Clements didn’t look so much like a pastor.

“Please remember that whatever quarrel you might have—or think you have—with Nick Valentine, he is most beloved in this city. Troubles may have a habit of sticking to him, but folks notice when someone tries to add to them. We don’t take kindly to it.”

The hand released her, and the pastor was back with his mild smile and serene eyes, as if he’d never disappeared.

...Yep. Not an inch.

Nora nodded and said, “Thank you,” keeping her eyes on him until she was at least two yards away. Then she turned to walk past the urchin peddling papers, down the dimly lit alley—

Dimly lit by a distant neon sign.

Neon. Pink neon. DETECTIVE, it read.

And once again, the whole world ground to a stop. It was a slow stop, but a drastic one, like a train creeping to a halt just over the edge of some unfinished track. As the lights in the word DETECTIVE flickered, she felt her grip on reality flicker too. 

Nora took the slowest walk of her life to the end of the lane, to the end of her track, and at its end...yes, the sign was real, a beacon that beamed at her in bright magenta letters. DETECTIVE. She stared at the word with her mouth wide open while a passing umpire eyed her suspiciously, and she hardly noticed him at all.

Whenever she and Nicky had joked about getting old, private investigator was always his go-to plan....

“From police detective to PI. That’s not much of a retirement,” she’d commented once, “is it?” 

“Well that’s just your opinion,” he had deadpanned back, “isn’t it?”

“Not enough excitement for you on the force, officer?”

“Not enough office space, counselor. Now, if the prosecution will kindly withdraw her elbows from my desk, we might just have enough room to eat...provided nobody tries to open the door.”

The scuff of the guard’s footsteps broke Nora out of her reverie and sent her rushing headlong down the adjacent lane. She almost tripped over the uneven pieces of whatever lined the alleyway, and then she screeched to a stop in the middle of it, hard enough to make the two people talking up ahead of her jump. They eyed her with the same hard-edged suspicion almost everyone seemed to have here. Nora took little notice. There was nothing but that lane between shadow and light, no sound but the sizzle of electricity from the words VALENTINE DETECTIVE AGENCY.

“Not very subtle,”  his voice came back to her, “are they?” 

The two of them had always joked about signs like that, every time they walked past the flashy PI ads in downtown Chi-Town.

“But an eye sore is still an eye catcher,” he’d said, “that’s for darn sure, and that gets business. What if I put up a big pink sign—hearts and arrows and all?”

“Only if you get it in that cheesy Hollywood typeface,” she had teased, “okay?” 

“Heh, I was thinking something in neon, honestly. Keep people up at night.”

“It would certainly keep their interest, even if it doesn’t keep you in business. ‘Nick Valentine, Private Eye.’ Hey, you put a heart around ‘private,’ and it might just get you two kinds of clients, Nicky.”

His laugh had been light and breezy. It whispered now in the electric buzz of that bizarre and beautiful sign.

“Nah. Wouldn’t wanna confuse folks, especially not ones looking for that kind of professional. ‘Valentine Detective Agency.’ That’s what it would say.”

And that’s just what it said. The words tumbled over and over in her head while the letters and the heart beside them burned into her eyes. Hope burned equally bright and absurd inside of her. She remembered Mama Murphy’s words about hearts in the darkness, this time with an entirely new sort of disbelief that sat on her chest and made it difficult to breathe. ...And when you see it...you’ll know.

Nora knew. She didn’t understand how it could be possible, because it wasn’t...but she knew.  

Here was her bright heart now, shining two hundred years after she had believed its light gone forever, after she had thought that night had fallen on her world irrevocably.... Instead, she was blinking away tears in the gaudy pink glow like some ridiculous, neon dawn of hope.

The Sight? Improbable. Coming back from the dead? Impossible. Surviving a world-wide holocaust and then two centuries of carnage that followed it? Inconceivable. But if Nora had beaten the odds, couldn’t he have made it too somehow? Maybe he hadn’t gone missing, just undercover, or into a witness protection program, and then maybe into an icebox, just like her. Who knew how many other vaults out here held victims like her family, frozen and waiting to wake up?

Nora froze the same way when she stepped into the alcove and saw his door. Her breath caught and held, just like it had for two centuries underground. She stared at the doorknob without touching it. A minute went by. People talked, machinery whirred, and the world stood still in urgent indecision.

If she just stood there, she wouldn’t have to face the impossible, right? Schrodinger’s cat was better than no cat at all, right? He could be just behind that door, but she didn’t want to open it and find out she was wrong. She didn’t want an imposter to clobber anymore—she wanted her best friend alive and well again. She nearly decided to turn around and put this whole thing off till tomorrow, all in the hopes that tomorrow might finally bring her something other than misfortune.

But Shaun couldn’t wait till tomorrow, and Nora had waited long enough.

She gripped the handle, pushed open the metal door, and walked inside.

...Not half an hour later, she walked back out alone.

The metal city groaned around her like an old man’s bones. Gathering clouds made the darkness feel thick as fog despite bright lights far overhead. Even the sign’s warm glow so close at hand couldn’t ward off the shadows of the night. One last look at that silly pink heart...and then she was off. No time to stock up on Stimpaks or food or any of the many essentials she should have considered. None of it mattered. Nothing could stop her now. Nicky was alive.

Alive, but gone. Good luck and bad. At least she knew for certain it was him now.

She had opened that door without knocking, walked inside, and nearly cried. Not only because of what wasn’t there—no resurrected detective to be seen—but because of what was. Bad luck and good. Not Nicky...but perfectly replicated in all its disorganized glory was an office she hadn’t stepped foot in since the twenty-first century. The final nail out of the coffin, and a miraculously empty tomb.

“I know exactly where everything is,” he always insisted. Nora too had known where most everything was amidst the clerical chaos, an ode to all the working lunches she’d spent there over the years. The cop brought the sandwiches, the lawyer brought the pop, and together they dined in the cramped privacy of Nicky’s perpetually disheveled office. Before life had split up their merry two-man band—with marriage and career changes, not murder and atom bombs—Nora had known Nick Valentine’s mess like the back of her hand. Boxes and filing cabinets and stacks of paper everywhere. Drawers open and overflowing with files. A wrinkled tie or two left on top of the cabinet. Dirty coffee cups, rolled up newspapers, a bottle of booze, and too many ashtrays piled high with half-smoked cigarettes. There was even a couple of crooked paintings on the walls, right where he would have put them. Everything was where he would have put it.

Everything except for the young woman sighing over a box of papers at the back. Her presence startled Nora, all the more so when she overheard the girl murmuring Nicky’s name. Apparently she hadn’t noticed the door open and close. Or maybe the forlorn-looking young lady wasn’t even real. Perhaps none of this was. Maybe she’d finally lost it...but hope insisted otherwise with a messy office, a tacky neon sign, and the name of a man who had been presumed dead two hundred years ago.

Summoning all the polite restraint she had left, Nora blurted out, “Excuse me,” loud enough to make the young lady jump.

She spun around to face the unexpected guest, her diminutive shoulders no longer hunched. She wore a ragged skirt and an equally ragged pink scarf, and ragged shoes wrapped in duct tape. The freckles on her face stood out like stars against her sheet-white skin, and the pallor made her chestnut hair look darker than it was. When she finally spoke, her voice was unexpectedly steady. A woman of many contrasts.

“...Sorry. Yes. How may I help you?”

Nora shook her head, dismissing the clerical small talk. 

“Does this office belong to Nick Valentine?”

She nodded, and Nora’s heart leapt in confirmation of every wild notion she’d doubted not five minutes before. She even felt a smile coming on, unfamiliar and strange in its sincerity. The expression was aborted, however, as the young lady’s head began to nod in what looked like sorrow instead of affirmation. There were tears in her soft brown eyes.

“Yes, it’s his office, but...I’m afraid he’s gone.”

That sad, simple little word twisted Nora’s stomach into a double knot.

“Gone?”  

Ellie Perkins was the girl’s name. That was the easy part; every other piece of information after that bit came slowly. The urge to grab Miss Perkins by the shoulders and shake the answers out of her was tactile the entire time she talked—and if the girl hadn’t been crying, Nora might have done it. Her hands stayed in tight fists against her thighs, just in case. She needed gentility and patience, not the rough anxiety that turned her tarnished silver tongue to lead and made her tap her foot on the floor like a loose piston.

Ellie—his secretary, she said—was either too polite to react to Nora’s poorly hidden impatience or too enthused by the offer of assistance to notice. She dried her tired brown eyes and slowly shared all that she knew, which was all vague and all bad news. A vault full of gangsters, two weeks with no word, no backup, no Plan B.... 

Fear breathed down Nora’s neck, a gloating specter on the edge of claiming her soul. It had all seemed too good to be true. Good luck on the verge of cancelling out the bad, only to be overwhelmed by misfortune in the end. Once again her parents’ pessimistic sayings echoed triumphantly: tomorrow brought sorrow, and gold couldn’t stay.

God, so much for those hopeful lights. 

“I told Nick he was walking into a trap,” Ellie went on, oblivious to the crisis happening in front of her, “but he just smiled and walked out the door like he always does.”

Nora laughed, and the sound was halfway to hysterical. The secretary wrinkled her forehead in bemusement but didn’t ask, thank goodness. How could she possibly explain how it was all too easy to picture? The warmth in his eyes as he winked. The easy self-assurance in his lopsided smile. The two fingers he touched to his forehead in a lighthearted salute as he walked out the door. Nora must have seen it a million times before. 

There had never been anything more infuriating than the nonchalant chivalry that sent Nicky into every sort of danger, head-first and eyes wide open. But that was her Valentine all over—noble and good-natured and all too willing to walk through fire for any stranger as much as a friend. A real Samaritan, like the pastor had said. Nora could remember him jumping into an icy creek to save the neighborhood drunk who would have drowned in three inches of water; getting chased by a junior gang of bullies to bring back a kid’s stolen bike; climbing over a barbed wire fence to rescue a mangy stray. And that was just when they were children. It was a wonder her hair hadn’t turned gray with all Nicky’s selfless shenanigans once he’d actually been licensed to kill himself for someone else’s skin.

She almost laughed again when Ellie talked about his “hat and trench coat getup.” Nora would have searched a haystack full of ferals for one needle-slim chance of a miracle, and the image of her best friend running around in full Noir attire was precisely that. “The clothes make the man,” he always said. 

She walked through the door the way he would have done—with a smile, a wink, and a casual salute—feeling happier than she had in an age. It was only when she saw the shining heart on the sign outside that she frowned.

...The night was dark. The odds were stacked. The neon flickered like an omen, and Nora couldn’t decide whether it was for good luck or bad.... Gray eyes smiled at her in spite of the darkness and distant thunder. Good luck, she decided. Good luck at last.

She walked away armed with nothing but her 10mm, a few supplies, and slightly superstitious hopes. But they were high hopes for the first time in the longest while, superstitious or not. A bright heart that would lead her to her son; a path that started in the light and went into the dark.... Memories of Mama Murphy’s prediction sent goosebumps down Nora’s spine, and she couldn’t blame it on the chilly air any longer.

Other memories followed her out of the alley and into the night. Old and new, light and dark, good and bad....

Growing up with workaholic parents might be lonely. Getting enrolled in too many extracurriculars to have a social life might be miserable. Living in a complex where you were the only other kid might be all of the above. Nora turned out to be lucky, though. She had Nicky right next door ever since she was six years old. After her father got his father a job, they went to the same school and participated in the same programs like Vault Camp and The Servants of Tomorrow. Maybe it was inevitable, their becoming fast friends.

Nicky was older than her, but he still played cops and robbers with her in the stairwell after school. He was gonna be a real police officer someday, but he let her play the good guy whenever she wanted. Nora’s parents said that she had to pick a different civil servant, one the SOT said girls could choose. Cops and robbers became cops and lawyers, but Nicky never acted like it mattered. 

Whether it was due to some lucky compatibility in their natures, or because they’d been the only kids in the entire building, the two of them had always been equals. They played pranks on each other and kept one another’s secrets. They studied together, fought together, and lived closer than mere neighbors ever could be. The difference in age and height had made no difference at all, even when the years began to stack uneven. When Nora wanted to ride on the back of his bike, Nicky didn’t tell her he was too old for it, and when she wanted to ride her bike alongside his, he didn’t say she was too young to keep up. Valentine and Pelowski, partners in crime and punishment, no matter the place or the time....

It looked like she was still trailing at his heels after all these years, only this time the trail led through a different kind of wilderness than the one they’d imagined for games of shoot ‘em up. A real jungle made of metal and rubble and mean, emaciated dogs. Old parking lots had turned into junkyards. Old diners had filled up with raiders whose raucous laughter sent Nora ducking down alleyways. She hadn’t lived in the area very long, but, boy howdy, a nuclear apocalypse sure brought the neighborhood downhill. 

She still knew it well enough to find Park Street. 

Passing through the Common was less of a walk in the park than she remembered, however. Something as big as a house lurked over near the lake, stomping around like Jack’s own giant. Once again, Nora was ducking out of sight and thankful for the cover of darkness as she listened to its breath—you could hear the thing breathing half a mile away. Hide and seek, just like she and Nicky had played when they had a thousand tomorrows ahead of them. She didn’t care for the thought of her best friend out here all by himself, but he’d managed it up to this point, at least. Nora knew his skill for holding out in the middle of tough spots well enough to relax just a little. 

Jenny, on the other hand, would’ve been having a tizzy standing in Nora’s shoes. 

Hers was the next face to appear in Nora’s mind as she neared the station. Jennifer Lands had balanced out their group and really made them into a group, instead of just a married couple and one lonely third wheel. With her around, it was all laughs, all the time. A lawyer, a soldier, and a cop walk into a bar, and the pretty blonde bartender says, “Isn’t this wonderful, gang?” That was the world for a while, just a party for four, and when life eventually turned down the music and split up their merry band—the Valentine couple in Chicago, the Howards out east—it took less than a year for reunion plans to start forming. Nate was home for good by spring, Shaun was due to arrive in the summer, and Nicky’s wedding was set for late fall. He had a case that was bringing him to Boston, and he would look into making it a more permanent move come winter, if things went well. At that point, life had seemed pretty perfect from Nora’s point of view. So much to look forward to. The misery of a failed career and a rioting world were forgotten in the face of such happy golden days. ...She should have known it couldn’t last, even before bomb threats became the talk of evening news....

After about an hour’s walk, she reached Park Street Station. It loomed in front of her like a mausoleum, and inside it? God only knew what. Guns and gangsters and maybe a best friend back from the grave.

Nora pulled in a deep lungful of the damp night air, tamped down a relatively new fear of cramped underground spaces, and marched.

Pretty soon she was wishing that she would’ve brought more explosives and ammunition. Maybe invested in some armor too, especially when a bullet tore straight through her upper arm. Thank goodness for Med-X and Stimpaks, or that might have been the end of her sprint, the pain was that bad. A couple of shots, though—she couldn’t decide if needles were worse than guns even now—and she was practically good as new. At least the bullet hadn’t stuck, and at least her arms were the only target these toughs could touch. Boy, she almost missed Mr. Bat right about now. Nora could’ve used a couple of those umpires and their automatics as she raced down tunnels and crawled up under trains.

“Where the fuck did she go?”

“Come on out, girly! We’ll make this fast...if you’re nice.”

Fortunately for Nora, some of those nightmarish extracurriculars her mother and father had confined her to included an education in ballistics. Her parents had been the sort who sent her to school with a lead-lined backpack and let her spend time down at the shooting range as a reward for good behavior. Not to mention good old camp apocalypse and the SOT. Basic combat training was a part of Vault Camp—especially for Nora, who had ended up getting security officer most often—and even girls were allowed to take physical defense as an elective in the Servants of Tomorrow. Two more reasons why she was gonna make it to the end of this damn tunnel and thank her parents whenever she died. 

The bastards at her heels ran past her hiding place and into a dead end. It sounded like one of them had even started to root around in the rubble there.

“Hey, look! A Quantum!”

Amongst the ammo and remaining meds in her trusty satchel, Nora had two small grenades—practically cherry bombs, but they would do—which a raider had been kind enough to lend her back at the State House. She fished one of them out now, quick and quiet.

“Fuck’s sake Ned, put the drink down and start—”

Ned, his Nuka-Cola, and the rest of the nearby thugs were blown to kingdom come before they could so much as blaspheme. The blast would bring others, Nora was sure, but it gave her enough time to slide out from under the train and sprint down the tubes without much ado. The stimulants in her system were making her mind sharp and her feet fast. When a stray bullet pinged somewhere behind her, she had the wherewithal to serpentine as best she could and just keep on running. She was almost at the end now. She had to be.

Memories came once more, inconvenient as they were. Maybe Nora had more than one kind of post traumatic stress, because, for all the gunfire and claustrophobia she was running through right now, the next flashbacks weren’t about the bombs....

It was a rainy Sunday morning—raining as a necessity, because this damn cruel world did nothing by halves, did it? Jenny had invited the Howards to Chicago; Nicky was “sending her back” until his case cooled off, and anyway, she had been eager to show Nora the wedding venue up by the lake. Nate had been more than willing to stay in a hotel with Shaun all day while the two girls went out. Now, however, the Howards were heading out early not for wedding plans, but a funeral.

Jenny hadn’t made it to Chicago. Tomorrow had come too soon and put a bullet in her back outside a seedy riverside diner. Tomorrow was a bastard out for blood, and it hadn’t finished with Nora and her family just yet. Not by a country mile....

Bullets ricocheted in the tunnels. Much more dreadful things bounced around in Nora’s mind. Luckily her legs hadn’t joined the impromptu reverie. As she flew like a bat into hell, her thoughts continued down a very similar path. She knew it was possible to make it through hell. She had seen Nicky do it, after all....

“Honey, you’ve got to talk to him. It isn’t healthy, what he’s doing.”

“What he’s doing is coping.”

“What you call coping, I call obsession.”

“You weren’t there when his mother died. It was the exact same thing.”

“I really doubt that, Nora. He shouldn’t even be involved in this anymore.”

“So what then? You wanna let those scumbags get away with it? Just walk off nice and easy into the sunset?”

“If you don’t say something, Nick’s going to run himself into an early grave...one way or another. Is that what you want?”

What she wanted was Eddie Winter’s head on a steak, but she didn’t tell Nate that—just like she didn’t tell him how she’d been dropping by Nicky’s office with bits of information no retired public defender should’ve had access to. Nora was cheering him on when everybody else was begging him to lay off. Even if she hadn’t been on his side about this, she knew that Nick Valentine didn’t give up when he set his teeth into something, even if half of the blood he drew was his own. 

Soon enough, however, Nora had started wondering if she should have encouraged him to get some help—or at least some sleep—instead of rooting for his renegade investigation. Both Nicky and the case were starting to look awful grim, like something too big for a mere police detective to handle all on his own. Corruption made for a pretty dangerous accusation inside any bureaucracy, and it could be an outright kill-word if it ran too high up the chain. Especially the sort of chain Nicky was shaking down—as quietly as he could, of course, but he still tried to keep Nora out of it in case things went south. Crooks were bad enough when they stood on the wrong side of the law, but crooked cops could bring you in and take you out without ever disturbing the surface of due process. 

“Could just be paranoia,” he said over the phone one night. “That’s part of post traumatic stress, isn’t it?”

“For heaven’s sake, Nicky, you’re never paranoid,” Nora told him. “You know you’re not. Name me one time you’ve regretted a hunch.” Her fingers twisted around the telephone’s curly cue cord, practically strangling the life out of it. “Don’t doubt yourself. You’ll find the rats, and I’ll be there with a camera to say cheese when you slap the cuffs on their wrists.”

“I’d settle for one pair of wrists at this point.... But I believe we’ve been over this before, Pelowski. You’re not gonna be near enough to even see the cuffs when it comes time. You just have too much to lose, all right?”

“And you’ve lost too much already!”

His sigh was a heavy thing, static through the receiver and gravel in his voice from too many sleepless nights. “That’s not a good reason for you to gamble everything you’ve got. I’m in the endgame here—if it blows up in my face, so what? But no matter what happens, I won’t stand to see it haunt you and yours. Got you involved enough as it is, damn nosy lawyer.”

“You tell me when it comes time to slap on cuffs,” she said, stern as ice, “because I’m not waiting around for another hospital phone call.” 

Silence hung on both ends of the line as the two of them swallowed her words.

Softer now, Nora told him, “You’re not doing this by yourself, Nicky. It’s sticking your neck right over the chopping block if you do.”

This time his sigh was a bit lighter, and it made her smile when he groused, “Pretty difficult to stick my neck out with you breathing right down it, Pelowski.” 

“I’m just one in a long line, Valentine. You oughta start charging admission.”

They continued nagging at each other back and forth for a while, until Shaun woke up for his 2 AM feeding. Before saying goodbye, she made Nicky promise her a follow up the next evening, after whatever this neuropsychological procedure down at the C.I.T. was. Something to help with the trauma, he said. Lord knows he needed it.

She should have reminded him one last time that he was never paranoid, that he needed to keep his guard higher than ever, that she was there if he needed her...all the things he already knew. In the end, all she told him was to keep at it, and all he answered was, “Count on it.”

Nicky didn’t need her to tell him that, though, because he didn’t give up—he would never just give up. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.

“Honey, you’ve got to accept the possibility that Nick...that he might not come back. We don’t know what happened. We might never know.”

...Nate’s words echoed like bullets off of metal walkways and rusty pillars. Words hurt a lot worse than gunshots, and they were the one thing she couldn’t dodge. At least bullets didn’t follow you with regrets and what-if’s. Bullets had an end to them. When the last of her pursuers stopped to reload, Nora rained hell from behind the safety of some clustered metal containers, and all was silent after that...except for Nate’s voice still reverberating in her head. We might never know.... Well, Nora knew damn well that it wasn’t suicide, no matter what any shit-brained officials presumed.

Looting corpses was a good distraction from old regrets. Bloody bodies hardly fazed her anymore, especially when she was rewarded with a bigger gun and plenty of rounds for her trouble. It looked like these guys had been saving most of their bullets for her face, unlike their sloppy compatriots who had somehow managed to shoot nothing but shadows, sans one lucky hit in the arm. The more competent heavies had been stationed here, further in. No doubt there would be many more once she got inside the...the vault.

Geez, if there were one word to give her the creeps for the rest of her days, that was it. A cold, sterile word. A perfect fit for the place she’d been locked in two hundred years ago. She gripped the tommy gun in her hands tight as a lion tamer’s whip when she came to stand before the oversized, gear-shaped door. Vault Tec! Prepared for the future! A better life underground! Another absolute crock....

The future came all right, but not like anybody had expected it to. Tomorrow brought sorrow as sure as the wind, and it had come on a bright blue morning in late October. The air was brisk, the leaves were bright, and the atom bombs were prompt. No early warning system, no hour to prepare, nothing that the media had promised in the event of the unthinkable. The threat was immediate, and it sent the Howards and a handful of their neighbors scurrying below the earth like rats into a trap. Out of the fire and into the ice, her usual lot in life. The sky was falling? Bad luck. The vault was open for business? Good luck. Nora’s family managed to just miss Armageddon. Two adults, one infant...nobody else. 

Nate pulled her close and told her not to worry when she was crying too hard to hold their son. He stood there with his arms around them both as their baby wailed and she sobbed uncontrollably inside a dark elevator shaft. The room they walked into wasn’t much better. Cold and dim and covered in metal. Their new home. 

“Shh, shh.... Mommy’s okay, Shaun. She’s okay. We all are. ...We’re gonna be fine, honey. You’ll see.”

Her tears fell on her baby’s cheeks, on Nate’s white shirt, and then on the crisp blue jumpsuit she changed into. A kind attendant tried to calm her down with promises of security in the new life awaiting them, but the serene words were like salt on a wound. Didn’t they know there were people who were still missing?  But then again...maybe it was better to hope that Nicky had been dead for a while now, rather than burning alive in the horror above their heads. If there was any mercy left in the world, the bombs were just dirt on top of his grave.

Nate smiled at her warmly even though his eyes looked tired and sad. He breathed on the glass of the cramped sanitation chamber and drew a small smiley face for her with one hand, the other holding Shaun to his chest. Even with her broken heart, Nora smiled back at him. For her husband and her son, she could try. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and did her best to imagine a whole new life....

Nora’s hands shook as she hit the button to open the rusty, gargantuan door. She was standing over a body, just like she had been back in her own vault. She had taken the Pip-Boy off a skeleton and fled above ground; now she would take a few magazines off a stiff and head in the opposite direction. A trip into claustrophobic hell felt like the stuff of bad dreams, but that wasn’t why she was trembling....

She’d never gotten a chance to picture that whole new life. It was no sanitation chamber she was sitting in, not that she had a chance to think about that either. The tears chilled on her cheeks, the air stilled in her lungs, and the thoughts froze inside her head for one long...long...second.

When she opened frost-fringed eyes once more, it was to a waking nightmare—the kind where you can’t move or speak or do anything at all to stop the monsters in front of you. They were trying to take Shaun out of Nate’s arms. He was crying, crying for her. Where were the attendants, all those security guards, the kind people in lab coats and vault suits who had promised them safety? Where the hell were they now that their help was really needed? Nora managed to lift one hand and bang her fist feebly against the glass while Nate struggled, his arms tight around their precious bundle. His shout was hoarse and urgent. Her answering screams came out as nothing but shuddering breaths. Suddenly, the nightmarish scene ended with a bang, just like the world had, and Nate’s arms went slack. 

In the blink of an eye, she lost everything all over again. The bombs weren’t the curtain on a finale. That was only the prologue, misfortune number one, and she had just watched as the last two golden sparks in her life were stolen away to complete the trio.

She sobbed, shocked and horrified. The ice began to creep over her mind once more. Her last look, just before she froze, was at a monster leering outside of her cage....

Similar monsters came to meet her now.

“Goddammit. I hate it when they open that door. Give us a little warning, will ya?”

Nora didn’t give them anything so merciful, not a word as she gunned down her exceedingly surprised welcoming party. They tried to hide around corners and behind more metal pillars. She shot three of them and made the fourth one a new face out of his own security baton. The last thing she gave the quartet after that was a quick search for more ammo and a kick to the side. Then a different kind of monster ran into the room with a baseball bat in its leathery hands. She screamed and gunned it down only to realize that this one actually had clothes on; he gurgled intelligible curses as he died too.

The first thing she’d seen out of her vault had been one such creature, rummaging around inside a nearby trailer. It hadn’t walked upright or cursed when she shot it. Half the ammo she’d been lucky enough to find underground had gotten used right then and there as it crawled towards her on all fours, roaring like a sickly lion. Preston had called them ferals, and, unfortunately, it looked like there were a lot more where that came from. It was bad enough having them run at you from out of the woods. Nora’s skin practically crawled off her bones at the idea of being locked inside an metal box with those things. Even so, it was the least of the nightmares she’d experienced since waking up across from her husband’s corpse....

Nora had crawled out of that pit and into a fresh new hell, like Alice through a demented rabbit hole. She had seen her neighbors frozen in their metal coffins, the scattered bones and giant bugs, but she hadn’t stopped to look. This had to be a bad dream, but she couldn’t wake up, and she couldn’t stop running. Even after she stood aboveground and killed the feral creature, with the sun burning in her eyes and the sharp breeze stinging her lungs...the feeling of a bad dream had still persisted. It remained with her no matter how much she slept or bled or pinched herself, because every time she woke up in a burned-out world, she said no way could this have ever been her home. It was blood red with rust and decay and mangled like a body in a car accident. Everything was dead except the things that should have been, and every time she woke up, Nora wished for nothing more than to curl into a ball and join them all, cross her heart and hope to die. 

But Shaun was out there somewhere, so she had to keep going. And now Nicky might be out there too, maybe right behind the next door.

The thought gave her strength, and she didn’t scream anymore—even when more noseless faces popped out from behind pillars and tried to turn her into swiss cheese. At least they didn’t try to eat her. She thought of Nicky and returned fire without batting an eye. It had been the same when she’d first been clawing her way through the wasteland: picturing Shaun’s plump little face or Nate’s golden laugh had only threatened to buckle her knees, but Nicky.... It was his warm gray eyes and lopsided smile that got her on her feet whenever she wanted to lay down and die. Shaun kept her going, but Nicky kept her alive.

She found food, shelter, and reasonably clean water. She found ammo, meds, and even a pet, although he felt more like a partner when he helped her tear out other people’s throats. What Nora found more abundantly than anything else, however, was bloodlust. It was probably concerning, but she had bigger problems than a sudden knack for carnage. Bugs as big as her dog chased her down. Stray mongrels came begging for food, only the food was her. Humans foaming crazy at the mouth ran after her for getting too near to their lawn chairs, and those weren’t even the undead ones. Taking them down, Nora discovered how incredibly easy it was to kill, especially when something was trying to kill you first....

Nora ran down more hallways, jumped through an open door, and, with an elegant turn, cut everybody in half before they could so much as drop their cigars. She tossed her last grenade through a square hole in the floor and savored the screams from below. She was cutting a bloody swathe through this godforsaken world like death in slacks, and she felt no pain for it...although that could have been the shot of Med-X lingering in her system. Nora felt the stab in her ankle after the jump, but it didn’t bother her. She didn’t even notice that some son of a bitch had shot her in the same damn arm—what the hell—until after the blood started tickling her elbow. At least it was just a graze this time, but she had enough blood stains on this jacket as it was, and no bandages to patch herself up with. No more Stimpaks in her satchel, either. Damn it, they must have fallen out during her trot and roll; should’ve put them in her pockets like the ammo. Rotten luck, and—aw, hell, was that a new bullet hole? Maybe she should have been more grateful that it was in her pack instead of her leg, but she couldn’t help groaning. 

The complaint was cut short when she stepped through another door and into a double-decker room.

“How ya doin’ in there, Valentine?”

The name hit once again, sucking the air out of her lungs. Directly across from her on the second story was a lone gangster. He stood in front of a round window and addressed the unseen man beyond it.

“Feelin’ hungry? Want a snack?”

Nora crept over to the bottom of the stairs while he taunted away. 

“Heh heh, so sorry we ain’t got no gasoline to wash it down.”

She hadn’t climbed more than a few steps when another voice, muffled but distinct, cut through the room.

“Keep talkin’, meathead. It’ll give Skinny more time to think about how he’s gonna bump you off.”

For the third time that day, Nora’s world came to a sudden halt—and her footsteps did too as she listened to the conversation. It felt like she was dreaming, and for once, it wasn’t a nightmare.

“Don’t gimme that crap, Valentine. You know nothin’ and you got nothin’.”

“Sure I don’t, Dino. Must’ve been my imagination when he wrote your name down in that little black book of his.”

“Wha? The book? ...But why would—”

“Something about a lousy cheating card shark, I believe. Looked like he struck the name across three times. But maybe that was my imagination too.”

“Oh no. I...I gotta smooth this over. Pronto!”

Pronto was Nora’s word too as she snapped out of it and started moving again. She was up the stairs when Mr. Meathead came running around the corner. One “what the hell” too many, and he was nothing but meat on the floor. Her hands had shaken as she shot him, but the stream of bullets from her favorite new toy was enough to compensate for that. And then she was running, not breathing, praying and hoping for a kind tomorrow and one single shred of the gold she had lost.

“Hey, you!”

The voice was different—yep, she hadn’t imagined that—but they were Nicky’s words. The man inside the window looked peculiar—although maybe his eyes were a trick of the light—but it was Nicky’s no-nonsense stance when he put his hands on his hips like a fussy mother hen and hollered, “I don’t know who you are, but we’ve got three minutes tops before they realize muscles-for-brains ain’t comin’ back. Get this door open!”

Maybe the light was funnier than she thought, if he didn’t recognize her, but she obeyed without a word. Not without a problem, though. It was almost an out-of-body experience, trying to hack that terminal. She looked down at the keyboard and it was as if she had never seen one before in her life. She put her hands over the keys and stared at the screen. Every breath, every motion, every second felt exaggerated. It took her two failed attempts just to realize that the password was on a note taped to the top of the console. LUXURY, she typed, and that was that.

The first thing he did when she stepped into the room was pull out a cigarette, and Nora could have laughed, could have cried. Three minutes tops but time for a smoke? That was Nick Valentine, all right. 

Here was the happy tomorrow she had never been guaranteed once in her life, and it was old and new, bright and dark. Like a fairytale, or a face full of shadows with eyes that shouldn’t have glowed. They did glow, though—bright as the light shining on bits of metal beneath worn-away skin, contours in a face she didn’t recognize. But none of it mattered to her, because the shift of his weight and the set of his shoulders when he leaned in to light that cigarette were so achingly familiar. 

Golden eyes stayed hidden beneath the brim of his hat as he cupped his hands around the light—just the way she knew he would—to guard it against the draft blowing from behind her.

“Gotta love the irony of the reverse damsel-in-distress scenario,” he said around the cigarette. “Question is....”

He froze.

He was finally looking up at her.

The cigarette dropped to the floor and burned there, unnoticed. Nothing moved but a few strands of dark hair fanning over her blood-stained cheek.

She breathed his name, halfway between a question and a prayer.

“Nick?”

For one excruciating minute, he stayed silent as a statue, and the smoke drifting up from his abandoned cigarette was the only sign that this wasn’t a still life painting. Then his jaw twitched. His strange eyes blinked. He shook his head, stared for a few more moments, and finally ran a fleshless metal hand across his face.

“Nora,” he whispered.