Archive of Our Own

still with the pain. forget the synths. can't keep himself balanced internally, externally...

footsteps. raises his eyes. not a synth approaching. kellogg. makes a half-hearted attempt for the gun before the pain in his chest pins him back.

kellogg sighs like this is all an inconvenience. "what're you doing here, valentine?"

doesn't answer. not gonna say a goddamn word to this murderer.

"come on, you must want something." kellogg aims a kick at the remains of an old turret. "why else are you crawling around in this garbage?"

focus, focus, let go of the pain, ya got worse things to worry about... sounds coming out of his throat, he didn't plan on this, electrical interference but not words just noise--

his eyes meet kellogg's, not intentional, but kellogg nods slowly.

"got a glitch in the old system?" he asks. "oughta be used to that by now."

synths frog-march him down the stairs to kellogg's little command center. his feet are heavy, keeps stumbling, falling over things. sounds still coming from his throat. can feel himself teeter on the edge of a shutdown, but he can't, has to... has to...

synths let him fall but he's powered down before he hits the floor.

hears the whirring of fans before he can see. bent backwards over a low chair, arms cuffed behind him, coat and hat gone. head tipped back, throat exposed. hands at his collar. pulling his tie loose.

eyes come back online. it's kellogg. kellogg leaning over him. kellogg ripping back his shirt.

"get your damn hands off me," he says. surprised his voice is still there. tired. gravely. still his.

kellogg ignores him. pulls the shirt untucked to expose his chest. pain's faded a little but still holding him down. kellogg sits beside him and he manages to lift his head enough to see. without a word kellogg's hand closes tightly around his thigh and then his other arm is jammed up into the hole in nick's side.

"what the hell are you...?" hurts like hell, too much pressure from the inside. words turn to dust in his mouth. can't look at kellogg, can't move, can't... can't.

"relax, nick." kellogg sounds barely interested. "what's the matter, never had another man stick his hand in your chest cavity?"

kellogg's arm presses against wires and nerves and it feels like it's turning him inside out, like a pain, like a tickle, like if he moves even a little and the pressure changes he'll come apart.

changes his focus down to the hand on his thigh, heavy and warm and not violating him yet. one of the few places that don't hurt. leg bounces, nervous energy, hold-over from the pre-war nick, and kellogg doubles down on the pressure.

"feels strange, huh." it's not a question. kellogg twists his arm, fingers touching something up behind nick's chest, and without a conscious thought nick's head is thrown back--he can't even begin to process the sensations. "yeah, you older models run a touch sensitive."

something comes out of his throat, a groan, a growl, a moan. fights the handcuffs. somewhere in him is still the pain but it's lost in a wave of, of whatever this is.

"here we go." kellogg's fingers close around something inside him and he's coming apart, what the hell is this, why, why--and kellogg yanks something loose and pulls his arm free. nick cries out. empty, so damn empty, half-finished physical feelings draining out of him.

pain is back in his chest this time. head falls back just for a moment. synths. standing watch behind him. watching whatever kellogg just did to him.

kellogg lets go of his leg and wipes whatever he just pulled from him on his shirt.

"you know what this is?" he asks, holding up a tiny little chip.

if it came from that deep inside him he has no idea.

"all you earlier models got these." kellogg flips it as easily as a coin. "guess they had trouble keeping you from overheating. nifty little program. regulates your temperature, your balance, adds a couple little tricks to the combat tactics. not exactly critical. not at first."

from some hidden place kellogg brings a pocket knife and flicks it open. nick's head rolls to one side to follow it. "institute's got a thing for redundancy. that's humanity improved for you. shoot a human in the head or blow out their heart, that's the end. but if i shot you in the head, or if a capacitor breaks down--" he touches nick's chest with just the tips of his fingers and the world is spinning-- "well, you can keep going for a while. not much for self-maintenance, are you?"

nick barely understands what he's saying. everything sounds hollow, echoing and broken. hurts like something's busted low inside him. maybe it is. he can only watch as kellogg steps closer, and then the knife is stabbing into the seam where his face meets his head.

he chokes on the scream that lodges in his throat. intellectually he know he's a synth, that he'll get through this, but the visceral horror that the real nick valentine would have felt, is feeling, floods him.

"take it easy, valentine." the synthetic face pops away from him and he can see it resting in kellogg's hands. "you think i got where i am not knowing how to play with you synths?"

oh god. oh god. he can't stop staring at it. the disconnect between what he feels and what he is stretches out forever. he should be dead.

kellogg sighs impatiently. fuck him. the panic clouds his mind and he has to think--you're a synth. you aren't nick valentine. he curls up in the chair. if he could just get his right hand through the cuffs...

"yeah, you're gonna want to sit still for this part." kellogg takes his jaw in his hand and tilts it up.

he tries to twist away. wants to tell kellogg to keep his damn hands to himself. wants to drive his forehead straight up into kellogg's nose and break it like somebody else clearly has already.

but kellogg's grip doesn't waver, and he feels the knife come to rest against the nerves in the back of his throat.

"you know what those do, don't you?" kellogg asks quietly.

he's frozen in place. forget pain. forget panic. kellogg's right, he does know exactly what those nerves do. all it will take is one little slip of the knife and he's gonna be paralyzed. Probably for good.

"yeah, that's what i thought. don't move."

the knife presses in against his nerves--he tries not to struggle against the pain--and then is gone. kellogg jams the blade into one of the seams on his skull and pops it free easily.

permanent shut-down? would have been easier just to kill him. taking him back to the institute, maybe, and doesn't want him fighting back. doesn't have a recall code, so instead of severing his connection to his body he's going to...

kellogg's fingers touch something inside his skull and the sound that comes out of him, sound he can't control, is wild and desperate and afraid. the fingers against his circuits make him feel like he's shorting out and he can't help it, the pulse makes him spasm uncontrollably.

"don't fucking move, valentine," kellogg says, and yanks.

everything cuts out. he can't see, can't smell, can't hear, can't feel anything at all. his mind is still racing but he's cut off from everything.

he fights back, or thinks he fights back, he can't know for sure, not like this. he still has the synth equivalent of muscle memory but he can't feel anything reaching back. the rational part of him tells him he has to stay calm. his only chance at getting out of this is for kellogg to put back whatever he took, and if he hurts him, or if he tears himself up, that's not going to happen. but the rest of him, the human part of him, is screaming at the prospect of being trapped inside his own head. he's never felt panic like this.

ironically he'd give anything for that shooting pain in his chest, for the knife against his throat, for whatever it was he'd felt with kellogg's arm inside him. anything but this emptiness.

he thinks he might be screaming. can't hear it, can't feel it, but he's that far gone.

tries a couple of different times to run diagnostics. maybe find a short cut, reroute around whatever it is that kellogg took. if nothing else it wastes a few minutes where he's not conscious of the emptiness. nothing comes of it. whatever's missing is keeping him from pushing through. all the data he gets back leads up to that one fact. everything that connects him to the outside world is gone.

every moment feels like an hour. for all the knows it could be. he wants to struggle, wants to fight back, has to remind himself to stay still. lets himself scream and cry, though. figures he deserves that much.

that's the one thing he can control. he screams abuse at kellogg, every bit of it deserved. maybe he can't stop. maybe he's snapped.

maybe he's already dead.

that single thought takes the fight out of him. maybe he's already dead. maybe what's left is just the little bit of consciousness he's been able to build for himself.

sad as it is that calms him a bit. he's come so close to dying so many times that death doesn't frighten him like it used to do. 

instead of panicking he thinks about the life he managed to wring out of the wasteland. he thinks of diamond city, the agency, the pink neon on the concrete. myrna calls the signs an eyesore, but he likes them. they bring in the business. they bring in business, and they're something he can claim as his own. he thinks of ellie, and how she must be waiting. he's never coming back. he wonders how long it will take for her to realize that.

poor kid. she always warned him. always said that he'd have been better off traveling with marty bullfinch than going it alone. maybe she was right after all.

he wishes he could tell her she was right.

he hopes she'll be okay, and then he feels it--the barest tickle on his skull.

even his panicked thoughts freeze at that. at first he worries that maybe he imagined it, that he's slowly starting to lose his mind.

no. there it is again, firmer this time, pressing harder, then gone. whatever kellogg took out of him is being put back. hold still, he thinks to himself. hold still.

the feeling is the first sense to return. it's not pain, not like it used to be. the stabbing pain is his chest is gone. now he's sore and stiff, and the wrist that still has feeling aches. he's still cuffed. he's dizzy, so dizzy. someone's hand presses into his head and he moves with the pressure because he doesn't have the strength to hold against it.

then the hearing. he doesn't realize right away that's what's happened because it's so quiet and still, but eventually it comes to him. the faint, irritable puff of breathing.

after that it all comes in a flood. the smell of oil and taste of coolant on his tongue, and the first thing he sees is kellogg's face, frowning, focused on his own.

"feeling better?"

he closes his eyes.

"uh-huh. thought as much." pressure again. one hand on his chin, holding his head in place, the other on his temple. he can feel reverberations in his head as the plate of his skull clicks back into place. "told you i knew what i was doing."

the coolant in his mouth leaks down his throat. he can feel it now, a gash in his tongue. he must have bitten it raw when he was struggling.

"valentine," kellogg barks. his mouth is so near nick's ear that it sets his ears to ringing and he flinches away. "open your fucking eyes and look at me." he's holding a single finger not far from nick's face. "focus on this." he moves the finger back and forth, forward and back. nick is too exhausted from pain and fear to deny a command. "eyes are working okay."

kellogg lets go of his face and he's not strong enough to hold his head up. he's looking down at his body. his pants are stained with coolant and more has dripped from his mouth onto his chest and stomach.

out of the corner of his eye he sees another synth, crumpled in a heap. its face is all but obliterated, and the plate on the side of its skull is torn out.

something covers his face--no, it is his face, he realizes, and it presses into place with another click. takes a moment for the nerves to reconnect. he's so, so sore. he slumps forward, his mouth pressing into kellogg's shoulder.

for a moment kellogg doesn't move. not sure if it's meant to give him a chance to re-calibrate his body or if he's just startled.

he runs a quick, simple diagnostic. whatever kellogg pulled out of his chest is still gone but he seems to be stable. in his head, though, something's wrong. the chip--and it seems like it was a chip kellogg removed--it's different. there's some additional programming on it that he can't shut down.

"here's what's gonna happen, valentine." kellogg pushes him back in the chair, and he's so weak he nearly falls. he watches kellogg stroll around behind him and take hold of the cuffs still on his wrists. "that new chip's gonna tell you when you're actually in pain, not just whenever it feels like telling you, and you're actually gonna pay attention to it. it tells you a capacitor's blown, you're gonna get it replaced. got it?"

he closes his eyes and opens them again. that's the closest he can come to a nod.

"and here's the fun part. everything you see, i can see."

he doesn't understand.

"that's the thing about these new synths. you can keep an eye on 'em at a distance and they're none the wiser. just a little broadcasting program, nothing fancy enough for you to screw up. anything you do, anything you say, anything you see, i'm gonna be watching." kellogg pushes his head back uncomfortably far so that he can see him and the synths beyond him. "so you're gonna crawl back to her and let her know. got it?"

back to who? ellie?

"tell her i'm watching, and whenever she decides to come for me i'll be ready. she's not gonna get the drop on me unless she finds somebody else to help her." kellogg lets up on his head. "and let's be real here. she won't."

the cuffs loosen and his hands are free. he could fight back, if he had any strength left in him at all.

"one other thing." kellogg pushes him so that he's almost upright. "that little chip in your chest? i ain't fixing that. so i'd advise you to crawl right back to diamond city and find somebody to go out synth-hunting and find you a replacement. maybe ask her to do it, if you think she would. in the meantime you'd best try to stay out of combat, unless you want to overheat so bad your joints fuse. got it?"

he wants to speak. wants to tell kellogg to go fuck himself. but when he opens his mouth the words don't come. there's more fear setting in. he's so tired. he's so afraid.

"oh, right, right." kellogg comes back around and immediately buries his hands in nick's throat. "since you don't like to shut up had to disconnect that voice of yours. hard to work with all that screaming."

he feels the wires connect and the word spills out. "christ." his voice is lower than usual, pained, stilted--but there's no interference.

kellogg lets him go. "come on. let's get you out of here."

he swallows a mouthful of coolant on instinct. it oozes from the gaping holes in his throat. "what are you..."

"what am i..." kellogg cracks his wrist.

"who... ellie?"

"nah." kellogg cracks the other. it seems so loud. the only other sound is his internal fan struggling to keep his temperature down. "nora was her name. let me guess. he ain't sprung her yet." the confusion must be written on his face because kellogg doesn't wait for an answer. "don't worry about it. it'll make sense later. assuming you do make it back to the great green jewel, anyway."

he can't stand without help. he can't walk at all. it doesn't seem possible that he can make it. not alone.

kellogg drags him across the room to a heavy metal door. "i'd get going if i were you," he says, and pushes him through it.

on the other side of the door is the commonwealth, and it is raining. the cold little drops on his skin help a little.

he would love to stay and fight, but what's he gonna do like this?

he gives himself a minute to rest and no longer. kellogg's right. he has to get going.