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The old book says that Death will ride in last on a pale horse. Conquest came by long ago, followed soon by War, and then by Famine as folks died across the wasteland. Death never needed to ride in. The others killed plenty for him.
It wasn’t Horsemen who caused the Apocalypse. Just some humans with wanton greed, lust for power, and homemade nuclear hellfire.
But Life doesn’t give up when humans choose to be fucking idiots and muck around with things on their own terms. The old book says a human built an ark, but not everyone believes the old book. Life knows better. It’s buried deep in the soil, ready to grow again.
Somewhere in the bowels of the Institute, someone uploads the memories of one Nick Valentine into the body of a Synth...
It’s been only a month since Sole brought down the Institute. They’re still hard at work, taking care of the young synth Shaun, watching for anyone from the Institute and ready to take them down, and handling various duties of the Minutemen and the Railroad alike. It’s hectic, as it ever is, but even a powerhouse like Sole needs to rest. Not everyone can get by without sleep, but that’s where Nick is more the exception than the rule.
As such, it’s a late night in Sanctuary where Nick spent the day helping out to make things better for those who’ve made it their home. Most of the settlement is asleep save for those acting as a sort of night watch for any emergencies that may arise over the course of the night. Nick sits outside on an empty crate, a cigarette in hand as he watches the night for anything unusual.
...Like that. Whatever it is that’s approaching. That’s unusual.
Nick watches, hesitant for a moment as he wonders if something’s wrong with his vision and making him hallucinate. A ghostly rider on a pale green horse... To its benefit, not a glowing, radioactive green, more of a sickly yellow-green. But still the appearance of a horse mutated by time and radiation, with its many legs and exposed teeth. The rider sits on its back, dressed in a darker green and a cowboy hat, with an almost bonewhite face and dark, sunken eyes...
It’s half a hallucination, and Nick finds himself blinking rapidly to try and clear it. The rider, in a pale flesh tone and normal, healthy eyes, and the horse in a dusty gray, stop just in front of him.
“Hey,” the rider greets. “What soil did you spring from?”
Nick squints. “What?”
“Is this Sanctuary?”
“Uh— Yes.” Nick comes to his senses enough to stand up, hand at the ready to draw a gun if need be. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The rider reaches into a satchel and pulls out an old, stained envelope with a wax seal embossed with an F. He holds it out for Nick to take. “Name’s Footlight. Looking for a, uh...”
The horse snorts indignantly.
“Right,” Footlight answers it. “Looking for a Nick Valentine?”
Nick frowns and gingerly takes the letter. “Well, you’ve found him. You know I have an office in Diamond City where you’re more likely to find me...?”
Footlight tilts his hat up to get a better look at Nick. “No shit? Well, there you go then.”
“Hold on,” Nick frowns. “What’s this about?”
“Nothing serious,” Footlight shrugs. “Just a matter of life and death.”
“...That sounds pretty serious to me.”
“You sure you didn’t come from the soil?” Footlight asks.
Nick is half convinced this man is drunk. “I’m a synth. I was built.”
“Right, and your metal’s gotta come from somewhere,” Footlight answers. “Your rubber. Your mettle.”
“You already said metal.”
“The other kind.” Footlight clicks his tongue and pats his horse’s side. “Alright, be seeing you, Valentine. Hope the Farmer who recommended you knows what he’s on about.”
Nick wordlessly watches as Footlight rides away, totally unnoticed by anyone else around them.
Yep. That man is drunk.
Nick sighs and shakes his head. He sits down again and opens up the letter.
Inside the envelope is a smaller envelope labeled “seeds” and a note reading “These bastards are too picky. You grow them.”
Nick stares, trying to figure out what the life or death matter of this is... He doesn’t even know what kind of seeds these are...
...Well. He’s never been much for gardening, but he might as well humor the suggestion. Get some pots and water the seeds and see if anything grows.
He works quietly, borrowing some material from the small farm set up nearby. As he plants the seeds in the soil, he can’t help but think back to what Footlight said...
He realizes how silly this is and leaves the pots behind to take up his post once more. Better to forget this happened before someone catches him up to something he can’t even explain.
Nick walks back into his office after a long, stressful case, ready to lie down and run diagnostics until the next case comes along. A kidnapping ending in tragedy... They can’t all be happy endings, but hell if he ever stops trying...
Ellie seems to read his mind and gives him space. Likely she’s already heard the news through the metaphorical grape vine, or if not his expression and silence says it all. He goes to his bed, not used often these days given that he doesn’t need to sleep, though he finds being horizontal helpful on occasion.
He blinks his eyes open to find a few hours have passed, and he hears a door opening and closing out in the office. He sighs and gets up to go see if it’s something he needs to tend to...
He finds Ellie holding a potted plant. Not just any plant, but what looks like roses of all things. The red flowers are gorgeous and mesmerizing and Nick finds himself drawing closer to see them.
“Where’d you get this from?” he asks. “Do you have an admirer?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” she says, holding out an envelope with his name on it. “This came with it.”
Nick takes the letter and flips it over to see it sealed with green wax embossed with a familiar F. Oh... He opens up the envelope and reads the note inside.
Nice job leaving it for others to grow. But they grew, so I’m not complaining.
Nick flips the letter over. He holds it to the light and peers inside the envelope. There has to be more to this than that. What is Footlight after and what does it have to do with these roses?
“So, what are these?” Ellie asks him as she sets the pot on the desk. “They have thorns...”
“Roses,” Nick says, dropping the letter on the desk next to the roses when he gives up on finding answers from it. “An old, pre-war flower.”
“They’re beautiful,” Ellie hums. “I wonder where they came from... I didn’t see your admirer when they left them, so I couldn’t ask.”
...Maybe he’s still in Diamond City. Maybe he has the chance to ask. “I’m going to try and look into it,” he says, heading for the door. “Don’t wait up.”
“Be careful,” Ellie calls after him. “Don’t get yourself kidnapped again.”
He rolls his eyes, but he’s out the door and making his way through Diamond City in search of Footlight or his horse. He catches sight of a man in a cowboy hat and a dark green coat sitting at the noodle stand, and he works his way through the crowd up to him.
By the time he makes it to the stand, Footlight is gone, as if he was never there.
“Drat,” he scowls. “Where’d he go? He was just here...”
He spends the rest of the day searching, but he doesn’t get any answers. He can’t find any sight of him, and the various people he questions on if they saw anything have nothing for him either.
Maybe if he went back to Sanctuary...?
There was more than one pot of seeds, after all...
Sole is overjoyed by the roses and eagerly shows them to him when he asks. They say how they don’t know where they came from, but they’re growing and beautiful. And they truly are. Not just in red, but pinks, yellows, whites, and all the colors in between.
Weird. He doesn’t remember planting this many.
He asks, casually, about a mysterious horseman he saw hanging around several nights ago. Sole doesn’t have any more answers for him than the folks around Diamond City. Nick’s starting to wonder if, perhaps, he’s gone off his rocker searching for a ghost.
But no, he knows this man exists. He just has to find him and interrogate him about what is going on. He’s going to get to the bottom of this if it’s the last thing—
“Nick— Nick.”
“Hmm?” Nick realizes that Sole’s been speaking the entire time, and that he didn’t catch a single word. “Oh— Sorry, I was distracted...”
Sole hums. Silently, they grab a nearby pair of pruning shears and cut a rose from one of the bushes. They stick the stem through the buttonhole on his coat’s lapel.
“A white rose?” he asks.
“Of course,” Sole answers, playfully hitting him in the arm. “White roses are for friends, and red roses are for lovers. You should know that.”
Nick tries not to lock up as he thinks back to the red roses back at his office. “No, I... I do. I know that.”
“Like I was saying,” Sole says. “Don’t be so obsessive about this mystery man of yours. Let him come to you. If he wants to be found, he’ll let you find him.”
Nick hums. “Maybe... Not my usual method, but...”
“No,” Sole says. “But maybe you should try it for once. Now, while you’re here, do you want to help out some more?”
“Might as well,” Nick agrees. He lets Sole drag him along to some tasks to help with.
The work does well to distract him from the mystery of Footlight and everything surrounding him. Nick finishes his work just in time to join the others around the campfire for storytime. Sole puts on their best dramatic voice to “tell a story of death”.
“Things die all the time,” someone complains. “Why are you telling a story about that?”
“No, not a story about a death,” Sole clarifies. “A story about Death, the man, the myth, the legend. The Grim Reaper and all that he is and isn’t. The fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, on his pale horse and with his scythe to reap the souls of the newly deceased. Except I know the truth about Death.”
“What’s the truth?” Shaun asks.
Sole chuckles. “Death is no stranger to me. I’ve seen him many times. A man with eyes ink black and starry like the night sky, who never speaks but is always present. He’s ancient and exists outside of time and space. That’s how he can find his way to any poor soul unlucky enough to be right where he has aimed his gun. Death is a man with a .44 Magnum and a mean streak matching his kill count. And Death is something of a guardian angel to me, coming right when I need him to take down even the toughest of enemies all with—” They fire a finger pistol with a small “bang”, “—one shot, instant kill.”
“For the record,” someone beside Nick whispers, and Nick looks to see Footlight seated beside him. He barely keeps from yelping and jumping up in shock, and Footlight takes the opportunity to continue his thought. “They’re talking about someone else. Not Death.”
Nick scowls. “What are you doing here?” he hisses, quiet so as not to disturb the story.
Footlight shrugs and flicks at his lighter. “You wanted to see me,” he says. He lights a cigarette. “After everyone’s gone to sleep,” he states. “I’ll give you your answers then.”
“...Where’s your horse?”
“Patty?” Footlight asks. “Probably dealing with some raiders trying to mess with her. She doesn’t put up with bullshit like that.”
“...Right,” Nick says, careful and uncertain. “But you promise you’ll give me answers?”
“Funny that you’re wearing a white rose,” Footlight says. He sets his lighter in Nick’s hand and then gets up and walks off, unseen by the others.
Nick frowns and looks at the lighter.
Painted on the side, albeit scratched and faded, is a black rose.
Death. Black roses symbolize death.
What has Nick gotten into...?
Nick sits on the same crate as the first night he met Footlight, staring at the lighter as if it’ll give him answers as he waits. He sighs and closes his eyes, listening for when Footlight will appear.
“You know,” Footlight says somewhere in the distance but approaching him. “Quite a number of cultures decided that men were first created from dirt or clay. You aren’t the first soul sculpted into being. Maybe you’re not quite made of clay, but folks got a little more creative with their art medium over the years.”
Nick opens his eyes to see Footlight standing in front of him, no scythe in sight and seemingly not about to take his soul to the afterlife. Nick holds out the lighter, and Footlight gratefully accepts it and uses it to light another cigarette. Nick pulls out his own cigarette, and Footlight offers him a light.
“So,” Nick says. “Are you Death?”
“You’ve got the half of it.”
“What’s the other half?”
Footlight lifts his brow. “Folks never get the full picture do they? They want to credit gods for the living and blame the reaper when time and fate catches up to them. They never want to think that you reap what you sow.”
“A matter of Life and Death,” Nick says, shaking his head. “That’s what you meant.”
Footlight smiles. “There you go.”
“And why bother me, hmm?”
“It was either you or your brother,” Footlight shrugs. “And that Farmer I mentioned recommended you. Not gonna lie, you’re more my speed than your brother.”
Nick frowns. “But why?”
“I dunno,” Footlight says. “Maybe I thought it was funny. Maybe I thought it was fitting. Maybe I was drunk and acted on impulse.”
“So you were drunk!”
“I said maybe.” Footlight clears his throat. “No, to be honest? I needed an excuse to talk to you. Watching from afar is one thing, but you? You’re something special. A living thing with a soul, but without all the natural, fleshy bits. Essentially made of clay, like the old myths. A man created just as the gods were said to create them.”
“Oh,” Nick utters, soft and reverent.
“And then, of course,” Footlight continues. “I reaped Nick Valentine’s soul when the world ended so long ago. Thought it interesting it’d pop up again without my input, and become its own, separate thing. Also named Nick Valentine. Telling you, Junior, that’s something new to me. Your brother has his own set of newness but I’m less interested in him.”
Nick frowns. “Don’t call me Junior.”
Footlight smirks. “Fair enough.”
“...Though, speaking of, why are you called Footlight?”
“...Y’know?” Footlight hums. “It’s been long enough, I don’t even remember. But that’s all I’ve got for you. Unless you’ve got something else to ask.”
“Why now?” Nick asks. “Why wait till now?”
“Because you’re struggling less with your identity now. Didn’t want to step in early and mess that up for you.”
“Why have me grow roses?”
“Didn’t remember what plant they were. But it’s a rite of passage. Everyone grows new life somehow, some way. ‘Cept for a lot of folks, it’s bacteria in their innards or molds on food they let grow bad.”
“...Ew.”
“Yeah,” Footlight chuckles. “Yours was a lot more pleasant.”
“One last question.” Nick looks up at Footlight to make sure he has his full attention. “Why did you give me the red roses?”
Footlight’s own face turns red. Something Nick wouldn’t expect from Death. Neither is Footlight turning tail and running away into the night.
Nick stares, and slowly the realization trickles in of just what that reaction was.
Death has a crush on him . Or Life does. Footlight has a crush on him.
...Nick, surprisingly, is a little touched by that.
He’ll have to follow Sole’s advice again and let Footlight come to him once more.