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To be or not to be. To live, or to lay. What it meant to be human. Truly human.
All questions Nora had considered before. But more extensively within this past year or so. It had not been easy to have been thrown so dismissively into post-apocalyptic Boston. And half the time Nora didn't even know if she was fully thawed out all the way through. Hell, if she could be honest, if it wasn't for Shaun she would have taken that pretty little silver 10 Millimeter and made it so Vault 111 would've stayed sealed shut. Or maybe she would have just let herself rot away in that pod with the image of the man she loved with half his head blown off to gaze at when she got bored of dying. To be or not to be? Bullshit. Nora didn't exactly have a choice. She had to be. There was no say in that matter.
Nora flicked her cigarette to the ground and smushed out the last of its life with the heel of her boot. Many things had changed in the past two hundred (give or take a handful) years, but the sky never changed. Well it had, seeing as there was no city to clog the star's clear view. But the sun always set so beautifully like that of a painting over the water, a sight only a very, extremely small percentage of people would remember.
The woman shivered. It was nearing the end of October, and the sun was setting slowly. She remembered this shitty sub joint. Never liked it herself, gave her a nasty feeling. I guess she was right.
About twenty feet in front of her stood her favorite insult to mother nature. But instead, today he was a man. As he shoved the barrel of his gun into Winters' arrogant mouth, muttering "Well. I guess I'm in good company." and painting the walls of the bunker red, he was a man. To Nora, he sure felt alive. Sometimes she wished he was of flesh and bone though. That she could fall asleep under his arm to the sound of a heartbeat, or to have him cup her ears to block out the bitter wind on nights like these. It would be nice, she guessed.
Everything eats and has eaten. Nothing is innocent. No child is innocent - fishing an extra cookie from the jar and hiding it under their shirt. But neither is some old dried out raisin that's been sitting smugly for the past two hundred years with an innocent woman's blood on his grubby hands.
The world keeps spinning though.
People die everyday, people are born everyday. Someone out there is having the best day of their lives. Others wish to bury themselves alive and die in self pity. That fact always made Nora find difficulty in being selfish. You couldn't really call it being selfish though, even if that's what she felt. Wanting something was a horrible, nasty, festering feeling to her. Someone had it harder. Someone needed it more than her. She found herself trapped in an ugly cycle of stepping through doorways labed "Help me!" only to find no floor, being left to fall to her demise.
But Detective Valentine always jumped in after her. Took on her case for a price of zero caps. He wasn't a sweet prince of love by any means. But he knew how to make a girl feel like waking up in the morning. Or rather he made her wake up with a swat of his boot to her back the second the sun peeked over the horizon.
He was ugly, but smooth like whiskey swirling around ice in a glass. Valentine was like confusing modern art that you needed to sit down and stare at all day to really appreciate. The old thing was anything but modern though, and it made Nora think this whole thing was a joke, that she was having a weird dream and he was a sliver of rest between nightmares. There were decent men in this day and age, she knew that. But none of them gently put a hand on her back to guide her through a crowd or offered to put her drink on his tab. Much less expect nearly nothing from the already exhausted woman.
He only asked for a cigarette or a spare screwdriver. And how she was doing. But after nearly a year of being wired to her hip, he finally relented.
Nora didn't like what she was told. How could literally lifeless eyes show so much pain? It was the second time he allowed her to hug him, the first time being after she killed Kellogg with his own gun and collapsed sobbing. When he asked her for her help was the second.
She didn't wish to change Valentine. Sure, he needed some wires mended sometimes but she never pressured him into going to see his brother up north to go patch up the missing skin in the neatly arranged panels of fake flesh like Ellie did (bless her heart) or nagged at him to drop the cigarettes because they were more than useless to him. Nora did, however, wish to understand him. Not necessarily tame the Synth, but she had a feeling she was reading him wrong sometimes. Valentine was complicated at first, and then simple, but then complicated once again.
But as Nora stares out at his figure gazing at the cracked concrete, she realizes that maybe he is both simple and complicated at the same time. A simple concept - a man out of time, who was never really a man at all - but with beautiful execution. He was like those stupid noir radio drama protagonists the local book club ladies would drink tea and giggle about. Even had the voice to match. And Nora, being the poor honest girl she was, couldn't lie when she said it made her feel right at home in that book club. Like a blushing bride on her wedding night, except her husband was cold on the floor and there was a metal man patting her back and asking if she wanted a drink.
Now it was Nora's turn to do the patting.
She slowly strolled up behind him, hands in her pockets. From behind he almost could have passed for a human. Tall and lanky and stiff. Almost human when you got closer. Rough edges and grayed skin. And as she finally stood next to him, those burning yellow eyes cutting through the shadow and staring at a couple of dents in the cracked pavement gave it all away. Nora stood unmoving as Nick went on his speel, ranting about everything in the dark crevices of his circuits. She listened as he had his causal identity crisis, how he was Nick Valentine but he wasn't Nick Valentine. How he thought that killing Winters would smooth things out for him but just threw him for a loop. Nick was always an even-headed man and Nora had barely heard his voice raised above speaking levels (minus during gunfights.) But right now, the Synth was basically shouting into the night, waving his good hand at the setting sun and the slow moving water. Nora was almost worried about attracting unwanted attention, but she really didn't have time to worry about that.
Time went on. Nick's tone went to more of one that belonged to a broken man. And he was a broken man. Literally and figuratively. He was falling apart, inside and out.
"I'll never be able to thank you." He muttered after a second, hand going back to his pocket to fish out another cigarette; the previous one went untouched and just smoldered in his fingers before he threw it at the water bank. Nora had asked why he smoked before, and he just grunted and shrugged out a "Why not?" before offering her a smoke herself.
"For what?"
Nick gave her a flat look from the corners of his eyes, which had begun to illuminate his face in the growing darkness. Nora grinned back.
"I'm pulling your leg, Nicky." He lit his cigarette and brought it to worn, gray lips. "Consider it pay back."
"For what?" It was his turn to ask that question now.
"You know you never charged me for my case."
"Suppose I didn't."
"So there you go." Nora took the cigarette as Nick offered it despite just finishing one of her own. She watched the smoke curled from the rips in his neck and into the night air. "This is your payment."
Nick shook his head, taking off his hat briefly to rub his face. He looked tired. Could he feel tired? Nora didn't know. He's always said he couldn't, but maybe he just doesn't get tired physically and is likely very, very tired emotionally. Nora looked back to the sunset and took a drag of the cigarette as he put his hat back on.
"O Nick, Nick. Wherefore art thou Nick? Deny thy Father and refuse thy name. Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be human." Nora blew the smoke out slowly.
"Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though not a Synth. What's Institute? It is nor hand, nor foot. Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet. So Nick would, were he not Synth called. Retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Nick, doff thy name, and for that name, which is no part of thee, take all myself."
Nick scoffed and took the cigarette back. He didn't smoke it, just stared with an amused look on his face as if to say "Really?"
"I take thee at thy word." He began after a second. "Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized. Henceforth I will never be Synth."
There was a pause.
"Never took you for a high culture dame."
Nora shrugged. That was the thing she liked about the relationship. She never had to explain herself to Nick. Nora was so used to spilling her guts to just about anyone to get them to be nice to her, to hear her out. She's only had to pull her tragic backstory on Nick exactly once, and that was because she literally hired him to listen to said backstory. And there was no more needed explanation. They could just give eachother a look and it was like a whole conversation. For a man with skin made out of plastic and muscles made of machinery, he sure had a range of pretty interesting facial expressions. Nora had to sometimes use every molecule in her body to not burst out laughing at his face when he knew someone was lying through their teeth to his face.
"...I can't tell if you were saying that it doesn't matter what I am, or if you're batshit crazy and you like tin cans." Nick muttered after a second, tugging his hat down over his eyes.
"Take it however you want."
"Well. I'll be damned."
He throws an arm around Nora's shoulder and drags her in, under his arm. There's a small, lopsided smile on his face; the right side higher than the left. That was the third hug.
He wasn't warm by any means. Rather cold, infact. But Nora still let him. He was still gentle with her, like he was still scared that she was going to be disgusted with him and run away even though he knew better.
Nora sighed and leaned her head onto his shoulder, handing the cigarette back. Nick pinched the smoldering end with his rubbery fingers and tucked it away into his pocket.
The sky never changed, even after all this time. Even without all the busy city lights clogging the sky and the stars newly twinkling above, it was still as beautiful as ever. And both of them remembered it.
To be or not to be. To live, or to lay. What it meant to be human. Truly human. And if Nora had to say, it wasn't what you were made of. Not anymore at least. Times have changed though. Time keeps moving. The world keeps spinning.