Chapter Text
She knows it’s him the moment she sees the tacky neon signs outside the- his-office in Diamond City. She knows the moment the woman- and god her stomach flips as the brunette stands there, clutching a tie in her hands like a lifeline- said, “That’s Nick, he just smiled like he always does and ran off.”
She’s silent the rest of the way to Parkway Station, her world suddenly flipped on it’s side.
It’s been two hundred years.
But it’s him. It has to be him.
It’s been two hundred and ten years.
She and Preston make short work of the triggermen in the vault and every snippet of conversation she hears just causes the roaring in her ears to get louder.
“Should have just killed that damn detective when we had the chance.”
He’s still alive. He’s still here. He’s real. He’s-
Preston has to stop her at one point when she takes a corner too quick an nearly gets riddled with bullets. Rookie mistake. She can almost hear him chastising her for it. They clear out the room and Preston grabs her by the shoulder. “Are you doing alright?”
Her voice sounds too excited, too anxious even to her ears, “Fine. We shouldn’t be wasting time talking, we should be finding-”
Preston cuts her off apologetically, “We’ll find Nick, don’t worry. That detective probably has been in worse situations than this.”
She staring at him, trying to comprehend. He knows Nick- every impulse is begging to ask him about him, ask him how they met, how he survived when Boston-
The door they’re standing by slides open and a voice brings her thoughts to a standstill.
“Keep talking, Meathead. It’ll just give Skinny Malone more time to figure out how to off you.”
Oh god. It’s him. It’s really him.
She knows that voice like the scars on her palms and the freckles across her face. Like looking into a mirror and seeing your reflection and suddenly having a sense ofhome in your own skin. She knows that gruff voice, from the way it sounds after a glass of whiskey to the hesitant tone when he asked her to dinner the first time. She finds herself sucking in her next breathe, suddenly aware of how long 210 years 5 months and 4 days really is.
The man taunting Nick turns and heads down the stairs and she makes sure one of her shots lands between his eyes.
She takes the stairs in bonds, and and catches the glimpse of a silhouette in the window as she boots up the terminal, her thoughts rushing by too fast to hold onto. Nick’s voice filters out from the room and she finds herself wondering if the barrier between them is whats creating that metallic undertone to his words. “Look, I don’t know who you are but we have about three minutes to get that door open.”
Give me a second, Valentine.
She can’t help but wonder how great it feels to think that.
She gets the door open and doesn’t hesitate to step into the room, eyes searching for the familiar dark skin-
And everything comes to a halt.
The thing- man- standing in the room is made of metal and plastic. The first thing she notices are the eyes: bright, unblinking, and yellow. This can’t be Nick-
The man (machine?) pulls a lighter out of his pocket and leans his head down to light the cigarette held between his teeth, an exact mirror of the man in her memories. It’s not him. But it is him. He has yet to say anything, and she realizes she’s wearing a bandana over her face and a minutemen hat. He can’t even see her face.
Her hands dart up to pull the fabric away from her face.
“I appreciate the irony of the reverse damsel-” Nick’s voice cuts away and his mouth snaps shut as she pulls the bandana away and takes off her hat, a few strands of ginger hair falling in front of her eyes as she does so.
The man- Nick- looks at her like he’s seeing a ghost, and for all intents and purposes, he is.
“Jenny?”
Her response is low and mournful, somewhere between a whisper and a sob, and she watches as the plastic features of his face scrunch up as if she was burning him with her voice alone.
“Hey Valentine.”