Archive of Our Own

1

Natalie sees the ruin that the world has become and knows immediately that her time is limited.

She has eleven pills. Not quite two weeks worth of normal function. (A few days more, and she would have gone to refill the bottle. The world can be cruel.) She traces the label with her thumb, brushes the fingers of her other hand gently across the scar on her throat. It’s still a bit sensitive, even three years after the surgery.

Thank God she hadn't handed the little bottle over with her clothes.

That she even has this much is thanks solely to Codsworth, bless him. She remembers the sirens, adrenaline blurring nearly everything else away save a few moments captured in startling clarity; the warmth of the sun on her face, Nate’s broad back, Shaun’s precious head peeking over his shoulder. She remembers her name, called urgently just as her feet hit the front step, remembers turning, the instinct to respond to that kind of tone not completely gone, remembers a bottle sailing towards her face, tossed halfway across the room. Remembers it biting into her palm, fingers clenched too tight as she entered the “decontamination chamber.”

She scrounges through Sanctuary, manages to come up with a holster for the 10mm pistol she’d picked up in the vault, some ammo, a modest collection of the bottle caps Codsworth tells her are the new form of currency. The most important, though, is that little bottle.

Not quite two weeks of normal function, not quite two weeks until her body starts a slow, grinding decline.

If she stretches it out, takes half a pill every other day, or every three days, it might give her more time. Still only a few months at most, she’ll probably start to feel very ill very quickly, likely barely functional, but a few months. A few months might be just enough time to find her son. To make sure he’s all right.

Natalie stands in the remains of her kitchen and cuts her pills in half with a tarnished butter knife, cupping her hand over them as if shielding Shaun’s eyes from bright light so no stray pieces go skittering off the counter, become lost in the trash on the floor. She sweeps every last crumb back into the bottle and caps it tight.

2

Her father taught her to shoot when she was young. He taught his daughter a lot of things in place of the son he never had. She enjoyed most of it, but she never much liked guns.

She gives herself one full magazine to practice. The rest is too precious to waste.

3

She’s on her way to Concord (best - only - lead that she has) when she runs into the trading woman, Carla.

Diamond City sounds like a much more solid lead than “there are people in Concord but they’re likely to shoot at you” so she chooses to bypass Concord entirely, new dog at her heels and hopefully well armed enough to last the journey.

(She isn’t. Her slightly rusty little 10mm might do the trick against raiders and freakishly large insects when they hold still long enough for her to aim properly. (In other words, Dogmeat does most of the work.) But she knows the moment she lays eyes on a Yao Guai that it won’t do a lick of good against the thing bears have become. She backs away slowly, hand tangling frantically in Dogmeat’s ruff before he can go rushing off after it - God, he needs a collar, a handkerchief, something she can grab hold of - and circles wide around that one. Her heart is in her throat for hours after.)

4

She gets a little lost, still learning to navigate. Winds up too far east, follows the sound of gunfire to where one heavily armed and armored man defends his two companions in front of the old police station. She slips up the outer wall and picks off ferals, keeps Dogmeat close, watching her back. She doesn’t want him anywhere near the careless barrage of the other man’s gun.

Paladin Danse is a paranoid bastard. She doesn’t mind telling him so.

She and Dogmeat sleep in an abandoned high rise that night. “Remind me never to go back there,” she tells Dogmeat as she cleans up the remains of their shared dinner.

5

On her way in to Diamond City, she slips past some men in a shootout with literal green giants and that is just it. The first thing she does after entering the city is to head straight for the market, trading in the shit weapons and armor she’s been collecting off the dead in exchange for a real rifle. Arturo knows his stuff.

(The surgeon does not. The word “thyroid” earns her only a slightly irritated look of confusion. He finally recognizes it when she describes the general shape and location, touching the red line across the front of her throat in demonstration, but it’s quite clear he’s unaware of what it actually does, much less how she might find a replacement for its function.)

Natalie supposes she shouldn’t be surprised at the degree of knowledge lost when the bombs fell, but what with the clear presence of other drugs, of stimpaks, she’d hoped…

It doesn’t matter what she hoped. She has a son to find.

6

She leaves Piper and Ellie in Diamond City, gets a little turned around on her way to Vault 114, winds up inside the Combat Zone. She’s in trouble; this many raiders far outclass her, even drunk and strung out on who knows what. Or they would, but if the Commonwealth has taught her one thing very quickly it is never to fight fair.

There are a wealth of shadows in this building, high places, dark filthy corners. She picks the raiders off one by one with her new rifle, moving stealthy from hidey hold to hidey hole so they can’t get a lock on her position and rush her all at once. Any that get close, Dogmeat knocks down long enough for her to pull her pistol and put a bullet between their eyes.

She has no intention of making friends in this so-called Commonwealth, but when she leaves the building it is with Dogmeat at her heels and Cait complaining vociferously at her side.

7

A line of hash marks are slowly growing down the shoulder strap of her rifle, two groups of three. She pulls a knife from her boot, carefully scores the leather, the start of a third group. She took a pill yesterday. On the morning she adds the third mark to this newest group she’ll take another.

Seven days. One week. She feels fine.

8

She returns to Diamond City on the heels of Detective Nick Valentine. She now has a name for the man who killed Nate. Kellogg. He lived here in Diamond City. Her infant son is ten years old.

There is so much to do.

She gets her hair trimmed short. Easier to take care of on the road, she tells the barber. She doesn’t tell him that if it’s short she won’t have to wonder whether it’s her imagination that she’s starting to find more of it in her hairbrush, on her sleeping bag, stuck to the back of her jacket. She asks him to shave the sides close, visibly shorter than the top. It will grow out quickly. It seems rebellious. Makes her feel young.

13

“Shaun is out of your reach,” Kellogg says.

“You might have been a good mother,” Kellogg says.

If he says anything more, she has stopped listening.

Once he is dead, Natalie sits on the floor, hunched over her burning belly, cradling her bleeding arm, letting the stimpaks do their work. If only they could grow her a new organ entirely. “This was just another dead end.” Natalie wants to scrub her hands through her hair, but they are filthy with blood and dirt and something like oil or grease. She feels like she is about to vibrate right out of her skin. Her fingers tingle with the remnants of panic.

Valentine crouches at her side, calmly sorting through their spoils. “Don’t go giving up yet. I still say we need to talk to Piper.”

His opinion of Piper is apparently far higher than hers. If only she had any better ideas. She sighs, pulls out a rag to start wiping the filth from her hands. “Diamond City it is.” Going back again feels so much like a defeat.

Valentine stands with a grunt and a clearly mechanical hiss. His tone is annoyed, gruff, but the words themselves are kind. “Chin up, Natalie. We’ll find him.”

14

Two weeks in. She trudges along beside Valentine, their feet aimed towards Diamond City, too much silence letting the doubts creep in at the edges of her mind. She wonders again how much longer she’ll feel normal. She is perhaps a little tired, a little irritable, her stomach a little upset. Nothing that can’t be passed off as poor diet, too much walking and not enough sleep.

17

“Dr Amari. Before I go, I… I have a medical question, if you have the time.” She is hyper aware of Piper’s eyes on her back. The woman is far too curious. “Even if you don’t know the answer, maybe you know someone who would.”

“Of course. You must understand, I make no promises. I have a very specialized line of work. But I will try.”

“I’m trying to find someone who can make more of this.” She withdraws the bottle from its secure inside pocket, rattles it but doesn’t remove any of the pills. “It’s synthetic hormone. Thyroid.”

Dr. Amari’s eyebrows hit her hairline. Natalie’s stomach plummets. She knows what Amari is going to say before her mouth even opens. “Synthetic… hormone? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Synthetic organs, yes, as you have just seen, but only the Institute has the technology to make something so sophisticated. You had this from before?”

Her mouth has gone dry. “Yes.”

“Synthetic hormone. I suppose, if one had the resources, one could study the effects of different chemical compounds on the human body. Eventually trial and error might come up with something to duplicate the desired effect. But that would take years of careful research, not to mention the resources... I’m sorry. I don’t know anyone who can help you.”

“But you have drugs,” Natalie insists, frustration rising. “Drugs that didn’t exist in my day. Someone obviously had to come up with them.”

“Yes, and nearly all of them are purely recreational. Stumbled upon by chance, or brought into the Commonwealth from elsewhere.” Dr. Amari is staring at the bottle, clearly intrigued. Natalie tucks it away, tugging the zipper closed with jerky motions. The doctor’s face softens, but only fractionally. Her eyes linger on the pocket for longer than Natalie is strictly comfortable with before rising to meet her own. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you wanted to hear.”

“No, I honestly wasn’t expecting any different. Thank you for your time, Dr. Amari.”

Piper’s steps dog hers out the door. The space between Natalie’s shoulder blades itches; she can feel the questions brewing at her back. Piper waits until they’re up the first flight of stairs, hopefully out of Amari’s hearing. “So… You gonna fill me in?”

Natalie scrubs a weary hand across her eyes, trying to quell the mis-placed irritation. “You remember where I’m from?”

“Kind of hard to forget, Blue.”

“I had Thyroid Cancer. The doctors had to remove it entirely to keep the cancer from spreading. They put me on this,” she pats the spot over the interior pocket, “as a way to replace the hormone the thyroid produces and keep me alive and functioning normally.”

“Synthetic thyroid. Right. And what happens when that runs out?”

The list of side effects are rote by now. “Depression, fatigue, digestive trouble... I can give you the whole list later if you really want. Eventual heart failure or coma. Everything - mental, physical, everything - slows down until it just… stops.” She laughs bitterly. “I don’t even know if these are good any more. Cryo might work on humans, but who’s to say it does anything for pills? Maybe I’m just taking a placebo.”

Piper’s face is twisted in an uncomfortable grimace. “Ah, geeze Blue.”

Natalie waves her off. She doesn’t want any awkward expressions of sympathy. “You get why I’m trying to find Shaun as fast as possible.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.”

19

Nat doesn’t have any power armor, so she and Detective Valentine are getting ready to venture into the Glowing Sea protected only by a bit of lead-lined clothing and every bit of Rad-X and Radaway the vendors of Goodneighbor and Diamond City can cough up. The preparation is taking longer than it really ought to. All the travel is getting to her. She still feels tired, even after two solid nights of sleep crashed on Piper’s couch. She didn’t slide out into the shivery late morning air today until the relentless clattering of Piper’s typewriter became annoying enough to overcome sleepy inertia.

They leave tomorrow. With any luck, by the time the three week mark hits, they’ll have found Virgil.

“Oh, before you leave.” Piper leaves off typing to root around in her desk for something, comes up with a long loop of fabric. She holds it out, both ends dangling. A scarf. “Take it. I prefer this one,” she gestures to the scarf around her own neck, a similar pattern but the colors slightly less faded. “No offense, but, ah. You look like you need it.” She eyes Natalie’s short hair and bare ears, frowning. “I don’t have any spare hats, but Nat - my Nat - might have one squirreled away around here somewhere.”

“That’s all right. They make me itch.” She wraps the scarf around her neck, tucking the trailing ends between two of her shirts. She’s started waring more layers. It’s getting more difficult to keep warm; she’d swear the weather is changing, except her Pip Boy cheerfully informs her that the temperature this week isn’t any lower than it was when she stepped out of the vault. “Thank you,” she adds belatedly.

23

It takes an entire day just to get to the edge of the Glowing Sea, and another three to actually find the place where Virgil should be. Walking through the loose dirt is difficult, the nights restless and sleep poor, the food all pre-cooked, pre-packaged crap. Nausea and dizziness have been a constant since day two, not even the medicine able to completely mask the effects of that much radiation for that long. Natalie has been walking hunched over for the past four hours, focused mostly on not puking her guts out, relying on Valentine to navigate and hoping they don’t surprise any more scorpions out of the sand. She’s overdue for a dose of Rad-X, but they’re getting low and she doesn’t want to risk running out on the way back.

And now they’re here, and the wasteland has decided to throw one more obstacle in her path.

She can see the entrance to the cave that ought to contain their renegade Institute scientist, a dark spot just up the slope, tantalizingly close. But, between it and her, a deathclaw. Life just… really, really sucks right now.

“What do you think?” Valentine’s voice is the barest of whispers next to her ear. “Snipe it from here or try to go around?”

She ducks her head back down, peering through the scope of her rifle. Her vision blurs. She blinks hard. If the first shot doesn’t kill it, they have no where to get away from it. “I don’t think I can make that shot.”

“Right. Around it is. If we back up, I think I saw a way up over the rocks, but it’ll be a bit of a hike.”

“I’ll take a hike over a deathclaw any day, Valentine.”

They draw back. Carefully. So, so quietly. Nat is barely breathing. She wonders if they are upwind or down, or if it matters. Perhaps deathclaws do not have a sense of smell. Maybe they use sonar, or can read the radiation levels from their surroundings or some such thing.

Valentine can move with surprising stealth. He scrambles up the rocks, silent and sure. She feels ridiculously clumsy in comparison, exhaustion dragging at her limbs and nausea lurching in her gut.

They make it. By some miracle, they make it, even when Natalie’s foot goes out from under her on that last steep slide to the mouth of the cave and she skids several feet. They hurry forward, away from the radiation, the scorpions and the deathclaw, only to come face to face with a pair of turrets. Natalie is shivering so hard, feels so ill, that she lets Valentine sling one of her arms over his shoulder. The turrets don’t fire, even when they come cautiously closer.

“Dr. Virgil?” Valentine calls, deliberately rattling the chain of cans at the door as they pass.

“Nick,” Natalie gasps, tugging away. He lets go just in time for her to double over. Virgil’s first sight of her is with one hand braced on his wall, throwing up all over his floor.

24

She has to lie outright to Virgil.

She tells herself that she will at least attempt to look for his cure. Perhaps, if she can get it to Valentine, he can take it back to the scientist. She tells herself this even as she knows she won’t. She won’t ask Valentine to go into the Sea alone, not for a stranger, even one who has let her sleep off radiation sickness on his bed and is helping her find her son.

She’s so tired. Guilt barely causes a ripple in the deep dark pool of exhaustion.

27

“Here.” Valentine shoves a bowl into her hands. They will be back in Diamond City tomorrow. They might have reached it tonight, if they’d pressed on after the sun set. It took less time to leave the Glowing Sea than it did heading in, since now they know where they are going.

“What is this? You didn’t have to.”

“You’ll feel better if you eat something.”

She’s really not hungry, but it would be rude not to eat it when he’s prepared it solely for her benefit. More importantly, he’s probably right.

The soup is really pretty awful. She has no appetite. She leaves half the bowl.

28

Nat is trying not to accumulate too many possessions. She doesn’t have a home - has been sleeping on the road as often as not, renting rooms or staying at Piper’s when she’s in Diamond City - and so everything she owns she carries with her.

So it’s a bit of a surprise when Detective Valentine snaps his fingers, making an ah-ha kind of noise like he’s just remembered something, and draws her attention to a footlocker crammed in amongst the various filing drawers in his office. “For you. You’d probably drop a few solid pounds off that pack of yours if you started leaving all those little trinkets behind.”

“They’re not trinkets!” The protest is instinct. She can feel a blush burning on her cheeks. “They’re useful!”

“Yeah, well, now you don’t have to lug them around with you over half the Commonwealth.”

Valentine may have a point, Natalie has to admit (privately, to herself) an hour or so later. On their own, the bits and bobs that have been rolling around in the bottom of her pack may not weigh that much, but by the time she’s finished sorting through them all the footlocker is half full of screws, wiring, half finished weapons mods, scraps of leather and the like, and her bag noticeably lighter.

She can’t quite look Nick in the eye as she thanks him, embarrassed.

(Four weeks. One month. Natalie hasn’t had a menstrual cycle since her pregnancy. She dreads getting one out here even as she knows that the longer she goes without one, the more likely the cause is from poor health rather than lingering pregnancy hormones.)

29

Their Courser hunt is nearly a disaster. Not the getting there; that goes smoothly enough. Natalie and Cait manage to sneak right past most of the raiders. Nat only has to shoot two, manages to put them down without alerting any of their comrades.

No, the trouble comes once they actually reach the building the courser is in only to discover that the Gunners have beaten them to it.

They are both bloody before the real fight even begins, stimpaks busily stitching up the worst of the damage but leaving the lingering ache of recent injury in their wake. Fighting the courser is like Kellogg all over again, only worse, because here there are no banks of computers to duck down behind. Nat can’t see what she’s meant to be shooting, doesn’t take shots that she could for fear of hitting Cait, who keeps moving straight into her line of sight. Cait fights like a woman possessed, like she doesn’t even feel the pain. Nat has never been more glad she managed to talk the woman into wearing heavy metal armor; she’s quite certain it’s the only reason either of them survive the encounter.

They don’t get the upper hand until Cait manages to herd the courser back through the door - ignoring the blood flowing freely from fresh gunshot wounds on both her arms - and flings him over the rail, down the center of the stairwell to the floor below. Apparently even coursers are susceptible to broken necks. Nat sends a full magazine’s worth of bullets down after him to be safe, and that is that.

Then there’s the surviving Gunners to deal with, the synth, and Nat just wants to curl up right here and sleep until the pounding in her head fades and the world stops spinning. She can’t show that kind of weakness. She really isn’t up for traveling, either, but they can’t stay here. It won’t be long before the Gunners overcome their shock. She stumbles into the elevator, slapping blindly at the controls. When the doors open on the ground floor she doesn’t move.

“Come on, then.” Cait, tugging at her elbow, hand sticky with blood. Most of it is hers. Natalie hopes she’s used a few of their dwindling supply of stimpaks. Cait is also carrying most of the looted weapons and ammo.

There is a decent building to spend the night in two blocks away. Still far too close to the Gunners and raiders alike, but Nat just isn’t getting any farther without a chance to rest.

31

They’re standing right outside Goodneighbor. Dr. Amari can’t help them any further. Follow the Freedom Trail. That might be a suitably subtle clue for someone raised in this place, in this time, but for her it’s painfully obvious.

“Valentine. The Freedom Trail. This is the Freedom Trail.” She points to the red brick inlaid in the road right at their feet.

Valentine blinks at her, eyes bright behind his cigarette. “Huh. You think it’s that simple?”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“No, no I guess not. You want to step back in to resupply? No telling how long this will take.”

“I got everything I needed at Daisy’s.” And some new goodies from KL-E-O. She’d been eying the extended mag, debating whether the added weight would be worth it. Her constantly aching back and tired arms ruled in favor of the lighter quick release.

“Well all right then. Let’s go.”

32

The guy with the sunglasses won’t let her pass. He wants her to join up, reminds her strongly of a desperate salesman pushing overpriced Mr. Handy units, the kind who skips straight to the hard sell, thinks that just going on and on about how great his product is, really, will be enough to close her on a deal. He’s also blocking the stairs, and with Valentine right behind her she’s not about to say she doesn’t care whether synths live or die. (And if, in this moment, that’s a little bit true… well, it has to be the exhaustion talking.) She’s tired, always tired. She aches down to her bones, hasn’t had a bowel movement in going on three days, her thoughts focused with sluggish dread on another trip through the Glowing Sea back to Virgil. The urge to snap at Mr. Sunglasses - Deacon - is growing with every word that passes his lips.

“Look,” she finally says, waving her hand to cut him off because he’s still talking. “I’m just not interested.” I don’t have time, she doesn’t say, because he’ll have an answer waiting for that and any other excuse. They always do. The fastest way she knows to get past this sort is to just keep saying no and not give them anything to latch on to. If that makes her a rude asshole, so be it.

“Right. Well, you change your mind, you know where to find me.” Finally, finally, he’s stepping back, out of her way. She brushes straight past him. One foot in front of the other. Then the next, and the next. They’ll head back to Diamond City first. Then, the Glowing Sea awaits.

35

Five weeks. Nat wakes with a blinding headache. She stares at the ceiling of her room at the Dugout, listening to Cait snore on the next bed over. She’s supposed to be hitting the shops today. Selling everything she’s brought back, buying food and ammo and all the Rad-X she can get her hands on.

The bed dips sharply. Dogmeat. He manages to mostly not stand on her shins as he steps over her. He wobbles his way up the bed, flopping down between her and the wall with his head resting on her chest and big, intelligent eyes staring at her face. She smiles, a little crooked, scratches at his ears, and tries to focus on the softness of his fur instead of the pounding at the back of her skull.

(Cait and Piper wind up running her errands that day. They tell her about it in detail over dinner in her room, a process which involves more arguing than actual relaying of information. Natalie laughs helplessly into her noodles and vows to never send them on errands together ever again.)

36

There is one more exception to Natalie’s “keep nothing unnecessary” rule. She’s started collecting comics. There’s a neat little bundle of them in the bottom of her pack, all wrapped in leather to keep out water. Shaun will be the right age for them.

38

It takes just as long to reach Virgil this trip as it did the first, and this time it is entirely her fault.

“I should’ve sent you with Cait this time,” she gasps, crouched over a puddle of vomit. The radiation has gotten to her more quickly.

“Yeah, you should have,” Valentine agrees. “But I think we both know how well that suggestion would have gone over.”

He’s right. She’s been a grouch lately, an absolute bear and knows it. She smacks his knee for the comment anyway. “Ass.”

“We can turn around,” Valentine says, voice gone all serious. “I can still come back with Cait, let you wait it out in Diamond City, but if you collapse on me now I’m not going to be getting you out of here before the Rad-X runs dry.”

She shakes her head, tries to ignore how gravity seems to have multiplied. Her muscles feel like they’re made of wet clay. “No. We’re almost there. If we stay an extra day at Virgil’s, I can make it back out.” He’s staring at her in stony silence, the inhuman circles of his eyes unreadable. “If you were going to get cold feet you should have done it three days ago,” she snaps. “It’s too late now. Help me up.”

42

Six weeks. She has to keep reminding herself of why she has to keep going. The reasons seem flimsier with each repetition. Her son is waiting.

43

Valentine watches her over their campfire at the edge of the Glowing Sea as she rifles again through the “blueprints” Virgil has given them. The fire isn’t exactly safe, liable to attract any number of unwelcome visitors, but she shivers constantly even in the warmer daylight hours and the heat is heavenly. She tugs her outermost jacket around her more closely, an over-sized, ragged thing Ellie pressed into her hands when she came back with Nick that very first week, telling her to keep it as a personal thank you. Since it’s the largest of her multiple layers, she wears it on the outside. The pretty smile that graces Ellie’s lips whenever her eyes catch on the thing is only an added bonus.

“You look like you might actually be understanding what you’re looking at,” Valentine comments.

“Did I ever mention what I did, before? Maybe not. I’m a patent lawyer,” she says absently. “I studied mechanical engineering before switching to law. I know how to read blueprints.” She huffs, shakes her head. “These,” she rattles the papers, a collection of scribbles in crayon and stubby pencil, “These are not blueprints.” She can make sense of some of it. It won’t be enough. The certainty of that thought sits like a rock in her gut.

“So we get help, like the doctor said.”

Nat bites her lip, staring at the papers, willing them to make sense. A good chunk of it, she knows she’s capable of building. Some of it she could probably puzzle out with a bit of trial and error. Maybe, if she got that far, the rest would fall into place.

But she’s fooling herself. This will take her weeks and weeks, if she manages it at all.

The six week mark was yesterday.

It’s suddenly too much. She’s not quite reckless enough to just fling the papers, but she smacks them hard to the ground, slapping her hand down over them in anger. Then she’s sobbing out of nowhere, big ugly heaving sobbing.

“Hey now!” Alarm colors Valentine’s voice.

“I can’t do it, I can’t do it,” she gasps. The words are barely understandable even to her own ears, but Nick seems to get the message well enough.

“Hey, come on now.” He’s moved closer, come around to her side of the fire, hovers there.

She wants a hug. She wants one of Nate’s hugs, so badly. She wants strong arms and a solid chest enveloping her, shielding her from the world when the huge, enormous weight of it seems too much to bear on her own. She hasn’t let herself think of him much these past few weeks, knows there is a deep well of grief lurking just below the apathy and knows with just as much certainty that if she lets herself think of him she’ll drown in it.

Nate isn’t here. Nate is rotting, dead and unburied, miles away from here. Her sobbing redoubles.

Instead of Nate, she has Valentine, crouching in front of her, circuitry showing around the edges of his worried face. He presses a handkerchief into her hand. It’s stained and ragged, just like everything else about him. She swipes at her eyes, holds it against her nose and mouth to muffle the noise. She just can’t stop.

Valentine thumps to the ground beside her. His mechanical hand lands on her opposite shoulder, not pulling, just resting there. She takes the unspoken invitation and lets herself slump against him. It’s too much. She’s not going to make it to her son in time. She’s so tired. She’s so sick of being exhausted all the damn time.

“You just take your time, Nat,” Nick is saying. “Let it out. We’ll get this figured. We’ll get you to your son.”

The noisy sobbing eventually fades to quieter, shuddering breathes, then to exhausted shaking silence. She feels hollow inside. “I thought I could read them,” she says into the quiet. Her voice is rough, throat caked with phlegm. She coughs several times, tries again. “I built stuff all the time, when I was a kid. Mom didn’t like it, thought Dad let me get away with too much. He showed me all the tricks. With the car, around the house. Even he didn’t want me to get into engineering. Said he didn’t think it suited me. But I was so determined. Stupid. I thought he was just saying that because I was a woman. I was going to show them they were wrong. I could do it.” She laughs bitterly. “I realized, almost four years in, he was right. They knew me better than I did. So I switched to law. I figured, a patent lawyer, at least all those years wouldn’t be a complete waste. That’s when I met Nate.” She thinks she’s going to go on, but no, that story is still too painful, her throat closing around the words. She pulls herself back on track, waves a hand at Virgil’s papers. “So I thought I could read these. But they don’t make sense. They’re…” beyond me. She can’t say it. “I just… What am I going to do?”

“We are going to find somebody,” Nick says firmly. “Someone who can read them. We’ll get them to draw us up a complete plan, and then we’ll build it.”

She laughs brokenly, scrubs her eyes on her sleeve since the handkerchief is covered in snot. Find somebody. As if it were that simple. She has no allies here, not with the kind of resources they’re talking about. What were the groups that Virgil mentioned? The Brotherhood of Steel? That stuck up Danse prick? “We are not going to the Brotherhood.” This she is firm on.

Nick chuckles. “No arguments there.”

“The Minutemen? Do you have any idea where they are?”

“Not for certain. Last I heard, there was a small group of them headed towards Concord, but no word since.”

That left one group. “The Railroad,” she groans. She worries he’ll mis-read the source of her reluctance, (or, perhaps, read it too well) but he only lets loose one of his dry sandpaper chuckles.

“We do know where they are. They probably won’t shoot us on sight, but with the way you said goodbye you might want to leave the armor on, just in case.”

“I couldn’t help it! He was just… guys like that drive me nuts!” Valentine laughs again, drops his hand from her shoulder. She holds her breath, but the world doesn’t slide out from under her when he leans away. It helps to have someone else contributing to the decisions.

“We can still try to find the Minutemen.”

“No. No, there’s no time.” All this traveling, back and forth across the Commonwealth, is more than wearing her down. The thought of another extended search, wandering all over the Commonwealth on nothing but vague rumors and he said/she saids, sends her stomach into fresh knots of anxiety. “Ugh. The Railroad it is.”

45

It takes every scrap of humility she possesses to step back into Old North Church.

Desdemona is rather blatant in telling her that she won’t receive a scrap of help from the Railroad unless she first helps them.

She bites her tongue, straightens her back. Turns to Deacon. “What do you want from me?”

46

“Nat.”

“Hm?”

“Natalie. Raiders ahead.”

“Where?” Natalie blinks rapidly, trying to bring her eyes back into focus. She’s been zoning out on the move far more often of late.

“Just there.”

Nat raises her rifle in the direction Cait’s pointing finger indicates, peering through the scope. It’s so incredibly heavy in her hands. She is only 29. She feels so old. She’s still a decent shot. “I count three.”

“We can take them.” Cait always wants to take them. This time, she’s right.

“Yes, we can. I’ll pick off as many as possible. Once they notice us, you go do your thing. I’ll cover your back.”

“Right. Now, less talking, more shooting.”

A smile curls at the corner of her mouth, just as her finger curls gently around the trigger. Her father’s voice echoes in her ears. Squeeze, don’t pull. “Your wish is my command, my lady.”

47

Deacon is trying to sell her on the Railroad. Again, when she’s already agreed to help them. She has no patience left for this. “I am going to see my son before I die,” she hisses, cutting him off. “Kellogg couldn’t stop me, the courser couldn’t stop me, and you are certainly not going to. No, no let me say my piece. If running this op is what it takes to make that happen, then fine. We run the op. That is the only reason I’m here. You said you were okay with people who just wanted to stick it to the man. This is me, sticking it. Can we go already?”

“Woah, woah. Okay, look. Obviously we got off on the wrong foot.”

Yes, they did, but she isn’t interested in making amends. “Deacon. Just spare me, okay? Let’s just get this over with.”

He drops his hands, goes quiet for a beat. Thank God. “Right. Well then.” He’s watching her. A frown makes a brief appearance on his face before he hides it again behind a mask of good humor. It’s the height of stupidity, to be deliberately alienating this man when he holds the key to getting her in with the Railroad. She resents that she has to be working with him at all. “The tourist should be just up ahead.” And just like that he’s off again, mindless prattle about secret handshakes. It’s the kind of aimless chatter she can safely ignore, so she does.

48

She’s on her back, her head on Cait’s lap while the other woman keeps watch. Deacon has split away, likely off to take care of some Railroad business before he rejoins them at headquarters, so it’s once again just the two of them. She stares at the indistinct outline of Cait’s chin and the stars beyond - so bright, out here in the wastes, no lights to compete with them, the skies blessedly clear of clouds or radioactive smog. They whisper secrets to each other on nights like this. They started in Diamond City, swaddled in blankets on Valentine’s rooftop one night when neither of them could sleep. Things Natalie is comfortable telling another woman but not Valentine, things she thinks Cait has told no one but her. Naughty tales that have them muffling snorts of laughter in their hands and more serious confessions.

“By the way, I got something for you.” Cait leans to the side, rummages in her pack for a moment, drops something small and light on Natalie’s chest. Natalie clutches at whatever it is to keep it from falling, fingers closing on fine, thin leather. Gloves. They’re well-worn, soft and supple. She puts them on. They’re a bit short in the finger, but otherwise fit well enough she won’t have any problem working her weapons with them on.

“Where did you get these?”

“Don’t ask. Seriously. Just don’t.”

She stretches both hands up towards the sky, spreads her fingers, feels the joints creak and pop, sees the shape of the gloves in the way they block out the stars.

49

“I have one of those,” she tells Tinker Tom. The Railroad has what they needed from the Switchboard. Desdemona is satisfied. Tinker Tom is ecstatic at the mess she hands him. He, apparently, has no problem making sense of Virgil’s “blueprints”, or at least enough of it to start giving her a grocery list of parts, clearly expecting her to be able to just memorize everything off the cuff.

There is a heavy duty circuit board, military, in the footlocker in Nick’s office.

“Okaaay. You’ll also need a biometric scanner.”

“I have one of those too.” She can feel Cait staring at the side of her face. Heat rises in her cheeks. “It’s the only one I’ve seen since coming here. Always wondered how those things worked. Figured I’d keep it and take it apart if I got the chance.” She coughs. The blazing in her cheeks has only grown worse. “What else?” She demands of Tom.

“Right, right. Give me just a minute. Here.”

He hands her a list. His handwriting is atrocious, and the exact amounts are all pretty vague, but as she runs her finger down the list she feels her confidence growing. “I have almost all of this. The only thing we really need is steel. I have that, too, just. Not these quantities.”

Tome slaps his hands together. “Well then. I guess the only thing left to do is find a build site while I fill in the blanks with these plans. Talk to P.A.M. She had a suggestion.”

“Sanctuary,” Nat says. In this she is firm. “If we tear down one of the houses we’ll have a solid foundation and plenty of steel and wiring to work with.”

Tom shoots a glance off to the side. Natalie doesn’t follow his eyes. She’d prefer to continue ignoring Desdemona and whoever else has been listening in on this entire conversation. “That’s, uh, that’s pretty far away.”

She has an argument ready. She’s had plenty of time to think this over. “That’s why it’s perfect. It’s quiet, there’s no one living there, plenty of space. We won’t be bothered.”

Tom glances aside again, appears to get some sort of unspoken go-ahead. “Well then, you go build the platform and come back when it’s done. I’ll have these plans ready.”

“No,” she disagrees again. She is calm. There is a hollow place inside her where emotion has drawn down, down, out of her reach except when it erupts without warning. Seven weeks. They are fast closing on two months. Time is not on her side. “If you need a day or two to get the plans ready, that’s fine. I need to stop in at Diamond City anyway. But I’m not going to start building this thing and then just leave it alone and unguarded, just waiting for someone to stumble across it and get curious. The only reason Sanctuary’s been quiet this long is because no one lives there. That changes the moment we start doing anything with the place.” (She also knows she can’t handle that much travel, Sanctuary and back twice. Not with the way her energy is flagging. Not with the way their travel times are growing, rather than shortening, with each subsequent trip.) “Is three days enough time?”

He hems and haws a bit, but reluctantly agrees.

“Then I’ll be back in three days, and we’ll go up to Sanctuary together.”

53

“Right, that’s it. Nick, take my bag.”

Natalie isn’t fully aware of the conversation going on next to her until she has to stumble to a stop, spitting a startled oath as she just barely avoids tripping over Cait, who has come up right in front of her and turned around.

“Up you go, then.”

It takes an embarrassingly long moment for her to figure out what Cait intends. Her brain is mush.

“Cait, I’m not, I can’t… it does no one any good if you’re exhausted too!” Shame makes the words sharp.

“You’re not that big. I can handle you for a little while. Up you go.”

“But.” She looks around for help. Desdemona is leading their little group along with Dogmeat, ignoring them entirely. Tinker Tom casts them a wide-eyed sidelong glance as he passes. Deacon only winks. Valentine gives them one of his slow, wry smiles.

“Best do as the lady says.”

“Fine! Fine. When you’re complaining about how tired you are tonight I get to say I told you so.” She hasn’t ridden piggyback since she and Nate first started dating, and even that didn’t last long. She puts nervous hands on Cait’s shoulders. There is wiry muscle beneath her palms, but Cait’s shoulders are disconcertingly narrow. Cait reaches back and grabs her thighs, pulling. Natalie yelps, caught off guard again, belatedly tries to pull herself up with her arms alone but only succeeds in sending them both tumbling. They’re both spitting curses as they de-tangle themselves. Cait grins as she springs to her feet. Natalie follows more slowly, groaning.

“Come on then! Do it right this time, come on.”

Her pack is swinging wildly at her side; it’s going to trip them up. She starts to take it off, hesitates. Valentine is already carrying both his and Cait’s load. It isn’t a good idea to have him too overburdened; he won’t be able to respond as quickly if they’re attacked.

Deacon startles her by holding his hand out. “No ulterior motives here, promise. That’s a lie. This I have got to see.” She doesn’t trust him, but a quick glance back at Valentine assures her that he, at least, will be watching. She slips the strap of the pack off her shoulder, lets go when Deacon takes it, slings it easily into place alongside his own.

“On three this time,” she tells Cait, placing her hands back on her shoulders. “One, two, three!” She jumps, lands hard. Cait staggers but catches her. She stumbles forward a few steps, swaying drunkenly. They’re both snorting giggles and Cait has to stop, catch her breath. She readjusts her grip on Natalie’s thighs. “I’m too heavy, aren’t I? Put me down, Cait, I can walk.”

“Shut up. You’re no heavier than I am. Squeeze your legs on my hips, support some of your own weight, you arse. You have no idea how this works, do you?”

Not really, no. She does as Cait says, and they set off again down the road. It is oddly intimate, being carried like this. Her hips and chest are pressed close to Cait’s back, her arms ringing Cait’s neck. She turns her head, scanning the countryside with Cait’s breath loud in her ear. If things were different, if exhaustion wasn’t sapping what’s left of her libido, if she weren’t on what amounts to a suicide mission, Natalie might have been interested.

Cait lasts longer than she expected, but not too much time passes before Nat can tell she’s getting tired.

“Put me down, Cait. I’m good to keep walking.” Cait’s hand tighten, but she stops, loosening her hands gradually so Nat doesn’t fall as she drops back to the ground. She leans on Cait for a moment, pretends to be regaining her balance, really just doesn’t want the contact to end. That can only last for so long, though, and after a few moments she pulls away, sighing.

“You start getting tired again, you tell me, you hear?”

“I hear you. Thank you, Cait.”

Deacon shakes his head when she tries to take her pack back, an odd twist to his mouth.

Nat snorts, puts her head down and starts walking. If he wants to play pack mule, that’s his prerogative. She's done worrying.

(The three of them take turns carrying her pack for the rest of the trip. She won’t let them have her rifle, even if she’s so slow with it these days that they usually have any danger taken care of before she’s finished swinging it to her shoulder. The Commonwealth has drilled home that lesson a little too well.)

56

Eight weeks. They should reach Sanctuary tomorrow. She sits by the fire and shivers. Cait argues at her for a solid fifteen minutes before storming off in a hurt huff when she refuses to eat. Valentine shoves a bowl of broth into her hands and glares until she drinks.

57

Building the transporter takes time. They don’t have any kind of heavy equipment for tearing down the ruins of the old house on the plot they’ve decided to use. Everyone pitches in. Natalie and Tom sort the useful from the trash (they disagree frequently on what exactly is useful and what isn’t, but she’s too tired to argue much. She’s taken to growling and pointing imperiously instead. Half the time it even works), while everyone else takes care of the heavy lifting. Cait has gotten hold of a sledgehammer from somewhere and uses it with gleeful abandon, hollering fit to wake the dead.

Nat shivers through the whole build, walking around in a constant haze. She’s taken to wearing her sleeping bag over her shoulders. She wouldn’t even be getting out of bed most mornings if Cait or Valentine didn’t come by to poke and prod at her. She knows this is what must happen if she is to see her son. She knows this is what she has been pushing towards. The concept just seems so distant, so abstract, compared to the colossal will it takes just to stand long enough to dress and feed herself. Surely one day to just rest won’t hurt. And then one more.

It falls on her companions to pick up her slack. On the good days she tries to make it up to them, pull her own weight. On the bad she supervises from a chair, huddled in a pile of sleeping bags with Dogmeat flopped across her feet and the blueprints in her lap. Sometimes arguing half-heartedly with Tom, sometimes closing her eyes and letting him do as he will, trusting that Valentine and Cait can keep the rest of them in check. She gave up on hiding her weakness the day she accepted Cait’s piggyback ride, the day she trusted Deacon with the bag containing all her earthly possessions. The Railroad won’t try to sabotage this. Desdemona doesn’t trust her, but she will use Natalie because this is dangerous no matter which way you cut it and she can’t afford to lose more people. Natalie is her best option. (”Is she capable of this?” She hears Desdemona murmur to Valentine one night. Natalie is in a chair by the fire, eyes closed. The voices woke her from a light doze. “I’m not going to be the one to tell her no,” Valentine replies.)

She starts slipping spare clothing and chems into Cait’s pack. They’re about the same size. Cait should get some use out of them. (She keeps the gloves Cait has given her. Piper’s scarf, Ellie’s jacket. These keep her warm in more ways than one.) There is a sizable stash of caps in Nick’s desk, more than she thinks he would accept otherwise, along with a note. If she doesn’t return within two months, he is to do what he sees fit with what few of her belongings remain. She doubts very much that she’ll be coming back here.

63

Nine weeks. The reflector is done. There are three pills left. They make a sad, hollow sound when she shakes the bottle.

She says her goodbyes in the privacy of the house where they’ve been sleeping, the one with a fire pit right outside. Exchanges a rough hug with Cait that they both come away from sniffling. Gives Valentine a firm handshake and the most honest thank you she can manage. Scruffs Dogmeat’s ears, tells him to go stay with the detective for a while.

Nine weeks. It’s time for her to go.

64

“Shaun.” She can’t help that her voice is breaking. Shaun, her son. He’s at least thirty years older than she is. “Shaun, stop. I’ll go meet all these people. Of course I will. But there’s something I need to tell you first.” The boy in the little glass room (the synth, not her son, not Shaun) is a painful distraction. “Is there somewhere we can sit down?”

He is frowning, clear concern creasing his brows. Nate showed worry the same way. “Yes, of course. This way.” He does something to the door behind her, leads her to small room with a couch.

She starts to sit but she’s too nervous, stands in the center of the room clenching her hands instead.

“I came here to say goodbye, Shaun.” His brow creases again, the beginnings of anger forming in the lines around his mouth. That’s not right. She doesn’t know how to say this. She’d been expecting a ten year old. But Shaun is only growing angrier the longer she is silent, so she finally just blurts it out. “I’m dying.” I wanted to see you before I died. I wanted to make sure you were okay. You aren’t what I was expecting but I think I could love you anyway. The words tangle up in her throat. None of them make it past her lips. She just stares at him, wide eyed and mute.

“Dying?” He is startled. His mouth opens and closes again. He visibly forces himself to take a breath. “Please explain.”

She’s been playing this conversation over and over in her head, but this is not a boy. This is a full grown man with a clear background in the sciences. This place is not what she thought it would be. It catches her a bit flat footed, all her careful euphemisms flying from her thoughts. She thinks she should be more detailed than she had planned, but she doesn’t want to hurt him.

“Back before the… before. Three years before you were born, I was diagnosed with cancer. The organ had to be surgically removed to treat it. My thyroid.”

His eyes widen. He’s following what she’s saying. That has to be a good thing. It just has to.

She withdraws her precious bottle of pills from their inside pocket, holds it so he can see. “I’m completely dependent on these. I had a little less than two weeks worth left when we went into the vault.”

“May I see?” He holds out a hand for the bottle. She stares at him, caught by the visceral reaction to pull it back out of reach, tuck it away out of sight as if he will take the pills from her by force. She can’t do it. She wants to trust him, desperately, but she can’t. She compromises, opens it and taps one sad little half pill out into her hand. She holds this out to him. Even that much is an effort of supreme will. He is very likely her only chance. If these people cannot help her, then very likely no one can. Not in the amount of time she has left.

Shaun pulls out a handkerchief - startlingly clean, when had she grown accustomed to constant filth? - and lays it across his hand. She tips the pill into his palm. Puts the bottle and its remaining two pills away with something like relief.

Shaun draws his hand close to his face, peering down at it intently. “You said this replaces the function of the thyroid?”

“Yes. You know what it does? You seemed to recognize the name.”

He looks up from his inspection to pin her with an intent look. His exact emotion is difficult to read. She thinks there is more to it than how he was looking at her a few moments before. When he speaks again it is not to answer her question.

“You are telling me that you crossed the Commonwealth, killed one of it’s most notorious mercenaries and a courser all while terminally ill? You really are extraordinary.”

She doesn’t think that’s a word she’s heard in reference to herself, ever. She tries to play it off with a shrug. “I think you’re underestimating the power of maternal instincts.”

“No, I do not think that I am. To answer your question, yes. I am familiar with the thyroid and it’s function. We have a replacement thyroid hormone of our own, in fact. It may not be the same compound exactly, but it should suffice.”

She has to sit down. Her legs are shaking. Her hands are too. She lets out an explosive breath. She feels like she’s about to hyperventilate.

Shaun takes a startled step towards her when she collapses boneless into the couch. His hand hovers by her shoulder. He does not touch her.

She breathes out another explosive sigh. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. Okay.”

“May I keep this?” He gestures with one hand to the pill still cupped in the other, nestled on the handkerchief like some prize jewel.

“Yes.”

He folds the handkerchief over with great care, tucking the little pill in securely, slides it into his breast pocket. “We should get you to medical immediately.”

“Right,” she says. She thinks her legs will hold her. “Okay.”

She doesn’t see any of the halls they pass through on their way to medical. She’s going to live. The thought is so strange, so foreign. Shaun leads her to an open room with beds lining the walls, seats her on one of them while getting the attention of an older man in white and green. She still has her pack, her rifle. She shucks them off, sets them against the wall.

“This woman needs an emergency dose of thyroid hormone,” Shaun is telling the doctor. He turns to her immediately, introduces himself as Dr. Volkert, and follows this with a string of questions about her condition that are so comfortingly familiar the sheer relief of them nearly makes her cry.

“Wait,” she says to Shaun as Volkert leaves to fetch a dose from another room. “If you have this, why did you want a sample of my medication?”

“It may be a more effective compound, and it will be good to have a second option should you not respond favorably to the hormone we use. I am taking it to be analyzed as soon as you are settled here. Doctor?”

Dr. Volkert is crossing the room towards them, syringe in hand. “Go on, I’ve got her.”

Shaun doesn’t leave immediately. He frowns at her, apparently debating something. His expressions are so like Nate’s. She wants to take his face in her hands and smooth the lines away. This man is still a perfect stranger.

“I was not going to do this so soon, but in light of the circumstances, it may be best if you stayed here at the Institute until your condition has stabilized.”

Thank God. Thank God.

“Of course I’ll stay, Shaun.”

He nods, sharp. “I will see to it that personal quarters are ready for your use by the time you are discharged from medical.”

66

The doctor doesn’t release her until late the next day. He gives her a syringe of medication to take the next morning and strict orders to rest. She didn’t sleep well. Medical is far too open, the beds all exposed. She is escorted to her new quarters by a synth and promptly goes straight back to bed. She sleeps straight through the night, wakes up with a headache. Stays in bed a few hours longer, until the thought of the shower she’d seen briefly the night before drives her from beneath the covers. It feels every bit as heavenly as she expected. The water is blessedly warm. She sits on the bed when she’s done, wraps herself in a blanket instead of getting dressed. There is probably food elsewhere in the Institute, if she cares to leave her room. She doesn’t, so she pulls a few strips of jerky out of her bag, carried here for her by the synth while she trailed behind, trying not to gawk too obviously.

There is a bundle of leather-wrapped comics in the bottom of said bag. It seems so silly now. She pulls the bundle out, spreads them across her bed and just stares. She finds herself flipping through them, actually reading them. She hasn’t done so up until now, simply tucking away any she found that a brief glance through to check that they were in decent condition.

Someone knocks on her door. She startles. How long has she been sitting here? She tucks up her legs, makes sure the blanket is covering everything before calling for her visitor to come in.

It isn’t Shaun. It’s another synth, a gen 2, with a platter that smells like food.

“I have been instructed to bring you sustenance.”

“Thank you.” She snakes one hand from beneath the blanket to scrub at her hair. She hasn’t brushed it, so it’s dried sticking up in every direction. “What time is it?”

“It is 1 PM. Is there anything else you require?”

“No. Thank you.”

She eats half the food, sets the rest aside for later. With a renewed burst of energy from the small meal, she sets about exploring her rooms. There are clothes in the drawer. Several sets of soft gray pants, all clean, no tears or fraying, and plain white tunic-tops that have similar styling to the uniforms everyone else is wearing. She dresses. The clothes are strange but comfortable.

Shaun is here. She found him. He is - this place is - not at all what she expected.

67

The next day, with the fours walls of her new quarters starting to feel achingly lonely, she wanders. She introduces herself to the heads of the various departments like Shaun wanted but feels uncomfortable interrupting their work and doesn’t linger. The water and trees of the central atrium draw her. She hasn’t seen so much green in months. She sits on the benches, watching people and synths go by.

She does the same the day after that, and again the next.

Though she meets fewer people than she might with deliberate exploration of the Institute’s every corner, she is far more comfortable with settling, day after day, on the same bench in the atrium. Everyone wanders through here at some point during the day, it seems, and though a number of them are in a hurry to be somewhere, just as many take the time to stop and say hello to Father’s mother. It’s a far more relaxing way to meet people than barging in on them while they’re working. She finds she is quickly memorizing faces and routines, asking after their families, their work. She’s beginning to feel a connection here that she never felt topside, too driven, too focused, too tired to let her care for the people there extend beyond a select few.

Though back on regular medication and already feeling improved, Nat is still very unwell. Since she is supposed to be resting, she has massive quantities of downtime. It is disconcerting. It still feels like she should be racing towards something, fighting her body for every scrap of energy it can produce.

And then there’s Shaun. She has the strangest feeling her illness has caught him off guard far more than her actual presence. Like he had some idea in mind, some grand plan for how this would go, and she has thrown it entirely off course. They take to eating dinner together, going for sedate, meandering walks after. They ask each other cautious questions, the kind of getting to know you things all new acquaintances ask each other. These give way to more animated discussions when they discover their shared love of tinkering. The first time they get into a moral debate Natalie breaks herself off mid argument, suddenly acutely aware of the way he’s looking at her.

“What,” she snaps, self conscious.

“It’s simply, I never imagined I would one day be having philosophical discussions with my mother. I am… enjoying having you here, more than I thought I would.”

“Even though I’m driving you nuts?”

“Especially so.”

82

The pink heart is still casting its neon glow over the alley. The door still groans loudly when it opens. Valentine’s desk is still covered in stacks of paper. The detective himself is in his chair, still every bit as beaten up and ornery as when she left.

“Well.” He leans back, peers up at her from under the brim of his hat. “I take it you found your son.”

“Yeah.” She drops into the visitor’s chair. He’s watching her, the intent stare he gets when he’s working. “Valentine. Nick. It… was more complicated than we thought.”

“Isn’t it always.”

“They have medicine, Valentine. Real, advanced medicine.”

“This your way of telling me you’re not a synth sent to clean up the trash and I can take my hand off my gun?”

“You’re not trash, Valentine. I wish you’d quit saying that.”

“Huh.” One of his hands reappears from under the table, reaches for the lit cigarette smoldering on the edge of his ashtray. “Maybe you’re you after all.”

“They have thyroid supplement already. I got a full dose almost immediately, it just took a while before I felt up to traveling. They’ve probably got the dose wrong; apparently they make it differently, but the only way to tell is to see how well I do on the current dose for a while and then make adjustments later. They’re talking about trying to make me a new thyroid entirely, a synthetic one.” She’s circling around the point, Valentine’s expression going more wry with every word. She forces herself back on track. “Valentine, Nick, I - Shaun. It hasn’t been ten years since they kidnapped him. It’s been sixty.”

“Well I’ll be. Don’t tell me. That boy, with Kellogg. He was a synth?”

She nods.

“Huh. Somehow, I didn’t see that one coming. Maybe I should’ve.”

“You should see it down there, Valentine. It’s so clean. I’m pretty sure most of their technology is more advanced than pre-war. But, some of the things they say. It’s disturbing.”

“Still don’t think I’m some mindless machine?”

“What? No! How could you-?”

“Come on, Nat. You come in here singing the Institute’s praises, telling me of all people how great they have it down there?”

She winces. “I’m sorry, Nick. You’re right. It’s just, it’s been a lot to take in.”

He huffs, waves her off. “You might not want to do that outside these walls, by the way. Talk like that about the Institute is going to get you in trouble in these parts.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“Don’t worry about it. I am glad you’re still here. Even if you do still look like shit.”

“You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome, Valentine. It takes a while, to get back to normal. Took a whole year, after the surgery, and then I went and got pregnant and threw everything off again. Doctor was pissed. But I am feeling better. Loads better.”

“Good. That’s good. You found your son, and you’re going to live. I guess this tale had a happy ending after all.”

“I guess it did.” A moment of awkward silence while they stare at each other. “Have you heard from Cait?”

“Yeah. Got herself a room over in Goodneighbor. Been dropping by once a week or so.”

“Good. That’s good.” She picks at the hem of her shirt. She’s only wearing two, plus Ellie’s jacket. She’s not sure she wants to admit to this, but the words have been rattling around in her skull for the past few weeks. She won’t have any peace unless she says them.

“Nick, I thought I was going to die. I was ready to die. Now that I’m not, I - I don’t know what to do.”

“Natalie.” He leans forward. Both his hands are on the desk, metal and flesh clasped together.

“How did you do it, Nick?” Her voice is a whisper. “How do you just… start over?”

“I look like a shrink to you?”

“Don’t be an ass, Valentine.”

He chuckles, rough as gravel. His eyes are thoughtful. “You keep getting up every morning. Just keep going, until you find something worth getting up for.”

“Right.” The words don’t make her feel any better. “Thanks, Nick.” They stare at each other.

“You want a job?”

“God, yes.” He’s smirking at her. She scowls, amends, “As long as it’s local, for now. I’m still not up for too much walking. Or heavy lifting.”

“Right useful you are.” He shuffles through the papers on his desk. “I think I’ve got just the thing…”