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“It might be painful” Eva looked at Doctor Amari with a sense of deep resignation.
“I already recognized his face as the one who stole Shaun out of my husband's arms, and I just shot him in the heart. Nothing else can hurt me today.” She looked down at the memory chair that the good doctor had been gesturing at. “I just sit down?”
“Yes, I’ll take care of the rest.” Turning to Deacon, who was standing like a silent sentry in the shadows, Eva pulled off her Pip-Boy and satchel before handing them over.
“I trust you can take care of these for me?”
“Yup, I’ll go sell them at Daisy’s the second you close your eyes.” Deacon snarked back before tucking her possessions gently into his arms.
“I knew I could count on you. Keep an eye out?” He nodded at her and took a step back.
Eva turned around and climbed into the memory chair, trying to brace herself for whatever could be inside Conrad Kelloggs mind, while also realising that she would be reliving one of the worst moments of her life. Deep calming breaths starting to give way to shorter panicked breaths, Eva turned her attention to the Please Stand By screen. She could hear Doctor Amari counting down, and just before hitting zero Eva saw Deacon step into her view, standing as if he was ready to attack anyone who made an appearance.
His pistol at his side with the safety off was the last thing Eva saw before getting pulled under.
What? Where? What do I do??
“Ah Eva! I’ve connected these memories to you through Nick’s systems, you might have to explore a bit but I will do my best here to guide you. See that set of neurons in front of you? Follow it.”
“How am I supposed to follow it? I’m nothing here.”
“Just think about walking down it, and you will.” Eva tried to sort out her ghost limbs, feeling eerily like she was defrosting from her cryo-pod again as she tentatively took a step forward. Somehow, despite all reason, it worked.
She was following glowing purple neurons through an empty black space that was once the mind of a killer.
Would someone be able to do that to her when she was dead? She was, for all intents and purposes, now a killer.
“Ah! I see our first memory coming up!” What looked like half of a concrete room came into focus as Eva took what felt like her first solid step in hours into the space.
A young boy was sitting on the bed, reading Grognak the Barbarian while his mother sat beside him reading her own book. The yelling outside the door alerted Eva that this was an early memory. Despite herself, she was drawn into the slice of Conrad’s early life. Eva could not ever imagine living in a world where she would have to hand a firearm to her young son to defend himself, but here was tangible proof that this was normal for folks in the Commonwealth.
“Well, that wasn’t useful. Let’s try this next memory.”
Without a response, Eva turned around and began to follow the next set of neurons that Doctor Amari was pulling out for her. Oh, it was beautiful to see young love coming into view. She remembered being at home when she and Nate first got together, both coming home from their big city jobs and finding the smallest things to be happy over. Nate reassuring her that there would be a future for them, and dreaming of their baby. Watching Conrad walk past his wife and to their daughter, it made Eva’s heart hurt.
Eva didn’t even hear the next thing Doctor Amari said, she just started on the purple path laid out before her, wanting to see the next memory and also for this to be done as soon as possible.
A tunnel came out of the mist.
She appeared behind an armored and older Conrad, watching as he charged down a hallway to the sounds of someone taunting him for the loss of his wife and daughter. Half of Eva wanted to pull out a weapon and join him, the other half wanted to sit down behind the piping and scream into her hands.
A short burst of rapid gunfire and a sudden silence.
Time to move on through this house of horrors.
This time Eva ended up in a bar, dingy, and on par with a nicer junkyard if she was going to be charitable, but a bar none the less.
She could see Conrad, this time sitting alone, in heavier armor than in the last memory. Eva wasn’t sure what the time jump was, but it appeared significant. He had gained that damned notable scar across his face, and a nasty nicotine habit. Two folks from the wasteland appeared on either side of Eva, startling her slightly even though they didn’t affect her at all. One of them even walked halfway through her on his journey to the small table Conrad was at.
Watching the interaction, Eva felt a sliver of ice drip down her veins and settle in her stomach. They were asking Conrad to kill someone, and they’d pay him after it was done.
Just yesterday, (Yesterday? Two days ago? Last week??) She and Deacon had cleared out a group of raiders at the request of one of the Minuteman settlements. Afterwards, when they were bringing them the good news, caps and food were pressed into their hands despite Eva saying many times they didn’t need to be paid.
(Deacon had laughed at her once they left. Of course he wasn’t going to stop them if they wanted to pay, he wanted to sleep on a mattress somewhere and not on the ground! He reasoned they could also get beer with caps, because even though Eva was a mastermind at getting people to buy drinks for her, Deacon was still on the outs)
Feeling that numb horror continue to settle deep inside her bones, Eva finished watching Conrad make a deal with the devil who paid. She was becoming like him to survive.
Thankfully, Doctor Amari didn’t feel the need to comment after the memory faded out, she just gave Eva a subtle nudge to continue down the path. They had to be getting close to some kind of information, the emotions were making her feel strung out and ready to cry.
Eva stumbled on her next memory. She knew this one far too well.
They were in the vault.
Rows of cryo-pods on either side, and two people in full body hazmat suits accompanied Conrad. Without waiting for the memory to progress, Eva hurried past the people trying to hack into a Vault-Tec terminal without a Pip-Boy and raced to Nate’s pod.
She gasped when she saw him again. Nate, just as handsome as always, holding Shaun safely in his arms. Eva reached out a hand like she would be able to reach through the pod door and touch him one more time. Her fingers floated through the air with a ghost of a caress as she backed up against her own pod to watch the damned terrible scene happen again, this time from someone who had different feelings about it.
This was a job to Conrad, but the violent ripping apart of her family for her.
Eva slid against the pod door and hit the floor, one hand pressed against her mouth to stop her from crying out, the other gripping at the delicate chain around her neck that Nate had gifted her at Shaun’s birth.
Doing her best to hold back her emotions and finish this terrible experience, Eva somehow managed to contain herself to a few tears dripping down her lashes. She knew in her heart of hearts this would come back to bite her later.
“I’m so sorry you had to see this. I will arrange the next memory, you can continue when you’re ready.”
Eva wasn’t ready. She would never be ready. But time was no longer on her side.
Gathering herself as best as she could, Eva scrubbed briefly at her face with the back of her hands and pushed herself off the floor.
Another memory, how bad could it be?
So much worse.
“Oh! Is that your son?”
Sitting on the floor of that house in Diamond City that Eva had searched with Nick Valentine was a teenage Shaun. Eva couldn’t help but stand there and drink in his face, this was probably the only time that she would ever see him look like that. Photographs weren’t something particularly common in the wasteland, and unfortunately Eva had a feeling that there weren't going to be other memories of him she could step into.
Eva kept watching with some kind of numb detachment, hoping that Doctor Amari and Nick were able to keep a record of what was happening. Nothing felt real to Eva in that moment, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to wrap the cloak of righteousness and revenge back around her once she left this god forsaken chair.
A dual flash of electricity had Eva blinking and throwing up a hand to shield her eyes, Doctor Amari’s voice echoing into the memory.
“Now we know what to do, you’re free to come out of the memories.”
Eva closed her eyes and prayed for the end.
A soft hissing and a sudden feeling of being right was enough to have Eva blinking back into the Memory Den.
Deacon was still standing in her eyeline, Pip-Boy and satchel in one hand and pistol in the other. (Safety on this time, thankfully.) He looked worried, but maintained standing there as her silent sentinel the whole time.
How Eva wished she could see his eyes.
“You alright boss?”
“I feel like I was just thrown out of a 747 without a parachute. But I’m alive.” Deacon nodded firmly and finally holstered his pistol.
“Ah! You’re up! How are you feeling?” Doctor Amari came around the memory chair and gave her a hand for assistance standing.
“Now we know why there isn’t a location for the Institute. Because they never needed one.” Eva gave Nick a sidelong glance, briefly wondering if having to state the obvious was a synth trait or a post-war trait.
“We have to find the doctor who separated from the Institute, Virgil. I know he’s the next puzzle piece. I have to keep going until I find out what happened to Shaun!” Eva pushed her way past Doctor Amari and walked over to Deacon, reaching out for her Pip-Boy.
He relinquished the device, allowing her to strap it onto her wrist and begin fiddling with the dials. Vault-Tec had helpfully added as many maps as they could think of, and by downloading information out of Vault 81 she had a rather accurate reading of the Commonwealth and the Glowing Sea.
“Professor, boss. You want to go restock first? As much as I’d love to go jump head first into the rad pool, I’d like to have a bit of a life preserver on the sidelines.” Eva gave Deacon a wry smile and a tilt of her head, conceding to his point.
“I need a bit of a lie down before we make tracks for the sea anyway. Nick, Doctor Amari, thank you so much for everything you’ve done. I think this is a fantastic lead. We’ll catch you later.” With that decisive ending, Eva headed for the door, knowing Deacon would fall in step at her back.
“I don’t know about you, but I could use a couple days off to read Shakespeare and paint my toes.I think blue is a good option this time?” The pair stepped outside the Memory Den and Eva laughed at his comment.
“Deacon, we can do whatever you want. Hold on?” Eva waited for Deacon to grab her wrist above her Pip-Boy before she input the coordinates for the Red Rocket that she had made her home base just as soon as she walked out of that thrice-damned vault without her family.
Vault-Tec was terrible, but the ability to travel quickly was a lifesaver.
After stripping of their weapons and outer layers behind the small wall divider Eva had fashioned, she made a beeline for the bed she had scavenged up and promptly curled up under the blanket, making herself as small as possible.
Deacon walked in slower, easing himself down to perch on the edge of the bed by her head. He gently stretched out one hand and started stroking down Eva’s back.
“Wanna talk about it?” A grunt came from under the blanket.
“Do you want a hug about it? This’ll be your one hug for the year though, so you gotta make it count.” Deacon tried to interject a bit of levity into his tone, knowing that something seriously bad had happened inside that memory chair.
He and the Professor hadn’t been traveling together for more than a handful of weeks at this point, but a handful of weeks in the Commonwealth must’ve been like years for the former popsicle. Eva had shown Deacon past her barriers a number of times, but he’d never seen her this despondent.
“Eva?” Slowly unwrapping her blanket cocoon, Eva revealed one eye absolutely swimming with tears, the other making its own appearance just as wet. “Oh sweetheart, let me in.”
Eva lifted the blanket up enough for Deacon to slide in behind her, one hand holding her head and the other tucked around her waist. He pulled her back against his chest and held her while she sobbed, quiet but deeply aching sobs pulled from deep inside her body. She rolled over to face him, burying her head in his chest and allowing for both of his arms to cradle her close.
Her sobs eventually tapered off, leaving a bit of a damp spot on his shirt. Deacon’d deal with it though, whatever Eva wanted. They just drifted for a while, merely seeking comfort from each other. Deacon could hear Dogmeat’s nails clicking softly around the abandoned building as she settled down for the night. Eva must have also heard her, because she shifted a little bit.
“I have something to tell you.”
“Whatever it is sweetheart, I’ll even quit the spy business and take up our mortuary partnership whatever you need.” Eva let out a soft huff of something that could be laughter before sobering back up. Gently whispering into his chest, so softly that he could barely hear it, Eva finally said her piece.
“I watched the murder of my husband and son, and I’m becoming the person who did it.