Nick Valentine

Personal journal

Dec. 12, 2292

Some radio DJ asked mid-broadcast if a synth could fall in love. I can't answer that question for anybody else, but I can answer it for myself. The exact moment I fell in love with her? I'm not sure. It may have been shortly after we started working together, perhaps when we were standing next to a pre-war terminal in some ruin south of Boston. I offered to hack it for her, but she gave me a half-smile and asked me to stand guard. I'd swear she was in faster than I could've been. I think that's when I started to fall. But the moment I absolutely know is the moment I knew she loved me.

I don't need to sleep. She does. So I try to make sure she does, even when she wants to keep going. I usually stay nearby while she's sleeping, which is how I know that she talks in her sleep. Usually, she'd murmur "Shaun? Shaun…" a few times in the night. Heartbreaking. But normal, under the circumstances. A few times, I'd caught her mumbling "Nate…" And while that was often plaintive as well, there were four occasions—yes, I know how many. I'm a synth. I don't forget things—four occasions when her whispered "Nate" had a particular… shading that let me know she was dreaming of the pre-war time. When they were together and happy and… well, they did produce a kid, right? So you know what that means.

It was four years into our partnership, and she didn't want to sleep, and I planted my feet at her house in Sanctuary and folded my arms, telling her I wouldn't move until she slept. She'd been awake for over 30 hours and I could see it was compromising her judgment. She sighed and lay down, falling asleep almost immediately. And as usual, she dreamed. And not as usual, she said my name. "Nick," she said, she breathed it, and she smiled. She shifted in her sleep. I stood beside her, frozen, staring. I tried not to watch her sleep, usually—it's weird. Even I know it's creepy. But I watched her sleep, heard her call my name a few more times. I thought maybe she wasn't asleep, but she couldn't fake the REM eye movements. They were real. And she was calling my name… Kinda like she had called his. I didn't even realize that six hours had gone by when she woke up.

Look, she's no Jenny. Jenny was fragile and sweet, innocent even for an innocent time. Jenny had hair of gold and eyes of cornflower blue. She favored dresses with pretty patterns and loved it when I brought her fresh flowers. She'd been delighted when I—of course, I mean when he—proposed. Sometimes I thought about her, remembering how she walked cheerfully through a field. He had preferred the memories of Jenny when she was with him, laughing at his stories, delighted when she could make him laugh… but I liked the memories of her from a little distance, like the time when she was dancing alone to some music I was too far away to hear. Or the time she had seen a little girl skin her knee, and she'd knelt by the girl and made it all better with a smile and a pat. Kids loved Jenny. I'd loved Jenny—well, he had loved Jenny. The guys at the station loved Jenny. Everyone loved Jenny. Still hard to believe sometimes I'd never actually met her. The memory of her was that vivid. I swore—he swore, at least, and it was one of the most sensible things he'd ever done, and he was right to do it, so I'm keeping that vow, too—that I would never bring another woman into this hardscrabble life. He'd been tempted a time or two. I hadn't been, not once. I might be the sum of his memories, but I didn't have exactly the same reactions.

But Sheila's no Jenny. I couldn't bring Sheila into a more dangerous life if I set out to do it. She was determined to take down the entire Institute, to move every scrap of debris in the Commonwealth, to do crazy things to get to her son, and all I can do is try to tag along and watch her back. So being involved with me… It doesn't put her in danger at all. If anything, being with her puts me in danger. And I can take it. So the vow doesn't apply here. Truth is, he wouldn't have been attracted to her. Jenny needed him, and he needed to be needed. Does Sheila need me? She has choices. If I left, she'd get another partner in a heartbeat. I've seen people ask her if they can tag along. She doesn't need me, strictly speaking. She wants me. He couldn't handle that, but it's exactly what I want. I also suspect that she wouldn't have taken him along. Something about that means I want to stay even closer to her. She's mine, not his. He'd never known her. He wouldn't have liked her this much even if he did. He wouldn't love to see the sun glinting off her ebony hair and he wouldn't have looked twice at dark eyes set in pale skin. No, she's not as pretty as Jenny was… but more beautiful, more elegant, more sophisticated.

Sheila's not innocent, not anymore. She might've been at one time… but I think she was never as innocent as Jenny. Even so? She's not hardened. It's hard to find someone in the Commonwealth who isn't hardened by post-war life. Everyone is cold. Or fake. Or somber. Or entirely unfeeling. You get a few folks who have hearts of gold underneath the cold, fake, somber iciness. But Sheila, as good as she is in a fight, doesn't have a cold exterior. She doesn't meet strangers. Jenny never met strangers either, but Jenny wasn't able to size 'em up. Sheila meets people, sees them for what they are, flaws and unsavory motives and all, and she still has compassion for them. Still treats them with kindness. When people notice this, she tells them it's because she lived before the war and remembers that world. But it's not. I lived before the war. I remember that world. Sure, the bullies weren't running things with guns and armor. They were running things from Congress and city council offices and sometimes, yeah, the police precincts. Still the same bullies, though. The war didn't exactly change anybody's nature. It just changed how close to the surface their true nature sits. If Jenny had somehow been moved forward in time, maybe through cryosleep like Sheila, she couldn't handle this world. Either she'd have to harden, or she'd die, or she'd have one of those breaks with reality that seem to be far too common. But Sheila changes the world instead of letting the world change her.

And when she woke up, instead of looking at me as if there were something wrong with me watching her sleep, she smiled at me. "Thanks for insisting, Nick," she said. I made some snide comment about needing her in top condition to watch my back, but she tilted her head and looked at me for a long moment. It was over eight seconds, not quite nine. And then she smiled again. She said, lightly, "I like you, too," and then walked past me. And that was when I knew that she knew that I loved her.