house call: part two [CLOSED]

[circumitus]

Who: Rey and Nick Valentine.
What: Rey rearranges furniture. :)
Where: Rey's apartment (Spire Two, 301).
When: Shortly after the fireflies are gone.
Warnings: Destruction of innocent housing appliances, language, serious talk, the good stuff. Will update as needed.

---

Going in, Rey knew the risks. She has only herself to blame, even if she could very well pin it on the so-called gods for this. One could also argue that her decision was just -- by shutting a part of herself down, she was helping others. No longer did she have to contribute to the energy that their hosts feed off of. In a way, she should be free.

But she isn't. Not really. She is no more liberated than she was when she had been a soulless husk, unfeeling and unthinking, acting solely out of its nature. And that nature was to kill. Rey doesn't want to kill for anyone anymore, though. There is already enough blood on her hands over the last near century for her to reach this point.

So when that old monster had been reawakened, forcefully returned by the whims of the 'gods', what other choice did she have? By casting that which made her feel everything behind her heart's door, she gave up a large piece of what made Rey. But, even then--

"It was the right thing to do," she had told herself on more than one occasion. A reminder she gives herself now when she returns home from one of her patrols. The fireflies that had infested the city now appear to be gone, no longer forcing their influence on the people of Hadriel. Her hands ball into fists when the tiny residue of emotion that Bianca had inflicted upon her returns. It was but a tiny fraction of happiness, but even then it was too much. All of this is just too much. She had cracked the mask, inviting not only the good but also the bad along with it.

Comedy always did go hand in hand with tragedy, didn't it? Life is just one big joke, and she has always been the unassuming punchline in the middle of it all, and so stupid to think that she could maintain this visage for long. It didn't work in her favor before. Why should now be any different?

Her teeth grind as she enters the room. Nothing about this is right. Her thoughts, her feelings, even this room. It isn't hers. She's a broken toy living in a dollhouse, just playing her part in someone else's game.

Was this another one of their tricks? Rey can't tell when she begins moving things around her two-bedroom apartment. At first it's just little things. A portrait straightened here, the table and some chairs set there. She even decides to drag the couch to the opposite side of the living room. Because if this place is her own personal prison, then she may as well make it hers. It's small, simple, silly, foolish... but at least she can take some control over her environment and make something of it that belongs to her. Hers, and no one else.

Then something changes and it's just not enough. Even the smallest, most irrelevant details start to boil past the brim. None of these things are hers. These furnishings, the walls, the food... Once more she feels as though she is living someone else's life.

What more, she feels.

And in that moment, she hates it. Hates this playroom, these things, even though they're just things -- it all represents yet another borrowed life she's living here.

The boil begins to bubble over. Is she being compelled again? Is she possessed? She can't tell anymore. The forced happiness is gone; something else screams.

...It's her.

Taking one of the chairs, she hurls it into the wall, tearing down a portrait and renting cracks in the paint. She kicks, thrashes, throwing chairs, flipping a table, upturning a couch and sending the loveseat across the living area. Papers and books and various knickknacks and things scatter across the floor. Her blood rushes, her pulse races, her vision flashes red when she finds herself taking up a broken piece of a chair and sending objects from the kitchenette flying.

Before long, the entire apartment appears as though it had been ransacked by burglars. In the wake of destruction, Rey's adrenaline pumping through her veins breaks down. And she is tired. More so than she's ever been.

"Get out of my head," she mutters to herself, throwing down the chair piece and grabbing the sides of her skull, fingers digging into her hair. "GET OUT."

She flings her shoulder to the wall, and slides down to the floor, curling up within herself. Her emotions, her thoughts, all the wretched things that she's kept locked away.

The floodgates are opened, and she is to blame.

Comments

[circumitus]

"Can't make any promises. Don't want..." She stops and exhales through her nose, looking away; focusing her attention to the couch she's upturned. "Don't want to be controlled like that again. Forced to hurt people because someone else wants it. Did enough of that back home, and tried putting all of that behind."

While Rey is trying to better herself in some ways, there are still things that don't change. Quite a few of them are for the worst.

"Have you ever hurt someone you love, Nick?"

[synthedick]

While he's not sure exactly why the Institute bothered making him in the first place, Nick can't deny that he's struggled with his own identity for years, so he can understand why she's reluctant -- she's been used as a weapon, given life as a tool with no business in questioning her existence. Some people believe machines shouldn't have free will, yet here they are with it. To take that from anyone is cruel beyond compare, but especially from someone who is still working out her own freedom, trying to find where she fits in the world.

It's just one more reason to never trust the gods in Hadriel, no matter how benevolent they seem. They can control how a person feels, so even when their intentions are supposedly good, it boils down to the fact that those powerful beings are still using the people they've collected in the city. They're not better than the mere mortals; in many ways, they're far worse.

Given his line of work -- the original Nick's line of work -- he knows a lot about genuine monsters. As much of a danger as Rey might be, Nick can't bring himself to see her as a monster, not when they're so similar, and not when the real ones are still painfully fresh on his mind. As a machine, his memories don't fade the same way those of a flesh-and-blood human might.

And that's why he hesitates as she poses her question. He's had his fair share of cases gone wrong, times where the outcome shed more blood than he'd have liked. Some people do the unexpected; others will go no way but the hard way. He's had to fire on people he trusted, wound more than a handful of folks with words he knew would be disappointing, at the very best.

Even then, the worst he's done was doing nothing at all. He'd followed orders, done what he'd felt was right, and in the end, he was watching them bury his -- no, the original Nick's -- fiancé. Those memories aren't his, but... he can't help that they feel so real to him, real enough that he lives every day with the weight of a dead man's sins.

It's his turn to be avoidant, his brow knitting as he pushes down guilt; he's at a long time to wrestle with it, and he expects he'll have even more time yet. "Haven't we all?"

[circumitus]

Having (sort of) mastered the art of deflecting herself, Rey can see when someone is being dodgy from a mile away. Her eyes flick back to Nick's, giving him a long, studying stare for a few seconds before she decides to say anything.

"Not like that," she says flatly, low and dark. "Am talking about a very specific hurt, the type that can't be mended or undone with an apology. 'For each man kills the thing he loves... yet each man does not die.'"

The very nature of those words are burrowed into Rey's memory. Words that she's been so often been encouraged to forget, and yet can't.

Won't.

Because history is an eternal cycle, often repeating itself. She'll keep on hurting those close to her if she continues to do the same thing, expecting different results. That's the very definition of insanity, after all. And she had spent enough time being insane to realize this.

[synthedick]

Though Nick keeps his eyes on hers, he knows well enough that she can see through him -- as a man constantly searching for the truth, he's not exactly a trained liar. While he's never made a habit of hiding what he is, where he's been, or even what he's done, he's never brought it up himself if he didn't have to, either. Most of what made him him was the ghost of a dead man, anyway. He had very little he could call his own.

That doesn't mean he can ignore those old memories, though. They might not be his, but they certainly feel like they are.

"I've done plenty I'm not proud of," he admits. "Me, and Nick Valentine. It's the sort of life he led, and the sort of world I was brought into."

[circumitus]

It's obvious what he's doing. Rey can see into it like glass, probably just as how Nick saw right through her. "Of course you did."

Everyone has regrets, and most of the time it changes them, much in the way that they had molded Rey into the thing she has become now.

"In spite of all of that," she adds, "you're still a good person."

Not a machine, not a tool, but an actual living and thinking goddamned person. Because that's what Nick is, more so than she could ever hope to be, and sometimes wishes she could strive for.

The muscles in Rey's shoulders unwind. She doesn't shake as she had been before. Her breathing is even. Something warps in her temperament, though. Neither that of a machine or a woman, but another thing entirely. The scared, angry, happy, sad creature that she was is washed away in the blink of an eye, replacing it with something else. A stranger, and yet someone also vaguely familiar, because she has always been there.

"I killed my mother," is what she says at last. Even the way she speaks has altered, distorting the façade she wears around so many people, and only so few so rarely have ever seen. If one wasn't mistaken, it would almost seem as though she sounds human for a change. "I killed the first person who ever loved me. Even though I was a lost cause, a defect, something that should have been disposed of... she saw something in me that she thought was worth loving and saving in spite of all of that. And it got her killed. Because I was, I am, a defect. It should have been me to die, not her. A lot of people would still be alive if that's how things had gone."

What she unveils to Nick is her own greatest regret. The one thing she would give anything just to scrub clean and start over. She would have gone through with the termination that had been planned for her, accepted her fate as a broken thing that had no business existing anymore, if it ever had that right to begin with. To Rey, this is her most naked truth.

Honesty is a two-way street. If she expects Nick to be open with her about anything, then she has to be open to opening up as well. That's how this is supposed to work, isn't it?

...Hell if she knows.

[synthedick]

He would have argued about his status as a person, but given her tone, he knows that's a losing battle for him. Sure, he might be closer to a person than a Protectron, but he's still more machine than man, with what heart he has as mechanical as the rest of him. There's nothing he, nor anyone else, can do about that.

There's also nothing that could have prepared him for what she says, or how she says it; his surprise shows as he leans back on his foot, his mouth pulling into a thin frown as he studies her. He'd wanted her to open up, to help him see eye-to-eye with her; he'd wanted the truth, and here it is: the true Rey, the one who's been hiding beneath the robotic personality and cold demeanor. He watches it happen before his eyes -- she shifts, changes, her voice becoming more... human than he's ever heard it. From the moment he met her, he'd noticed she had an odd way of speaking in that she didn't really refer to herself, as though leaving all those self pronouns like I and me out of her speech would keep who she is and who she'd been separate, keep them safe. He realizes now it was just another wall to hide behind.

And down that wall comes with the rest. He gives her a sympathetic look and slides off his knee to the floor, taking a seat beside her and leaning against the wall.

"You telling me this because you think I'm a good person?" he asks finally, casting a look at her from the side. "Or are you still hoping to chase me off?"

Or maybe she thinks he ought to know. No matter her answer, he's grateful in that moment to see the real her -- to know she was indeed in there somewhere, and that she isn't all metal and no soul.

[circumitus]

Chasing him off would have been the wiser decision here, in Rey's mind. For some reason, she can't bring herself to do it. Perhaps it's that fear of ending up alone again; something that she's long since denied but cannot ignore forever. That if she makes him leave, then what else does she have going for her in this damned place?

"Neither." She swallows, her jaw tightening, and she wonders if she's going to regret saying all of this to Nick, sooner rather than later. For now, she just shakes her head. "Not that I don't think the former, or that I haven't attempted the latter. But if I wanted to chase you off, I'd have told you something far worse."

Implying that matricide isn't the worst thing she's ever done? Yes, yes she is. Just because it's not the worst thing doesn't mean it isn't the thing she would most want to take back, more so than anything she has done in her entire, long existence.

Rey glances to Nick, sitting beside her now rather than in front of her like he was a barrier, and there's some comfort to be found in that. "You're the one who was talking about being let in. So, I'm opening the door, and my only house rule is that this can't be one-sided. It's up to you whether you want to step through or not."

Though she has a feeling that she knows what his answer is going to be.

[synthedick]

"At least I didn't have to kick this door down," he remarks with another sideways glance. Not that he wasn't trying.

What she's saying makes sense, though. It's a two-way street: he can't expect her to be honest with him if he's not going to be honest with her. Maybe all he'd wanted was for her to embrace what humanity she has been offered -- more than him in some ways, and less in others -- but now that the door is open, he can't just close it at his convenience. That's not how it works.

She'd opened the door, and now he has to step through it. To him, it feels a little like accepting a partnership, albeit a partnership in crime given the subject matter.

His eyes trail to his metal hand again, the bare skeleton reminding him that he cannot change what he is -- both for better and for worse. "Whether or not I'm a person is debatable... and for as much as I preach about it, I'm not always kind."

His nose wrinkles as he processes old memories, ones who make him who he is, but that he wishes, sometimes, he could be rid of. "There's a man I want dead. What he did, he did two hundred years ago, and he didn't even do to me, but I just can't let it go."

He sighs. "When it comes right to it, I'm a machine looking for revenge on a guy who might not be alive anymore, and if he is, maybe he won't remember what he did, or what he took from me -- from Nick. It doesn't matter, because when I find him, I'm putting him down like the dog he is."

[circumitus]

Seriously, Nick. It's a pretty sturdy door. One that would have taken more than muscle to break down. But it hasn't come to that, and hopefully it never will.

Rey is both curious and, admittedly, a little sad at Nick's admission that he himself doesn't think himself to be a person, when he has been one more than she ever has been. She considers him to be better person than many who call themselves human.

What gets to her more is his claim that he isn't always kind; soured by his desire for revenge on someone who didn't even wrong him personally, but the man who owns his memories. Rey can relate, in a way, as she carries with her the burdens of eight different women. Women who had suffered more hardships than most could even imagine. The only problem is that Rey has no way of tracking down the people who had wronged those women, thus the prospect of retribution is hardly on the table.

Only at Nick's position do the similarities draw the line.

"No one ever is completely kind. Never really pegged you for much of a saint, anyway," she points out. "And wanting justness, no matter whose it belongs to, doesn't make you unkind. It just shows how connected you are to the man whose memories you have."

She hesitates to bring up her own position on the subject matter, scratching her forehead in thought.

"Have been on the other end of someone's need for revenge. She has every right to it, too -- I'd taken away someone she deeply cared about. I don't hold it against her for wanting to put her ghost to rest. Neither would I think lesser of you for wanting the same."

In fact, Rey had practically offered that revenge up on a silver platter, though things obviously didn't end the way she had expected.

[synthedick]

"The guy was a crime lord," Nick explains with a wry smile; it twists away in seconds, replaced with disgust. "I'm betting even when I do get to him, he won't give a damn what I think. He's been sitting pretty in his little vault, away from his crimes, the Commonwealth, and the justice he never got served. It's been two hundred years for him... and a lot less for me. And I'm not even the man who ought to be shooting him."

Rey's right: Nick is undeniably connected to the original Nick Valentine... and there's nothing he can do about it, aside from getting his memory wiped. That's not an option in his mind, as his memories -- Nick's memories, his personality, his morals -- make the synth who he is, allow him a modicum of humanity that other machines in his world are lacking. It's because of the original Nick that the synth version hasn't been destroyed just for being what he is, that he can work as a detective and be treated as though he were a real person. It's due to Nick that he has anything at all.

And ultimately, that's as much of a bane as it is a boon. Because of Nick, the synthetic Valentine has both everything and nothing. He's ust a copy of a man long dead; he has no personality of his own, no background, no thoughts or rationale or even behavior that wasn't lifted from someone else.

"I sometimes think about finding him," he continues, his eyes narrowing as he flexes those skeletal fingers again, "and about what I'll say. What I'll do. And I wonder if any of those things will even be for me. If this thirst for vengeance is mine, or if it's just something else that isn't. All that kindness I give folks comes from Nick's personality. Everything that drives me is his. Hell, even my name comes from him."

He's not a worthwhile prototype for the Institute, seeing how he was dumped in the trash and left on his own. He's not a human with his metal parts and bare hand. He's not entirely a machine, given he has a real mind downloaded to the hardware in his skull. He's not Nick Valentine. So just what is he?

[circumitus]

What Nick describes does sound unique enough from Rey's own situation to warrant a much different ending. She is literally a whole other person now from the ones she used to be. She can't claim their identities, or even their names in the same way Nick struggles with. It's one of the few things she has to be grateful for.

"Nick is dead." Rey couldn't be any more blunt when she says this, but it's true. Two hundred years is a pretty good indicator that the original Nick is long gone and forgotten, save for this remnant keeping his legacy alive. "The things you do now and the kindness that you give don't belong to him. Your personality may be his, but the things you do are yours. You could have easily just decided not to do anything with what you've got, but instead you're putting it to use by doing some good."

Rey should be taking her own advice, she knows. But she isn't as much in conflict with her previous selves in the way that Nick is. She's made her peace with who and what she is, even put that knowledge to some good use herself. In fact, she wouldn't be here without those memories.

Nick, it seems, has differing opinions on the matter. And that's why she can't stay silent while she listens to him talk about himself this way.

"I couldn't give less of a shit who this guy is, or was -- you're the Nick that I know, the one that I'm fairly certain I can trust. That belongs to you as well. Not him."

Birds of a feather and all that.

[synthedick]

Those glowing eyes of his make their way back to Rey as she speaks; his expression takes a somber turn as he gets lost in his own head, the synth clearly mulling over her words. He's tried considering that before: the real Nick is long dead, and those memories and everything that came after the synthetic copy's awakening in the wasteland that is the Commonwealth might as well be his, and his alone. Ultimately, Nick always returns to the source -- that without the original Valentine's personality programmed into him, he'd have been as unfeeling and mechanical as the other synths produced by the Institute. Maybe he'd have never earned the respect of the folks in Diamond City; maybe he'd have been shot the second he made it there. Or maybe he'd have turned on the first people who ever spoke to him -- those settlers who, so long ago, treated him like a person for the first time in his life.

While he can't help feeling like he owes the real Nick his entire existence, it does help to have someone else reassure him of his place in the world. It's even better that she's someone knows what it's like to be something not quite human, who has dealt with her own ghosts and struggled with her own identity in a way closer to him than anyone else he's ever met. They're not exactly the same, no... but they are definitely kindred in a way he can't possibly hope to be with other people.

"You know, for someone I've been trying to help, you're pretty good at this yourself," he says finally. "Looks like I'm the one who needed a talking to this time around."

A single laugh escapes him as he notes how the tables have turned on him. He even recalls what he told her only couple of weeks prior. "Guess I'm not alone in this, am I?"

[circumitus]

"Well, I'd rather think that I'm not completely hopeless sometimes," Rey says as she rubs the back of her ear, casting a look to Nick beside her. She leans forward, resting her elbows over her knees as she mulls this over.

It feels good to be able to help; she can see why someone like Nick would do it. More often than not, it's difficult for her to relate to other people to even know how to help them. Nick is different, though, in that he isn't that much different. Not from her, anyway. And there is solace in this, buried under the guilt that someone who actually knows what she's going through, to some extent, even exists.

The corner of her lip twitches, but she neither smiles nor laughs in the way Nick does. It's too much effort for her. "No, suppose you're not."

Just as Rey isn't alone in it anymore, either.

She hesitates, before including, "You know, I don't really think there's much to debate, about whether or not you're a person. I've seen how machines only pretending to be human act, and you're far more... You're not anything like them."

[synthedick]

"I'm glad to hear it," he replies, trying to look more positive about what she's saying. For as much as he talks about changing people's perceptions of what a synth can be, he truly struggles to change how he views himself. He's gotten so used to viewing himself as a machine, every reflection he sees reminding him that he's not nearly as human as he feels. And what he does feel? It comes from something that wasn't his to begin with -- a personality stolen, replicated on a processor the way a data file would be on a terminal.

"You're not wrong, I know," he adds. "It's just that I'm the only one I've met like me, back in the Commonwealth. I suspect I'm a prototype of some sort. Hopefully one-of-a-kind so that there aren't more synths running around as confused as I was when I woke up. Still, it makes for a lonely life at times. It's... it's nice to have someone to talk to about this sort of thing."

For all he knows, there might be another synth out there with the original Nick's personality. He might not be the only copy. But that's the nature of machines. They're far easier to make than people, more expendable. Nothing he has is his own, and there's not much he can do about it except try to accept that fact and make something for himself. He just hasn't figured out what yet.

[circumitus]

Being positive isn't one of Rey's strong suits. But when it comes to dragging other people down with her, she would prefer to avoid that. It also doesn't help that, in Nick's case, most slights she makes against herself is also a burn on him.

The sacrifices she endures for people. Seriously.

She makes a sound that's almost like a laugh, but not really. "Six years ago, I woke up in a morgue with a complete memory wipe. And I've never met anyone like me since then, either -- not even my own brother. So, I know how that all goes."

Perhaps she hadn't been wandering as aimlessly for so long as Nick has, trying to find a place in the world, but it's just one more thing that she can relate to with him. One more thing he doesn't have to feel so alone about, despite their dissimilarities.

[synthedick]

He smirks. "Well, I'm glad to have you here. And glad to have you back." Everyone may be stuck in Hadriel, but knowing just who he can turn to when things get grim is important -- important enough that he'd fight to make sure she's safe, even from herself.

Which, given the state of her apartment, it's a good thing he'd been concerned enough to keep an eye on her. He pauses as he takes a look around, letting the silence between them hang as his eyes trail across her apartment, the scene a complete and utter wreck. "I know I didn't mention it earlier, since it didn't seem pertinent at the time, but it looks like you've been redecorating."

[circumitus]

If Rey didn't know any better, she'd resent that statement, indicating that she was ever 'gone' in the first place.

The subject of the state she had left her once humble abode, however, swings her attention as well. She brings a hand over her face and sighs. When Rey is in emotional turmoil, she throws shit. It's what she does.

"Well, you didn't really give me time to clean up. Not that you're one to talk." She glances towards the opening where her door had once been. "Going to have to fix that now."

At least she doesn't sound annoyed. She could always be annoyed.

[synthedick]

"I didn't exactly have time to think about it, considering I thought you were in trouble in here." Not that she hadn't been.

That does bring something else to mind, however. "My thermometer picked up some unusual readings while I was out there waiting for you to decide whether or not you wanted to let me in. I thought the gods might've sent something after us again, or that the apartment was on fire."

He pauses there, letting his questions go unsaid for now.

[circumitus]

No questions necessary. Rey can take a hint.

"What, you mean the fact that it's practically ninety degrees in here right now?"

She isn't bothered by the heat, mind you. And she doubts that Nick is, too. But she isn't surprised to hear about his thermometer concerns.

"Yes," she confirms. "That was me. Had a little mishap, but it's under control now."

[synthedick]

"Mishap, hm?" he questions flatly, his tone saying that he's leaving it at that and not expecting any kind of explanation. She's had enough walls broken down for one day, and there's still a major problem he needs to bring up, namely that she needs to move. It's not just that he broke the lock on her door, or that her furnishings are all over the place -- literally in some cases, as there's a piece of a chair both beside him and another from the same chair all the way across the room. It's that he wants to keep an eye on her, that overprotective streak of his hard to ignore.

And more, he doesn't want her to be alone. She doesn't need to be alone, not when she's still working things out. She might find another place with a roommate, but having her in the same spire as him has been convenient, to say the least.

"Well, if you need a place to stay for a while, I know a guy with an extra room. Lives right above you, I hear."

[circumitus]

For a robot detective, subtlety does not appear to be Nick's strongest suit. Rey just shoots him a sidelong look, ignoring the 'mishap' comment (like he doubts her or something?) and focuses right on the heart of the matter.

"Suppose I'll have to have a word with this guy. Wouldn't want to be intruding on him or anything."

Smartass.

[synthedick]

"I don't think he'll mind. That extra room of his is just gathering dust. Gets kind of lonely up there. Too quiet."

Smartass synthetics need to stick together. Birds of a feather, indeed.

[circumitus]

This isn't even much of a hint, is it?

"Hey. You're almost making me feel sorry for him."

Truth be told, Rey never really did care for living by herself, anyway, so it doesn't take much convincing on Nick's part.

[synthedick]

"I'm sure he'll be glad to hear you're feeling anything these days."

He says that with a smile as he gets to his feet, offering her a hand up -- not that she needs it, but the gesture is in his nature.

[circumitus]

"I'm sure you are," she retorts, no longer playing along as she had been. Rey gets it.

What Nick presents is a simple gesture, one that is expected from a lot of good-natured people like him. And, coming from someone like her, she would have declined said gesture and gotten up on her own because she could.

It isn't about what she can do, though. It's about accepting something that she so seldom allows herself to. About changing her patterns.

With that, she accepts his offer, able to push herself up onto her feet just fine without Nick's help. But again, it's the gesture that's appreciated.

[synthedick]

Knowing good and well she doesn't need his help, Nick is a little surprised Rey does take his hand -- not that he isn't glad for it. It's one more sign of her welcoming humanity, of their mutual respect, of the two of them learning to work together, as no one else may quite understand their very nature the way they do. There's no telling if there will ever be other synths or machines like them in Hadriel, so the two there are ought to look out for one another.

And Nick fully intends to do that. As dark a place as the city can be, he's excited by the prospect of helping out someone a little like him, and being helped by her in return. Maybe he'll believe what she said one day: that he's more of a person than he realizes or cares to admit. She is, too -- he will argue that until his skeleton rusts.

He leads the way up to his apartment, leaving the door to hers broken, ajar, hopefully to never close on him again.