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sugar-soda · 2 months ago

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Kids Shouldn't be Here: Nick Valentine

Fallout 4 Platonic Companions x Child! Sole

Warnings: Canon Typical Violence, Child in dangerous situations

A/N: This is NOT romantic at all! This is all platonic relationships that explore how the Fallout 4 companions and game would change if the Sole Survivor was a young child. Any romantic suggestions or reblogs will be blocked.

Masterlist

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Kids were in trouble in Diamond City often.

Most of the time, it wasn’t anything big. Kids were meant to get into small amounts of trouble. Sneaking a Fancy Lad Snack Cake before dinner was expected, and with an actual group of kids in the city, arguments and fights were bound to happen. It was easy for them to get a hold of things they shouldn’t: Half empty beers left by guards on break, a single Mentat left in a tossed away tin, and dirty magazines their fathers hid from their moms. All was free reign when the adults were away.

A few times, the trouble they brought was bigger. While an adult would not get sick from a full bottle of alcohol or from a strong hit of Jet, the few times a kid has gotten their hands on something unused like that, it ended with them having to spend the entire night in Dr. Sun’s care. Everyone also remembered when John McDonough had set fire to the radio station. One resident still walked with a limb from when they played with their mother’s pistol.

They weren’t all trouble. Everyone got their news from a quick-witted little girl, and their water was cleaned by a sharp tongue young boy. Children never bothered Takahashi, only approaching the robot when they had spare caps to buy a bowl of noodles. It wasn’t uncommon to find them piled up in a secluded area, reading a few comics and sipping from a single Nuka-Cola until it was time to go to class, go home, or help their parents with their jobs.

None of the adults really trusted each other. Parents especially. So no one asked for help when they struggled to take care of their little ones. If anyone wanted to help, they would have to be subtle about it. Dr. Sun’s price for check-ups would be mysteriously cheaper for families, and Mister Zwicky and Miss Edna ran the schoolhouse 24/7. That’s as much “help” as anyone was willing to accept.

There was, however, one exception to that unspoken rule.

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Detective Nick Valentine always liked kids. When he first came to Diamond City, the kids were the only ones to talk to him, asking questions he didn’t have answers for and telling him what he didn’t know about the Commonwealth. Even now, the kids of Diamond City would randomly approach to ask questions about his latest case or news outside the city Piper didn’t deem necessary to write about. His status as a publicly-known, easily-seen, prototype synth ironically gave the parents of Diamond City a peace of mind when he was with the kids. He was already a synth, so there was no worry of him being replaced by one. Even if he was, he had so much wear and tear, there was no way it wouldn’t be noticeable. So no one was worried when the kids ducked into the agency to avoid a rainstorm. Well, except Myrna, who had a problem with Nick's general existence.

Even the original Nick was good with kids, regularly being the one placed in charge of kids to ask gentle questions or provide a distraction until a parent or social worker could take over. Bubblegum and candy had taken permanent residence in his pockets so he could pass them out. His friends and fellow cops had told him he would make a great father. When he first started out, he would just laugh them off, saying he works too much to have a kid. After he met Jenny, the teasing jokes increased and he would have to ignore the pleasant images in his head and the warm, subtle blush on his stern face.

Then Jenny was shot, and the jokes stopped, and any idea of fatherhood had disappeared long ago.

Now, his dislike of gang leaders like Winters had not decreased from that terrible night. Skinny Malone had nowhere near the power of Winters, but he had the same ego. Nick wasn’t sure what exactly Darla saw in the gangster, but his best guess was his promise of caps and power that had blinded the young woman from his cigar breath and bad temper. Not that her’s was any better.

The no-name mobster that was guarding Nick was just as bad. He would yell out taunts or threats and get annoyed when Nick ignored him and get annoyed when Nick did respond. He was sure the guy was compensating for something, but the annoying bastard was sadly right. He didn’t have any way of getting out of this office, and rescue wasn’t likely coming. He was at the mercy of Skinny Malone’s twisted whims.

He picked up the very slightest scrape of a door. All the vaults had these fancy sliding doors that barely made any noise. Lot easier on the audio processor than the rusted, broken doors more commonly found in the rest of the Commonwealth. Nick expected the rough yells of another triggerman coming to tell his current guard it was time to switch off or that Skinny has finally decided to stop wasting time and off the detective.

Instead, he heard nothing. Just the poorly made threats echoing through the empty, wide open room. Nick slowly slid his eyes around what he could see from the window. White metal walls, white metal railings, and white metal railings. Same as it was when he was first locked in this office.

There. A flash of red, before disappearing on the stairs. Definitely not triggermen. They preferred to wear reclaimed suits from before the war in blacks and checkered patterns. Nick wasn’t sure who this person was, but they were the closest thing Nick has had a chance of getting out of here.

“Keep talking, meathead. It'll give Skinny Malone more time to think about how he's going to bump you off,” Nick insults back at the wannabe mobster. He was pulling words out of thin air, but he needed this guy out of here. As the triggerman sputtered out a retort, Nick added detail to his lie in his head.

“Really? I saw him writing your name down in that black book of his. Lousy cheating card shark I think were his exact words. Then he struck the name across three times.” That was how Skinny Malone kept track of everything. His men, money, people he killed, where he was wanted. Everything was kept in a little, black book that was dwarfed by Skinny’s large fingers, and everyone knew what those three strikes meant. Three strikes and you’re out.

The triggerman panicked at the suggestion and ran off. Good. That’s one obstacle out of the way. Now for the door.

“Hey, you. I don't know who you are, but we got three minutes before ole' muscles-for-brains comes back. Get this door open.” He yelled through the window. Running toward the terminal, He saw that there were actually three people.

He was relieved to see Piper. A few times he had asked her for assistance, and even more she had invited herself on a case. Nick remembered when she first came to Diamond City, little Nat in tow. A teenager who had a gleam of determination in her eyes that hasn’t gone away as an adult. While she was as subtle as an atom bomb sometimes, she had her heart in the right place.

A minuteman took watch at the door the triggerman had left through. Nick hadn’t seen one for awhile. When Nat had shown up at his door early one morning, personally delivering a copy of a certain story to each member of the city, Nick knew it was important. He dropped a few caps in the girl's hand, then sat in his chair reading about the death of Quincy over and over until Ellie had woken up. He had passed the paper to her solemnly and neither of them had spoken for the rest of the day. Nick didn’t know if this one was involved, but he didn’t trust him to watch his back.

Whoever the third person was, they ran to the terminal too fast for a good look on who they were. He just caught their shorter stature and a bright blue. His guess was a vault dweller. They were the only ones who wore such a vibrant color. This vault had never been completed, so he guessed they were from vault 81, since it was the only operational vault to his knowledge.

“Hey, Valentine,” Piper greeted through the thick glass. “You got Ellie all worked up thinking you’re dead.”

“I’ll give her a day off once you and your friends get me out of here,” He promised. His gaze flicked to the minuteman. “Do I know these guys?”

Piper followed his eyes, “No, met them earlier. Don’t worry, he was with Colonel Holis when Quincy fell.”

Good enough for him.

The sound of the terminal going off and the click of the lock interrupted any further conversation. “I got it, Miss Piper!” the third person spoke. The voice sounded young. They rushed in quickly, Piper coming in after the previously unseen third member of the party.

Looks like he was right. The kid couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Nat. She was all awkward limbs and too-big armor. The yellow-gold lettering on her suit said 111 instead of 81, so he was wrong about that. He had never heard of Vault 111, but it may have opened up in the time he was locked up in here. That didn’t explain what the kid was doing or what the hell Piper was thinking bringing her here.

Nor did it explain the laser rifle in her hands, nor the sniper rifle slung haphazardly to her back.

The kid seemed surprised by his appearance, probably not stopping to register it when she was hacking the terminal. Her eyes widened in shock at his appearance and her nostrils flared as she attempted to school her face into a polite neutral expression. He appreciated the attempt at least. Most people would either freak out or spit insults in shock.

Deciding to wait and see what explanation she had, Nick lit a cigarette. He couldn’t actually breathe in the smoke or feel the effects of the nicotine, but it was a habit from the original Nick that he had never been able to properly shake. Guess addictions ran deeper than just physical.

“Gotta love the irony of the reverse damsel-in-distress scenario,” he said, “Question is, why did our heroine risk life and limb for an old private eye?”

“My brother was kidnapped,” the vault girl answered, “You’re my only lead on finding him, so here I am. How did you get in here?” She said it with such ease that Nick wondered if she realized how strange this scenario was. Not that he had any room to comment.

“A missing kid, huh? Well, you came to the right man. If not the right place.” Missing people were sadly a dime a dozen in his line of work. Kidnapped kids, sneaking spouses, and turbulent teenagers would disappear and their loved ones would come to Nick Valentine, the Synth Detective. The cases didn’t always end the same way. Sometimes he simply brought back a runaway who overestimated their skills and underestimated the Commonwealth, dragging them to their crying mothers or upset fathers. Other times, he revealed an affair that had been ongoing for months or years, until the immoral lovers decided to run from their problems instead of releasing their poor, betrayed spouses. He normally alerted the guards and kept an eye on the cheated party, due to how prone they were to the whispers of revenge. Kidnappings were the worst. They normally involved sneaking, fighting, and sweet-talking his way to the victim’s freedom. Sometimes he saw a reuniting of families. Other times he brought back a limp body. Still there are others, where there was nothing at all.

“I thought you were looking for a kidnapped woman, Nick. How did you end up being kidnapped?,” Piper questioned.

“I've been cooped up in here for weeks. Turns out the runaway daughter I came here to find wasn't kidnapped. She's Skinny Malo's new flame, and she's got a mean streak,” Nick explained. The vault girl made a grossed out face, guess she hadn’t gotten out of the ‘boys are icky’ phase. “Anyway, you got troubles, and I'm glad to help. But now ain't the time. Let's blow this joint. Then we'll talk.”

The girl nodded, “Got it. I’m Sunny, and the man with us is Mr. Preston. We met Miss Piper when we went to Diamond City looking for you.” As she spoke, she grabbed a bobblehead off the desk, pivoted on her heel, and followed them out of the office.

The minuteman, Preston, took his gaze off the door. While Sunny had tried to hide her reaction to Nick’s robotic appearance, he gave none at all. “It’s an honor to meet you, Detective Valentine. Sorry it couldn’t be under better circumstances.”

“Likewise. We’ll save the pleasantries. Hope you know how to use that musket.” Nick took the point of the group, rushing down the steps toward the exit. He explained quietly the situation regarding the vault, Skinny Malone, and how he got hired then subsequently thrown in the office. Two weeks of being guarded by these meatheads had made Nick more than a little stir crazy.

They came up to the entrance of what looked like the vault cafeteria. Triggermen were scattered around, playing cards and drinking what little provisions they had away. It's a wonder they were able to stay here this long the way they blew through food and liquor.

“How do you want to do this?” he whispered. There was a tell-tale sign of a Stealth-boy being activated and Sunny had disappeared. Good. There was a plan for her.

Piper had taken the first shot, and then chaos erupted. The gunshots echoed loudly off the metal walls of the vault. Preston's laser musket was probably the quietest of all of them, though Nick had seen a laser come from nowhere a few times.

The rest of the Vault went the same way. Run through the stairwell, shoot the triggermen, rinse and repeat until annoyed. “Who built this damn vault? A fitness instructor?,” Nick complained.

Whenever the fighting would stop, Sunny would reappear, then set to rifling through the dead men's pockets for ammo and stimpaks. She stayed quiet for the most part. She mostly made occasional noises of agreement in response to commands. There was a brief excited squeal of excitement when finding an in-tact comic book before she remembered herself. Nick was glad she seemed to understand the situation, he didn't have the patience to keep an eye on an unruly teen.

They finally came up to the room where Skinny Malone mainly set up shop. Nick could hear heavy footsteps

The door click and angry swearing through the door. He tried to open it, but it held fast. “Another locked door. Shouldn't be too hard…”

As he messed with the lock, he gave a warning. “I hear big, fat footsteps on the other side, so Skinny Malone and the rest of his boys are waiting for us in there. The name's, uh, ironic, but don't let that fool you. He's dangerous. Once we step through this door, get ready for anything.”

The spare bobby pin he kept snapped. “Dammit,” he swore. He started fishing for another in his pockets. While he could pick a lock just fine, he was much better with terminals or any piece of tech. Old Nick didn’t bother with either, but he also didn’t need to. This skill belonged to the Synth.

Something tapped against his shoulder. “Here, I got some.” Sunny was holding out an old cigarette carton, stuffed full of bobby pins that rattled with each tap.

“Thanks,” he said, taking a pin and trying again. This time he found the sweet spot in the lock. It clicked open and he was met with the business end of multiple submachine guns.

“Nicky? What're you doin'? You come into my house. Shoot up my guys. You have any idea how much this is gonna set me back?,” Skinny Malone said in false hurt.

“I wouldn't be here if it weren't for your two-timing dame, Skinny. You ought to tell her to write home more often.”

“Awww… poor little, Valentine. Ashamed you got beat up by a girl? I'll just run back home to daddy, shall I?,” Darla mocked. Her grip around her bat tightened. Apparently, she liked to get up close and personal with her victims in a way that firearms didn't allow for. Nick had the unfortunate experience of learning that when he first came to the Vault.

“Should've left it alone, Nicky. This ain't the old neighborhood. In this Vault, I'm king of the castle, you hear me?,” Malone spat, “And I ain't lettin' some private dick shut us down now that I finally got a good thing goin'!”

Darla’s glare snapped to Skinny. Even he wasn’t free from her ire, “I told you we should've just killed him, but then you had to get all sentimental! All that stupid crap about the ‘old times’."

“Darla, I'm handling this! Skinny Malone's always got things under control!”

As the killer couple bickered, Nick thought that they could sneak past the two if it weren’t for the two bodyguards aiming at them.

“Oh yeah, then what's a kid doing here, huh? A pipsqueak helped rub us all out of here!,’ Darla pointed her bat too close to Sunny’s face, and leaned down to snarl in her face. “What are you doing here, you brat?”

Sunny’s eyes widened in a mix of emotions. Surprise at being addressed, fear at being threatened, and confusion at the question. She was quiet for half a second, before steeling her face like she did when she entered the office, and asked her own question.

“What are you doing here?”

Darla didn’t like that answer one bit, grabbing the girl’s arm and dragging her forward. “You fucking mocking me? Don’t test me, cause I ain’t got a problem with knockin’ a snot-nosed brat off the map!, “ she spat.

“You’ve got a family don’t you? With food, water, and safety? Who love and care enough for you to go all the way to Diamond City in the hopes of hiring someone who can find you? Why would you give that up?”

Darla still looked angry, but now that anger looked conflicted. Nick didn’t know much about her family and their homelife. When her father had come into his office on a late, chilly afternoon, he knew he wasn’t from the city. His skittishness at the crowds and purple stains on his clothes suggested he was a mutifruit farmer, but all the man spoke about was his poor daughter had been kidnapped by some gangster, and he had no idea where he had taken her. When the father had calmed down enough to describe the gangster in detail, Nick knew where to look for the girl.

“I had nothing in that dirt pile! No one understood I wanted to be more, not just work in the fields with the other girls and pop out babies for the first fucking guy that popped the question!”

Sunny grimaced as Darla tightened her grip, but kept pushing. “So you came here? An empty vault surrounded by gangsters with no caps? Ordered around by a gross old guy that could be your father?”

“He’s got power!” Darla argued, but she didn’t look like she believed herself. Most of Skinny Malone’s men were now corpses pumped full of lead. He had been muscled out of his previous territory by stronger, smarter, and better supplied gangs. It wouldn’t take much for them to come in here and kill off the gang for good.

“What good is that when you have no food or water? If the settlements don’t bow to your threats, and you can’t get caps, where are you going to get stimpaks or radaway? At least that dirt pile seemed to care about you, all he’s done is drag you underground and yell at you.”

There was a beat of stillness as Darla didn't respond, staring at Sunny. Then, she just…drops the kid’s arm. Sunny immediately scrambles back behind Preston. Darla stared for a bit longer, brow furrowed and angry, then turned and started walking toward the exit.

“Darla? Wh-where are you goin'?”

“Home, Skinny! Where I should have been all this time. This is goodbye for us,” she snapped. Her walk turned into a sprint as she took off toward the vault door, refusing to be stopped by Skinny’s yelling. Nick guessed he would get a message in a few days from her father, telling him Darla is home, safe and sound.

“Oh, come on, Nicky! You cost me my men, now you and your friend cost me my girl?, “ the gangster turned back to the detective. Well, the runaway girl got out. Now he had to get himself out.

“The kid here just did you a favor, Skinny. You always did have bad taste in women,” Nick quipped, “Now that she's not around to feed that temper of yours, maybe you'll see sense and let us walk? You still owe me for two weeks in the hole.”

Skinny turned multiple shades of red. “ You smug, overconfident ass… Agh! All right, you get to the count of ten! I still see your face after that, I'm gunning both of you down!,” he growled.

That was long enough for Nick.

“Ah, look at that Commonwealth sky. Never thought anything so naturally ominous could end up looking so inviting…”

The mad dash out the vault and into the open air hadn’t affected Nick, but the other three were kneeled over as they tried to catch their breath. Nick patted Sunny’s shoulder as she gulped down air, “Quick thinking in there, kid. You kept a cool head in there.”

“Oh, I didn’t,” Sunny disagreed, gasping between words. “I have no idea what I said, it was just word vomit. I think I actually threw up a little.”

The walk back to the city was filled with chatter. Piper caught Nick up on everything he missed while prisoner in the vault. Who had been accused as a synth, who did the accusing, who had been caught cheating, what asinine thing Mayor McDonough had most recently done, and everything in between. When she had exhausted all topics, she pressed Preston into talking about the Minutemen and his hopes for the currently broken faction.

Sunny added small comments to their anecdotes. She had added that the mayor had mistaken Preston for her father when Piper had told him about McDonough making the kid cry. When the Minuteman told about their incident at the Museum of Freedom, she had helpfully added about Preston getting thrown into a car when fighting the Deathclaw.

It naturally segwayed into Sunny coming from a vault.

Nick wasn’t surprised that Vault-Tec would do something so horrible as to freeze people alive, but he was surprised anyone survived. Guess they were in the same boat. The only reason either of them were here in the Commonwealth is because of the immoral actions of people wanting to play god with no consequences. Nick had no idea how the Institute had gotten the original Nick’s memory files, but he had definitely not signed up to have his memories shoved into a experimental robot. Even if some families would have willingly frozen themselves to wait out the nuclear apocalypse, Vault-Tec still decided to lie and trick innocent people for their sick experiment.

Now all that was left of those experiments was a Synth Detective and a two-hundred and twelve year old kid.

Sunny hadn’t walked in their small group, instead choosing to flit back and forth on the street and between the three. She was filled with nervous energy, likely about the missing brother she mentioned earlier. There were a million ways someone could go missing in the Commonwealth, and going missing from a vault would make a case harder than the average runaway case. Nick just hoped the boy was alive, wherever he was. He wanted to go ahead and start asking questions, but they all probably needed rest before they were really ready for questions. Anyway, he would prefer to ask questions in a more private place with a notepad and pen. He could borrow Piper’s but he didn’t want any private details mixed into the next edition of Publik Occurrences.

All of the stores were closed by the time they got into the city. Everyone was asleep by now, except it seems, Nat, who was still up waiting for her sister. Piper crashed onto her couch with a promise of a longer interview later, and a Mr.Handy replaced her. According to Preston, “Codsworth” was Sunny’s and had served her family before the bombs dropped.

No wonder she was so attached to him.

When they got to the agency, Preston gladly took up Nick’s offer to take his bed. It’s not like he actually slept, he just used it for a more comfortable place to sit at night when his chair was too hard to sit on. Elle was fast asleep on her own sheets, still full dressed. She probably tired herself out in worry.

Sunny was still filled with nervous energy, hopping from one foot to another as Codsworth fretted over her. She clearly won’t be getting sleep soon.

Nick sighed. Best get some work done while she was still awake. He pulled off his coat and placed it on her shoulders, hoping the weight would settle her a little.

“Here, kid. At least sit down, I’m getting antsy just watching you.”

“Sorry,” she apologized, and flopped down on the offered chair while Codsworth checked her shoulder for bruising. Nick opened a cabinet drawer and flicked through his files, looking for anything involving Vault-Tec and their metal graves. There wasn’t much, barely enough to fill half a page, but it was something.

“You said your brother is missing, right? Any idea if he ran off on his own or if someone else did the dirty work?”

“Someone else,” Sunny answered immediately, trying to sound calm, “Shaun’s a baby, he can’t even walk yet.”

Nick nodded and switched to a drawer with files on cases with really young kids. Babies weren’t desirable in the slave trade, since it takes so long for them to grow up and be useful, they needed a lot of care, and can easily die from anything. Too much risk, not enough reward. He stacked what few files he had with his Vault-Tec file.

“Any motive that you can think of?, ” Nick continued, “Rogue scientist who couldn’t handle the guilt of freezing a newborn? Crazy neighbor hopped up on Buffout?”

“No. I saw the man who took him. After he killed Mom and Dad, he looked right at me,” she paused, blowing out a shaky breath. “ I’ve never seen him before, and he wasn’t dressed like a scientist. He was dressed like he was from the Commonwealth.”

Taking an empty file and mostly empty pen, he also grabbed a list of known, at-large criminals along with what pitiful information he found. He sat down at his desk. Sunny being a witness wasn’t a good thing, no matter how much easier it would make his job. No kid should see that.

“It’s going to be okay. Do you need a minute, or do you think you can tell me what he looked like?”

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