Nick Valentine never came awake gradually as a synth, not in the few times he lost consciousness. If he was ever out, it was because he was put down forcefully.
He didn’t remember who’d knocked him out; he didn’t remember where he’d been or why.
It happened sometimes when he was re-set. Nick knew enough to keep his cool as his memories re-assembled, as the sound of his brain whirring back to life like a rusted motor filled his ears. His eyes finally opened and lit.
Nick was staring into another set of eyes; white-gold, wide, nearly popping out of the desecrated plastic and steel skull they were set in. The detective lurched before his body had even re-set its nervous system, driven on the very human reflex to get away from that skull.Â
He reached back to grip at something and pulled, and that something gave way. An arm slid-- not his own, but it looked like it-- hitting him in the face hard enough to stun him for a second.
Another body nestled against his, cold and steel and skeletal. Nick found himself lurching again as his nervous system tried to respond, tried to jump away like his brain was telling it too. He only sank lower.
It was like quicksand, a pile of steel and polymer and wide dead eyes. Nick gasped-- and screamed. He hadn’t heard himself scream for... years. It was terrified, haunted, angry.
An arm finally got out to shove another synth body aside, a leg kicked to shatter through plastic as Nick tried to pull himself out. His unconscious body had been discarded, it seemed, much like the rest of the destroyed Gen 1 seekers in the building.Â
Taken out with the trash. Again. Pulling himself out of it with reckless terror... again.
Nick was shaking too badly to get out himself. ...Again.Â
“Motherfucker-!”Â
