Heat rushed through her body. It was a familiar heat; her blood was carrying the healing components of a stimpak to her injuries. She wondered who she owed a stimpak to. As the darkness moved away from her mind, she remembered getting into a firefight. She was almost finished with her mission. She was almost ready to let go, but she had made a promise she had to survive to keep.

She felt herself sitting up, there was something hard against her back. She killed Ed Rose, she finally killed Ed Rose. Light hit her eyelids, she felt herself waking up.

Marian opened her eyes and saw RJ kneeling over her, a spent stimpak in his hand. Windowlicker was standing behind him with her backpack on his shoulders, looking concerned. Marian looked at RJ’s neck, relieved that it wasn’t being covered by a collar. Either he and Windowlicker figured out how to get it off, or he never had one in the first place. Marian hoped it was the former, that would mean that all the slaves were freed.

“Hey, you’re okay,” RJ said with his usual energy, but his voice was quiet like he was worried about waking the dead bodies around them.

Marian smiled up at her little brother. She was glad to see he was alright. She always hated it when he was in trouble, especially when she brought that trouble to him. He was alright. That meant Nick was, too. He probably left RJ and Windowlicker to take care of her while he returned Davey to Hangman’s Alley. She may not be walking Nick back to Ellie, but she kept her promise.

“It’s over,” Marian said. It was both a question and a statement.

“Yeah,” RJ confirmed. “You finally destroyed the Rose Gang.”

“Hey! I helped,” Windowlicker said. “I killed the two guards who were watching you and the other prisoners.”

“Looks like the plan worked,” Marian responded.

She didn’t have time to see if he was using a Stealthboy to sneak past her and the Rose Gang while she distracted them with the fight. In the heat of the moment, she could only trust that he did what she asked.

She started trying to sit up.

“Easy,” RJ said as he helped her to her feet. “You took some major damage.”

“It worked,” Windowlicker agreed. “If you had joined my group when we invited you, I think we would have been unstoppable.”

“I would have been limited to the number of people I could have helped,” Marian told him. “No thank you. I prefer being able to run around on my own.” She was about to make her way to the door but noticed that neither of her saviors were moving. “What’s wrong? It’s over, you two can go home.”

“It’s not that easy,” RJ said.

“We can’t find Nick,” Windowlicker finished.

A shiver shot through Marian’s spine. She thought Nick was safe. She thought the whole ordeal was over. If Nick was already sold, she would never be able to find him if the whole Rose Gang was now dead. She should have left a survivor. She could have maimed China or not bashed Demask as hard as she did.

“I thought he was with you,” she told RJ.

“We were separated,” he explained. “I think they were having trouble accepting that Nick was more than just another generation two synth. They took me to the main cage, but I don’t know what they did with him. I’m sorry, sis.”

Marian was distraught. How was she going to keep her promise to Ellie now? She wasn’t even sure if Valentine was still in the Commonwealth. He had enough enemies that the Rose Gang would be able to recreate Paradise Falls right in the Commonwealth. She started walking around the room. The idea that Nick Valentine was sold, maybe even killed, was too much for her. She had to fix the problem.

Suddenly, she noticed the desk that Burnet had been leaning up against when she first entered the building. She saw several weapons, none of them were assault rifles. Marian moved over to them and looked at them carefully. Most of them were pipe pistols, and then she saw a revolver. She was familiar with that revolver. She had spent hours cleaning it. It had lost its shine and had developed a thin layer of carbon on it. Still, it was Nick Valentine’s. He was here, he had to be.

“Where was he when you last saw him?” She asked RJ.

“I don’t know, he was in the production room. Somewhere near the conveyor belt.”

Marian thought about this for a moment. It wasn’t much to go on. She needed to think. She needed to search.

“Where are the rest of the prisoners?” She finally asked.

“We took them to Kingsport Lighthouse,” Windowlicker explained.

“Okay, it’s getting late. Go there and wait for me,” Marian ordered. “I’m going to find Valentine.”

Windowlicker looked like he had something to say, but RJ put a hand on his arm. “Come on,” he told the other man.

They both left the cannery. Windowlicker took a moment to drop the backpack at the door. Marian was alone with her thoughts and the corpses and Malta. Where was Nick Valentine? Why couldn’t they find him? Ed didn’t say anything to suggest that he had gotten a clientele yet. The two guards outside the building looked like they weren’t expecting anyone. In fact, they looked like they were expecting absolutely no one. It was how Marian was able to sneak up on them so easily.

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She pocketed Nick’s revolver and then started walking around the room. She looked around the front room first, trying to see if anything looked out of place. She tried to think of where she would put a VIP prisoner. Someone who was more valuable alive than dead, but who she wouldn’t shed a tear over if he died. Where would she personally put Nick Valentine?

The front room held no secrets. Just weapons and rubble. There was a smaller room, next to it, with lockers and restrooms attached. Collars littered the table in the center, but still no real secrets. She stepped over Demask and moved into the production room. She looked around.

This room was full of secrets. It had all the dead bodies right where she left them. The deactivated Mr. Handys were laying around the conveyor belt. She wondered if they could or would help her if she reactivated them. She decided not to, she just wasn’t in the mood to kill hostile robots if she was wrong.

She looked around, trying to think. This was where RJ last saw Nick Valentine. The last time anyone who was still alive last saw him. She tried to think; where would she have put him?

The thought of calling out to him crossed her mind. She then tried to decide rather that idea was more futile or more dangerous. Either way, she was sure if all she had to do was call for him, RJ and Windowlicker would already have found him.

She looked at a wall behind the conveyor belt. There were two round yellow doors that looked like the door to a bank vault. Was that door able to be opened? Did RJ and Windowlicker really even look for Nick Valentine? This would have been the first place she would have looked for him. Unless, that door was already sealed shut. Still, if it could be opened, she had to find a way to open it. Even if these doors were sealed tight, there may be something the means of opening the doors could show her.

She looked around. There was nothing obvious from where she was standing, but now she knew what she was looking for. She moved around the room, looking for anything that could be considered a control panel. She walked up a short flight of stairs and a large red button was in view. She wondered why this wasn’t tried before, but she gritted her teeth, and pushed the button.

Something must have worked. A loud mechanical sound came from the nearest yellow door. It opened, but nothing happened. Marian readied Nick's revolver, preparing for anything to come from those doors. If it was something big like a deathclaw, she could bolt farther up the stairs and pick off the monster from there.

The wait was palpable. Marian was about to give up and decide that there was nothing behind those doors when she saw movement. She focused at the movement the best she could in the inconsistent lighting, waiting for anything when she saw a generation two synth slowly come out of the area. It looked around, casually taking in the dead bodies, then looked straight at her.

“I know you’ve been wanting to shoot me, Doll, but don’t you think you went a little extreme to accomplish your goal?” Nick Valentine asked.

Marian lowered her weapon. It was Nick. He was safe, he was here. He was naked. As she realized the vulnerable situation he was in, she couldn’t help blushing.

“Sorry,” she excused herself and turned her back to Nick. “I can get some clothes for you if you’d like.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll just borrow from one of our friends here.”

Marian kept looking at the wall, waiting for Nick to do whatever he planned to. She heard rustling. She tried ignoring the noises. She knew she should be scared. She didn’t like having anyone behind her. She liked knowing exactly where everyone was and what they were doing. Somehow, she wasn’t scared. She trusted Valentine not to shoot her in the back.

“It’s okay,” she heard him say gently. “I’m decent.”

Marian turned around to see Nick standing next to Ed Rose’s dead body. His distinctive clothes, he wore because he thought it made him look both dangerous and a smart businessman, were stripped from his body and now graced Nick Valentine’s slender figure.

“How do I look?” He asked adjusting the jacket.

Was he? Was Nick Valentine flirting with her? No, he couldn’t be. He had no reason to want to flirt with her. Maybe he just liked flirting. The Wastelander suddenly realized she knew almost nothing about him, just that she wasn’t supposed to like him.

“Like someone I should shoot,” she responded with a playful smile.

The detective smiled back at her. He started patting down his clothes. Marian had seen that tick done by enough people to know exactly what he was looking for. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“Here,” she called tossing a pack of cigarettes to him. “He kept his lighter in his left breast pocket.”

Nick caught the pack and found the lighter before putting them in the pocket he found the lighter from. “I thought you didn’t like smoking,” he said.

“I don’t,” Marian said as she moved towards the detective. “I think it’s a disgusting habit. But when someone tries paying me with a case of cigarettes, I figured I would…” Marian had gotten closer to Nick than she realized. How could she tell him that she had found herself snatching up packs when she saw them? She never thought about giving them to RJ, she just thought about how Nick would like them, even if he would probably blow the smoke in her face. “I mean, I had nothing else to do with them. I just figured better then letting them go to waste.”

She was about to pick up Faenus when Valentine leaned down and picked it up. “Interesting that everyone from this gang has this same gun,” he pointed out examining her weapon. “The same type of gun that you carry.” Nick looked up at her. She saw suspicion in his eyes, but he didn’t look hostile.

“What are you getting at?” she asked snatching Faenus away from Valentine.

“I had a long time to think about things, Sweetheart,” he told her. “The one thing that kept going through my mind is that your brother told me you had a history with this gang, and then I see that you are carrying around the same type of weapon every member does. It seems suspicious. Wouldn’t you say, Doll?”

Marian closed her eyes. The things she did to get into the gang. The people she had to watch get sold in order to not get herself in trouble. Every day was physically painful for her as she felt what she could call a soul get torn to shreds as she stood by and treated people like cattle.

“Marian, Doll, I’m sorry, you don’t owe me an explanation,” she heard Nick say. “I should trust you more. I’m sorry.”

She opened her eyes and saw that familiar look of concern in his. Why did he always have to look at her that way? Like he actually cared about how she felt. When he looked at her like that, she felt like her emotions mattered. There was no reason for him to feel that way. He should only care for her as long as she could help him get cases.

“I have a friend who needs you,” she told him. “She got separated from one of her kids. I don’t know why she cares, she has two spares, but I guess they all are supposed to matter or something.” She laid his revolver on the conveyor belt. “It’s getting late. Why not check on RJ and the other freed slaves at Kingsport? I’ll escort you home. Take care of her, free of charge, and we’ll call it even.”

Nick was silent for a while. “Marian,” he finally whispered.

She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want him to give her excuses or say pretty things that he didn’t mean. She just wanted to get him back to Diamond City where he belonged. Her promise to Ellie will be finished, and she would go back to counting caps until she could find her way to the Capital Wasteland.

She turned toward the door and started walking to it. “When you’re ready to head back to Diamond City, come find me. I’m sure you can figure out where I am with your Detekating.”