Chapter Text
The letter smelled like cigars and century old perfume. It had arrived in the hands of a courier whose pockets were clinking with caps paid ahead to expedite delivery, and the looping handwriting on the front told North who had sent it without needing to ask. Irma never wrote unless it was with bad news. Her thoughts had first turned to Kent, and she had scanned the letter for signs of his name before reading the whole thing- and instead found the name Nick Valentine.
North arrived in Goodneighbor at the rare hour when the entire town was asleep. Even the Memory Den felt quiet. Irma greeted her with tired eyes and a worried smile. "I wasn't sure you'd make it so fast," she said. "You'd better go on down, darling. I'll wake Amari."
The back room was shadowy, the only light coming from a lantern in the corner. A familiar old trenchcoat was slung over the arm of the couch. North almost missed the figure in the lounger, fedora pulled down over his eyes, chin touching his chest. Relief spread through her. "Nick," she said, approaching the glass. The lid wasn't shut; the lounger wasn't on. But Nick still didn't respond. "Nick?"
She pushed his hat away from his eyes. Open, but dark- no familiar yellow light. Her chest tightened. When she said his name again, her voice wavered. "Nick?"
"North? Is that you?" North scrambled to her feet. Amari, her loose night dress ruffled, stood in the doorway, frowning. "Just the woman I've been waiting to see."
North barely waited until Amari had finished her sentence to speak. "Is Nick okay?" she asked, keeping her eyes fixed on his.
Amari sighed. "I'm afraid not."
North's blood ran cold.
"Detective Valentine came in a few days ago for a memory session," Amari said. "But once the replay ended, I wasn't able to pull him out. He appears to be stuck in some kind of feedback loop."
Amari's words sounded like they were coming from far away. "Feedback loop?" North mumbled. Her head was spinning.
"This isn't unusual- memory regress is unfortunately common, and why we're so selective about our clients. Fixing it involves linking two minds- Valentine needs to be convinced to wake up."
The words drew North from her stupor. "And you want me to do that?"
"Usually Irma is the second mind, but Nick's hold on this... memory, or whatever it is..." Amari pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose, glancing away from North. "Well, it's not like anything I've seen before."
"This is the Memory Den, Amari. If it's not a memory, what is it?" North asked, a frown etching itself between her eyebrows.
"I'm not sure what he's experiencing. Unless I'm more out of the loop than I realised, the things he's seeing never happened."
"Like- like what?"
"Well, for one, I'm relatively sure I never performed a body transfer on Detective Valentine."
"Body transfer?" North blinked. "Like what we did to Curie?"
"Er... sort of. The details are hazy- Nick never had a strong grasp on my line of work. He's... filling in the blanks as he goes."
"So... he's dreaming?"
"Memories are delicate things. Wishful thinking, denial, any sort of emotional processes can alter them. It's possible that what he is experiencing is an altered memory, or it's possible that it's a new narrative, something that simply draws on memories he already has."
"So... dreaming."
Amari sighed. "It's a little more complicated than that. But yes, I suppose." The lines in her face softened for a moment, and a hesitant look crossed her expression. "North, there's one more thing that seems to be characteristic of these... dreams, if you must call them that."
"What?" Images of Jenny, half-formed ideas of what the woman must have looked like, and Eddie Winter, face smooth and young, flooded North's mind.
Amari pursed her lips. "Well... unless I'm more out of the loop than I thought, I don't believe Mr. Valentine has had any recent forays into romance, no?"
In the brief moment of complete silence that followed, North swore she could hear the blood rushing to her cheeks, as if Amari had somehow caught her in a lie. "No," she answered truthfully. "No."
North reached out and took Nick's hand. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, showing the bare plating on his arms. She traced the seam of his wrist with her thumb. His fingers twitched. North wondered if she had woken him up, but no other part of him moved. Just his hand, curling tighter around hers.
She sighed. "How do I help?"
Amari gestured toward the empty pod. "Sit."
North wrung her hands together. "This is- well, safe?" she asked.
"You won't die. Probably."
The light on the pod's screen fritzed, the words Please Stand By blinking in and out of a pixelated haze of grey. North's fingers unfurled from around Nick's wrist. "I'll do it," she said. Amari nodded, and North climbed into the pod.
"I'll have to rewind it. Back to the moment it all began. Right after Nick awakens from this... transfer." Amari's fingers clattered across the keyboard. "Just relax, North."
The screen went white just as North's vision faded to black. Amari's voice echoed in her ears as she slid into the clutches of the programming. "That's it, relax- hold on, that's too relaxed. What happened to the lucidity suspenders? North? North, I need you to listen very carefully..."