[Disclaimer]: I do not own Fallout 4 or any canon characters. Any characters used from the anime Hetalia belong to Hidekaz Himaruya and will be stated as his after each first appearance. I do claim ownership over the very few amount of OCs that appear within the story.

This is a pretty long chapter. There is a lot to take in and I really hope this isn't too squirrelly and all over the place. I will have a bit of information down on the bottom to explain a bit of this a tad further. So this chapter also explains quite a few other things that may have been a bit odd, like the way Kyra treats others.

"A Guide of the Commonwealth" by an omnipotent Narrator:

25) If you do something slowly enough or just are horrible at it for long enough, someone else will do it for you. Or shoot you.

26) Good reporters always take blackmail photos.

27) Let sleeping lions lie.

Chapter 10~ Two Minds

The rest of the day, Kyra, Alfred, Matthew and Nate clean out the blue house beside Nate's. Kyra decided that she would visit whenever she was in the area. They managed to get the old junk dragged out and kept all of the salvageable things where they used to be. All that was left was to put in a few new pieces of furniture to replace the destroyed pieces and for her to add her own personal touches.

"Are you sure you only want one bed?" Nate gives her a concerned look then he looks back towards the two guys arguing over the best way to drag the ruined couch out.

"Yeah. One bed is good. Alfred, Matthew and I can share. I don't mind. I can use the extra space for an office or maybe I'll find some other use for it. How many caps will you want for a queen bed? I noticed that all of the other beds were twin beds… I can pay extra…" She fishes around in her pockets for an ample amount of caps.

"Kyra," Nate sternly says her name, "Please don't pay me. This is your house. It isn't a problem to refurnish it for you."

"Thank you, Uncle Nate. Please excuse me for a moment." She turns and fires her pistol at the couch stuck halfway in the door. "Can you two do nothing? Turn it sideways!"

Matthew calls back, "That is what I kept trying to tell him!"

"We can talk later, Nate. I'm going to help these two clueless idiots. I promise I'll make this all up to you." She walks over to the couch and shoves Alfred aside, helping Matthew to finally get it through the doorway. "Useless!" She calls out to Alfred. He just gives her a grin and nods.

He stage whispers to Nate, "If I do a bad job for long enough, she does it for me!" He laughs and picks up the broken ottoman. Nate just rolls his eyes at the second in command.

…

That night, Kyra had dinner with everyone in the tavern. She had canned meat with a side of boiled carrots. It was completely lackluster compared to the food she had on her island, but she was thankful anyways. She made sure to apologize to the settler who had his cart of gourds knocked over in her rampage.

All of the settlers took an immediate liking to her despite knowing her affiliation with, or rather leadership of, Nightmare. She regaled many stories of her time before the war and all the things she used to do for fun around here. Smith, the other member of Nightmare was just as happy to hear them and to see his usually terrifying boss look so happy and friendly.

She drank lots of wine while the others practically drowned themselves in whiskey and vodka. Everyone was a bit inebriated to say the least.

Kyra was standing on top of a table giving one of her stories from before. No, it wasn't quite her story anyways. "This is my favorite action story from before the war. It was on a certain channel and it would play every night very late. This is the story of The Great Scientist Rick and His Faithful Assistant Morty!"

Nate chuckles and shakes his head. MacCready sits beside him and gives a questioning look his way. "It's called Rick and Morty. I'm very certain she isn't going to tell it how it happened. She's likely going to tell you something she made up about them. It's like her hobby." *

"She wasn't like this on the island. Sure she was happy, but she wasn't so carefree."

Nate sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "You would be correct in saying that. The thing about Kyra…"

"Uncle Nate?" Kyra stands still on the table and looks at him with worry in her eyes but a large grin on her face. "Do you remember that theory on the type of alcohol Rick drinks?"

"Of course," He gets up to finish helping her tell her story. "Well you see," He begins.

MacCready doesn't stay to listen to the rest of the story. Whatever Nate wanted to tell him, she didn't. How she heard them both as she was telling her story was a mystery as well. Why she was so different here was bothering him. He had wanted to believe she was just loosening up because her subordinates were not here except Smith and the other two.

How he wanted to believe she was just being carefree because she was home, however, so many things didn't make sense in his mind. The rumors told a story about her insanity and ruthlessness. Her behavior on the island showed a leader that just wanted the best for her subordinates that had even publicly shamed them to keep them in line. Here, in Sanctuary, it was like she never stepped in that pod. It was like she had not been through those years in the wastes. She was just like a young teen enjoying her days with friends, untouched by the hardships of the wasteland.

"Something on your mind, friend?"

MacCready turns to see Matthew leaning against the wall beside him. It was a bit unnerving how quietly he moved. He walked around like a ghost.

"What was Nate going to say back there?"

"You saw me signing?" Matthew looks surprised, having believed he had done his signing so secretly that not even Nate would know.

"I didn't. I just thought you guys would know. She was so far away that I couldn't believe she was able to hear us." MacCready had trapped him in a verbal game of chess.

"Kyra doesn't like us talking about it. She never gave it a specific name, but from what I understand, it's something she was told she had a very long time ago. She explained it like this: She will always be Kyra, but sometimes she will be a different Kyra. She still remembers everything, but she won't act the same way to different things. Like right now, she is Kyra from before the war."

"You know that everything you are saying is insane."

"Believe me or don't. Ask Nate again if you want. You should just ask her. I think she would be better at explaining what goes on in her mind than Nate would." Matthew heads back inside to let MacCready brood in the dark.

She's the same but not the same? MacCready looks up at the dark sky. "Why did you have to get yourself tangled up in all of this mess, man? Why did you let him hire you?" He gives a heavy sigh. He was like a bad luck magnet in recent years, so why did he expect his new companions to be even slightly normal?

The rest of the night went on in a blur for everyone who wasn't sober. Kyra had passed out on one of the tables with a bottle of wine in her hand and only one boot. Matthew and Alfred were wrestling in the center of a small fight ring made by the other settlers offering said boot as a reward.

Nate had stumbled back to his home at one point. Piper had been snapping pictures of the entire night. She was now lying on the floor in 'the perfect position' to snap a photo of Alfred and Matthew on the floor. She squeals with joy as she gets the photo of the exact moment Matthew knocks Alfred out cold.

"I believe I won Kyra's boot." Smith graciously hands over his leader's shined boot to the winner. Matthew ties the laces around his belt and walks over to the sleeping Kyra. He hefts her up and leans backwards to compensate for the new weight he holds against his chest. He laces his fingers under her butt to keep her from falling. In a bout of half consciousness, Kyra wraps her arms loosely around his shoulders and pulls herself close to make it easier to carry her.

Alfred eventually gets up from the floor and looks around for Piper. "Here, reporter girl. I'm sorry I can't remember your name. Can you show me which one is Kyra's? I can't remember."

Piper laughs and helps him up from the floor. He slurs a he tries to explain to her that he usually can hold his liquor better than this. She just laughs, "Of course you can, Red."

"Red?" Alfred slurs.

"Yeah, because you wear a red jumpsuit." She sure did have a knack for picking out nicknames.

Piper leads Alfred to the house, more or less carrying him since he leans on her so heavily. She walks into the back room and stops quickly, nearly dropping Alfred. Kyra lies in the bed snuggling with Matthew. She has her arms around his middle, her face pressed to his chest and her legs tangled with his. "We should go take you to the couch."

"No, it's fine. We sleep like this on missions all of the time." Alfred stumbles over to the large bed and flops down beside Kyra. He kicks off his shoes and wraps his arm around her side, falling asleep as soon as he closes his eyes.

Piper just does what any good reporter does. She pulls out her camera and gets a photo of them all sleeping. She snickers once she sees that Kyra still only has one boot on. "Old Nate is going to get a kick out of this." Piper decides it's time for her to turn in as well and makes her way to her home she shares with a few other settlers.

…

The next morning, everyone was in bad moods. Nate had trudged his way to the tavern with a grating headache. His breakfast of mutt chops and carrots was hardly touched in favor of laying his head on the table to try to get a few moments of peace. He got his peace for a while before drinking a few cups of water and finally finishing his now cold food.

He decided that it would be best to wake Kyra up and begin what was to be their tour of everything in the vicinity as well as some or the surrounding land. He planned to take her by the truck stop once again to take a look at some of the improvements he had overseen. He also planned to take a little walk over to Abernathy Farm so she could see the other settlement Nate had claim over.

Nate knocks on the door and waits for a few seconds. Matthew opens the door, looking dead tired and like most hung-over people looked like. He had shadow under his bloodshot eyes and his hair was sticking up in a few places.

"Kyra is still sleeping."

"Can you wake her up?" Matthew doesn't answer and instead steps to the side so Nate can come in. He closes the door and returns to the back room. Nate follows behind and watches in amusement as the tired raider crawls back onto the bed. Kyra angrily grumbles something about Matthew moving around too much. Alfred grumbles at Kyra for grumbling at Matthew. They all snuggle together and fall back asleep.

Nate just nods his head and keeps from snickering. He returns to the living room and looks around the kitchen they still had to remodel a bit. He takes a trip to the tavern again and purchases some food for Kyra, Matthew and Alfred. He thinks back to those two. He had remembered at some point the night before who Alfred was, remembering how he was the first raider to greet them as they were making their way to go up to the Fallen Skybridge.

Just a few weeks prior, Kyra was ready to chop Nate's arm in her little office. She was crazy-eyed and unwilling to believe she had anyone in life to actually care for her. She was so dead set on taking over the world with her new family at her side. Sure she likely still had the same plans, but now she seemed like she may enjoy stopping to smell the roses… or whatever the equivalent of roses was in the wasteland.

She sure as hell didn't trust anyone, claiming so herself a couple of times, especially about why she never cut her hair, but she must trust those two a whole lot to be so comfortable around them. Nate looks down at the wooden floors of the tavern while he waits for the food. He wonders if this is all some sort of front she put up. She was always the same Kyra.

She was Kyra… but at the same time... she wasn't. Sure she was happy-go-lucky like she used to be, but it wasn't the same. She looked so different. That was what didn't quite match. Her attitude didn't match the way he had figured her to be. Nate shakes his head, realizing that this likely was the real Kyra while the other was the vicious leader.

He knew that he would have to confront her sooner or later. He didn't want to risk her having an episode and freaking out in the settlement, so he thought that perhaps he could do so on the way to Abernathy. Nate began to wonder if the others knew of her condition. Looking through a window to look at her blue house, he decides that even if they didn't know, there would be no problems because they both loved her, and that was clear.

Nate finally got their food and took the three plates to the house. He set them on the dining table and brought along a couple of purified water cartons as well. Alfred was the first to actually get up. Nate waited for a full hour on the recliner couch waiting. Alfred looked sleepy but was relatively surprised to see Nate sitting in the chair. "Holy shit!" Alfred puts a hand to his heart. "Sorry. You scared me. What are you doing just sitting here quietly?"

"I was waiting for you all to wake up. There is breakfast on the table and some water." Nate points to the dining table. Alfred gives a nod and sits before a plate of food. He happily chows down even if the food was cold. Nate clears his throat. "Where is Kyra?"

"Oh, she's still asleep. Mattie would be out here to join us but she said that she was going to eviscerate him if he so much as turned around. She's so mean in the mornings." Alfred snickers at the image of Kyra forcibly snuggling with Matthew, threatening to do cruel things should he decide to move and disturb her sleep further. "I'm so lucky that she usually thinks I'm too warm to snuggle with."

"This happens often?"

Alfred looks at him like it was a stupid question to ask. He seems to have some epiphany and gasps, "Oh that's right. I keep forgetting that nobody knows. Well you see, Kyra has like two of herself. One that we call Kyra and one that we call Boss. Boss is the leader of the island and all that and she is really cruel and she likes to hurt and shame us. Kyra is like this sweet woman who treats us like other teenagers even if we are all adults. When we first met Kyra, she had just formed a faction."

"It was her, her advisor and about twelve other guys. She came to visit the Chemist, who I guess is supposed to be my dad, but I don't really know. Well anyways, Mattie and I were on our way back with some supplies he told us to get and we saw her and her advisor buying some chemicals from my dad. We wanted to join her. We lived an awful life in a house that had chemicals in the air. We could fight and we asked her if we could. She was sixteen at the time."

"She told us that we could do whatever we wanted. So we said goodbye to my dad, promising to come back with lots of caps, and we followed after her."

Nate holds up his hand to stop Alfred, "Are we getting to the part where you tell me why you all sleep in the same bed like siblings?"

"Yes, this is all really important to that. They were living in Back Street Apparel at the time. She had instructed us to call her Boss and said that we would have to prove ourselves useful. When we finally got there, Todd decided that they needed more supplies. He told Kyra he would be back the next day. He left her there with us. It got late, she instructed us on how the hierarchy worked. She had already gotten her hands on Brotherhood of Steel jumpsuits."

"We got outfitted and then she told us to keep watch. She went to the other room to sleep, complaining that Todd stuck her with us and that it wasn't her job to train the new guys. We stood watch for a long time. We were really tired. Later, Kyra came out to call for someone. She seemed to have forgotten that nobody else was there. She was crying and came up to hug me. She begged us to come sit in the room with her to keep her safe. We did as she wanted, believing her to be cruel and thinking she would have killed us if we didn't."

"She had been sleeping on the floor in a pile of blankets. She pulled me over and had me lie down. Mattie agreed to keep watch for a bit longer until he was too tired and then we would switch places. And we did. She would sleep for an hour snuggled up to either of us and then we would switch. After a while, meaning several months, even when the others were around, we didn't stop. Mattie would guard the door while I slept and then I would guard while he slept. Eventually, with the group of members steadily amassing, she stopped and got her own room. Around everyone, she was Boss and around us at night, she was Kyra. When there were more people, she was worried about how they would view her and stopped."

"The next year, we had to relocate. We didn't go far, but we took over the library. The first night, when everyone was on high alert, she freaked out. She had been walking around and then just freaked out kind of like she did yesterday. We took her to the place she would call her room and because everyone was on high alert, we all slept in her pile of blankets. It was like before. It only lasted that night and we were cast out again. She seemed more on edge afterwards."

"Then" Alfred smiles, thinking about his memory of Kyra, "She decided to go on a scouting mission. She brought us both with her and she acted like she did before, like the real Kyra. It was all just a sham to spend time with us. Since then, we took scouting trips just to spend time together."

Nate nods a few times, letting all of Alfred's information sink in. "Do you know?" Alfred doesn't understand and cocks his head to the side like a dog would. "Do you know what she has?"

"She said that there are two of her but also not. She says that sometimes it's like watching herself from outside of her body. That is when the mean Kyra is in control. That is when she has to be the Boss. She says that she was told she was sick but in her mind. She got mad when I called her insane."

"I guess that is part of it… Kyra has a form of D.I.D. It is like having multiple personalities, and she does, but they are still the same person. It seems her other personality is her as the leader of Nightmare and her normal self is the person you both like. It's not unlike what she was like as a child. This other personality is a coping mechanism for trauma. She likely created it when she came out of Sanctuary. She knows what she has but sometimes she can't tell who she really is. My bet is that sometimes Boss acts and she can't tell if it is her own action or her other personality's. It's really all pretty confusing."

"Dude, you lost me a long time ago."

"I'm kind of talking to myself anyways," Nate chuckles at the confused raider. "It has been five years she was without medication for this, so for it to pop up again doesn't strike me as odd."

"We don't think of her any differently. We love the boss. Sure she's cruel as hell and has a mean streak a mile long, but she makes up for it by being Kyra around us and us only." Alfred smiles. Nate's vision blurs as he tries to hold back tears.

Kyra had people who loved her. It made his heart soar. This new life may have been absolute hell for her, but it was so much better than her before life in the people she had around her. These two guys understood she was cruel and violent, and in this world it was important, but they liked her because she felt comfortable enough around them to truly be herself instead of 'the boss'.

Nate cries tears of happiness, smiling as he tries to dry his face. "I'm so happy for her."

...

[AN]: *Guess what! Kyra writes fanfiction too. She enjoys reality television and adult cartoons.

So D.I.D. is what most people describe as multiple personalities. Kyra actually has Depersonalization with D.I.D. tendencies. It basically means that she can function on autopilot with a certain personality as a coping mechanism. Being 'Boss Kyra' would not really change her in reality, but in her mind, she gets information in such a way that it seems like she has another personality and things she does not want to see are treated as repressed memories. Its very difficult to understand and explain, but it is intriguing at the same time.