Chapter 1: Dissolute Game
Summary:
V prepares to go to the Afterlife and ask for Rogue's help tracking down Hellman.
Notes:
This first chapter is set about a month after the heist, so it's been about two weeks since V woke up at Vik's with Johnny in her head. She's rescued Evelyn, and now is trying to figure out how to contact the Voodoo Boys. I headcanon that it takes V a couple of days to think to call Mr. Hands to help her. So at this point, she's still kind of at a loss about that.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The first three stations she flips to are all playing Eurodyne tracks, and V can feel amused annoyance from Johnny prickle somewhere within her as she speeds on her motorcycle up through the familiar streets of Heywood and back towards Watson. The third one they land on is actually her personal favorite song of Eurodyne's, so she leaves it on for a moment, and she feels Johnny’s… whatever it is he’s feeling about his former bandmate's solo hits soften into something almost like… begrudging admiration? It is an undeniable banger, that’s for sure.
She flips the station again and Us Cracks blares in their ears. She grins and guns her bike, weaving between the rush hour traffic as they cross into Corpo Plaza.
She expects to feel more annoyance from Johnny at the sudden auditory onslaught of the lazrpop track, but instead he seems to be curious, even a little intrigued, though he still doesn’t say anything. She’s noticed he usually leaves her alone when she’s riding her motorcycle, and given the way she drives, she can’t entirely blame him considering he’s getting just as flatlined as she does if they crash. She sighs and flips the station again, determined to get a rise out of him. And this time, it’s a Samurai song, one she knows well enough that she almost considered getting the lyrics tattooed on her back when she was a teenager. Thank god I didn’t, she thinks, burying the thought before Johnny can catch it. She hopes.
Instead, she begins singing along loudly, making up her own nonsense lyrics instead of the actual ones. They cross the bridge into Watson, the sun setting to their left.
“Blah blah bloop down the rebel path, chip chip chip, I’m chippin’ in,” V sings along to the radio as she skids her motorcycle to a stop in her parking garage, her face a wolfish, teasing grin.
“Oh shut the fuck up, V, stop pretending you don’t know the words.”
Johnny finally takes the bait, appearing in front of her bike, leaning against the handlebars. They've been at each other's throats all day, but it's settled into a playful, comfortable banter, and she knows on some level they're both enjoying swapping insults with someone else who can actually dish them out as well as the other can. His mean smirk is twitching upwards at the corner even now, which only makes her grin wider as she kills the the engine, cutting off Johnny's song with a glitchy thunk. But she doesn't miss a beat and continues singing her increasingly ridiculous made-up lyrics as she vaults off her bike in one swift movement and saunters theatrically towards the elevator.
She collapses laughing against the wall of the elevator, and Johnny's glitching form emerges with static crackle in front of her. Their eyes meet, and he is laughing too, but then it’s suddenly too intimate and he looks away and puts his sunglasses back on and, after a moment, glitches away again. She understands why. These easy moments between them, when their banter suddenly syncs into an effortless rhythm, are what truly scare her the most. Because in these moments, she can feel the line between the two of them blur, and she can feel the edges of his mind touching hers, enveloping hers, and the scariest thing about it is that it feels so… familiar, and safe, like something that’s always been a part of her, something she’s always known and just somehow forgotten. His memories, his impulses, his preferences, his desires unfurl inside of her like a lost limb that’s slowly regaining sensation. Like she can’t remember where she ends and he begins. And that's exactly why it's terrifying; it’s the fucking horrifying reality of experiencing her brain getting slowly and inexorably rearranged into someone else’s. There is a foreign mind in her head, in her body, and she can already start to viscerally feel her identity slipping away, being subsumed by his. The process, if left unchecked, is going to kill her and leave this long-dead stranger in control of the remaining husk of her body as the malfunctioning Relic she stole does its work from where it sits permanently lodged in the nape of her neck. Arasaka's new toy is slowly killing her. Johnny's presence in her mind, regardless of how either of them feels about it, is slowly and inevitably killing her. That’s just the facts.
So, better to keep the walls up. Carve out and cling to what little space they can, to hide from each other whatever little they still can. To hold on for dear life to those last bastions of privacy in their own minds - or rather, in the single mind and body they’re forced to share.
My body, V thinks. It’s still mine.
It’s a loud and forceful thought, and she can feel Johnny react to it, but she can’t tell exactly what it is he’s feeling. He’s put up his walls and retreated inside her mind again, and the warm, safe, yet terrifyingly dangerous feeling has receded with him.
She shivers, suddenly cold as the elevator rattles its way up to her apartment level. It was almost 100 degrees out today, so she didn’t bring a coat when she left her place this morning, just her small bag slung across her back and her pistol holster. She got caught in a flash rain shower out in the Badlands chasing one of the rogue Delamains on her motorcycle earlier, and then got dust kicked all over her on the way back. By the time they got to the last of the wayward AI-powered cabs in that underpass in Pacifica, Johnny'd been teasing her that she fit right in with the bums there as she cleaned up a nearby crime scene she’d intercepted on her NCPD scanner.
“If you’re done beating up every thug in Pacifica like a pinata on the off chance that one of them will somehow magically lead you to the Voodoo Boys, let’s get the fuck home so you can take a fucking shower, put on a your best ‘I’m hot shit’ outfit, and get your ass to the Afterlife to ask Rogue to help you find Hellman,” he'd finally said to her, exasperated.
"You think she'll talk to me after what happened with Dex?"
"Rogue's a great judge of character," he'd assured her. "Just let her feel you out, see what your deal is."
"Great fucking plan, Johnny. I just, what, burst into her little VIP booth and ask for her help?"
"Pretty much, yup," he'd replied. “She’s a fixer, that’s literally her fuckin’ job.”
He was right, she'd decided then. She doesn’t know what the fuck she's doing. It’s not like wandering around the boardwalk answering random NCPD calls is going to endear her to the local gangs, or get her ear to the ground in any meaningful way. She is better off asking Rogue about Hellman and abandoning the Voodoo Boys lead for now - fuck, Rogue probably even has contacts in Pacifica, for all she knows. Johnny was right - she should go to the Afterlife.
Because as of now, those are their only two real leads - figure out why Evelyn Parker, the now traumatized and despondent joytoy who hired V and Jackie for the job to steal the biochip, was working for the Voodoo Boys; or find Anders Hellman, the Arasaka scientist who designed said biochip. Hopefully, between the two, they'll find some way to stop this waking nightmare before it kills them both. And the Voodoo Boys aren't exactly known for playing nice with outsiders - the mysterious netrunner gang tends to keep to Pacifica and keep their secrets even closer. After a day of dead ends, tracking down Hellman is starting to seem like the surer bet.
And so here she is - here they are - stepping into her apartment and kicking off her muddy boots and slinging her bag off over her head and unhooking her pistol holster and pulling off her beanie and shaking out her thick, messy hair.
She avoids looking in the mirror as she undresses and steps into the shower. The water cascades over her body, slowly but surely unknotting the day’s work. Somewhere inside of her, she can feel Johnny enjoying it too.
It is still strange beyond words, having a constant presence there for every single minute of her day. Never being truly alone, with her body or her mind. Someone constantly there observing - judging, even - her every absent-minded fidget, her aches and pains, her strange little tics, each and every one of her quirks. He’d been a complete stranger to her only a few short weeks ago - Johnny Silverhand, a name she'd known only as the frontman of Samurai and a curse uttered by corpos, a face she'd grown up seeing on band posters and in history books as the terrorist who died blowing up Arasaka Tower almost 50 years ago. Someone she’d known only through his growling, rage-filled lyrics and via fringe conspiracy theories from washed up old rocker fucks. And yet, the forced intimacy of their situation has very quickly catapulted them into completely uncharted territory. And the projection of him that she sees - or hallucination, or whatever the fuck he is when he appears - looks so real, so tangible, despite the glitching blue artifacts that hover around his tall, lanky form. Like she could almost reach out and touch him.
She can't, though. Thank god. Not since that first night he appeared to her, when she awoke to his projection standing over her bed, her body still bound in bandages and her head still healing from the bullet she took from Dex. When Johnny, as confused and terrified as she was, tried to take control of her body - and how, failing that, he dragged her by her hair and hit her across the face and slammed her head into her window over and over, his panic and disorientation and claustrophobia overlapping with her own rage and terror into a screeching crescendo that left her despondent for days.
Since then, her hand thankfully goes straight through him like a fuckin' poltergeist.
Even now, it sometimes doesn't seem quite real, how Jackie's final act of desperation as his life left him - how he reached across the backseat of that Delamain, blood pouring from his face, and slotted the stolen biochip into her skull with his dying breath, still believing she could finish the job - has led to her having to quickly adjust to the inescapable reality of being passively observed by Johnny fuckin' Silverhand during all of her waking (and sleeping) hours.
She finishes showering and begins drying her hair, not bothering to cover herself. As she watches herself in the mirror, she feels Johnny watching her too, through her own eyes. She's never even attempted any kind of modesty around him, since it seems to her like doing so would only call more attention to her complete lack of ability to set any actual, meaningful boundaries between them, when push comes to shove. And she isn’t the type to pretend something just to make herself feel better. Which is also why she hasn’t been taking the blockers that Vik gave her, despite their violent and terrifying introduction. Having a foreign presence in her head was incomprehensible to her at first and it still is; the horrifying sensation of her mind and body being pried open and laid completely bare to a complete fucking stranger has been violating in a fundamental way that she and Johnny are both still struggling to grapple with and adapt to. But the moment she realized that she couldn't deny with absolute certainty that his engram truly is anything other than a whole entire actual person, with thoughts and memories and feelings and a personal history as complex as her own, he stopped being something she could just write off as a virus to be deleted or a problem to be wiped. She still has no idea how the fuck any of it works, or how this is all gonna play out in the end for either of them, even in a best case scenario type of situation. And she doesn't even know how much time she has left. She's seen some of Johnny's memories from his time in Mikoshi, Arasaka's soul prison for stored engram constructs. The place he spent the last fifty years. She sees it sometimes in her dreams - it was horrible, cold, and empty in a gnawing way that rattled her to her very soul - an endless, vibrating monotony of not-quite-nothingness. She can't bring herself to to needlessly torture Johnny by locking him back into some smaller soul prison within her own head, just to buy herself the illusion of privacy.
She doesn’t like killing people just because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact, she does everything she can to avoid it. Sure, Johnny did launch himself straight into Arasaka Tower, nuke in hand, so he wasn’t exactly an innocent bystander in any of this, but-
She meets her own eyes in the mirror, but instead of herself, she sees him, standing there fully clothed and staring back at her.
“What the fuck?” she chokes, stepping back. It isn’t the first time the Relic has glitched out like this, but it startles the fuck out of her every time. She can feel the cyberware malfunction blurring her vision, and she leans over and coughs and retches in the sink. She hasn’t eaten much of anything today, so not much comes up. She splashes water on her face, and when she looks up, her own familiar pale gold Kiroshi optical implants stare back at her.
Her eyes fall to the bottle of omega blockers on the counter. Aside from any sense of charity she may be starting to feel towards Johnny, she needs him with her tonight. If she’s gonna talk to Rogue, she wants someone there who knows, or at least knew, the legendary fixer personally. The truth is, Rogue scares the shit out of her. Not in a bad way, though. Rogue is everything she wants to be. Powerful, intimidating, untouchable. And somehow still hot as fuck at over 80. Aside from Johnny’s memories, V’s only ever seen her from a distance in real life, the one time she’s been to the Afterlife prior to tonight, the time she went with Jackie. On what turned into the worst night of her entire life.
She pictures Rogue the way she looked that night, stepping out of her booth, surveying the room like a lion surveying its pride. V’d been unable to tear her eyes away from the silver-haired woman. Unbothered, but alert. Confidant but guarded. Charismatic and terrifying. More than a little bit like Johnny, V realizes now. Makes sense they were chooms.
She can feel Johnny react to that thought, but he buries it too quickly for her to parse out exactly what it is. She sighs and fluffs out her now-dry hair, the short choppy faded violet layers settling into a wavy halo around her face, the ends just barely brushing her shoulders. She arranges her messy bangs as best she can, then steps out of the bathroom and begins rummaging through her closet.
"You want Rogue to take you seriously, so don't dress like some gonk wanna-be solo," Johnny huffs, glitching into existence and leaning against the wall, aviators on.
“Not your dress-up doll, Johnny.” V rolls her eyes and pulls on her leather pants and combat boots, then thinks the better of it and reaches for a different pair with a slight heel. Johnny nods approvingly. V ignores him and reaches for her favorite shirt.
"Not that one," Johnny says.
V frowns. "Fuck you, I like this shirt."
"Got nothing against your weird little shirt, V. I'm just sayin', if you want Rogue to give you the time of day, you gotta turn it up a notch."
V pauses and considers her closet for another moment.
"How about this?" she says, reaching for a black vinyl corset top. Johnny watches her silently as she shimmies it around her shoulders and zips up the front.
"Hmm," he says approvingly.
V thinks for another moment, then grabs her black leather choker. Johnny is straight up smiling now as she fastens it around her neck. She willfully ignores him and crosses the room back to her mirror. Johnny glitches in behind her, leaning against the wall, and gives her a full once over.
"Gotta say, V, you clean up alright."
She rolls her eyes at him again and starts putting on make-up. Johnny takes off his aviators and crosses his arms, still watching her.
"Never seen you wear makeup before."
"Never had a reason to."
Johnny cocks an eyebrow in response, and continues to watch her silently as she finishes applying a dark red lipstick.
“Look at my little merc,” he says, his voice warm with approval.
It’s the most openly affectionate thing he’s ever said to her, and it stops her dead in her tracks. Their eyes meet for an instant, then she recovers and flashes him a cocky smirk, grabs her coat, and heads for the door. Walls up, she thinks.
Notes:
This is my first multi-chapter fic ever!! Hope you all like it!
I have a decent amount of it already written and the rest is outlined in great detail and honestly I'm having so much fun writing about these two gonks.
That being said, I can't promise I'll "finish" this or update it regularly, but I'm very much on a roll right now and will definitely keep adding to it until I get bored or run out of steam or finish it, whichever happens first.** Let me know if you want more or if this is hot garbage pouring from my brain and someone should come take my keyboard away immediately lmao**Don't worry, new readers, this fic is now COMPLETED!
Chapter 2: Hostility, Brutality
Summary:
V has a dream about Johnny that really unsettles them both, for more than one reason.
Notes:
CW: mildly dubious consent (in a confusing dream sequence)
Okay things are getting spicy much more quickly than I anticipated OOPS and also you're welcome. This chapter is a bit dark and comes with a content warning for semi non-con stuff (it's fairly mild, but still may be triggering for some)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When V stumbles back into her apartment later that night, she is drunk. Rogue did seem intrigued by her ask, but wanted 15 thousand fucking eddies upfront. V has almost that much, almost, but she’s been saving what she has to pay Vik back for all the bona fide work he's done on her, from her top-of-the-line Kiroshis to her new fuckin' arm. And despite the fact that a lot of top fixers are suddenly calling her with jobs now, she is still relatively small-time. Hence the cheap clothes and SCSM burritos. Fucking fuck, she thinks. A couple more gigs and she’ll have enough to pay Rogue, but then she’ll be back to square one with her Vik debt. She sighs. Vik will have to wait. Again. Bless that man and his strange soft spot for her.
After talking to Rogue, she’d sat with the bartender for a while. Claire was her name, right? Nice girl, V thinks. Claire’d remembered the drink Jackie had spelled out for her, and made V as many as she wanted. Which was a lot, it turns out. And Johnny certainly hadn’t been eager to pump the brakes on her little bender. From what she’s gathered, his experiences of her sensations are a little bit muted and delayed, but he can still appreciate a good stiff drink. Or ten. Fuck, did she really have ten? Her skull is half titanium, her left arm is chrome now, she's rocking reinforced tendons in her legs, a spinal stabilizer, and a subdermal RealSkinn nanoweave on most of her torso (she silently thanks Vik yet again), but her liver is still an original.
Well, with the way things are going, she might not be needing it for very much longer, anyway.
She takes off her jacket and tosses it onto the pile of clothes on her beanbag chair that serves mainly as a pedestal for said clothing pile, peeling off her pants as she collapses towards her bed, not bothering to wash off her makeup or take off her shirt or hell, even her choker. It’s been a long day, and she is piss drunk.
But despite her exhaustion, she finds herself tossing and turning in her bed, trying her best not to focus on the mundane yet obvious reason: that dull insistent throbbing between her legs that she hasn't allowed herself to address for weeks now, thanks to her ever-present, unwanted spectator. Worse yet, she is sure that Johnny knows, and her body burns with the frustration and silent humiliation.
As if confirming her worst suspicions, she feels his annoyance prickle into a sharper edge of something primal and caged, which in turn triggers a sudden and dizzying wave of shame, excitement, and fear that she feels looping between them, like the feedback from a guitar amp.
She isn't sure if that last thought is hers, or Johnny's.
The room is spinning slightly from the booze, and she watches her ceiling fan rotate slowly through half-lidded eyes until finally, she feels them close.
The sensations settle over her like a static haze.
The dream begins like most of the dreams she’s been having lately. Dragging herself from that landfill, left arm mangled from being crushed beneath a refrigerator. Intercut with Johnny’s version of the same dream, of losing his left arm in the war as a teenager. Fuck, he’d been so young. And in the dream, it’s all so vivid. That cold, ripping feeling, the horrible phantom pain, and it’s not just because she’s experienced it herself. She’s living his memory of it, his PTSD dream. His nightmares are hers now, as hers are his. Only took them a couple of days to figure that one out, though they've yet to explicitly discuss it. Like most things between them.
But then the dream changes, and she’s in a room she doesn’t recognize. It’s like a dressing room, or a hotel room, but the walls are shifting and she can’t quite make out any details. It looks a little bit like the No-Tell room where Dex flatlined her, but all No-Tell rooms look the same, really. Could even be her apartment. But it feels like a place that’s important to her, though she can’t quite place why. Is it something from Johnny’s memories? Or a mix of both of theirs?
It doesn’t matter anymore, because suddenly Johnny is there, prowling the room like a trapped animal, like he did the first night he was in her head.
“Gotta get out of here,” he is muttering to himself. He stops and bangs his head and his fist against the wall, then continues pacing and muttering. He hasn’t noticed her yet.
She’s not sure if it’s really him, or just some figment of her dreams. She’s seen herself in their mixed up dreams before, looking small and weak, naive and fragile and stupid, probably the way Johnny sees her. Maybe this dream is just her projection of that first night, and how terrified she was. She braces herself.
She realizes Johnny has spotted her, and the look on his face is one she’s never seen before. It’s absolutely feral. He takes a step towards her, and she backs away instinctively, tripping backwards over some garbage or something. She looks down and sees it’s a bottle of pills. Her blockers. Or no, it's the other pills, the pseudoendotrizine. To speed things up, Misty said, and she feels a cold stab of fear in her chest. As she stumbles and falls flat on her back, she realizes she is still wearing the vinyl top and choker she fell asleep in, and absolutely nothing else. And suddenly Johnny is standing over her, looking down at her like she’s prey, just another body to take however he wants.
Take in the sense of overwrite and consume, she is suddenly sure of that. He’s going to kill her, push her out once and for all and take over.
She scrambles backwards on her hands, trying to put some distance between them, but his metal hand is on her wrists, wrenching them upwards and pinning them above her head, and his lip curls upward into a sneer as he watches her struggle in vain. She hears the words, “Johnny, please,” slip from her lips, and she’s not sure what exactly it is she’s begging him for at this point. She is aware of her hips arching towards him, almost against her will.
But it’s enough to make him stop and lock eyes with her.
His eyes are black and unfocused, and he growls as he shoves his other hand, his real one, inside of her, roughly and with no preamble.
She squirms and tries to back away, but she is so fucking wet and she knows he can feel it and he is looking at her like he is certain that this is what she wants. This is her dream after all, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
She doesn’t have much time to think about it, because Johnny curls his fingers inside of her, thrusting faster and harder and rubbing her clit in exactly the way she likes albeit much more roughly than she’s used to, and the room is glitching around them and suddenly his eyes focus on hers and she is abruptly and absolutely sure that this is the real Johnny. The realization brings her crashing over the edge, so fucking quickly, and at the same time she feels his consciousness crashing violently into hers as she convulses, his intense self-loathing and his fucking traumatic memories intercut with her waves of intense pleasure. She screams his name as she wakes up, soaked in sweat and shaking violently, a Relic malfunction glitching the edges of her vision. She heaves herself out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom just in time to vomit a stream of blood into her toilet.
“Johnny?” she calls out again, weakly this time.
There is no response. She can still feel him there somewhere, but he’s put up all the walls now and is bunkered down somewhere deep inside of her, and she can barely feel anything coming from him. And what she can feel is just dull waves of pain, shame, and sheer terror. She can’t tell whether it’s hers or his.
Fuck, she thinks, curling around her toilet. Every single thing about this entire fucking situation is so fucking fucked up.
She wakes up on her bathroom floor, still cradling her head on the toilet bowl. Every single part of her body hurts. She can tell by the light that it’s near midday.
She turns back to the toilet and retches again, but thankfully there’s no blood this time, it’s just a good old-fashioned hangover puke.
She staggers to her feet, finally freeing herself of the stupid corset top and choker she was wearing, still sticky with her sweat and bloody vomit. She’ll have to get it cleaned later.
Her holo is beeping, and she pulls on a tattered white tank top, the closest shirt within arm’s reach, as she goes to answer it. Fuck. It’s that guy Ozob she was supposed to call.
“I need a driver,” he says as she picks up. “I heard you’re the best in town.”
There’s nothing she hates more than being buttered up for a shitty job. But she needs to scrounge up those last couple thousand eddies for Rogue, so she’s not exactly in a position to be turning down gigs.
"Japantown, now. By the market entrance. Give a few honks and I'll stroll up. Later, V," he says, ending the call before she can respond.
Fuck.
She pulls on some cargo pants and her combat boots. Her hair is beyond salvation, so she shoves a baseball cap on her head and tries to tuck as much of her hair into it as she can. Her eyeliner is still smudged around her cheeks, but at least her lipstick is gone from all the puking.
Oh well, she thinks, grabbing her iron and heading for the door.
After watching Ozob (who turns out to be some ex-merc from Brazil with a literal live grenade implanted in the middle of his face like a fuckin' clown nose) get into a shootout with some Tyger Claws in the alley outside of Misty’s shop, and checking to make sure Misty herself isn't too rattled, V drives up to Northside to handle some gigs for Regina. Johnny is still blocking her out; she hasn’t heard a single thing from him yet today. She’s also still getting the residual waves of really bad feelings from him, wherever he’s hiding, though the intensity has waned a bit.
He finally pops up when she agrees to help a monk she encounters near the docks rescue his brother from some Maelstrom gangers who've been nabbin' people off the streets, implantin' the poor fucks full of chrome and torturing 'em.
"How poetic, a monk in distress. They should include this in your epic," he says smugly, glitching in right behind the monk. Her face hardens when she sees him.
"What are you gonna do, meditate at them until they drop dead?" he intones, catching her expression and probably the feelings behind it, as well.
"Wish you'd drop dead," V snaps back.
Johnny smirks and flips her the bird. V does it right back, not caring that to any observers, she's flipping off the air.
He grins and gives her two middle fingers right back.
They're acting like fucking children and she knows it.
Notes:
WHEW this got kinda dark
Chapter 3: Drowning Call
Summary:
V and Johnny attempt (unsuccessfully) to communicate, and V visits some old friends.
Chapter Text
The next day, V decides to wear those stupid old pants she has with a Silverhand patch on the knee, just to see if Johnny will say anything, and finds herself feeling slightly disappointed when he doesn't. He’s still been keeping his distance, only appearing occasionally to briefly rag on her, then glitching away immediately and burrowing back into whatever deep recess of her mind he’s been hiding out in.
He’s a fucking pain, sure, and she doesn’t trust him as far as she can throw him (which is probably nowhere considering he’s an engram literally stuck in her brain), but getting the silent treatment is starting to drive her crazy. Mostly because she knows he can still see and hear most of what she does, hell, most of what she thinks. And she’d rather he just come out and say whatever he’s thinking, even if it’s cruel or callous. Definitely not because she misses his constant nagging, she tells herself. And definitely not because she’s still trying to figure out what the fuck to make of that dream.
It's not like she hasn't considered it. The full implications of having him here. The lines between them that will inevitably be crossed. The futility of trying to keep any parts of herself private. She feels a hot flush at the thought.
Jesus, she thinks. Must be pretty fuckin’ lonely if I'm fantasizing about the dead terrorist in my head.
“You got that right, princess,” he says, glitching into view as she’s finishing up the last of her synth-coffee, startling her and almost causing her to do a spit take. “And here I thought it was sad when that joytoy at Clouds gave you a pep talk ‘stead of screwing your brains out. Really outdoing yourself, kid. Preem work.”
“Fuck you, Johnny,” she says, heat rushing to her face.
“In your dreams,” he smirks back without missing a beat, and she is furious. How fucking dare he.
“Seem to remember you being the one who stomped over and shoved your fingers in me, asshole,” she spits at him.
“Only 'cause you asked so nicely,” he drawls. His aviators are still on, so she can’t read his face, and he’s keeping his emotions carefully guarded.
Her lip curls into a snarl and she hurls her coffee cup at him. Of course, it passes straight through him, splashing the remains on her stupid Arasaka clock. Why the fuck does she even still have that thing?
“'Cause it’s the only thing you still got from that shithole you lived in with your mom,” Johnny says, answering her unspoken thought.
“Stop fucking doing that!” she says through gritted teeth. “Is that what you’ve been up to for the last 48 hours? Diggin’ around in my memories?”
“Are you kidding? I’d puke all over your gonk brain if I did that.”
She scowls, and he shrugs.
“Can’t help it sometimes though, V,” he continues, his voice only slightly softer. “If you’re thinkin’ ‘bout something hard enough, chances are I’m gonna see it too. Not too much I can really do about that. Learn to control your thoughts better or something if you care that much.” He lights a cigarette and looks away. He’s seen more of her past than he wants to admit, she can feel that.
“Thanks for the tip, dickwipe,” she hisses, stepping right through him into her bathroom to shove a couple of spare MaxDocs into the pockets of her coat before storming out the door.
After venting some of her anger by knocking the teeth out of those two freaky twins in Kabuki (thanks once again in no small part to the top shelf cybernetic replacement left arm Vik installed while she was recovering after the heist), she remembers that text from Kirk, wanting to meet at El Coyote Cojo. She’d been planning to ignore him, but suddenly decides it might not be such a bad idea to stop by and check in on Pepe and Mama Welles, maybe even pay Padre a visit. She could stand to see some familiar faces. She texts Kirk back, telling him to meet her there in an hour. She knows it’s gonk of her to even consider working with him again, but eddies are eddies, and right now, she needs more of them.
She hasn’t been by the Coyote since Jackie’s ofrenda. It was only a week ago, but it’s been a damn long week, and it’s not the memory she wants to associate this place with.
This used to be her haunt, she thinks as she screeches her bike to a halt by the entrance. Her neighborhood dive that she basically treated like her living room while growing up. And as a teenage street rat, when she started running small jobs for the block gangs, and then later when she began working bigger gigs for Padre as a young adult. She got her start here. Hell, she even dated that gonk nomad prick who used to work here as a barkeep. He’d vanished to rejoin some other nomad clan while she was in Atlanta, and while she wasn’t sad to see him go, she was, and maybe still is, a little bitter about how he chose to leave. She'd caught him cheating twice: once, with a skydiving instructor that she’d paid for as a surprise, and once in the apartment they briefly shared. Not that she'd been much better when it came to things like commitment. She wonders where he is now, and if any part of him would care what is happening to her.
But most prominently, she finds that being back here makes her think of the time she spent living with Jackie and his mother. The laughter, the warmth those two showed her was unlike anything she’s ever experienced before or since. And the chilaquiles didn’t hurt, either.
And, of course, she thinks of the night she first met Jackie. That fateful night they got arrested together trying to steal that stupid fucking car. That was the night that started it all, she thinks. Or was it when she decided to come back from Atlanta? Or something else, something even further back? When had it become too late for her to change course? She thinks of what Jackie used to say when he was in his darker moods. Born in shit, die in shit. Were people like them just destined to get passed the worst fucking hand in the whole deck, time and again?
“Alright V, enough with this sad sack sentimental bullshit. We drinkin’ here or not?”
“I’m drinkin’,” she says, kicking down the stand of her bike, then swinging her leg over and heading towards the door. “You’re doing whatever the fuck it is you do in my head.”
She can feel Johnny’s irritation at that, but part of her is glad he’s not blocking her off completely anymore. She takes a deep breath, then pushes open the door to the bar and steps inside.
Pepe is behind the bar and waves her over, and she slides onto a stool.
“V! Great of you to stop by,” he says, sliding her her usual order before she can even open her mouth. Centzon tequila, neat. She knows it’s Johnny’s drink of choice too, but the fact that Pepe handed it to her without her saying a single word should tell him that this is a preference that predates him by a long shot. And besides, who says he gets dibs on a signature tequila? Johnny doesn't say shit, though, so she cocks an eyebrow at Pepe and downs the glass in one swig.
“Weird seein’ you here without Jackie, though,” Pepe adds, watching her as she slams the glass back down on the table.
“Yeah,” she agrees.
They swap a few memories of him, and he refills her glass. She can feel the warmth from the drink curling in her stomach, and it’s helping to unknot some of the pain and fucking loneliness that’s been eating away at her since Jackie… since the heist.
“How’s Mama Welles doing?”
Pepe looks to his right, and V follows his gaze and sees her sitting alone on the couch, staring at the portrait of Jackie framed by candles.
The table is still set up in the back, and judging by the looks of it, V suspects it may now be a permanent fixture. She stands from the bar and crosses over to it, pausing to examine Jackie’s pistols, which are still laid out there.
“Take them, mija,” Mama Welles insists, watching her. “They’re not doing anyone any good collecting dust in this old dive,” she says. “You will put them to good use, I’m sure.”
V relents and places one of the pistols in her spare holster. She likes the idea of keeping Jackie’s gun close to her. Almost like a part of him is still protecting her.
She sits besides Mama Welles on the couch.
Johnny is unusually chatty with her this afternoon. Between berating her for agreeing to do a job for Kirk again and providing running commentary while they follow and stake out Pepe’s wife as a favor to her old choom, they quickly begin to fall back into the easy banter they’ve been tentatively establishing over the past week or so. She caps off the evening by climbing up onto the roof of the Coyote, like she and Jackie used to, to watch the sunset and share a cigarette or two.
Johnny glitches in beside her, and they sit in companionable silence together for the first time in, well, ever, and Johnny closes his eyes and even sighs a little when V lights her cigarette. She doesn’t smoke often, just when she’s drinking, but it’s been hard not to succumb a bit to Johnny’s constant whining about it. And she’s beginning to actually feel the cravings sometimes herself, too.
He takes a long drag of his imaginary cigarette, and V wonders again whether he actually gets anything out of it when he does that. He must, since he keeps doing it. Or maybe it’s just habit?
“Think when Evelyn comes to she’ll have some answers for us?” V wonders aloud. It’s been a few days since they pulled Ev outta that godawful XBD hellscape, and V still can’t shake the image of that place, the state they found the doll in. She knew XBD production got dark as fuck, but seein’ it in person still rattled her. According to Judy, Ev is still despondent, and V can’t say she’s surprised to hear it.
Johnny sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “V, if I could see that far I wouldn't be a fucking ghost on a chip in a corpse's head right now.”
V pulls on her cigarette, then coughs into the back of her hand as she exhales, pointedly ignoring the light splattering of blood left behind on her wrist. She avoids Johnny’s eyes, but she can feel him looking at her.
“Johnny… the fuck do you want from me?” she asks softly after a moment.
“It's all goin' too slow,” he mutters, his voice softening to something almost like concern. “Gonna decomish before we learn how to rip the chip out.”
A sharp pain lances through V’s head as if to punctuate his point, and she leans forward, clutching her forehead in her hands. She can feel Johnny still watching her, and raises her chin to meet his eyes defiantly. “Wanted me dead, said so yourself.”
He holds her gaze, unflinching. “Made it pretty clear since that I changed my mind. Want you to live now.”
They stare at each other for a beat as V weighs this. “Can't find the words to describe exactly how fucked up you are,” she finally says.
Johnny regards her, still not breaking eye contact as he takes another drag of his cig. “I just needed a calmer moment to think. And yeah, figured since fate gave me another shot, I'll take it.”
V huffs a dark laugh. “To live life to the fullest? See the northern lights, run with the mechbulls or with gazelles on a safari?”
“To finish what I started,” Johnny replies smoothly. “I'm back in the game. Want 'Saka out, so I'm gonna need you in.”
“But why?” V presses. “Fightin' for some dated ideal? Pursuin' a personal vendetta?”
Johnny’s face is once again unreadable. “You don't need to know. Just need to get me from point A to point B.” He pulls his cigarette again, leaning closer to her. “Listen, I know things. Where we can save your life, who can help us do that. You'll get rid of the chip, I’ll smash 'Saka... win-win, kid. Soulkiller's what we need, and Milkoshi's how we grab it.”
V scowls. “You know you're just an irritating hallucination, right? Should just ignore you.”
“And you're a walkin’ corpse,” Johnny retorts. “Should just wait till your mind shrivels to nothing and frees up space for me.”
The blow lands. “You fuckin' asshole,” she hisses through gritted teeth.
“But as should be obvious, I've decided to help you," he reminds her coolly. “Need to find somethin' first. Seven letters, starts with an M…”
V sighs. “Okay, so, this Mikoshi,” she relents. “Seen your memories of it… did a real number on ya.”
Johnny scowls at this. “Seems we got a few more things to broach than I thought, but that'll come later.” He frowns, then continues. “So you're jacked in, cruisin' the Net, Arasaka can use Soulkiller, an AI, to trap, fry and pack away your psyche, your mind and your soul. When Soulkiller fries, roasts and boils you, you die. But the contents of your mind get copied to an engram first. Followin' so far?”
She nods. “Sure. That's how you became a construct.”
“Exactly,” Johnny says grimly. “Now, Mikoshi's the place Soukiller operates out of, where it stores its victims' engrams.”
“I know that,” V reminds him. “Still don't see how that can help my chip problem.”
“Not the brightest bulb on stage, are ya?” Johnny says, but his voice is teasing now, almost affectionate. “Fifty years back, for ops on the human mind, Mikoshi was the sole place on Earth where they did anything like that. Bet it still is today. Tellin' ya, all roads lead there. It's where we'll settle our biz. You yours, me mine.”
V swallows at the implications of what he's proposin', at what she's been fearing all along about where exactly all these roads are leading. “And, uh, how you plan to smash Arasaka this time? Got another nuke tucked away?”
“This time, bomb's named Alt Cunningham.”
V’s gut clenches. “The legendary ‘runner,” she says softly. “You gonna tell me what the fuck she has to do with this?”
Johnny’s eyebrows raise slightly, but his face gives nothing away. “Not yet. You’ll see once we find what we need. For now, we got no time to lose, need to get inside Mikoshi. So we need Alt. And the Voodoo Boys are our ticket to find her.” He takes another long drag. “You had a plan, you tried, it fell flat. Now you're flat… not in any condition to find jackshit.”
V nods slowly. Johnny’s right, it’s been all fuckin’ dead ends so far. Evelyn, Hellman, the Voodoo Boys… it feels like the answers they’re chasin’ after are always just out of reach.
She’s finishing up her last drag when a sudden thought hits her like a ton of bricks.
“Mr. Hands!” she exclaims, startling them both.
“Gettin’ creative with nicknames for me?”
“No, you gonk, that fixer in Pacifica who called me the other day. Said only to call him if it was business. Remember? Thought he seemed shady as fuck, so I ignored it.”
“Oh right, the glitched out guy with the face blockers.” Johnny lights another cigarette. “Can’t hurt to try. Might have some contacts.”
She flicks on her holo and finds the contact she needs. The fuck kinda name is Mr. Hands, anyway? she thinks as she listens to the holo ring, hoping he’ll answer. Most of the other fixers she works with just go by their real names.
“V! What’s shakin?”
The strange man’s weird raspy shout fills her ears as he picks up, and V breathes a small sigh of relief.
Chapter 4: Cyber Sexcapades
Summary:
V crosses the Blackwall to meet Alt and makes some discoveries about Johnny's past.
Notes:
If you haven't caught on, chapter titles are all Samurai tracks (with some Eurodyne and Silverhand solo tracks mixed in too bc otherwise I'd run out lmao)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
As it turns out, Mr. Hands' did have a way to get V in touch with the Voodoo Boys, though his plan almost got her fuckin' flatlined in the process. After sneakin' into the abandoned Grand Imperial Mall and facing down a NetWatch agent (and surviving the spike the Voodoo Boys'd used to try and zero him), V'd managed to crawl back to Maman Brigitte, the Voodoo Boys' leader, the one who'd been trying to get her hands on Johnny's Relic in the first place.
And now V's in the basement of their fuckin' weird little church, standing next to a bathtub full of ice surrounded by the gangers' black market netrunning rigs.
“What's your plan to contact Alt?” she asks Maman Brigitte, swallowing hard. V hopes the matriarch can’t see through her bravado.
“We try to cut out a unique piece of Silverhand's engram from de biochip," Brigitte replies in her heavily accented English. "Alt will know it,” she continues confidently. “If something of de human is left after years beyond de Blackwall, she will answer.”
V balks. “Whoa, what? You said nothin' 'bout breakin' through the Blackwall.”
Brigitte shrugs. “Well, now you know.”
“Don't try and get outta this, V,” Johnny warns her, tapping his foot impatiently from where he’s perched on the edge of the bathtub. “Just do what she says. I'm not about to sizzle with you.”
V cocks an eyebrow at him. Looks like you're the bait, she says to him silently. You okay with that?
“Yeah, whatever,” Johnny mumbles. “Just do what she says.”
But his energy is nervous, crackling, giving him away. V studies his face. Who was Alt to him?
She glances at Brigitte and the rest of the ‘runners gathered. “What exactly do you want from Alt? All of you?”
“Alt de only one can give us safe passage past de Blackwall,” Brigitte explains. “When de change come, we wish to be on de winning side.”
V nods slowly. This is gonna be a deeper dive than she has ever done before. But she forces herself to swallow her fear as she hoists herself onto the ledge of the freezing tub.
“Let's do this,” she says, lowering herself into the tub before she can change her mind. She winces, her body seizing as the cold water envelopes her. Breathe, she tells herself. “Oookay, wh-what now?” she manages through chattering teeth.
“Li pare,” one of the ‘runners monitoring her says in Haitian Creole. She's ready.
Another VDB 'runner grasps her head, twisting it to the side to plug her in. The world glitches and stretches, V’s hands going numb as she feels herself start to go under. Her fingers warp and pull into strange and unsettling shapes.
“J-Johnny?” she stammers, almost out of instinct, and then the world fractures and blurs and she’s dragged down into the surreal dreamscape of cyberspace.
The Voodoo Boys' private data fortress materializes around V, and Maman Brigitte is there, standing before her with her arms spread. It's a bridge to the deep Net, the gang leader explains. And in order to find something to get Alt's attention, she's gotta go digging around in V's brain for more of Johnny's memories.
The woman takes V’s face in her hands, and the virtual world around them twists and warps. It’s disorienting, nauseating - she can feel a hatch somewhere in her mind being pried open, and then it’s just Johnny, everything is Johnny, she is Johnny, and it’s a lot like when she experienced his memories of blowing up ‘Saka Tower in 2023, except sharper and much clearer, less muddled, because this time she actually understands what is happening. It’s like a braindance, but much more vivid than any BD she’s ever experienced, even the raw ones Judy showed her before the heist.
It’s 2013 now. She feels Johnny’s rage and frustration, her own rage and frustration, as he stalks onstage and grabs the mic and screams into it. His eyes lock with a woman in the crowd, and she knows that it’s Alt. Fuck, she’s beautiful. She isn’t sure if the thought is her own, or Johnny’s, but it doesn’t really matter at this point. She was his output, V realizes. Coulda fuckin’ mentioned that earlier.
And then she’s backstage, stalking towards Johnny's dressing room, ignoring the screaming fans and media clambering against the barricade, screaming her name. Not her name, his name.
“SILVERHAND!!!!” a girl shrieks, over and over, decked head to toe in Samurai merch.
V feels Johnny's head turn as he flashes the crowd a shit-eating grin, then turns to a young Kerry Eurodyne, who is standing outside the door to his dressing room, arms crossed. He’s looking at Johnny with a mix of resentment and concern, and opens his mouth to start laying into him as Johnny takes a steps closer. Johnny barely listens to what he says, snapping at him sharply before shoving him aside and pushing open the door to the dressing room and storming inside, slamming it in Kerry’s face.
Alt is there, sitting cross-legged on the couch in the back of the room, watching him, her face impassive. Johnny ignores her and turns to the mirror, throwing down the guitar he’s still holding and grabbing the bottles of pills there.
It’s less strange than she expects, seeing Johnny’s face in the mirror here. It feels as natural as wearing her own face, right now. His metal arm, his tattoos, his bracelets, the feeling of his shaggy black hair brushing against his shoulders. Fuck, it’s almost a revelation to have his body feel so corporeal for a moment, even as a memory that she’s living out. The only other time he’s felt this real to her was in that fucking dream.
“Fuck!” Johnny exclaims, downing a handful of the pills. In the mirror, she can see Alt approaching behind him, and Johnny turns to face her.
They fight, then fuck, then fight some more, and she can tell from the way the scene feels that this is something Johnny thinks about a lot, a memory that plays over and over in his head. It’s not just because it’s great sex, (though it is, she begrudgingly admits), but because of the emotional weight she can feel in every corner of the room, in every curve of Alt’s body, in the way Johnny reverently gathers Alt's soft blonde hair and yanks it hard as he crushes their mouths together, in the sharpness of her green eyes, in every sensation, in every word they speak to each other. Everything seems sharper, more vivid, but also dreamlike in the way memories do when you replay them so many times they take on their own mythology, become something new entirely, a little braindance of your mind’s own making. This is something Johnny carries with him, she realizes, though she doesn’t fully see why until the scene changes and they’re in the alley behind the venue, mantis blades cutting through her torso - no, Johnny’s torso - like butter, and the world going black as he lies there in the street helpless, unable to do anything to stop it as those fucking 'Saka goons load Alt into the back of that fucking truck, taking her away from him forever.
And then they’re back in Arasaka Tower, shooting their way through the waves of guards, Rogue at Johnny’s side once again. V’d suspected there was more to their relationship than Johnny’d been letting on, and this confirms it. Fuck, he’d done a number on her. On Alt, and Kerry too. She sees now how he treated the people he was closest to, the people who loved him the most, who fought for him the hardest, who followed him to hell and back over and over, who didn’t give up on him and kept coming back even after he’d pushed them to their brink, and then past it. He pushed them all away, made them feel foolish for caring, because he really believed that they were foolish for caring. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe in his ideals, or share his visions, or any of the other excuses he made or things he accused them of. They just didn’t want to watch him destroy himself and everything around him in the process. But he did, and that was the problem.
And now they’re at the worst part. She already knows what’s coming, she can feel it. This is the part that haunts Johnny’s nightmares the most. She’s seen flashes of it, even. The woman in the white netrunner suit, slumped in a runner chair deep within Arasaka’s system core. She's seen it in his dreams. It’s Alt, of course, and everything goes even more downhill from there. She feels Johnny’s arms reaching for the woman, cradling her, yanking the link out of her head, begging her to wake up, come back to him, stay with him, but it’s already too late, she’s limp against his chest, her heart fluttering to a stop, her breath catching into a long low rattle as the life fades from her body. And then Johnny’s lashing out, punching that media gonk, smashing up the chair, the windows, anything and everything, and the world around her glitches and suddenly she’s herself again, lying flat on her back, in cyberspace again. She’s naked, and Johnny is standing over her, wearing the combat vest he died in, the same vest he was wearing the first night she saw him, blood covering his arms and face.
“Well?” he says, pacing back and forth above her. "Spit it out before you burst."
"Never even told me half that about Alt," she chokes, sitting up on her elbows.
"Really?" he growls. "Any examples?"
"I dunno, that you were a couple, that she wrote Soulkiller, that she's dead? " V says, climbing to her feet. Johnny doesn't answer right away, and turns and stalks away from her.
"Didn't know where she was, if we'd be able to find her," he says. "Didn't see the point."
"What do you mean 'find her'?" V presses, still struggling to make sense of it all. She hadn't realized Johnny's been banking everything on getting help from his dead output - he's been so infuriatingly vague thus far about who or what exactly Alt even is. "How the hell's she supposed to help us now? As a ghost?"
"She's not dead," Johnny cuts in. "Managed to escape."
Is he that fucking delusional?
"Johnny, I saw the body. You felt her die. I saw it."
Johnny is quiet for a moment, his back to V.
"She fled. Into the Net."
That stops V short.
"You're pushin' bullshit, Johnny," she says, shaking her head and laughing sharply. "Heard more than my share of tales 'bout runners who ran off to Never-Never Netland. Just never thought you'd be the next to tell me one."
"Don't need you to believe me," Johnny spits, his back still to her. "As long as you do exactly what I say."
He is leaning forward against some kind of barricade. She looks around. Where the fuck even are they, anyway? Arasaka Tower, still? Johnny’s head is bowed, and he suddenly looks broken and small. This isn't easy for him either, she realizes. And fuck, who is she to say a dead runner can't escape to the Net when there's an engram of a long-dead rockstar living in her fucking head, talking to her right now?
"When'd you find out?" she asks, stepping closer to Johnny and leaning against the railing next to him.
"When she made contact, a little later."
"And? What'd she say?"
"That she was a captive in the Arasaka subnet. But they couldn't hurt her." He takes a deep breath. "And she told me not to come lookin' for her."
“What? Why?”
"This one time, she wanted me to just let it go. 'Cause enough people had died for nothing already."
I remind him of her, V realizes. She feels Johnny realize it too, and it pisses him off.
“So... what did you do?" V asks, ignoring the strange surge of feelings that pass between them.
“Got my hands on two thermonuclear charges."
Oh. Oh. Fuck. The pieces all suddenly click into place for V.
"Then headed back to Arasaka Tower," she finishes for him, her voice low.
Johnny is silent, but she can feel the grief still rolling off him in waves.
“And Rogue went with you. Again.”
“I paid her well,” Johnny says darkly.
God, was he really that blind?
“Said it yourself, she was the best,” V presses him. “Had her pick of the best contracts. But for some strange-ass reason, she took a job from a rocker with a death wish. A rocker forever getting his ass beat by Arasaka.”
“Different times, kid," he huffs. "Back then, mercs didn’t normally sell out to corps. All you had to do was yell ‘Let’s fuck up Arasaka!’ and every last one of ‘em jizzed their pants. Rogue included.”
“Uh huh,” V says, unconvinced. “Sure it had nothing to do with, y’know, how she felt about you?”
“You don’t know shit,” Johnny snaps, and it’s clear he’s done discussing it.
V watches him for a beat, his jaw tensed in profile. “Alright, then. How do you know Alt’s even still around?” she asks. “It’s been half a century. Which you’ve spent cloistered in Mikoshi. NetWatch coulda hunted her down years ago.”
Johnny laughs. “Oh, they tried, believe me. But their tiny corporate brains can’t handle a free AI that knows how people think. They were busy lookin’ for her in the Crystal Palace. While she was building the Ghost City for Kang Tao right outta Arasaka's fuckin' basement.”
Fuck, V thinks. This is some real shit.
"The Voodoo Boys think they know where she is. Beyond the Blackwall," she guesses.
"Where nobody can touch her," Johnny laughs again, more bitterly this time.
"And Brigitte's primed to go there, break through. Just to contact Alt, talk to her." She sucks in the air through her teeth. "That's why they were trying to klep the Relic in the first place. Wanted to use your engram to get to her. Fuck."
"Too much for our little pro?" Johnny asks, finally turning to look at her, a sad smirk on his face.
V doesn't answer, and they look at each other for a long moment. But then the world around them glitches and distorts once more, and suddenly V is standing with her face inches from Maman Brigitte's again, and she realizes only seconds have passed since she last saw the woman.
It's time to go meet Alt.
The Blackwall doesn’t exactly look how V imagined it. She’s never dared venture this deep into the Net before. She’s confident enough in her 'running skills, but safely going this far out just flat out requires the sort of preem gear she can’t afford. She’s gotta admit, she’s impressed with the Voodoo Boys’ setup, she thinks, gazing up at the Wall with a mixture of fear and awe as Brigitte explains to her, like this is her first fucking time on the Net ever, that the Blackwall is actually an AI itself, and that the strange shapes she sees spiking through it are rogue AIs from beyond attempting to breach it. V shudders at the thought, but she can’t deny that the Blackwall is beautiful, enormous, and terrifying.
And now she’s about to cross it. Become one of the only living humans to ever do so. Assuming she comes back, that is.
She takes a deep breath and steps toward it, tentatively reaching her hand out. She thinks of the 'runner that those scavs forced through the Wall in that braindance she had to watch while tracking down Ev - how the Blackwall had shredded his mind and fried his body, how much it hurt before he died. Fear grips her gut.
“How do I-” she begins, but then the world around her distorts and flips and suddenly she’s on the other fucking side.
The Wall is to her back now, and she'd be relieved to be alive if the whole thing weren't so severely disorienting. Before her is an infinite abyss of swirling colors, shapes, and data that overwhelms her senses. Or is it just empty grayness? She can’t even tell. She can see shapes moving in it, and fuck, it’s all moving, and she feels queasy. It’s hard to look at, but there's nowhere else to look. She wonders if Mikoshi was anything like this, and the thought is answered by a flash of Johnny's memory of that endless, nauseating, monotonous vertigo.
This space feels strangely alive, by contrast.
And that's when she notices one of the shapes moving towards her.
“Alt?” she calls out, her voice shaky.
An undulating form floats closer to her, glitching as it approaches, and as it draws near, V can make out the shape of a woman, her skin and 'runner suit blood red, her hair that was once blonde fanning out around her, glitching into fractalesque swirls of red code, like some strange ethereal goddess of the underworld.
It's Alt, she's sure of it.
"You cannot remain here," Alt says, her voice cold and authoritative, echoing around V like it's coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, and V is forcibly ejected back out to Brigitte and the rest.
"Alt? What's going on?" she shouts, but before she can register what's happening, beams shoot out from the Wall itself, and Brigitte and rest of the Voodoo Boys are frozen in place, and then V is jerked away again somewhere, and she realizes she’s back in the same room she was just in with Johnny, and he's leaning against the barricade again, like he's been waiting for her. Except this time, Alt is hovering in the middle of the room.
"We will talk here," she states in a flat voice.
Johnny turns to V. "Relax, lemme handle this," he says gently.
V shoots him a skeptical glance, but doesn't reply as she moves to lean against the railing next to him.
"Johnny," says Alt, and there's a strange warmth to the way she says his name, contrasting sharply with her otherwise alien, inhuman voice.
Johnny seems to hear it, too. "Came through the Blackwall to meet me... That means we're good, things're chill between us?"
The warmth is gone. "I have recognized your engram code, but I do not know why you are here."
"To give you a chance to pay me back for gettin' you outta Arasaka Tower," he pleads, then turns to V. "V, this is Alt... best netrunner Night City's ever seen."
V can hear the pride and grief in his voice. She can feel that it hurts him to see Alt like this, a digital shadow of her former self. He really actually fuckin' loved her, she realizes. Who knew he had it in him?
Johnny turns back to Alt. "Alt, this is V. You need to save her life."
V frowns, unable to stop herself from cutting in. "What'd you do with Brigitte and the others? They still alive?"
Alt's cold eyes fall to her. "Yes, but she is not needed at the moment. What do you want?"
V glances at Johnny again, then back at Alt. "This chip, the Relic, it's... killin' me. Construct on it... Johnny... is wormin' its way through my neural system."
"I see this," Alt says, her face still impassive as she observes them steadily. "But why is it my problem?"
"Why the fuck isn't it?" Johnny argues. "You created Soulkiller. You handed Arasaka a fuckin’ super weapon that dismantled me, you, and half the 'runners in Night City."
"Your death was of your own making," Alt replies coolly.
"Jesus, Alt," Johnny replies, his voice breaking slightly. "I dove in after you. Gonna tell me now this ain't your problem?"
"It is not," Alt maintains. "The Alt Cunningham you strove to save in Arasaka Tower no longer exists. This should be obvious to you, as you were responsible for her death."
V can feel Johnny's reaction to this. "Your death wasn't Johnny's fault," she insists.
Alt's eyes once gain lock her in their icy gaze. "How could you know?"
"Seen you in his memories," V replies. "It was an accident."
Alt shakes her head, her unearthly red hair fanning out in whorls. "What you saw was his subjective view of what happened. A warped account of events he locked away in his subconscious and replayed time and again. It bears no resemblance to the truth."
Johnny doesn't react outwardly to this, but she can feel that dark knot of anger coiling inside his chest.
She is suddenly sure that Alt can feel it, too; that she can read Johnny like lines of code.
"If you're not Alt, who are you?" V presses.
"I use her engramatic data," Alt explains as though she's talking a child.
"Really?" Johnny replies coldly. "You find this 'icy bitch' aspect in there, too?"
V rolls her eyes at him. "Mind unloadin' this baggage later? Wasn't sure what to expect from a meetin' with an AI, but it sure as hell wasn't a digital lovers' spat."
"How's that help me, exactly?" Johnny retorts.
"Just don't make it any worse," V warns him, turning back to Alt. "Okay, I get it, you hate Johnny's guts," she tells the dead runner. "But what about me?"
Alt looks at her for a moment, then back at Johnny. "I cannot help you."
"Can't?" Johnny spits. "Or won't?"
"Can't," Alt replies. "To attempt to do so, I would need access to more advanced technology."
"What?" V counters. "But it's your tech, you created Soulkiller."
"The program I created has little in common with how Arasaka has since repurposed it."
Johnny sighs heavily, but his eyes flick to V again. "Fine... so how about Mikoshi? That advanced enough for ya?"
Alt's eyes flash, and if V didn't know better, she could swear she sees anger there. "If I could gain access to Mikoshi, it would cease to exist," Alt says in a low, dangerous voice.
Johnny grins. "Good, we can work with that," he says, sounding strangely pleased. "We'll get you inside Mikoshi, and you'll help. Deal?"
V looks at him quizzically, then back at Alt. "Best 'runner Night City's ever seen can't bust into Mikoshi on her own?" she challenges.
"I am a well known threat there," Alt explains. "They have a layer of black ICE with my name on it, literally."
"Kinda like a custom-made prison jumpsuit," Johnny mutters.
"I refuse to be caged in there ever again." Alt hovers slightly higher, moving closer to Johnny.
"What can you do for me, exactly?" V presses.
Alt looks at her. "With the Soulkiller resident Inside Mikoshi, I will create a construct of you, then disentangle your neural network from Johnny's. I shall then inject your engram back into your mortal form."
V blinks at her, trying to comprehend. "So... you'll save my life but flatline me along the way?"
"Your consciousness, neural engrams, will be recorded as data. The rest will cease to exist."
"The rest?" V asks dumbly. She still doesn't quite grasp what exactly Alt is implying.
"The soul," Alt replies. "I did not grant the program its name, but Soulkiller does precisely what it promises to do."
"Christ, I don't wanna listen to this bullshit," Johnny says, sounding agitated. "You're sayin' the short of it is that V just hops back into her body, right? Nothin' changes."
Alt gives him a long look. "Everything changes. You know this well."
Johnny is silent, but V can feel the conflict writhing within him.
"Right," V says, clearing her throat nervously. "So we got a plan."
"But how will you reach Mikoshi?" Alt asks them. "I've created armies that failed to breach it."
"They were children of the Net," Johnny counters. "There's your problem. We're bankin' on the human factor. We'll crack a window, slip you into Mikoshi."
"Johnny, uh... embellishes, in case you hadn't noticed," V interjects. "You don't trust him, which is fine, but you have my word we'll slip you inside Mikoshi while keepin' you outta harm's way."
Alt smiles wickedly, and this time V is certain she sees some human emotion there. "I believe this 'human factor' and I have things in common," Alt replies.
V smiles back. "So, we agreed?"
"Yes, we are agreed," Alt says. "Find a path into Mikoshi, I shall prepare a program to help you navigate the localnet."
"How'll I contact you once I'm ready?" V asks.
V feels a piercing in her head, and a series of numbers appear on her HUD.
"This is a BBS address," Alt explains as the code integrates itself with V's deck. "It will be our secure communication channel."
"Voodoo Boys," Johnny asks suddenly. "What about them?
Alt nods. "They shall let you pass unharmed," she replies. "Those were our terms."
And with that, the cyber world dissolves around them.
Notes:
Man, writing scenes from the actual game is a fucking HEADACHE lol I was trying to find YouTube clips to use as reference for some of the in-game dialogue but NONE of the videos I could find had V picking the dialogue selections I needed so I wound up having to load up the game and literally take notes lmao
I know it's less fun when these chapters are just a retread of stuff in the actual game, so I'm trying to avoid that, but it just seemed wrong to skip this part, especially because I really wanted to write V's reactions to it all. Anyway, hope you enjoy!
Chapter 5: Black and Blue and Red
Summary:
Johnny attempts to grapple with his feelings after V experiences some of his worst memories.
Chapter Text
Johnny stalks back and forth on the sidewalk, his engram projection pacing wildly as V stumbles out of the old church, collapsing onto her hands and knees and coughing up blood. Everyone around ignores her, and it’s not like he can do anything to help her either. And then he sees the fucking Secure Your Soul billboard on the bus stop. That sets him the fuck off. Seeing them peddling this scop like it’s some fucking privilege to be packed into an engram and uploaded to Mikoshi, to have your soul shredded and turned into code for Ara-fucking-saka to do whatever the fuck they want with. A dark rage twists inside him and he feels like if he doesn’t do something, right the fuck now, he’s going to explode. First Alt, then him, and now V. This stupid little girl who stumbled ass backwards into something way too big for her, way too big for any of them. And it’s gonna eat them all alive unless they fight back with everything they have. Maybe more than they have. More than anyone has. He tried to stand up to Arasaka twice, and look where the fuck it got him? Locked in fuckin’ soul prison for 50 years, then trapped in the head of some green as fuck little merc whose biggest achievement to date is horrifically botching a heist she had no fucking business being on in the first place. Fuck her for not being able to say no to her numbskull fuckin’ dead idiot choom. Major leagues my fuckin’ ass. He wants to scream at her.
She sighs as she staggers to her feet and walks towards him.
“Look,” he says to V. “See that?” He jabs his finger towards the billboard. “Fuck those cunts.” He sits on the ledge, leaning back and crossing his arms, closing off his body to her.
“You watchin’ a story on the Arasakas, or narrating porn?” she says, and god, she sounds so fucking tired. Kid can bite back, though, and that’s something he can’t help but like about her.
“Gee, aren’t you funny?” He allows himself a small smile, then gestures around them. “Look around, look what they’ve done to this ‘hood.”
“This the part where you divulge your master plan to annihilate Arasaka?” She sighs heavily, hands on her hips, head cocked to one side.
"No, it's the part where I say I despise petty merc-thiefs who think they're hot shit rebels after settin' foot in the Afterlife. Might think you took on Arasaka, but you're just a bug they scraped off the sole of their boot and tossed in the trash,” he lashes out. Whatever it is she has to say right now, he doesn’t want to fucking hear it. It all feels so fucking futile suddenly.
Johnny fucking hates that she saw all that she did. His darkest, worst memories, along with some of his greatest regrets. Or, that’s not quite right. He doesn’t hate that she saw it. He knows she has the same kinds of dreams. Hell, he’s shared them with her. All her worst dreams end with her cradling that big gonk’s head in the backseat of that Delamain, watching him bleed out until she wakes up screaming. Almost all of them, anyway.
He pushes down the thought of the specific exception he has in mind, still feeling the shame bubbling inside him. He’s already destroying V's mind, violating her bodily autonomy with his mere existence, and crossin' that line without her consent, even in a dream, just makes it all even fuckin' worse. But the truth is, in that dream he'd allowed himself to be steered by her hidden desires, found himself caught off guard by how strong they were... and by how strongly his own mirrored them.
He tried to keep his distance after that, to lay low in her mind. But after a day, he could feel her mind reaching for his, checking on him, trying to coax him out. He isn’t even sure how aware of it she was.
And the deeper truth is that he doesn’t hate that she saw his memories, he hates that he inflicted them on her. And worst of all, he hates that goddamn look of sympathy she’s wearing on her face right now. She’s not yelling at him and telling him what a dick he was to Alt, how he never deserved someone like her, all the things he already knows. Instead, she’s standing there, still soaking wet and shivering from the tub of ice she just spent the last few hours in, looking at him, her big eyes wide with newfound understanding. For some reason, she’d had trouble swallowing that he’d attacked ‘Saka Tower twice solely as a way to kick it to the corpos, topple Arasaka, free the world from their ironclad grasp. Too much collateral damage, she’d insisted. Not worth it.
No, it’s the fact that it somehow makes more sense to her that he did it to try to save someone he loved. And that’s what he can’t stomach. He’s on his feet again now, feeling his false body glitch as he rants at her, waves his arms, trying to make her open her fucking eyes and see how sick the world they live in is, see how ‘Saka is strangling the life out of everyone and everything, and is now coming for their very souls.
She hears him out and doesn't even argue, even when he leans in close to her, getting up in her face, still yelling, telling her that if he needs her body he'll fucking take it, use her, use anything he can to get to Arasaka and end their bullshit once and for all. He's really worked up now, barely aware of what he's even saying or to who. And she just listens, and even nods occasionally.
He’s feeling so many things right now, and he can’t pin any of them down, or even sort out which feelings are his and which are V’s. That was… that was all just a fucking lot. Sure, he relives those memories in his dreams almost every single night, but it was different seeing them through her eyes. Feeling her judgment of him, imagined or real. Or was it his own judgment of himself? It’s getting hard to tell these days. Either way, it makes him angry.
She just stands there watching him, her face impassive. He can’t totally tell what she’s feeling, either. She’s getting better at controlling it, he realizes. Guess she took his note, after all. He’s a little annoyed; being able to feel exactly what she was feeling made things a little easier. Made her easier to manipulate, he thinks. ‘Cause that’s what you do, what you always do, and you fucking know it.
He slumps back onto the ledge.
“Ain’t the only one to get flatlined by ‘Saka,” she reminds him. “‘Cept I didn’t get my mind scooped out, digilocked in a trinket.”
“Ha ha,” he says sardonically. “I brought war to their doorstep, kid. Your grand plan? To steal their fuckin’ car.”
“Still ended more or less the same way for us.” She looks past him, and he can still feel that jumble of contradictory emotions jostling inside of them both, none of them winning out. “Not quite dead, not quite alive either,” she finishes quietly.
He watches her for a minute, still trying to get a read on her. She keeps eluding him, refusing to fit into any box he tries to place her in. She does remind him a little bit of Alt, and that scares him for a fuckload of reasons.
“Been tryin’ to learn how you’re wired this whole time,” he muses. “To know who I’m dealin’ with. Thought you were just unlucky at first, but I kept watchin’ and finally realized what your problem is. You're a dirtgirl from Heywood who found the guts to walk a few blocks from home," he growls. "But turned out the best you can do is chase scavs for ennies." It comes out harsher than he intends, but he’s still too worked up at this point to care.
"You're a dick, y’know," she says, her voice even, but he can see the hurt in her eyes, feel it tugging at him in the web of bullshit flowing between their minds.
"And you're a cunt. Maybe we'll fit together after all?" He cocks an eyebrow at her over the top of his aviators. She rolls her eyes, but sits on the bench next to him and wraps her arms around herself.
"You know a lot about my past," she says. It's not a question.
"Well, yeah. I see flashes of it, just like you've seen flashes of mine.”
"Honestly?" she says, "I'm scared of the day I'll start seeing your memories as my own."
"Shit. If it's a two-way street, I'll somehow have to live with the fact that I let DeShawn best me, fuck me over."
"What’s it like?" she asks gently. “Livin’ in someone else’s body, I mean.” Fuck, she's being way fucking nicer to him than he deserves right now.
He mumbles some stuff to her about tits and hormones, the infuriating sensory lag, how it annoys the fuck outta him when she does gonk shit like burn her tongue on hot pizza and he doesn’t feel it right away. How badly he just wants a fucking cigarette, all the goddamn time. How all the sensations he gets through her are muted, delayed, like he's swimming through static sometimes. Doesn't even come close to describing the actual horror of being trapped in a body that's not your own, not in control of anything, your thoughts and feelings and memories and dreams laid bare to a complete fucking stranger. Well, that last part at least she probably understands.
“Gettin’ used to it, I guess,” he admits. “But it’s no fuckin’ picnic.”
She considers that for a minute.
"The moment I turn into you... will I even notice it?" Her voice sounds so small and frightened, and he fights down a strange impulse to put like, a hand on her shoulder or something. He knows he can't, though, so he just leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees.
She takes a deep breath and continues. “Or… is it one of those things where I’ll wonder why I ever feared it?”
It’s not what he expects her to say.
“Worst thing you can do to a human... rip their identity out of them,” he tells her. “That’s all I know.” He wishes he could offer her more.
"God, this fucking chip is the worst fuckin' thing to happen to me," she mumbles, putting her head in her hands.
"Mean to say I haven't earned the top spot yet?" he teases, turning to look at her.
She smiles. "An arrogant asshole's no small problem, but it ain't my biggest. Dying is."
He nods slowly. "Death by becoming someone else,” he says, his voice much softer now. “You didn't do anything to deserve that fate."
She is silent for a moment, both of them watching the ocean through the busted up old Ferris wheel.
"You afraid of death?" she asks.
He sighs. "I'm afraid of wasted opportunities."
"Like Arasaka Tower?"
"Came through it, as you can see,” he reminds her. “And I ain't done with them yet."
She chews her lip, and his eyes catch on the motion. "Can you just tell me what you want?” she presses. “What you really want?"
“Help me settle my score against Arasaka,” Johnny says without missing a beat, looking back out towards the boardwalk. “That's it.”
And it's true - if he's only got limited time back in this world, he wants to make it count. And that means makin' Arasaka pay. For what they did to him, what they did to Alt, what they're doin' to V. What they did to this city, what they did to this country, what they're doin' to the world. And now, V's the only one who can help him. And he's the only one who can help her.
V seems to consider this for a moment. "Your goal's to bury Arasaka, demolish it," she says slowly. "Mine's to stay above ground. Seem pretty clearly defined, both."
Johnny laughs sharply and turns to her, feeling something soften in his chest. "Actually align pretty nicely, too," he agrees, smiling at her. "You need Mikoshi to save your life. That done, I can burn it to the fucking ground."
He can feel how exhausted V is as she limps towards her motorcycle afterwards. She hasn’t slept since… hell, since before she snuck into the GIM, before she got her brain nearly melted by those netrunner gangbangers’ fucking spike, before she tangled with that NetWatch scum, before she’d had to relive Johnny's personal nightmares. Before spending hours in the deep Net, beyond the Blackwall, a strain on anyone’s mind, even the best netrunners. V's good, sure, but it's been a fucking lot for one body to take. And hers has to be strong enough now for not just one, but two fucked up idiots inhabiting it.
She starts up her bike and begins heading back up towards Watson. He can feel how badly she wants to collapse onto her bed and just sleep. He’s reminded of the last time they rode this way together, and how she tried to get a rise out of him by singing stupid lyrics to his song. He knew that she knew them, and it's kinda cute how much she tries to hide from him that she was once a big fan. He noticed the patch on her jeans, of course, as well as the records on her shelf. As if the Eurodyne posters on her wall don’t give it away, or the Second Conflict jacket she keeps in her closet, or the-
Wait. Is it Kerry that she's a bigger fan of? He swears he can remember seeing some of his Silverhand solo stuff there too, but...
His petty thoughts are interrupted by her holo ringing. It's the small loud girl, Judy. He sees why V likes her, but she's a little too wide-eyed for his tastes. Doesn’t understand how things have to get done, sometimes. V does, even if she doesn’t like admitting it. For all her talk about not wanting to kill unless absolutely necessary, she at least can recognize that sometimes it is, in fact, necessary.
Whatever it is that happened to Judy, it sounds urgent, so despite Johnny’s protests, V changes course and heads for Judy’s. Will this girl ever learn to say no? Johnny thinks.
“It’s called having friends, Johnny,” V replies as she skids her bike to a stop next to the dumpster in front of Judy’s apartment. “You could stand to learn a thing or two about that.”
Fuck me, he thinks. She can hear my thoughts now too?
"I think whatever Brigitte did made our connection stronger," she admits, hopping off her bike. "Can you feel it?"
He shrugs, glitching in next to the dumpster, cigarette already in hand. "I dunno. Feels the same to me."
"Hmm," she says. "Maybe it's just on my end, then."
"Wonder if this means I'm just killin' ya faster now," he mutters.
"Hope not," she agrees.
“And don't talk to me about friendship," he snaps, looking up to meet her eyes. "Like you didn't just watch me bum rush ‘Saka Tower for someone."
“It’s not always about grand gestures and blowing shit up,” she says, meeting his gaze coolly. “Sometimes it’s just as simple as bein' there for a choom when they need you.”
He stomps out his cigarette as a response, and she heads up the stairs to Judy’s apartment.
Fucking hell, Johnny thinks, as he watches the badges load Evelyn's lifeless body onto their stretcher and carry the poor dead doll out of Judy's apartment. The joytoy fuckin' offed herself, slit her wrists in the bathtub. After all the shit that happened to her... Fuck. Judy, Evelyn, V… they’re all just kids in way the fuck over their heads.
But then again, he’d only been 25 when Alt got taken by Arasaka, Johnny reminds himself. Two years younger than V is now. And Rogue’d been even younger. Maybe it’s him who’s getting too old for this shit.
V follows Judy up the fire escape to the roof, and the two girls share a cigarette and talk for a while. Johnny knows V is smoking mainly for his benefit, and he can't help but appreciate it. And fuck, when Judy tells them what she found on Evelyn’s BD scrolls, how Woodman took advantage of the doll's vulnerable and comatose body, it’s hard for Johnny not to materialize and punch something. It’s fucking shitstains like Woodman who make Night City a living hell, he thinks. The sooner they burn it all to the fucking ground, the better.
The sun is coming up by the time they finally get home. V strips off her clothes and collapses headfirst onto her bed, not even bothering to get under the covers or all the way onto the bed properly, and she’s out like a fuckin' light. Feeling her fall asleep is a strange sensation, the world around him dimming until he’s just kind of floating in her consciousness, still awake but only sort of. Today, he welcomes it. He's fuckin' tired too.
And then the dreams start.
It’s V’s dream this time, and he’s there in her head as she crouches over the bathtub at Judy’s again, gently lifting Evelyn’s body out of the tub and carrying her to the bedroom. He can feel Evelyn’s cold limp form hanging like dead weight in V’s arms, just like her mom's did all those years ago - a memory he's only seen glimpses of before, but one that he knows haunts V. Then the dream shifts and they’re back in that fucking Delamain, and the body V is holding belongs to Jackie, like he’s seen in her dreams too many times to count at this point. But as Jackie dies, the scene changes again and now it’s Alt whose head he’s cradling, feeling her die in their arms. This is what he was afraid of, he realizes. Now V's gotta have this dream too. But as the life slips out of her, suddenly the woman he’s holding is V, and it’s her that’s dying and he’s fucking powerless to stop it, powerless to do anything but feel her heart stutter and strain and slow to a halt, feel the heat leave her limbs.
And, of course, it’s him that’s killing her, his hands wrapped around her throat, squeezing the life out of her body - but he can’t move his hands, can’t move at all, can’t do anything but watch helplessly as her body goes limp under him. And that's when he suddenly knows that this is his dream. His nightmare.
Or is there even a difference anymore?
She wakes up screaming, like always.
Notes:
I can't not call out the fact that V literally can start the game with a closet full of Samurai merch and half the lyrics to Chippin' In tattooed on their back, and there's somehow still not a single dialogue option anywhere in the game to say something like, "Yes, Johnny, I have more than a passing familiarity with your band."
Chapter 6: Old Gold
Summary:
V returns to the Afterlife to speak with Rogue, and things with Johnny take a surprising turn.
Chapter Text
Johnny feels V waking up slowly, all the aches and pains in her body coming online one by one, like lights flipping on in a warehouse. Waking up a prisoner in another body isn't something Johnny thinks he'll ever get fully used to, but there's something oddly comforting about the way her mind reaches for his when she wakes up, almost like she's checking to see if he's still there.
And what's more, he can feel that dull, infuriating ache between her legs again. And worse, he can sense her sudden awareness of his awareness of it. V exhales sharply, still half-asleep, and the tension between her fear and arousal makes Johnny’s non-existent stomach twist. Or is that V's?
It's strangely mundane, yet entirely too intimate at the same time. And Johnny's still just a prisoner in her body, so all he can do is lie there helplessly, feeling her pulse pounding, trying and failing not to wonder how exactly V likes to get herself off, wondering whether she likes it-
“Stop it,” she hisses at him, her voice a harsh whisper undercut with a hoarseness that betrays her.
She groans and rolls over onto her side, then after a moment, gingerly sits up and swings her feet off her bed onto the cold tile floor. The change in temperature on the soles of her feet shocks them both slightly more awake, chasing away the dreamlike haze. Johnny notices that her knees are both badly bruised, and he wonders when exactly that happened. Probably when she collapsed from the Relic malfunction while leaving the church. Or was it when the Voodoo Boys tried to spike her and she'd gone down like a sack of rocks?
He glitches into existence at the foot of her bed.
“Think you probably got enough eddies for Rogue now,” he reminds her, crossing his arms and tapping his foot impatiently. It's already late afternoon.
“Jesus fuck, Johnny, I just woke up,” V mumbles groggily at him. “Gimme a minute.”
He sighs dramatically and glitches away.
After a minute, she climbs to her feet and gets in the shower, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. As soon as she turns on the water, she starts coughing up blood, her body convulsing. She spits and rinses her hands, but Johnny can feel the spike of terror in her chest, overriding everything else. They're racing against a clock, and neither of them really knows exactly how much time is left on it. Johnny suspects the untouched blockers might buy them a little bit more runway, but he is silently grateful she abandoned them completely after those first few terrifying days.
But still. They can't afford to delay.
"Afterlife later though, yeah?" he prods her as she's toweling off her hair.
She shoots him an exasperated look in the mirror, but her eyes glow blue as she checks her account. He can see her Kiroshi HUD too, and he's right, they've got a little shy of €$19k now. He smiles and lights a cigarette.
"Atta girl," he says, taking a drag.
She begins getting dressed, and Johnny glitches away to give her some space. He can't control the reaction that surges through their shared link, though, when she reaches for a top he's never seen her wear before, a white cotton bustier that looks almost exactly like the one Alt was wearing the night she got taken.
He quickly pulls himself together, throwing up his mental walls and withdrawing a little. She's fastening the top in her mirror now, and Jesus fuck, it looks good on her. Is she doing this to fuck with him? He can’t tell whether he’s more turned on or pissed off, and he fights hard not to let either feeling bleed across to her. Whatever she's feelin' right now, she's keepin' it close to her chest, too.
V's hot as fuck, that's for sure, though in a kinda unexpected way. Which is what Johnny typically likes. He can't deny that in another life, she'd have been exactly his type. He noticed that pretty quickly once he saw her without her face covered in bloody bandages, and even more so the first time she casually undressed in front of her mirror with him an unwitting passenger. But thinkin' about her that way feels strange, almost wrong somehow, given their current situation.
He stays quiet as she finishes dressing, grabs her sunglasses, and heads down to Tom's Diner, sliding into the same booth she'd sat in their first morning together, when she'd met with that 'Saka lapdog, Goro Takemura. Saburo Arasaka's former bodyguard, now on the lam after being framed for the old fuck's murder. Johnny would scowl, if he had a face to do it with, so he glitches into the booth across from her and does just that.
"Wonder what that gonk's up to now," V says, catching his thought.
"Probably already got offed by his old corpo chooms," Johnny mutters. "Who the fuck cares?"
V shrugs. "His plan sounded gonk as fuck, that's for sure, but I dunno. Don't feel like we're in a position to be rulin' out any options just yet."
Johnny opens his mouth to respond, tell her that she's fucking gonked if she thinks asking Arasaka for help directly while in the same breath tossing a murder accusation at their current acting president - or god emperor, or whatever the fuck title Saburo's traitorous corpo fuck son has given himself - actually counts as an option, but the waitress comes over to take V's order right at that moment. She gets a synth egg scramble with toast and black coffee, which she quickly downs as soon as it's brought out to her. Johnny can feel the caffeine buzzing through her system, and it makes him jittery. Fuck, he wants a cigarette.
V seems to hear his unspoken thought, because to his surprise she reaches into her jacket and pulls out Evelyn's old cigarette case, taking one out and placing it between her lips. She lights it as the waitress comes over to refill her coffee, and a second later Johnny relaxes a little as the nicotine hits him too.
He watches her from behind his sunglasses as she taps the cigarette against the ashtray on the table, reaching for her coffee with her other hand. He notices that V always smokes with her organic hand, just like he does.
He knows firsthand how disorienting it is to lose a limb, but she seems to be taking it in stride, overall. Implant technology has improved a lot in the last 50 years, that's for sure, but he suspects it's more likely that grieving the loss of her left forearm just got shoved down her list of priorities, somewhere underneath "mourn her best choom" and "get rid of her talking brain tumor."
Kid's had a hell of a month, that's for sure. And as far as he can tell, they're just getting started.
She finishes her coffee and her cigarette, and they leave and wander the market for a bit before stopping into Misty's. She's still really struggling to process Jackie's death too, seems like. Johnny feels for the kid.
Eventually, V brings up the weird glitchy tarot graffiti they've been seeing around the city, and Misty seems to think it's a sign from a higher power or some scop like that. More likely it's another side effect of the damned chip, Johnny thinks.
She does a tarot reading for V, and Johnny barely pays attention; he doesn't have much patience for this woo-woo shit. It all just sounds pretty damn grim from where he's sitting.
Then, to Johnny's surprise, Misty asks point blank about him, about how he and V are getting along.
"It's kinda weird," V replies after a moment. "But believe it or not, I think we're startin' to see eye to eye."
Misty laughs. "That doesn't surprise me," she says kindly. "It's hard not to get along with you, V."
Johnny ponders this, entirely sure that no one has ever under any circumstances said anything like that about him. Definitely the opposite, in fact. But the tarot chick's not wrong; there's something about V that people seem drawn to, something that makes them wanna trust her. Takemura said she had an "honest face," whatever the fuck that meant.
They go down to Vik's next, stopping to pet the weird hairless stray cat that always hangs out in the alley there. It mews and blinks up at them with its eerie pale gold eyes, and Johnny wonders how the fuck it's managed to avoid getting rounded up and put down this whole time. Scrappy little fucker, he thinks. Not everyone has what it takes to survive in this shithole.
"V!" the ripperdoc exclaims when he sees her, standing up to push open the metal gate for her. "Here for some new toys?"
"Nah Vik, don't got the eddies to pay you back yet, not gonna dig myself any deeper just yet. Just wanted a check-up, got spiked pretty bad on a job the other day."
He frowns, guiding her towards the chair while muttering gentle chastisements at her. V's lucky to have him, Johnny thinks. Good street rippers, ones you can trust, are hard to come by. Johnny had one once, he would know. He wonders if that old fuck is still alive.
Vik runs a scan, and frowns. "Looks like ya got lucky again, kid," he says, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eye with the back of his wrist. "Only reason that spike didn't fry you is because it couldn't touch the parts of your brain the engram's already gotten to, and seems like that was enough to keep your vitals going till your system could reboot and repair itself."
"Huh," V says, chewing her lip. "So Johnny's engram kept my body running 'stead of flatlining? Guess there's a silver lining to this after all."
"Wouldn't put that to the test too much if I were you. A little longer, and your whole brain woulda melted, engram and all. You got lucky, like I said."
"Thanks, Vik."
"Don't even wanna ask what you were doing that got you spiked like this, but it's my job to tell you to be careful." He frowns. "You been taking those blockers I gave you?"
V shifts uncomfortably. "Yeah, sure am. Work great," she lies.
Vik sees right through her, and sighs disapprovingly. "I can't make you do anything, kid. I'm not gonna pretend to know what it's like to be in your shoes right now, and I trust your judgement, but I worry. Seem to remember you here just the other day sayin' the construct tried to kill you."
"We made a truce," V says, and smiles. Vik doesn't seem to think it's funny, and V sighs, looking down at her hands. "It's… I dunno, Vik. It's complicated. He's like… he's startin' to feel like a real person to me, ya know?" She shakes her head slowly.
"That's what I'm afraid of," Vik says, sighing heavily and scooting his chair back over to the desk while V climbs to her feet. "Just scared of the day you'll walk in here and it's not... you anymore."
"Me too," she agrees. "But I'm workin' on it. Thanks again, Vik. And I'll have your eds soon, promise."
He waves her away. "No rush. I mean it. Don't worry about me, you got bigger fish to fry. I know you'll get 'em." He gives her a long look, full of concern. "Take care, kid."
It's a little after 7 pm, and Johnny is getting impatient. But V is ready, and they cut through the market again and make their way down towards the Afterlife, entering via the back alley.
The bar's pretty dead, but it's Sunday, and still relatively early. The bartender, Claire, waves V over and she takes a seat and orders a Centzon neat. They swap stories for a bit, and V makes Claire laugh with a terrifyingly dead on impression of Rogue. It unnerves Johnny a bit how quickly V can pick up on people's mannerisms, see through their facades. Maybe that's part of her secret, he thinks. What Misty meant.
He senses Rogue enter the room before he sees her. Crazy how he's still strangely attuned to her, even after all these years. But then again, she's the kind of person you notice when she enters a room. V feels it too, and her head swivels towards his ex-output, who struts in through the door from the back offices looking like she just fell off the cover of Solo of Fortune. Everyone else in the bar seems to notice her, too, and multiple pairs of eyes track her as she crosses the room to her booth, nodding at a few of them and ignoring most. This is her domain, after all. They don't call her "Queen of the Afterlife" for nothing.
V climbs to her feet and follows after her.
“Got the scratch,” V says, without preamble, leaning over the bouncer’s shoulder as Rogue settles herself in her booth. “Now will you show me what you got on Hellman?”
Rogue gives her a long look, then nods and waves aside the bouncer, and V enters the booth. The older woman motions for Claire to bring them two glasses, and the bartender snaps to attention and vanishes behind the bar.
“Siddown,” Rogue says to V, and then turns to the other occupants of her booth. “Make some room,” she says coolly, and they all clear out.
V sits down beside her. “Hope you got ‘im,” she says.
Rogue raises an eyebrow. “Don’t see that often, determination like yours. Must really need this guy.”
Johnny glitches in, perched on the table near Rogue. It’s still trippin' him the fuck out, seeing her like this. Pushing 90, holding court in a damn nightclub, queen of the fuckin’ fixers. Part of him is proud of her - she was always a tough chick, and he never doubted she’d manage to scramble her way to the top, somehow or other. But it's the “somehow” part that's bugging him a little. Which corpo cocks’d she have to suck to get such a comfy little set-up like this? he can’t help but wonder. Walking away, alive and scot free, after participating in a little stunt like what they pulled in 2023 isn’t something you just do without making some sort of deal with one devil or another.
“Matter of life and death,” V responds coolly, using the same line Johnny himself had fuckin’ used on her when he’d barged into that back room at Atlantis almost 64 fuckin’ years ago.
“Heh,” Rogue laughs. “Haven’t heard that for a while, either.”
Claire brings over the drinks, and Rogue glances up at her. “Bottle stays,” she says. She turns back to V. “Go ahead, enjoy.”
V smiles and reaches for her glass, raising it towards Rogue.
“To your health,” she says, taking a swig.
“To yours, kid,” Rogue counters, downing hers as well. “Gonna need it.”
A man in a yellow netrunner suit and cargo pants enters, sliding a shard across the table towards Rogue.
“Thanks, Nix,” she says, taking the shard and slotting it in, checking the data before slotting it back out and offering it to V.
Johnny watches Rogue, studying her. She looks fuckin’ great still, but her face is undeniably different, harder. You don’t just walk away from the kinda shit she’s seen, he thinks. One way or another, it changes you.
“Queen of the Afterlife,” he mutters. “Who woulda thunk…”
Think she’ll help us? V asks, speaking silently to him via their shared connection.
Johnny shrugs, looking back and forth between the two women. V probably reminds Rogue of herself, he realizes, back when she was the little merc’s age. Same sharp tongue, same fierce determination, same soft spot for idiot rockerboys who run roughshod through their lives. He sighs.
“The Rogue I remember was one cold-ass bitch,” he says. “But she usually went with her gut. Somethin’ tells me she thinks you check out.”
“Got a shard for you,” Rogue is saying. “Some intel. Interesting stuff.”
V takes the shard and slots it in, and the two of them start going over the details.
Seems like Hellman’s holed up with Kang Tao, hidin’ out from Arasaka. Rogue’s managed to figure out when and how they’re transporting him, and she’s pinpointed a weak spot on their route, a dead zone over Jackson Plains in the Badlands. They can hit the convoy there.
“Guess it’s your lucky day,” Johnny says to V.
But there’s a catch, as always. Rogue wants her to team up with some nomad reject chick who lost a shipment and her car running a job for Rogue. Help her get her shit back, and she’ll help V hit the convoy.
Johnny doesn’t like it. Better not to drag more people into this than necessary.
But Rogue’s clearly forcing their hand. V needs someone who knows the region, and this Panam chick is that person.
V relents, and Rogue flicks her the nomad’s contact deets.
“Give ‘er a call tomorrow,” Rogue encourages.
V nods, and glances up at Johnny. “Let’s get outta here,” he says to her. They have what they came here for.
She ignores him and turns back to Rogue, taking a deep breath.
“You used to know Johnny Silverhand. What was he like?"
Johnny rolls his eyes at her. “We really doin’ this now?” he says.
"Johnny...?” Rogue says, looking surprised. “Where did that come from?"
V shrugs, trying to look nonplussed. “'Seem to be as many rumors about him now as there were fifty years ago. And not all of 'em gel together.” She meets Rogue’s eyes, the two mercs sizing each other up. “I know you two were close. That's why I ask."
Rogue thinks for a minute.
"Hmmm... what was Johnny like...?” She looks out towards the bar, straight through where Johnny is sitting. She can’t see him, of course - only V can see his projection - but the effect is still unnerving. He straightens in his seat, and Rogue smiles softly to herself.
“Strong. Arrogant. Uncompromising," she says, and laughs. "He'd burn down half the city just to prove he was right. And burn the other half just for fun. He was like a kid with a box of matches and a can of CHOOH2."
V smiles. “Tough luck, I guess.”
"You don't know the half of it,” Rogue agrees, raising an eyebrow and taking another sip of her drink. “Now, we done shootin’ the shit? Got other clients waiting.”
V thanks her and stands, leaving the booth. But before she makes it to the exit, Claire waves her over to the bar again, already pouring her a drink and sliding it over to her. Of fucking course, V turns and heads over to her.
“Well, well,” Claire says as V lowers herself back onto a stool. “Bar sure is abuzz about you lately.”
“Good things, I hope,” V sighs.
Claire smiles. “Little bit o’ both. But they say you’re a merc who's reliable, gets things done.”
“Okay…” V says. Johnny can feel where this is going. Hopefully whatever this chick is about to ask for is at least interesting.
“Need a driver," Claire says with a grin. "For street races. Drop by my autoshop sometime this week, I'll tell you more.”
"Street racing, huh?" Johnny says, glitching in beside V. "That actually sounds like it could be pretty fun."
V seems to agree. “Okay, sounds good," she says, smiling and raising her glass to Claire.
"Preem,” Claire says. “It’s in Arroyo, on Valley. Lovely spot, can't miss it."
Johnny very much doubts anything in Arroyo could ever be described as “lovely,” but maybe this Claire chick has a better sense of humor than he’s giving her credit.
V orders a Silverhand special next, and Johnny makes a face at her and rolls his eyes. Everyone’s gonna think this girl’s some weird superfan if she’s not careful. But he changes his mind as soon as she takes her first sip. This was his favorite drink for a reason, after all. And fuck, Rogue’s got a literal shrine to him set up behind the bar, with a bottle of Centzon right there in the middle. He finds himself strangely touched by that. Guess she’s still got a sentimental streak, after all.
When they finally get home, V’s still pretty wired even though it’s well past midnight by now. She did sleep until almost 4 pm, he remembers. She crosses to her sunken sitting area and flops onto the couch, putting her feet up on the coffee table and lighting another cigarette. She flicks on the radio, and it’s one of Johnny’s old songs, The Ballad of Buck Ravers. V grins and pretends to air guitar and thrash her head around dramatically to it. Johnny glitches in on the couch across from her and leans back, crossing his arms across his chest.
“Hah fuckin’ hah,” he says. “Don’t pretend you don’t love it.”
“Hmm,” V says teasingly. “I dunno. Seems like your typical edgelord anti-corpo scop, if you ask me.”
“Mmhmm,” Johnny says, gazing coolly at her. “Sure explains why you got a copy on vinyl, shoved way in the back of your closet.”
V laughs, caught. “You got me,” she teases. “I’m your biggest fuckin’ fan. Too bad engrams can’t sign autographs.”
“Don’t worry, princess. First thing I’ll do once I take over is get my autograph tattooed on those nice tits o' yours,” he jokes, unable to stop his eyes from dropping down as he does so. Fuck that shirt looks good on her, he thinks, admiring the swell of her breasts over the structured cotton bustier. Got nicer tits than even Alt maybe did. Johnny feels his cock tighten in his leather pants as he drags his eyes back up to her face. Or is it V’s arousal that he’s feeling? Fuck.
V cocks an eyebrow at him. Too much? he thinks, and almost glitches away. He knows they've been dancin' around this shit for a few days now, though V's seemed fuckin' determined to shove down any and all of her urges as long as Johnny remains an uninvited voyeur. He's found himself wondering more than once when and how her willpower will finally shatter. If it were him in control-
He quickly squashes those thoughts, continuing to stare at her while trying to keep his face even.
But she’s looking at him with clear interest now. Fuck.
“Hmm,” she says. “Nice tits, you say?”
She takes a long drag of her cigarette and leans back, not breaking eye contact with Johnny.
Fuck, he’s fully hard now. He still doesn’t even know how the fuck that works, but he can feel himself straining against the zipper of his pants, can feel his balls startin' to ache. V lets out a shaky breath, still holding his gaze as she slowly starts to glide her own hand, her chrome one, down over her pants, across her thigh, and fuck, he can feel it too, almost as though it were his own body. Which it technically is, after all. A drunkenly brazen and conspiratorial smile breaks out across her pretty face, and Johnny exhales slowly as she continues to move her hand, bringing it down between her legs and pressing just hard enough to make him shift in his seat, his breath hitching.
Part of him can't believe this is happening, the same part that knows he should resist, should try to avoid makin' this all more messy than it has to be... but a bigger part of him is already too fuckin' drunk and horny to care. Because if he's feeling those things right now, then so is she. That's the deal of sharin' a body, after all.
He hasn't allowed himself to fully consider the implications of this.
“Thought about taking the blockers a couple times,” she admits in a low, husky voice. “So I could… ya know. Have some privacy. But then I thought…” she looks up at him through hooded lashes, her face already flushed.
Johnny struggles to make his thoughts catch up to his dick. It’s not totally working. He feels like this is a line that’s dangerous to cross, but fuck if he gives a shit right now. The way her heart's pounding, the way she’s looking at him...
“Take off your pants,” he growls.
Notes:
Porn cliffhanger, sorry guys!!!
Chapter 7: Titanium Skin
Summary:
Johnny and V explore new territory with each other, then begin their quest to find Hellman.
Chapter Text
Johnny can see V’s entire body react to his command, can quite literally feel it, too. He is acutely and painfully aware of precisely how fucking turned on she is right now, and that only makes his own sudden, urgent need even stronger.
He leans back, not even attempting to conceal the hunger in his eyes anymore as he holds her gaze. V lets out a shaky breath as her eyes flick down to the bulge in his pants, and fuck that turns him on even more. Their feedback loop is making the tension between them almost palpable, like the air before a storm.
She only hesitates a moment before she obeys him slowly but eagerly. He can feel her heart pounding as she moves to unfasten her pants and shimmy them over her hips and down her thighs before freeing her feet one by one with a sharp kick, leaning forward to put out her cigarette at the same time. She settles back and looks up at Johnny, her pretty face flushed.
“Good girl,” he says, nodding approvingly, his voice low and thick. And to his delight, that seems to be something she really likes hearing. Course it is, he thinks as she gasps softly in response, and he can feel the heat throbbing between her legs, the sensation reverberating between the two of them. She lets out a shaky exhale and slides her hand down now, teasing herself gently through her panties, rubbing her clit in slow, small circles, sending corresponding jolts of pleasure through Johnny's cock. His balls tighten, and she meets his eyes, her breath catching in her throat, and Johnny can feel the spike of adrenaline in her chest as the reality of what they're doing - what she's doing - really hits her. And it's real fuckin' raw, sharing a body like this while she touches herself - he can feel her fighting the impulse to recoil, to retreat. But he can also feel that she's too worked up to stop at this point or let any lingering bashfulness get in the way, and he's right the fuck there with her, his cock almost painfully hard now as she continues to play with herself. Johnny manages to maintain his composure at first, not taking his eyes off her, but as she begins to gradually increase the speed and pressure, he groans and brings his own hand to his groin, palming the bulge there.
It’s almost too much for him, the sight of her writhing against her fingers like that, making those fuckin’ sounds, feeling those sensations from her body echoed in his own.
“Take off your panties,” he commands, his voice rough. “Wanna see ya.”
She obeys once more, then lies back against the couch and slips her hand back down, spreading herself open for him, and fuck she has one of the prettiest cunts he’s ever seen. His cock aches in his pants, pulsing beneath his hand.
“Fuck, V,” Johnny growls appreciatively. “Bet your pussy tastes real fuckin’ preem.”
V responds by dipping two fingers inside herself and moaning slightly, her eyes fluttering shut. But then her eyes shoot open and she meets Johnny’s, removing her fingers and bringing them to her mouth, a devilish glint in her eye.
“See for yourself,” she murmurs, smiling around her fingers as she drags them along her tongue, tasting herself, and fuck, he can actually fuckin' taste it, taste her too.
He loses his composure again, still reeling internally at this new side of V that's now bein' revealed to him. With a loud groan, his whole body glitches and suddenly his pants are gone and his cock springs free, rigid and twitching. V’s breath catches at the sight of it and she moans again, her lips still wrapped around her fingers, wetting them in her mouth before plunging them back into her perfect little pussy.
The shared sensations of it all are so impossibly intense that it catches Johnny off-guard again. Sure, he's watched chicks get themselves off before, but he can literally feel V's body, can feel her hardened nipples rubbing against the fabric of her shirt, can feel exactly what she's feelin' as she works her fingers inside herself and on her clit in a practiced way. And there's something so unguarded about how she's touchin' herself now, so vulnerable, like he's a participant in something deeply and inherently private. He's suddenly very aware of the fact that he's experiencing V's sexuality in a way that no one else ever has before, witnessing something no one's ever been able to share with her like this. That no one else in the history of the fuckin' world has ever been able to share with anyone like this. The thought makes his breath catch and his cock feel like it's gonna fuckin' explode, and V's body is beginning to tremble now too as she brings herself closer to the edge, the tension mounting inside of both of them.
Whatever the fuck is happening, he doesn't want her to stop.
He feels a flush cross her skin as she's hit with a sudden reciprocal wave of self-consciousness, and her hand slows for a moment. But lookin' at her there like that, flushed and panting, feeling how badly she needs this, how badly they both need this... Johnny doesn't think he's ever been more turned on in his entire fuckin' life.
Which means that V's gotta be in much the same state, too.
"Don't stop," he commands, but it comes out as a rough gasp, almost a plea.
He feels another sharp stab of urgency from her, and she lets out a soft whine and resumes working her hand furiously between her legs, her nerves alighting in response to his words as Johnny shudders along with her, a low moan escaping his lips.
Johnny can't take it anymore, so he wraps his hand around his cock and begins pumping, keeping V pinned under his gaze. Her breathing grows ragged as she fucks herself with her fingers, bucking her hips to meet her hand, circling her clit with her thumb and fuck he can feel that she’s close. The sounds she’s making are almost enough to send him over the edge, her full lips forming a perfect “O” and fuckin’ christ Johnny wishes he could grab her hair and shove his cock all the way down her throat. Make her fuckin’ gag on it.
She seems to hear his unspoken thought and whines again, grinding herself frantically against her fingers.
“You like that, huh?” he says in a hoarse voice. “Like imaginin’ yourself chokin’ on my cock?”
She nods, panting hard, and he knows it’s not gonna be much longer.
“Johnny, I’m gonna-” she gasps, whining his name in a way that might as well be a tongue on his cock from the way his dick responds to it.
“Come for me, V,” he growls, cutting her off, and she does immediately, throwing back her head and crying out as her body convulses. He follows half a second later as the delayed sensation from her cunt hits him, and it's just like it was in the dream but even more intense. He can feel their minds merge completely in that moment, unified in the all-consuming, blinding pleasure that come tearing through them both, from her clit to his cock. He can feel her pussy quivering around her fingers, can see himself the way she sees him right now - hand wrapped around himself, streams of cum shooting out and dripping down his fingers - and he can feel what it does to her, seein' him like this. To Johnny's shock, it brings her - and him with her - crashing over the edge again and fucking fuck it doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to stop.
When he finally comes down, V is lying there spent, chest heaving, her legs still spread and her hair wild and fuck he’s never seen anything more beautiful in his life. She gazes up at him, cheeks flushed, and suddenly it actually finally is all too much, too intimate, so he glitches away and reappears fully clothed, cigarette in hand, leaning against the wall near the window. She watches him with heavy lidded eyes, then leans forward and reaches for her own cigarette.
“Well then,” she says with a laugh, her voice low and smoky and a little bit breathy and dazed. “Guess I can check that off my bucket list now.”
“What, havin’ an engram of a dead rockstar watch you touch yourself?” Johnny replies gruffly. His sunglasses are back on, and he watches her from behind them.
“Gettin’ Johnny fuckin’ Silverhand to scream my name,” she says, looking extremely pleased with herself as she takes a slow drag of her cig.
Fuck, did he do that? He musta been so lost in the damn moment, he didn’t even realize.
He can feel V's mind still reeling at the line they just barreled headlong across, but Johnny also can't remember the last time she felt this... relaxed.
“Glad I didn’t take those blockers,” she murmurs.
“Mmm,” he agrees, taking a long drag.
She hoists herself to her feet and crosses over to the bed, unfastening her top as she does so. Her tits spring free as she pulls it off and tosses it aside, and Johnny regrets not asking her to take it off sooner. But he can feel V's exhaustion finally creeping in, so he glitches away and settles back into her mind, basking in their shared afterglow as her eyes flutter shut.
If either of them dreams that night, he doesn’t remember it.
**********
V wakes up the next morning feeling more well-rested than she has in what feels like months. And she and Johnny... her face flushes slightly at the memory, though part of her's a little relieved that that boundary's come crashing down now, that they both don't need to keep tip-toeing around it. If they're gonna be stuck sharing a body for a while, this is gonna make things that much easier.
Or that much more complicated.
She drags herself to the bathroom, tugging a loose crop top over her head and adjusting it in the mirror as she examines the hollows underneath her eyes.
"You never wear a fuckin' bra," Johnny grumbles, glitching in behind her. "Can feel the fabric of your shirt rubbing."
Aw," she teases, meeting his eyes in the mirror. "Still gettin' used to havin' tits?"
"Didn't expect 'em to be so... sensitive," he admits, glancing down at said tits, then back up to her face.
She doesn't answer, and instead reaches down and tweaks her nipple roughly through her shirt. It's worth it to see the sequence of expressions that pass across Johnny's face as he inhales sharply, cursing under his breath. "Fuckin' hell, V."
She cocks an eyebrow at him in the mirror and he holds her gaze for a heavy beat, then glitches away. Her nipple is still peaked underneath her shirt, and she suddenly feels very stupid and self conscious. She knows she's testing his limits, trying to see what makes him tick, figuring out exactly where the fuck the line even is anymore.
She huffs out a shaky breath, then turns from the mirror and lights a cigarette, opening her holo to check for messages. There’s one from Coach Fred, telling her about another fight in Arroyo, and another from Claire with the address of her autoshop. V runs her hand through her hair, her finger hovering over Panam’s contact.
Better get to it, she thinks. No use wasting time.
She calls Panam.
A dark-haired woman in a red Aldecaldos jacket answers, and V realizes she’s seen her before at the Afterlife, butting heads with Rogue. Well, that explains that.
“Hello?” the woman says.
“Hey, Panam. Got your number from Rogue. Name’s V.”
Panam rolls her eyes. “Great. Where’s that old war horse want to kick me now?”
“Forget Rogue for a minute,” V says. “I can help you.”
Panam scoffs. “How very kind. But it’s for too little, far too late. So do tell Rogue she can eat my shorts.”
“Tell it to your therapist,” V retorts. “I’m callin’ about your ride and the merch you lost. Interested? Or are you gonna tell me to eat your shorts, too?”
This catches the nomad’s interest, and she studies V for a moment before answering. “The rail freight yard on Bonita Street, the one hugging the city line. Meet me there,” Panam says, and V nods before hanging up.
The truth is, V just straight up likes Panam. As it turns out, they're pretty similar in a lot of ways, and though they butt heads, it always quickly becomes playful. V can't fully explain it, but there's just an immediate sense of trust between the two of them, and it's refreshing.
She sighs and rolls over, feeling the shitty motel bed creak underneath her, while Panam snores on a similar mattress a couple feet away. But sleep isn't coming for V, even though the first light of dawn is already beginning to creep through the dingy blinds.
The day went pretty well, all things considered. After meeting Panam in that parking lot, they headed out to the Badlands together in a stolen clunker, stopping by the Aldecaldo camp in a vain attempt to enlist the help of some of Panam's old chooms. But it seemed whatever beef she had with them was still somewhat ongoing. They did manage to grab some preem gear Panam had stashed away, and with it, the two of them pulled off a pretty spectacular ambush in Rocky Ridge and got Pan's truck back without much incident. V was glad for that; she likes doing things clean. After, they went and tracked down Nash, the fucker who crossed Panam, to some nearby tunnels, and V was able to use non-lethal quickhacks to take out his whole team and recover the merch. Panam hadn’t shown the same mercy to Nash himself, but there wasn’t much V could do about that. And besides, she understood. If she'd had the chance, she'd've done the same to Dex.
And now they’re at the Sunset Motel, some shithole truck stop in the middle of nowhere. From what the bartender told V, it's mostly a place where nomads smuggling merch into the city stop for the night. People who aren’t interested in drawing much attention to themselves. Like V and Panam right now. After sharing some beers and stories at the motel bar, they'd crashed out in a room together. Panam promised they'd tackle the Hellman job first thing when they woke up.
It was interesting, observing the way Panam interacted with her family during their brief stop in the camp earlier. V had never been in a nomad camp before today. On her long drive back from Atlanta, she'd rubbed elbows with her share of nomads from various clans at the endless procession of truck stops, motels, and dives she'd found herself at along the way, but had never actually set foot in any of their camps. It wasn't quite what she'd expected, and the way they looked out for each other, treated each other like family, even when there were ongoing disagreements, almost reminded her of Heywood in some ways. Minus the constant gunfire and police sirens. Panam’s lucky to have people like that, V thinks. Hopefully Pan will be able to see it herself, soon, stop running from them. V certainly doesn’t have anyone like that, not anymore, and the thought causes a sharp spike of loneliness to blossom in her chest.
Just a dirtgirl from Heywood.
The words echo in her head, the words Johnny threw in her face as she came to in the GIM after the Voodoo Boys' spike took her out along with that NetWatch goon, when they'd both realized just how expendable she'd been to the gangers.
Pathetic gutter trash, someone who no one’s ever gonna come looking for.
"So that's what's bothering you," Johnny says, glitching into existence and lighting a cig. "You know I don’t really think those things, right? Was just sayin' 'em to make a point.”
"Felt like those words came to you awfully easy," V mutters.
"Well, you did look like shit," Johnny reminds her. "But I guess you have your good days," he adds, his voice softening.
"Gee, thanks."
Johnny gives her a dark look. “I get it, V. Seein' Panam, with her family. Makin' you wonder who'd stick their neck out for you, when the bullets start flyin'."
V sighs. “As far as I can figure, I’ve got my ripperdoc, my dead choom’s girlfriend, and my imaginary fuck buddy,” she says bitterly, shooting him a look.
“Aw, are we buddies now?” Johnny smirks at her over the top of his aviators, and V rolls her eyes and sighs. “And besides,” he continues, “You’ve got your little Mox girlfriend, too.”
“Judy’s not my girlfriend,” V insists.
“Bet she’d like to be,” he teases.
“Maybe,” V says, chewing on her lip. "I thought all I wanted was to be a fuckin' Afterlife merc,” she continues, closing her eyes and leaning her head back. “Major leagues, like Jackie said. It seems so fuckin' stupid now. I thought once I was taking jobs from the top fixers, everything would just… fall into place. And now, I’ve got exactly that, but it's just another ladder to climb, and an even higher one. And I’m livin’ on borrowed time."
It’s the most candid she’s ever been with Johnny, but something about the darkness of the motel room and Panam’s soft breathing (and maybe the 5 or 6 beers she had) makes the confession roll off her tongue.
Johnny’s glasses are off, now.
"You'll get there, V," he says softly. "You’re smart, you’re fast, you’re a scary good netrunner. Fuckin’ hell, the way you can just roast an entire squad with one quickhack…” He shakes his head appreciatively. “And most importantly, you're determined as they come. You’ve already got a reputation. Gettin' to the top is only a matter of time for ya, if you ask me. And you’re young.”
It’s by far the nicest thing he’s ever said to her, and it somehow makes her angry. It’s all just empty words if they don’t figure out a way to stop the chip from eating her fuckin’ brain.
"That’s all well and good if I wasn’t fuckin’ dying, Johnny," she snaps. "Will Night City even notice, when it happens? Will my 5 fuckin’ friends, most of whom I've known for less than a year really give a-"
“That’s not gonna happen, V," he says, cutting her off. "Told you that already. We’ll find a way to get to Mikoshi, fix you, then blow it all to fuckin’ smithereens.”
Somehow, his bravado is as reassuring as it is infuriating - V laughs bitterly, then catches herself, not wanting to wake Panam. “Right, you make it sound so fuckin’ easy," she retorts, turning to Johnny. "I know raiding Arasaka is like, a fun weekend activity for you, but for the rest of us that’s a pretty fuckin' impossible caveat to the whole fuckin' gonk plan. Sure, your AI output says she can help us, but we still barely know anything about how the Relic even fuckin' works." She sighs agitatedly. "Which is also why we can't afford to fuck up this up," she says, waving her hand towards Panam. "We gotta find Hellman, get some fuckin' answers first.”
She lights a cigarette too, pulling herself up to lean against the wall, and Panam shifts beside her but doesn't wake up.
Johnny ponders this for a moment, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
"Whaddya make of her?" he asks, gesturing with his chin towards the sleeping nomad.
V shrugs. "She's stubborn as fuck, but I dunno, I like her vibe," she tells him honestly. "I think she's the real deal."
"Mm," Johnny agrees, raising one eyebrow. "Sounds like someone else I know." He takes a drag of his cigarette. "Think we can trust her?"
"Yeah," V says. "From what I've seen so far, I'd say her bull-headedness is exactly why, too. She won't break her word once she gives it."
"Hope you're right, V."
Notes:
Porn is hard to write!!!! lmao
Edited to add: This was quite literally the first smut scene I ever wrote! To celebrate finally completing the fic, I re-wrote the scene in this chapter as a one-shot from V's POV: Practical Heart. Go check it out lol
Chapter 8: Warrior's Prayer
Summary:
V and Panam make a plan to jack the Kang Tao convoy and capture Anders Hellman. Obviously, things don't go quite as planned.
Chapter Text
The dream starts the way it always does. She’s in the jungle, crawling on her stomach, the sounds of gunfire and explosions all around her. All she can see is mud and leaves and boots and she can taste the dampness and the ash and the smell of meat and shit and death that permeates the air. This is Johnny’s dream, his war dream. Seeing this, night after night, she can understand why he deserted.
And then they’re in the landfill, and she’s dragging herself out from under that refrigerator, the searing pain of her mutilated hand numbed only by the screaming agony in her skull. Through blurred vision, she sees Takemura lift his gun and execute Dexter DeShawn, that fat fuck falling to his final resting place in the garbage dump where he fucking belongs.
Except then it changes, and she’s Johnny again, lying supine on the roof of Arasaka Tower, Adam Smasher standing over him, the mangled remains of his eponymous hand lying a couple feet away, sparks flying off of it into the night. Hovering overhead is the AV, and Rogue’s outstretched hand, but it’s too little, too late, and he’s falling again, but there’s nothing underneath him this time, just the endless void of Mikoshi, and he doesn’t know who he is anymore, V doesn’t know who she is, it’s all just a jumble of code, and she can feel the edges of herself blurring and spreading and fading away completely into nothingness, into the abyss, forgotten, alone.
She wakes up screaming. It takes her a moment to remember where she is.
Hellman. Need to find him.
She sits up. Panam is gone, and the sun is down. Her holo is flashing - there’s a text from the nomad saying she’s in the garage and to come find her there.
V sighs and tries to rub the knots from her shoulders. God, she slept like shit. Her back hurts from the shitty motel mattress, and her head hurts from, well, everything. She stands and crosses to the door, pushing it open and stepping out into the cool night. As soon as she’s outside, the Relic starts glitching, causing a wave of nausea to overwhelm her. She steadies herself on the railing, taking deep shaky breaths as she surveys the lot of the Sunset Motel.
There are still quite a few people milling around on the landing, and a handful of cars filling up at the CHOOH2 stations outside. But it’s quiet, much quieter than anywhere in the city. All she can hear, aside from the gentle chatter of the guests and the low din from the bar is... crickets. Literal crickets.
After a couple more deep breaths, V continues down the stairs and makes her way over to the garage.
She is greeted by Panam’s boots sticking out from beneath the front end of her Thorton.
“Can I help?” V asks as she approaches.
“Nah, you can’t,” Panam responds from underneath the truck. “I’ll be done soon. The Raffens left her crooked as a bag of snakes.”
V smiles at the nomad’s strange turns of phrase as Panam slides out from under the truck and hoists herself to her feet.
“Didja sleep alright?” she asks V, leaning over to dust herself off.
“Can’t complain,” V lies. “What about you? Reasonably rested?”
Panam looks her dead in the eye. “I think you had nightmares. You screamed a few times.”
Damn, this nomad chick don’t beat around the bush, V thinks.
“Sorry about that,” she mutters.
“Don’t worry,” Panam says, shrugging. “I’m accustomed to that sort of thing. When Mitch and Scorpion came back from the war, they tossed and turned night after night. For months this went on.” She furrows her brow and looks down, then back up at V. “Whatever it is, it’ll pass.”
Right, Mitch and Scorpion. The guys from the Aldecaldo camp, Panam’s old chooms. They’d been vets, Panam had said. Fuckin’ corpo wars.
“Uh huh,” V says. “Let’s hope so. Anyway, come up with anything? For Hellman, I mean.”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Panam says, looking very pleased with herself. “Look here.”
She crosses over to a workbench against the wall of the garage. V follows.
“Alright, lay it on me.”
Panam’s plan, which she illustrates for V using various tools on the workbench, is absolutely crazy, but it just might work. She wants to break into a satwave power station down near the Biotechnica flats that’s underneath the path of the AV’s route, overload the power station, and use the charge to detonate an EMP blast that will, if all goes according to plan, knock out the AV’s comms and nav systems, causing it to crash. Then, they swoop in and nab Hellman.
“Remember,” V says, “I need Hellman alive, unharmed. Gotta try not to blow the AV to bits, okay?”
“I know, I know,” Panam assures her. “But I’d say your man had best buckle in. This idea… if it works, he’ll be in for a rough landing.”
V cocks an eyebrow at Panam, but nods. “When we doin’ this?”
“According to Rogue’s intel, the AV should be passing over in about 7 or 8 hours. So we’d best head out now.”
V nods again. “Alright. Let’s ride.”
They climb into Panam’s truck and set out into the night.
“Who owns this power station?” V wonders aloud. “Gov, or corp?”
Panam laughs sharply. “Is there any difference? Who do you think pulls the government’s strings?”
“I’m just wondering whose toes we’re about to step all over.”
“V, look around. It is simple! Everything you see is owned by a corporation,” Panam crows.
V grins. “And you like to mess with the corps.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Panam says, grinning back.
“Or wait, scratch that,” V continues. “Rogue, Nash, the Raffens…”
“You’re on thin ice, V,” Panam warns, tossing her hair away from her face.
“You just like to mess with everyone,” V finishes with a smirk. It’s nice to rib someone who isn’t Johnny, for a change.
“Well, then I suppose it’s a good thing I’m on your side then, isn’t it?”
V watches the city skyline pass by in the distance, beyond the flats, as they speed down the freeway towards Jackson Plains. They talk as they drive, swapping stories of their weirder jobs. Apparently, Panam once smuggled the body of the deputy finance director of Kaukaz into NC in her fuckin' trunk. V makes a mental note that if she ever needs anything transported in or out of the city, Panam's the one to call.
They’ve been driving for about an hour when Panam suddenly pulls over to the side of the freeway and turns to V.
“We’ve almost reached the dam,” she says. “But first, we need to make a quick stop here so we can calibrate you with the turret. I want you to be able to use the gun, too. It should up our chances in general.” She gestures to the jack on the dash in front of V. “Go ahead and connect there.”
“We really gotta waste time with this?” V asks, looking nervously at the sky. She knows the AV is still hours out, but they still need to break into the station, overload it, and get into position.
“We do,” Panam says, not budging an inch. “Unless you’ve already used one of these without help, while moving, while taking fire from all directions? And still managed to hit something? But somehow, I don’t think that’s the case! So don’t argue, just connect.”
“Just my personal link?”
“How else?” Panam says, rolling her eyes. “Just watch the jack. Sometimes you have to jiggle it a little bit.”
V sighs and pulls the link out of her left wrist and inserts it into the jack. “Wired in,” she says.
“Wait a moment,” Panam says, tapping her datapad as she begins linking the systems. “Diagnostics first.” She taps a couple more times, then frowns. “Shit, it keeps giving me an error. Odd. Let me work around it.”
Johnny glitches into the backseat. “And now, Panam, heeeere’s Johnny!” he announces sardonically. “Out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Great work, V.”
“Hey, uh… I think your implant has a virus,” Panam is saying. “The one in the nape of your neck.”
V sighs. Fuck, she was worried about this.
“I uh… I’ve got a bioprocessor in my head that operates… independently of me,” she says, watching both Johnny and Panam for their reactions. Johnny has his shades on, so his face is hard to read. “Probably why your diagnostics flagged it.”
Panam frowns. “Um, okay…”
“No data will leak out of it through the personal link,” V assures her. “Your ride’s secure. Not malware, though sometimes it feels that way,” she adds, shooting Johnny a look.
"Real fuckin' funny, V," he says, deadpan.
Panam sighs. “Fine. I trust you won’t fuck anything up,” she says, linking V to the turret.
It’s actually kinda fun, V admits. She can reach out with just her mind and take control of the big-ass gun mounted on top of the truck, and with Panam’s guidance, practices shooting a couple of wrecked cars in the hills off the side of the freeway.
She jacks out. “Calibration seems fine,” she says, “But your soft could really use an update. Scanner, controllers… all a couple generations back, at least. There’s better tech in the bargain bin at a Kabuki flea market. I can help you with that, you know.”
“Yes, sure,” Panam says. “The important thing is that it works now.”
She starts the car again.
“So, where exactly is the power station?” V asks.
“You will see in a moment,” Panam assures her, grinning. “I know a spot. We’ll have a decent view from there. I just want to be sure the area is clear.”
Johnny is still in the backseat, and he turns to V and grins. “Sabotage a corpo power station, jump a corpo transport, kidnap a corpo suit…” he says, counting off on his fingers.
This a plug for the word ‘corpo’ or do you have a point? V says silently to him.
“Know what?” Johnny says, still grinning. “You’re starting to remind me of me… fifty years back.” He smirks and leans back against the window. “Minus the charisma, and impressive cock.”
V didn’t think it was possible for him to smirk more than he was before, but somehow, he does. She rolls her eyes at him.
“Heard you think it, V,” he reminds her, and she can’t help blushing at that. She’s thankful for the dark car, even though she knows Johnny can probably feel her reaction regardless.
“And now look at you, on a cute little road trip to blow up some corpo shit,” he continues, still looking smug. “Maybe you and I really can get along.”
V allows him a small smile, but the implications of this scare her a little, too. Mean to say you think the chip is already making me become more like you?
“Nah, you’re just more like me than you think,” Johnny says. “You’ll see.”
Could say the same for you, she teases.
“Nah, no way,” Johnny says, but his mouth twitches upwards into that signature mean smirk.
They drive for another 20 minutes or so, and then Panam pulls over again. From here, V can see all the way across the flats to Pacifica, the twinkling lights of the Biotechnica worm farms glowing gently under the dark sky. The power station glimmers just beneath their perch, its antenna spire extending upwards into the night.
Panam scans the area and declares it all clear. They go over the plan one more time.
“This power station serve the whole city?” V asks, the sudden thought occurring to her.
“Honestly?” Panam says, “Who the fuck knows?”
Both women laugh.
“Guess we’re about to find out,” says V. “So, what now?”
“We wait,” Panam says. “We’ll start heading down when the AV is two hours out.”
It’s just after midnight now, so they still have a couple hours to kill. Panam flips on the radio, and they listen to the news for a while, but it’s just the usual corpo-spun scop so she eventually flips it to music, but nothing good is on so she turns it off.
“Your chooms back at the camp. You said they were in the army?” V asks.
“Scorp and Mitch?” Panam asks. “Yeah. Panzerboys. They were on contract during the last war.”
“Panzerboys?” V asks, surprised. Just like Johnny. “Flew those huge transporters?”
Panam nods. “Scorpion piloted, Mitch ran security. They both got some kick-ass combat implants and a stack of really fucked up nightmares.”
Sounds about right, V thinks, Johnny's nightmares echoing in her memory. “Seemed like good guys,” she says.
“The best friends you could ask for,” Panam agrees.
They sit in silence for a while. It’s a full moon tonight, and it hangs over the city like an omen.
When the first light of dawn begins to creep across the sky, Panam turns to V.
“Alright, time to roll.”
She starts the truck and begins driving down the cliffs towards the power station.
“Ever done anything like this before?” V asks.
“Downing an AV? By myself? No. Why do you ask?”
V smiles. “Seems Rogue was right.”
Panam frowns deeply. “V…”
“What?” V says, her voice all innocence. “She said you were good. And she was right.”
“Yes, I suppose she was,” Panam say dryly. “But, we have yet to take the AV. So you might wait before you fasten a halo on her.”
V grins. “Know what? Think I figured you out.”
She glances at Johnny in the backseat, and he is watching her with a bemused look on his face.
“Oh, you have, have you?” Panam says, taking the bait.
“Either pull this mission off, or prove Rogue wrong. Choose one.”
“Fuck off!” Panam laughs. “I will get both done.”
The sky is turning pink as they approach the station. It’s time, and they’re ready.
V jacks into the turret, and Panam slams the accelerator and the truck smashes through the front gate of the power station. Alarms start going off, and suddenly there are 4 drones on their tail. V makes quick work of them with the turret, and jacks back out.
“Think that’s all of ‘em?” she asks.
“If we hurry,” Panam says.
They smash through one final gate, and drive the truck straight into the power station’s core, Panam slamming the brakes just inches from the central conductor tower.
“Find the controls!” Panam shouts over the alarms, opening the door and hopping out. “I’ll connect the detonator. Quick, V!”
V nods and leaps out of the truck, already moving towards the nearest terminal. There are four total, she counts, and she figures if she can overload at least 3 of them that should be enough to detonate a pretty sizable EMP blast when triggered. The first terminal has a simple interface, not even any security on it, so she dials up the temperature control panel and sets it to overcharge.
As soon as she does, her vision begins glitching blue, but her normal Relic malfunction warning doesn’t appear. This is something different.
She hears Johnny swearing somewhere in her head.
It’s not like they can back out now, though.
She makes her way to the second terminal, her vision still glitching, making it hard to see where she's going. She uses the railing to guide her.
The terminal has the same interface, so she sets it to overcharge and steps back, and this time it feels like a hot knife is being stabbed through her skull. Her vision goes blue, then flashes white, glitching wildly.
She doubles over groaning, pressing her fingers to her forehead and willing herself to stay on her feet.
There’s another terminal right next to this one, so she steadies herself on the desk and manages to bring up the right panel and overlock it the same way as the others.
Her vision goes white and she collapses onto her hands and knees.
“Ooof… c’mon… breathe… aghh…” she says to herself, forcing herself to stand. “Shit, Panam, think we mighta overdone it!”
“You’ll survive!” Panam crows, already running back towards the truck. The central tower in the middle of the room is glowing blue, wild arcs of electricity crackling outwards from it. They definitely did something, that’s for sure.
V limps over to the passenger side door, moving as quickly as she can. She climbs in, her vision still glitching violently. She feels like she’s gonna hurl.
“Do you see that?” Panam says, utterly delighted and seemingly oblivious to V’s condition. “All lit up and blinking like a Christmas tree!”
“Girl, you wanted eleven, you got eleven,” V grants her.
“Fuck yeah!” Panam agrees. “Now let’s get out of here before it lights us up, too.”
She backs straight up out of the station, through the hole in the gate they’d punched on their way in, then turns and starts hightailing it out of the compound.
Johnny glitches into the backseat again, but he doesn’t fully materialize, he just glitches in and out, his whole body a blur of static.
“V!” he shouts, his voice choked with panic. “Get the fuck out before something happens to the chip!”
Thanks for the tip, V thinks furiously at him. I was just about to set up a fuckin’ picnic, maybe lay out, work on my base tan…
She’s fuckin’ scared, too, and she can feel his fear creating a feedback loop with her own, and it’s making her heart beat out of her chest which is only making her head pound worse. She’s shaking uncontrollably. He doesn’t have to fuckin’ yell at her.
“I mean it, V,” Johnny says, and V can hear the real alarm in his voice. “Watch out, the next one migh-”
He is suddenly cut off as his engram dissolves into a garble of static and glitches. He glitches in and out, writhing into strange, contorted poses, before blinking out completely. V feels the panic rising in her throat.
Johnny? she thinks frantically. And then, out loud, “Johnny!?!”
Panam looks at her strangely, but doesn’t say anything. She’s focused on flooring it up the switchbacks and out of the flats.
V doesn’t breathe for what feels like an eternity, staring wildly into the backseat, reaching for him with her mind. That shit couldn’t have permanently damaged the chip, right? Right?
He suddenly reappears, leaning forward against the back of her seat and putting his head on his hands, and V breathes an immediate shaky sigh of relief.
“Fuckin’ hell…” is all he says. He steadies himself on the seat, then removes his shades and slumps back against the backseat. His face is pale and his eyes are wide. He leans forward again, closer to V, and rests his elbow on her seat.
“Okay. I’m fine,” he says, seemingly more to himself than to V. “It’s… it’s okay, just… it’s okay, I’m fine… yeah… just... delta the fuck outta here!”
He locks eyes with V as he says the last part, and she can still feel the sharp, raw spike of fear there. Whatever the fuck just happened, they’re both pretty fuckin’ shaken.
They clear the top of the switchbacks, finally.
“Not the cleanest job, perhaps, but it still went well,” Panam says, but she’s breathing hard from the adrenaline too.
“Detonator’s good to go?” V confirms, collecting herself, allowing the fear to give way to the rush of what they are about to do.
“Yes,” Panam reassures her. “We just need to drive far away enough to keep the pulse from blasting us, too.”
She pulls off the road onto a small, unmarked rocky overlook.
“Here,” she says, stopping the car and handing V the detonator.
V takes it, grinning. “Always wanted to push the big red button on somethin’ like this.” She surveys the horizon. “How much time until it’s here?”
Panam checks her holo. “We’ve got about thirty minutes. Stay sharp.”
V nods. “Got it.”
“And by the way…” Panam says mischievously.
“What?”
“We are about to knock a multimillion-eurodollar Kang Tao asset clean out of the sky,” Panam says, resting her elbow on the steering wheel and leaning forward to peer through her binoculars. “How does that make you feel?”
‘Blastin’ corpo shit? Like you said, it’s exactly like fuckin’ Christmas.” She grins at the nomad.
“And that’s exactly what I like to hear,” Panam agrees.
They sit quietly for a few minutes, their eyes fixed on the horizon above Pacifica and out into the bay. The silence covers them like a thick blanket. All V can hear is the wind, and the rustling brush.
“Just noticed…” she says softly.
“What?” Panam asks.
“It’s quiet,” V muses. “The hum of the city, people’s voices, the smells… It’s all gone. Wind just intensifies it.” She listens for another moment. “Think I forgot quiet exists.”
“Mhmm…” Panam agrees, still keeping watch through her binoculars. “Though maybe not the smells. I mean, the coyotes? Rather hard to miss.”
“Thought that was just the air freshener in your Thorton.”
“Ha, ha,” Panam says. “Screw you.”
They both laugh, and V focuses her attention back on the horizon. Should be any minute now.
This better fucking work, she thinks.
Notes:
Ugh I feel like it's less fun when these chapters are just retellings of stuff in the game?? More original stuff coming shortly tho dw
Chapter 9: (Out of) The City
Summary:
V and Panam continue their pursuit of Hellman. Johnny and V finally get some answers about what is happening to them... and of course, none of it is good.
Chapter Text
The AV, surrounded by its entourage of drones, emerges in the predawn stillness from over the ocean like a swarm of gnats.
Panam sees it at the same time V does.
“It’s there!” the nomad says, pointing. “Coming from Pacifica! Get ready!”
V waits, holding her breath, heart pounding in her chest as the AV drifts towards them over the flats. As soon as it clears the Biotechnica tents, V presses the button on the detonator.
“Boom,” she says coolly.
Nothing happens.
“Shit, what’s happening?” Panam’s voice is worried.
Fuck.
V presses the button a couple more times. Still nothing.
“Great, just great,” she mutters, frantically clicking the detonator.
The power station explodes in an impressive fireball bursting outwards over the flats, shattering the silence of the misty morning.
“Bullseye!” Panam shouts triumphantly.
The AV lurches and dives downward, but the engines don’t cut out and to V’s horror, it manages to stabilize itself.
“Shit, Panam! Fuck! They’re getting away!”
“They’re going nowhere,” Panam hisses, opening the driver’s side door and hopping out. V hears her going around the back of the truck, and leans out the window.
“What are you doing?” she shouts.
Panam ignores her and marches toward the cliff’s edge, HMG in hand. She stops and hoists the massive missile launcher onto her shoulder, then aims and fires a rocket straight towards the AV, illuminating her silhouette in brilliant orange.
V watches, not daring to breathe, as the missile arcs through the sky and thank fucking Christ hits the AV square in the middle. To V’s relief, it immediately starts losing altitude.
“That’s how you do it!” Panam shouts, strutting back over to the car and slinging the HMG back into the trunk.
“Let’s go!” V shouts back, sliding back into her seat as Panam joins her, reverses the truck out of the overlook, and begins racing back down the switchbacks onto the flats.
“No way it stays in the air after that,” V reassures herself.
“They’ll either land, or they’ll crash,” Panam agrees.
Suddenly, another voice crackles over Panam’s comm unit.
“You catch that? Over.”
The voice sounds familiar to V, but she can’t immediately place it.
“Yup. AV, unmarked. Losing alt. Got eyes on it,” another voice responds.
“Mitch! Scorpion!” Panam cries. “What the hell are they doing?!”
Oh, fuck.
“Follow ‘em, I’ll be on my way in a bit,” says the first voice, which V now identifies as Mitch.
“Mitch? Scorpion? It’s Panam!” Panam is shouting into the comm. “Don’t go near that AV! I repeat, do not approach the AV!”
“Mhm, on the way, or I’ll start the party without you,” the second voice, presumably Scorpion, responds.
“It’s Kang Tao!” Panam shouts, her voice panicked. “Wait for me! Or better yet, get the hell out!” She hits her dash angrily. “Fuck, they can’t hear me! The pulse is interfering! Shit!”
“And the transport is unmarked,” V realizes. “Fuck.”
“They probably want to help the survivors. Without knowing it’s corporate!” Panam’s voice shakes. A sudden beeping on her radar draws both mercs’ attention.
“Drones?” V asks.
Panam nods, and V jacks into the turret.
She aims and tries to fire at the drones trailing after them, but nothing happens.
“Panam! It’s not shooting!”
“Shit! Probably jammed again,” Panam growls. “I’ll fix it. Hold on tight, going on autopilot.”
V can see through the turret sights as Panam heaves her upper body out the roof of the truck, leaning over towards the gun and burying her hands in the mass of cables and boxes that surround it. “Yep, seized up. Son of a bitch!” she yells.
“They’re on our tail!” V shouts.
“I know!” she shouts back, hitting her fist against a black box. “Fucking latches! Don’t! Want to! Open! Just a sec-”
Panam is cut off as a shot from one of the drones clips her torso, and she flies backwards like a ragdoll.
“Panam!!!” V screams.
The nomad recovers and pulls herself back into the car, clutching her torso.
“It’s nothing, I’m fine,” she insists. “Turret should work now. For the time being, at least.”
“Time being’s all we need,” V replies shakily, shooting the drones out of the sky as quickly as she can manage.
She jacks out to find Panam still doubled over, clutching her bleeding stomach with her right hand while steering with her left.
“You okay?” V says.
“Fucking… ricochet…” Panam gasps, looking down at her hand. It’s covered in blood.
She’s losing consciousness. Fuck. And her wound is in the same fuckin’ spot as Jackie’s was. V fights down the panic rising in her throat.
“I’ll live, don’t worry,” Panam reassures her.
“Hey man, where are you? Hellooooo! Scorpion?” Mitch’s voice crackles over the comm again.
“Mhm, perfect!” Panam shouts at her silenced comm. “Keep broadcasting over an open channel, just in case they missed you the first time! God, I swear!”
Gunshots echo out across the hills, and both women turn to each other in alarm.
“Did you hear that?” Panam says, still flooring the gas. “Fuck, something happened to them!”
V watches as Panam rummages in the cupholder next to her seat as she drives, pulling out an old airhypo.
“Looks expired,” Panam says, examining it. “Fuck it,” she decides, stabbing it into her torso and breathing heavily as it takes effect. “V…” she gasps. “If they got the Aldecaldos… If they got Mitch and Scorpion… I can’t… I don’t…”
“Hurry,” V agrees.
They careen around a rocky outcropping, and now V can see the downed transport a little ways below. They’ve cordoned it off, and a couple of mechs are patrolling, as well as a drone and some Kang Tao personnel. There are bodies on the ground, too.
Fuck, V thinks. This is my fault. There wasn't supposed to be any collateral damage.
“Oh no, no, no…” Panam is saying.
“Those your clan?” V asks, but of course she already knows the answer.
Panam nods, her face a mask of horror and grief. “They’re dead, all of them… V, if they…”
“Don’t worry,” V assures her. “We don’t know for sure.”
“Fucking corporate rats…” Panam hisses.
V feels Johnny's silent but emphatic agreement bubble up from somewhere inside her.
She continues to scan the crash site as they approach, and spots a man standing off to the side of the transport with his hands up, being held at gunpoint by one of the mechs.
“Mitch! He’s alive! They have them!” Panam cries, seeing him too.
“Corpos are probably waiting for reinforcements,” V guesses.
“If not for those damned glitches, I could have warned them!” Panam chokes, slamming her fist on the steering wheel. “This is all my doing… Why in the hell were they following the AV? The fools!” she yells, screeching the truck to a halt behind a rock, just out of sight of the downed craft.
“Listen,” V says, trying to keep her voice even. “We saw Mitch. They probably have Scorpion, too. I can handle the Kang Tao. You stay in the car, I’ll-”
“No!” Panam cuts her off. “Not so fast. I will go with you. Those are my people…” She glances frantically back towards the AV.
“Panam, you’re hurt,” V reminds her. “Wait in the car.”
‘I…” Panam starts, then huffs. “Fine. But I have Mitch’s rifle. I will try to cover you from here.”
“Preem idea,” V agrees, opening the passenger side door and dropping out of the truck. She can hear Panam grabbing the rifle and getting into position as she edges around the side of the boulder. V drops to a crouch and moves silently through the brush towards the AV, taking advantage of the early dawn darkness and staying in the shadows between the rocks.
As soon as she’s in range and has a clear line of sight, she uses a quickhack to shut down the launcher guarding the wreck. She then unleashes a series of contagion daemons on the nearest mech, which quickly leap to its allies and they start sparking and short-circuiting. V uses the distraction to sprint towards the AV, pulling out her revolver and firing at anything in a Kang Tao uniform. Her gun, as always, is loaded with non-lethal rounds, and she is grateful for that, since in the dim light with all the fire and smoke, she has no idea if any of these men are Hellman.
He better’ve survived the crash…
After short circuiting the final drone with another quickhack, V surveys the area. It’s all clear now, and there’s no sign of Mitch or Hellman. There are bodies of Aldecaldos strewn everywhere, and V feels sick to her stomach.
My fault.
“Path’s clear,” she says to Panam over the holo link.
Moments later, she hears the nomad approach from the truck. It’s quiet now, except for the crackle and roar of the fires still burning.
“Gonna open the door to the AV,” V says as Panam joins her. “Cover me.”
Panam nods, getting in position. V reloads her revolver, then takes a deep breath.
“Now!” she says, using her chrome arm to force open the hatch.
Oh, fuck.
The AV pilot is waiting for them on the other side of the door, with Mitch in a chokehold and a gun pressed to his forehead.
“Step back!” he yells. “Back! Toss your weapons! Or I’ll shoot! I repeat! Drop your weapons! Now!”
V doesn’t bat an eyelash, though her heart is hammering out of her chest. Panam’s gun is drawn too, and she and nomad find themselves frozen in a standoff with the Kang Tao pilot.
“Easy now,” V says, trying to keep her voice calm. “Not too late for everyone to walk outta this alive.”
“We called for backup!” the pilot shouts, his voice panicked.
“Bullshit,” Mitch hisses from the chokehold.
V holds the pilot’s gaze, her gun still trained on his forehead. “Last chance,” she says. “You don’t gotta die today. Let’s talk.”
“Why should I believe you?” the pilot grunts.
“Panam, shoot ‘im,” Mitch says.
“Shut the fuck up!” the pilot replies, pressing the gun harder against Mitch's forehead.
V’s throat is dry. “Listen,” she pleads. “This isn’t about you. Let him go and tell me where your passenger is.”
“I…” the pilot stammers. “I don’t know where they took him!”
“Hell no,” Panam counters. “He’s lying.”
“You don’t know? Or you don’t wanna say?” V prompts.
The pilot starts muttering about getting the comms back up so he can buzz the rest of his unit, clearly playing for time, but before V can cut him off, Mitch looks Panam dead in the eye and says, “Panam, you remember the cowboy, don’t you?”
And then before V can react, he kicks the pilot in the knee and bends forward as far as he can, giving Panam the window she needs.
Panam fires, hitting the pilot square between the eyes, yelling, “Fuck!” as she does so.
“Shit!” V exclaims.
Panam’s rounds certainly weren’t non-lethal.
“Are you alright?” Panam cries, rushing to Mitch’s side.
He shakily stands, dusting himself off. “Eh, just some scratches.”
Panam helps him out of the AV, then shoves him hard in the shoulder. “You fucking morons!”
“Did you get hit?” Mitch asks, noticing her bleeding torso. “Hang on, girl, I’ll patch you up.”
“It’s nothing,” Panam insists, waving him away, avoiding his eyes. “Let’s just go.”
Mitch sighs heavily. “We couldn’t retreat, Panam… They regrouped so fast, started shootin’ rockets ‘n shit." He looks around and shakes his head. "I… I lost everyone.”
“Everyone?” Panam wheels around to face him, her eyes wild. “Scorpion? Is he here?!”
Mitch’s silence tells V everything she needs to know. She feels the guilt twisting in her gut once more.
“Mitch?” Panam repeats, her voice breaking. “Mitch?! He’s… he’s safe, right?”
“Panam, I’m sorry,” Mitch says, his voice low. “I didn’t make it in time…”
Panam collapses onto a nearby crate, burying her face in her hands. “No… No!” she mutters, rocking back and forth. “Are you sure? No, he…” She looks up at Mitch, her eyes pleading.
Mitch kneels in front of her, trying to meet her eyes. V stands there awkwardly for a moment, then sits beside Panam and puts her hand, her organic one, on the merc’s shoulder.
“I… I’m sorry we didn’t get here sooner,” V says. “Scorpion… the rest… this is all my fault.”
“They were good people,” Mitch says softly. “Great people. They didn’t have to die here.” There is no accusation in his voice, only grief.
“I should have stopped him,” Panam says, the pain heavy in her voice.
“Doubt he would’ve listened,” Mitch reassures her. “Never was much of a listener.”
“Stubborn bastard,” Panam spits.
“Why’d you rush the AV like that?” V asks Mitch.
“We saw it was damaged, we know this land, we knew where it would fall,” Mitch says, shaking his head. “Had no idea it was Kang Tao.” He sighs heavily. “Figured they might need help. In the worst case, there’d be good salvage to be had.” He looks at V. “Seriously though, thanks for saving my ass, V.”
Got you all into this mess in the first place, V thinks bitterly. And it’s all for fucking nothing if we don’t catch Hellman.
“Sorry about your people, but I need to keep moving,” she says.
Mitch studies her face. “I’m guessin’ since you’re out here, you’re out here for the AV. Question is, why?”
“I need the guy they were transporting. Did you see anything?" She scans the crash site again - there are no more signs of life. “See where they went?”
“A handful of those corpo fucks took our cars and headed west. Your man might be there. If you follow them, you might still be able to catch ‘em,” Mitch offers.
“Must be lookin’ for a way to call base,” V muses.
In her peripheral vision, she sees Johnny glitch in, pacing back and forth nervously, surveying the wreckage. He’s anxious to go after Hellman, she knows.
“So you’re the ones who hit ‘em with that EMP,” Mitch is saying.
“Yeah,” V admits. “Tried to warn you, but couldn’t connect.” She glances over at Panam, who is still hunched over looking devastated. She looks up at V, then out into the distance.
“If they took our cars, they’ll have left tracks. We can follow them,” Panam says, her voice edged with determination.
"I’ll go after ‘em,” V says, getting to her feet. “Stay with Mitch, I’ll be fine.”
No sense getting more people hurt, she thinks.
Panam whips her head towards V and starts getting to her feet as well. “I am going with you. I promised I would help,” she says firmly. “Besides, those bastards killed Scorpion. I won’t let that go.”
V opens her mouth to object, but Mitch cuts in before she can say anything.
“Don’t argue with ‘er, V. No point,” he says, smiling sadly. He puts a hand on Panam’s shoulder. “Go. I’ll call the crew, we’ll take care of things here. And take my bike, you’ll be faster that way.”
“Good idea. I’ll leave my ride here, just in case,” Panam agrees. “Just watch the gun, it likes to jam.” She turns to V and swallows hard. “You can take Scorpion’s bike.”
V nods, and after Mitch makes Panam promise to come back for her truck in one piece, the two mercs set off towards the pair of dirt bikes parked a couple meters out from the AV.
“Panam?” V says, stopping before getting on the bike. It’s a gold Brennan Apollo emblazoned with the Aldecaldos logo, and V is suddenly reminded of Jackie’s old bike that she inherited. “Scorpion and the rest…” she says, her voice thick with emotion. “Look, I know how you feel. I mean it. I’ll help you settle your score with Kang Tao. Know what it’s like to lose a best choom.”
“I will destroy them, V,” Panam vows. “Every last one.”
V nods. “We’re in this together. To the bitter end.”
Panam smiles. “You know what, V? You’re all right. You helped me with Nash, you helped me with Mitch… to my mind, I owe you a favor. Your Hellman. I will find him.”
V smiles. “Ah, so that’s what this is? Just payin’ your debts?”
“No,” Panam says, her voice serious. “Nomads always help their own.”
“Oh ho, so I’m one of yours now?” V can’t help laughing, but she is secretly touched. “Sounds good.”
Panam smiles too, and swings her leg over the bike and starts the engine. V follows suit. The sun breaks above the horizon as they speed off into the brush, illuminating the desert in gold. The tire tracks are fresh and easy to follow, and V kicks her bike into gear and accelerates after Panam.
They ride for about an hour, the sun slowly positioning itself overhead. As they crest over a hill, V can see that the tracks ahead lead to an old filling station.
“I’d wager that’s where they’re holding Hellman,” Panam says, pulling up beside V.
V nods, and uses her Kiroshi scanner to get a closer look at the station. “Drones, patrols… definitely set up shop here,” she confirms. “And I see cars,” she adds as she continues scanning. “Nomad, looks like.”
Panam nods, tossing her head to clear the hair from her face. “Mhm. I recognize them. The clan’s. Hellman has to be here. But see that, V?” she says, pointing. “The pumps look pretty good. Not what you would find if the place were closed. The bastards might have managed to call for transport.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” V says, hopping off her bike and reaching for her revolver.
“I’ll cover you from here,” Panam says, unhooking her sniper rifle from the back of her bike and moving to take cover behind a large boulder. V nods at her, then uses her scanner again to unleash a daemon on the turrets and surveillance cameras, then another to take out the drone. A handful of Kang Tao personnel are patrolling as well, and V uses a non-lethal but highly effective contagion quickhack that’s become a personal favorite of hers, and watches with satisfaction as it jumps from one soldier to the next, causing them to double over in pain and lose consciousness as their implants glitch and malfunction.
“Goin’ in,” she says, and struts quickly across the road, revolver at the ready.
The door to the gas station market has been blocked by a SCSM machine, and V uses her prosthetic arm to shove it out of the way, ducking behind a row of shelves to take cover from the automated turret that immediately opens fire on her. She aims a shutdown daemon at the nearest surveillance camera, and to her relief, it jumps to the turret as well and the gun retreats back into the ceiling of the small market. Thank god they’re on the same network, she thinks.
There are more Kang Tao inside the station, too, and V makes a dash for better cover behind the Buck-A-Slice counter. From there, after taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she hits the agents with more quickhacks to slow them down, then uses her revolver to finish the job. She can feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins, and part of her fuckin’ loves this shit. Kicking corpo bastards right in the fuckin’ nuts. Or is that Johnny’s enjoyment she’s feeling?
A shot from the turret clipped her arm, she realizes, right below the shoulder. Thanks to her Realskin, it doesn’t seem like it caused any real damage, but she can tell it’s gonna leave a nasty bruise. She fishes a MaxDoc out of her pocket and inhales a puff of it anyway, just to be safe.
When the room is clear, she kicks open the door behind her, and is surprised to find herself face to face with an old man with a weathered face seated alone in an office chair. From his uniform, V deduces he must’ve been an employee here. Poor old fuck, she thinks.
“Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed,” he is saying. “This is my station. Those fuckin’ suits rode up like they owned the place! Took everything! Shoved me in here an’ locked the door,” he huffs.
“Don’t look too concerned,” V comments, holstering her revolver.
He shrugs. “Ain’t my first rodeo.” Then, he launches into a monologue about how between the Raffens and the Wraiths, this happens fairly often. V nods sympathetically, but cuts in as soon as he stops for breath.
“Kang Tao had a man with them. Civilian. You see where they’re holding him?”
To her immense relief, the man nods. “Sure did. Garage, room upstairs. Probably keepin’ him there.”
V thanks him and turns to leave, then turns back to the strange man.
“You even get any customers out here? Shit, anyone even drive this way?”
The man smiles. “Anyone who don’t like refuelin’ with cameras watchin’ ‘em. Not many, sure. But they’re all big tippers, you get me?” He winks.
“In exchange for your terrible memory?” V guesses.
“Heh heh,” he chuckles, his voice like dry leaves. “Don’t you worry. I’ll forget you, too.”
Just like the whole fuckin’ city, V thinks bitterly, and exits the side room back into the main market.
She can still hear gunfire outside as Panam picks off more soldiers with her sniper rifle. V quickly locates a side door in the market that leads to the garage, and steps through it, shutting down another turret with her daemon arsenal and taking out the remaining two guards with a series of well-timed quickhacks. Across the room, she can see metal stairs leading up to what looks like an office. Must be where he is, she thinks.
A Kang Tao goon jumps out at her from behind a crate, mantis blades at the ready. V whips around and shoots him square in the chest, and he collapses backwards. She follows it up with a final quickhack to make sure he stays the fuck down.
Her path to the stairs is clear, and she sprints for them. There’s a small sitting area on the landing with a metal door to the right. She takes a deep breath, cocks her revolver, then pushes the door open and steps through.
A blonde, bespectacled man in a suit is seated in a chair in the center of the room. She recognizes him as Hellman immediately. Crouched in front of him is a Kang Tao agent, bandaging his knee. Musta been hurt in the crash.
She knocks out the Kang Tao fuck with a system reset quickhack aimed straight at his cyberdeck. He collapses like a bag of rocks.
“Who sent you?” Hellman demands, throwing his hands up and cowering.
“Hey, easy,” V says, keeping her voice calm and steady but not lowering her weapon. “We gotta talk.”
“Who are you working for?” Hellman stammers. “Yorinobu Arasaka? Do you wish to take me back or, or…” his voice trails off, and V wonders if he’s about to piss himself.
“What a shit-eating rat,” Johnny says, materializing behind Hellman, his deep voice dripping with disgust. “He’s about to either scream or run or shit his pants.” He sighs roughly and leans against the wall, crossing his arms. “Motherfucker doesn’t know who to be more scared of - you, or Arasaka.”
Hopefully we can use that to our advantage, V silently responds, and Johnny nods without smiling. She takes a step towards Hellman.
“Don’t take this personally,” she says sarcastically, pistol-whipping him in the head and knocking him out cold.
Johnny glitches in closer, sitting with one leg propped up on the nearby desk, cigarette already lit.
“Seem to recall you were gonna tell Takemura when you got Hellman.”
V just stares at him for a second. “All of a sudden you want me to call him? Thought you hoped he was already dead.”
Johnny takes a drag. “Didn’t say you had to suddenly be best chooms. But you have Hellman now, and that’s one helluva a card. Try to win something with it.”
“Takemura saved my life, remember?” V reminds him.
“Because it was in his fucking interest to do so,” Johnny intones. “Still just biz. He’s no friend of yours.”
V sighs, then gets out her holo and calls Takemura. They arrange to meet at the Sunset Motel. She’ll take Hellman back to the room she and Panam still have booked and question him there, she decides, and Johnny nods approvingly. She hangs up, then stoops down and hoists Hellman’s unconscious body over her left shoulder and carries him out the door and down the stairs. Johnny glitches in the door frame, watching her as she leaves.
She can hear the roar of cars and motorcycles revving outside as she crosses the garage floor, and for a moment, she worries that Kang Tao managed to call for back-up after all. But then the garage door opens, and Panam is standing there, flanked by what looks like half the Aldecaldo clan.
“Looks like your new choombas are here,” Johnny says, glitching in next to her.
V smiles and steps out into the cool, bright morning.
V pulls up to the Sunset Motel with Hellman slung over the back of Scorpion’s bike like a hog being brought in from the hunt. Her bike now, apparently, at Panam's insistence. It was awful watching her new friend get chewed out by Saul (V finally met the gruff nomad leader) and V'd tried her best to take the blame for the whole fuckin’ mess, but Saul was hearing none of it. Panam was still responsible for her clan, he'd said, and then he asked the nomad point blank whether or not she was still an Aldecaldo. Despite that confrontation, every single nomad they spoke to seemed to want to welcome Panam back with open arms. And Mitch revealed that Saul had dropped everything to go help Panam once he’d learned what was happening.
V finds herself once again envying their camaraderie, their commitment to each other, her own loneliness blossoming in her chest once more. But now isn’t the time for her sad sack bullshit, as Johnny called it. She cuts the engine on her bike, then hoists Hellman back onto her shoulder and carries him across the parking lot and up the stairs to the dingy room she spent the previous day in with Panam.
It’s well past noon by now. Two days since she’s been home, changed her clothes, or showered. She realizes she can't remember the last time she ate anything, either. The SCSM hot dogs she had with Panam yesterday?
She pulls a chair out from the small table against the wall and deposits Hellman into it. He slumps forward unceremoniously. V pulls up another chair across from him and sits down, studying him. She reaches into her jacket and pulls out Ev’s old cigarette case, removes a cigarette, and lights it.
This corpo fuck better have some answers, she thinks, and slaps him across the face.
He startles awake, tensing up like a frightened rodent.
“Hey,” she says casually.
“Where am I?” Hellman stammers. “What is this place?” He speaks with a thick Scandinavian accent.
V takes a drag of her cigarette. “Motel. Middle of nowhere.”
“Any specific middle?”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re not leaving here by yourself, anyway.” She blows out the smoke directly into his face. He flinches, predictably.
“Why are we here?” He drops his hands to his lap, but doesn’t relax his shoulders.
“Wanna talk about your little invention,” V growls. “Biochip you made for Arasaka.”
“Fine,” Hellman says, as though he’d been expecting that. He leans forward. “But let’s get one thing straight, first. Yorinobu Arasaka didn’t send you?”
“No."
“This means you must have an offer for me,” Hellman says, leaning back. “If your boss will pay more than Kang Tao, I believe we can talk.”
“You misunderstand me,” V says coldly. “There is no offer.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Got Silverhand’s construct in my head. Your miraculous fuckin’ invention. It’s literally destroying my mind, and I know it’s only gonna get worse.” V takes another drag of her cigarette. “I need to find a way to safely remove it. And that? None of that’s on the fuckin’ billboards. Not even in the fine print.”
As she speaks, Johnny glitches in behind Hellman and stalks over to the remaining chair. He lowers himself into it, cigarette in hand, and leans forward with his elbows on his knees, looking at the floor.
“Silverhand? Construct…?” Hellman is saying. “That’s impossible!” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Where did you get this biochip?”
“Long story,” V intones dryly.
“If Arasaka finds me, I’m dead,” Hellman responds. “So are you. So we are in no hurry. And I’m interested. Truly.”
V glances at Johnny, and he nods almost imperceptibly. He has his hand on his knee now, regarding her through his shades.
“Klepped it off Yorinobu Arasaka,” she tells Hellman. “Job for a client, but the client left me out to dry.”
“And you decided the best place for it was in your own goddamn head?” the suit replies, incredulous.
“Actually, wasn’t a bad idea,” V says, still watching Johnny out of the corner of her eye. “Construct rebooted me when my own goddamn head took a bullet.”
Hellman considers this for a moment. “I always knew Yorinobu’s plan would fail. I just… never imagined it would turn out like this.” He shakes his head again. “Arasaka’s prize tech really is in the very streets of the city.”
V rolls her eyes. “Just tell me how the fuck I can remove it.”
Hellman looks at her. “If you’re telling the truth, you slotted in a new, experimental version of the biochip.”
“Sure fucking did,” she says. “But you made the thing, didn’t you? So start talking.”
“It’s not that simple,” Hellman begins, but V cuts him off.
“I know you can’t just yank it out,” she says impatiently. “My ripper said-”
“You showed that to some fucking street doctor?” Hellman shouts. “Who else knows?!”
“I needed help!” V shouts back. “Or did you think the first thing that came to mind was downing a Kang Tao AV?”
Hellman has no response to that.
“How’s the prototype version different?” V presses. “It’s got a different… engram? Something more…” She searches for the right word.
“Aware?” Johnny suggests.
“Aggressive?” V finishes.
“The biochip is what’s unique, not Silverhand’s engram,” Hellman responds. “The previous version of the chip was only used to communicate with pre-saved engrams.”
“And it was rare as fuck and cost a fortune, yeah,” V interjects.
“This one’s rarer,” Hellman says. “Meant to install and activate the engram in a new body. When I left Arasaka, the project was still in the trial phase.”
“How exactly was this new version supposed to work?” V asks, trying to control the vitriol in her voice. “Were you planning to have the engram kick people out of their own bodies? Is that shit by design?”
“During the tests, we assumed that the body would be… neurally indifferent during implantation.”
“Really don’t wanna know how you were testin’ this shit,” V says with a shudder. “‘Neurally indifferent’ means ‘dead,’ right?”
“Yes,” Hellman confirms. “Which makes what happened to you interesting indeed.” He looks up to meet V’s eyes.
“How do you put a price on immortality?” she says mockingly. “Who could even afford tech like this?”
“Nobody,” Hellman says without missing a beat. “This tech was meant to remain in-house. The prototype was Saburo Arasaka’s personal commission. He oversaw the entire project himself.”
“Fuckin’ asshole wants to live forever,” Johnny mutters darkly.
“So if Yorinobu hadn’t tried to sell it to fuckin’ NetWatch as a way to say ‘Fuck you,’ to his pops, nobody would’ve found out,” V concludes.
“And if not for you, the project would not have been a success,” Hellman points out. “This is a true breakthrough.”
“Huh,” V says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Imagine my luck, to be so fucking unique, so fucking exceptional. That mean you’ll help me?”
“Oh, V…” Johnny grumbles, getting to his feet and taking a step towards Hellman. He stops and puts one hand on his hip and looks down at the suit.
“I would have to see it first,” Hellman replies, reaching to pull out his personal link.
“Whoa, we just met,” V says, leaning back. “Haven’t built up that sorta trust yet.”
“How did you think this was going to go?” Hellman asks, exasperated. “If you want me to help, I must examine you.”
V glances up at Johnny again. He looks down and away from her, but nods.
“Okay,” she says softly.
Johnny watches Hellman closely, almost protectively, as he pulls the personal link from his left wrist and jacks it into the back of V’s neck. He paces behind Hellman as the corpo runs a scan.
“Unbelievable,” Hellman breathes as he begins analyzing the data. “It looks like…”
Johnny takes off his shades and bends over to peer closely at the man.
“Can’t believe this suit’s the one who’s gonna help us,” Johnny mutters, looking up at V, and gesturing towards Hellman with his glasses. He looks back at Hellman, then straightens and puts his shades back on.
“Oh, fuck,” Hellman says suddenly, reaching for V’s neck and jacking out his link.
“What, what is it?
Hellman shakes his head sadly. “What a pity I won’t be able to examine it fully,” he laments.
“Yeah, real shame, you coulda been his guinea pig, too,” Johnny says disgustedly, turning towards the bed V slept on and collapsing backwards onto it dramatically. He props one foot up and stares at the ceiling.
“I’m afraid I have bad news,” Hellman is saying. “Your neural network has completely deteriorated. It can no longer function independently of the chip.”
Fuck, she thinks. Johnny lifts his head up and looks at her for a moment and she feels a surge of emotion pass across their shared link. Fear? Anger? Before she can parse it out, Johnny flops backwards again.
“The only thing I could do…” Hellman continues, pausing for a moment as if to choose his words. V takes another drag of her cigarette.
“Woohoo, it’s bargaining time,” Johnny mutters angrily, gesturing with his hands.
“I could… I could give you information on a good clinic in Sweden,” Hellman finishes. “They’ll help you through the terminal stages, minimize the pain.”
Johnny doesn’t move, but V feels another surge of emotion from him. Definitely anger and fear, but something else, too.
“Wait,” V protests. “You said the project was in the trial phase. You don’t actually know how it’ll end.”
“Oh, I do,” Hellman answers swiftly. “I just saw the construct devouring your brain.” He leans forward. “It’s programmed to take over its new environment. At all costs. And your little meatbrain is helpless against it.” He almost smiles as he says the last part.
“So no matter what, sooner or later the engram wins,” V says quietly, looking at Johnny. He’s stopped fidgeting and is lying still on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Yes,” Hellman confirms. “And from what I’ve heard about Silverhand, that seems to be exactly his style.”
“Huh, I see my reputation’s grown into Arasaka legend,” Johnny says darkly.
“What exactly is going on in my head?” V presses, feeling something like despair rising in her throat. Don’t fuckin’ cry in front of this corpo gonk, she thinks furiously.
“You tell me,” Hellman replies coolly. “What’s it like to have two personalities? Because it’s not like you’re hearing voices. You’re both yourself and Silverhand, simultaneously.”
V shakes her head. “I can see him and talk to him."
Johnny sits up on the bed, swinging his legs over the side and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and light a cigarette.
“You’re not ‘talking,’ but yes, I understand what you mean,” Hellman says. “Have you noticed the construct’s influence on your decision-making?” He leans forward and rests his hand on his chin, studying V.
V feels another emotional surge from Johnny, and he stands suddenly and steps onto and over Panam’s bed. “Sheesh, give it a fuckin’ rest,” he barks at Hellman, glitching as he paces around them before coming to stand behind V.
“As of now, Johnny’s still just a voice in my head,” V explains to Hellman. “He has his own opinions, yeah, but he can’t make me do anything.”
“Agreed one hundred percent,” Johnny declares. “You are one fucking stubborn host.” He paces around again and stands close to Hellman, looking V directly in the eyes. His glasses are off, but his face is inscrutable as he continues to smoke. V notices he’s smoking with his metal hand, which he almost never does. She’s still picking up intense emotional static from him - something almost like… loathing but she can’t tell where or whom exactly it’s directed at.
“It’s not as if one of you wins the debate,” Hellman says, shaking his head and gesturing with his hand. “The scale simply shifts, slowly but surely.”
“What exactly do you mean?” V's heart is pounding and her mouth is dry. The waves of loathing - self-loathing, V suddenly realizes - are still rolling off of Johnny. She feels sick to her stomach.
“You will start doing things that were once unthinkable, at least to your old self.” He shakes his head, and Johnny’s glasses glitch back on and he looks at Hellman as though he were an insect. “And you know exactly who he was. A fanatic. A terrorist. A suicide bomber.”
V feels her blood start to boil at this. Johnny is pacing wildly again. “Oh, fuck me,” he growls. “Who’s trying to mess with your head now?” He looks over at V, his face serious.
“That is why I believe it would be better for you to consider clinical isolation at this stage,” Hellman continues.
V’s lips curl into a snarl. “At least Johnny never whored himself out like you.”
“Are you defending him?” Hellman asks, raising his eyebrows. “Or is that Johnny speaking now?” He taps his chin with his slender, pale finger. “Or, let me guess… he already tried to take over your body? You know, just for a little while?”
“No,” V says through gritted teeth.
“Would you, though?” Johnny drawls. “Could be fun…” He smirks at her and she resists glaring daggers at him. He turns and paces back to the chair he’d been sitting in earlier. “Kidding,” he says, lowering himself into the chair. “But watch out, suit’s gettin’ ready to talk your head off.” He hurls his cigarette to the ground and crushes it with the toe of his boot.
Hellman regards V with the same infuriating smirk on his stupid little rat face. "You know, this is rather like talking to someone hopelessly in love," he continues in a mocking tone, and V tries and fails to ignore the way the blood immediately rushes to her face at his words. "Nothing gets through," Hellman intones. "You're letting him push you out of your own body. And you can't even see it as a problem."
V's mouth twists into a grimace. “Know what?” she says coldly, feeling her pulse pounding her ears. “That’s enough. You just playing for time? Because I can’t tell. Are you trying to convince me you’re useless? I mean, in that case, I can just shoot you in the head and save us both some time.” She’s fuckin’ angry now, and she doesn’t give a shit, doesn't want to examine too closely just why he's gettin' under her skin so much.
“Ugh, finally,” Johnny says approvingly.
“I will try to help you,” Hellman insists. “If you come with me to Kang Tao.”
“‘I’ll try’ just isn’t gonna cut it,” V snarls, her voice dripping with malice. “Actually, it’s almost like you’re trying to buy your way in with the Chinese… at my expense.” She gestures with her cigarette as she speaks.
“Do you even realize how much data is in your head?” Hellman protests. “Even if I can’t help you, the data must be saved.”
“Well fuck me sideways,” Johnny says incredulously. “What a half-brained gonk. He just admitted you’re right!”
“Fuck you and fuck Kang Tao,” V spits. “Got any other ideas?” She puts out her cigarette like Johnny did, hurling it to the floor and crushing it with her boot.
Hellman thinks for a moment. “If you think there’s anyone else who can help you, I could give you the blueprints. Complete project documentation. Kang Tao offered quite the sum for it.”
“You got it with you?”
“He’s got to,” Johnny all but shouts, spreading his hands. “Gonk’s fucking useless without ‘em.”
At that exact moment, the door flies open and Goro Takemura struts in.
“V,” he says simply.
“Takemura?” Hellman says, looking back and forth between the two of them, the shock apparent on his face. “What the hell is he doing here?”
Johnny glitches in behind Hellman again and sits on the corner of Panam’s bed.
“He’s got a few questions of his own for you. You play nice, he might even save your ass.” She looks up at the former bodyguard. His arms are crossed and his face is hard. “I’m almost done,” she says to him, then looks back at Hellman. “The blueprints,” she says firmly.
Hellman reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a shard. He offers it slowly to V.
V snatches it from him and slots it into her head, checking the files. She can’t make much sense of the data, but at a glance it seems to be what Hellman claims.
“Better than nothing,” she hears Johnny say. “Long as we find someone fluent in technobabble.”
She slots out the chip and looks up at Takemura.
“What’ll you do with him?” she asks.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Goro says flatly. “You know me. I can be impulsive.”
Trying to psych him out, she thinks. Judging by Hellman’s face, it seems to be working.
V is more than happy to leave them to it.
“He’s all yours,” she says, getting to her feet. “I’ll give you two some space.”
Her vision glitches slightly as she stands, and she feels a wave of nausea roll through her.
“I hope we can come to an understanding,” Hellman is saying, sounding like a stammering rodent again.
“That is certainly in your best interest,” Takemura agrees. He turns back to V. “V, I will remember this,” he says sincerely.
V nods and steps towards the door. Behind her, she can hear Takemura continuing to talk to Hellman.
“Mm, did V not give you even a glass of water?” he is saying. “Unacceptable, inhumane. That is not me. You will see the difference. I will give you full buckets.”
V shudders as she pushes the door open. She’s glad she doesn’t have to be here for this part.
Johnny is waiting outside for her, leaning against the railing.
“Well, can put a check mark next to Hellman’s name,” he says as she steps through the door, hearing it close behind her. “Now we gotta- agh!”
V collapses forward onto her hands and knees, a Relic malfunction glitching her vision and making her heart stutter wildly.
Johnny is on his knees in front of her, leaning over her, his glasses off and his face worried.
“Fuck!” they both say in unison.
V’s head fills with a loud buzzing, and her vision begins to go dark. She reaches for Johnny as everything glitches and goes black.
Notes:
WHEW I played myself by deciding to actually write out this whole quest line. Still trying to plan out which parts of the game I intend to write out in detail like this and which parts I can skim over in favor of my original scenes without breaking the flow of the narrative too much. So please let me know if you've enjoyed these last couple chapters or if you strongly prefer the original stuff, as that will help me decide how much to ultimately include of each. Thanks so much for reading and subscribing y'all are the best!!!!!! :''''''')
Chapter 10: Scream and Whisper
Summary:
V and Johnny have a heart to heart before heading back to the city.
Notes:
You can have another chapter today, as a treat :3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The sun is setting when V comes to, still lying sprawled on the landing of the Sunset Motel. Her vision is still glitching, and she pulls herself onto her hands and knees and retches violently.
Through the door behind her, she can hear Hellman sobbing and Takemura speaking in a low and dangerous voice. She shudders and retches again, her whole body convulsing.
She reaches for the railing and uses it to drag herself to her feet. Johnny appears in front of her, leaning over to look at her face, trying to reach for her to steady her. She can feel something like dull static when he tries to grab her arm, but it doesn’t do much more than that.
She takes a step towards him, using the railing for support, but her legs give out and she stumbles.
“Siddown, goddamnit,” Johnny says, and her vision goes dark again.
When she comes to this time, it doesn’t seem like much time has passed, but to her surprise she’s managed to drag herself to the tables in the sitting area outside the bar. Or was that somehow Johnny's doing?
She heaves herself into one of the chairs and slumps back in it. Her vision is still glitching and her heart is still beating wildly in an erratic, unsteady rhythm. Everyone around her ignores her, but she probably just looks like another drunk, to them.
Johnny is standing across from her, still looking extremely worried.
“This all the biochip?” he asks, concern written all over his face.
“No, asshole, it's third trimester cramping,” V manages shakily, fumbling in her jacket for a cigarette.
“Ha ha ha, joke away, but you look pretty spent,” Johnny says, his voice serious.
He sits across from her, and V’s hand shakes as she lifts the cigarette to her lips.
“Fuck!” she exclaims, feeling her heart stutter and twitch in her chest. Her vision goes dark on the edges again.
“That was your ticker,” Johnny says, looking out at the desert, avoiding her eyes. “Just sit and rest. Don’t need you flatlinin’ while we got a job to do.” He pulls out his own cigarette as V coughs violently.
“Blah blah blah, fuck Arasaka, blah blah, smash Mikoshi,” she says, pitching her voice low to imitate him.
“You really are turnin’ into me,” Johnny teases, cracking a small smile as he lights his own cigarette.
“Heh,” V gasps, her heart still beating erratically. “Might be right.” Her hands won't stop shaking as she lights her cigarette and takes a long drag.
“We’ve been bickering like a shriveled old married couple,” Johnny remarks, still staring out at the horizon. “Maybe it’s time we let up, let a little trust take hold.”
She can’t tell exactly what he’s thinking, but she can feel a jumble of contradictory emotions bubbling between them. He’s right, she thinks. They have no choice but to trust each other.
It all suddenly feels so utterly stupid, so fucking pointless. All this bloodshed... and for what? A stupid dirtgirl and a dead terrorist?
“Got no idea where I’m going,” V chokes, looking at her hands, her words barely above a whisper. “Be a living legend. That’s all I wanted.” Fuck, don’t cry now, she thinks. “Feels like I’m barely surviving.”
Johnny is silent for a moment. V watches a drunk couple arguing on the deck behind him.
“Test of a person’s true value?” Johnny turns to look at her, finally. “Death. Facing it, staring it down.” He leans across the table and reaches his hand, his organic one, towards V. She stares at it, then up at him. “You still got a chance to be somebody.”
She finds herself unable to hold his gaze, and her eyes fall back to his hand. “Yeah," she murmurs. "Maybe.”
Johnny shakes his head fiercely. She’s reminded of their conversation the other night, how he’d expressed the same complete confidence in her. He actually fuckin’ believes in me, she realizes. Like Jackie did. She feels something sharp in her chest, and looks away again towards the fighting couple.
“What was it like?” she asks softly. “When you died?”
Johnny turns away from her and leans down, putting his elbows on his knees and taking a drag of his cigarette. She turns to face him now, watching as she waits for him to speak.
“Was on top of the world,” he says quietly. “Failure... not an option, not a thought… till it happened.” He looks at his hands, then back up at her. “Death feels real now. It’s only now I know it.” His gaze is intense, even through his sunglasses.
“Now?” V says, her voice catching in her throat. “Had half a century to come to terms.”
“Mikoshi felt… I dunno, like sleep?” he says. “Lacked awareness, had no sense of passing time, didn’t mark it. Did what they wanted to me. I just remember… cold. A black void. Fear.”
V remembers. She’s seen it in his dreams. She shivers. This is the first time he’s talked about it openly with her.
Johnny leans back and crosses one leg over the other, resting his ankle on his knee. He stares up at the darkening sky. “Or… was that your death?”
But V can remember Johnny's death, now, too. She can remember the taste of his fear. She chews her lip.
“My memories,” she asks. “What do they feel like?”
Johnny shakes his head. “Not followin’ ya.”
“Aside from what you see and hear, I mean,” V says. “You process or… experience any feelings?”
Johnny considers this for a moment. “Anger, regret, bitterness, fear,” he says. “Though honestly, can’t tell if they’re yours or mine.”
V raises an eyebrow. “You sayin' you regret what you did?” she asks. “At 'Saka Tower? Detonating a nuke downtown?”
Johnny shakes his head. “It was Mikoshi I was after,” he corrects, his voice low and sharp. “I needed to destroy it. Gave ‘Saka ample time to clear the building.”
“Thousands of innocent folks dead, and for what?” V presses him. “An even taller tower?”
Johnny just shakes his head again, seemingly unmoved. “If you're gonna declare war on corps, you'd best be ready for the consequences. Yes, innocent people die. It's the nature of war.”
“You think your death served some kind of greater purpose, don't you?” V says. “You didn't sacrifice yourself for all those poor souls oppressed by Arasaka. You got zeroed by Smasher while trying to save your output. So don't take it out on me just 'cause you couldn't change the world.” She narrows her eyes at him. “You knew countless people would die. Don't kid yourself.”
“For all your non-lethal bullcrap, you kill too, when you need to. When you feel it’s justified. When it suits you. When a client demands it,” he spits. “Or," he continues, looking pointedly at her, "When plans go haywire, and innocent people are in the wrong place at the wrong time."
She knows he means the Aldecaldos. She thinks of their bodies strewn around the AV, of Scorpion, and her stomach twists.
"That doesn't fuckin' compare, doesn't even come close, and you know it," she snaps. "Twelve thousand people, Johnny. And that was just the blast alone. Not even countin' the quarter mil' that died of radiation sickness," she reminds him. "Know you didn't have N54 News in Mikoshi, but trust me when I say it was pretty fuckin' bad."
"So, your problem just about the scale, then?" he presses. "All your little botched merc jobs add up, you know."
She glares at him. “I do what I do because someone's gotta do these jobs, and at least I can do my best to do them clean and quiet and not hurt anyone I don’t need to," she hisses, fighting to keep her voice even. "If I don't take the gigs, some other gonk will, and it'll be someone with no skill and no principles who'll do it sloppy and zero people who don't deserve to get zeroed.”
He stares back at her, his face unreadable.
“Agreed,” he says, “And that’s why I had to take down Arasaka myself.”
This answer catches V somewhat off guard, and she laughs sharply. “Guess we make quite the duo,” she says, her lip twitching up into a sardonic smile.
“I told you. You're more like me than you think, chip or no," Johnny says flatly. "And, to answer your question. What I did in Saka Tower... no regrets,” he concludes, but she can feel his doubt, even as she can feel him trying to bury it.
“Might fool someone else with that, but I call horseshit.”
Johnny shakes his head again. “We're one in the same, whether you wanna admit it or not. Idealists fightin' for a cause, blind to the fact it'll put everyone we care about in the ground. ‘Cept the line 'tween believing in an ideal and bein' plain naive is, well... pretty fuckin' thin.”
V regards him coolly. “When it comes to bein' blinded by ideals, well... can skin that cat a dozen different ways.”
“Uh huh,” he says. “What d’ya know? Guess you’ve got me all figured out.” His voice is hard.
“I know you, Johnny.” And as she says it, she realizes it might be more true than either of them wants to admit.
He doesn’t respond to that, and just takes another slow drag of his cigarette.
V does the same. “So, Mikoshi… why’d Arasaka even build it?”
“If I could only see inside Saburo’s head…” Johnny drawls, tapping his metal fingers agitatedly against the table.
“Ha, ha,” V responds.
“People can be bought, brainwashed, but it’s only in Mikoshi that you can peer inside a soul, pick it apart… reprogram it. They’ve amassed quite a collection. Scary talented runners, soulkilled, packed away.” He looks at V pointedly again, and she remembers he'd called her almost exactly that just yesterday. “Probably using them now, probably controlling ‘em.”
V shudders again. “So, rulin’ hearts and minds, that’s what it’s about. The usual.”
Johnny nods. “Corps’ve always tried to shackle people one way or another. Saburo’s ambition is greater... he’s out to control humanity.”
“Well,” V concedes, “Think I get why you detest the place.”
“Shouldn’t exist,” Johnny agrees. “Of all the destruction and pain corps wreak ‘round the world, what happens at Mikoshi is worst.” He uncrosses his legs and leans towards her again, his hand inching across the table. “Know why?”
“They can change who you are,” V whispers. “Turn you into someone else without you even knowing it.”
“Yep, goddamn right,” Johnny says disgustedly.
"You're smarter than you pretend to be," she muses, watching him as she finishes her cigarette.
He looks back at her with that same hard look. "Yeah," he tells her. "So are you."
He holds her gaze as she takes a final drag of her cigarette, then smashes it out on the small tray on the table between them, resting her hand next to it.
“Realize what you’re doin’ to me is what Arasaka’s doin’ at Mikoshi, right?” she says, her voice catching in her throat.
“Yeah,” Johnny says again, his voice suddenly filled with anguish. “I know.” He stomps out his cigarette and just stares at it on the ground. “That’s why I’m gonna fix it.” His voice is hard again, and she feels the same waves of self-loathing that she’d felt from him earlier.
She leans toward him and inches her hand closer to him across the table, the way he had before. Not quite reaching for him, but not… not.
He looks at her hand, then at her face, and they stare at each other for what feels like an eternity. She swallows but doesn’t break his gaze.
The moment is interrupted by the sound of Panam’s voice on the stairs behind them.
“V?” she says, sounding only mildly surprised as she approaches the table. “I didn’t think you would still be here. Did you finish questioning your man?”
V nods as Panam moves to sit in the chair that Johnny’s in. He glitches away just as she pulls it out to do so.
“Surprised to see you here too,” V says.
“Figured I would stop and spend the night here instead of heading straight back to the city,” Panam says matter-of-factly. “It is a long drive, and I remembered we still had the room booked another night.”
V glances over her shoulder. “It’s uh… occupied right now actually.”
“Hellman?” Panam asks.
“Yeah and… another friend of mine. Had a couple questions of his own.”
“Mm. I see,” the nomad says, glancing toward the room as well. “What did you want him for, anyway?”
V shakes her head. “Sheesh. Long story. Not sure I’d even know where to start,” she says honestly.
“Tell me next time, then,” Panam says warmly, and V finds herself strangely grateful for the nomad’s unexpected company.
“So, what now? Book another room, or head back to NC?”
“I suppose we can drive back tonight,” Panam says. “I can give you a ride, if you’d like. You can put your bike in the back of the truck.”
“Sure,” V agrees, and Panam is silent for another moment. “How’d things go with Saul after I left?”
“About what you’d imagine. Sorry you had to witness that,” the nomad says, sighing heavily. “Things just get complicated, dramatic sometimes.”
“Like any family.”
“The thing is, am I even part of the family anymore?” She stares at her hands.
“You know you are,” V says firmly.
Panam doesn't answer.
“He’ll get over it,” V assures her.
“I don’t give a damn,” Panam insists, tossing her hair back haughtily.
“He clearly gives a damn about you, though.”
Panam rolls her eyes and stares out into the desert.
“Saul, Mitch…” V presses. “They really treat you like family. Maybe you should give them a chance.”
“It is not that simple,” Panam huffs.
“Once again - like any family,” V says, still watching Panam’s face. “But really, Panam… think you’ll ever go back?” she asks. “I mean, not right now, but… someday?”
Panam sighs. “I don’t rightly know,” she answers. “On the one hand, I don’t have anyone outside the clan. Shit, I don’t really know any other life.”
“But on the other?”
“Without my clan, who am I?” She looks at V. “Who would I become if I stayed in Night City?”
V thinks about the conversation she and Johnny’d just been having. Try to be a legend in NC, and all you get is death, she thinks. As if on cue, he glitches in behind Panam and leans against the railing, staring out into the desert.
“Could always try it out, see who you become there,” V says to Panam. “Except… city doesn't always play fair. Dunno if it's worth sacrificing your friends along the way.”
“Already did that,” Panam mutters darkly.
“It’s never too late to start over again,” V says pointedly, looking at Johnny. He doesn’t turn towards her or react, but she can still feel the dark knot that’s tangled up inside him. Inside them both.
Panam frowns. “Mhm. For now, I only seem to be really good at burning bridges.”
“You mean Saul? Or Rogue?”
“The former, but thanks for reminding me.” Panam snaps, but then falls silent again. “V…” she says finally, looking up at her. “Do you think I could make a fresh start with her, too?”
V thinks for a moment, then nods. “She seems to bet her eddies on the right people. You’ll work it out.”
Behind her, Johnny glitches away.
“Scorpion said I would hate Night City,” Panam says softly.
“He knew you that well?” V teases.
“Probably better than I know myself,” Panam mutters sadly. “He said when I’d had enough of the city, we would stock up on canned kibble… fill a couple thermoses with coffee and whiskey, and hit the road. He said we would get away from it all.”
“Sounds like a real adventure.” V says, but a sudden thought strikes her. “Was he… was he your input?”
“No,” Panam sighs, shaking her head. “Or, well… not quite. We… well, it was complicated. If I’d come back sooner, maybe… I don’t know. But now he’s gone. Shit, V, why is everything shit, shit, shit…”
V's gut twists as Jackie's face floats to the surface of her mind, the trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth and the intensity in his eyes as the light left them.
“I’m sorry,” V tells Panam gently. “I know the feeling. But you’re still alive.”
Panam bites her lip, her eyes flashing. “Do you know what?” the nomad declares bitterly.
“What?”
“This is my life right here. I step out of one pile of shit, only to trip into another, bigger one,” she laments.
“Panam…” V protests. If anyone should be saying this, it's me, she thinks.
“And pull in everyone else after me,” the nomad continues. “I’m done. You hear me, V? I fuck up again, you’d better give me a good kick in the ass.”
“But you didn’t fuck anyth-”
“Promise me!” Panam interjects.
“Alright, I promise,” V relents.
Panam looks long and hard at V, then smiles slowly. “You know what? I’m glad we met,” the nomad says. “It’s been a damned tough couple of days, but still we pulled through.”
“We did,” V agrees, smiling.
Panam gets to her feet. “Alright. If we’re heading back tonight, we had better get a move on. You have everything?”
“Yeah,” V says, getting to her feet and following the tall, dark-haired nomad woman down the stairs to her truck. Together, they load Scorpion’s old bike into the back, and V circles around to slide into the passenger seat. Panam smiles at her again, then turns on the radio, cranks it up, and peels out into the quickly fading dusk, speeding back towards the city of fuckin’ dreams that just got finished crushing both of theirs.
But Panam looks happier now, and V tries to catch her mood. A Samurai song comes on the radio - Never Fade Away, which just so happens to be V’s favorite - and Panam grins and begins howling along.
Her voice is horrifically off-key, but V is surprised to see she seems to know all the words. She grins in spite of herself, and allows herself to sing along under her breath as well. She’s waiting for Johnny to appear and smirk at her from the backseat, but he doesn’t, and when she reaches for him she can still feel him brooding somewhere deep inside her.
Fuck it, she thinks, and begins screaming the lyrics along with Panam.
Notes:
I always felt like there was something between Panam and Scorpion!!! Please tell me I'm not alone here lol
Chapter 11: Dancing With My Axe
Summary:
V and Judy make a plan to change things up at Clouds, and V gets a tarot reading from Misty.
Notes:
WARNING: Porn in this one choombas
I always thought it was so strange that Johnny doesn't have anything to say for himself when you go to the 2023 Memorial at Arasaka Tower. Really feels like there should have been some sort of interaction there!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Her dreams that night are jumbled, disorganized. There are gunshots, explosions, and dead nomads, and she hears Hellman saying over and over in her ear that the engram is devouring her little meatbrain. And then she’s Johnny, sitting in that fucking chair with Saburo fucking Arasaka standing over him, lighting up his brain with Soulkiller and ripping his soul from his body in one final blaze of agony.
But then it’s all gone, and she’s standing alone in the Badlands, the sun rising. Or is it setting? And then, Johnny is next to her.
They stand there silently side by side, facing the sunset or sunrise or whatever it is, and she abruptly realizes that it's neither - it's the city and it's burning, all of it. But instead of fear or horror, she feels strangely calm.
Johnny reaches over to take her hand. It’s unprecedented, but it feels so natural, and she doesn’t think twice before slipping her hand into his. It feels solid, warm, real.
She wakes up to her holo ringing, the edges of the dream still clinging to her mind. It’s Judy. She feels her heart beat a little bit faster at the sight of the girl's weird octopus avatar flashing on her HUD.
“Hey Jude, how ya feelin’?” V asks sleepily, rolling over to sit up as she answers. Her vision glitches, and she shakes her head to clear it.
“Shitty,” the braindance editor answers. “I buried Ev the other day. Thought you’d wanna know. Bought her a box at the Columbarium. The one near North Oak.”
Same one where Jackie is, V thinks. “Did that help?”
“Nope,” Judy says. “I just went and got thoroughly shitfaced after. But then, somethin’ came to me.”
“Gotta give yourself time to grieve, Judy. Experience all the stages, let ‘em play out.”
Judy laughs sharply. “I’d say I’m on anger. Gonna stay here for a while, too. I can work with anger.”
Understandable. V sighs heavily. “Okay, so… what came to you?”
The short of it is, Judy wants to take Clouds from the Tyger Claws. Like what the Mox did at Lizzie’s all those years ago. V knows the story, and she knows it didn’t exactly go smoothly, and she reminds Judy as much.
But Judy isn't gonna be talked down that easily, that much is clear. Not after what Woodman did to Evelyn - not after he raped and sold Judy's friend to people who did even worse things to her. Not after Evelyn died because of it. Not after the Claws stood by and allowed the supposedly upscale dollhouse to be run like that. So now, Judy's determined to set things right. And, of course, she wants V to help her. And by “help,” V suspects she'll be the one doing most of the heavy lifting. Judy claims she knows someone at Clouds who will take their side - Maiko Maeda, a doll herself who “unofficially” runs things there - but it sounds like her cooperation is far from a sure thing.
“So, what exactly is the plan?” V asks Judy, running her hand through her hair. She is hesitant to admit it, even to herself, but she’s developing a real soft spot for this girl.
“We’ll sneak into Clouds early tomorrow morning,” Judy is saying. “If you’re free,” she adds quickly.
“How early?”
“Before 8. Clouds’ll be closed but Maiko will be around. We’ll just drop in quietly and have a chat with her. No one else even has to know we’re there.”
Normally, V’d be annoyed by an ask like this, but Judy’s earnestness is hard to refuse, and V can’t deny that the little Mox’s heart is in the right place. No one deserves what happened to Evelyn. V thinks about her conversation with Johnny yesterday, about why she does what she does.
If I don’t help her, she’ll ask someone worse, V thinks.
“Alright,” she says. “Pick you up tomorrow morning at 6, then.”
“Woo!” says Judy. “You’re the best.”
V hangs up and flops back onto her bed. She can feel Johnny’s muted disapproval.
Should stop by Vik’s, she thinks. Make sure the EMP didn’t rattle anything loose in her head. Maybe get her hand tuned up a bit, too.
She heaves herself to her feet and walks to the bathroom, stripping off the old Samurai 2020 tour t-shirt she’d slept in. She bought it from that guy at the Cherry Blossom Market as a joke to get a rise out of Johnny, but it turned out to be extremely soft and comfortable, and it’s become her favorite shirt to sleep in.
She hears Johnny glitch in behind her as she starts the shower.
“You just here to ogle or you want something?” she snaps. She’s not in the mood for a lecture, and she knows he's pissed she agreed to help Judy.
"Don't pretend you haven't noticed, way she looks at you,” Johnny says, his voice deadpan. “Makes you go all mushy inside, I can feel it."
V laughs sharply to hide her self-consciousness. She's been trying her fuckin' hardest to keep that shit carefully guarded from Johnny. Sure, so she's had a little crush on Judy since the feisty Mox first glared at her from across the bar at Lizzie's. Maybe even a big crush. Fuck her if she's about to admit it to Johnny outright.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say my brain tumor’s gettin’ jealous,” she says instead.
"Bet you'd like that, wouldn't you."
"Yeah, you got me," V says sarcastically. "I love the idea of my Stockholm Syndrome sex pest brain parasite gettin’ pissy the second I wanna get some real ass."
She knows she's gone too far when Johnny glitches around in front of her, staring openly at her naked body. He's fully clothed, cigarette in hand, sunglasses on. Not getting wet, of course. It would almost be funny, if he weren't looking at her like that.
"You can lick every cunt in Night City if you want, princess," he says, voice dripping with disdain. "After all, I'll be right there with you. Should be thanking you, really."
God, are they twelve?
He’s right, though, and prior to now, she hasn’t quite allowed herself to consider that aspect of things. Anyone she hooks up with, and Johnny’s suddenly the uninvited third wheel, the invisible guest at the world’s most fucked up threesome. It’s either that, or take the damn blockers.
And on top of that, she knows she’s gotta break it to Judy sooner or later that she’s in all likelihood gonna turn into said brain parasite. That she’s gonna die. That one day, Judy will call her, and Johnny will answer.
She sighs and turns off the water. Johnny doesn’t glitch away, he just moves to watch her as she begins getting dressed.
“Look, V,” he says, his voice softer. “Someone’s gonna be left holdin’ the bag for this little stunt. And who knows, maybe the bad guys’ll saddle up, answer for all the bad shit they’ve done. But you know what I think? I think you’re the one who’s paying.”
“Says the man who expected his friends to walk through fire for his antics,” V retorts. “Ever consider that shit’s supposed to be a two-way street?”
“And when exactly do you think Judy’s gonna pick up a gun and help you take down some corpos?”
“She helped us track Evelyn! Led us to the Voodoo Boys! Or did that already seep out of your gonk code-brain?” V says, throwing on her coat. It’s overcast today, and her HUD tells her it’s gonna be in the high 60s.
Johnny cocks an eyebrow. “She tagged along at best.”
“Is that it, then? Someone’s not useful in your little anti-corpo crusade, you got no time for ‘em?”
“Just tryna look out for you, V. For us,” He looks down, but doesn’t take his glasses off. “We’re runnin’ low on time, here. Can’t get sucked into every hairbrained scheme a choom o’ yours hatches.”
“Okay, then,” she huffs. “What do you want to do today?”
“Arasaka Tower,” he says, taking a drag of his cigarette.
She tries and fails not to roll her eyes. “Lemme guess, you wanna kick down the fuckin' door, guns blazin-”
“No,” he cuts her off. “The memorial plaza outside. Rode past it the other day.” He puts out his cigarette. “Wanna see it up close.”
“What, wanna admire your handiwork?” she shoots back.
His face looks solemn, but he’s carefully guarding his emotions now and she can’t feel much through their link.
“Somethin’ like that,” he says darkly.
And so she finds herself pulling up at the base of the monolithic tower on Jackie's old Arch, kicking down the stand and staring up at the tower with a mixture of fear and... something else. This is the place where Johnny's story ended - for the first time, anyway.
It’s not crowded, but there are the usual gaggles of tourists and school groups as well as a couple of families there to leave flowers and other mementos. Johnny is surprisingly silent as V wanders slowly through the memorial, stopping at the massive array of candles in front of the big sign.
“Damn, ‘Saka sure knows how to put on a show,” Johnny mutters, finally glitching into appearance. “Playin’ the victim card as if they didn’t bring this on themselves.”
“These were just workers, Johnny,” V says. “Not everyone who takes a corpo job does it out of deep love for the corps. People gotta feed their families. For a lot of ‘em, this is a way out.”
“You didn’t take a corpo job,” he points out.
“And not everyone can be a self-taught netrunner and merc,” she reminds him coldly.
He sighs and kicks his foot, studying the names on the memorial wall.
“They weren’t supposed to be there,” he insists. “If ‘Saka hadn’t jammed our evac warning, if the bomb went off in the basement like it was s'posed to…”
“I know,” V says softly. “But it is what it is.”
“Yeah,” Johnny says, glitching away.
They continue to wander through the exhibit, heading inside to the preserved parts of the destroyed tower, still twisted and crumbled from the bomb’s detonation. Still blocked off with Nanoglass to prevent any residual radiation from leaking out. V presses her fingers to the cold glass, gazing down into the demolished remains of what had once been an office.
Johnny is responsible for this. There's no way around it, V realizes. It doesn't matter if he did it for love, or for a noble cause. All these lives are still on his hands. On his conscience.
Across from them, on the wall inside the ruined office, another strange graffiti glitches into focus.
It’s another tarot card. The Tower. Seems fitting, V thinks.
They emerge from the glass walkway out into the final area, a series of concrete pillars rising up from a flat, mirror-like fountain. The clouds have cleared a bit, but the air is still crisp. V stands there for a moment, and reaches for Johnny with her mind. She can feel a dark knot undulating inside him.
We done here? she asks silently.
He glitches in next to her.
“Yeah,” he says darkly. “Seen all I need to. Thanks, V.”
He glitches away.
V walks slowly back to her bike, processing it all. She knows Johnny feels conflicted about the consequences of his actions, despite his insistence otherwise. She can feel the weight of it all settling into his chest, into her own chest. But she also can't help but understand why he did it, and why he’d do it again if given the chance.
Hell, the way things are going, it isn’t impossible that she’ll be the one bursting into tower herself this time, Ballad of Buck Ravers style.
I’m not Johnny, though, she thinks forcefully. Not yet, anyway. If it comes to that, she’s not gonna share Johnny’s take-no-prisoners attitude. She’s got her non-lethal combat quickhacks and her modded Quasar, whereas Johnny just had his wits and his Malorian. And a coupla chooms willing to walk into hell with him. That’s one thing she doesn’t currently have, imaginary friend notwithstanding.
She sighs and kicks her bike into gear, heading back towards Watson.
Misty is meditating in front of her altar when V enters the quiet shop. The sound of the low chimes and the smell of patchouli and incense fill her senses, and she breathes deep, basking in the comforting oasis of the little storefront.
“Hey, V,” Misty says in her soft lilt, turning as she hears the merc enter.
"How's it going, Misty? You all right?" V says, coming to lean against the counter.
"I think so,” Misty says, crossing over to sit opposite V. “It hasn’t been easy. Y'know, putting my life back together. Without him.”
“Yeah,” V agrees, her eyes wandering to the various trinkets and bonsai trees Misty keeps around the shop. “I keep thinkin’ about that mandala he was making, for some reason. It was such a mess, but… it seemed like he was working really hard on it. Musta meant something to him.”
“Yeah,” Misty says softly. “What a mess. Too bad he never finished it.” She laughs, but V can see her eyes start to shine a little.
"How's it goin' with Mama Welles?" she asks, to change the subject a bit.
“Pretty good…” Misty answers. “Maybe too good."
"Too good? How’s that?”
"After the ofrenda, she invited me over. We talked for a while. It was really nice,” Misty says. “But now, she calls me every single day. Asks how it's going, tells me about herself, Jackie, everything. Sometimes for hours." She shakes her head. "Sent me a roast the other day! You believe that? Apparently I'm too skinny. She knows I don't eat meat!" Misty looks plaintively at V. "V, I'm afraid she's trying to, I dunno, adopt me somehow."
"Wish someone would make me a roast," V says, smiling sadly. “She must be so lonely.”
"Yeah,” Misty murmurs. “I think she’s using me to avoid thinking about her son's death."
Poor Mama Welles, V thinks. "And she’s trying to make you into a new, surrogate daughter."
"Exactly,” Misty nods. "But enough about me. How about you, V? How are you? I mean... you... two?"
V smiles. Misty is the only person who ever asks her about Johnny directly, like he’s a real person. She hasn’t told Panam anything yet, and even Judy doesn’t know the full story, and Vik still just sees him as a virus or something to be erased as quickly as possible.
"I wouldn't say it's been easy," V admits. "But, we're managing. We’re… we're strangely alike, in a lot of ways. Which just makes the whole thing so much more confusing."
And it’s true, V realizes. Even the things she doesn’t want to admit to herself - like Johnny’s tendency to push people away, his fear of being known, and his even deeper fear of being forgotten - are things she shares, things that have always been in her.
"Yeah," Misty says thoughtfully. "Not too many people could handle that. But I had a feeling you two could find a silver lining, somehow."
"Silver lining," V jokes. "Heh."
Misty smiles at that. “Want a tarot reading?” she says, reaching for her deck and leaning forward across the counter.
“Sure,” V says, settling herself into the stool and resting her elbows on the counter. “Hit me with it.”
Misty smiles again and begins shuffling the cards. “I devised this layout especially for you and Johnny. Your future is his future... and vice versa.”
V raises her eyebrows at this. “Guess so.”
On cue, Johnny glitches in behind Misty and leans next to her, looking over her shoulder. He raises an eyebrow at V, and she doesn’t even need to tap into their emotional connection to know he thinks all this tarot scop is kinda a big joke.
Misty draws a card and places it on the table.
“This card represents you as you are now,” she says. “The World reversed. You stand at the beginning of your journey. It will be nothing like you think, and longer than you imagine.”
“You don’t say,” Johnny scoffs.
“That tracks so far,” V says, ignoring him. “Definitely got no idea where any of this is headed, and if you’d told me a month ago that Jackie'd be dead and I’d have an engram of Johnny Silverhand devouring my brain, I’d say you were gonked, that's for sure.” She laughs darkly.
Misty chuckles sadly with her and draws another card.
“This card represents something recent that has happened, or a force that is acting upon the present circumstances,” she explains, placing it on the table. “The Magician. Interesting... it represents someone who is fascinating, someone charismatic.” Johnny waggles his eyebrows over his shades at V. “Maybe even… someone you will grow to love?” Misty continues, and Johnny stops smirking and uncrosses his arms. “It's hard to say.” She frowns at the card. “Could mean Johnny.”
V swallows. “Uh, sure," she mumbles, trying her absolute best to squish down and cordon off any emotional reaction she has to that. Johnny seems to be doing the same.
“And this one is your present, or immediate future,” Misty continues, drawing a third card. “The Lovers reversed.” She frowns again, her brow furrowing. “You are surrounded by a force that will challenge you. You will also come into conflict with another, inner force.”
“Hm,” V says noncommittally. “Alright, and the last one is, what, the further future?”
Johnny rolls his eyes dramatically.
Misty nods. “Yes, this is how this will all resolve,” she says, and draws the final card, laying it on the counter to complete the spread. “The Star, also reversed.” She ponders the card for a moment. “I think it means you will have to overcome unknown desires… and sever a strong tie with... something I can't quite make out.”
“Ah, of course,” Johnny says sagely. “Unknown desires, something she can’t quite make out. Sounds completely legit. And didn’t she say she pulled this whole spread straight outta her ass, anyway? This shit can mean whatever you want it to mean.”
“Hm,” V says again, mulling this over. Johnny’s right, it’s all pretty vague, but what Misty is saying does resonate, even in ways that frighten her. She’s not sure how much of this shit she exactly believes, or how much is just her reading into shit, seeing what she wants to see, like Johnny says. But maybe that's the point, she suddenly realizes. Maybe it's how you interpret the cards, the things you see in them, that tell you what you already know but are afraid to admit.
What does she want to see, then?
“What do you make of it all?” she asks Misty.
Misty shrugs. “I dunno, to be honest. It sounds like you’ve got a difficult road ahead of you.” She smiles coyly, meeting V's eyes. “But at least you’ve got someone along for the ride.”
“Didn’t need cards to tell ya that,” Johnny mutters, glitching away.
“You could say that,” V agrees, standing up. “Gonna head down to see Vik, now. Thanks for the reading, Misty.”
Vik is pleased to see her, and gently chides her as he runs a scan to check all her implants. The EMP doesn’t seem to have done any permanent damage, thank god. Her Kiroshis are due for a firmware update, though, so Vik takes care of that quickly, waving her away when she begins to apologize again for not having the eddies she owes.
She knows she’s lucky to have him.
After leaving the clinic, she goes back up to Misty’s, and the two of them order a pizza and sit and talk some more, mostly about Jackie. A couple of customers wander in - the first is lost and looking for a nearby joyhouse, but the second actually peruses for a bit and buys a crystal before leaving. V is glad for Misty that the shop is getting some business.
When the sun begins to set, she decides to head home and try to get some sleep before she meets up with Judy at the ass crack of dawn. Johnny is silent on the short ride back, and doesn’t show up to bother her as she winds down by cleaning the sand from her revolver and fiddling with the scope and mods in her little makeshift workshop. She pours herself a glass of Centzon as she works, hoping it’ll help her relax enough to go to sleep early.
One glass turns to three, and then four, and soon she is drinking on her couch, mindlessly flipping through TV channels. It’s all fuckin’ ads, as usual. But then, a Ruth Dzeng segment about the Kang Tao AV they jacked comes on, and V sits up straight.
“Say, did y’all lose power yesterday, too?” the host is saying in her put-on quirky affect. “Yeah, when the lights went out, there I was cookin’ dinner… Well, if we’re gettin’ specific, I was nukin’ a half-eaten burrito I found wedged in my couch cushions.”
V finds her persona deeply grating - she’s just another corpo fuck like the rest of them. Except she pretends to be poor.
“Anyway, what was I… Right, the power outage. Apparently, some plant out in Santo short circ’d. Heard the EMPs were knockin’ AVs outta the sky. The NCPD says the blackout led to a hundred and twenty mil in damages, all in all. The real tragedy, though? I cannot stomach a cold burrito…”
“120 million eddies?!” Johnny says appreciatively, glitching in on the couch a little ways down from her. “Hot damn. And just to get your hands on one dude.” He smiles at V. “You got some cojones, V.”
V cocks an eyebrow and raises her glass to Johnny in response before taking another sip. "Guess I'm learnin' a thing or two from you, after all," she teases.
He smirks. “So, what now, you just gonna sit here and drink alone?”
“I’m not drinking alone,” she points out, and finishes the rest of her drink in one swig. "I'm drinkin' with you."
She’s well on her way to being drunk now, and closing her eyes for a bit on the couch is starting to seem very appealing. The sun has long since gone down, and suddenly the exhaustion of the last few days hits her all at once.
She stretches out and curls up around the nearest pillow, quickly setting an alarm on her Kiroshis for 5 am. On the couch across from her, a guitar glitches into Johnny's hands and he begins to strum it absentmindedly, playing a song she's never heard before and humming softly to himself.
It's strangely comforting, and she feels her eyelids get heavy as she listens to him play. It's not long before they finally droop shut and she drifts off into a restless sleep.
The dream begins in cyberspace. She’s not sure at first if the dream is hers or Johnny’s, since she’s just floating in the endless datastreams she saw with Brigitte and the Voodoo Boys, no sense of self or place. But when she looks down, she’s naked, but her body is Johnny’s. She lifts his hands to her face and stares at them for a second - his tattooed right hand and his silver left one. And then she is beyond the Blackwall again, in the nausea-inducing, incomprehensible swirl of undulating code. From the darkness, Alt emerges, looking as powerful and terrifying as she did the first time V encountered her there.
“Johnny,” Alt says, in that same strangely warm voice that comes from everywhere and nowhere at once. And V feels him react to it, feels his grief, his love for Alt that still lingers, his regret, his guilt.
But then the figure before V shifts, and suddenly it’s herself she’s seeing floating before her, suspended in the abyss. But it’s not her, not quite - she’s like Alt now, composed only of data, a pillar of white code, her eyes empty and cold and her hair fanning out around her face in the same sickening spirals of data as Alt’s. A shadow of who she was, who she is now. But there’s power there, too, something terrifying and enormous, and she feels Johnny’s fear of this, fear of her.
Fear of losing her like he lost Alt.
The thought is sharp, and she’s not sure if it’s entirely hers or Johnny’s, but it pierces her right near her heart and the dream shatters around them.
She’s somewhere else now, somewhere she doesn’t recognize - a nightclub maybe? She’s herself again, and Johnny is nowhere to be seen. It’s hot and loud, and she’s pressing through a crowd of people, looking for someone or something but she can't remember who, and then suddenly she sees the stage and realizes where she is. What she’s seeing.
Johnny is brandishing a gun onstage, shouting something about corpos. He fires it above the crowd, then grabs his guitar and launches into a song she doesn’t recognize, screaming into the mic, a crazed look in his eyes.
And then he sees her, and the world around them stops.
Like, literally stops. Everyone freezes, the band mid-song, the crowd mid-screams, and the room hangs suddenly silent and still as Johnny locks eyes with her.
In an instant, he throws his guitar aside and leaps off the stage and begins pushing his way through the crowd towards her, and before she really knows what she is doing, she finds herself doing the same. She’s shoving people aside, their bodies rigid but pliant, and even the cigarette smoke hangs frozen in the air like a strange, silver mist.
She’s lost sight of of Johnny now, but continues to press forward through the crowd, and suddenly he’s there, in front of her, and before she can process what is happening his mouth is on her throat and her legs are wrapped around him and he’s carrying her back towards the stage, their hands tearing at each other’s clothes.
He shoves her roughly against the edge of the stage and their eyes meet, and she is suddenly aware of all the frozen pairs of eyes watching them. His face is unreadable as he reaches out his hand - his organic one - to cup the side of her face almost tenderly for a fraction of a second. But then he shoves his thumb in her mouth, dragging it across her lower lip, and she whines and grinds herself against him. In that moment, he can do whatever the fuck he wants to her and she doesn’t give a shit who’s watching.
“Say that out loud,” he says, and she whimpers.
“You can do whatever the fuck you want to me,” she breathes, and he groans softly in response and shoves another two fingers into her mouth, watching her face with a wild intensity that makes her whole body thrill as he leans in close. She can smell the tequila and cigarette smoke on his breath, and he hovers his face inches from hers but doesn’t move to kiss her.
“I know I can,” he growls in her ear, his voice low. “Because I know exactly what you want me to do to you.”
And then he rips open her shirt and pinches her nipple roughly, and her moan turns into a whine as she furiously grinds against him, hungry for more friction.
He smirks down at her and slowly unbuckles his belt.
“You want me to fuck your little pussy, right here, in front of all these people?” he murmurs dangerously.
She nods helplessly, feeling her face flush as she arches her hips towards him. If she didn't feel the same desperate urgency from Johnny, her own neediness would almost be embarrassing. 'Cause fuck, she needs him so fucking badly right now.
“That’s what I like to hear,” he says, as though she'd said it out loud. Maybe she did.
And then he’s pulling her pants down roughly and flipping her around, shoving her face and naked tits against the coarse, dirty stage.
Johnny slides a hand between her thighs, and of course she’s already fuckin’ dripping wet.
“Mm,” he says appreciatively, sliding a finger inside her, then two, while unzipping his pants with his other hand. She whines and gyrates her hips, trying to gain more traction against his calloused fingers.
He flicks her clit softly with his thumb, and she balls her hand into a fist and makes a sound she’s never heard herself make before. He lets out a low groan in response, and she feels the head of his cock pressed against her, eliciting another sound from her lips that's almost a sob.
“Please, Johnny,” she begs, and he only makes her wait a half second before plunging his cock all the way inside her in one swift motion with a loud, unsteady choked moan like he’s been fuckin’ dying to do this since the very first time he ever saw her, sprawled out on her bed with her tits wrapped in bloody bandages and her hair sticky with blood and sweat.
Fuck, was that his thought she just heard?
He pulls out almost all the way, and thrusts into her hard again, and all thoughts, his or hers, are pushed completely from her mind. God, he’s so fucking big. His cock is thick and hard, and she can feel his pulse and her pulse beating in sync, everything about them is in sync, as his thrusts increase in speed, his desperation blending with hers and driving them both closer and closer. She hears words coming out of her mouth, and she can tell they’re filthy, incoherent, and she’s so fucking close, but then she opens her eyes and becomes acutely aware of the fact that Kerry Eurodyne’s boots are frozen in place about two feet away from her face, and that's enough to break the spell. The dream collapses around them and she wakes up panting, still on the couch, with the pillow she’d fallen asleep on shoved between her legs.
She tosses aside the pillow and slides her hand down into her sweatpants, furiously trying to finish herself off with her fingers before she’s even completely cognizant of what she’s doing. She’s fucking soaked, and her heart is pounding in her ears.
She's suddenly aware of Johnny leaning over her, supporting himself on the back of the couch with his silver hand, cock in the other, jerking himself off as he watches her with a ferocity that she can feel in her entire body.
Fuck, she’s gonna-
She comes suddenly, like a tidal wave, and so does Johnny a second later, and just like last time, she feels something inside of them collide almost sickeningly and merge, their senses and memories and feelings overlapping with an escalating intensity that makes her vision go white and her awareness of what is her and what is him completely erode. She can feel his cock throbbing in his hand, can see herself whimpering with her hand down her pants, can feel all his conflicted emotions, his anger, his self-loathing, his regret, his fear, and it’s all so fucking overwhelming she doesn’t know if she can…
She gasps as her vision glitches violently again, and she rolls over and dry heaves over the edge of the couch, coughing up blood as she does.
The malfunction passes quickly, thank god, and she shakily sits up and lights herself a cigarette, still catching her breath.
Johnny glitches in across from her, fully clothed but his face bare.
“You okay?” he asks. There’s concern in his voice and written on his face, but his internal walls are up again and she can’t actually feel much from him anymore.
“Yeah,” she says, taking a deep drag and moving to pour herself another glass of tequila. Whatever the fuck that was, she needs something to calm her nerves.
It’s a little past 4 am. Oh well, she thinks. Guess I’m awake.
She lies back onto the couch and watches the ceiling fan spin above her in slow circles. It’s going to be a long day.
Notes:
oop I thought this chapter was gonna finally have some Judy content but it somehow just turned into more Johnny porn, whups lmao
Chapter 12: Five Rings
Summary:
V and Judy sneak into Clouds to talk to Maiko.
Notes:
WARNING: light Johnny smut in this one too lol lmao
Also, sidenote: I really like the Nomad starting car (the Galena Rattler) so I modded my Streetkid V to have it too
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The sun is barely a hint on the horizon when V pulls up in front of Judy’s apartment in her modded Thorton Galena that she’s lovingly dubbed the “Rattler” - the shitty beater car she bought off a nomad in Atlanta. It groans and sputters to a stop as she cuts the engine. She dials Judy on her holo, but it’s barely started ringing when Judy emerges from the stairwell. She’s clearly been waiting.
V waves to her from the driver’s seat, and Judy smiles as she gets in, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She’s visibly nervous. Instead of her usual overalls, she’s wearing a cropped silver jacket and black jeans.
“Fwoo!” Judy says as she shuts the door and turns to V. “You ready?”
“Sure,” V replies, starting the car and heading towards the bridge to Japantown. She glances over at Judy, and notices dark circles under her friend’s eyes. “Did you sleep at all?”
Judy shakes her head. “Nah. Wasn’t tired.”
V frowns. “We’re just talking to this Maiko chick, right? Not plannin’ anything… else?”
Judy nods. “Yeah, just talkin’. It’s just…”
“Let me rephrase,” V says, watching Judy out of the corner of her eye as she switches lanes to get on the bridge. “Is there any chance she’ll slap us around, then shove us out her megatower window?”
“‘Course, sure,” Judy says, shaking her leg nervously and gazing out the window. The bridge is still fairly empty - the morning commuters have yet to clog the city's arteries.
“Guess I can work with that,” V says with a laugh. “How well do you know her?”
“Too well,” Judy responds darkly. She turns to V. “Hey, V… thanks for doing this. I mean it.”
V shoots a smile at the jittery braindance editor. “‘Course, Jude. We’re friends, right?”
Judy smiles back shyly. “Yeah,” she says, but then her face darkens. “Look, talkin’ with Maiko’s like a game of 3D chess. Can’t let her derail us.”
V nods. “Alright. Anything else you can tell me about her? Before we’re in there?”
Judy shakes her head. “Leave the talkin’ to me.”
“So basically, I’m just here as your huscle, then?” V teases.
Judy looks mortified. “I never said that! I just know the woman better.”
V laughs gently. “It’s okay, Jude. You know I got your back if things get ugly.” She flips on the radio and some cute scoppy love song is playing. V leaves it, hoping it’ll help Judy relax. “What’s your angle? How you gonna get her over to our side?”
Judy exhales through pursed lips. “Gonna tell her the truth. ‘Bout what happened to Evelyn.”
“And? You think that’ll work?”
“No,” Judy says. “Have to improvise from there.”
V considers this as they exit the bridge into Westbrook, the neon lights of Japantown enveloping them as they circle around the market along the waterfront and head towards Megabuilding H8. She pulls to a stop in front of the building and turns to Judy.
“You’re still nervous,” she says.
“All I can think about is how badly I wanna kill Woodman with my bare hands,” Judy admits, her voice thick with barely contained rage. “So yeah, could say I’m a teensy bit nervous.”
Acting on a sudden impulse, V grabs the girl’s hand and gives it a small squeeze. Judy blushes furiously, but finally seems to relax a bit. “Let’s go then,” V says, killing the engine and opening her door.
They ride the elevator up in silence, and V follows Judy as she scales a series of catwalks from the megabuilding floor above Clouds with a practiced ease before finally dropping down to the balcony outside the dollhouse. Judy stops to collect herself here, and she's looking anxious as all hell again.
“Whew,” she says, lighting a cigarette. “Alright, let me get this door open. Just a sec.” She turns to the door and starts messing with the panel near it.
“Looks like you’ve come this way before,” V observes. “More than once.”
“Hm,” Judy says, still fiddling. “I have, on occasion.” The door clicks open. “Easy as paella.” She takes another drag of her cigarette, then puts it out and stomps it, breathing out another shaky sigh.
“Sure you’re okay, Judy? You seem really tense,” V says. It makes sense to be a little nervous, but hell, the way Judy’s acting… “She like, your ex-output or something?”
Oh damn. V’d been half joking, but judging by Judy’s face she’s just hit the nail on the head.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-” she begins, but Judy cuts her off.
“It’s okay, V. Let’s just get this over with.”
She turns and opens the door, and V follows her down a short hallway into a lush, richly decorated office.
A woman with pink hair in a tight braid is seated at the desk. She’s stylishly dressed, her makeup is impeccable, and her eyes are hard. Her doll cyberware shines gold as it snakes out from under her synth-silk dress and winds down her arms and legs. V instantly has her guard up.
“Judy Alvarez,” Maiko drawls. “I’d say it’s great to see you, but I’ve never been one to lie. Also, I never liked surprise parties. As you well know.”
“Yep,” says Judy, her voice equally sharp. “And I even know why.”
Maiko shakes her head and leans forward against her large, ornate desk. “Thought you’d hit rock bottom when you joined the Mox. Guess you’ve managed to stoop even lower, now. Consorting with a persona who is very non grata…” She looks V directly in the eye. “Yes, V. I mean you.”
V returns her cold smile. “Guess I left a lasting impression. Good. But remember, I came here for info, left when I got what I needed, and I did my best to make sure no one ended up in a garbage bag.”
“Appreciated,” Maiko says dryly. “Now, what exactly are you after? Gonna go and harass another doll?” She stands and crosses to the decorative silkscreen covering the wall opposite her desk. “What’s next? Threats?”
V’s already pegged this chick as the wannabe-corpo type - manipulative and petty, and not someone who seems likely to muster any genuine sympathy for their cause. But there's curiosity in her eyes nonetheless. Judy shoots her a worried glance, and V sighs.
“Just hear Judy out, okay?" she tells Maiko. "What we’re sayin’ is... something’s gonna happen. Whether you’re involved or not. So the question is, do you want to be the last to know?”
“Hm,” is all Maiko says, but her mouth presses into a line. She produces a cigarette from her jacket and lights it.
V takes the opportunity and dives in. Appeal to this woman’s ego, her instinct tells her. “We need you,” she implores, letting all the earnestness she can seep into her voice. “What we wanna do… can't do it without you.”
“You mean making better life choices?” Maiko quips, and V hopes she hasn’t played her cards wrong.
“Judy has a proposal,” she says, deciding to just charge ahead. “About Clouds.”
“Wanna come back?” Maiko says, turning to Judy. “Done. Always valued your skills, you know that. Just don’t get why you had to drag this… loose end in here.” She gestures disdainfully at V.
“Stop treatin’ dolls like meat and I’ll consider it,” Judy spits.
“We wanna help the dolls,” V concurs.
“Dolls make more eddies than anyone else in the industry,” Maiko retorts, crossing over to Judy and eying her up and down as she puffs her cigarette. “You know how the chips work. They experience no trauma. Every whore in Night City wants to work here.”
“It’s the Tyger Claws that’re the problem!” Judy shouts, clearly unable to contain herself any longer. “And people like Woodman!” Her hands are balled into tight fists. “He raped Evelyn while she was unconscious, then sold her off like so much scrap!”
Maiko doesn’t respond right away. V watches as she takes a couple slow drags of her cigarette, then coughs into her manicured hand.
“What you two’re out to do is… impossible,” she finally says. “Completely beyond your means. Tyger Claw bosses rule this place. Know how much I mean to them? About as much as you two and your problems mean to me.”
“So, you won’t help,” V says.
“I thought I expressed myself clearly,” Maiko says. “Gonna pretend as if you two weren’t ever here. For old times’ sake, Judy.” She smiles at the Mox, and Judy scowls back. “Now, security will be here in roughly two seconds, so I suggest you see yourselves out the way you came in. And that’s not a threat or a figure of speech. Just a friendly heads up.”
“Had enough of your scop,” Judy spits. “I’m leavin’.” She turns on her heel and storms out.
“Smart move,” Maiko replies, then turns to V. “And, so you don’t think I’m brushing you off completely… Woodman will be on the maintenance level in a couple minutes. Alone.”
Judy’ll wanna hear that, V thinks. “I’m not your enemy here,” she insists, turning to leave.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Maiko says, but her voice isn’t entirely cold, so V just gives her a long hard look then follows Judy out through the door they came in.
Judy is already sitting on the ledge of the balcony, cigarette in hand.
“Well, that went smoothly,” she says darkly as V crosses over to her. She slaps her thigh in frustration. “She didn’t even let me make my point!”
“She probably needs some time to think,” V reassures her. “Couple days, tops. And she’s probably scared, too.”
“Yeah, you might be right,” Judy admits. “I’ll call her tomorrow.”
She hops off the ledge and climbs back up onto the catwalk they came in on.
“So, you two have a history?” V asks, her curiosity winning.
“Way back, yeah,” Judy admits, chewing her lip. “Think I just felt lonely.”
“Like everyone in Night City,” V says sympathetically.
“She was different then. And so was I.” Judy turns back to V. “I… well, I think I was just really taken with her. Took me a long time to realize who she really was.” She sighs. “Just think… coulda gone diving this morning.”
“You dive?” V asks, surprised. “That sounds really nice, actually. Could use some unwinding.”
“It wouldn’t have exactly been unwinding,” Judy explains. “I’ve had this idea buzzin’ in my head that I’ve been workin’ on… but I can’t say yet if it’ll actually amount to anything.”
V laughs. “Guess I don’t really see you as the deckchair and Mai Tai type.”
“Sittin’ in a deckchair would just mean mullin’ over all the coulda, shoulda, wouldas..." Judy says sadly. "Can’t afford that right now.”
"Know the feeling," V agrees softly.
They walk the rest of the way to the elevator in silence.
“Wait a sec,” Judy says as they enter the elevator. “What about Woodman?”
"You heard what Maiko said?"
Judy nods.
“Well, what do you wanna do?” V asks.
Judy doesn't hesitate. “I want somebody to unload lead into his face until there is no face."
“Somebody?” V says pointedly.
“Fine…” Judy says, looking down at her feet and kicking her boot against the grimy floor. “Want you to do it.” She looks up at V almost sheepishly, and it would almost be cute if she weren't asking her to literally murder someone.
V thinks it over for a moment, but she knows she's already made her decision. “Don’t have an ounce of sympathy for that motherfucker,” she decides. “Let’s end him.”
Judy nods and presses the button on the elevator for the maintenance level.
V leans against the elevator wall, and suddenly Johnny appears directly in front of her, arms crossed and looking her dead in the eye.
“Piece of work, that Maiko chick,” Johnny says, tapping his foot agitatedly. “But I’ll give her credit... she’s dead on about your chances of pullin’ this off.”
V ignores him, turning her attention to the advertisement blaring on the TV behind him. It's an All Foods ad with a model striking erotic poses with a hot dog in front of her massive breasts.
“Really don’t understand what tits have to do with sellin’ that garbage,” Judy says disgustedly, following V’s gaze.
“Can’t say no to tits,” Johnny says smugly, staring openly at V’s. “Rest can go fuck itself.”
Clearly, you're the target audience, V silently mocks him. The second you react with your dick instead of your head, you're giving 'em exactly what they want.
Johnny shakes his head, then uses his metal hand as a mock hand puppet to mimic her chatter. "Does it look like I give a shit?" he says, but he's smiling.
Doesn't matter, V says, smiling back. They already flushed one down your brain.
“Blame the corpos all you want," V says out loud, "But at the end of the day, the fact that this is what sells says more about us than about them.” She shoots Johnny a look as she says the last part. He crosses his arms and leans back against the elevator wall, mirroring Judy’s pose but still smirking.
“It’s junk food,” Judy replies, shaking her head, unaware of Johnny and V’s little interaction. “People don’t buy it ‘cause they’re gonk… they do it cause they're poor.”
Judy's right, of course, but V knows that's not what she's really upset about.
The elevator groans to a halt at the maintenance level where Woodman allegedly is. V and Judy exchange a look. Executions like this aren’t her usual style, but what Woodman did… V can feel the rage churning in her stomach just thinking about it. From Judy's face, V can tell she feels the same way.
V pulls out her knife then tucks it into her sleeve, and together they exit the elevator.
Woodman is smoking alone in the back of the maintenance area next to a dumpster, leaning against a large mechanical box. He puts out his cigarette as he sees the girls approach.
“The fuck are you two doin’ here?” he says in his horrible cockney accent. “Where’s Maiko? Why’d she fuckin’ call me here?”
Damn, girl did us a solid after all, V thinks.
“Evelyn’s dead,” she says, her voice ice.
“Come here just to tell me that? Fuckin' kind of you to remember,” he laughs, still looking confused. “Here, go light a candle.”
“When Evelyn needed help, you raped her,” V reminds him, and now her voice is as hard and sharp as the knife she's clutching up her sleeve.
“Could’ve also broken her neck, hung her up like a chandelier till it started to rot.”
Judy spits on his shoes.
“Instead, I took ‘er to a ripper,” Woodman continues, undeterred. “Was due a little somethin’ in return.”
That’s all V can stomach. In a flash, she uses her synthetic arm to body slam Woodman against the wall by his throat, sliding the knife cleanly between his ribs. She can feel it pierce his flesh, slip into his heart, and she feels it stutter and lurch and then stop inside of his chest. She doesn’t break eye contact as he struggles, even as the blood starts spurting from his mouth and he begins to choke and gargle. She doesn’t step away until his eyes go flat and his body slumps forward, unconscious.
Only then does she let him fall to the floor like the sack of shit that he is.
“Let’s, uh…. let’s get out of here, V,” Judy says, sounding severely shaken. V wonders if she’s ever seen anyone die like that before. Aside from her snuff braindances. V tries to level out her breathing as she follows Judy back to the elevator.
As soon as the doors open, Judy slumps against the wall and sinks to the floor, resting her elbows on her knees and looking up plaintively at V.
“I thought I’d… feel more… I’d be satisfied,” she says softly.
V punches the button for the ground floor, then sits on the elevator floor next to Judy.
"Sorry you had to see that," she says.
“Almost felt like... the world’d suddenly be a better place once he died,” Judy continues, almost speaking more to herself than to V. "I felt that so strongly."
“It is, though,” V says, putting her arm around Judy’s narrow shoulders and pulling her close. “All the people he could’ve hurt… they’re all safe now. Think of that. They’ll never even know they were in danger.”
Judy nods silently and leans into V as the elevator grinds to a stop at the ground floor. V stands and offers Judy her hand. She takes it, and V helps her to her feet but Judy doesn’t let go. They walk in silence together, hand in hand, through the lobby of the megabuilding, past the food vendors choking the air with their competing smells.
Judy lights a cigarette as soon as they get in V’s car.
“You hungry?” V asks, starting the car.
Judy ignores her, still lost in thought. “Gotta get back to Maiko with somethin’ big,” she mutters.
V shoots Judy a sidelong glance. “Appealing to her sense of justice wasn’t big enough?”
“Maiko only works with specifics.”
“So, not giving up, then?” V confirms.
“V…” Judy says, finally turning to look at her. “I go for days tuning virtus in a basement. Know what the chances are of somebody blowin’ my head off down there?”
“Miniscule?” V guesses.
“Same as Maiko’s empathy,” Judy agrees. “Unlike you, I don’t put myself out there.”
“Y’know,” V says carefully, “I’m also partial to specifics.” If they’re gonna pull this off, they still need an actual plan.
“So that’s what matters to you?” Judy suddenly snaps. “How many you’ll drop, how much ammo you’ll use, how many eddies it’ll getcha?”
“Jesus, Judy, I just meant like… what’s our plan?” V says, shaking her head. She knows Judy just misunderstood her, but the comment stings nonetheless. “I don’t want your eddies. But this is what I do for a living, yeah? And if you’ve got a problem with that then just fuckin’ say it now." She floors the gas as they head back towards the bridge. "Art and dreams can’t be everyone’s food. Someone’s gotta deal with the dirt. Better me than someone else.”
“You tryna convince Judy, or yourself?” Johnny says from the backseat, and V startles. She hadn’t felt him appear.
You sound like me, she shoots at Johnny, and he makes a little mocking puppet hand at her again and glitches away.
“I’m sorry, V, I didn’t-” Judy begins, but V just shakes her head.
“It’s okay,” she says, trying to soften her voice. “Just… let’s figure out our next move, okay?”
Judy takes a drag of her cigarette, then tosses it out the window as they speed across the bridge back to Kabuki. “Gotta think," she says. "We need more bodies, that’s for sure.”
“Know any other mercs?” V asks.
Judy shakes her head. “No, but I’ve got another idea I’m chewin’ on.”
V doesn’t press her further, and they drive in silence until V pulls up in front of Judy’s apartment.
“I’m gonna talk to the dolls,” Judy says, turning to V. “I’ll… I’ll call you when I’ve got something. And, V…” She glances down at her lap and flushes. “Thanks for this. Really.”
“No problem, Jude,” V says gently, and reaches out to squeeze the girl’s hand again. Judy smiles up at her.
“Did we do the right thing… killing Woodman?” Judy asks.
“I don’t kill lightly,” V reassures her. “That fuck deserved it.”
Judy nods, then opens the door and gets out of the car. V waits until she’s safely inside, then pulls away and heads back towards Little China.
Johnny glitches into the seat next to her.
“Know what’s worse than a corpo?” he says, looking at V and lowering his shades. “A wannabe corpo bitch.”
“Can’t argue with that,” V says. She’s exhausted, and not in the mood to keep hashing this over.
“You know what else?” Johnny continues. “I’m not even surprised you let yourself get talked into this little uprising.” He leans back in his seat. “Hell, back in my day I would’ve bum rushed the riot shields in the name of joytoys’ freedom or whatever. But this Maiko chick? I’ve got a bad feeling about her.”
V just nods in response. Johnny’s right, Maiko seems like a real fuckin’ piece of work, but she has a feeling they’re not gonna get very far without her in their corner.
It’s starting to rain as V pulls into her garage. She tightens her coat around her shoulders as she walks to the elevator, then slumps against the wall as it screeches its way up to her megabuilding level. Through the window, she can see an AV landing on the pad outside the penthouse at the apartment building next door, and wonders, like she always does, who lives there. She remembers what Johnny said to her in the desert, about still being able to make it big, to be somebody. Be a living legend. Could she someday live in a place like that?
Assuming I survive the next month, anyway, she thinks darkly.
She checks her holo as she enters her apartment, and there’s a text from Claire asking her if she’s amped for the race. Shit. It’s Saturday already. The first race of the qualifying semi-finals is tonight.
V sighs and strips off her coat and boots and flops backwards onto her bed. Her nap on the couch earlier barely counted as actual sleep. She considers pouring herself another glass of tequila and trying to sleep for another couple hours, but she doesn’t wanna be hungover for the race later.
“I know something that’ll help you sleep,” Johnny says smugly, glitching in above her, leaning against the wall next to her bed in the same place he’d first appeared to her the night he’d crash-landed in her head and beat the shit out of her.
She knows him well enough at this point to guess exactly where he's goin' with this.
“'Member what I said about bein’ a sex pest?” V groans, putting both of her hands over her eyes.
“You’re all worked up, I can feel it, remember?” Johnny persists, stepping away from the wall and coming to sit on the bed next to her.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were tryin’ to seduce me right now,” V teases, dragging her hands up from her eyes to push her hair out of her face and meeting Johnny’s gaze.
“Maybe I am,” he says coolly, not missing a beat.
“Oh ho, so you’re stepping it up now that you’ve got some competition?”
“You and I both know Judy could never make you feel as good I do,” he says, his voice low in his throat as he drags his eyes up and down her body and fuck she hates how his infuriating confidence pisses her off and turns her on in the same breath. It's not fair - she likes Judy - but he's right, there's no way anyone else could know how to push her buttons like he does.
“I…” she begins, a retort on her tongue, but Johnny moves his hand to the front of his pants. He’s already hard because of course he fuckin' is, but she knows that’s because of what she's already feeling, too.
He's already won, and they both know it.
"Fine," she huffs, yanking down her pants and shimmying out of her shirt. “But I wanna try something different this time,” she adds coyly, and before Johnny can read her thoughts and see what she has in mind, she reaches for a small box on the shelf next to her bed and pulls out her vibrator.
Johnny’s eyes widen for a half second, and then he recovers and raises an eyebrow at her. She can see the excitement on his face, hell, she can feel it, and like always, it activates their fuckin’ feedback loop and suddenly fucking herself with her toy for Johnny is all she can fuckin’ think about. Her heart is pounding in her throat, and her desire has become so intense so quickly that it's almost painful.
“Now you get to feel me use it on myself,” she murmurs, low and breathy. But her voice shakes a bit too, giving her away. She bites her lip while watching Johnny’s face, and he's reacting exactly the way she hoped. She knows he can feel how much she likes winding him up like this, and it's just getting them both more worked up. “Gonna make you wish it was your cock makin’ me come this hard,” she breathes, already starting to tease herself with the toy.
Johnny starts to unbuckle his pants slowly, not taking his eyes off her. It's almost like he’s transfixed and afraid to break the spell. The look on his face makes her heart skip a beat, and she feels her face flush as she meets his eye. Part of her still can't believe they're doing this. But the other part of her can't seem to stop, now that this door between them has been opened. She reaches her other hand up to cup her breast, then rolls her nipple roughly between her fingers and Johnny groans softly in response. She can feel how frustrated he is that he can't touch her, can't grab her, can't fuck her senseless the way she knows he's fuckin' dying to right now, and the thought makes her mind go blank with lust.
“You’re gonna be the death of me,” he rasps as she turns on the vibrator.
Notes:
Poor Judy she keeps falling in love with all the wrong people
Chapter 13: Return of the Sparrow
Summary:
V enters the world of street-racing with Claire, then does a job Johnny knows was a bad idea.
Notes:
Thank you everyone for reading and all your wonderful feedback!!! I'm so glad you're all along for the ride and your comments and kudos literally make my day
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The rainy day has given way to a hot, muggy night as V and Claire pull up to the starting line in Claire’s Beast. There’s a pretty big crowd assembled, and V again marvels at the amount of cops just hanging out, watching and not interfering.
“They’re really okay with this?” she asks Claire again, incredulously.
“Mhm,” Claire says. “Badges can’t see a problem around the stack of eddies put in front of ‘em.”
She and Claire exchange a small, conspiratorial smile, and V revs the engine and grins at the bartender.
V is loathe to admit it, but Johnny had the right of it with his sex pestering - she’d passed out pretty cold for a good, dreamless 5 hours, and woke up just as the sun was going down, her vibrator still lying next to her on the pillow.
After throwing on some clothes and walking to the Afterlife to meet Claire (who’d just been finishing her shift), they’d had a quick drink together, then hopped in the Beast and headed to City Center to get set up for the race.
She hasn't seen or heard from Johnny at all since she woke up, and V thinks she understands why. The way it always seems to end - with both of their psyches laid completely bare to each other, in every sense of the word - is always a little overwhelming. Which is part of what makes it so fuckin’ preem, obviously, but it’s also just… a lot to process. And this time, she felt all the usual things from him - the rage, the fear, the pain, the pleasure - but there was something else there, something deeper, a different kind of fear. Something that felt almost like desperation, a sharp and jagged feeling that tugged at something heavy inside of her. It isn’t something she's prepared to name, or even to look at too closely.
It’s safer to just stake out their respective claimed corners of their shared skull that's starting to feel smaller with every passing day, their little hideouts of dwindling secrets getting progressively chipped away as these precious last bastions of separation start to chip and falter. She knows that every time they let the lines blur between them like that, those hard-fought walls crumble just a little bit more. And she knows he feels it too, and that’s why he retreats.
It’s not fucking romantic, she reminds herself. It’s what fuckin' happens when your brain is being physically reshaped into someone else’s.
But there's an image she can't shake from earlier. The way he looked at her as she writhed on her bed for him, coming undone in perfect sync as always. What she saw in his face. And the feeling that came with it.
Something sharp, and something terrifying.
How does this all end?
She's seen enough to know that the answer probably isn't "happily ever after."
She shoves down the thought and turns her attention back to Claire as the shard she slotted in begins to count down to the start of the race. A glowing yellow path stretches before her, overlaid on her HUD, and she slams her foot on the gas and feels the Beast shudder and launch itself forward like a tank shot from a cannon.
She hasn't done a street race since she was in Atlanta, and part of her wishes she’d insisted on taking her Rattler - it may not look like much, but her old hunk of scrap metal is faster than it appears. And it’s more maneuverable. But quickly, she sees that Claire’s truck has been built and tuned for this - though it handles differently than she’s used to, and can’t take turns as tight as her Galena, it packs much more speed and agility than she’d expect given its size and weight.
And it has the added bonus of being able to slam any cars that get too close clean off course.
Claire’s riding shotgun, literally - she's firing her handgun out the window at the tires of their competitors, shouting insults at the other racers and egging V on with a potent mixture of criticism and encouragement.
And fuck it, V’s having fucking fun. It’s undeniably exhilarating, racing through Corpo Plaza in the dead of night, the scream of the tires and the crunch of metal providing background ambiance to the loud techno Claire has on. And they’re in the lead; V can see the other cars, some of which are literally on fire, skidding along behind them, trying to gain ground.
But the Beast is faster, and suddenly they’re flying across the finish line, eyes wide, laughing in disbelief.
“And the winners are Claire and V!” the announcer blasts over the holo, and they are enveloped by the cheers of the crowd.
Claire turns to V, her eyes shining. “We fuckin’ won! First place! Holy shit!”
V grins back at her. “You sound surprised.”
“First fuckin’ place!” Claire says again. “It’s not that I’m surprised, it’s just…”
“I know, first place,” V chuckles. “I heard ya.”
“Could stand to clean up those turns,” Claire smirks, “But yeah, I’d say we make a good team.”
There are cameras flashing at them from outside the car. V grins and makes a rocker hand at them. She feels a bubble of something from Johnny, too, and it feels like… amusement? Or no, is it pride?
She blushes suddenly, then shakes it off and turns to Claire. “Whaddya say we grab a drink to celebrate?” V suggests, pulling the car around in a final victory lap, waving to the onlookers through the window.
“Sure,” Claire agrees. “Red Dirt, near my garage? I can tune up the Beast a little, then I’ve gotta head back to the Afterlife for my second shift.”
“Sounds preem,” V says, and with a final wave, turns the car and starts heading towards Santo Domingo.
After a quick stop at Claire’s garage to tighten some bolts and check the overall damage, they park the Beast in an alley near the bar, and V follows Claire around the corner to the entrance. She’s been here before, a long time ago, to see some shitty local bands play when she was a teenager. Only thing she ever really came to Arroyo for, come to think of it, if she could avoid it.
There’s a Samurai song playing on the jukebox as they take a seat at the bar and do a quick round of shots, followed by cocktails; for V, that means a glass of tequila neat, for Claire, it’s a tequila sunrise. The bar is mostly empty except for a smattering of barflys and some young 6th Streeters playing pool. There are a handful of couples on dates, and a group of fairly normal looking teenagers sulking in the corner, and V smiles. There’s something very familiar and oddly comforting about the bar, something deeper than her fond teenage memories. It doesn’t fully click for her until she sees the newspaper clippings that paper the wall behind the bar, and the Samurai logo painted on the wall above the stage that… oh.
“Wait a sec,” she says, turning to the bartender. “Isn’t this where Samurai played their first gig?”
The bartender's eyes immediately light up. “Ah, what a night!” he says wistfully, shaking his head, though he can’t be that much older than V is. “The way they talk about it…” he adds, confirming her suspicions. “They say the band played so loud they had to replace all the windows." He chuckles to himself. "Oh! And they made a new rule refusing service to nude customers.”
Johnny glitches in behind the bar, grinning ear to ear. “That was Kerry,” he says, surveying the bar, a strange fondness softening his features. “I remember this place.”
“There’s a special on the menu just for Samurai fans,” the bartender continues. “Ribs a la Silverhand. Pricey, sure, but you won’t stop licking your fingers.”
V almost chokes on her drink. Even Johnny makes a face at this, but he recovers more quickly and raises an eyebrow at V, doing his best attempt at a smirk, but she can tell he’s still holding in a laugh.
“What a fuckin’ cornball,” Johnny says, but he wiggles his fingers at V and she can’t suppress a giggle. A fucking giggle. Christ, he really has reduced her to a sweaty teenager.
She lights a cigarette and turns to Claire, and as if on cue, two of the 6th Streeters split from their cohort and approach them at the bar.
“Can, uh… can my friend and I buy you ladies a drink?” one of them offers, and V is initially caught off guard by his intense awkwardness that contrasts sharply with his gruff appearance. He has plain, crude features and short-cropped bleached blonde hair, and he gestures to his friend, who’s sporting a camo vest and a NUSA bandana around his head. “This is Keiran. And I’m… uh…” he swallows. “I’m Matt.”
V smiles bemusedly. “Hi, Matt,” she says.
“Fuck off, Matt,” says Johnny from behind the bar, but he sounds more entertained than actually annoyed.
Claire is watching with amusement as well.
“You, uh, you come here often?” Matt stammers.
Jeez, is he for real? V thinks incredulously. “Sure,” she answers. “In another life.”
“I do,” says Claire. “And you’ve tried to buy me a drink every night this week. And you know what? Tonight, I think I’ll take you up on it.” She gestures to V with her thumb. “We just fuckin’ won first place in the fuckin’ street league semi-finals!” she crows.
Matt’s eyes widen, and he looks genuinely taken aback. “I, ah… wow! Yeah!” He turns to the bartender. “Whatever… whatever they want,” he manages.
“Round of shots,” V says. “Tequila. Centzon if you have it.”
The shots arrive, and Keiran and Matt look like they’ve just won the lottery, but V’s riding the high and enjoying the attention. Claire seems to be too, and orders another round as soon as they slam back the first ones.
After the second round, they find themselves roped into a game of pool with the 6th Streeters. It’s been a minute, but there was a time when V’d been something of a local pool shark in the Glen. Spending a childhood hanging around the backs of Valentino bars and pool halls left plenty of opportunities to hone that particular skillset. And more recently, at El Coyote Cojo - she and Jackie’d go there almost every night after their gigs, challenging anyone to beat the two of them. And now, she has the added help of her Kiroshi optics and her inhumanly steady left forearm.
Suffice to say, she and Claire completely slaughter the 6th Streeters. A small part of her, the part of her that still holds onto those old homegrown gang grudges, the part of her that sometimes sounds suspiciously like Jackie, feels an intense rush of satisfaction at this.
The 6th Streeters don’t seem to mind much at all though, and order another round of shots for all of them.
Claire shakes her head at V. “Damn, girl,” she says. “You know how to party!”
V grins at her, and after handing the gangbangers their asses in one more round of pool (and one more round of shots), Claire gestures to V and points at her watch, and V realizes she probably needs to get back to work. She nods at her friend, and after a exchanging some high fives and toasts with the camo-clad gonks, they exit the bar into the damp night air.
“Whew!” says Claire, zipping up her sweatshirt as she hoists herself back into the truck. V slides into the passenger seat this time, and she’s grateful for that. She has a feeling she’s had a couple more shots than Claire has.
Claire flips on the radio, but changes the station to something more chill, just some ambient techno, and it’s the perfect soundtrack to the late summer night. They take the bridge to Corpo Plaza, and drive under the shimmering koi holograms that swim sentinel in their slow, neverending circles between the towering giants of the corpo megaliths that surround them. It’s beautiful and hideous at the same time, and V is reminded of how much she fuckin’ loves this city and simultaneously hates it with every fiber of her being, how it’s always felt like such an inexorable part of her, and she of it.
She knows that Johnny feels the same way. He wasn’t born here, but this city made him. She doesn’t even need to mine his memories to know that this is where he put together the pieces from the war, became the rockerboy, the legend, an adult. This is where he died. Right here, in this plaza.
Maybe I will too, she thinks, as the plaza blurs behind them and they cross onto the bridge into Little China.
“You feelin’ alright?” Claire asks, snapping V out of her reverie. Damn, she must be more drunk than she realized.
“Yeah,” she mumbles, then looks over at Claire. “Hey, so, why do you race? For the eddies? The wins, the glory? What’s the hook for you?”
“You don’t like winning?” Claire teases, clearly enjoying V’s drunken state.
“Depends on what I stand to gain,” V answers candidly. “And what I gotta put in.”
“Yeah…” Claire sounds wistful. Sad, even. “The price can be pretty high.”
V frowns. “Did you say you lost your last driver?”
“Can we not talk about it?” Claire says suddenly.
“Yeah, sure, sure.”
They pull off the bridge and into the parking lot outside the Afterlife. Claire cuts the engine and smiles at V. “Can’t wait for the next one, yeah?”
V grins. “You know it.”
It’s almost 2 am, but V’s nowhere close to tired, so she follows Claire back into the nightclub and sits at the bar while Claire busies herself getting back to work. She knows she should probably slow her roll, but she’s a little nervous at the prospect of going home, of being alone with herself… or more specifically, alone with Johnny. Where there’s nowhere to hide from each other.
Claire slides her another Centzon, and V sips it gingerly.
“Well, well, well,” says a voice behind her, and V can’t believe she hadn’t noticed Rogue there until that moment. “Someone’s making a splash in the local street-racing scene, looks like.”
Claire smiles. “New driver’s workin’ out, I’d say.”
“So it would seem,” Rogue says, raising an eyebrow at V. V smirks at her in what she hopes is a confident, cocksure kind of way, and as she does it she realizes it’s Johnny’s smirk. Rogue frowns when she does it, as though she’s trying to place something, and V is suddenly self-conscious. Not that she needs another excuse to feel self-conscious around Rogue. She can feel Johnny's amusement at her discomfort. “Drinks on the house for her tonight,” Rogue tells Claire, then struts off to her booth.
Fuck, how does she do that? V thinks. Every merc at the bar is watching her now.
She raises her glass in a mock toast. “To this!” she says loudly, and drinks. Everyone at the bar laughs and follows suit, repeating her stupid toast. She feels a pang in her chest. It was a stupid bit she always did whenever Jackie’d ask her to make a toast, and it never failed to get a reaction out of him. Fuck, why does she keep thinking about him tonight?
She orders a Jackie Welles as her next drink. “With a splash of love,” she reminds Claire, and Claire nods knowingly.
“Couldn’t forget that part,” she says with a solemn wink.
V knows she’s about one drink away from starting to slur, so she stumbles home after this last one, high fiving Claire across the bar one final time.
It’s still a surprisingly warm night, and she lets herself enjoy the walk home, despite the not-so-distant gunshots and sirens she can hear. Johnny is silent until she’s inside her apartment, and then he glitches onto her couch, hologram drink in hand, and raises a toast to her.
“To this,” he says, then laughs. “Where the fuck did you get that?”
“It was a stupid inside joke Jackie and I had,” she explains. “I’d just say it all the time to get a rise outta him. Always worked.” She laughs. “He fuckin’ hated it.”
Johnny grins. “Well I fuckin’ love it.” He raises his glass again. “To this!”
He’s drunk too, she realizes.
She tosses off her coat and pours herself a glass as well, a small one.
“To this,” she says solemnly, raising her glass to Johnny.
*********
Johnny can feel how hungover V is the moment she opens her eyes. She’s not fully awake yet, so he patiently waits as she groans and pulls a pillow over her eyes, rolling over and burying her head in the sheets to block out the sunlight streaming in through the open window. He can feel a small Relic malfunction glitching her vision, but she ignores it and just grumbles softly, pulling the blankets closer around her head.
Is it getting out of hand? he wonders. The fact that their fucking - or jacking off, or whatever you wanna call it - seems to lead to a Relic malfunction almost every time worries Johnny more than a little bit. He thinks about last night, how V made herself come for him again after they got home from the Afterlife. Fuckin’ three times in less than 24 hours, he realizes. Like a coupla horny teenagers. It's fuckin' hot as hell, that's for fuckin’ sure, like nothing he ever experienced when he was alive. But when she finished that last time, she had a malfunction so bad she almost passed out and Johnny couldn’t do anything but watch helplessly as she dry heaved and coughed up blood into her sink.
But now that that line has been breached, they can’t seem to stop.
Guess that’s what happens when you lock two horny idiots up together in one body, he thinks darkly. Leave it to him to find a way to twist their fucked up situation into some weird sex thing.
And the vivid glimpses he gets of her emotions when they do this... when he feels his mind collapse into hers... that scares the hell outta him, too.
He quickly crumples up those thoughts and pushes them way, way down, because V is waking up now. At least she was too drunk to dream, he thinks. A small blessing.
“Mmmm,” she mutters groggily, rolling over to check her holo. Coach Fred’s reminding her about those fights again, and she’s got a couple gigs comin’ in from Padre. Johnny knows her well enough by now to know she never says no to Padre, so he figures that’s how they’re gonna be spending their day today. And worse, today’s also the day she’s supposed to klep that Militech merch for that idiot gonk Kirk, a gig she agreed to for reasons he absolutely cannot fucking fathom.
He doesn’t bother her as she showers and gets dressed and heads down to Heywood. The first job for Padre is to steal some data from a Valentino bar, some smear stuff for the upcoming mayoral election. Johnny fuckin’ hates politicians - they’re all corrupt, the lot of ‘em, even the ones who talk the talk, and he tells V as much. Even this Peralez clown all the locals are slavering over.
V doesn’t argue as she downloads the data from the computer then slips out through the window, landing softly on her reinforced tendons. Another job done clean and quiet, no flatlining or violence. V’s good and she knows it, and Johnny can feel her satisfaction as she heads to the drop point to leave the shard for one of Padre’s couriers. Johnny knows she used to do that kinda errand work for him as a kid, which is why she leaves a small cash tip in the drop box as well. He tries not to dig, but when it’s at the front of her mind like this, he can’t help but see it too as the memories rise to the surface of their shared mind - the feeling of slipping silently into alleys, scrambling up onto rooftops to avoid the badges doing their sweeps, hiding out in small spaces that adults couldn’t reach. She was a pretty decent hacker even then, and she’d already seen her share of violence.
That’s something they both share, he thinks - a childhood that ended too early, too violently.
Her holo rings, and of course it's Judy. V answers immediately, and Johnny can feel her pulse pick up a bit.
"Heya, Judy," she says warmly. "How you feelin'?"
"Still shitty," she admits. "But I've been working on my idea. Puttin' it all together."
"So, I take it that means you got a plan?"
"Damn right I do," Judy replies. "Come over to mine tonight, gonna lay the groundwork with Tom and Roxie. They're with us." She pauses. "Maiko'll be here, too."
V laughs sharply. "How’d you manage that?"
A mysterious smile plays on Judy's lips. "Got somethin’ really big. Tell you everything tonight. Oh, last thing. What do you like on your pizza?"
V only hesitates for a half second. "A and A, artichokes and avocado flavor," she says confidently. "And zucchini for good measure."
Johnny would roll his eyes, if he had any.
"Oooh," says Judy. "Fancy. So, I'll see you tonight? Told everyone to be here around 8."
"Of course,” V says. “Gonna tell me this big secret of yours?"
Judy’s obviously excited about whatever it is she's done, that much is clear. "Figured out how to tweak behavioral chips. Turn dolls into fighters," she says smugly.
Johnny can feel the stupid smile spread across V’s face. Jeez, girl’s got it bad, he thinks. He’s not sure how to feel about this. About any of this. He still isn’t thrilled about this whole plan, and he’s not sure if it’s because he thinks it’s gonk or because he’s getting sick of watching V and this chick make gooey eyes at each other. Probably both.
"Hell yeah,” V says. “I'll be there."
But first, they’ve still gotta do what Johnny knows is gonna be a hot mess of a gig - the Kirk one.
Kirk’s already flicked V the coordinates, so she punches them into her GPS after getting off the call with Judy.
“Gotta say, V, I thought you had better judgment than this,” Johnny mutters, glitching in as she gets on her bike.
“Job sounds straightforward enough,” she says with a shrug. “Yeah, Kirk’s an idiot, but I don’t think he’d purposefully fuck me over.”
When will she actually learn to start listening to him?
“Oh, right, cause this time he promised that everything’ll go smooth? Totally safe, zero risk, and big payout?” Johnny shakes his head at her. “What’re you waiting for? Sounds like nothing could possibly go wrong!”
V rolls her eyes and starts up her bike.
The address takes them to a place in Arroyo, and Johnny already doesn’t like this. If Kirk’s about to step on any 6th Street toes, this could get ugly.
“This block’s Valentinos’, actually,” V says as she cuts the engine.
“‘Scuse me for not having a block by block map of the latest gang wars burned into my brain,” Johnny scoffs, glitching in at the foot of her bike.
Kirk and his big idiot sidekick are waiting for them on the sidewalk.
“Hey, hey, V! Over here, choom!” he calls when he sees V.
“Not your choom,” V says coldly as she approaches.
Johnny leans against the concrete barricade behind them and nods at V approvingly.
“Yeah, sure, just tryna be friendly is all,” Kirk mutters.
“Not chooms, not friends. Biz, now,” V says firmly.
Kirk nods. “Okay,” he says, and puts out his cigarette. “See that garage, right there?” he says, pointing to the gated lot next door. “Van’s inside. You go in, grab the tech, get out, we split it fifty-fifty. Clear?”
V narrows her eyes. “Thought this was a job for two. Looks like I’m carryin’ all the weight here.”
“All the weight!” Kirk laughs, and fuck does he have a punchable face. “All the fuckin’ weight! Who’s gonna keep watch? Me, of course! Anything happens, you’ll know.”
“Does this gonk even do anything?” Johnny asks, gesturing with his thumb at Kirk’s fanny-pack-wearing oversize useless-lookin’ huscle.
“And Big Joe?” V asks, looking at his companion pointedly.
“Joe’s just here for moral support,” Kirk says with a wink.
Johnny shoots V an incredulous look. Surely she knows better than this?
“Don’t like the split,” V says, shaking her head. “Two thirds for me, one for you.”
“Atta girl,” Johnny says, watching her through his shades.
Kirk blinks at her, then laughs. “Know what? Sure. You’re all right, V. A pro, a pal. Choom like you’s hard to come by in this town.”
“Alright, well now I know this gig is bunk,” Johnny mutters.
V ignores him and looks towards the garage. “You scan the area? Anyone inside?”
“All clear, V,” Kirk assures her. “Not a soul. Can waltz right in like you own the place.”
V nods slowly. “Okay, then. In I go.” She starts toward the garage. “Head on a swivel, right?” she shoots sarcastically over her shoulder.
Kirk flashes her a thumbs up, and Johnny glitches away.
V steps through the gate into the lot outside the garage, and Johnny sees them at the same time she does. Valentino gangoons, five of ‘em.
“All clear, my ass…” V mutters, ducking behind a pallet of oil barrels.
V’s dead set on not flatlining any of them, so it turns into a prolonged game of hide and seek that ends with V knocking them out one by one with her combat quickhacks. He knows that V is averse to killing in general, but also that she feels especially obligated to keep the body count low when she’s operating on her home turf. To her, the Valentinos are just other Heywood street kids - ones who made a different choice than she did, ones who took what for them was the path of least resistance. Like her choom Jackie’d done.
When the garage is finally clear, V stands and crosses to the van, throwing open the back to look inside. There’s a lone suitcase there, and she opens it to check the merch. Johnny glitches into the back of the van as well and stretches out languidly against the wall, hand resting on his knee, watching V.
“What the… the fuck’s this?” V says, pulling out a cheaply made synthetic bomber jacket. “Clothes?!”
Johnny watches as she turns it around to examine the back, and of all things, it’s a fuckin’ fake Samurai jacket, a knock-off of his signature one that he used to wear. It says “SAMERAI” in bold letters across the back, above an off-color poorly printed version of their logo. The laughter escapes his throat before he can stop himself.
V stares at the jacket incredulously. “Cheap knockoffs, too?!” Her voice jumps up an octave when she’s caught by surprise, Johnny notices. It’s cute.
“Had real great intel, that Kirk,” he says, still unable to stop laughing. “Like always, actually. But hey, now you can retire, quit this line of work, open up a stand in Kabuki just like ol’ Karim and his-”
“Implants,” V hisses, and he feels a real wave of anger from her crash over him. “Fuckin’ Militech ‘ware. I’ma shove these duds right up his ass.”
She grabs the jacket and storms out of the garage back towards Kirk.
She’s barely made it halfway across the lot when the sound of gunfire rings out from the other side of the wall.
“Shit, now a firefight?” V groans and breaks into a run.
Johnny sees them at the same time V does. Kirk and Big Joe are roughly ten feet from where they left them, but their bodies are now bleeding out on the pavement.
And three tattooed Valentinos are crouched over them, guns drawn.
“Ugh, fucking fuck!” V curses when she sees them.
Johnny glitches in, feeling the adrenaline coursing through her. And beneath that, he can feel her annoyance that he turned out to be right.
“Wow, the fun’s just gettin’ started,” he says smugly. “Have a good time, V.”
“Fuck you, Johnny,” she says out loud, and takes a step towards the gangers.
“Oh, look, another gonk,” the one in the middle says, getting to his feet. He’s wearing some fuckin’ hideous striped vest, and if Johnny had to guess, he’s their leader. “How you like those combat implants, choom?” He bursts out laughing, and the other gangoons join in.
“Hm,” says V. “Very funny.” She gestures at Kirk’s body. “The fuck’s goin’ on here?”
“Your choom, Kirk,” the Valentino replies. “Did biz time to time… but see, had this funny feelin’ he was tryna play me. So, I told ‘im I had a transport, preem implants, just sitting there for the taking… An’ I waited.”
“See the prank worked,” V observes, and Johnny can hear the humiliation in her voice. Kirk got played, and by proxy, she got played.
“Yup, sure did,” the Valentino answers smugly. “Isn’t that right, boys?”
The other two Valentinos join in his laughter, jeering at V.
Johnny’s suddenly never wanted to punch anyone or anything more.
“I should splatter your brains on the pavement, but I’d just be wasting lead,” the Valentino spits. “Only a fuckin’ gonk would run an op with Kirk.”
V narrows her eyes at him like she’s trying to crush him with just the force of her own mind. Which, realistically, she could do if she wanted. Johnny wonders why she hasn’t flatlined these gonks yet.
“Hey, don’t give me that face,” the ganger shoots back. “You are what you fuckin’ do,” he growls. “So say it - say you’re a gonk little bitch and I’ll let you live.”
Johnny knows she could take ‘em out, easily. But she hesitates.
“I’m a gonk little bitch,” she hisses, but before they can even start laughing, she pulls out her revolver and shoots them each directly in the fuckin’ forehead. Non-lethal, of course, but they drop like rocks as the modded bullets knock ‘em out cold.
Johnny didn’t think V could still surprise him.
The middle one is still moving, though, and V approaches him as he writhes on the ground.
“How ‘bout a little joke instead?” she says, her voice dripping with spite. “What lies on the ground, pissin’ itself and beggin’ for mercy?”
And then her eyes glow blue and the Valentino starts convulsing as the quickhack hits. Too bad he didn’t invest in better personal ICE, Johnny thinks. Not that you could buy anything close to the custom ones V programs for herself.
Johnny whistles softly through his teeth as the gonk starts to flatline, and V just watches as he twitches and goes cold.
V can be cold-hearted as fuck sometimes after all.
“Well, that’s what you get for a lifetime of hustlin’,” Johnny mutters, glitching in to lean against the stack of pallets next to them.
V’s clearly not in the mood for his shit right now. “Nice speech,” she scowls. “Remind me not to invite you to my funeral.”
“Is this the funeral scenario where I’m wearin’ your skinsuit? Or do you have another plan for how I’m gonna outlive you that you haven’t told me about?” he jokes, keeping his eyes on her face.
She glares at him from under the hair that’s fallen across her eyes. He has a sudden impulse to reach out and push it aside, which is fucking gonk of him for at least twelve reasons.
He glitches away instead.
Notes:
That stupid toast V can do twice in the Corpo intro is so fucking funny and cute and I always wished it got called back at some point
Chapter 14: Chippin' In
Summary:
V meets with Judy and her friends to plan their next moves for the Clouds takeover, and V struggles with her growing feelings for Judy in light of her complicated situation with Johnny.
Notes:
Special shout-out to y'all on the discord for being so kind and encouraging and for riding this trash bus to hell with me
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It’s dark when V arrives at Judy’s apartment, and well past 8, meaning she's late. She's still exhausted and pissed off from that Kirk job, pissed off that she lost her cool, and even more pissed that Johnny'd been right.
She can already feel him start to brood as she climbs the stairs inside the building, taking them two at a time. She's still trying to figure out what exactly his issue is with Judy - is it really just that he doesn't trust Maiko, that he doesn't want to risk them getting hurt running off on some half-baked gonk plan? Or is it something else? She teased him before about being jealous, sure, but given his current circumstances, hell, their entire current situation, it doesn't seem to her like he's in the position to be placing any kind of demands or guidelines on her sexual autonomy. And besides, he said it himself - he doesn't give a fuck, and in fact will probably even enjoy it if she hooks up with Judy. Which bothers her too, for a whole different slew of reasons. Would Judy even want that, if she knew about the mandatory guest?
Of all the strange scenarios V ever thought she'd find herself in, having to navigate a complicated sexual relationship with the engram of a dead rockstar that's eating her brain alive from the inside was definitely nowhere near the top. She still has no fuckin' clue how she's gonna explain that part to Judy. Or if she even should.
But whatever it is, something's bothering Johnny - she can feel those familiar knots of tension rolling off him somewhere inside her, wherever he's hiding out.
She rings Judy's bell, and the door opens. Standing there is a guy she recognizes as one of the dolls she questioned at Clouds. Tom, she remembers. Evelyn’s friend.
“Hey, V! Come on in,” he says warmly, as though they’ve been friends for years. “Pizza’s getting cold!”
“You made it!” Judy crows from the kitchen when V enters, and V smiles too when she sees her. She’s dressed more casually than V’s ever seen her before, in boxer shorts and a loose t-shirt. It suits her, V thinks, admiring the tattoos on her legs.
“Feelin’ better?” she asks Judy, stepping into the kitchen to join her. “You look better.” She can't help glancing down as she says this, and Judy blushes. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Johnny glitching in to glower at her from the beanbag chair in the corner of the room.
But Judy shakes her head, and her pretty face darkens. “I’m on autopilot. I don’t think, just do.”
She’s where I was at a couple weeks ago, V realizes. Right after Jackie died, when the wound was still raw, still angry. Not that V's wounds still aren't raw. She just has bigger fish to fry. She glances at Johnny, and he looks away.
“Sound method,” V says to Judy sympathetically, sitting herself on one of the stools at the kitchen counter where the other guests are seated. Judy introduces Roxanne, the girl with dark skin and coiffed blonde hair on the stool next to V. “She's worked at Clouds longer than any of us,” Judy notes.
Roxanne is wearing sweatpants and a sports bra, and Tom's wearin' gym shorts and a tank top, and V suddenly feels overdressed in her merc leathers. She takes off her jacket and tosses it onto Judy’s chair. Roxanne smiles at V.
“Nice to meet ya,” V says, returning the smile. There are pizza boxes open on the table, and V chuckles when she sees that Judy actually got her the stupid pizza she asked for. Artichoke, avocado, and zucchini. She reaches for a slice.
“When I heard what you pulled at Clouds…” Roxanne is saying, “Shit, I so regretted I was off that day!”
Johnny glitches over to lean against the aquarium near the table, smoking a cigarette and tapping his foot impatiently. “Just eat the free pizza and then we're outta here, yeah?” he mutters, gesturing pointedly at V with his cigarette. She gives him a long, hard look and takes a bite of her pizza, then turns to Tom.
“How’ve you been?” she asks.
“Okay, I guess,” he says. “But… y’know. Sad as hell.” He looks down at his beer.
“So, you guys’re here 'cause you want payback for what happened to Ev?”
Roxanne nods. “That’s part of it, yeah. But I also just wanna have a normal job, ya know? No fears, no tears.”
V nods empathetically, and tries not to let Johnny's bad mood bother her. Despite the fact that they're here to plan the hostile takeover of a gang-run joyhouse, this is the most normal thing V's done in what feels like months. Just sitting around, eating pizza with a bunch of young people she'd probably be friends with if she met them in any other context. In any other life. None of them kill people for a living, she thinks darkly.
Maybe Johnny's bad mood is rubbing off on her, after all.
She frowns, and right at that moment, the door opens and Maiko saunters in. She’s wearing some tacky leopard print monstrosity with pink fur arm cuffs, because of fuckin’ course she is, but at least V's not the most overdressed one anymore.
“Well, well, well,” Maiko says when she sees V. “Looks like Judy’s won herself a true and loyal fan.” Judy blushes furiously. She gets flustered so easily, V notices, and she finds it strangely endearing.
“Changed your mind, huh?” V retorts, giving Judy a chance to recover. “Quickly, too.”
“I'm here. Doubt I need to explain why.” Maiko comes to stand at the head of the table, black snakeskin clutch in one hand, the other on her hip.
“Judy convinced you,” V says simply. “Call me satisfied.”
“By the way,” Maiko says, raising an eyebrow at V, “Woodman didn’t show up for work today. Or yesterday.”
“No shit,” Johnny says from behind her. "The fuck she think was gonna happen?"
“He’s not comin’ back,” V says to Maiko. “Doubt I need to explain to you why.”
“Me?” Maiko says, her voice dripping with feigned innocence. “I’ve got no idea why. Remember that.”
“Done saying hello to each other?” Judy cuts in. “Revolution won't plan itself.”
She walks over to Maiko and studies her for a moment, then turns to face the rest of them.
“Basically, I figured out a way to modify any doll’s behavioral chip so that it can operate their motor reflex system,” she announces, looking grimly pleased with herself. “In other words, make the doll move and fight like a preem-tier solo.”
Maiko considers this for a moment. “Fascinating, isn't it?” she drawls, removing a cigarette from her clutch and lighting it. “What one can learn while tuning fake orgasms for the Moxes.”
“I’d really rather you didn’t smoke in here,” Judy says coldly, waving her hand to fan the smoke away.
Maiko rolls her eyes. “You'll air it out later,” she says flippantly, staring Judy down, but Judy holds her ground and Maiko finally sighs and looks away. “Fine, I'll sit by the window.”
V watches her strut over to the couch, and tries to imagine what they must've been like as a couple. Did they fight a lot? Did Maiko just walk all over Judy even then, too? She frowns as Maiko sits on the corner of the couch, right underneath the window. Next to Johnny, who's glitched in to to lean against the wall next to the window, but Maiko obviously doesn’t know that. Judy deserves better than her, V thinks.
Judy sighs heavily and continues. “Already tested it out on Tom,” she says, clapping her hand on his shoulder. “Chip's impulses supplant any natural reflexes, so it’s almost like cyberpsychosis. The doll doesn’t remember anything that happens once the chip activates, but their body will be executing a series of well-trained movements.”
“But it's basically the same as when we activate ourselves for a client,” Tom quickly adds, leaning back and crossing his arms. “Except instead of weird sex stuff, we’re doin’ kung fu and shit.”
V is impressed at the undeniable ingenuity of it, but she's still skeptical, and more than a little horrified. If what Judy's saying is true...
“Solo skills don't lie in just executing movements,” she says. “There are split second processes that happen… logistics, decision-making. Result of years of practice.” She shakes her head. “Doubt your chip's capable of compensating for that.”
Judy nods. “You're prolly right. But the alternative's intensive training, and we don't have time for that.”
“So aside from potentially turning all your friends into cyberpsychos, what are the other side effects?” V says. “Spill ‘em.”
Judy looks sheepish. “Combat mode auto-initiates when a threat is present, and, uh... there's no way to stop it. Can't find a workaround.”
Yikes, V thinks. “And that’s it? Anything else?”
“I dunno,” Judy admits. “Only way to determine that'd be through months of testing on a range of subjects.”
“There's an ethical side, too,” Roxanne interjects. “You could murder someone and not remember a thing.”
The implications behind this, especially with how relatively easy it seems like it was for Judy to do it, unsettle V. She feels a surge of dark agreement from Johnny.
“How'd you even come up with this?” she asks.
Judy shrugs again. “Always seemed like the chips must be pretty easy to modify. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't get the idea sooner.”
Maiko laughs sharply. “Tyger Claws would sooner dig those chips outta the dolls with screwdrivers than let an idea like this run its course.”
“Sounds about right,” V says. “Still, gotta see it to believe it.”
“Finally, someone said it,” Maiko agrees.
Judy turns to Tom. “Tom?”
Tom smiles at Judy, then stands up and grabs a kitchen knife from her counter. He spins it in his hand, then flings it across the room. It hits right in the middle of the octopus painting on Judy’s wall. Incidentally, right where Johnny is standing. Johnny doesn’t flinch or move away, he just leans against the wall, glaring at the ground. Tom grabs two more knives in quick succession, and they each hit within an inch of the first knife. Johnny turns his head to look at V, his face unreadable. Whatever he’s feeling, he’s keeping it locked down tight. She meets his gaze.
“Nice bar trick,” Maiko quips. “But I wanna see a fight. And it just so happens that we’ve got an expert in causing serious bodily harm among us. I wanna see how Tommy handles her.” She points a manicured finger at V.
V looks at Tom nervously, but he nods and walks to the open space in Judy’s living area, cracking his knuckles as he does so. V stands and positions herself opposite him and puts her fists up half-heartedly. She really doesn’t wanna hurt him, so they just stare at each other for a moment, neither making a move.
“You gotta throw the first punch, remember?” Judy says. “Or the combat won’t auto-initiate.”
V obliges and throws a punch at Tom with her organic hand. He dodges it easily and moves to counter, so V shoots a quick jab with her chrome one, sure to clock him in the chin this time. But to her shock, he grabs her arm and twists it around, taking her with it and following it up with a swift shove to her abdomen that sends her flying straight backwards into Judy’s couch, her vision glitching.
“Agh!” she grunts in surprise, clutching her stomach and struggling to sit up. Judy comes running to her side and crouches on the floor in front of her.
“You alright?” she asks, placing her hand on V’s knee.
“Hahaha! Look at me go!” she hears Tom say, blinking in surprise as he comes back to himself and sees her on the floor. “Ya see that?!”
“Nice work, Judy,” V says, sitting up and coughing. “Outdid yourself. If you were to sell that… you'd be the richest Judy in the NUSA.”
On second thought, if Judy made this in a matter of days, then some corpo fucks in a lab somewhere have probably already perfected it, are already deploying it god-knows-where.
Johnny is still sulking against the wall, watching her, and V figures he’s thinking along similar lines. If you got something to say, just say it, she thinks.
“Who, me?” He scowls. “This is my impressed face.”
“Oh, please,” Judy is saying, still crouched on the floor in front of V, leaning an elbow on the coffee table. “Plenty o' killin' machines in the world. I don't wanna turn more people into 'em. After this, chips are gettin' micronuked.”
“Happy now?” V says out loud to Johnny before she can catch herself.
“I'm rarely happy,” Maiko answers, assuming that V’d been talking to her. “But that was proof enough that it works.”
V's relieved she doesn't have to explain her gaffe. Johnny just shakes his head at her slowly.
“So how about it?” Judy asks, turning to the rest of them. “V? Tom? Roxie? Made up your minds?”
Roxanne frowns and chews on her nail. “I... I need to think about it. Never wasted anyone before, y'know.” Her low voice quavers a little.
“I'm with it all the way!" Tom declares.
Judy looks expectantly at V.
Johnny gives her a hard look. “Don't tell me you're seriously considering this? Stickin' our precious necks out for these gonks and potentially getting yourself caught up in a gang war?”
V meets Judy's eyes. “Already said I'd help, didn't I?”
“Thanks, V," Judy says, beaming up at her.
Now it’s Maiko’s turn to roll her eyes. “Save the gratitude for later, please.”
“Rather not have to flatline anyone, though,” V adds softly, and her vision glitches again.
“What she said,” Roxanne agrees.
Judy nods. “Hope is, it won't be necessary. Just gotta humiliate ‘em.”
As she speaks, V’s vision starts to blur and glitch, worse than before. Fuck, not now, she thinks.
Maiko and Judy and the dolls proceed to start breaking down the plan, hashing out the details. Tom and Roxie’ll strike Clouds, while V and Judy will break into the boss’s penthouse in a show of force to attempt to strike terms with him. V tries to keep up with the conversation, but her vision is worsening, and Judy and her friends’ voices are starting to sound distorted and distant, like they’re underwater. And fuck, the walls are breathing, making blue spots appear across her whole field of vision. She can tell this is gonna be a bad one.
Eventually, Maiko stands to leave, telling them she’ll set up a meeting and let them know the details in a couple days.
“Maiko, hold up,” Roxanne says, following her. “Give us a lift?
“Only if you don’t talk to me,” Maiko quips. “I feel a migraine coming on.”
V’s vision doubles as the glitches keep getting worse. An intense, piercing pain stabs through her head, and she tries to breathe through it as the dolls collect their things and leave together. Judy sees them out, giving hugs to Roxanne and Tom and a cold nod to Maiko.
Johnny is still looking down at her, but his face is much softer now. V grimaces at him in pain through gritted teeth.
When the front door finally closes, Judy turns back to V, face flushed. She looks nervous and excited at the same time.
Keep it together, V thinks. Don't make this Judy's problem.
“Hooo, shit... I'm scared, V,” Judy says, exhaling a shaky breath and walking back over to sit on the couch next to V, still seemingly oblivious to the merc's condition.
V gives her what she hopes is an encouraging look, but it's probably just another grimace.
“Speakin' of gratitude…” Judy continues shyly. “Stuff I'm askin' you to do, well… usually comes with a price tag, I know.” She looks down, and V knows she's remembering their argument yesterday. “You wanna help, I get that. But I'm more than happy to pay your fee in full. Feels like it's only right.” She looks up at V imploringly.
“Judy... for real?” V shakes her head firmly, causing her vision to split and wobble even more. She feels the words come out of her mouth slightly slurred, even though she hasn't been drinking. “No, don't wanna hear it.”
“But-” Judy starts, her face blurring into blue streaks as V struggles to focus on it.
V leans forward and presses her finger to Judy’s lips. “Not a word,” she insists.
Judy blushes furiously, but V’s vision glitches badly again. Her head throbs like it’s about to explode, and she doubles over.
“Um... V, everything okay?” Judy asks, finally noticing that V is in all likelihood about to have a fuckin' seizure on her couch.
V tries to answer but only a choked, strangled sound comes out. Judy grabs her shoulders to steady her. It suddenly sounds to V like she’s a thousand miles away. “V? You don't look so hot…”
The world around her is going dark, and V struggles to hang on to consciousness. She's aware of Johnny still watching her, the worried look on his face a mirror of Judy’s.
V leans forward and puts her head between her knees, trying to collect herself and take deep breaths as she waits for the malfunction to pass, but it shows no signs of abetting. “I'm better, I'm fine,” she lies, attempting to stand, but a wave of nausea hits her and her legs give out, causing her to collapse back onto the couch.
“What the hell, V?” Judy asks, clearly shaken. She reaches out her hand out to gently grasp V’s arm. “You, like, sick?”
V leans into her, fighting down the nausea, and Judy settles her back onto the couch. V rests her head on Judy’s shoulder. The room is spinning, and she can’t see Johnny anymore.
Time to tell Judy the truth, she decides.
“Remember the heist Evelyn hired us for, the Relic I klepped?” she mumbles.
“Ugh, couldn’t forget that in a million years,” Judy says, her voice dark.
“And remember how I told you that the biochip had Johnny Silverhand’s engram on it?”
She feels Judy nod.
“Well, chip wound up slotted into my head. And now Johnny… his engram… is overwriting my mind.” She swallows, waiting for Judy’s reaction.
Judy pulls back to look her in the face. “You bein’ serious?”
“Truly wish I wasn’t,” V says softly. The malfunction seems to be passing a bit now, thank god.
“Fuck…” says Judy. “Anything at all you can do?”
“One can hope,” V murmurs.
Judy stares at her silently for a long moment and V watches a parade of emotions cross her face. “It's late, you're tired,” she finally says. “You can, uh… you can crash on my couch if you want.”
“I... yeah, thanks,” V says, and Judy smiles and looks down.
“Don't worry 'bout it,” she says, reaching for V’s hand and holding it gently in hers. “Make yourself at home.”
On a sudden impulse, V pulls Judy towards her and kisses her on the mouth.
Judy stiffens with surprise at first, but then melts into V, kissing her back so softly and sweetly that V feels her throat tighten. It's just so nice to be held and kissed by a real fuckin' person, and V suddenly realizes how lonely she's been.
This can’t end well, she thinks sadly, and pulls away, tucking a lock of Judy’s pink and green hair behind her ear. “You’re a real one, Judy,” she whispers.
Judy leans in to kiss her again, and V gives in to it, letting herself pretend for a moment that things are normal - that she and Judy are both just normal girls who can kiss, date, fall in love - that one of them isn’t facing down a sentence worse than death, according to Johnny.
But the moment is ruined when another wave of nausea hits her, and she pulls away from Judy and vomits up the slice of pizza she ate earlier.
“Fuck, Judy, I’m sorry,” she mumbles, but Judy gently pushes the sweaty hair out V's face and kisses her on the forehead, then stands and goes to get supplies to help her clean up.
V lies back on the couch and puts her hands over her face. Fuck, she thinks.
When V wakes up on Judy’s couch, it’s almost noon, and she is alone.
Judy’d sat with her and stroked her hair and hummed some weird song until she fell asleep, and V can’t remember the last time anyone’s shown her that kind of gentleness. She feels her throat tighten at the memory.
Her holo’s flashing, as always, and she checks her messages. Coach Fred, again, reminding her that she’s supposed to fight some gonk in Pacifica today, and three from Judy.
Mornin’ sleepyhead!
Had to run, didn’t wanna wake u
Left you some breakfast. Eat up!
V smiles when she reads them, and after washing her face and rinsing her mouth in the bathroom, she investigates the kitchen and finds a handmade sandwich Judy left for her.
She feels that slight tugging in her chest again. No one’s made her homemade food since she lived with Jackie and Mama Welles.
There’s coffee, too, and she sips it slowly while she chews on the sandwich. It’s synth-ham and cheese, but it seems like Judy added some jalapeno flavor or seasoning or something. It’s actually not bad at all.
V wanders around the apartment as she eats, examining Judy’s things. She takes a moment to admire the big octopus mural on the rear wall, and wonders if Judy painted it herself. Girl’s got a thing for underwater imagery, she realizes, suddenly connecting all of Judy’s nautical tattoos with the well-maintained aquarium, the octopus avatar, and the large wall painting. She moves closer to the aquarium, as she’s never really stopped to examine it closely.
A pair of beautifully colored fish swim in slow circles through a forest of colorful corals and seaweed. This thing must cost a fortune to maintain, V thinks. Judy must make bank with her braindance tuning skills.
She continues her little tour of the main room, and notices a box on the floor that looks like a collection of old vintage video cards. “Whoa,” she says, peering inside. “Interesting hobby.”
She hadn’t consciously been saying it to Johnny, but he glitches into the desk chair at the workbench next to the box, and leans over to examine it. Who the fuck else would I be talking to? she reminds herself. Maybe she let herself get a little too carried away with her fantasy of being normal, of being someone Judy’d actually wanna be with.
“Place looks like a fuckin' antique museum,” Johnny mutters.
“Then I guess you should feel right at home,” V quips. It’s not fair, he hasn’t done anything, but she finds herself resenting him a bit in this moment.
Johnny continues to take stock of the items in the box. “Chick's got taste,” he says begrudgingly. “‘Cept for one thing,” he teases, cocking an eyebrow at V.
V sighs. She knows he’s just trying to get a rise out of her, and she's not really in the mood. “That all you have to say?”
Johnny shrugs. “And she's nice.” He shoots V a wicked grin. “Six outta ten.”
“So you’re rating my friends now?”
“She’s no Panam, I’ll tell ya that,” Johnny says with a smirk, and V would hit him if she could. “Come on!” he protests, throwing his hands up. “Don’t tell me you’re not salty she doesn’t bat for your team.”
V rolls her eyes. “Panam’s a choom, Johnny. Don’t be gross.”
“Hey, I’m just tellin’ you your own thoughts, not mine,” he protests.
“You sure about that?” V says, but Johnny just smirks again and turns his attention to the robotic quadruped on the desk he’s seated at, and V follows his gaze. “Huh,” she says. “Didn't know Judy dabbled in robotics.”
Johnny looks genuinely impressed. “Now that's fuckin' shimra. Think that's how she winds down?”
“After a day's work of tuning hardcore smut?” V laughs. “Wouldn't be surprised.”
She’s getting more curious now, and wanders through Judy’s beaded curtain into her little office area.
“Whoa, the Bushido collection in BD format!" Johnny says, glitching in to perch on Judy’s desk and pointing at the box set on her shelf appreciatively.
There's something so uncharacteristically normal about Johnny's enduring affection for these stupid movies that V can't help but find oddly endearing.
“First three are collectors' items nowadays,” she tells him. He raises his eyebrows, but he’s smiling. “They’re vintage now, after all.”
She leaves the office and enters Judy’s bedroom. The bed is unmade, and there’s a box of diving gear on the floor.
“That’s right,” V muses, eyeing the gear. “She mentioned she liked diving.”
Johnny glitches in and peeks into the box. “Don't need to be an expert to tell the gear's pro.”
“Girl’s got a lot of hobbies,” V remarks, and Johnny nods thoughtfully. I'm only good at one thing, she thinks darkly again. Least Johnny could also play guitar in addition to shooting a gun. What else can she claim besides thievery and hacking?
"Maybe she'll be a good influence on you after all," Johnny teases. "Broaden your horizons a bit."
"If this is leading to some kinda sex joke about 'broads,' please save it," she says with a sigh.
But then Johnny notices the music posters on the wall above Judy's bed.
“Perilous Futur,” he reads in a mocking voice. “Elektropunk?” He shakes his head. “I'd rather puke out my ears.”
Leave it to him to be a music snob, V thinks. “You rather her walls be plastered in Samurai posters?”
“Nah, that’d be weird,” he says, shaking his head. “Then you’d be about two members away from callin’ yourself a fan club.”
“And here I thought you’d like the idea of me fuckin’ her under a big poster of your face,” she jokes.
Johnny opens his mouth to respond, but at that moment, they hear the front door open.
“V?” Judy’s voice calls. “That you?”
“In the bedroom,” V says, and Judy enters holding a grocery bag. She tosses V a NiCola.
“Here,” she says. “Figured you could stand to hydrate a little.” She pauses. “Were you just talkin’ to someone?”
V shifts uncomfortably. “No. Well, yeah, sort of,” she says, and Johnny glitches away. She considers lying and saying she was on her holo, but she doesn’t want to set a precedent of lying to Judy. “I was… was talkin’ to Johnny, actually,” she admits.
Judy’s clearly still confused, glancing around the room suspiciously.
“I can see him and talk to him,” V explains. “It’s… I don’t really know how to explain it.”
Judy nods slowly. “So he’s just kinda… there all the time?”
“Sort of,” V says, popping open the can of NiCola and taking a sip. Judy sits down on the bed and rests her chin on her hands, looking up at V. “He’s not always visible, or talking to me, but he can always see and hear what I do, and I can feel what he’s feeling most of the time.”
“Damn,” Judy says. “Can’t imagine what that must be like.”
“It’s not all bad,” V admits. “He can be funny, when he’s not being a total dick. And… he’s tryna help me.”
“Help you get rid of him, you mean?”
V nods. “Or find a way to stop the chip from killing me, at the very least.”
Judy looks at her sadly. “So, that’s how it’s gonna go if you don’t figure out how to fix it? One day you’ll wake up, and just… be Johnny Silverhand?”
“More or less, yeah,” she says quietly, and she feels some sort of emotion bubble up from Johnny as she says it.
Judy whistles slowly. “Fuck, V,” she says, and her voice is edged with sorrow.
“I’ve still got some time,” V quickly reassures her. Not sure how much, though, she silently adds. “And like I said, we’re workin’ on it. Got some ideas.”
Judy nods, but looks unconvinced. She’s looking at V like someone just handed her an ice cream cone and then told her it was poisonous. Which, in a way, is kinda exactly what just happened. V finds herself wishing so badly again that just for now, she could pretend things are normal. Maybe she can. Just for today, she thinks.
“So, uh, got any plans for today?” V asks, trying to change the subject.
Judy shakes her head. “Don’t have to go into Lizzie’s till way later, so I’m pretty free. How ‘bout you?”
“Gotta go fight some guy in Pacifica,” she tells Judy. “Boxing fight, I mean. Wanna come watch?”
A grin spreads across Judy's face at the invitation, making her dark eyes light up. “'Course!” she says, jumping up from the bed, and her sudden enthusiasm is infectious. She stops and glances around suddenly. “You, uh, wanna borrow some clothes or something? Take a shower, maybe?”
“Yeah, that’d be preem,” V says with a laugh, tipping her head down to sniff herself. “Could definitely use both.”
Judy laughs warmly and begins rummaging through her drawers, producing a plain black tank and some shorts for V to wear.
“Here ya go,” she says, handing them to V. “There’s clean towels in the bathroom. Lemme know if you need anythin’ else. And feel free to use my toothbrush,” she says with a mischievous smile.
V accepts the offering gratefully, and heads into Judy’s bathroom and starts her shower. She can hear Judy put on some music from the other room, and she smiles to herself when she recognizes it as one of Kerry Eurodyne’s solo albums.
“Guess she’s a fan, after all,” she whispers under her breath, and Johnny appears outside the shower and rolls his eyes.
“Of Kerry,” he corrects her.
“Have you ever actually listened to any of his solo stuff?” V asks, though obviously she knows the answer.
“Hear it on the radio all the fuckin’ time,” he mutters.
“Sure, but he’s had a 50 year career since you died,” she reminds him. “You’re not gonna get the full picture just from hearing his top five most recent hits here and there. Second Conflict is a concept album, you gotta listen to it straight through.”
“Fine,” Johnny acquiesces. “You can play it for me tonight. Assuming you’re not too busy shovin’ your fingers inside Judy.”
V is grateful there’s no way Judy could overhear that. She sighs and steps out of the shower and does her best to towel dry her hair, then puts on the clothes Judy lent her. They’re a little small - the top, especially - but they’ll work. Johnny doesn’t seem to mind, though, and gives her a once over before nodding approvingly and glitching away. She finds herself wondering if this maybe is just a case of good old-fashioned jealousy. But her and Johnny's arrangement is just one of necessity, convenience. Isn't that the deal?
She thinks about the things she's felt pass between them, that strange desperation buried underneath all the walls and spikes they both keep up, and shivers suddenly in the damp bathroom. It's all just too fucking complicated. For one fucking day, just one day, she wants to get to be herself again.
Judy is at her workstation tinkering with the robot when V emerges, but she puts down her tools and stands when she hears her.
“Ready to go?” V asks.
Judy nods and grabs her sunglasses, and they walk down the stairs together and exit the building. It’s hot and sunny out, and V blinks in the bright sunlight as she crosses to where she parked her bike by the dumpster last night.
“Hop on,” she says to Judy with a grin, swinging her leg over and starting the engine.
Judy only hesitates for a second, then slides on behind V, wrapping her thin arms around V’s waist.
Could get used to this, V thinks as she revs the engine and steers out of Judy’s driveway, the wind blowing both of their hair back as they head for the freeway entrance. She turns on the radio. Us Cracks is playing, and she leaves it on. It’s fun and happy, and it fits her mood right now.
“Woo!” Judy shouts as they pick up speed.
Traffic is light, so they make good time to Pacifica. Aside from the occasional beach bonfire, V’s mostly steered clear of Pacifica until recently. She remembers her mom taking her to the boardwalk a handful of times as a kid, before the whole thing closed down and turned into the rusted up ruin that it is today. And as an adult, she's kept her distance, especially back when she was doing more work for the Valentinos. The Voodoo Boys don’t exactly take kindly to outsiders on their turf, especially ones with incompatible gang affiliations. She hasn't been back since the day Evelyn died - the day she met Alt.
Johnny feels comfortable here, though, she thinks as they pull out of the tunnel and speed up along the main road through West Wind Estate up towards Coastview, where the fight’s supposed to go down. She knows it’s Johnny’s favorite part of the city, the one place he feels like he can breathe. Maybe it’s the lack of NCPD presence, or maybe it’s the sound and smell of the Pacific. But she knows this place holds memories for him, too, and not all of ‘em are good ones.
But Judy’s face is flushed and she’s grinning when V stops the bike in front of the abandoned Grand Imperial Mall. Seems like the locals have reclaimed it now that the Animals and their NetWatch leash-holders have been driven out. V smiles to herself at this.
She hops off the bike and helps Judy off as well, and Judy laughs and dusts herself off.
“Been a while since I’ve ridden one of those,” she tells V, still smiling. “And you go fast,” she adds.
“Sure do,” V says with a cocky grin, and Judy blushes again. V decides that she really likes making Judy blush.
Somewhere inside her, she feels Johnny roll his proverbial eyes.
The fight isn’t in the GIM, though, it’s in an abandoned pool behind the massive complex, so they meander around the labyrinth of staircases and walkways that lead around the mall to the back area that overlooks the beach. Lots of locals are out and about today - the weather is beautiful, and the ocean is calm. There are teenagers drinking in flocks, and gaggles of gangers roaming around as well, but none of them seem like they’re lookin’ for a fight, just out enjoying the sun. But they’re still all packing heat, both the visible kind and presumably the cyber kind. V’s got personal ICE stacked for miles, but she’s not sure her stuff could stand up to the Voodoo Boys’ off-market custom tech.
As she approaches the empty pool, she can see a small crowd gathered to watch the fight, and she makes out the shape of her opponent standing with his arms crossed at the edge of the pool. She squints at him. He looks familiar, but she can’t place it until he turns around and she sees the big fuckin’ grenade stuck to the middle of his face.
“Ozob?!” she calls out incredulously as she walks up, Judy close behind her.
He turns to her with a grin, and it’s definitely fuckin’ Ozob.
Guess Judy's about to watch me fist-fight someone with a live grenade on their face, V thinks, and steps toward him.
Notes:
I don't know why, but this chapter was one of the hardest ones to write so far and kind of broke my brain lol. I rewrote it like 4 times and kept switching perspectives between Johnny and V bc I couldn't decide. They both brought such different energy to the scene but I ultimately landed on V.
Once again, thank you so much for reading and for all your comments and feedback!! This monster is a SLOW BURN for sure and I'm glad y'all are enjoying the ride! And just know I've got a ton of wild stuff planned!!
Chapter 15: Saints of Void
Summary:
V and Judy spend the day together in Pacifica, then head downtown to meet with a new fixer.
Notes:
This chapter's for all you Dino hoes out there (you know who you are)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V circles Ozob in the makeshift ring, feeling Judy’s eyes on her from the sidelines.
Don’t hit his nose, she reminds herself, watching his face. He’s grinning like a madman, which doesn't seem remotely out of character for him.
She sees an opening and darts in, jabbing him in the stomach with her chrome arm, and he doubles over. Her replacement arm sure can pack a punch.
But he recovers and rushes her, still grinning, his fist making contact with her jaw before she can move out of the way.
She sees stars, but shakes it off and uses his moment of gloating to come at him again, this time distracting him with a right hook to the chin with her organic hand, but following it up with another gut-punch with her left that she manages to land right in the same spot as last time.
He doubles over again, wheezing a little this time. V wonders if she cracked a rib.
He’s still grinning, though, and almost immediately rushes her again. She’s ready this time and steps cleanly out of the way, catching his leg with her thigh and bringing her chrome elbow down on the back of his neck. Not hard enough to snap it, but hard enough to get him down.
He tries to get up, but she swings her leg over his torso to straddle him and uses her chrome hand again to give him a good roundhouse punch to the side of his head as he tries to hurl her off and climb to his feet. She manages to clock his ear, and he staggers again, looking dazed, but continues to get up, and she stumbles backwards off him and dances away to regain her balance.
Fucker must have a chrome skull, she thinks.
She can hear Judy cheering her on from the stands, and flashes her a grin. Ozob takes the opportunity to take another swing at her, but she’s better than that and sidesteps it again, moving behind him to give him another good punch to the back of the head.
He falls forward, catching himself on his hands, but then retches and collapses onto his stomach, panting. V wonders if she gave him a concussion.
She waits for him to get back up, but he doesn’t, he just rolls over and grins up at her, his mouth contorting strangely underneath the grenade.
“Agh! Stop! I’m done! I surrender!” he says, still laughing.
The announcer declares V the winner, and she raises her arms triumphantly to the small crowd.
“Hey,” V says softly to him as she helps him to his feet. “You do know that grenade’s gonna pop one of these days, right? I avoided, but someone else…”
“I know, I know,” Ozob says, brushing himself off and wincing. “We all die someday. Least when I do, there’ll be fireworks.” He grins at her again.
The people you meet in this city, V thinks, shaking her head at him and hoisting herself out of the pool to rejoin Judy.
Judy runs over and throws her arms around V’s neck, planting a kiss on her cheek. V laughs and hugs her back.
“Damn, V, that was fire,” she says. “Never seen you like that!”
V chuckles. “Not gonna lie, was a little nervous after Tom handed me my ass last night. Guess I’ve still got it,” she jokes.
Judy smiles and takes V’s hand. “Wanna walk around the beach a little?” she suggests shyly.
“Oh ho, long walks on the beach?” V teases her. “What’s next, you gonna ask me to move in?”
Judy laughs. “Like that old joke,” she says. “What do lesbians bring on their second date?”
“A moving truck,” V answers, and they both giggle as they walk down the stairs together to the beach, hand in hand.
God, she wishes it were that simple.
The beach is littered with washed up trash and bonfire detritus, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping anyone from blasting music, drinking beers, and even going in the water. V smiles as she walks, holding Judy’s hand, and enjoys the feeling of the fresh ocean air. She can even feel Johnny begrudgingly enjoying it a bit, too.
Her holo pings, and it’s Regina. There’s been a reported cyberpsycho sighting nearby, and Regina wants her to try to neutralize the psycho without killing them. V’s specialty, apparently.
She sighs and turns to Judy.
“Hey, Judy, sorry but I gotta take care of something real quick,” she says.
“What is it?” Judy asks.
“Cyberpsycho. Set up shop in an underpass around here,” she says, looking around, and she thinks she can see the underpass in question from where they’re standing. She hears some strange sounds coming from that direction. “Fixer wants me to take ‘em out. Alive, preferably.”
Judy whistles through her teeth. “Damn, V. Didn’t realize you were that hardcore.”
“Wanna wait for me here?”
Judy shakes her head. “I’ll watch your six.”
V can’t help but smile at her desire to help, but there’s no way she’s letting Judy accompany her anywhere near an active cyberpsycho. After some back and forth, Judy sits huffily on a washed up crate, and V leans down to quickly kiss her before drawing her Quasar and dropping to a crouch as she approaches the underpass.
There’s a closed garage door to the side of the underpass entrance, and it’s silent now, but that’s where V heard the sounds coming from a moment ago. And there’s a corpse on the ground outside. Shit.
“Looks like Regina wants to turn you into a one-woman army in the fight against cyberpsychosis,” Johnny says dryly, glitching in and leaning against the side of the garage. “One thing I still don’t get though… why does she want them alive?”
V shrugs. “Probably to test treatments on ‘em, if I had to guess,” she says.
“Yeah,” Johnny says darkly. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Rather just let MaxTac kill 'em?” she snaps.
“Better than deliverin’ ‘em straight to the corpos to rewire their brains or whatever,” Johnny rebuts.
She doesn’t answer him, because she’s concentrating on scanning the garage for threats. She can hear someone stalking around inside, as well as what sounds to her like a combat drone.
She hacks the door, quickly taking cover as it opens.
It’s clear from the setup that the garage belongs to a netrunner. Meaning the target will likely try to hack her. She quickly checks her personal ICE, then runs a couple more precautionary booster protocols just in case.
She sees the drone and uses a hack to take it down, and on her scanner she can see the outline of a man in a netrunner suit crouched behind some barrels.
She feels his quickhack hit her, attempting to overheat her system and fry her brain, but luckily her ICE is up to the job and neutralizes the hacking attempt before the daemon can gain access.
The next time the cyberpsycho leans out from cover, she hits him with her custom-upgraded system reset hack. She ducks back into cover while she waits for it to take effect. She hears a loud, choked yell, and emerges from cover just in time to watch him fall to the floor twitching, his Kiroshis and the ports in his neck visibly sparking in the dimly lit garage.
She knows not everyone has a deck like hers, skills like hers, or custom quickhacks like hers, but it still isn’t that hard to use non-lethal force, even against a target as deadly and unpredictable as a cyberpsycho. The fact that MaxTac almost never takes ‘em alive means, to V, that they’re not even trying.
She frowns as she searches the garage, pondering this. Johnny glitches in too, pacing around the room.
“Look, V, it’s you in the future,” he says dryly, pointing at the unconscious runner.
He makes the same joke literally every time they've encountered a netrunner that got fried in their chair (or stuck in cyberspace, or turned psycho, or any other of the relatively common misfortunes that befall unlucky 'runners), and she opens her mouth to toss back a witty retort, but the look on his face gives her pause. It suddenly occurs to her that maybe it’s less of a recurring joke, and more of a tic he’s developed after what happened to Alt. He knows all too well what can happen to netrunners who fly too close to the sun. Or who stick prototype chips into their brains.
But Johnny just shakes his head and glitches away, so she continues searching for anything useful to send Regina. She checks the 'runner’s computer, and sure enough, the messages reveal that he got hit with some kinda spike in the deep Net, and that’s what drove him psycho.
V frowns. She’s got a ton of cyberware herself, more than you can tell just by looking at her, and the more of these cyberpsychos she takes down, the more she’s beginning to see herself in them. It's an increasingly unsettling thought.
Does having an engram in your head that’s actively trying to goad you into blowin’ up Arasaka Tower technically count as cyberpsychosis?
“I dunno, V, does fucking said engram technically count as cyberpsychosis?” Johnny says from behind her, and when she turns to glare at him, his face is predictably smug, but his eyes are hard and grim.
She hears the sound of the MaxTac AV descending outside and knows it’s time to leave the scene. She’s not trying to hang around and get questioned by badges - Regina’s people will take care of the rest. She ducks out of the garage, texting Regina the info, and jogs over to where Judy is still waiting for her on the beach. Her face softens with relief when she sees V.
“All good?” she asks, standing up as V approaches.
“All good,” V says, stopping to catch her breath. “Took ‘im down pretty easy, actually.”
She follows Judy’s gaze over her shoulder to the heavily armed, ‘borged out MaxTac officers that are hopping out of the AV, assault rifles drawn. She hopes they don’t undo her work by shootin’ the guy dead anyway.
“Think I’ve had enough of Pacifica for today,” she says, turning back to Judy. “Wanna grab a drink?”
Judy nods. “Sure, where?”
V thinks for a moment. “There’s another fixer I’m s’posed to stop by and meet with that keeps texting me. I’ve been swervin’ him for bit ‘cause I’ve been busy with other stuff, but he owns some bar downtown. Could go there, maybe get a couple free drinks out of it?”
“Can’t say no to free drinks,” Judy says with a grin, and they head back to V’s bike.
They get caught in rush hour traffic on the way out of Pacifica, and even though V lane-splits and takes extreme liberties with things like traffic lights and stop signs, the sun is setting by the time they arrive in City Center amidst the rush of the corporats leaving their offices and heading to the bars.
V weaves through the congested streets, occasionally jumping onto the sidewalk to avoid a jam, causing Judy to shriek and clutch onto her in a way that makes V smile.
The bar is called Electric Orgasm, but the only sign V can see at the coordinates is what looks like a liquor store called the Malted Iguana. She frowns and double checks, but this is definitely the address Dino’d sent her, along with the promise of a stiff drink. She hops off the bike, shrugging at Judy, and Judy follows, fixing her disheveled hair.
She pushes open the door, and sure enough, it leads to a speak-easy style dive. Now that she’s inside, V is pretty sure she’s been here before - there are very few bars in City Center or Heywood that she hasn’t been to at this point, after all. Didn’t they used to have some kind of punk night? She tries to remember. There’s a stage set up for a band to play, and a Eurodyne song is blasting from the sound system as they enter. It’s the title track off Persuasion of the Undecided, and V nods approvingly. This place has got a vibe, that’s for sure.
Judy seems a little on edge, and V takes a quick scan of the other patrons. There are a coupla armed mercs sitting at the bar, but no gangers as far as she can tell; it’s mostly just rockerboys and roadies sprawled out with their beers, probably comparing guitars or dick sizes or whatever it is that rockerboys talk about.
“Ehh, everyone’s a sellout these days,” a man in a studded leather jacket and leopard print pants is saying to his friend, as if to prove her point. “All the great artists, falling one by one.”
Complainin’ about sellouts, V thinks with a smirk. Classic.
“If someone told my mother fifty years ago that Eurodyne would sell out too… pfft,” his friend replies, and V stops short at the mention of Kerry’s name. She’s not sure if it’s her attention or Johnny’s that just got piqued.
“If you’re a rebel, you die for what you believe in,” the first one agrees. “Or you live long enough to join the system and fade away. No other option.”
She can definitely feel Johnny react to that. But there’s no sense of smugness or satisfaction in what she’s feeling from him, it’s just the same dark, rolling anger and frustration she’s been getting all day.
“Well said, choom,” says the second one, and V notices he’s wearing a Wounded Machine patch on his vest. “Another decade or two, nobody’ll even remember the guy. They’ll find another kid with big dreams, promise him a mountain of ‘ganic gold, then muzzle him with a corpo contract.”
“Shit, man,” his friend says sadly, shaking his head. “We believed in you, Kerry.”
Pretty harsh, V thinks. And she doesn’t agree with them, anyway. Fine, she can admit it, Johnny knows it now anyway - she’s a big fuckin’ Kerry Eurodyne fan. And yeah, Kerry did what he needed to do to get a platform, but it was because he had something to say and he knew that was the only way to make sure people heard it. He did what Johnny couldn’t do - what Johnny wasn’t willing to do. Johnny died a rebel, and Kerry lived and became a star.
Judy’s watching her face carefully, and V wonders if she’s making the connection between the conversation snippet they just overheard and the imaginary friend V’s been running around town with who might have a reaction to said conversation. To distract her, she grabs Judy’s hand and drags her towards the bar.
She recognizes Dino Dinovic seated at the bar immediately - he’s got tattoos, a chromed out jaw, some kinda combat bullshit in his shoulders, a ton of piercings, and a mohawk of blue dreads snaking down the back of his neck. And he’s wearing sunglasses indoors, like another certain rockerboy she knows. There is something about him that reminds her of Johnny, V realizes. Not his looks, but his energy - a kind of coiled, crackling restlessness, a way of looking at the people around him like they’d better do something quick to get his attention or he’ll get bored before they even open their mouths, the slight sneer on his face that V suspects may be a permanent fixture. A kind of self-assured cockiness that says he doesn’t give a fuck whether you have time for him or not.
But Dino’s got more of a “too much cologne at the nightclub guy who offers you synth-coke and is gross to your friends but you fuck him anyway for some reason and then deeply regret it” vibe. Johnny’s more of a… well, Johnny is Johnny. He’s the guy who blew up Arasaka Tower twice to save his girlfriend and send a message, and there’s a cemetery in the middle of the fuckin’ city because of it.
He’s the guy who saved V’s life.
Dino sees V then, and his mouth spreads into a wide grin as he doesn’t even try to hide the once-over he gives both her and Judy. V gives Judy’s hand a squeeze as they approach the fixer.
“I’m V,” she says, leaning against the bar next to him. Judy lets go of her hand and crosses her arms, leaning back and sizing him up.
“Yeah, I know,” Dino says, studying her face over the top of his sunglasses. His eyes are brilliant green, and they don’t even look like implants, but she can’t be sure. “Heard about you. Hot stuff.”
He nods at the bartender, and suddenly there are three glasses of whiskey in front of them.
“That so?” V asks, taking a sip of her drink.
He smiles at her and gives her a long look. "Sure is," he says, and doesn't volunteer any more details.
"Anything interesting come your way lately?" she asks, wondering if he's open to talking business or if this is just a meet and greet.
“Shit!” he says, opening his palms towards her. “Place is burnin’ up, girl! Since that ‘Saka bitch showed up on her bigass boat, all them suits are shittin’ themselves like they ate day-old Caliente," he continues, referring to Hanako Arasaka's recent arrival by sea with her now-dead father. He picks up his glass and downs the whole thing. “Biz is fucking booming. Everyone’s gotta have a piece of ol’ uncle Dino.” He laughs and slaps his thigh as he says the last part.
Judy rolls her eyes exaggeratedly, but reaches for her drink and takes a big swig.
“Who’s your friend?” Dino asks, nodding his chin towards Judy.
“I’m Judy,” she says, taking another swig and laughing. “Virtu tuner. Merc work’s not really my thing.”
Dino laughs too. “Cute,” he says, and turns back to V. “So, you girls here for work, or you just tryna party?”
“Well, Dino,” V says coyly, shooting a conspiratorial wink at Judy. “Say we were in the mood to party. What would you recommend?”
He raises his eyebrows then, and produces a vial of synth-coke. Seems my read on him was spot on, V thinks, smirking to herself. And he is wearing way too much cologne. He does a bump, then offers it to V and she accepts, carefully taking the little metal spoon he hands her and guiding a small scoop of the crystalline powder to her nose. She feels it drip down the back of her throat, and damn, it’s the good shit.
“Shimra, right?” Dino says, watching her face.
“Yeah, real preem,” V agrees, handing it to Judy. “Anything good goin’ on tonight?” she asks. Judy takes the vial and does a small bump too, then hands it back to V, who places it back on the bar in front of Dino.
“Heard about a rager in Santo,” Dino says with a shrug. “Or if that's not your scene, there’s a warehouse rave down by the docks just a few blocks from here. And Empathy down the street is always a good time.” He grins. “Or, you could stick around here, hang with ol’ Uncle Dino, see what he’s got planned for tonight.”
“And what would that be?” V asks.
He smiles again, that rockerboy cockiness coming through. “Gonna sit here and drink whiskey and do blow with two pretty girls.”
“Wow, hard sell,” she says with mock seriousness. She knows she’s flirting with him, and she hopes Judy doesn’t mind. She just knows how guys like Dino work, how to get their attention. But just in case, she reaches for Judy’s hand and gives it another little squeeze. Dino notices, and it only makes his grin widen. Gross.
“But hey, if that’s not your bag, Kerry Eurodyne’s settin’ up a real preem shindig in a couple weeks,” he continues, clearly trying to impress them. “I’ll get you in. Just gimme a little time. Kerry likes me.”
“Does he now?” she asks, raising her eyebrow.
He smirks. “Yeah, I know Kerry. Used to hang with him and all the Samurai guys back in the day,” he brags.
V blinks at that, releasing Judy's hand. “You knew Johnny Silverhand?”
“Pssh, c’mon. Little young for that.” He shakes his head, laughing at her. “Meant the rest of ‘em, back when I was tourin’ and shit. But now that you mention it, I did hit one of Silverhand’s gigs once, 'fore he died or whatever.” He does another bump of coke. “Real fucked up.”
“Fucked up how?” V asks, bracing herself for whatever he’s about to say. She can feel Johnny tensing, too.
“Eh, played normo,” Dino says, wiping his nose with the back of his hand and handing the vial back to V. “But Johnny, apparently he had some ‘Saka suit tied up backstage. Said if they didn’t get at least three encores, he’d bash the poor bastard’s faceplate in.” He smiles. “Johnny had style, kid.”
Judy's eyes widen a bit at this, but she doesn't say anything. And somewhere deeper inside of her, V can feel Johnny's emotions writhing into an even tighter, darker knot that she forces herself to ignore.
“That’s one way to put it,” V agrees, taking the coke from Dino and doing another bump before downing the rest of her drink. She remembers Dino’s band - the Gloryhole Bandits. All her friends had been obsessed when they were like, thirteen. She’d outgrown them pretty quickly, though. Moved on to stuff like Samurai. But they weren’t bad, from what she remembers. It was angry, catchy, surprisingly fun stuff.
“Still jam with the band now and then?” she asks him, genuinely curious but also suddenly eager to turn the subject away from Johnny.
“No time, kid,” he says, and he sounds a little wistful. “But I’ll get back to it. The fuckin’ days, those were.”
“Even went to one of your gigs once,” V admits.
“Ah, a groupie!” Dino teases, but he’s grinning big now. “What, have a good time?”
“Honestly?” V says, laughing. “Seen better. Mostly remember you vomming all over the front row.”
Judy laughs too, and Dino just shakes his head at them, but he's still smiling.
“Gloryhole Bandits’ll be back, babe,” he assures her. “One of these days.” He downs his drink, and motions for the bartender to bring another round.
They stay at the bar for a while, and Judy seems to be enjoying herself too - Dino even gets a genuine laugh or two outta her. All three of 'em are from Night City, born and raised, and the conversation eventually devolves into them complaining about all the usual stuff - the toothless government, the ruthless corpos, the corrupt NCPD, the shitty music scene. Typical synth-coke talk. By the time she drops Judy off at Lizzie's, it's almost midnight and both girls are pretty buzzed.
Judy rests her head against V's shoulder as they ride back to Watson, and V finds herself wishing the ride weren't so short. The day went too fast, and now she has to say goodbye to Judy and return to her reality. To Johnny, and to the complicated, confusing mess they've created for themselves.
She pulls into the parking lot of Lizzie's, and Judy plants a kiss on her cheek before hopping off the bike.
"So what now, you gonna stay up all night tunin' smut?" V asks as she pulls away.
"It's when I do my best work," Judy replies with a wink. "I'll let you know when Maiko calls," she promises, blowing V a kiss and disappearing into the Mox-run braindance bar, leaving V to ride back down to Little China alone.
Well, not quite alone.
“Knew ya had shitty taste in men, but didn’t think you’d stoop to someone like Dino,” Johnny mutters as soon as she gets in the elevator of her garage.
“Stop crawlin’ up my dick, Johnny,” she says exasperatedly. “He’s a pretty big time fixer, was just tryna butter him up a little.”
“Right, and that’s why I could feel your panties get wet every time he stared at your tits,” Johnny replies, deadpan.
“Jesus fucking christ, Johnny,” V says. She can tell he's trying to pick a fight.
“And you really think I shoulda sold out like Kerry?” he continues, beginning to pace agitatedly. “That Kerry was braver than me for signin’ with some corpo label, lettin’ them sign his checks and hold his leash like a fucking dog?”
"I didn't fuckin' say any of that," V says, her face burning.
Johnny shakes his head. “I’ve made peace with my decisions,” he says, but V knows that’s not completely true.
“What the fuck’s been up with you?” she says, taking a step towards him and trying to meet his eyes. “Is this still about Judy? Or are you gettin' your nuts in a twist about Dino, now, too? Or are you just butthurt the whole world spent more of the last fifty years fawning over Kerry than suckin’ your dead dick for your rebel crusade? Which is it?”
“I told you, you can do whatever the fuck you want with Judy,” he shoots back, his eyes dark.
“But what do you want?” V presses.
“Wanna make sure we survive long enough to destroy Mikoshi and save your life,” he says, without missing a beat. "That's it."
“That’s not what I meant,” she says, but the elevator arrives at her floor with a loud, metallic crunching sound and he glitches away. She sighs and stomps out of the elevator and back to her apartment. She's still pretty keyed up from all the synth-coke, and Johnny's gotta be feelin' it too.
When she opens the door, Johnny is waiting by the window. He watches her silently as she enters, but doesn’t speak until the door closes behind her.
“What would you want if I wasn’t in your head?” he demands, but his voice is softer than it was before.
“Johnny, did it occur to you that I was flirting with Dino specifically because he reminds me of you?”
Johnny is struck silent by this, and V laughs.
“Not like that,” she says, still laughing, even though his misinterpretation isn't entirely wrong, either. Dino isn't nearly as good-looking as Johnny, but he does have the same strange, almost unsettling charisma. “I meant that a few weeks of listenin' to you yammer in my head made me know exactly what to say to him to get him wrapped around my finger," she gloats. "You rockerboy gonks are all the same.” She grins at him, and it has exactly its intended effect - he can’t decide whether to be angry or offended or flattered or flustered or annoyed or turned on.
“You’re a real piece of work, V,” he growls.
She walks over to stand closer to him.
“Johnny…” she begins softly.
“Look,” he says at the same time, and V decides to shut her mouth and let him talk. “I know that... if it weren’t for me, you could be datin' someone like Judy. Someone who’s nice to ya.” He looks down.
“So wait, now you feel bad about cockblocking me with your mere existence?”
“Jesus, V,” he says. “I’m just sayin’ I wish things were different, is all.”
The way he says it makes her wonder if he's still talking about Judy.
“Yeah,” she says. “Me too." She smiles at him sadly. “Still wanna listen to Kerry’s album?”
He shakes his head and looks away. “Not tonight."
“You sure?” she teases. “You know the whole album is basically about you, right? Thought that’d be right up your alley.”
She sees the corner of his mouth twitch up. “Wow, I’m touched." He smiles and shakes his head. “Alright, fine, put it on.”
She rummages through her closet until she finds her old vinyl copy of Second Conflict and carries it carefully to her record player, sliding it out of its sleeve and setting it on the turntable. The opening chords of Bloodbathed Stars fill her apartment, and she grins at Johnny as she kicks off her shoes and changes out of the clothes she borrowed from Judy and into her own t-shirt and shorts. He leans against the window, still watching her, but she can tell he’s listening to the music, too.
When Fever Danger comes on, he raises an eyebrow at the opening riff. “Catchy hook,” he says begrudgingly.
“Are you only listening to the guitars, or are you actually paying attention to the lyrics too?” V huffs, flopping backwards onto her bed and lighting a cigarette.
“Sounds like Kerry’s typical bullshit to me,” Johnny says dismissively.
“No, listen, right here,” V says, lifting her finger as the song gets to the second verse. “He’s literally singing about a fight you guys had, see?”
Johnny frowns, listening, and she watches his face for the rest of the song.
"Y'know, we talked about this," he muses, his face softening. "Me 'n Kerry. Writin' a concept album about the war." He shakes his head, and his eyes look suddenly distant, sad. "Can't believe he actually went and did it."
“Come sit down,” she says, even though she knows it doesn’t matter - it’s not like he can get tired independently of her. It's just making her nervous, having him standing over her like that.
He glitches away as the next song starts, then reappears lying next to her on the bed, causing V to startle. She'd been expecting him to sit on the edge of the bed like he usually does, or something. He’s never just… laid down next to her like this.
But it feels really natural somehow to be lying side by side with him, listening to records, and as she relaxes, she feels her annoyance with him start to melt away.
He’s trying, she thinks, and then finds her mind wandering back to Alt, and then to Rogue. She’s seen how he used to treat the women in his life, and hell, the men too, if Kerry’s album is any indication. The lengths he’d go to just to avoid admitting he cared.
If he doesn't care, then they can't hurt him. If he hurts them first, he can't inevitably disappoint them. If he doesn't want them, they have no power over him. That’s what he tells himself, she knows. She knows because she tells herself the same things, pushes people away for the same reasons.
What a fuckin' pair they make.
“So, Rogue knew about Alt,” she says. “But what about Alt? Did she…?”
“Did she know about Rogue, you mean?” Johnny replies, seemingly unsurprised by this new line of questioning. For all she knows, he’s been following her entire train of thought. He sighs. “Honestly, Alt and Rogue were just the tip of the assberg.”
She snorts at that. “Yeah, yeah, I get it, you fucked everything and everyone in Night City. Congrats.” She takes a drag of her cigarette. “But yeah, that’s what I wanna know.”
“Fuck me, V,” he says softly. “So do I.’
It’s not what she expects him to say.
“Prolly not how you pictured your grand reunion with Alt, huh,” she says sympathetically.
“I knew she’d change, transform… but…” his voice trails off.
“You’ve changed too,” she reminds him. “You’re literally someone else now.”
He shakes his head. “Alt’s out there fractaling, globulating, becoming a bigger and better AI,” he says darkly. “While I’m here, trapped in your head, killing you slowly.”
“But what were you expecting?” V presses. “Did you think she’d throw her arms around your neck? That you’d finally get to have it all out, get some closure?”
“Thought we’d talk, yeah,” he admits. “The way we used to.”
“To fix what you busted? Or to prove something to her?”
He thinks about this for a minute. “More like, prove myself wrong. Dead wrong when I told her we had nothing, were nothing, and shared nothing but sex.”
She feels him roll over next to her, and turns her head to see that he's propped himself up on his elbow and is studying her with a strange look on his face.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly.
He sighs. “Doesn’t matter. Seems I’m about fifty years late in gettin’ to it. Guess I just never thought she’d stop giving a fuck about me so completely.” His face falls as he says the last part, and he suddenly looks younger than his 34 years. Vulnerable. Lost.
“Got her to help us,” V reminds him gently, rolling onto her side to face him.
“Doesn’t give a fuck about helping me,” Johnny mutters. “Just wants to wipe Mikoshi.”
“No,” V says, shaking her head. She understands Alt a little, or at least she thinks she does. “She feels accountable for how Arasaka used Soulkiller. That’s why she’s helping.”
“Hm,” Johnny says, giving V a long look. “Could be.”
“And it took you to remind her of that. Only you.”
Johnny is silent, still watching her face, and she meets his gaze and holds it. She can feel that tangled knot of emotions inside of him, but she doesn't shy away from it and he's not holding back as much as he usually does, either.
They lie there quietly, looking at each other, while the rest of the album plays, and he's letting her feel his reactions to each track. Kerry's emotions in the music itself are so raw, and feeling Johnny's on top of that makes the whole experience a lot more intense than she's used to, but it's also strangely calming, in a way.
She can feel her eyes start to close before they even get to her favorite song, and fights to keep them open.
"We can finish it tomorrow," Johnny says softly, and she tries to shake her head but she can already feel herself slipping. She gives in and closes her eyes, letting the music lull her to sleep.
Notes:
It really bugs me that none of Kerry's original solo music is canonically in the game. Considering he's supposed to be like, David Bowie level famous, it's weird that you never hear any of his stuff out in the wild. Would have been cool if they'd gotten an artist to create music for him like they did with Samurai.
Anyway, my solution for this was to just headcanon that a lot of the unattributed tracks on Vexelstorm are actually Kerry's, since a lot of those don't have "in-world" bands associated with them and sound the way I imagine Kerry's music would sound (e.g. a more produced, but still heavy industrial sound as opposed to Samurai's straight heavy rock). I actually went as far as fitting them into his catalogue and deciding what aspects of his life they're each about lollll. I may or may not incorporate this headcanon into this fic, I haven't decided yet. So far, all his music that I've referenced here is canon as per the tabletop stuff.
Chapter 16: Fever Danger
Summary:
Johnny and V head back to the desert to help Panam rescue Saul from the Wraiths, then V meets with Takemura's mysterious friend.
Notes:
Porn in this one folks!!! And some light BDSM lol
This is a long one so buckle in! Also, sorry for the wait between chapters, this week has been busy as heck but now I'm back on my bullshit lol
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Johnny’s onstage, screaming into his mic at a faceless crowd, the lights blinding him and the feedback from the amps roaring in his ears. Kerry’s next to him, screaming with him, and when he catches Johnny’s eye and grins widely at him, Johnny feels like it’s been a while since they’ve seen each other, but he can’t remember why. But Kerry’s mouth is forming unfamiliar lyrics, and he’s singing them at Johnny not with him , and Johnny realizes it’s not a Samurai song he’s singing, but one of Kerry’s own, and the words coming out of Kerry's mouth are accusing, hurt, confused, heartbroken.
But then the guitar Johnny is holding twists and distorts, and when he looks down it’s an HMG he’s clutching and he’s in that goddamn jungle again, the one he returns to every fuckin’ night, the gunfire and explosions all around him, the screams of the dying and the stench of the dead overwhelming his senses and all he can feel is fear.
Run, a voice in his head screams.
He tries to run, but everything is exploding, everything is on fire and he trips and falls onto his stomach, getting a mouthful of leaves and wet dirt. And so he starts crawling, dragging himself along on his stomach, the jungle turning to flames around him.
Don’t stop, he thinks as a shell explodes next to his head and he shields himself with his hands, but continues to drag himself across the jungle floor. Keep moving.
And then Saburo Arasaka is standing over him, watching that wreath get lowered onto his head like a crown of thorns, lookin’ at him like he’s a fucking insect. Johnny can feel his soul being severed, violently torn away from himself, and it’s the most fucking excruciating agony he’s ever experienced - every nerve in his body is on fire and he’s never been more afraid in his whole fucking life and then he’s falling down, down, down, drowning in that horrible, bottomless gray void where time ceases to exist and there’s nothing, nothing at all but those stomach-turning shapes that scuttle and twist around the edges of his vision, never quite visible but never quite gone. It stretches out forever in every direction and it’s unbearable, it’s worse than fucking death, worse than any pain any living person could ever feel, worse than watching all his friends die over and over again, and he wishes he were fuckin’ dead. Anything to end it, make it stop, make him feel something, anything besides the pulsating monotony of this infinite, colorless abyss.
Mikoshi needs to be destroyed.
But then something grabs his wrist, and he sees a slender, familiar hand reaching down, clutching him, and he grasps her forearm and clings on for dear life.
He sees her face, too, somewhere above him, but it’s distorted like he’s looking at her from beneath the surface of a frozen lake.
“Johnny!” she screams, but her voice is muffled, choked, and he can’t breathe either, his hand is slipping, she’s trying to hold onto his wrist, his hand, his fingers, anything, but something is pulling him back down into the void, something stronger than either of them and his grip on her slips and he’s falling again, plummeting downwards back to where there is no direction at all.
“Johnny!” V screams again, and this time she wakes up, her vision splitting and blurring and glitching as the Relic malfunction pierces her head.
She barely makes it to her toilet in time as she collapses on the floor next to it, gagging and retching and coughing up blood, clutching at the sides to steady herself as the walls breathe blue and little dots of color spiral out of everything.
“Fuck,” she says, spitting a mouthful of blood into the bowl and flushing it.
She slumps against the wall next to the toilet, still shaking. Johnny appears behind her and leans against the wall of her shower, feeling as impotent as he always does when this shit happens.
He knows why she's been acting the way she has these last few days - bein' short with him, runnin' around with Judy, flirtin' with that tweaked out fixer fuck. It's the same reason he withdraws and hides out in her head when shit between them starts to get too real. She's trying to draw lines, stake some sorta claim on her life and her body and her heart while she still can.
She won’t take the blockers - something Johnny is grateful for - but that leaves ‘em with no other real options to take a break from each other in any meaningful way, as they can’t exactly do any of the normal things humans do when they need a breather. They can’t storm out and go for a walk when things get too heated, can’t take time apart to decompress, can’t just vanish for a few days the way Johnny normally would when he starts feeling like this.
He thinks about their conversation last night, what she said about Alt. The things V sees in him that he won't admit, can't admit, even to himself. How sometimes he feels like she's startin' to know him better than he knows himself.
Her holo rings suddenly, and Panam’s corny red “Forever Free” Aldecaldos avatar appears on her screen. V ignores it. Johnny watches her try to collect herself, and she sits there and leans her head against the wall and presses her palms against her eyes until it goes to voicemail.
It immediately starts ringing again.
“Must be pretty serious,” Johnny says, looking down at her. “Tough chick like Panam wouldn’t blow you up like this just for some chump chore.”
V looks up at him and sighs, but does as he says and picks up.
Panam’s worried face appears on her HUD.
“V!” she says immediately. “It’s a good thing you answered. I could probably use your help.” Her voice quavers.
“‘Probably?’” V says, giving her a look.
Panam sighs. “Fine. I could really use your help. Can you come to the Aldecaldos' camp?”
“Whoa, slow down,” V says, pushing the sweaty hair out of her eyes. “What’s goin’ on?”
Panam’s clearly spooked about something. “The Wraiths took Saul,” she finally says. “The brickbrain ventured out with a small patrol and never came back.”
“Sure it was Wraiths?” V asks.
“Yes,” Panam says certainly. “We’ve been observing their camp. They have him. And we need to free him.” She pauses and looks down, then up at V again. “I don’t know why, but… I felt I could count on you.”
“Cause you and me’re chooms,” V reminds her. “Thought that was clear.”
Panam looks visibly relieved, and V promises her she’ll be at the camp in a few hours, then hangs up and leans back against the wall again and closes her eyes.
“You really never say no, do ya,” Johnny says quietly.
She doesn’t open her eyes. “Lemme guess, you’re about to tell me this is a waste of time?”
He shakes his head. “No,” he says seriously. “I’m gonna tell you to hurry up and go help her.”
V blinks up at him, genuine surprise written across her face. “Since when do you care about the Aldecaldos?”
He shrugs. “Used to ride with ‘em for a bit. After Alt died. Went off with Santiago for a couple years.” He’s never really talked to her about this part of his life before. Or to anyone, come to think of it.
“The Aldecaldos?” V bites her lip thoughtfully. “Huh. I’ve seen some flashes of that, I think. Didn’t really know where it fit in context.”
He can feel her thumbing through his memories, but he knows she’s not doing it to be nosy. It’s more of a subconscious reflex they’ve both caught themselves doing sometimes, reaching into each other’s memories when something bubbles to the surface, because it feels sorta like being reminded of their own memories that they’ve forgotten, and by the time they’ve followed the thread and realized they’re witnessing something from the other’s past, it’s too late and they’ve already seen it.
He suspects that’s what V’s doing right now, and he closes his eyes and gently nudges her out.
Her eyes snap into focus and she looks up at him. “Oh, sorry,” she mumbles. “Wasn’t tryna pry.”
“I know,” he says gently.
V smiles softly, and Johnny's glad to see the color's returned to her face.
"Gettin' sentimental?" she teases.
"Maybe," he replies, and glitches away to stand in the bathroom door frame. "So, ready to head back to the gusty outback?"
It's early afternoon by the time they get to the Aldecaldo camp. Panam is waiting for V, and together they try to convince Mitch and the other 'Caldo veterans to help stage a rescue. They're all reluctant, and it pisses Johnny the fuck off. Santiago would have launched a rescue for anyone in his clan, no questions asked. He's that glad V calls 'em on it, points out that if they're this hesitant when it's their fuckin' leader, she doesn't wanna know how they treat the rest.
Mitch is in their corner, at least, and gives 'em a van and some drone intel on the Wraiths' camp, and the girls set out.
It winds up being a pretty in-and-out rescue, when all is said and done. V manages to slip into the Wraiths' compound unnoticed, and finds Saul tied up in a basement in pretty bad shape. After hitting him with an airhypo, they escape together through a drainage tunnel to Panam's waiting van.
V's good, really good, Johnny thinks with no small amount of pride as they speed away from the Wraith camp, trying to outrun the sandstorm, with Panam driving and Saul and V crouched in the back of the van. Johnny can clearly see why his little merc's been catchin' the eye of every fixer in the city. Even that fuckin' idiot rockerboy from last night.
When it's clear they can't outrun the storm, Panam pulls into an abandoned farmhouse and they take shelter for the night.
It takes some finagling to get the generator up and running, and V has to run out into the storm to fiddle with the breaker, staggering across the yard with the wind whipping sand in her mouth and eyes and hair.
"Look what I found," Panam is saying as V reenters the cottage. The nomad is holding up a bottle of liquor, and V brushes the sand from her hair and spits some more from her mouth. Panam frowns as she inspects the ancient bottle. "Expiration date's from before the last war, so hopefully it hasn't turned to poison." She shrugs and takes a swig. "Today's our lucky day!"
"Lucky..." Saul says with a frown. "Interesting choice of words."
Panam rolls her eyes. "Brace yourself," she says to V. "He's about to start lecturing us."
To Johnny's dismay, she's not wrong, and the two nomads start layin' into each other about what's best for the clan, how things should be run. Fuckin' Saul is convinced that signing a contract with Bioctechnica is the only viable option for them.
"Heh, maybe it's not the time for this," V says, trying to diffuse the tension. "You're both exhausted."
"Maybe you're right," Panam says gratefully, but Saul isn't as ready to let things drop.
"We can't hope to handle the Raffens alone," he insists.
"So you would sell us out to Biotechnica?" Panam spits. "V, tell him it's a damn rotten idea!"
V doesn't hesitate. "I gotta agree with Panam. Sounds like a truly shitty idea."
Atta girl, Johnny thinks.
"Thanks," Panam says with satisfaction.
Saul narrows his eyes. "What could you possibly know about it?"
V isn't intimidated. "Y'know what I always liked about nomads? Your taste - or no, your hunger for freedom. It's not easy to come by in Night City. The corps got their grubby claws in everything." She shakes her head, and more sand falls out of her hair. "And I just can't believe you'd hand them what you hold to be most precious."
"Thank you, V," Panam says smugly. "I could not have said it better."
Saul looks at both women long and hard. "We've had our spats," he says softly to Panam.
"A few. Like any family," Panam agrees.
Saul sighs. "If you'd like to come back... everyone'll be waiting, arms open wide. But there will have to be changes." He studies Panam carefully. "No more jumpin' to the front of the line."
Panam huffs and rolls her eyes. "And so it begins…"
"You know what, sweetheart?" Saul says. "We'll have plenty of time to tear at each other's throats later." He stands and stretches. "But right now… I wouldn't mind catching a few winks."
"That is my hope," Panam quips.
"Fuck off," he says with a laugh, then looks thoughtful. "Huh... Do you know what they call these storms in North Africa? Haboobs." He chuckles. "Damn, I love that word."
He disappears into the bedroom.
Panam turns to V. "Whew, what was that about?"
V raises the ancient bottle towards Panam. "To haboobs," she says dryly, and takes a big swig, handing the bottle to Panam.
Panam laughs and takes the bottle. "Yeah! To haboobs!" She takes a swig and makes a face. "Blech! Now that packs octane."
She passes the bottle back to V, who takes another sip and then places the bottle on the table. Panam wasn’t exaggerating, Johnny can feel the liquor hit V’s throat like she’s drinking fuckin’ diesel fuel. He’s drank worse things, though.
Panam laughs quietly. “Funny…” she mutters, looking at V from under her hair.
“What is?” V asks.
Panam shakes her head. “I rarely sleep with a roof overhead, yet this will be the second time with you. When you're on the road, day into night into day, your butt basically fusing with your seat, you forget what it's like.”
V smiles. “And? You think this is any better?”
“No…” Panam says thoughtfully. “Just different.” She looks around the crumbling yet strangely cozy little farmhouse. “Yeah, this would make for a decent little motel, wouldn't it? Little fireplace, booze…” She laughs to herself. “Grumpy guy at reception is the one thing missing.”
V laughs too. “Have everything you need, ma'am?” she says, putting on a fake deep voice.
Panam nods, smiling at V as she stretches out her legs and crosses her feet on V’s lap. “Couldn't ask for more.”
“How's your whiskey, ma'am?” V says, continuing the bit.
“Hmm…” Panam says, picking up the bottle and swishing it. She sniffs it, then takes another sip. “Pff, warm... subtle metallic aftertaste. Bold, yet smooth. Four out of five stars.”
V raises an eyebrow at Panam. “Ma'am, I'm sure you'd be cozier with your shoes off.”
Panam laughs. “After a full day in them? I'd fear a health code violation.”
“Nonsense, after a day as full as today, you deserve to kick back.”
Johnny watches V and Panam joke around on the couch, and suddenly realizes why he likes Panam. V is completely herself when she's with the nomad merc - goofy, funny, constantly roasting each other, calling each other out. And he has a feeling that Panam sees V for who she really is, and likes her for it.
It's not that he doesn't like Judy - he wasn't lying when he said she was nice. Cute, too, and clearly smart as hell.
But no, what bothers him is who V tries to become when she's with her. He doesn't think V does it intentionally, and he's not even sure she's aware of it. Judy's just fuckin' awestruck by her, that much is clear, and sees V as some kinda strong protector, a knight in shining armor, a mystery to be solved, a taste of danger - and he knows some part of V enjoys playing that role for her. She likes that she can make Judy feel safe while keeping her slightly off balance at the same time. With Judy, she can pretend she's someone else, pretend she's the V that Judy sees. Not the complicated, contradictory, scared, fucked up person she is.
Hell, Johnny played that exact game with people back when he was still alive. He doesn't blame V. Everyone wears a mask sometimes. But it’s different now that he’s got a front row seat to her show, 24/7 - he knows when she’s doin’ it and it’s a little jarring.
And besides, V deserves someone who sees her, who really knows her, who she can't pull any of her bullshit on. Johnny’d had a few friends like that, once upon a time, and he finds himself wishing he’d tried harder to hold onto ‘em. Or at least not tried so hard to push them away.
“V…” Panam says suddenly, her voice soft. “I'm glad you came. Really, thanks. It meant a lot to me.”
V smiles at her. “Told ya, we’re chooms.”
Panam smiles too, then pauses and cocks her head to the side. “Hmm... Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” V asks.
“The wind has waned,” she mutters, stretching out on the couch and curling up against the armrest, closing her eyes. “I can't speak for haboobs, but... when a chinook rolls rough and rowdy across the plain… I sure can't get any shut-eye… not a wink…”
Within moments, she’s asleep. V settles herself down as well, curling up on the opposite end of the couch, her legs tangled up with Panam’s.
Johnny glitches in and sits on the low coffee table in front of the couch, close to V. He smiles down at her. “On behalf of the staff of the Independent California Motel… I wish you all sweet dreams,” he says softly.
V smiles up at him and closes her eyes.
Mitch and rest come to meet them early the next morning. After Panam gives V her sniper rifle as payment for her help, V heads back to the city.
But any ideas Johnny may have had for the evening go out the window when V gets a text from Takemura. His Arasaka insider friend came through, and he wants them to meet. Tonight. In Japantown.
"If someone told me I'd be taking calls from Saburo Arasaka's fucking bodyguard, I'd have laughed in their face,” he says to V as she changes out of her now sand-covered desert clothes and into something black and leather and more merc-like for the meeting. “And now we're supposed to meet with these corpocunts? Hand over all our detes?” He taps his foot nervously. “I'm not even gonna pretend like this is a good idea.”
“Arasaka made this chip,” V reminds him. “Even if they can’t or won’t help us, or we find a better way, we could still learn something from ‘em.”
“We already found a better way. Got Alt,” Johnny spits.
“You’re still forgetting the part where we gotta get her into Arasaka's systems in the first place,” V snaps. “And if we can avoid doing it violently, I’d very much prefer that.”
“Even if it means playin’ right into their hands?”
She stops what she’s doing and looks at him long and hard. “Johnny,” she says. “I don’t wanna get cozy with Arasaka either. I’m not an idiot, and neither are you. We’re not committing to anything, I’m just making sure we know what all our options are.”
She’s right, but Johnny still hates the idea of working with Arasaka on any of this.
“Fuck it,” he says, shaking his head as V finishes getting ready, buckling her merc boots and fastening her holster around her thigh. “Can’t stop you, don’t gotta like it.”
He glitches away.
*******
V isn’t thrilled at the prospect of meeting with Takemura’s mysterious friend either, but she doesn’t share Johnny’s inherent disdain for the man. He’s a ‘Saka lapdog, sure, but she also saw something else in him the day he helped her escape that landfill - saved her life, even - that made her realize that he’s human, and he’s conflicted, and he wants to help her. She feels she owes Takemura this much, owes it to herself, and whether he likes it or not, she owes it to Johnny.
If there’s a chance, any chance, that they can both make it out of this somehow…
She gets off her bike under the bridge in Japantown, at the coordinates that Takemura’d sent her. He’s not there yet, so she leans against the barricade and watches the shipping boats pass in the night. It’s almost midnight, so he should be any minute now.
She’s nervous, and not just because dealing with corpos doesn’t come as easily to her as dealin’ with fixers and her usual clients. She can handle herself with pretty much anyone - just gotta remember that they’re human, that they piss and shit and fuck and die like anyone else.
Except Arasaka’s found a way to avoid that last part, it seems. And that’s what scares her. At the end of the day, she doesn’t know what they’re offering. What their help could look like - for her, or for Johnny. She’d be gonk to think they’d have her best interests in their minds on any level, despite any sense of obligation or goodwill Takemura may harbor for her, or any favors she can gain by throwing Yorinobu under the bus like Takemura’s tryna orchestrate by using her as his star witness or whatever. And she’d be even more gonk to think they’d show an ounce of charity or kindness towards Johnny, assuming they’re even able to remove the chip. What will happen to Johnny, then?
She’s barely even allowed herself to consider that part of the equation, in any of the potential scenarios for how this plays out.
She absentmindedly fiddles with the pendant on the necklace she’s wearing that Misty made for her from the bullet Dex flatlined her with. It’s become a sort of memento, a good luck charm, and she’s gotten in the habit of wearing it under her shirt when taking on particularly dangerous - or particularly gonk - missions.
A van pulls into the underpass behind her, and V turns to wait as Takemura stops the car and climbs out.
“It is good to see you, V,” he says, coming to lean against the barricade next to her.
“Seems pretty, uh, secluded here,” V comments, glancing around nervously. She can hear sirens in the distance, but there is no one else around.
Takemura nods solemnly. “It is appropriate for such a secret meeting.”
V suddenly notices how fuckin’ wrecked Takemura looks. Like he hasn’t eaten or slept in days. “What the hell happened?” she asks. “Look close to awful.”
Takemura looks down. “You see a man robbed of his implants, money and dignity.” He looks up then, and meets V’s eye. “But it is not all bad. I am mostly unnoticed in the streets.”
V nods. “So, where’s that friend you mentioned?”
“Oda?” Takemura says, leaning forward to watch the boats. “He should be here any moment now.”
V drums her fingers on the barricade. “Gonna finally give me the spec on 'im? Who is he?”
Takemura pauses. “He is Hanako-sama's bodyguard.”
“Hanako-sama?” V says, incredulous. “As in, Hanako Arasaka? From that carrier anchored in the bay? Saburo's daughter?”
“Yes,” Takemura answers, dead serious. “And if he believes you, we will next meet with her.”
V stares at him, dumbstruck. “And what's to stop her little errand boy from selling us out?”
“He will not do that,” Takemura says with certainty. “He is a man of honor.”
V scoffs. “Right, 'cause Arasaka's ranks are chock-full of those.”
I witnessed her brother murder their fuckin' dad, she thinks to herself. There's no way this is gonna go over well.
“Do not confuse true honor with the petty morals by which you live,” Takemura spits at her, but he says it more like he’s clinging to that idea himself than trying to convince V. He sees the expression on V’s face and sighs. “I have nothing to lose,” he says simply. “Is that better?”
“Worse,” V says. “‘Cause I got plenty to lose.” She's not actually sure if it's true. What is her life even worth at this point? Who even cares about what happens to her?
Goro opens his mouth to say something else, but right at that moment, headlights sweep into the underpass and they both fall silent.
“By car, huh?” Takemura remarks. “A good sign. He is usually camouflaged.”
The expensive-looking black town car pulls to a stop, and a young Japanese man gets out. He’s surprisingly good-looking, and by the looks of it, not much older than V, but it’s hard to tell with these rich fucks. He’s wearing a well-cut but understated suit straight out of a magazine, and his black, stylishly cut hair falls softly across his face. He keeps one hand on the door of his car and stares at them, his face hard.
“Takemura-san,” Oda says, bowing deferentially to the older man. That's a good sign, at least, given that the rest of Arasaka is hunting for Goro like a wanted criminal, his loyalty to the Arasaka family rewarded by Yorinobu trying to frame the old ronin for slaying their CEO and god emperor.
“Oda," Goro replies stiffly.
Oda closes the car door and crosses over to them, still maintaining a safe distance. “Is this her? Your thief?”
“She is my witness. Her name is V.”
“Can speak for myself, you know,” V says. The tension in the air is so thick you could cut it with a machete, and she checks Oda with her scanner. He's unarmed, but her Kiroshis reveal he's got top of the line mantis blades installed, tons of combat upgrades, and a cyberdeck that would probably put her personal ICE through its paces.
"So, speak," Oda says, examining her with narrowed eyes, quite likely performing a similar scan. "I have been told you know things."
V holds his gaze coolly. "Not gonna like what I'm about to say," she tells him. "I need a guarantee I'm safe here."
Oda nods. "You are. You have it."
Takemura looks imploringly at V. "V, you can trust Oda."
V sighs. "All right, then," she says. Guess we're doin' this. "Konpeki Plaza. I was there the night it happened. Looked like your typical family quarrel, until…" She swallows. "Yorinobu lunged at Saburo and started chokin' him-"
"Silence," Oda hisses, cutting her off. "Not one word more. You will bring death to your door."
"But it is the truth!" Takemura protests. "Hanako-sama must hear it!"
Oda shakes his head. "My one concern is to keep her safe in this city forgotten by the gods."
"Is she in danger?" Takemura asks, sounding genuinely worried. She can feel Johnny's disgust at this.
Oda looks at Takemura. "Now? No. Yet during the parade to honor Arasaka-sama? Most certainly."
"I bring you this witness to his murder," Takemura spits. "And you dare to worry about a silly parade? Fool!"
Oda nods again. "Correct. Unlike you, I have not yet failed to keep my oath to do my duty."
"But you can't ignore the truth!" V protests.
"You will regret those words," Takemura says to Oda, his voice thick with rage.
"The only thing I regret is that I came here to meet you," Oda growls. "There is a price on your head! I do you a favor now by not cutting it off and taking it straight to Yorinobu-sama."
"Alright, cut it out with your Arasaka honor shit," V interjects. "I saw what I saw. You wanna ignore that, fine. Doesn't change what happened. We’re not asking for a lot here. Just one, brief meeting. Hanako should decide if what we say is true. You can’t decide for her."
Oda sighs. "What would you do now were you in my place?" he asks Takemurs.
Takemura looks down. "I do no favors," he mutters. "I would deliver your head to Yorinobu-sama."
"Consider yourself lucky that I am not you," Oda says, turning back toward his car.
Looks like this is gonna be a bust, after all.
"Oda!" V calls, and he stops and looks at her over his shoulder.
"What?" he says impatiently.
"We're talkin' about a guy who killed his father to seize control of Arasaka!" V shouts. "And you’re gonna just walk away? Not even gonna consider helping?!”
Oda considers this for a moment, then shakes his head. "I will not. But I will let you leave this place, this city, unharmed. If I see either of you again, I will not be so lenient."
"Be very careful, my friend," Takemura says, almost sadly. "We are all so far from home."
Oda gives him a long look, then gets into the town car and drives away. V lets out a shaky breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"Good fuckin' riddance," Johnny mutters, appearing next to V and glaring after the car, cigarette in hand. "One Arasaka wackjob is already plenty."
"Fine friend, there," V says sarcastically, turning to Takemura. "Got any more?"
Takemura shakes his head solemnly. "Alas, only him."
"No way this was gonna work," V mutters darkly. She looks at Johnny, and he stares back at her, his face solemn as he continues to smoke. He’s scared, V realizes. She reaches into her jacket and lights a cigarette as well.
"Hm." Takemura ponders this. "Yet, we walk away with a small measure of success…"
"How do you figure that?"
"What Oda said," Goro explains. "They return to Tokyo after the parade. Do you not see? The parade… It is our chance, perhaps. If, somehow, we can get to Hanako-sama…" He stares past V, out over the water, then turns back to her. "We must do a proper reconnaissance first. We will need a precise map of Japantown."
"Hold on…" V says, holding up a hand.
"It is your turn to call on friends," Takemura continues. "Do you know a fixer who could help?"
"Uh, hang on, not so fast!" V says. "Make it sound as easy as hacking a SCSM. But you said yourself - Hanako's got the tightest security in all Night City."
Takemura nods. "Correct. That is why I wish for you to contact us with the local fixer."
This guy don't fuck around, she thinks. But he was Saburo fuckin' Arasaka's personal bodyguard, after all. Even in his current, weakened state, she can tell he's deadly when he needs to be.
But despite it all, there's something disarmingly earnest about him. He is someone who says what he means and means what he says, and V knows that's a rare trait in and of itself. She can feel Johnny's vehement disagreement, but she makes her decision.
"Know just the fixer dame. Wakako Okada. Runs a pachinko parlor on Jig-Jig Street."
Takemura looks grateful. "We must pay this woman a visit. Will you join me?"
V shrugs. "Sure, why not."
Johnny rolls his eyes and sighs heavily, then glitches away.
V can still feel Johnny’s disapproval as she and Goro drive the short distance to Jig-Jig Street, the meandering alley of joyhouses and sex shops above Cherry Blossom Market. He has the radio tuned to classic 20th century jazz, and V finds herself mildly surprised at his taste. She didn’t take him for one to listen to American music.
“Jig-Jig Street… what is this name?” Takemura asks, frowning.
“Just a Night City name,” V replies bemusedly, looking out the window.
“Beware,” Takemura says, but there’s a teasing tone to his voice. “You mock me… too often.”
It occurs to V that it’s entirely possible no one has gently mocked this man in a very long time. Or treated him like a human at all, for that matter.
“Any idea what's going on at Arasaka?” she asks.
Takemura shakes his head. “Only what I can surmise from what I see on TV. Yorinobu and his puppets grin at the cameras and insist that everything is under control. But the wider the smile, the bigger the lies.”
V looks at him. “You all right, Goro?”
“Yes,” he replies, shooting her a glance. “Why the sudden concern?”
V gives him a strange look. “Uh, just asking? Does everything with you have to have an ulterior motive?”
“I apologize,” he says sincerely. “That came off wrong. I, em… I am simply not used to such questions.” He looks ahead as he drives. “People like me… either we are doing well, or we are in a grave.”
Arasaka lapdog or no, V has sudden empathy for the guy.
“Catching lead in Night City's easier than catching a cold,” she agrees.
“I am alive and well for now, as you can see,” Takemura says, his voice much softer. “You should worry about yourself.”
A light fog has descended as they park the van under the neon Jig-Jig Street sign and make their way through the narrow, bustling alleys of Japantown towards Wakako’s little pachinko parlor.
Wakako is finishing a phone call with Rogue when they arrive, and is surprisingly receptive to them, despite Takemura’s wanted status. Goro impresses her with his old-school Japanese manners, and when she learns it’s Arasaka they’re after, V helps things along by reminding her that ‘Saka was responsible for the high profile death of one of her grandsons. V is struck by the realization that Wakako is probably around the same age as Rogue - she’s just opted to age naturally, a rare choice for someone of her status and means. V can still tell she was probably beautiful once, and the Tyger Claws mob wife-turned-fixer still carries herself with a level of grace and poise that supersedes her aged body and face.
She’s got no love for Arasaka, that much is clear. She refers to them as “tin soldiers” and complains about how the last parade through Japantown left the neighborhood with trash up to their elbows and no one to collect it.
To V’s surprise, she gives them a shard for free with all the intel she has about the parade route and expected security, including the location of the dashi float from which Hanako will deliver her speech. From the sound of it, security will be heavy - for the last parade, they had undercover operatives in the crowd, snipers stationed on balconies, and a netrunner or two.
“Not at all curious what we’re going to all this trouble for?” V asks her, taking the shard.
Wakako smiles coyly. “Blissful ignorance has served me well,” she says. “In any case… I’ll find out soon, won’t I?”
“We appreciate this, Okada-san,” Goro says, bowing to her.
V’s vision begins to glitch as they exit through the nondescript pachinko parlor outside Wakako’s office, the loud clinking and music from the machines blaring in her ears.
“Mm, how I missed this sound,” Takemura says wistfully.
“Shit…” she says, leaning against the wall to steady herself as they emerge into the street, waiting for her vision to clear. Takemura watches her with a curious look on his face, but doesn’t ask questions. She wonders how much he’s pieced together about the stolen technology in her head, or if that kind of knowledge was above his pay grade. Thankfully, the malfunction passes quickly.
Goro looks back toward Wakako’s office. “A delightful, mature woman,” he remarks admiringly.
V chuckles and nods.
He has some associates he can call, and tells V he plans to gather more intel on the parade and will contact her when he has a plan.
“Just… keep a low profile, okay?” she gently reminds him. “Don't start handin’ out autographs.”
Takemura smiles. “In fame, I could not overtake you if I tried. Be safe, V.”
V wanders down to the market for a bit, stopping to grab some ramen from a stand. She finishes it quickly, suddenly realizing how hungry she’d been, then makes her way back down to the underpass where she left her bike. There are still boats going by - more than usual - and she realizes many of them are carrying what must be the parade floats for the celebration they’re planning to infiltrate.
"Y'know, V, I've seen you do a lotta gonk shit, but this parade plan might be the stupidest one yet," Johnny complains as she gets on her bike.
"Fuck, Johnny, can we go one night without fighting?"
He glitches away as she starts the engine, and she enjoys a moment of peace as she rides across the bridge back to Watson, blasting her music and feeling the cool, damp night air on her face.
But he starts laying into her again the second she’s back in her apartment.
“Still got a bad feeling about this,” he huffs, glitching in behind her as she washes her face and gets ready for bed.
“Goro’s not a bad guy,” she insists, and Johnny bristles at that.
“His loyalty is to Arasaka,” he reminds her. “Not to you.”
“He’s still human, though,” she argues. “They chewed ‘im up and spit him out after a lifetime of that loyalty. Maybe with time, he’ll start to see things differently.”
“Jesus V, you’re not really that naive, are you?” His voice is dripping with disgust.
“People change, Johnny!” she yells. “You of all people should know that.”
He shakes his head. "Thought you were smarter than this, is all."
His comment stings more than V expects.
"Maybe you don't know me as well as you thought," she snaps, glaring at him in the mirror.
"Know you as well as you know yourself," he snarls, and the way he says it sends an unexpected thrill through her. She raises her eyes to the mirror to meet his, and there’s still anger on his face, but also something else. Something possessive, protective even.
"That so?" she asks, and now it’s a challenge.
"Yeah, it is,” he says with cold confidence, taking a step towards her.
“So then trust me,” she whispers.
He nods slowly, his eyes already raking up and down her body in the mirror, and she can feel his shared awareness of the coiled tension within her. As she watches Johnny watch her, she’s hit by an abrupt, deep sadness that she can’t seek any kind of real, actual physical comfort from him - she doesn’t wanna just touch herself, she wants him to touch her.
He seems to feel it too, because he moves closer to her, so close she can almost feel him if she concentrates hard enough, like a weird sort of dull static.
“Take off your shirt,” he commands in a rough voice, and she does so, already feeling her body start to flush. When he talks to her like that… well, it’s not the same as him touching her, but her body responds to it nonetheless.
He shakes his head appreciatively, smiling a little bit as he feels her react. “Fuckin’ christ V, I'd storm 'Saka Tower again just to actually come on those tits,” he murmurs.
“That might be exactly what it’ll take,” she teases, and they both laugh, their fight momentarily forgotten. She realizes she just might’ve let slip her secret hope that she hasn’t shared with him yet - that she’s barely admitted to herself, even - her real reason for even entertaining the idea of collaborating with Arasaka on any level.
If they have his body somewhere… she thinks.
But her laugh turns to something else as he reaches his hand around her to cup her breast, and she can’t exactly feel it but the strange static sensation she does feel isn’t exactly unpleasant, either.
Johnny lets out a low hum of frustration, and she brings her own hand up to join his, pinching her nipple hard, watching herself and him in the mirror.
“If you know what I like so much,” she dares him, “Then tell me what to do.”
He regards her for a second, taking a slow drag of his cig like he’s thinkin’ about what to say next. Her body thrills in anticipation.
“Go get that toy you like and bring it back here,” he says roughly. “Want you to watch yourself use it.” He nods at the mirror.
V 's pulse quickens at his command, and Johnny leans back against her bathroom wall, waiting for her, his eyes dark. He’s still standing there smoking when she returns, vibrator in hand, breathless, waiting for his next instruction.
“Bend over,” he says, and she obeys, leaning forward over her bathroom counter and pulling her panties down around her thighs as she does so.
“Didn’t tell you to do that,” he scolds, and she smirks at him in the mirror.
“What’re you gonna do about it?”
He steps up behind her, tossing away his cigarette, and slides his hand roughly between her legs. She still can’t feel it, but the staticky sensation definitely does something when he touches her already flushed and sensitive skin. She moans softly and grinds her hips in frustration, wishing his hand felt more solid.
“Mm,” he says, his voice low. “Was gonna tell ya to use your toy, but now I think I’m gonna have to tease you first.”
A whimper claws its way from her throat. Fuck, it’s insane what he can do to her with just his voice.
“Now, you gonna behave?”
The dull static of his hand thrums against her, and she mewls at him. He doesn’t take away his hand, and the light sensation is distracting enough that it drives all the thoughts from her head.
“Use your words, V,” he says. “Are you gonna fuckin’ behave?”
“Yes, Johnny,” she breathes.
“That’s my good girl,” he says, and fuck she loves it when he calls her that. “Now,” he says slowly. “Want you to play with your tits again for me.”
V obediently reaches her chrome hand up and pinches her nipple.
“Harder,” Johnny commands.
She does as he says, letting out another low, muffled whine.
“Look so pretty like that, bent over for me,” he murmurs, and she can see him watching his hand in the mirror as he strokes it slowly up and down her exposed flesh. The way it feels is infuriating, it’s barely fuckin’ anything, and she whines again, her hand sliding down between her legs before she is even fully aware of what she’s doing.
His eyes darken as he withdraws his hand, and the strange electric sensation vanishes. “Didn’t fuckin’ say you could touch yourself yet."
Her eyes fly up to meet his, and she bites her lip and pulls her hand back. His mouth twitches upward, but his face is hard and mean. She watches in the mirror as he lights another cigarette, and his feigned disinterest is somehow winding her up even more. He’s really enjoying this, though - she can feel it through their connection.
“Or what?” she taunts him again. She knows he likes it when she’s a little bratty.
His eyes narrow as he takes a long drag of his cigarette. "You're fuckin’ lucky I can't touch you," he growls, and his eyes flash dangerously. “I’d spank your little pussy so hard you’d be walkin’ funny for a week and thanking me for it. Now,” he says again, “You gonna be a good girl for me?”
“Yes,” she chokes.
“That’s what I like to hear,” he says, slowly reaching out his metal hand and dragging it along the length of her, and she shivers at the strange sensation. “Now take that toy and play with yourself for me.”
She does as he says, and fuck she’s so wet already. She presses the toy hard against herself, moaning softly.
“Fuck, your little cunt looks so pretty,” he murmurs. “Tell me whose it is.”
“Yours, Johnny,” she says without hesitation, and the double meaning pierces through them both. Her whole body is technically his, if he wants it. His eyes meet hers in the mirror, and somethin’ fucking intense sparks between them, but he just takes another slow drag of his cigarette and regards her coolly. She doesn’t know how the fuck he’s keeping it together so well, when she knows he’s gotta be just as worked up as she is. Fuck, she can feel it, and that turns her on even more and she writhes against her toy, closing her eyes at the sensation.
“Look at me, V,” he says, and she does. His jaw is set, and she can feel the effort it’s taking him not give in to what she's feeling, what they're both feeling. “Turn it on,” he tells her.
She turns on the toy, and the sound she hears herself make is fuckin’ obscene as the vibrations pulse against her swollen clit. She rubs herself with it harder, moaning loudly now, and a soft groan escapes Johnny, too.
“Can I-?” she breathes, pressing the tip of the toy against her opening. He nods, and she pushes it slowly inside herself, feeling her legs start to shake as the vibrations begin to hit her deep inside.
“Yeah, princess, just like that,” he praises her, his voice rough and shaking slightly. “Take it for me like a good little whore.”
V bites her lip to keep from moaning at that, and begins to thrust faster and harder with the vibrator. It’s so fucking intense - watching him the mirror watch her, feeling him respond to it - she knows she’s not gonna last much longer.
“Don’t fuckin’ come until I tell you to,” he growls. “Say that for me, V.”
She opens her mouth but a loud groan comes out instead, and he leans close to her. “Wasn’t fuckin’ asking. Say it.”
“Won’t come till you tell me to,” she manages, her voice quavering and choked.
“Such a good girl for me,” he purrs, and she whines and fucks herself harder with the toy. She’s getting so close, and the way he’s talking to her... fuck. She feels the first few spasms start to shake through her, and abruptly stops moving her hand, trying as hard as she can to hold on.
“Did I say you could stop?” he demands roughly, glaring down at her, and she’s already a quivering fucking mess.
“I’m so close,” she gasps, and he just smirks at her.
“So beg for it,” he says simply, and fuck, that alone almost does it.
“Please, Johnny,” she whimpers.
“You can do better than that,” he scolds, but his voice is hoarse and she knows he must be as close to the edge as she is.
“Please, can I come for you, Johnny?” she whines, near tears.
“That’s more like it,” he says approvingly, and only now does he press his hand to the front of his pants, gently stroking himself through the thick fabric. “But no, not yet. Not quite done with you.”
She lets out a choked, frustrated sob and tries to stop her legs from shaking. Behind her, Johnny puts out his cigarette, then slowly unzips his pants and takes out his cock, and fuck she wishes that’s what was inside her now instead.
“Say that for me,” he growls, responding to her unspoken thought.
“Wish it was your cock inside me,” she breathes, meeting his eyes, and he groans in response as he begins to stroke himself. Fuck. A shiver rolls through her whole body at the sight, and she begins to move her hand again, slowly pushing the vibrator in and out, trembling almost violently as she does so.
“Mmm,” Johnny says. “You look so fuckin’ hot, V.”
Her whole body shakes again, and she looks at him pleadingly. His eyes are wild, and she doesn’t think either of them can take any more edging.
“Come for me, baby,” he says, and it's the pet name that undoes her - she comes hard with a choked gasp that turns into a groan. A half-second later, he does too, and then she’s lost, falling deep into it, into him, and even though she knows to expect this now, the intensity of it never fails to overwhelm her. The separation between them melts and blurs away, and she feels something sharp in her chest as the immensity of his passion, his rage, and his fear come crashing over her, into her, through her. It’s the fear that’s sharper this time, and there’s something even sharper underneath it, that unnamable thing that threatens to drag her down with it, but she can already feel the waves subsiding as she collapses against the counter, her breath fogging up the mirror, her legs shaking and almost giving out under her.
Behind her, Johnny zips up his pants and lights another cigarette.
V pulls herself to her feet, her vision glitching slightly.
“All without actually layin’ a finger on you,” he smirks. “I’d like to see Judy try that.”
“Way to ruin the moment, asshole,” V snaps, pulling up her underwear and stalking to her bed.
Johnny doesn’t follow, and V lies down on her bed, facing the wall.
How long can we keep playin' this game with each other? V wonders.
And more importantly, what will happen when they can't?
Notes:
Not gonna lie, I really reeeally hate the porn at the end of this chapter and am tempted to delete it every time I go back and re-read this chapter lol
Not even totally sure why, for some reason my brain just like... rebels against it lol. But enough people have said they liked it so I guess it gets to stay!!!!
Chapter 17: Lambs Rise
Summary:
V, Judy, and the dolls put their Clouds takeover into action, and things don't work out quite the way they imagined. A wild night ensues.
Chapter Text
V leans against the railing above the market in Japantown, smoking a cigarette with Judy and watching the crowds below.
“Fuck, V!” Judy says, slamming her fist against the railing. “You just stood there and watched her play us?”
“You’re the one who wanted to take this to her,” V reminds her. “You trusted her.”
V hates that Johnny turned out to be right about Maiko. To say the Clouds takeover didn’t exactly go according to plan would be the understatement of the fuckin’ century. Maiko pulled some shit, because of fuckin’ course she did, and V went with it because she had to make a split second decision and didn’t wanna get more people killed. The old boss got a katana to the chest - from his Claw bosses, no less - and Maiko convinced them to let her take his job.
Not quite what they’d set out to accomplish.
“Look at me,” Johnny says to V, glitching in next to her. “See this? This is a look of un-fucking-surprise on my face.”
V ignores him. She’s pissed as fuck too that Maiko pulled a fast one on her like that, but now that it’s all said and done, she’s trying to be optimistic the dolls’ll still see some improvement to their day-to-day working conditions.
“Don’t pin this on me,” Judy snaps, shaking her head as the first few drops of rain start to fall. V shivers and pulls her coat tighter around her.
She thinks about what Maiko said to her back in the penthouse. How Judy’s dreaming if she thinks you can have justice and peace in Night City without cuts, bruises, and blood. V hates to agree with her, but it’s a lesson she’s learned for herself now more than once, the hard way. She knows Johnny has, too.
“I’m not,” V says gently. “But look at it this way… at least now Clouds is gonna be run by someone who’s been a doll herself,” she points out.
Judy doesn't seem reassured. “Shoulda seen this comin’,” she mutters darkly. “Probably had this planned from the start, as soon as we walked into her office.” She shakes her head. “Jesus, am I a gonk.”
“Believing people wanna do good doesn’t make you a gonk,” V tells her, putting out her cigarette. “But… I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you hoped for.”
Judy sighs, looking defeated. “No, you’re right. The plan was to put Clouds in the hands of the dolls, and we did that.” She steps away from the railing and puts her hand on V’s cheek, then kisses her gently. “And you made it happen. Thank you.”
V pulls away after a moment. She still doesn’t feel good about how this all went down.
“Where are Tom and Roxie?” she asks.
Judy gestures with her head towards the railing. “Down in the market,” she says. “Grabbin’ some grub. Let’s go find ‘em.”
V nods, and they head down the nearby stairs into the bustle of stalls and vendors. They pass the booth with the guy selling all the Samurai shit, and he nods at V in recognition.
Tom and Roxanne are perched on stools in front of a ramen stand, the same one V’d been to a couple nights ago after meeting Takemura. She hasn’t heard anything from him yet, even though it’s been a few days.
Hopefully Arasaka’s “tin soldiers” haven’t gotten to him, V thinks darkly as she and Judy approach the ramen stall.
Roxie’s eyes are wide, but she looks exhilarated and pleased with herself. Tom seems a bit more deadpan, surprisingly, and V wonders if the reality of having to waste people wasn’t what he’d imagined. V gives them what she hopes is an encouraging smile as she takes a seat beside them.
“Y’all were right,” Roxanne says. “Sometimes the only rational course of action is a kick in the nuts and a bullet between the eyes.”
Tom stares silently into his ramen. V doesn’t have much of an appetite either, but she orders a NiCola and sits with Judy and the rest of them as they finish their food.
Roxie is more talkative, providing Judy and V a detailed blow-by-blow of fighting their way through Clouds. Tom smiles when Roxanne recounts his heroics, but V can tell he’s still a little shaken.
“You know what we need?” V says suddenly. Everyone turns to look at her. “We need to get shitfaced.”
Roxanne laughs, and then so does Judy, and then Tom does too.
“Fuck yeah we do,” says Judy, and it’s settled.
They start the night right there on Jig-Jig Street, doing shots at one of the many stripper bars that dot the alleyways, egging each other on to try stranger and more elaborate concoctions on the menu that is clearly catered to off-duty corpos and sex tourists. V fuckin’ loves it here, and is reminded of all the times she and Jackie and Misty used to do this shit. Misty hasn’t been up for goin’ out much lately, she realizes. Not that V’s been inviting her. She frowns, but is distracted when Tom taps her on the back and hands her another shot, and she does it, and then another one in quick succession. She’s already lost count at this point, but she’s having too much fun to worry about it. Tom and Roxanne are dancing, and she and Judy are making out, and there’s a random joytoy dancing with them too, and then they’re doing another round of shots but these ones are on fire and what the fuck, is she fifteen again? She’s laughing too hard to care.
Her vision glitches around the edges and a sudden wave of nausea hits her, and she pulls away from Judy on the cramped, sweaty dance floor.
“Jussa minute, Judy,” she mumbles, and shoves her way out through the small crowd into the damp, cool night. It’s stopped raining, and V slumps against the wall next to the door, taking deep gasps of fresh air as the malfunction subsides. Two monks are seated on a small blanket next to her, surrounded by candles, and as her vision clears, she suddenly notices one of them is dotted with implants. It’s those monks she rescued from Maelstrom a couple weeks ago, she realizes.
“Whoa, it’s you guys!” she says, straightening and moving to sit cross-legged on the wet cobblestone in front of them.
Their faces brighten as they, in turn, recognize her.
“We offer you our humble thanks,” the unscathed one on the left says, smiling.
“Least I could do,” V says, trying her hardest not to slur. “Are you guys gonna be okay now? Can your bro still be a monk?” She gestures to his brother, wincing when she sees the cybernetic eye and facial implants that line his jaw and dot his skull.
“The pratimoksha vows are a guide to enlightenment, not binding laws,” he responds, meeting V’s eye. “Though my path is paved with ever greater challenges, I shall not give up.”
V nods. If these guys are so against chrome, she wonders what they’d make of Johnny.
“Uh… humor me for a sec,” she says on a sudden impulse. “Given your stance on implants… what do you think about constructs?”
“Ah, yes,” the older one says. “A fashionable subject, is it not? Arasaka’s new Relic.” He shakes his head. “It is a complex, fluctuating affair. It all depends on whether the engram is a copy of a person, or if this person simply exists in the digital realm.”
“So if the engram’s just a person that’s been digitized, that kosher, in your view?”
“Buddhism does not condemn digitization, per se,” the monk explains. “I would not condemn the simple act of transferal, under the condition that they are at peace with it.”
“However, he who cannot die can never be released from samsara, can never achieve nirvana,” the implanted monk adds.
Johnny appears next to the monks, leaning against the wall where V was when she first came outside. He lights a cigarette.
V studies Johnny's face, but he’s guarded now. “Let’s say the engram’s just a copy, then,” she says to the monks. “What then? Could you still say that person was…” she swallows. “Real?”
Johnny gazes down at her, taking a drag of his cigarette.
“If they are truly self aware, a Buddhist will recognize them as a human being,” the unmarked brother says. “A perfect copy of a complex human mind is still a human mind.”
V nods slowly. That’s the answer she was hoping for. She hasn't wanted to admit that this has been bothering her. What it could mean for her, if Alt's plan is actually successful.
“Suffering is key,” the other monk adds. “It has been there since the dawn of human existence. If a construct can suffer, it is a person.”
Johnny suffers, V knows this as deeply as she knows her own suffering. She looks up at him, and feels something sharp twist in her chest.
“What’s your take, Johnny?” she says, momentarily forgetting not to speak to him out loud. “You the real Johnny? Or… a copy?”
“What difference does it make?” Johnny says, his voice dark. “You heard him, I’m trapped in a few lines of code… and your body.”
“Maybe Johnny Silverhand really is dead,” she murmurs. “Maybe you’re just a…”
“What, imitation?” he scoffs. “That what you wanted to say?” His eyes fall to the shining cobblestones at his feet, the mottled neon light reflecting back onto his face. “If the real Johnny Silverhand’s dead, then that’s his problem.” He looks back up at V. “Not mine.”
She holds his gaze, and there’s that intense spark between them again, but then she abruptly remembers that she’s the only one who can see him and is suddenly self-conscious. She must be drunker than she realized. The monks seem unfazed by her conversation with an invisible presence, but V stumbles to her feet, mumbling an awkward apology.
She doesn’t have time to dwell on it, though, because Judy suddenly bursts out of the bar, casting her eyes about the alley. Johnny gives V another long look, then glitches away.
“Oh phew,” Judy says when she sees V. “There you are. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” V replies. “Just needed to get some air.” She dusts herself off, but her pants are already damp from sitting on the wet pavement. Judy glances back and forth between her and the monks.
“Well then,” V says to the monks. “Best of luck to ya guys.”
Tom and Roxie appear behind Judy.
“We’re goin’ to Lizzie’s!” Roxanne announces. “Already called a Delamain.”
“Ooh, fancy,” V teases.
Roxanne and Tom are laughing as they stumble down the alley towards the main road, and V and Judy trail after them. Judy takes V’s hand.
“Didja know those guys?” she asks.
V nods. “Yeah, I rescued one of ‘em from Maelstrom a couple weeks back. Fuckin’ gangers were kidnappin’ people off the street, givin' 'em implants for fun.”
Judy stares up at her, her eyes shining. “See, V? You’re fuckin’ proof there are still people in this city who’re genuinely tryna do good.”
“Operative word there is ‘trying,’” V counters. “Like you saw today, shit don’t always work out like that.”
Judy is still lookin’ at her like she’s the Dalai fuckin’ Lama or some shit as they pile into the Delamain. Tom sits in the front, and the three girls pile into the back, laughing as they cram in together. The Del’s playin’ some soft fancy techno, as usual, but Roxanne demands the AI switch it, and next thing V knows they’re all screaming along to Ponpon Shit as they cross the bridge to Watson and pull into the parking lot of Lizzie’s.
Mateo’s working at the bar, and when Roxie tells him about their escapade at Clouds, he gives them free drinks for the rest of the night. Roxie and Tom start having a twerking contest on the dance floor, and to V’s surprise, Judy joins in. It feels good to cut loose after everything that’s happened today, and V starts busting out some of her more adventurous dance moves as well.
She remembers dancing here with Jackie the night before it all went to hell, and so many nights before that. She wrenches her mind away from the memories and back into the present, taking Judy's hand and twirling her until they're both laughing again.
They stay until after the bar closes, and Mateo joins them for a final round of shots once all the clients have been herded out.
“So, um…” Judy says nervously, turning to V as they stumble out of the bar.
“You’re comin’ with me,” V reassures her, and Judy blushes and rewards V with a soft smile.
Roxanne, Mateo, and Tom split another cab home, since they all live in Westbrook, and Tom drunkenly plants a kiss on V as the Del pulls up. V laughs and shoves him into the car after Roxie and Mateo, who are already making out in the backseat.
V takes Judy’s hand, and the two of them wave as the cab drives away.
“Feel better about everything?” V asks as they begin the walk back to her apartment.
Judy’s face darkens. “A little… but… let’s not talk about that anymore tonight, yeah? Just wanna enjoy this.” She squeezes V’s hand.
V’s head is spinning as the two of them stumble into the elevator together. She feels her back collide with the wall and realizes Judy is pushing her against it, kissing her.
“Mmmph,” she mumbles, drawing Judy closer and kissing her back.
Judy keeps pulling back to look at her, big brown eyes shining.
Fuck, V thinks.
As they crash into V’s apartment, V is dimly aware of Johnny watching them from near the window, but he glitches away when she turns to look at him. And then Judy is kissing her again, pulling off her shirt, stepping out of her overalls, pushing V down onto the bed, and V doesn’t remember getting undressed but she must have because she’s completely naked and her tongue is in Judy’s mouth, her hands tangled in her hair, and Judy’s hands are…
V exhales sharply as Judy pulls away again, her pretty lips slightly parted and her hand already working between V’s legs, and fuck it feels really fucking good to be touched like that by someone real. V moans softly and arches her hips towards Judy, pulling her back down and kissing her hard. Judy smiles against her lips and V feels a pang of something that she can’t immediately place.
She can feel how wet she is, though, and Judy may not be able to read her mind like Johnny can, but she knows what the fuck she’s doing, that much is clear. She’s moving her hand in practiced circles on V’s clit, and fuck it feels fuckin’ amazing. Judy withdraws her hand and moves it up to V’s breast, but V barely has time to whimper in protest before Judy slides her thigh between V’s legs, and now she feels Judy’s own warm wetness against her thigh, and she wraps her arms around Judy’s waist and pulls her closer as they grind against each other. The sounds Judy’s makin’ are fuckin’ hot as hell, but she’s suddenly aware of Johnny, somewhere deep inside her mind, trying his fucking hardest to stay out of this.
V grabs Judy’s waist and flips them around so she has Judy pinned against the bed now, and Judy’s eyes widen in surprise.
“I…” V starts, but realizes she doesn’t actually know what she wants to say. Judy is looking up at her breathlessly, and V releases her and sits back on her heels. Judy’s face changes to confusion.
“V, you okay? Somethin’ wrong?”
V shakes her head. “S’not you,” she says, trying to form her thoughts into coherent words.
The truth is, she doesn’t wanna let Judy get her off cause she’s fuckin’ scared of what’ll happen, given how it’s been with Johnny. She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to keep him out then, and it seems… wrong. Like an intrusion that Judy hasn’t consented to.
“Is it… is it your construct?” Judy guesses, glancing around nervously.
“Not like that,” V quickly reassures her. “I just… think I maybe had too much to drink,” she says, and it’s not completely a lie. Maybe she’ll be more prepared for this some other time, when she’s more sober and in control. She realizes she’s shaking, and she can feel something creeping out from Johnny now, and it feels like a mixture of relief and frustration plus a whole bunch of other even more chaotic, muddled stuff.
“It’s okay,” Judy says softly. “You don’t have to explain.” She swallows, looking slightly crestfallen. “D’you want me to go?”
V shakes her head vehemently. “No. I’d… really like it if you stayed, actually.”
Judy looks relieved, and lifts her hand and brushes it lightly against V’s cheek. V takes it and presses a kiss to Judy’s palm, then settles down and curls herself around Judy, who wraps her arms around V and gently strokes her hair and V could almost cry at how good it feels to be held.
But she knows who she wishes it was holding her, and the thought makes something catch in her throat and she shoves it down before it can fully form in her head.
The room is still spinning, and V squeezes her eyes shut and waits for the oblivion of sleep to consume her.
Except, of course, it’s never oblivion, not anymore.
She’s with Jackie in Konpeki Plaza, squeezed into that little glass pillar watching Yorinobu choke out the emperor himself, looking into Jackie’s wide, frightened eyes as the life they knew shatters around them. And then they’re jumping off the roof together, crashing through the glass ceiling, Jackie clutching the case that contains both of their deaths though they don’t know it yet, and then Jackie’s reaching for her in that backseat, slotting the shard into her head, and the world glitches and collapses around her into a distorted blur of Johnny’s final moments, moments she’s relived so many times, so many nights now.
And then she’s in a room she recognizes from another dream, the one where Johnny first touched her, before she even knew she wanted him to. Johnny’s here now too, prowling around again like an angry, trapped animal.
But this time when he sees her, his face softens and he stops in his tracks.
V feels herself walking towards him, drawn by some invisible force, but as she gets closer, his image glitches and blurs and she can’t focus on any part of his face or body. She reaches for him but he’s like smoke, he’s already gone. She looks around frantically, and sees him on the balcony outside whatever room they’re in, and vaults through the window after him without hesitating.
But as soon as she reaches him, his form blurs again and turns to dust, and she can see him on the street down below, leaning against a streetlight, staring up at her with the same unfathomable expression on his face.
“Johnny!” she calls to him, and starts racing down the stairs. She stumbles and falls, scraping her legs badly, but gets up and keeps running.
He’s still there, waiting for her, when she leaps from the bottom step, but the second she gets close again he’s gone, and she can see him further away now, out on the beach, smoking a cigarette and staring out at the ocean.
“Johnny, wait!” she says again, already jogging towards him.
He turns to her as she approaches, but she realizes suddenly that it’s not Johnny at all, it’s her, it always was. She looks down at her hands, but instead of her own flesh and chrome, she’s lookin’ at Johnny’s hands, his silver left one and his tattooed right one with the snake winding its way across his palm, and she somehow knows that these have always been her hands, that she’s been Johnny this whole time, that whoever she’s chasing doesn’t exist.
And when she looks up, V is gone, and she’s just Johnny, alone on the beach in Pacifica, screaming out into the ocean.
“V!”
She can hear someone yelling her name, and wants to tell them it’s pointless, that V is gone, it’s too late.
“V!” the voice says again, louder and more insistent this time, and V is yanked forcefully out of the dream when she recognizes Judy’s voice.
She opens her eyes to see Judy’s wide, worried ones staring back at her.
“V?” Judy asks cautiously.
It’s early afternoon, judging by the sun.
“Was I screamin’?” she mumbles.
“Yeah,” Judy says softly. “Woke me up.”
“Sorry.”
Judy shakes her head. “It’s okay. I get it. Been happenin’ to me too, sometimes, since…”
“Since Evelyn?” V guesses, and Judy nods.
“Were you dreamin’ about… your friend? The one who didn’t make it?”
V nods. It’s partly true, anyway. “Yeah, Jackie,” she says, and Judy leans over to kiss her forehead.
“So what now?” Judy asks. “Breakfast? Coffee?”
V smiles, but then winces as she feels a sharp stabbing pain behind her eyes. “Ideally both before this hangover really kicks in,” she jokes.
But their plans are interrupted when V’s holo starts ringing. And of all fuckin’ times he could’ve called, of course it’s Goro.
“Hang on, Jude,” she says, pulling the blanket up around her to better cover herself. “Gotta take this.”
“V?” Takemura says as soon as she answers. He raises his eyebrows slightly at her very clearly naked and disheveled state, but doesn’t comment. “The information from Okada-san,” he continues, getting straight to the point. “Very valuable. I also learned some things through my own efforts. We must meet.”
V sighs. “Where'll it be this time? Trash processing plant? Deserted NCART station?”
“In the south of Japantown there is a street market,” Takemura says as though she hasn’t lived in this city her whole goddamn life. “There is a footbridge above the main street. I am on my way there now. Do not make me wait.”
He hangs up, and V rolls over and drapes her arm around Judy, lying silently for a minute.
“I gotta go meet someone in Japantown,” she says finally.
“Now?” Judy asks, and V nods.
“I can drop you off if you want,” V offers, but Judy shakes her head.
“I’ll take the train, don’t worry about it.”
“Shut up,” V says, nudging her gently. “I’ll drive you home.”
Judy acquiesces, and the two of them get dressed. V pulls on a rumpled Second Conflict tank from her laundry hamper and some combat pants and throws a long leather coat over it. It’s not that cold out, but it looks like it may rain later.
Judy is mostly silent on the drive back, and V can’t help but feel bad about how things ended last night.
“I’ll see you soon, Jude,” she assures her as Judy hops out of her Galena.
She watches Judy enter her stairwell, turning to wave at V one final time.
“You were right, you know,” V says softly.
“Hm?” Johnny says, glitching into the passenger seat.
“If you weren’t trapped in my head, I would want Judy to be my girlfriend.”
Johnny nods at this, unsurprised, but there’s a deep sadness in his face that tugs at her.
“Told ya,” he says. “Not gonna get in your way.”
She looks over at him. “But you are in my head,” she says, and starts the car.
Notes:
If you follow Judy after she walks away from you after the Clouds mission, she goes to a ramen booth in the Japantown market and hangs out there for awhile and orders food lol aaaaand anyway that's what inspired this chapter
Chapter 18: Binocular Eyes
Summary:
V and Takemura lay their plans to infiltrate the parade and attempt to speak with Hanako.
Notes:
Sorry again for the long wait between chapters!!! These last few weeks have been crazy busy with work but I will hopefully be able to resume a more regular update schedule after this weekend! This chapter is a chonky boy tho!
ALSO edited to mention, this fic sprouted a brain tumor and now I am concurrently writing a prequel fic, Isometric Air, that will cover the beginning of the game, focusing on Jackie and V's relationship. So if you wanna see more of Vero and her backstory, go check it out! I probably won't update it with any regularity until I finish this one, but I may post random chapters here and there if I need a break from this thicc lad lol
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Johnny is still trying to process what exactly V meant by that, what she said about him and Judy, as she parks her car by the NCART station in Japantown. He didn’t and still doesn't know how to respond, or how to feel - guilty? resentful? annoyed? relieved? - but instead of glitching away he'd just sat silently beside her as she drove across the bridge to Westbrook to meet this ‘Saka gonk and find out what kinda plan he’s hatched.
"Our crazed ronin shows no signs of slowing his roll," Johnny mutters as V takes the elevator up to the footbridge where Takemura said he’d be waiting. "Don't let him strongarm you into anything," he warns.
V rolls her eyes at him as she exits the elevator and crosses the crowded bridge, dodging the tourists and food stalls blaring loud music into the now late afternoon. Johnny sees Takemura before V does, at the far end of the bridge, chattin’ it up with some badges. The fuck is he playing at?
As they get closer, he realizes Goro’s grilling ‘em about the parade security. From the sound of it, Arasaka’s got the NCPD to provide extra goons during the event. Fuckin’ great, Johnny thinks.
When V gets his attention, Goro nods once at the badges, then turns and walks back out onto the bridge, gesturing for V to follow. He stops about halfway across, and leans against the railing facing north, looking out over the wide avenue below, crisscrossed by other footbridges and the elevated freeway sweeping across it towards the bridge. V rests her elbow on the railing and leans next to him.
“Good to see you, Goro,” she says, giving him a genuine smile. Gonk looks like he needs it, Johnny thinks - he’s in even worse shape than he was the last time they saw him.
Goro’s face softens. “As it is to see you, V.”
The short of it is, Takemura’s figured out that it’s Yorinobu who’s spearheading the parade, and it’s certainly not out of any sense of honor or Japanese tradition. It’s a display of power, plain and simple. These corpo fucks are all the same, Johnny thinks. It’s always just about intimidating their enemies, winning hearts and minds, spewing their disinformation to quash any attempt at free thinking.
Except they’re not all the same, Johnny suddenly realizes. Unlike these two, Johnny remembers what Yorinobu used to be like. Who he used to be. In Johnny’s time, Yorinobu’d been the estranged black sheep of the family, the one who left and started his own gang - the Steel Dragons - whose entire mission was to take down and destroy his father’s empire. People had even called him the “Johnny Silverhand of Tokyo.” Johnny’d always fuckin’ hated that, but still… he wonders what the old fuck’s playin’ at, now. From what he’s gathered in his short time back, it was the 2023 tower bombing - Johnny and Rogue’s little stunt - that ultimately sent him running back into his father’s good graces.
And now he’s the fuckin’ head of Arasaka, puttin’ on a good old-fashioned propaganda parade.
Worse, still, is Goro’s actual plan to talk to Hanako. Fucker plans to jump from the footbridge straight onto her float, and he’s concocted a scheme for V to sneak into the Arasaka warehouse where they’re keepin’ the floats before the parade and spike Hanako’s with an infected shard that will give ‘em control of the float (and its security systems) during the parade itself.
And, of course, V’s also gotta take out the snipers during the parade so that she can clear a path for Takemura to make his daring leap of faith.
At Takemura’s request, V breaks into a nearby camera control room to test the infected shard on the city security cameras, and Johnny is pleasantly surprised when it actually works. Might be something to this gonk plan, after all. He isn’t under the illusion that anyone at Arasaka’ll actually help V in a way that’s acceptable to either of ‘em, but playin’ nice with Hanako might give them the access that they need to do what they came for, accomplish their own goals. Save V, destroy Mikoshi. In that order.
V scrambles back up the ladder and returns to Takemura.
“And?” Goro asks expectantly.
“Two-bit thief, ain’t I?” V says smugly, spreading her hands. “Keep sayin’ so yourself,”
“Not without reason,” Takemura replies, but his mouth cracks into a small smile. “The easy work we have done. To break into Arasaka Industrial Park will not be such a… bed of roses.” He stumbles a bit over the foreign idiom. “But before we discuss that…”
He casts his eyes around the area and then seems to make a decision and begins walking towards a nearby food stall. V follows him as he sits down on one of the stools.
“Sit,” he tells her, gesturing to the stool beside him. “I have not eaten since yesterday.”
Explains why he looks like shit, Johnny thinks as V sits, and he glitches in opposite her, leaning against the steel strut of the bridge that the cart is set up around.
Takemura demands the chef give ‘em the best on the menu as long as it isn’t local. The chef recommends the yakitori, so Takemura orders some for himself and V. Johnny studies the former Arasaka bodyguard as the chef prepares the food. He’s a fuckin’ weirdo, that’s for sure, but Johnny gets the sense his desire to help V is genuine. Which is troubling for its own set of reasons.
“Can't believe I'm sayin' this, but this ‘Saka scum might actually prove useful,” Johnny tells V begrudgingly. “He's a well-trained dog. Needs orders, that's all.” The chef places a plate of yakitori skewers in front of Goro and V, and Johnny crosses his arms. “And when he outlives his purpose, we'll flatline him.”
V rolls her eyes at this and watches as Takemura takes a bite of his skewer. Don’t be stupid, Johnny, she silently responds. Even without implants he could decomish us easily.
“Where's that come from?” Johnny challenges her. “Ever seen him in action?”
V shakes her head. Nah. Just know... from the way he walks, look in his eye...
Johnny knows what she’s talkin’ about, he’s clocked it too. But he thinks V isn’t giving herself enough credit. He also thinks that part of her secretly likes the gonk, that he’s growin’ on her a little bit, and that pisses Johnny off. Goro does have a strange sort of charm, but a ‘Saka dog is a ‘Saka dog, as far as Johnny’s concerned.
“What is this?!” Takemura exclaims, making a face and tossing his skewer back onto his plate.
The chef laughs softly. “Yakitori, I told you.”
V takes a tentative bite, and Johnny can taste that it’s actually not bad.
“Sawdust and plastic,” Takemura scoffs and shoves his plate haughtily back towards the chef. V continues eating hers, watching Goro with bemusement. “So, here is the plan,” he continues, turning to V. “One, we break into Arasaka Industrial Park. One and a half, we hack Hanako-sama's float. Two, during the parade you eliminate any snipers. Three, I jump onto the float. Four, I convince Hanako-sama of the truth."
“Forgot five,” V says dryly, pausing between bites of yakitori. “Oda zeroes us and pisses on our corpses.”
Johnny laughs at this.
“Oda would not dare raise his hand against me,” Takemura says with complete confidence.
V raises an eyebrow. “What about me?”
Takamura considers this for a moment. “That is a different matter. I would advise you to watch your distance.”
V takes another bite of her yakitori. “Well,” she says with a shrug. “Sounds like a suicide run, but done dumber shit than this, so…”
Takemura is unsuccessful at holding in a smile, but it’s a warm, teasing one. “Things even more stupid than stealing from Arasaka?”
“Nah, not dumber than that,” V admits, and smiles too. “Set the bar pretty high with that one.”
Takemura moves to stand. “Now, we part. Reconnaissance is required.”
Hold the fuck up, Johnny thinks. “Go with him, V,” he says. “Let ‘im off his leash and you can say goodbye to his fuckin' honor.”
V nods almost imperceptibly. “You're a stranger in a strange land,” she says quickly to Takemura, starting to stand as well. “Goin' with you.”
Takemura studies her for a moment, then nods. “Hmm, true. And you with your hands, skills, mind of a thief...” His face breaks into a grin. “Agreed. This we will do together.”
He lowers himself back onto his stool and waits for V to finish her meal. Suddenly, Yorinobu comes on the television behind the cart. Goro snaps to attention and gestures for the chef to turn up the volume.
As they watch his speech, Takemura launches into a soliloquy about the inner workings of Arasaka, all the factions and backstabbing and insider baseball. Johnny watches as V’s eyes glaze over and smiles to himself.
On the TV, Yorinobu’s also spouting the same old nonsense about family honor and all that bullshit. Johnny finds himself wondering again what exactly the Arasaka heir is up to. After decades of rebellion… was it really Johnny’s act of terrorism that changed him? To be sure, his older brother’d been killed in the aftermath of the tower attack… but had that event really, single-handedly drawn him back into his father’s arms? Only to murder him years later after trying to sell his greatest technological achievement to NetWatch?
Johnny frowns. Something doesn’t add up.
“Where's Yorinobu's rebellious streak come from?” V asks Goro suddenly, and Johnny wonders if she was privy to his train of thought.
“No one knows this,” Goro answers. “Perhaps soon I shall ask him. In person.”
He goes on to explain how the only reason Saburo never crushed his son’s rebellion was Hanako. Apparently, the two siblings were always close.
Johnny frowns again. V does too, seeming again to hear his thought. “Wait,” she says to Goro. “You think Hanako mighta been complicit in Saburo's murder?”
“I think we are all to blame,” Takemura says, staring defeatedly at his untouched yakitori. “We allowed ourselves to be tricked.”
If Saburo’s own children were conspiring against him, they could be about to jump into even deeper shit than they thought. All the more reason to keep this goon on a tight leash.
Goro moves to stand again. “Will you join me?”
“Sure,” V says, and Johnny flashes her a thumbs up.
Takemura’s drivin’ a different car this time than the van he had before, but he’s still playing the same classic jazz station. Interesting taste, Johnny notes.
The sun has fully set by the time they get to Santo Domingo, and Takemura pulls up in front of a construction site opposite the large Arasaka compound that spans a few blocks. V follows him as they jump a fence and climb the rickety scaffolding to a platform that affords them an unimpeded view of the Arasaka grounds.
He and V scan the warehouse, looking for vulnerabilities and potential ways to enter. V immediately spots some pipes, as well as an access tunnel, and does a thorough sweep of the compound’s security. Johnny’s once again impressed and finds himself marveling at the fact that not long ago he’d thought of her as bumbling and incompetent, green and silly. But that was before he’d really seen her in action, seen how she worked. She’s as good as the best of ‘em, as good as Rogue was back in her heyday.
He wonders if telling her that would make her happy or piss her off.
“Oh, can you run and grab us a pizza?” V jokes to Takemura, handing him back the binoculars. She doesn’t really need ‘em anyway, not with her Kiroshis.
“Takeout food?” Takemura scowls. “No, absolutely not.” He shakes his head vehemently. “If I had time and ingredients, I would prepare us some onigiri with cod… or perhaps grilled salmon.” He thinks for a moment. “No,” he corrects himself. “Even better. With umeboshi plums. Arasaka-sama's favorite appetizer. Simple, tasty and filling.”
Is… is he flirting with V? Johnny doesn’t even bother trying to stem his annoyance at this revelation.
“I found him chewing once, pride on his face,” Takemura continues, smiling at V. “It was a protein bar.”
V laughs sharply. “Saburo Arasaka with a protein bar? That’s rich.”
“Like a true soldier,” Goro jokes. “Okay, enough, or we will both grow hungry.”
V is smiling as she does a final sweep of the compound, like she’s laughing at some private joke in her head. Whatever it is, she’s not sharing it with Johnny.
“So now what?” she says to Takemura. “We goin' in?”
“Hmph,” Takemura snorts. “Is this what you said before entering Konpeki Plaza?” He shakes his head. “I wish to be certain we have not overlooked anything. We should wait and observe. If nothing out of the ordinary happens, then yes... We goin' in!” He pitches his voice higher to imitate V.
V chuckles. “Alright then, let’s get comfy. And brace yourself… I’m probably gonna order that pizza.”
They settle in to surveil the compound, and V takes the first watch while Takemura sits against a concrete strut and closes his eyes. He’s asleep almost immediately, and Johnny feels V wonder when the last time the poor gonk slept was.
He glitches in next to V. “You’re goin’ soft on the lapdog,” he scowls.
“Chill, Johnny,” V whispers. “He’s ‘Saka scum to you, I know that, but Goro’s not a bad guy.”
“Not a bad guy?!” Johnny growls. “He was Saburo fucking Arasaka’s bodyguard! Think his pretty eyes landed him that gig?”
V looks at the sleeping ex-corpo. “We don’t know his story,” she says softly.
“I still say we zero him if he steps outta line,” Johnny presses. “He’s got training, sure, but I’ve seen you take down cyberpsychos tougher’n him.”
“He hasn’t given us any reason not to trust him yet,” V reminds him.
“You never know what a dog's thinking,” Johnny insists. “Might be the same thing. Once Hanako hears your story, and you’ve given him what he wants…”
“Bridge we might cross,” V concedes. “But only might. We'll see.”
Johnny nods, satisfied for now. “Glad we're on the same page.”
The night creeps slowly towards dawn, and V wakes Goro as the sky is starting to lighten.
His whole body tenses as he awakens, startling at V’s touch.
“I’m sorry,” she says, withdrawing her hand quickly. “Bad dream?”
“It is of no concern,” he says bruskly. He stands and dusts himself off, and V settles down onto the corrugated metal floor, rolling up her coat to use as a pillow.
It’s almost noon when Goro shakes her awake, and to Johnny’s surprise, he ordered them pizza and takeout noodles while V was asleep.
She sits up and rubs the sleep from her eyes, coughing as her vision glitches slightly.
“Nova,” she says, noticing the food. She pulls the pizza towards her and grabs a slice. It’s synth-pepperoni and artichokes. One half of the toppings she’d have chosen, Johnny thinks amusedly.
Takemura sits on the floor beside her and digs into the noodles. But a couple of the pizza slices are already missing, so he’s clearly come around on the Night City staple.
They are eating in companionable silence when suddenly Takemura freezes.
“No sudden movements,” he whispers to V.
Johnny can feel V’s entire body tense up. “What is it?” she asks.
Goro points above V’s shoulder, and when she turns to look there’s a fuckin’ hairless cat sitting there on the ledge, watching them. It looks strangely identical to the one she’s seen skulking around in the alley behind Vik’s.
“Jesus Goro, I was expecting to see a ‘Saka sniper perched behind me,” V mutters, studying the cat. “I’ve seen a similar cat in Watson,” she remarks upon closer examination. “Didn’t realize there were still so many strays in the city. Thought they rounded ‘em all up.”
“It is the first animal I see in Night City,” Takemura marvels. “Except cockroaches, of course.” He ponders the small creature. “Perhaps it is a bakeneko?”
V snorts. “Didn’t take you for one to believe in ghosts, Goro.”
“The Relic lets you talk to the dead, does not?” Takemura counters. “We are past belief.”
At this, Johnny glitches in, lying on his back on the concrete strut that flanks the platform they’re seated on.
Goro reaches his hand out towards the cat, who takes a tentative step towards them, “My grandmother would tell us many stories about kitsune kappa… bakeneko, too.”
“Where'd you grow up, anyway?” V asks.
“I am from the slums of Chiba-11,” Goro tells her, looking down into his noodles. “Once, when I was desperate to leave there, I…” His voice trails off and he shakes his head. “Bad memories washed away by time. I long only for the simple days of childhood.”
“Childhood memories, let's see,” V thinks. “Hoppin’ buildings, runnin' away from badges… iron taste of blood from a split lip.”
Johnny remembers all this too, V’s childhood. Although some of it’s gettin’ blurred up with his own now, runnin’ around in the hot Texas sun, playin’ cowboy with the other kids in their dusty crumbling university town. And the war… if that even counts as part of his childhood, though he’d only been a young teen when he was recruited.
“I remember the chemical stench of the canal where we boys washed our shirts,” Goro continues, as though emboldened by V’s candor. “Corporate transporters sometimes passed through our slum. Arasaka selecting children… but only the clean ones.”
“Lemme guess,” V says darkly “So they could turn 'em into corposoldiers?”
“Exactly,” Takemura says, nodding and lifting his cybernetic eyes to meet hers. Johnny feels a strange jolt as he realizes his own story doesn’t differ too much from Goro’s - only who recruited them straight outta their shitty little childhoods.
“When they chose me, I felt I had won the lottery,” Goro continues, watching the cat as it preens and licks its paw. “In the army, I was given everything I lacked before. Discipline, regular meals. And when I proved I was gifted… an education.”
The US Army hadn’t even given Johnny that, he thinks bitterly. Just the ability to shoot a gun, and a fuckload of nightmares.
V considers this. “So how's a corpo rookie go from cleaning latrines to bein' Saburo Arasaka's bodyguard?”
“The highest grades at the academy, service in the special forces, and Arasaka-sama's unmatched eye for talent,” Goro answers simply.
“And all you had to do in return was kill Saburo's enemies.”
“I sense that you judge me,” Takemura spits, looking at her again. “And yet, you have no right to. Unlike you and your friend Mr. Welles, I was not arrogant, I did not take the easy path.”
Johnny feels V bristle at the mention of Jackie. He tilts his head to look at her, but her eyes are fixed on Goro and Johnny can tell she’s about to lay into him.
“Sayin' you got no dirt on your hands?” V shoots back defensively.
Takemura shakes his head. “There are no clean hands. But it is important how they become dirty.”
“Alright, so spill. How'd you sully yours?”
“Are you asking for a recounting of every one of my kills?” Goro asks coolly. “I could ask the same of you, and I doubt you would like to share. Arasaka gave me values I could honor, live for. This was most important.” He gestures at V. “You dirty your hands for money. I, in the name of principles.”
“Know it’s hard for you to believe, but I have my own principles,” V snarls, tossing aside the pizza. “I don’t do what I do for the eddies. I do it because if I don’t, someone else with no principles will.”
Johnny’s heard this exact diatribe from her before, and he’s come to see the truth in it. It’s part of what he admires about V, something they share.
"There is no honor among thieves," Goro says skeptically.
"There's no honor in signin’ away your life to a corporation that's bleeding the world dry," V retorts, not backing down.
Atta girl, Johnny thinks.
Goro sighs and watches the cat, who’s paused its grooming and regards them curiously with its large yellow eyes. "We do what we must to survive," he says finally.
"Exactly," V agrees softly. “I wasn't judging you.”
“Untrue,” Takemura counters. “You oppose the corporations, their order, their world, in a mindless way, yet you offer no worthy alternative.”
V laughs sharply. “Take a look around, Goro. It's here. Your corporate world in its glorious splendor. We’re livin’ in it.”
“You show me filthy streets as if no other world exists, as if nothing else is possible,” Goro says darkly, shaking his head. “What of the millions who work for Arasaka and receive stability, safety?”
“And Chiba-11's slumrats?” V reminds him, cocking an eyebrow. “They're still there, scraping scraps out of scoptins. Corps decided that, too.”
Takemura stares out at the city skyline. A fog has descended over the city today, adding to the grimness of V’s assessment. “We cannot fix everything at once,” he says sadly.
“People hate corps more than anything,” V continues. “Can't blame 'em, either. They force people into slavery, hold ‘em hostage with implants people rely on. If that’s your idea of stability and safety…”
The cat is now looking straight at Johnny in a way that slightly unnerves him. He extends his hand towards it, and it seems to regard him curiously. Ghost to ghost, he thinks to himself, and feels his lip twitch upwards. He can feel V watching him, and turns his head to meet her eyes.
Takemura sighs. “Sometimes I wish to become a nomad. To leave this world, forget everything.”
“Never too late to change,” V says softly, and her eyes flick back to Johnny, makin’ him feel that soft tugging in his chest again. Her relentless belief in people’s better angels is hard to fuckin’ stomach sometimes.
Takemura contemplates this. “What is your expression... ‘One cannot teach an old dog new tricks.’” He studies V’s face, and his eyes are serious but compassionate. “Do you know what I think?”
“What's that?”
“That day in Konpeki, we both have lost someone important,” Takemura says, his voice low. “And we are not at peace with this, so we seek conflict, argue eagerly.”
V nods slowly, chewin' on her lip in the way that she does when she's trying to work some out. “You’re not entirely wrong,” she concedes.
“It is the duty of the living to atone for the dead,” Goro adds. “Hanako-sama shall aid us in our mission.”
“Or she'll make sure we die for good,” Johnny interjects bitterly, and dramatically rolls off the side of the ledge, glitching away as he does so. He still feels V’s kneejerk reaction to this, and can't help feeling silent satisfaction at her unwarranted concern.
The cat, strangely enough, leaps down after him.
V takes the next shift, and Goro leans back and closes his eyes again.
“You know, you and Goro are sorta alike,” she murmurs under her breath once she’s sure he’s asleep, and Johnny glitches in again, this time perched on the railing next to her.
“Fuck you,” he mutters, taking a drag of his cigarette.
V smiles. “Know you thought it yourself. If it’d been Arasaka that’d recruited you… maybe it’d be you guarding the Arasakas, spoutin’ all this shit at me about honor and principles.”
Johnny scowls. “Nah,” he says. “Don’t forget, I deserted once I saw the things I saw during the war. And then spent the rest of my life screamin’ about it, fuckin’ up corpo shit wherever I could. Your boy Goro just kept on earnin’ the boy scout badges until he sucked enough corpo dick to get to the top.”
“And now here we all are, about to hijack an Arasaka float and shove our fist right up Yorinobu’s ass,” V grins.
This gets an eyebrow raise from Johnny. “Fun little party the three of us make, huh? Dead rocker, hot-headed little merc, and former ‘Saka samurai. Each with our own bones to pick with Arasaka.”
V laughs silently, then her eyes flick back down to Takemura, who is now softly snoring. “Really did a number on him, huh,” she murmurs thoughtfully, and Johnny rolls his eyes and glitches away.
It’s gotten cold and started to rain slightly when V next awakens, after trading shifts and a few small pleasantries with Takemura before she settled down to try to nap again. She hadn’t actually expected to sleep and had mostly just been tryin’ to conserve her energy for whatever comes next, but somehow drifted off again.
Her coat is draped over her like a tent, and Johnny wonders if Goro did that while she was asleep. V immediately rolls over and retches as a malfunction hits, glitching her vision badly, and Johnny feels the familiar stabbing headache rolling through her in waves.
“Are you alright?” Goro asks her, looking concerned.
“It’s getting worse,” V admits, dragging herself to her feet and threading her arms back into the coat before pulling it tight around her.
The industrial park’s been quiet all day, so it’s time now to make their move. The two of them climb back down the scaffolding to ground level, and Goro links them on the holo while V uses the pipes she spotted earlier to slip into the compound unnoticed. She hacks the security cameras as she slinks around inside the warehouse, dodging the watchful eyes of the mechs and soldiers patrolling the area.
It’s fuckin’ tense as hell, and Johnny can feel V’s palms sweating and hear heart hammering in her chest. They both know what’s at stake here. Her breath is coming out shaky as she fishes a combat stim from her pocket and inhales it quickly, and Johnny feels her heartbeat even out as the chemical cocktail steadies her nerves.
She drops down behind the terminal, silent as a cat, and uploads the infected code, holding her breath and praying the guard a mere 10 feet away won’t hear her and turn around.
The alarm sounds right as her HUD alerts her the spike’s been successfully uploaded. Johnny feels V panic at first, thinking that the shard triggered the alarm, but Takemura’s voice crackles over her holo, assuring her he pulled the alarm to provide her an escape route.
It seems to have worked though, because all the guards rush to man the doors, locking all the normal exit points but clearing the main floor completely.
“Jump to the roof!” Goro prompts her, and V scrambles up on top of the float and uses her reinforced tendon implants to launch herself with a running start from the top of the float to the perimeter wall of the open-roofed warehouse. She barely makes it, catching herself with her chrome hand and heaving the rest of her body up afterwards. Johnny can feel her heart thrashing wildly as she scans the area then leaps down to a nearby lower building, keeping cover behind the pipes as she sprints for the edge of the compound, once again launching herself over the compound fence and tumbling head over heels down into the concrete trough that passes for a riverbed running along the side of the industrial park.
She lands on her back, staring up into the cold, cloudy night as rain falls onto her face and stomach, her coat having fallen open during her escape. She can see the spotlights from the drones as they circle the area, searching for intruders. She quickly rolls to her feet and runs along the noxious trickle at the bottom of the riverbed, not stopping until she can no longer hear the alarms and shouts of the guards and the hum of the drones.
There are some bums around a trash fire involved in some kinda fistfight, and V skirts them as she scrambles out of the riverbed back up to the street. Takemura is waiting for her in his car.
“Would you like me to take you home?” he asks as she approaches.
Johnny wonders how the fuck this corpo fucker knows where they live. Where V lives, he corrects himself. And how he knew exactly where V’d climb out of the river.
V only hesitates for a moment. It’s raining harder now, and she’s already soaked through. “Sure,” she says gratefully, and gets in the car.
Takemura is silent for most of the drive home, and Johnny feels V start to relax as they drive through the night, the soft jazz providing a perfect soundtrack to the rain gently pattering against the car windows, making the streetlights blossom and blur into bright bouquets of light as they drive along the Westbrook waterfront back towards Watson. Takemura hums along to the radio, and Johnny wonders if Saburo had a thing for American jazz or some shit like that. He somehow doubts Goro’s had much opportunity to develop his own individual tastes.
Goro drops V off in the loading zone in front of her megabuilding, and unlike Johnny, she doesn’t seem overly concerned that he somehow knows where she lives. She hops out of the car and climbs the stairs into the building, walking quickly through the ground floor indoor mall towards the elevators. The main elevator bank is more crowded than the one from the garage they usually take, and she presses herself against the wall to keep distance between the other residents who pile in after her. Johnny finds himself wishin’ he could actually stand next to her, use his size to help her block out some personal space. Especially this ugly fucker, he thinks, feeling V avoid the leering gaze of a man who is standing entirely too close to her. The elevator lurches and screeches its way up, and V shoves her way out when it reaches her floor.
Coach Fred tries to wave her down as she beelines through the gym, and she gives him a nod but doesn’t stop to chat. He’s probably just got another gonk for her to fight in some underpass somewhere, and a text’ll suffice.
V strips off her wet clothes and wriggles into an oversized t-shirt the second they’re back in her apartment, then flops onto the couch and pours herself a drink. Johnny glitches in on the couch next to her with his own drink. It's just a stupid prop, he knows, but he also knows V enjoys it when he acts more like he's really there, makes her feel less like she's drinking alone and talkin' to a voice in her head.
"You're jealous of Goro," she says out of nowhere, and Johnny almost spits out his drink.
"The fuck would I be jealous of that washed up corpo gonk for?"
V smiles, but it's a sharp one. "I fuckin' felt it, Johnny. When you thought he was flirtin' with me. You got mad as hell."
Johnny shakes his head. "Yeah, cause he's fuckin' scum who’s just as likely to double cross us as he is to help us, even if he doesn’t intend to. And you’re goin’ soft on him. S'not jealousy."
"Sure," V teases. "Just like Judy, and Dino."
“Not fuckin’ this again,” Johnny groans. “And it’s not even remotely the same fuckin’ thing.”
"Uh huh," V says, cocking an eyebrow at him and taking another sip of her drink. He knows she's just tryin' to goad him, but he's fuckin' tired and getting more than a little pissed. If she has something to say, he wishes she’d just fuckin’ say it. He'd been hoping they were just gonna drink and then jerk off and go to sleep, not have another stupid fight.
"The fuck you want me to say, V?" Johnny says, throwing up his hands. "Yeah, it drives me nuts watchin' you get hit on by half of Night City. Like everyone thinks you owe them something, wants a piece of you." He shakes his head. "And none of 'em even actually know you at all."
"And you do? That what you're saying?"
"Better than any of them, yeah."
She looks at him, then, and he suddenly thinks the night might go his way after all, but she just stands and crosses over to her record player.
"Never finished our Eurodyne retrospective," she says, and Johnny is confused by the abrupt subject change but grateful she's down to drop the topic for now. But instead of finishing Second Conflict, she slides a different record off her shelf and places it on the turntable. "Persuasion of the Undecided," she says as the first track starts. "His fifth album. This one's a concept album about the crumbling American dream, but it’s also mostly about his ex-wife."
This stops Johnny in his tracks. "Ex what now?" he sputters. "Kerry got fuckin' married?"
V laughs. "Yeah, to Louise Nordin, the actress, back in the 50s. It was a whole fuckin’ thing." She sits on the edge of her bed and rests her chin on her hand, looking over at Johnny still sprawled on her couch. "Guess you missed a lot, huh."
"Married… no shit," Johnny mutters.
"Had two kids too," V adds, and Johnny raises his eyebrows. He tries and fails to imagine the Kerry he knew as a dad, and the image seems so implausible it's almost comical.
"So what's your point, V?" he says exhaustedly. "Want me to give you a fan trophy or something?"
"He's super fucking famous, Johnny. Don't gotta be a fan to know this stuff, it's been plastered all over the screamsheets my entire goddamn life."
Johnny digests this for a sec. He feels like there's a reason V's makin' him listen to this now, but he isn't in the mood to play twenty questions.
"As much as I love hearin' about my former bandmate's bad decisions, I'd much rather be watchin' you play with your tits," he says gruffly.
He smirks as he sees the blood immediately rush to V's face, feels her body react even as she shoots him an utterly exhausted look.
"Johnny…" she says, and he can feel there's more she wants to say.
"Just spit it out, V,” he says exasperatedly. “Still upset about Judy?" he guesses, and she hesitates for a moment then nods, and Johnny rolls his eyes.
“Look V, like I said… won’t get in your way.”
“It’s not that,” V says, shaking her head and looking down into her drink. “It just... made me realize… I can’t have anyone else, but… I can’t have you either.”
His stomach twists, but he resists the urge to glitch away. She’s right, his existence is puttin’ her in a pretty unresolvable situation for now, and he struggles with this for a minute before standing and going to sit next to her on the bed. He coulda glitched, but he feels like that’d only serve to highlight her entire goddamn point. He’s over here gettin’ pissy every time she tries to make an actual connection with someone else, someone real, and it’s not even like he’s able to give her much of anything in return.
She looks up at him, her eyes wide and bright, and he silently puts his hand on her knee. He knows all she can feel is a dull static tingle, but he hopes the gesture communicates something anyway.
He reaches for her with his mind, then, and lets her see. Not too much, but a little bit. Stuff he’s never shared with anyone else. Memories of riding with the nomads, driving through the desert with Santiago, sittin’ around campfires, playing guitar. He wrote Never Fade Away out there, thinkin’ about Alt and what happened, and he lets her see a little bit of that, too. Stuff from his childhood he wishes he could forget, how his family was killed in the aftermath of the Collapse and he was taken in by his aunt. Things from the war she’s already seen some of, but shared now with the clarity of wakefulness rather than the blind terror of dreams. Memories of Kerry - their fights, their nights spent in the studio together high on drugs and adrenaline, their creative ideas clamoring and clashing against each other’s… and sometimes their bodies doing the same. And more recent memories too - of how V looks at him after he’s completely taken her apart with just his words, the little smiles she slips him when he’s being a dick and she’s not as mad as she’s pretending, all the little shit he’s noticed about her that he knows no one else does, that no one else could ever know.
He feels her breath catch, and her eyes widen even more.
“Why?” she breathes.
“Just wanted ya to see,” he says simply. “You got plenty of me already,” he teases. “More than enough, most would way.”
She smiles, but her face is still sad. “Yeah,” she says, reaching for the cigarettes on her shelf and lighting one.
To his surprise, she returns the gesture and starts showin’ him stuff about her dad that she’s never talked about, how he was a corpo who kept V’s mother as his secret mistress, how he paid for V to go to a fancy corpo day school in Charter Hill when she was little but pulled the plug on that and the rest of their financial support when his wife found out about ‘em, cutting her formal education short. How he died of a heart attack a few years later that V has always suspected was his wife's doing, how he left V and her mom nothing in his will, causing V’s mom to slowly sink into drugs and depression, ultimately ending up at some behavioral health chop-shop where the first line of treatment was electroshock therapy followed by a good old-fashioned lobotomy. How she offed herself when V was only 23, and V changed her name to distance herself from all of it, started goin’ by just “V.”
And for the first time, she lets him see her real name.
“Vero,” he says aloud, tasting it with his tongue, marveling at the fact she’s managed to keep it buried from him this long.
She smiles softly. “Sounds good when you say it,” she murmurs, and he makes note of that.
They sit there silently while the rest of the album plays, sharing more random stupid memories with each other that progressively turns into a “who did dumber shit as a teen” competition that ultimately ends in a draw. V eventually settles into bed, and Johnny lays down beside her again. He knows their entire situation is completely and utterly fucked, but the intoxication of these moments - when for a few short hours they can catch their breath and stop bein’ at each other’s throats - make Johnny feel the sharpness in his chest soften into something different, something that makes him feel like he can finally breathe.
She falls asleep again before the album finishes, and Johnny feels himself pulled down along with her into what he prays will be a dreamless sleep.
Notes:
Well this chapter took an unexpected soft turn
Also sidenote, after the next chapter we'll have finally gotten to the place where my original outline for this fic actually started (hahahahaha haha ha ha hahaaa) so that means I have a decent amount of stuff already written from this point forward. Which hopefully will mean faster updates!!!
Chapter 19: Seven Virtues
Summary:
The day before the parade, V goes diving with Judy and tries to sort out their complicated situation.
Notes:
This chapter is NSFW (Judy/V/sorta Johnny)!!! And also very angsty!!! Lots of weird smut and also feeEeEelings and also it's very long!!! Sorry not sorry!!!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The parade’s not for another few days, so V lets herself get roped into helping Panam organize what actually turns out to be a pretty fun train robbery to steal a Basilisk panzer from a Militech transport. It’s a nice change of pace from city life, and V relishes the opportunity to spend a couple days in the desert under the stars with Panam, who’s provin’ herself to be a real choom. She even helps Mitch pull together an impromptu (albeit unusual) funeral for Scorpion that involves putting his body in his old car, lighting it on fire, and sending it over a cliff. And sitting around the campfire with Panam and the vets, hearin’ about how hard Mitch and the others had it in the war, makes her think of Johnny and all the shit he got dragged into so young. Especially now that she’s seen some of his memories of spending time in the desert with the Aldecaldos.
Judy calls her a couple times while she’s out in the Badlands, but the reception is patchy and they can’t really talk. But V manages to parse out that the braindance editor wants to go diving together that weekend, the day before the parade.
“This chick keeps asking you for weirder and weirder shit,” Johnny grumbles, and V doesn’t understand why this is what would prompt that kind of reaction from him, considering Panam literally just asked ‘em to help steal a fuckin' panzer from Militech and he didn’t bat an eyelash.
Aside from the obvious fact that for Johnny, stealing from corpos counts as fun. And, of course, the complicated situation with Judy. But V’s mostly relieved that Judy’s still talkin’ to her after things got weird the other night. V’s still not sure how to begin to sort out her feelings about it all, but she knows she doesn’t want things to be awkward or different between them.
So that’s how V finds herself riding out past the dam in Santo Domingo that Friday to meet Judy at the coordinates she’d sent, up by the big toxic lake that had once been a reservoir.
Odd choice for a place to go diving, but V figures Judy’s got her reasons.
Judy's sitting on the hood of an old car parked in front of what looks like an abandoned cottage, wearing a wetsuit and humming to herself. She smiles and waves as V parks her bike and hops off.
“Lookin’ good,” she says coyly as V walks towards her, and V blushes. She’s tried to tone down her usual all-black leather merc look for the day, instead opting for a casual (and very small) tank top with cut off shorts and sneakers.
“You mean, considering the shit I do on a daily basis?” V teases.
“Well, factor that in, and you look fuckin’ amazing,” Judy laughs, and now it’s her turn to blush.
V sits on the car next to her. “Jude…” she begins, searching for the right words. “About the other night… I… was worried you and I'd be ancient history,” she admits.
Judy shakes her head. “Don't be a gonk,” she says warmly. “I know you’re in a weird spot right now, but I’m not easily scared off by weirdness.” She smiles and looks up at V through her thick lashes. “Least it’s never boring with you.”
“Guess I can give you that,” V laughs. “Either way, I’m glad.”
Judy smiles at her, and V finds herself wishing again that things could just be simple between the two of them. Judy’s really rockin’ that wetsuit, and the braindance editor blushes again when she catches V staring.
“So, now that we’ve blown each other, what’s up?” V jokes.
“I wanna scroll a virtu together,” Judy says, her voice breathy and excited. “Been tinkerin' a lot lately and figured out a way to scroll two actors' experiences at the same time. Thought we could try it out.” She looks expectantly at V, suddenly shy. “If you're down, of course.”
“Combining two neural tracks into one braindance?” V asks. “How would that even work?” She finds herself wondering if the result would be anything like what she experiences with Johnny on a daily basis.
“Well, my first couple tries turned out kinda like bad arthouse,” Judy replies, and her eyes crinkle up as she smiles. “But after messin’ with it, I managed to isolate specific sensations, figure out a way to weave ‘em together that was still coherent. If I edit ‘em right… I think it could be something really unique.”
“Alright then, count me in,” V chuckles. “But I gotta warn you, I look great in a wetsuit.”
Judy laughs. “I’ll be the judge of that,” she says, winking at V. She turns and looks out over the water. “Guess this is our first real date, huh?” she says softly. “Y’know, like… one where we’re not planning to zero anyone or save anyone.”
“Guess so,” V agrees. “Speaking of, what's the latest from Clouds? Know anything?”
Judy shakes her head and looks away. “Nothin' of any interest. Got a new situation, an' everybody's tryin' to adapt. Me too.”
V furrows her brow. “Doesn't sound like it's all okay.”
“Doesn't mean it isn't,” Judy snaps.
“You sure?” V presses.
“Can we please just not talk about Clouds, the Mox, or Arasaka and Militech and how the world's goin' to shit?” Judy begs, raising her eyes again to meet V’s. “I’d just... rather not think about any of that today, anything dark.”
“Sure thing, Jude," V agrees. She could use a break from all that, too.
Turns out Judy wants them to scroll together underwater while diving. V’s honestly pretty pumped - she loves shit like this and is always up for a new experience. But Johnny appears on the dock as the girls prepare for the dive, pacing nervously and staring down at V as she checks the valves on the wetsuit Judy's lent her.
“This is fuckin’ bad idea,” Johnny mutters. “Tell 'er to find some other yes-woman.”
V looks at him strangely. Why would you say that? she silently asks. She'd figured he’d be down for something different like this too, despite his overall misgivings about Judy. It’s like Judy said, a chance to do something fun without anyone shootin’ at ‘em for a change. Especially considering what might happen if things don’t go their way at the parade tomorrow. Might be their last chance to just do stupid shit for fun, for its own sake.
“I dunno,” Johnny says, shaking his head. “Don't like the idea, that's all. It's just… when I think about the dark, the deep… palms that I don't fuckin' have get clammy with sweat I don't secrete.”
She can feel real anxiety from him, but she's already caught up in Judy's plan and doesn't have the heart to disappoint the girl. And besides, she's curious herself.
This really about some sudden fear of the water? she asks exasperatedly. Or you just salty I’m spendin’ more time with Judy?
Johnny looks darkly at her and glitches away as she finishes checking the gear and slips out of her clothes to put it on.
“You weren’t wrong,” Judy says approvingly as V finishes zipping it up. “Look pretty damn fine in that wetsuit.”
V smiles and does a little spin before pulling the helmet on and locking the seals.
“Water's toxic,” she reminds Judy. “That not a problem?”
“Whole reason we're suitin' up,” Judy says with a wicked grin, and shoves V off the dock into the freezing cold water before leaping off after her.
The water’s dark and murky, but the headlamps from their wetsuits guide their way as V swims along after Judy, who seems completely at ease in the water. She can still feel Johnny’s anxiety rippling somewhere inside her, and tries her best to ignore it.
“Virtus are more to you than just a way to churn out eddies, huh?" V remarks via their holo link as they swim deeper.
“Well, duh!” Judy laughs. “They’re just like paintings, or songs. They're meant to produce emotional responses.”
“Generally how any kind of creativity works, sure.”
“Right, so art's like a casing, trigger for emotion,” Judy agrees, swimming up to the edge of a sharp drop-off point that stretches beneath them into what looks to V like a dark, gaping underwater chasm. “And BDs are emotion in near pure form. You can make smut, sure, but you can also tune things that feel real, more real than in any other medium.” She looks at V, the dim glow from her headlamp illuminating her face in the dark water. “Ready to start scrollin’?”
V nods, but Judy gives her another warning look.
“When we’re scrollin’ together… our thoughts, sensations, are gonna be linked. It might create some, uh… weird feedback loops. But I think it’ll be interesting. Haven’t really tested it out yet, though, so don’t get freaked.”
V just nods again, but she’s suddenly a little nervous and wonders again if it’s gonna be anything like how things are with Johnny. She knows all too well how sharing sensations and emotional feedback loops can get pretty weird pretty quick. But Johnny’s been strangely quiet since they went underwater, and she can only feel the tension rolling off him.
Judy starts scrolling then, and V feels a tingle in her whole body as their neural systems sync. It’s not quite like it is with Johnny - she can feel some of Judy’s emotional resonance, but it’s nowhere near the clarity she has with Johnny. But it’s still strange, to feel someone else touching her mind like this, to have her sensations linked to a new person, and she’s reminded of how unsettling and terrifying it was when Johnny first entered her head. But Judy doesn’t seem bothered by it, and she figures it’s because they already have an established trust and intimacy between them. Unlike Johnny, who’d been a complete fucking stranger.
She can still feel him now, and she wonders if Judy can too. At first she thinks he’s still just sulking, but she reaches for him and he pulls back further, and she realizes he’s genuinely just… scared. He wasn’t kidding when he said he was afraid of diving. V feels her palms start to sweat inside her wetsuit and she tries to push his fear away before it leaks over to Judy. They’re pretty deep now, and she knows they can’t afford to make any mistakes.
And suddenly, as Judy tosses out flares in front of them, V sees where they’re headed.
There’s a fuckin’ town down there, buried in water, lost to time, and V suddenly realizes where they are - Laguna Bend, the neighborhood that got flooded when they built the dam back in the 60s. She remembers seein' it on the news as a kid.
“Impressive, huh?” Judy says as they swim closer.
“We’re gonna explore all that?”
“Not me. I want you to explore it. Used to be called Laguna Bend. Just fifteen years ago, people still lived here.”
She feels an emotional surge from Judy as they approach the town, and V abruptly realizes what the significance of this place must be to her.
“Yeah... I remember,” V tells her. “Got some connection to this place, right?”
“You got it. Grew up here,” Judy confirms, her voice heavy with grief. “Haven't been back since it was wiped off the map.”
They swim closer, and V can see all the little houses and storefronts, suspended in time, glowing red in the light from the flares Judy dropped. The effect is eerie and more than a little unsettling, but also strangely beautiful. They drift between the buildings, taking it all in.
“Played this moment, coming back, so many times in my head,” Judy says. “Taken me years, workin’ up the nerve for this.”
“Why is this what you picked for your dual-track BD experiment?” she asks Judy as they swim through the silent streets.
“It’s important to me,” Judy says simply. “And I’m hopin' you'll be able to pick up all the unfiltered mess of emotions this place brings out in me. You'll react to those feelings, and that's what I wanna capture.”
“Feels like we're outside of time... like, in a snow globe,” V remarks as they swim deeper and begin to explore the wrecked houses. Judy stops in front of one, and V feels another wave of emotion from her.
It’s the house Judy lived in with her grandparents, V learns, after her mom died. And the funny thing is, as she’s tellin’ her, V can almost hear those memories. It’s similar to what she feels with Johnny, except with Johnny, it just feels like recalling one of her own memories. Now, with Judy, she can actually hear the other children taunting her, can hear Judy as a child crying and shouting back. She watches Judy’s face through her diving mask as they scan the wreckage for any trinkets, and V finds an old camera that’d belonged to Judy once.
They stop at a couple other places, and Judy shares more of her memories with V. V’s not even sure if Judy realizes how much she can hear of those memories, but she knows sharing all this is important to Judy, so she follows her through the empty, darkened streets until they come to an old decaying church in the center of town. She can still feel Johnny’s fear, but he’s trying his best to control it too, and she reaches for him again, sending him what she hopes is comforting energy.
“Church always looked like it'd landed here from outer space,” Judy remarks as she stops to tread water near the big doors at the front. “Bells were cracked too. Gave off this eerie, atonal clang.” As she speaks, V realizes she can almost actually hear the bells herself now, and the sound is otherworldly and unsettling. “Weird... I had no memory of that seconds ago. Now I can almost hear 'em,” Judy murmurs.
“I dunno know how it's possible, but... I think I hear those bells too,” V tells her.
“Seriously? You can hear my memories?” Judy says, sounding genuinely surprised. “Must be a side effect of our neural tracks being synced.”
Judy wants to go inside, so V helps her search for an entrance, and they swim together through a hole in the roof, the red light from Judy’s flares illuminating the interior of the crumbling cathedral in a dim unearthly glow.
“Snuck in here once when no one was around,” Judy tells her as they swim up towards the altar. “Stood right here and tried to imagine what went through the padre's mind, lookin' at all those people. Then I screamed at the top of my lungs to check the acoustics.”
V can hear a small, childlike voice screaming somewhere in her mind, and it sends a chill up her spine as her vision starts to glitch. She feels a spike of dread shoot through her, and she can’t tell if it’s hers this time or Johnny’s. If he’s havin’ some kinda panic attack and that’s triggering a malfunction…
Fuck, please not now, she prays, and swims closer to Judy.
“Did you get in trouble?” she gasps as her vision starts to glitch more.
“Nah,” Judy says playfully, and starts explainin’ about how she’d felt guilty about havin’ a childhood crush on some girl, but her voice sounds echoey and far away and V knows a fuckin’ bad one is coming on. She can feel Johnny’s dread sharpen into something closer to terror now too, as the red glow turns to blue and everything starts to disintegrate into wiggly blue dots, and she feels her heart start to beat erratically in her chest and she clutches at her throat, gasping for air. The screaming around her gets louder, drowning out everything else, and she's suddenly sure she’s gonna die here, alone with Judy, deep underwater inside this old sunken church. She flails, grasping for Judy, for Johnny, for anything.
She hears herself make a choked, gargled sound that turns into a scream, and then everything goes black.
“V! Please…”
She hears Judy’s frantic voice shouting her name, and as she opens her eyes, she feels something heavy on her chest and realizes Judy’s been givin’ her CPR.
Fuck, it must have been really bad. She starts coughing and gasping, feeling her heart thump and flutter wildly before finally settling into a somewhat normal rhythm. Her diving mask is off, and she turns her head to the side and spits bile and blood from her mouth and wipes the sweat off her face.
“Oh, thank fuck!” Judy exclaims and falls backwards onto her heels. “You're alive…”
V can feel Judy’s panic through their link, which is still connected, and it catches in her throat. And she is suddenly aware of Johnny’s own frantic terror, too, and the combination makes her heart pound faster in her chest. It’s a lot, getting so much emotional feedback from two other people at once. Her vision is still warping and glitching around the edges, and Judy’s voice sounds distant and echoey, but the worst of the malfunction seems to have passed for now.
“What happened?” V mumbles.
“You passed out. Had like another seizure or somethin’.” Judy’s voice is shaking, and V can see her face is wet with tears. She reaches for the girl, and Judy grabs her arms and helps pull her up into a sitting position. “Careful, easy now,” she says as V sways dangerously, but she steadies herself on Judy’s arm. On the dock behind Judy, Johnny is standing with his back to them, looking out across the dark lake. V can feel an involuted mixture of fear and relief and anger pouring out from him all at once, and it threatens to overwhelm her again.
“How'd you manage to lift me out?” V asks Judy, mustering up a weak smile.
“Dunno,” Judy shrugs. “Didn't think about it. Just did what I had to do.”
Can’t have been easy, V thinks. Dragging her dead weight out from the bottom of a fuckin’ lake.
“So, you're sayin'... you saved my life,” V breathes. “Thank you.”
Judy smiles at her, then blushes and looks down.
"Told you diving into this toxic waste was gonna end badly," Johnny huffs, but his voice is rough and he sounds as shaken as Judy. "But you just don't fuckin' listen!"
“‘Toxic waste?’” Judy asks, her eyes widening. “Was that… is that your construct?"
V looks at Johnny, and he’s looking at her now too, shock written plain across his face. V was afraid this would happen when she and Judy’d first linked up, but she's surprised to feel a strange and unexpected sense of relief now suddenly, too. Not that she’d ever truly thought Johnny talkin’ to her was just a figment of her imagination, but… if Judy can hear him too, then that means…
“You… heard him?" she asks Judy incredulously.
"Uh… ‘heard’ might be overstating,” Judy says, furrowing her brow. “It just… surfaced in my head… a thought that wasn’t mine or completely yours.”
“Can you see him?” V asks, pointing to where Johnny's standing. Judy follows her gaze, then shakes her head.
"He's there now?" she asks, her brows still pursed, and V nods.
"Thought you might be able to," V mumbles, but she sees the corner of Judy's mouth twitch downwards.
"Is he... upset?" she asks. "He sounded angry."
"No," V says defensively, stumbling over her words. "I mean, a little. It’s uh… it’s a complicated relationship.”
Johnny raises his eyebrows at this and turns away again. “Why do I even bother?” he mutters under his breath and glitches away.
Judy is just nodding at her. “I bet,” she says, then frowns. “Doubt you should go back to the city just now. And I'm pretty beat too... last thing I wanna do is drive. Let's stay the night. Whaddaya think?
“Stay... where, exactly?” V asks. “In the cabin?”
Judy nods and hoists herself to her feet, then offers a hand to V, who takes it and stands shakily. Her vision is clear now, and she feels steady on her feet again. Judy leads her into the cottage and starts rummaging around the kitchen.
“Must be chilled to the bone,” she says, flipping open the coffee maker and sniffing a bag of grounds before pouring some into the top part. “I'll brew us a pot. How do you take yours?”
“Uh, black, please,” V says.
Judy chuckles. “Like the heart of a merc.”
The lights flicker out then, and Judy curses under her breath.
V offers to run outside and re-start the generator, but Judy presses a hand to her chest.
“You gotta take it easy, V,” she says. “Just watched you almost fuckin’ die on me.”
“I’ll be fine,” V insists, already crossing to the door, shooting Judy a confident smile before stepping out into the night.
Course I will be, she hears a voice say in her head, and at first she thinks it’s Judy but she feels a sudden chill when she realizes it’s Evelyn’s voice. Judy’s having some kinda flashback, V realizes. She frowns and almost turns back, but decides to press on and get them some power for the night first.
Know what I see lookin' at you? Walking, talking corpses.
That was definitely Judy this time. V remembers when she said that to her and Evelyn. Feels like a lifetime ago. She wasn’t fuckin’ wrong, V thinks grimly as she flips on the generator and watches it whir to life as the lights blink back on inside the cabin.
“Power's up!” she shouts as she jogs back towards the cottage.
You go that route, city'll always win. So be careful.
It’s Judy’s voice again, and V opens the door to the cottage and steps in, but Judy’s nowhere in sight.
Course I will be.
“Judy?” she calls out, then hears the water running from the bathroom. “You okay?” she asks, tapping the bathroom door.
“I’m fine, it’s nothing.” Judy’s muffled voice comes from inside the bathroom, and it sounds like she’s crying.
V pushes open the door to find Judy sitting naked on the edge of the bathtub with her head in her hands, her wetsuit crumpled next to her and the shower running.
“C’mon, Jude,” V says, sitting beside her and resting her hand on Judy’s knee. “We're still synced, remember?”
Judy sniffles, then looks up at V. “Maiko’s holdin’ all of Clouds at gunpoint,” she mumbles. “Decides every little thing, apparently.”
So this is what's been eatin' at her all day.
“But things are still different than they were, right?” V prompts hopefully.
Judy shakes her head, still morose. “Talked to the dolls… Tom and Roxie… they don’t see any change. Everything’s just like it was before.” She sits up and tilts her head back, trying to stop the flow of tears. V squeezes her knee. “Got a feelin’ everything we did was… wasted effort.” She looks back up at V, her dark eyes wet with tears. “I didn’t wanna tell you,” she breathes. “Wanted this to be just… our day.”
She sounds so broken that V can’t help reaching her hand out and lightly stroking the side of Judy’s face, brushing her finger gently across Judy’s lip. Judy closes her eyes and leans into V’s touch, then places her hand over V’s and takes it in her own. She smiles softly at V for a moment, her brown eyes full of sadness but also warmth, then stands and reaches for V’s hand again. V takes it and lets herself be led out of the bathroom, across the kitchen towards the small, dimly lit bedroom.
Judy peels V out of her wetsuit, running her hands along V’s body as she does so. V feels gross and sticky from the dive and the clammy suit, but Judy doesn’t seem to mind, leaning up to kiss her softly on the mouth. V steps out of the crumpled wetsuit and takes both of Judy’s hands in hers and when Judy looks up at her, her eyes are full of that warmth again, like a candle in a dark room.
V reaches up towards her neck slot, intending to stop scrolling, but Judy gently touches her wrist to stop her, shaking her head.
“Wanna do this while we’re still synced,” she whispers, and V feels a strange thrill at the prospect.
“You sure?” she says carefully. “Even with… even with Johnny?”
“Johnny can watch, for all I care,” Judy smirks, and that’s all the confirmation V needs.
V takes a step towards her and Judy looks down and blushes, but V tilts her chin up towards her and captures Judy's mouth with hers, pushing her backwards onto the bed as she does so.
She reaches up with her chrome hand and strokes Judy’s face again, and Judy whines softly as V slides her hand down Judy’s body, briefly cupping her small breast in her hand before slipping her fingers between Judy’s legs and beginning to move them in slow patterns that make Judy whimper and arch her hips towards V.
V is sober enough this time to really appreciate all of Judy’s tattoos, and she takes a moment to kiss each one before sliding her fingers inside Judy, who’s already soaked. "Mmm," V murmurs, pulling Judy’s face to hers to kiss her again, still thrusting slowly with her chrome fingers, and Judy is writhing against her now, moaning and panting and it’s hot as all hell.
She can feel how much Johnny’s enjoying this too, enjoying watching how she fucks Judy, enjoying how much she’s enjoying it, and instead of upsetting her she realizes it’s turning her the fuck on even more this time, especially now that Judy’s explicitly given her blessing.
But she’s still afraid of what’ll happen if Judy makes her come, especially with all three of ‘em linked like this. And surprisingly, Johnny’s still trying to stay out of the way, even though V can feel the amount of self-control it’s taking him. Part of her wants him to appear somewhere, maybe in that chair in the corner, so she can see how much he’s enjoying this, maybe even let him even tell ‘er what to do, tell her how to fuck Judy right.
That was his thought, she realizes - she can feel him imagining it right now and it makes her whole body thrill as she thrusts into Judy even harder with her fingers. She can feel a spike of pleasure from Johnny when Judy gasps and then whines, her eyes rolling shut as she grinds her hips against V’s wrist.
But another part of her just wants this to just be something she and Judy share, something separate from whatever the fuck it is she has with Johnny. Or maybe it’s Johnny that she wants to keep separate - have him stay hers and hers alone.
She pushes that thought away, kissing Judy again. Judy moans against her mouth and V drags her lips down to suck on Judy’s neck as she feels her start to buck against her hand. She moves her other hand to pinch Judy’s nipple, and feels Judy’s small body start to convulse gently underneath her. She can feel Judy’s orgasm through the link when it hits her, and it’s not nearly as intense as it is with Johnny, but she still can’t help letting out a soft groan as Judy arches her back and cries out.
They fall apart, panting, and Judy looks at her and V can almost see the fuckin’ stars in her eyes. V smiles, but Judy sits up and reaches for a nearby drawer and produces a little container of weed and some rolling papers and begins to craft a joint for them.
Judy doesn't speak as she licks the paper with her tongue before rolling it neatly into a tight cylinder. She places the rolled joint between her lips, and V leans over to grab the lighter on the nightstand and light it for Judy, who takes a deep drag and blows the smoke out slowly before handing the joint to V.
V’s always been kinda a lightweight with weed, strangely enough, but she takes the joint and inhales deeply anyway. Judy watches her with a sly smile on her face, then climbs on top of V, straddling her and pushing her back down against the bed. She takes the joint from V’s mouth and takes another puff, then places it between V’s lips one more time, letting her inhale again before drawing it away and leaning in for another kiss. V feels the weed start to take effect as Judy pulls away and looks into her eyes for a moment before setting the joint gently in an ashtray on the nightstand. Judy turns back to her and begins exploring V's body with her mouth, starting at her collarbone and working her way down.
V can see where this is going, and fights back the panic that starts to rise in her throat. Judy must feel it through their link, because she stops and looks up at V.
“You okay?” she asks breathily, and V nods. She doesn't want Judy to stop this time, she fuckin' needs this, even as she can feel Johnny's arousal winning out over his attempts to stay hidden. Out of the corner of her eye, V sees him glitch into the exact chair she imagined him in a moment ago, watching them intensely as Judy works her way downward. Finally, V can feel Judy's hot breath between her legs, which is quickly followed by her tongue, and she reaches out to stroke Judy’s hair before grabbing a fistful and pulling it. Not forcefully, just hard enough to make Judy gasp against her and V lets out a low moan at the sensation. Judy seems to feel it too, and hums softly as V arches her hips and grinds herself into Judy’s tongue. She can feel Judy smile as she slides a finger inside her, and then another one, and V looks over at Johnny and the look on his face is enough to make her whine softly and buck her hips again. Johnny’s eyes are glazed with desire, and V has to look away because the sensations she’s getting from all of it threaten to be entirely too fuckin’ much.
Judy's really going to town now, and V doesn't know if she can hold back much longer. She looks over at Johnny again, and he’s still fully dressed, but she can see the rigid bulge in his pants, can see his hand draped loosely over it, can see him watching her with heavy-lidded eyes and lips slightly parted as Judy rolls her tongue around V’s clit and works her fingers inside her at the same time. Feeling Johnny watching them is only makin' it more exciting, feeling his control progressively slipping, and it’s all pushing her inexorably closer to the edge. She knows Johnny can feel exactly what she's feeling right now, and she's about to come hard around Judy's fingers and tongue.
"Fuck… " she breathes as her orgasm hits her, and then Johnny's there with her too and for half a second, she's not sure who she is or where she is, she's just lost in it, lost in Johnny, and she knows it's not fuckin' fair to Judy and it's not fair to Johnny and it's not fair to her but it's the most fucking intense thing she's felt in a while and she bites her tongue to keep herself from screaming Johnny's name as she feels their minds merge into a singular point and then collapse outward again until she’s panting heavily, clutching Judy’s hair, her vision glitching and going white, and she wonders how much of that Judy felt, too.
She reaches for Johnny with her mind, and he’s still there, still with her, and so is Judy - she can feel them both touching the edges of her consciousness and it’s a strange but not unpleasant sensation. But Johnny’s not in the chair anymore - he’s lying on the floor next to the bed looking slightly dazed and spent. She meets his eyes and he smiles up at her - just a small upward twitch of his mouth - before glitching away again, and she closes her eyes and feels Judy crawl up and curl her body around V's.
“Holy shit,” Judy breathes into her chest, and V reaches her chrome hand up to gently stroke Judy's hair.
“Could you feel that?” V asks, and Judy nods breathlessly.
“Could feel… him too,” Judy adds, and V turns her head to look into Judy's eyes, checking for any signs of discomfort. But Judy’s smiling, and reaches up to brush her thumb against V’s lips. “S’okay,” she says. “Wasn’t weird. Kinda hot, actually.” She licks her lips and smiles, then kisses V again and V can taste herself on her. “Made it more intense, I think. And besides, know you kinda come as a package deal, so…”
V nods slowly as Judy nestles back into the space between her shoulder and chin. “Yeah,” she murmurs, winding her arm around Judy’s waist and holding her close until she feels Judy's body relax and her breathing even out. Only then does she reach up behind her neck and stop scrolling, and she feels a strange chill as the link disconnects and the warmth of Judy's mind retreats from hers. Judy shifts against her but doesn't roll away or wake up, so V closes her eyes and waits for sleep to come for her as well.
She dreams she’s in Arasaka Tower again, but she’s herself this time, running through the atrium, shooting Johnny’s gun, doing that little twirl thing he does with it when he reloads as she picks off the ‘Saka soldiers one by one. She knows she’s there for something important, but she can’t remember what, and the waves and waves of guards keep coming, seemingly neverending.
There's something she needs to find, something she needs to destroy. Someone she needs to save.
And then Smasher’s standing above her, but it’s her chrome arm that’s been separated from her, her gun kicked just out of reach, and she can see a figure lying on the ground nearby and realizes that it’s Johnny, and he’s looking at her too, reaching for her, but then Smasher’s fist connects with her face and everything goes black, and she’s deep underwater somewhere, but it’s not water, she’s in Mikoshi again, in that empty, endless darkness, and she suddenly realizes exactly fucking why Johnny didn’t want to go diving.
V wakes up in a cold sweat, her heart hammering out of her chest as the dream fades. Thankfully, she didn’t scream this time and Judy is still curled up against her, fast asleep. V lies still for as long as she can, just enjoying the feeling of Judy’s naked body pressed against hers as the morning sunlight creeps across the dusty ceiling. But she really needs a fuckin’ cigarette. Or maybe Johnny does. Not much of a difference, anymore, really.
She slides out of bed as quietly as she can manage, fishing her cigarettes out of her coat before pulling on her shorts and tank top but leaving her shoes behind as she pads barefoot out onto the dock. She sits at the end and dangles her feet over the edge and lights a cigarette. It’s still early and she knows she didn’t sleep enough, but she also knows the chance for that has passed.
“Fuckin’ Judy,” Johnny growls, glitching in next to her, but he doesn’t sit, he just stands above her, pacing nervously on the dock. “Chick gets on my nerves.”
“Still?” V asks, exhaling smoke through her nostrils. “Thought we’d laid this to rest.” She takes another drag of her cigarette. “This about me fuckin’ her? Or you still mad we went diving? I’m sorry about that, by the way,” V adds, the words tumbling out of her mouth. “Thought you were just bein’ pissy, didn’t realize it was like… a PTSD Mikoshi thing.”
Johnny scowls and keeps pacing. “That sucked, but no, it’s not that. Don’t care that you fucked her, either, told you that. Was fun for both of us,” he says, cocking an eyebrow at her, but she can feel something else, something darker, underneath it.
“So then, what?” V says, getting increasingly exasperated. “I like Judy, wanna at least keep bein’ her friend if nothing else. So just talk to me, Johnny.”
“She's all over the place,” he huffs. “Refuses to take the door, jumps out a window, then acts all surprised when she gets hurt.”
V catches the tail end of a thought from him, and to her surprise, he’s thinking about… Alt?
“She reminds you of Alt?” V asks, unable to stop herself.
“Oh, for… no!” Johnny blanches, turning to look at her. “You think she reminds me of Alt? You think Judy could ever be close to Alt, to what me and her had?”
V feels her stomach drop at that. “I dunno,” she says. “I felt how much… I know you enjoyed last night. Fuckin’ her, I mean. And I felt you think it just now, comparing the two of ‘em.”
“Christ V, are you getting jealous now?” He starts pacing around the dock again, wringing his hands, and V is reminded of the way he sometimes acts and feels like a caged animal. Which he is, in a sense. Just along for the ride in her body, tangled up in all her bullshit. “You’re the one who said you’d wanna date Judy if I weren’t in your goddamn head, gobblin’ up your gonk brain.”
“And if you weren’t, wouldn’t you be out there trying to fuck half of Night City like you’re always yellin’ at me about? Isn't that your whole deal?”
He stops pacing and crosses his arms, and she thinks she sees something almost like hurt on his face. “Maybe,” he snaps. “But maybe not. Old me woulda, yeah. But…”
“But what?” V prompts, daring him to just fucking say it even though she knows he won’t.
“Let's you and me blow,” he says, but his voice is softer, more conspiratorial. He looks down at V. “Gotta get ready for the parade, anyway. Don't even need to wake her up.”
V scowls at his attempt to divert. “Are you kidding? Not gonna just fuck her and then leave her here,” she argues. “Might be your style, but it’s not mine.”
“Ugh, can't talk to you when you get this… sentimental,” Johnny sneers, avoiding her eyes. “Waste of words. Let’s just drop it so we don't have to argue.”
“So Johnny of you," she hisses at him. "Ghosting the second shit gets complicated. Or uncomfortable.”
“Fuck off," he mutters. "How's that for bein' Johnny?”
But he doesn’t glitch away, and they’re both silent for a second.
“She does remind me of Alt,” Johnny admits suddenly, “But not for the reasons you think.” His voice is low. “It’s ‘cause she’s messin’ with tech that could be fuckin’ scary in the wrong hands, and she’s damn good at it. Only a matter of time before one of her experiments catches some corpo’s attention, and suddenly her little art projects are bein’ used as an interrogation method, or her doll fighter chips are bein’ used to train cyborg armies.”
“Like Soulkiller,” V breathes, and her heart clenches at the thought of a similar fate befalling Judy.
“Alt was smarter, though," Johnny intones. "Knew what her tech was worth. That’s why ‘Saka had to nab her the hard way.”
V shakes her head. “Judy’s no gonk,” she argues. “She’s gotten offers from corps before, always turned ‘em down.”
“At a certain point, they won’t offer anymore. They’ll just take. And hangin’ around you makes her a more likely target.”
V knows Johnny’s not wrong. But she also knows that’s not all of it, that he’s just trying to distract her, and she’s getting sick of it. It’s not Judy, it’s Johnny who’s bein’ all over the fuckin’ place like always, talking around the fucking elephant in the room. They’re about to do something more dangerous than maybe anything she’s ever attempted tonight, and it doesn’t feel like the time to leave things unsaid.
But it doesn’t feel like the time to say them, either. Because what does it matter? What would it change?
“Johnny…” she begins, looking up at him, but she hears the door open behind them and shuts her mouth as Judy steps out of the cottage to join her on the dock. Johnny gives her a long look then glitches away.
Judy’s holdin’ two coffee mugs, and places one down next to V as she sits beside her.
“Mornin'," V says, attempting a smile.
“Here's your coffee. Finally,” Judy jokes, then helps herself to one of V’s cigarettes and lights it, dangling her feet off the dock next to V. V takes the coffee and sips it tentatively. “Were you just talking to your construct… to Johnny again?” Judy asks, not looking at her.
V nods slowly. “Yeah, he’s, uh… he’s worried your projects are gonna catch the attention of the corps,” she tells her.
Judy considers this as she looks out over the water. “I worry about that too,” she says, and laughs sharply. “It’s a big part of why I’ve been thinkin’ about leaving Night City for good. That, and everything that’s happened recently. Guess it just got to me. Was gonna go up to Oregon or something, I dunno.”
“You’re leaving?!” V asks, alarmed.
Judy shakes her head. “No. I mean… I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She exhales a shaky breath, blowing cigarette smoke out across the water. “Look, was that weird for you?” she asks suddenly. “Last night, I mean."
“Because of Johnny?” she asks, and Judy nods. “Yes and no,” V answers honestly, running a hand through her hair. "Long as he's here, everything's a little weird."
Judy nods her head again slowly. “Right,” she says, and V can tell something’s still bothering her. “So…” Judy says finally. “What is this, then? Last night, all of it.” She nervously puffs her cigarette and avoids V’s eyes. “You know what I’m trying to say. What does it mean, like… to you?”
V looks down at her coffee. She’s known it was only a matter of time before she’d have to have this conversation with Judy. Part of her wants to end things definitively, run for the hills, but another part of her is grasping at the hope that Judy's okay with her - that Judy still somehow wants her - exactly the way she is, Johnny mess and all.
“I think it… I mean… I hope this is the beginning of something nice,” she says honestly. She likes Judy, likes being around her, and though she knows she can’t currently be what Judy wants or needs, she knows she doesn’t want the virtu tuner out of her life. “Unless… you see things differently?”
Judy shakes her head. “Ugh, sorry I can be such a gonk sometimes,” she says, sounding relieved, and V puts a hand on her shoulder. "Course I feel the same way."
“But, listen Jude…” V begins, and Judy looks up at her like she’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop. V sighs heavily. “You know… you know shit is a mess for me right now. If I don’t figure out what to do… I won’t be around for much longer… and you’re not wrong, havin’ him in my head does make things more… complicated.” She inhales her cigarette, then blows the smoke out slowly. “But I like you a lot, you know that,” she says, and from Judy’s face it’s clear that maybe she hadn’t known that, and V feels a sudden twisting in her chest.
The fuck are you doing? she thinks.
“I gotta be real, though,” she continues. “I can’t make any promises now. Hell, can’t even say for sure if I’ll be around tomorrow.” She thinks about the fucking parade - about what she’s gotta do tonight - and her stomach clenches.
“Like I said, I was plannin’ to leave Night City,” Judy muses softly. “Even started packing. But now, I think… I think I gotta stay. At least for now.”
“Don’t stay on account of me, Jude,” V manages, her voice barely a whisper.
Judy shakes her head fiercely. “I don’t care if you can’t be my girlfriend, if you can’t be anything to me at all,” she insists. “I care about you, too, and I’m gonna stick around until you figure your shit out. Or… until you don’t,” she finishes, her eyes falling to her lap.
V is touched, but she hates that Judy’s passin’ up a chance at a fresh start for herself, hates that there’s a good chance she’s just gonna be sticking around to watch V slowly die. But she's also secretly glad she’s not about to lose another friend - Judy’s been a good one, and it’s not exactly like V has that many right now.
“Gonna have to make it up to you,” V manages, blinking back the tears that suddenly form in her eyes.
But Judy just pulls her into a tight hug, and they hold each other for awhile without saying anything.
“Gimme your hand, V,” Judy says softly, pulling away and holding out her palm.
“What for?” V asks, confused.
“Don't say anything,” Judy whispers. “Just gimme your hand.”
V does as she’s told and places her hand in Judy’s, and Judy takes her other wrist and presses it against V’s. Judy’s eyes glow blue and suddenly a biometric lock code appears on V’s HUD.
“All set, congrats,” Judy says simply. “Just gave you unlimited access to my pad.”
“Whoa, what?” V sputters. “Askin' me to move in?”
Judy drops her hand and looks suddenly nervous. “I… If it's what you want. Or just drop by when the urge grabs you."
“You sure?” V asks. “Isn’t exactly a small thing, this. And I just told you… I could die tonight, or tomorrow, or if not that then in a couple weeks or months… you’ll just wake up one morning and it’ll be Johnny there and I-”
Judy cuts her off with a kiss. “I like you,” she says firmly. “Wanna see you lots. Way I see it, there isn’t anything else to consider.”
“I… I dunno what to say,” V breathes. “Been awhile since anyone’s done anything like this for me.” Not since Jackie, she thinks, and swallows hard. “Really shows trust.”
Judy smiles and sips her coffee. “And it’s fine if you don’t come around much, either,” she says quickly. “I know you’ve got stuff goin’ on. Not askin’ you to marry me. Just… know my door’s always open, yeah? No matter what happens, you’ve always got somewhere to go.”
V nods and feels her eyes welling up again, and pulls Judy back in for another hug. She rests her head on Judy’s narrow shoulder and closes her eyes to hold in the tears still threatening to spill.
“Thanks, Judy,” she whispers, and Judy hugs her tighter.
She can feel Johnny getting anxious though, and knows she needs to get home and start preparing for tonight. Whatever happens next all depends on whether they pull this off or not. She sighs and pulls away.
“Look, I… I’ve gotta do something tonight. And if you don’t hear from me in a couple days…” she looks down, and Judy catches her hand and holds it. “I just… I’m just glad to have known ya,” she finishes softly.
It's almost noon by the time V gets back to the city. She left Judy at the cottage and rode back alone on her bike, listening to Samurai and trying to shift her focus back into a fine, sharp point. It's time to get back to work, she tells herself as she rides the elevator up to her apartment. No room for mistakes, no more room for distractions today.
But Johnny's waiting for her when she walks in the door, sitting sprawled in her desk chair with his arms crossed and a strange look on his face.
"Think she just heard what she wanted to hear," Johnny says immediately, and V already knows he's still talkin' about Judy.
It's all V can take, and she suddenly explodes at him. "And what the fuck was I supposed to say?" she shouts, throwing her coat on the floor and taking a step towards him. "That I don't wanna see her anymore cause I'd rather stay home and jerk off with my fuckin' engram? Is that what you wanted?"
Johnny stares her down, and she can feel something sharp twist in her chest.
"I want you, V," he says simply.
She stops dead in her tracks and opens her mouth, intending to reply. But instead, she just bursts into tears.
Notes:
Faster updates!!! What did I tell y'all!
Also, I can't be the only one who played this scene and was like... why not keep scrolling during sex???? 😛
Brace yourselves because the next few chapters are a rollercoaster!!!!
Chapter 20: Hell's Blade
Summary:
Johnny and V infiltrate Arasaka's dashi memorial parade and put Takemura's plan into action.
Notes:
This chapter is the first of a three-chapter arc that's gonna be an extra spicy meatball. I'd say that this arc marks about the 1/3 point of this fic, or what I currently have planned for it, anyway.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Johnny isn’t sure what reaction he expected from V, but this definitely is not it. She’s still standin’ there, bawling her goddamn eyes out, and he instinctively leans forward in his chair, unsure what to say or do next.
“V?” he says tentatively.
She looks up at him, her eyes red.
“The fuck am I supposed to do with that?” she chokes.
He shrugs helplessly and looks down at his hands. “Dunno,” he mumbles. “Thought it would be easier if I just came out and said it… thought that was what you wanted.” He frowns and hears her sniffle - he can feel her trying to collect herself. “I’m not good at this stuff.”
“Sure this isn’t just some Stockholm thing?” she teases, but her voice breaks.
Johnny laughs softly. “Who the fuck knows?” he tells her. “Never been stuck in someone’s head before. Also never seen tits as nice as yours before.”
That gets a chuckle out of her. She takes a step towards him and he looks up at her, and neither of them says anything for a moment that stretches into what feels like an eternity.
“Johnny…” she says softly, extending her hand toward him. He reaches to take it without thinking, feeling a static tingle as his hand brushes straight through hers. He sighs and puts his head in his hands.
“It is what it is,” he says simply, and he can feel her nod.
“Guess it is,” she agrees, her voice barely a whisper. “And if things go south tonight… better to have all our cards on the table, I guess.”
He looks up at her then and feels that sharp stabbing feelin’ in his heart, and has to lower his eyes again because the look he sees on her face is just too fuckin’ sad for him to handle right now.
It feels strange to be talking like this, and Johnny doesn’t know where to go from here. There’s nothing else to say, nothing to really do about any of it. He’s a fuckin’ digital ghost, she’s still dying, and that’s the reality of things. He can’t even fuckin’ touch her.
And at the heart of it all, he’s fuckin’ scared. They could die tonight. And if they fail, that also means she’ll die - tomorrow, or the next day, or in a few weeks… months if they’re lucky. He doesn’t deserve her trust, her affection, any of it. Not as long as his very existence is killing her.
Cards on the fuckin’ table, like she said.
“C’mon,” he says softly. “Enough sentimental bullshit for now, we’ve got a parade to crash.”
Johnny leans against the window and smokes a cigarette as V finishes getting ready, donning all black and buckling on her knee pads and gun holster before sliding a knife into her tall combat boots. She quickly eats a burrito from the SCSM, and Johnny can taste how dry and gross it is, but it’ll have to do for now. He feels V’s stomach churning as she forces down the tasteless scop, and he knows it’s not entirely because of the burrito. She’s scared too, he can feel it.
She finishes eating and checks her guns in the armory, then checks them again, fiddling with the mods and fine-tuning the scopes and adding a silencer to her Quasar. He can feel her getting into the zone now as she runs a systems check on her personal ICE, tryna psych herself up, pull her focus together and push away the mess of emotions that the past 24 hours’ve somehow become.
Before leaving, V hesitates in her bathroom then grabs both the omega blockers and Misty’s pseudoendotrizine, stuffin’ ‘em in her pockets along with some combat stims and MaxDocs. Johnny’s confused about the pills at first, but then hears V’s thought clear as day - if they wind up captured or cornered by Arasaka, better to have all their options close at hand. He nods solemnly as she does one final check of her gear, then steps out the door and he glitches away.
V leans her forehead against the glass of the elevator window, lookin’ out at that penthouse she’s so into as the elevator rattles down to the garage. Johnny can feel the tension in her jaw as she kicks off her bike and guns it out of the garage, switching the station to the one that’s always playin’ Kerry’s shit. She weaves her bike through the traffic on the bridge and it’s fuckin’ packed - everyone and their fuckin’ uncle is on their way to go see the parade, seems like.
The streets in Japantown are teeming with people and cars and tourists, and V parks her bike near the elevator to the footbridge again, making sure to leave it pointed towards the street for a quick getaway. She takes deep breaths as they wait for the elevator, running her hand nervously through her hair as the elevator doors slide open. A crowd of tourists crushes in behind her, and V slips to the corner as they’re ferried up to the footbridge. The TV’s playin’ a news segment about the Kang Tao AV again - apparently, Militech and other corps are cracking down on nomad clans as a result. Johnny feels V frown at this, but she pulls her attention back to the task at hand. No time to worry about the nomads now.
The footbridge is equally crowded, and most of the food stalls have been cleared out of the way to make more room for spectators. There’s a festive energy in the air, which only serves to amplify the iciness Johnny can feel in V’s chest.
Takemura’s leanin’ over the railing, looking vaguely ill, but he draws himself up straight and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand when he sees V.
“Wow, Goro, you look like a million eddies,” V teases him.
“I ate what you call a scop-burger,” Takemura dejectedly tells her.
“Tasty, huh?” V says, and Johnny wonders if Goro’s as nervous as they are.
“Ask the people below,” Goro responds, gesturing over the edge of the bridge. He steps away from the railing towards V. “The parade will soon begin.”
He hands V a shard with updated info on the sniper positions, and they go over the plan one more time. The first sniper is lower and nearby, but the second one is in a perch that may require some climbing to reach. And the third’s on another footbridge that overlooks the street, and Hanako’s float. V swallows, and Johnny knows what she’s thinking. This ain’t gonna be easy. There’s drones patrolling, too, and a lone netrunner, like Goro suspected. He’s got a loose fix on the netrunner’s position, but the drones V’ll have to track herself.
Luckily, Goro’s infected shard seems to be working even better than they expected - in addition to having the sniper locations, they’ll be able to listen to all the guards’ comm chatter as well as the CCTV feeds.
“Stay in the shadows,” Goro warns as V slots the shard back out. “If the snipers notice you… bang, no more thief.”
V smiles grimly. “Not too late to trade places,” she teases.
“And what exactly would you say to Hanako-sama?” Goro asks, and Johnny’s unsure if he missed the joke or is playing along. “Hello, my name is V?”
This gets a sharp laugh from V, and Goro’s mouth twitches into a small smile, too.
“Last question,” V says. “If things go to shit… we got a backup plan?”
“What do you think?” Goro says, giving her a long look. “I am accused of betraying Arasaka. Soon I will try to confront the sister of the CEO in person, after leaping to her float and climbing through a window.” He shakes his head and moves closer to V, placing a hand on her shoulder. “There are no backup plans. This one must work.”
“Plan’s fucked beyond all recognition, yet here I am,” V replies, and though she says it with bravado, Johnny can hear - and feel - the fear in her voice.
“I know,” Goro says seriously. “And I thank you for this.”
“Eh, thank me once it works,” V says, and this time she doesn’t try to hide her nerves.
They part with a final nod and handshake, and V moves to get in position as they wait for the show to start.
A flurry of fireworks signifies the beginning of the parade, and V tries her best to blend in with the crowd as she moves through the throngs, glancing up at the massive, colorful holographic koi fish that have begun to swim their way overhead along the parade path. A mixture of real confetti and holographic ticker tape showers the crowd in a glittering downpour, and V reaches her hand upwards, letting the bright fragments tumble between her fingers. Johnny feels a memory bubble up from V’s early childhood of comin’ to parades like this with her mom. And of comin’ alone when she was a little older, to pickpocket unsuspecting tourists. You little thief, he thinks affectionately, and is rewarded with a smile from her.
Beyond the koi escort, Johnny can see the floats starting to move as well - the small Arasaka-logo-emblazoned pagoda style structures that they encountered in the warehouse drifting along between the towering buildings like something out of a dream.
V begins to move through the crowd with more purpose now, carefully examining each face she sees in the flickering glow of the paper lanterns strung across the walkways. Johnny remembers the Arasaka undercover agents planted in the crowd and feels V arrange her face into a rigid smile, as though she’s just there enjoying the parade like any of these other gonks.
She checks her HUD, and according to Goro’s intel, the first sniper’s camped out on the other side of the parade route. She quickly crosses another footbridge, stopping for a moment to gaze up at the floats hovering above before continuing onwards, pushing her way through the crowds of dancing teenagers, screaming children, and tipsy adults. Banners are draped from the bridges and balconies, all ornamented with the Arasaka clover, and on screens around the viewing areas, Hanako herself has already begun speaking, broadcasting her message loud and clear: Arasaka’s enemies are not welcome here.
V climbs a short flight of stairs to reach the higher levels. She’s got a better view of the floats from up here, and Johnny realizes some of the massive koi are actually floats too, not holograms.
The sniper is nearby, and V slips away from the crowd into a small maintenance corridor. She moves silently as she scales a series of ladders, crouching behind an exhaust vent when she spots the sniper. He’s set up on the scaffolding in front of a large billboard, and is on his comm unit with the other soldiers, reporting his observations. As soon as he’s silent, V leans out to get a clear line of sight, then hits ‘im with a full system reset hack and ducks back to wait as the daemon uploads and the man seizes up, losing consciousness.
Safer to kill ‘em, Johnny thinks, but he knows how V works and he’s not gonna start badgerin’ her about that now. He can feel V’s adrenaline spike as she jumps up onto the billboard and quickly hacks the knocked out sniper’s comm to ping at random intervals so his radio silence will be less obvious, then drags his unconscious body behind a nearby stack of crates. Her heart is hammering as she drops from the ad stand and quickly informs Goro via their holo link that the first sniper is down.
After a couple of shaky deep breaths, she hoists herself up the scaffolding behind them and vaults onto another viewing balcony, disappearing into the crowd and trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. She drops her hood down for now - easier to blend in.
Shoulda done something with her hair to make it less distinctive, Johnny thinks. Nothing to be done now, though.
She slinks her way through the crowd, almost tripping over a group of monks seated in a cluster, until she reaches a nearby elevator bank. Her HUD shows the sniper as being a couple levels above them, and Takemura’d mentioned needing to climb. She ducks into the elevator when it arrives and quickly presses the button to shut the door so no one can follow her, but thankfully, most of the people nearby seem engrossed in the parade and no one tries to enter after her. Johnny feels her let out a breath as soon as the doors slide shut.
One down, two to go.
“V, listen to this,” Goro’s voice crackles over the holo, and he patches her in to a phone conversation he’s picking up via their hack.
Johnny recognizes Oda’s voice immediately. ‘Saka fucker’s complainin’ about the parade security, sayin’ they should pull Hanako out ‘cause she’s not safe. Which is worrisome.
But the blood freezes in Johnny's non-existent veins when he hears the voice that answers.
“You questioning Yorinobu's orders? Do your damn job.”
It’s fuckin’ Smasher. Adam fucking Smasher.
Johnny flashes back to that night half a century ago, sprawled on his back on the roof of Arasaka Tower, that ‘borged out fuck standing over him triumphantly as Rogue and the AV fly off into the night, leaving him to die alone with Smasher. He can feel V shaking, and realizes his panic is bleeding over to her.
He glitches in as the elevator doors open, pacing wildly in front of her, unable to contain his rage.
“Fuck that ‘borged out ogre!” he shouts as V steps out onto the walkway.
“Guy who killed you,” she whispers, and he knows she’s relived it almost as many times as he has, at this point.
“Guy?” he spits at her. “Motherfucker’s barely human!”
His fists are clenched, and he realizes V’s are too, but he can’t stop the waves of anger, of hatred, of seething violence from rolling off him. He can see she’s still shaking.
“But hey, know what?” he continues, his voice coming out in sharp growls. “Glad he’s here. Seein’ as I woke up in a world without any Saburo, I’ll have to be satisfied with Smasher.”
I'll kill that fucker, he thinks. With his bare fuckin' hands if he has to. V's hands, he reminds himself.
“You’ll have to be?” V snaps. “You’ve got fuck all to lose, it’s my life on the line here.”
Mine too, he thinks, but he forces himself to slow down, unclench his fists.
“All right, fine,” he says, turning to face her. “We. Your finger on the fuckin' trigger, I guess. Still both our lives at stake, though.”
V holds his gaze and slowly nods, her jaw set and her face hardened with anger that mirrors his own. She gets it, he knows she does. She wasn’t there, but she still remembers. And she’s died herself, knows how it fuckin’ feels. He’s felt it from her before - she wishes she coulda flatlined Dex herself.
But they need to deal with the snipers first.
He glitches away as she heads towards a nearby ladder that Goro tells her over the holo leads up to a maintenance area she can use to get to the next sniper.
He can feel her back tense as she climbs up the long ladder, knowing she’s an easy target now if one of the remaining snipers were to spot her. They’re met with a pair of loosely hanging dilapidated catwalks extending across a narrow section of the parade route, the first one cordoned off and ripped in half, the second lookin’ like it’s about to join its friend at any moment.
“Catwalk don't look too stable,” Johnny warns her, glitching in next to her and frowning. “Sure Takemura didn't plan a little whoopsy-daisy for ya?”
“Shut the fuck up, Johnny,” V snaps as she steps out onto the intact one, and it almost immediately falls away beneath her. She barely manages to grab onto the ledge in time and scramble back up to safety, her eyes wide and her heart hammering wildly.
“Fuck!” she shouts, and he can feel how shaken she is. “Almost fuckin’ fell!”
“When the fuck are you gonna start listening to me?” Johnny shouts back. “I’m tryna keep us both alive, not fuck with you.” He shakes his head furiously. “Fuckin’ christ, V.”
She looks at him and nods. “Yeah,” she says. “I know.”
He knows they’re not really mad at each other, just keyed up on adrenaline and scared as shit. She reaches into her pocket for one of her combat stims and inhales a puff and Johnny feels the effects a second later as her head clears and her focus sharpens.
They can’t afford to make any mistakes.
A lone metal bar now extends across the gap, and V meets Johnny’s eyes before setting off across it, balancing herself carefully on the thick treads of her boots. There’s a holographic dragon swimming through the street underneath them; V makes the mistake of glancing down, and Johnny feels her heart rate spike. But she collects herself and quickly crosses the rest of the way, not allowing herself to breathe until she’s back on solid footing.
That was close. Too close.
They can still hear Hanako prattling on about Arasaka honor, messages for their enemies, all that jazz. Not even attemptin’ to be subtle, Johnny observes darkly. V drops down from the platform and opens a hatch on the floor leading to another maintenance shaft, following the path Takemura’s laid out for her. She steps out of the corridor and emerges onto what must be fire escape scaffolding running up the sides of one of the residential buildings that line the street, and she’s completely exposed now.
“Carefully,” Goro warns her over the holo. “You must not draw attention. And don’t rush… I need you alive, not a corpse below.”
There are a couple of wyvern drones hovering nearby, and V quickly hacks their optics as she drops down to the level below her, landing on an air duct with a loud bang that's thankfully masked by the blare of the parade music and the roar of the crowd. She jumps back to the fire scaffolding and uses it to climb down, deliberately taking a safer route so as not to draw any eyes. She knocks out the optics of another drone that gets too close, pulling her hood up over her head again. Her Kiroshis’ll scramble her face from any cameras that see her, but she’s not taking any chances.
“Soldier. Industrialist. Visionary. My father,” Hanako’s voice booms from her float. “These words are not for his friends, his family, his dear associates. They are for his enemies.”
Johnny wishes Saburo were alive so he could strangle that old fuck all over again.
“It is no coincidence that I utter these words, here in this city,” Hanako continues. “It was here in this city, fifty years ago, that his enemies showed their true colors.”
Johnny feels a chill go up V’s spine at those words, and it feels fuckin’ strange to be directly addressed by her like this. Obviously, Hanako’s got no way of knowing the terrorist she’s talkin’ about is here, is listening, but it makes V’s heart beat faster nonetheless.
“A cowardly act of terrorism that consumed thousands of lives. The lives of Arasaka Corporation employees. The lives of Night Citizens. The life of… my brother. Arasaka Tower crumbled.”
“Really layin’ it on thick, huh,” V mutters under her breath as she reaches the bottom of the scaffolding and steps onto a narrow concrete ledge. Below her, she can see a soldier guarding a lone door, and she aims a quickhack at him and crouches in the shadows while it takes effect.
“And yet its spire still towers over the rooftops and skyscrapers, more powerful than ever before,” Hanako finishes.
V jumps the rest of the way down as the guard collapses, and it’s a hard landing. She brushes herself off shakily and stands, using her scanner to ping the network and check for enemies beyond the door. Hanako’s float is nearing Goro’s position now, and she doesn’t have much time left.
The sniper’s holed up in an empty office area. As V steps through the door, her scanner alerts her of a couple of trip mines that she deactivates before silently moving in a low crouch towards the room the sniper’s in. He’s at the window with his back to her, and she takes him out with the same system reset hack she used on the last one, deactivating his comm in the same way too. She doesn’t bother to hide the body, though; there’s not enough time and they have to keep moving.
“What do soldiers say? Target down?” she jokes, attempting to lighten the mood, but her voice quavers.
She moves out past that room, into the office lobby, and almost steps straight into another laser mine.
“Watch out, V!” Johnny yells, just in time, and she jumps backwards through the door and manages to upload a hack to disarm it right before it activates.
Too close.
He feels her take another deep, steadying breath, then moves as quietly as she can towards the stairs. He can hear more guards above them, and V stays low as she crawls up the stairs and their instinct is right - there’s another ‘Saka soldier positioned at the top of the landing. She hits him with a contagion daemon before he sees her, and he clutches his head and drops like a rock as it takes effect, her scanner tracking the daemon as it leaps to another nearby guard Johnny hadn’t yet spotted.
Goro pings her on the holo again, patching them into another call from Oda.
“We have to announce that public safety has been compromised! She must be extracted! At once!” Oda is yelling.
Shit.
“Arasaka is fully capable of protecting its principals,” Smasher’s voice answers, and Johnny feels another spear of rage shoot through him.
“They know something,” Goro whispers. “Perhaps much. We must hurry.”
No fuckin’ shit, Johnny thinks, and V grimaces and continues up the stairs. She’s leavin’ a trail of bodies behind her at this point, and it's only a matter of time before all of Arasaka's on their tail. Johnny can see Hanako’s float passing slowly by through the window outside, and V’s heart is pounding so loud he can feel it in their ears.
She stays down, keeping below the windows, and hurries through a long corridor that leads back out to another ledge overlooking the parade. There’s a guard perched out here too, and she takes him out with another quickhack.
‘Saka really needs to up their ICE, Johnny thinks smugly.
“No one tell ‘em that,” V murmurs. She can see the covered footbridge that the third sniper is on a little further along the parade route and about a hundred feet above them, but she’s not sure how to get to it. There’s another covered footbridge directly below them, and Goro suggests using the top of that to get across and then climb up.
“Keep your head low,” Goro warns her. “Unless you intend to get cooked by the float jets.”
The floats are passing dangerously close over the bridge, but it seems like their only option.
“Here goes nothin’,” V says quietly, and clambers down onto the narrow bridge just as Hanako’s float passes less than twenty feet overhead. Johnny can feel the heat from the jets, and V ducks and uses the pipes that run along the top of the bridge for cover, moving as fast as she can in that position. Despite the threat of the jets, Johnny’s glad the float is directly above them, otherwise the remaining sniper’d have a clear line of sight.
As soon as the float passes, she sprints the rest of the way across and dives into a metal stairwell that runs up the side of the building.
“Your path is clear,” Goro tells her, and V doesn’t hesitate as she runs up the creaky stairs, taking them two at a time and praying the sniper can’t see her.
But Goro gives her a soft warning when she reaches the landing at the top, and Johnny spots them, too - there’s two guards on the walkway and they’ve seen V. She doesn’t have time to queue up a quickhack, so she pulls out her gun and fires it twice in quick succession, the soft pops of the silencer vanishing into the din of the crowd and the fireworks. She hits the first one on the forehead, knocking him out cold, but misses the second one and he dives toward her, rifle cocked, already yelling into his comm.
He’s too close now, so V pulls the knife out of her boot as she rolls to get behind him, then leaps to her feet and grabs him with her chrome arm, drawing the knife across his throat. He gurgles and spurts blood all over the sleeve of her coat as she gently sets him on the ground.
Nothing to be done about it now.
There’s an elevator behind them that she takes up to a construction area, and at Goro’s direction uses the scaffolding to scale the side of the building until she’s level with the covered footbridge that houses the third and final sniper. There’s an ad stand right outside one of the windows, and after taking a deep breath, she leaps to it and crouches underneath the window. The sniper’s a couple windows down, and from here she can see him enough to hit him with a reset, and he falls to the floor with a quiet thud.
“Welp, that’s all of them,” she says under her breath, then vaults through the window and takes stock of her surroundings. She’s breathing heavily now, both from the adrenaline and from all that climbing. She wipes the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, her teeth chattering slightly.
“One problem remains,” Takemura reminds her. “The netrunner. She has taken control of all the networks. I have her location. You must deal with her or we cannot access the float.”
“Got it,” V tells him and disarms the laser mines that line the bridge as she carefully picks her way across. A drone suddenly appears in the window, zeroing in on her with its targeting systems. She short circuits it with a hack, ducking to avoid the debris that shoots in the window as it explodes.
She’s getting tired and getting sloppy, Johnny realizes, and he can feel that she’s fuckin’ terrified. They’re in too deep now, and the only way out is through.
The doors at the end of the footbridge lead to another empty office plaza with tall, wide windows letting in the eerie blue and orange glow from the parade floats.
Goro steers her towards an elevator at the end of the lobby, and she’s trembling violently as she takes it down. From the window of the elevator, Johnny can see Hanako’s float directly underneath them, and her soft voice filters through the elevator walls as she begins to sing.
The elevator doors open onto a small balcony, and the haunting melody fills the air around them. V shivers. Behind Hanako’s float, an enormous gold and black dragon snaps its head and roars holographic fire in a broad stream above the crowd.
They can see Hanako now, standing alone on the top deck of the float, eyes closed as she sings. Johnny can’t see Oda, but he knows he must be down there somewhere. V rests her elbows on the railing and uses her scanner to zoom in on Hanako, and she looks so small from here, so human, that it suddenly seems strange that they’re going to all this trouble just to get to her.
As soon as V steps away from the railing, a Relic malfunction hits her and she doubles over.
“Shit!” she chokes, and the pain in her voice, the pain that stabs straight through to him, is a bitter reminder for Johnny of exactly what's at stake here. V's fuckin' life.
He thinks back to their conversation earlier as she coughs more blood onto her already bloodied sleeve. Part of him’s been aware of it for a while now, he realizes. Aware of exactly how hard he’s fuckin’ falling for this little merc-thief. But there’s still no point in tellin’ her that, he thinks. Not when he just doesn’t see a way they’re both makin’ it outta this alive.
Her vision is glitching blue, and Hanako’s voice floats around them, echoing strangely as V staggers into the foyer of the construction site where the netrunner is holed up.
The runner’s seated alone in a large atrium, hunched cross-legged on the floor beneath a large bank of monitors that face the windows, the cable snaking from her neck back towards the tower of humming machinery. There are candles surrounding her and strange markings on the walls, and Johnny wonders if ‘Saka’s recruitin’ straight from the Voodoo Boys’ ranks now.
V creeps up silently behind the netrunner and places one hand around the woman’s head and another hand on the jack, yanking it out roughly in one sharp motion.
The woman collapses to the ground, but at that exact moment, a masked figure flies at her from above, glowing orange mantis blades unfurled and slashing at her.
“Fuck!” V screams, dropping the woman and rolling out of the way. The blades narrowly miss her.
Way too fuckin’ close.
“Oda!” Goro shouts over the holo.
V leaps to her feet and drops into a fighting stance, drawing her revolver while Oda lifts his blades and begins to rush at her again.
“I warned you,” he spits as he runs towards her. “You should have quit and left the city!”
V ducks out of the path of his charge, already firing her revolver, but the bullets ricochet off his armor.
“Course you’re fuckin’ here,” she snaps back, launching a quickhack at his head that his personal ICE easily neutralizes.
“You leave me no choice!” Oda shouts. “Takemura. Where is he?!”
“Fuck you!” V screams, unloading a full clip at him. One hits his arm, and he staggers backwards but quickly recovers. He spits on the floor and charges her again.
“Fearful to face his apprentice?!” Oda taunts, presumably for Goro's ears as V rolls out of the way again, firing as she does so. This time her shot hits him in the throat, sending a short circuiting shock through his cyberware on impact. He drops onto his back, gasping for breath.
Mighta fuckin’ collapsed his trachea, Johnny thinks hopefully as V takes a cautious step towards the fallen bodyguard. The metal cyberware on his neck is bent and twisted where the bullet hit him at point blank range, and it's sparking slightly.
“You... will not touch her... will not let you!” he gasps, clutching at his throat, his mantis blades retracted.
“V! What is your status?” Goro shouts through the holo.
“I… I managed to…” she pants, trying to catch her breath, not taking her eyes off Oda writhing weakly on the ground.
“Oda… is he dead?” Goro asks slowly.
V leans over him, and Oda’s barely hangin’ on to consciousness. She reaches for his face and deactivates the holomask he’s wearing, and he looks up at her, his cybernetic eyes wide as he struggles for breath.
“He’s breathin’,'' she tells Goro. “For now.”
Goro is silent for a moment. “Please, V,” he begs. “Show him mercy.”
“Fuck that,” Johnny says, glitching in to stand over Oda as well, arms crossed. He’s sick of playin’ nice with these fucks. “Better not get this fuckin’ soft when we find Smasher,” he warns her, and she shoots him a dark look.
“You and your fuckin’ sick sense of honor,” V says as she turns back to Oda, kicking him sharply in the ribs. He groans and curls in on himself. “Today’s your lucky day, though. Can thank your old choom, Goro.”
“It is I who thank you, V,” Goro says softly in their ear, and Johnny rolls his eyes. He still can’t decide if V’s reluctance to kill is the thing he hates or admires the most about her.
There’s only one thing left for them to do now, and then it’s all in Goro’s hands. Johnny's still hopin' for a chance at Smasher, but first they need to do what they came here for.
V steps away from Oda and crosses over to the bank of computers, then jacks her personal link into the terminal. Her vision goes dark as she searches through the system until she finds what she’s looking for - the camera feed from inside Hanako’s float.
And there’s Hanako herself, sashaying down the stairs and coming to sit at the desk directly across from the feed V’s tapped into. The effect is unsettling, even though the heiress has no way of knowing who’s watching. V disarms the float’s security systems, all the while not taking her eyes off Hanako.
“What is she doing?” Goro asks.
“Trying to call someone, I think,” V guesses as Hanako presses a button on her holo.
“I was alerted of a threat,” Hanako says quickly in Japanese, but V’s Kiroshis are able to translate for them in near real time. Johnny marvels at how strange it feels - this kinda tech wasn’t nearly as good back in his day. Part of his brain is still aware that he can’t actually understand Hanako, but somehow he also just… knows what she’s saying.
“Oda is not answering,” Hanako continues to the listener on the other end. “Something isn’t right.”
“If we cancel the celebrations, it will be taken as a sign of weakness,” a voice answers from the other end, and V and Johnny both immediately recognize it as Yorinobu.
“Weakness?” Hanako counters. “Whose? Yours?”
“Ours,” comes the answer.
“I only agreed to this to honor the memory of our father,” Hanako insists. “But now I’ve started to feel like your puppet.”
“Everyone has their role to play in this spectacle,” Yorinobu says firmly. “Michiko has no problem with that.”
Michiko… Saburo’s granddaughter, if Johnny’s rememberin’ correctly. Hanako and Yorinobu’s niece. Fuckin’ bloodsucker louses, all of ‘em.
“But I understand,” Yorinobu continues. “One word from you and we can end this, it can all be over. Your safety is most important to me.”
He’s fuckin’ manipulating her, Johnny thinks, and he feels V’s silent agreement. What’s his fucking game?
Hanako seems to consider this. “Brother?” she says finally. “We must finish it.”
“Thank you, Hanako,” Yorinobu says, his voice dripping with what Johnny can absolutely tell is false warmth. “It would have been a shame not to finish so heartwarming a ceremony.”
They hear a beep as the call disconnects. This is their chance.
“Goro?” V says softly. “All systems jammed. It’s now or never.”
She holds her breath and they wait.
Notes:
I always feel kinda lame when the chapter is just a lot of summarizing the game, but I feel like this scene builds important tension for the next two chapters. And I really wanted to write Johnny's POV of it. I had fun writing it so I hope it's still a fun read!
And more importantly I think we all know what's coming next!
Chapter 21: Black Dog
Summary:
V and Johnny escape from the parade after Goro makes a bold move. After things go south, Johnny takes V somewhere important to him.
Notes:
This one's a long one too!!! And don't worry we're uhhhh not done with the Pistis Sophia yet
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V's still holding her breath, eyes fixed on the video feed, when Goro emerges from underneath the staircase and quietly approaches Hanako, who's seated facing away from him.
“Hanako-sama,” he says softly.
“It’s you!” Hanako startles, jumping to her feet and taking a step backwards, away from Takemura, who is approaching her with his hands spread wide to show he is unarmed.
“Please forgive me, Hanako-sama,” Takemura begs, speaking rapidly in Japanese, much more quickly than V’s ever heard him speak before. She’s used to his stilted, heavily accented English. “I only ask that you listen to me. Your father-”
“How dare you speak of him?!” Hanako snaps, cutting Goro off. Her voice is edged with panic, alarm.
This isn’t going well.
“This is the last thing I can do for him,” Goro says quickly. “Reveal to you the truth about his death.”
They face each other, both of their bodies tensed, and Goro reaches for something in his coat. “Hanako-sama, please," he begs. "Don’t make me do this."
Hanako bolts for the door, but Goro whips out a small, weird-lookin' pistol device and shoots her with it. She collapses, and Goro catches her in his arms, cradling her gently before she can hit the floor. The whole interaction has only lasted a few seconds.
Goro turns and looks straight into the camera.
“V! Run!” he says to her in English, and V doesn’t have to be fuckin’ told twice.
“Shit!” V yells as she jacks out of the terminal. “Shit! Shit!”
“He fuckin’ shot her?!” Johnny growls, the shock clear in his voice and face as he paces nervously behind her like a tightly coiled spring. “We gotta delta the fuck outta here!”
“Whatever he did, now we’re really fucked!” V agrees, already moving towards the exit.
“Knew we couldn’t trust him!” Johnny glitches into the doorway as she sprints through it. “What happened to keepin’ him on his leash?!”
V runs past him and darts outside onto a metal grated landing, and two octant drones are waiting for her there. She short circuits them both and keeps running, ducking away from the rain of debris as they each burst into small fireballs mere yards above her head. She crosses the catwalk to another landing and tries the door there, but it’s locked. She casts her eyes around for an alternate route, and there’s a narrow metal ledge nearby that she slides along, pressing her body against the building, until she’s positioned over an air duct she uses to jump down to the pedestrian footbridge where revelers are now milling about in confusion. Some of them are indignant, others fearful.
Spectators are leaving the parade in droves now, too, many of them running. Word musta gotten out that shit’s goin’ down, V thinks as she pulls up her hood and attempts to disappear into the crowd. She slides between the press of bodies until she reaches the corridor to the elevator she took when she first got here.
She steps into the first one that arrives and hurls herself in, pressing the button for street level. A crush of tourists follows close behind her, all attempting to leave as well. She welcomes the cover this time. Her heart is hammering as the elevator makes its way down at an excruciatingly slow crawl, and she can feel Johnny’s boiling fear underneath her own.
She half expects a ‘Saka squadron to be waitin’ for her when the doors slide open, but instead her holo rings and it’s fuckin’ Goro.
“V, are you secure?” his worried voice says when she answers.
“You lost your fuckin’ mind?!” she shouts back, already sprinting towards her bike.
“There is no time to explain,” Goro says quickly. “We must meet.”
“Where are you?” she demands, and he flicks her the coordinates.
“Room 303. Knock four times,” he says, then hangs up.
There’s a flock of drones sweeping the streets, hovering above her like an ominous swarm of bees as she swings her leg over her bike and kicks it into gear, roaring off into the night.
She rides through the darkened streets, escaping the parade crowds and heading farther south, following the waterfront almost all the way to Charter Hill. She hasn’t spotted a tail, but just to be sure, she makes a few intentional wrong turns until she’s satisfied she hasn’t been followed.
V can feel the effects of the combat stim wearing off and the inevitable adrenaline crash already creeping in as she screeches her bike to a stop in front of the address Takemura gave her.
She enters the dilapidated apartment building and walks quickly through the dingy hallways and up the stairs until she reaches room 303.
"Our factory-reset ronin, now hounded by every single 'Saka soldier in Night City for kidnapping Saburo Arasaka's daughter," Johnny grumbles as she raises her fist to the door. "Kudos to him, I couldn't've fucked this plan up better myself." He shakes his head. "Just remember to knock four times. His head, preferably, against a fuckin' table."
V knocks four times, and after a brief pause, the door slides open.
“Come inside, quick,” Goro says, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her through the door, hastily closing it behind her. “I feared they had caught you,” he says solemnly, keeping his hand on her shoulder as he appraises her.
She yanks her arm away. “Now gonna tell me what the fuck you were thinkin’?!” she snaps at him.
“I used a sedative,” he explains as though that somehow makes complete sense. “She tried to enable her tracker.” He looks over V’s shoulder and she follows his gaze, suddenly realizing Hanako herself is seated alone at a small table underneath the lone window. “I had no choice.”
Another malfunction glitches V’s vision and she feels a sharp pain pulsating through her skull.
“I offered her some tea,” Goro adds.
“You kidnap Hanako Arasaka and offer her a cup of fuckin’ tea?” V asks incredulously, shaking her head to clear the glitching.
“Yes,” Goro says simply. “She respectfully declined.” He clasps his hands together and looks at V imploringly. “Tell her the truth about Yorinobu, no embellishment. And state your terms clearly. Perhaps to you, she will listen.”
V nods and slowly approaches Hanako, who turns her head to avoid meeting V’s eyes.
“Hanako-sama,” Goro says to her in Japanese. “This is the woman I spoke of. Please, listen to what she has to say.”
V sits at the table across from her and studies the woman. She’s gotta be at least 80, but doesn’t look a day over 30. Whatever she’s done to preserve her youth is beyond even what V’s seen on people like Rogue. She’s still wearing her parade clothes; her dress alone could probably pay off all V’s debts and then some. Not to mention her jewelry, or the gold cyberware snaking down her arms and encasing her fingertips.
“I was there that night at Konpeki Plaza,” V begins, and Hanako still won’t fuckin’ look at her. “I saw your father die.” Behind the heiress, Johnny appears perched on a countertop, boring a hole through V with his eyes. She swallows, then continues. “He wasn’t poisoned,” she tells Hanako. “That’s a lie your brother made up and spread. Yorinobu is the murderer.”
Hanako finally looks at her then, and V holds her gaze, trying to keep her face cool and composed.
“You must be mad to think I will listen to such nonsense,” she says in perfect English.
Thinks she’s too fuckin’ high and mighty to listen to me, V realizes.
“Oh, I see,” V snarls, her voice dripping with malice. “My word means shit to you, huh? Cause I’m just some petty street merc, a two-bit thief?”
“Hanako-sama, I apologize on her behalf-” Goro begins, but V cuts him off.
“Maybe I am just a two-bit thief,” she says to Hanako, feeling Johnny and Goro's eyes on her. “But I’m the two-bit thief who stole that fuckin’ Relic off you. Slotted it in, took a bullet to the head, died.”
That seems to get Hanako’s attention, and her lips part slightly. “You… died?” she asks, her dark eyes widening.
“Sure fuckin’ did,” V spits. “And now I’ve got Johnny fuckin’ Silverhand stuck in my head, and I’m gonna die again if I don’t figure out a way to get him out. So I’ve got exactly nothing to lose. But you… you got lots.”
What she says seems to land, because Hanako lowers her head to stare at her gilded hands.
“Hanako-sama,” Goro prompts, and V bristles at how respectfully he still addresses her, like she’s his fuckin’ queen. “V is living proof of the terrible crime your brother committed! We can confirm every word she speaks if only you will help her with the Relic.”
Hanako looks down and away from him.
“Hanako-sama…” he pleads.
Goro's face is desperate now. V wracks her mind for something else she can possibly say. If Hanako won’t listen, this whole gonk plan’s a fuckin’ bust, and now they’ve got all of Arasaka after ‘em for kidnapping their fucking princess.
She hears the sound of footsteps in the hallway, and Goro hears it at the same time, his head whipping up towards it. It’s a lot of footsteps.
Fuck.
“Check the door,” Goro whispers. “I will watch her.”
V nods and cautiously approaches the door, drawing her revolver as she does so.
“Got a bad feelin’ about this,” Johnny mutters behind her, and she can feel all the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.
She opens the hallway door, ducking behind the frame for cover, but there’s no one there. She leans out and looks down the flickering, fluorescent-lit corridor, but it’s completely empty.
Behind her, Goro suddenly lets out a strangled yell and V turns and dives to the ground just as a drone outside begins unloading its automated turret through the windows at them.
Holy shit, V thinks as she rolls to avoid the chunks of ceiling that break off and rain down on her as shells explode all around them. They coulda fuckin’ killed Hanako, too.
These are Yorinobu’s men, she realizes almost as quickly, just as a flashbang grenade flies through the window and she throws her arm over her face a millisecond too late.
When her vision clears, there’s a squad of ‘Saka elites pouring through the broken window and a mech bursting straight through the fucking wall, already opening fire.
As if on cue, the floor in the center of the room collapses, and V tumbles down to the level below, landing hard on her back. She feels the wind get knocked out of her as she briefly loses consciousness.
Johnny’s crouched over her when she comes to, looking scared as all hell.
“We gotta get the fuck outta here!” he says as she opens her eyes. Her vision’s glitching red and blue and black, and she can still hear gunfire and explosions around them. She has no idea what happened to Goro and Hanako.
Johnny’s gesturing at her to stand, and she pulls herself up into a sitting position. Her entire body is bruised and battered from her fall, but she knows she has to move.
“Can’t leave Takemura behind,” she mumbles as her vision goes dark again.
“Forget him, guy’s toast!” Johnny shouts, still gesticulating wildly at her. “Unless you wanna wind up like him!” He tries to grab at her arm, but obviously his hand just passes straight through her. Johnny looks over his shoulder, then back down at V as she struggles to stand. He backs away from her and starts jogging toward the exit, leading the way for her.
V falls forward onto her hands and knees, and Johnny runs back over to her. “C’mon!” he says, and she can hear the terror in his voice.
But V’s got other ideas. ‘Saka gonk or not, Goro’s been true to his word thus far, and she’s not leaving him here to die if she can help it. And if he gets captured, things could get even worse for them.
She staggers to her feet and sets off down the hallway. Johnny growls in frustration, but has no real say in the matter.
“Keep low and eyes three-sixty! They’re in the hallway!” he shouts at her as she pushes past him, feeling a static tingle when her shoulder passes through his. She starts running back toward the stairwell.
Johnny’s not wrong, the hallway’s full of Arasaka soldiers, and she unleashes a flurry of contagion daemons at them, hoping their ICE isn’t as beefed up as Oda’s. To her relief, they start dropping, and V sprints for the stairs. The hallway’s on fire, the whole building is on fire, and V hopes she’s not too late.
“The fuck you doin’?” Johnny shouts as she races up the stairs. “You lost it? He’s beyond any sort of help!”
A flashlight passes over her as she exits the stairwell, and she ducks as a barrage of gunfire sprays above her head.
The hall in front of her explodes as one of the soldiers lobs a grenade at her, but V keeps running through the smoke, using her scanner to find the silhouettes of the guards. She hits ‘em back with more quickhacks and doesn’t slow down to see if they work this time. But the screams and grunts behind her sound promising, and no one’s firing at her anymore.
She bursts back into the apartment to find Goro cornered but holding his own, crouched behind the kitchenette and exchanging fire with a cluster of soldiers. Her head is throbbing and she can feel her deck starting to overheat, but she tosses out another set of hacks at ‘em, hoping her overclocked system will hold out even though she knows she’s not giving it enough time to cool down between attacks.
“You should not have returned!” Goro exclaims in alarm when he sees V. “You will only die here with me!”
“Thank me later!” V yells back, grabbing his arm and yanking him out after her. He unloads an assault rifle he presumably took off one of the fallen guards as another squad bursts in the door, then leaps down through the hole in the floor. V follows and they duck through another jagged opening that’s been blasted through the wall to their left, racing back for the exit. The air is thick with smoke and flames, and V coughs and chokes as they run. They’re under heavy fire, but at least the low visibility is covering their escape. V throws her entire body against the door when they reach it, and Goro tumbles after her into the street.
The cool night air is a welcome relief, but V doesn’t have any time to enjoy it before another malfunction hits, a worse one this time, and she falls to her hands and knees, coughing violently.
“Oh shit,” she gasps, clawing at the pavement.
Goro runs back to her and helps her to her feet as she stumbles toward her bike. “We must go different ways!” Goro shouts over the gunfire still echoing from inside the building. “Alone we have a better chance!”
V nods at him, already swinging her leg over her bike as Goro takes off running down the street. V guns her bike away from the burning building, accelerating as fast as she can.
"We've gotta get out of the city, lay low for a day or two," Johnny says, glitching in on the motorcycle behind her. V startles - he’s never done this before, has always left her alone on her bike. She can feel that weird prickly static feeling on her back where his body would be touching hers. It’s not a pleasant feeling, but it’s strangely comforting right now, havin' him there.
She thinks about calling Panam, goin' to the nomad camp, but the Aldecaldos've got enough corpo heat on them already as it is, between the Kang Tao stunt and their Militech panzer heist.
There’s only one place she can think of off the top of her head, so she gets on the freeway and heads there.
The sun is starting to rise as she passes through the canyons that connect the city to the Badlands. She doesn’t slow down, even when she’s safely past the city limits, until she sees the flickering, crumbling sign for the Sunset Motel.
She pays for a room with one bed this time. It's filthy and disgusting, but they're not here for luxury or even comfort. V strips off her bloody coat and collapses onto the bed, her head still spinning.
"Should keep watch for a while, make sure we weren't followed," Johnny mutters, pacing by the window.
V knows he's probably right, but she hardly slept the previous night - the night she spent with Judy that already feels like a thousand fucking years ago - and she can barely keep her eyes open now.
"Johnny…" she manages, struggling to stay awake.
He looks down at her on the bed, and his face softens.
"Yeah," he agrees. "Get some rest."
V doesn't have to be told twice, and feels her eyes drop shut.
Her dreams are a jumbled mess, a muddle of giant shimmering koi fish and brilliant glowing dragons roaring flames at her as she scales the sides of buildings.
Johnny’s sitting on the table by the window when she wakes up, one foot propped on the chair, watching her with a strange expression on his face.
“Think they make these motels especially for royal fuck-ups like us?” he says as she sits up, rubbing her eyes groggily. “AC's busted, dirty needles under the mattress, shitter's clogged…”
V’s body feels like one giant fucking bruise, and she groans as she swings her feet over the edge of the bed.
“No, for real,” Johnny rants. “Who fuckin' comes here to sleep? We're a couple miles outside Night City. Someone leavin' town just keeps driving. Somebody goin' there sleeps in the damn city. What’s the fuckin’ point of a motel in the middle of nowhere? I'll tell you who sleeps here. Fuckin' losers, that's who.”
“Yep, just two fuckin’ losers,” V says darkly, shaking her head. “Fuck. We’re truly fucked now, huh?”
“Mhm,” Johnny agrees. “See? Get too cozy with the corps, this is what happens.”
“You agreed to Goro’s plan, too,” she reminds him.
“Thought we were just steppin’ in shit,” he says, shaking his head. “Turns out we fell into a fuckin’ cesspit.” He looks straight into V’s eyes. “Anyone knocks, blast the fuckin’ door. No warning.”
V nods and reaches for her revolver. It’s just past sunset, which means she slept for almost 12 fucking hours, and her head feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton. If a bunch of ‘Saka guards were coming for them, they’d probably be here already… but Johnny’s right, they shouldn’t take any chances.
“What if it’s Goro?” she asks.
“Who’re you kidding?” Johnny grumbles. “Been twenty-four hours since we split up. Complete radio silence. Rest in fuckin’ peace, bastard.”
He leans back and peers out the window, and V wonders if there’s any way he can actually see stuff out there that she can’t. She’s never thought to ask, always just assumed he can only really see what she sees, but she realizes she’s got no fuckin’ clue how his engram projection even works in the first place. He can see her, even when she’s not lookin’ in a mirror, so maybe his eyes work like a holocam?
“Goro’s a good fighter,” V argues. “Saw him yourself. He’ll pull through.”
“Doesn’t matter how good you are in Night City,” Johnny mutters, his voice dark. “On your own, you’re fucked.”
“Good thing I’m never on my own, then,” V retorts softly.
Johnny raises his eyebrows, but stops whatever he’s about to say when they hear the sound of car tires outside.
“Hear that?” he asks.
V nods.
“At this hour? In this place?” Johnny sounds scared, and V cocks her revolver. He leans back towards the window. “Fuck,” he mutters. “Just one? Finger on the trig, V.”
They wait there in the darkness, V's heart thumping in her ears.
They hear footsteps outside, followed by a knock on the door. Johnny stiffens. “Not a word,” he whispers to her.
“I have a message for V,” an unfamiliar female voice says through the door.
V looks at Johnny, and his eyes are wide, frightened.
“Don't touch that door,” Johnny warns.
“I know you're in there!” the voice says.
If it was a squad coming to kill us, they wouldn’t have bothered to knock, V thinks.
“Who's there?” she calls through the door, and Johnny shakes his head. There’s no answer, so she asks again, louder this time.
“Want the whole motel to hear, or will you let me in?” the voice responds, sounding irritated but not afraid.
V looks at Johnny. She can’t fully make out his expression in the dark room, but he nods slightly.
“I'm armed,” V warns. “Don't try anything.”
She crosses to the door and opens it, and on the other side is a very ordinary-looking young woman. She’s wearing a short dress and smoking a cigarette, and V notices doll cyberware creeping up her arms and legs.
“Finally,” the stranger huffs, stepping through the door. She wrinkles her nose as she surveys the room. “Ugh! What’s that on the wall?” She points to a dark splatter above the bed. “Is that blood?”
“Yeah,” V snarls, closing the door behind them. “Knocked the last star off this dump.”
The strange doll pulls out a chair for herself, the one Johnny had his foot on just a moment ago, and lowers herself into it with a sigh. Johnny’s in the corner now, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, still rippling with nervous energy.
“So? You were saying? Got a message?” V demands, not lowering her revolver.
“Sittin' right here!” the stranger says as though she’s just stopped by for a casual visit. She sighs and puts out her cigarette in the ashtray. “It'll start soon.”
“What'll start?”
The doll’s eyes suddenly glow orange, and her head drops forward for a moment.
“It's a proxy,” Johnny says, and V suddenly understands. Some doll chips can also be used to let a third party temporarily take over the doll remotely. She’s never seen it in action before. She sits in the chair opposite the doll, not taking her eyes off her.
The doll clears her throat, then lifts her head to look at V. Her whole body language has shifted now; instead of a casual demeanor, she moves with a trained grace as she sits up straight and folds her hands on the table in front of her.
“I must make one thing clear,” the doll says, and V has an inkling of who she’s really talking to now. "I still think you are mad, but…”
“Hanako?” V asks. “That you?”
“But I can fool myself no longer,” the proxy continues, ignoring her question. “I believe you.”
V wonders if the Arasakas make a habit of using humans as their living puppets. “How'd you find me?”
The doll smiles, her face illuminated in dim stripes of light from the slatted blinds. “Did you really think it would be enough to leave the city?” she says with a mocking smile. “Takemura mentioned he had placed a tracker on you.” V stiffens at this, and she sees Johnny’s face cloud as well. “Yet even had he not,” the doll continues, “when Arasaka wishes to find someone, we find them.”
“Porcelain bitch,” Johnny spits.
“Any word from Goro?” V can’t help asking. “We split up when we went on the run.”
“Takemura is in a secure location,” the doll answers. “That is all you need to know at this time.”
“Okay,” V says, nodding slowly. “So you believe me now, great. What’s next?”
“Yorinobu betrayed our family,” she says. “I must act. And you will help me. You are living proof of his crime and treason.”
V raises her eyebrows at this. “Will I?” She smiles tightly and shakes her head. “You’re in no position to set conditions.”
“And what if I… obliged you to cooperate?” Hanako threatens.
“Have to send a swarm of proxies to do that,” V says with a sharp laugh. “The fact that you’re here, talkin’ to me through a fuckin’ doll, is because you’re alone,” she guesses. “You don’t have anyone else you can turn to.”
It’s a risky gamble, but V has a feeling she’s right, and Hanako’s silence confirms it.
“This is true,” she finally says. “So, what are your terms?”
“Found your boy Hellman,” she tells Hanako. “We chatted. Thinks sooner or later the engram’ll completely consume me. That it can’t be stopped.”
Hanako smiles. “A surprisingly deterministic conclusion for a man of science.”
V feels a sudden spark of hope seize in her chest, and she quickly squashes it. She still doesn’t trust Hanako as far as she can throw 'er.
“Tell me everything you know about Mikoshi,” V says, looking past her to Johnny. He’s leaning his head against the wall now, looking over at her with a dark expression.
The doll leans forward. “One of my father’s flagship projects. It’s an archive of personality constructs, digitized psyches. A data fortress with servers situated on orbital stations all around Earth.”
“I think the word you’re lookin’ for is ‘prison,’” V spits. “But yeah, that’s the one.”
“A matter of perspective,” the doll says with a shrug, and V feels a sharp spike of rage from Johnny.
“Here’s the deal. I’ll testify against Yorinobu, you’ll give me access to Mikoshi and help me find a way to stop the Relic from killing me. Those are my terms.”
Hanako considers this. “That sounds reasonable,” she says. “Let us meet in person. I will contact you when it is time.”
V nods. She has no intention of letting a single fucking Arasaka scientist touch her head. And if she shows them the schematics Hellman gave her, they’ll just take ‘em and figure out a way to weaponize and/or sell this shit. And there’s absolutely no chance in hell she’s tellin’ ‘em about Alt.
But better to let Hanako think it’s the Arasaka scientists she’s primarily after, and she’ll be distracted from their true goal. All they really need is access to Mikoshi, and they can slip Alt into the system, let her use Soulkiller to separate them on their own terms.
And then destroy it.
And - maybe most importantly - V knows she can count on Alt more than Hanako and her scientists to consider Johnny in all of this as well.
“For now, we must both exercise extreme caution,” Hanako says, and the proxy’s eyes go dark.
The doll blinks and straightens in her chair, then lights another cigarette and leans back.
“Well, that’s my job done!” she chirps, standing up and cracking her back. V scowls and escorts her to the door, closing and bolting it behind her.
“Know what?” Johnny says as she turns back to him.
“What?”
Johnny pushes off from the wall and stalks over to sit on the bed. “Think I’d’ve rather had a wave of ‘Saka elites barge in here.”
“Know what you mean,” V agrees, going to sit beside him. Her hands are shaking, and she feels slightly nauseous. “At least we’ve dealt with ‘Saka henchmen before. But this? It’s somethin’ new.”
“Glad you get it,” he says. “We’ve just landed on very thin ice, V. Crash landed.”
“Yeah,” she says softly.
If Hanako doesn’t call, if the meeting turns out to be a trap, if she doesn’t honor their terms…
“We’ll find a way,” Johnny promises, and the way he says it makes her chest tighten. She looks up at him and studies his face in the dim light. His jaw is set and his eyes are serious, resolute. But there’s fear there too, and sadness.
“Wanna get a drink?” she asks him, and he smiles down at her.
“Read my mind,” he says, glitching away as she stands. She shrugs her coat back on and rolls up the sleeves in an attempt to hide the blood, but it’s crusted all the way up past her elbow. She gives up and crosses over to the door, intending to head up to the second floor bar.
Her vision starts to glitch as soon as the door slides open, and Johnny’s waitin’ for her outside, leaning against the post.
“What’s up?” she teases. “Got a few more words to say about the porcelain cunt?”
But before Johnny can respond, the malfunction hits hard and she doubles over and starts coughing up blood, a lot of blood. The pain is unlike anything she’s ever experienced before, more than any of the previous malfunctions, and she collapses onto her hands and knees, her whole body convulsing.
But when she looks down at her hand, to her horror her left arm is silver, like Johnny’s. It is Johnny’s hand.
“Fuck!” Johnny shouts, but it’s her mouth the voice comes out of.
The pain is excruciating now, and she rolls onto her back, chest heaving. She lets out a strangled sob. She’s dying; the cold certainty of it wraps around her heart like ice. It’s really happening - right here, right now, tonight.
“Johnny,” she chokes. “I’m dyin’.”
And then he’s there, crouching over her, his face terrified as he reaches for her. She feels his hands close around her wrists, trying to still her shaking limbs. She feels him gather her in his arms, feels him lift her up, and she doesn’t know how the fuck that’s possible but she doesn’t care right now either because she can feel her heart sputtering in her chest and her hands going numb as her body seizes up.
“You ain’t dyin’ yet,” he tells her fiercely. “I got you.”
And then everything goes black.
The first thing she's aware of is the sound of the ocean. Opening her eyes feels like the most difficult task in the world, so she just lies there for a bit, her entire body pulsing with a dull ache.
She finally pries her eyes open. She’s lying on her side on a dirty concrete floor somewhere, clutching her bottle of pills. The ones Misty gave her. There are pills scattered around her on the ground, too. Her vision is still pulsing blue, the sickening blue dots quivering on her periphery.
“Johnny…” she mumbles weakly, rolling over onto her other side, still holding the pills. She's lying in the middle of what looks like the exterior corridor of a building, and Johnny’s leaning against the stucco railing, looking out into the sunset. Or sunrise? What day is it? Where are they?
“That smell’s the sea breeze.”
Johnny’s voice is low and soft, but it echoes strangely in her ears and she wonders for a moment if this is another dream.
She lies still for another minute, her vision continuing to glitch. Her body feels like it’s full of lead weights; she can barely move her limbs.
“Get up,” Johnny says gently to her. “Pacific’s beautiful this time of day.”
She clenches her fists and uses every ounce of energy she can muster to heave herself to her knees, then uses the railing to drag herself up to lean against it next to Johnny.
“Almost got flatlined by that attack,” she manages.
“Almost,” Johnny repeats, and there’s a tenderness in his voice she’s never heard before.
She looks out over the railing, and realizes they’re in Pacifica. But there’s something strangely familiar about the view before them, and she can’t shake the feeling she’s been here before. Maybe she has, in one of Johnny’s dreams or memories.
The sun is setting over the ocean, making it sparkle like a million black diamonds.
“You’re right,” she breathes. “It is beautiful. Hard to take my eyes off it.”
She turns her head to look up at Johnny then, and he’s watching her with an intensity that makes her heart clench. She can still feel that dark tangle of emotions from him, but it’s hardened into something sharper, something fiercer, something determined.
“What’s this building?” she asks him. Her vision is still glitching badly, and her legs feel like they’re made out of jelly.
“Old hotel,” he tells her. “The Pistis Sophia. We’re her sole guests right now.” He steps away from the railing and gestures for her to follow. “Wanna show you something. C’mon.”
She takes a couple of wobbly steps after him. How long was she out?
“Why…” she asks. “Why bring me here, of all places?”
“You’ll see,” he promises.
“You took over…” she murmurs.
His body glitches as he walks. “Couldn’t just leave you there, could I?” There's still that strange, new gentleness in his voice.
"And you took the blockers to give me back control?"
“Yeah,” Johnny says, then shakes his head. “But they didn’t block me out all the way, as you can see. Just shoved me back in the passenger seat.”
V nods, still stumbling after him. “Was it… nice to be behind the wheel again?” she asks, swallowing hard. Johnny stops and leans against the railing again, his face darkening.
“Honestly?” he admits. “Never felt better… like, in my life.”
She feels a rush of emotions from him and collapses forward onto her hands and knees, her open palm landing in a pile of broken glass. She lifts her chin to look at him, silhouetted against the sunset.
“Thanks,” she says simply. “For helpin’.”
He smiles down at her. “What are imaginary friends for?”
V staggers to her feet and follows after him as he glitches further in front of her, leading her towards an open window further down the mezzanine. But her vision goes almost completely blue and she stumbles again, grabbing onto the railing and leaning her head against the low plaster wall.
Johnny turns and walks back over to her, waiting for her to get up.
“Return the favor first chance I get,” she promises.
Johnny smirks, holding her gaze for a beat. “Hold ya to that.”
“Your first thought was sex, wasn’t it,” she teases, heaving herself to her feet.
“Well, technically you’re just jackin’ off,” he reminds her, sauntering away. “But nah,” he jokes. “You’re not my type.”
“Shut the fuck up, Johnny,” she laughs, limping after him. “Think I’m runnin’ out of time here,” she admits, and her voice sounds so small and scared.
He turns back to her. “Yeah,” he says softly, his expression turning impossibly sad. “Lookin’ that way.”
She feels a sharp wave of grief pass between them as she continues in lurching steps towards him.
He stops by a broken window and leans his shoulder against it. “Climb in through here,” he says. “Think you can manage that?”
V nods and hoists herself through the smashed window, landing flat on her back on the floor. She rolls over onto her side, feeling her hand connect with more broken glass. Her palm is a bloody mess, and she squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them again.
“You wanted to know why I brought you here,” Johnny says, glitching over to the corner of the room. “The air vent by my foot. There’s a hidey-hole behind it. C’mere and open it,” he tells her.
V drags herself on her hands and knees over to Johnny, his gaze steady on her as she fumbles with the metal grate over the air duct. When she pries it off, there’s a small cardboard box shoved behind it. She slumps into a sitting position, leaning her back against the wall, and opens the box.
Inside it are a pair of dog tags. Like the ones Johnny always wears. She takes them in her hand, winding the chain around her fingers as she examines them.
“These yours?” she murmurs.
Johnny nods. “They were,” he says softly. “Belong to you now.”
V swallows as Johnny sits opposite her, straddling a chair and looking down at her slumped on the floor.
“From the Mexican conflict,” she says, and he nods again.
“Was in Mexico when I realized that no matter the conflict, corps always win. Ordinary people always lose.” He’s watchin’ her with that same intense expression on his face, and V feels that sharpness in her chest again. He drapes his forearms over the back of the chair and leans towards her.
“That the truth you decided to reveal in song?” she quips, and he grants her a small smile.
“After I deserted, I wound up here,” he explains. “In this room.” He gestures behind him at the moldering mattress, the crumbling furniture. “Laid in bed and stared at the ceiling fan for a good month.”
V suddenly realizes she has seen this room before. Twice, in her dreams. It's where Johnny first touched her. She lets out a shaky breath.
“I wouldn’t mind lyin’ down right now,” she admits. “Watchin’ a ceiling fan until the end of time.”
“It’s why I brought you here,” Johnny solemnly tells her. “Wasting days… weeks… that’s the step I want you to skip.”
“So why are you giving me these?” she asks, holding up the dog tags.
He watches her face carefully, resting a hand on his knee. “Imagine we’re in a war together,” he says, lookin’ down at her. “Fightin’ side by side.” He pauses. “Would you take a bullet for me?”
The question takes V by surprise, and her eyes lock onto Johnny's. “I would, yeah,” she admits honestly, hearing her voice shake. The answer comes almost automatically, before she even has time to think about it. But it's simple - Johnny has saved her life, more than once now. And she would do the same for him, if it ever came to it. Even now, thinkin' about losing him...
He looks down and away from her, and she feels another wave of emotion rush and crackle between them.
“Tags belonged to a man who sacrificed his life for mine in Mexico,” Johnny tells her, and there's a roughness, an urgency to his tone even as he draws the words out slowly. “We traded ours when we made that promise to each other. That I'd take a bullet for him, if it came to it. And then it did, and... he did. So I took them back." Johnny's eyes drop to the floor, and he is silent for a moment before looking back up at V. "Been thinking about our… predicament," he says, holding her gaze. "Wanna be clear. I will do you no wrong. When the time comes, it’ll be my life for yours. I’ll agree to get wiped.” His eyes burn into hers, and she fights the urge to look away. “Tags are proof of my promise.”
V’s heart is in her throat. To admit he wants her is one thing. To promise his life for hers… this is something else, something she isn't prepared for at all. She feels the implications of his vow yawning beneath her like a gaping wound, as well as that familiar deep tug from him - something sharp, tinged with fear and that sense of desperation. She can't give it a name, won't give it a name.
“I…” she begins, at a loss for what to say. “I’d do the same for you,” she tells him again.
“Yeah,” Johnny says sadly, still lookin’ at her. “Thanks.”
They stare at each other for a long time, then V shakily gets to her feet. Johnny watches as she explores the room, opening all the drawers and examining the graffiti on the walls. Maybe it's just her imagination, but Johnny's presence feels stronger here, more real, and she wonders if it's because of the time he spent here or because their connection is getting stronger now.
There's an old Samurai tank top in one of the drawers, and she pulls it out and holds it up.
"This yours?" she asks him, and Johnny's eyes widen.
"Holy shit, yeah," he says incredulously. "That was the first run of shirts we made, right after Kerry and I joined up together and formed the band." He smiles at her. "Well?" he asks. "Ya gonna try it on?"
V's clothes are a filthy fuckin' mess, so she gratefully shrugs off her bloodied coat and peels her soiled shirt off over her head before pulling on the faded tank. It hangs loose across her shoulders and tits, and she glances down at it. To be wearing something of Johnny's, something he wore himself…
She slips the dog tags on over her head too, feeling them settle against her chest like they've been there her whole life. Johnny's eyes soften as he watches her.
"Wanna go up to the roof?" he asks her. "Watch the rest of the sunset?"
"Suddenly a romantic now?" she teases, but he just smiles and glitches over to the window. He watches her as she climbs out, then glitches over to the stairs leading upwards to the next mezzanine level.
"The Hotel Pistis Sophia," she murmurs as she follows after him. "Seems like a good place to die."
"Yeah," he replies softly. "But not today."
Notes:
Next chapter is just mostly porn lmao. I'll probably post it tomorrow!
Also holy shit, while replaying this scene to write it I was once again bowled over by how fucking romantic it is???? Like what on earth was CDPR thinking??? How dare they not let us at least hug the sad brainworm??? So rude tbh
Chapter 22: Too Much, Too Little
Summary:
Johnny and V spend more time together at the Pistis Sophia, and make a surprising discovery about their deepening connection.
Notes:
This entire chapter is basically entirely porn, pls enjoy
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Nothing could have prepared Johnny for how good it felt to be in control of V's body, and he fuckin' hates himself for it. He just... slipped into her skin as seamlessly as though it were his own, felt her lean slender muscles respond entirely to his commands, and the rush was like nothing he's ever felt before in his life.
But the fear of losing her eclipsed everything else. And so he rode her bike out here to the safest place he could think of, a place no one would look for them, a place he could hide out, wait for her to come back and reclaim her body.
A place he could share something important with her.
And those terrifying few hours when he wasn't sure she'd come back, when he really believed for a moment that he’d actually, truly lost her, that it was over and he was alone forever in her body… the relief was indescribable when he felt her mind beginning to stir again somewhere deep inside herself, felt her start to unfurl her consciousness back out towards him after he choked down the blockers. Despite the exhilaration of his temporary control, he felt nothing but grateful as he let himself sink back into the passenger seat, knowing V lived to fight another day.
He looks at her now, smokin' a cigarette and watching the city burn amber in the final moments of the sunset, the downtown skyline of the neighborhood where she was born glowing a brilliant orange before her.
“You really love this city, don’t ya," he observes.
Her eyes crinkle as she smiles up at him. “Yeah,” she says softly. “I do. That’s gonk as fuck of me, right? This city that took fuckin' everything from me…” She keeps smiling, but there's sadness in her eyes now, too. “But I still do, yeah.”
“I get it," he agrees gently. "Feel the same way. Didn’t grow up here like you did, but when I came here… felt like a place where I could finally become the person I always knew I was.”
“Yeah, that’s what they say,” she murmurs. “I remember, before I went to Atlanta, I thought Night City had everything. I couldn’t imagine who, or what, it could possibly be missing. But then I realized that the one thing you won’t find in Night City are people who've never been here and have no interest in it.” She laughs quietly to herself, and Johnny wonders if she’s thinkin' of anyone in particular. He could search her memories and find out, but he tries not to do that unless she volunteers. He likes how sometimes, she opens parts of her memories to him, tryin' to show him specific things. But other times, there's a wall up, and he respects her too much to try to breach that.
“But you came back,” he says instead.
“I did, yeah. Cause it’s like you said, Night City is a place where anything seems within reach if you’re just brave enough, or gonk enough, to reach out and try to take it.”
“Well, I think you’re brave enough, and we both know you’re gonk enough.”
“And soon I’ll be dead enough,” V reminds him.
“Nah,” he teases, taking a step closer to her. “Too gonk for that, too. Couldn’t even die right the first time."
“You’re one to talk,” she shoots back.
"I got Soulkilled properly by Saburo fuckin’ Arasaka himself after putting a nuke right in his fuckin’ kitchen. You got shot by some scop fixer in a No-Tell and then dumped in a landfill,” he retorts.
“Oh, so we’re comparing our deaths again now?” she scoffs, but she's smiling. It feels surprisingly good to fall back into their comfortable banter, now that they're safe again for the time being.
“Don’t have to," Johnny chuckles. "Mine was way more badass and we both know it. And I stayed dead for a good 50 years at least, you just popped back up a couple weeks later with a new choom in your head that you’ve got some weird sex thing goin’ on with.”
"Hmm, I dunno," V says with a grin. "I did manage to steal the most preem piece of tech in Saburo's personal collection. 'Cept it just turned out to be some idiot rockerboy who thinks his cock makes the sun rise and set."
She pretends to duck as he playfully punches her arm. To his shock, instead of glitching straight through her shoulder like he expected, his hand meets actual solid flesh.
He doesn’t need their shared senses to know that she felt it too - she freezes, the shock on her face mirroring his own. There's no doubt she actually somehow felt his hand this time.
He thinks back to the previous night, how he grabbed her arms and lifted her up, right before he felt himself merge into her completely and take control.
Their eyes meet. This is probably a bad sign - a sign that things are getting worse, or some lingering effect from the pseudoendotrizine - but his curiosity gets the better of him.
He does it again, this time with an open palm, and she follows his hand with her eyes. Though his hand connects, he can feel through their link that it's nothing to her this time except a dull static.
"Hmm," he says. Her brow furrows as well.
On a sudden impulse, or maybe a hunch, his hand flies out and wraps around her throat, pressing her up against the metal wall of the air duct they’re standing near. And this time, it works - he can feel the wind get knocked out of her. Interesting.
"That's what I thought," he murmurs, holding her there and studying her face. She doesn’t look scared, just surprised. Her eyes are wide and her face is flushed. In under three seconds, he can feel his hand dematerialize into the same dull static she usually feels. "Seems like it only works when I can catch you off guard?"
"Wonder why that is,” she sputters, the surprise still wearing off. But he can feel her nerves light up, too, can feel the heat pooling in her stomach. 'Course she's enjoyin' this, he thinks, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. And fuck, it’s not like his mind isn’t running through all the implications of this now, too.
"Probably cause it's the coupla seconds ‘fore your gonk brain kicks in and remembers I'm not real," he muses.
V is silent for a moment.
"Put your hand on my throat again," she says, not breaking eye contact. “Do it slowly this time.”
Johnny lifts his hand, his 'ganic one, and wraps his fingers around her throat once more, this time almost gently. Almost. Her eyes widen.
"You can feel that?"
"Uh huh," she nods, and he can feel her heart pounding. Their heart.
He squeezes his hand slightly, and she gasps. Fuck she looks good like that - his hand wrapped around her throat, her lips slightly parted, her eyes burning into his.
"What did you do differently?" he asks her in a low voice, his face inches from hers.
She swallows hard. "I tried… I tried letting myself believe you’re real," she whispers.
They both go in for the kiss at exactly the same time. His lips crush hers with a sudden, intense, bottomless desperation that rises up from the deepest parts of him - desperation to taste her, to feel her tongue colliding with his, to drink her in - desperation that he feels mirrored back from her in equal measure, and fuck it’s way better than when they’re dreaming, it’s almost as if he’s really-
The illusion slips, and their lips lose contact as he feels himself momentarily turn to static again. But she pulls back and places her hands on either side of his face and looks into his eyes with a fiery intensity, and it's enough to make him believe in that moment that he truly is solid - real once again - and he doesn’t hesitate before crashing his lips back against hers, his hand sliding behind her neck to tangle in her hair, pulling them even closer together.
He can feel her pressed against him, and holy fuck it’s not perfect, but it’s as close to the real thing as he’s felt since he first woke up in this beautiful gonk’s head.
She exhales shakily, pulling away slightly to rest her forehead against his, their hands still grasped in each other’s hair.
“Never thought we’d get to do that,” she breathes, and he responds by kissing her again.
Her lips are so unbelievably soft, and after a minute he tears himself away and takes his hand to trace them gently with his organic fingers. Her lip trembles, and he drags his thumb along her lower lip in response, feeling her breath hitch. He captures her mouth with his again, and fuck, he could keep kissing her like this forever.
He feels her smile against his lips, and suddenly she is giggling softly into his mouth. “Wonder what it looks like I’m doin’ to anyone who’s watching,” she murmurs. He laughs too.
“Fuck if I know,” he says. “For all we know, you’re just imagining all of this. Or maybe you’re standin’ here makin’ out with thin air like a cyberpsycho, who can say?”
She laughs and winds her arms around the back of his neck, and he wraps his arms around her waist and draws her in close, feeling her rest her head against his shoulder. First time I’ve held her, too, he thinks, smiling into her hair.
For once, he doesn’t withdraw. Fuck, he was so worried he’d lost her earlier, that she wasn’t gonna come back this time. Who knows how many moments like this they have left? For all he knows, this one could be their first and their last. The adrenaline and anxiety and sheer terror of the last few days suddenly melt away, and for a moment, he just lets himself enjoy holding her like this, feeling her breathe against him.
She pulls away first and meets his gaze.
“Let’s go downstairs,” she says, and he knows that look in her eyes.
He nods, and he can feel her pulse quicken as he takes her hand and follows her down the stairs back to the decrepit room that he’d once spent the darkest few months of his life in.
Time to make some new memories here, he thinks as she lets go of his hand to climb back in the window. He glitches in behind her a moment later. She reaches for his hand again, and he takes it willingly. Fuck, it’s nice to be able to touch her, even for little stupid shit like this.
She leads him to the bed, then turns to face him, her eyes blazing and her cheeks already flushed. He doesn’t have to read her thoughts to know exactly what she’s thinking. And then she pulls him towards her and they tumble backwards onto the bed, his mouth already on hers, their hands desperately groping at each other as they collapse together onto the filthy mattress.
It would be sloppy if they were anyone but them - but fuck, they literally share a brain, know each other inside and out, know exactly how the other likes to be touched, even when they’re fumbling at each other hungrily in a blind haze of lust.
She tears off her shirt, and his dog tags fall back against her chest, nestling between her perfect fuckin' tits, and they look fucking perfect right there on her like that. A lot growl escapes his lips, and he drags his mouth downward to leave a trail of rough, bruising kisses down her neck and across her stomach before stopping to wrap his mouth around her nipple and roll his tongue across it, savoring the way he can actually feel her squirm and gasp beneath him.
She's practically keening already, grinding her body against his, and though he wants to go slowly, to savor this, he has a feeling neither of them possesses anything remotely close to that kinda self control.
He tugs at her pants and she takes the cue and yanks them down for him, spreading her legs. He wastes no time before dipping his face between them, feeling the intense heat from her mingle with his breath. She moans just at that, and he hovers his lips over her already soaking wet pussy, enjoying the smell of her, feeling his beard brush her skin, feeling exactly how fucking badly she wants him, until he can't resist running his tongue up the length of her, enveloping her clit with his mouth, licking and sucking it as gently as he can manage. Her hands are grasping at his hair, her hips bucking to grind herself against his tongue, and he can feel the pleasure that's building in her as he rolls his tongue over her feverish cunt, pleasure that's reverberating straight to him, making his cock pulse and ache painfully in his pants.
But he can feel her hands gently tugging at his hair, and he lifts his face to meet her gaze and what he sees there makes something sharp twist inside him, something right next to his heart. He crawls up and presses his mouth to hers, wondering if she can somehow taste herself on him.
She moans against his lips as he slides his hand down between her legs, rubbing his thumb in slow, teasing circles around her clit the way he knows she likes. The resulting jolt of pleasure that echoes through him is enough to make them both groan out loud. She kicks her pants the rest of the way off, and now she is completely naked except for his dog tags.
Not wanting to break the illusion, he unbuckles his pants instead of just glitching out of them. He stands for a moment to finish removing his clothes, and then they are both naked, looking at each other hungrily with a fierce, raw lust that he can feel reflected back at him tenfold as the feedback loop of their desire tugs him back down towards her.
“Johnny,” she breathes as he pulls her body flush against his, and she wraps her legs around his waist and threads her arms around his neck again. It’s way more intimate than the way they usually do this, but fuck he can’t get enough of her, just the feeling of her skin against his, even if it’s not quite the real thing.
He feels himself glitch slightly again, but she pulls him back with another rough, desperate kiss, clinging to him tightly until he fully materializes in her arms once again. He exhales shakily into her mouth. Is this actually gonna work?
His cock is as hard as it’s ever fuckin’ been, his length pressing into her thigh, and that feels pretty fuckin’ real to them both right now. He shifts slightly to line himself up with her and she pulls back to meet his gaze, pupils blown and already panting slightly.
Normally, he’d probably say something filthy to her right now, but he’s honestly just so overwhelmed by it all that all he can do is reach his organic hand out to gently cup the side of her face, marveling at the feel of her skin against his palm.
“Fuck me, Johnny, please,” she whispers, clearly not quite as at a loss for words as he is, and the words shoot straight to his cock like a stab of electricity.
“That what you want, princess?” he murmurs, and she nods frantically. He slides his hand from her face to wrap it around her throat again, and he can feel the heat rush down between her legs, can feel her throbbing against the head of his cock, and he groans and thrusts his hips, entering her in one smooth motion like his cock was fuckin’ made to be inside her. She gasps and her eyes flutter shut, and fuck it’s so intense, actually feeling her pussy wrapped around him like this, clenching and gripping it already, eliciting a low groan from his throat as his hips buck into her almost against his will. He feels her nails digging into his back, and he thrusts into her hard again, her body trembling against his, her tits pressed to his chest and her legs still locked around his waist, his metal arm supporting her hips and pulling her to him as he begins to fuck her as slowly as he can manage.
But he knows they’re both way too fuckin’ wound up, and as much as he wants to savor this, he can tell she’s not gonna last long and that means neither is he.
And besides, he has a feeling they’re gonna be doin’ a lot of this, now that the option is suddenly on the table.
He picks up the pace ‘cause he can’t fuckin’ help it, and V sinks her teeth into his shoulder, moaning Johnny's name against his skin. It's enough to make him groan loudly and start ramming his cock into her as hard as he can, and from the sounds she’s making, that’s exactly what she needs, too. She arches her back and whines, shovin’ her tits up towards his face, and he sucks on her neck roughly, hard enough to leave a mark. He wonders if it will, and the thought makes his body glitch again for a moment, but only for a fraction of a second, because then she's grabbing his face and kissing him hungrily and he’s completely lost in it, lost in her, and he knows he’s about to come because he can already feel the edges of himself bleeding into her, her sensations blending into his, and then she's swearing loudly and tightening around him. They both come crashing over the edge together, almost no delay between them anymore.
It’s somehow even more intense than it’s ever been before, and it crashes through him, consuming him utterly. He’s sure he’s saying her name, and he is simultaneously V screaming his name, and she is him and he is her and he feels everything in that instant - her toes curling as she shudders around him uncontrollably, her hands knotted in his hair, his mouth pressed against hers, the feel of his cock pulsing inside of her, and then deeper still, that incredibly sharp thing he can often feel near her heart, blossoming still larger into something that pierces him and shatters him completely. It’s the most painful and wonderful thing he’s ever felt in his fucking life, and he gasps and clutches at her even harder as he comes undone entirely.
He can feel her trying to hold onto him as he collapses into her, but it’s hard for him to keep himself there, and her concentration is slipping too. His body starts to glitch but she catches his hand and presses it to her mouth, and he see through her eyes as her vision darkens and stutters around the edges while she continues to holds his gaze. He gives in to the impulse now and brushes away the hair that’s clinging to her forehead, but the malfunction hits again and she convulses, her eyes rolling back into her head. He feels himself start to dematerialize and grabs at her wrist, but his hand slips right through her.
“V!” he shouts, his voice rough, and her eyes snap back to his but look wild, unfocused. “Stay with me,” he says hoarsely, trying to touch her face, and she brings her hand up to place it over his. As her breathing stabilizes, he can suddenly feel her again. He exhales shakily and presses his forehead to hers.
He doesn’t glitch away again, and she wraps her arms around him. He rests his head on her chest.
“We’re fucked, aren’t we,” she says softly.
“Always were,” he agrees.
They lie there quietly, holding each other as the sun sets and the room falls into darkness around them.
“Would you still want me, though, if we'd met when you were alive?” she asks him suddenly in a small voice, and he raises his head to look at her. “Would any of this…” she gestures between the two of them, “...still’ve happened?"
Johnny thinks for a moment before answering.
"No,” he says, seeing Vs face fall and quickly rushing to explain. "Definitely would’ve tried to fuck you, that's for sure," he reassures her. "Prolly woulda tried to keep you around for a minute too. But you saw how it was with Rogue, with Alt, even with Kerry." He swallows hard. "Didn't know how to let anyone let in, not really. Guess it took me bein' literally forced to," he tells her, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards.
She laughs softly. “Dunno if I’d have given you the time of day, either,” she admits. “Woulda probably just written you off as a dick and moved on with my life.”
“You’d’ve been right to,” he agrees. “You’d still be right to, now.”
“Can’t exactly do that, though.”
He rests his head back against her chest and he runs his hand slowly up and down her stomach and feels her shiver, marveling again at how fuckin' good it feels to be able to be with her like this, even if it means their clock is running out faster than ever.
“Whaddya think of Hanako’s offer?” he asks her. “You seriously considering it?”
V nods into his hair. “We can use her to get access to Mikoshi, make her think we’re playin’ her game. Then we let Alt in, do things our way. Unless you’ve got a better idea.”
“Not yet,” Johnny admits, tightening his arms around her.
"So what do we do now?" she asks him.
"We wait for the porcelain bitch to call," he says. "And we keep working, tie up loose ends. Pay back your starry-eyed ripperdoc. And…" he hesitates. "Got something I wanna ask you to do for me."
“Yeah?” V murmurs.
“Adam Smasher,” he says, and V’s body tenses up as he says the name. “Whatever happens to me… I want him zeroed, gone, tossed into the wind as mulch.”
“That’s your dyin’ wish?” V whispers. “Revenge?”
“It’s more than that,” Johnny tells her softly, releasing her and glitching up to lie beside her. “And I want Rogue to be there with you, too. It’s important to me, and it’s just as important for her.”
V's throat bobs as she looks over at him. “So I gotta tell Rogue… everything?”
This is the part Johnny’s afraid to ask. “Think I’d better do that,” he says, his voice low.
She blinks at him, not comprehending.
“Take the pills from Misty,” he says quietly. “Let me steer the ship for a bit.”
V stiffens as she realizes what he’s asking.
“Let you take over?” she asks in a frightened voice, and he nods.
“Just a quick chat with Rogue,” he assures her. “Then I’m out. I promise.”
He means it, too. After what happened last night, if he's sure of anything, he's sure of this. He doesn't want V's body for his own, not even if it means a second chance at life for him. Not at the expense of hers. He promised her that much, and it's a promise he intends to keep.
But he's thought this through, while V was out, and he knows Rogue won't believe them any other way. And if he knows Rogue at all, he knows she needs this too. It's his chance to absolve her, let her make peace with whatever burden she's been carryin' about leavin' him for dead on that rooftop fifty years back.
“Hellman said you’d do this,” V murmurs. “Make a pitch for control.”
“Think after all this, that’s what I’m after?” Johnny says, sounding as wounded as he feels. “Seizing control of your body at long last?”
V shakes her head. “Or some gonk-ass suicide plan to attack Arasaka. Know you pretty damn well at this point, Johnny.”
“Would never do that to ya,” he says softly. “This needs to work both ways, V. You enjoy complete control over me at all times,” he points out.
V snorts. “Don’t even enjoy control over myself.”
He leans over and runs his hand through her hair again, smoothing it away from her face. “You’re the one who makes the bad calls,” he teases. “All I can do is advise.” Her eyes search his, and he can still see and feel the apprehension there. “And ask for favors. Like I’m doin’ now.”
“Need to know exactly what you plan to do.” Her voice shakes.
“I’ll tell Rogue the truth, see if she’s willin’ to help.”
“Hey, just busted out of soul prison,” V jokes, imitating his voice. “Check out my new ass.”
He smiles. “Somethin’ like that.”
“Fine,” V says after a moment. “I’ll do this… for you.”
“Thanks,” he says softly, winding his arms around her again, pulling her against his chest. They lie there silently for a long moment, and he can feel her emotions - confused, tangled, and intense - flowing through both of ‘em. “Still feel a sharp somethin’ near your heart,” he murmurs.
“Doubt that’s ever goin’ away,” she whispers into his chest. She slowly traces her chrome fingers over his tattoos, over the jagged scars that crisscross his torso, and Johnny closes his eyes, enjoying the feel of her touch on his skin.
It's not nearly enough, none of it fucking is… but it'll have to do for now.
Notes:
THEY FINALLY DID IT
Only took us 22 chapters to get here lmaooo
Chapter 23: My Marionette
Summary:
V recovers from the parade and heads to the Afterlife to make good on her promise to Johnny. She trusts him, right?
Notes:
All aboard the train to angst town because that's where we're headed
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When V wakes up, she is alone in the dingy abandoned hotel room. Her organic palm is sliced to hell, and she’s dehydrated as fuck and her head is pounding. She struggles to remember the last time she ate anything, either.
The last few days feel like a strange dream to her, especially now that she’s here, alone, in this dilapidated hotel room where Johnny used to live.
“Johnny?” she mumbles sleepily and then he’s there again, lying next to her, starin’ at her.
“Still here,” he reassures her, and she reaches for him, rolling onto her side.
It still takes some concentration for her to actually touch him, and she tries to focus on how real he feels to her as she gently lays her hand on his chest. If she lets herself remember he’s essentially just a construction of her imagination, the illusion breaks and he’s just a fuckin’ hologram again. But it’s not that difficult now, especially given how strongly she feels his presence in this room. She wonders if this new discovery will hold, or if things’ll return to normal once they leave the hotel.
Or if it’ll get stronger as he takes over her brain more.
She withdraws her hand at the thought and frowns. She knows objectively that the Johnny she sees isn’t actually real, that as his engram grows stronger and his memories take root in her mind, the chip’s usin’ that and poking her brain to create this image of him she can interact with, sorta like a UI for interfacing with the saved construct. But she wonders if this new aspect of touch is unique to this prototype, to her and Johnny’s connection, or if it’s something Arasaka’s designed intentionally into the tech.
“Course they did,” Johnny huffs, hearing her thoughts. “You think ‘Saka doesn’t know their market? Sure, they peddle it with the Secure Your Soul bullcrap, that’s the pitch. But there’s gotta be a line of corpo-rats a mile long jumpin’ at the chance to have their very own fuckable hologram.” He scowls.
“You seemed as surprised as I was yesterday,” she points out.
“I was,” he says. “But then I thought about it for five fuckin’ seconds. Think about it, V. They’ve got a massive fuckin’ stockpile of actors, braindance stars, more’n you could even dream of locked up in Mikoshi. Who’d even need joytoys when Arasaka’s got the world’s best virtual dollhouse ready and waiting?”
The implications are horrifying, but the way Johnny says it makes V snort. “All that, and I got stuck with you,” she teases. “And to think, I coulda gotten a BD star hunk, or some-”
He shoves her back against the bed, kissing her hard. She’s breathless when he pulls away, smirking.
“You were saying?” he asks.
“Is this the part where you start braggin’ about your cock again?” she ribs back.
“Don’t think I need to,” he reminds her, raising an eyebrow and watching her blush.
She laughs and smacks him on the arm, and feels a thrill that she can do that now, that they can do all this now, even if it doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense. Even if it means they’re in deeper shit.
He promised his life for hers. No one’s ever promised her anything like that before, and the unspoken meaning behind those words fuckin’ bowled her over yesterday, sent her mind and heart reeling. But now that the shock of the sentiment’s worn off a bit, she’s allowing herself to wrap her mind around what that promise means.
It means Johnny doesn’t believe they’re both gonna make it.
She feels a sudden urge to touch him again and so she does, lifting her hand to feel the roughness of his beard, the sharp line of his jaw, the softness of his lips. She leans up to kiss him and he lowers his mouth to meet hers, his hair falling like a curtain around his face to brush the sides of hers.
“You should call Judy,” he says suddenly when they finally part. “Let ‘er know you’re still kickin’.”
“Yeah,” V agrees, surprised that Johnny’s the one to suggest it. She hasn’t thought about Judy much the last couple days; she’s been so distracted with, well, everything. “Should stop by Vik’s too,” she adds. “Get all my shit checked.”
Her stomach rumbles at that moment, and Johnny feels it, too.
“You’re fuckin’ starving, V,” he says.
“Not my fault you didn’t keep this place stocked," she jokes. "Half expected to find some old army rations shoved in a drawer somewhere."
“Fuck that,” Johnny says, making a face. “We’re in Pacifica, there’s a whole fuckin’ street market right outside. Let’s go get some food.”
After shoveling down some synth-meat skewers from a street vendor, V calls Judy on her way home. Judy’s seen the news - she heard what happened at the parade and seems entirely unsurprised that V was somehow involved. She also sounds more amused than concerned, which makes V feel as though Judy doesn’t grasp the extent of the danger she was in. V’s happy to talk to Judy, happy to see her face... but things feel different now, and she realizes that it's not solely because of how things with Johnny have shifted. Is Judy really prepared for the increasing direness of V's situation? Could anyone ever be? Judy still feels like a safe, warm candle flame... but maybe what V needs right now is a flamethrower.
She doesn't read the rest of the messages on her holo until she's home, and there's a lot of 'em; she's been off the grid and on the run for a few days now. V sets about the task of responding to them all, after taking a much needed shower and downing a bowl of instant ramen. She sits at her desk picking through the messages with a NiCola, a synth coffee, and a glass of scotch arrayed in front of her, Johnny pacing nervously over her shoulder as she does so.
“Jesus V, drink some fuckin’ water, I can feel your organs pickling,” he mutters.
She points to the NiCola. “Doesn’t this count?”
He shakes his head and glitches away, leaving her to answer her emails in peace.
Claire’s sent her the deets for their next race, but it’s still a week away. And Padre’s got some gigs lined up for her, including one in particular that catches her eye. He’s got a client who wants her to steal one of Kerry Eurodyne’s guitars from some megafan collector in the Glen; Johnny huffs a sharp chuckle as she skims the job description.
V’s almost through all of ‘em when her holo starts ringing. It’s an unfamiliar number, but the line is marked secure. Curiosity gets the better of her.
“Hello, we haven’t met,” a well-dressed woman says when V picks up. “I’m Elizabeth.”
“Assuming you already know who I am, since you’re callin’,” V guesses, and the woman nods.
“Yes,” she says. “You came highly recommended. My husband and I… we need a somewhat delicate matter… handled.”
V wonders if “handled” means she’s about to be asked to zero someone. And then she suddenly places where she’s seen the woman before - it’s the fuckin’ wife of that mayoral candidate, Jefferson Peralez. The populist gonk who’s running to replace Mayor Rhyne in the wake of his highly publicized sudden death. She’s seen ‘em both on TV and plastered on campaign posters all over the city. V frowns. Doin’ work for politicians isn’t her usual bread and butter.
“And who recommended me?” she asks.
“I’d rather not discuss details over the phone,” the woman responds. “Please, meet with us. We’ll explain everything. As I said, it’s a rather delicate matter.”
She feels Johnny’s apprehension mingle with her own, but a job is a job. With these types, whatever the fuck it is they want, they’re bound to pay well.
“Sure,” V says. “Let’s do that.”
The woman flicks her an address and a time. Ass early, in the Glen, the following morning.
Johnny is even more skeptical. “Look, if a job starts like a classic whodunit... some femme fatale calls you up, refuses to give deets and just calls a meet... one of three things is going down," he warns her. "You're dreaming, you're scrollin' a shit BD, or someone's hazing you good. Think you can scratch the first two.”
“You think this is a joke?” V asks him.
“Or a trap,” he says.
“She’s a politician, not a corpo,” V points out.
“Same difference,” Johnny says with a shrug.
But V doesn’t think a high profile politician’s wife would cold call a merc if they weren’t after something real, and she tells Johnny as much. He glitches away with a huff, but reappears by the window moments later with a cig lit.
“Still gonna go to Vik’s?” he asks her, and she nods and stands.
“Yeah,” she says. “Good intentions or not, you were able to take over my body the other night. And I… wanna see if he’s got any insights about what’s happenin’ to us. What to expect.”
“Gonna tell him we fucked?” Johnny teases.
V flushes, imagining exactly how Vik would react to that.
“Feel like I should tell ‘im I can touch you now, at the very least,” she counters. “Seems kinda important.”
“That’s not new,” Johnny points out. “Slapped you around pretty good that first night I showed up here.”
V flinches at the memory. “Right,” she says. “But it’s different now and we both know it.” She shrugs. “And benefits aside...”
“It’s weird and scary, yeah,” Johnny agrees, finishing her thought. “Now you’ve got a brain ghost who can do more’n just yell at ya.”
She looks down. She believes that Johnny wouldn’t hurt her now, not intentionally, but the chip’s gonna keep doin’ what it was designed to do: wreak havoc on her mind and body until she’s no more than a prisoner in her own skin, until she disappears completely.
“I trust Vik,” she says softly.
Johnny nods slowly. “Haven't met many rippers who'd install Kiroshi optics on credit and faith. In fact, I only know one. Let’s go visit the old guy, yeah? Just… be careful, V. Don’t tell him too much. Might not understand.”
There’s a news segment playin’ in the elevator about the parade, and V listens as Yorinobu comes on the TV, making grand and colorful threats to any and all enemies of Arasaka.
“Well, looks like the gloves are comin’ off,” Johnny mutters.
She stops by Misty’s first. Misty’s seated at the counter, looking bored as all hell, but her face lights up when V steps in.
“V!” she says warmly, jumping lightly from her chair and rushing over to hug the merc. “Hadn’t heard from you in a minute and I was getting worried.”
“Still in one piece,” V laughs. “Just been busy with stuff.”
“The usual?” Misty teases.
“Tryna save my own life and all that,” V replies, and Misty nods, already reaching for her tarot deck.
“Let me give you a reading,” she insists.
“S’what I’m here for,” V jokes, lowering herself onto the stool at the counter.
Misty smiles as she shuffles the cards.
“So how have things been lately? With Johnny, I mean?”
V isn't immediately sure how to answer that. “They’ve been… good, I think,” she begins, reaching for the right words. “I trust him. I mean… things are definitely gettin’ worse, more confusing… he’s getting stronger, but…”
“You trust him not to hurt you,” Misty says calmly, as though it’s the most normal thing in the world to have a friendly relationship with a biochip that’s killing her.
“He promised me that, and I believe him,” V tells her honestly, and Misty’s smile is gentle as she draws the first card. It’s the Fool, just like last time.
“Heh, what a surprise,” V jokes.
“The Fool represents the start of a journey, the announcement of something new,” Misty reminds her. “It's the inner child, curious about the world, but also naive and reckless.” She laughs softly. “Sounds a lot like the V I first met.”
She draws the second card.
“The Magician,” Misty reads, peering down at the cards. “This one usually represents a person of great talent and charisma, a leader.”
“Sounds like Johnny,” V guesses, and Misty nods.
“The card is reversed, though. That can mean a tendency toward addiction… mental instability.”
V snorts. “Okay, definitely Johnny.”
She can feel Johnny balk at that.
“The next card is your present,” Misty continues, drawing a third card. It’s the Lovers, not reversed this time.
“Heh, something that doesn't give me the chills,” V says, chuckling. “Finally.”
Misty smiles at her. “It’s a good one,” she agrees. “Balance, friendship, love…”
“Uh huh,” V says, swallowing hard. She finds herself thinking about the look in Johnny’s eyes at the Pistis Sophia, the promise he made her. The things she felt when they-
She’s suddenly aware of Misty watchin’ her curiously.
“V… have you been keeping something from me?” she asks coyly, and V feels her face burn.
“Huh?” she says, feigning innocence. “What, why?”
“You're makin' a strange face.”
“I, uh…” She laughs nervously and clears her throat. “No, I'm fine. Okay, and the last one? Our future?”
Misty raises her eyebrows at this but doesn’t press the matter.
“The Moon…” she says slowly, drawing the final card and placing it on the table, examining it thoughtfully.
“Well, it... doesn't sound too bad, right?” V says hopefully.
“I don't know, V,” Misty replies. “The Moon is mystery.”
“So mine and Johnny’s future is a mystery?”
“Something like that,” Misty agrees. “But it’s about more than that, too. It represents illusion, things not being as they appear.”
“Hmm,” V says, frowning.
Misty looks at the cards for another long moment. “You’ll understand when the time comes,” she says. “I can't explain everything.”
“Could just die,” V says darkly. “Not even get that far.”
“Oh come on,” Misty scoffs. “You won’t let that happen.”
“That what you told Jackie?” V counters, regretting the words almost immediately.
Misty’s face darkens. “No,” she says quietly. “I told him the opposite, actually.”
V remembers some of Jackie’s last words. Misty knew, he’d said. She shivers.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
Misty opens a drawer to her right and rummages around for a moment. She fishes out what looks like a handmade dreamcatcher and straightens, handing it to V.
“Take this,” she says. “It may help.”
V turns the small dreamcatcher over in her hands. It’s made of string and leather with a mixture of glass and metal beads. Three delicate feathers hang from it.
“Thanks, Misty, really,” she says, strangely touched by the gesture. “Think I’m gonna need more than a lucky charm to keep my nightmares at bay, though.” She pockets the charm and stands, taking a step towards the back door.
“And now you’ve got nightmares for two,” Misty reminds her, and the insightfulness of the comment catches V off guard. Misty seems to get what she’s goin’ through more than anyone, somehow.
“Hey Misty,” she says, pausing by the door and turning back to her friend. “We should… go out sometime. A good, old-fashioned night on the town. Like we used to do.”
Misty smiles, but her eyes are sad. “Yeah,” she says. “Won’t be the same now, but… yeah. That would be nice.”
“Give you a call,” V promises and steps out the door, hearing the chimes tinkle behind her as it shuts.
“Still think this tarot shit’s all gonk?” V asks Johnny as they cut through the back alley down to Vik’s.
“Course it is,” he says, appearing in the stairwell. “It’s just another way for people to feel like they have some sense of control, some sense of what’s comin’. A way to delude themselves into thinkin’ they have any fuckin’ clue what’s happening to ‘em and why.”
“Strong words from a man with a tattoo of the Tower on his fuckin’ arm,” she taunts back, unable to resist the jab.
Johnny scoffs. “It’s good fuckin’ symbolism,” he argues. “Meant it to be about Arasaka, remind me what I’m up against.”
“Exactly,” V says. “It’s good fuckin’ symbolism.”
Vik runs a check on all her chrome, makin’ some minor adjustments here and there.
“Saw the parade on the news,” he says casually as he works, but she can hear the question in his voice.
“Uh huh,” she says noncommittally.
“Heard corpos opened fire, civilians were killed,” he continues, and V stiffens. She’d been holding out hope that that hadn’t been the case.
“I… yeah. I was there,” she admits.
“Figured as much,” Vik huffs, straightening to look at her. “Look, kid, I know with Silverhand in your head, you’ve got all kinds of nonsense messin’ with you, clouding your judgment. Don’t let him push you around, you hear me?”
“It’s not like that,” she insists. “Wasn’t Johnny’s idea, either. He didn’t like it, actually.” She shakes her head fiercely. “Was that ‘Saka guy, one who dragged me back here after the heist.”
“Even better,” Vik mutters darkly.
“We just wanted to talk to Hanako,” she insists. “Things went… a little sideways from there.”
Vik sighs. “Dealin’ with corps… what’d you expect?”
V feels Johnny’s enthusiastic agreement. She sits in silence while Vik finishes his check-up.
“Well, you’re all patched up, kid,” he says finally, rolling his chair away as she stands. “Anything else I can help you with?”
She pauses, debating how much to reveal to him. “Had a few questions about Johnny and the chip, actually,” she mumbles.
“I’m no expert,” he reminds her. “But, shoot.”
“Well… I told you how I can see him, right? Like a hologram or something,” she begins uncertainly, and Vik nods. “And now… as of recently… he’s gotten more… solid. I can touch him,” she finishes, feeling a blush creeping across her cheeks again, and she is silently thankful for the dim red lighting Vik’s got in the clinic.
“You can touch him?” Vik asks, clearly surprised.
“Not always,” V says quickly. “But I had a bad seizure the other night and he… grabbed me.” She swallows. “And then after that, we were… experimenting. And I realized I could still do it, if I concentrate hard enough.”
Vik raises his eyebrows, and she hopes he’s not filling in the blanks too hard on what she means by “experimenting.”
“Well,” he says carefully. “The biochip is designed for users to communicate with constructs, to interact with them. It’s just doin’ its job.”
“That’s what Johnny thought,” she muses. “Thinks ‘Saka’s got a lock on the market for building some kinda engram joyhouse.”
If Vik hadn’t connected the dots before, he definitely has now, and his eyes widen.
“Jesus, V,” he mutters. “Don’t tell me you-” He cuts himself off, unable to even say it. “This shit’s killing you, and you’re using it to… ugh.” He puts his face in his hands.
V’s blushing furiously now - there’s no hiding it from Vik at this point.
“He’s there all the time, Vik,” she protests, feeling her face burn. She hadn’t intended to talk so frankly about all this with him, but here they are. “It’s not like I can just tell him to fuck off when I need privacy!”
“Take the blockers?” he says as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
She shakes her head. “First of all, I’ve seen what it was like for him in Mikoshi. He’s trapped in my body as it is, not gonna lock him away any more than that.”
“He’s a terrorist, V,” Vik says gently. “Doesn’t deserve that kinda sympathy from you.”
“You don’t know him,” V argues, feeling her voice crack as she rushes to defend Johnny. “Sure, he did some fucked up shit, but he had his reasons, he-”
“Do you even hear yourself?” Vik interjects. He rubs his temples. “Fuck, V, I was worried about this.”
V opens and closes her mouth, unsure of how to respond. From where Vik’s sitting, he just sees his good friend, someone he cares about, slowly gettin’ transformed into someone who scares him. And Vik was alive back in '23 - he was still a kid, sure, but he saw firsthand the damage Johnny did, the destruction he wrought on the city, on innocent people. He mighta even known people who died that day. This is personal for him, V realizes.
“Fifty years in soul prison changes a person,” V insists, but her voice sounds weak and small. “And besides, the blockers don’t even work anymore,” she finishes lamely. “Least, not the way they used to.”
“What do you mean?” Vik asks, his brow still deeply furrowed.
“After the parade, when I had that seizure… Johnny… took over,” she tells him. Any remaining blood has drained from Vik’s face now, but V continues, speaking quickly before he can cut her off again. “I was knocked out and he needed to get me to safety. Took the blockers to hand me back control, and they worked for that, but didn’t get rid of him completely.”
“So take two next time,” Vik says, and V shakes her head again.
“You don’t get it, Vik. He saved my ass. Coulda just taken over completely, not given me back control, but he did. And… I trust him.”
Vik looks unconvinced, but he sighs heavily and lowers his eyes.
“Well, it’s your head he’s in, not mine,” he says resignedly. “Just hope you know what you’re doin’. Make sure you don’t forget who you are. What you want.”
“I won’t,” V promises, but pauses again. “I, uh… finally managed to scrounge up the eddies to pay you back in full,” she tells Vik, suddenly shy. He’s been so nice to her, way nicer than she deserves.
He straightens in his chair, raising his hands in protest. “Hold onto ‘em just in case,” he says gently. “You need ‘em more than me.”
“Not takin’ ‘em all the way to my grave, Vik,” she counters, flicking him the full amount before he can put up any more of a fight. “And thanks again for doin’ so much work on me without ever seein’ an enny.”
“That’s what friends are for,” he says, lookin’ up at her. His eyes are warm, but there’s grief in them too, and fear. It’s too much for V to bear, so she thanks him and leaves.
Johnny’s waitin’ for her outside when she exits the clinic, arms crossed and looking annoyed.
“Can’t believe you told ‘im about us,” he mutters as she stomps up the stairs into the alley.
“I technically didn’t,” she reminds him.
“Yeah, but he put two ‘n two together,” Johnny huffs.
“So?” she argues. “He’s my doctor, and fun as it can be to have a talkin’ brain aneurysm, I should be honest with him about what the chip’s doin’, how things’re progressing.”
V knows that’s not really what Johnny’s upset about. It’s the rest of the stuff Vik said, callin’ him a terrorist, the fear in his eyes. A sobering reminder of what set this chain of events in motion in the first place.
“He doesn’t know scop,” Johnny says. “He’s good, but this is prototype tech. We’re all just fumblin’ blindly in the dark here.”
V sighs and looks at him. “Guess I just figured if we’re gonna keep doin’ it-”
“Keep banging, you mean?” Johnny interjects, and V nods.
“Just wanna make sure it’s not gonna fuckin’ flatline me next time,” V finishes.
Johnny gives her a strange, anguished look, then grabs her arm and pulls her to him roughly, kissing her hard.
She’s caught completely off guard - even though they were literally just talkin’ about it, she almost forgot that he can just… do shit like this now.
"Won't let it,” he reassures her, though they both know he can't actually promise that. He pulls back to look at her, then pokes her gently in the stomach as if to prove to himself that she's still there. “Speakin’ of takin’ weird pills… wanna stop by the Afterlife later tonight? Have our little chat with Rogue?”
“Tonight?” V asks in a small voice. She’s still down for what she promised him, but she hadn’t expected to do it so soon.
“Smasher’s only gonna be in town for so long,” Johnny reminds her. “Gotta get on this now, while he’s still here, ‘fore ‘Saka pulls him back to Tokyo or wherever.”
V considers this for a minute, then nods. Best to get this over with.
“Okay,” she agrees. “We’ll go tonight.”
They grab some dinner at a nearby street vendor - just some shitty noodles that she shovels down, barely tasting much. She doesn’t wanna admit it, but she’s scared to give Johnny control again. Last time, she was too far gone to really feel much of anything, but she wonders what it’ll feel like to willingly hand him the keys, even just for a short time. Johnny’s silent, but she can feel something from him like… anticipation? And that frightens her, too.
She heads home to change first. Johnny rolls his eyes as she agonizes over her outfit, finally settling on black leather pants and a matching motorcycle jacket. For reasons she can’t fully explain, she still feels an intense need to impress Rogue. The fixer’s intimidating as fuck, and V can’t hide her open admiration for the woman, but it goes beyond that. She wants Rogue to like her, wants to be like her. Wants Rogue to look at her and see a potential equal, not just some minor league merc.
"Rogue dresses like a fuckin' teenager anyway," Johnny huffs as she finishes dressing, and V snorts because it's true - Rogue may have poise, but her clothes are loud and bright and wouldn't look out of place on someone 1/5th her age. It's part of her effortless coolness, though, V thinks silently.
“You sure you wanna do this?” she asks Johnny one more time before they head out. “Can just talk to Rogue myself, you know. I can prove what I’m sayin’ in other ways.”
“Like what?” Johnny prompts, and V is at a loss.
He steps closer to her and tucks an errant strand of hair behind her ear. The familiarity of his touch makes her startle again - she hadn't realized she was so used to him being intangible, stayin’ at arm’s length - but she leans her face into his palm and closes her eyes.
“Look, I don't ask you for much,” he continues. “But this is my chance to finally get Smasher. Motherfucker thinks he's invincible.” He scowls and drops his hand from her face, a dark look clouding his eyes. “Worse, so does Rogue. All these years, Arasaka Tower's been hauntin’ her.” He shakes his head solemnly, then looks back down at V. “Enough's enough. I'm taking control this one time, then we’re gonna find him and wipe Adam Smasher off the face of the fuckin’ earth.”
V just nods slowly. “Okay,” she whispers and heads for the elevator.
Afterlife’s pretty crowded for a weeknight, and V nods at the bouncer as she struts in, trying to push down the stubborn fear that’s rising in her throat.
“Welcome back, kid,” the bouncer says warmly, stepping aside to let her pass. Emmerick’s his name, V reminds herself as she smiles back at him.
Johnny’s waiting for her inside, leaning against a wall by the entrance, tapping his foot nervously. Or impatiently.
“So, you ready?” he says to her. His arms are crossed and his sunglasses are on and there’s an anxious energy to his body, to his movements. She can’t tell if he’s afraid, too... or excited. She swallows back another lump of fear and leans her head around the corner to check the booth where Rogue usually hangs out. There’s no sign of her.
“Rogue isn’t even here yet,” she points out.
“She will be,” Johnny says confidently.
V looks at him then. His face is strange, unreadable. “Okay, one more time,” she says. Her mouth is suddenly very dry. “You’re just gonna talk to Rogue about Smasher, right? Then you’ll hand me back the wheel, hop back in the passenger seat?”
“That is the plan,” Johnny reassures her. He’s smiling, but she can’t see his eyes behind the dark shades. “Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle,” he teases. “Ya might even enjoy it.”
The knot in V’s stomach hasn’t loosened. She’s not in the mood for his jokes right now, either. V doesn’t trust easily, and this is a huge leap that she’s about to take - she’s about to willingly hand complete control of her body over to him, someone she’s known barely a month. Someone who tried to kill her. Someone who’s killed thousands of people, manipulated and hurt countless more.
She remembers what Vik said to her earlier, and that sad, defeated look he had on his face. Was he right? Is she deluding herself?
“Actually, startin’ to regret this already,” she admits to Johnny, hearing her voice shake slightly. “You’re gonna, what, strum Rogue’s guilt, squeeze her for favors? Remind her all about how she left you to die in ‘Saka Tower?”
Johnny’s face darkens. “First off, she was sure I was dead already. Second, I’d never do that to her. Don’t have to.”
“So what’s the plan, then?" V presses. "Just gonna try to charm her? Reminisce about the good old days?”
“Rogue’s never said no to me, ever,” Johnny says simply, and somehow that makes V feel worse. Is that what he’d say about her, too? The thought makes her stomach drop.
But no, what she and Johnny have is different, she tells herself. He can’t lie to her, can’t hide himself from her. She trusts Johnny now, trusts him with her life. He promised he would die for her. He probably saved her life the other night. Why would he do that, say those things, just to take control now?
Her hands are shaking as she closes her fist around the bottle of pills in her pocket.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m ready. I trust you.”
Johnny watches her closely as she takes a pill in her palm and pops it in her mouth, dry swallowing it in one gulp.
Nothing happens at first, but then Johnny reaches for her hand. And the second he touches her, she feels the part of her that is Johnny suddenly expand within her as her vision warps and twists around the edges in that sickening way. The walls of the room start breathing and she has to lean her arm against the wall to steady herself.
That's when she feels it - a frigid wave of tingling numbness spreading through her whole body, getting louder until it’s a deafening roar. And just like that, her limbs and her face and her voice and even her fuckin' eyes are no longer hers to control. She feels her thoughts blur and stretch and rearrange themselves into something both familiar and foreign, and then it’s all Johnny, just Johnny, and she can’t remember her own name or her face or anything about her previous existence. Her arms are his, her legs are his, her guts are his, her heart is his, and it feels like fuckin’ dying; she can feel herself slipping away towards some infinite, horrible void. She tries to scream, but of course her mouth doesn’t respond. She realizes in a cold panic that she’s not even sure if Johnny can hear her thoughts anymore, hear her anymore.
She doesn’t know why she thought it would just be like switching places, but it’s fucking horrifying. Or maybe it is like this for Johnny all the time, she thinks as she’s pulled helplessly downwards, drowning in her own mind. She claws desperately within herself, trying instinctively to will her body to respond to her commands, but it's all futile.
Her legs move of their own accord as she takes a step towards the bar, then the world glitches and goes black.
Notes:
Johnny noooo don't do the thing
Chapter 24: No Apology
Summary:
V tries to come to terms with Johnny's breach of their trust as she begins working a gig for an ambitious politician and his wife.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The next thing V is aware of is intense, searing pain reverberating through her skull. It’s coming from everywhere at once; there’s a sharp, shooting pain harmonizing excruciatingly with a duller, throbbing one. Her eyes are like glue, her limbs are lead, and she feels like she got hit by a truck and then punched in the face. As she curls her fingers against rough, unfamiliar sheets, she becomes suddenly aware that she is not in her own bed.
The horror of losing control of her body still feels fresh and visceral, but everything after that is blurry, vague. It's almost like she wasn't conscious or present for any of it, but memories of the night are starting to come back to her in hazy flashes. It feels similar to how it does when she accesses Johnny’s memories from his previous life, but these new memories are both more immediate and yet fuzzier at the same time, like they’re bein’ filtered through some kind of strange warp effect. All of it is a confusing blur at first, and her head hurts when she tries to focus on any of it. It's almost like trying to piece together events after a night of heavy drinking.
Which, judging by the clearer bits that are starting to take shape, is exactly what fuckin’ happened.
The beginning of the night is coming back the clearest now, how Johnny slipped into her skin as easily and seamlessly as if it were his own fuckin’ leather pants. She can recall the rush he felt as all his sensations came fully online, no longer with any bullshit sensory delay or muting or filtering. She remembers him flexing his fingers, unable to push down the giddy joy that permeated every part of him at finally bein’ back in control of a real, actual body again. She remembers him talkin’ to Claire, ordering his own fuckin’ namesake drink and downing it in one swig - how the harshness of the alcohol burned his throat on the way down, the fire from it spreading in his stomach, how much he delighted in it. She remembers him ordering another, and then another, until Claire was just pourin’ him straight tequila with none of the other stuff. And then the bottle appeared in front of him and he had at least four more before losing count.
V’s no lightweight, but she knows her body’s still a lot smaller than what Johnny’s used to.
There’re other memories too, but they’re bubbling to the surface more slowly. Was he... at a fuckin’ strip club? Why did he leave the Afterlife at all?
How long was he in control?
Her body convulses as a fit of coughing hits her, and only then does she pry open her eyes. Above her is an unfamiliar ceiling with a single naked, hanging lightbulb and a dented, battered fan slowly spinning beside it. She groans loudly as the strange room glitches around her, the blood she hacked up into her palm blurring and doubling erratically from her shaky vision.
She realizes she’s still fuckin’ drunk, and that it’s quickly turning into the world’s absolute worst fuckin’ hangover.
“Spit blood every morning?” a voice says, and V lifts her head with some effort to find Rogue straddling a chair in the far corner of the room, watching her with a curious expression. Everything’s still spasming wildly in a swirl of blue dots, and V struggles to focus on the fixer’s face.
God, she feels fuckin’ awful.
She reaches for Johnny with her mind, but there’s no sign of him. She hasn’t had this kinda silence in her head in over a month, and right now it’s not fuckin’ helping because she definitely has a thing or ten to say to him.
“First time you walked up, sensed there was something familiar about you,” Rogue muses, still watching her. V feels like she might puke at any minute and fights to hold it down.
“Blah, blah, Johnny told you,” V manages. Her voice comes out hoarse and raspy, and her throat feels like sandpaper. “Don’t seem surprised.”
Rogue chuckles. “I was surprised. I was very surprised. But not anymore. You prolly don’t remember.”
“Got flashes here an’ there,” V chokes. “It’s kinda… comin’ back…”
She struggles to focus on specifics, but her head is throbbing more by the second. There was… a car crash?
“He called me early morning,” Rogue tells her. “Course, I thought it was you. And I thought, ‘Cute kid, too bad she’s gone completely whacked.’”
Rogue swings her leg off the chair and saunters over to the bed, folding her arms and staring down at V like she’s still trying to connect some dots. V releases her head to fall back onto the thin, lumpy pillow wedged beneath her.
What the fuck did Johnny do?
Where the fuck even are they?
“Came to see for yourself though, huh?” she gasps at Rogue. “Morbid curiosity?”
“Mhm,” Rogue nods. “And I found Johnny Silverhand.”
A sudden thought strikes V, and her stomach clenches. Did Johnny... did he do more than just talk to Rogue?
“Did he… I mean… did we… uh…”
She braces herself for the answer, but Rogue just laughs lightly. “He tried, but no, gonk was too drunk. Kept mumblin’ weird shit about you, though,” she adds, flashing V a strange look.
V feels sick. She’s not even sure if she wants to know more. The way Rogue’s lookin’ at her is kinda unnerving, and she looks away. “Feels fuckin’ weird,” V murmurs. “You knowin’ about Johnny.”
Rogue’s eyes continue to probe her. “Face is changing, y’know?" the fixer muses. "Still look like V, but that mean smirk… I’d know it anywhere.”
V knows exactly the smirk Rogue is referring to. She’s seen Johnny do it countless times, felt her own face twist into it on occasion. Moreso recently.
“How he talks, moves… how he smokes,” Rogue continues, and V feels another oncoming wave of nausea threaten to overwhelm her.
“Didn’t use to smoke like this,” V slurs.
“I know,” Rogue says sympathetically, and V wonders just how much else the fixer’s clocked about her. “Could never confuse you two.”
V furrows her brow. “Smasher… did Johnny tell you about him?"
“Yes,” Rogue says, and now there’s an edge to her voice. “Didn’t know he’d come back to NC. Johnny found some way to get at him.”
At least there's that. V searches through more of the clouded memories, trying to see for herself what Johnny learned. An image surfaces in her mind of Cassius Ryder, Wakako’s ripperdoc in Northside. Seems like Johnny went to see him last night; kicked it with him for a while, too. V hadn't realized that Johnny knew him. With some effort, she can remember them passing back and forth a joint and a bottle of scotch. Johnny asked him for leads… and he got a name.
“Wait… Grayson?” V mumbles.
Rogue nods, uncrossing her arms and pacing slowly to the foot of the bed. “Jeremiah Grayson,” she confirms. “Works for Smasher. Johnny got a tip off some stripper, don’t ask me how.”
And then that part comes back to V, too. How he went to Empathy - Dino’s friend’s braindance bar - and chatted up some girl there who… was Grayson’s side piece? But other stuff is floating to the surface now, too - she remembers doin’ shots and snortin’ lines with the strippers in a back room, gettin’ punched out by the bouncer… making out with Grayson’s girl behind the club…
You stupid fuck, she tells herself. Letting yourself start to fall for him. She'd really wanted to believe that things would somehow be different, that he was different now too. But it's not like he didn't tell her exactly who he was. What he was capable of. She's seen it herself. Why didn't she believe him?
Her gut twists and she thinks she might be sick again, but it doesn’t stop there. She remembers Johnny sliding his - her - hand up the girl’s leg, under her skirt, while she drove ‘em somewhere… and then there was a crash of metal and glass and both of ‘em were sitting by the side of the road, the girl looking dazed as she scribbled something on a fuckin’ condom that she handed to Johnny.
V feels around in her coat pocket, and it’s still there. She pulls it out and examines it, grimacing. The word “Ebunike” is scrawled on the wrapper, nothing more.
“Ebunike,” Rogue says, watching V's face. “Just that. Still, lemme see what I can do.” She smiles suddenly like a cat who’s got the mouse in its sights. “We’re gonna get that son of a bitch.”
V swallows back the bile that’s rising in her throat. She’s not sure whether she’s more angry, hurt, or just plain sick.
She'd trusted Johnny. She'd fuckin’ trusted him.
“Know what Smasher’s been up to, all this time?” she asks Rogue, squeezing her eyes shut and willing back the angry tears that threaten to spill. She has way too much pride to cry in front of Rogue.
Rogue shrugs. “He disappeared after the ‘Saka Tower assault in 2023. All thought he was gone for good. He’s popped up a couple times, done mondo jobs for Arasaka, but he always went right back to ground. Wiped out a squad of edgerunners in NC a few years back, but nobody's seen him since. ‘Cept Grayson, apparently.”
“Anything I can do?” V stammers.
“In your current state?” Rogue says appraisingly. “You’re useless. I’ll call you when I learn something.”
“Okay.” V’s voice sounds small and pathetic, and she hates herself for it.
Rogue’s face softens then, and she moves to come sit on the edge of the bed. V stiffens as Rogue reaches for her face and leans forward to peer at her closely. Rogue is close enough now that V can see the faintly glowing telltale orange dots on the fixer's irises - those MR-Eyes are an older model, but they're still among the best on the market. V swallows, feeling suddenly shy.
“Unbelievable that bastard’s somewhere in your head,” Rogue murmurs.
V doesn’t know what to say, so she just stares back at Rogue.
The fixer finally releases her face and stands again.
“You gonna be alright?” Rogue asks. “Need a ride anywhere?”
V is certain that if she were to stand up now, she’d puke everywhere.
“I’m good,” she insists. “Need a minute. I’ll call a Del."
Rogue nods once and opens the door, stepping out into the bright morning sunlight, which pierces V’s head and makes her temples start to throb even worse than before.
The second the door closes behind Rogue, V leans over the side of the bed and hurls. She gasps and spits and heaves up another wave of bile.
And of fuckin' course, it's right then that Johnny fuckin' appears, standing directly in front of her, scratchin’ his fuckin’ balls.
“Oh, fuck,” he says when he sees her.
“What the shit, Johnny!?” V struggles to pull herself into a sitting position. “Fuck…” She sniffles pathetically, wiping the blood and vomit from her face with the back of her sleeve.
"Had no idea the pills would lay you out like this."
His voice is solemn, and he drops onto his heels, squatting in front of her, but she can’t even bring herself to fuckin’ look at him right now.
“Maybe wouldn’t be so bad if you hadn't chased 'em down with fuck knows what.” Her voice breaks as she says it.
Don't cry, don't fucking cry, she commands herself.
Johnny looks away too, his face inscrutable.
“You tricked me,” she continues. “You were just supposed to talk to Rogue! You literally promised me, multiple times, that that was all you were gonna do!”
“Did talk to ‘er,” Johnny says simply, as though that somehow makes any of this okay.
“And the stripper? Empathy brawl!?” Another memory hits her then, like a sack of bricks, and she is suddenly aware of a familiar burning sensation on her right forearm. “Tattoo?” she squeaks, hearing her voice jump a register. Fuck, she’s scared to look.
“Had to give Rogue some kinda lead, didn’t I?” He slumps down onto the floor, leaning against the wall next to the bed.
“Coulda done all that myself,” V spits. “Didn’t need to take my body for a fuckin’ joyride, Johnny.”
“Yeah? Coulda talked to Rogue too? Or would you have needed me to whisper in your ear?”
“Fuck you,” she hisses through gritted teeth.
“I got what we were after,” Johnny points out.
“‘Ebunike’?!” she almost shouts. “A lead on Grayson’s supposed to be a lead on Smasher? Lead to lead… that’s real?”
“Real enough for Rogue.”
“Don’t give me that shit, Johnny. I remember. I felt it. You didn’t even fuckin’ care. You just wanted to go on your little fuckin’ bender, the fuckin’ second you had control. Fuck.”
“Got a little carried away,” he murmurs.
“Carried away?” V shouts back at him hoarsely. “It's my body, not your personal fucking toy.”
“Why can’t it be both?” he replies with a smirk, clearly thinkin’ he can get out of this one with his usual prickish charm.
“This isn’t fucking funny, Johnny! It’s my body and you did a whole fuckload of shit to it without my consent!” She can feel hot tears pouring down her face now, but she can’t seem to stop them. She had trusted him, willingly let him take control, and he went and violated that trust so fucking fundamentally.
“V…” he says, reaching for her, but she recoils.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” she growls. “And where the fuck were you when I woke up?”
“Took two blockers this time,” Johnny mutters. “Like Vik suggested. Thought it would help.”
She just shakes her head and collapses back onto the flimsy mattress, feeling it creak and shift underneath her. “I thought that fuckin’ meant something,” she chokes. "What you promised me, at the Pistis Sophia. How the fuck can I believe anything you say now?”
It lands, and she feels something in Johnny's chest rip open at those words. She squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn't fucking care. She can't let herself care.
“Look at your tattoo,” he says softly after a moment.
“Do I even fucking want to?” she snarls.
He is silent, so she pushes up her coat sleeve to the elbow, then drops her gaze down to see.
It’s a tattoo of a heart with an arrow through it, and the words “Johnny + V” scrawled inside.
She starts crying again.
“What the fuck is this?” she gasps.
“What’s it look like?” he answers stoically. “Gave you a little something to remember me by.”
The implications of his words make her heart twist, but she forces the feeling away, sifting through his memories to find it. How he drunkenly sketched the design on a napkin, brought it to Doc Ryder, demanded he tattoo it on her right then and there.
“She’s gonna love it,” she remembers Johnny slurring through her mouth as the image took shape on her arm.
But she doesn’t believe - can’t believe - that this was just his idea of some romantic fuckin' gesture. Especially not when he went and tried to take a stripper home mere hours later. Tried to fuck Rogue, too, from the sound of it. With her body.
Fuck.
She was so fucking stupid to trust him.
“Let's go get you some air,” Johnny says quietly. She shoots him a dark look. She doesn't want his concern, not fuckin' now.
“The hell even is this place?” she mutters, appraising the grimy motel room they're in.
“A place where you can puke all over the carpet, no problem,” he replies as V heaves herself off the bed, carefully stepping around said puddle of vomit, and staggers over to the sink. There’s no cups anywhere, so she ducks her head and drinks straight from the faucet, attempting to rinse her mouth out as well. Her legs wobble unsteadily underneath her and she leans heavily against the counter.
Fuck. She’s supposed to go meet the Peralezes today, in less than a fucking hour.
She knows she doesn’t have time, but she has to go home and change, even if it means bein’ late. She’s covered in tequila and puke and god knows what else and stinks to high heaven. She checks the pockets of her coat for her belongings and is relieved to find Misty’s dreamcatcher is still there, although it’s slightly damp and sticky with a fluid that V doesn’t let herself wonder about.
“Fuck,” she says aloud. Her hands are shaking. Johnny’s still leaning against the wall watching her from behind his sunglasses. “You oughtta be the one pukin’ right now.”
Johnny just looks down.
V sighs and gathers her shit, already regrettin’ not taking Rogue up on her offer of a ride. The sunlight makes her wince as she steps out the door onto the balustrade of the shitty motel, and she blinks, trying to get her bearings. They’re in Watson, up in Northside. Why the fuck Johnny came here, she has no fuckin’ clue. The end of the night, and his conversation with Rogue, still completely elude her. But what she does remember is Johnny continuing to toss back Misty's pills to keep his roll goin’, remembers him standing on the Halsey Blvd Bridge by himself with his arms raised, shouting triumphantly into the night.
She feels like a fucking fool.
Johnny appears against the railing, but she’s got nothing else to say to him now. She gives him a dark look, then slumps against the wall by the door and tries to gather her thoughts. Home first, shower, change, then head to the Glen. There’s no way she’s gonna make it in time. Fuck.
Her eyes fall to the parking lot, and she realizes Rogue’s still down there, just sitting in her car like she’s still processing all of it. She sees V on the landing and waves, rolling down her window to lean out.
“Last chance for a ride,” she says, and V breathes a sigh of relief and stumbles down the stairs out into the lot.
“Got a client to go meet,” V admits, sliding into the passenger seat.
Rogue looks her up and down. “In that state?”
V shrugs helplessly, and Rogue’s brow knits. “Got a change of clothes in my trunk,” the fixer says in a kind voice. “I’ll wait while you get cleaned up, then I can give you a lift.”
It’s so fuckin’ nice of her to offer, and V experiences a strange mix of emotions warring inside her, comin’ from both herself and Johnny. Would Rogue still be this generous if V wasn’t luggin’ around the fixer's long-dead ex-lover inside her brain? But she feels a sudden sense of kinship with Rogue, too. The Queen of the Afterlife now knows about her sitch with Johnny - someone who actually knew Johnny. Bein’ so intimidated by the woman feels a little silly, now - Rogue’d been just like her once, V realizes. The statuesque merc-turned-fixer certainly got taken for a ride by Johnny more than her fair share of times.
Rogue gets out of the car and digs around in her trunk, handing V a stack of clothing, which V gratefully accepts and takes back up to the room while Rogue lights a cigarette and leans against her car.
The shower barely works and there’s no soap, but V stands under the cold water for as long as she can bear it, feeling the stickiness of the booze and sweat wash away. The clothes Rogue gave her are casual, and more Rogue’s style than her own - there’s a bright neon yellow sweater and some black vinyl pants that V’s not sure she can pull off the way Rogue does - but V’s not in a position to complain. She’d wanted to try and look particularly sharp for this meeting and had a whole outfit planned, but oh fuckin’ well.
When she’s done dressing, she crumples her soiled clothes into a ball and tucks ‘em under her arm before returning to Rogue.
“I’ll get those cleaned and have ‘em delivered for you,” Rogue offers, and V tosses them in the backseat as Rogue starts the car and heads for City Center. Rogue’s ride is as slick as V imagined - a custom Quadra Type-66 Mistral with pink lights on the hypermodern dash. They’re silent for most of the drive, mainly since V's trying her fuckin' hardest not to puke again in Rogue's nice car.
The address V gives her leads them to an empty lot in between two buildings where a lone black town car is parked with some beefed out huscle standing next to it. Thankfully, she’s only a couple minutes late.
“You good?” Rogue asks, idling the car just outside the alley.
V nods. “Thanks, Rogue.”
Rogue gives her a long look as V gets out of the car and collects herself before crossing unsteadily to the waiting vehicle.
“Are you V?” the bodyguard asks, and V nods her head once. He gestures for her to step into the town car, and she opens the door to the backseat.
Jefferson Peralez is in the seat next to hers and extends his hand to V as she sits down.
“Hello, V. I’m Jefferson Peralez,” he says. He introduces his wife, Elizabeth, who’s seated in the front passenger side. The muscly dude slides into the driver’s seat and starts the car, and they glide silently out of the empty lot. Through the tinted windows, V can see Rogue’s car driving off, and she quietly reminds herself to pay Rogue back in some way when she gets a chance.
“Nice to meet you Mr. Peralez,” V says, nodding to them both. She can turn on the charm when she needs to. She can do this. “Mrs. Peralez.”
“Hm,” Jefferson says, seemingly impressed by her manners. “Right again, Liz.”
V wonders if they’d expected her to be some chromed out street merc dragged in from a back alley, and silently thanks Rogue again for the fact that she didn’t have to show up looking - and smelling - like exactly that. But she ignores the comment and turns back to Jefferson.
“So, running for mayor of Night City, huh? The people’s mayor?” she says, raising an eyebrow. Her head is still pounding, but she tries to ignore it.
“Indeed,” Elizabeth says from the front seat in a low, crisp voice.
“So, the one who was DA until recently but just vaulted into a seat on the city council,” V adds. She wants them to see that she knows her shit, isn’t in over her head here.
“I gather you understand why discretion is of the utmost importance,” Jefferson agrees, smiling at her. He turns to Elizabeth again. “My wife is a great judge of character. Said this would work, and now I see why.” He looks back at V warmly.
His friendliness seems genuine, but V’s headache is worsening by the minute and she’s not here to make small talk. “So, whaddya got me for?” she says, cutting to the chase.
“Elizabeth?” Jefferson prompts, and his wife twists around in her seat to face V. She’s wearing an immaculate silver dress and jeweled earrings that hang almost down to her collarbones.
Turns out they want her to investigate the high profile death of the last mayor, Lucius Rhyne. Fuckin' preem, V thinks. This is lookin' to be a big job with an even bigger paycheck.
The official story's that the mayor died of natural causes - a cardioimplant malfunction - but he'd been attacked at a press conference a few hours prior to his death. The NCPD's insisting there's no link, that it was just a random cyberpsycho attack, but the Peralezes are skeptical. V has to agree that on paper, it all seems a little sketch.
And better yet, they have a raw braindance of the ‘psycho attack, and want V to take a look at it right then and there.
“It has to be back where it belongs today,” Jefferson warns her. “Or a lot of people will be in a lot of trouble.”
V’s glad she didn’t blow off this meeting, then.
“I’ll take a look,” she agrees, and Elizabeth takes a braindance wreath from the glove compartment and slots in the shard before handing it to V. V places it on her head and leans back in the seat as the blue lights from the headset flash before her vision and everything goes white.
The BD recording's from one of Rhyne’s security detail as they’re prepping backstage for the press event.
“Well, whadda we got here?” Johnny says, glitching straight into the middle of the braindance, cigarette in hand, as soon as the scene starts to play back.
“Question is, what’re you doing here?” V asks, not even trying to keep the anger and exhaustion out of her voice.
“My brain too, isn’t it?” he says in a dark voice, pacing around the room as the recording plays. She recognizes two of the men present - there’s Lucius Rhyne himself, and his crony deputy Weldon Holt, who’s since taken over as the current acting mayor and is Peralez’s opponent in the mayoral race. Rhyne mentions something about having a room prepared for him later that night at a place called the Red Queen’s Race.
“These assclowns are all the same,” Johnny comments.
“You know what that is?” she asks him.
“Sure,” he jokes. “Buncha old Britfarts in powdered wigs, shouting ‘Off with their heads!’” He does a mock British accent on the last part.
On any other occasion, V’d probably have laughed, but she’s still not in the mood to be all buddy-buddy with Johnny.
“Y’know, you’re allowed to say you don’t have a clue,” she snaps, letting him feel the full force of her annoyance.
The huscle who’s scrolling lumbers over to the door to take up his post. No sooner has he done so than a man in street clothes bursts through the door, barreling straight through the security checkpoint. V thinks he must be the psycho at first, but he turns back to the guard who challenges him, flashing an NCPD badge at the scanner which quickly turns green in response. V frowns. He’s not dressed like a cop - he’s wearing a worn leather trench coat with fur on the collar and a red tank top with leather pants that only serve to accentuate his considerable height and build. Something about his size and demeanor reminds V of Jackie, and she feels her throat tighten.
The stranger heads straight towards the security guard scroller, who lifts a hand to stop him.
“River Ward, NCPD,” the man says, getting up in the guard’s face. Up close, he looks nothing like Jackie - he’s got a cybernetic left eye and a single silver earring on the opposite ear - but his face is extremely handsome in a very rugged sort of way. He’s demandin’ to speak to the mayor’s chief of security, and V can hear Rhyne instructing from the other room to make him wait.
But this man, River, doesn’t seem like one to take no for an answer, and he charges in past the guard in quick, sure strides.
No sooner has he done so than V hears the flick of a mantis blade unfurling behind her and feels it plunge clean through her back, emerging from the huscle’s abdomen covered in his blood and gore.
V hadn’t realized this was gonna be a snuff BD, and feels another wave of bile rise in her throat. It’s also similar - too similar - to Johnny’s memory of being stabbed by a mantis blade in almost the exact same fuckin’ way, and she feels him recoil inwardly as well.
The poor gonk collapses to the floor, clawing at the shitty carpet as he tries to drag himself to safety. But the cyberpsycho’s already in the room, humming a strange tune and launching himself at anything and anyone that moves.
But then gunfire rings out, and it’s over almost as quickly as it began. It’s the plainclothes cop, River. Shot the psycho clean between the eyes, then follows up with a few more for good measure. He’s approaching the body now, probing it with his foot and reaching down to search it for evidence. He turns and sees the guard struggling on the floor, and quickly closes the distance to where he’s lying. His boots fill V’s vision right as the recording cuts out.
“The other guards left literally seconds before the attack,” V muses. “And the terminal glitched right as the psycho came through. Looks planned, like it was done on purpose.”
“That, or the psycho saw his chance and took it,” Johnny counters. “Don’t get paranoid on me.”
V shakes her head. “No, that cop wanted to tell security somethin’.”
“Prolly that he was standin’ by to lick Rhyne’s butthole,” Johnny scoffs.
She knows he's just trying to get a reaction from her, so she resists taking the bait and exits the BD, pulling the wreath off her head as the richly appointed town car fades back into focus around her.
She’s alone in the car with the driver now, parked on an AV landing pad. Both the Peralezes are standing outside near a waiting skycar. She opens the door and walks over to them, hearing the town car drive off behind her.
“Whole thing stinks worse than Coronado Bay in July,” V tells them, handing back the wreath and the shard. She frowns as Jefferson pockets it. “Cop who saved Rhyne,” she asks. “Know anything about him?”
Jefferson smiles broadly, then. “Detective River Ward. Good guy. We worked a few cases together. You wanna talk to him, I’ll put you in touch.”
V nods, feeling Johnny bristle at this. “Ward had great timing,” she says. “Either has crazy good luck or had a source, got good info. I’m gonna need some of each.”
“Well said,” Elizabeth agrees, already flicking her the cop’s contact deets.
Both of them thank her warmly before climbing into the AV, and V backs up as the door closes and it rises off into the sky.
The sunny morning’s been replaced by a quiet gloom that settles heavily over the city, and V heaves a sigh of relief as soon as the AV’s outta sight.
She’ll call Ward later. She needs a proper shower first, and probably some whiskey too to take the edge off her monstrous fuckin’ hangover. And definitely some coffee.
And probably a few more words with Johnny, too, though she’s honestly fucking dreading that part.
As of on cue, he appears next to her as she starts walkin’ for the metro, not even having the good sense to leave her the fuck alone until she’s cooled down a little more.
"Well, well, special favors for politicians,” he teases.
“Shut up, Johnny,” she says, walking faster, but he glitches along to keep up, undeterred.
“First rule of top secret jobs - don't take 'em. First rule of working with politicians - don't do it. First rule of contacting the police - avoid it,” he lists, ticking ‘em off on his fingers. “And what do you do? Break 'em all at once. Gotta say, V, I'm a little impressed.”
“Good to know,” she says through gritted teeth as she swipes through the NCART turnstile.
“You think you've got any clout here?” he presses on. “The Peralezes might seem like decent and down to earth folk, not sitting snug in corpo's pockets like the rest. But they're still part of the ruling elite, V. If they gotta step over you to get to the top, they won't hesitate. Don't believe even for a second that they're any different.”
She finally looks at him then. “You done?” she asks sharply, and he must see the anger and hurt in her eyes because he falls silent and glitches away. Finally.
It’s the first time she’s ever truly considered taking the blockers.
Notes:
River Ward content incoming! I love River and I think he's a super underrated (and underwritten) character tbqh
Chapter 25: False Terrorist
Summary:
V teams up with River Ward to unravel the mystery of the former mayor's death.
Notes:
V and River together are surprisingly fun to write!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Johnny seems to get the message, because he fucks right off while V undresses, carefully setting aside the borrowed clothes to return to Rogue later.
Her reflection in the mirror looks haggard and worn, and she brushes her teeth twice, spitting out more blood as she does so. A relatively mild Relic malfunction hits her while she showers, causing her to gasp and cough violently beneath the stream of water, and she rests her arm against the wall of the shower and waits for it to pass. Her eyes fall to her new fuckin’ tattoo - it’s already starting to swell angrily as the healing process begins.
Her eyes well up with angry tears again. How could he do this to her? How could she have been so foolish to believe he felt the same way about her, that he was starting to really, truly care? That whatever was between had become about more than just convenience, that there was actually something to those emotions she was sure she’d felt from him? To that sharp something in her heart - in his heart - as he himself called it?
Or was it always just her own projections all along?
She stops the shower and dresses, pouring herself a glass of whiskey and flipping on her coffeemaker. She knows she should eat something, but her stomach’s still churning and she doesn’t trust herself to keep anything solid down just yet.
She flops onto her couch, whiskey in hand, while she waits for the coffee to brew. She can still feel Johnny like a dark, black knot in her chest, even though he’s doing his best to stay quiet.
With a heavy sigh, she opens her holo and calls the detective, River Ward.
“This is Ward. Who’m I talkin’ to?”
“Name’s V,” she tells him. “I’m lookin’ into the death of one Lucius Rhyne.”
“Wonder why,” he says with a raise of his eyebrows. “You’re not a cop.”
“Listen,” she says, cutting to the chase. “I know you tried to warn Rhyne about the cyberpsycho.”
He looks at her for a beat, his eyes appraising. “What else do you know?”
“That you’d best meet with me.”
That gets another eyebrow raise from him. “Alright,” he says with a small chuckle. “I’m headed to Chubby Buffalo’s.”
“Be there stat,” V promises and hangs up.
The coffee machine beeps then, and V takes the steaming mug and pours the rest of her whiskey into it. She downs it quickly, burning her tongue in the process and taking a quiet pleasure in Johnny’s irritation at this.
The morning gloom has progressed into full-on rain by now, so V decides to take her car instead of Jackie’s bike. It’s late afternoon, so she hits the beginning of rush hour traffic as she heads across the bridge back to the Glen, keeping to the waterfront downtown to avoid passing through the gridlock of Corpo Plaza.
The parking lot of Chubby Buffalo’s brings back old memories for V. The countless late nights she spent here with Jackie, the countless more as a teen with her friends at the end of a night out… or hungover the next morning. Normally, the diner perched in its peculiar spot on the freeway entrance ramp would afford a spectacular view of Santo Domingo, but right now it’s too foggy to even see all the way across the canal.
V gets out of the car, holding her hood up over her head as she walks quickly towards the diner entrance. She lowers it again and shakes the rain out of her hair as soon as she’s under the awning, then pushes open the wide double doors and enters the cacophony of the crowded diner. There’s music blaring from the TV, and different music blaring from the jukebox, and the din makes her head feel like it’s bein’ split open with a pickaxe.
She spots River Ward’s hulking form in a booth by the windows facin’ his back to her, sitting with a smaller, older man in a trenchcoat and dark shades with an NCPD badge hanging around his neck.
“Someone here to see you, looks like,” the other badge says to River as V approaches.
V comes to a stop at their table, and River turns to look up at her.
“You River Ward?” she asks him pointedly, though she wouldn’t mistake him anywhere. He’s wearin’ the same fur-collared leather trench coat he was wearing in the BD she saw, same silver earring, same cybernetic eye that he’s now coolly regarding her with.
“In the flesh,” he says solemnly. “V, right?”
She nods. “Thanks for agreeing to meet.”
He introduces his partner, Detective Han, who scowls up at V and folds his hands in his lap.
“You really intend to work with a merc?” he spits, narrowing his eyes at River.
“Don’t know what I intend just yet,” River says, turning back to his partner, but his eyes linger on V as he speaks. “For now, gonna see if I hear anything new about Rhyne’s death.”
“You back on that?” Han wrings his hands. “Boss already told you to drop it. Don’t make him say it again.”
Interesting. V makes a mental note of this.
“And if you don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that, heed my advice, as your friend. Just let the case go,” the older detective continues.
V’s brow furrows. Who are they protecting?
But River just smiles. “See me doing’ anything? Just sittin’ here, sippin’ coffee, listenin’ to gossip.” His eyes fall back to V, the smile still playing on his lips.
“Fine, do what you want,” the other detective huffs. “I’m not about to be part of this. Gotta go get my little girl, anyway.” He stands and shuffles out of the booth, pushing past V. “Can you two at least find a quieter corner? Wouldn’t wanna be overheard.”
River watches him as he exits the diner, then gestures to the empty seat. “Okay,” he says to V. “Talk.”
“See Detective Han’s not a fan of edgerunners,” V remarks, sliding into the booth.
“Don’t take it personally,” River says, shooting her a sly grin. “Han’s not a fan of anybody ‘cept his daughter.”
She notices then that he’s got a chrome hand peeking out from under his right sleeve. He doesn’t strike her as an implant enthusiast, so that must mean he’s seen a lot of action. And, she admits, he’s even more good-looking in person. She doesn’t try to stop the thought from reaching Johnny, and her pettiness is rewarded with a spike of annoyance from wherever the fuck he’s burrowed down right now.
“Before the attack, you wanted to talk to Rhyne’s huscle, get some info to ‘em,” she says to River. “What was it?”
“Let me ask you a question first,” he counters. “Why do you got your nose in this? Who hired you?”
V hesitates. She knows this guy’s worked with the Peralezes before, but they did stress the importance of discretion to her, multiple times. “Don’t usually make a habit of giving up the names of my clients,” she tells him.
“Well, then, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of other leads besides me,” River says, callin’ her bluff. “I mean, I sure hope so, cause I’m not telling you a thing.” He drums his metal fingers on the table. “And I’m not bein’ mean, or nosy, nor is it personal. Just coverin’ my own ass. My own safety’s at stake, too. So, before I open my mouth, I need to know whose ears are listening.”
That’s fair, V thinks. “Liz Peralez hired me. And her husband, Jefferson.”
“The presumed future mayor?” River grins and leans back in his seat, chuckling softly. “Guess I coulda seen that comin’.”
V gives him a wry smile, but his face darkens and his eyes begin to dart around the room. “Know what?” he says suddenly. “Han was right. Acoustics are a little too good in here. Got my car outside.”
“Okay,” V says.
It’s still pouring when they step outside, and V jogs slightly to keep pace with River’s long strides as she follows him across the lot to a big, red Thorton Mackinaw Larimore pick-up truck parked next to her Galena.
His dark eye watches her as she clambers into the front seat next to him, then he reverses the truck and pulls out of the lot and into the downpour. As they drive, he launches into an explanation of how the cyberpsycho who’d attacked the mayor, Peter Horvath, had been arrested earlier on the day of the attack for shootin’ up dumpsters and yellin’ about how he was gonna meet with the mayor. But he’d been mysteriously released before they could so much as get a statement from him - just in time to make his bloody appearance at the press conference.
V frowns again. Someone’s got the NCPD in their pockets, seems like.
She knows what Johnny would say. He’s not sayin’ it, but he might as well. Corpos, it’s always corpos.
“So… you saw him as a potential threat, decided to warn the mayor?” she asks River. “Just like that? Cause… you got a good heart?” The last part comes out a bit more sarcastic sounding than she’d intended it.
He turns to her with a serious expression. “Make it sound like that’s somethin’ to be ashamed of.”
V studies his face, and there’s an earnestness there she rarely encounters in this godforsaken city. ‘Specially not among its badges.
“Ashamed… no. Just not something you see every day.” She turns and looks ahead out the window, but finds herself glancing back at River. “So you think someone sprung Horvath intentionally? So he could keep his little date with the mayor?”
River nods. “And before you ask me, no, I got no idea who.” He returns her sidelong glance. “My turn. Why’s Peralez looking at this now? Why’s he want it done unofficial, on the hush hush?”
“He might be out to smear Holt,” V guesses.
“So he thinks Holt’s involved?”
“Dunno,” V says. “But even if he’s not, a murdered mayor isn’t great optics for his deputy. But… Peralez also could just be scared.”
“Doesn’t want the job of a guy who just got carried out feet first?” River smiles slyly, shooting V another quick glance.
V laughs. “Who would?”
She continues to watch River as he drives, taking in his strong profile and the silver earring dangling from his ear. He has a really powerful presence, she thinks. Like Jackie, but much more controlled, serious. But they share the same earnestness, and something about River makes V wanna trust him. He seems like a genuinely good guy, despite bein’ a badge.
“Red Queen’s Race,” she asks, remembering what Rhyne’d said in the braindance. “Know anything about it? Know what it is?”
“Maybe I have, maybe I do,” he says coolly. “It got anything to do with Rhyne?”
“Guy was headed there the day he died,” V recalls.
River narrows his eyes. “Okay,” he says, seeming to make a decision. “We’re gonna go see my CI. All I’ve heard, it’s some fancy-ass club. No idea where to even look for it. CI might know. Then, we’ll go talk to the woman Horvath worked for. Or actually…” He looks at V. “We could see her first. Up to you.”
“Sorry… ‘we’?”
She hadn’t exactly planned on working this whole case with him.
He shrugs. “Can’t shake this case. Something’s up. Just look at how quickly it was closed.” His face is hardened, angry now. “This way, you can get your job done while I find evidence that gets my chief to reopen the case.”
V’s more skeptical about this. If the NCPD was part of the coverup on any level, River might be in for some big disappointments. But she shrugs - he seems smart and well-informed, and she could use his help. “Sure,” she says. “Sounds like a win-win.”
River’s face breaks into a grin. “So, where to first?”
V considers this for a moment. “Let’s go see his boss first. Might have some insights into how he got all that chrome he was packing.”
“Okay,” River says simply, and gets on the bridge to Japantown. They drive in silence as the rain patters heavily against the roof of the truck, and River flips on the radio to a heavy techno station. She feels Johnny flinch at this, but V doesn’t mind - she enjoys this kinda music, actually. They drive up along the waterfront before River turns off onto a side street leading down to an alley next to the Cherry Blossom Market, pulling his truck to a stop in an alcove next to a dumpster.
“We’re looking for Christine Markov,” he tells her. “Listed as Peter’s employer… and also his sole contact. C’mon,” he says, hopping out of the truck.
The glass atrium ceiling that arcs over the market protects them from the rain, creating a strange oasis in the bustling labyrinth of stalls. The sun is almost down now, and the strings of red paper lanterns strung between the stalls illuminate the market in a warm glow amidst the deepening downpour outside.
River puts a hand on her arm as they step into the market. “Got no idea where her stall is,” he admits. “Gonna have to ask around. I’ll start from the left, you take the right.”
V nods and he moves away from her in the opposite direction. She approaches the nearest vendor. “Know which stall Christine Markov works at?” she asks.
The vendor shakes her head. “No hablo ingles,” she says, and V sighs and moves on. Her translator soft woulda made that a non-issue, but she knows a "fuck off" when she hears one. A couple stalls down, she can hear River talking in a low, smooth voice as he systematically questions each stall owner.
The second vendor V talks to just scoffs at her. “Don’t know any Christine. This isn’t Alcoholics fuckin' Anonymous.”
She wanders the market for a bit longer, but none of the other vendors are any more helpful.
Her holo buzzes, and there’s a text from River.
Lost track of you somewhere, but I found her. Waiting for you.
She spots him at a stall a couple aisles down, and weaves her way through the crowd to join him.
Christine Markov turns out to be the owner of a scrap shop, but she does paint them a clearer picture of what’d happened to Horvath. Apparently, he’d always been a little off… but after he went to prison, he’d returned spoutin’ weird stuff about the mayor and then had showed up to work one day with a bunch of fancy new implants that someone had bought him because they “finally saw what he was worth.”
“Horvath had sponsors,” River says, turning to V as they head back towards his car.
“No shit,” V says. “Same sponsors who jumped him outta lockdown the night of the mayor’s death?”
“Might be,” River agrees.
There’s a coupla Tyger Claw gangoons waitin’ by the truck, tryna pick a fight with River. V opens her mouth to tell ‘em to go get fucked, but River places a hand on her arm.
“Let me handle this,” he says, then proceeds to talk them down with a calmness that V can’t help but be impressed by. The gonks slink off with their tails between their legs, one of them turning to flip off River and the other stopping to kick his truck as they scurry off into the market.
“Got a beef with all gangs, or just the Tygers?” she teases him as they climb back into the truck.
“I’m a cop,” River says with a shrug. “Whaddya think?”
He starts the car and pulls out of the market. “So, go see my CI now? That is… if you’re still on board.” He says it almost shyly, as though he’s worried she’s gonna bolt at any minute.
“Course,” she says, and his eyes crinkle into a soft smile as they head back down the waterfront towards the bridge. It’s stopped raining now, and V rolls down her window. The evening air feels fresh and crisp.
“Mind if I smoke?” she asks.
River grins. “Only if you don’t mind that I bum one.”
V smiles and pulls two cigarettes from her case, handing one to River. He leans toward her while he steers so she can light it for him, then rolls down his window and exhales into the cool, damp night.
The song playin’ on the radio used to be one of Jackie’s favorites, but V tries not to let that distract her right now. They’re heading into Vista Del Rey, into one of the seedier parts. V’d known to avoid this block as a teen - it was notorious for being a Scav haunt, even though the area was technically 6th Street territory they’d stolen from the Valentinos. V remembers those gang wars - a lot of older boys on her block didn’t survive it.
River pulls his car to a stop in front of a run-down sex shop. River’s CI turns out to be the proud proprietor thereof - he’s a weaselly little fuck who tries to bolt when he realizes who’s askin’ what. But River cuts him off at the exit, shoves him against the wall of the alleyway and holds him at gunpoint while V talks him down. He eventually rescinds and gives ‘em the address of Red Queen’s Race - apparently, it’s a private, invitation-only braindance and sex club out in Rancho, hidden inside a warehouse near the river. But he warns ‘em the club got shut down recently, emptied out.
“Shut down?” River asks. “Before or after Rhyne died?”
“Uhhh…” the man stammers. “Soon after, I guess.”
River thanks him and lowers his gun and the man dashes back inside, muttering curses under his breath.
“Well, well, well, that’s what I’d call a breakthrough,” says River, holstering his gun and turning to V with a satisfied smirk. She’s suddenly very aware of how much taller he is than her - maybe even taller than Jackie. “Let’s head there?” he proposes, and she nods.
They drive up along the river towards Santo Domingo, and River pulls into a drive-thru Brooklyn Barista once they’re across the bridge.
“Want anything?” he asks V as they pull up to the window.
“Sure,” V says. “Just a coffee, black. Strongest they got.”
River smiles and orders the same for himself, handing her the steaming drink as he pulls back out onto the road. V sips the coffee, feelin’ her headache subside slightly. Although to be honest, her hangover’s receded significantly by now, thank fuckin’ god. There’s something about River’s presence that she finds calming. And this investigation is proving to be a welcome distraction from the events of the previous night.
“Make a habit of workin’ with badges?” he asks, shooting her another little sidelong glance.
“Can’t say I do,” she smirks. “Fact, you’re the first one.”
“That so?” he says, a smile playing on his lips. “Well, I’m honored to be your first.”
V feels a spike of something from Johnny as she smiles back at River, and she’s sure he’d be fake gagging from the backseat right now if he wasn’t afraid she’d start screamin’ at him again. Which she probably would.
She forces down a scowl and returns to nursing her coffee.
River does a u-turn when they get to the homeless encampment by the river, then pulls the car to a stop on the street level bridge that spans the river and connects Santo to Westbrook. The warehouse the coordinates lead to is the one at the end of the bridge, facing the water.
“This is Animal turf,” V reminds him as they get out of the car.
“I know,” he says, and V remembers that he’s a cop; 'course he would know his shit.
“Lock up any of theirs recently?” she asks.
“Not lately, no,” he says. “But they’re not exactly fans of pigs, either.”
He puts his hand on her arm again to stop her as she starts to cross the street when they reach the end of the bridge. “I can’t go in without a warrant,” he says. “But you…”
V raises her eyebrows. Plays by the books, she thinks with bemusement. “Alright. I can do that.”
“Link with me on the holo,” he says, and she accepts his request when it appears on her HUD. He leans casually against the railing of the bridge, and she can feel his eyes on her as she crosses the street and approaches the front gate.
There’s a surly lookin’ Animal woman manning the booth there, but V slips around the side, looking for another way in. And she finds it - a small vent on the ground that she easily pries off that leads to a crawl space underneath the floor.
“Found a way in,” she tells River, slipping in.
“Good,” he says. “Be careful, and keep me updated. If you need backup, I’ll be there.”
The floor above her is just metal grating, and she can see more Animals walkin’ around up there. She uses the big pipes as cover as she slips along unseen, looking for a way up. When she manages to get to a quiet, hidden corner of the room, she carefully lifts off a panel of the floor above her, hoisting herself out onto the main level.
There’s an Animal standing only 20 feet away from her, but he’s bent over a crate and doesn’t see her. She tries not to breathe as she slips through a door to their right.
She disables a security camera with her Kiroshis and slides between the stacks of crates, narrowly missing an Animal who’s patrolling the area. She darts behind a truck, leaning around the side to check for a clear path, when suddenly a hand clamps down on her shoulder.
“You lost?” the Animal’s mechanical voice growls at her.
Oh fuck.
She doesn’t hesitate before lifting her knee to connect with his groin, slipping away as she does so. He’s yelling loudly now, and she dives behind a crate, already queuing up her combat quickhacks.
“V?” It’s River’s worried voice on the holo. “Everything okay?”
“Got spotted!” she whispers hoarsely.
“Okay,” River says. “Hang on, be right there!”
She leans out to launch her daemons, but another Animal’s waitin’ there with a giant fuckin’ sledgehammer raised, and V barely rolls out of the way in time. They’re firing at her now, too, and she ducks back behind the crates.
Fuck fuck fuck.
The Animal raises her hammer again, and V finally manages to land a quickhack, causing the woman to seize up mid-swing as the daemon glitches her circuits. And it’s particularly effective on these chromed-out gonks, V notes with relief, as the ganger’s hammer slips from her hand and drops to the floor with a thundering crash. V ducks against the crates and takes deep, steadying breaths as she waits for the strangled cries to begin, tellin’ her the hack is leaping its way from one gangoon to the next like it’s supposed to. But there’s another wave of ‘em comin’ at her now from another room, and she draws her revolver and turns around to face them.
But then River’s there, gun drawn, picking off the Animals surgically as he approaches her. She already saw a preview of his skills in the braindance, but damn, he’s a good shot. She notices too that the Animals he hits aren’t bleedin’ out - he’s using the same modded non-lethal rounds that she uses, and she feels her lip twitch upward at this realization. Together, they take down the rest of ‘em, and V smiles gratefully at him when he reaches her.
He assumes position and watches her six as they fight their way through the warehouse until finally, the room is silent except for their echoing footsteps.
“So, the club’s in here somewhere,” River says as they survey the empty, nondescript warehouse. “In the garage, is my guess. Or under it.”
They move between the stacks of shipping crates, looking for anything that could plausibly be the entrance to a nightclub.
V comes to a stop in front of a crate that has a strange and slightly more elaborate locking system on it than the other crates. And more tellingly, it has a strip of orange neon lights above it, which seem to her to be purely decorative.
“River, check this out,” she says, and he moves to her side to examine it.
“Think you can hack it?” he asks, and V nods, already scanning it with her Kiroshis.
It’s an easy locking algorithm that uses an old code, so she’s able to get it open with minimal effort. The bolts slide out from the doors, and they swing inward to reveal a staircase down, bathed in a pink and red neon glow. At the bottom of the staircase is an elevator.
“Look at that,” River says, crinkling his eyes at V again.
They walk down and enter the elevator together. V presses the button for the club level, and the elevator begins to descend. River meets her eyes and they both ready their guns and position themselves for combat in case there’s anyone waitin’ for ‘em at the bottom.
There’s no one there when the elevator doors slide open, so they step out together into a narrow, neon lit foyer. Beyond it, through a set of double doors, V can see a much larger main space. Luckily for them, the club appears to be completely empty, but it’s been absolutely ransacked.
“Someone really wanted to cover up… whatever it was that went down here,” she murmurs.
But it’s not quite empty - there’s a lone Animal stationed just inside the doors to the main area of the club, and River and V corner her at gunpoint.
V waits for River to talk, but he nudges her and she remembers again he’s playin’ by the rules with this warrant shit. Alright then, V thinks.
“Lucius Rhyne,” she demands, pressing her revolver to the woman’s head. “He was here the night he died?”
“Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t,” the Animal spits. “No fuckin’ idea.”
“Why you watchin’ this dump?” V asks, gesturing around them. “Nothin’ left to klep here.”
“We ain’t watchin’ it, we’re fuckin’ waiting!” she shouts back, bits of spittle flying from her mouth.
“For what?” V prompts.
“Till they pay us for a job well done!” she howls. “Smashed it up pretty fuckin’ good, didn’t we?”
So someone paid ‘em off to smash the place up, destoy evidence. V and River exchange a look.
“Who’d you smash it up for?” V asks.
It takes a bit of cajoling, but eventually V manages to get a name out of ‘er.
Weldon fuckin’ Holt. Maybe Jefferson’s hunch was right, after all.
V frowns and lowers her gun, and the Animal makes a dash for the elevator. V and River let her go.
“Let’s find the office,” River suggests. “See if they’ve got any security cam footage the Animals didn’t scrub.”
V nods and they move out, beginning their sweep of the club. It’s a fuckin’ mess; the goon wasn’t lying when she said the Animals’d done a great job of smashin’ shit up.
They find the office on the second floor, and to V’s relief, the computer’s still functioning even though the screen is cracked. She hacks into the network and scans through the security footage trying to find the backdated ones they need, but of course, the ones from that night’ve been deleted. But V’s a better hacker than that - they didn’t do a clean wipe of the files, and V’s able to restore ‘em.
River looks impressed as she pulls up the video, and leans forward to watch over her shoulder. She can feel his breath in her ear and tries not to focus on that.
But then both of their eyes widen as the recording starts, because pacing back and forth in front of one of the private booths is River’s own fuckin’ partner, Detective motherfuckin’ Han.
“Weird!” V says sarcastically, turning to River. “Guy looks familiar, doesn’t he?”
“V…” River warns, his brown wrinkling into a frown. “I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
In the video, Han’s on the phone with someone, tellin’ ‘em that Rhyne’s been dead in the room for hours, and apparently didn’t have his Trauma Team card on him. Han repeats back the instructions he receives from whoever he’s talkin’ to - bring Rhyne’s body home, tell the press he died in his sleep of natural causes - before hanging up the phone and waving over some huscle to drag Rhyne’s hulking corpse from the room.
“Think we’ve seen everything we need to,” River says bitterly, stepping away from the computer and folding his arms across his broad chest.
But V wants to check out the private booth the mayor’d been in, see if there’s any evidence the Animals missed. “Gonna look around some more,” she tells him.
River follows her down the hall and watches from the doorway as she examines the room. Nothing about the booth shows any indication someone died here - there’s no blood, no personal belongings, just some empty bottles and ripped pillows strewn about, likely the Animals’ contribution.
But something catches V’s eye, and she moves aside one of the pillows to find a braindance wreath peeking out from under it, wedged between two of the couch cushions. She picks it up and to her surprise, it’s untouched and looks functional - even still has a shard in it. Her curiosity gets the better of her and she slides it onto her head and lowers herself onto the couch.
The blue lights start to flash and her vision goes white, but then something sharp pierces her head and everything starts to glitch. This isn’t a Relic malfunction, it’s the fuckin’ braindance, she realizes in a panic as her vision turns to static and she feels her heart stutter and her body begin to convulse. She lets out a strangled scream, falling forward off the couch onto her hands and knees. She feels Johnny’s terror now too - he’s suddenly standin’ above her, reachin’ for her almost instinctively.
“V!” River shouts, rushing over to her. Johnny glitches away as River rips the wreath off her head and reaches for her hand. She collapses against him, shakin’ and panting.
“Shit, V?! You okay?”
She wills herself to breathe, but her vision’s still glitching red and whatever the fuck just happened seems to be triggering a Relic malfunction now, too. Fuckin’ great.
River grabs her arm and pulls her around to face him.
“You hear me?” he says in a panicked voice.
She looks at him as his face slowly wobbles back into focus and her vision clears, and she feels her heart thump back into its normal rhythm finally. She’s still shaking, but she pulls herself into a sitting position. River stays crouched over her, lookin’ scared as hell.
“Thanks,” she manages, and his face breaks into a relieved smile.
“No problem,” he says. “You feelin’ okay?”
“You ask me… wasn’t a heart attack that killed Rhyne,” V says, and it still takes some effort to speak. “Someone spiked his BD. That’s what killed him.”
“Fuck…” River says, his eyes widening. “Think you’re right.”
He pockets the wreath and helps her to her feet, guiding her back to the elevator. He doesn’t release her until he’s sure she can walk steadily on her own. She’s once again struck by how comforting his presence is - something about him just makes her feel safe, protected.
Unsurprisingly, this thought provokes another lurid wave of bullshit from Johnny, and V can’t help but feel a grim satisfaction at this.
River’s face is hard when they get in the truck.
“What now?” she asks.
“Gotta confront Han,” he says.
“Sure that’s a good idea?” V asks. “Don’t know how far up this goes.”
“Don’t care,” River says. “He’s my partner, I need to hear it from him.”
V just nods as River calls up the older detective.
“Han,” he says when the detective answers. “Meet me at Chubby Buffalo’s. One hour.”
He hangs up before Han has a chance to respond and guns the truck back towards the Glen.
The sun’s just barely startin’ to creep up by the time they make it back to Chubby Buffalo’s, and a damp fog is still clinging to the city. Han’s waiting in the parking lot by his car smokin’ a cigarette, and River parks right next to it. V’s car is there too, right where she left it.
“Fuck,” River says to his steering wheel, then turns and gets out. V follows.
“Still hangin’ around with this punk?” Han says to River when he sees her.
“Shut it, Harold,” River snaps. “I know what you did. Not gonna ask you why you did it. Just wanna know - who gave you the order?”
Han just laughs lightly and takes a drag of his cigarette. “You’ve still got no idea how this city works, kid. Think your goddamn inspirational, idealistic bullshit actually means something? It doesn’t, never did.” He scowls at V. “Hey, don’t look at me that way, merc. You know I’m right.”
“Know this city inside and out,” V tells him, feelin’ her jaw clench. Only thing worse than a cop is a dirty one, she thinks. “City’ll tear you down, sure, but that’s all the more reason to stand up to it. Corpos and politicians are always out to fuck over the rest of us, but that doesn’t mean we gotta roll over and take it.”
She feels River’s eyes on her as she says it, and she reads something like surprise, or admiration on his face. Probably doesn’t come across a lot of mercs who think like she does, she realizes.
“And you?” V continues. “You’re just as bad as they are. Same asshole, different suit.”
“V…” River cautions. “Preciate it, but this isn’t your biz. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“How you gonna do that? Am I under arrest?” Han taunts River.
“Got a scroll, got a motive, got your confession. So yeah, you could be,” River sneers back. “But it wouldn’t make much sense. You don’t even gotta say who ordered you to go and clean up. I know anyway.” He paces back and forth across the parking lot, arms still tightly folded. His pacing isn't like Johnny’s wild, barely contained rage - River’s arms are crossed and he’s still in control, keeping his rage tamped down. “So, since even our brass’s fingers are all over this, I guess I gotta take it to internal.”
“They won’t do a thing, either,” Han says calmly, taking another drag of his cig. “Not to me. They’ll put you in their sights, though.” He tosses down his cigarette and stamps it out, then moves to get back into his car. “Just go home, Ward. Get some sleep. Find all this easier to take in in the morning.” He pauses before shutting the door. “I mean, that’s my plan.”
River watches with disgust as his partner drives off, his lip still curled in anger.
“Fuck,” he says, dropping his arms and striding back over to the concrete ledge overlooking the mist-covered canal.
V follows him and leans against the ledge beside him, thinkin’ about all the times she and Jackie’d sat perched in this very spot, passin’ back and forth a bottle of Papa Garcin or whatever other cheap liquor they could scrounge.
River sighs heavily and stares out into the fog.
“What are you gonna do now?” V asks him.
“Won’t let this go,” River growls in a low voice. “Can’t.” He shakes his head. “Holt murdered Rhyne. Wanted his seat. Oldest, tritest motive in the book. That’s why I believe it. Used the NCPD to cover his tracks.” He turns around and crosses his arms again and looks down at V, waiting for her response.
V thinks about this for a moment. It’s the simplest explanation, that’s for sure… but something about it doesn’t quite add up for her. The kinda chrome Horvath was packing… the premeditation required to groom him for the hit… not to mention the spiked BD, the sloppy Animals coverup… the improperly scrubbed security footage…
“No…” she says slowly. “Wasn’t like that, not quite. Whole thing stinks of corpos, if you ask me.”
God, I sound like Johnny, she thinks.
“So, what happened?” River asks.
“Dunno exactly,” she shrugs. “Just feels like this goes deeper than you, me, Han, and Holt. Like there’s somethin’ bigger pullin’ the strings. If you ask me, they set it up so Holt’d take the fall if anyone started digging. Used him as cover.”
River stares at her. “Might be right,” he concedes. “Either way, I’m takin’ this to internal affairs. Got enough to get this case reopened.”
V nods. “Sure but… be careful, River. Han wasn’t wrong that this might put you in the sights of some powerful fucks who don’t give two shits about morals or justice.”
“And you?” River asks. “Gonna report back to the Peralezes?”
“Guess so.”
He looks at her for a long beat, then, and V swallows nervously under his gaze. She finds herself not wanting to walk away. She extends her hand to River and he shakes it firmly, letting his hand linger on hers a little bit longer than strictly necessary. His metal fingers feel cold against her soft, organic ones.
“Thanks, V,” he says, and she turns away and steps slowly toward her car. River leans against the concrete ledge and watches her through the windshield as she gets in and starts the engine.
She waves once at him, then pulls out of the lot and heads back to Watson.
The sun is breaking through the clouds over the horizon by the time she gets home, and she collapses onto her bed still in her clothes. It’s still too early to call the Peralezes, and she needs to get some actual sleep before she does anything else. She’s fuckin’ wiped. She hasn't slept in her own bed in god knows how many nights.
“Still mad?” Johnny asks in a low voice, glitching in by the window next to her bed, back in that same spot he’d appeared the night they first met. His shades are off, and he’s looking down at her with a cigarette dangling between his lips. He reaches for it with his metal hand and takes a long, slow drag.
She nods, avoiding his eyes.
“So now you’re flirtin’ with cops to get back at me?”
“Wasn’t flirting,” she lies. “And not everything’s about you, believe it or fuckin’ not. Know that’s hard for your gonk little pissbrain to grasp sometimes.”
Guess we're getting into this now, she thinks.
"Come on, V,” he pleads. “I've seen you party that hard. Didn't do anything you wouldn't've."
"You're still missin’ the fucking point, Johnny!” she growls, throwing her elbow over her face. “This is about consent. Yeah, sure, maybe I would've done all that dumb shit you did all by my fuckin’ self. But I didn’t, and I didn’t say you could, either. You had complete control over my body, I wasn't fuckin’ conscious, and I was trustin’ you to only do what you said you were gonna do. And instead, you got trashed and did a bunch of fuckin' drugs and tried to bang a fuckin’ stripper! And Rogue, too!"
She feels a ripple of something from Johnny that he quickly tamps down before she can catch its exact shape. "Is that why you're mad?” he asks. “You’re… jealous?"
She heaves out a frustrated sigh, removing her arm from her face and propping herself up on her elbows to look at him. He’s still regarding her solemnly, waiting for her response.
"You asked me, as a fuckin’ favor, to give you control for a couple hours so you could get Rogue on board to help us find Smasher,” she says, like she’s talkin’ to a fucking child. What about this is so fuckin’ hard for him to understand? “If you'd wanted to borrow my body to go party and try to get laid that would have been a completely different fuckin' conversation!"
He looks down and doesn’t respond.
"Was it ever even actually about Smasher?” she presses. “Or did you just want an excuse to take my body for a spin?"
"Only one way I wanna take your body for a spin, and that wasn't it," Johnny says, meeting her gaze. She almost laughs, but his voice is dead fuckin' serious. Leave it to him to make a dumb sex joke in the middle of a serious fuckin' argument.
She rolls her eyes instead. "So what the fuck happened, then?"
"I lost control," he says simply. "Don't have an excuse. Hadn't technically had a drink in 50 fuckin' years. But I guess some demons never leave you."
V considers this. She knows Johnny struggled with that shit his whole adult life - she’s seen his memories of the benders, the days spent drinking away the pain and trauma of the war, the nights he spent writhin’ in various motel rooms kickin’ dope and every other drug under the sun, the relationships he ruined by getting smashed and doin’ and sayin’ gonk shit. And V experienced it with her own mother, too… the broken bottles, the crying, the suicide attempts. Doesn’t make it fucking okay, though, she thinks.
"I'm still mad," she says softly. And she is, but it's cooled into something less white hot. Now, it's just a general sense of disappointment and heartbreak.
Her forearm itches, and she pushes up her sleeve to scratch it before remembering the still healing tattoo. It’s startin’ to scab now.
“Really thought you’d like it,” Johnny murmurs, following her gaze.
"Maybe I would have, if it hadn't come as a package deal with the rest," she mutters.
She sits up and wriggles out of her coat, tossing it to the side before curling up against her pillow, facing away from Johnny. Neither of them says anything for a minute.
“I’m scared, Johnny,” she admits, her voice a whisper. “Is that what it’s gonna feel like if this doesn’t work? If you finally do take over, and I just… fade away?”
“Not gonna let that-” he begins, but she cuts him off.
“Not lookin’ for more empty promises,” she tells him sharply.
“They’re not empty, V,” he says seriously. “Might mean jack shit to you now, but a promise is a promise. Gonna do my best to make sure ya never find out. You’re gonna live, V… even if it’s the last goddamn thing I do.”
She squeezes her eyes shut against the tears that suddenly threaten to spill, not letting herself give him a response. After a long moment, she hears him finally glitch away behind her, and only then does she allow herself to cry.
Notes:
Jogny is a Sad Brainwurm uwu
ALSOOO if any of you want to check out a really fun, small, inclusive Cyberpunk discord I'm part of where you can join our shared single braincell in yammering nonstop about Cyberpunk nonsense, here is the link!!!
Chapter 26: Wounded Machine
Summary:
V reports back to the Peralezes, does a strange gig for Padre, then drowns her sorrows.
Notes:
This chapter is kind of a doozy!
CW: light smut and drug abuse
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It’s raining again when V wakes up, and Johnny is nowhere to be found. She resists the urge to reach for him with her mind, poke at him a little, and instead flips on her holo and calls Elizabeth Peralez. She lights a cigarette while it rings and cracks her back - her body feels stiff and sore in pretty much every way imaginable.
“Got a pretty good idea what happened to Rhyne,” she says when Elizabeth answers.
Elizabeth’s face lights up. “Great. Come by, please. I’d rather discuss your findings face to face.”
She hears a ping as the woman flicks her the coordinates - Charter Hill, unsurprisingly - and V nods once.
“We’ll be waiting,” Elizabeth says, and disconnects.
V finishes her cigarette and makes herself a coffee, taking her time in the hopes that the rain will abate some. At least this time, she has a chance to make a better impression with her wardrobe, so she dresses carefully, choosing her cleanest and least scuffed leather pants and her one Jinguji top she splurged on a few months back. She frowns at her reflection in the mirror. A shopping trip is definitely in order - now that she has some extra eds, it’ll be worth it to invest in a couple of nicer pieces.
The rain shows no signs of stopping, so she eventually relents and pulls on her most rainproof bomber and heads down to the garage.
It’s still raining heavily when she rolls to a stop in front of a large, fancy apartment building in Charter Hill, leaving her Galena with the valet and trying to ignore his judgmental glance at her beat up scrap heap that passes for a car.
Elizabeth lets her in via the intercom, and V fights down the old memories that surge up as she steps into the lavishly appointed lobby. Her dad had once lived in an apartment like this. She rarely ever went there, but sometimes he’d bring her over after school, alone, when his wife was out of town. Talk her ear off about how much money he was spending on her education, how she and her mother should be grateful for the meager crumbs he’d throw at ‘em. Hadn’t stopped him from cutting off her school tuition the second his wife wised up, or kickin’ them out of the shitty apartment he rented for them in Heywood, either. “Grateful” wasn’t a word she ever felt he’d earned, despite the undeniable advantages those early years of education had given her over the other street kids on her block. She’d have much rather had a real father.
She punches the elevator button for the penthouse and tries to gather her thoughts as the doors slide shut.
“Just gonna tell you one thing,” Johnny says, appearing against the wall next to her as the lift glides silently upwards.
“Prolly gonna be more than one, but all right,” she sighs.
“Don’t tell ‘em nothin’,” Johnny says seriously. “Don’t get involved. This muck is deeper than ya think. Suck you in if you’re not careful.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” V says sharply. “I’m always careful.”
“Fine, do whatever the fuck you want,” Johnny huffs, folding his arms. “Not like ya listen, anyway.”
But Johnny’s words echo in her head as the doors open and Elizabeth leads her through their lush foyer into a large open living room with sweeping views of the rainswept city. A grand piano sits in the middle of the room, playin’ a pre-programmed track. To her surprise, it’s one V recognizes - Claire de Lune. Her mom used to play it on the old piano in Padre’s parish when she thought no one was around. V knew she’d learned piano as a kid in Neo-Sov, but she never talked to V about her childhood much. The tune arouses old, painful memories for V, like everything else about this fuckin’ apartment. Her dad’s wasn’t nearly as nice - he certainly hadn’t lived in a penthouse - but the overall vibe is still sickeningly familiar to her.
Jefferson’s seated on the couch when she enters, and Elizabeth takes a bottle of wine from the bar and crosses over to the low marble coffee table, pouring them each a glass. V sits at Jefferson’s urging and allows herself a tentative sip of the wine, and holy crap, she’s never tasted wine like this before. It’s rich and fruity yet not sweet, and she forces herself to put it down before she drinks it too quickly and gives herself away.
Elizabeth delicately lifts her wine glass and perches on the back of the couch behind Jefferson, gently resting a hand on his shoulder. They’re both dressed more casually than when she last saw them - Jefferson’s shirt is unbuttoned at the top, and Elizabeth is wearing tailored pants and a luxurious looking sweater - but V has a feeling their combined outfits are still probably worth more than her Galena outside.
She continues sipping her wine while Jefferson asks if she unearthed any answers during her investigation.
She hesitates, choosing her words carefully. “Case is pretty complex,” she begins. “Leaves a lotta questions unanswered.”
She could take the simple path here, implicate Holt, hand Jefferson his electoral win. Holt did cover it up - and that’s damning on its own. But she trusts her gut, and she knows Johnny’s right - there’s something deeper goin’ on here, and she’s not sure she wants to place herself in the crosshairs of whoever it is that’s pulling the strings. But Jefferson and Elizabeth are both lookin’ at her expectantly, so she takes another sip of her wine and continues.
“I’d rather… not draw any conclusions just yet,” she says evasively.
Jefferson’s brow furrows. “But… you must have an opinion?”
“Jeff… honey,” Elizabeth says to him gently. “Read between the lines. The case is ‘complicated’? Dying at home of a cardiac malfunction isn’t complicated.”
V sees the comprehension dawn on Jefferson’s face then as well.
“So we were right?” he says, looking back and forth between his wife and V.
“Yes,” Elizabeth agrees. “And that’s enough for me.” She looks over at V, who nods in confirmation. “We have to be careful. Very careful, Jeff. That’s what V’s trying to tell us.”
Jefferson considers this for a moment. He doesn’t seem like the type to let something go easily, but his wife still has her hand on his shoulder, both women watching him carefully. He nods once. “Thanks for your help, V,” he says simply, and his eyes glow blue as he flicks her a staggering amount of eddies.
V struggles to keep her face cool as the numbers flash across her HUD.
“Pleasure workin’ with you,” she says, finishing her wine and getting to her feet, then pauses to look at the two of ‘em, sitting there together on the couch. The Peralezes seem genuine - at least as genuine as politicians can be - and she hopes whoever came after Holt won’t target them next.
“You two watch out for each other,” she tells them, stepping back into the elevator.
The valet brings her car around, and V tips him generously. Johnny glitches into the passenger seat as soon as she closes the door.
“Good move, V,” he says as she starts the car.
“Yeah,” she says. “You were right. There’s more goin’ on here. Think they got the message?”
Johnny nods, looking satisfied and more than a little bit smug. “Where to, now?”
V checks her messages. “Could do that gig Padre sent. Steal back your old choom’s guitar.”
That gets a sharp laugh from Johnny. “Can’t believe Kerry let someone nab his axe. Old man’s gettin’ sloppy.”
V’s still mad at Johnny, but she knows there’s no point in shuttin’ him out forever. She sighs. “Alright then, let’s roll.”
It’s still raining, but the sun’s beginning to peek through the clouds as they cross the bridge over to Heywood, circling around to park in front of another fancy-lookin’ apartment complex. No valet here though, so V parks her car under a nearby awning and hops out, pulling up the hood of her bomber as she walks quickly towards the building entrance.
There are two men in the lobby, and V pauses when she catches the tail end of their conversation. They’re complainin’ about loud music blasting from one of the units, and V suddenly realizes they’re almost definitely talkin’ about her target.
“Guy’s obsessed with that one shitty band,” one of them is saying. “Plays it full blast, nonstop. Won’t shut up about ‘em either, always babblin’ about Silverhand this, Eurodyne that. For hours on end. Literally.”
V chuckles to herself as she crosses to the elevator, feeling Johnny’s pride prickle at this.
It’s easy to tell which apartment is the right one, because just like the guys downstairs were saying, there’s Samurai music blasting from inside it, clearly audible from the hallway. V approaches the door and knocks, and when there’s no answer, she hacks the door console and it slides open easily.
To the immediate right of the door is a wall of guitars on display.
“Welp,” V says. “Can’t have bad luck all the time.”
Johnny appears next to her, already rolling his eyes. “Save ya some time. It’s none of these.”
V frowns. “How do you know?”
“‘Cause say what you will about Kerry, but he knew guitars,” Johnny scoffs. “And these’re all hot trash.”
V sighs and surveys the rest of the apartment. It’s not huge, but it’s a nice open space with a lofted second floor and a broad glass wall that stretches to the ceiling, opening out to a small balcony.
And every visible surface is covered top to bottom in Samurai paraphernalia.
Johnny glitches over to stand in front of a huge poster for one of the band’s early shows. Judging from the date, Johnny was still a teenager then. She forgets sometimes how young he’d been when the band first got started. It’s hard to imagine what he must have been like then.
“Piss poor acoustics, that place,” Johnny muses. “Lighting came a close second. Grub was the worst.”
Imagining Johnny as a young man playing those early shows makes V momentarily forget her anger at him, but of course the next thing outta his mouth ruins that again.
“Course, the chicks made up for that,” he adds. “Best pussy I ever ate.”
V scowls at him, and Johnny smirks right back. Clearly the reaction he’d been hoping for.
“You don’t count,” he says smugly. “Haven’t actually properly tasted yours.”
She feels the heat rush to her face and her dark anger return, so she turns away from him to examine a smaller poster on the next wall.
“Weird…” Johnny says, following her gaze. “Don’t remember this one.”
“Must be all that vodka you sponged up over the years,” she shoots back.
Now it’s Johnny’s turn to look taken aback. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he says haughtily. “I never touched vodka. Bourbon, whiskey, and tequila… that was my crowd.”
“Mm, noted,” V replies sardonically. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
Johnny wanders over to the fully stocked bar near the kitchen. There’s a bottle of Centzon on the counter, surrounded by a few half empty glasses. Either this guy’s just had a party… or he has a bit of a drinking problem.
“Well, well,” Johnny says. “Have to appreciate the man’s taste in both music and liquor.”
“Ah, of course,” V says dryly, grabbing the bottle and pouring herself a glass. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Johnny furrows his brow as she downs the glass. “But what I don’t get… I mean, why the fixation on Kerry?”
V rolls her eyes and pours herself another shot. She tosses it back quickly, and Johnny raises an eyebrow at her. She ignores him and moves to search the upstairs, but Johnny appears sitting on the stairs in front of her, staring at another poster hung on the wall above them.
“I’ll never forget this one,” he says, laughing softly. “Line was longer than from here to Plymouth Rock. Afterparty lasted two nights straight.”
“And ended in the drunk tank?” V guesses.
Johnny just taps his heel on the step and grins at her.
“Mm,” she says coolly, stepping over him and continuing up the stairs. There’s a small landing with a door that opens into the bedroom, and V enters cautiously, although she’s pretty sure by now there’s no one here. No way someone could sleep through music this loud.
“Ha, now that was a fuckin’ party,” Johnny says, glitching in front of another concert poster. “Kerry got so wasted he vommed in Nancy’s guitar case.”
V raises an eyebrow. “Wish I was there to see that.”
“Kinda wish you were too, honestly,” Johnny says, sitting on the bed and taking a drag of his cig. “Woulda had fun.”
V doesn’t know what to say to this, so she just continues perusing the room. But Johnny leans over to look at a framed photo on the bedside table.
“Fuck, Kerry’s an old geezer now,” he says, and there’s a sadness to his voice that makes V pause. She comes closer to examine the photo as well, and sure enough, there's Kerry. “When was this still taken?” Johnny asks.
Kerry’s holding a fancy-looking guitar in the photo and posing with a fan that V guesses might be the owner of the house they’re in. They’re standing underneath a concert marquee with the date on it.
“Not long ago,” V points out. “Look, the date… and the guitar we came for.”
Johnny nods thoughtfully. “Wonder where he’s got it stashed away.”
V moves to search the rest of the room. There’s a small suitcase in the corner, and she kicks it open and a pair of brown leather pants falls out.
Johnny glitches over to stand beside her. “Are those… my pants?” he says incredulously.
She leans down to pick them up, and sure enough, they’re exactly like the ones Johnny’s engram’s wearin’ right now.
“The fuck did he even get these?” Johnny huffs, putting out his cigarette and lighting another one. “Was wearin’ ‘em the night I died.”
V frowns at this. “D’you know what they did with your body?” she asks, and Johnny shakes his head.
“How the fuck would I know that? Once they ripped me out of it, all I remember is Mikoshi.” He shudders, and she can feel the dark memories bubble up inside him. She hasn’t let herself wonder much about what happened to his body, but seeing these here makes something sharp flare up in her chest again. Johnny must feel it too, because he looks at her strangely.
“Want me to hang onto ‘em?” she asks.
Johnny nods. “Yeah,” he says, then grins. “Wanna find out if they fit ya?”
Maybe it’s the wine and tequila goin’ to her head, but V shrugs and unbuttons her pants, slipping them off and stepping out of them before pulling on the worn leather ones. They’re a little tight on the hips and loose on the waist and the length is long on her, but a slow smile spreads across Johnny’s face.
“Look preem on ya,” he says, taking a long drag of his cig.
V hates to admit it, but she really likes them, too. She leans over and cuffs up the ends, then picks up her old pants and tucks ‘em under her arm.
“Alright, we’ve got a job to do,” she reminds him.
There’s a door on the far side of the bedroom that she takes back out onto the landing, and there's another room out there to their right with a glass security door. Inside, she can see more posters, an old drum kit, and right in the middle is a particularly notable looking guitar displayed on a pedestal with a single spotlight above it.
“Hah!” Johnny says, glitching through the door and doing a circle inside the room. “This is it, V! His custom Lancaster he was so fuckin' proud of." He paces back and forth. "Safe room, numeric keyboard… Shit, V, it’s gotta be the date on that still with the guitar!”
“Think our buddy here would be that gonk?”
“Well since he was Kerry’s fan, then yeah, damn sure of it.”
Johnny lights another cigarette, waiting for her inside the room, and V punches in the date on the picture and lo and behold, the door slides open.
She crosses over to where Johnny’s standing and grabs the guitar off its pedestal. Course, that triggers the fuckin' security system, and the alarms all start whooping. Johnny looks at her and glitches back out to the landing.
“Shit, they’re comin’, V,” he says, and she runs out to join him.
There’s already two security guards comin’ in the front door, guns drawn, so V vaults over the ledge of the loft and back down into the main area, making a dash for the balcony. She looks over the edge of the railing to see if there’s another balcony below she can jump to, but it’s just a straight drop down to the street far below. She’s gotta think of something fast, though - the guards have opened fire on her.
She looks up instead, and there’s a light trellis covering half the balcony. She tosses the guitar up first, then heaves herself up onto it as the guards approach. The apartment is on the top floor, so the roof of the building isn’t that far above her, and V says a quiet prayer to Vik for her reinforced tendons as she rockets herself upward with a powerful leap, grabbing the edge of the roof with her chrome arm and pulling herself the rest of the way up, still clutching the guitar in her organic hand.
The whole building is on alert now it seems, and she runs for a small door across the roof and takes the stairs down two at a time until she’s back in the hallway outside the apartment. It’s empty - all the guards must still be inside the apartment - so she sprints for the elevator and closes the door as quickly as she can. Lobby’ll be crawlin’ with security, she thinks, punching the button for the basement.
She can hear voices yelling as the elevator passes the ground floor, then the doors open to a dimly lit subterranean hallway. V doesn’t hesitate as she jogs down it quickly, looking for some kinda maintenance exit. She pushes open a door that leads to another hallway, this one filled with air pumps and plumbing, but to her right there’s a concrete ramp that leads upward, and V turns and runs up it, pushing open the double doors at the end and stepping out into the sunlight of the loading bay beneath the building. She doesn’t slow down as she dashes for a nearby alley, quickly losing herself in these old familiar streets. They’re deep in Heywood now, and she doesn’t stop running until she emerges into what the locals have dubbed Valentino Alley.
There’s that shitty old Valentino dive on the corner, where V's mother would get plastered every fuckin’ day and night, and there right up the stairs across the alley is the fucking building they lived in for most of her childhood, with its shitty white-paneled facade and dirty windows.
Right there on the wall is a big graffitied mural of Jackie’s face, and V stops in her tracks to stare up at it. A bunch of young gangers are dancing to a car stereo, and some of ‘em seem to recognize V, so she turns away and moves on before anyone stops her for a chat.
Johnny glitches in beside her as she walks quickly towards the nearest drop point where she can unload the guitar for one of Padre’s errand kids to come grab.
“This was your old hood, huh,” he says as they walk, and V nods.
She doesn’t say anything else - doesn’t have to. He can see all her memories, she’s not tryna hide them.
“You know this used to be a college campus?” Johnny adds. “Some poor fucks thought that taking out colossal loans and enrolling in a biotech degree would make their lives less miserable.”
They reach the drop point then, and she carefully deposits the guitar along with a big tip for whatever street rat’s gonna pick it up later, and it’s only then that she realizes she dropped her other pants at some point during her escape. They were her nice pants too. She kicks the ground in frustration. Oh fuckin’ well, no goin’ back for ‘em now.
She walks slowly back to her car, weaving her way through the familiar labyrinth of alleyways and staircases that she ran up and down so many times as a kid. It’s all bringin’ up a lot of dark shit for her, and maybe it’s just ‘cause she’s already a little tipsy from the drinks she’s had - or from the adrenaline of their escape from the apartment, or from her lingering rage at Johnny - but she’s overcome with a sudden, familiar dark urge. She wants to keep drinking.
Johnny seems to agree, because he doesn’t protest as she starts her car and drives them straight to the Coyote.
As always, Pepe’s behind the bar, and he grins when he sees her.
“The usual?” he asks as she sits herself on a stool opposite him.
She shakes her head. “Nah… think tonight I’m gonna do something different. What kinda vodka ya got?”
Pepe raises his eyebrows, but gives her a rundown of her options.
“Let’s go with the bottom shelf,” she says, and Pepe obliges and pours her a shot of their shittiest vodka.
It’s fucking disgusting, because of course it is, but V feels a sick sense of satisfaction at the wave of revulsion she feels from Johnny as the shot burns her belly on its way down.
“Really, V?” he says incredulously, glitching in behind the bar next to Pepe. “Tryna cut off your nose to spite your face?”
V just scowls at him and motions for Pepe to pour her another.
She’s a couple rounds deep, listenin’ to Pepe catch her up on the latest neighborhood gossip, when she suddenly remembers her promise to hit up Misty the next time she went out.
She calls her up. “Doin’ anything right now?”
“Just closing up the shop,” Misty answers. “Why, what’s up?”
“Come by the Coyote, if you’re free. I’m here havin’ a drink, was wonderin’ if you wanted to join.”
Misty hesitates. “Is Mrs. Welles there?”
It’s so cute how she calls her that, V thinks. She looks to her right, and Mama Welles is in her usual corner, chatting with some regulars.
“Yeah, she’s here. That okay?”
Misty nods. “Of course it is, V. Just needed to know so I can… you know. Emotionally prepare myself.”
Mama Welles comes over to say hi when Misty arrives, and the three of them have a round together, talkin’ about Jackie. It’s not as awkward or sad as V feared - it’s actually kinda nice to be sitting there with the two other people who’d been closest to him, sharing drinks and stories, but without the raw grief of the ofrenda. It’s been almost two months now since he died - the wound is still fresh, but they’ve all had some time to make their peace with it.
And more importantly, she realizes that it means a lot to her to spend time with the people she cares about. If things go south… she might not have that many more chances.
She is suddenly hit with an intense desire to see Judy. Maybe it’s the vodka talkin’, but she longs for the simplicity of it, the sweetness. So she opens her holo and gives her a call.
“Hey Jude,” V says when Judy picks up. “Busy?”
“Not anymore, now that you’ve called,” Judy teases.
“Preem. Wanna come down to the Coyote? I’m here with my friend Misty, we’re havin’ some drinks.”
“Hell yeah! Been wantin’ to meet more of your chooms,” Judy says, grinning. “I’ll invite Roxie, we can make it a night out.”
V nurses her drink and listens to Misty and Mama Welles while she waits, and it seems like no time at all before Judy bursts in the door, face flushed, clearly eager to see her. She feels a pang of guilt - she knows this is all partly just escapism on her part. But spending time with Judy just makes her feel so… normal, and that’s something she’s been sorely missing for the past week.
Pepe raises a toast to Jackie and they all do another round of shots, then Mama Welles gives them each a long hug and retreats to her back office for the night.
Judy orders a beer and perches on the stool next to V.
“So Judy, you’re a virtu tuner?” Misty asks, and Judy nods enthusiastically. “V tells me you’re a real artist.”
Judy laughs. “I tune smut, mostly.”
“That can still be art,” Misty says sagely.
“And more importantly, two minutes of reelfeel’s a week’s pay,” Judy adds.
“Doesn’t the objectification bother you?” Misty asks, but Judy shakes her head.
“Objectification?” Judy scoffs. “Not in my virtus. My actors love what they do, and that’s why everyone wants to feel ‘em. Can’t fake old school emotions.”
"You'll have to show me sometime," Misty teases.
Judy winks at her, then turns to V. “Ooh, before I forget, some lady called me, Elizabeth… something. Said she had a job for someone with an eye for virtus. Told her to drop you a line.”
“Ahh, so you were the one who recommended me,” V says.
“Hey, don’t mention it. I just hope she was worth the eddies.”
“How d’ya think I’m payin’ for these drinks?” V replies with a grin.
“You’re not payin’ for anything,” Pepe corrects her, already pourin’ them another round.
Roxie arrives then, and the mood immediately shifts to more of a party vibe. V’s fine with that - she’s drunk now, and is feeling a wild desire to throw herself into the night and ride it wherever it takes her. If Johnny can run around Night City goin’ feral in her fucking body, then so the fuck can she. It’s still her body - if anyone’s gonna trash it, might as well be her.
So she turns to Pepe and asks him if he’s still got a good synth-coke hook-up, and of course he does - he waves over a sketchy lookin’ Valentino dude who’s been lurking in a corner booth, and after a quick exchange of eddies, V’s pourin’ out little bumps for the four of them.
Everything speeds up then, and the next thing V knows, they’re all piling into V’s car and she’s drivin’ ‘em all to the Afterlife. She’s definitely too drunk to be behind the wheel, but she doesn’t give a fuck - she’s still got that dark, self-destructive urge pulsing in her veins, so she weaves her car through the rainy night while they all scream along to the radio as they cross over the bridge to Watson, screeching her car to a halt in the small lot outside the bar.
Claire’s face lights up when she see’s ‘em, and she moves to make V her usual Silverhand special, but V stops her.
“I’m doin’ vodka tonight,” she slurs at her. “Round o’ shots, and you better fuckin’ do one with us.”
This gets an eyebrow raise from Claire, but then she just grins. “Oookay,” she obliges, and lines ‘em up.
“To this!” V yells as she does her shot, and Misty laughs. Misty remembers that stupid fuckin' toast, and V’s really glad she convinced her to come out with them tonight.
And then Roxie’s pullin’ everyone out onto the dance floor, and V lets herself be overtaken by the music and the noise and the liquor as she dances with Judy, letting the little virtu tuner pull her face toward her and kiss her as they dance.
It’s hot as fuck in here, so V takes off her jacket and tosses it onto a nearby barstool, and Judy’s eyes fall to her forearm. V’s heart sinks as she suddenly remembers what’s there.
“What’s that?” Judy asks, grabbing her arm and twisting it towards her for a better look.
The tattoo’s scabbed over into an angry welt by now, and V flinches and yanks her arm back instinctively.
“Don’t worry about it,” she says defensively. “S’just somethin’ stupid Johnny did.”
“Something Johnny did? Whaddya mean?” Judy shouts over the music.
“Really don’t wanna talk about it,” V says, feeling a sudden wave of nausea. She pushes her way through the crowd to the bathroom, and makes it just in time to hurl a stream of vomit into the toilet, clutching at the sides of the bowl and gasping for breath.
She hears someone come in behind her and feels a gentle hand on her back as she retches again, more bile spilling from her mouth. Then Judy’s hands are holding back her hair, helpin’ her to her feet and out of the bathroom, getting her a glass of water from the bar, lookin’ at her with a worried expression.
V chugs the rest of the water and hands it back to Claire, then reaches into her pocket for the coke and does another sizable bump. She’s not fuckin’ done yet, not by a long shot.
Roxie and Misty appear at her side then, too, givin’ her questioning concerned looks. V finds herself resenting their concern a little, so she turns to Claire and orders another round of shots, hearing her voice slur as she does so.
Claire just laughs and shakes her head. “I’m cuttin’ you off, girl,” she says with a chuckle. “Besides, my shift’s ending now.”
“Great,” V says without missing a beat. “Party at my place!”
She’s vaguely aware of Misty driving her car home with all five of ‘em packed in, and then they’re all arrayed on her couch, racking out lines of the synth-coke on her coffee table and drinkin’ tequila out of mugs. Or the rest of ‘em are, anyway - V’s just railin’ coke at this point. Her head’s a mess and everything’s a neon blur, but she feels a smug satisfaction at the dull emptiness she feels in her chest. No pain, no anger, no regrets. Just fuckin’ nothing. Sorrows fuckin’ drowned, she thinks to herself, letting out a sharp laugh.
She leans forward and does another line, tilting her head back and relishing the sharp burn as it drips down her throat. Lizzy Wizzy's blastin' from her stereo, and Claire’s circling her apartment, examining all her knickknacks, laughing and commenting on things that catch her eye. Two Claires, really - V’s vision’s doubled as fuck right now. Roxie’s deep in a conversation with Misty about some esoteric shit, and Judy’s glued to V's side, still frowning at the tattoo on her arm.
And underneath it all, she can feel Johnny. He’s drunk too, because she is, but unlike her, his rage and pain haven’t been dulled one fuckin’ bit. It’s an enormous, formless rage, and the second she focuses on it, she feels that horrible acute ache in her chest again. When she looks up, he’s standing in the corner with his arms crossed, just starin’ at her with a weird look on his face.
She grins darkly at him and grabs Judy’s cup of tequila and gulps it down before Judy gently takes it out of her hand.
V turns to Judy, trying to focus on her face as it swims around before her. “Still thinkin' 'bout leavin’ Night City?” V slurs at her.
Judy shrugs. “Yeah, someday. And once you tie up all your loose ends… maybe you could join me?” she asks hopefully.
V smiles sadly at her. At this point, it’s difficult for V to imagine a scenario where she leaves Night City for good. Alive, anyway. “Maybe,” she says, and that seems like it’s good enough for Judy, because she smiles and leans her head on V’s shoulder as they listen to Roxie monologue at Claire and Misty about some rich dude she's been seeing. Misty's listening attentively and offering advice while Claire's just teasin' her. V smiles to herself, glad they all seem to be hitting it off.
Roxie and Claire depart at some point, and then it’s just the three of them again. The sky outside's startin' to lighten into the hazy violet gray of morning, and Misty carefully rails out the last few lines of synth-coke. V wraps her arm around Judy and pulls her closer to her, and Judy looks up at V, pupils blown and eyes wide. V kisses her then, and the drug haze heightens the feeling, so she leans into it, deepening the kiss. But then Judy pulls away, reaching for Misty and pulling her in for a kiss too, and that’s when V realizes that Judy’s almost as drunk as she is. But Misty melts against the virtu tuner, grabbing her face and kissing Judy back passionately before Judy gently breaks away and turns to kiss V again.
Whoa, guess this is happening, V thinks dazedly as the three of them tumble onto the floor together.
The rest of the night is a blur of tangled limbs, soft lips, Misty’s hair in her hands and Judy moaning against her, and she’s not totally sure if she’s dreaming or not.
She’s dimly aware of Johnny still in the corner, watching them, but she feels no lust from him, just a strange empty sadness, and something about that tugs at her even more. Or maybe she’s just imagining it, imagining all of it.
And then she's riding through the desert on a motorcycle, wind in her hair, Aldecaldos at her side. She’s pretty sure she’s definitely dreaming now. But when she turns to her left, she sees Santiago instead of Panam, and sure enough the hand on the clutch of her bike is Johnny's.
She's fuckin’ sick of dreaming that she's Johnny.
Rogue’s on another bike to her right, and V hadn’t realized she’d joined Johnny and Santiago with the nomads, though she supposes it makes sense.
They pull the bikes to a stop, and Rogue dismounts and exchanges a look with Santiago, and the surge of jealousy V feels from Johnny tells her everything she needs to know about what was happenin’ there. Why's Johnny dreaming about this now, though?
She wonders how Rogue felt about it all, how she feels about Johnny now.
But then she’s back at the Pistis Sophia, lyin’ on that dirty mattress watching the ceiling fan spin above her, and at first she thinks this is still Johnny’s dream until she sees him standing by the window, still just watching her with that same look he’s had all night, the same look he had on his face when they were really there together, that look that makes her feel that sharp somethin’ near her heart, as he’d called it. The room is glitching around them, the walls flickering in and out, making V feel like they’re in some kind of strange surreal dollhouse.
She can feel his raw emotions flowing between them too, completely unfiltered here. They come crashing over her like the ocean waves battering the pier outside - all his pain, grief, rage, and terror. His feelings are as much of a confusing mess as hers are, she realizes, and they lock eyes for a long moment.
And then he’s next to her on the bed, reaching his hand to cup the side of her face and run his thumb along her jawline, turning her head towards his. His dark eyes are burning into hers, and she squeezes her eyes shut, wanting to shut him out, wanting to shut everything out, forcing herself out of the dream.
V’s eyes snap open, and she’s immediately aware of two things.
One - she’s in her bed, naked, sandwiched between Judy and Misty, who’re also naked, with their arms and legs thrown over various parts of her body.
Guess that wasn’t a dream then.
Two - she’s got a hangover to rival the one Johnny gave her after his escapade.
Mission fucking accomplished, she thinks bitterly, wriggling out from between her friends to stagger to the bathroom.
God, she looks like a fucking mess. She bends over to splash water on her face, but her vision's glitching badly and her head's fuckin' throbbing.
“The fuck was that, V? Tryna prove your body’s still yours by gettin' hammered and fuckin' everyone in Night City?”
She snaps her head back up to the mirror, and Johnny’s behind her, leaning against the wall with a cigarette held between his lips that he slowly lights, not looking at her.
“Maybe I am,” she snaps at him, then leans over the sink and vomits a stream of blood.
Notes:
V is a hot mess lmao
Chapter 27: Metal Grave
Summary:
V and Rogue attempt to use Johnny's lead to track down Smasher, leading them instead to Johnny's final resting place.
Chapter Text
Johnny watches through his shades as V finishes puking and wipes off her mouth before lifting her to head to look at him again.
“Fuck, V,” he says, more gently now.
Her shoulders slump then, and he feels something inside her collapse in on itself. He takes a step closer to her and tentatively rests his hand on her back.
She tenses up and whirls her head around to face him, but he catches her wrist and holds her there before she can bolt.
“Don’t… c’mon…” he pleads. Her eyes flash, but she relaxes her arm into his grip.
She looks down at his metal hand around her wrist, holding her arm just below the tattoo he put there.
“Johnny…” Her voice is a hoarse whisper.
“M’already doin’ enough to destroy your body, V,” he says roughly. “Don’t gotta help out more just to spite me.”
He lets go of her wrist then and she doesn’t move away from him, so he reaches up to brush the side of her face with his organic hand. She breathes in sharply at his touch, eyes fluttering shut, and the spike of pain he feels in her chest makes him drop his hand. He can feel her heartache, her suspicion, her betrayal, and it fuckin’ kills him.
“V?” Misty’s voice calls from the bed.
Johnny glitches away as she returns to the bed alcove where Judy and Misty are both awake now. Misty’s sitting up, but Judy’s lyin’ on her side groaning with a pillow over her head.
“How’s everyone feeling?” Misty asks gently. She looks straight into V’s eyes when she says it, in a way that makes Johnny feel like she's including him in her question.
“Like I drank half the vodka in Night City then puked it back up,” V says dryly, collapsing back onto the bed, and Misty giggles her musical little laugh.
Judy peeks out from underneath the pillow at them.
“Jesus, V, remind me never to mix vodka and tequila again,” she mumbles.
V smiles, but Johnny can feel the dark knot in her stomach still, the sharp pain in her head. He resumes his self flagellating as the girls get dressed and V makes ‘em all coffee.
He fucking hates this. Hates himself for letting his night in V’s body spin out of control, hates that those fifty years in soul prison weren’t enough for him to outrun his old bullshit. Hates watching V hurt herself now just to get back at him. Hates that V acts out in the same fuckin’ ways he does, hates that he’s not sure if she was always like this, or if he’s just bleedin’ over into her more, poisoning her with his own fucked up baggage. Probably a little bit of both, he thinks. They’re similar, always were, and it’s part of what makes their whole delicate balance so volatile. The only ways he knows how to deal with his pain are through anger and drinking, and it seems like V’s got a similar emotional vocabulary.
But he meant every fuckin’ word he said to her at the Pistis Sophia, and he’s damn well gonna fuckin’ prove it to her. He’s gonna drag her ass to Mikoshi if he has to, let Alt scrub him, and give V back her fuckin’ life.
Misty gives V a kiss on the cheek and sees herself out, and V turns back to Judy, who’s now sprawled out on the couch. V sits down next to her and tips the remainder of the previous night’s tequila bottle into her coffee.
Judy raises an eyebrow at this.
“What?” V says, taking a sip. “Best way to deal with hangovers.”
V continues to drink her spiked coffee while Judy watches her, the furrow in her brow deepening.
“Are you… alright?” Judy finally asks in a tentative voice, sitting up to look at V. “Are things okay with… you know? With Johnny?”
“Are they ever?” V answers darkly.
Judy frowns. “You gonna explain that tattoo to me?”
Out of all the dumb shit he did that night, the one thing Johnny doesn’t regret is the tattoo. He knows there’s a part of V that secretly likes it too - he can feel the way her heart swells a little, albeit painfully, when she looks at it. And it’s true what he told her. He wanted to leave her with something, some sorta physical, permanent reminder of their time together, what it’s meant to him.
But V just sighs and looks down at it. “Misty gave me these pills that… let Johnny take over for a while,” she admits, ignoring the shock on Judy’s face at this. “Took some the other night so he could talk to an old choom of his. Rogue Amendiares, the fixer. Sure you’ve heard of her.”
“I know who fuckin’ Rogue is, V,” Judy says, and her voice is harder than usual. “You didn’t answer my question.”
V shrugs. “Woke up and he’d gotten it. Dunno what else you want me to say.”
“But why?” Judy presses. “The fuck’s he playin’ at?”
“I don’t know,” V says. “I told you, it’s complicated.”
“I’m listening,” Judy insists. “Help me understand, V.”
“Look, what do you want me to say?” V’s voice rises the way it does when she’s emotional or agitated. “He’s here fuckin’ 24/7, Judy. In my fuckin’ head. He’s in my fuckin’ dreams. We share dreams, did I ever tell you that?” She sighs and presses her thumb and forefinger to her temples. “I can remember… I remember his fuckin’ childhood, the memories are just right there, parallel to my own, and sometimes I can’t even tell which is which anymore. And he knows me now in ways that no one else ever has, no one else ever could. At first it was like being naked with a spotlight pointed straight at me in front of a complete stranger. Now… I’m not sure anymore. Sometimes I think… I don’t know.” She sighs heavily and looks past Judy, out the window at that big stupid penthouse. “Dunno if I’m more scared of becoming him, or of who I’ll become without him,” she confesses, and Johnny feels a jolt at this. “So yeah, when I say it’s complicated, that’s what I fuckin’ mean.”
“Right,” Judy says slowly. “Think I get it.”
“Do you, though?”
“I don’t know, V! I’m trying to understand. I know what’s happening to you is scary as fuck. I just…” her voice trails off, and both women look at each other for a drawn out beat.
“Know I haven’t been around much lately,” V whispers apologetically.
“Yeah,” Judy says, sounding defeated. “You've got a lot on your plate. Tryna not to die and all that. Look, I’m… just gonna go. Sure you’ve got more merc shit to take care of now, anyway.”
V looks crushed. “You can stay for a bit if you want. Could order food or somethin’.”
But Judy shakes her head. “Nah,” she says. “I’ll get outta your hair."
She stands and begins to gather her things, looking more than a bit dazed and frustrated. Poor kid, Johnny thinks. He knows he hasn't been fair to Judy. She cares about V, even now that her idealized fantasy of the merc's gettin' shattered and replaced with the messier reality of V's life.
Judy pauses by the door before leaving and looks up at V, who’s leanin’ next to the door frame, arms crossed in a pose very reminiscent of Johnny. "Just… don’t be a stranger, ‘kay?” Judy says in a small voice.
“I won't,” V promises, but Judy just shakes her head and steps through the door, closing it behind her. V slumps against it and wraps her thin arms around herself, taking a couple deep, shaky breaths.
Johnny feels fuckin’ terrible, and there's so much he wants to say to V right now - part of him wants to tell her to run after Judy, to not make the mistakes he did and not push her friends away. Part of him wants to kneel at her feet and beg for forgiveness, even though his pride would never allow it. Part of him wants to take her and throw her on the bed and fuck her senseless until she can't remember a single thing in her life that's ever made her sad.
He glitches into the chair by her desk, tapping his foot as he lights a smoke. “Gonna keep the tat, then?” he asks casually, fighting to keep his face impassive.
V opens her mouth to respond, but right then her holo starts ringing. Johnny’s about to be annoyed, but then he sees Rogue’s name on her screen.
“V, how's it goin'? Feelin' better?” the fixer asks when V answers.
“Eh,” she says, and Johnny feels a twinge of shame that Rogue had to see the sorry state he left V in.
“Got to the bottom of ‘Ebunike,’” Rogue continues. “Talked to some old friends, did some digging. Found something. Section of the docks that’s Maelstrom turf.”
“And Grayson’s there?” V asks. “Think he can really get us to Smasher?”
Rogue nods. “Come see me at the Afterlife. We’ll talk.”
After taking a shower and ordering a pizza that she chokes down with more spiked coffee, V gets dressed and makes her way back down to the club.
“Look who we have here,” Emmerick smirks at V as she enters, and Johnny flinches inwardly at the same time V does outwardly. Guess at least now they’ve both made fools of ‘emselves here within the past week.
Claire winks at V as she walks past, and V stops and does a quick shot to calm her nerves. Rogue’s standin’ at the entrance to her booth, talkin’ to someone who looks startlingly familiar to Johnny, and he realizes it must be Andrew Weyland’s son. From where V’s standing, he can overhear snippets of their conversation.
“Have something for her, too,” Rogue is saying, and Johnny wonders if she’s talkin’ about V.
“You know, it seems you’re starting to show your age,” the man says in his lilting Jamaican accent. “Just like me grandma. That woman never threw a ting away. Never know when it might come in handy.”
“Don’t push it, Crispin,” Rogue teases, and it’s at that moment that she sees V and waves her over. “V,” she says as the merc approaches. “This is Crispin Weyland. He’s helping us.”
“Ey, V,” the man says, and up close he’s even more of a spittin’ image of his father. “I hear you’re hunting Smasher.”
“Weyland… of the Weylands?” V asks him, and Johnny is once again reminded that she grew up hearin’ about his friends as legends.
“Yes, girl,” Weyland says proudly. “Take it ya heard of old Andrew Boa Boa?”
“Like everybody in this town,” V says, unable to shake the admiration from her voice. “You joinin’ us?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, me don’t share me father’s aspirations. So me expect to live longer than he did.”
Rogue scowls. “Don’t tell me you don’t wanna see Smasher dead?”
“Me sure would,” he agrees. “But not so close. De bastard has a bad habit of comin’ back from de dead.”
“Mhm,” says Rogue. “True bastards somehow always find a way.” She looks right into V’s eyes, then, and Johnny’s sure he knows who she’s talkin’ about now. “Ready to roll?” she asks. “We’ll talk on the way.”
“Good luck!” Weyland calls after them as V follows Rogue out of the club.
“Comin’ back later?” Emmerick says to Rogue in a low voice as they pass him, and Rogue shoots him a flippant grin.
“Maybe, dunno,” she says in a sultry voice. “Don’t wait up.”
Johnny can’t help but marvel at how age hasn’t seemed to dull the fixer’s edge one bit. Despite the circumstances, it feels really fuckin’ good to see Rogue again, ‘specially now that she knows about him.
They emerge from the club into the parking lot, and there’s a slight autumn chill in the air as the sun begins its slow descent. V shivers, and Johnny resists the urge to yell at her for not bringing a coat.
Rogue stops at her car and pops open the trunk. V sheepishly moves to toss in the bundle of clothes she’s got tucked under her arm that she borrowed the other day, but stops in her tracks when she sees what Rogue’s got in there.
“Gotcha a little somethin’,” Rogue says with a smirk, and Johnny feels a strange surge in his chest when he sees what it is.
“Try it on!” he urges V as he glitches in next to her, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. It’s his jacket, his old fuckin’ Samurai jacket! How the fuck does Rogue still have it, after all this time?
V places down Rogue’s clothes and reaches for the jacket, her eyes shining as she lifts it from the trunk.
“This… Johnny’s jacket?” she asks in a choked voice, and Rogue nods.
Why is she giving her this? Johnny wonders as V holds up the jacket to examine it. He can feel a lump formin’ in her throat - she’s as touched by the gesture as he is. But is it actually a gift for her? Or does Rogue just wanna dress her up like Johnny?
Rogue smiles as V cautiously slips her arms into the jacket, straightening the collar and tugging it into place. Johnny can’t help grinning at the sight of her in it.
"Finally lookin' half decent," he says, smiling at her affectionately. Fuck, he really likes seein’ her in his old clothes. He feels a responding thrill from her - he knows she likes it as much as he does.
“With me wearin’ it, sure you won’t confuse us?” V jokes.
Rogue scoffs, but she’s still smiling. “Quite sure, thanks,” she says bruskly. “This is for you, V.” Her eyes fall to the dog tags V’s wearing, and she raises an eyebrow. “Seems’ like Johnny’s already given you a little somethin’ of his, too.”
“Yeah, he did,” V says, unconsciously lifting her hand to touch them. “Thanks, Rogue… really.”
“Jump in,” Rogue tells her, opening the doors to the Quadra. V slides into the passenger seat as Rogue starts the car.
“So, what does Johnny say about me?” Rogue asks as they drive, cutting right to the chase. “Know you two talk… all the time.” She looks over at V curiously.
“Could ask you the same,” V says. “You told me he was sayin’ weird shit about me the night you talked to ‘im.”
Rogue frowns. “Yeah, he was,” she says, but doesn’t volunteer anything else.
V stares out the window for a moment, then turns back to Rogue. “Said you were the best,” V tells her honestly. “Always were.” This gets a chuckle from Rogue, and Johnny’s glad V’s not bein’ petty right now.
“The best?” she asks, cockin’ an eyebrow at V. “Too bad that comes at a price.”
“Gonna tell me now?” V presses, but Rogue just shakes her head.
“If he hasn’t told you himself, then I’m keepin’ my mouth shut,” Rogue says firmly.
Fuck, what did he say? Johnny struggles to remember, but that part of the night’s a bit of a blur for him, too. He only vaguely remembers callin’ Rogue, slurrin’ at her about Smasher. Probably said a whole bunch of gonk shit about V, too. Hopefully nothing too bad.
“Sure you’re up for this?” V asks.
“What, you getting cold feet?” Rogue teases.
“No, just… don’t wanna see Johnny haze you,” V admits. “Adam Smasher’s his obsession, not yours.”
Rogue laughs softly. “Heh, think so?”
“Just tryna play fair,” V tells her. “How come you never tried to track him down before now?”
Rogue looks over at her as she steers. “Listen, V. Fact that Johnny’s back changes things, okay?”
“Okay, sure,” V relents. “Believe me, I’d know.”
Rogue gives her a strange look, then. “I’m sure you do,” she says.
They’re nearing the docks in Northside, and Rogue pulls the car to a stop near the waterfront behind some machinery.
“So what’s our plan?” V asks, her eyes darting around nervously.
“Weyland saw Grayson somewhere around the docks. He was with somebody.”
“Smasher?”
Rogue nods. “So I hope. Might be our lucky day,” she says, twisting to look at V. “Drop Grayson and Smasher in one go.” She surveys the docking area just ahead of them, the scanners in her eyes flashing. “But there’s too many rats around. Better wait until a little more darkness creeps in.”
She gets out of the car and walks around to V’s side, and V opens her door and swings her legs out as Rogue leans against the car next to her, fishing in her pocket for her smokes.
“Want one?” she says to V, and V accepts gratefully.
They sit in silence for a while as the sun settles on the horizon, flushing the city in amber and then eventually violet. V’s chainsmoking at this point, which is unlike her. Johnny can feel her nervousness - both at doin’ something like this with Rogue, and the prospect of encountering Smasher.
Johnny's nervous, too. He's been waitin' a long time to kill this bastard.
“Fucker’s gotta be around here somewhere,” he mutters, glitching and agitatedly smoking a cigarette of his own. He feels V’s eyes on him as he paces up and down the dock.
“There’s a dataterm in their main stash house, should have the info we need on Smasher,” Rogue says, checking her holo. “Where he is, where we can find him.”
“Know where their dataterm is… how, exactly?” V asks, knitting her brow.
“Set up the buy myself,” Rogue admits. “ATHENA D-III, external database.”
“Didn’t know you worked for Maelstrom.” V takes a final puff of her cigarette and stomps it out.
“Work for anybody,” Rogue says simply. “As long as it’s on my terms.”
“See I missed a lot these last fifty years,” Johnny mutters, lookin’ at Rogue sadly, and he catches a flash of what looks like sympathy on V’s face.
The sun is down now, and Rogue turns to V.
“Let’s go in,” she says.
V nods and together they approach the compound. Johnny watches the way Rogue moves; she clearly hasn’t lost her bite, but Johnny knows her well enough to tell she’s on edge.
“She’s tense,” he tells V, glitching in beside her as Rogue scales the fence. “Cover her, just in case.”
V nods once and follows behind Rogue, shutting down the security cameras as they slip past the Maelstrom guards patrolling the docks.
There’s a lotta big crates marked Militech, and Johnny finds himself wondering just what kinda shit Rogue’s gotten herself tangled up in since he died. They creep across the shipping yard, sidestepping the Maelstrom goons until they reach the small security room where Rogue’s dataterm is.
Johnny perches on the desk next to the screen as V jacks in her personal link and starts scanning the files.
“Know what I think?” he says to V. “She knows exactly where to find him. She’s stallin’. Rogue’s still scared of the asshole.”
V quickly finds what she needs. There’s a message from Smasher to Grayson, tellin’ him to lay low and sit tight on the ship for a week. The Ebunike.
“Okay,” says Rogue. “Let’s go check it out.”
They cross the yard towards the big container ship.
“Kinda hard to believe he’s got his hidey-hole here,” V remarks as they climb the stairs onto the ship.
“What, expect him to put up a sign or something?” Rogue teases, coming up close behind her. “Come on, let’s search the deck.”
V stays close to Rogue as they begin to sweep the ship, systematically checking each container they pass.
“Why are you even doing this?” V asks suddenly.
Rogue shoots her another strange look. “I’m settling a score.”
“Avengin’ Johnny?” V guesses.
Rogue frowns. “That too.”
So Rogue’s got more history with Smasher, that much is clear to Johnny. Fuck, there’s so much he missed during his years in Mikoshi.
They find some stashes that Rogue recognizes - some loot that got jacked off of Kang Tao. “Gotta admit, that bastard’s good,” Rogue says admiringly as she surveys the pile of merch.
“Yep, real fuckin’ preem,” Johnny sneers, glitching in atop the stack of boxes. “Now let’s go find him and kill him, yeah?”
There’s a locked room at the bow of the ship, and it takes V a couple tries to hack it. Johnny feels the rage curl inside him - inside her - as they enter. It’s Adam Smasher’s fuckin’ hideout. It’s empty, but his guns and armor line the walls, all lit with eerie red emergency lighting.
A large desk stands in the corner, and V approaches the computer and jacks in to scan the files. There’s an audio log of Smasher violently blackmailing some Militech gonk over cuttin' a deal with Night Corp.
“Why’d he even record that?” Johnny wonders aloud.
“Grayson might’ve,” V guesses. “To have dirt on Smasher.”
“Think you’re giving Grayson too much credit,” Johnny mutters.
Rogue’s lookin’ at V curiously now, and Johnny suddenly realizes V’d answered him out loud.
“You talkin’ to Johnny?” she asks, and V just nods.
Rogue raises her eyebrows at this, but doesn’t seem particularly fazed as she searches the rest of the room, but there’s nothing else useful there.
Johnny's getting impatient. It’s clear Smasher’s not here - but he could be lurking around any corner, waiting to strike. “Let’s find the motherfucker and do this,” he urges.
V seems to agree, because she moves quickly out of the room to continue sweeping the deck. But right as she exits the hideout, a Maelstrom chick covered in cyberware jumps at her from above, mantis blades drawn and slashing towards her.
“Guns blazing it is, then!” Rogue shouts, shooting the Maelstrommer right between the eyes.
Entering the room musta triggered the alarm, because the whole yard’s on alert now, and V starts tossin’ out her quickhacks as the Maelstrom guards rush them. Rogue’s shootin’ at ‘em too, picking them off one by one, and Johnny can’t deny part of him really enjoys watchin’ the two of ‘em fight together. He’d loved watching Rogue in action back in the day, and seein’ V fighting next to her, holding her own… he feels a strange swell of pride, and is once again struck by how much V reminds him of Rogue when she was young.
He’s not totally sure who his ex has become now, though.
His thoughts are interrupted when he hears a sudden, familiar sound ring out amongst the chaos, accompanied by a male voice that makes Rogue stiffen and look towards it.
“Fuck, you hear that?” He glitches in to stand on the deck, cocking his head to one side, feeling strangely casual in the midst of the firefight.
“Grayson, yeah!” V calls out to him, still not bothering to speak silently for Rogue’s sake.
“No, not that!” Johnny yells, running towards the sound. “Fucker’s shooting at me with my own gun! Malorian thirty-five sixteen. Signature sound, I’d know it anywhere.”
V and Rogue finish taking out the Maelstrom guards until the deck is silent. Rogue races up the stairs after the sound of the gunshots, and there’s a man slumped and bleeding against a stack of crates.
“It’s him,” Rogue hisses, and V follows as they approach the huddled figure.
“Grab my gun,” Johnny instructs her, and V leans over and yanks it outta his hand.
“Not yours, I don’t think,” she spits, twirling it in her hand to point back at him.
Johnny’s never seen her twirl her gun like that. It's his signature move, one he did outta muscle memory whenever he picked up his iron. The fact that V just did it too… and so automatically…
Johnny tries not to think about it as he crouches next to Grayson, who’s shivering like a rat that got pulled outta the sewer.
“Grayson,” says Rogue, and there’s a venom in her voice he hasn’t heard in half a century.
“Oh my, Rogue,” Grayson drawls, smilin’ up at her. “You an’ me not playin’ for the same team anymore?” He spits blood onto the floor. “Guess I’m not at all surprised. Seems your specialty, slipping shivs in the backs of allies.”
Rogue kicks him hard in the ribs. “Where’s Smasher?”
V frowns and looks back and forth between them. “You two know each other?”
Grayson smirks. “Everyone knows Rogue. Livin’ legend that she is.” He coughs violently, then collects himself. “Ever wonder how Rogue survived after the attack on the tower, how in hell no one ever hunted her down?” He gazes up at Rogue, a dark smile playing on his lips. “Her alone… out of all that Atlantis trash? ‘Cause I do! Truly wonder how far she had to go to set herself up so comfy.”
V cocks the Malorian and points it right at his fuckin’ head.
“Who’d she fingerfuck? Whose crack did she have to lick to- uagh!”
He’s cut off by Rogue pistol-whippin’ him across the face, and Johnny smirks at this. Old Rogue’s still got it, he thinks. But that doesn’t negate his concern at what Grayson’s gettin’ at. Shit, Johnny’s been wonderin’ about all that himself. He's pretty sure he won’t like the answers.
“What’s he goin’ on about?” V asks Rogue.
“He’s tryin’ to throw you off,” Rogue says quickly. “Gonk thinks he can still squirm outta this.”
She's evading, Johnny can tell, but they don't have time to press her about it now.
“Where’s Smasher now?” V demands, turning back to Grayson.
He grunts and rubs his jaw where Rogue hit him. “With the Arasakas. But I think you know that already.”
“When’s he due back?” V presses.
“Never,” Grayson says smugly. “Faithful old Adam’s just been named head of security there. He’s not comin’ back to this rathole, ever. I stayed behind just to tie off his loose ends.”
“Shit!” Rogue exclaims, turning away from him, fists clenched.
“Could say that again,” Grayson gloats. “You two’ll never jump that high. Smasher’s outta your reach. But don’t feel bad. He’ll find you himself. Likes to resolve shit like this in person.”
“Gonna lead us to Smasher, assface,” V spits, leaning forward to press the Malorian against his jaw.
“Even if I wanted to, he don’t trust me enough to…” He pauses suddenly and narrows his eyes at V. “Hey… why are you so interested in Smasher, anyway?”
“I’m not,” V says without missing a beat. “Interested in Silverhand. And what happened to him.”
Johnny blinks at her. He hadn’t realized V had an ulterior motive here.
Grayson scoffs at this. “Johnny Silverhand? What do you wanna know?”
“Johnny’s gun. You had it.”
“What, you a fan too?” he says in a mocking voice.
“Smasher give it to you?” Rogue demands, her interest piqued again.
“Uh huh,” Grayson says. “Reward for a special job well done.”
“Smasher ever tell you what he did with Silverhand’s body?” V asks, pressing the gun harder against his skull. Her hand is shaking, and Johnny can feel her heart pounding as she waits for his answer.
Fuck, he thinks sadly. She’s still holding out hope my body’s out there somewhere.
He hasn’t let himself go there at all, can’t. It’s too much to hope for, and he knows it. This shadow of a life he has as a dark, not-so-silent passenger in V’s body is the best he’s gonna get; he’s gotta keep telling himself that. And then he’s gonna let Alt wipe him like he promised, let V go. He can’t let himself hope for more. Can’t let V get her hopes up for more.
But fuck, if it is somewhere…
He can’t deny he’s almost as curious as V is. He glitches to stand beside her, looking down while she interrogates the man.
“That into him, huh?” Grayson taunts. “Plan to exhume that scop? Or you just wanna hear how he died? Soaked in his own piss, neurons scorched by Soulkiller?”
V’s face twists into something feral then, and she lets out a low, dangerous growl as she whips the Malorian hard across his face.
Johnny’d kiss her right then and there if Rogue wasn’t still standin’ next to ‘em.
“What did they do with him?” V shouts in Grayson's face, and her voice sounds fuckin’ deadly, even as it quavers a bit. Rogue gives her a look, and Johnny wonders what exactly she’s worked out about their… relationship, or whatever you wanna call it. For all he knows, he mighta fuckin' told Rogue all about it.
“Badlands,” Grayson gasps, coughing and clutching his face. “Near the oil fields… buried out there. Take the 101 north, then head for the landfill. Dig deep enough, might even find a shit-smeared silver arm.” His eyes glow blue as he flicks V the coordinates.
Buried. Johnny feels V’s gut twist at this, and there’s a sudden lump in his own throat as well. As long as he’s been in V’s body, his death has felt… abstract, in some ways. Sure, he died - he fuckin’ remembers it, relives it constantly. But the idea that his body - the body that used to be him - is buried somewhere, decomposing in a fucking landfill… that somehow makes it all more real. More final.
“Heard enough,” Johnny cuts in. “Finish him. Fucker,” he spits.
“Wanna rip my eyes out just lookin’ at him,” Rogue agrees.
V’s still shaking, her face still twisted into a snarl as she pulls Grayson up by his collar, continuing to hold the pistol to his head.
“No, no, wait!” Grayson stammers in protest. “I got somethin’... Silverhand, you’re into him, right? Could give you somethin’.”
“What is it?” V hisses through gritted teeth.
“Smasher’s got something that was Johnny’s,” Grayson chokes. “Could be yours… just gotta let me live.”
“How’d Smasher wind up with Johnny’s stuff?” V demands.
“Told me Saburo Arasaka ordered him to get rid of the body, any and all sundries…” He coughs again. “Sold most of it, ‘cept the Malorian, and… what I got.”
“Give it to me,” V growls, and he shakily hands her an access card.
“Look in the container, on that goliath over there,” he manages.
“What’s inside?”
“You’ll see,” he says, and V releases him, pistol-whipping him again in the same motion, this time connecting with his skull. He crumples to the deck and doesn’t move.
“Goin’ soft on me, V,” Johnny mutters, starin’ down at the unconscious figure. If it were up to him, he’d zero the guy.
“For fuck’s sake,” Rogue yells, turning away and kicking the deck angrily. “Pointless, this whole thing. Still no leads, nowhere to go from here.”
“Fuck, V, tell her…” Johnny begins, and V's already crossing over to Rogue, placing a hand on her arm.
“To Johnny, this is more than a 50-year-old grudge,” she tells Rogue.
“Really?” Rogue snaps, crossing her arms. “Like, what is it?” She turns and paces away from V.
“It’s about you, Rogue,” V says. “He wanted to do this with you.”
Rogue’s shoulders slump slightly, but she doesn’t turn around. “What, to cheer me up?” she scoffs. “Didn’t work.”
“Smasher-” V begins, but Rogue cuts her off.
“Fuck, you don’t get it!” Rogue yells, finally turning back to V. “This isn’t about Smasher! He’s just the goddamn tip of the iceberg! Even if we get him… what does that get us?”
V doesn’t have an answer for this, and neither does Johnny. They stare at each other as the moment stretches on, then Rogue turns and storms off towards the stairs.
“No reason to stay. I’m out,” she says over her shoulder.
“Wait,” V says, taking a step after her. “I-”
“Later, V,” Rogue says firmly, taking the steps down two at a time, leaving V dumbfounded on the deck.
“Leave her alone, V,” Johnny says softly from behind her, and she turns to look at him. He’s perched on top of the crates above Grayson, drumming his fingers against the side. “She’ll get it together,” he reassures her. “But… I think this really spooked her. Times like this she prefers to be alone.”
“Okay,” V says shakily. “I get that.”
“Let’s go get that container down,” he says. “If there’s something of mine in there, I want it back.”
V nods.
They find a control panel to lower the crate, then V vaults off the deck of the ship and back down to the rail yard. The big container they lowered is sitting near the back gate, and V approaches it slowly.
“Oh, fuck,” Johnny laughs, glitching in next to it. “Think I know what it is!”
He’s hardly daring to hope, but he only owned one thing in his life that would warrant a container this size.
V uses the key Grayson gave ‘em to open the bolts on the crate, then stands back as the doors unlatch and slide open.
There’s a dark shape inside covered by a large dropcloth, but Johnny already knows his hunch was right. He can make out the shape of his Porsche underneath the fabric, and he can’t contain his giddiness.
“Take off the rag!” he tells V eagerly, and she yanks it off with her chrome hand to reveal the gleaming silver vintage sports car underneath. It's a 1977 Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet that Johnny lovingly restored - it seems whoever's been lookin' after it all these years has at least been treating his prided project right. One half point for Grayson, Johnny thinks begrudgingly.
“My ride,” Johnny says proudly, and V lets out a slow breath as she admires the vehicle. “Hop in,” he tells her, grinning. “I’ll even let you drive.”
Johnny can feel V's throat tighten as she gets into the car, placing her hands reverently on the steering wheel, her eyes sweeping the interior. Johnny sits next to her, and they exchange a small smile.
The key’s still in the ignition, and V grins at him as she starts the car. Tank's full too, by the looks of it.
“Purrs like a dream,” Johnny remarks. "Know how to drive stick?"
V rolls her eyes. "Been street racin' since I was a kid, Johnny."
“Alright, alright," he says with a chuckle. "Let’s go see where they fuckin’ planted my ass.”
V nods and shifts the car into gear as she steps on the gas, and they drive out through the gate into the night.
Through the window, they can see Rogue’s gettin’ in her car, and she waves as they drive past.
“Never realized the thing between you and Rogue was that serious,” V says, and Johnny can tell she’s trying to keep her voice impassive.
“Damn right it was serious,” Johnny says darkly. “When we met up, someone always died.”
“How so very romantic,” V teases. “Definitely your style.”
But Johnny leans against the window, actually lettin’ himself think about it. “There was always somethin’ goin’ on,” he continues. “She had a gig, I had a gig… music, that is. Was never run-of-the-mill.”
“Doesn’t seem like any of your relationships ever were,” V observes, and Johnny nods.
“Did try to take her to see a flick, once,” he says, suddenly remembering.
“And?” V prompts.
“And nothin’ came of it.” He stares out the window at the passing night. “As usual.”
He falls silent as they get on the freeway and drive up the coast into the oil fields, following the coordinates Grayson gave her.
“Huh,” Johnny mutters as they make their way past the oil drills and piles of scrap that shine damp in the night. “Worse than I thought.”
V doesn’t say anything as she turns off the main road, steering the car onto a narrow dirt path that leads up a low hill between two oil derricks before pulling it to a stop a few feet from the marked coordinates.
She looks at Johnny then, cutting the engine and opening her door. He glitches out and joins her as they walk up the final stretch to their destination.
“Can’t believe they bothered to truck it all the way out here,” Johnny mutters.
“Eh, better than the junkyard where I landed,” V remarks softly as they reach the place.
There’s nothing fucking here, because of course there’s not. Just a couple scraps of sheet metal and a pile of tangled junk.
“So that’s how it is,” Johnny says, sitting heavily on one of the corrugated sheets. “Nothing here at all." He feels a strange, crushing emptiness at this - like his life, his music, his rebellion all just amounted to nothing. Nothing but a bloated corpse left to rot in a landfill.
“What did you expect?” V says sympathetically, sitting down next to him. “Headstone, flag and flowers?”
“Nah, I…” he shakes his head. “I dunno. A marker? Something, anything.”
“Really need symbolic, empty gestures?”
“Guess I do,” he admits, looking up into her eyes. “Thought I’d feel like I’d closed a chapter here. Like I’d said goodbye to the old Silverhand, hello to the new.”
“And how do you feel?”
“Like I never even was. Or like I’m still inside Mikoshi.”
V's face is reflecting his despair right back at him. She turns to the sheet metal they’re sittin’ on and grabs her knife from her boot, then scratches something into the metal there.
JS - 2023
It’s not much, but Johnny’s fuckin’ touched.
“Better now?” she asks, looking up at him, her eyes shining in the dark.
“A bit,” he says, meeting her gaze. “But let’s say it was my real grave. What would you write?” He gestures to the ground beneath them, not quite sure what it is that he needs to hear from her. “Here lies Johnny Silverhand…”
“The guy who saved my life,” she finishes softly, and Johnny’s heart catches in his throat.
Fuck. The implications of that bowl him the fuck over. Of all the things she coulda said… of all the things she coulda chosen… The fact that that’s how she somehow still sees him, how she thinks he ought to be remembered…
And he knows he doesn’t fucking deserve it.
He takes off his glasses and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. He hadn’t realized he’d been crying, hadn’t even realized engrams could cry.
“Fuck, V…” he says, looking up at her. “You don’t know how much I want that to be true.”
Bein' near her's almost too much, so he gets to his feet and stands over her, awkwardly holding his glasses in his hand. He looks at her sitting there, wearin' his oversized jacket, and she suddenly seems so small, so vulnerable.
“Listen, I realize I fucked up a lotta things,” he admits. “Either let down or used every last person who gave me their trust. Blind, selfish bastard that I was. But I… I’ve managed one thing so far. Not to fuck this up, what we have.”
Her eyes flash. “No, Johnny,” she says, shaking her head. “You fucked that up, too. You used me, lied to me… How am I supposed to trust you, now?”
He looks down. “I know," he says in a low voice. "Let you down, showed you the worst of me. Johnny Silverhand, terrorist and raging asshole.” He sighs and begins pacing. “Most people I thought were my friends, they couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with me.” He reaches into his pocket for a cigarette and places it between his lips, turning back to V. “You’re fuckin’ closest to me by a long shot. There twenty-four seven. And yet… you don’t seem to hate my living guts. At least… until now. And when I..."
He doesn’t finish the thought and instead clears his throat and wipes his eyes again, then swallows his pride and gets to his knees in front of her, putting a hand on her leg. She doesn’t withdraw, just meets his gaze coolly, but he can still feel that sharp twisting in her chest. “Is it too late to ask for a second chance?” he begs.
She sighs heavily. “What do you want from me?” she asks him for what feels like the hundredth time.
“I want to make things right. Whatever that means. Whatever that looks like.”
V is silent, watching him in the dark for a long beat.
“Okay,” she says finally, speaking slowly. “But as second chances go, this is your last. I refuse to be that naive.”
“I’ll try damned hard,” Johnny promises, but he can’t stop his heart from leapin’ in his chest. He was so worried she’d never forgive him, never let him in again. And yet here she is, still willing to place her trust in him, despite all she's seen, despite all she knows. “Johnny Silverhand,” he says, unable to keep the grin from spreading across his face as he gets to his feet. “Relentless rockerboy who never gives up!”
V's mouth twitches upward in spite of herself, a slow smile creeping across her face as well. It lights up her features and god, he wants to kiss her.
“V,” she says, grinning up at him. “First among suckers.”
Johnny beams back at her, and he knows his smile is dopey as hell right now, but he doesn’t care. She’s forgiven him; that’s enough for now.
She shakes her head, still smiling. “Too bad we didn’t talk like this earlier. Woulda made things easier.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Not good at this stuff,” he admits. “Remember wakin’ up at Vik’s, not knowin’ about me? ‘I’m seein’ things, I’m scared,’” he reminds her, mimicking her voice. “Then moanin’ at Misty’s ‘bout how you didn’t wanna die?”
She laughs. “Remember you whinin’ for smokes in the middle of the night, complainin’ about not bein’ able to kill me.”
“Never thought we’d make it this far,” he agrees softly.
She looks up at him, her eyes luminous in the night. “Still feel like you can’t breathe in here?” she asks in a quiet voice.
“Nah,” he tells her, shakin’ his head. “Not sayin’ it’s great, but it’s... different.” He sits down next to her again, trying to find the words to explain. “Sometimes, when I wake up, feels like I’m back for a while.”
“What d’you mean, back?”
“Well,” he admits. “Like I got your body to myself. Like I’m free.” He swallows hard. “Seconds later, feels like I’m missing something… something really important. Then I realize… you’re there, always were, and this stupid wave of relief washes over me.”
She just stares at him for a long time, and he can feel her heartbeat, his heartbeat, pounding in her throat. It’s the closest he’s ever come to admitting the true depth of his feelings, and he knows she knows this.
“Have similar dreams, sometimes,” she says finally. “That you never died… that I’m you. And I do the things that you do, and I feel… fuckin’ great. Like I’ve finally started to fit into this world.”
“Like havin’ me in your head makes you feel like… you?”
She nods. “Can’t explain it. Probably a bad sign. But it’s like… I never felt complete before, and now…”
“Yeah,” he says. He knows exactly what she’s fuckin’ talking about. “Prolly not a great sign. We gotta do something soon.”
“Just waitin’ on Hanako.”
“That’s not good enough,” Johnny demurs. “We need a Plan B. But let's go home now. We can talk about this later.” He gazes at the dump surrounding them. “Nothing to see here, after all.”
“Worth comin’ out all the same?” V says, getting to her feet.
He looks at her. “Absolutely,” he says with utter sincerity. “Thanks, V.”
She smiles up at him, and she looks so beautiful silhouetted in the dim glow of the city in the distance.
“Of all the heads I coulda popped up in… hella glad it was yours,” he tells her, and he means it.
She closes the distance between them, planting a small, soft kiss on his mouth. It takes him by surprise somehow, and then his senses kick in and he pulls her closer, deepening the kiss for a short, intense moment that he briefly lets himself get lost in.
“Let’s delta,” he says then, taking her hand and leading her back towards the car.
They don’t speak much for the rest of the drive home, just listening to the radio in silence as the city passes by them in the night.
When they’re back in V’s apartment, she puts on his old tank top then shimmies down under the covers of her bed. He glitches in next to her and she snakes her organic hand out from under the blankets and reaches for his chrome one. He takes it gently and intertwines his fingers with hers, metal and flesh, silver and skin. They lie silently together for a while, hand in hand, and he starts to wonder if she’s gonna fall asleep like that. He wouldn’t mind.
“When you said you let your friends down… did you mean Rogue?” she whispers.
He rolls over to face her. “Rogue, Alt, Kerry, Santiago…”
The list could go on.
She untangles her hand from his and reaches up to caress his face, and he closes his eyes and revels in her touch. “It's not all lost yet, least not with Rogue,” she reminds him.
He shakes his head. “Can’t pretend nothing’s changed over fifty years, can’t just insert myself back into her life.”
“Kinda already have,” V points out. “And I think the Smasher biz really got to her. Can’t leave it like this, I don’t think.”
“Might be right,” he admits. “She was acting weird.”
“You oughta talk to her. Remember how you told me you promised to take her to the movies?” V smiles at him from under her lashes. “Not too late to do that.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Good idea.”
“I’ll call her for you,” V promises. “See if she’s free some night.”
But he knows there's one big catch, still.
“Thing is, you’d have to surrender control… again,” he reminds her gently. He knows how fucking scary it was for her last time; he’s felt it in her memories. He doesn’t wanna put her through that again.
But she’s shakin’ her head fiercely, her hair falling across her eyes. “I know,” she says. “But this might be your last chance to set things right with her, get both of you closure. I know if I were her, I’d want that chance.”
He thinks about this for a moment. He does want it, wants this chance. Rogue meant a lot to him - still does. He's never even fuckin' told her that. Now might be his last opportunity.
“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Okay.”
V brushes his lip with her thumb, then moves to reach for his hand again and he gladly takes it, holding it gently to his chest as she closes her eyes. He watches her until her breathing evens and he feels himself getting pulled down into her, into her dreams, her nightmares, whatever it is that’s waiting for him there tonight.
He wants so badly to be the guy who saved her life. He has to be. He can be.
Right?
Notes:
The oil fields scene made me stop breathing the first time I played it ngl
Also, I decided to just make the jacket Rogue gives V the real one, not a replica, bc why not? It's not implausible she could have somehow had/kept the real one. NO GODS NO MASTERS I MAKE THE RULES HERE
Chapter 28: When Love Runs Low
Summary:
V and Johnny struggle to keep their jealousy in check as River continues his pursuit of V, and Johnny plans his date with Rogue.
Chapter Text
In her dreams, V is Johnny again, playing guitar on a big stage, blinding lights in her eyes and the roar of the crowd in her ears. She’s firing her gun above the audience, shouting stuff about Arasaka, and she feels fuckin’ great, just like she told Johnny. Being Johnny now feels right, feels like who she’s always been, feels like where she belongs.
But she doesn’t have time to enjoy it before she’s right back in fuckin’ Arasaka Tower again. She can’t tell if it’s 2013 or 2023 now, but Rogue’s there, Rogue’s always there. She feels a pang in her chest at this - a pang in Johnny’s chest - as the merc shoots her way through the waves of guards, glancing over her shoulder at Johnny, covering him as they move through the tower. Rogue’s always been there. Rogue’s never said no to him. Rogue’s the best.
He loves Rogue, she realizes suddenly, and she wakes with a start.
She’s curled up in her bed, and it’s the early afternoon. She slept for a long time; musta really fuckin’ needed it. Johnny glitches in beside her as she opens her eyes, and his face looks so soft to her now, so different from the way it looked in his memories, the way it looked when she first met him.
Her stomach twists when she remembers the promise she made him last night, her offer to let him take over again so he can set things right with Rogue. She wants to believe him so badly, wants to believe the promises he made her last night are genuine this time, that he won’t take advantage of her again, but she knows it’s not gonna be that simple. He’s still who he is, and she’s still who she is, and they’re both still a fuckin’ tangled up mess. It’s gonna take more than just his word for her to be able to simply pick up where they left off.
But she can feel how powerful his desire is to make the most of this second chance she’s given him, and that’s gotta be enough for now. He can’t be gonk enough to make the same mistake twice. She reaches for his hand and he gathers it in his own, and it’s so fucking strange to think about his body being buried out there in the oil fields when he feels so real lying next to her right now. Fuck, he even feels warm.
Although, the more she thinks about his body lying somewhere down there in that landfill, the more it doesn't quite add up.
She remembers how at Jackie's ofrenda, Mama Welles told her that 'Saka agents'd come sniffin' by the Coyote, looking for Jackie's remains. Mama Welles had stood her ground, told 'em he'd already been cremated and sent to the Columbarium. But still... if Arasaka did that kind of due diligence for the corpse of a petty thief, it seems kinda hard to believe they’d’ve left Johnny with huscle like Smasher to dump in the wasteland. Johnny was public enemy number fuckin’ one; he'd just blown up their North American headquarters, for fuck's sake. And they were clearly interested in using him to experiment with the less palatable aspects of the Secure Your Soul technology - why discard a perfectly good soulless host body when there were tests to be run, abominations to create?
Johnny's givin' her a weird look, probably hearin' her thoughts to some degree.
"V," he says in a low voice. "Stop torturing yourself. Can feel your mind racin'."
"I just don't buy it," she mutters. "Don't think Arasaka would've let go of you that easily."
"Mighta been their way of sendin' a message," Johnny suggests.
“To who? About what?” V says. “Havin’ your soul and body on deck to use as their puppet woulda sent that message a thousand times more clearly, don’t ya think?”
“It’s been over fifty years,” he says softly. “Not gonna get my hopes up.”
"Givin' up that easily?" she teases, rolling over to reach for a cigarette, but he catches her by the wrist and pulls her back towards him.
Their eyes meet, and she can feel his breath against her lips, but then her holo starts ringing, because of course it fucking does. Like it does every fuckin’ morning. Or afternoon, in this case.
She can’t stop her heart rate from picking up a bit though when she sees it's that cop from the Peralez job, River Ward.
Johnny releases her wrist and scowls as she picks up.
“River,” she says as his face appears on her HUD.
“V, hey.” His voice is warm, but there’s an edge to it that V picks up on immediately. “I need your help.”
“What’s up?” she asks, turning away from Johnny slightly, as though that makes any fuckin’ difference. “Somethin’ happen with the case?”
“No,” he says, then hesitates. “I shouldn’t talk about this on the holo. We gotta meet.”
V feels an unexpected thrill at this that she quickly quashes. “Just tell me when and where,” she says to River.
“Glen, this evening,” comes his response. “I’ll flick you the details.” He pauses. “Or actually, I could come pick you up in an hour, if you’re cool with that.”
“Sure,” V says without hesitation. “I’m in Watson, sending the coords now.”
River smiles, and V feels that familiar dark twist of jealousy from Johnny as she hangs up.
"NCPD boy in blue gives you a holler and you come runnin' like an obedient dog?” he huffs, glitching into a sitting position and lifting a cigarette to his lips. “This ain't gonna become a regular thing, is it?”
“Please don’t do this, Johnny,” V says. Things are finally startin’ to be good between them again and she hopes he’s not gonna be a dick and ruin it. “River’s alright in my book.”
“Well, whatever, sounds like he's got an errand for you, real personal kind,” Johnny prods, waggling his eyebrows. “Least it's better than chasing dead politicians.”
V ignores him and moves to get out of bed.
“Just do me a favor…” Johnny adds, glitching up to stand over her. “Don’t make a habit of helpin’ out badges, okay?”
“You’re not in a position to be askin’ for favors right now,” she reminds him coldly.
"This one's for you, not for me," he insists. "Gettin' tangled up with the police could make things more difficult for ya." It’s a weak excuse, and they both know it.
"Wow, I'm touched," she jokes, rolling her eyes. "And here I thought you were just bein' your typical jealous self."
Johnny shrugs. At least he doesn't bother denying it at this point, just frowns at her as she climbs to her feet and gets in the shower.
“You do know this cop’s sniffin’ around you for somethin’ extra, though, right, V?” he says, glitching in next to her as she shampoos her hair.
“Please stay out of it, Johnny,” she snaps.
“Oooh!” He gives her one of his signature mean smirks. “Think someone actually wants to polish Mr. Policeman’s badge.”
“Don’t forget,” she warns. “Can punch you back now.”
She knows that part of him wishes she would. And worse, the thought kinda turns him on.
God, they're both fucked in the head.
“Fine,” he relents. “Not gonna be a prick about it. Truth is, you could do a lot worse than Detective ‘Blue Moon’ Ward.”
“Already have,” V shoots back, but the corner of her mouth twitches upward, giving her away. “Got a brain parasite nibblin’ away at my nerve endings as we speak.”
He lifts his metal hand and mimics her talking with it, but he's smiling now. And so is she - givin' each other shit like this is is how they communicate best. And fuck, she’s missed their stupid banter.
She reaches for his dog tags before leaving, slidin’ ‘em on over her head and letting them fall softly against her chest, and she grips the tags in her hand for a moment, lookin’ down at the name on ‘em.
Robert John Linder. A name Johnny’d tried to outrun for years.
V grabs her sunglasses and heads for the door.
She’s sittin’ on the front steps outside her megabuilding smoking a cig when River pulls up in his Thorton. He’s much more terse than before; it’s clear something’s really gotten to him. Turns out he needs V's help with something totally unrelated to local politics this time - Johnny was right ‘bout it being personal. Some psycho's been kidnapping teenage boys, and River's nephew Randy is among the ones still missing. They’ve got the perp in custody already, but he’s in a coma and therefore isn’t exactly bein’ super talkative or providing any leads on where he’s keepin’ the kids.
Gonk’s probably flatlined the poor brats already, she hears Johnny think. But on the off-chance the kid’s still alive… V knows she’s gotta help him. And to Johnny’s delight, the first thing River wants to do is break into a police station downtown to grab some evidence. What’s more, it turns out River recently got himself kicked off the force and failed to mention this little detail to V.
They end up at River’s sister’s house, searching through his nephew’s shit to find some connection to the kidnapper. His family lives in a trailer park on the outskirts of the city.
And she meets River’s sister, Joss. She’s hard as nails and clearly’s had a tough go of it, but V can tell she’s the kind of woman who’d do anything for her kids. She lives in the main house with her two younger children, while Randy stays in a separate, smaller trailer on the property.
“Ex-cop trailer trash,” Johnny jokes as they paw through the kid’s junk. “Really know how to pick ‘em, V.”
V scowls, but continues to ignore him as she helps River piece together the clues. Even Johnny eventually offers a few helpful pointers, and they quickly figure out that the kidnapper was talkin’ to the kids, preying on their insecurities and struggles, gaining their trust before luring them out to his home. Fuckin’ hell, V thinks. She hopes they’re not too late.
She winds up crashing out for a few hours in Randy’s room while River continues working the case. But he wakes her after only a couple hours - he's had a breakthrough, and they manage to trace the location of the kidnapper's home to a farm out in the Badlands south of the city, beyond the Biotechnica Flats.
River drives them there as the sun is coming up. They speed over the dam towards the flats, and V’s reminded of the time she came down here with Panam to light up that goddamn power station. She still feels a horrible twist in her gut at the thought of Scorpion and the other Aldecaldos who died that day.
“So, you lost your badge… didn’t tell me about it, why?” she asks River, forcing herself back to the present.
“I… don’t know,” he replies slowly.
“Makes you a bit of a leadhead, doesn’t it?” she teases.
“That it do,” River agrees, chuckling softly. But then his face is serious again. “It’s just, uh… it’s not easy for me to talk about what’s bitin’ at my ass,” he admits.
Sorta like someone else I know, V thinks.
But despite it all, there's still something about River that makes V feel really at ease, like she can let her guard down around him and just be herself. Conversation flows naturally, and he's smart, inquisitive, curious about her. Caring, almost to a fault. Determined.
And there’s a warmth to him that Johnny lacks, which is probably what draws her to him the most. But he’s not green like Judy; he’s strong, capable, good in a fight, and seems to know exactly who he is and what he wants.
Okay, so she likes him, she can at least admit that to herself. But she feels that familiar tug of guilt, and thinks about the conversation she had with Judy just yesterday. She’s still stuck, and she knows that - as long as Johnny’s in her head, this can all only end one way. So she pushes the thought down, and focuses instead on the task at hand as they pull up to the farm.
Thank fuckin' christ, his nephew’s there, and he’s alive. Sick fuck had ‘em hooked up to braindance machines meant for cattle, pumped full of hormones and god knows what else. V feels sick to her stomach as she unplugs the boys and drags ‘em outside to the waiting Trauma Team AVs.
After NCPD swarms the farm and they finish loading the rescued boys onto the AVs, River offers to drive her home and she gratefully accepts.
“So why did you become a cop?” V wonders aloud as they make their way through Santo Domingo back into the city.
River’s face darkens, but then he turns to V and smiles. “Tell you about it over a beer sometime.”
“Sign me up,” she says with a grin. “We found Randy, now we can find the bottoms of a few bottles.”
The corner of River’s mouth twitches upwards. “It would be my pleasure.”
It takes them another hour to reach Watson, and River turns to her again when he finally pulls to a stop in front of her building.
“Really, V… thanks,” he says. “Couldn’t’ve done any of this without ya.” His voice is low and rough, and V can’t ignore the spark she feels pass between them when his eyes meet hers.
“Don’t mention it,” she insists, awkwardly fumbling for the door handle. “And holler if you change your mind about needin’ help zeroing the guy. Or… if you’re just in the mood to holler.”
God, what is it about this ex-cop that makes her feel like a teenager with a crush?
River smiles and extends his hand to her and she gives it a shake, both of them lingering a bit longer than necessary. V can feel Johnny's growing irritation as she hops out of the car and starts up the stairs.
“Just spit it out, Johnny,” she says in the elevator, and he glitches in across from her, shades on and cigarette in hand.
“What?” he says. “Am I supposed to pretend to be thrilled you’re gettin’ all wet for a washed up ex-cop?”
“Thought you said you weren’t gonna be a prick about this,” she reminds him.
“Yeah, but then I remembered I gotta be there and feel every fuckin’ butterfly in your gonk little stomach when he fuckin’ makes eyes at you,” Johnny spits.
“Says the man who’s in all likelihood gonna try and use my body to fuck his ex the second he gets the chance,” V snaps. It’s a low blow and she knows it, and she feels him recoil.
“Maybe I will, yeah,” he growls, taking a long drag of his cigarette and blowing it out towards her.
They glare at each other the rest of the elevator ride, and V feels a sting of disappointment that they’ve fallen back into their old bullshit so quickly. She really thought things would be different this time.
The next couple days pass quickly - Jefferson Peralez calls her again, and this time, his request is even stranger. Turns out, their private security’s been spying on them, and when V starts to dig deeper, she unearths something more wildly disturbing than anything she’s encountered thus far in her merc work. Someone - some shadowy organization - has been using some kinda mind control on the Peralezes. Reshaping their minds, their memories. Elizabeth begs V not to reveal the extent of their findings to her husband, but V still hasn’t decided whether or not she’s gonna play along or not.
Whoever it is that did it is probably the same people who killed Rhyne and tried to frame Holt.
She hasn’t heard from Judy since the morning after their night out, and V feels a pang whenever she thinks of the little virtu tuner. It wasn’t how she’d hoped things would go between them, and she hopes it’s not too late to salvage a friendship, at the very least. She makes a mental note to check up on her later, grab a drink with her and try to make amends.
And there’s still no call from Hanako.
Johnny’s been quiet lately too, though she can feel a spike of anticipation from him when she finally gets out her holo the following night and calls Rogue. He glitches in front of her as the holo rings, pacing nervously and smoking his cigarette.
The fixer’s face appears on her HUD, looking cool and collected as always. “V,” she says. “What’s up?”
V swallows and decides to get right to it. “Johnny wants to ask you out on a date. Whaddaya think?”
Rogue’s eyebrows shoot up at this. “Johnny’s asking? Or is it you?”
V hadn’t even considered the possibility that Rogue might take it that way. “Johnny,” she says quickly. “You’re the one who said you got no trouble tellin’ us apart.”
“Okay,” Rogue smiles. “And where would we go?”
“Where would you wanna go?” V asks.
“Silver Pixel Cloud in North Oak,” Rogue says without hesitation, naming the old drive-in up there. “This Saturday.”
Just like Johnny told her. “Okay,” V says, forcing a smile. “I’ll swing by the Afterlife, pick you up.”
Rogue smirks like a cat who’s got the cream. “Perfect,” she says, and hangs up.
“Shimra,” Johnny crows, not even trying to hide his glee.
Now that it’s actually happening, V feels like she might be sick to her stomach.
“Can't even remember why Rogue and I were always at each other's throats,” Johnny continues wistfully. “All I remember is the good times... and how few of ‘em there were.” He shakes his head sadly. “Now I've got one night to make it up to her. Yeah, a movie date sounds boring, but hell, we never did normal, boring things. Better late than never, right?” He grins at V, and she just nods mutely.
But she feels vindicated the next morning when River calls again.
“Here I feared you’d forgotten about me,” V teases as she picks up.
“About you?” River says incredulously, and V feels her heart flutter. “Oh, come on, never. Was actually… callin’ to invite you to my sister’s for dinner tonight,'' he continues sheepishly. “If you’re free.”
V feels a slow grin spread across her face. Fuck it, if Johnny can go on dates in her fuckin’ body, then so the fuck can she, right?
River’s watchin’ her anxiously, waiting for her response. “So, you gonna stop by? Or gonna make me grovel?” he prompts.
“Be great to see all you guys,” V answers honestly.
“Prime!” River exclaims, his whole face lighting up. “I’ve… missed you, y’know,” he adds, looking suddenly shy.
“Actually missed you too, River,” V admits, and it’s strangely true - he has such a calming presence.
River seems at a loss for words for a beat, then a big dopey grin spreads across his face. “I’ll see you at Joss’s?”
“I’ll see you at Joss’s,” V repeats, and hangs up.
Of course, Johnny’s bein’ all huffy as she starts to get ready.
"The kidnapping case is done and closed, so you do know you never have to see this badge again... right?” he says as she considers her outfit choices. Most of her shorts either come down to her knees and are meant for crawlin’ around in the desert, or go halfway up her ass and are meant for goin’ out dancing.
She frowns as she pulls on a pair of dangerously short denim ones. “You’re goin’ on a date the day after tomorrow,” she points out. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“The Rogue thing was your idea,” he reminds her.
“So?” she says. “My point still stands."
He tosses away his cigarette and immediately lights another. “Okay, fine, I get it, you and the cop crawled through shit and fire together, and now you wanna kick back and celebrate your victory. But a family dinner? Fuckin' seriously? Can't just find a decent dive to grab a tequila or ten? Smash the bottle over some corpocunt's face? You're getting soft, V.”
“That your idea of a good date?” she teases.
“It is, and I know it’s yours too,” Johnny says coolly, starin’ her straight in the eye.
“Guess we’ll have to do that sometime, then,” V retorts, and that shuts him up real quick.
She pulls on a small white crop top and Johnny glitches closer to her.
“Christ V, there are gonna be kids there,” he says, staring pointedly at her very exposed upper thighs.
“Right, I’m sure it’s definitely the kids you’re worried about,” she says sardonically, but she grabs her oversized bomber and pulls it on as she heads for the door.
It’s late afternoon when she arrives back at the trailer park, and a dark-haired little girl - River's niece, Monique, V remembers - comes running over to her motorcycle as she dismounts.
“Oh, hey!” the girl says shyly, waving at her. V grins and waves back. The girl's brother, Dorian, is further back by the house, and he waves at her as well and yells “Hi!” in a small voice.
River’s out front, too; he’s got a whole grill situation set up and seems hard at work. He holds up his hand to V as she approaches, and he’s grinning too.
She’s halfway to him when Johnny glitches in on the steps in front of Randy’s trailer.
“Not really my jam, picnics,” he mutters as she passes. “But you have fun.”
She cocks an eyebrow at him, pausing to meet his eye.
“Spinnin’ a new song, anyway,” he adds. “Rather focus on that.”
V hadn’t realized he’d been comin’ up with new music since bein’ in her head, though she supposes it makes sense - he is a musician, after all. She can’t help but wonder what he’s been writin’ about. She’s tempted to ask, but he’s already humming angrily to himself and staring past her into the middle distance, so she sighs and continues over to River.
River’s making jambalaya, and he seems so different today. He’s relaxed, happy, cracking jokes and smiling easily. V points this out to him, and he grins shyly.
“Well, wanted you to see this side of me, too,” he tells her.
She likes him like this, she decides.
They sit on the porch together and crack open some beers while they wait for the jambalaya to simmer. And then, out of nowhere, River’s telling her about how his parents died. It was an armed burglary in the middle of the night; they shot his dad then handed River the gun and held him at gunpoint and told him to shoot his mom. He couldn’t do it, so they just laughed at him, then shot her themselves and left him and Joss there alone with their parents' bleeding corpses.
And that’s why River became a cop in the first place, why he devoted his life to finding and stopping people like that.
Holy shit, V thinks, putting a hand on his arm sympathetically. River's face softens at her touch.
But then his niece and nephew run over, wanting to play a game with them, and River relents with a smile. They’ve got these little VR headsets that V was never able to afford as a kid, and she’s having way more fun than she expected running around with them in the yard.
Her face is flushed when they all sit down to dinner, and she finds herself suddenly a little jealous of what they all have - she never got to have normal family dinners anything like this. River talks about his plans to become a private investigator now that he’s left the NCPD, and V agrees that’d be great for him.
“What about you, V?” Joss asks. “You got family?”
“Grew up in Heywood,” she replies, mashing her jambalaya around with her fork. “Whole street was my family. Neighbors helped each other out, thought nothing of it.”
“Well, you brought my family back to me, and I’m grateful,” Joss says.
“If you say so, Joss,” V smiles.
“And my brother likes you,” Joss adds, shooting a cheeky look at River.
“Joss…” River groans.
“Well, why hide it?” Joss presses.
“Come on, Joss,” V says, fighting down the wave of sadness that suddenly hits her. From where Joss is sitting, she's right, why hide it? These people... they've got no way of knowing that as they speak, V's brain is bein’ devoured by a very possessive rockerboy, no way of knowing that her days of bein’ herself are in all likelihood numbered.
“Who thinks V and Uncle River would make a good couple?” Monique exclaims, and both she and her brother’s hands shoot up into the air, along with Joss’s.
River slams down his fork and turns to V. “Well, that’s decided,” he mutters, but he’s holding back a smile as he gets to his feet.
“Got an 11-99, officer needs backup,” V jokes.
“C’mon,” River says, stepping away from the table and motioning for V to follow. “Pull you outta this ambush.”
She puts down her fork as well and follows him gratefully, thanking Joss as they head back across the yard and up a small hill at the far end of the trailer park.
“Phew,” V exhales. “Situation was gettin’ dicey.”
“You were about a hair’s breadth away from havin’ look at photo albums,” River agrees with a chuckle.
“Oh, so this is a romantic stroll?" V teases.
“Not about to pick you flowers, if that’s what you're asking,” River quips back.
They get to an old water tower with a high fence around it.
“Here we are,” says River. “Great spot.”
He gives her a boost over the gate, a boost she definitely doesn’t need what with her modified tendons and all, but she lets him hoist her up anyway. Once they’re both inside, she follows him up a long series of ladders to the top of the tower.
“Apparently the worst city between the Atlantic and the Pacific,” River says dryly as they stand there together, surveying the city sprawled before them. “But I do love it up here,” he adds. “Find it calming.”
He retrieves an unopened bottle of rye that’s been stashed away up here, then sits himself on the edge of the tower. V sidles up next to him, dangling her legs over the edge, and he opens the bottle and takes a swig before passing it to her. They're in the foothills on the outskirts of the city, affording them a spectacular view of the whole bay. Santo Domingo stretches out before them, its twinkling streetlights draped like gossamer webs over the low hills. And beyond it, the soaring towers of downtown sparkle in the dusk, their holographic advertisements reaching upward into the night like glowing pillars of light.
“Out here, you can’t smell the shit the corps dump in the street,” V observes, passin’ him back the liquor. “Like the city’s their own personal toilet. Shit, flush, repeat.”
Once again, she’s struck by how much she fuckin’ sounds like Johnny.
River smiles. “Hm, poetic. Couldn’t’ve said it better.” He takes another swig then sets the bottle down, glancing nervously down at his feet then back up at her. “Alright, V. You know why we’re here, don’t you? Say you do,” he begs.
V swallows hard. Of course she knows, she’s not blind or dumb. You could cut the sexual tension between them with a fuckin’ knife. She sighs and looks out over the city, feeling her thoughts start to race.
“Please, don’t string me along,” River says, still holding her in his intense gaze.
She reaches for the rye and takes several large gulps. “Ever feel… alone?” she asks him softly, setting the bottle down again as she feels the liquor start to take effect.
“Course I do,” River says. “But… doubt I’m cut out for relationships.”
V laughs sharply. “I doubt you know who you’re talkin’ to. Me, I’m a master of disastrous relationships.”
River smiles. “I’ll need some evidence.”
V considers this. “Smashed one relationship to pieces, along with the fucker’s jaw,” she says, remembering her final showdown with Vince, the bartender at El Coyote, before she stormed out and left for Atlanta. It’s not something she remembers fondly.
“Why, what’d he do?” River asks.
“Said I was too aggressive for him,” V smirks. “Kidding,” she adds quickly. “He had a side bitch, caught ‘em fucking between the sheets I’d bought.”
“Oof, classic.”
“Worst part was, it was with the skydiving instructor from a lesson I’d booked for ‘im.”
River laughs at this, and V looks down at her hands, really letting herself think about Vince for the first time in what feels like months. He’s probably sittin’ around some campfire somewhere now with his new nomad chooms, and she’s barely a flicker of a memory to him at this point.
“Was only ever in love once,” she continues, thinkin’ of Naomi, her netrunner girlfriend from Atlanta. She still hasn’t heard a word from her since their last fight - V assumes she’s got a new girlfriend by now, too. “I was a shithead, while she was… she was great.”
“But?” River prompts, raising his eyebrows only slightly at the feminine pronouns.
“Lived with her in Atlanta for a while,” V explains. “She gave me my NetWatch cyberdeck, showed me the ropes of high level ‘running. But… I could never quite commit. Think it’s ‘cause I never quite trusted her, if I’m bein’ honest with myself.”
It’s not like her to open up like this so quickly, but there’s just something about River that makes her feel like she can tell him anything and he’ll take it in stride.
He nods sympathetically. “Know what that’s like,” he offers.
“And then… more recently I was seein’ this girl. Real nice girl, too. But it… all fell apart.” She shakes her head sadly. Her last conversation with Judy is still a fresh wound.
“How come?” River asks.
“I… well…” V’s not sure how to explain it. “It’s sorta complicated. I’d rather not get into it now,” she finishes weakly, and River doesn’t press her.
“Nice stories,” he says. “But none of ‘em beat my last serious liason.”
“What did you do?” she asks, grateful to turn the topic away from her for a bit.
River’s face darkens. “I shot her.”
“Shut up…” V says incredulously. Fuck, that does top all her stories.
“Had no choice,” River continues sadly. “Found ourselves standing on opposite sides of the law.”
Could easily happen with us, V thinks.
“But don’t worry,” River adds quickly, seeming to catch her unspoken fear. “Never made it a habit. I’m done shooting the women I date.”
“I see what you’re doin’, River,” V says softly, cutting to the chase.
“And how am I doing?” he asks seriously. “Do I stand a chance?”
V swallows again, feeling a sudden lump in her throat. It's such a vulnerable question. And his face is close to hers now; she can feel the heat from his body. She forces herself to hold his gaze.
“Just… don’t fall in love with me,” she murmurs.
He looks at her long and hard, and she feels her breath catch.
“Too late, V,” he says finally, then leans over and kisses her.
She feels Johnny’s rage and disappointment boil over inside her, but she’s already kissing River back, leaning deeper into it, because fuck it, she wants to. She wants to just let herself give in to this, wants to just let it happen.
Johnny loves Rogue, she reminds herself as River shoves his tongue into her mouth. He's gonna fuck her, said so himself.
She pulls away and downs a few more swigs of the rye, and River does the same. Her head is swimming now, and the night suddenly takes on that magical, surreal quality it does after exactly the right amount of booze.
River takes her hand and leads her back down the water tower to the ground, then pushes her up against the wall of a nearby trailer. His hands are up her shirt, and hers are down his pants and damn, what she feels there is very promising. Some neighbors stop to whistle but River just laughs and takes her hand again, leading her back to the trailer where Joss and the kids are already asleep.
And then they’re in his room, and he’s kissing her hard as he shuts the door behind them, tearing off her clothes and fumbling with his pants and taking her face in both of his hands and pressing his mouth to hers. She runs her hands up his bare chest, feeling the solid wall of muscle there. Fuck, the sheer size of him is hot - he’s gotta be at least 6’5” - and he towers over her, his broad shoulders dwarfing her small frame as he bends his head to kiss and suck on her neck.
As if hearing her thoughts, he throws her on the bed like a ragdoll and she gasps as he climbs on top of her, leaning down to continue his exploration of her body with his tongue.
His arm wraps around her waist then and he flips them over so she’s on top of him. His cock’s already hard as a rock, and god, she was right, he’s fucking huge, just like everything else about him. River lets out a low groan as V takes him in her hand and lines them up before slowly lowering herself onto him, whimpering softly at the stretch. She begins riding him, slowly at first, but quickly picking up the pace, placing her hand over his mouth so he won’t wake up his entire fuckin’ extended family.
She’s just starting to really get into it when he suddenly scoots to the edge of the bed and holds her waist as he starts to stand up, so she wraps her legs around his torso and lets him carry her to the window, where he turns her around to so she’s pressed against the glass while he fucks her from behind. His hands grasp at her breasts, and part of her can’t shake the feeling that his metal hand is the wrong hand - Johnny’s is his left one, River’s is his right - but she pushes this thought away as he ruts into her, biting her shoulder to muffle his moans.
He pulls her to him again and they collapse to the floor together, V landing hard on her back, and then River is holding himself above her as he lifts her legs up over her head and fucks her hard. And god it feels fucking good, it’s been so long since she’s had a real cock in her. But just as she feels herself getting close, he pulls out and comes all over her stomach and tits, groaning her name with a string of curses as he pumps himself dry before collapsing in a sweaty heap next to her.
They lie there panting, and V’s still fuckin’ keyed up as hell. River senses this and moves to put his mouth between her legs, but she gently lifts his head away and pulls him to her, kissing him instead. It’s better this way, she thinks, ignoring the burning fire in her belly and the wetness on her thighs. She doesn’t wanna have to explain if she suddenly has a Relic malfunction, doesn’t wanna bring Johnny into this any more than he already is.
She can feel Johnny’s relief somewhere in there, and she lets River scoop her onto the bed and wrap his huge arms around her as she snuggles against him, enjoying the closeness.
He lifts her hand to kiss it, but pauses momentarily at the tattoo on her forearm.
“Who’s Johnny?” River asks, and V stiffens.
“It’s complicated,” she mumbles, hoping he doesn’t question her further.
“The complicated thing you mentioned earlier?” he says in her ear, and she nods.
“Mm, can tell me about it tomorrow,” he mutters, already almost asleep.
V lies awake for a while longer, letting the mess of emotions from both Johnny and herself wash over her, ruining any chance she might’ve had of enjoying the feeling of falling asleep in River’s arms.
Johnny glitches in across from her, leaning against the mirror and appraising her, lying there with River.
“Christ, V,” he mutters. “Can’t believe you’re makin’ me fuck a cop.” He scowls down at them, his eyes hidden behind his shades. “Gonna go plug my ears, gouge out my eyes.”
She sighs heavily and closes her eyes.
When she opens them, it takes V a second to remember where she is and why as she stares at the dusty old ceiling fan spinning slowly above her. Her eyes drift to a small dream catcher hung above his bed, so similar to the one Misty gave her, and suddenly the whole night comes crashing back to her. She can hear River clattering around in the kitchen, humming softly to himself.
She heaves herself up and finds her shorts on the floor, pulling them on along with her discarded tank top, then pads out down the hallway and into the small kitchen.
“Hey,” she says, holding back a yawn as she approaches him.
“Hey!” he says, turning to her. “Coffee’s almost ready.”
“Preem,” she says, unable to stifle her yawn this time as she leans against the counter beside him. He's wearing loose sweatpants and his chest is bare, and V catches herself admiring him in spite of herself, in spite of the conversation she knows they're likely about to have.
“Taste it,” River coaxes, handing her the mug. “Best coffee you’ve ever had, I bet.”
“Thanks,” she says. She tentatively sips it, and yeah, it’s pretty damn good.
“Did ya sleep alright?” he asks, and V nods.
“Mmm,” she says noncommittally.
“So, I been thinking,” River begins, his voice suddenly serious. “Last night… you and me… is this goin’ anywhere, y’know… longer term?”
V feels her stomach sink. “Ugh, heavy convos first thing in the morning?” she groans, trying to deflect.
“Please just answer me,” he begs. “I need to know where I stand.”
V sighs heavily, that familiar weight settling into her chest. He's handing her his heart on his fucking sleeve, and she's about to smash it. Just like she did with Judy.
“Listen River…” V says, searching for the right words. “Last night… what happened… it was real, it was good.”
“But?” he prompts, and he absolutely looks like a puppy waiting to be kicked.
“I… can’t make any plans for the future,” she admits. “There’s this thing…”
“That you couldn’t tell me about,” River finishes for her. “I know. Call it veteran cop intuition.” His voice is gentle now. “It’s why I told you about my parents.”
“To give me courage, boost it?” she guesses.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “So you’d know exactly how fucked up I am. Give you a chance to consider if you even want me.”
V almost smiles at the irony of this. River’s a good one, she thinks. In another life…
But they’re not in another life, they’re in this one.
“River,” she says softly. “I’m dying. Wanna haggle on, try to outdo that?”
His eyes widen. “What?” he says, clearly taken aback.
“Wasn’t just me you spent the night with,” she adds darkly. “I’m currently sharing headspace with a construct I picked up on a job gone way wrong. An experimental Arasaka biochip.”
“Construct?” River says incredulously, putting down his coffee and furrowing his brow. “You mean, like… somebody’s mind?”
“Mhm,” she nods. “An engram of Johnny Silverhand. Yes, that Silverhand,” she adds, clocking the recognition on his face. “And… it’s getting worse.”
His eyes drop to the tattoo on her arm, comprehension suddenly dawning.
“But…” River begins haltingly, searching V's eyes for some sort of reprieve. “Sorry, still not following you.”
“You’re talking to V right now,” she explains. “But tomorrow… this could be a self-obsessed, dickhead rockerboy.”
Johnny glitches in as she says this, puffing his cigarette in the corner and watching her coolly.
“And trust me,” she adds. “You don’t wanna talk to him.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” Johnny mutters from his corner.
River’s still shaking his head in disbelief. “How is that even possible?”
“He’s displacing my own neural net, River. Gradually destroying my brain.”
Johnny looks down at this, and she feels an acute wave of anguish from him.
“But it’s reversible, right?” River says, taking a step towards her, a panicked edge to his voice. “There’s no way it could actually kill you?”
“Actually, doesn’t look promising,” she manages. Fuck, this is harder than she thought it would be. “Need to figure out a way to get him outta my brain before it’s too late.”
River starts pacing around the kitchen. “Shit,” he mutters under his breath.
“So, still wanna be my boyfriend?” V asks him bitterly.
He turns on his heel and looks down at her, his gaze intense. “Who do you take me for?” he demands. “‘Course I do. This doesn’t change a thing.”
Well, that’s not the answer she expected.
“Question is…” he says, leaning back against the counter, still looking at her. “What do you want?”
V looks down at the floor, then back up at his face, and he’s still staring at her like she’s the most precious treasure he’s ever stumbled upon. She feels her heart break a little bit. In the corner behind him, Johnny's mouth is twisted into a scowl, his eyes dark.
“River, I… I like bein’ around you,” V admits, meeting River's eyes. “I can’t make any promises, can’t commit to anything but… I’d like to see you again. That's the most I can give you.”
River nods. “Okay,” he says, his mouth curving into a small smile. “That’s good enough for me.”
Feels like Judy all fuckin’ over again, V thinks. Maybe it would be better to just rip the band-aid off now.
“But… if it doesn’t work… we’ll still be friends, right?” she can’t help asking.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?” River says, still smiling gently at her.
“Sure,” V says. “Yeah.”
Her emotions are still a fuckin' mess as she climbs onto her bike and rides back to the city. So instead of heading home, she parks her bike in her garage then walks to the Afterlife and does shots with Claire until the sun goes down and she’s good and fucking drunk. To her relief, Rogue isn’t there; V doesn’t think she can handle makin’ small talk with the fixer before Johnny’s big date with her tomorrow.
It’s almost midnight by the time V stumbles in from the bar, kicking off her shorts as soon as the door to her apartment closes behind her. She heads straight for her shower, already pulling off her top, but she’s barely made it into her bathroom when suddenly Johnny glitches in behind her, his hands wrapped around her wrists and his voice close and low in her ear.
“I don’t think so,” he growls, twisting her around to face the mirror.
She startles at his touch, feeling equal parts excitement and fear well up inside her. Fear in particular at how firm his hands feel around her wrists. She struggles, testing the limits of his strength, and finds that contrary to how it was before, it now requires more effort to make him momentarily dematerialize. It takes all her concentration to slip free of his grasp and turn around to face him.
“Think I’m just gonna let some fuckin’ badge try and fail to make you come?” Johnny says in a rough voice, palming his cold metal hand around her breast, his hardened fingers tweaking her nipple almost painfully as his organic hand slides between her legs and begins rubbing her roughly, precisely how she likes. And Johnny knows that, because of fuckin' course he does.
A low whine slips from her lips before she can stop herself, and she’s already fuckin’ grinding against his fingers. He’s right, River didn’t get her off, and she’s been wound up all fuckin’ day because of it. Which means that Johnny has been, too.
He suddenly pulls his hands away and she whimpers pathetically, but Johnny grabs her hips and turns her around to face the mirror again. Her eyes meet his in their reflection, and she can feel his cock pressing up against her. He grits his teeth as he enters her in one harsh thrust, and she moans and falls forward onto her elbows. And then he fucks her hard, brutally slamming into her with all the rage and jealousy and frustration and fear she's felt in him these last few days. And christ, he’s fucking her exactly the way she needs to be fucked, like he’s a got a fuckin’ direct line into her brain, like he can hear all her most private, darkest, secret desires. Because he quite literally does.
“You got that right,” Johnny says aloud in response to her unspoken thought, his voice like gravel as his teeth graze her ear. “You’re such a little fuckin’ slut, you know that?" he growls. "You wanna let all of Night City fuck your tight little cunt? Well, that’s too fuckin’ bad ‘cause…” He pulls all the way out of her. “It’s-" He slams into her. "Fucking-" He pulls out and slams into her again. "Mine.”
He hisses the last word forcefully as he slams into her again, his pace unrelenting. She can only whine helplessly in response, writhing in his grip as he continues to pound her so hard she's already seein' stars. His eyes are still locked on hers in the mirror, and what she sees there is dark, glazed over, feral.
“Say it, V,” he snarls. “Tell me who your perfect fuckin' pussy belongs to.”
“It’s yours, Johnny,” she gasps, and the literal truth of the words once again hits her like a sledgehammer and sends them both tumbling headlong over the edge. And like always, their minds crash and shatter together - she feels Johnny bleed into her, and her into him, and in that moment it's true, all of her belongs to him, all of her body is his and only his and there is no separation between any parts of them at all anymore. And in that one split second she can feel those feelings mirrored back from Johnny exactly, that he is hers and hers alone, and the intensity of it brings her knees crashing to the floor as she comes again, hard, until she's draped on her stomach, clutching at her bathroom sink. She can’t feel Johnny's form behind her anymore, but she can still feel him within every cell of her body - something sharp near her heart, like he said - as she collapses to the tiles.
When she looks up, he’s glitched back in by the window, and is leaning there smoking a cigarette. His pants are back on, but his chest is bare and his glasses are off.
“Fuckin’ christ,” is all she manages. Her thoughts struggle to arrange themselves - it occurs to her that this is the second time Johnny has brought her to her knees before her own reflection this way, out of jealousy or possessiveness or whatever sense of ownership she can't deny he has over her at this point.
He raises an eyebrow. “Fuckin’ christ is right, V. Now get some sleep, I have a date tomorrow.”
Leave it to him to be a dick. She studies his face for a moment, and he looks back at her, unflinching.
“Johnny, I…” she starts.
“I know,” he says, cutting her off and looking at her long and hard, his face serious but his eyes soft. “Now go to bed.”
Notes:
This one was a wild ride lol
They aren't gonna be dicks to each other forever, I promise lmao
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Chapter 29: Mechanical Heart
Summary:
Johnny goes on a date with Rogue and learns a few surprising things.
Notes:
Sorry for the lag between updates! I'm travelling this month to visit family so new chapters may come a bit slower for the next couple weeks, but I definitely won't stop altogether. Thanks for being patient! 🌹
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Johnny kisses Rogue’s face, presses his body against hers. He can smell her, can taste her; his cock is rock hard, and in that moment, he can't remember wanting anything more in his fucking life.
But that isn't quite right. His cock isn’t hard, 'cause he doesn’t fuckin’ have one, and his hands are all wrong, the wrong size, the wrong shape, the wrong tattoos, the wrong chrome. He’s got fuckin’ tits - nice ones too.
It’s V’s body, obviously. It feels wrong, but it feels almost as familiar as his own now, something that belongs to him as much as anything else about himself.
And someone else’s hands are on it right now. When he looks up again, it’s not Rogue anymore but that fuckin' loser badge - River’s hands palming those tits, River’s mouth on his neck, River’s chrome hand between his legs, River’s cock pressin’ against his-
He feels V recoil as she wakes abruptly, snapping them both forcefully from the dream. And then the malfunction hits - she leaps out of bed and barely makes it to her bathroom sink in time.
Waking up like this has been gettin’ more frequent, Johnny notes as V dry heaves into the basin, tears and snot streaming down her face, a trickle of blood coming from her nose.
Every time the damaged chip reboots, he can feel himself… expand. The chip’s keepin’ her alive, but when it glitches and reloads, it’s almost like it’s slippin’ its tendrils into more of her, injecting Johnny into the final remaining crevices that were previously inaccessible to him. Her skin feels so close to his own now, as though with the merest of thoughts he could just reach through and…
He stops himself there. He’s not gonna do that. And he can’t quite, not yet. Still needs the pills to take full control. As it should be.
The dream still clings to him, too, bits and pieces of it fluttering through their shared mind like some horrible laugh track to the tragic little sitcom they’re trapped in. And Johnny knows, in some part of him, that these games of jealousy they're playing are the only way he can deal with the fact that the very literal ownership of V’s body remains a pendulum inexorably swinging towards him in a way that goes beyond any dirty talk they might throw at each other.
And yet his date with Rogue is still really happening, and it’s tonight - and fuck, Johnny can’t help it if his eagerness is genuine. Part of him is still hopin' V will chicken out, ‘cause the thought of her experiencing that kind of terror again is agonizing. But a greedier, more selfish part of him is relieved, glad that she still seems determined to go through with it. Christ, he never thought he’d get another shot to make things right with Rogue. Never in a million years. Never thought he’d get a chance to apologize to Alt, either. Or a second chance - hell, even a first chance - to earn the trust of someone like V. His whole existence now has become a series of second chances he never deserved. He knows he's got V to thank for that.
He looks at her now, bent over the sink like he had her last night, but there’s nothing sexy about the way she's slumped there now. She looks like hell. But there’s still that fire in her eyes as she washes her face clean and checks her HUD for messages.
She's got a couple texts from Dino, that gonk fixer downtown.
Hey, hot stuff. Kerry’s throwin that rager I was tellin u about tonite
I can get u and ur cute friend in. Got more of that snow u liked too ;)
18467 Lilac St in North Oak
Text me if you have trouble at the door >:P
Johnny barks out a sharp laugh at this. “Kerry’s havin’ a rager, huh?”
“Guess so,” V chokes, spitting another glob of blood into the sink. “Wanna crash it?”
“If we didn’t have plans with Rogue, then fuck yeah. Glad to see he still knows how to party,” Johnny muses. “Woulda thought maybe he’d calmed down in his old age.”
“Think you would’ve?”
“Hell no,” Johnny says immediately. V rolls her eyes but can't hide the slight smile on her face.
She spends the afternoon cleaning her guns, tweaking their mods, polishing the scopes. She does a shallow Net dive to check and re-check her personal ICE, runs some tests on her little daemon army, tries to hack together some new tricks. She’s keepin’ herself distracted, keeping Johnny at arm’s length, keeping her feelings buried deep down and to herself.
The sun is starting to set when she pours herself a glass of whiskey and strips off the ratty tank top she’s been wearing, turning towards where Johnny's glitched in to watch her dress.
“So whaddaya want me to wear?” she asks him. Johnny blinks at her, unable to tear his eyes from those perfect, full tits. V cocks an eyebrow, staring up at him from under her tousled hair. “For the date,” she reminds him.
Right.
“I dunno,” he says, finally dragging his eyes up to meet hers.
“Thought you liked dressin’ me up,” she teases. “It’s your date.”
Johnny ponders it for a moment but doesn’t answer. He does like it when V tries to look hot for him, but this is... different.
“Want me to wear your pants?” she suggests. “Can wear your shirt and jacket too, and your tags.” He can see the barest hint of a smirk on her face. “Just fully dress up as you. Might make it less confusing for Rogue.”
Johnny can’t quite tell if she’s joking or not. “Wear what you want,” he says, trying to sound dismissive. This whole thing is starting to unnerve him a bit.
V observes him coolly, then goes and puts on his fuckin’ leather pants as promised. But instead of his old Samurai shirt, she opts for that white corset top she has that looks like the one Alt used to wear, finishing it off with Johnny's dog tags and jacket and that leather choker she knows he likes.
God, she knows exactly how to push his fucking buttons.
She starts doing her hair then, and instead of leaving it wild the way she normally does, she slicks it back into a more styled, sleek look, then leans towards her mirror and begins carefully applying dark rings of eyeliner.
“What’s with the makeup?” Johnny asks gruffly. He rarely ever sees her wear it.
“I’m gettin’ pretty for your date, dumbass,” she mutters as she finishes off the look with some dark lipstick. It looks fuckin’ great on her.
She didn’t try this hard for River, he thinks. It’s like some fucked up little teenage boy fantasy, he realizes. Makin’ her go on a date with his ex for him.
He feels her catch the thought, and the corner of her mouth twitches upward in the mirror.
Fuck, is she doing this to mess with him?
He finds himself once again unable to decide whether he’s more frustrated, annoyed, pissed off, or turned on.
Or scared.
He snaps himself out of it as V leaves her apartment, shoving a handful of Misty's pills into the pocket of Johnny's jacket and sliding her knife into her boot holster. She leaves her irons behind, though, and Johnny is strangely appreciative of that. He thinks Rogue’ll appreciate it, too. This isn’t that kinda date, the kind with guns, and he wants Rogue to see that.
V exits the elevator in her garage and cautiously approaches the gleaming Porsche that's now parked between her Galena and the inherited motorbikes from Jackie and Scorpion. It’s the first time she’s driven it since they took it to the oil fields, and to Johnny's relief, she treats it with the same reverence as she did that night, running her hands appreciatively along the leather gear lever and steering wheel before starting the engine and heading out into the quickening sunset.
Johnny can feel V’s heart pounding as they pull up to the Afterlife. And there's Rogue, waiting for them outside the club, leaning next to the doorway underneath the big green neon sign.
V cuts the engine and gets out of the car, giving Rogue a nod as she approaches.
Rogue’s dressed for the occasion as well, wearin’ a white sparkly bodysuit with low slung pants and - to Johnny's shock - heels. He can't remember ever seein' Rogue wear anything besides combat boots. She looks hot as hell, especially considering she’s been alive for almost a god damn century at this point.
V gives Rogue an appraising look, her eyes sweeping up and down her figure.
“You look… wow,” says V, and she’s right - his ex looks fuckin’ smokin’.
But Rogue just crosses her arms and tilts her head. “That Johnny’s ‘wow’ or yours?” she asks.
“Both,” V says with a grin.
Johnny knows V’s got complicated feelings about Rogue, and he wonders how much of it is her own admiration for the fixer and how much of it is just plain old jealousy. And he can't deny that there’s a dark part of him that enjoys makin’ V jealous, given how he had to suffer through her gettin’ dicked down by a fuckin' cop the other night.
Emmerick’s waiting with Rogue, and the bouncer narrows his eyes at V.
“Again… you,” he mutters, and Johnny wonders if Rogue’s got somethin’ going on with her huscle as the large man stalks off to resume his post at the door.
V just grins at his retreating figure, then turns back to Rogue.
“So where’s Johnny?” Rogue says, cocking her eyebrow at V. “Couldn’t make it after all?”
“I’m just your driver,” V jokes, and this gets another eyebrow raise from Rogue.
“See you keep him on a short leash,” she observes with a chuckle as V moves to escort her towards Johnny’s Porsche. “Wise beyond your years.”
V opens the passenger door for her, and Rogue slides into the seat, smirking up at V.
“So this is what was in the container Grayson was talkin’ about,” she says with no small amount of amusement. “Thought I saw you drive past in it that night. Johnny must be thrilled.”
V just smiles. “You could say that.”
Rogue smiles too and rests her hand almost tenderly on the dash. “Got a lotta memories in this car.”
Johnny feels another small surge of jealousy tighten V’s chest at that, and he tries not to let said memories immediately bubble to the surface. Yeah, he and Rogue fucked in this car. In the driver’s seat, in the passenger seat, in the backseat, on the hood…
Okay, too late. He knows V can see all of it, now.
“So uh, Silver Pixel Cloud your favorite place?” V asks Rogue, staring at the road ahead and swallowing hard as Johnny feels her attempting to wrest her focus from the very graphic memory slideshow he just inadvertently subjected her to.
“Once, probably. Haven’t been there in ages,” Rogue says wistfully. “Drive-ins went out of style a century ago. But Silver Pixel’s still hangin’ in there.”
“Sounds like a preem place for a date,” V says.
“Thought so, too,” Rogue agrees. “Which is why I suggested Johnny take me there. A million years ago.”
“So it wasn’t his idea.”
Rogue chuckles. “‘Course not. His idea of a romantic night out was blowing up Arasaka HQ.”
This elicits a sharp spike of emotions from V, but Johnny can’t untangle what exactly it is she’s feelin’. He can guess, though.
They drive in silence for a while as V gets on the freeway and heads across the bridge towards Westbrook.
“Alright, V,” Rogue says suddenly, turning to her. “Tell me what’s going on. For real.”
Johnny feels V stiffen. “Meanin’...?” she asks cautiously.
“Johnny doesn’t do a thing without an ulterior motive,” Rogue says darkly. “So what’s in play this time?”
V doesn’t hesitate. “Johnny’s changed,” she says. “He really does just wanna spend some time with you. No hooks, no lines, no sinkers.”
It makes Johnny's chest ache that after everything, V is still bein' this generous, giving him this much grace.
“Right…” Rogue mutters thoughtfully.
V waits for her to say more, but she doesn’t. “Rogue?” she prompts after a moment.
“Just taking it all in,” Rogue murmurs. She huffs a soft laugh. "Heh, a selfless Johnny Silverhand. Apparently, you’re a positive influence on him.”
Warmth blossoms in V’s chest at this, and Johnny realizes that Rogue may be right - V does make him wanna be better. He wonders if V knows she has that effect on him. He wonders if he should tell her.
V doesn’t answer and just smiles as she weaves between lanes, breezing past a bunch of slow-moving cars.
“You even drive like him,” Rogue observes, and V’s grin widens as they blaze through the tunnel out of Japantown and begin speeding up the switchbacks into North Oak. The sunset is in full swing now, and the city looks fuckin’ preem from up here.
“I know,” she says simply.
They hit more traffic, so V shifts into the opposite lane and speeds by the line of cars, sliding back into the right lane just in time to avoid an oncoming truck. She continues up into the hills, past the old Tyger Claws shrine and through another tunnel as the shadows grow long.
“Here we are!” Rogue says to V as they veer sharply into the entrance to the drive-in.
But the gate’s pulled down, shut and locked, and it’s clear from the looks of it that no one has been here in quite some time.
“Fuck,” Johnny says, glitching in to examine the shuttered entryway. “I don’t believe it.”
“It really has been years,” Rogue says, getting out of the car and staring up at the crumbling marquee, her face a mask of genuine disappointment.
Johnny’s not giving up this easily. “V,” he says. “Try to get inside.”
V sighs heavily and gets out of the car after Rogue.
“We asked you out on a date,” she says pointedly to Rogue. “Can’t stop us, won’t stop us.”
“We?” Rogue cocks an eyebrow, but V just grins. “Alright," Rogue says, crossing her arms. "Do your thing, I’ll watch.”
Johnny looks back and forth between the two women, the absurdity of his situation really hitting him. It’s fuckin' surreal, being on a date with… both of them. His feelings for Rogue are old and heavy, but there's still an undeniable pull, the same one that's always been there between them. And his feelings for V… well, he’s still trying to sort those out. But what he feels looking at her now is bright, sharp, and immediate, and something twists in his chest as he regards the two of 'em standing there, both all dolled up for his benefit.
V’s still keepin’ her feelings close to her chest, so Johnny can’t exactly tell where her head’s at right now. But she’s being a good sport, and he’s grateful for that. This night means a helluva lot to him, and he knows he’s gonna owe her one after this.
She hacks the keypad to enter the old ticketing office, and sure enough, there’s another door in there that leads into the main part of the theater.
“Wham bam sha-la-la,” Johnny crows as the door slides open.
“Guess we really are going to the movies,” Rogue says with a grin, following V inside.
There’s an abandoned convertible propped up on cinder blocks in the center of the lot, and Rogue heads towards it.
“I’ll try and get the projector running,” V calls after her, already walking towards the stairs to the projector booth.
“Know how to work this thing?” Johnny asks, glitching to stand next to the projector as V pushes open the door to the abandoned room.
“‘Bout to find out,” V replies, crossing over to fiddle with the mechanism. It’s rusted and jammed, but seems to still be in otherwise working condition, and the dirty screen across from them flickers as the projector whirs to life.
“Look at that!” Johnny exclaims. “Last played… Bushido X. Fucking perfect!”
“Looks like a spurt of runny shit,” V observes dryly.
Johnny laughs. “V, we’re at a drive-in. Movie’s the last thing we care about. Just want some background noise… a little blood, tits, and gore, that sorta thing.”
V's throat bobs as she catches Johnny's implication. “Bushido will give you that,” she agrees.
Johnny frowns. “Don’t have to go through with this, you know.”
He feels the fear curling around her stomach like it's his own, but she shakes her head. “No Johnny, I want to do this. It’s important for you, for Rogue.”
“Only if you’re sure.”
“I am,” she says boldly, but Johnny can still hear her voice shake as she produces the pill from the pocket of his old Samurai jacket. She looks down at it and clenches her fist around it once, then presses her palm to her mouth and dry swallows it in one gulp.
Her eyes go a bit unfocused and she staggers forward, leaning heavily against the projector. Johnny instinctively reaches for her, and she looks up at him, her eyes wild and full of fear. But she nods at him, and he puts his hand on her arm as her vision starts to glitch.
And just like last time, Johnny can't tamp down the overwhelming euphoria he feels as his mind rushes to the surface of her skin, as his senses all heighten and snap into focus and V slips away. He flexes her muscles one by one, feeling her body respond to his commands, and finds himself instinctively reaching for her with his mind. Like last time, she’s nowhere to be found… but no, he can still feel her there, buried down deep. He doesn’t know if she can hear him, but it comforts him greatly nonetheless, so he does his best to send her what he hopes are reassuring vibes. She was scared as hell, but she's doing this for him anyway. He swallows hard. He’s not gonna fuck up this time, not gonna break her trust.
And he's gonna make the most of this gift she's giving him.
He all but runs back down the stairs and out to Rogue, seeing the immediate recognition on her face as he slides into the prop car next to her.
“Grabbed us the best spot,” Rogue jokes, turning to smile at him.
Bushido X is sputtering on the screen. V was right, it does look like hot garbage, but he's always loved these dumb fuckin’ movies. Rogue once did, too, he remembers. And right now, it’s perfect.
“Oh, so that’s how you do it,” he jokes as they watch Jake, the hero, battle Gorira atop a moving train.
There’s a part of him that still feels jarred at the sound of V’s voice coming out of his mouth. But it sounds different on him - he drawls out his words more slowly, and her low smoky voice wraps around them in a different way than it does her own.
Rogue’s eyes are shining as he leans in towards her, brushing her shoulder with his.
“I don’t need this world anymore… but I need you,” he quotes along with the movie in a pseudo dramatic voice.
"You must've made a pretty big impression on V for getting her on board with this," Rogue remarks. "So, hats off."
Johnny stiffens. "Guess so," he mutters.
Rogue is silent for a moment.
“Johnny,” she says softly. “I was wrong about you. And it’s a cryin’ shame.”
He studies Rogue's face in the setting sun. “So, this how you imagined this evening going?”
She smiles sadly. “Always knew things would have to change for us to just go out and catch a movie. Never imagined they’d change this much.” She looks up at the screen for a moment, then turns back to him, a wry smile still tugging at her lips. “Let’s pretend it’s 2015, huh? We just met, and I got no idea what a bastard you are.”
She knew exactly what a bastard he was by 2015. He'd already cheated on her with Alt by then, already raided Arasaka Tower once. But he doesn't bother to correct her. It's been much longer for her than it has for him.
“Sure,” he teases. “Lured you to the movies so we could bang, by the way.” He’s rewarded with another laugh from Rogue, a deep, throaty one this time. “It’s technically a possibility, you know,” he adds.
“I’m sure V would love that,” Rogue jokes, raising an eyebrow at him, and Johnny frowns. Okay, so maybe fuckin’ his ex in his new output’s body would be a bit much.
He catches the thought for a moment and holds it there. New output. They're banging, sure, so it technically fits... but can V even be considered his output, given that they share a body? For reasons he can't quite explain, using a word like that for her feels... inadequate, somehow. He's not sure there is a word to describe whatever the fuck it is they're doing, whatever the fuck exists between them.
“Okay, but if you could do it all again…” Rogue says, turning back to Johnny suddenly. “What would you change? Anything at all?”
“I’d get Smasher before he got me. And maybe plant more charges in that tower,” Johnny says, grateful to turn the subject away from V. He’s only half joking.
Rogue frowns. “So you’d do the exact same thing, just better?” she asks skeptically.
Johnny considers this for a minute. “All those brain craps, dopey decisions…” he says. “They were wholly mine. Gotta take ownership of it.”
“So you’d get yourself killed again,” Rogue reminds him. “Over an obsession with Arasaka, for someone who wasn’t a real person.”
She means Alt, and he bristles at this. “I’d have done the same for you,” he tells her, and it’s the truth.
“In 2020, maybe,” she says. “But things have changed.”
“I like 2077 Rogue,” Johnny protests, and he means it - she’s different, harder, yet he can’t help but admire the powerful woman she’s grown into.
Rogue’s face darkens, and she looks away from him. “A far inferior version,” she says.
They sit silently for a moment. Johnny watches Rogue's face, illuminated in profile by the reflected light from the dirty projector screen as she watches the mind-numbing action sequence play out. As far as Johnny can tell, she's still as beautiful, funny, and strong as she ever was. But he thinks he knows what she's getting at, and his stomach sinks.
“Okay, there’s one thing I would change,” he admits. “I’d do everything in my power not to lose you.”
Rogue looks at him then, a mess of emotions passing across her face. “Johnny, I…”
She looks like she’s about to fuckin’ cry.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he says softly, putting a hand on her arm. “What’s this?”
“Nothing, it’s just… had a lot of time to think while you were… away. What-ifs, and all that.”
“Sure that’s it?" he murmurs, looking at her through V's thick lashes. "Nothing about Grayson or Smasher?” he presses, finally giving voice to what's been buggin’ him, what Grayson said to her that night on the Ebunike. He knows there’s stuff she’s not tellin’ him.
“What?” Rogue’s eyes widen. “What’s Smasher got to do with anything?”
“Get the sense you still got a thorn in your side there.”
“Cause I do,” Rogue says, her voice sharp. “I’m irate, disappointed. But I’d rather not think about it now.”
Johnny nods slowly. “You’re right,” he agrees. “All that counts is that I’m back… here with you, right now. Think that’s way better than any ‘what if.’”
“Yeah,” says Rogue softly.
“Don’t got much else to offer you.”
“Still more than before,” Rogue replies. She closes her eyes and exhales slowly, then looks up at him. “But all we got’s this one night.”
“It’s more than I ever could have asked for,” Johnny says truthfully, hearing V’s voice crack as he reaches over to stroke Rogue’s cheek. He flinches inwardly at the sight of V’s chrome hand caressing his ex's face, but fuck, it's nothing short of incredible that he's somehow actually here, alive, touching Rogue right now. “Rogue…” he says hoarsely. “I’m here on borrowed time, in a borrowed body… but I’m here.”
He's unable to stop himself from leaning in to kiss her neck, then, and she shudders under his touch. Her skin is rougher, more aged than he remembers, but she still smells the same, and somehow that makes his heart break a little. It feels like yesterday when they were both young idiots - hell, she was a good 4 years younger than him, and at 25, that felt like a lot. And now… she’s in her mid 80s, and he’s a ghost stuck in the body of a 27-year-old woman.
But it’s all they have now, and Rogue must feel the same because she hauls his mouth to hers for a kiss, her eyes shining and full of emotion.
He leans into it, breathing in her soft, achingly familiar vanilla scent, still reveling in the fact that this is actually somehow fuckin’ happening, against all odds, against death itself.
“Johnny,” Rogue says suddenly, pulling back and looking at him. “I… can’t. It’s not right.”
Johnny blinks at her. “Meanin’... not fair to V?”
“That too," Rogue says with a heavy sigh. "But it's not fair to you, either,” she corrects him. “Or to me. Tried so hard to pretend nothing’s changed. To pretend I’m the same Rogue you knew.” She smiles sadly. “Actually managed to fool myself for a little.”
“Think there’s still something you’re hidin’ from me,” Johnny ventures.
“Johnny, there’s a heap of things I’m hiding from you.”
“Rogue, I…” he begins weakly, but he’s not sure where to go from here.
“I see what you’re trying to do, but… I’m in a different place now,” she tells him, and the warmth in her eyes has shuttered now, redressed itself into something impossibly sad..
“Was it something I said?”
“No, you’re just… too late." Her face falls. "The Rogue you knew is gone. And I don’t wanna keep pretending otherwise.”
Johnny decides to play dumb. “Got no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”
“I know,” she says sadly. “And I’d rather it stayed that way. Let’s just watch the movie.”
They turn their attention back to the screen as Jake and Gorira continue their battle in the canyons, the explosions lighting up the small drive-in while Johnny casts around for a way to salvage this.
Maybe he should just be honest with her. After everything, he owes her that much.
“I know I fucked up back then,” he says finally, twisting back to Rogue. “See it clearly now. See I coulda been myself around you. No pretending, no posing.”
“That what you have with V now?” Rogue asks.
He considers this. “Guess so,” he admits. And V knows him now in ways that Rogue never could. Still, he needs Rogue to know that what was between them was real, still is real.
But Rogue's frown has deepened, and she's staring at her hands.
“Johnny,” she says again. “Do you remember what you said to me the other night? The last time you were in control of V?”
Johnny shakes his head mutely, and Rogue sighs.
“Jesus, Johnny, you’re in so deep and don’t even know it.”
He narrows his eyes at her, unsure if he even wants to know what he said.
“I didn’t wanna make tonight about her,” Rogue admits. “Wanted to have a chance to just… talk to you. Like old times. But I look at you, and see her face… and I see myself fifty years ago.”
It’s a comparison Johnny’s drawn himself, but he’s never allowed himself to really follow that thread to its logical conclusion.
“Just tell me what I said,” he begs.
Rogue takes a deep breath and looks down, then back up at Johnny. “You told me you were falling in love with her.”
Johnny feels his mouth fall open, so he snaps it shut, then opens it again but no words come out, so he just stares at her like a gaping fish.
Fuck, he thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“I said what?” he asks dumbly.
“Yeah,” Rogue says softly. “Were slurring and mumbling all sorts of weird stuff, but you kept saying that over and over. Seemed really broken up about it, too.”
“I…” he begins, but still finds himself at a complete loss for words. “Fuck,” is all he can manage.
“I got no idea what’s been going on between you two, how any of that even works,” Rogue continues. “But it seems like you’ve got stuff to sort out, and I don’t wanna be in the middle of that.”
He looks down at his hands, at V’s hands, his mind still reeling. Nothing could have prepared him for this. But if he said that… if there’s any truth to it…
Fuck.
Rogue’s still watching him, a curious look on her face.
“Did you really not know?” she asks, her voice sympathetic.
Part of him did, he’s not gonk enough to deny that. It’s something he’s been wrestling with, been quashing down, been studiously ignoring, because the implications would be too fucking painful and complicated to bear. He can’t remember when exactly he first felt it - maybe it was that day in Pacifica, when V showed him unexpected kindness after seeing all his memories of Alt. Or maybe it was the night she made him listen to Kerry's album with her. But he suspects he's known it in his gut since the parade, at least. Since the Pistis Sophia, when he thought he'd lost her. When he made her that promise - his life for hers.
Still, it's not a word he's ever used lightly, and one he's even more rarely said out loud, so the fact that he blurted it out to his ex while drunk and doesn't even fuckin' remember it is a helluva revelation.
“Fuck,” he says again.
“Maybe you’d better talk to her,” Rogue suggests gently. “I appreciate you comin’ here with me tonight… but maybe I’m not the one you need to be setting things straight with.”
Johnny just continues to stare at his hands. At the tattoo on V’s wrist. He unconsciously reaches for the dog tags dangling at her neck, and Rogue’s eyes follow his hand.
“Don’t fuck this up,” Rogue warns him. “V’s a good kid, she cares about you more than you deserve.”
“Think so?” Johnny asks, and Rogue nods.
“Can tell by the gonk faces she makes whenever I say your name,” Rogue tells him.
Johnny sighs through his teeth as the weight of what Rogue's words imply slides between his ribs like a knife and winds around his heart, squeezing painfully.
“I’m killin’ her,” he says softly.
“Gotta figure that out, too,” Rogue agrees. “Would hate to see potential like V’s go to waste.”
“Yeah,” Johnny says darkly.
They watch the movie in silence for a while longer. Gorira rips Jake’s arm off and chucks it off the side of the train before Jake comes back and stomps the monster's face. Johnny finds himself thinkin’ about Smasher, about how he’d hoped things would go if they'd found him that night on the Ebunike.
“Gonna head out,” Rogue says suddenly, yanking his attention back to her. “I’ll call myself a Del. Think we’ve covered enough ground for tonight.” She regards Johnny somberly. “But really…" she says. "Talk to V. You may not have much time left with her. Don’t wanna leave her wondering for years the way you did with me.”
She gets up from the car and starts walking towards the exit before Johnny can compose his thoughts enough to respond.
“That how you’re gonna leave it?” he calls after her, hearing the confusion in V’s voice coming out of his mouth. There’s still more he wants to say to Rogue - they spent most of their date talkin’ about V, for fuck’s sake.
“It’s better this way,” she assures him. “Take care, Johnny.”
“Rogue!” he shouts, but she doesn’t turn back. “Fuck.”
He sits there alone in V’s body, watching the film play out on the stained and timeworn screen above him. With Gorira defeated, Jake’s now talkin’ to his main girl whose name Johnny can’t for the life of him remember.
He runs his hand nervously through V’s thick hair, messing up the sleek style she did as he tries to process everything that just happened.
Rogue didn’t just leave because of V, he knows her well enough to see that much. She and Grayson have a history, which means she and Smasher have a history. She’s gotten her hands dirty in the years since he died, that much is clear.
Just how dirty… he’s not sure he’s ready to hear. And Rogue knows him well enough to realize that, and that’s why she left.
And then there’s V. He gently traces his finger along the lines of the tattoo on her arm. It’s still healing; there’s a couple of black, angry scabs left on the ink lines, and he runs V’s chrome fingers over them like a rosary.
He told Rogue that he’s falling in love with V.
His mind still tries to rebel against the gravity of this admission, much less the fact that he told Rogue, of all fuckin’ people. Not that he has that many other people to confide in currently, V notwithstanding.
And V’s not Rogue, not Alt, not Violet, not Sam, not even Kerry. She reminds him of all of 'em at times, sure, but she’s her own person, and he doesn’t need to be bound to repeating his mistakes of the past.
But how can he let himself love her when he’s taking control of her very body, kicking her out slowly in the process?
Yet at the same time, how can he not?
V can’t know, he decides. He won't be able to fully stop her from accessing these memories later, but he hopes if he tries hard enough, he can somehow keep this part from her. They’re already absolutely fucked in so many other respects, and he knows there are only two ways this is realistically gonna end. Either he eventually kills her, or they somehow pull off their impossible, gonk plan. Meanin' he’s gonna get wiped, gonna die for real, gonna leave her...
Rogue’s right, though, they do need to talk.
He reaches into the pocket of his old jacket for the blockers. It’s dark now, with the last wisps of dusk curling across the horizon in a dim purple glow. Not that the city sky here ever gets any darker than that familiar shadowy mauve he knows so well.
He takes just one pill this time - he wants to be around when V wakes up.
And then he waits until he feels her stirring, feels her coming back to her body like blood returning to limbs after frostbite. His senses recede slightly as he fades back into her, and he glitches in next to her now, watching as she begins to twitch and blink groggily at the screen. She knits her brow, clearly surprised to still be at the drive-in, surprised the movie's not even over. Johnny notices her lipstick's a little smudged from when he kissed Rogue, and he wonders how she'll feel when she figures that out.
He smiles down at her. "Hey," he says softly. "Welcome back, kid."
Notes:
Hooo boy Johnny's in deep now
Chapter 30: Artificial Wonderland
Summary:
V and Johnny have a talk (among other things), then decide to crash Kerry's party.
Notes:
This chapter was not supposed to have smut, but oops my hand slipped
Also worth noting that this fic has been updated to now have a FINAL CHAPTER COUNT!!! I finished breaking down my outline into actual chapters last night, and it's looking like this is gonna be an enormous lad coming in at 56 or 57 chapters, which would put us just a little bit past the halfway point! Hopefully you all will stick with this until the end! Also, I still cannot believe that Keanu Reeves Dating Simulator™ inspired me to write this many words about brainworm sex but here we are lmaoo
And once again, thanks SO MUCH for all of your continued thoughtful comments and kudos!!! I started writing this with zero expectations and I'm still absolutely beside myself that so many people seem to be enjoying this horrible brainworm of a fic. YOU GUYS ARE ALL VERY COOL AND LOVELY HUMANS ( つ◕◡◕)つ❤💕
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When V comes to, she's surprised as hell to find herself still at the drive-in. She'd expected to wake up somewhere else, like her own apartment or maybe Rogue's, or maybe even a No-Tell. But no, they're still in North Oak, still at the theater, and from the looks of it, not even halfway through Bushido X. Johnny's sitting beside her with a strange look on his face, welcoming her back with a surprising gentleness. She looks around, and Rogue's nowhere to be seen.
Her head is pounding and her vision is glitching, but it’s nothing close to as bad as last time.
“Rogue’s gone,” she says, furrowing her brow.
“Yep,” says Johnny in a low voice.
“Guess things did not go swimmingly...”
“Nope.”
“You fought?” she guesses. “What about?”
“Not fought,” Johnny corrects her. “But it didn’t go well,” he says, running a hand through his hair. She can sense that he’s hiding something. “Was gonna be a nice night at the drive-in. But she got upset and delta’d.”
“Maybe it’s you,” V teases trying to lighten the mood. “Maybe she just lost interest.”
“Ha ha,” Johnny retorts, but his face his dark. “Don’t think it’s that.”
V can’t help but try to sift through Johnny’s memories of the date as the movie continues to play out on the screen above them. The scenes are patchy, but still clearer than the last time he took control. Probably ‘cause he actually stayed sober this time. But parts of it are still strangely hazy, almost as though he’s purposefully trying to keep some of it blocked off, the way he does sometimes with stuff from his previous life. She focuses harder, trying to pierce the fog, but she feels him gently nudging her out. Her stomach twists. Did he... did they...? Or is it something else?
“Remember Grayson?” Johnny says, reaching for a cigarette and bringing it to his lips. “How they spoke, how weird it was?”
V knows he's trying to distract her, but she takes the bait. “Weird’s not the word, I don’t think,” she says thoughtfully. “He was toying with her. Could be something to that.”
“Yeah,” Johnny agrees. “Rogue said it herself, prick was just the tip of the iceberg. Grayson knew her, knew she'd worked for Smasher. And if she worked for Smasher, she was open to working for anybody.”
“And that’s why you think she left? Didn’t wanna tell you that?”
“Probably,” Johnny mutters. “Corps practically wiped the Atlantis mercs off this city's face. Rogue was the last denizen standing, like Grayson said. Who kept her afloat?”
“So she’s been running for the corps,” V says, stating what they both already know. "Thought we'd already figured that one out."
“Seems like it,” Johnny says darkly. “Anyway, this movie’s a turd wrapped in crepe paper.”
“Yup,” V agrees with a laugh, letting herself feel some relief, then. Relief that the date is over, that Johnny kept his word this time.
They watch the movie in silence for a bit, and V resists the temptation to dig more into Johnny’s memories of the date. She catches a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror that’s still attached to the dash, and notices her lipstick’s a little smudged. She frowns and sniffs her fingers tentatively, earning a soft chuckle from Johnny.
“Wonderin’ if anything happened between me ‘n Rogue?” he guesses.
V nods, swallowing hard.
“No,” he replies quickly. “Kissed her, then shit got weird, then she left.”
“Got weird how, exactly? Just the Smasher stuff?” V presses. She knows there’s more to it, and isn’t about to let Johnny off the hook so easily.
Johnny is silent for a moment, as though deciding how to answer. She can feel some strange emotions from him, and waits for him to speak.
“Your body is yours,” he says finally. “Shouldn't do stuff like that if I’m in control. You get to decide who fucks you, and only you.”
V just nods. “Okay,” she says. He’s still avoiding the question.
Johnny smiles at her then; it’s a warm smile, but there’s a sadness to it as well. There’s definitely something he isn't telling her, she’s sure of that. She knows he still has strong feelings for Rogue. Did he tell her that? she wonders. She gives him an inquiring look, and he averts his eyes.
“V…” he begins, looking back over at her.
“Johnny?”
“I… want things to be different between us,” he says slowly. “Not be at each other’s throats all the time. Might not have much time left and… don’t wanna waste it. It’s time we started bein’ honest with each other.”
V’s mouth is suddenly very dry, and she looks down at her hands. “Yeah,” she agrees, absentmindedly picking at the scabs on her new tattoo. Johnny follows her gaze.
“Got you that 'cause I wanted you to know that I care,” he tells her in a rough voice, and there’s an unexpected vulnerability to his words that makes V’s eyes snap back up to meet his. His eyes burn like dark fire into hers, and the look on his face makes her pulse quicken.
“I know you do,” she whispers. “I do, too.”
His face twists into an almost pained expression, but he quickly rearranges his features as he holds her gaze, his eyes still blazing.
“There’s one more reason I got that tattoo,” he adds, his voice lowering. His mouth twitches upwards into a slight smirk.
“Oh?” she asks.
He leans closer to her, and his eyes drop to her lips. "Wanted pricks like that badge to see it and know who the fuck you belong to,” he says, and then he’s kissing her roughly, dragging her towards him in the decrepit little convertible.
She suspects he's still trying to distract her, but fuck, it's working. She lets him pull her to straddle him, keeping her mouth on his. Her hands fumble with the buckle on his pants - she suddenly needs to feel him like she needs to breathe. He laughs softly against her lips and she feels him glitch beneath her and then his pants are gone.
"Nice trick," she chuckles, reaching down to wrap her hand around him. He groans and rolls his hips slightly as she begins to stroke him. She's more than ready for a distraction right now.
"Mm," he says roughly, leaning in to kiss her again.
"Like that?" she asks.
"Like it more if it was your mouth," he tells her, and she leans her head back to look at him.
"Would that even work?" she asks, lifting one eyebrow before glancing down to where her hand is still gripping him.
"One way to find out," he says, already taking her hair in his fist and tugging her head gently downwards.
She maintains eye contact as she wraps her lips around him and rolls her tongue around the broad head of his cock. It's kind of insane how real this feels, and she's further encouraged when Johnny moans and tightens his grip on her hair, forcing her mouth further down his shaft. She takes him all the way then, feeling his cock hit the back of her throat, causing her to gag slightly at the strange, slightly staticky feeling. He moans again at this, thrusting harshly into her face.
"Feels fuckin' preem," he says. "But I don't think I can actually get off unless you do."
V responds to this by pulling her mouth off of him slowly, eliciting another groan from Johnny. He pulls her head up towards him and kisses her hard, flipping them in the same motion so she's underneath him, already undoing the buttons on her pants and forcing them down around her thighs so he can slide his hand between her legs.
She gasps sharply and arches her hips towards him as his fingers brush her, and he doesn't waste any time before shoving two of them inside her.
"Already so nice and wet for me," he murmurs into her mouth. "Atta girl."
She whines at this as he begins working his calloused fingers inside her, his thumb circling her clit as he does so. She grinds against his hand, clawing at his back as he continues to kiss her face while fucking her slowly with his fingers.
"Johnny," she moans, fisting his shirt in her hand as he thrusts his hand into her, picking up speed.
"Love it when you say my name like that," he purrs.
She meets his eyes then, and there's an intensity there that makes her heart pound even faster, and he seems to feel it too because he presses his forehead against hers, moving his thumb in furious little circles as he curls his fingers even deeper inside her.
"I'm not Rogue," she reminds him, panting. "Not Alt, either."
"Know exactly who the fuck you are, V," he says in a low voice, pulling back to look into her eyes again before pressing a kiss to her forehead. The softness of the gesture takes her by surprise, and she reaches a hand up to brush his hair from his face, running it down along his beard as his fingers continue to bring her closer and closer. She gasps softly as he rubs his thumb over her most sensitive spots just how she likes it, and she knows no one else on the planet could ever fuck her like this. She feels Johnny smile against her as he picks up on that thought.
"That’s fuckin’ right,” he agrees, his breath hot against her face, and she squirms and bucks her hips under him. She’s almost there now - god, he knows exactly how to fucking touch her.
“I’m close,” she gasps, and he hums with approval.
"Wanna feel you come for me, V," he growls into her ear.
And after a few more seconds she does, in a blinding explosion that surprises her with its forcefulness, with Johnny right behind her as her orgasm crashes over them both. And she feels something even more intense underneath that as their thoughts merge into a single, sharp point - something deep and terrifying and wonderful at the same time. She can't tell if the feeling belongs to Johnny, or to her, or to both of them.
"Johnny," she moans again as he collapses against her, fighting the Relic malfunction that makes his body glitch and blur slightly.
"V," he murmurs in return, his lips against her ear, and she shudders in his arms, his fingers still buried inside her.
The credits are rolling on the screen behind him, and he removes his hand and glitches away to sit next to her, his clothes already back in place. V wiggles her pants back up around her hips, laughing quietly as she fastens them.
"You were right, Bushido makes great background ambiance," she jokes, and Johnny smiles as he lifts a cigarette to his mouth.
"Told ya," he smirks.
She lights her own cigarette too, and they sit in comfortable silence as the credits scroll past, enjoying the cool night air.
“So, was thinking,” Johnny says suddenly. “Saw some shit about Kerry in the screamsheets that night you… weren’t around. Got me thinking.”
“Mhm,” V says. “Your boys night out. So, what, wanna crash his party after all?”
“Yeah, I do,” Johnny says, blowing smoke out into the night air that glitches and vanishes as it snakes away from his mouth. “Seems as good a time as any.”
“This a friendly visit, or you still got a bone to pick with him?” V asks. She knows Johnny’s got complicated feelings about his former bandmate’s success.
“Me? Nah,” Johnny says, shaking his head. “He’s the one who couldn’t decide whether to fuck me or boot me outta the band.”
“So, a lovers squabble? Or clash of the titan visionaries?” V teases. “Or was it just that you preferred tits?"
"I mostly prefer women,” he corrects her. “But I swing both ways. The more the merrier.” He takes a long drag of his cigarette. “But nah, that wasn’t it. Kerry and I… well, it was complicated," he admits. “The issue wasn’t that he had a dick, it was that he was missin' the balls. Only posed as a rebel to fit in, actually desperate not to step on any toes. Arasaka’s especially.”
"Seen some of your fights," she reminds him. "Seems like you guys argued a lot about your, uh… activism."
Johnny laughs darkly. "Yeah," he says. "For Ker, it was all about the music. For me… well, the music was important, but it was a way to shake things up, make people see what was happening to the world around them."
“Sounds about right,” she says. “You get along any better with the rest of the band?”
“Others didn’t give a rat’s dick about me. Nancy just enjoyed controlling us. Treated us all like sex-scavenging halfwits,” he says with a laugh. “Which was kinda true for Henry, actually.” He smiles, and V can see some of the memories he’s thinking about - the tours, the backstage quarrels, the partying. Good times and bad. “And he dated Denny on and off…” Johnny continues. “Thing was, those two rarely shared the same state of consciousness at once.”
“Sounds like a wild time,” V agrees.
“It was,” Johnny says softly. “Didn’t really appreciate ‘em back then, but fifty years in soul prison really makes you see things differently.”
V nods slowly. “Yeah.”
“Know what they’re sayin’ about Kerry now?” Johnny asks her. “That he’s depressed, attempted suicide.”
Fuck, V thinks. She hasn’t been paying much attention to the screamsheets lately. Kerry’s depression has been a known thing for a while now - hell, he wrote a fucking album about it - but the suicide attempt is news to her. She is suddenly and immediately reminded of her mother, too - how she took her own life after years of battling with similar demons.
“You really worried he wants to hurt himself?” V asks in a small voice.
“Who knows?” Johnny replies. “Either way, could give him some pointers.”
“Meanin’ you wanna go in person,” V guesses, feeling her stomach clench. “Gotta hand you the reins again.”
“Yeah, if you’re okay with it,” says Johnny, shooting her a questioning look. “Behaved myself tonight, didn’t I? Think I warrant another furlough for good behavior.”
“Mhm,” V says skeptically. “First Rogue, now Kerry. Who’s next on the list of conjugal visits?”
“Nobody,” Johnny assures her. “Just so happens the list of people I consider friends, and who’re still alive, is pretty damn short. Exactly why I need to talk to Kerry.”
“He really tried to kill himself?” V asks again.
“Apparently it was some super amateur hour shit,” Johnny says, his voice dark. “Tried to put a bullet through his skull in his room. Bodyguard took his gun like candy from a baby.”
“Could just be the rumor mill,” V suggests.
“Sure, could,” Johnny agrees. “But I wanna know.”
“Okay,” V says slowly. “But I wanna know what you plan to do.”
“Nothin’ stupid, I promise. Just wanna see how he’s doin’.”
“How you plan to tell him it’s you?” V presses. “Could be dealin’ with some real personal shit right now, might not be the best time to mess with his head.”
“V, Ker was always dealing with personal shit,” Johnny tells her. “That’s why, in spite of everything else, we got along.” He gives her a small, reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll play it by ear, sensitively.”
“So… I just show up at Kerry’s party? Tell him I got his dead bandmate gnawin’ at my brain who wants to say hi?”
"You just show up there and pop the pills when the time's right," he tells her. "I'll take it from there."
V meets his eyes, but she knows she's already made her decision. Guess she can't say no to him, either.
“Okay,” she agrees. “Just lemme know when you wanna take the wheel.” She flashes him a grin, laying the bravado on thick. She gets it, she really does, why this is important to him. This might be his last chance to... She doesn't let herself finish the thought. "Let's go find out what kind of rager Eurodyne throws these days."
Kerry's house is only a short drive from the theater, nestled deep in the hills further up the winding switchbacks.
There's a line of cars parked on the street outside the address Dino sent, and it takes V a couple minutes to find a spot a little bit down the hill.
“Kerry’s done well for himself if he got one of these buck-a-mansions up here," Johnny remarks as V hikes up the road towards the house. She's out of breath by the time she makes it back up to the broad driveway blocked by a wrought iron gate emblazoned with an enormous golden Second Conflict logo.
"He's a star," V agrees.
Johnny just nods slowly. “The whole time I was flat on my digital ass in Mikoshi, Kerry was out there forging his glittering solo career," he muses, glitching ahead to stare up at the ostentatious gate. "He'd better be real fucking chill after all these years, right? But something tells me deep down, he's still the same.”
V doesn't have a response, so she approaches the intercom and presses the buzzer.
"Hello?" a voice answers.
"Hey, uh, I'm here for the party?" she stammers.
"And who's asking?" the voice demands. She can't say for certain if it's Kerry, but it sure as fuck sounds like him.
"I'm a friend of Dino's," she answers, trying to inject what she hopes is Johnny's swagger into her voice.
"Dunno who the fuck that is," the voice says, and hangs up.
"Well shit," Johnny says smugly. "Looks like your boy ain't as well-connected as he wants ya to think."
V rolls her eyes and calls Dino on her holo.
He picks up immediately, a wide grin on his face.
"V!” he exclaims. "This party's fuckin' shimra, you gonna roll through?"
"I'm outside," she tells him. "Someone on the intercom, mighta been Kerry, didn't let me in."
Dino frowns at this. "Well, shit!" he says. "Hang on, lemme see what I can do. Just wait there."
He hangs up, leaving V standing there awkwardly outside the gate.
"Fuck Dino," says Johnny. "Let's find another way in. Just do what you do best," he teases.
"Breaking and entering, you mean?" she retorts, and he winks at her.
"Fence ain't even that high," he says. "Seen you get into way harder to breach situations."
"This is different," she points out. "That really the best way to make a first impression?"
Johnny just laughs. "Let's look around back, find a spot you can just vault over into some bushes or something."
He turns and starts walking along a narrow path that leads up and around the wall surrounding the property, and V follows reluctantly, fighting down the humiliation of such a petty rejection. Coming here was a bad idea, she thinks.
But Johnny seems entirely unfazed as he pauses in front of a graffitied cock that's been painted on a section of the stucco wall.
“Whoa!" he jokes. "It’s like, symbolic.”
V laughs at this, but Johnny's already pointing to a spot just a little ahead where the wall's a bit lower.
"There," he says, and V nods as she gets into position to hurl herself over it.
She crouches, then uses her reinforced tendons to leap up and grab the top, swinging her legs quickly over before dropping down silently behind some shrubbery.
She can hear voices and loud music, and she takes a moment to dust herself off before stepping out casually from behind the bushes, acting nonchalant as though she'd just been takin' a piss or something.
Before her is a broad yard filled with people drinking and dancing and draped over a variety of lawn furniture, many of them arrayed around the large, sparkling lake-style pool. Behind them is a mansion, all lit up from the inside, with a stream of people filtering in and out between the garden and the house.
She can see two security droids doing laps in the distance, but none of 'em seem to have clocked her.
"Shit security," Johnny mutters in her ear, shaking his head in disapproval. "Kerry's really gotta work on that."
V nods in agreement, stepping out into the crowd and trying to blend in with the rest of the guests. No one seems to take notice of her, so she approaches the outdoor bar and waves down the bartender, who’s a handsome young man wearin’ nothing but a small pair of swim shorts.
"Hey beautiful," he says. "What can I getcha?"
"Bourbon, rocks," she says, flashing him a smile.
He moves to pour it for her, and it's top shelf stuff, of course.
"Havin' a good time?" he asks with a wink, and V nods.
"Hella preem," she tells him.
"That's what I like to hear," he says, sliding her the drink.
She raises the glass and takes a sip. "Seen Kerry around?" she asks, trying to keep her voice casual.
"He's up in the house," the bartender says, gesturing with his thumb.
V thanks him and turns back to the crowd, clutching her drink as she makes her way towards the mansion.
She shoots Dino a quick text as she walks.
I'm inside, where r u?
Her holo buzzes with a response almost immediately.
Hell yeah!
Upstairs, back room. Cum find me ;)
There's a custom gold Rayfield Aerondight Guinevere parked in the long driveway, and Johnny glitches in to admire it.
“All right, I’ll give him that one,” Johnny says, gazing enviously at the shiny vehicle.
"Tried to klep one like that once," V reminds him.
"Night you met Jackie," Johnny finishes for her. "Sorta what got you into this whole mess in the first place."
"Yeah," V agrees, stopping to gaze at the car before continuing on towards the main entrance.
The huge double doors at the front of the house are propped open, and she steps through into a wall of blaring music. It's pretty fucking crowded, and she pushes her way past a gaggle of young men smoking cigarettes in a cluster by the door.
“Fugly as seafood barf,” Johnny says as they enter the huge main room of the house. “Hope it was expensive, at least. Something’s gotta justify this level of tacky.”
V’s eyes sweep across the room, taking in the grand piano at the center, which is currently being ignored by the press of swaying bodies and girls in dangerously short dresses and men in equally short shorts.
"Who the fuck are all these people?" she wonders aloud, and Johnny shrugs.
"No fuckin' idea," he says. "Don't see anyone I recognize. Doesn't seem like Kerry's usual crowd." He frowns. "Although, guess I got no idea what his usual crowd is these days."
V, on the other hand, does see a couple of faces she recognizes from the media. Ruth Dzeng, the try-hard comedic host of that scop talk show Info Flash, is in a corner, chatting it up with a group of women who all look like they just stepped off a runway, and she spots a couple of other well-known musicians and TV personalities.
Behind the piano is a big, marble dining room table strewn with drinks and empty food containers.
“Fuck, cookie cutter crap straight from a catalogue,” Johnny says, drumming his metal fingers on the marble. “Doubt Kerry picked this.” He scoffs at the fast food wrappers covering the table. “Always ate out. Always.”
V raises her eyebrows and continues moving through the crowd towards the broad staircase at the center of the room that curves upwards around and past the piano.
She pauses in front of a wall of guitars beneath the stairs.
“Wicked bad collection,” she says, eyeing them admiringly.
“Well, now I am impressed,” Johnny agrees, leaning over to inspect the line-up. “Played a few of these myself back in our Samurai days.”
“Axe like that run us many eddies?” V jokes.
“Don’t even think about it,” Johnny cautions. “That’s Kerry’s fave.”
V notices the custom Lancaster she nabbed from that apartment downtown for Padre.
"Huh," she says. "Guess Kerry was the client for that job we did."
"Looks like it," Johnny agrees.
V moves on to examine a nearby wall of records. There are four platinum ones arrayed in a square, lit by bright recessed lighting.
“There's that gonk album of his you made me listen to," Johnny says, pointin' to Second Conflict. "Kerry’d always go straight for kitsch with the titles,” he laughs. “Guess nothing’s changed.”
"You liked it," V reminds him, and Johnny just smiles.
"Wasn't bad," he admits.
Chippin' In and Blistering Love are on the bottom row, and Johnny raises an eyebrow at those. “Chippin' In was oldie but a goodie. And Blistering Love… one of our earliest singles. No idea why Kerry hoards this shit.”
"Bet you'd do the same if you were alive," V teases. Johnny shoots her another sly sidelong smile in response.
“Could be,” he says, his eyes flicking back to the top row. “Never Fade Away…” he murmurs, staring at the record there next to Second Conflict. It's the version the whole band recorded as a single rather than Johnny's later homonymous solo album. His smile softens. “Guess if I had a fave, it’d be that one.”
“It’s my favorite too,” V whispers, and Johnny turns to her, still smiling.
"Good taste," he says warmly. "Wrote it about Alt, but thinkin' about it now… kinda also reminds me of-"
"Our situation?" V finishes for him. She's had the thought before while listening to it, and he nods.
"Yeah," he says almost shyly. V smiles back at him, noticing how different his attitude towards her has seemed since she woke up after his date. What did Rogue say to him? she wonders. His whole demeanor seems gentler, somehow.
“Cute that he has your solo stuff displayed, too," V points out.
"Yeah," Johnny says again. "Guess it meant somethin' to him, after all."
"You a fan, too?" a woman asks casually, sidling up beside V. She's wearing an expensive looking gold dress and is clutching a champagne flute in her manicured hands.
"Aren't we all?" V jokes, and the woman smiles.
"How do you know Kerry?" she asks.
"Friend of a friend," V says evasively. "Trying to find him now, actually," she adds. "You seen him around?"
"Was upstairs last I saw," the woman says. "Back room with his close friends."
V nods, then steps away quickly. She isn't here to mingle and make small talk.
She crosses to the stairs then, sidestepping a group of drunk women tripping down them, their heels clacking against the polished wood.
The lofted second floor seems to mostly be reserved for the bar at the center, and she follows the landing onto a balcony overlooking a different room downstairs. The biggest wall in this room is dominated by a large painting of Kerry nude, holding a sword with a samurai robe pooled at his feet.
“Ah, a beautiful butterfly Kerry emerging from his silky Samurai chrysalis,” Johnny remarks wryly, putting a hand on his hip as he examines the enormous artwork.
“It’s quite a statement,” V concurs.
There’s a small couch at the end of the balcony facing the window, and Johnny glitches in beside it, ignoring the couple that’s making out there. “Bet he sits here and thinks, the fuck I need all this shit for?”
V laughs. "Alright, nice tour, let's find Dino," she tells him, suddenly self-conscious that she's been wandering around this party alone, talkin' to herself. The men on the couch break their kiss to look up at her strangely, but don’t say anything as she turns on her heel and walks quickly back to the main second floor area with the bar.
She suddenly stops dead in her tracks, because through the crowd, she catches a glimpse of Rogue.
“The fuck is she doing here?” Johnny asks, glitching in beside her.
“Guess she and Kerry stayed friends,” V whispers to him.
“Don’t let her see you,” Johnny says, but it’s too late, the fixer’s eyes are already locked on hers, and she raises a brow at V, then her glass.
Here we go, V thinks, crossing over reluctantly to greet the woman.
“V,” Rogue says bemusedly. “Didn’t expect to run into you here.”
“Could say the same,” V says, taking another sip of her bourbon and noting that Rogue could tell immediately that it was her again, not still Johnny.
“Figured I was already in the area, couldn’t hurt to stop by,” Rogue says simply. “I’m guessin’ Johnny wanted to check in on his old pal?”
“Something like that,” V says. “But actually, Dino invited me,” she adds defensively.
“That so?” Rogue says, raising her eyebrow again.
V nods. “Have you seen him?”
“He’s in the back with Kerry and some others,” Rogue tells her, giving her a strange look. “Railin’ synth-coke like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Sounds about right,” V says, trying her best to make it sound like she’s not at all fazed by the idea of being at Kerry fuckin’ Eurodyne’s house party.
Rogue seems to see right through her though. “Haven’t been to many of these, have you?” she says sympathetically.
It’s not entirely true - V’s been to mansion parties like this in the hills before, but usually just some D-lister or other low-tier rich fuck. Never anyone nearly as famous as Kerry, and never with a rockerboy in tow who was best friends with said celebrity.
“It’s different with Johnny here,” she says honestly, and Rogue nods.
“I bet,” she says knowingly. “How was the rest of the movie?”
“We made the most of it,” V says, and this gets another eyebrow raise from Rogue.
“I’m sure you did,” Rogue replies. “Tell that rockerboy to man up, will you? Can’t leave you hanging forever like he did with me.”
“What do you mean?” V asks, furrowing her brow.
“Just something he said to me,” Rogue says vaguely. “Ask him yourself.”
Well, this confirms that more was discussed on the date than Johnny's letting on. V's frown deepens, and she makes a mental note to do just that later.
“Think I will,” she tells Rogue, who just smiles. Johnny's glitched away, but she can still feel his presence roiling inside her.
“Well, have fun,” Rogue says. “And tell Dino I said hi. I was just leaving, actually.” She pauses, looking at V for a long moment. “And if you ever need any work, you know where to find me,” she adds.
“Thanks, Rogue.”
The fixer gives her another knowing smile, then sashays off into the crowd, leaving V alone again clutching her now empty drink. She beelines for the bar and gestures to the bartender for another. The one working up here is another good-looking young man in impossibly short shorts, and he grins as he pours V her second bourbon.
She down it in one gulp and slides it back to him for another refill, and he obliges with a smile and an eyebrow raise.
“Seems like someone’s trying to have a good night,” he teases.
“Sure am,” V says, taking the glass and heading off down the narrow hallway next to the bar towards the only part of the house she hasn’t been to yet.
She emerges from the short hallway into what she immediately realizes is Kerry’s bedroom, and there’s a small group of people gathered on the couch by the huge glass windows, a massive pile of synth-coke on the table in front of them.
Dino’s among them, and his face stretches into a broad grin when he sees V.
“You made it!” he exclaims, waving her over excitedly and moving over to make room for her next to him.
She strolls over and sits beside him, her eyes scanning the others. Kerry’s not here.
“Seen Kerry anywhere?” she asks him casually.
“Ah, forgot you were a fangirl,” he teases. “He was up here just a minute ago, dunno where he went now. I’ll introduce ya,” he promises with a wink.
“Think I talked to him on the intercom,” V tells him. “Said he had no idea who you were.”
“That’s Kerry for ya,” Dino laughs, seemingly unbothered. “But don’t worry, we go way back.”
V nods, unconvinced, but accepts the rolled up bill Dino hands her and leans over to do one of the carefully racked out lines before her. It’s top tier shit, and she feels a heady rush as the drug hits the back of her nasal cavity.
“Real preem stuff, yeah?” Dino says as she tilts her head back, feeling the numbness dripping down her throat.
“Wouldn’t expect anything less here,” V says, handing him back the bill.
Johnny’s pacing around the room a little bit away, and stops to put one foot up on Kerry’s bed. “Prolly the only actual necessity in this whole pad,” he mutters.
She ignores him. Dino’s the only person she knows here besides Rogue, and she’s relieved to have someone to talk to until Kerry emerges from wherever he’s hidin’.
“Fuckin’ wild party, huh?” Dino says, waving his hand around them. “This is Lucile,” he continues, gesturing to the woman to his right. “And this is Arif, and Sarah, and Fumiko.” He turns back to her. “And this is V,” he tells them. “My new favorite merc. Keep an eye on her,” he adds, shooting V a wink.
V recognizes Arif - he’s that news reporter with WNS News that she sees on TV all the time. She thinks she’s seen some of these women on billboards and advertisements, too. They all look like models, anyway.
“Hey,” she says. “Nice to meet you all.”
“So how ya been?” Dino asks her. “Runnin' lotsa sick gigs?”
“Could say that,” V says. “But nothin’ I’m gonna talk about in front of him,” she jokes, gesturing with her thumb to Arif.
The reporter looks taken aback by this. “I report the news,” he says. “Not tall tales mercs tell at parties.”
“You’d be surprised,” V retorts.
“I’ve heard about you, actually,” replies Arif, eyeing her coldly. “You’ve been making quite a name for yourself.”
“A good one, I hope,” she quips, taking a sip of her drink.
“‘Good’ is subjective,” Arif says back, sipping his own drink. It’s a fucking martini, because of course it is.
“Tell us, Arif,” the woman Dino introduced as Lucile says, turning to the reporter. She speaks with a heavy French accent. “What do you make of zis mayoral election? I hear zat zey are saying ze last mayor was murdered?”
V puts down her drink and leans her elbows on her knees, waiting for Arif’s answer.
The reporter just scoffs and takes another sip of his martini, swirling his glass around as he does so.
“Rhyne was a good mayor,” he says condescendingly. “As you may recall, he defended the city from NUSA and Militech when they tried to take it. But most people tend to forget about that, these days. Everyone is just interested in the latest scandal, no one watches real news anymore.”
“Fuck this prick,” Johnny mutters from across the room as Dino hands V the bill again, and she leans over to do another enormous line.
“Rhyne was as corrupt as they come,” V argues. “He pulled the NCPD from Pacifica just to make the crime rate look better. Never did shit to actually try an’ make things improve once he got NUSA off our asses.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Arif corrects her. “These issues are more complex than most ignorant people are able to grasp. Any other mayor would have caved to President Myers faster than you could hack a corpo’s bank account.”
“Spoken like somebody who has no fuckin’ clue how long it would take to hack a corpo’s bank account,” V shoots back.
“As I’m sure you do,” Arif replies smugly, setting down his drink as well. “But I wouldn’t expect you to understand the underpinnings of geopolitics.”
“Eat my ass, dickwipe,” V growls. “Went to school, too, you know.”
“And when was the last time you read a book about North American diplomacy?” he replies.
God, she wants to punch his smug, douchey face so fuckin’ badly.
“Come on, Arif,” Dino interjects. “V’s alright.”
“You are a Samurai fan?” Lucile asks in a bold attempt to change the subject, and V suddenly remembers the Samurai jacket she’s wearing. She shrugs self-consciously.
“Sure,” she says. “Who isn’t?”
“Samurai had nothing on Eurodyne,” the other woman - Fumiko, V remembers - adds, taking a drag of her cigarette.
Johnny makes a face from his spot near Kerry’s bed, crossing his arms. “Who the fuck are all these posers anyway?” he huffs. “Didn’t take Kerry for one to surround himself with such a posh fuckin’ crowd.”
V eyes him sympathetically, but doesn’t respond, turning instead to Fumiko. “Kerry’s great, sure, but Samurai had spirit. Can’t fake that.”
“Mm,” Lucile agrees. “They had... how you say... grit?”
Dino nods. “Hell yeah! They don’t make rockerboys like Silverhand anymore.”
Arif shakes his head, unamused. “Johnny Silverhand was just a two-bit terrorist. We shouldn’t be lionizing people like him.”
V shoots him a dark look, her mouth curling into a snarl. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” she says before she can stop herself.
“V’s a true fan,” Dino explains, and Arif smiles at her mockingly.
“So it would seem,” he says, raising his eyebrows and sipping his cocktail. God, V hates pricks like him.
“I like Samurai,” the third woman whose name V has already forgotten adds.
Arif sighs and stands. “Ah well, guess I’m off to find others to engage with, then,” he says. “Come, Fumi.”
Fumiko shakes her head. “I’ll find you later,” she tells him, and Arif frowns and collects his drink and moves to leave.
“Prick,” V mutters under her breath as he walks away.
“Eh, don’t mind him,” says Dino. “Always has to be the smartest fucker in the room.”
“Doubt he’s ever been that a day in his fuckin’ life,” V says, still angry.
“Hey, take it easy, have another line,” Dino says, handing her the bill again. She accepts gratefully, leaning forward to rail another fat one.
“Just can’t fuckin’ stand when dicks like him think they understand Night City,” V says, the words flowing easily now as the coke starts really lightin’ up her brain. “Can’t actually understand this city unless you understand its streets, know the actual fuckin’ people.”
“Don’t gotta tell me twice,” Dino says encouragingly, doing another massive line himself.
“Come on, V, let’s ditch these gonks and go find Kerry,” Johnny says from the bed, glitching in to lie back on it, arms folded behind his head.
But V’s on a roll now, and she continues ranting to Dino about whatever gonk shit comes to mind - Arif, the media, the NCPD, Arasaka, all of it. She’s vaguely aware that it’s mostly the coke talkin’, but fuck, she rarely has a captive audience like this, and the three women and Dino are staring at her enraptured.
“You’re a smart kid, V,” Dino says in a mildly surprised voice, and V’s not sure whether to take the compliment or be slightly offended that he’d have assumed otherwise.
“Was top of my fuckin’ class,” she retorts.
Dino just smiles at her and lights himself a cigarette, offering her one too. She takes it, as well as the light that he offers, just as another well-dressed man appears with a bottle in his hand, placing it on the table in front of them. It’s the same bourbon V’s been drinking, so she takes it and fills her glass to the brim.
“To this,” she says, raising a toast to the room, and they all glance at each other before raising their glasses in response.
Time starts to blur then, and suddenly the sun’s coming up and the pile of coke is noticeably smaller.
And there’s still no sign of Kerry.
“I’m… gonna go walk around,” she slurs, suddenly remembering the whole reason she fuckin’ came here.
Dino nods. “I’ll find you in a bit,” he says, and she stands and stumbles out of the bedroom.
The party’s thinned out by now, and there are only a few small clusters remaining, mostly of people crowded similarly around the various tables, lines of coke laid out in front of them.
V makes her way down the stairs and out of the house towards the pool, where only a handful of people prevail, smoking cigarettes and doing key bumps in pairs and small groups.
A Relic malfunction hits her then, and she clutches her head and walks quickly to the nearest pool chair, collapsing into it and breathing deeply as the pain tears through her head.
“V,” Johnny says, appearing above her and grabbing her shoulders. “Get it together, we gotta find Kerry.”
“Need a minute,” she protests, and Johnny glances around them.
“Yeah, alright,” he relents. “Maybe we should just wait here until everyone leaves, then go do another sweep of the house. He’s gotta be here somewhere.”
V nods gratefully, and presses her hands to her eyes as her hearing goes echoey and the world around her wobbles.
She must’ve passed out, because when she opens them again, the sun is fully up and the lawn is empty and strewn with trash and party detritus. Her holo is flashing, and there’s a bunch of texts from Dino.
Hey, where’d u go?
Lookin’ all over for ya
Damn guess u left? :’(
Oh well, hope u had fun. Party again soon tho
She staggers to her feet, surveying the barren yard. Her head is clear now, at least.
The security droids are still patrolling, and she uses a quickhack to deactivate them both just to be safe, then walks briskly back towards the house. The front doors are still propped open, thank god, and she steps inside to find the living room in a similar state of disarray as the yard.
“Let’s look for him,” Johnny urges, and V does a quick lap of the house, but it appears to be empty - even the bedroom. She helps herself to another bourbon from the bar and returns back downstairs, and it’s only then that she hears the sound of water running from the downstairs bathroom to the right of the main entrance.
“Shit, he’s in there showering!” Johnny says, glitching in next to the door.
V presses her ear to the door, and can hear what sounds like… singing?
She laughs suddenly, acutely aware of the absurdity of the situation - how fuckin’ insane it is to be standing here alone, listenin’ like a creep to Kerry Eurodyne singing in the fuckin’ shower.
“Definitely Ker,” Johnny confirms. “Alone, too,” he adds. “Good thing, believe me.”
V nods and moves away from the door to sit on the low ottoman in front of the guitars that line the wall.
“Okay, leave the rest to me,” Johnny says, glitching in across from her. “I’ll get his attention. Drop one of Misty’s special pills, let’s go.”
“Not yet!” V tells him, trying to ignore the way her stomach drops at the reminder of what comes next. “Gimme a sec.”
“What?” Johnny says, spreading his hands. “Wanna keep wanderin’ around by yourself? Like a fangirl or somethin’?” His face darkens. “Or do you not trust me after all?”
“Gimme a minute is all I ask,” V pleads. “Every damn time we change things up, feels like a leap off ‘Saka Tower to me.”
“Hm,” Johnny says, his face softening. “And need a running start?”
“Yeah,” V admits, taking the second pill from her pocket and staring at it.
“How’s this?” he asks, stepping towards her and tilting her chin up towards him before leaning down to kiss her softly.
She blinks up at him as they part. “Know this is important to you,” she says quietly.
“Yeah, it is,” he agrees.
“Okay,” she says, nodding. “But only if you tell me whatever it actually was that you talked about with Rogue earlier.”
“I will,” he promises. “Later.”
She looks at him for a beat, then tosses the pill in her mouth and chases it with her bourbon. Johnny crouches in front of her and takes her hands in his.
“I’ll take good care of you, V,” he says solemnly as she feels her thoughts stretch and blur, rearranging themselves in a sickening pattern of colored lines as her body stops obeying her and Johnny steps into the driver’s seat once more. She feels him reach inward for her, feels a strange warmth from him, but it’s quickly sucked away as her mind is pulled back down into that horrible, bottomless void.
The last thing she’s aware of is Johnny reaching with her hands towards Kerry's Lancaster, and then she’s gone.
Notes:
So stoked to finally arrive at the Kerry part!!! I have a whole arc planned for him and V that I've been really excited to write, and was actually one of the main reasons I initially started writing this fic!!!
Also, as it says in the tags, this will have some elements of a fem V/Kerry romance. We stan a bisexual Kerry here!!! He is canonically bi and CDPR did us dirty with that one.
Chapter 31: Like A Broken Record
Summary:
V wakes up at Kerry's house to find Johnny has made some interesting plans with him that involve her... and his old bandmates.
Notes:
HELLO EVERYONE and sorry for the massive delay between chapters!! I was traveling all month to visit family, but now I'm back to my regularly scheduled bullshit. And as a treat, this chapter is LONG AS HELL so enjoy! Not super proofread because I wanted to get it up as quickly as possible, so YOLO hope there are no typos lmao
Also so stoked to be finally writing Kerry!! He is my favorite chaotic bisexual senior citizen trash boy and we are about to have a lot of fun with him.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V's head pulses violently with a now-familiar searing pain as she surges back into her body, more forcefully this time than before. Her limbs are tingling and her head is hammering as she blinks and struggles to focus. Everything is too bright, and she resists the urge to vomit as her eyesight blurs and glitches.
And Kerry fucking Eurodyne is standing over her, one hand on her shoulder, looking into her eyes with a worried expression.
“Johnny!” Kerry says, gently slapping the side of her face. “You okay?”
V blacks out again momentarily, her ears splitting with a loud, echoey roar that fills her head.
When her vision returns, Kerry’s crouched in front of her with a hand on her knee, almost perfectly mirroring the pose Johnny'd been in right before he took control. The rockstar’s face is alarmed, scared even.
And he’s wearing nothing but a silk bathrobe. A silk bathrobe that’s hanging open, giving V a clear view of, well... everything.
She swallows and forces herself to meet his eyes, her ears still ringing loudly and the room doubling around her.
“No,” she manages.
Kerry smiles. “Ahh, so you must be V.” His eyes crinkle at the corners, but his mouth twitches downwards in a way that suggests disappointment. “Johnny warned me this would happen.”
V’s mind is still reeling. He’s so close that she can smell his cologne, as well as the underlying odor of whiskey and cigarettes and... possibly hair product? It’s not a bad smell at all, but it’s enough to make another wave of nausea threaten to overwhelm her.
“You two have fun?” she chokes.
Kerry chuckles at this and hoists himself to his feet, standing over her with his hands on his hips. “That a hint of disapproval I hear?”
V frowns. “No, I… I’m fine. I-” she stammers, but Kerry laughs again, cutting her off.
“Just sit tight, hang for a bit. Rest,” he tells her, leaning down to pat her shoulder affectionately. The familiarity unnerves her, and not just because he’s a fucking massive celebrity. “Don’t worry about a thing,” he assures her, straightening again and taking a step back.
Right on cue, Johnny glitches in behind him, perched on the back of the white leather couch perpendicular to the chair she’s slumped in.
They’re downstairs now, she realizes, in the big room with the painting of Kerry, the one she’d been discussing with Johnny earlier. And it’s dark out, which means Johnny was in control… all day.
She’s not sure how she feels about this. She reaches back for Johnny’s recent memories, rifling through them, trying to see exactly what they got up to. This time, Johnny lets her look without resisting.
It’s immediately clear from a cursory recall that he and Kerry have been up this whole time drinking and doing more coke. And V can feel it; she’s still a little drunk, and the speediness of the synth-coke is definitely still affecting her system, making her heart jolt along unsteadily and slightly too fast.
But it isn't like it was the first time he took control and went on a bender. It feels different to her, even now. She can tell that Johnny didn’t lose control this time - he was just enjoying what he could of these precious, borrowed few hours he got, against all odds, with his old friend. And they’d had a lot of catching up to do.
Okay, and maybe she's a little bit biased because of who Kerry is.
She wipes her nose to discover a smear of blood on the back of her hand. From the Relic or from all the blow, she can’t say.
“Want some water?” Kerry asks, and she nods gratefully, still trying to wrap her head around the fact that she more or less just spent the day hanging out with Kerry Eurodyne. Her childhood crush, the man whose albums she spent hours listening to on repeat throughout her entire teenage years. Sure, technically Johnny spent all day with him, but she’s here now in his house, and he knows who she is, and he’s going to get her a glass of water with his dick hanging out like they’re old friends - or lovers, even - who go way back. And in a way, they are; she feels an odd sense of familiarity towards him too, which is probably just Johnny’s feelings about the old rocker bleedin’ over into hers.
She sighs heavily and leans back into the armchair, trying to piece together as much as she can from Johnny’s memories of the day as Kerry pads off towards the kitchen.
When Johnny first took control, he grabbed that guitar from the wall, started jamming out the main riff from Never Fade Away. And then Kerry emerged from the bathroom, clutching a revolver that he pointed right at their head. But Kerry knew who he was instantly, somehow. V figures that after playing music together for as many years as they did, Johnny's style musta become unmistakable to Kerry.
It looks to her like they spent most of the day drinking and filling each other in, a large part of which seems to've been Johnny explaining how exactly it came to be that he was now occupying the body of a 27-year-old street merc.
“You’d like her,” she remembers him telling Kerry, and V flushes at the memory.
There's other things he told Kerry about her, too. How he doesn’t want her to die, how he’s plannin’ to let himself get wiped so she can have her body back.
And then he’d casually, off-handedly said, “Kid loves me.” Referring to her. So confidently, so assuredly.
Does she?
She looks at Johnny sitting there on the back of the couch opposite her, looking down at her the way he always does, and she suspects she already knows the answer.
She swallows and looks away, trying to remember everything else they talked about. Samurai, mostly. How Kerry’d signed with some big corpo label. What the other band members were up to. And then they’d watched old concert tapes for hours, reliving the old days, recounting stories.
And finally, Johnny suggested getting the band back together for one more show, a suggestion Kerry had leapt at enthusiastically.
She meets Johnny’s eyes again, feeling her brow furrow.
“The hell is this concert thing?” she asks.
He smiles at her. “Wanna see Samurai live? Prolly won’t get another chance.”
She frowns. So Johnny wants to take over again, play a Samurai show using her body? Put her on stage right next to Kerry and the rest of them?
Her head hurts just trying to imagine it.
“What if this ends up like the Rogue thing?” she asks Johnny. “One big let-down?”
He is silent for a moment as he considers this, then shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. “This is different. Kerry needs this concert.”
As if on cue, Kerry returns with a bottle of sparkling water and hands it to her. She takes it, and gratefully chugs as much of it as she can before setting it down on the low marble coffee table in front of them. There’s a framed picture of Louise Nordin there - Kerry’s ex-wife. V’s mom’s favorite actress, she remembers. What would her mom think of all this, now?
Through the window across from her, the city gleams in the clear night.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Kerry says, offering her a hand as though inviting her to bed is the most natural thing in the world.
She looks at Johnny and he just looks back at her flatly, so she accepts Kerry's hand and lets him help her to her feet and lead her up the stairs, side-stepping the empty bottles and cups from the party that litter the floor as they make their way to his bedroom. The whole scene is so surreal, she can’t help but feel like she’s in a very strange but vivid dream.
Kerry kicks off his sandals when they reach the bedroom and collapses backwards onto his bed, groaning slightly and pressing his fingers to his temples.
“Feel like shit, too?” V mumbles, standing awkwardly next to the bed, suddenly unsure of what to do next.
“Nah,” he says with a wink. “Just need a power nap. C’mon, join me.”
Johnny appears on the other side of the bed, hands on his hips, staring down at Kerry.
“He’s joking,” he warns V. “We should get going.”
But Kerry doesn’t seem like he’s joking, and for reasons that V can’t quite articulate, she feels safe here - safer than she has in a long time. Maybe it’s the liquor, or the coke, or Johnny’s history with Kerry, but getting into bed with the aging rockerboy suddenly seems like the obvious and only thing to do. So she takes off her boots and lowers herself onto the bed next to Kerry, who scoots over to make room for her. He reaches above his head for a whiskey bottle that’s perched on the planter behind them that doubles as a headboard. It’s full of exotic looking plants that spill over the sides and hang around the bed, making the whole scene feel even more dreamlike.
He takes a swig and hands the bottle to V. “Here, kid,” he says. “Help take the edge off.”
She accepts and takes a long drink, then hands the bottle back to Kerry.
“Thanks,” she says, and Kerry chuckles again.
“You got a lot of balls, y’know. Draggin’ that gonk around in your head all day, listenin’ to his shit day in day out. Dunno how you do it,” he remarks.
“We manage,” V says dryly, but she shoots a small smile in Johnny’s direction. Johnny sighs dramatically, but returns the smile then glitches away to sprawl on the couch near the window, the same one she’d been sittin’ on earlier with Dino and his friends.
When she turns back to Kerry, he’s cuttin’ out more lines of coke onto a small, round glass mirror.
“Thought you wanted to nap,” she says.
“Decided I’d rather get to know you a bit,” he replies with a shrug, using a small golden knife to break the crystal powder into fine lines. He hands her the little glass circle and a bill that she realizes is a 200 eddie note. “Gonna be on stage with you, wanna know what your whole deal is first.”
She raises an eyebrow at this, but takes the bill and the tray and obediently does one of the lines, passing it back to Kerry who does the same before setting it down on the bedside table.
“That’s the good shit,” he says, sniffling a couple times and wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
“So, about this show,” V prompts, and Kerry cocks an eyebrow at her.
“We’ll keep it small,” he reassures her. “Gonna do it at Red Dirt, same place we got our start. Keep it low-key, don’t wanna turn it into a media frenzy.”
V snorts. “Fat chance of that.”
“Eh, you’ll see,” Kerry says. “It’ll be fun.”
V is still apprehensive, but she can feel a nervous energy from Johnny, and realizes that playing this show is important to him too, not just to Kerry.
“So what’d you do after Samurai tanked?” she asks, doing another small line as he hands her back the mirror.
“Bet he went to go ‘find himself’ on some shithole beach in the Philippines,” Johnny quips from the couch.
“Took me a while to pick myself up,” Kerry continues, doing another line as well. “Spent two years out on Masbate. Went back to my roots.”
“What’d I say?” Johnny crows, sitting up to gloat at her. “High outta his mind all day, spent all night fucking anything that moved. Called it.” He waves his hand dismissively and flops back down.
“What did you do there?” V asks Kerry, continuing to ignore Johnny’s interjections.
“Slowed the fuck down. Meditated and shit.”
“And?” she says. “Help at all?”
Kerry chuckles softly. “In the end, yeah. Think the media got the rest of the story.”
There's something oddly childlike about Kerry, she decides.
“So what about you? How’d you get into this?” Kerry asks her suddenly. “This… I mean, y’know…”
“Merc work, you mean?” V prompts. “You’re askin’ why I do what I do?”
“Yeah,” says Kerry slowly. “Tell me. Why?”
V thinks about this for a moment. “Came up on Night City’s streets,” she says. “Grew up in Heywood, had a messy childhood, the usual. Got good at netrunning, sneaking around, doing stuff clean and quiet. And, well... fixers find people like me pretty quick. Just snowballed from there.”
Kerry nods thoughtfully. “Never thought about getting out? Tryin’ something else?”
“If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” V jokes. Kerry gives her a strange look, so she shrugs awkwardly. “I did get out,” she admits. “Went to Atlanta for a couple years. But, it was... worse there. So I came back.”
He looks at her knowingly, then. Even a bit sympathetically. “Yeah,” he agrees softly.
V swallows, ready with her usual line. “And the work I do… well, there’s always shit like that needs doin’. If I didn’t take these jobs, other mercs would. Mercs that don’t give a fuck about hurting bystanders. Whereas me… I’m careful. Or at least, I try to be.”
She thinks again of the nomads that are dead because of her, of the police that opened fire at the parade. Can she really even make that claim anymore?
Kerry’s face softens. “None of us can keep our hands clean,” he says, and for the first time, she really feels his age. Like Rogue, but different, not as hardened. Kerry still has a strange, almost curious vulnerability to him, like he’s desperate to trust a world that keeps violating that trust.
V finds herself wanting to be worthy of that trust.
“Never said mine were,” she replies, her voice a hoarse whisper.
“So where’d you learn all that shit?” he asks, his mouth twitching into a lopsided smile. “Netrunnin’, all that.”
“Taught myself, mostly,” V admits, not even attempting to hide the pride in her voice. “Got a lot of opportunities to practice. Ran for block gangs, and whenever I saw someone do something cool, I’d ask 'em to teach me. And enough times, they would. Not every time, but enough times. And the rest just came naturally to me,” she says.
“Naturally modest, naturally blunt, or just coked up as hell,” Kerry teases. “Still can’t decide which one you are.”
V grins.
Despite the fact that he's roughly three times her age, there's an instant chemistry, that instant familiarity between them that V realizes can’t entirely be attributed to Johnny. That’s part of it, sure - and maybe some of it’s definitely the fact that she’s been doin’ coke with him for nearly two days straight now - but she can’t help but feel that she and Kerry are oddly temperamentally similar in a lot of ways. She feels Johnny react to this thought, and realizes he agrees.
"That's Johnny's jacket, ain't it?" Kerry asks, gesturing to the Samurai bomber draped over the couch that Johnny's still flopped on.
V nods, and Kerry whistles softly. "The fuck you even get that?" he says incredulously.
"Rogue had it," V explains, and Kerry snorts.
"Course she did," he laughs, doing another line. "Johnny told me 'bout his date with 'er, or whatever you wanna call it." His eyes crinkle when he laughs, the cyberware snaking out from them like little golden crow's feet.
"Mm," V says noncommittally.
"He was such a dick to women," Kerry continues conspiratorially, as though they're gossiping about a schoolyard crush. "So spill… how is he with you? And don't try to bullshit me," Kerry adds, raising a hand as V opens her mouth to protest. "I know what he's like, and I know you guys got some intense shit goin' on between you."
"I… well," V begins, unsure of what to say, and Johnny sighs heavily from the couch. "He doesn't always make it easy."
"Except when he does," Kerry says. "To love him, that is. Spite of all his bullshit."
His casual use of the word makes V startle.
"There's no one like him," she agrees softly, and Kerry nods. She suddenly realizes it's nice - really nice - to be able to talk about Johnny like he's a real fucking person, to someone who actually knew him. It's still surreal as hell to be bonding with Kerry goddamn Eurodyne over the ghost of Johnny Silverhand, but here she fucking is. And while V may be haunted by his literal ghost, Kerry’s been haunted by Johnny as well, in his own way, she realizes. Their influence on each other is apparent in so many of his small mannerisms, in his speech, in his way of thinking about the world, and it all adds to the feeling that she's known Kerry much longer than she has.
“How’d you and Johnny meet?” she asks.
“Knew each other a bit during the war,” Kerry tells her. “Served together but weren’t close. Wasn’t until after, when we were back in NC, that we really connected. He was holed up in some god awful hotel for like a year or some shit, had to drag him outta there.” He sighs. “God, we were still kids then. Fuckin’ teenagers. Crashed at my mom’s for a bit, started writin’ music together. Rest is rock ‘n’ roll history.”
His face stretches into a crooked grin at the memory, and V’s reminded of how Jackie and his mom took her in when she first came back to Night City. Kerry did that for Johnny, she realizes. If Kerry was to Johnny was Jackie’d been to her…
She smiles to herself and does another line of coke.
The hours pass quickly, and suddenly the sun is coming up again. But talking to Kerry somehow feels so easy, so natural, like they’ve known each other their whole lives. She smiles at the aging rockerboy, who’s propped up on his elbow with the mirror of coke between them. She’s feeling the exhaustion start to creep in now, so she settles back against the headboard and watches the dawn break over the cityscape before them. Kerry takes the tray and places it back on the table, then lies back as well, resting his head on the silk pillowcase and rolling to face her.
“You’re a good kid,” he says, closing his eyes. “Our boy got lucky.”
“Johnny, y’mean?” V mumbles, her own eyes hanging heavy-lidded.
“Mm.”
“Ready for that nap now?” she jokes, and he nods once without opening his eyes.
“We’ll call Nance and the others in the morning,” he mumbles. “Later in the morning,” he adds, opening one eye to frown at the rapidly lightening sky.
V laughs. “Sure,” she agrees, closing her eyes as well. Her mouth is dry, her head is pounding, and her heart's still racing from all the blow, and she's not sure if she's actually gonna be able to fall asleep. Johnny’s usual roiling angst has quieted a bit now, though, and he seems more at peace than he has in a while. She opens her eyes again to look at Kerry, who’s now snoring softly beside her. His ageless face looks both young and old at the same time, just like his personality. Spending time with Kerry must be good for Johnny, she decides, and lets her eyes fall shut.
She must have slept eventually, because when she opens her eyes again, it's late afternoon and Kerry is gone.
Her holo is buzzing with calls and messages she’s been ignoring for days now, and she continues to do so as she stretches her arms and cracks her back. Johnny glitches in on the bed next to her and cocks an eyebrow at her.
“So, how’s it feel to wake up in the bed of your teenage wet dream? Gonna cream your pants or what?”
“Shut up, Johnny,” she says, playfully punching his arm.
He grins as he recoils, raising his arms in mock surrender.
“C’mon, just teasin’,” he says. “So, whaddya think of Ker?”
“He’s… easy to hang with,” she says carefully.
“See? Maybe havin’ me as a brainworm ain’t all bad. Gettin’ to meet your idols.”
He’s still grinning like an idiot, and V shoots him a look before she stands and pads barefoot out into the sitting area by the bar outside the bedroom. She can hear someone moving around downstairs, and peers over the bannister to see Kerry seated at the big dining table with some fresh takeout spread out before him.
“Eyyy, V!” he calls up to her, grinning and raising a Caliente taco in greeting.
“Mornin’,” she calls back sleepily, feeling her stomach simultaneously growl and churn at the smell of the fast food. She can’t remember the last time she ate anything. Probably the day before yesterday, before her date with Rogue. She can’t remember Johnny and Kerry eating at any point yesterday, and she suddenly feels more than a little lightheaded.
“Come down and grab some,” Kerry prompts, and V nods and moves away from the bannister, unsteadily picking her way around the bottles and trash still strewn everywhere as she makes her way downstairs to join Kerry at the broad marble table.
He’s gotten coffees for them, too, and V reaches for that first. It’s already cold, but she drinks half of it before reaching for one of the tacos and tentatively taking a bite. It’s fucking gross, but right then it’s also the best fucking thing she’s ever tasted, and before she can stop herself she’s devoured three of them.
Kerry watches her appraisingly. “Damn kid, when’s the last time you ate?”
“Not yesterday, apparently,” she reminds him, and he laughs warmly.
“Should tell Johnny to take better care of ya,” he huffs, taking another bite of his taco before putting it down. “God, these things are fuckin’ disgusting. Woke up with a craving for ‘em, for some fuckin’ reason.”
“Kerry’s always eaten trash,” Johnny counters wryly, glitching in near the window behind them and staring out at the city. “Even when we could afford better. Don’t listen to him, he loves this scop.”
Kerry gives her a strange look as she laughs at their invisible heckler. “What?” he asks.
“Just somethin’ Johnny said,” she tells him.
“Lemme guess, he’s givin’ me shit about my eating habits?”
She nods, prompting an indignant scoff from both Kerry and Johnny.
“Classic,” Kerry says, rolling his eyes. “So I take it you and Johnny are eating fresh, real sushi straight from Japan every fuckin’ day?”
“I’ll be sure to order that from my SCSM next time,” V jokes, putting her feet up on the table and leaning back in her chair.
Kerry watches her as she does this with a strange look on his face. “So,” he says. “Let’s get this show on the road. Give Nance a call, I’m gonna go try and track down Henry.”
He flicks her the contact details and moves to stand.
“How come you can’t call her?” V protests, and Kerry shrugs.
“Feel like you’ll be able to do a better job convincing her,” he says simply.
“But what do I tell her?” V presses him. “That I’m just some rando you pulled off the street to sub in for Johnny? That you wanna put together a reunion show… why?”
“Tell her you’re my new output. Offer her money. Appeal to her nostalgia. Johnny said you’re good at convincin’ people to do shit,” Kerry replies, not backing down.
But V’s mind stopped listening at the first thing he said. “You want me to tell an N54 News reporter that I’m your new output?” She hears her voice jump an octave, and hates herself for it. She can feel Johnny’s bemusement from where he’s still standing by the window.
Kerry shrugs again. “Yeah, s’what Johnny and I decided on last night,” he says like it’s no big deal. “Easier than explainin’ the truth. Oh, and she goes by Bes now. Bes Isis.”
“Right, but…” V starts, at a complete loss for words. “You know what? Nevermind. Fine. Sure. I’ll do my best.”
“Atta girl,” Kerry says, smiling down at her and walking away from the table, leaving V alone with the half-eaten pile of tacos and cold coffee. And Johnny.
“You heard the man,” Johnny says, turning to her. “Go ahead, call Nancy.”
V sighs. “Alright, alright, I’m callin’ her.”
She loads up the contact info Kerry sent and puts the call through on her holo, nervously tapping her fingers as it rings. She hears a crackle as someone answers, but whoever it is has their holo feed turned off so she can’t see who she’s talkin’ to.
“Nancy?” V asks tentatively, then corrects herself. “I mean… Bes? Bes Isis?”
“No,” says an indignant voice on the other end, and the video comes on then to reveal a disgruntled looking young man in an N54 News beanie. “This is her underpaid, underappreciated assistant.” He scowls at V, then puts on a false cheery tone. “Steven, N54 News, how can I help?”
“Wanna talk to Bes,” V presses.
“She’s not here.”
“Tell ‘im you’re calling from my place,” Kerry yells from the other room.
“I’m calling from Kerry Eurodyne’s residence,” V tells the assistant.
“Coool,” Steven replies dryly. “But Bes still isn’t here.”
“When’ll she be back?”
Steven shrugs. “She was s’posed to be back two days ago. Went to the Totentanz to shoot some stuff, story on Maelstrom,” he intones. “Call back next week, or just watch the news. Anything happens to her, I’ll be the first to cover it.”
He hangs up, and Johnny puts his hand on the table and leans forward, looking at V over the top of his sunglasses.
“Got a bad feeling, V,” he says seriously. “Think we better head to the Totentanz.”
“Think she got in over her head with Maelstrom?”
“One way to find out,” Johnny says, and V nods.
Kerry reappears then, and he’s traded his silk robe for a pair of black leather pants and a white, expensive-looking tank top with a gold-printed Avante decal.
“What’d she say?” he asks.
“She wasn’t there. Sounds like she mighta gotten herself into some trouble,” V tells him. “I’m gonna go check it out.”
“Seems like your kinda shit,” Kerry says with a grin, and V is once again struck by the familiarity with which he addresses her. They’ve known each other less than 48 hours, and he’s already teasin’ her like they’ve been friends for years. Hell, she's already basically seen him naked. She feels herself blushing at the memory.
“Let’s hope not,” she says, standing to go put on her boots.
Kerry walks her to her car, and laughs loudly when he sees Johnny’s Porsche parked on the street where she left it the night before last.
“You got Johnny's wheels, too?" he says, letting out a low whistle. “Damn, he’d never even let me drive this thing. How the hell didja get it?”
“Long story,” V says, opening the door to get in. “Call you when I find Nancy.”
Kerry nods and his eyes glow blue, and just like that, she has Kerry Eurodyne’s fuckin’ phone number.
She flicks him her deets in return, and he grins and waves as she pulls away.
Johnny appears in the passenger seat but doesn’t say anything, he just puts his feet up on the dash as she drives them home. She stops by her apartment to grab her irons and some MaxDocs just in case, and uses the opportunity to take a shower and change her clothes. She knows she can’t blend in at Totentanz no matter what she wears, so she just puts on her merc leathers and holsters her Quasar on her right hip and Johnny’s Malorian on her left. She hasn’t bothered to put her non-lethal mods on Johnny’s gun - it’s good to have options, she figures. She used to carry Jackie’s pistol for this purpose, but swapping it out for Johnny’s seems more fitting, somehow. And his Malorian’s been calibrated to work best with a chrome left arm to handle its heavy recoil, which she just so happens to have.
She frowns at her blackened chrome fingers, flexing them as she shrugs on her coat, watching the way they move as she clenches and unclenches her fist. She’s barely had time to really process the loss of her arm, she realizes. With Jackie gone, Johnny suddenly in her head, and her own death looming over her, waking up with a new chrome arm had seemed the least of her worries at the time. But it’s undeniably strange, having spent the first 27 years of her life looking down at the same familiar fleshy hands, to now only have one remaining. She thinks about how Johnny must have felt, losing his in the war when he was still a teenager.
No matter how this plays out, she’ll never be the same V she was before, she realizes. She’ll never get back the things she lost.
“Weak ass pussies don’t belong here!” a Maelstrommer yells at her as she approaches the nondescript dilapidated building that houses the gang-run nightclub.
“Fuck, all startin’ to come together,” Johnny mutters as she steps out of the bright orange sunset and into the shadow of the entryway. “No media would ever go for the Totentanz. Except Nancy.”
“What was she like, back in the day?” V asks. Out of all the members of Samurai, she probably knows the least about Nancy. She was the enigmatic keyboardist with a mop of black hair and a perpetual exhausted scowl who rarely spoke in public. All the media she’s read about the band mostly focused on Kerry and Johnny, and the rest was devoted to the unending drama between Henry and Denny. She vaguely remembers something about Nancy spending time in jail. But from the way Johnny talks about her, it seems like Nancy was, on some level, the glue that held them all together.
Johnny considers this. “Used to think she was the only one who had her shit together,” he says, leaning back against the graffitied wall. “Turned out she was just hiding it well. Lived with some sick son-of-a-bitch who beat her for two years.” He shakes his head. “Never said a word, then threw the guy out their living room window one day. 80th floor or somethin’.”
“Jeez,” V remarks. “That’s some real intense shit. Not much left of him to clean up, probably.”
Johnny lets out a dark laugh. “Heh, nope. Did seven months. Once she got out, wasn’t much left of her life to salvage, either.”
“That was part of why Samurai broke up, wasn’t it?” V asks, trying to remember the bits and pieces she’s read over the years, and Johnny nods sadly.
“Yeah, things were never the same after that. Came back for our 2020 reunion tour, though. Was always a tough chick, that one.”
Johnny glitches away then, and V steps into the club. It’s dark and surprisingly quiet. Must have good soundproofing installed on the club floor, she thinks. There’re Maelstrommers draped over various crates and stacked furniture, including something that looks like it used to be a reception desk. V ignores them and heads for the stairs, and Johnny glitches over to the landing, tapping his foot impatiently.
“C’mon, up you go,” he encourages her.
V tries not to think about what those Maelstrommers did to that monk she pulled outta their warehouse a month or two back. Or her and Jackie's tangle with them at the All Foods plant before the biochip heist, when they went to pick up that stupid robot.
She follows a series of metal catwalks to the elevator, where a surly looking Maelstrom bouncer is standing with his arms crossed. His red cyberware eye array glows as he turns to V, giving her a quick once over.
“Like your style,” he growls. “Minimalist. Used to have chrome just like that.”
Johnny appears next to her, crossing his arms almost protectively as he squares off against the bouncer.
But the bouncer grins widely at her and steps aside as the elevator doors slide open for them, and Johnny leans around him to peer inside suspiciously.
There’s a drunk Maelstrommer already in the elevator, and he also grins at V as she enters, baring his silver-plated teeth.
“Totentanz, too? Fuck yeah!” he slurs, leaning heavily against the wall.
V just nods at him, and he laughs drunkenly. “Third floor. Press the button, my fingers’re numb,” he says, his words punctuated by a violent fit of hiccups. He stares down stupidly at his hands, which look like newly implanted chrome ones. His arms are covered in angry red scars and welts with metal tubes and other hardware snaking out of them, and the upper half of his head sports a version of the classic Maelstrom optical mods - there’s a glowing red X across his face where his eyes used to be.
She does as he says, and the elevator doors slide shut as the lift begins to ascend.
After a moment, V can hear a low thumping of bass that quickly increases in volume as they speed upwards.
“Hear that?” the drunk Maelstrommer says excitedly. “Tinnitus today. Our guys.” He grins at the ceiling, pointing to it unsteadily with his metal hands. “This one I like!”
V's holo buzzes, and she pulls up the messages. They're from Kerry, and a series of rapid-fire texts begin to appear on her HUD.
Holy shit, Henry’s on board. Way to go!
Checked outta rehab of his own free will… thru the window, hehe
Some nurse tried to stop us
At first I thought she wanted an autograph, but she didn’t even recognize me
Tell you the rest later
How’s it going with Nancy?
V glances up at the Maelstrom gonk who’s now drunkenly swaying to the beat, and quickly composes a reply.
Under control so far. At Totentanz now
Kerry’s response comes almost immediately.
That’s what I like to hear
V’s not one to get starstruck, but there’s something surreal about casually texting Kerry Eurodyne that her brain is still having trouble wrapping itself around.
The elevator lurches to a halt then, and the doors slide open. The ganger turns and stumbles out of the lift, shouting, “Later!” at V as he starts off down the hall towards the club entrance.
“Go on,” Johnny teases, glitching in against the wall as V exits after the ganger. “You’ll blend in, no problem.”
She follows the hallway towards the sound of the music and pushes through a curtain of filthy plastic flaps. There’s a group of three Maelstrommers sitting on a couch next to the entrance, and they all look up when V rounds the corner.
“Fuck!” one of them yells. “No fuckin’ way!”
The other two look at him in confusion, and he raises his hands angrily. “That’s the rimbo who klepped the spiderbot!” he shouts at them.
Fuck, V thinks. She’d been afraid of this. They’re referring, of course, to that flathead pick-up at the Maelstrom hideout she did with Jackie. The one that went horribly south in every possible way. In what seems like another life, now.
“No,” says the second one, exhaling a puff of blue smoke out of his mouth. Black lace, probably. “No, no, no. Wouldn’t be that stupid to show here.”
V stops in her tracks.
“You the one…?” the first one asks her, and there’s fear in his voice. V’s pretty sure she could take them all easily - her quickhacks work particularly well against Maelstrom idiots - but she’s not here to start a firefight.
“Lookin’ for Bes Isis,” she says coolly.
But the Maelstrommer isn’t budging. “Guess I gotta spell it out,” he growls. “You the one who klepped the flathead?” He leans forward threateningly, clenching his fists like he’s gonna fuckin’ charge her. She can still sense his fear, though, and decides to use that to her advantage.
“Sure did,” she tells them. “Why, you got another one? Had to toss the first.”
“Fuckin’ jagoff,” the Maelstrom goon spits.
“Look at this,” the third one pipes up from the couch, also leaning forward and fixing the array of red headlamps that cover his face on her. “A chance at a nick in the barrel.”
V braces herself for a fight, but right at that moment, the doors behind them slide open and a lithe woman with coiffed magenta hair and only slightly less cyberware than the rest of ‘em steps out, already yelling.
“Get the fuck out,” she says to the gangers in an authoritative voice edged with a harsh, metallic tenor from her cyberware. “Now.”
She crosses her arms and waits for them to obey, but the first one points at V in protest.
“That’s the All Foods punk-” he begins, but the woman cuts him off.
“I’m not blind,” she snaps, then turns to V. “Whaddaya want?”
Johnny glitches in next to her. “Watch out for that one,” he mutters in her ear.
“You the one in charge now?” V asks carefully. She can’t be sure how much what happened with Jackie at All Foods shook up Maelstrom’s chain of command.
“No,” the woman growls. “A lot’s changed since Royce went, but not that much.”
The Maelstrommer next to her twitches and scratches agitatedly at his still-healing cyberware.
V decides to drop this line of questioning. “Bes Isis,” she says. “Name mean anything to you?”
“You work with her?” The woman’s voice takes on an even harsher metallic growl.
“No,” V says quickly. “Just gotta talk. Heard she’s here.”
“She’s here. But you talk to Brick first. His call what happens to you. Follow me.”
V remembers Brick. He was the Maelstrom leader she saved during the All Foods stunt with Jackie. She guesses that he’s taken over again, now.
The woman uncrosses her arms and the doors behind her open again, and she turns on her heel and struts through them. V glances warily at the Maelstrommers, who are all still coiled to attack, and steps through after the gruff woman.
The doors lead to a set of metal stairs that plunge them down into the thick of the nightclub. The air is heavy with smoke and the dancefloor is packed - it’s mostly Maelstrommers, but there are a bunch of normies there, too. Three men are onstage, decked out in full Maelstrom cyberware, and they’re jumpin’ up and down and jamming on weird instruments that V can’t quite identify. Tinnitus, presumably. The crowd seems to fucking love it. The music is so loud it’s making V’s eardrums hurt. Truly living up to their name, she thinks wryly. She’s heard before that they sound different when you’ve got the right cyberware - “right” meaning, of course, the full Maelstrom chrome package. The lot of ‘em seem to be obsessed with this dumb band. She wonders what angle exactly Nancy’d been hoping to cover by coming here.
As they climb another set of metal stairs to a small lofted balcony area, V hears a rough voice above her loudly declaring that he doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks.
“Then let’s say… extreme music?” another voice answers, and it’s a woman’s voice - clear and unmodified by any cyberware. “What does that mean to you?”
“Look, lady, you keep tryna slap a label on us,” the first voice responds. As they crest the top of the stairs, V sees the hulking form of a man seated on a leather couch opposite a small, grey-haired woman wearing a media headset who’s leaning forward attentively with her arms resting casually across her knees. V recognizes the large man as Brick. The woman must be Nancy.
“That’s Nance,” Johnny confirms, glitching in behind V and placing a hand on her arm.
“No,” Nancy is saying firmly. “I’m trying to understand you. Chaos, a wall of noise and distortion… It must all form some sort of system, or style.”
“Brick,” the Maelstrom woman who led her there announces as they enter. “Got another guest.”
“V,” Brick says, turning to look at her. “What a surprise. What can I do for ya?”
V lowers herself onto the couch and leans back, surveying the small balcony. There’s an entourage of Maelstrom guards surrounding them, all of 'em twitching in the way that these gonks all seem to.
“Looks like I’m interrupting,” she says to Brick. He’s packing more chrome than even most Maelstrommers - his huge arms are covered in tubes that run down to his fingers, and his head is much the same. Six red orbs stare out from in and around his eye sockets, reminding her of some kind of strange spider.
“Wrappin’ up, actually,” Brick intones. “Bes here’s overstayed her welcome.”
“Yet I still haven’t gotten answers to all my questions,” Nancy protests calmly.
Johnny glitches to stand behind his old bandmate now, and he regards her with a strange fondness on his face.
“Make somethin’ up,” Brick growls dismissively. “You’re a journalist, should be second nature. Say it’s an orgy of noise or whatever.” He’s clearly losing patience with her. But V remembers rescuing him. She knows he’s reasonable - smart, even. Especially for a Maelstrommer.
“Should up your huscle on the Ebunike,” V says to Brick, dragging his attention away from Nancy. She knows she’s goading him, but part of her can’t help herself. It’s worth reminding him who he’s dealing with here. “Just there the other day. Your people didn’t put up much of a fight.”
Brick’s face twists into a scowl. “In that case, you should go back,” he says. “I’ll see to it they take good care of you.” His scowl contorts again into a wicked grin, dragging his cyberware with it.
“Chill,” V says lightly. “Just some friendly advice.”
“‘Preciate it,” Brick says, cracking his chrome knuckles and shifting restlessly in his seat.
V turns to Nancy. “Kerry Eurodyne sent me,” she says. “With some biz for Bes,” she adds, turning back to Brick.
Nancy raises an eyebrow. “Kerry?” she says, the surprise plain in her voice. “Did he suddenly remember I exist?”
Her face looks eerie in the dim red light, her black lipstick adding to the harshness of her aged features. Whatever work Kerry’s had done to maintain his youthful appearance, Nancy’s clearly opted out of. Journalism doesn’t pay nearly as well as a solo music career, V figures.
She thinks of Rogue then, too, and realizes that Nancy’s the first of Johnny’s contemporaries who actually looks her age.
But as V studies her, she realizes that’s not quite right, either. Nancy has had work done - she still doesn’t look nearly as old as Wakako, for example, though they've gotta be close to the same age. But she’s kept it lowkey and natural, less obvious than Kerry and Rogue’s blatant defiance of time.
“You can go,” Brick says to Nancy.
“Huh?” one of the guards protests. “Just like that?”
“I ask you?” Brick growls at them. “No? That’s what I thought.”
V realizes with a cold shiver that the gangers very well might not've let Nancy walk outta there unharmed had she not showed up when she did.
“Thanks, Brick,” Nancy says, reading the room. “That was… enlightening.” She gets to her feet. “Let’s go,” she says to V, and V is happy to oblige.
“Thanks,” she says sincerely to Brick, standing to follow.
As she walks down the stairs behind Nancy, V notes the woman’s outfit - she’s wearin’ a cropped denim vest with the word “BITCH” emblazoned on the back. And despite her short stature, she walks with a wide, confident swagger.
“Brick seems alright,” she says to Nancy as they cross the dancefloor, fighting their way through the press of undulating bodies.
“Sure,” Nancy agrees, seemingly unfazed by the whole scene. “Just too bad he doesn’t know squat about music.”
“That’s what you wanted to talk to him about?” V asks as they approach the elevator.
“Yeah,” she replies. “Tinnitus. The Totentanz sound. What I got outta Brick was scop.”
So she’s still a music nerd, V thinks, and she feels another warm surge of fondness from Johnny at this. He's really happy to see Nancy, she realizes.
“Why’s the elevator so damn slow in this dump?” Nancy complains as they wait for the lift. V can’t tell if she’s oblivious to the danger they were just in, or merely confident - perhaps overly so - in her own abilities to navigate dicey situations like this.
The elevator arrives then, and Nancy slumps against the back wall. V notices that she’s wearin’ a t-shirt under her vest that says “BURN CORPO SHIT.” Clearly a woman after Johnny’s own heart.
“So, what?” V asks. “Giving up on your story? I won’t learn anything about Maelstrom’s music?”
Johnny glitches in across from her, eyeing Nancy again, smiling gently at her. V feels a mix of old, buried emotions emanating from him, seein' Nancy like this now.
“Got lots of footage,” Nancy is saying. “Need to look through it, see what I can patch together.”
Johnny continues to watch his old bandmate with that same strange smile playing on his lips as the elevator descends.
“Okay, c’mon,” Nancy says when the elevator doors open. “Fuck, just hope the car’s still where I parked it.”
V walks with her through the strangely silent foyer.
“Brick was the safe option,” Nancy continues, clearly still fixated on her story. “Really should’ve talked to the asses from Tinnitus.”
“You got some sorta in with them?” V asks.
“Brick invited me to one of their gigs,” Nancy explains as they walk. “Problem is the line-up. Changes every time.”
“They’re playing tonight, right? That was them in there?”
Nancy nods. “Or some version of ‘em, anyway. Not convinced they actually play any instruments, to be honest. The sound is all machines. The guys on stage are just there to hype the crowd.”
“Huh,” V remarks.
The sun’s gone down while they were in the club, and it’s raining now too. Nancy crosses the lot to stop in front of a beat up Galena hatchback that’s parked there, and puts her hands on her hips furiously when she sees the car’s been slathered in Maelstrom graffiti.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” she declares, leaning forward to examine the artwork.
“Coulda been worse,” V points out. “This way you got a souvenir.”
“Fuck souvenirs,” Nancy snaps. She turns to V. “I’m headed straight back to the editing room. Wanna talk, gotta come with me.”
V eyes her abandoned motorcycle, still parked nearby. Guess I’ll come back for it later, she thinks.
“Clunker like this, hope it gets us there in one piece,” Johnny remarks, glitching in to kick at the back tire.
V ignores him and gets into the passenger seat, and Nancy starts the car immediately and starts driving away from the club.
“All right,” Nancy says, cutting to the chase. “So what’s Kerry want?”
“Wants to bring back Samurai,” V replies. “One gig, one night.”
Nancy is silent for a second. “There is no Samurai without Silverhand,” she says somberly.
Johnny glitches into the backseat then and grins at V, clearly thrilled at this declaration.
“Gonna be a gig in Silverhand’s honor,” V explains, thinking quickly. “I’m gonna be filling in for Johnny.”
Nancy throws back her head and laughs. “You?”
“Let’s just say… there’s nothing Silverhand could do that I can’t,” V says in what she hopes is Johnny’s confident tone.
Nancy eyes her skeptically. “Well, if you got Kerry on board…”
“I’ve got this, trust me,” V assures her, and Nancy just nods slowly.
“A gig in Silverhand’s honor…” she muses. “What’s got into Kerry all of a sudden?” She furrows her brow. “Thought he got over this ages ago.”
“Dunno if he ever really got over it,” V tells her honestly.
Nancy considers this. “Well, guess it doesn’t matter,” she says. “What’s in it for me?”
V remembers what Kerry said, about playin’ to her nostalgia. “A reunion with some old friends?” she suggests.
“Ah, come on,” Nancy scoffs, side-eyeing V as she drives. “Kerry and Johnny were friends, that’s it. We just floated around, sometimes got in their way.”
“Is that what it was like?” V can’t help asking.
Nancy sighs. “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe not. It’s hard to remember, sometimes. What it was actually like.” She eyes V cautiously. “Why, you a fan?”
“Just trying to understand what I’m getting myself into.”
This seems to satisfy Nancy, and she lets out a small hum as she drives.
“Kerry and Johnny had some complicated shit going on,” Nancy admits suddenly. “But I guess we all did. We were all just a bunch of young pissbrains, then.”
“So what would it take to make you say yes?” V presses. “An interview with Kerry?”
“Hah,” Nancy barks a sharp laugh. “Could write that myself, straight outta my ass.” She shakes her head. “I want access to all his industry contacts, associates.”
V shrugs. “Not a problem, not as far as I can see.”
Nancy’s golden eyes narrow. “So who exactly are you to him?”
This is the question V’s been afraid of. She swallows. “I’m uh… his new output.”
“That so?” Nancy says, arching an eyebrow. “How long you two known each other? Surprised it’s not all over the screamsheets.”
“‘Spect it will be after this little gig,” V says, fighting down the lump of terror the thought provokes.
“So is that what this is, then? His attempt to promote some hot young thing he’s screwin’?”
“No,” V says firmly. “Not even close. I’m no one,” she insists. “This is about Kerry. He wants to see you guys, connect with his past. Do something to remember Johnny.”
Nancy raises her eyebrows again but doesn’t respond. They drive in silence, not even any radio to break the strange tension that settles over the car. Johnny is tapping his foot nervously from the backseat, and V tries to look at him without being too obvious. He’s just staring out the window, so she does the same as they get on the bridge to Westbrook and cross over into Japantown, the rain making the city sparkle in the night.
Nancy pulls the car to a stop in front of the big N54 News tower on the Japantown waterfront, then turns to V.
“We’re here,” she says. “Hop out.”
“So... the concert?” V asks.
Nancy sighs heavily and rolls her eyes. “Tell Kerry I’ll put it together.” She opens the door to the car. “Be in touch,” she says, and gets out and walks quickly to the door, leaving V to stumble out awkwardly after her.
“Okay, thanks,” she calls after the woman as she disappears inside the building.
Johnny glitches in to lean against one of the big round pillars by the entrance.
“That went pretty damn well,” he says, and V isn’t sure if he’s being sarcastic or not. Nancy did agree to do the show, so she decides to take it at face value. “Now call Kerry,” Johnny prompts.
V opens her holo and does as he says, eyeing Kerry’s avatar as it rings. It’s some weird artwork of layered symbols with “2023” written in the center. The year Johnny died.
Fuck, she thinks. He really has been carrying this around.
“Hey!” Kerry says when he answers, his face appearing on the small screen. “So, how’d it go? Talk to Nance?”
“Yep,” V tells him. “She agreed. Even said she’d organize the gig.”
Kerry laughs. “Still a control freak. Awesome.”
“Manage to track down Henry or Denny?” she asks.
“Just Henry so far,” Kerry says. “You saw my texts. Dragged him outta rehab. Great story, actually. Henry didn’t know Denny’s been in Night City all this time. On his way over to see her now, gonna be a surprise.” He laughs again. “Figured I'd give 'em some space to catch up tonight, do their thing. Gonna meet them over at Denny’s tomorrow, at around 3. You’ll be there, right?”
“What, me too?” V asks. “Why?”
Kerry smiles. “Gonna play with us, aren’t ya? Gotta meet the others. Might run some songs, make sure we’re all still up to snuff. Won’t make you do that part though, don’t worry,” he quickly adds, seeing the look of horror cross V’s face. Her guitar playing ability is, well, nonexistent, and she hadn’t been planning on letting Johnny take control again until the show. “Sendin’ you the address,” Kerry says, and hangs up before she can protest.
Johnny grins at her. “Rock and fuckin’ roll,” he says triumphantly. “Can’t believe we’re gettin’ the whole band back together. You’re gonna love Denny,” he declares.
V swallows a lump of nervousness in her throat. This is all happening so fucking fast.
“Yeah,” she says. “Gonna be preem.”
Notes:
Once again, sorry for the wait! I should have the next chapter ready pretty soon! LOVE YOU ALL and thanks for sticking around!!!!
Chapter 32: Bleed the Beat
Summary:
Johnny and V meet the rest of the band, then prepare themselves for Samurai's one-night-only reunion show.
Notes:
This chapter is long as hell too, guess my chapters are all just gonna be long now? Sorry not sorry!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Johnny watches V get ready to head to Denny’s house to meet Kerry and the rest of the band; she's goin' through her typical routine of agonizing over her outfit, trying on different flavors of aspirational looks for herself. Johnny gets a front row seat to the whole thing whether he likes it or not, but it’s a ritual that he’s come to strangely enjoy.
She currently has on her black jeans and a t-shirt, but she’s frowning at her reflection. Johnny watches through her eyes as she strips naked and starts from scratch, going for a pair of black leather overalls and a white cropped tank top with some simple leather biker boots. She’s not dressing for combat today.
She fastens on her choker and leaves her dog tags where they are. Johnny’s noticed she rarely takes them off these days, even to shower. Feeling the way they fall against her chest makes Johnny feel a tightness in his own, and he finds himself thinking again about his conversation with Rogue at the drive-in. What she revealed to him about what he'd told her, specifically.
V’s putting on her make-up now, too caught up in her own nerves to be paying much attention to what Johnny’s feeling, and he’s grateful for that. He understands why she’s anxious, but he also can’t tamp down his own excitement at the prospect of V getting this glimpse into his old life, seeing him in his element, doing what he did best, in more than just his old memories. He knows she won’t actually be present for the concert, but he hopes she’ll at least be able to revisit the memories of it later. Never Fade Away’s her favorite song, he remembers, making a mental note to be sure to play that one. He and Kerry haven’t locked down a setlist or anything yet, and although that track was technically one of his solo works rather than the whole band’s effort, he doesn’t foresee it being much of an issue. When he and Kerry toured together as solo acts, it always wound up basically bein' a Samurai show, anyway. Denny always toured with Kerry, and Henry either went with ‘em or played with Johnny, depending on how things were going with Denny the week they’d lock down the tour rosters. Not that it mattered much either way - before the tour was over, Henry’d inevitably have made himself comfortable in Denny’s hotel room and would be onstage for both acts, regardless. Nancy usually went with Johnny, unless Kerry offered to pay her more. And without fail, there’d come a point in the tour where they’d just give the session musicians the night off and play an old Samurai set, the full band staying on stage throughout Johnny and Kerry’s solo portions. Sure, they each took their acts on the road separately sometimes too, but it never had quite the same energy as it did when they were all together, even if they hated to admit it at the time. Johnny wonders who Kerry tours with these days, who his band members are. Corpo scops the label provides? Old faces he’d remember? He’s gotta ask Kerry about that.
V finishes her makeup - just a smear of red lipstick and black liner smudged around her eyes. Classic rockergirl look. Johnny lets her feel his approval, and she smiles at herself in the mirror, a smile he knows is for him.
They’re all gonna love her, he’s sure of it. How could anyone not?
One of Kerry’s songs comes on the radio as V rides her bike up the hills to the address he gave 'em last night, and V pipes up to explain to Johnny that it’s a track off his most recent album, Made in America. It has more of an industrial, modern, electronic edge than the older stuff of Kerry's he’s heard - it's not quite as raw as Second Conflict, which came out only shortly after Johnny's death, after the end of Samurai. Johnny likes that old sound better, he decides. It sounds more like the Kerry he knew. This new shit ain’t bad, and it’s got a harder bite in some ways, but it’s missing the old rockerboy energy he remembers from Kerry, that electric something that could light up an entire stage.
Denny lives a bit down the hill from Kerry, but still well past the guarded gatehouse they've got to keep the riffraff from the rest of NC out. V breezes through it on her bike and pulls to a stop in front of a large, well-kept mansion.
Well, well-kept except for the muddy tire tracks crashing through the manicured hedges to the right side of the front gate.
“What happened here?” V wonders aloud, vaulting her leg over her bike and crossing to stand above where Johnny's already glitched over to crouch near the tracks.
Johnny stands and looks around. Through the gate, he can see the front of the house is undergoin’ some kind of construction work, looks like.
“Must be renovatin’,” he points out. “Guess Henry got here first and… borrowed a truck.” He sighs. He’d hoped whatever drama went on between the two back in the day had long since been resolved, but he has a suspicion those hopes were misplaced. If Henry’s trying to send Denny some kinda message… "Gonk always was good at improvising,” he jokes to V, who scowls.
“Knew sending Henry here alone last night was a mistake,” V mutters. “Dunno what Kerry was thinking.”
Johnny shakes his head. “Don’t think he actually made his move until today,” he points out. “Tire tracks’re fresh.”
V nods. “Think Kerry’s here?”
“Try the intercom,” Johnny suggests.
V crosses to the small metal box and presses the call button, and Johnny glitches over to stand beside her, leaning against the side of the concrete gate. It buzzes a handful of times, but there’s no response.
She opens her holo to call Kerry, but Johnny’s already glitched away to stand impatiently on the tire tracks, further into the brush around the side of the house.
“V, c’mon,” he says. “Let’s just follow the tracks around back, see what’s goin’ on first.”
V walks toward him, her arms swinging at her sides, the afternoon sun hitting her face and making her faded violet hair glow gold. Johnny glitches away to stand further down the newly smashed-in path, and sure enough, there’s Kerry’s fuckin’ muscle car parked right outside an enormous hole that’s been battered into the wall of the compound.
“See Kerry beat us here,” Johnny says, glitching over to stand next to it.
V nods again and steps past the shining golden Rayfield through the collapsed section of fence.
“You fuckin’ gonked?” a raised voice carries over to them. A voice that Johnny immediately recognizes as Denny’s.
“Hoo boy,” he says to V. “Sounds sadly familiar.”
“Speak for yourself, Denny! What’re you doin’ here?” a voice yells back, harsh and mocking. As V approaches, Johnny can see Henry lying with his hands behind his head on a deck chair, while Denny stands over him brandishing a large, spiked golden bat. “This really your house? This is your fuckin’ pool?!”
And that’s when Johnny notices that the pool Denny’s standing next to has been filled to the brim with cement from the cement truck that’s been driven straight across the lawn to stand hanging over the edge of said pool. Johnny sees Kerry then, too, leaning awkwardly against a large concrete fire pit with his arms crossed and a concerned look on his face, watching the quarrel unfold.
“V!” Kerry calls when he sees the merc walking towards him. “Uh, good you’re here. We got a problem.”
“You’re gonna pay for this, you piece of shit!” Denny spits, taking little notice of V as she enters the yard and crosses to stand beside Kerry.
“You bet I will! Just so I can come back again!” Henny roars back. “Maybe then, you’ll tell me why the hell you left me to die in the street!”
Oof. Johnny wonders what he’s missed here. Things were always rough between these two, but this seems extreme, even for them.
“Left you to die!?” Denny shouts incredulously. “Ugh, I wish you would fuckin’ die!” She waves the bat threateningly, then lowers it to her side. “Why’m I even standin’ here talkin’ to you? GET THE FUCK OUT!”
“What, now? Already?” Henry yells indignantly. “No grand tour? Introduce me to the fam?”
“Go anywhere near them and you’re dead!” Denny shouts back. “I kid you not, I’ma whack your fuckin’ head off.” She lifts the bat again and gesticulates with it as she yells, pointing it sharply at Henry’s face.
But Henry sits up and grins at this, propping himself on his elbows. “Oh, what? They don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?” Denny’s voice is pure venom, Johnny’s never heard her like this before. “That I lost years of my life to a scopbag like you?”
Henry leans forward, draping his long arms around his knees. “Yeah? Fuck… that how you remember it?” His voice is softer now, but only slightly. He pops out his leg to kick at Denny, just an angry gesture.
“Remember a helluva lot more than you do,” she growls.
“This supposed to be Henry’s surprise?” V says dryly to Kerry as she leans next to him against the fire pit.
“Yeah, I obviously missed a few beats,” Kerry scowls. “Looks like he was holdin’ some sort of grudge.”
“So he… flooded Denny’s pool with concrete?”
Kerry shrugs helplessly. “Henry did often get emotional.”
“Know what happened between them?” she asks. Johnny glitches in on the other side of Kerry, watching the scene play out before them.
“From what I’ve come to understand, one day Denny disappeared without a word, then hid from Henry.”
V frowns. “But you don’t know why? Was he hurting her?”
Kerry shakes his head. “No,” he says, then shrugs again. “I don’t know. Hadn’t spoken to either of ‘em in years.”
“So she had enough, hid from him,” V muses. "Must not've been too hard, given how outta it he was."
“Yep,” Kerry agrees. “That is, till I gave Henry her address.”
“Yeesh,” V mutters.
Johnny watches his old bandmates hurl insults at each other, and feels his hopes for the concert slipping away with each passin' moment.
“What about the concert?” V asks, picking up on Johnny’s unspoken worry.
“Haven’t gotten a chance to ask Denny yet,” Kerry admits. “Doesn’t look good, though.”
Johnny locks V in his gaze. “V, talk to them,” he tells her. “Kerry’ll just make it worse.”
V sighs nervously. “Not really my biz…”
Johnny shakes his head. V's got a magic tongue, in more ways than one. He's seen her talk people down in much higher stakes scenarios. “Go, go,” he reassures her. “They’ll get past it in a sec. Kerry didn’t piss all over himself outta joy when he saw me, either.”
In fact, Kerry pistol-whipped him across the face after pulling a gun on him. He knows V remembers, and he brings the memories to the forefront of his mind then to remind her. She's even still got a dark, purplish bruise next to her eye from it.
V swallows and nods, then walks slowly over to the fighting couple.
“This your backup?” Denny shouts derisively, gesturing towards V as she approaches. “Case you forgot why the hell you came here in the first place?”
“Kerry sent me,” V says, and Johnny can tell she’s doing her best to keep her voice even. “About the concert.”
Henry stretches and grins languidly on the pool chair, but Denny’s bat drops to her side again, and she turns to face V. “What concert?” she demands. “Why isn’t he over here talkin’ to me?”
She scowls at Kerry, who waves at her from the other side of the yard. Johnny glitches in to perch on the table next to the chair Henry’s splayed out on.
“Look, it’s awkward,” V says gently. “Kerry considers you both friends.”
“What a sensitive guy, shit,” Denny replies, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Given he’s the one who set this flaming turdbag on my doorstep.”
Henry theatrically kicks his feet towards Denny again, then claps them together like some kinda clown.
“We’re bringin’ back Samurai,” V tells her, ignoring Henry’s antics. “One night only.”
Denny arches an eyebrow at them. “That’s what he wants to get the crew back together for?” She lifts her bat again, tapping it against her opposite palm as she faces V. “Sweet, but no fucking way. Not about to play with this shitstain,” she adds, gesturing again towards Henry.
“Denny!” Henry protests plaintively.
“No,” Denny cuts him off, shaking her head, making her curls bounce. “No way. Either him or me,” she continues, fixing her gaze on V. “Choose.”
Johnny can see the confusion plain on V’s face. He rests his hand on his knee, studying the faces of his former bandmates. Denny looks fucking nova - she hasn’t aged a day, and her dark curls halo her face in an impressive fro, just like she used to wear it. She’s dressed in all white, and only her muddied shoes show any indication of the mess of her current surroundings. And she’s got that imperious air around her now, the way she gets when she’s mad as hell and not planning on backing down an inch.
“Denny digs in her heels, we’re done,” Johnny tells V sadly.
“How’s it goin’?” Kerry asks nervously. He’s crept up behind V while she was talkin’ to Denny, and now sidles in to stand beside her, putting his hands on his hips.
“Like shit, man!” Henry grumbles, his words slurring slightly. “Denny wants me outta the gig.” He points accusingly at his ex, looking to Kerry. “An’ you ‘n me already agreed on everything!”
Denny’s eyes narrow. “What, Kerry’s payin’ you? That’s what this is about?” She swings her bat towards Henry, stopping it inches from his face. “Fuck! This is all fuckin’ great," she snarls at Kerry. "So you get him away from me and get the fuck off my lawn!”
“Don’t make me choose,” Kerry says innocently, throwing up his hands.
“Maybe if someone would tell me what happened…” V suggests softly.
“Are you blind?” Denny shouts, turning back to V. “Fucker filled my pool with cement!”
V winces. “Maybe he had a good reason?”
“Really?” Denny yells. “A reason?”
“Aright,” V says, and turns to Henry. “The fuck you do this to her pool for? You outta your fuckin’ mind? You knew Kerry wanted to get Denny to play with us.”
“Just wanted to clear the air,” Henry says, but he sounds like a child being scolded now.
Johnny marvels at V’s ability to deescalate the situation. No one’s shouting anymore, and they’re all looking at V like she somehow has all the answers. She’s got this steadfast willingness to see the best in people, and though he finds it infuriating at times, he knows it’s the main thing that’s allowed her to accept him, to befriend him. To give him another chance when he didn’t deserve one, time and time again.
V locks eyes with him then. “Wonder what Silverhand woulda done,” she says pointedly, looking at Johnny. It’s her way of asking for his advice without makin’ it obvious she’s talkin’ to an invisible ghost, he realizes.
He smiles, but of course Henry and Denny just launch into another argument about which one of ‘em Johnny would’ve picked.
“Fuck,” Johnny mutters. “Really pisses me off. Denny’s on a control kick, settin’ conditions.” He watches them argue while Kerry just stands there helplessly, waiting for V to say something else.
“On the other hand, Henry’s got scop for brain,” Johnny continues, watching Henry flail in his chair towards Denny, like a little boy who’s had too much sugar. Except now he’s an old man who’s had too much booze and god knows what else. “Can’t trust him.”
“Thanks,” V says dryly, addressing all of them. “Real helpful.” She sighs and puts her hands on hips, turning to Kerry. “Guess we gotta go without one or the other.”
Kerry’s face falls. “Not a problem,” he says, waving his hand, but the disappointment is clear in his voice. “Should be able to borrow someone else for one gig.” He looks down. “Won’t be the same, though.”
Denny looks at him sympathetically. “It won’t ever be the same, Kerry.”
Johnny looks away at this. He knows Denny would never’ve said something like that to his face. He’s touched, but also sad that the only way he can see his friends now is as a digital ghost trapped in someone else’s body. He already knows who V is gonna pick, and in his heart, he agrees with her. How the fuck could he say no to Denny after that?
“Fuckin’ preem,” Kerry mutters under his breath.
V exhales through her teeth. “If we gotta choose, let’s play with Denny,” she says decisively.
Henry shoots up in his chair. “Fuck, Kerry! Seriously?” He points furiously at Denny. “She’s the one who’s makin’ a big deal outta this, not me!” He jumps to his feet and starts to angrily storm off, but Kerry jumps in front of him.
“Listen, I’ll get you-” he starts, but Henry cuts him off, his large frame dwarfing Kerry’s.
“Y’know what, Kerry? Fuck you,” he spits. “Good thing Silverhand isn’t here to see this,” he adds, prodding his finger roughly into Kerry’s shoulder before turning to storm off out through the hole in the wall.
“You done?” Denny calls after Henry. “Get out.” Kerry steps towards her, and she lowers her bat and sighs. “Alright,” she says to him. “What about Nancy?”
“Spoke last night,” Kerry tells her. “She’s gonna set it all up. Should be on her way here, now, actually. I’d hoped we could all catch up, warm up a little bit.” He looks down sheepishly.
As if on cue, Nancy swaggers in, keyboard case in hand. She looks like she hasn’t slept, but she’s wearin’ a black tank now with a leather jacket, lookin’ more like the Nance that Johnny remembers. He finds himself wishin’ she’d gotten here earlier - maybe she coulda talked some sense into these gonks.
“What’s goin’ on?” she asks casually. “Heard we were gonna jam today.”
Denny shakes her head. “Not in the mood. I know the songs, I’ll be ready.”
Kerry looks at Nancy helplessly. “Things got messy,” he explains, and Nancy’s eyes dart to the pool.
“Figured as much when I saw Henry out front on my way in,” she says coolly, raising an eyebrow. Her gaze flicks to V then, and Johnny watches V straighten slightly. “So, Denny, take it you’ve met Kerry’s new squeeze?”
Johnny almost laughs at how much V jumps outta her skin at this, but Kerry throws his arm around her casually.
“Yup,” he says, not missing a beat. “Gonna fill in for Johnny,” he explains to Denny.
V’s eyes dart nervously between the remaining band members, but Denny just laughs.
“Ha!” she exclaims. “The hell’d you find her?”
Kerry smiles at V conspiratorially, and Johnny feels her heart quicken. “Met her at a party, believe it or not,” he says with a wink.
V just nods mutely.
“She got the chops?” Denny asks, her voice more serious.
Kerry removes his arm from V, spreading his hands. “Denny, please,” he teases. “She's my new protege. Would I settle for anything less?”
Denny shrugs. “Fair enough. Guess we’ll see soon.”
“Did I miss the party?” Nancy says.
“Nah,” Kerry says. “Come with me back to mine, we’ll catch up there.” He turns to Denny, who’s poking at the filled pool with her bat. “See you at the show?” he says to her, and she nods once and waves without turning to look at him.
Kerry shrugs, then turns to V. “Wanna join?” he asks, but she shakes her head. She just left her 3-day bender at Kerry’s house, and Johnny can tell she’s not quite ready to embark upon what he’s sure is gonna be another one with Nancy. Kerry shrugs and heads toward his car, Nancy following at his heels. V watches them leave, then takes a tentative step towards Denny, who’s still surveying the mess of her pool.
“Fuck,” Denny mutters. “Now I gotta find someone to clean this up…”
“You okay?” V asks her cautiously.
“No,” Denny says, her voice low, deflated of its anger. “Just the sight of that douchewad reminded me how not okay it is.” She stares at her ruined pool, her eyes distant, then turns to V and flashes a wide smile. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll be past it by showtime.”
Johnny can feel V’s disbelief at the fact that Denny’s reassuring her about her own readiness, and not the other way around, but V just nods, and Johnny glitches to sit next to her, resting his feet on the now-solid cement that’s filling the pool.
They stand there awkwardly for a moment, then V moves to leave.
“Well, nice to meet you,” she says, but Denny just nods without looking up from the pool.
“Wonder what Henry did to her,” Johnny muses as they walk back along the path to V’s bike out front.
“So, his fault after all?” V questions.
“Well, normally, Denny’s not a raging bitch.”
“Well, pretty sure she knew Henry really wanted this concert,” V says, and Johnny feels a spike of guilt. Henry probably needed this. And Johnny did want the whole band back together for this, more than he wants to admit.
“Mhm,” he agrees. “Doubt she really gave a fuck about the pool.”
A Relic malfunction hits V then, and she doubles over gasping, clutching the nearby wall for support.
She hasn’t been sleeping enough, Johnny thinks. Hasn’t been eating enough either. He can feel her lack of appetite, but also her constant hunger gnawing at his own stomach, and her headaches are starting to bleed through to him, too. And she’s gotten noticeably thinner, he realizes with another pang of guilt.
“V,” he says gently, glitching over to put his hand on her shoulder. “Breathe.”
She chokes and gasps, her vision still a mess, but leans against the wall until it passes enough for her to stagger the rest of the way to her bike.
Henry’s sittin’ on the curb out front, looking like a stray dog that just got kicked out of the house.
“Sorry it played out like that,” V says to him sincerely, still catching her breath. But Henry just looks down and waves her away, then snarls when she takes a step closer. So she backs off and swings her leg onto her bike, shooting him one last sympathetic look before starting the engine and speeding off down the hill.
“How come you didn’t wanna go to Kerry’s?” Johnny asks, glitching onto the back of the bike and wrapping his arms around her torso.
He feels her stiffen, then relax into him.
“Dunno,” she says, her words getting lost in the wind, but Johnny can hear them in his head just fine. “Need some time to do V things, ya know?”
Johnny nods, resting his chin briefly on her shoulder as she zigzags down the switchbacks into the city. But after taking the Watson bridge, she turns south instead of heading up towards her apartment, and he realizes quickly where they’re headed as she pulls her bike into the tunnel that leads to the Afterlife parking lot.
“So you’d rather drink alone than with Kerry and Nance?” he teases, glitching to stand near the entrance as she heads towards it.
“Fuck you,” she says, but she’s smiling. “Just wanna decompress a little.”
She jogs down the stairs into the bar, flashing Emmerick a grin, who steps aside when he sees her. Rogue’s not in her booth, to Johnny’s relief, but Claire’s behind the bar and she starts reaching for the tequila as soon as she sees V.
“Excited for the race this weekend?” she says, and V sits up short as she’s about to down the shot.
“Saturday?” she says smoothly, coverin’ up the fact that she’d completely forgotten about the race as she shoots back the tequila, slamming the glass back onto the bar. “Hell yeah I am!”
Claire grins and does a shot with her. “That’s what I like to hear,” she says, already pouring them another round.
They're a couple shots deep when V’s holo starts ringing, and Nancy Hartley’s name appears on her screen.
“Hey,” Nancy says as V answers. “Gig’s all set up super sweet, like. Tomorrow night, at the Red Dirt.”
“Tomorrow?” V squeaks.
"Yeah,” Nancy says. “Called Red Dirt and asked if they'd be down to host us this Friday. Guy there flipped a shit and cancelled whatever small-time band they had booked. Figured doing it fast would be the move, less of a chance for a media frenzy than if we announced it weeks out.”
“Tomorrow it is, then,” V chokes. “Red Dirt. Kerry gettin’ cold feet yet?”
“No, no, not at all,” Nancy assures her. “He’s pretty stoked, in fact. Haven’t seen him like this since the Silverhand days.”
Johnny can feel V smile at this. “What about Henry?" she asks. “Still not on board?”
“Didn’t even try,” Nancy replies. “Not wastin’ my breath on that dicktip.”
“And you? You still at Kerry’s?” V asks, and Nancy nods.
“Relivin’ the old days,” she jokes. “You gonna be joining us?”
V considers this. Johnny can feel that part of her wants to.
“Think I’m gonna try and get some rest before the big night,” she says honestly.
“Well, see you tomorrow!” Nancy says brightly, then pauses suddenly and looks offscreen, probably listening to somethin’ Kerry’s sayin’. “Oh, and don’t worry about your axe. Kerry and I got the gear all rounded up.”
The reporter hangs up then, leaving V to stare into Claire’s curious face.
“What’s happening at Red Dirt tomorrow night?” she says, raising an eyebrow as she fills V’s glass up again.
“It’s nothing. Just a concert.”
“Oh?” Claire presses. “Who’s playing?”
Part of Johnny hopes V will lie, but the other part of him hopes she’ll tell all her friends, invite the whole fuckin’ city.
“I am,” V says. “Well, sort of.”
“The fuck’s that mean?”
“It’s like… a Samurai reunion concert,” she mumbles. “I’m gonna be fillin’ in for Johnny.”
“Wait,” Claire says, placing the bottle down and leaning towards V with both her hands on the bar. “You’re tellin’ me you’re playing a show at the Red Dirt tomorrow night with the surviving members of Samurai? With Kerry heckin’ Eurodyne?”
V shrugs, then nods. “More or less,” she says.
“V, what the fuck? You hit your head on a job?”
“Know it sounds gonk,” V says. “Don’t even ask me how it happened.”
“No, V, you gotta tell me how the fuck this happened. Still don’t even totally believe you,” Claire adds incredulously.
“It’s real,” V insists. “I went to a party at Kerry’s the other night. We hit it off. One thing led to another, and…”
“You’re saying you just randomly met Kerry Eurodyne at a party and he asked you to play a show with him?” Claire’s eyebrows are halfway up her forehead now. “Do you even play guitar?”
“I can when I need to,” V says, and Johnny is impressed at how well she’s keeping her cool under Claire’s interrogation. He knows she’s internally freaking out, though. V hasn’t told Claire about Johnny, so to her, this must seem even more outta left field.
Claire nods, still skeptical, but pours them another round. “Believe it when I see it,” she says.
V raises the shotglass to her and downs it. “So you’re coming?”
“Well, now I gotta know if you’re full of shit or not,” Claire says.
V’s regretting this more and more by the second. And as if things couldn’t get any worse, her holo starts ringing again, and V almost falls out of her chair when she sees that it’s Judy.
She almost lets it go to voicemail, but decides to answer instead.
“Hey,” she says slowly, waiting to see what Judy says first.
“You’ve been ignoring my texts,” Judy says without missing a beat.
“Sorry,” V says, running her hand through her hair. “Been a weird couple days.”
“That Judy?” Claire asks, leaning across the bar so V’s holocam picks her up too. “Hey girl!” she says. She can’t see Judy, but Judy can see her. “You coming to V’s show tomorrow?”
“V’s what?” Judy replies, furrowing her brow in confusion. “V, what is she talking about?”
V sighs. “I’m playing a show at Red Dirt tomorrow night with the remaining members of Samurai. Wanna come watch?”
“You’re what?” Judy asks, startled, but somewhat less so than Claire. She does know about Johnny, after all. “Johnny put you up to this?”
V shakes her head. “It was mostly Kerry’s doing, actually.”
“Kerry’s?” Judy asks incredulously. “Kerry Eurodyne? V, you say his name like he’s an old fuckin’ choom of yours.”
“He is, in a way,” V explains. “You know it’s complicated,” she adds, her voice pleading. She doesn’t wanna do this now, not again.
Judy is silent for a moment. “Do you want me to come?”
V hesitates for a second, then nods. Johnny can feel her conflicting emotions warring inside her. “Yeah,” she says softly. “I do.”
“Then I’ll be there,” says Judy and hangs up.
Claire is polishing a glass, one eyebrow still raised.
“We were trying to keep it low-key,” V admits. “But guess the cat’s outta the bag.” She sighs, then opens her holo again and proceeds to call Misty and Vik and invite them both. Misty's thrilled, Vik less so, but both agree to show up. After another moment of hesitation, she calls River, who's also thrilled. And after doing yet another shot with Claire, she texts Panam and Mitch too, on the off-chance they’ll be in town.
“Gonna be a hell of a party,” Johnny gloats, glitching in next to her.
Her HUD flashes, and a message from Kerry appears.
What about Johnny? He amped for this gig or meh?
V sighs and types out a quick series of responses.
As amped as he’s ever been
Know it’s important to him or I wouldn’t be taking those pills again
I don’t hand over the wheel lightly
After a moment, her holo flashes again as Kerry’s replies start to appear.
Well I’m amped as fuck, if anyone’s wonderin
It’ll be fuckin shimra
Just gotta remember not to get too wasted before
Old habits die hard haha
This bodes well, Johnny thinks.
V sighs heavily and does another shot.
When they get home later, V’s too tired and drunk to do much, so she puts on her vinyl copy of A Cool Metal Fire and flops onto the bed without even bothering to wipe off her make-up. Johnny’s more than game to revisit his old work tonight, so he glitches in beside her while it plays, and before long she’s curled up against his chest while he smokes a cigarette and absentmindedly plays with her hair.
They listen to the whole thing front to back, and Johnny lets his mind wander to some of his favorite memories of his time with Samurai - stuff he wants V to see. There’s a lotta bad stuff mixed in there, but he finds himself focusing more now on the good times, those brief shining moments when they were all happy. When he felt like they were on top of the world.
The next day passes quickly - V sleeps until almost noon, and she takes her time showering and getting ready and even orders herself a proper meal before heading out to Santo Domingo. Johnny complains, as always, about how much he hates Rancho Coronado, but he realizes this time that it's precisely because of how much time he spent here with Samurai at the beginning, playin' house shows and shitty dives and crashing on the couches and in the beds of groupies. Like all of this fuckin' city, it holds his history, his youth, his memories - good and bad.
There’s a small crowd gathered outside Red Dirt when they arrive, and more than a handful of paparazzi as well. Likely waitin' for Kerry. No one takes notice of V as she strolls in the front door, the bouncer checking her name against his list and nodding once to let her through.
Denny and Nancy are perched around a table in the middle of the bar with a guitar case balanced on the small table between them.
“Hey, V,” Denny says, waving the merc over when she spots her.
Denny’s wearin’ a little red and gold number, and Nancy looks like a completely different person - she’s slicked back her hair and is wearing a leather romper like the ones she used to wear back in the old days. And there’s a new light in her eyes that makes her look decades younger to Johnny.
“V!” Nancy says excitedly. “Got somethin’ for ya.” She rests her hand on the guitar case next to her, and Johnny glitches in to get a closer look at it, removing his shades. “Dunno if you know, but once upon a time this was Silverhand’s.”
She opens the guitar case with a flourish, and Johnny almost falls over when he sees it’s his old fuckin’ Orphean DeLuze. And it's his real, original one; he can tell by where the paint’s worn off from his playing, from the old stickers he remembers covering it with. Holy hell, he thinks, leaning forward to examine it. V does the same, and he catches her eye and grins at her.
“Fuck,” he says admiringly. “Nancy just gets shit done! Should just whisper ‘Mikoshi’ in her ear, we’ll be all set.”
V smiles at him, but he feels her stomach drop slightly at the casual reminder of what they’ve gotta do.
Nancy twists over her shoulder to see what V is smiling at, and V catches herself and turns back to the guitar.
“The DeLuze Orphean,” she says admiringly. “‘Member that Samurai graffiti in Heywood, where the bakery used to be?”
“Uh huh,” Nancy nods. “Got painted over a while ago. But yeah, Johnny was holding the Orphean there. Nice one.”
Johnny, of course, has never seen the graffiti V’s referring to. But he can see it now in her memories - a big mural of him rocking out with his guitar, rendered in garish colors but with surprising detail. In V’s memories, she’s younger, a teenager maybe, smoking a cigarette and staring at the image transfixed. Guess she was a little fangirl after all, he thinks affectionately.
He realizes V is blushing at the memory, and pulls himself back to the present and out of V’s past.
“Where’d you find it?” V asks, reaching forward to run her hand across its strings, touching the painted wooden body.
“Bought it,” Nancy says simply. “Private collection. Always like to have everything down to the last detail.”
“Gets too obsessed at times, but gotta respect her hustle,” Johnny says, still grinning.
V nods and turns to Denny. “How’re you feelin’ ahead of the show?”
“Weird,” Denny says. “Like I’m about to pretend to be… myself.”
Johnny strangely knows how she feels. They’ve all lived fifty years on Earth that he hasn’t, sure, but he spent those fifty years in Mikoshi, feeling nothing but time itself stretching out like digital silk in all directions, infinite and empty. But tonight, they’ve gotta get up there and be who they were fifty years ago. Before ‘Saka Tower, before death came for him and life came for them and tore them all apart.
“Plus,” Denny adds. “Johnny’s out. Never thought I’d say I miss the bastard, but I damn well do.”
Wow. She’d definitely never have said that to his face if she knew he was here listening. Johnny puffs up at this theatrically, tugging his belt buckle and beaming at V to hide how actually touched he is by Denny’s admission. But he knows V feels his happiness anyway, and she shoots him a shy smile.
But true to her devilish nature, she turns the moment around by taking advantage of Denny’s moment of softness. “So, how ‘bout you tell me what happened with Henry?” she says to Denny, and to Johnny’s surprise, his old drummer smiles warmly at V.
“Ancient history,” Denny says, sighing sadly. “Gonk kept falling into all sorts of crap, then I’d have to dig him out.”
“Got tired of getting your hands dirty all the time?” V guesses.
“Not quite,” Denny says, shaking her head. “Managed to get him a gig with a decent band, actually. Henry quit usin’, got his shit together. Things were goin’ great." She heaves a sigh. "So he booted me out of his life.”
Johnny frowns at this, and V mirrors his expression. “He stopped needing you.”
Denny nods. “He ditched me, partied with his new pals for a month. Then they tossed him out ‘cause he started acting up again.” She looks down and shrugs. “Ran into him on the street, total mess. Gonk even fainted for effect, a tug at my heartstrings.”
“What’d you do?” V asks. Nancy’s watching Denny too, a sympathetic look on her face. She’s clearly familiar with this story.
“Left him right there,” Denny tells them. “And made damn sure he couldn’t find me again.”
“You don’t think there’s a chance he’s changed? He was in rehab, after all,” V says, but Denny shakes her head.
“Lost any chance he had of proving that to me when he filled my pool with cement,” Denny reminds her, and Nancy laughs at this.
V turns back to Nance. “Thanks for putting the gig together,” she says earnestly.
Nancy smiles. “Please. Kerry couldn’t twiddle his own asshole without my help.”
“Silverhand was probably the same,” V says, shooting a wink at Johnny, who scoffs at her in mock affront.
“Heh, worse,” Nancy says with a chuckle. “At least Kerry did what I told him to do, kept outta my hair.”
Johnny spreads his hands in a helpless shrug, but he can't help the smile that tugs upwards on his lips. Fuck, he’s missed these gonks. He wonders how things woulda turned out differently for them if he’d been around these last fifty years. Would they be better off? Worse?
Knowing him, the latter seems more likely. He frowns, but quickly shakes himself out of it.
Now’s his chance to make up for it. Probably his last one.
Hopefully his last one, because the alternative would mean...
“Where’s Kerry?” V asks, casting her eyes around the room.
“Should be here any minute,” Nancy assures her. She raises an eyebrow at V. “Told me you play really well. Better be true, ‘cause we sure didn’t do a dress rehearsal.”
“Right,” V teases. “Can’t let that full house down.”
She’s right, the bar’s still almost empty. But from the sound of it, the crowd outside has tripled in size.
“Honestly, got no idea who these people are,” Nancy says, looking over V’s shoulder at the bouncer manning the door. V twists her head to follow her gaze, and Johnny feels her suddenly remember the friends she invited.
“Thought Kerry didn’t want word to get around,” V says darkly.
“Yeah,” Nancy agrees with a wry smile. “Well, we’ll see about that.”
“Think the media caught wind of this?” V asks.
“For sure,” Nancy says, confirming V’s worst fears. “Hyenas.”
“Who’s fillin’ in for Henry?” V asks, changing the subject.
“Kerry got Drausin from Cutthroat to join us,” Nancy tells her while Denny sits silently, nursing her drink. Gin, neat, just like old times, Johnny notices. “I know him, seen him play,” Nancy continues.
“And?” V asks. “He any good?”
“He’s… fine. Just… fine. You’re the mystery dish, here,” Nancy reminds her.
“Just wait,” V says with an air of confidence that belies the dread Johnny can feel churning in her stomach. “Like I said, nothing Silverhand could do that I can’t.”
Nancy and Denny exchange a look, but V just grins at them, and Johnny can't help but admire her bravado.
“Just a min,” she tells them. “Gonna go make sure my friends don’t have any trouble at the door.”
Denny raises her glass to her, and V steps away to tentatively approach the door guy.
“Can I help you?” he asks her.
“I’m playin' with the band tonight. Can I give you my guest list?”
“Sure,” the bouncer grunts, lookin’ her up and down. “But keep it short, capacity’s limited. Don’t usually got Kerry Eurodyne dragging half of NC into this dive.”
V nods, and leans over to scrawl her friends names on the clipboard he presents her. Johnny can feel her hesitation as she writes out Judy’s name. He knows part of her is afraid to let her friends see her like this, see Johnny controlling her on stage like some kind of horrible puppet show.
On the other hand, Johnny realizes this is probably the closest he’ll come to ever actually properly meeting them. And he can feel too that part of V wants them to see that, too, the part of herself that’s him now. Johnny in his element.
He remembers how Judy could hear him through the BD link she created, that strange night the three of 'em shared by the lake. It was a weird experience for all of them, and probably the weirdest not-quite-threesome Johnny’s ever had, but not all in a bad way. V’s remembering it now, too, but he feels her push those thoughts away as she thanks the bouncer and heads towards the bar to grab a drink before they start. She gets Centzon, of course, and downs it in one gulp, trying to still the shaking in her hands.
Johnny notices then that the bar’s playin’ Black Dog over its sound system. It always startles him a bit, hearing this song out in the wild, considering he never even actually released it before he died. He’s heard it on the radio a few times now since wakin’ up in V’s head, and she’s explained to him how the masters were recovered and released posthumously by his label. And, of course, it’s gone on to become one of his most well-known songs. Figures, he thinks.
All he remembers is writing it on a 3-day solo bender, hating everyone, hating himself, wanting nothing more than to go out in a blaze of glory in Arasaka Tower, taking down the whole corp with him. The corporation that took everything from him.
And now they’re still taking more. They’ve taken his soul, they’re taking V’s life, they’re gonna take his a second fuckin’ time.
But right now, he’s still standing. And tonight, he’s gonna remind this city of that.
“Pill time,” Johnny whispers in V’s ear. “Just be discreet.”
“And if I start puking blood again?” V hisses back, and Johnny suddenly realizes how truly scared she is.
“This is Kerry’s big night,” he reminds her, and she nods and stands from the bar, making her way towards the bathroom.
“I got a feeling Nancy doesn’t think I can keep up with ‘em,” V complains playfully. Johnny can tell she’s stalling, trying to keep the mood light.
“Well, she’s right,” Johnny teases back as V pushes open the door to the dingy bathroom. He glitches into one of the empty toilet stalls, and V steps in after him and shuts the door behind her.
“Ready to thrash?” he asks her, leaning his head back against the wall.
V reaches into her pocket for the pill, then stares at it in her palm, hesitating.
“I dunno,” she says. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
“Now you mention it?” Johnny says, stopping up short, trying to hide his frustration. Fuck. If V really doesn’t wanna do this, why the fuck didn’t she say something sooner? He wants this, wants it so bad, but he’s not gonna fuckin’ force her.
“It’s getting worse,” she points out, a slight quaver in her voice. “Maybe this gig isn’t worth it?”
Johnny hates himself for it, but he’s fucking itching to take the wheel. Since the last two times they’ve swapped places, the urge has gotten stronger, almost like a pain he can feel in his teeth. It’s not a conscious desire, it’s something deeper, more primal, like the urge to struggle against rope when you’re tied. Reality feels so close, but he’s still just a silent passenger with no agency beyond what he can say and do to V. And he wants to be free one last time before he dies for good. And to him, freedom means playing his guitar on a stage.
“Fine,” he says, trying to hide his disappointment. “Go out and play. I’ll just sit back, tend to my bleedin’ ears.”
“That’s not fair,” she says. “You got me into this.”
“Well, you wanna go out there and tell Kerry the show’s cancelled?” Johnny points out, his frustration leaking out despite himself. “Cause if you want me to do it, still gotta hand over the keys.”
“Okay, fine,” V says with a heavy sigh. “You got me.”
He looks at her seriously, then. He can't deny that he did kinda strong-arm her into this. His usual fuckin' style.
His face softens. “Really, V,” he says, as gently as he can manage. “We can call the whole thing off.”
She shakes her head, her nearly-white hair falling around her face, the shadows from the flickering overhead fluorescent light playing strangely across her features and making her look even weaker, more sickly. “Have fun,” she says, and tosses back the pill before he can react or move to stop her.
He watches as she doubles over and collapses forward, catching herself with her arm on the back of the toilet and clutching the seat with her chrome hand. And true to her word, she vomits a fountain of blood and bile into the toilet bowl as her vision glitches blue and Johnny feels himself pulled inward, back down towards her. It’s her eyes he’s seeing out of now, and her pain he’s feeling tearing through his head, and it sharpens into a single, fine point before bursting outwards into streams of color that culminate in that subtle but disorienting shift he feels as the balance of power transfers between them. And then V is gone, and Johnny is once again alone in her skin.
He heaves himself to his feet, waiting for his vision to clear, then pushes open the stall door and steps out to find himself face to face with V’s reflection in the mirror. There’s a trickle of blood coming out of the corner of her mouth, but other than that, she looks fucking hot, even as pale and thin as she’s gotten. If anything, her sickliness just adds to the rockergirl vibe she’s given’ off. Her eyes are ringed with black, her hair is wild in the way that he likes, and she’s wearin’ a short white tank top with his dog tags and her choker above her tight black leather pants. She hadn’t wanted to wear his clothes for this, hadn’t wanted to look like a cosplaying superfan, she’d said. But she relented and wore his jacket after all, and he’s grateful for it. Because otherwise, the face staring back at him suddenly feels completely alien to him, even though it’s now become as familiar as his own. Because it’s not his face. He shouldn’t be seeing this face in a mirror, V should be.
He looks down at V’s chrome hand and flexes her fingers, feeling his stomach clench. He knows this is risky for her - what he’s doing, what he’s about to do, all of it.
But all he can do now is remind Night City what Samurai can do. And they’re all gonna watch V do it.
“Let’s motor,” he says to her reflection, even though he knows she can’t hear him. He takes one last look at V’s face, then steps out to rejoin his bandmates.
Kerry enters the bar just then, and he meets Johnny’s eyes from across the floor.
“There you are,” he says, and Johnny tilts his chin up towards him as they both head towards the table Nancy and Denny are still seated at.
A big guy that Johnny’s never seen before, with a bleached mohawk and a gold chain around his neck, is standing there between the girls now. Kerry gestures lazily at him from where he’s standing next to Johnny.
“This is Drausin,” he says. “From Cutthroat.”
“Hey,” Drausin says excitedly. “Big fan, huge fan. You too? Got all their albums. I mean, I never dreamed I’d-”
“Chill, choom,” Kerry cuts him off gently, but there’s a bite to his voice. “She’s in the same boat as you.” He shoots Johnny a wink, then turns back to Drausin. “Wanna talk to a star, talk to me. And get that shakin’ under control.” But then Kerry looks down and away from the big gonk, and mutters into Johnny’s ear. “Think my shakes’re the same… or worse.”
But the truth is, Johnny’s anything but nervous right now. He knows this is just another stolen moment - he's already taken more of them than he should - but the exhilaration of it all is quickly overriding any lingering guilt. And he’s still comin' up on the intoxicating high of actually being in control of a real body for what - if all goes well - will be his final time. And being in this fuckin’ bar, surrounded by his old bandmates, Kerry at his side, is starting to all coalesce into a heady rush. But it’s not a bad thing; he’s feeling revved up, energized, and ready to put on a fucking show.
“Crowd got you stressed?” he teases Kerry. “Or is it me?”
The other band members are watching them, he realizes, but he’s not sayin’ anything that couldn’t pass for a new couple flirting. He can tell that Kerry’s enjoying this a little too much.
“Fuuck you,” Kerry drawls lazily, scowling dramatically.
“Missed you too,” Johnny teases, hamming it up even more.
His eyes fall to his old Orphean in front of him, and he reverently runs V’s hand along its steel strings.
“Alright,” he says, grabbing the guitar and lifting it from the case. “Let’s do this.”
Nancy and Denny’s gear’s already set up onstage, so Johnny plugs in the Orphean and runs a quick sound check with Kerry and the band. Kerry and Nance already hashed out the set list, it seems, and Johnny's got no beef with their selections, as long as they stick with his request for the encore. And fuckin’ hell, Johnny’s missed this. The feeling of standing on a stage with a guitar in his hands, a real one, is enough alone to overwhelm him.
The bouncer’s started letting people in, and before Johnny knows it, the floor is fuckin’ packed. He grins out at the sea of faces, and someone’s screamin’ the band’s name over and over at the top of their lungs. Just like the old days. He can pick out a couple of V’s friends in the crowd, and gives them a quick nod.
And then Kerry grabs the mic.
“Alright Night City, ready for some rock and roll?” he says in his stage voice, a voice Johnny hasn’t heard in what feels like a million fuckin’ years. He catches himself beaming at his old friend, and Kerry turns to him with a grin before launching straight into A Like Supreme.
Johnny grins and flashes devil horns at the crowd with V’s hand, his eyes falling to the tattoo he put there. He hopes everyone here tonight will remember this, remember them like this, remember V’s face.
But then his eyes lock with a familiar face in the crowd, and his grin falters. Fuckin’ Rogue is here, because of fuckin’ course she is, and Johnny’s heart clenches at the sight of her. But she’s smiling up at him, just like she used to, and he feels his body relax as he allows himself to smile back at her.
It’s fuckin’ good to be back, even if it’s just on borrowed time, in a borrowed body, like he said to her that night.
And even though it’s V’s hands sliding deftly along the strings, V’s voice coming out of his mouth as he screams into the mic with Kerry, V’s body he’s slamming up against his old friend as he shreds out his old solo that his fingers will never forget, he can’t remember the last time he’s felt this fuckin’ alive.
This is Johnny at his finest, and he wishes V were here to see it.
Notes:
I've always wished there was an option for V to invite their friends to the Samurai concert so in my game, I used AMM to do exactly that lmao. Do they have stuff to say about it? You bet they do!! Stay tuned lmao
Chapter 33: Kill Steel
Summary:
V and her friends go out together after the concert and have some difficult conversations.
Chapter Text
Johnny must’ve let the pills wear off on their own rather than take the blockers this time, because V becomes slowly aware of herself again while Johnny’s still in control, and it scares the shit out of her. She can see, she can hear, but she can’t control her body and she doesn’t think Johnny can hear her, either. Her mind rebels, thrashing against his instinctively, reaching out to try and move her own hands to no avail. She wonders if this is how Johnny felt the first time he woke up in her head. No wonder he tried to kill her.
She can see that he’s sitting at the bar now, havin’ a drink with Kerry. From the looks of it, the show’s already over and the crowd’s milling around, a lot of ‘em clamoring to talk to Kerry.
“Fuck,” Kerry is saying, a grin plastered across his face. “This is fucked up.”
“What is?” Johnny replies. It’s a strange and disorienting sensation, to feel her mouth and limbs move under someone else’s control, to hear someone else’s words coming out in her voice.
Kerry looks sheepish. “Actually, uh… got pretty nervous for this thing.” He glances down, then smiles up at V. “Felt like I had something to prove. To myself, to you, and… whoever the fuck.” It sounds to V like he’d been about to say something else, but he just laughs. “But... all I did was have a good time,” he continues. “That’s it.”
She feels Johnny grin back at him. “Wanna do it again?” he teases.
Kerry shakes his head. “No. That was enough,” he says, his voice strangely rough with emotion.
“In that case…” Johnny says thoughtfully, reaching for the Orphean that’s sitting on the bar next to them and sliding it towards Kerry. “Here, take it. As a souvenir.”
A slideshow of emotions passes across Kerry’s face. “You sure?” he says, looking directly into her eyes.
“Wouldn’t play without you," Johnny says. "Just wouldn’t be the same." There’s a sadness in his voice that she realizes is because he’s pretty convinced that this show was the last one he’s ever gonna play.
Kerry nods and picks up the guitar, pulling it onto his lap and positioning his fingers on the frets. “See what you’re doin’ here,” he says. “But I still plan on playin’.”
He begins to strum the guitar, picking out some interesting riffs. Johnny watches him, and she feels his small smile playing across her lips. And then he reaches inward for her with his mind, and she registers his surprise and pleasure when he senses her returning presence.
He sits up straight on the barstool and reaches with her hand into her pocket, fumbling for the pills. V wonders if he’s gonna pop another pseudoendotrizine, keep his roll going, but to her relief he reaches for the blockers instead, popping one in his mouth and chasing it down with a shot.
Her vision goes dark almost immediately, a loud roar filling her ears as Johnny pitches forward onto the bar, resting her head on her forearm to catch her from falling over. She feels a painful tingling in her whole body as all her nerves come back online, and suddenly all her senses feel real again, sharp like knives - the smell of smoke, the soreness in her fingertips, the hoarseness in her throat from all the screaming onstage.
“You wanna hear a new-” Kerry begins, looking up and suddenly noticing her compromised state. “Johnny?” he asks tentatively.
V balls her hand into a fist and groans loudly in response. It’s the most she can manage.
“He’s… gone, isn’t he,” Kerry says softly.
“Yeah,” V chokes, trying and failing to pull herself upright. “But he can still hear you,” she reminds him, leaning heavily on her arm on the bar, taking deep breaths to collect herself before anyone else takes notice of her condition.
“Thanks, but… not in the mood for hovering tables and voices from beyond the grave right now," Kerry says, and there's that disappointment in his voice again.
As V focuses on taking long steady breaths, she tries to remember what she can from the show. Johnny’s recollections of the concert itself are surprisingly vague, even though he hadn’t been that hammered or anything. Probably the adrenaline, she realizes. She’s never performed onstage before, so she wouldn’t know firsthand, but it feels similar to the way she remembers her own combat experiences. That high-intensity shit where she has to get in the zone, let her body take over. But from the flashes she can recall, Johnny had the fuckin’ time of his life up there, and revelation makes an unexpected warmth curl inside of her. She's glad she could give him this, despite what it may have cost her.
They closed out the set with Never Fade Away, V remembers, and strangely Johnny’s memories of that part of the gig are much clearer than the rest. She realizes suddenly that it’s ‘cause Johnny did his best to make sure of that - while playing the song, he’d been focused on crystalizing that moment in his memory, remembering every detail, for her to see now. She feels a lump rise in her throat, and unconsciously reaches for his dog tags that hang around her neck.
“How was the gig?” she asks Kerry, finally pushing herself up to a proper sitting position.
“Hella preem!” he crows, a true smile spreading across his face. “Samurai’s found its new groove.”
“Damn shame I had to miss it,” V says, managing a smile back.
“Eh,” Kerry says, looking back down at his new guitar, then up at V again. “Can still come to my show.” He shoots her a wink, and V is suddenly blushing.
She went to one of Kerry’s shows once with her mom when she was still a kid; her mom had been a huge fan, too. She remembers her mother scraping together eddies for months to afford a ticket. He’d played at the old stadium in Santo, and V had barely been able to make out his face - he’d just been a tiny figure on a huge stage - but she remembers the electric energy of the crowd, of Kerry. Of his music. She imagines what it would be like to be there as his friend, or as his date, standing off to the side of the stage with the roadies.
Kerry studies her face with a curious expression, then reaches into the pocket of his coat. To her surprise, he pulls out an ornate pistol, one she recognizes from Johnny’s jumbled memories of the night they met. He sets it on the bar and slides it over to her, looking up at her almost shyly.
“Maybe you should hang onto this, actually,” he suggests.
V reaches for the pistol. “You sure?” she asks. It’s beautiful piece - an old-school revolver with a barrel covered in baroque patterns hammered into the silver.
“The very gun I tried to shoot Johnny with,” Kerry jokes. “When you crashed my party and interrupted my shower.”
“Meanin’ you tried to shoot me,” V corrects him.
“Yeah,” Kerry agrees. “And earlier…” he begins, a sad look crossing his features. “Eh, never mind.”
V looks at him questioningly but doesn’t press him.
“It's strange," he murmurs, more to himself than to V. “Feels like I fell asleep... and woke up fifty years later."
Like Johnny, V thinks. Or rather, because of Johnny, she realizes. Kerry’s still more or less a stranger to her, and he’s so much older, so much more famous… but part of her knows how he must feel. She can imagine all too well the kind of crater a person like Johnny would leave in someone’s life. The kind of crater he likely is gonna leave in hers. Assuming she even makes it out of this alive. The thought fills her with a sudden sadness that threatens to overwhelm her, and she looks away from Kerry.
“I’ll drink to that,” she says, but Kerry picks up the guitar on his lap and stands to leave instead.
“Gonna head out,” he says. “Try and dodge the paparazzi before things get too crazy.” He places a hand on her shoulder, leaning in to plant a quick kiss on her cheek. “Take care, V,” he says gently. “And... thank you for this. I’ll… be in touch.” He gives her another long look, then hurriedly walks off towards the back exit of the bar.
V sits there, a bit thrown off by his sudden departure. She surveys the bar, trying to catch a familiar face.
“V,” Johnny says, and she whirls her head around to see he’s glitched in behind the bar, leaning forward on his hands. “How you feelin’?” he asks, his face a mask of concern. “Can’t believe that asshole Kerry just up and left you like this.”
“Don’t think crowds are his thing,” she observes, thinking of how he spent the night hiding from his own party.
“Probably writin’ a new song as we speak,” Johnny mutters.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” V says. “To make him feel better?”
“Better,” Johnny jokes. “But not that good.”
“‘Johnny, don’t ever leave me again, I can’t live without you,’” V teases, mimicking Kerry’s voice. “That more what you were hoping for?”
“A little of that could go a long way,” he says, cocking an eyebrow at her, and she’s suddenly not sure if he’s still talking about Kerry. Another wave of nausea hits her, doubling her vision, and she puts her elbows on the bar and rests her face in her hands.
“Hope that’s it for last requests,” she chokes. “Not sure I can handle any more.”
“It is,” Johnny says, his voice still somber. “And I’m starting to regret you even agreed to this concert thing in the first place.” He looks almost chagrined. But beneath that, something about him feels more settled, now. Resolved, even.
“Huh,” V says darkly, genuinely surprised to hear this. “And here I thought you'd thank me for this. You said it was important to you. To Kerry.”
“It was,” Johnny says, still holding her in his intense stare. “But not more important than you.”
It's not what she expected him to say, and her face heats again. She looks down and away, feeling his gaze still boring into her.
“Kerry’s got his life back,” Johnny continues. “Whereas we should be worryin’ about how to get yours back.”
“Wonder when we'll hear from Hanako,” V says softly. "Still gotta talk to her, see what she can offer us."
Johnny shakes his head. “Still don’t like that plan,” he says. “But okay, your choice.”
It’s been two weeks since the parade, and V is once again acutely aware of the ticking clock of her own mortality. Johnny reaches across the bar and takes her hand, and she searches his eyes for some reassurance. But a bartender steps in front of her then, and he glitches away.
“Helluva a show,” the bartender says, grinning at her. “Can I get you another?”
V eyes the empty shot glass in front of her and nods mutely as he moves to refill it. She does the shot, then steps away to go find the rest of the band.
Nancy’s seated further down the bar, nursing a cocktail and chatting with the other bartender and ignoring the fans gathered around her.
“I mean… shit,” the bartender is saying. “Never heard anything like it.”
“And you’re not likely to again,” Nancy replies, turning away from him to smile at V as she approaches. Nancy’s hair is a bit disheveled now, but her face is glowing.
“Well?” V asks. “I do alright?”
“Mhm,” Nancy says, narrowing her gold eyes at V. “Too damn well. Got me wonderin’ where Kerry’s been hidin’ you all this time.”
“I’m a woman of many talents,” V says dryly, and Nancy nods, still skeptical.
“Seems that way,” she says.
V does another shot with her, then spots Denny and Drausin hovering around one of the tables, fielding a press of fans and media. She pushes her way towards them, the crowd parting to allow her to pass.
“No, no, I hit it too hard,” Drausin is complaining to Denny as V steps up to lean against the table between them.
“It was fine, great,” Denny says dismissively, knocking back a shot.
“Axe went outta tune after Chippin’ In,” Drausin continues, babbling nervously.
“No worries!” Denny assures him with a patronizing grin. “Can’t hear the bass anyway.”
“Have a good time?” V asks Drausin, resting her elbow on the small table.
“Hell yeah!” Drausin says, grinning at her. “Kerry even said I’ma see some eddies!”
It’s the first time it’s occurred to V that playin’ this gig might net her some eddies as well. Did Johnny work out an arrangement with Kerry? She frowns and turns to Denny.
“You were great,” she tells the drummer sincerely.
“Ooh, first time I’ve heard that after a gig,” Denny replies, and V can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or not until she follows it up with a quiet, “Thanks,” and smiles sheepishly at V, who then finds herself wondering just how much of a dick Johnny was to the rest of his band back in the day.
But then Denny’s face falls, and her eyes slip past V to something, or someone behind her.
“Oh hell no,” Denny says flatly, and V turns to follow her gaze.
Henry’s standing there looking like a kicked puppy, swaying on his feet, clearly shitfaced.
“Denny,” he slurs. “Didja really think I wasn’t gonna come see ya play?”
His words are punctuated by a fit of hiccups, and he sways dangerously.
“I thought you were gonna stay the hell away like I told you to,” Denny hisses, putting down her drink.
“C’mon, Denny, this was my band too,” he pleads.
“Then you coulda come over and talked to me like an adult instead of ruining my whole fuckin’ yard,” Denny snaps.
“S’just a fuckin’ pool,” Henry protests. “C’mon babe, just gimme another chance.” He wobbles again, and V’s genuinely afraid he’s gonna fall over.
“I’ll take care of it,” says a smooth voice behind her, and V twists her head to find its source. And then Rogue appears outta fuckin’ nowhere, placing her hand gently on Henry’s arm.
“Rogue!” the bassist howls excitedly, throwing his arms around her. “Thought you’d be dead by now.”
“Not that easy to kill,” Rogue says gently, patting him on the back and rolling her eyes at Denny over his shoulder, who’s still bristling like she’s poised for a fight.
V’s eyes dart nervously between Johnny’s old friends. She expects to feel some annoyance from Johnny, but he still seems to be riding the high from his performance - that strange calm she's feeling from him hasn't gone away.
“You gonna drag his ass back to rehab?” Denny asks, and Rogue nods.
“Got people who can get him in somewhere better,” she says. “Dunno what Kerry was thinking, busting him out of there.”
Henry leans heavily on Rogue, his beef with Denny momentarily forgotten.
“S’nice to see all my friends,” he declares, staggering a bit.
Rogue raises an eyebrow at this, her gaze falling on V.
“Sure was quite a show,” Rogue says to them. “Silverhand woulda been proud.” She winks at V knowingly.
“Surprised to see you here,” V says, but as soon as the words leave her mouth, she realizes she’s not. Rogue makes it her business to know everything going on in Night City, course she’d’ve wanted to come to this gig.
“Wouldn’t miss a chance to see the old crew in action,” Rogue says carefully, her eyes still fixed on V.
“It’s good to see you too,” Denny says. “We’ll have to catch up properly sometime.”
A meaningful look passes between them, and V feels suddenly awkward. She’s surrounded by famous people three times her age who have a far-reaching personal history with each other; she’s just a street merc from Heywood who stumbled ass-backwards into this whole situation outta plain bad luck.
Rogue nods, then shoots another glance at V before herding Henry towards the door, her eyes flashing blue as she makes whatever arrangements for him she has in mind. Denny visibly relaxes, knocking back the rest of her drink.
“Poor gonk,” she says, and it’s the most sympathy she’s shown her ex in the short time V’s known her.
But Drausin still looks a little starstruck, and is gaping after Henry and Rogue. V watches him, wondering how he’d feel if he knew who was riding shotgun in her head.
She feels a hand on her shoulder, and whirls around for a third time.
“Hella preem, kid! Didn’t even know ya played,” Dino says, pulling her in for a tight hug.
“Mmph,” she says into his chest, pushing him away instinctively.
“Time for the afterparty?” he says to her, waggling his eyebrows and sticking out his pierced tongue.
“Probably,” V replies, still collecting herself. She still feels like shit from the pills, and suddenly wonders where the hell all her friends she invited are. Security musta herded most everyone out after the show, she realizes, noticing how relatively thin the crowd’s gotten. But she’s strangely grateful for Dino’s presence - he’s the first person she’s seen here who isn’t one of Johnny’s old chooms, the first person she knows from her own life. “Let’s go find my friends,” she says to Dino, taking him by the arm and guiding him towards the exit, waving over her shoulder to Denny and Drausin.
Dino’s wearin’ his sunglasses, even though it’s nighttime and they’re indoors, because of course he is. He grins down at her, peering over his shades.
“You were fuckin’ shimra up there,” he continues. “Had no idea you had that kinda rockergirl energy.”
V swallows nervously. Course, Dino’s got no way of knowing it was Johnny up there, not her. “I can turn it on when I need to,” she tells him, using the same evasive not-quite-lie she’s given everyone so far.
“And what’s this about you ‘n Kerry dating?” he continues to tease. “He's up there sayin’ you’re his new output?” He whistles through his teeth. “And here I thought you were just another fangirl.”
Oh god, Kerry did introduce her that way to the audience, didn't he. Fuck, V thinks. This is getting out of hand.
“We’re not dating,” V says quickly, taking her hand off Dino's arm. “Met him the other night at that party at his place.”
Dino grins again. “Damn girl, you move fast.” He chuckles down at her. “I wondered where you’d gone off to that night. Guess you and Ker were gettin’ busy, huh? Must've really... impressed him.”
His innuendo isn't lost on her, but V can tell there’s no point in correcting him now. “Could say that,” she mutters.
“Knew there was a reason I kept you around,” he jokes. “Hope your boyfriend is fine with me borrowin’ you for the night.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” V insists again.
“Good,” says Dino, and she can feel Johnny roll his proverbial eyes somewhere inside her.
They exit the bar then, and there’s a crowd of cheering strangers outside to greet them. To V’s surprise and slight horror, they’re all clamoring around her, trying to get pictures. But through the crowd, she spots Vik standing with Misty and the rest of her friends, and manages to push through to them, Dino still in tow.
Vik’s looking at her with concern on his face, but Misty’s beaming to high heaven. Judy’s at her side, looking a little confused and pissed, but that's more or less what V expected. Claire's just grinning at V in disbelief. And to V’s surprise, Mitch is there too, and he's the first to step forward and hug her warmly. She's confused for a moment about why he's already with her other friends, but then she remembers that he knows Vik from his forays into the city. Vik's one of the few NC rippers who's willin' to work for nomads, and Mitch has a lot of high end military chrome that needs top tier maintenance.
“Panam couldn’t make it,” he tells her. “But I was in town, figured I’d swing through.”
“Thanks,” she mumbles into his shoulder. “Glad you came.”
“Holy hell, V!” Claire exclaims, moving in to hug her as well. “Still can’t believe you didn’t make this whole thing up. You were insane up there!”
V laughs nervously, enjoying the attention but feeling a little weird that she's the one receiving it instead of Johnny.
Misty hugs her next, planting a big kiss on her cheek. “Know that must have been hard for you,” she says softly. “But I’m sure Johnny appreciated it. He seemed like he was having fun.”
V smiles back at her. "Yeah," she says. "He was."
She turns to Vik, who’s still furrowing his brow at her.
“You okay, kid?” he says.
“I’m alright,” V tells him hoarsely.
“Not gonna pretend to like this,” he says gently, placing his hand her on the shoulder, searching her eyes for something.
“Really, Vik. I’m good,” she says, and she means it. Yeah, this whole thing is more than a little fucking outlandish, but like Johnny, she's riding a strange high from it all, from the memories of being onstage, and she’s realizing by the minute that she actually fuckin’ loved it, loved how it felt up there. She’s not sure how much of that is Johnny’s feelings bleeding into her own, but it doesn’t really matter much at this point.
And then she turns to Judy, who’s studying her with a similar hardened look as Vik, with a dash of heartbreak there as well.
“Judy,” V manages. “Thanks for coming.”
Judy doesn’t uncross her arms, and just blows her hair out of her eyes with the side of her mouth.
“That was him up there, wasn’t it,” she says. It’s not a question.
V just shrugs helplessly.
“Hmph,” Judy says.
“We gonna party or what?” Dino chimes in, grinning at the group.
V notices River then, standing awkwardly by himself a little ways away. He doesn’t know her friends, she realizes, so she steps aside from the group to greet him.
“Hey, River,” she says, and his face brightens.
“V!” he says, scooping her up into a big hug, lifting her slightly off the ground.
She finds herself wanting to get lost in him again, lost in his warmth, but she carefully pulls herself away when he sets her down and takes a step back.
“Come meet my friends,” she says, leading him back to the rest and introducing him to everyone.
Vik, Dino, and Mitch shake his hand, Judy and Claire give him a small wave, but Misty steps up and gives him a big, warm hug.
“Nice to meet you, River,” she says, smiling up at him, and River blushes furiously.
Hm, V thinks.
“So where we partying?” Claire asks. “And please don’t say Afterlife, I spend enough time there as it is.”
“Lizzie’s?” Misty suggests, but Judy shakes her head.
“Live my life hunkered down in that basement,” she protests.
V laughs. “Come on, someone pick somewhere,” she says.
And that’s how they wind up at Riot, skipping the line as Dino fistbumps the bouncer who ushers them all through. This place was his suggestion, of course.
She’s perched at the bar now between Vik and Dino, while the rest of the group has disappeared out onto the dance floor. Dino’s feedin’ her blow, as always, and Vik is nursing a glass of whiskey and still frowning at her. He’s probably close to the same age as Dino, V realizes. He’s doin’ the blow too, but he insisted on testing it first with a little kit he has in his belt bag for some reason.
“Lotta bad drugs around these days,” he explains as Dino looks affronted at the implication that he’d be offerin’ them anything less than the purest shit.
V does a small bump and hands the vial to Vik, who does some as well, but off the back of his hand instead of Dino’s little spoon.
V does the same when he hands it back to her, licking the remainder off with her tongue. Dino grins wickedly at her, but Vik looks down into his drink.
Dino starts flirting with the bartender, and Vik turns to her.
“So, you’re dating Kerry Eurodyne now?” he asks. He’s doing a terrible job at keeping his voice casual.
“No,” she laughs.
“Isn’t he roughly three times your age?” Vik says, like a disapproving father.
“We’re not dating,” V insists.
“I’m worried about you, V.”
“I’m worried about me, too,” V agrees flippantly. She’s not in the mood for this now.
“You don’t look good,” he presses.
“‘Cause I’m not,” V says sharply. “But I'm just trying to have a good night tonight, Vik. I told you, I’m workin’ on it, I have a plan, I’m just waiting for some things to… come through,” she says, hearing the exhaustion creep into her voice.
“Not even talking about that,” Vik says, shaking his head. “You’ve been goin’ real hard lately.”
“Misty been talkin’ to you?”
Vik nods. “I can’t tell you how to live your life, kid,” he says. “But you gotta take care of yourself, both the chrome parts and all the rest.”
“Noted,” V says, downing her tequila and gesturing to the bartender for another.
Dino rails a huge line off the back of his hand and tilts his head back, sniffing loudly. He’s still wearing his sunglasses, and he wiggles his tongue back and forth at V when he catches her watching him.
She’s suddenly had enough of both of them right now, and pushes away from the bar to stand. The club’s packed tonight - it’s Friday, and there’s some hot DJ spinning, someone new that she’s never heard of. Right now, he’s blasting the latest Lizzy Wizzy single, and V slides through the crush of bodies to the dancefloor, pushing her way between the flailing limbs and undulating forms until she sees River’s head poking out above the crowd.
Misty’s dancing like V hasn’t seen her dance since before Jackie died, and River’s tearing it up with her. River can dance almost as well as Jackie could, V notices, and she grins at them both as she swings her hips in time to the music, sidling up between them. To her surprise, Mitch and Claire are right there with them, doing some sort of weird boogie that might be mistaken for dancing. V joins them, letting Misty take her hands and spin her around, feeling her body move to the music, before she suddenly realizes Judy isn’t among them.
“Where’s Judy?” she shouts to Misty over the thump of the bass.
Misty casts her wide eyes around the dancefloor, searching for their friend.
V frowns and pushes her way through the crowd to the bathrooms, but Judy’s not there either. She checks in with Johnny, but he’s in his own world now, just relivin’ the concert in his head, so she leaves him be.
She continues searching, checking the upper bar and the lounge area by the entrance, but there’s no sign of the braindance editor. But then she spots a handful of people disappearing through a side door, and pushes through after them to emerge into an alley on the side of the club where a smattering of people are milling around smoking cigarettes.
And there’s Judy, standing off to the side by a dumpster, puffing a cig and scowling into the middle distance.
V approaches her. “Hey, Jude,” she calls. “I was looking for you.”
“Bet you were,” Judy snaps, and V realizes she’s furious.
“What’s up?” asks says softly, reaching for Judy’s arm, but Judy twists away.
“‘What’s up?’” Judy almost shouts back, tossing away her cigarette and immediately reaching for another and lighting it. Her hands are shaking, and it takes her a few tries. “That’s all you have to say?”
“Judy, I don’t-” V starts, but Judy cuts her off.
“You ignore me for over two weeks, then invite me to some weird show where you let the engram that’s killing you take control of your body and dance around wearin' your face, and next thing I know I’m watchin’ Kerry fuckin’ Eurodyne introduce you onstage as his new output? The hell, V?”
“We’re not-” V begins, but Judy’s not done yet.
“You fucking vanish on me, and then, what, you’re dating Kerry Eurodyne suddenly? Is that how it is?” she glowers at V. “Or is Johnny the one pulling all the strings now?”
“Kerry’s full of shit,” V protests. “It’s not like that.”
Judy’s hands are shaking as she lifts the cigarette to her mouth. “I feel like I don’t even know you anymore, V. I know who I saw up there tonight wasn’t you, but I’m not sure that the rest of you’s still the same, either.”
V looks down. “I’m not the same,” she says quietly. “Tried to warn you about this.”
“I know, I just…” Judy looks down and squeezes her eyes shut. “Just didn’t think it would be like this. Thought I’d lose you all at once, not in bits and pieces, slowly.”
V can’t think of anything to say to that, so she just stares at Judy, who’s now very clearly holding back tears. Johnny glitches in next to them, and he looks pretty upset too. Judy's yelling must've snapped him out of his reverie.
“Tell her you did it for me,” he says.
V lets out a shaky breath. “I did it for Johnny,” she tells Judy. “He didn’t make me. I just… look, if all goes according to plan, he’s not gonna be around much longer, and… I wanted to give him this. A chance to reconnect with the people who were important to him, the things that mattered to him.”
She hopes Judy can understand. She needs Judy to understand.
“What about the people who matter to you, V?” Judy says, looking up at her with tearstained eyes. “What about the things that are important to you?”
“That includes Johnny now,” V says simply.
Judy just nods. “‘Course it does,” she spits.
V suddenly doesn’t feel like partying anymore. “Let’s get outta here,” she says to Judy, reaching for her hand, but Judy snatches it away.
“Too late, V,” she says. “Already called myself a Del.”
She storms away towards the waiting car that's pulled up, leaving V alone. V almost follows her, but Johnny shakes his head, so she lights her own cigarette and smokes it slowly, trying to process what just happened.
She's suddenly exhausted. All of it - Kerry, the show, Johnny, Judy, her friends - it's all just too much, and she just wants to go the fuck home and be alone. Or, as alone as she can ever really be these days. She finishes her cigarette and heads out of the alley to the sidewalk, where a huge line is still snaking around the block. She shoots Misty a quick text explaining that she left, counting on Misty to let everyone else know. She feels bad ghosting her own party, but she just doesn’t have it in her to go back up there and pretend everything’s okay.
She’s barely made it down the block when she suddenly hears heavy, running footsteps behind her. She whips around, unconsciously reaching for where she holstered the gun Kerry gave her before realizing that it’s just River.
He stops in front of her, panting and out of breath.
“You’re leaving?” he gasps.
“I’m tired,” V tells him, and turns to keep walking. He falls into step beside her. The waterfront is to their right, the towers of Corpo Plaza looming over them from across the canal. Arasaka Tower juts out amongst them like a horrible black monolith presiding over the city.
“Let me walk you home,” River insists, keeping pace with her.
"Aren’t you pissed I haven't had time for you?" she says, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave her alone, see that Judy’s right, she’s not worth the trouble.
"You got your own stuff goin' on,” he says calmly. “I get that. We'll make up for it."
V stops and turns to face him. They’re right in front of the tunnel to Afterlife now, and she considers ducking in there to keep drinking by herself. It’s a dark urge, and one she pushes down as she squares herself off against River. Gotta rip the band-aid off now, she thinks. Not let him follow her home like a lost puppy.
"River," V begins. “I’ve been thinking…”
"About what, specifically?" River prompts, not backing down.
"Us," V says, almost losing her nerve. She hates that she has to do this with River now, too. "What happened between us. I just think that..."
"That you don't see a happy ending?" River guesses, finishing for her.
"How'd you know?" V stammers.
"I didn't," River says, sighing heavily. "Maybe I’m just startin' to get to know you better."
"Anyway, I..." V starts, then stops herself. She doesn’t need to make this more difficult than it needs to be. If River wants to be her friend, she might as well let him. "It's stupid," she mutters. "Rambling. Just forget I said anything."
"Already forgotten."
She turns into the Afterlife parking lot and keeps walking past the entrance to the bar. At the very least, she can cut through the alley here and avoid the intersection on the waterfront.
"Hey, listen," River says, still at her side. "About the thing with Silverhand... I can imagine it must be pretty hard on you. If you ever need to talk, I'm here."
"Thanks, River," she says honestly. "That means a lot to me."
"Just remember you can always count on me," he says. "For anything."
"I know," she tells him. "Likewise."
They walk the rest of the way back to her apartment in silence, but she finds herself strangely glad for his presence. He doesn’t make any moves to touch her, doesn’t expect her to invite him up when they reach the stairs to her building, doesn’t ask anything of her at all, and something about having him there makes the panic in her chest begin to slowly subside.
She takes a step towards him, and he pulls her into a long hug.
"Hang in there, V," he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead before releasing her and stepping away. She can feel him still watching her as she climbs the stairs to her building and heads towards the elevator.
She's afraid Johnny's gonna have more to say the second they're alone, but he leaves her to her thoughts as she undresses and gets in bed. She finds herself lying awake, staring up at the ceiling, at Misty’s dreamcatcher hanging above her bed. River had a similar one, she remembers. Seems like they hit it off tonight, too. River does remind her a bit of Jackie, in some ways. Maybe there’s potential there. Better her friends find happiness in each other than try to place any hopes on her.
“Playin’ matchmaker with your chooms now?” Johnny teases, glitching in beside her.
“Shut up,” she tells him, and he lifts a cigarette to his mouth, lying on his back next to her and following her gaze upwards to the dreamcatcher.
“Those things don’t seem to work on us,” he remarks.
“Mm,” she agrees, closing her eyes.
And true to Johnny’s word, it’s a nightmare like always. She’s standing on a stage, like in a lot of Johnny's dreams, but it’s not one she’s ever seen before - she’s in a stadium, and the crowd is huge. And she’s herself this time, but she’s playing guitar like Johnny does, Kerry at her side, screaming his feelings out to the crowd. And when she looks down, Jackie’s standing in the crowd, smiling up at her.
“Eyy, chica,” he says, his voice crystal clear even against the roar of the stadium. “Looks like you made it to the major leagues.”
She smiles down at him, and for a moment, she believes him, believes that this is all real. But the scene around them dissolves and suddenly they’re back in that fucking Delamain, and Jackie’s reaching for her neck, clutching the bloody chip in his hands, and she’s leaning towards him, holding back her tears.
“Jackie,” she gasps, reaching for him.
But he’s already gone, and she’s alone on a pier now, probably in Pacifica, watching the waves crash beneath her against the crumbling struts holding it all up.
“Thought I’d lose you all at once,” Judy's voice says from behind her, repeating what she said to V earlier. V turns to see the virtu tuner standing there with the same anguished look on her face as before. “But you’re already gone,” she continues, her voice thick with pain.
And when V looks down, she’s not even surprised anymore to see Johnny’s hands there, Johnny’s boots planted on the ground where her own feet should be. Judy steps towards her, arms outstretched, and for a moment V thinks she’s about to embrace her, but when she looks up again, it’s Hanako Arasaka who’s standing there, reaching for her, shoving her backwards off the dock, sending her tumbling down into the dark waves below.
The blackness envelops her, and with it comes the pain; it tears through her, starting in her heart and flaring out into all her muscles and bones, causing her vision to go black. She clutches at her chest, screaming, as the waves of agony consume her.
“Johnny!” she screams, but he’s not there. And neither is she, she realizes, as the ocean pulls her deeper in, the void tugging her mind apart like there never even was a V to begin with.
She jolts awake, shaking and screaming and sobbing into her pillow. But Johnny’s arms are around her, his voice rough and low in her ear in the darkness.
“I'm here,” he whispers fiercely. “I got you.”
He holds her like that, muttering softly in her ear until her shaking stops and she cries herself back to sleep.
Notes:
At least we ended on some somft jogny content
Chapter 34: Purple Flame
Summary:
V meets with Jefferson Peralez and makes some alarming connections, goes racing with Claire, then takes a meeting with a mysterious new client.
Chapter Text
“So, thoughts?” V asks, watching as Jefferson Peralez shuffles slowly away from them, looking like a man who just had his entire vision of reality shattered. Which he quite literally just did.
V rubs her eyes. Her vision glitches slightly, and the pain in her head creeps back and settles into a dull, constant ache. It’s been getting worse, and she and Johnny both know it. Although to be fair, she hasn’t exactly been taking great care of her body lately.
She’s still hungover from the concert and subsequent party last night, still feeling raw from her fight with Judy. But she dragged herself up today anyway, not wanting to miss her scheduled meeting with the mayoral candidate. Elizabeth intercepted her earlier with a call while she was on her way to the meeting spot in Corpo Plaza, begging her again not to tell her husband the truth, but V decided not to listen, and Johnny wholeheartedly agreed. If V were in Jefferson’s shoes, she’d wanna know if someone was messing with her mind, her memories. And despite everything, the aspiring mayor seems like a good guy to her.
She hopes this doesn't blow up in her face.
Because there was also a second call she got, right as they arrived here to meet Jefferson, and not one from Elizabeth this time. A terrifying voice threatening her coldly through her holo, a horrible, screeching sound that filled her head, a Relic malfunction. She shudders at the memory.
They mighta just stepped in deeper shit than they even realized.
Johnny folds his arms and leans back. “Somehow doubt it’s people who’re behind this.”
V rolls her eyes. “So, aliens?”
“Very funny,” Johnny says, returning her eye roll. “You’re too young to remember this, but not so long ago people talked about rogue AIs prowling cyberspace.”
She fights back to urge to protest - she’s been netrunning since she was a fuckin’ kid, course she’s heard every dumb story out there ‘bout rogue AIs.
“So… not aliens,” she says instead.
“You met Alt, you’ve seen what they’re capable of,” he reminds her darkly.
“You really think rogue AIs are pulling the strings here, then?”
“Doesn’t matter who. What matters is that guy decided to take up the gauntlet.” Johnny smiles admiringly after the young politician as he gets into his waiting AV and flies off into the brisk autumn morning. “My man.”
Despite her teasing, V can't deny that Johnny may be right. She can’t shake the feeling that there's something even deeper, more sinister to this; that this is all something that’s been going on far longer than either of ‘em wants to admit.
“I dunno,” she says slowly. “Both Jefferson and his wife came from the streets of NC but were scooped up and given Night Corp scholarships for university. Saw the papers in their house, remember?”
Johnny considers this for a moment. “Trained and matched with each other and groomed to be the perfect populist candidates,” he says, comprehension dawning on his face.
“Maybe Rhyne’s death was all part of this too,” V continues, voicing a suspicion she's been harboring for a while now. “Maybe there’s someone out there who wants Jefferson as mayor, wants him to be their puppet.” She frowns. “Lotta arrows seem to point to Night Corp.”
“Hm,” Johnny says, mirroring her frown. “Could be right. Fuck knows what kinda shit a mayor controlled by puppet masters could pull. Even in my day, there were whispers about this kinda stuff.”
“Remember when we staked out that creepy cultist meeting in the empty lot behind Judy’s house?”
Johnny nods, and she can feel him remembering that night. It wasn’t that long after she’d first woken up with him in her head. “Poor fuck vanished after that," he points out, referencing the doomsday prophet who used to hang around outside Misty's shop, shoutin' about blue eyed space vampires controlling people's minds. "Think Night Corp nabbed him?”
“Garry, yeah,” she says. “Could be. His chooms did say it was suits that took him away. And there’s that data shard we got for Sandra Dorsett…”
“Who?” Johnny says.
“A corpo chick Jackie and I rescued. Before you, uh... got here.” She focuses on the memory of that job, pushing down the pain that comes with remembering how it felt to work with Jackie. Those days feel so much brighter now, so much simpler. “And then you and I did a gig for her too, remember? To get her shard back.”
“Right, the one you hacked,” Johnny says, narrowing his eyes.
She nods. “Yeah, with all the shit about Night Corp testing similar mind-altering techniques…”
“Whole thing’s fucked up, huh?” Johnny scowls. “Speaking of… overlapping memories, changing personalities… remind you of anything?”
“At least we know what we’re up against,” V says.
“Some real rat bastards behind this,” Johnny agrees. “Someone’s gotta take ‘em down." He frowns. "Hell, I'm starting to think I could've done worse than end up on this little Relic of yours."
V purses her lips, nodding slowly. Whatever’s goin' on, it feels bigger than anything they've touched before, Arasaka biochip in her head notwithstanding. And she can’t deny that it scares her. If their suspicions are even a little bit on the mark, this is as fucked as what ‘Saka’s doin’ at Mikoshi. Johnny’s right, she thinks. Corps came for our bodies, now they’re comin’ for our souls.
“Who’s that guy?” Johnny says suddenly. V follows his gaze, and there’s a man standing on a nearby balcony, watching them intensely. She checks him with her Kiroshi scanner, but there’s no file on him or anything. Just shows his name as “Mr. Blue Eyes.”
“Let’s delta,” she whispers, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. That call she got right when they arrived unnerved the fuck outta her - whoever it was seemed to know exactly who she was and what was happening to her, not to mention that they were able to somehow remotely trigger a Relic malfunction.
Johnny seems to agree, and she stands and walks as quickly as she can without actively running back to her bike. Her heart is still pounding as she starts the engine and zooms off towards the bridge out of Corpo Plaza back to Watson.
Her holo rings as she pulls her bike into her garage, skidding to a stop in front of the elevator. It’s Kerry, and she feels her heart pound a bit at the avatar flashing on her screen.
“Kerry?” she says, answering quickly as she vaults off her bike. She hadn’t expected to hear from him so soon. Does he want to talk to Johnny? Does he wanna talk to her? Are they friends? She’s genuinely not sure.
“Uh… Johnny?” he says, confirming her worst fears.
“V this time,” she corrects him. “Disappointed?”
“Fuck, sorry,” Kerry says, looking genuinely apologetic. “Don’t really get how that show of yours works.”
“Simple,” V says, sounding harsher than she intends. “Johnny’s along for the ride.”
“Mhm,” Kerry remarks. “Knowin’ him, he don’t got no ticket either.”
“Whatever,” V says. “I’m at the wheel, and Johnny wants to keep it that way from now on.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Kerry says. “So that was just a one-time thing? Y'know, like your cheating wife paying you a conjugal after you're locked up? Pops by once to shush her conscience, then disappears for good?”
Johnny laughs darkly as she steps into the elevator, glitching in near the window across from her.
“Sounds about right,” V says, meeting Johnny’s eyes. “And Johnny appreciates the prison metaphor.”
“So you can like, always talk to ‘im?” Kerry asks, his eyebrows raised in what seems to be authentic curiosity.
“Yeah, he’s listening now. I can see him, too.”
“Weird,” Kerry says. “I mean, cool.”
V smiles weakly. “Sorry I’m not your man,” she mumbles.
“Actually, wanted to talk to you,” Kerry tells her, and V can’t hide her surprise at that.
“Me? Why?”
He gives her an odd look. “Got a job,” he says. “Kind that seems ideal for you.”
V blinks at him. Of all the things she would've expected Kerry to call her about, offering her a job wasn’t one of them. And she can’t help but wonder just what kind of job Kerry thinks is ideal for her, specifically.
“A job?” she repeats dumbly.
“Corner of Grey and Mallagra,” he says. “Just before sunrise. We’ll talk.”
“Cool,” she says, and he hangs up.
“Course Kerry needs some help,” Johnny mutters from where he’s leaning by the window. “Always did. Got nothing against it, either. A friend in need is a friend indeed, and I've never been jealous of that second fiddle in my life.”
“Who said you were?” V arches an eyebrow at Johnny, stepping towards him as the elevator begins its ascent. She can feel that Johnny doesn’t actually see Kerry that way, but talkin’ about him like this is almost a tic for him.
“Look,” he continues. “I don't know if Kerry's just having a real late-life crisis, or whether his shrink's got him some on some sweet new meds, but I do know one thing... this is gonna be good.”
V frowns. “Whaddya think he wants?”
“No fuckin’ clue,” Johnny laughs. “But it won’t be boring, I guarantee it.”
V considers this as she looks past him out the window at that big penthouse next door as they speed upwards. When she was younger, she never really understood why Kerry seemed so preoccupied by Johnny in his early albums. To her, Kerry’d always seemed like the more electric, more dynamic, more magnetic one of the two. But her perception was obviously colored by his subsequent fame - she’d never known a world where he wasn’t a globally recognizable icon. Now, having had Johnny in her head the past couple months, she can understand why he’d cast such a long shadow in Kerry’s life. She can see it all in Johnny’s memories - their youth together, their countless tours together, their nights out together, their mornings in together.
And now Kerry’s just alone, rattling around that big empty mansion of his. She looks down at the penthouse through the elevator window. Is the person who lives there alone, too? She can’t make out any noticeable signs of life.
“You love that dumb fuckin’ house,” Johnny remarks, following her gaze.
“Wonder what it’d be like to live there,” she murmurs. She tries to picture it - waking up every morning to that view, stepping outside to that pool, making breakfast in what she imagines is probably a big, fully functional kitchen… She realizes abruptly that Johnny’s there, too, in this little fantasy of hers. Alive, in his own body.
“You’re wondering what it would be like for me to fuck you against those big windows,” he says without missing a beat.
“I’m wondering what it would be like to toss you out of one of those big windows,” she quips back.
But they both know he was right the first time, and he just grins at her as the elevator speeds upwards.
As soon as she steps back into her apartment, he doesn’t wait before shoving her roughly against the door, his mouth on hers. And she’s kissing him back, pushing her pants down over her feet, trying not to think about how badly she wants that stupid fantasy of hers to be true.
He pulls back then, reaching down with his metal hand and gathering both her wrists, wrenching them up above her head before pausing to hold her gaze.
“You wanna live in a big nice house?” he teases her, leaning in to bite her neck. “You wanna get fucked on your fancy ass furniture, front of your big ass windows, for all of Night City to see? That what you want, princess?” His voice is hard, mocking, and she whines softly in response as he rolls his tongue across her collarbone.
“Yeah,” she says. “Gonna get myself the preemest joytoys eddies can buy. Gonna make ‘em fuck me on every surface of that- augh!”
Her words are cut off as he bites her earlobe hard, causing her to yelp.
“What’s that you were sayin’? Think some fancy ass joytoy could make you scream like I do?”
“You sayin’ you’d make a good joytoy?” she taunts, still gasping.
“I’m sayin’ there’s no one else in the world that can fuck you like I do.”
“Prove it to me,” she challenges, and he growls against her ear, not needing to be asked twice.
And true to his word, he winds up fucking her against her much less impressive window, makin' her stare down at that penthouse with her face pressed against the spiderweb of cracks in the glass from when he smashed her head the night they met, their minds tangling together in a dizzying wave of ecstasy and terror, just like always.
Hours later, she’s heading back down to the garage to go meet Claire for their next street race. The one she’d almost forgotten about until she saw Claire at the Afterlife the other night.
“Wanna take my Porsche this time?” Johnny says as the elevator plummets down.
She’s not sure if he’s joking, and examines his face carefully for any sign he’s fuckin’ with her.
“Thought you preferred your Porsche to not be on fire,” she says.
He shrugs. “It’s fast,” he says simply. “Used to race it myself sometimes, back in the day.”
“You bein’ serious?” she says, checking one more time, and he just nods.
“What’s mine is yours,” he says as though it were obvious, and she’s still not sure this isn’t some elaborate prank to give her shit for messing up his car later.
But he doesn’t call her bluff as she goes to unlock his car, doesn’t do anything except appear next to her grinning as she starts the engine and pulls out of her garage.
She cranks up the radio and calls Claire.
“Ready for this one?” Claire says when she answers, a broad smile on her face.
“Already on my way,” she tells the bartender.
“We using your ride, or am I bringin’ Beast?”
“Let’s use mine this time,” V says. It feels weird to refer to Johnny’s car as hers, but it’s as close to the truth as anything. “I’ll give you a ride back after. Need me to swing by and grab you now?”
“Nah,” Claire says. “I’m at my shop, I can just hoof it.”
Claire’s already there when she pulls up to the starting point near the stadium, standing to the side away from the other racers. She grins and waves as V gets out of her car, then lets out a low whistle as she takes in V’s new ride.
“Whoa, V!” she says appreciatively. “Where on earth did you get this? It looks vintage.”
“It is,” V says, stepping aside to let Claire do an assessment.
“Mind if I take a look under the hood before we start?” Claire asks. “See what we’re workin’ with?”
“Go for it,” V welcomes. Johnny glitches in and watches anxiously as Claire pokes around the engine, but she steps away after a moment and nods in approval. Grayson kept his ride in top condition, seems like.
The car appears to be in racing shape, so they settle into their seats and wait for the race to start. Claire’s jabbering in V's ear about their competition, warning her what moves to look out for from the other racers. V’s hardly listening - her adrenaline’s already coursing and she’s ready to win this thing. But Claire falls silent and readies her shotgun as the countdown begins, and then V’s slamming her foot on the accelerator and rocketing them forwards into the quickening dusk.
Like the last two races, V finds herself grinning maniacally as she careens the Porsche through the city, drifting into her turns with as much control as she can manage and quickly cutting her way to the front of the pack. She’s playing it a little safer this time - despite Johnny’s enthusiasm, she doesn’t want to wreck his car. It’s one of the nicest things she’s ever owned, and the fact that it was Johnny’s gives it even more weight for her. So she hedges her bets a bit, lets Claire shoot the other cars instead of slamming into them like she would if she were driving the Beast, and relies more on the speed and maneuverability of the sports car to maintain their lead as they speed through the warehouse district and out onto the freeway before plunging back into the narrow residential streets of Rancho.
The final section of the race takes them up the switchbacks to the top of the dam, with a few off-road sections that momentarily make V regret not taking Claire’s all-terrain monster. But Johnny was right, his Porsche is fast, and that’s ultimately their winning ticket.
It’s a closer race than the previous two, but V still breezes across the finish line a few hundred feet ahead of their closest rival, grinning at Claire as the announcer calls the race.
“Oh my god, V, we did it!” Claire shrieks. “We’re finals bound, yeah!”
“Hell yeah!” V agrees.
V moves to pull the car back around to go bask in the adoration from the crowd of spectators, but Claire puts a hand on her arm.
“Don’t stop yet, okay? Drive a little bit further, then pull over there,” Claire says, pointing to an overlook on the side of the road, her voice suddenly serious.
“What for?” V asks, wrinkling her brow in confusion.
“Need to talk,” Claire replies in a low voice. “Somethin’ you should know.”
“Okay…” V says, pulling the car to a stop.
Claire gets out of the car, and V follows her to go sit on the ledge above the dam. It is a helluva view - from here, V can see everything from the Biotechnica flats (and the power station she and Panam blew up) to the northern towers of the Arasaka Waterfront. She can make out the hazy silhouette of Konpeki Plaza in the distance, peeking out from between the megabuildings.
“Quite the view,” V remarks, waiting for Claire to say something.
Claire nods, her ponytail bobbing. “Yeah,” she says softly. “Me and Dean… we liked to come here.”
“Your husband, right?” V says, trying to scrape together what little Claire has mentioned about him. “Wheel to your heat?”
Claire looks down. “Sweetest man I ever knew. We were friends before my gender transition.” She smiles softly to herself. “Brought daffodils to the hospital… 'To new beginnings,' he said.”
“Were you married long?” V wonders if this is just a confessional, or if there’s a reason Claire wants to talk about this now.
“Twelve years,” Claire tells her. “We married young. Dean used to laugh that for our fifteenth… said he’d finally talk me into my first implant. Was prepping some surprise.”
V’s wondered about this before. Claire doesn’t have any visible cyberware, not even a proper holo. She’s always found it a little quaint.
“How come you don’t sport any chrome?” she asks.
Claire looks up at her. “I love machines, V, I do. But I don’t ever wanna become one.” She smiles sadly. “That weird?”
V shrugs. “A little. I guess. But it’s fine.”
“Dean…” Claire says wistfully, looking out at the city in the setting sun. “Only person who coulda convinced me to chrome up. But… guess we’ll never know if he’da managed, huh?”
“Why tell me about this?” V presses. “I mean… why now?”
Claire’s face twists into a mask of grief. “He died durin’ a race last year,” she says. “The final.”
V's more or less already put that together. She presses her lips into a sympathetic grimace.
“Not your standard fatality, though,” Claire continues, and there’s a hardness to her voice now.
“This have something to do with our race?” V guesses.
The short of it is, Claire’s pretty fuckin’ convinced that Dean was intentionally murdered by some corpo fuck, a guy named Peter Sampson who won the finals last year. He’d been in the lead, Claire and Dean in second, and Sampson had a clear path to the finish but instead slammed his brakes, knocking Dean and Claire off the road and killing Dean in the process. Claire is positive the move was intentional, malicious. Apparently, Sampson and Dean had had some sort of long-standing personal beef.
“But…” V says cautiously, not wanting to sound callous. “Isn’t that how this race works? You shoot at each other, people die sometimes. Said it yourself.”
“You don’t get it,” Claire says, shaking her head. “Road was clear to the finish line. He woulda won.” She looks imploringly at V. “It was premeditated, I’m sure of it! They were arguing before the race. Something was up, I know it.” She balls her hands into fists. “Gonna kill that bastard.”
V suddenly realizes that she’s dead serious.
“During the race?” she says with alarm.
“It’s like you said, folks die on the track all the time,” Claire says with a shrug. “Won’t seem unusual at all.” She smiles bitterly. “Another day at the races, in line with the rules.”
“So… you want my help to zero him,” V says again, just to be clear.
Claire nods. “Killing Sampson matters more than taking first,” she says fiercely. “If we have to make a choice…” She looks down, then back up at V, her eyes pleading.
V sighs. “If Sampson dies by the rules of the game… all right, I guess.” She meets Claire’s eyes, her face solemn. “But I won’t help you execute the guy. Just so we’re clear. I don’t do hits like that.”
“That’s fair,” Claire says. “I can agree to that.”
“And trust me…" V adds. “Revenge don’t soothe your soul. It just makes you a killer, that’s all.”
Claire shakes her head and looks down at her hands. “Sorry I lied to you, V. ‘Bout why we were doing this. Just didn’t think you’d say yes if I told you upfront.”
V’s suddenly exhausted. All her friends - Judy, River, even Kerry, and now Claire - always seem to want shit like this from her. Sure, it comes with the territory of bein’ a merc, but she hopes they know she’s good for more than just makin’ their problems go away with violence.
“Claire…” she begins. “There’s somethin’ I wanna tell you, too.”
And then she tells her everything. About Johnny, about who Claire really saw play last night at the concert, about how the chip’s killin’ her, all of it. Claire’s eyes widen as she listens, and she asks most of the same questions as Judy and River, her incredulity eventually giving way to pity.
“V… I… I don’t know what to say…” she begins, but V puts a hand on her leg.
“Claire, it’s okay, really,” she insists. “We’re all carryin’ something. Just wanted you to know what mine is.”
Claire nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Thanks.” She stands up and stretches her legs. “Wanna grab a drink?”
V shakes her head. “Not tonight.” She’s supposed to meet Kerry later, and she doesn’t wanna be fucked up already when that happens. “Can take you back to your shop, though.”
They get back in Johnny’s Porsche and drive in silence down the switchbacks back into Rancho, and V pulls the car to a stop in front of Claire’s garage.
“Till next time,” she says, giving V a quick hug.
Johnny glitches into the passenger seat once Claire is out of the car and watches her retreat into her garage.
"No one in Night City is only one layer deep," he observes, putting his feet up on the dash. "So, what now, V? Gonna help Claire stick it to the corpos who offed her husband?"
“Dunno,” V says honestly.
"You know what I'd do if it were my call,” Johnny continues. “But it's your hands on the wheel, not mine.”
“You’d off the corpo?” V guesses.
Johnny shrugs. “One less of ‘em is never a bad thing.”
“I don’t like murdering people,” V reminds him. “Not my style.”
“Like I said… your call,” Johnny replies. He drums his fingers on the dash. “You know... Claire's not so bad, after all. Kinda feel sorry for her, actually.”
“So, you like my friends the second you find out they want me to kill corpos for ‘em?” V shoots back.
This gets a smirk from Johnny. “What are friends for?”
Her holo buzzes then, and she opens it quickly, wondering if it’s Kerry.
Let’s meet. No-Tell Motel. Room 210. Midnight.
It’s from an unknown number, and the source is being blocked. V frowns as she replies.
Who is this?
What do you want?
Johnny lowers his feet and leans forward in his seat.
“Unknown number, anonymous client, a secret hotel meet-up…” he says, a gleam in his eyes. “The aura of mystery 'round this one's so thick I need a machete to hack my way through it.”
“Think it’s a trap?” V says. “Arasaka, maybe? Or something to do with the Peralezes? Or the guy we saw earlier? Night Corp, maybe?”
Johnny shrugs. “One way to find out.”
Midnight’s still a few hours away, so V goes home and changes out of her racing clothes and into something more apropos for a mysterious hotel meet-up followed by a potential job offer from a famous rock star. She’s at a bit of a loss, so she decides to just throw on her sneakers and favorite black leather jacket. Nondescript, yet tasteful, she tells herself. Not looking for a fight, but ready for one.
She slides her Quasar into her right holster and Johnny’s Malorian into her left, in what’s become a sort of ritual for her. But when she checks herself one final time in the mirror, it’s Johnny’s face staring back at her, causing her to startle. She blinks quickly and the illusion clears; it’s her own pale face staring back at her again. But she suddenly doubts herself - did she actually see Johnny this time, or was it her own face she reacted to, her own face that seemed like the wrong one? She examines herself in the mirror, tracing her eyes across her familiar features… but it still feels wrong somehow, like she’d been expecting to see Johnny and had identified the face that felt wrong as his. It scares her, the realization that her own face is becoming alien to her, starting to feel like it’s not the one she should be seeing, and the thought sends a rush of nausea bubbling up her throat as she bends forward to dry heave into her sink.
She can feel Johnny watching helplessly through her eyes as she splashes water on her face and tries to collect herself, taking deep, steadying breaths. She avoids looking in the mirror again as she slips a MaxDoc into her pocket and walks quickly out the door. She can’t bring herself to look at the penthouse as the elevator rattles down either - it’s too much of a reminder of all the things she’ll never get to have.
“Started to think you wouldn’t show,” says a soft, metallic voice from beyond the beaded curtain as V steps into the dimly lit room of the No-Tell. The voice sounds familiar, though V can’t place where she knows it from until she steps through the curtain and sees Lizzy fuckin’ Wizzy standin’ by the window with her back to V, cigarette in hand.
“Fuck me,” V mutters. “It’s you.”
“It’s me,” the singer replies simply, turning to face V as she enters. “Lizzy Wizzy.” Her pink hair falls in soft ringlets around her face, illuminated by the red glow from the hotel lighting reflected off her silvery chrome skin. V wonders what it would feel like to exist in a fully chromed body like that. It’s such a sharp contrast to Claire’s, she thinks.
Lizzy gestures to the grimy couch by the wall. “Sit, please. Let’s talk.”
V nods once and crosses to sit on the edge of the moldering furniture.
“Normally only work with fixers,” V explains as Lizzy reclines in a chair opposite her. “Clients that avoid ‘em tend to be bad news.”
“I just care about my privacy,” Lizzy replies, her voice sounding almost pouty.
“Everyone wants their privacy,” V retorts.
“Maybe,” the singer responds. “But not as much as me.”
V sighs heavily. "Okay, so… what’s this about?” she asks.
Lizzy looks at her for a moment in silence, taking a series of long drags from her cigarette while V shifts uncomfortably. Something about the singer’s cool, robotic gaze is unnerving.
“I think you can guess,” Lizzy says finally. “I’m in trouble.”
“Uh huh,” V says dryly. “And what kind?”
Lizzy takes another long drag of her cigarette. “Hah,” she says sharply. “Goooood question.” She continues to puff her cig. “Been a rough year. Creative block. Can't even say the last time I made anything worth listening to. And to make things worse… I fell in love.”
“I’m so sorry,” V jokes. She’s not sure what response Lizzy’s looking for, but that seems to be the right one, because the singer throws back her head and laughs a strange little musical laugh, made eerie by the metallic tones in her voice.
“And why’s that?”
“Sooner or later, love’ll only let you down,” V says, sounding more bitter than she intends. It sounds like something Johnny would say. Maybe it’s his thought she’s voicing. She can’t be totally sure anymore.
“Guess it’ll be sooner,” Lizzy agrees.
“So… we’re talkin’ a man? Woman?” V prompts. She still hasn’t parsed out where she comes in, what this woman wants from her.
Lizzy fumbles her cigarette, then catches it clumsily between her slender chrome fingers. “Oh shit,” she mutters. “These hands. Sometimes… seems like I just brush something, and sparks fly.”
V can’t tell if she’s speaking metaphorically or not. The singer’s voice is strangely monotone, devoid of any emotion, and she speaks with an odd detached softness. Was she always like this? V can’t help but wonder. She remembers Lizzy’s big stunt a few years back, how she stopped her concert midway through and had her full-body conversion done right there onstage behind a curtain, making the audience wait as she was flatlined and reconstructed from the ground up. And then she stepped out in her shiny new skin and finished the gig in her upgraded flesh.
“Fuckin’ hardcore, if you ask me,” Johnny says admiringly, glitching in on the couch next to the singer and giving her a once over. V thinks about her own failing body, her cybernetic arm, her NetWatch deck, her Kiroshi eyes, her nanoweave skin, her reinforced tendons, her spinal stabilizers, her countless other invisible upgrades. The chip in her head that's rewriting her brain. What's a human but the sum of their parts, and if those parts aren't human, then what's left? A soul? A disembodied consciousness like Alt's? Like Johnny's?
Maybe Claire has the right idea after all, she thinks.
“Anyway,” Lizzy continues with a sigh. “His name is Liam. Liam Northam. Been together a few months, but… I think he’s cheating on me.”
Oh god, V thinks. One of these. She hates these kinds of jobs.
“Okay…” she says carefully. “Why the suspicion?”
“Ugh,” Lizzy says. “It’s so cliched, it’s embarrassing.” She shakes her head, causing her pink hair to tumble across her shoulders. “Whispered phone calls in the bathroom, strange receipts, secret meetings in the middle of the night…”
“Any specific event come to mind?”
Lizzy lets out a sharp laugh. “Hah. My mind. That’s… that’s a touchy subject.”
V’s not following. “Why?” she asks, unable to keep the exhaustion from creeping into her voice.
“Don’t know each other well enough for that, V,” Lizzy chides with a wry smile.
“Well, have you talked to him?” V can’t believe she’s playin’ fucking relationship counsellor with Lizzy Wizzy right now. Her life has certainly taken a turn for the surreal, lately.
“Hah!” Lizzy says again. “You’re adorable.” V scowls, but Lizzy continues talking. “We’re never alone, not really. Always surrounded by assistants, PR reps, makeup artists, you know the drill. I stop smiling at him for one millisecond, it’ll be all over every screamsheet in this town.”
“Understood,” V says, swallowing. She wonders if that’s what it’s like for Kerry.
“I thought you would,” Lizzy says with a small smile. “It’s something you don’t understand until you’ve lived it. Millions of eyes, trained on you constantly. It can be beautiful… and terrifying.”
“Why do you think I would understand?” V can’t help asking.
“You’re Eurodyne’s new output, no?” Lizzy says, but doesn’t wait for an answer. “I needed someone who I knew could keep a cool head around me, who would comprehend the world I live in. I figured that a merc dating someone like Kerry would be a safe bet.”
V’s gaze flicks away from Lizzy to meet Johnny’s eyes. This is an outcome neither of them had anticipated. It hadn’t even occurred to her that Kerry’s little fib would spread this far and this fast and start landing her jobs for people like Lizzy motherfuckin’ Wizzy.
“Word travels fast,” she mutters.
“Indeed it does,” Lizzy agrees.
“So, who is this guy you’re dating?” V asks, trying to steer the conversation back on topic before Lizzy starts to ask too many questions.
“Fortyish, sensitive…” Lizzy says. “Guy who never wanted for anything. You know the type.”
V’s not sure that she does. “In theory, sure. How’d you meet?”
Lizzy lets out a heavy sigh. “He’s my manager.” She takes another drag of her smoke. “I know, I know how it sounds. I never meant to. He’s not even my type. But…”
“But?” V prompts.
“Your body can be chrome, but the heart never changes. It wants what it wants.”
V has to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Johnny doesn’t have to do any such thing, and even accompanies the eyeroll with a dramatic sigh.
“So what’s my role here?” V presses. “What do you want?”
“Proof,” Lizzy declares. “And then I’ll end things. For good.” She studies V’s face again, her cybernetic eyes drilling into V’s. “Liam goes to Riot all the time,” she continues. “Think he meets someone there. I wanna know who.”
“Alright,” V says. “Sounds simple enough. Let’s talk scratch, then.”
“You’ll get it,” Lizzy says dismissively.
“Sure hope so,” V replies. “Question is, how much?”
“God, how mundane,” Lizzy says. “No idea. Scads and scads of scratch. You happy?”
V gives her a look. “Y’know, for us mere mortals, the mundane matters. Sometimes means the difference between life and death.”
“Figured your boyfriend was keeping you plush,” Lizzy says lightly, and V scowls. “But don’t lecture me. Do you want the job or not?”
“I’m in,” V promises. Like it or not, stacks of eddies are still something she's in sore need of.
“Perfect,” Lizzy says coolly. “Liam’s out of town this week, but I’ll let you know when he’s back and you can get started. And remember… I want specifics. Details. Recordings or pics if you can.”
“Sure,” V says.
“Good,” Lizzy says with a tight smile. “Now, go.”
V doesn’t have to be told twice. She fucking hates being here - it’s the same No-Tell where Dex double-crossed her, where Jackie bled out in the car outside. Where she died. Where the chip got activated and Johnny came crashing into her life, her own second death close in tow.
She can’t leave quickly enough. And besides, it’s almost time to meet Kerry.
Notes:
Next chapter will probably be long as hell get hyped
Chapter 35: Clone Wars
Summary:
V helps Kerry cause some chaos in the music world.
Notes:
k-kewwy uwudyne-san???? idk man it's 4 am here's a chapter
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V pulls up to the nondescript street corner in Rancho Coronado, glancing around for any sign of Kerry, but there’s no one around - just a small corner restaurant counter selling dim sum across the street from a Capitan Caliente, its dim flickering neon sign glowing in the hazy, polluted night air. No other customers are seated there, so V dismounts her bike and slides onto a stool, ordering a NiCola that she sips in silence as she waits for Kerry to appear.
“Old geezer gonna stand you up?” Johnny teases, glitching in to lean against the side of the booth.
“Think he’d do that?” V asks, and Johnny just shrugs.
A car screeches behind her, then, and V whips around in her chair just in time to see a shitty old Galena jump the curb and back up, screeching again as it pulls to a stop. The passenger window rolls down, and a familiar husky voice calls out to her.
“Ah, you’re here,” Kerry says from the driver’s seat. “Nova.”
He’s wearin’ sunglasses and a leather vest over a plain white t-shirt. What is it with these rockerboys and their sunglasses at night? V wonders, standing to walk towards the car.
“Get in,” Kerry says with a grin. “Take ya for a ride.”
V climbs into the car, and Kerry gives her a long look, his face inscrutable behind the expensive-looking shades he’s got on. He turns and starts the engine, backing the car away from the restaurant and heading back towards the main road.
“Soon as I saw you that time, thought to myself… those’re some balls on that one,” Kerry tells her without any preamble. “And I definitely need someone with a pair for this job.”
He swivels his head back to V, his mouth twitching upwards at the corner. Same way that Johnny does, V realizes. It’s uncanny how many mannerisms they share. And Johnny’s mannerisms have grown as familiar to her as her own, now. She’s aware of why it’s happening, but she still can’t help but feel a strange affinity for Kerry as a result.
She senses more than sees Johnny glitch into the backseat.
“Never mind the testicles, tell him to keep those hands at ten and two,” Johnny complains. “Always wound up in a ditch whenever Kerry drove.”
Prolly 'cause you gonks were too busy jerkin' each other off, V thinks at him pointedly.
Johnny huffs a sharp laugh, but V ignores him. “So,” she says to Kerry, “What good’ll my balls do us today?”
“Too bad you split so quick after the concert,” Kerry says, disregarding her question. “We didn't even get a chance to chat.”
"You're the one who left early," V reminds him. “Or... are you talking about Johnny?”
Kerry furrows his brow. “That so?” he says. “Hm, maybe. Anyway, it was fuckin' nova, wasn't it? Shoulda recorded it for you. Didn't realize you wouldn't remember it through Johnny."
“I do, a little bit,” V tells him. “Sorta like… memories of a dream, or something that happened a really long time ago.”
“Weird,” Kerry says. “But yeah, wish we coulda talked more. I still barely know anything about you, except you've got a shit-ton going on inside.”
V’s not sure what to say to this, so she picks at the threadbare fabric upholstery of the rattling car. It reeks of stale cigarettes.
“These your wheels?” she asks.
“God, no, come on,” Kerry scoffs, looking affronted. He turns to her and grins. “Borrowed it. So no loss if we wreck it.”
“That’s the plan?”
“Fuck,” Johnny gloats. “Knew it. Told ya this would be good.” He laces his hands behind his head and reclines in the backseat. V notices his shades are on now, too. He seems to be enjoying this.
“V,” Kerry says seriously. “Some people in this town… they’ve gone completely whacked.” He looks at V imploringly. “You, you’re gonna help me set things right in this shithole we call home.”
V wonders just what she’s gotten herself into. “How’s that, exactly?”
They’re driving through the warehouse district in Rancho, towards the freeway entrance, and Kerry takes them onto the ramp. “There’s this little girl group, Us Cracks, right?” he says, turning to V again. “Three birds from Japan, lazrpop scop.”
“Course, yeah, I know Us Cracks,” V says, furrowing her brow.
“Ehh, big over in Asia, but I mean, pff, who isn’t?” he says dismissively. “Now, they signed some deal for an NUS tour. Wanna promote it with a cover of my song!” He bangs his fist against the steering wheel, and V feels her frown deepen. “Can you believe that?! Not about to let them play me like that.”
“Alright, and you got a problem with that because…?” V asks, glancing at Johnny in the backseat. She doesn’t see what the issue is here; musicians cover other artist’s songs all the time.
“Seriously?” Kerry growls. “Don’t see the fuckery here?” He shakes his head and balls his fist against the steering wheel again, growling exasperatedly. He punches the radio on and sure enough, PonPon Shit is blasting from three out of four of the stations he flips the dial to. “See?” he says. “They got corpo contracts, spots on every station.”
“We’ve gotta hear Kerry’s scop on every station half the time, too,” Johnny intones from the backseat. “Ask him how many corpo cocks he had to suck to get that preem placement.”
“Your music gets a ton of airplay, too,” V says to Kerry. “Don’t think people say the same about you?”
He snorts. “Johnny talkin’ shit again?” he correctly guesses. He tilts his head up towards the roof, as though addressing some invisible presence around them. “It’s ‘cause my shit’s good!”
Now it’s V’s turn to laugh. “He’s in the backseat, actually.”
“Wait, you can like, see him?” Kerry twists nervously in his seat, glancing at the empty backseat. Johnny grins and gives him the finger. “The fuck?”
“Yeah,” V says, trying not to roll her eyes at Johnny. She realizes she hasn’t quite explained this part to Kerry. “It’s like… a hallucination, or a hologram or something. I can see him and touch him and talk to him… almost like he’s really here sometimes.”
“Trippy,” Kerry says, and he sounds slightly shaken at the thought. “How the fuck does that work?”
V shrugs. “It’s a prototype chip, who the fuck knows?”
“Did you say you can touch him?”
“Yeah, sometimes,” V says, her mouth suddenly dry. “At first, it was only when I was havin’ a bad… seizure. The Relic’s damaged, so it malfunctions a lot, I think maybe every time the chip takes over and reboots another part of my brain.” She frowns. “That’s my ripper’s theory, anyway.” Kerry’s lookin’ at her, still seeming kinda stunned. She swallows and continues. “So... as the chip’s taken over more… it’s gotten easier. Now I can touch him pretty much whenever.”
Kerry lets out a low whistle. “That’s some sci-fi shit,” he says. “Well, tell ‘im-”
“He can hear you,” V reminds him.
“Alright then, listen up, Johnny,” he shouts. “If you fuck up and kill this chick I’m gonna find some way to make you regret ever comin’ back!”
Johnny makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a growl as he flips his bandmate off again, but V can’t hide her surprise at Kerry’s sudden outburst of protectiveness towards her.
She watches Kerry out of the corner of her eye as they drive. “Real bold of you to introduce me as your output during the show the other night,” she says, trying to keep her voice even. “Media seems to have really picked that up and ran with it.”
“Yeah?” he says, raising an eyebrow at her. “That a bad thing?”
“It’s been getting me some… attention,” she says carefully. She wonders if she should tell him about Lizzy Wizzy. The singer did emphasize privacy, but V is also itching to tell Kerry, for some reason. She gives in to the impulse. “Got a job from a pretty high profile client today who said she hired me ‘cause of it.”
“Ya don’t say,” Kerry says, glancing at her with interest. “Who was it?"
“Gotta promise you won’t let it slip to anyone,” V urges.
“Pff,” Kerry says. “Who would I tell?”
“Some groupie at one of your parties?” V guesses. “I dunno.”
“Not my style,” Kerry insists. “So, spill.”
“Fine,” V says. Maybe it’s just Johnny’s long-standing friendship with him messin’ with her judgment, but she implicitly trusts him. “It was Lizzy Wizzy.”
“No shit!” Kerry says with a laugh. “That’s fuckin’ preem. What’d she want?”
“Thinks her boyfriend’s cheating, wants me to check it out.”
Kerry lets out another low whistle. “Damn, not your usual sorta thing, I take it.”
V shakes her head, smiling a little. “You could say that.” She watches the lights whiz by out the window for a moment, then turns back to Kerry. “So anyway, what’s your beef with the Us Cracks chicks?”
“Screw it, doesn’t matter,” Kerry says, pulling off the freeway and heading into the canyon pass out towards the Badlands. “Be clear as day in a sec,” he adds.
“Where’re we going?”
Kerry pushes the pedal to the floor, speeding through the empty canyon. The sky’s just barely starting to lighten, making the cragged peaks loom like dark shadows above them. “A truck with the Us Cracks kit’ll be comin’ this way. Got a tip. We do it old style, like last century. We blow the fucker up.” He grins wickedly. “No gear, those bitches’ll have to cancel concerts.”
V thinks that sounds a little extreme, but Johnny leans forward from the backseat as she processes this, resting his head right next to hers.
“Kerry, solvin’ his own problems!” Johnny says, giving Kerry an appreciative once over. “Used to just send in an army of lawyers. They’d make it all disappear while he tanned his bare ass by the pool. Must be some fuckery indeed.”
“It’s just up ahead,” Kerry continues, pointing to the break in the canyon where the road emerges out into the high desert.
He pulls the car to a stop a couple yards away from a lit up bus stop, leaving the car in the shadows. The advertisements on the bus stop are for the aforementioned Us Cracks tour - they’re all over the fuckin’ city.
Kerry scowls at the billboard. “Here we are,” he says, turning to her and flashing a smirk before opening the door and hopping out.
She follows Kerry out of the car, shooting one last questioning look at Johnny, who just shrugs and glitches out of the backseat as she walks around to stand by the trunk where Kerry’s leanin’ with his arms crossed.
“Grab what’s in there,” he says, popping it open and gesturing at what V quickly realizes is a box of explosives and a stinger stashed in the rear of the hatchback.
“Damn,” she says in a low voice. “Quite the arsenal.”
“We’re fighting for art,” Kerry replies gruffly. “Art with a capital A.”
Johnny glitches in to lean on the other side of the trunk. “Hm,” he says. “I know the guy. This ain’t about art.”
V gives them both a long look, then takes a step forward and grabs the stinger and grenades, pocketing the latter in her coat.
“Automated modules… hollow spikes for better control of the vehicle…” V muses. “Standard police tech. The grenades, too. Where’d you get ‘em?”
“Same place you get designer drugs, the latest, still-patent-pending AudioVox, and fresh Yubaris,” Kerry says without missing a beat.
“Black market?” V guesses.
“Nah.” Kerry grins. “Fans.”
“Right,” she mutters.
She follows Kerry out to the middle of the road. “You know they killed IV Coma right here, in this very spot?” he says casually. “The DJ?”
V nods. “I remember that. Didn’t she die while gettin’ head or some shit like that?”
Kerry laughs darkly. “S’what the screamsheets all said,” He surveys the silent, deserted stretch of highway. “Cloaked AV followed her limo. Almost nothin’ left of her afterwards. Or the limo.” He gestures to V. “And yeah, turned out later she wasn’t even the target. It was some Biotechnica suit, one who was busy eatin’ her out when the bullets started flyin’.”
“And they found the bodies… just like that,” V murmurs.
It’s the first time it really occurs to her that her budding and apparently somewhat high-profile friendship with Kerry might start attracting him unwanted attention. Arasaka’s, specifically.
She suppresses a shudder at the thought as Kerry stops underneath a giant billboard stretching across the highway and points to the middle of the lane.
“Lay it out here,” he says.
“Why’d you need my help for this?” V says, crouching down to set up the stinger. It unfurls with a loud metal screech, stretching its arms across the road, its sharp spikes shooting out to stop any oncoming traffic.
“More fun this way,” Kerry says with a grin, and V wonders if he did just bring her along for the moral support. Could he really be that lonely? “C’mon, quick, let’s hide behind the bus stop and watch the fireworks.”
Kerry jogs back to the glowing overhang and slides behind the Us Cracks poster. V follows and crouches next to him, peering her head around, and Kerry casually rests his hand on her shoulder as he makes room for her.
“Now, we wait,” he tells her.
The stretch of highway is completely deserted right now, and V can only hope it stays that way, that Kerry's timing is right, that the next vehicle that comes down that road is their intended target.
“Alright, just spit it out,” she says. “This a set-up? Flock of medias about to fly in?”
Kerry laughs. “Wouldn’t mind that, actually.” He gives her shoulder a squeeze. “Honestly? No clue what’s about to go down.”
V frowns. “Whoever’s driving that truck… they armed?” she asks. “Got any huscle?”
“Fuck, V, no idea,” Kerry says exasperatedly. “What happens, happens, you’ll be able to handle it. That’s why you’re here.”
“Not trying to zero random roadies,” she reminds him coldly.
“No one’s gettin’ zeroed,” Kerry assures her. “Also why I asked you.”
“Sure hope you know what you’re doin’,” she tells him.
Right then, the headlights of a small van emerge out of the darkness.
“There she is,” Kerry whispers. “Right on the dot.”
Johnny appears in the middle of the road, then, arms outstretched with his back to the vehicle. V watches as the van slams into the stinger, crashing straight through Johnny’s ghost before skidding to halt on its ruined tires.
Very dramatic of him, she thinks.
Kerry leaps out from behind her, already drawing his iron. “Showtime!” he crows. “I take the driver, you get his sidechoom,” he instructs V as he jogs toward the stopped van. “We want ‘em outta the truck!”
V nods and approaches the passenger side door, drawing her Quasar as well.
“You two whacked?!” the driver shouts as she pulls open the van door. “The hell was that?!”
“Outta the truck, on the ground!” Kerry yells, brandishing his pistol. “Hands where I can see ‘em!”
“Get out,” V says more gently to the terrified looking roadie in the passenger seat. “Nice ‘n easy, no weirdness, nothing’ll happen,” she promises.
“Got the wrong truck,” the roadie stammers, stumbling out the door of the van. “Fuck, we’re not-”
“I said, easy,” V repeats. “Now get down on the ground. Won’t say it a third time.”
The roadie gets to his knees and then onto his stomach beside the driver, lacing his hands behind his head.
“H-hey man, lose the iron,” the truck driver begs. “Let’s talk it out.”
V feels bad for these poor fucks. They didn’t sign up for this shit.
“Not a word,” Kerry spits ominously. “It’ll all be over soon. Now, gimme your access card.”
The truck driver groans. “Fuckin’ hell,” he manages, reaching into his pocket and tossing a card onto the ground at V’s feet. She leans over to pick it up, keeping her pistol trained on the second roadie.
“Pop the back,” Kerry instructs her, and she nods, lowering her gun.
“No gonk moves,” she warns them, walking quickly to the back of the truck, using the access card to open the double doors.
“What’s inside?” Kerry shouts to her.
V does a quick inventory of the van’s contents. Kerry was right - it’s all their shit. Amps, a very expensive-looking keyboard, stacks of coiled cables, mixers, and a couple other preem pieces of audio tech that V can’t identify.
“Your lucky day, Ker,” V says in a low voice. “Crates ‘n crates of nothin’ but gear.”
“Hell yeaaah!” Kerry crows. “We got a hit!”
V surveys the gear again. Stuff’s gotta be worth at least a couple hundred thousand eddies, she thinks. “Really wanna trash it, not klep it?” she asks Kerry.
“Please,” Kerry scoffs, sounding affronted again. “Never stolen a thing in my life.”
“Fuck me, he really believes that?” Johnny mutters incredulously, glitching in next to her. “I remember all my strings getting swiped back in the day. Gonk never had his own.”
V chuckles under her breath at this.
“Right, gents,” Kerry’s sayin’ to the truckers still lying facedown in the road. “Now, run along and don’t look back.”
The driver doesn’t have to be asked twice, and takes off running into the early dawn. The second roadie seems paralyzed, and Kerry nudges him with his foot.
“I said, delta the fuck off!” he repeats, and the roadie scrambles to his feet and takes off running after his choom.
Kerry turns to her, grinning. “Now, for the grand finale,” he says. “Want this set to be a smoldering puddle of chrome and plastic when we’re done.”
“New signature move?” V says, cocking an eyebrow at him.
“Mhm,” he replies. “You got it. So don’t miss.” He mimes tossing a grenade into the trunk. “Light ‘er up!” he shouts triumphantly.
V backs up to a safe distance, Kerry trailing her, then removes the grenade from her pocket and pulls out the pin with her teeth before lobbing it cleanly into the back of the truck. It tumbles off the keyboard and lands with a thunk amongst the nests of coiled cables.
They wait a beat, V holding her breath, and then the truck explodes in a violent flurry of flames and smoke.
Kerry crows with laughter beside her. “Fuck yeah!” he shouts, jumping into the air and pumping his fist. “You’re a fuckin’ pro, V!” He slaps her on the back, then pulls her into a quick hug.
“Fuck me, Kerry,” Johnny mutters again, appearing beside her as Kerry whips out his phone and snaps a picture of the flaming wreckage. “I mean, it’s just a truck of toys for some plastic Japanese dolls. Might as well blow up a cotton candy stand, but…” He shakes his head slowly at Kerry, smiling appreciatively. “Still a big step forward. I hardly recognize the bastard. Old Kerry woulda been way too afraid to rock the boat with somethin’ like this.”
V remembers their fights. Kerry’d always yell at Johnny for takin’ shit too far during their sets. Like the time he fired a gun into the crowd the night Alt got taken. Or the shit Dino told her, ‘bout the ‘Saka suit they tied up backstage during a gig.
She’s not sure just how on board she is with these sort of violent theatrics, but she understands where they were coming from, back then. Why they felt the need to send a message to the men in power, to punch upwards, to fight to make their voices heard in a sea of corporate propaganda and algorithm-perfected advertising. But she has trouble seeing Kerry as the victim in this current situation. He was once a starving young rockerboy, sure, but at this point, the way she sees it, he’s a rich, old man who’s sittin’ pretty on top of a pile of platinum records and a career that spans the better part of the last century.
She wonders how Johnny’s life would have gone if he’d been around to live it.
“Burnin’ real nice, I’ll grant you that,” V says to Kerry, frowning slightly as she watches him dance around in childlike glee. “Thing is, I mean… what’s it actually get you?” She surveys the wreckage of the truck. “Scared two chooms shitless, flamed a truck… Tryin’ to be the next Silverhand, Kerry? Play terrorist?”
“Next me?” Johnny scoffs. “Hah, please. Kerry’s got a short fuse, sure, but ain’t no dynamite in that soul.”
But Kerry’s eyes narrow. “You always oversimplify shit? Nuance, V. You say vandalism, I say artistic protest.”
“Mm,” V says noncommittally, still not fully buying it. “And the real reason?”
Kerry starts pacing nervously, the same way that Johnny does when he’s agitated.
“If those little bitches think they can make it big on my song, they got another thing comin’,” he growls, circling back to V to stand close to her. “You even know what I had to sacrifice to get where I am?” he continues, still practically shouting. “The price I paid for success?!” He throws his arms open towards the smoldering truck. “And those ten-enny whores wanna klep my tune and expect me to just let ‘em? Fucking pig-ignorant hacks.”
He spits on the ground.
Johnny frowns thoughtfully at his cigarette. “Yeah, success,” he mutters. “Always a sore spot of Kerry’s. See nothing’s changed on that front.”
V shakes her head at the old rocker. “Well, wouldn’t it’ve been better to have a lawyer fight this fight for you?” Despite Johnny’s quip at him earlier, this does seem like the sorta thing best left for suits to duke it out about.
But Kerry turns away, crossing his arms again. “I’ve flashed my teeth and signed papers enough for one lifetime,” he mutters. “This here? I’m sendin’ a message.” He gestures at the truck again. “This is how you do biz in Night City.”
V raises her eyebrows skeptically. He’s not wrong, but she’s struck again by how oddly childlike he seems at times. He’s been in his insulated fame bubble for decades now, V realizes. How could he still know how shit works in the streets? But Kerry’s looking at her like he’s waitin’ for some kind of approval, and she can’t help but shake her head, her mouth twitching into a small smile.
“That is how you do biz in Night City,” she grants him. “Respect, Ker.”
His face softens, then, and he grins back at her. “You get me,” he says with relief. “Finally. Thanks.”
They smile at each other for another moment, the flickering flames reflecting in the golden chrome inlays on Kerry’s face. But then they both hear it at the same time - police sirens.
“Cops!” Kerry exclaims. “Shit, let’s delta.”
V's already sprinting towards the car, Kerry close behind her.
“You drive,” Kerry says, sliding into the passenger seat. “Get ‘em off our ass.”
V nods and hops in the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut as she guns the engine and turns the car around, racing back towards the city.
“Aw, shit!” Kerry shouts as she speeds down the freeway back through the canyons and down towards Rancho. “Last time I ran from the cops was back in… 2020?” he tells her. “With Johnny, actually.”
“Yeah?” V asks as she drives, shooting him a quick glance. He’s grinning again, making his ageless face look even younger than usual.
“High out of our damn minds, pigs still couldn’t catch us,” he continues, throwing back his head and laughing hysterically. “These gonks don’t stand a chance! Fuckin’ pigs!”
His enthusiasm is infectious, and V starts laughin’ too as they careen back down into the narrow streets of Rancho, weaving through the residential blocks. V slows their speed to match the first trickle of the day’s traffic, merging in amongst the other commuters, the inconspicuous car blending in with little effort.
“Lost ‘em,” Kerry remarks triumphantly, letting out another loud laugh. “Payin’ out the ass for you, but it was worth every eddie,” he tells her. “Nice one!”
V shoots him a look. This is news to her. “Yet to see a single eddie,” she reminds him.
“I gotcha, kid,” Kerry assures her. “For this and the show, too. Don’t worry, baby, I’ll get you flush.”
V remembers what Lizzy said to her earlier, about Kerry doing just that. She is suddenly hyper aware of the dramatic power imbalance between them. Money that means absolutely nothing anymore to people like Kerry and Lizzy is money that could change the lives of people like V. She hopes Kerry still remembers how it felt to be at the bottom, before he got where he is now.
“So, where we headed now?” V asks, changing the subject.
“Corner of Mallagra, again,” Kerry says. “Wanna grab a bite.”
V pulls into the lot of the Capitan Caliente there at his instruction, right across from the corner stall where he first picked her up.
“Kerry Eurodyne eats at a dump like this?” she teases as she parks the car.
“Choombatta!” he says, turning to her in exaggerated affront. “Best coffee in town right here. Thick as tar, and if they know you, they give you the ‘ganic stuff.” He smirks at her. “C’mon, my treat.”
“Wow,” V says dryly. “Caliente coffee with a rock star?”
Kerry just smiles at this and gets out of the car before V even stops the engine, then crosses to open V’s door for her, extending his hand to her with a slight bow. She stares at it in confusion for half a beat, then takes it and lets him help her out of the car.
He doesn’t let go of her hand as they walk towards the diner together, and V glances around nervously to see if anyone’s recognized him yet.
“When Samurai started out, we spent every enny we had on guitars, strings, y’know,” he says conversationally, letting go of her hand to hold the door open for her as they step into the brightly lit little coffee shop. “Hey, Rachel!” he says, waving down a tired-looking waitress.
But the waitress's face brightens when she sees the rocker. “G’morning,” she grunts, waving back at him.
It’s still pretty early - the sun’s not even up yet - so the diner’s mostly empty. Just a coupla suits sitting alone with their drinks, and some rougher looking types too. V carefully avoids their eyes as she follows Kerry to go sit at the counter facing the window.
“Know this dump,” Johnny says as she slides onto a stool. “It’s been fucking forever, but… I’ll never forget this smell.”
It’s not a particularly notable smell, V thinks. Just strong coffee and grease, with an undercurrent of cleaning products. But Johnny’s eyes are shining, and as V turns to Kerry, she realizes his shades are off and he’s looking at her with a soft expression on his face, too.
“Eh,” Kerry continues, drumming his fingers on the counter. “Back in the day… had a practice space right by here. Had almost nothin’ left over for food, but we still went across the street every day, right to Caliente.” He shakes his head, smiling. “Stuffed our faces, joe by the gallon. Johnny said we were so hungry and high we woulda eaten the cardboard boxes out from under the bums outside.”
V tries to imagine it. All of ‘em, young and starving, comin’ in here to eat cheap trash after practice. Johnny, alive and in the flesh, sitting in maybe this very seat.
Guess Kerry does remember, she thinks with relief, smiling up at him as she rests her elbow on the counter.
The waitress he waved to approaches them.
“The usual, Mr. Eurodyne?” she says.
“Mhm,” he nods. “Double espresso, Jamaican blend. Nothin’ else, no sugar.”
“You got it,” the waitress replies with a smile. “And you?” she asks, turning to V.
“What he’s havin’,” V says quickly, earning another smile from Kerry.
“Great!” the waitress says brightly. “Be right back with it.”
“Whew!” Kerry says, turning back to V. “Shit… just comin’ down now. Whew…” he says again. “Fuckin’ awesome. Last time I felt like this was back in Memphis. Last tour, last concert, vibes from the crowd, me on stage…”
V tries to imagine it. “The adrenaline rush,” she says.
He nods, but then his face falls. “Fuck, just thought about those Us Cracks cunts again. You think we got ‘em?”
The waitress reappears and places two coffees in front of them, smiling again at Kerry and giving V a curious look before stepping away.
V eyes her coffee, waiting for it to cool a bit.
“They really got to you, didn’t they?” she observes.
As if on cue, PonPon Shit starts playing again over the shitty diner jukebox.
“God, are you kidding me?” Kerry says, waving his arms dramatically. “Unlistenable. And this trash is their biggest hit?!”
“I like it, actually,” V admits. “It’s nothing like what you do, sure, but it’s cute and catchy in it’s own way, ya know?”
“Fuck, anyone could churn out hits like this,” Kerry moans. “Even you.”
“Know what? I’m gonna take that as a compliment,” V jokes, getting a soft chuckle from Kerry.
“Bet you could do even better,” he says with a wink. “Whole city thinks you can shred like a pro now, anyway.”
V feels her face flush at this. She knows it's an act she’ll never be able to follow.
“But really, Ker, don’t you think you’re exaggerating a bit?” she presses. “The girls just wanna have fun, sing your song to millions of adoring fans. You stand to gain here, too.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Kerry says, putting a hand on her leg. “You know how Us Cracks got started? Bunch of MSM suits decided the world needed this dookie and so served it up sprinkled with millions of eddies.” He moves his other hand to the counter again, drumming his fingers agitatedly, like Johnny does. They’re both always moving, always full of the same kinetic, nervous energy. “World ate it up, of course,” he continues, shaking his head with disgust. “And I gotta be part of that?”
Johnny appears next to them, studying his former bandmate. “Don’t believe for a millisec he torched that truck for art’s sake,” he says. “This is about money, I guarantee it. Musta screwed him on the royalties.”
Kerry takes his hand off her thigh to pick up his espresso and sip it furiously, making a face when it burns his tongue.
But V’s not sure Johnny’s right about that part. She shakes her head. “Somethin’ tells me this isn’t about Art-with-a-capital-A,” she says to Kerry. “Not about eds either,” she adds, shooting Johnny a look. “You’re afraid, Kerry.”
Kerry looks down at his coffee, then sighs heavily. “Maybe you’re right,” he admits in a low voice. “Last thing I want is Johnny to’ve been right all along.”
“About what, exactly?” she asks, thinking of what Johnny said in the car earlier, about Kerry selling out to corpos.
“Well…” Kerry says, looking down. “Johnny accused me of leaving Samurai for money. And fame.”
“And… that’s not true?” V prompts.
“No, no,” Kerry says with another heavy sigh. “It’s true, won’t lie. But he also said I’d be putting myself on a corp leash.”
“And did you?”
Kerry looks away, and both of them fall silent for a moment. V reaches for her espresso, sipping it tentatively. It’s still hot, but not quite bad enough to burn. And Kerry’s right, it’s fucking organic. V can’t remember the last time she had real, organic coffee.
“Fuck, V,” Johnny says, watching them. “Tell Kerry he shouldn’t give a shit what some dead fuck thinks.”
She has a sneaking suspicion a lot of what Kerry does is still about Johnny, on some level. Maybe even more than he wants to admit.
“Kerry,” she says softly. “Johnny’s dead. You’re not.”
“So they say,” he says, narrowing his eyes at her.
“He blew up half the city, and look where that got him,” she reminds him.
“Got him a new body with a nice rack, seems like,” Kerry jokes darkly.
“That part does have its perks,” Johnny agrees.
God, do they bring out this shit in each other? V wonders. She shoots Johnny a look over Kerry’s shoulder, but he just grins at her.
“Decide whose truth matters to you more,” she gently urges Kerry, placing her hand on his knee. “Yours, or someone else’s?”
“That a trick question?” he asks.
“Only if you don’t have the ‘nads to answer it honestly.”
Kerry is silent for a moment, then leans forward, resting his elbows on the counter.
“This Us Cracks shit…” he says sadly. “What if I’m a product, just like those dolls? Drownin’ in dirty money, ‘stead of swimmin’ in it?”
“Look,” V says softly. “Not like we know each other that well, but trust me… you got a rocker’s soul… and a rocker’s balls.”
Kerry laughs and looks over at her, a small smile creeping back across his face. “Heh, thanks,” he says quietly.
“This city don’t forgive, it eats people alive,” V continues. “But you? Well… you survived.”
“Never thought about it that way,” Kerry says, turning back to her. “You may be right, doll.”
If Kerry needs this to prove to himself that his music’s still his own, not a product to be passed around and re-packaged and sold, then she’s game to help him do that, she decides.
“Tell you what,” V says. “If Us Cracks doesn’t back out now, give me a call. We’ll convince ‘em another way,” she promises.
Kerry smiles at her - a genuine smile that lights up his whole face. “Thanks,” he says.
They sit in silence for another moment, sipping their coffees as the sky outside lightens into morning.
“Let’s get goin’,” he says suddenly, standing to leave. “You need a ride?”
V shakes her head, standing as well. “My bike’s parked just down the street.”
“Preem,” he says, offering her his arm as they head for the door.
She should've expected it, but there’s a small crowd of paparazzi gathered outside the diner, drones at the ready, and they accost the rockstar as the two of them exit the restaurant.
“Mr. Eurodyne!” one of them calls. “Is Samurai making a comeback? Will there be more reunion shows?”
“Fuckin’ hell,” Kerry mutters under his breath, ducking his head and heading for the decrepit Galena. “Sorry ‘bout all this, shoulda warned ya. Sure you don’t want a ride?”
“I’ll be fine,” she insists. “My bike is faster, anyway.”
He nods. “Well then,” he says, shifting his weight awkwardly. There’s a flash of nearby cameras, and V tries not to flinch. They look at each other for a beat. “Thanks for, uh… you know,” Kerry says, then turns and gets in his car.
“Don’t mention it,” V says.
He smiles and gives her a small wave out the window, then drives off into the early dawn.
The paparazzi horde follows V the rest of the way to her bike, and she does her best to ignore them as she hops on and starts the engine.
“What’s it like dating Kerry Eurodyne?” one of them yells after her.
She ignores the question and pulls her sunglasses out of her pocket and puts them on, shooting one last scowl at the clamoring gaggle of medias. She’s starting to understand why all rockers seem to wear these things 24/7. They’re a shield, a mask, a layer of protection, a way to hide whatever confusing mix of emotions their questions are evoking on her face.
She’s pretty sure Kerry is her friend, now, though. But she’ll feel more sure if they hang out in a context where he’s not payin’ her to be there, she realizes.
She kicks her bike into gear and speeds off into the morning, away from the cameras.
Notes:
This chapter got way too long so I actually broke it into two lmao. I'll probably post the next one tomorrow! As a treat!!!!!
Chapter 36: Flashing Lights
Summary:
V and Kerry go to Riot to settle Kerry's score with Us Cracks, once and for all.
Chapter Text
The sun is fully up by the time V gets home, and Johnny watches her undress and crawl into bed like he has every morning and every night for the past two months, now. It would almost feel domestic, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s a digital ghost fryin’ her mind bit by bit.
But her head has barely hit the pillow when her holo buzzes, and Johnny can see Kerry's avatar flashing in the corner of her HUD above the message that appears.
Heey
So I can’t stop thinkin’ about our little adventure. FUCKIN AWESOME
That’s how you live life. ON THE EDGE :>
As V reads the text, Johnny can't help but notice how Kerry's texting style hasn't changed at all in the last 50 fuckin' years. But V smiles and rolls onto her back to compose a response.
Who doesn’t like explosions and races? :)
Lemme know if the rest of your plan worked out
Johnny glitches in next to her, tracing his fingers in slow circles on her hip. Her eyes meet his as her holo buzzes again, and more texts from Kerry appear.
Sure, I’ll text or call ;)
If I can’t convince you to blow up anythin else, then at least we can go for a drink
Take care!
V sighs and rolls over to face Johnny.
“Did Kerry just ask me out for a drink?” she mumbles, her eyes already closing.
Johnny shrugs, moving his hand to her waist and sliding it up under her shirt.
“Doesn’t seem like he has that many chooms these days,” he observes.
V murmurs a quiet sound of agreement, but she’s already halfway asleep. Johnny watches her for as long as he can, feeling his body start to dematerialize as her consciousness slips under.
Her dreams - their dreams - that morning start out as a wildly discordant blur of memories and feelings.
There’s a woman singing in a small, filthy kitchen, and he abruptly recognizes the song she’s singing. It’s one of Kerry's songs. And the woman singing is V’s mother, he realizes. She bends down and scoops up a little V up in her arms, dancing around and singing along to the stereo. It’s a song V's played for him - Saints of Void - and the woman smiles as she spins V around. He can feel V trying to sing along too in her small, off-key voice, and he's struck by how much V’s mom looks like her - same sharp nose, same freckles, same full lips. But her hair and eyes are dark, unlike V's light gold Kiroshis and bleached hair, and there’s a jadedness to her features that V’s missing.
But the dream’s already changing, and now V’s scrambling up onto a rooftop, blinking back tears, fumbling with a cigarette in her tiny hands, coughing as the harsh smoke burns her lungs. She’s still a child, but older now, and the Night City skyline stretches out before them as she chokes down the cigarette in a fit of small, quiet sobs.
And to Johnny's surprise, he’s there too, physically present on the unfamiliar roof with her. But when he looks down at his hands, he sees both his real ones - organic flesh, no silver hand, no tattoos. He’s a child too, he realizes at the exact moment she turns to him, and he sees the recognition spread across her face.
“Johnny,” she whispers, quickly wiping away her tears and looking at him in bewilderment.
She’s gotta be like, 12 or 13, and her hair falls to her shoulders in a thick, messy, braid - a style he’s never seen her wear before. And it's her natural color, a dark rich brown like her mother's. Her eyes are natural, too - they're grey, and he realizes he hadn't known that about her until now. Musta gotten that from her dad.
“V,” he replies, his voice coming out roughly an octave higher than he’s used to.
She laughs, then, and it’s a childlike, musical laugh.
“This is a new one,” she says quietly. He goes to sit beside her.
“Chip’s inserting me into your childhood memories, now,” he murmurs, and she nods. Her face is still red from crying.
“Is this what you looked like?” she asks him with another small laugh.
He chuckles softly and looks down at his boyish hands again. “Guess so,” he says. “What were you crying about?”
She shakes her head. “God, I can’t even remember now. Something about my dad, I think.” Her face falls, and then the sky darkens, too, and the city fades around them and rearranges itself into a different rooftop, one Johnny recognizes this time. It’s the roof of the old abandoned movie theater in College Station where he’d come to be alone as a kid.
“Guess it cuts both ways,” he says, smiling at the thought of sharing this with V. But her face is still dark, and now she’s looking down at her hands, looking more terrified than anything else.
“I can’t remember,” she says again, and her voice sounds scared and small. “I can remember this, can remember your childhood… but mine…”
She looks back up at him, panic written on her young features, and he opens his mouth to respond, to reassure her somehow, even though he's got no clue what to tell her.
But whatever he might have been about to say is interrupted by a sharp, loud buzz, and V startles awake to her holo ringing.
It’s fuckin' Kerry again, and V's vision is glitching wildly as she rubs her eyes and rolls onto her back, trying to drag herself fully from sleep.
The late afternoon sun falls across the bed, illuminating the sheets in brilliant orange. They slept all day, seems like, but Johnny can feel that it wasn’t enough - V’s still exhausted. And her holo's still ringing.
“You know what I’m lookin’ at?” Kerry shouts angrily as she answers. “Us Cracks’ concert announcement. Tonight! This is not fuckin’ happening!”
Guess he's still on about this, Johnny thinks.
“Wait, what?” V mumbles groggily. “Thought we took care of it.”
“Truck didn’t do shit!” Kerry exclaims. “They just got new gear, show’s still on.” He shakes his head furiously. “Look, meet me outside Riot in a couple hours. Little push didn’t work, now we gotta shove.”
Johnny glitches in next to her, still trying to shake off the dream and its implications. He lights a cigarette and watches as V runs a hand through her messy, tousled hair.
“You tried talkin’ to the label, didn’t you?” V asks Kerry hopefully, sitting up and reaching for a cigarette and lighting it between her lips.
“Whaddaya think I did first?” Kerry replies, his voice still raised. “I sent my manager after ‘em. Yeah, helluva lot that did.” He shakes his head in disgust. “Sent me back a crate of fine whiskey and started bombarding me with PR shit every two seconds, remindin’ me about our deal. Fuck ‘em.”
“Alright, alright," V relents. “I’ll be there.”
“Bring your heat,” Kerry tells her, then hangs up before she can protest.
But Johnny just laughs and shakes his head as she turns to him.
“And the crisis continues!” he comments, taking a drag of his own cigarette. “Though I’m pretty sure Kerry’s barkin’ mad up the wrong tree, here. Those Us Cracks girls are a symptom, not the cause.”
V nods. “Probably wasn’t even up to them,” she agrees.
“Could wipe 'em off the face of the earth, and those MSM bastards would still find some other two-bit gonk to sing his song,” Johnny continues, glitching over to the window and drumming his fingers against the glass. “We're dime-a-dozen whores to them, all of us. Chew up, spit out, rinse and repeat.”
“Think that’s exactly what Kerry’s afraid of,” V says softly, and Johnny marvels at how much of a read she already seems to have on his friend. Though to be fair, she does have the advantage of his memories.
“He’s right to be,” Johnny mutters. “Either way, guess we're about to find out.”
The TV in the elevator is showin’ a segment about the tour van they blew up that morning, and Johnny and V exchange a look before she steps out onto the ground floor of her megabuilding, dodging the evening hordes of people gettin’ back from their shitty 9-to-5s. She weaves her way between the food stands and makes her way towards the exit, turning south at the bottom of the stairs and taking her usual shortcut down towards the waterfront.
V pulls her coat tighter around her as she walks. The sun is setting, and there’s a crisp autumn breeze blowing along the canal, making her hair whip around her face.
There’s a long line outside Riot that snakes almost all the way to Afterlife, mostly consisting of teenagers decked head to toe in Us Cracks merch. Kerry’s not there yet, so V moves away from the crowd and crosses the street to plant herself at a halal cart where she orders a synth-meat shawarma and a NiCola. She hasn’t been eating enough, Johnny thinks for the hundredth time that week.
V finishes half the shawarma before a wave of nausea makes her gag and put the sandwich down, her vision glitching slightly at the edges.
“About time, hey!” Kerry says, clapping a hand on her shoulder. V spins around, and Johnny almost doesn’t even fuckin’ recognize him at first - he’s wearin’ an oversized bomber jacket with a hat and sunglasses. Clearly tryna go incognito tonight.
“Hey,” V chokes, still startled and fighting down the nausea.
“C’mon,” Kerry says bruskly. “Time to lay it out for those little idiots. Their fifteen minutes is up.”
V nods and stands, gathering up the rest of her meal and tossing it into a nearby trash can.
“So, uh, what’s the plan?” she asks as she follows Kerry back across the street towards the club.
Kerry shrugs. “Simple. We get inside, find the little sluts’ dressing room, do our thing, delta.”
He’s got the same mean streak as you, V thinks pointedly to Johnny.
“What’s with the outfit?” she asks Kerry.
“I can’t be seen,” He explains gruffly. “Not about to give ‘em any free PR.”
“Uh huh,” V says, unconvinced. “Pretty sure you gave ‘em enough already. Did you see the screamsheets today? Burning truck was everywhere, all the feeds.”
“Don’t get smart,” Kerry scoffs. “Tell me how we get inside.”
V shrugs. “Look, sometimes simplest is best,” she says. “Can’t we just buy tickets?”
Kerry looks aghast. “Okay, first, you whacked?!” he says incredulously. “Not about to let those bitches make an enny off of me.” His face twists into a scowl. “Second… it’s sold out.”
“Cool,” V says with a laugh. “I’ll figure something out.”
She bypasses the line and the bouncer, slipping around the side of the club to the alley where Judy yelled at her just a few short days ago, and tries the side door there. It’s locked. She considers hacking it, but Johnny’s got a feeling there’s a bouncer standin’ on the other side of it. V seems to agree, because she steps away and looks up instead. There’s a fire escape above the dumpster, and V quickly vaults up onto it, grabbing the hanging ladder and using it to hoist herself up.
The door up here isn’t locked, and V checks to make sure there’s no one on the other side of it, either. It’s clear, so she drops the ladder down for Kerry, who grins as he scrambles up after her.
They’re in some sort of back office area, but the inner door opens to the mezzanine of the club that Johnny remembers from the other night. They're right near the bar she was sittin' at with her ripper and that wanna-be rockerboy fixer gonk. Kerry sidles past V as they step through and join the crowd jostling for the bartender's attention.
“Stage door is over there,” V says to Kerry, pointing at a guarded door on the opposite side of the mezzanine.
“Hah,” Kerry scoffs. “Club gigs. Amateur hour. They were any good, they’d be fillin’ stadiums.”
“Least it’s here and not at one of your sold-out stadiums,” V points out. “Woulda had to contend with huscle, medias, fuckin’ NCPD drones, NetWatch…”
“Yeah, yeah, eat my ass,” Kerry quips back playfully.
“We can bluff our way in,” V suggests, but Kerry shakes his head.
“Guy there. Roadie,” he says, pointing to a man sitting alone at the bar. “He’s done with his job for now. He’s gonna wanna drink, get himself some strange.”
“Uh huh,” V says, nodding slowly as she grasps his angle. “So he won’t be needin’ his backstage pass anymore.”
Kerry grins. “Distract him,” he tells her. “I’ll grab the pass.”
V approaches the man. He’s wearin’ a shiny pink and silver bomber jacket, doesn’t look to Johnny like he’s from Night City. His body language gives ‘im away, too.
He’s talkin’ to the bartender now, braggin’ about how well he knows the Us Cracks chicks like he’s a fuckin’ groupie gonk. Johnny remembers the type, had to contend with plenty of ‘em back in the Samurai days.
“And Blue Moon told me at rehearsal they haven’t had this quality sound in a long time,” he’s sayin’ as V slides onto the empty stool next to him. “No artifacts, no reverb.”
“This seat taken?” she says, giving him a sly grin. She leans in towards the bartender, angling herself so the roadie’s got a preem view of her cleavage, and orders herself a glass of Centzon, neat.
“Heyyyy, there,” the roadie says to her, his face lighting up as he gives her a once over, eyes lingering on her chest way longer than Johnny likes. He’s young, probably around V’s age. "How you doin’?” he asks, speaking with a thick New York accent, confirming Johnny’s suspicion that he’s not from around here.
V rests her elbow on the bar and smiles at him, casually sipping her drink and trying not to watch over his shoulder as Kerry sidles up to the bar behind him. “Hear about that truck?” she asks the roadie conspiratorially. “Full of the girls’ gear? All blew up?”
Johnny sees Kerry shoot her a dark look over the poor fuck’s shoulder.
“Sure did,” the roadie replies sadly. “Guy at the bottom gets the short end of the stick, always.”
“Us Cracks aren’t exactly at the bottom,” Kerry pipes up gruffly, pitching his voice lower than usual. It’s a poor attempt at a disguise, but no one seems to’ve recognized him yet.
“No,” the roadie says, turning to Kerry. “I’m talkin’ about the drivers. Got fired, both. For leaving the scene, not bein’ there to give the cops information.”
Johnny feels V's face fall at this.
“Musta been a pain for the girls, though,” Kerry says, seemingly unable to help himself. “Gear destroyed, had to scramble to replace it for tonight. Think it mighta been someone sending a message?”
“Nah,” the roadie says dismissively. “Shit was insured. Prolly got more scratch outta this than that junk was even worth.” He shrugs. “Besides, what’s some truck to them? Couldn’t give a shit, prolly didn’t even know about it. That’s their manager’s job, ain’t it?”
Kerry frowns, and Johnny can tell he's gettin' pretty worked up. V notices it too, and puts on her best bashful smile to draw the roadie’s attention back to her. “You know the girls, like, personally?” she asks in a starstruck voice, attempting to steer the conversation to safer territory.
It works, and the roadie grins widely at her. “Wanna meet ‘em, hun? I can set it up, no problem.”
Johnny very much doubts this.
“Everybody says they know so-and-so,” V argues sweetly. “Always turns out they don’t know shit.”
“True…” the roadie says, studying her face. “But look, they ain’t here. You are. How ‘bout we focus on you, huh?” He beams at her. “Nice eyes you got. Kiroshi?”
Johnny knows it certainly ain’t the smoothest line V’s ever heard, but she pretends to act flustered and looks down, then back up at him, batting her eyelashes slightly. “Hm,” she says, in a sultry voice. “Think I’d rather get to know you better.”
Truth is, Johnny admits, he probably woulda fallen for this act himself too, back in the day. V really can turn on the charm when she needs to. He scowls internally.
The roadie turns on his stool then to face her square on. “You’re alright, kitten,” he says, looking her up and down. “What’s your name?”
“V,” she tells him. “You?”
“Donnie,” he says, a goofy ass grin spreading across his face like he just won the fuckin' lottery. “But you can call me ‘D’.”
“Very funny,” V teases, still smiling that catlike smile of hers.
Behind him, Johnny can see Kerry slide his hand into the man’s pocket, extracting the backstage pass and giving V a quick thumbs up. He kleps like a street kid, Johnny hears V think to herself.
“How about we get outta here for a few minutes?” Donnie is saying. “Maybe even a few more, if you’re lucky?”
“I’ll find you later,” V promises, giving him a wink and standing up. The roadie's face falls, but he doesn’t try to stop her and just turns back to his drink, his shoulders slumping ever so slightly.
Dream the fuck on, Johnny thinks smugly.
Kerry’s already walkin’ back towards the stage door, and V follows after him quickly, pushing through her way across the floor that’s gettin’ more crowded by the minute as the club fills up.
“How’s it lookin’ pre-show?” V asks the bouncer casually as Kerry shows him the klepped pass. “Everything in order?”
The bouncer nods. “Yeah… had some hiccups with the sound, little starlets wanted their own matrixes, some custom-made Japanese shit.” He shakes his head. “Boys couldn’t figure out how to link it all up. Dunno, apparently it’s all good now.” He nods at the badge Kerry’s holdin’ and steps aside to let them pass.
“Thanks, pal,” V says, clapping the bouncer on the shoulder as she steps through the door, shooting him a devilish grin.
“Yeah, sound system…" Kerry mutters in her ear. "Must be one of those smart vocoders. Do the whole damn job for ‘em.”
Ker's really got a chip on his shoulder these days, seems like.
The backstage area is a maze of hallways and dressing rooms, but Kerry and V follow the sound of high-pitched laughter until they find the door they're lookin’ for.
Three girls with colorful hair wearing color-coordinated skirts and leotards are gathered around the big mirrors of the main dressing room, giggling and gossiping with each other in fast-paced Japanese as the door slides open at V's quickhack.
Johnny’s seen ‘em before - their presence these days is ubiquitous. They’re on posters and Kiroshi ads all over the city, their vids blarin’ from TVs every ten feet. But in person, they’re just three tiny, chromed-up girls. Can’t be older than 23, Johnny thinks, though he can't be sure given how heavily modded they clearly all are.
Kerry gives V a nod and steps into the room.
“Now, we’re gonna chat!” he announces loudly, pulling out his gun and approaching the girls.
“Who the fuck are you?” the red-haired one asks coldly, jumping back from the mirror and facing Kerry and V with her hands on her hips. Johnny notices that the heavy Japanese accent he's heard them use in interviews has suddenly vanished.
“The fuckin’ guy you robbed!” Kerry yells, pulling off his hat and tossing aside his sunglasses.
All three girls start flipping out at once, jumping up and down and clapping their hands excitedly.
“Kerry Eurodyne?” the blue-haired girl shrieks. “Kerry-san?!”
Johnny's not sure what he was expecting, but whatever it was, this ain't it. Fuckin’ christ, he thinks. These’re true blue fans. Seems Kerry’s got it all fuckin’ wrong.
But Kerry shakes his head, his face twisting with disgust as he cocks his pistol and waves it threateningly in their faces. “I ain’t your san! This ain’t a meet ‘n greet, either!”
The blue-haired girl’s hands fly to her mouth, and the three of them step back, confusion written all over their pretty plastic faces.
Kerry glances at V, obviously expecting her to say something right now. “V?” he hisses.
V just shrugs. “Hear him out,” she says coolly, turning to sit on the low couch next to them. “This is all a misunderstanding. Clear it up, and we’re gone.”
She pours herself a drink from the bottle they have sittin’ in an ice bucket on the small glowing table. It’s vodka, ‘cause of fuckin’ course it is. Johnny would make a face if he could, but V tosses it back anyway and immediately starts refillin’ her glass.
“But… Kerry-san,” the purple-haired one stammers. “What happened? We had a deal, didn’t we?”
“Oh my god,” the blue-haired girl says in horror. “Is this about that N54 interview?”
“We, like, didn’t mean to offend or anything,” the red-haired one adds. “‘Old’ doesn’t mean anything anymore!”
Johnny would laugh if he could, but Kerry turns to V exasperatedly, lowering his gun and throwing his arms back dramatically. “No wonder the truck didn’t get to ‘em,” he sneers. “Even dumber than I thought.”
“This has to be a case of crossed cables!” the blue-haired girl is saying. Blue Moon, Johnny recalls, thumbing through V's casual knowledge of the group. They all got dumb names like that. ‘Course V would know this shit. Red Menace is the red-haired one and… Purple Flame? He can’t fuckin’ remember the third.
That’s your own dumb song, you gonk, V tells him silently. It’s Purple Force.
Johnny glitches in by the mirror and rolls his eyes at her.
"Are you backing out of the deal?" Red Menace asks with alarm.
“Wait, wait wait,” V says, setting down her drink. “What’s this about a deal?”
Blue Moon turns to her. “We signed a deal with MSM to play Kerry-san’s song, User Friendly.”
“It’s like, our new single for the North American leg of the tour,” Purple Force chimes in.
Johnny raises his eyebrows. “Welp, looks like Ol’ Ker missed some of the plot, here,” he says to V.
But Kerry’s havin’ none of it. “Over. My. Dead. Body,” he growls, gesticulating with his gun at the three girls as he speaks, causin’ ‘em to cower back slightly again.
“But we’re going to bring your rock into a new era!” Purple Force protests, stepping tentatively towards him. “Isn’t that what you wa-”
“Rock?!” Kerry shouts, cutting her off. “You?!” He sighs angrily and paces back and forth a few steps. “Okay, let me tell ya something,’ he continues. “It’s been claimed before, but you actually did it. Rock is dead,” he shouts. “And you killed it. Congratu-fuckin’-lations.”
Johnny lets out a loud guffaw. Leave it to Kerry to be this fuckin’ theatrical. But to their credit, the girls stand their ground.
“Your manager contacted ours,” Red Menace tells Kerry indignantly. “Said you wanted to work with us.”
This finally stops Kerry up short. He lowers the gun, blinking at V and then back at the girls in confusion. “Kovachek?” he says dumbly. “Th-the fuck? H-he never even asked me!" His eyes dart wildly around the room. "The fuckin’ corpo cuntbag!”
“Listen, Kerry-san,” Blue Moon says gently. “That cover is an expression of our love for you. Please, let’s work something out.”
Johnny looks pointedly at V. “Rock may be dead,” he says gruffly, “But Kerry’s blind if he can’t see these girls got potential.”
V just nods and polishes off her drink. “Looks like the label fucked you all,” she says. “You’re their pawns. They’re playin’ you.”
Kerry's anger is abruptly deflated. “Looks that way...” he admits, his shoulders slumping. “Fuck,” he adds softly, looking down.
The Us Cracks girls regard him nervously, waiting for him to say more.
Johnny’s enjoyin’ this more than he cares to admit. It’s not that he likes seein’ Kerry get dressed down, it’s that he likes bein’ right. It’s the fuckin’ corpo’s fault, it’s always the corpo’s fault. Not these little kids playin’ at pop idols.
“Y’know,” Kerry says to them finally. “Got nothin’ against you. The sitch, that’s what’s fucked.”
“Well, you chained your gonk ass to the corpos, what’d ya expect?” Johnny crows from where he’s leaning, earning another sharp look from V. God, he loves being right.
“We’ll talk to the label, Kerry-san,” Blue Moon promises. “But right now, we’ll make our displeasure known.”
“Your song’s out of the set,” Red Menace agrees. “We’ll call off the concert and suspend the tour.”
“Seriously?” Kerry says. “You’ll lose millions.”
“They’ll lose even more,” Red Menace says with a grin.
Johnny snorts a laugh. These chicks have the right fuckin’ idea after all.
Kerry stands there, utterly speechless for a moment. V silently pours herself another drink and downs it. Johnny feels the liquor coursin’ through ‘em both, and it only makes this whole situation even funnier to him. He lowers his shades and grins at V.
“Well… okay,” Kerry says slowly. “You girls, ehh…” He looks down sheepishly. “You’re all right. What I said earlier, I…”
“No biggie, Kerry-san!” Blue Moon insists. “Even monkeys fall from trees.”
“Right,” Kerry says, seemingly unsure if that's an insult or not. He turns to V. “C’mon, let’s get outta here.”
“Wait, Kerry-san…” says Red Menace, stepping forward and playfully pushing Kerry. “Since you’re here, can we… can we get a pic with you? Just… as a souvenir?” She grabs his hand and yanks him back towards the rest of the girls, and Kerry shoots V a helpless look and shrugs as he goes to join them by the mirrors.
“Erm, pff,” he sputters. “Why the hell not?” He looks at V. “V, do the honors?”
Red Menace grabs Kerry’s gun from his hand and poses dramatically with it.
“Say, ‘synth-cheese,’” V jokes dryly, and snaps a pic of the four of them on her holo.
“Do you want to be in it, too?” Blue Moon asks suddenly, smiling shyly at V.
V looks at them, and Johnny can feel her immediate awkwardness. “I, uh…” she stammers.
But Purple Force is already stepping forward, grabbing her hand and pulling her back to join them.
“Let’s take a selfie!” Red Menace exclaims enthusiastically, and Kerry gets out his phone and holds it out in front of him. They all lean in and pose around him, and Johnny can feel V’s painful awareness of how out of place she looks among their plastic, perfect little faces. But Johnny prefers hers - scars, bruises and all. It’s a real face, and it’s her face.
She catches his thought and smiles, flashing a “V” with her fingers as Kerry snaps the photo. Johnny sees him shoot V a wink as he does so.
“Um, so,” Kerry says to the girls, putting away his phone. “You workin’ on any new songs? We could, ah, maybe pick one for your single.”
Johnny laughs again and shakes his head. One sec Kerry’s threatening these chicks with a gun, next second he’s tryna be their goddamn uncle. Fuckin’ classic.
But Blue Moon practically squeals with delight. “Really?!” she gasps.
Kerry nods, smilin’ at the three of them. He turns to V.
“Let’s stick around, huh?” he says with a shrug. “I mean, look at ‘em… the girls need help.”
V meets Johnny’s eye and laughs too. “I don’t got anywhere else to be,” she tells him, raising the glass of vodka she's still clutching in a mock toast.
The girls all clap and grin. The purple-haired one even jumps up and down.
“So…” Blue Moon says, turning back to Kerry. “Maybe you’d listen to some tracks in progress?” she asks hopefully. “We’re working on loads. Wanna hear about them?”
“About?” Kerry scoffs. “C’mon, talkin’ about music’s like fuckin’ in a bed of azeleas. Unnecessary, uncomfortable, and ultimately kitsch as all fuckin’ get out.”
Blue Moon pouts. “I kinda like azaleas.”
“We can play them for you,” Red Menace offers instead.
Kerry agrees, and the girls excitedly convene with each other, arguing in Japanese for a bit before seemingly deciding on a track.
“This one is called Chainsaw Lollipop,” Red Menace announces.
Purple Force’s eyes glow blue as she queues it up, and then a loud, catchy beat fills the air around them, followed by an even catchier synth riff.
“Hmm,” Kerry says thoughtfully. “Eh, it’s not complete tripe… Like the title enough, s’kinda catchy… Indirectly metaphorical, hmm…”
Kerry and the girls all move to the couch, but V's already nearly polished off their whole ass bottle of fancy vodka. Johnny can feel that she’s more than a little drunk as she joins them on the couch. The girls send for another bottle, and Kerry produces a little vial of synth-coke, and soon enough they’ve listened to their entire fuckin’ album and Kerry’s offerin’ ‘em all sorts of words of wisdom about the biz. V's listening with rapt attention too as Kerry regales 'em all with stories from his tours and recording sessions.
Kerry’s actually enjoyin’ himself, Johnny realizes. This mentor shit kinda suits him.
The next bottle arrives, and night gets hazy from there. The opener's finishing up - it's almost time for the girls to go on. Despite their pleas, Kerry resists their attempts to convince him and V to stay for the show. And then V and Kerry are huggin' the girls goodbye and stumblin’ over to the Afterlife, laughin’ hysterically about how it all went down.
“You fuckin’ gonk,” V slurs at him as they stagger down the sidewalk together. “Can’t fuckin’ believe you pulled a fuckin’ gun on them.” She giggles and leans heavily against him as they tumble through the alley and down the stairs into the green glow of the familiar club.
“Didja see their faces, though?" Kerry laughs back. “Was worth it for that alone.”
Emmerick waves them past, and Kerry and V take a seat at the bar. Claire’s eyes widen when she sees ‘em. The Afterlife may be full of top-tier mercs, but it’s not every day they get a fuckin’ true-blue A-list celebrity like Kerry in their midst, Johnny figures.
“Still glad we did it,” Kerry says, resting his elbows on the bar. “You don’t take matters into your own hands, they’ll squeeze you dry, chew you up, and shit you out," he tells V sagely.
“Mm,” V agrees as Claire steps over to them, grinning broadly.
“Lemme guess,” she says. “Two Silverhand specials?”
Kerry throws back his head and laughs at this. “For real?” he says. “The fuck is in a Silverhand special?”
“Tequila, the fuck do you think?” V tells him, also laughing.
“Alright, alright, sounds preem,” Kerry says, shaking his head in bemusement. His eyes fall on the little Silverhand shrine Rogue has up behind the bar, and he nudges V and points to it. “Always knew Rogue would never lose her soft spot for that fucker,” he says to her, and he's leaning in close enough that Johnny can smell his cologne. Same stuff Ker always wore. It makes something in Johnny's chest ache.
“You don’t know the half of it,” V mutters darkly as Claire places the two drinks in front of them and moves away politely, shootin’ V a small wink.
“Eh, it’s alright,” Kerry reassures V, lifting his glass and clinking it against hers as she lifts it to her mouth. “You got nicer tits.”
"What’s that got to do with anything?” V asks, choking on her drink.
But Kerry just laughs. “Nothin’, just sayin’ Johnny’s got a type.”
“I… he… what?” V splutters.
Johnny’s somewhat less surprised by Kerry's callout. Sure, he didn’t outright tell Kerry the exact nature of his relationship with V, at least not that he can remember, but he's not shocked that Kerry knows him well enough to read between the lines.
"Told Johnny that, too,” Kerry adds, still laughing. Johnny can tell that Kerry's pretty fuckin' drunk now, too.
“Told him what?” V squeaks.
“That you have a nice rack,” he replies, lowering his voice to a sultry tone, and V punches his arm. “Kidding!” he says. “I mean, I’m not, though. I did say that to him.”
“The fuck were you talkin’ about my tits for?”
"When I was askin’ him what the fuck he was doin’ in the body of a hot 27-year-old merc chick," he tells V. "Or to be exact, I asked him why he looked like a klepto-punk from the Afterlife." He throws back his head and laughs again, gesturing to their surroundings. "Guess I had you pegged."
"I was wearing Johnny's pants and jacket!" V protests.
"Eh," Kerry says appraisingly. "Maybe it's the hair."
V unconsciously reaches her hand up to touch said hair. It is probably the most distinctive thing about her appearance, Johnny thinks. He’d made fun of her for it at first, called her weird, choppy DIY mullet a "dandelion puff" ‘cause of how it sticks out in all directions, forming a soft messy halo around her face. Right now, the pale lavender color she had when he met her has almost completely faded to white and her dark roots are growing in now too, adding even more to the effect. But Johnny’s grown to like it, as he has every goddamn stupid thing about her.
"It's a good look on ya," Kerry says reassuringly, agreeing with Johnny’s unspoken thought.
V blushes, then, and Johnny’s not sure whether it’s because of what Kerry said, or if she caught some of what he was just thinkin’.
“So,” Kerry continues conversationally. “Does it piss Johnny off that I’m constantly flirting with you?"
V balks, and so does Johnny. “Are you?”
“Aren’t I?” Kerry replies with a grin, taking another swig of his drink.
Johnny considers this. He hasn’t actually thought much of it right up until this moment, frankly - given’ Kerry’s general preference for men and the fact that he’s over 60 years her senior, Johnny’d just assumed Kerry was only teasin’ her, maybe even tryna get a rise out of Johnny himself.
But now that Johnny thinks about it, he realizes Kerry might actually be serious in his affections. And what's more, he’s actually not sure it does piss him off, strangely enough. He’s missed Kerry, more than he’s admitted even to himself. Part of him resents how naturally V seems to get along with him, something Johnny never could quite seem to figure out. But maybe that’s it, he thinks. He’s gettin’ to see a different side of Kerry through V, and it’s a side he realizes he likes.
“Would you be disappointed if I said no?” V asks.
Kerry raises an eyebrow. “Not tryna seduce you just to piss him off, V,” he says seriously.
“But you are trying to seduce me?”
“Let’s have a couple more of these and find out,” he says coyly, waving Claire down. She hasn’t moved far, and is still lingering nearby, listening to their conversation with a poorly-feigned disinterest. Everyone in the bar is lookin’ at Kerry, Johnny abruptly notices. At V, too. She glances down nervously into her drink. Claire crosses over to refill it, shooting her another wink and staying nearby this time.
“Well, then,” V says, lifting her glass to Kerry. “To this.”
The corner of Kerry's mouth twists upwards into that crooked smile of his that Johnny remembers so well.
“To this,” Kerry replies, taking a swig.
“You two lovebirds are all over the news,” Claire remarks as they finish their toast.
“So I’ve heard,” V replies in an equally dry tone.
“But have you seen it?” Claire says, her eyes lighting up. She fumbles in her pocket for her old-fashioned phone, the kind with a screen that V doesn’t bother with anymore now. The kind Kerry still uses, despite the fact that he's def got a holo installed in his fancy fuckin' optics. Johnny watches as Claire thumbs through it, pulling something up before turning it around and handing it to V.
It’s a screamsheet article from some scop outlet that Johnny vaguely recognizes. Kerry leans in to read it over V’s shoulder, and Johnny reads along with them.
WHO IS “V”??
Oct 21, 2077 -- Kerry Eurodyne’s mysterious new output electrified Samurai fans both old and new alike at their surprise reunion concert on Friday night at Red Dirt in the Arroyo neighborhood of Santo Domingo. Their stage presence together was absolutely magnetic, and it seemed almost as though she were channeling the spirit of Silverhand himself. With a voice like smoke and eyes to match, she stunned an unsuspecting audience with her virtuoso guitar playing and intense energy.
But who is this elusive new rockergirl on the scene? Sources name her as Verona Verne, who goes by just “V,” an up and coming merc known for being a new staple of the Afterlife scene. Dino Dinovic, a well known fixer and former rockerboy himself, described her as “hot stuff” when asked for comment. Hailing from our very own Heywood, she is known locally as a highly skilled netrunner with childhood ties to the Valentinos. Sources tell us she’s also made a recent splash in NC's professional boxing circuit and has been having a hot streak in the street racing scene. No wonder this hotshot young merc caught Eurodyne’s eye! All this certainly makes for an exciting backstory as she makes her foray into the music world.
The pair were spotted going for an early morning coffee later in the week, pulling up to Capitan Caliente in Rancho Coronado in an unmarked vehicle. Kerry wore his signature rocker vest and combat boots, and V sported a leather jacket and kept it casual with sneakers and a white tank. Interestingly, the pair left separately -- Kerry in his car, while V hopped on a modified Arch Nazare and slipped away from the paparazzi.
We sure can’t wait to see what this dynamic duo gets up to next!
And sure enough, there at the top of the article is a photo of the two of them leaving the diner that morning, V clutching Kerry's arm and Kerry raising his hand protectively towards the cameras.
“Jesus christ,” V says softly, handing Claire back her phone.
But Kerry’s cackling. “‘With a voice like smoke and eyes to match!’” he quotes in a dramatic voice, raising his drink to her again. Claire laughs and steps away to help another patron, while V rolls her eyes and presses her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose as soon as she’s gone.
“Fuck, is this what I have to look forward to now?” she groans. And then a new thought seems to strike her. “Fuck!” she exclaims suddenly, setting down her drink and turning to Kerry with alarm.
“What?” Kerry asks, his brow furrowing.
“They printed my real fuckin’ name, Kerry,” she says in a low voice.
“So?” he asks.
But Johnny knows what she’s thinking. This article - and the countless others like it, probably - just painted a big red fuckin’ target on her ass. Now anyone lookin’ for her’s got her name, her picture, her known associates.
“Fuck,” she says again as her vision starts to glitch. She leans forward, resting her forehead on her arms.
“You okay?” Kerry asks, putting a hand on her shoulder, but V leans away from him and pukes a fountain of blood all over the fuckin’ floor before collapsing off the barstool onto the ground.
Johnny’s dimly aware of Kerry and Emmerick lifting V off the floor, helping her to her feet and up the stairs. Emmerick hovers while Kerry calls them a Delamain, and V crumples into it when it arrives, immediately puking all over the white leather interiors before blacking out again.
And then they’re in the elevator of her megabuilding, V leaning heavily into Kerry’s shoulder, pointin’ at the penthouse and slurrin’ some stupid nonsense about it.
“Jackie and I were gonna live there,” she's mumblin' at him. “Fuckin’ major leagues.”
And then her vision goes white as she slumps against Kerry.
When she opens her eyes again, they’re back in her apartment. Her vision’s still glitching, but she’s in her bed, tucked in and everything, lights off.
And Kerry’s still here, too, Johnny realizes, standing alone by the window, lookin’ out at that goddamn penthouse. It’s raining, now - Johnny can hear the soft pattering against the glass, the thunder in the distance above the muffled sounds of the city below.
Johnny watches through V’s eyes as Kerry gazes out the window into the falling rain, his face unreadable. But he knows Kerry well enough to know what’s happening. Kerry’s always been like this - he falls hard and fast, gets attached quickly. It doesn’t happen with him often, but when it does, it’s one of those things that’s hard to shake. Johnny knows Kerry felt that way about him, once. Still does, maybe. Johnny remembers all too well. He suspects some of those old feelings of Ker's are partly to blame for his sudden captivation with V, but he also has no trouble seeing how and why V herself has grabbed his old friend's attention.
He can feel V’s confusion about the situation, too, as she watches Kerry sigh and rest his forehead against the glass. He seems to feel V’s gaze on him, then, because his eyes flick to her momentarily.
But V just mumbles something that Johnny can’t make out, then rolls over and closes her eyes again, the sound of the rain against the glass blending with the tequila and the Relic malfunction-induced sway of the world around them, lulling them both into an uneasy, dreamless sleep.
Notes:
Enjoy the brief respite bc the next chapter is a doozy
Chapter 37: Archangel
Summary:
Kerry invites V for another night out, but her day takes some unexpected twists along the way.
Notes:
Smut in this one! This chapter's a real fucking doozy as advertised and it's a long one so plan accordingly. It has like literally every romcom trope under the sun lmao and of course I made it all angsty. Enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The sunlight is streaming through the window when V opens her eyes, and Kerry is gone. Was he really there all night, or did she dream that? Her eyes fall to the Wounded Machine poster above her couch and she feels her face flush at the thought of Kerry himself seein' it. The idea of him being in her apartment still somehow seems almost too surreal for words.
She rolls over onto her back, blinking and rubbing her eyes.
Another day, another hangover.
She drags herself to her feet and staggers to the bathroom, splashing water on her face and drinking straight from the tap. The water tastes metallic and a little too salty for her comfort, but she chokes it down and rests her elbows on the counter, placing her forehead in her hands.
“Congratulations, you didn’t join the 27 Club,” Johnny says behind her.
“The what?”
Johnny frowns. “Do they not say that anymore? Means you survived to be 28."
Fuck, she realizes. Johnny's right. Today's her fuckin' birthday. It's October 12th, and she's 28 years old.
“Yeah, and?” she says, straightening to meet his eyes in the mirror.
He shrugs. “Happy birthday.”
She studies him warily, unsure if there’s an added jab coming.
“Thanks, old man,” V teases. “Aren’t we about to be celebrating your, what, 89th birthday soon?”
“If I’m still here by November to celebrate my birthday, that means shit’s gone fuckin’ ass over sideways,” he reminds her.
She grimaces at this, but says nothing.
He takes a step forward, closing the distance between them as he comes to stand behind V, then puts his metal hand on her leg, sliding it up her thigh. “So,” he purrs. “Whaddaya want for your birthday?”
His implications are clear, but V twists her head to look him directly in the eye instead.
“How about you tell me the thing you talked to Rogue about that you didn’t wanna tell me?”
The question seems to catch Johnny off guard, and V watches his face as he freezes, collects himself, then considers his words carefully. She can feel him retreat within her, like he always does when he’s keepin’ something close to his chest.
“You promised,” she reminds him.
He resumes moving his hand up her thigh, sliding it around her hip and pulling her body flush against his.
"She was giving me shit about some stupid bullshit I said when I was drunk," he murmurs into her neck.
V raises an eyebrow, remembering her conversation with Rogue in the car on the way to the movies.
"Think she mentioned that to me," V says.
"Yeah, I... didn't remember, so she kindly reminded me," Johnny says, brushing his mouth upwards to nip at V's earlobe. He's not lying, but V can tell he's not telling her the whole truth, either.
"You still love her," she says. It's not a question, she can feel the way his heart twists a little bit every time he thinks about her.
But Johnny just pulls back abruptly and looks at her.
"What?" he says, the surprise clear in his voice. "No. Or I mean… maybe." His brow furrows as he shakes his head. "I dunno. Guess part of me prolly always will, yeah. But no, it wasn't that."
V frowns. "So, what, then?" she presses.
Johnny studies her face.
"Told her about us," he says slowly.
She meets his gaze. "Figured it was maybe something like that," she says, lifting her chin. "Be more specific. What did you tell her, exactly?"
Johnny smiles a slow, sad smile. "That we're fucked. That I'm fucked."
"Just that?” V asks skeptically. “What'd she say?"
"She told me not to do to you what I did to her."
V scowls. "Cheat on me with a hot blonde netrunner, you mean?"
"You are a hot blonde netrunner," Johnny reminds her, leaning in again to bite her neck, hard enough this time to leave a bruise.
“Johnny!” she protests, laughing in spite of herself.
He rests his hands on the counter on either side of her, dragging his teeth down along her collarbone, his beard grazing her skin. He pauses for a moment, and she feels some emotion writhing inside him, something dragging heavily at their shared link.
“Told her that-” he begins, but then V’s holo starts ringing and Johnny freezes and pulls back again, his face suddenly hard.
And then V sees the name on her HUD and understands why.
Hanako Arasaka.
Took her fucking long enough.
V answers immediately, unable to stop her voice from shaking. “H-hello?”
“V,” says the Arasaka heiress in her clipped and polished English.
“Hanako,” V says, swallowing hard. Johnny shifts off of her and backs up to lean against the wall across from her, folding his arms across his chest and tapping his foot nervously. His shades are on, now, but she doesn't need to see his eyes to know what he's feeling. She can see the wariness in the set of his jaw, feel it rolling off him in waves.
“You’ve been making quite a name for yourself,” Hanako remarks. “Running all around town with Mr. Eurodyne.”
“I…” V begins, unsure of what to say. Is Hanako about to start crawlin' up her ass about those screamsheet pieces? The fuck is she supposed to say to this?
“It is good,” Hanako says quickly. “I hope my brother sees it. I hope he sees that you have powerful allies, that you are not afraid of him.”
V forces herself to nod. “If you say so.”
“That being said, we are running out of time,” Hanako continues. “We will meet two weeks from today. At Embers, in the city center. It is discreet. Just remember one thing. From now on, we both must exercise extreme caution.”
“I…” V begins. “Okay.”
“Until then,” Hanako says, disconnecting the call.
“Fuck,” V says.
Johnny is scowling. “Don’t fuckin’ like this, V,” he says. “We’ve still got other options.”
“Do we?” V asks, looking at him.
“Could ask Rogue for help. Or even fuckin’ Kerry.”
“The fuck is Kerry gonna do?”
“He has money. Connections.” Johnny shrugs. “Better than lickin’ Hanako’s cunt and helping her with whatever little sibling rivalry bullshit she’s got goin’ on.”
“She’s desperate, Johnny,” V reminds him. “This might be our best chance. She could get us access to Mikoshi without sheddin’ any blood, get us access to doctors. Maybe even...” She bites her lip and looks at him, feeling that familiar sharp ache in her chest. She doesn’t have to finish the thought; he knows what she’s thinking, and his face darkens.
"Can't you just accept it, V?” he says. He uncrosses his arms, reaching into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. “I'm dead, I've been dead for fifty fuckin’ years, this ain't gonna have a fairytale fuckin’ ending. I see your little fantasies, I know you're holdin' out some gonk hope that 'Saka's got my body on ice somewhere, and you'll be able to wake Sleeping Beauty up after all these years. But shit don't work that way in real life, princess."
V recoils as though she’s been slapped. "You don't fuckin' know that," she says softly, looking him square in the eye.
“I do know that,” he says, dangling the cigarette between his lips and lighting it, his face still hard under his shades. “The sooner you stop thinkin’ otherwise, the less painful it’ll be when life inevitably kicks you in the nuts. You should know that as well as I do, by this point.”
“No, you should know that I’m not the type to take shit lyin’ down,” she says, not backing down. “And neither are you. You yourself raided ‘Saka Tower twice to save your goddamn output, even after she was already as dead as you are right now. The fuck can’t you accept that someone might wanna return the favor?”
“I’m not your fuckin’ input,” he scowls. "I'm a ghost in your head that's killin' ya."
“No,” she protests. “You’re the guy who saved my fuckin’ life, and I wanna try to save yours, too, and the least you could do is not make me feel like a fuckin-”
"We both knew this time would come, V," Johnny says gently, cutting her off. "If we don't think of something quick, you will die... and I'll go with you. Don’t have time to make deals and dick around tryna find my corpse in a fridge somewhere."
"The fuck does that mean, you’ll go with me?" V snaps. "If I die, you'll be sittin' pretty in my skin."
He shakes his head. "Nah, I'll take your gonk ass straight to 'Saka Tower and blow it up again if it comes to that," he promises.
"Great, so we makin' suicide pacts now?" she shoots back. "'Cause in that case-"
Her words are cut off as her holo starts buzzin’ again, and this time it’s Kerry. She sighs and turns away from Johnny.
“Kerry,” she says in an exhausted voice as she answers. “Hey. Look, I'm sorry about last-" she begins, but he's already talking.
“You got plans this evening?” he asks without a greeting. “Cancel ‘em.”
“I-” she begins. “Tonight? Have you even fuckin’ slept?”
“Yeah, tonight,” he says impatiently, but his eyes are shining with excitement. “Come to Dark Matter on Woodland. You might not know the place, don’t really advertise.”
“What’s the occasion?” she asks cautiously.
“Us Cracks!” he exclaims. “We never celebrated our little victory.”
“Whaddaya call last night, then?” she asks.
“Doesn’t count. Gotta do a press thing, make it official. And besides, you got sick,” he reminds her. “Need to have a do-over.”
“Yeah, uh, sorry about that,” she mumbles. “And thanks, by the way. For takin’ me home and shit.”
“Don’t mention it, babydoll,” he says, waving his hand at her. “When you get there, tell the bouncer you’re with me. Let you in, no problem.”
“Right,” she says.
“Oh, and wear something nice. Be ready for the cameras this time.” He winks. “Don’t be late!”
Johnny’s mouth twitches upwards. “Well, so much for suicide pacts. Looks like Cinderella’s got herself a date to the ball after all."
“Do you ever stop?” V huffs, rolling her eyes.
“Hmm,” Johnny replies. “Well, it is your birthday. Got a hot date with your ol’ teen heartthrob. What are you gonna wear?” He waggles his eyebrows at her.
“Shut up,” she warns him.
He has a point, though. She has nothing remotely viable to wear. All her dresses are torn or stained in some capacity, all her pants look like they’ve been in at least one or two fights. And she's saved up a bit of eddies, relatively speaking; maybe a shopping trip is in order.
She finds her mind wandering back to Kerry as she pours her now-usual heavy hand of whiskey into her synth-coffee. It’s been a whirlwind with that man so far, and the fact that a day hasn’t gone by without him essentially demanding her presence is making her wonder what exactly it really is that he wants from her. Is it just his fixation with Johnny? Is his interest in her genuine?
“You know,” Johnny says suddenly. “Kerry's whole escapade makes me think. People do change. He did. I mean, he made it to a crossroads, and now I can see his rockerboy heart pushin’ him down the right path.”
“Hm, you sayin’ a stubborn rockerboy can change?” she jokes, blowing on her coffee impatiently.
Johnny cracks a small smile. “Thing is, Kerry might've changed, but the city hasn't,” he continues, frowning again. “And I think he knows it. Hell, so do you.”
V thinks she knows what he means.
She parks her bike outside the downtown Jinguji, ignoring Johnny’s heckling as she vaults off it and struts into the store, trying to act like she belongs there.
“Welcome to our little oasis of elegance!” the shopkeep says warmly to her. He’s a young guy, about her age, impeccably dressed head to toe in an immaculately tailored suit. “I’m Zane,” he tells her. “Now, what can I get for you today?”
“Agh, dunno,” V says, casting her eyes around the shop. Nothing’s really jumping out at her that fits her taste. “A dress? A nice one? For an event,” she adds, as though she needs to justify this shit to him for some reason.
“Wait a minute,” Zane says suddenly. “I know you, you’re the one that’s been in all the feeds lately. Eurodyne’s girl. Never forget a pretty face like yours when I see one!”
V cringes at this. “Yeah, I uh… yeah, that’s me.”
“Well then, I take it this is a music industry function?”
“Something like that,” V says.
Zane smiles. “Well, we’ll have to get you something suitable, won’t we?” he says with a wink. “You are practically begging for a new do. Of course, nothing wrong with this look,” he adds quickly, giving her a once over. “But maybe a little upgrade, hm? Sequins are back, you know.”
“Sequins?” V asks. “Really?”
“With what you’re working with, dear? They’d be perfect. You want shimra, you have to shine first.”
Zane’s the first person under 50 V’s ever heard use the word “shimra,” and she smiles at him. There’s something earnest about him that she can’t help but like.
“Alright,” she relents with a grin. “Show me your finest sequins.”
Zane grins back, and leads her to a wall of elegant eveningwear backlit by gently glowing lights. He pulls a couple dresses off the rack and considers each one, glancing between her and the dresses and frowning.
V notices there’s no one else in the store except for the two of ‘em and the security guard posted at the door.
“Is it usually this empty in here?” she asks, looking around at the deserted shop.
Zane shrugs. “What can I say? Jinguji is about quality, not quantity.”
He continues rifling through the racks, pulling out a couple more dresses and fingering the fabric, eyeing V all the while.
“Not blue,” he says, shaking his head as he puts one back. “We don’t want to make your skin look too washed out.” He reaches for a gold metallic one instead, then a black silk one, and finally, a silver dress covered entirely in the promised sequins. “Try these ones on,” he instructs her, pointing to the fitting rooms in the back. “And don’t forget to come out and show ‘em to me! We’ve gotta get you in something that’ll knock your rockerboy’s socks right off.”
“Sure, right,” V says, gathering the dresses in her arms and retreating to the back room.
The gold dress is gorgeous, but the cut feels a little too stiff and formal for her. Johnny eyes her appraisingly, shaking his head as she examines herself in the mirror.
“Whaddaya think of this one?” she asks, stepping out of the room and nervously smoothing down the front as Zane frowns and considers her.
“Hm,” he says. “It certainly flatters your figure, but it is a bit corporate, isn’t it?”
V smiles. “A bit, yeah.”
“Not your look, I take it,” he says with a knowing smile. “Well, let’s see the other ones!”
V retreats back to the room, peeling off the dress and swapping it out for the black one. This one is stunning - it hits her curves in all the right places, and the neckline certainly does some favors for her.
“Hot,” Johnny says, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall behind her.
She cocks an eyebrow at him as she exits the room again. "How ‘bout this one?” she asks Zane,
“Fabulous!” he says approvingly. “Between the two of us, a touch of elegance can go a long way. But I still wanna see those sequins,” he pouts.
“Alright,” V says with a laugh, returning to try on the final dress.
This one, she thinks as she studies herself in the mirror. It’s short, hitting just at her thighs, and it clings to her body like a glove, the glittering sequins refracting the light around her like some kind of exotic fish.
“You look like a disco ball,” Johnny mutters.
“I like this one,” she tells him.
“I liked the black one better,” he sulks.
“Good thing I asked,” V retorts sarcastically, stepping past him to show Zane.
“Ah!” he says, clapping his hands together. “I think we have a winner!”
V grins and does a little spin.
There’s a sudden commotion at the door, then, and V turns her head just in time to see a man charge in, mantis blades drawn, screaming and growling incoherent nonsense as he disembowels the security guard before he can even draw his fuckin’ gun.
Zane blanches and dives behind the reception desk. “Cyberpsycho!” he yells. “I’m sounding the alarm!”
The floor lights all turn red, and a metal gate slides closed over the front of the shop, trapping V and the shopkeep inside with the cyberpsycho, who’s now turning to V and clearly preparing to charge.
“Fuck, V, get down!” Johnny yells, and V dives out of the way just in time to avoid a similar fate as the unlucky guard.
She scrambles to her feet, frantically casting about for something - anything - she can use as a weapon. Her guns are all still in the fuckin’ fitting room, and the goddamn psycho’s movin’ too fast for her to get a lock on him and launch a quickhack.
“MaxTac’ll be here any minute!” Zane yells from behind the desk. “Hold him! Hold him till they get here!”
“Talkin’ to me?” V shouts back as the 'psycho launches himself at her. She parries the his mantis blade swing with her cyberarm, twisting her arm to wrench him off her and following it up with a swift kick to the nuts. He recoils for a moment, and she uses her opening to hit him with a system reset daemon, the most powerful one she has queued up in her deck.
He’s got top notch personal ICE, it seems, because the hack takes longer than she expects to start working, and she rolls out of the way as his blade comes down at her again, this time clipping her shoulder and causing her to cry out.
“V!” she hears Johnny’s voice shouting from somewhere.
“Don’t let him kill me!” Zane pleads from his hiding spot.
The hack takes effect just as MaxTac bursts in the door, guns and mantis blades at the ready. V shudders. Basically 'psychos themselves, the lot of ‘em.
“MaxTac!” Zane yells gratefully. “Thank god!”
“Goin’ in!” one of the MaxTac officers shouts. “Surround the target!”
But the cyberpsycho’s already twitching on the floor now, and V stands over him, panting heavily with blood pouring from the wound on her shoulder. She presses her hand to it, trying to staunch the bleeding.
The MaxTac officers surround her, guns still drawn.
“Don’t shoot,” V says quickly, raising her hands above her head, heart pounding. “I got ‘im.”
The officer with the mantis blades leans over and slices her blade clean across the psycho’s neck. He immediately stops seizing and goes limp.
“Target neutralized,” she declares, ignoring V. “Secure the witnesses,” she says to her team.
V realizes she’s shaking.
“Just had to go play dutiful consumer in a corpo suit shop, didn’t we?” Johnny mocks, but she can tell he’s shaken, too.
“You,” the MaxTac officer says, pointing to V. “Statements, now.”
Zane scrambles out from behind the desk and deactivates the alarm system, and the lights return to their normal soft glow.
The officer retracts her mantis blades and gestures to the white leather couches in the center of the store. “Sit,” she commands. “Hands where I can see ‘em.”
Zane crosses and sits on the couch, and V lowers herself onto the sofa opposite him. The MaxTac officer produces her portable deck and faces them, her elaborate headset buzzing and blinking.
“In accordance with Article 105 of the Cyberpsychosis Procedure Code, your statements will be recorded and retained,” the offer continues. “Melissa Rory, MaxTac senior officer. Please state your name and occupation.”
“Zane Jagger,” Zane says shakily. “I work for Jinguji. An oasis of elegance… sorry. Habit.”
The officer nods and looks at V.
“V,” she says. “Merc.”
Johnny glitches in to perch on the back of the couch next to Zane.
“Johnny Silverhand,” he says to the officer. “Rock legend, voice in V’s head, and also-”
“The fuck, Johnny?” V says out loud before she can stop herself.
He turns to her. “Lemme pretend I exist sometimes, okay?”
The officer gives her a strange look. “I’ll need your full name,” she insists.
V sighs. “Verona Verne,” she mutters. She wonders what kinda files MaxTac has on her.
The officer frowns and punches the data into her pad. “Checks out,” she says. “Please describe what happened, starting from the moment of the attack.”
“I was just presenting V with some beautiful selections when I… I heard shouting from the street,” Zane begins, but V cuts him off.
“Psycho storms in, wipes the huscle. Zane hits the alarm, locks us in with the fucker.” She shoots him a look. “Thanks, Zane.”
“Mr. Jagger followed the correct security protocol,” the officer interjects. “He significantly reduced the assailant’s range of effectiveness.”
“Yeah, noted,” V shoots back. “Played cat and mouse around the whole range of effectiveness before you lot showed up.”
“V pinned the crazy bastard,” Zane adds. “Weren’t for her… wouldn’t be anything left to clean up.”
“Hey, no problem,” V tells him. “Was savin’ my own ass, too.”
“Thank you for your cooperation,” the officer says sharply. “That is all.”
The officers converge by the door, radioing the coroner and chattering amongst themselves.
“One killed, one wounded inside the store, six bodies on the street outside,” one of the officers says into his headset.
Zane stands and puts his hands on his hips, looking down at V.
“My apologies for all of this,” he says sheepishly. “And thank you for… uh… for saving my life,” he adds. He glances down at the sequined dress V’s still wearing. Somehow, miraculously, it doesn’t have blood on it.
“Course,” V manages, the adrenaline crash hitting her hard, then. Her vision glitches slightly around the edges, and Johnny shoots her a worried look.
“And as a token of my appreciation, the dress is yours,” Zane adds. “On the house. Couldn’t sell it now, anyway.”
V nods. “Thanks,” she stammers.
She stands unsteadily, dusting herself off, then goes back to the fitting room to change back into her street clothes. Zane takes the dress from her when she emerges and carefully wraps and packages it for her.
The MaxTac officer watches V with sudden interest, and approaches her as Zane finishes bagging the dress.
“Nice work,” she says to V. “You feel that back there? Feel his life leave his body?”
V’d already had the guy unconscious when they arrived; this fuckin’ badge didn't need to cut his throat in cold blood. She thinks of all the cyberpsychos she’s taken out non-lethally for Regina.
“You always just wipe ‘em?” V asks her. “Y’know, heard therapy can sometimes work.”
“Apprehending the target alive creates more risk for bystanders,” she replies simply. “It’s rarely done. Very rarely.”
“Rarely?” V asks. “More like never. How many psychos you save in your life?”
“Don’t change the subject,” the officer warns. “You felt him die. Did you… like it? That split second when the blood still flows… but his light’s gone out.”
V shakes her head. “If you’re lookin’ for a 'psycho soulmate, it ain’t me, babe.”
But the officer just smiles at her, a devilish little smirk that makes V itch to punch her. But she’s seen what this woman can do with her blades, and she’s probably got ICE stacked to high heaven. Even V’s not gonk enough to pick a fight with MaxTac.
“Hold up a sec,” V says, eyeing her forearms. “Your mantis blades… Higurashi 20-13s, right? Weren’t those pulled off the market in ‘69?” She frowns. “Heard they don’t play well with neural processors. Pokin’ at a part of the prefrontal cortex that shouldn’t be poked at. Had to talk a friend down from gettin’ em a few years back.”
Naomi - her ex from Atlanta - had had her eyes on these, V remembers. She’d wound up goin’ with the newer Arasaka model, the standard issue ones that all the badges seem to have.
“Good eye,” the officer says with a smile. “Had them installed years ago. They’re very… precise.” She looks down at her metal forearms. “They’re my… reminder,” she continues. “When I see them, I see what they’ve sliced. Muscle, tendon, bone… even implants. Like a hot knife through butter.”
“Yikes,” V remarks. “Guess it don’t much matter to you if they’re 'psychos or regular gonks who get in the way, huh? You just love the hunt, love the kill.”
“Oh, we’re not so different, you and I,” the officer says with another wicked little smile. “I saw that look on your face right after. You can’t hide it.” Her smile broadens into a grin. “Join us,” she adds. “Could use a few more like you.”
“Me, a cop?” V says incredulously. “That’d be like… puttin’ a merc in fuckin’ sequins.”
“Think about it,” the officer urges her. “You certainly got a gift.”
V scowls and brushes past her, stepping out of the store. It’s pouring rain now, and there are bloodied bodies on the pavement and the whole scene is taped off. MaxTac officers mill around in front of the Militech chopper parked right in the middle of the fuckin’ street.
V walks quickly back to her bike and throws her leg over it. She can’t get out of here fast enough.
“I hope you learned a valuable lesson today,” Johnny says as she fires up the engine, glitching in behind her.
“What’s that?” she asks him, idling for a moment in the street.
“My little merc wants to play dress-up like a corpo, then all of a sudden a cyberpsycho kicks down the shop's door and next thing you know you’re gettin’ headhunted for MaxTac,” he teases. “Not gonna say it’s poetic justice, but…”
“Happy fuckin’ birthday to me,” she mutters, but she’s smiling now. She likes it when Johnny calls her that.
“Hey, least you got a free dress out of it,” Johnny reminds her. “Don’t even wanna know how many eddies that thing woulda cost otherwise.”
“Would be just like me to show up to Kerry’s thing tonight in a fuckin’ blood-soaked dress, huh?” V jokes as she starts the bike and speeds home through the rain.
It’s stopped raining by the time V leaves for the club, but she takes a Delamain, anyway. Given the way her nights have been going lately, it seems a safer bet than driving Johnny’s Porsche, and she’s not keen on rolling up to a place like this in her Galena.
She steps out of the cab when it arrives at a non-descript street right on the border between Charter Hill and Japantown, tugging her new dress down nervously around her thighs and pulling her coat tighter around her. The sun is setting, and there’s a chill in the air as she crosses the sidewalk and enters a small foyer where a lone man in a stylish suit stands with his hands folded in front of the elevator.
He eyes her skeptically. “This elevator is out of order,” he says coldly. “Sorry.”
V raises an eyebrow at him. “If it’s out of order, why are you here?”
The bouncer just shrugs, his face still impassive. V scowls.
“Out of order for Kerry Eurodyne’s guests, too?” she asks. “He’s expecting me.”
The bouncer’s face still doesn’t change, but he steps to the side and presses the button to open the elevator. “In that case,” he says stoically, “Enjoy your evening.”
V shoots him a look as she steps past him into the elevator, trying to calm her nerves as the doors shut and the lift glides upwards. She has no idea what kinda scene she’s about to walk into.
The doors slide open to reveal a pretty packed mezzanine overlooking a large room that V can’t make out through the crowd. There’s music blasting that V recognizes immediately as Us Cracks, though it’s not a song she’s heard before. And then she suddenly realizes she has heard it before, albeit in a very different form - it’s Kerry’s song, the one he was throwin’ a fit about them covering literally just yesterday.
There’s a man to the left of the elevator who waves her over to check her coat, and she slides it off her shoulders and hands it him, feeling unusually exposed in her skimpy, sparkly get-up. But she fits right in - most of the crowd is similarly garbed. 'Psycho attack aside, she’s glad she made the effort to dress the part tonight.
She pushes her way to the front of the balcony, leaning over to peer down into the club. It’s a relatively small venue with a low stage, and the entire place is packed balls to walls with stylishly dressed people. And on the stage, there’s a big screen playing an animated music video of Kerry and the Us Cracks girls jumpin’ around and singing along to the track.
“Ladies and gentleman!” a voice announces over the speakers. “Us Cracks and Kerry Eurodyne!”
The screen slides up then to reveal Kerry posing onstage with the girls, all smiles and waves. He struts to the front of the raised platform and hops down off it into a velvet-roped off section in front of it, and the girls perch on the edge of the stage behind him as medias descend upon the group in a flurry of camera flashes.
“Konban-wa!” Blue Moon shouts in her put-on Japanese accent, waving enthusiastically at the crowd. “Good evening, Night City!” She leans forward and strikes a pose, making a heart with her hands.
Red Menace waves beside her. “Thank you, dears!”
An interviewer approaches them, camera drone hovering over her shoulder.
“Kerry, great to see you so on top of your game!” she says brightly. “You and Us Cracks…” she laughs. “Shocking! How’d it happen?”
“Simple,” Kerry replies with a chuckle, spreading his hands. “Rock’s not dead. It’s evolved, yet again. And I’m part of that evolution.”
Quite a turn from twenty-four hours ago, V thinks bemusedly.
“These girls are energizing, they’re electrifying,” he continues with a grin. “They asked me to lay down a new track with ‘em… How could I say no? Rest is rock history.”
That’s one way to put it, V thinks, stepping away from the balcony and pushing her way towards the stairs down to the main floor.
“Kerry!” the reporter crows as V descends the staircase, weaving her way through the tight crowd. “Gotta say, you look great! But it wasn’t that long ago you were fighting depression, thinking of hanging up your guitar for good. What changed?”
“Did I say that?” Kerry replies with a grin. “Goes to show you, you shouldn’t trust a word that comes outta my mouth. Sweet little lies. Only way I can get at the truth.”
There's a sadness to his voice that betrays him, though V's pretty sure she only hears it 'cause of how well Johnny knows the man. To the reporter, it's just another clever line.
The media woman turns to the Us Cracks girls. “Now, girls, how is it to work with the legendary Kerry Eurodyne?”
“Kerry-san is most sweet, most lovely man in the world!” Blue Moon squeals. “Suteki! Kakkoii! Kawaii!”
“We met Kerry-san when he came to dressing room. It was... how you say? Love at first sight!” Red Menace chimes in.
“He is wonderful!” Purple Force agrees. “So sensitive and so, so naughty! Rawrrr! Our Kerry bad boy!”
V reaches the bottom of the stairs and shoves her way through the last stretch of crowd.
“Kerry! Kerry! Over here! Here!” another reporter shouts as she approaches.
“You’re breathtaking!” says another.
“Thank you, thank you! You’re breathtaking,” Kerry replies, giving them a grin and a double guns. And then his eyes land on V, and his whole face lights up.
“V!” he exclaims, extending his arm out to her and pulling her towards him and away from the pressing throng.
V smiles and turns to face the medias as Kerry drapes his arm around her shoulders. She flinches inwardly at the sudden onslaught of cameras pointed at her, but wills her grin not to falter. And she can't deny the small thrill she feels too - she can see why this shit is addicting.
“This is V,” he tells the reporters. “My, uh… right hand.” He winks at V, then grins back at the reporters. “V’s the little bird that shows up when I gotta wrap up and run. Sorry!”
He flashes a peace sign at the medias and starts to guide them away, but one of the reporters grabs V’s other arm.
“V, V, quick question,” she says. “What’s it like hanging with Kerry Eurodyne, a living legend?”
“It’s a wild and crazy ride,” V replies. “But hey, can’t complain. If I told you what I had seen and done with Mr. Eurodyne…” she teases, shooting Kerry a wink.
“V!” Kerry hisses under his breath.
“Well, as you might imagine, it is… legendary,” she adds simply, flashing them another winning smile. “But the juiciest details... I keep to myself.”
“Thanks,” Kerry says, waving them off. “But we really gotta run. Late for our next thing already.” He gently steers her away from the reporters. “Let’s go,” he whispers in her ear. “Unless you feel like givin' a few more interviews.”
V turns to wave to the Us Cracks girls.
“You guys look great,” she tells them.
“Mrrrow!” Red Menace says. “You do, too!”
“V!” Blue Moon exclaims. “You should be in our next-o video!” She does a little spin and points at V.
“Or, be personal bodyguard!” Red Menace adds.
V chuckles. “I'll keep that in mind,” she promises.
“Hey,” Kerry says, tugging at her arm. “Come with me, V. Wanna show you somethin’.”
V lets him lead her away from the girls and the crowd and out around to the side of the stage. He doesn't remove his arm from hers until they reach another elevator tucked in the back corner.
“Gotta say, doll, you look…” he begins, raising his eyebrows as he looks her up and down, letting out a low whistle. “Damn, girl.”
V grins, feeling a flush creep into her cheeks. “I guess congrats are in order,” she says, diverting the attention back to him. “Glad you sorted everything out with Us Cracks.”
Kerry laughs. “They’re alright,” he says, punching the button on the elevator. The doors slide open and V steps in after him.
“So now that that’s behind us, what’s Kerry Eurodyne’s next mission?” she teases. “Do a hit on your manager, what was his name? Kovachek?”
“Very funny,” Kerry drawls, hitting the button for the top floor. “But yeah,” he adds, looking down. “Not about to let him get away with it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but the bastard’s gonna regret makin’ me sign those papers.”
“You gonna try to get out of your deal with the label?” V asks as they begin their ascent.
Kerry crosses his arms and leans back against the wall of the elevator.
“Ahh… let’s be real,” he says. “Say I break contract. Then what? Who’s gonna release my new tracks? Who’s gonna deal with distribution, promotion, influencers, media?” He shakes his head. “Labels’ve got ‘em all in their pockets. You’re out with them, you’re out, period.”
“You’d be free,” V points out.
“Seriously?” says Kerry, throwing up his hands. “Free to sing until you’re blue in the face, nobody hearin’ a thing? It’s just another kind of cage.”
The elevator doors slide open then, and Kerry steps out into a fancy-looking but deserted restaurant roofdeck. The sun has set now, and the city hangs before them in the crisp dusk. The air smells clean and fresh in the way that it only ever does here after it rains.
V follows Kerry out across the empty terrace.
“Wanted to show you one of my favorite spots in Night City,” he tells her, leading her across the deck. “Don’t come here often,” he continues. “But when I do… it’s important.”
“Should I feel special?” V jokes.
He grins. “Maybe. But don’t let it go to your head.” He gestures to the empty bar as they pass it. “Told ‘em to shut the place down for the day.”
V feels strange butterflies in her stomach as Kerry guides her down a short series of steps towards the outer edge of the deck, a wide glass mezzanine that encircles the terraced dining area. Johnny glitches in and leans against one of the empty tables as Kerry crosses over to the glass railing and rests his elbows on it, gazing out over the city.
“Ahh…” Kerry says, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a heavy sigh. “Can’t get enough of this view. Love lookin’ at this city from above.”
The floor near the edge is glass, too, and V glances down through it at the dizzying drop below. The cars and people on the street look so small from up here, and it makes the fluttering in her stomach intensify.
“Well?” Kerry says, turning to look at her expectantly, still resting his elbow on the railing. She moves to stand next to him, leaning against the railing as well, gazing down at the cityscape before them. Westbrook sparkles in the night, the towers and warehouses all lit up from the inside while the freeways sweep around them like glimmering ribbons of shifting color.
“Sometimes wonder if I’ll ever see anything more beautiful,” V muses.
“Only place you fall asleep thinkin’ you’re special, then wake up knowin’ you’re no one,” Johnny mutters from behind her.
“I’ve seen places more beautiful,” Kerry tells her. “Doesn’t matter, though. Night City’s not somethin’ you ever forget. Just doesn’t letcha.”
V’s driven across the country, seen the deserts, the mountains, the Grand fuckin’ Canyon. But Kerry’s right, there’s just nowhere like here.
“Think I know what you mean,” she murmurs.
“You ever feel like this city doesn’t give you a choice?” Kerry asks, turning to face her. “You either burn alive in it, or you never existed at all.” He looks down. “Shit.”
“Glad we get this moment to ourselves,” she agrees, turning to face him as well. Kerry’s world is still overwhelming to her. Exciting, sure, but she can’t help but feel a bit out of her depth.
“Me too,” Kerry says, his eyes meeting hers. “Get the sense that we… resonate, feel me? So... I wanted to talk somethin’ out with you. With someone outside that whole shitshow downstairs.”
“Sure, what’s up?” she says, studying his face.
Kerry sighs heavily. “Thought the whole Us Cracks thing was me bein’ afraid,” he says slowly. “Of bein’ exposed, of people finally seein’ me as another piece of merch, another cog in the corpomachine.” He looks back out at the city, his face twisting into a scowl. “Sellout Eurodyne, showin’ Asian pop starlets a good time for cash, fame, and the chance to remind people he’s still fuckin’ alive.”
“No truth to that?” V asks.
“There is,” Kerry admits. “But that’s not what’s important. Real problem’s deeper. Way deeper.”
Behind him, Johnny lights a cigarette and watches the two of them. He’s got his sunglasses on, and V can’t quite feel what he’s thinking.
“Talk to me,” V urges, turning her gaze back to Kerry.
“See, thought I was afraid everybody’d think me another corposlave,” Kerry says. “But really, I was just afraid I’d be in someone’s shadow again.”
“Again?” V asks, but she thinks she already knows who Kerry’s talkin’ about. She glances again over Kerry’s shoulder, but Johnny’s face remains impassive as he pulls a long drag of his cigarette, watching her coolly through his shades.
Kerry nods. “Lived in Johnny’s for years. Part of the scenery, machinery, helpin’ him shine brighter.” He turns back towards the skyline, leaning forward over the railing and letting his head drop down. “Never believed I’d make it on my own without Silverhand,” he admits softly.
Johnny speaks up behind him, then. “That why he left Samurai?” he mutters. “Fuck…”
V puts a hand on Kerry’s shoulder. “But you did make it,” she reminds him. “Big, too. Only diehards remember Samurai now. You… everybody knows your name.”
Kerry looks up at her, his eyes anguished. “You think that changes anything?” He shakes his head again. “Wake up with the same thought every damn day… that I might somehow fade into this town’s steam, stench, murk. For good.”
V knows all too well what that feels like.
“Johnny figured you just chickened out,” she says softly. “Couldn’t take the pressure, so you left the band, went out on your own.”
“Yeah, I know,” Kerry says. “But he was wrong. Decided to start fightin’ for myself. Still keepin’ that up,” he tells her. His eyes drop to his hands. “Night City’s a city of shadows. Done everything I could to walk clear of ‘em for years.” He looks back up at V, his eyes searching hers. “Fuck…”
“Time you stopped bein’ afraid,” V tells him gently, still a little floored that he's bein' this vulnerable with her. “Don’t need to be.”
“Think it’s that simple?” he asks.
“I still got a lot to prove to this city,” she says. “But you? You’re at the top. City’s yours. What’s there to be afraid of?”
“Eh,” Kerry says. “We’ll talk about this again, someday. Once you’re in my shoes.”
He says it so casually, like it’s a fuckin’ given. Like she’s not in all likelihood gonna be dead within the fucking month.
“Really think it’s in the cards for me?” she asks, unable to keep the slight quaver out of her voice.
Kerry smiles at her warmly. “You’re strong,” he tells her. “City couldn’t swallow you if it tried.”
“Hold you to your word on that,” V whispers, feeling strangely moved. There’s something that shifts inside of her when she’s with Kerry, like he taps into something buried in her memories, something that runs as deep in her blood as this city itself does.
“Hmph,” he laughs softly. “Think you can drive the shadows away. If anyone can, it's you.”
She swallows hard. “I can try,” she tells him.
“And what about me?” Kerry says, and she looks at his face, then - really looks at him. Kerry’s almost 90 years old, she knows, but he doesn’t look a day over 40; aside from the shock of gray hair he keeps artfully swept back from his ageless face, he appears every bit the same rockerboy she had plastered all over her bedroom as a kid. But there’s still that sadness in his eyes that she saw the night they met, like he’s both an old man and a lost boy, waiting for someone to come and bring him back to life.
“I’ll even protect you from yourself,” she promises, gently reaching out and placing her hand on his cheek, swallowing hard against the sudden and intense wave of affection she feels for this odd, contradictory man.
“Is he…?” Kerry asks, glancing over V’s shoulder, and she understands his unspoken question. Johnny.
“Does it matter?” she breathes, and suddenly Kerry's lips are on hers, his hand is gripping her hair and his other is sliding around her waist, pulling her close to him as he kisses her with a surprising fierceness.
“Nah,” he murmurs, smiling against her mouth. “Not anymore.”
He drags his lips down along her jawline before pulling back to meet her eyes. He looks almost as surprised as she feels - like neither of 'em expected that to actually happen and they just collided together like two strange, mis-calibrated magnets both circling around the same black hole.
But Kerry's looking at her with a light in his eyes she hasn't seen before, and he's looking at her. Not searchin’ for Johnny, he’s just looking at her face like it’s the most wonderful fuckin’ thing he’s ever seen.
“Eh,” he says, reaching down to cup V’s face and tilt her chin up towards his. “It’s just all so fuckin’ crazy.” He shakes his head. “Here with you, lookin’ at the city… want this moment to last forever.” His Kiroshis glow softly in the falling shadows. She can smell his cologne, the liquor and cigarettes on his breath, his skin. “Want it to hang, frozen in time, bathed in these gorgeous neon lights.”
“Moment’s gonna pass, isn’t it?” she murmurs.
“And we’ll gladly go back to the chaos down below,” he agrees.
Johnny glitches to stand next to him. “Kerry never did get it,” he mutters sadly. “Only one thing worse than unfulfilled dreams.” He looks V dead in the eyes. “Dreams that come true.” He paces around Kerry, looking back and forth between the rockerboy and V.
Because then there's something to lose, V finishes silently. She holds Johnny’s gaze for a moment, and he nods at her once, almost imperceptibly.
She gently lifts Kerry’s hand off of her hip. “Let’s go back down,” she says, running her other hand down his tattooed arm. “Chaos awaits. Everyone downstairs is waiting… for you.”
“I know, I know.” Kerry grins down at her. “Aim to knock back a few tonight. Drink to this city. And to me ‘n you in it.”
He takes her hand and they walk together back to the elevator, and V feels a strange, new energy from him, like he’s been ignited with some kinda bright spark. There’s somethin’ about him that’s just fuckin’ magical, she thinks. His impish smile, his restless energy, his quick, raspy way of speaking… he’s got an aura that glitters, shines. Johnny had that kinda pull, too, she knows, but his is the kind that twists its dark tendrils around her heart, pullin’ her down into something deep and alluring and terrifying. With Kerry, it’s just electric, like lightning in the desert.
They step back out into the club, a flurry of camera flashes blinding them immediately. Kerry smiles and squeezes her hand, and they make their way around the stage to a booth on the other side where the Us Cracks girls are all seated, fielding another horde of reporters.
Kerry slides into the booth, pulling V in after him, and the girls all scoot over to make room.
“Kerry!” one of the reporters asks. “So, tell us, what made you decide to date a woman this time?”
Kerry scowls. “The fuck kinda question is that?” he shoots back, then rests his arm around V’s shoulders and gestures to her with his other hand. “You see ‘er? You tell me.”
V blushes deeply. She’s not at all used to this kind of attention, fuckin’ any of it.
There’s a bottle of vodka in an ice bucket on the table, and V grabs a glass and fills it to the brim.
Kerry grins and does the same, and raises his to hers in a little cheers. V downs hers in one gulp, feeling the liquor warm her stomach and melt away some of her sudden flood of nerves.
“V!” Blue Moon laughs. “Are you having fun?”
V smiles. “Ain’t the worst night I’ve had,” she says, reaching for the bottle again.
True to Kerry’s word, they knock back more than a few to the City of fuckin’ Dreams, and eventually the crowd filters out and the girls leave and it’s just V and Kerry alone in the booth while a few lone industry types mill around the floor, exchanging stories and contact information.
Kerry turns to V. “We’ll get a room here,” he says decisively, tracing his fingers on her thigh before giving it a firm squeeze.
V feels a sudden and intense thrill at his words, matched by the equally intense wave of despair that follows it. There’s a part of her that still can’t believe this is fucking happening - that she’s here, in this place, in this dress, on her fuckin’ 28th birthday, with Kerry fucking Eurodyne. That she's dying, that she's got Johnny's fucking engram in her head, that she's bein' plastered all over screamsheets, that she's got a fucking personal meeting with Hanako fucking Arasaka in a couple short weeks. That all these powerful people know who the fuck she is, that her sad, tragic little life somehow rocketed her straight to the top in some weird blaze of glory on her way to an early grave. That this is all somehow happening to her, Vero from fuckin’ Heywood. A dirtgirl merc who found the guts to walk a few blocks from home.
She nods mutely, and Kerry leans in to kiss her again, and next thing she knows he’s talkin’ to the staff, payin' for a room, gettin' their coats and leading her around to yet another set of elevators, pressing the button and pushing her against the wall in one motion, crushing his lips to hers as they rocket upwards. And then they’re tumbling together down a short hallway, he’s taking her palm and pressing it against the door to unlock the room and pulling her inside after him.
There’s a bottle of champagne on the low table in the middle of the room, and beyond it an enormous bed, all made up in glistening white sheets. And behind that, the city is spread before them, glittering in the night. It’s dark now, but the skyline is as bright as it’s ever looked to V.
Kerry fumbles with the champagne, laughing as it pops open, spraying them both with the foamy liquid. He lifts it straight to his mouth, chugging as much as he can before spinning around, still laughing as he hands the bottle to V. She does the same, spilling some on herself in the process, and he takes the bottle from her and sets it down, drawing her into another long, slow kiss.
Then they’re tripping over each other, over the table, over the chair as they tumble towards the massive bed, giggling like schoolchildren.
She shoves Kerry backwards onto the mattress, grinning wickedly as he collapses onto it. He rakes his eyes hungrily up and down her body as she crawls forward onto the bed to straddle him, grinding herself against the growing bulge in his jeans. She moans at the rough friction through her thin underwear, and he growls in response as he grips his hands around her waist, pulling her firmly against him. She leans forward to kiss him, sucking gently on his lower lip as they part.
He lets out an appreciative hum, reaching his hands lower to hike her already short dress up around her waist, gripping her hard as he ruts his hips against her. She feels his fingers digging into her, feels the desperation in his grasp, feels his pulse through the front of his jeans.
So she crawls lower and begins unbuttoning his pants. Just like Johnny, in true rockerboy form, he's not wearin' any underwear, and V bites her lower lip as his cock springs free. He lets out a soft gasp as she grips it in her hand and gives it a few quick strokes, using the precum already beading at the head.
She's seen his dick before, but never like this, and she gazes down admiringly as it twitches under her palm. Not as thick as Johnny's, but still impressive nonetheless.
She reaches for Johnny with her mind then, almost unconsciously, expecting him to be annoyed at her comparison. But no - to her surprise, he's sharing her admiration. In fact, she can feel his excitement, and it sharpens her own growing need.
She yanks Kerry’s pants down over his feet, and he helps her kick them off before she crawls back up to position herself over him.
Kerry catches her eyes with his, and the lust she sees there makes her breathing grow heavier as she pushes aside her already soaked panties and slowly begins to lower herself onto him, letting out a low whine as he stretches her out.
"Fuck," he groans, moving his hands back to her thighs and thrusting himself all the way into her in one short, sharp movement that leaves her gasping for breath.
"Like feelin' me inside you?" he asks in a low, throaty growl.
And in truth, her head is spinning. Not only is her mind racing to catch up with the fact that she's currently riding Kerry Eurodyne's cock, but Johnny's excitement is reaching a fever pitch as well, and she realizes she's getting a taste of the two rockerboys’ own strange sexual interplay.
"Bet you haven't had pussy this preem in a while," she teases, rolling her hips and smirking as he shuts his eyes and moans with pleasure. She feels his cock twitch again inside her.
He sits up then, still tightly holding her waist, and she moves her legs to circle around him as he thrusts into her in a harsher and faster rhythm. Her left hand finds its way to his jaw, forcing his mouth to hers before sliding her chrome hand down around his throat, squeezing hard enough to make him gasp. But he responds by throwing her off him and onto the bed, and she sprawls backwards against the luxurious comforter as he positions himself over her, his hand already guiding his cock back towards her entrance.
He lines himself up with her, and she quivers in anticipation. But instead of entering her, he slaps her hard across the face, then thrusts his cock inside of her while her head's still reeling.
Johnny really fuckin' likes that, though, and she realizes that though she's always experienced him as being the dominant one in bed, his sexual dynamic with Kerry had been more of a power struggle, and Kerry's treatin' her the same way now. And she doesn’t know anymore whether it's entirely her own desire that she’s feeling or Johnny’s, or the liquor clouding her brain, but right now she's desperate for more. She whines and arches her back, reaching up her right hand to claw at Kerry's face, shoving two fingers inside his mouth. He rolls his tongue around them, moaning softly, then bites down hard, causing her to yell out and buck her hips.
He slaps her again, using his other arm to hold himself up against the headboard. V sees stars as she cries out again, feeling the pool of warmth between her legs bloom into a fevered heat. She's gettin' close, and Kerry's unrelenting pace is bringing her closer with every thrust.
"You like that, Johnny?" Kerry growls, peering deep into her eyes. "Bet you wish you could fuck her like this, don’t you? You like feelin' me fuck your little merc? Like feeling me fuck you?"
She doesn't know whether that’s what sends Johnny over the edge, taking her with him, or vice versa, but her head explodes into a burst of stars as Kerry slaps her again, causing her to come hard as Johnny's mind crashes into hers, their shared desire for each other and for Kerry bleeding into one.
"Johnny," she moans before she can stop herself. But that seems to send Kerry tumbling over the edge now too, and he pulls out and comes with a choked moan, painting her chest and stomach with the evidence of his pleasure and leaving her new dress soaked and ruined. He collapses next to her, both of them panting.
"V," Kerry whispers, still trying to catch his breath.
Least he still knows who I am, she thinks.
And then he's pulling her towards him, kissing her with a surprising tenderness, pressing her to his chest, not caring about the sticky wetness that he's makin' into a bigger mess.
He winds his arms around her and closes his eyes, breathing deeply into her hair. It's surprisingly intimate, but there's nothing forced about it, and she lets him hold her like that as their breathing slows and her heartbeat returns to normal.
"Shower?" he mumbles in her ear, and she nods against his cheek, peeling herself away from him and ripping the damp dress off over her head and flinging it aside before shimmying out of her ruined panties as well.
Kerry drags himself out of bed after her and crosses to the huge marble bathroom, flipping on the light and starting up the shower. Warm mist fills the room, and he pulls her with him under the jets of hot water.
“You’re beautiful, you know that?” he tells her, leaning in to kiss her again as the water streams down over both of their naked bodies. He wraps his arms around her, and she rests her head on his shoulder and winds her arms around his waist.
She giggles against his neck, suddenly overwhelmed at the sheer absurdity of it all. “Today’s my birthday,” she murmurs, her body still shaking with quiet laughter.
“No shit?” Kerry says, leaning back and brushing the wet hair from her face. “Happy fuckin’ birthday,” he says, grinning at her like a little kid.
And then they’re both laughing - at everything and at nothing - clutching each other helplessly and giggling uncontrollably, like they’re both in on the same hilarious, tragic joke. And she can still feel Johnny somewhere inside her as always - that strange, bitter tangle of hope and sadness and fear churning in her mind and in her heart.
Johnny’s right, she thinks. A dream coming true is a dangerous thing. Especially in a city that swallows dreams whole.
Notes:
A handful of people have asked recently what my V looks like, so I threw a link in the fic notes but I'm gonna toss it here too in case anyone is interested.
Chapter 38: Stimulation of Real
Summary:
V continues to help Kerry create more mayhem as their bond deepens.
Notes:
*slaps chapter* this bad boy can fit sooo much smut and angst
But for real this chapter is basically head to toe porn that I have no excuse for, NSFW or for anything or anyone, really. There's also horrible angst at the end. I have nothing to say for myself except that no one came and forcibly took my keyboard away from me today, so... enjoy?!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When she opens her eyes, it takes V a full couple seconds to remember where she is and why. But then she smells Kerry’s distinctive cologne, feels the silky white sheets against her bare skin, sees his tattooed arm thrown around her waist, and twists around to find herself face to face with the rockerboy’s naked, sleeping body.
He’s still asleep, his eyes fluttering gently as he dreams, and V finds herself once again struck by the strange feeling that she's known Kerry for much longer than she has. And it’s not just ‘cause of Johnny - it’s also largely the fact that she grew up hearin' his voice on the radio, seein' his face on TV, on his album covers, in his music vids, on her walls. He’s been in her peripheral consciousness for her whole goddamn life; his is a face she knows, a voice she knows. But getting to know him this past week, she’s come to the realization that it’s his soul that she recognizes. He’s got this city in his blood, like she does, and he’s got a sensitive, poetic side to him that he’s learned to keep wrapped under layers of jokes, jabs, and clever words. Just like she does. Just like Johnny does. But Kerry wears his softness on his sleeve more than either of ‘em, and there’s an aching loneliness to him that touches her heart in a way that she hadn’t anticipated.
But even more strangely, it seems to cut both ways. He treats her with a casual familiarity, like they've been close for years. She'd chalk it up to Johnny if he didn't seem so interested in learning her tastes, her preferences, what makes her tick.
His eyes flutter open, then, and he smiles at her warmly.
“Mornin’,” he says sleepily, reaching out to rest his hand on the side of her neck.
She feels the room spin around her a bit, and she’s not sure if it’s her residual hangover or the fact that she’s layin’ in bed naked next to a fuckin’ rock star that she just spent the night of her birthday with. She’s never seen herself as the type to get starstruck, but part of her is still struggling to accept that her current reality all kinda feels to her like some weird sweaty fantasy she’d have written herself into as a teen.
“Mornin’ yourself,” she says back, finding her words.
He stretches like a cat, arching his back and reaching his arms out to pull her into them, closing his eyes again and grumbling softly into her hair.
“S’get some room service,” he mumbles.
The idea of food makes V’s stomach churn slightly, but she nods against his chest and he rolls over onto his back, his eyes flashing blue as he pings reception on his holo.
“Yeah,” he says into his holo. “Eurodyne, Room 806. Sure. Yeah. Uh… lemme get a breakfast burrito… wait no, make that a quesadilla. Yeah. Hot sauce on the side. Sure, yeah, avocado, too. Preem.” He turns to V. “Whaddaya want?” he asks, and she just shrugs.
“Just get two of whatever you’re getting,” she says, then thinks again for a beat. “Maybe a Bloody Mary?”
Kerry raises his eyebrows at her. “And a Bloody Mary,” he adds with a laugh. “And double the whole order. Great. Thanks.”
His eyes return to their normal shade and he rolls back to face her.
“Mmph,” he says, pulling her back against him, and she’s content to let him, let this moment stretch out as long as possible before she’s gotta go back out into the world and face the reality of her doomed life.
But of course, that’s Johnny’s cue to appear, and she hears the static glitching sound his engram makes as he materializes behind her.
“Damn, V, knew you were a groupie but didn’t think you were tryna do a tour of the whole band,” he teases. He doesn’t sound actually annoyed though, or even jealous… just extremely amused. V squeezes her eyes shut. This is a conversation they can have later.
The food arrives quickly, and V slips into a fluffy white hotel robe as Kerry takes their plates off the cart and hands hers to her in bed. She picks half-heartedly at the quesadilla, more impressed than anything else that this place has real fuckin’ avocado. She wishes she weren’t too hungover to enjoy it. She reaches instead for her Bloody Mary and takes a long sip of it, feeling the heat and the liquor melt away her blossoming headache. It’s made the way she likes - extra spicy, with a smokiness to it as well. Probably used real tomatoes for the juice.
“Guess this is how people like Ker get to live, now,” Johnny mutters from where he’s still standing by the window, lookin’ out at the city in the late morning sun.
Kerry, for that matter, is eating at the cart standing up, wolfing down his food like it’s the last meal he’ll ever eat, his Bloody Mary already mostly drained.
V puts her plate on the nightstand and focuses on her drink, and soon hers is empty as well.
Kerry takes the cue and starts fishing around in the minibar, and sure enough, there’s a bottle of rye whiskey. He grins and pops open the top, sniffing it once before pouring some into two glasses and bringing one to V, crawling back onto the bed to slump beside her.
He turns to her and raises his glass. “To this,” he says.
“That’s my toast,” V pouts.
“I know, I remember,” Kerry says with a laugh, taking a sip of the rye. “I liked it.”
V takes a sip as well, and damn if it isn’t some of the best she’s ever tasted, smokey and bitter in all the right ways. She takes a bigger sip, and then Kerry’s gently pryin’ it from her hands and pressing his mouth to hers, and she can taste the smokiness on his lips, too.
"What time do we have to check out?" she murmurs.
"Whenever we want," he tells her.
"Fuck," V mumbles, suddenly remembering her dress. "The fuck am I gonna wear outta here?"
Kerry frowns.
"Not tryna get photographed by the fuckin' paparazzi doin’ a walk of shame in a crusty, cum-stained Jinguji dress,” V reminds him.
"Can you hang here a minute?" Kerry says, sitting up abruptly and putting a hand on her shoulder.
"Why?" V asks.
"I'll take care of it," he says, already getting out of bed and pulling on his pants. "Just wait here. Eat your quesadilla," he suggests, gesturing to V's barely touched breakfast.
"Where are you going?"
"I'll be back in 15," he promises. "Don't go anywhere."
V watches mutely as Kerry finishes shoving his feet into his boots and throws on his leather jacket, stopping to press one last kiss to her forehead before stepping quickly out of the room, the door hissing shut behind him.
She stares around the suddenly empty room, feeling oddly out of place the second Kerry is gone. The sheets suddenly feel too silky, the sunlight streaming through the window too bright, the pounding in her head too loud.
She reaches for her whiskey again, tossing back the rest of it in one gulp and pushing herself out of bed to go refill her glass at the mini bar. She takes it over to the window, leaning her forearm against the glass to shield her eyes as she surveys the cityscape before her, gleaming bright in the morning sun.
She feels Johnny appear next to her, and she turns to look at him. It’s still insane to her how real he can look sometimes, the sunlight playing off his skin just like it would if he were actually there. She steps closer to him, almost instinctively, and his skin flickers blue for barely a fraction of a second. She places her hand on his arm, wanting to keep him more solid and real beside her.
His face is conveyin’ a mess of emotions though, and she tilts her chin up to meet his gaze, tracing her eyes along the set of his jaw, the hard line of his slight frown.
“You cool with me sleepin’ with Kerry?” she asks softly.
Johnny looks down, folding his arms and tapping his foot. “Honestly?”
“That a new concept for you?”
Johnny gives her a wry smile and shrugs. “Not sure how to feel,” he mutters, his voice surprisingly frank. “Kerry used to spend all kinds of time and energy tryna get me into bed with him. A little ironic, actually, that he’s getting a round two now, thanks to you.”
“Wow,” V says. “You do know it’s not always about you? That thought ever enter your mind?”
“Hm, nope,” Johnny says dryly. “That’s a new one.”
“Just say what you mean,” V presses. “What’s your point? Worried he’s only interested in me ‘cause of you?”
Johnny thinks about this for a moment. “Kerry’ll still be here after I’m gone,” he says finally, his voice somber.
The taste of the rye suddenly turns to ash in V’s mouth.
“Or vice versa,” she reminds him.
He looks at her for a long time, then nods. “Yeah,” he agrees. “So… I dunno. Part of me is glad you guys seem to’ve hit it off. Kerry’s a real one,” he adds, lookin’ out over the city before them. “Just… keep an eye on him, alright? When it’s... just you, I mean.”
V nods slowly. “Don’t wanna think about that, now,” she says in a quiet voice.
“Least we can agree my cock’s bigger, though, right?” Johnny teases, and normally she’d punch him in the arm right about now, but she knows he’s only trying to lighten the mood.
“Hey, you liked it, too,” she says. “Last night, I mean.”
He laughs softly, shaking his head. “It’s different with Ker,” he agrees. “Feels more... real to me, somehow, I dunno. Don’t feel like I gotta leave you to it, stay outta the way as much.”
V smiles. “Think Kerry feels the same,” she reminds him.
“Could have some fun with that,” Johnny agrees with a smirk.
They smile at each other mischievously, and V feels a strange wave of relief from him. She realizes Kerry’s like a breath of fresh air for both of ‘em - someone neither of them has anything to hide from, for once. And it is nice, not having to keep things from Kerry, not even her complicated feelings for Johnny. Kerry’s are just as fuckin’ complicated, she knows. She can be her whole self around him, weird situation and all.
She hopes he’ll still want her around, even if…
She can’t let herself finish the thought. Johnny might be afraid to hold out hope on a third chance at life, but V’s not lettin’ the idea go that easily.
She moves back to the bed, making another attempt at her quesadilla, but her stomach rebels and she barely chokes down her bite before running to the bathroom to hurl into the pristine fuckin’ toilet in there.
She’s still crouched around it, dry heaving with tears streaming down her face when Kerry returns, and he immediately drops the bag he’s holding and rushes to her side, gently pushing the hair out of her face and pressing a cool hand to her forehead.
“Jesus, V, you okay?” he asks worriedly.
“Yeah,” she chokes. “It’s the Relic, it’s gettin’ worse.”
He stands and leaves for a moment, returning seconds later with a fancy glass bottle of water he pulled from the minibar. V takes it and chugs gratefully, setting it aside as another wave of nausea hits her.
“Fuck,” she spits, watching the blood swirl as she flushes it, heaving herself to her feet with Kerry’s help. He leads her unsteadily back to the bed, lookin’ at her like she might start bleeding out of her eyeballs any second now. And the way she’s feeling right now, he might not be too far off.
“Christ, kid,” Kerry says, sitting down next to her and taking her hand in his, running his thumb over her fingers. “Shit’s really doin’ a number on ya.”
“Could say that,” V agrees, pinching the bridge of her nose and trying to will the dizzying glitching to stop. Every fuckin’ time this happens now, she can feel herself slipping away in bits and pieces - a little less of her and a little more of Johnny in the shared space that is her mind.
He sits with her for a while in silence, neither of them feeling the need to fill it with empty words or promises.
“Should probably head home,” V says finally.
“Could come back to my place,” Kerry suggests hopefully, but V shakes her head.
“Some other time,” she promises. “Least need a change of clothes,” she mutters, glancing at her dress still crumpled on the floor from the previous night.
Kerry nods, a smile stretching across his face, likely at the memory of how the dress got in its current ruined state. “Check the bag I brought,” he reminds her, pointing to the forgotten parcel by the door.
The bag turns out to contain a loose, white, expensive-looking silk slip dress, and Kerry shrugs sheepishly when she opens it.
“Know it’s probably not your usual vibe, but figured I’d have an easier time guessin’ your dress size than trying to find a whole outfit that fit ya,” he explains as she pulls it on over her head, feeling the smooth fabric flutter against her skin. Kerry went fuckin’ shopping for her. It’s such a simple thing, but V can’t help the slight lump she feels in her throat as she smoothes the dress down across her stomach. She’s not used to people just… giving her things. All she’s been taught, her whole life, even from her own parents, is that everything has a price, and nothing free is ever free. She finds herself instinctively wondering what Kerry’s angle is, what hidden motive he could possibly have. But he’s just watching her anxiously from the bed, like he’s genuinely just worried about whether or not she fucking likes it. Like he’s desperate for her to like it.
And for some gonk reason, she believes him.
Her heart starts to beat a little bit faster, feeling his eyes on her like that.
“It’s fine, Ker, thanks,” she assures him, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. “Appreciate it.”
“Looks fuckin’ nova on ya, actually,” he says, clicking his tongue as he watches her. “Maybe I should ruin this one too, buy ya another.”
She feels the heat pool in her stomach at this, and she glances up at him through her eyelashes, her cheeks flushing.
“Yeah?” she breathes, but he’s already sitting up and reaching to pull her back down onto the bed, his hands running up her body underneath the silky fabric of the dress.
“Fuck, V, you’re a real preem piece of ass, you know that?”
She smiles against his mouth, grinding on him slightly, feeling him already hard underneath her.
And then, to her surprise, she feels Johnny’s hands sliding around her from behind too, cupping her breasts, his breath hot on her neck.
“Fuck,” she gasps, leaning into his touch, her eyes flying to Kerry’s.
“Tell ‘im what I’m doin’,” Johnny commands in her ear, his voice low and rough.
“Johnny… he…” she gasps, arching her back as Johnny’s hands slide lower, his metal fingers pressing hard against her clit.
Kerry’s eyes widen in sudden understanding. “He touchin’ you now?” Kerry asks, and V nods furiously, already whining as Johnny starts to move his fingers in deliberate strokes.
She doesn’t actually wanna ruin her dress this time, so she pulls it over her head and flings it into the corner before leaning down to unbutton Kerry’s pants again. He slides them down around hips, takin’ his cock out and pumping it slowly while he watches her already start to come apart under Johnny’s fingers, rocking her hips against his invisible hand.
She’s worried that the illusion of Johnny’s touch will be harder to maintain with Kerry watchin’, but Johnny’s hands still feel surprisingly solid on her body, and Kerry continues to run his hand up and down his cock, picking up a faster pace, biting his lip as he watches V writhe above him.
“Tell him to fuck you,” Johnny growls.
“Johnny,” she whimpers, moving to position herself over Kerry. “Johnny, he- he wants you to-” she manages.
Kerry doesn’t need to be asked twice, and he releases his cock to wrap his hands up around her waist as he thrusts himself into her with a loud groan. He bucks inside her almost helplessly, his eyes raking over her trembling body. Johnny bites down on her neck at the exact same moment, causing her to cry out and grind her hips against them both, Johnny’s hand still working her clit as Kerry starts to fuck her hard and fast.
“Good girl,” Johnny breathes into her neck.
This isn’t gonna last long for any of them, she realizes.
She can feel Johnny’s erection pressing against her lower back as he grabs her throat with his other hand, squeezing hard while he continues to move his metal hand between her legs. V lets out a low whimper that turns into a whine, overwhelmed at the sensations of it all.
“V, I’m gonna-” Kerry chokes, his hand digging hard into her thigh as he thrusts wildly under her.
“Wanna feel you come on his cock,” Johnny whispers in her ear, his voice hot and raw, lowering his hand from her neck to twist her nipple between his fingers.
And that’s all the encouragement she needs as she feels something burst inside her. She cries out as her vision goes white and she convulses on top of Kerry, feeling Johnny come crashing over the edge with her. And then Kerry lets out a loud groan, his cock spasming inside of her as she continues to ride him through her own waves of pleasure.
She collapses onto Kerry's chest, gasping and shaking as her orgasm subsides. Johnny glitches to lie next to them, already with a lit cigarette in his mouth.
Kerry’s eyes are wide, his pupils blown as she rolls off him to land between the two men, feeling the sweat already starting to cool on her body.
“Fuck,” is all she can manage.
Kerry seems to read her mind, because he’s already fumbling in the pockets of his leather jacket next to the bed for his own cigarettes, handing her one and lighting it for her with shaking hands. She gratefully takes a long drag, slumping back against the bed, basking in the shared afterglow.
“Fuckin’ weird,” Kerry breathes. “But fuckin’ shimra.”
V lets out a shaky sigh, feeling something loosen in her chest for the first time in what feels like months. It’s such a revelation, being with someone who not only tolerates but welcomes Johnny’s presence… someone for whom her silent passenger isn’t a bug, but a feature.
“Can’t say I’ve ever done that before,” V agrees. “But yeah.”
Kerry laughs softly. “Preem excuse for a late checkout,” he jokes, reaching down to affectionately squeeze her thigh.
V laughs too, and she finds herself wishing again that they could just stay here forever, hiding in this strange little oasis from the rest of the world, suspended in time like a snow globe.
Kerry calls her a Del eventually, and luckily there’s not too many media waiting for her downstairs as she emerges from the elevator in her new white dress, leather coat pulled tight around her as she slides into the waiting car.
The hallways of her megabuilding feel even more dingy and decrepit than usual after the luxury of the hotel, and as she makes her way up to her floor, she can’t help but cringe slightly at the thought that Kerry had to see the way she lives.
A sudden shape darts between her legs as she walks from the elevator towards her flat, disappearing into the shadow of a nearby dumpster. She spots a pair of pale gold eyes watching her from the darkness.
“Look, hey, look,” Johnny says excitedly, glitching in next to her. “See that?”
“Here, kitty,” she whispers softly, dropping to a crouch. She’s seen this cat before, she can swear it… it looks identical to the one that hangs around Vik’s, and strangely enough, to the one she saw in Rancho the day she was doin’ recon with Takemura.
There’s no way it could be, though, right?
The cat approaches her cautiously, sniffing suspiciously at her empty hand before threading itself around her legs, rubbing its wiry hairless body against her boot.
“Hang on, lemme get you something to eat,” V tells it, stepping into her apartment and casting around for anything suitable for a cat. All she’s got is a tin of some non-specific synth-meat in the corner by her microwave, so she pops that open and returns to the hall.
The cat’s already gone though, and she sighs heavily before placing the open food can down next to the dumpster. He’ll come back for it, she figures.
V steps back into her apartment, suddenly again self-conscious about the fact that Kerry's been here now, too - seen her laundry strewn across the floor, her posters of his albums, her fuckin' SCSM, her depressing little shower.
She throws off her coat, finding herself unsure of what to do with the rest of her day. Her body feels tired and weak, so she changes into something comfortable and decides to hit the gym for the first time in what feels like forever.
The burn of her muscles is a welcome relief from the pain in her head, and she makes small talk with Coach Fred when he spots her on the bench and spars with her in the ring. She’s still as sharp as ever, even though she can feel that she’s lost some strength and stamina overall. Relic must be wasting her body more quickly now, she thinks, and she can feel Johnny's tightly coiled shame at the observation. She hates that he blames himself for the way the chip's makin' her deteriorate.
When she’s finished her workout, V showers and dries her hair and flops onto the couch, ready to spend her first night home in days. She reaches for the ever-present tequila bottle on the coffee table and doesn't even bother to pour herself a glass, swigging it straight from the bottle instead.
"Johnny," she says, and he's there as soon as she calls for him, materializing on the couch beside her. Something about knowing he’s always there when she wants him now sends a thrill through her.
It’s been a while since they’ve had a night alone, just the two of them, and they reach for each other at the same time, reading each other’s desires, savoring the moment, his hands and mouth on her body like he’s trying to memorize her. The hours pass, and soon she feels herself falling asleep on the couch with Johnny’s arms wrapped around her, watching Watson Whore on her shitty little TV, a tangle of limbs and minds both real and imaginary.
She dreams that she’s falling off the roof of Konpeki Plaza, crashing through the jungle, through the war dreams of Johnny’s memories, and into the dark depths of Mikoshi. She dreams that she’s a little boy in Texas, collecting two-headed lizards and 5-legged frogs and bringing them back to polluted creeks, poking them with sticks until they reluctantly return to their ruined homes. She dreams of her arm being torn off, and she’s not sure whose dream that one is anymore - the flesh and bone being ripped from her body, the metal one being placed there in its stead. She dreams she’s onstage, with blinding lights in her face, Kerry smiling beside her, Kerry’s body pressed against hers, Kerry’s tongue in her mouth, and she finds herself again unsure whose dreams these are this time, whose body it is she’s inhabiting, whose mind is whose anymore.
The dream is interrupted, as always, by her holo ringing. She rolls off the couch with a start, hitting her head on the coffee table and sitting up sharply with a loud yelp. She’s not surprised this time to see that it’s Kerry.
“Kerry, hey,” she says, clutching her head as she answers, grimacing at the bruise she can feel blossoming on her scalp.
“Drop whatever you’re doing and meet me at the marina,” he says, not bothering with a greeting. “Don’t make me wait.”
“Damn, you just love ordering me around town, don’t ya?” she teases.
“Can’t pretend I don’t,” he admits. “So, you in?”
“Alright, alright,” V relents with a laugh. “Gimme a few, I’ll be on my way.”
“In for a real treat, V,” he says, grinning from ear to fuckin’ ear. “Uh, Night City Marina, pier four!”
He hangs up, leaving V alone on the floor, still clutching her head.
Johnny materializes on the couch above her, legs crossed and looking down at her with an amused smirk.
"The marina, huh?” he says. “Wonder what Kerry's got up his sleeve this time. Maybe he wants to get rid of someone, toss the body parts in the bay. Or maybe he just wants an audience while he waxes poetic about yachts over shrimp cocktails.”
“Maybe he just wants to go fuckin’ sailing,” V suggests, but Johnny shakes his head and laughs, his black hair tumbling around his shoulders.
“Nah,” he says. “Know Ker better than that. This one’s gonna be mayhem, you have my fuckin’ word.” He shrugs, chuckling softly again. “Oh well, he's your problem now. Not mine."
V sighs and heaves herself to her feet, already heading for the shower when her holo buzzes again with another text from Kerry.
Slight change of plans
Waitin on an important delivery and the fuckin gonk’s late
Be at the marina at 7pm!
V gets in the shower anyway, and spends the afternoon cleaning her apartment in case Kerry decides to make another surprise appearance. After some consideration, she pulls on her old denim shorts and a simple tank and sneakers before taking a Delamain to the marina. She knows Kerry’s speed well enough at this point to know better than to take her own ride. Given the kinda payouts she's been getting lately, takin' a Del is a small luxury she can allow herself these days.
Kerry’s wavin’ to her from the deck of a big ass fuckin’ yacht as she makes her way down the ramp to the dock.
“Ahoy, there, scallywag!” he shouts as she approaches, and she laughs and waves back.
The boat he’s standing on is emblazoned with the name Seamurai on the hull, and V snorts at this as she walks slowly up the gangway to join Kerry on the deck.
He’s dressed in a plain white tank top and jeans, no leather today, and his face crinkles into a broad grin as she steps onto the boat.
“Hey there, yourself,” she says, letting him pull her in for a quick kiss.
“Up for a cruise around the bay?” he asks her. “Kickin’ it with ol’ Kerry?”
He unties the gangway behind her, lifting it off the boat and frowning at it before turning to cross to the white leather couches at the stern. He picks up a fancy-looking guitar that's propped up next to the couch and flops heavily down onto the cushions, pulling the guitar into his lap and tuning it as he grins up at her.
“So, what’s the occasion?” she asks, sitting beside him and folding her legs underneath her.
He lowers his guitar momentarily, lookin’ her in the eye. “New beginnings,” he says simply, spreading his hands. “And life’s loops.”
“Life’s… loops?” V asks, furrowing her brow.
“V, please don’t make me ruin the surprise,” Kerry teases. “We doin’ this or not?”
“Alright, alright, I’m intrigued,” V says with a smile. “Count me in.”
“Music to my fuckin’ ears!” Kerry crows. “Off we go,” he declares, and his eyes glow blue as he engages the boat’s autopilot system. “Now if I can find that button to raise, uh…” His brow knits in concentration. “Ah, fuck it,” he says finally. “Seamurai, all ahead!”
He raises his arm dramatically, and the boat shudders to life with a heavy thunk and begins to glide slowly away from the dock, out of the marina and into the ocean.
Kerry smiles at her, his face golden in the sunset as they sail out away from the shore, and he begins picking out a tune on his guitar. Johnny glitches in behind him, lying on his back on the railing of the boat, one knee up with his hands behind his head and a cigarette already in his mouth. He looks - and feels - more relaxed than V thinks she’s ever fuckin’ seen him, and she smiles softly to herself as they drift silently out of the bay and into the open water.
“Nice axe,” V says, sizing up the guitar Kerry’s playing. She recognizes it as the one she and Johnny stole back from that superfan in the Glen. She wonders if Kerry realizes that was her.
“It’s a Lancaster,” Kerry says. “Custom-built. Only five ever made in this series. I got one, Militech chief’s got another. The other three… eh, fuck if I know,” he tells her. “It’s tailored with a reversed-polarity pickup, ebony frets, and one silky-smooth Kaimar vibrato.” He grins at her. “And see this rusty color on the strings? S’posed to be the blood of legendary bluesman Dennis Ford himself.”
V smiles, but she's surprised to realize she can follow what he's saying, mostly. She doesn't know jackshit about guitars - must be Johnny’s knowledge of this shit bleedin’ over into her brain. Kerry continues to strum; it’s a soft, bluesy riff, one she doesn’t recognize from any of his music that she knows.
“That your song?” she asks. “Don’t recognize it.”
Kerry grins at her again. “‘Cause it’s new!” he tells her. “Riff’s been bouncin’ round my skull for a while now…” He bounces his knee in time with the beat as he continues strumming. “I… feel I’m onto somethin’ really special here,” he adds, looking out past her at the bay.
Behind him in the middle distance, she can see the spaceport silhouetted against the setting sun, the rockets jutting out from the small island like strange mechanical stalks reaching for the sky.
“Okay,” she says. “So, what’s the surprise? Lemme hear what this’s all about.”
“Like I said,” Kerry says mysteriously. “Life’s loops.”
“Um… breakfast cereal?” V questions.
“Nah, no, no, no, no…” he says to her, shaking his head and chuckling softly. “Loops, cycles. One chapter ends, another begins. Life’s full of ‘em! Least, my guru tells me so.”
“Your guru?” V asks skeptically, cocking an eyebrow at him.
“Yeah,” Kerry replies with a shrug. “I got spiritual needs. Visit Khian every couple o’ years. Y’know, he’s got this… yurt. In Tangalan. Middle of fuckin’ nowhere. Off-grid, net-blockers included.” He laughs again, his fingers continuing to strum. “Our last meet… Khian told me that the time for closure, loop completion, had come. That’s why we’re here… you and me.”
V considers this. “This… closure,” she begins. “Got anything to do with Johnny? With you battling shadows?”
“Ehh…” Kerry says, shifting uncomfortably. “Nah. Um, well… yeah, maybe a bit? Huh…” He looks past V again, his eyes wandering out across the city skyline sparkling behind her in the sunset. “‘Cause, y’know… managed well without him. Built my career, made my fortune… me. But dammit, no matter how hard I try… I can’t forget him.”
His eyes flick back to V’s, and he holds her gaze for a second, and she feels, really feels, the intensity of his love for Johnny in that moment. A love bordering on obsession, she realizes, one that’s been drivin’ him in some way or another for nearly his entire life. She feels a sharp twist in her chest, then, wondering what the rest of her life will be like, if all goes according to Johnny’s plan. A life alone in her head, her body her own again… and no Johnny.
“Yeah,” she agrees softly.
“Yeah, I’d rip him outta my head if I fuckin’ could…” Kerry continues, looking at her pointedly. “But…”
“Dunno if that’s even possible, at this point,” V agrees.
Kerry smiles, and Johnny sighs heavily from his position on the railing, tossing his cigarette over the side of the boat.
“Alright, so what about these loops?” V says, turning the conversation back to the present.
“Okay,” Kerry begins. “So, first tune I ever wrote that was worth a damn, I wrote at sea,” he tells her. “And d’ya notice? Fingers’re onto somethin’ fresh again today. There’s a loop for ya.”
“Which song are you referring to?” V wonders aloud.
“Bleed the Beat,” he tells her. “Wrote it during a cruise ship gig. Decks, pools, more pools, buffets, shrimp. Y’know, bells ‘n whistles.” He sighs. “Everybody thinks the song’s about stickin’ it to corpo fascistas.”
“But actually, it’s…?” V prompts, trying to imagine Kerry even younger than she is now, workin’ shitty gigs on a cruise ship. She remembers bits and pieces of that time through Johnny, of course, but it’s different hearin’ about Kerry’s life in his own words.
“Didn’t just make music on that boat,” Kerry confesses. “Busted my ass servin’ drinks, waitin’ tables. Free time, I… I composed till my fingers bled,” he admits, his face darkening. “Had to watch out not to stain their precious porcelain. And there it is,” he says, giving her a sad smile. “A song about bleedin’ in service of the rich. People hear what they wanna hear, though.”
“Yeah,” V agrees. She knows all too well what that feels like.
“But, man, was that a hit!” Kerry continues. “One of Samurai’s biggest. Just like this one’ll be,” he adds. “Fresh, raw, real.”
“And you wanted my company for that?” V prompts, still unable to shake the sense that there’s something more to this whole boat ride. Maybe it’s Kerry’s nervous energy, or the way his eyes keep darting around the boat like he’s casing it out for something.
“Not just your company,” Kerry says seriously, pausing his strumming and letting the guitar rest against his legs. “I needed you, V.”
The intensity she sees on his face then makes her mouth feel suddenly dry, and she swallows nervously under his gaze.
“Me?” she breathes.
“Been thinkin’ about that Us Cracks fiasco,” he continues. “‘Bout how you helped me. About our night together. A lot.” He’s still pinning her with his gaze, and she feels the heat already rising to her face. “You shake things up, V,” he says. “Make me feel…” He shakes his head and looks down. “I mean… ‘fore you came along, I was stuck in mud, scared of my own shadow, even.”
“And now?”
Kerry looks past her, his hands still draped loosely around the guitar on his lap. “Got me thinkin’ about a new song… a new album, even. A real fuckin’ thrasher with a new soul. Like everything from now on…” His voice trails off, but then he turns back to V, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Had what I think folks call an epiphany,” he says.
“Eh, could just be what folks call ‘maturity,’” V teases.
“You’ll see,” Kerry promises. “I’m done with all the mayhem, shady-ass schemes. Startin’ a new chapter,” he tells her. “Startin’ a new me.”
“Happy for ya, Ker,” V says sincerely.
But Kerry just grins at her wickedly. “But, y’know…” he says. “Startin’ tomorrow.”
V realizes then that the boat’s stopped moving. They’re near the shore now, by the oil fields north of the city.
“What are we-” she begins, but Kerry sits up then, a new light in his eyes.
“Alright!” he declares. “Now for a breath of freedom!”
Before V can react, he leaps to his feet and starts smashing the guitar against the railing of the boat, pieces of its wooden frame popping off and clattering to the deck before he flings the entire guitar off the edge of the boat and into the sea.
He turns to her, already dancing backwards towards the door to the interior of the boat.
“Ya gonna fuckin’ help me, or just stand there like a gonk?” he jokes, gesturing for her to get up and follow him.
“Jesus, Kerry!” V says, getting to her feet and stumbling after him. “That’s eddies down the drain!”
He grins. “Hit the nail on the head.” He spins on his heel and continues striding towards the door. “Think this is my boat? Honestly think I’d name my own yacht Seamurai?” He throws back his head and laughs maniacally.
V’s eyes dart around wildly. “Whose the fuck is it?!?
“Leadhead motherfucker,” Kerry growls, pushing open the door and jogging down the short flight of stairs into the cabin. “L.B. Kovachek.”
“Kovachek?” V asks, comprehension beginning to dawn as she follows him into a richly appointed interior room, complete with a fully stocked bar. “That Kovachek? Your manager?”
“Mhm,” Kerry says, grinning at her as he knocks every glass and bottle off the bar in one swift motion. “Never got a chance to properly thank him for the Us Cracks shit… and a few other things.”
Suddenly, it all makes sense.
Johnny appears in the doorway, raising one eyebrow at her with a bemused look on his face. “What'd I tell ya? Mayhem," he laughs. "Kerry needs this,” he adds. “Hell, you need this, V. I can feel it.”
“Chaos and destruction?” V says, exchanging a look with Johnny. “Why the fuck not?”
Kerry leans under the bar and pulls out a pickaxe and laughs wildly before swinging it down onto the bar counter, taking out a huge chunk of it. “Choose somethin’ and smash it!” he shouts to her. “Grab something heavy and get to work! This one’s on L.B.”
V grins. “You’ll never change, Kerry,” she teases. “C’mon, let’s rip this boat to shreds.”
“Let’s fuck shit up!” Kerry agrees, dropping the axe and attempting to pry off the countertop with his bare hands.
V laughs and shoves him aside. “Gonna need some better arms for that,” she quips, reaching over the counter with her cybernetic arm and latching her fingers onto it, ripping it off in one clean movement.
Johnny laughs approvingly as V moves to the other end of the counter, taking a record player there and smashing it onto the floor, stomping it once for good measure as Kerry grabs the espresso machine and hurls it onto the ground as well.
“Either he’s gone senile, or he’s finally wizened the fuck up,” Johnny jokes, glitching over to the couch to watch the show. “Could be either.”
After Kerry finishes smashing every single bottle of booze behind the bar, stopping to sample a few of ‘em, he moves to the door at the far side of the room and begins attempting to pry what looks like a flagpole off the doorframe while V rips a painting off the wall and puts her foot through it exuberantly. God, she must’ve already destroyed tens of thousands of eddies worth of shit. Johnny’s right - it feels exhilarating, freeing. Maybe she does need this, need Kerry, need Johnny, all of it.
“Member when you woke up in that scrapyard?” Johnny says admiringly from the couch. “That’s where he is now… bein’ reborn with fuck-all to stop him.”
“Gimme a hand with this motherfucker!” Kerry calls to her, and V goes to help him with the pole, placing her hands on the metal bar and yanking downwards on it.
Her cyberarm easily rips it out of the wall, and Kerry collapses forward into her, both of them laughing. She catches him with her hand on his shoulder, and he leans back and flashes that dazzling smile at her before winding his hand behind her neck and crushing his mouth to hers. She kisses him back eagerly, but he pulls away from her again and steps over to the as-yet-unsmashed radio on the counter, turning it on to a rock station and dancing back towards her, swaying his hips and doing a cheesy double-guns in her direction. She laughs again as she lets him take her face in his hands, pressing his mouth to hers once more in a long, slow, passionate kiss.
But Kerry has more than just romance in mind, apparently, and she draws in a sharp gasp as his hand finds its way between her legs. He presses hard, rubbing her and biting his lip as he shoves her stumbling backwards on the couch behind her. He tears off his shirt and gets on his knees in front of her, already yanking her shorts and underwear down over her sneakers and plunging his head between her legs, his tongue swirling over her and making her cry out in surprise and pleasure.
She grabs his head and fists her hand in his hair, pressing his mouth harder against her and meeting Johnny’s eyes from across the room. He’s watching from the other couch with intense interest, the lust clear on his face, his hand loosely palming the bulge in his leather pants.
Kerry pulls away and looks up at her then, a devilish gleam in his eye. He reaches into the pocket of his jeans and produces a lighter that he flicks on and holds up between them, the flames dancing across the gold cyberware on his face. He grins, then flings the lighter over his shoulder onto the liquor soaked carpet in the center of the room, which immediately goes up in a blaze that jumps around the small room, surrounding them with flames.
“Huh,” Johnny remarks. “Baptism by sex, fire, and water? A-fuckin’-men.”
But Kerry just turns back to her, yanking his pants down to his hips and throwing her legs up around his shoulders before plunging himself all the way into her with a low groan.
V reaches up on a sudden impulse and slaps him hard across the face, making him moan loudly and bite his lip as he fucks her wildly. The reflection of the fire dances in his eyes as the boat burns around them, and V wraps her hand around his throat and shoves him backwards, causing him to stumble off her, landing on his ass. She stands and removes her shirt, then crosses to straddle him on the floor, sinking herself onto him again with a soft whine.
When she glances up, she’s only half surprised to see that Johnny’s naked now, too, stokin’ himself while he watches them, and she feels a sharp jolt in her chest as she meets his gaze again while still ridin’ Kerry’s cock.
“C’mere,” she tells Johnny, and he doesn’t hesitate - he rises and comes to stand over her, taking her hair in his fist and slapping his cock across her face.
“Wish Kerry could see what I’m doin’ to ya now,” Johnny growls, continuing to stroke himself while he drags his cock slowly across her cheek, catching it on her parted lips. She opens her mouth to run her tongue along the head as he does so, drawing a rough moan from him.
“Is he…?” Kerry asks breathlessly, propping himself up on his elbows with wide eyes as she continues to roll her hips against him.
She nods once as Johnny whips his cock across her face again, still holding Kerry’s gaze with her own. Kerry swears loudly and reaches up to shove his thumb in her mouth, not breaking eye contact as he drags it across her lower lip and down her chin.
"So fuckin' pretty," he gasps. "Ain't she, Johnny?"
“He's right, V,” Johnny growls approvingly, still stroking himself above her, watching them both. “You take it better than any fuckin’ joytoy I’ve ever had.”
And god, hearin' him say that get's V close, real fucking close, but Kerry’s there first this time, his eyes rolling up into his head as he spills into her, thrusting wildly.
"Fuck,” Johnny groans, wrapping his hand around V's throat and grinding his cock on her cheek as he watches Kerry come apart underneath her. And that’s enough to send her over the edge this time - she’s barely aware of the incoherent stream of swears she cries out as she comes, utterly overwhelmed by the intensity of this whole fucking scene, the fire consuming the world around them, the blurred lines between reality and dreams as Johnny glitches out of existence and she and Kerry collapse in a sweaty heap to the floor.
V’s vision is glitching violently and she feels a malfunction coming on, but the boat’s really goin’ up now and they don’t have any time to linger in the afterglow this time. Kerry shoves her off him and heaves himself to his feet, kicking his jeans off the rest of the way and pulling her up after him. And then he's sprinting for the door, doing a little spin as he runs out to the deck, the cold night air a welcome relief from the flames below.
“Race ya to the shore!” he shouts, darting to the edge of the boat and doing a cannonball off the side into the cold, black water below.
V only hesitates a moment before diving in after him, the shock of the icy water hitting her like a blow to the chest.
But nothing can kill her rush as she swims after him through the darkness, the lights of the skyline in the distance guiding her in the right direction.
And then she’s gasping, wading naked out of the waves and onto the wet sand, Johnny’s dog tags falling softly against her chest as she drags herself up the beach to collapse onto her back and stare panting up at the starless dusk.
Kerry's emerging from the water now, too, and V props herself on her elbows to grin at him.
“Heh,” Kerry gasps, clearly winded. “Think I oughta... start usin’ my own pool more often… heh.” He sits heavily next to her on the sand, giggling softly. “C’mere, kid,” he says, throwing his arm around V and pulling her against his chest as she trembles in the cold night air.
They sit there in silence for a moment watching the boat burn. The sound of the ocean, the distant hum of the freeway, and the crackling flames from the burning boat are the only sounds in the night.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Kerry remarks softly.
“Sure is,” V agrees.
But Kerry frowns. “The fucker’s still in one piece… Somebody has to have seen the smoke by now.” He casts his eyes around the darkened beach, but there’s no sirens yet, no other signs of life.
“What if it don’t blow?” V asks worriedly.
“Take that back!” Kerry shouts with mock anger, shaking his head. “If the Seamurai sails another day, I’m gonna rip my hair out,” he mutters. “Think I shoulda loaded more barrels… or come with black market C-6? Whaddaya think?”
V opens her mouth to answer, but right then, the boat explodes in a massive fireball, a momentary bright blaze in the night, a pillar of smoke on the water.
“Ah!” says Kerry. “Nevermind.”
“Pour money down the drain…” V remarks. “Given the bay’s a sewer, we literally did just that.”
They watch silently as the boat slowly sinks into the depths, Kerry’s arm still clutching her body tightly to his.
“I had fun,” he says softly. “You?”
“Gotta admit, not bad,” V agrees.
“Not bad?” Kerry teases. “It was fuckin’ wild! Just what I needed, too.”
“To settle that score?”
“Mm,” he says. “To mark a new beginning.”
“You’re insane,” V says with a laugh.
“Eh, you danced along that edge with me,” he reminds her. “Felt good, didn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she murmurs, still trying to process everything that just fuckin’ happened out there on the boat. He’s right though - it definitely did feel good, sharing that moment of pure, unbridled chaos with both Kerry and Johnny.
“And for these precious few minutes… we simply get to feel good,” he adds, leaning over to press a kiss to her forehead. “Thanks, V.” He looks back out at the boat, which is now nothin’ more than a bubble of smoke in the black tide.
“Think Johnny enjoyed it too,” she tells Kerry, and his face breaks open in a broad grin.
“Aw, hell of a night, huh?” he says with a soft laugh. “Felt like Samurai’s first few gigs. A lil’ sloppy, granted, but the energy was fuckin’ raw.”
V throws back her head and laughs, too. “Nice twist of events, gotta admit.”
“Ehh… yeah, romantic as fuck,” Kerry says, still laughing. “Fuck doin’ things by the Night City book.” He turns to her, his face suddenly soft. “You and me,” he says fiercely. “We deserve this. Us. Each other.” He gives her a long look. “Whaddaya say?”
“To what?” V asks.
“To us,” Kerry repeats. “There is an us now, right? Whole world already thinks you’re my output, might as well make it official.”
“Are you… askin’ me to be your mainline?” V blinks at him, her mind struggling suddenly to catch up with the fact that she’s sitting naked on a filthy beach with Kerry Eurodyne after gettin’ railed by him and the dead rockerboy in her head on a burning boat, and now he’s sittin’ here askin’ her to be his girlfriend.
“Yeah, guess I am,” he says sheepishly.
“Okay,” V says incredulously. “I mean, yeah. Yes,” she says.
“Heh,” Kerry chuckles, and if it weren’t for the dark, V could swear she sees a flush in his cheeks. “Let’s get outta here before the wind flips and we get flooded by that stench.” He hoists himself to his feet and extends his hand down to V. “C’mon, left my car here for us, it’s parked up by the road.”
She lets him lead her up the beach to his waiting Aerondight. The only time she’s ever been inside one of these things was the night she met Jackie, she thinks as the doors raise open like a pair of beetle wings. Kerry slides naked into the driver's seat, and V hops in after him, cringing at the thought of her wet, sandy body on the expensive upholstery. But Kerry seems utterly unbothered as he flips on the radio and speeds back down the coast and onto the freeway, not slowing as they take the switchbacks up the hills to his house. He stops the car in the dimly lit driveway, cutting the engine and turning to pull her in for another kiss before he opens the car door and hops out.
She follows him into the house, the lights turning on automatically as they enter, and he’s already headed for the bar, pouring them each a glass of Centzon and raising his to her in another toast, both of them still naked. And then they’re giggling in the shower again, kissing on the stairs up to the bedroom, collapsing on his bed in a mess of limbs and bodies as they grapple each other with their hands and mouths.
The next three days pass as a blur of tequila shots on Kerry’s deck, listening to him play piano in the lounge, guitar by the pool, cigarettes on the roof of his garage, synth-coke on the mirror he keeps next to his bed. It’s so easy to get lost here with him, V realizes, in his little bubble he’s created for himself, filled with endless toys and things to entertain themselves with, not the least of which is turning out to be each other. He’s still got a closet full of clothes that used to belong to his ex-wife, and he lets V take whatever she wants. Most of it isn’t her style, but there’s plenty of old shirts and dresses for her to wear as they careen around the house together, partying and smoking cigarettes and talking and exploring each other.
And Johnny’s there too, listening to Kerry’s stories, sometimes piping up with his own details or suggestions that V’s more than happy to relay to Ker. And Kerry seems to enjoy Johnny’s strange, ghostly presence as well, in more than just the bedroom. It’s an interesting dynamic, unlike anything V’s ever experienced before. It’s the most real Johnny’s ever felt to her, these lost days spent tumbling around Kerry’s house... and the most fleeting their time together has ever seemed, with Hanako’s meeting looming over them like a fucking guillotine.
“So, hear from your manager yet?” V asks Kerry on the third day as they sip tequila cocktails by the pool. “Or wait, lemme rephrase… is Kovachek still your manager?”
“Hah!” Kerry laughs. “So far, nothing, but it won’t be long. He’ll know it was me, even if he can’t fuckin’ prove a thing.”
“And what about Us Cracks?” she asks. “Heard from ‘em at all?”
“Yeah,” Kerry tells her. “Just sent me a demo of theirs to check out, actually. I’ll play it for ya later, it’s decent stuff.” He sighs. “Y’know, that’ll never be my world. But hey, I’m happy to add a little blood ‘n chrome to their fakepop slice ‘n dice.”
“Pretty sure they’ve got enough chrome between the three of ‘em to buy a whole city,” V muses, earning a chuckle from Kerry.
"Let's go for a swim," he says suddenly, polishing off his cocktail and turning to grin at V.
"Don't got a suit," V protests, but Kerry just laughs.
"Didn't stop ya the other night,” he reminds her.
And then he’s hoisting her to her feet, yanking her shirt off over her head and pulling her naked by the hand into the artificial beach he’s got for a pool.
He treads water around her, splashing her as she shrieks and tries to dunk his head underwater. She still has trouble reconciling the fact that he’s close to a century old with his seemingly limitless, boyish energy.
He kisses her, then, and she wraps her legs around his torso, letting him hold her up with his hands, aided by the buoyancy of the water.
“How’s your new album?” she asks, kissing his neck. “Comin’ along?”
“Mhm,” Kerry says. “Thinkin’ ‘bout callin’ it… Kerry Eurodyne. Haven’t done a self-titled yet. It’s symbolic, y’know? A rebirth.”
“I like it,” V agrees.
“I listen to the new tracks and… it’s like I’m in a goddamn wax museum, lookin’ at old mes.” He shakes his head. “A little freaky, but still fuckin’ awesome.”
“Lemme have a listen?” V asks hopefully. She’s heard the little snippets he noodles on guitar all day, the piano riffs he’s testin’ out, but she’s yet to hear any of the demos she knows he's been layin' down all the times he's slunk into his home studio while she slept.
“Eh, not yet,” Kerry says, waving his hand. “Still too rough around the edges. But it’s getting there!”
“Can’t wait,” she tells him sincerely as he pulls her down into the water.
Later, as they sit in robes on his leather sofa, havin’ moved on to straight tequila and synth-coke as the sun sets, she feels an abrupt, almost irrational fear twist in her chest as she listens to him wax poetic about his tours with Johnny and the band.
"Who do you see when you look at me?" she asks him abruptly, turning to face him.
“Whaddaya mean?” he asks, leaning forward to do another line of synth-coke.
“I’m serious, Ker,” she says. “Are you… is this… are we… this all just ‘cause of…”
She can’t even bring herself to ask.
“Just about Johnny, you mean?” he asks.
She nods.
“Fuck, could ask the same of you,” he mutters, running his hand through his still-damp hair.
“What are you talkin’ about?” she whispers.
“Look,” he says. “I know whatever you and Johnny have is… well… I know nothin’ I could ever say or do could ever fuckin’ come close to that,” he manages, and his face looks suddenly, impossibly sad.
V doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s right, of course - no one else could ever really know her like Johnny does. But she thought - she’d hoped - Kerry understood this, that he was on board for it - for her and everything that came with it.
Her silence seems to tell him everything he needs to know.
"Fuck…” Kerry says softly, leaning back against the couch and pressing his hands to his forehead. “I finally meet the girl of my fucking dreams, and somehow, Johnny Silverhand still fuckin’ got there first.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Fifty years after that motherfucker died. Unbelievable.”
Johnny appears at this like a demon summoned straight from hell, pacing back and forth behind Kerry like a caged wildcat, the dark gloom rolling off him in waves.
“Fuck, Ker…” he says sadly, looking down at his old friend.
‘Kerry, I-” V begins, but Kerry cuts her off.
“Your heart is fuckin’ his, I get it." There’s no accusation in his voice, just a resigned sadness.
In any other context, V can't even begin to imagine how she'd feel about the fact that Kerry Eurodyne, the same one she'd grown up staring at a poster of above her fuckin' bed, just called her the girl of his fucking dreams. But now, all she can think about is the fact that they’re both scared the other is too spun out over the same dead rockerboy - the very one who is currently prowling around the room, rewiring V's neurons into said dead rockerboy.
She blinks at Kerry, her heart hammering in her chest.
"Know that how you feel for me, too, is partly… and I dunno how big a part… ‘cause of how you felt and still feel about him. About Johnny,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “You know he's here right now,” she says, flicking her gaze up to Johnny, who pauses his pacing to meet her eyes through his shades. “Hearin' all I’m sayin’, feelin’ everything that I'm feeling... so we both know that anything you say to me is also, on some level, partly for him, too."
The look on Kerry's face is enough to break her heart.
"V," he pleads. "Shut the fuck up. 'Course that was part of it, least at first, but fuck, man. I meant what I said. You really fuckin' get me. Same frequencies, all that jazz. I don't know howta explain it."
Johnny is at least part of that explanation, though, and they all know it.
Kerry looks down and puts his hand to his face again, running it up and through his hair nervously. V is still somewhat dumbstruck by the sheer surrealness of the situation, at how absolutely overwhelming her inner turmoil of emotions is quickly becoming. She can feel it from Johnny, too, and her heart starts pounding even more wildly in her chest. And whatever emotion is surging from Johnny suddenly causes her vision to glitch and her head to explode in raw, unadulterated agony and she leans forward and gags a wave of blood-red vomit onto Kerry’s white leather couch.
But instead of acting horrified, he gathers her gently into his arms and guides her up the stairs to his master bathroom where he strips off her bloody bathrobe and turns on the shower, waiting until it's the perfect temperature before holding her convulsing body underneath the stream until she stops shaking and locks her eyes onto his.
He crouches next to her on the floor of the shower and reaches out his hand to gently press it against the side of her face, his own silk robe getting soaked beneath the stream of warm water that rains down over them both. His hair is wet against his forehead, and she laughs sadly and reaches out her chrome hand to gently brush it aside. He smiles another heartbreaking smile and leans in to kiss her, and she melts into him, almost against her will, as his lips meet hers and her tongue finds its way into his mouth.
He picks her leg up and kisses his way down the inside of her thigh before hooking it around his waist and pushing himself against her, leaning in to press his mouth to hers again. She welcomes him hungrily, wrapping her other leg around him and pulling him closer to her.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks.
“Doing what?” he says.
“Bein’ so nice to me,” she chokes.
"V," he says, kissing his way down her neck. "Don't you get it?"
"What?" she asks, her voice barely a whisper.
"You saved my fuckin' life that night," Kerry says. "Why do you think I spent all night hiding from my own party? Why do you think I didn't have any house staff that night? Why do you think I had my gun with me in the fucking shower?" He sighs and sits back on his heels, and V notices that now he's shaking. "Was gonna off myself that night,” he admits, his voice breaking. “If I hadn't heard Johnny playin' guitar out there...”
V’s heart is in her throat as she sits up to stare at him. She doesn’t know what to say, so she just winds her arms around him, pulling him close as the words continue to tumble out of his mouth.
“And then I meet you,” he continues. “And you're just this stupid kid who waltzes in here and reminds me that the world is full of so much shit to live for, so many people I haven't met yet. That someone I mourned for half a century isn't really gone. That my music meant something to someone, to someone like you.” He pulls back and looks into her eyes. “You know what Johnny said about you that night? He said you shine like no one else, and he was fuckin' right. Fuck, V, I..."
His voice breaks again, and V realizes he's crying.
And she’s crying now too, sobbing into Kerry's shoulder as she keeps her arms wrapped tightly around him and comforts him the only way she can think to, their bodies moving together under the hot water, their tears washing away with all the rest.
And it’s enough, it has to be enough - for tonight, at least.
Notes:
Sorry and/or you're welcome!
Edited to add: I just wrote and posted a smut one-shot bonus chapter, Persuasion of the Undecided, set during the end part of this chapter. Check it out if you wanna read more about V getting railed by Johnny and Kerry lmao
Chapter 39: Holdin' On
Summary:
V heads to the desert to test drive the stolen Basilisk with Panam.
Notes:
I feel like I say this every chapter now, but this one is looong and also my brain is mush so there are probably lots of typos I'm sorry I'm advance
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Y’know, fans used to literally write fanfic about Johnny and me,” Kerry says to V.
They’re laying out on the lawn, a half-full bottle of scotch nestled in the grass between them. V’s having trouble remembering how many days exactly she’s been here, now. Three? Or is today four? It’s all blurred together into kind of a dreamlike haze as she and Kerry have floated around his massive property, drinking and doin’ blow and fucking on every piece of furniture he owns. She knows she can't stay in this pink cloud of sex and drugs with Kerry forever, but she feels like she’s waitin’ for something… for the spell to be broken, somehow.
She turns her head to look at Kerry and laughs. “No fuckin’ way.”
“Yeah fuckin' way,” Kerry says, laughing now, too. “Thought it was weird as hell. But Johnny fuckin’ loved it, any time he found some he’d come read it out loud to me and fuckin’ die laughing while I tried to strangle him.”
Johnny’s here too, lying in the grass a little ways away, and he pipes up at this. “You loved it too, Ker,” he teases, though they both know Kerry can’t hear him.
“Probably used it for inspiration,” V guesses with a laugh.
“Oh, you have no idea,” Kerry says, propping himself on his elbows so he can reach for the bottle and take a swig. “Sometimes he’d even toss in a particularly dumb line from one while we were fuckin’, ruin the whole damn moment.”
V’s still laughing when her holo starts goin' off, and she sits up to answer, brushing the grass from her legs. It’s Panam, and though she’s delighted to hear from her nomad friend, she knows this means her exercise in escapism is likely about to come crashing to an end.
“V!” Panam says, grinning widely when V picks up. “The Basilisk! It’s ready! Wanna come out and take it for a spin?”
“Sure," V says, glancing at Kerry. "I’ll, uh... I'll drive out first thing tomorrow."
“Fuck, V, it is awesome!” Panam crows, clearly unable to contain her excitement.
“So I hear,” V replies with a laugh.
"Sorry I missed your concert, by the way. Mitch told me that it was truly something," Panam adds, and V laughs again, more nervously this time.
"Tell him thanks," V says.
“Sure, sure, just get your ass out here!” Panam says, flashing her a wide grin.
Panam’s enthusiasm is infectious, and V smiles as she hangs up.
Her holo buzzes again, and a picture of the panzer itself appears, along with a text from Mitch.
Ain’t she just a beauty?
Drop by the camp, stills don’t do her justice
And maybe you cheer up Panam
V wonders if Panam is still spun out about the Saul situation. He did lay into them pretty hard after they returned to camp with the stolen Basilisk, told Panam she was endangering the family. V hopes they’ve smoothed things over in her absence, but knowing Panam, she has a feeling that’s not likely.
“So, Ker,” she says, turning to the rockerboy who’s still stretched out on the grass beside her, eyein’ her quizzically.
“Lemme guess, duty calls?” he says.
“Not exactly,” V tells him. “My nomad friend, Panam, wants me to come out to their camp, test drive the panzer we klepped a coupla weeks ago.”
“Damn, you klepped a panzer?” Kerry says then, shielding his eyes with his hand to look up at her. “Used to pilot those motherfuckers back during the war. What kinda panzer?”
“It’s a Militech Basilisk,” she says, and his eyes widen.
“No shit!” he says incredulously. “Drove ones like those a handful of times. Fuckin’ coffins. Kinda fun, though, in a way.” He grins. “You’ll see.”
"You wanna come?" V offers, but Kerry shakes his head.
"Fun as it sounds to go roll around with you in the desert, got stuff to take care of here," he tells her.
V nods and glances around the yard. She literally doesn’t have any of her own stuff here, not even her clothes, not her car. She’s currently wearing one of Kerry’s shirts loosely buttoned over a pair of his boxers, and nothing else.
“Can I, uh… grab some clothes?” she asks him sheepishly.
“Yeah, ‘course,” Kerry says quickly. “Take whatever you want.”
V stumbles upstairs, trying to clear her head as she rummages through Kerry’s closet and settles on a pair of weird leopard print pants and a t-shirt. Definitely not something she’d normally wear, but it’ll do. She thinks about her mom suddenly, and wonders how she'd feel knowing her daughter was flopping around Kerry Eurodyne's house wearin' Louise fuckin' Nordin's old threads.
When she comes back downstairs, Kerry is hovering by the bar, watching her closely.
“Call me, uh, when you’re back in the city?” he says anxiously.
V nods. “Course, Ker,” she says, stepping over to press her lips to his, letting him wind his fingers in her hair and pull her against him for a moment.
She doesn’t want to leave. But she knows she can’t keep hiding out here forever, until…
She steps away from Kerry, letting her hand linger on his chest, and he gathers it in his, pressing a quick kiss to her knuckles.
“Be safe, kid,” he tells her, his eyes glowing blue as he calls for a Delamain to come pick her up.
The cab ride home feels like a strange exodus from a dream as the car carries her down the hill and back into the noise and clamor of the city streets. Her megabuilding seems even more oppressively loud and smelly than usual, and V tries to fight off her budding headache as she exits the elevator and cuts through the gym, dodging the crowds as she jogs up the stairs to her floor.
When V arrives at her apartment door, to her surprise, the cat from the other day is waiting there, meowing loudly next to the empty can of food she left out earlier.
“Hey lil buddy!” she exclaims softly, dropping to a squat and holding out her hand to the strange cat.
It blinks its eyes slowly at her as it approaches, and she runs her hand along its hairless body, feeling it arch its back as it rubs against her leg.
She gets to her feet and opens the door to her apartment, and the cat immediately darts inside and makes a beeline for her couch where it settles in and starts licking its paws.
“Alright, then,” she says with a soft chuckle, going to grab a small bowl that she fills with water and places on the floor before opening another tin of synth-meat to set out next to it.
The cat watches her, blinking at her with big golden-yellow eyes before hopping off the couch and padding over to lap at the water.
Johnny appears then, crouching next to the cat and watching it with a strange reverence on his face.
“Well, there it is,” he says in a satisfied voice as the cat finishes drinking and starts to clean itself with its little paws.
V smiles at his awestruck reaction to the small creature. “Don’t see too many of them these days, huh?” she says softly.
Johnny grins up at her. “Did we just adopt a cat?”
V can't remember ever seeing Johnny this giddy about anything, not even the Samurai concert.
“Guess so,” she laughs.
“What should we name him?” Johnny says, and that’s when V notices that he’s right, it’s a tomcat. She shrugs.
“I dunno, you pick,” she says.
Johnny considers the animal for a moment. “Nibbles,” he says finally.
V snorts. “Nibbles? Really?”
Johnny reaches out his hand to touch the cat, his face falling slightly when his fingers predictably pass through its body.
“Had a cat when I was a kid. It was just a barn cat, some stray that wandered in. I named him Nibbles. Looked a lot like this one,” he tells her.
“What happened to him?” V asks.
Johnny shrugs. “Dunno. I left for the war and never went back.”
V is silent for a moment as they both watch the cat make itself comfortable. V makes a mental note to ask Misty to come feed it while she’s in the desert. And maybe, she thinks, also after…
She stops herself again. No point in thinking that far ahead, not yet.
After showering and dressing in her own clothes, V heads down to Misty’s shop. She takes her usual shortcut down the stairs past Tom's Diner, ignoring the growling in her stomach. She hasn't eaten yet today, but the smell of greasy synth-meat is also makin' her feel slightly ill.
“V!” Misty exclaims as she enters the little store, looking up at the soft chimes that announce V’s arrival. “Where’ve you been?” she asks, crossing the shop to hug her. “No one’s heard from you since the concert,” she adds, a note of concern in her voice.
“Yeah, I…” V begins. “It’s been a pretty wild week.”
“If the screamsheets are to be believed, I can imagine why,” Misty says with a laugh.
V chuckles softly. “Yeah,” she just says. She feels a little weird talking about the whole situation with Kerry, to be honest. It’s partly his fame, and partly that the nature of the whole thing just feels impossible to explain.
“Did you come to see Vik?” Misty asks, and V shakes her head.
“Wanted to ask you a favor, actually.”
Misty’s face lights up. “Of course, V! What do you need?”
V leans against the counter. “Well, there’s this cat in my building that sort of… moved in,” she says.
Misty literally claps her hands. “You adopted a cat?!”
“Well, sort of,” V stammers. “Know there’re big fines for that if you don’t register ‘em, pay the fees, all that jazz,” V adds quickly. “But he looked hungry so I let him inside and…" She shrugs helplessly. "Anyway, I’m goin’ to the desert for a bit, probably a night or two, and I was wonderin’ if you could… y’know, like, feed him?”
“V!” Misty squeals. “What’s his name?”
V smiles. “Nibbles,” she says. “Johnny named him.”
“Nibbles,” Misty repeats, her eyes shining. “I think this will be good for you, V.”
“Never had a pet before,” V says anxiously. “Not really sure what to do, if I’m bein’ honest.”
“Well first, you need a litterbox," Misty tells her with a laugh. "I can bring one. I’ll get it all set up while you’re gone, don’t worry,” she assures V.
“You don’t have to-” V starts to protest, but Misty cuts her off.
“V!” she insists. “It’s nothing, really. Promise. And you’ll be great,” she says warmly. “Cats don’t need much.”
“Thanks, Misty,” V says sincerely, smiling as she takes Misty's wrist and places her own against it, both of their eyes flashing blue as she adds Misty’s biometrics to her door lock.
Misty grins suddenly.
“I have something to tell you, too, actually,” she says shyly, and V already has a feeling she knows where this is going.
“Did River call you?” she guesses, and Misty nods, her whole face lighting up.
“Is that… is that okay with you?” she asks. “We went out for drinks, he told me about what… what happened with you guys,” she says. “I got the sense you were pretty involved in whatever it is you’ve got goin’ on with Kerry, so I…” she stammers, but V just laughs, cutting her off.
“I’m happy for ya,” V says. “You guys are a great match.”
“Nothing happened yet!” Misty says quickly, her eyes widening. “I wanted to talk to you first.”
“It’s fine, Misty, really,” V assures her. “River’s a great guy. I can really see it with you two.”
Misty smiles shyly again, looking like she's about to say something else, but then the back door opens and Vik’s head pops in, followed by his broad shoulders.
“Oh, hey, V!” he says, stepping the rest of the way inside. “Was heading to grab lunch, I thought I heard your voice.”
V smiles at him. “Good to see you, Vik."
“How ya been, kid?” he says, furrowing his brow at V as he walks over to lean against the counter across from her.
“I’m…” she begins, then shrugs. “Well, you know.”
Vik grimaces as he nods. “That bad, huh?” he says gently.
V looks down. “Not all bad,” she says. “I’ve got a thing… a meeting lined up next week,” she tells him slowly. “Dunno what’ll come of it, but it might lead somewhere.”
Vik gives her a long look. “That’s good to hear.” He studies her for another beat. “So what’s goin’ on with you and Eurodyne?” he asks then, and V sighs. She’s been bracing herself for this. She knows Vik reads all the screamsheets to keep up with all the latest boxing gossip.
“We’ve been spendin’ time together, yeah,” she says simply, holding his gaze.
Vik frowns. “That where you’ve been since the concert?” he asks, and V shrugs, then nods.
“Yeah,” she says. “Been at his house, mostly.”
“So he’s your boyfriend for real now?”
“I think so,” V says. “I mean, yeah. He asked me, and I agreed.”
Vik continues to study her, still frowning. “You look pretty rough,” he says. “Been sleeping?”
“Enough,” she tells Vik coolly. If this is his way of tryin’ to get a peek at her sex life, she’s not about to hand it to him this time.
“V, as your doctor, it’s my job to tell you that you don’t look good,” he says, his brow still furrowed. He leans in a little closer. “Wait, are you… drunk?”
V considers this. She was up most of the night drinking with Kerry, and they continued doin’ so all day. Coke, too. Her head’s still feeling more than a little fuzzy, but she’s also startin’ to really feel the comedown.
“Not really,” she tells him.
“Not really?” Viks says incredulously. “V, it’s not even noon.”
V shrugs. “Kerry still goes pretty hard.”
"So wait,” Vik says. “You telling me you spent the last week on some weird bender with Kerry Eurodyne? That you're for real dating him now?” He sighs. “This a real thing, or just like... a bender thing?”
V feels her face flush what must be a brilliant scarlet. "You don't get it, Vik,” she protests. “Kerry's… he’s the only person who really understands what I'm going through right now, he-"
"Is he?" Vik interjects. "Tell me, how much of the time you've spent with Kerry have you actually been sober for? Any of it?"
V is silent. He's not wrong. But it’s still a fuckin’ slap in the face to hear.
“He's old enough to be your fuckin' grandfather, V,” Vik says, more gently this time.
Misty looks back and forth between the two of them, seemingly unsure if she should intervene. V shoots her a pleading look.
“Vik,” Misty says gently, placing a hand on the ripperdoc’s tattooed arm.
V’s vision starts to glitch slightly, then. “‘Preciate the concern, Vik, really,” she says, pressing her hand to her forehead. “But I just… can’t talk about this right now,” she tells him, fighting off the headache that’s quickly incoming.
“You alright?” Vik says, his tone deepening into one of genuine concern. “Wanna come downstairs, have me take a look at ya?” He’s speaking so gently, and there’s a warmth to his voice that makes V wanna burst into tears. He’s just lookin’ out for her, she knows that. But right now, she just wants to be alone, away from her friends’ worry and fear for her.
“I’m just gonna go home and lie down,” she tells them, already backing towards the door. “Thanks again, Misty,” she adds. “And tell River I said hi.”
Misty glances nervously between her and Vik, but just nods as V slips out the door, walking quickly to the end of the alley before she stops to lean against the window of a nearby sex shop, taking deep, panicked breaths that quickly turn into dry heaves and end with her coughing up a sizeable amount of blood.
“Fuck,” she chokes.
“Christ, V,” Johnny says, appearing next to her and shaking his head dolefully. “C’mon, let’s get you home.”
V nods at him and pulls herself together, her head still pounding as she walks the rest of the way back to her apartment.
The cat winds himself around her legs excitedly when she enters, already mewing and trotting back to his now empty tin of food.
“You’ll get more later,” V promises, making a mental note to go buy some actual cat food to leave for Misty before she heads out tomorrow.
She sighs and goes to lie down on her bed, and Johnny glitches in behind her, winding his arms around her and resting his chin on her neck.
They lie together in silence - there’s nothing more for either of them to say. The whole situation is impossible, doomed no matter what angle V examines it from.
And the further she gets from it, the less real her time spent with Kerry starts to feel and the more Vik’s words begin to hold water. The intensity of Kerry's confessions, their easy camaraderie… it all just happened so fast. She can’t tell if she’s falling in love with him, or if she just spent a week in a drug-fueled haze with a desperate, aging rockstar and her imaginary friend, like Vik said. Either could be true at this point. Maybe both are true.
She wishes she were anyone else, had anyone else’s life instead of the wretched mess her own has become.
Johnny’s arms tighten around her, and she can feel his own fear and frustration mingling with her own, and she squeezes her eyes shut to hold back the tears that suddenly threaten to spill.
Getting out of the city for a few days will be good, she thinks.
*********
Johnny fucking loves driving through the desert.
Night City may run deep in his veins, sure, but there’s something about the breath of freedom he gets every time he’s outta that hellhole that makes everything there seem less real, less dire, and right now that’s a welcome feeling. V seems to feel it too - the further they get from the city, the more he feels that dark knot in her chest start to loosen.
Watching her drive with the windows down and the stereo on full blast also makes him think of his time with Rogue and Santiago with the Aldecaldos. Different decade, different nomads, but the desert never really changes. He remembers how Rogue used to wear her overgrown mohawk in a French braid back in those days, how the nomad life seemed to unexpectedly suit her. It's hard to reconcile that woman with the one who stalks around the Afterlife in 2077, but Johnny knows the girl with the braid is still in there, somewhere. He hopes that Rogue knows that, too.
It’s early afternoon by the time they reach the Aldecaldo’s camp, and the sun is beatin’ down like a fuckin’ heat lamp. Johnny snaps out of his reverie as V pulls her Rattler up the dirt road to the edge of the compound, bringing it to a halt as the dust settles around them. She cuts the engine and gets out, shielding her eyes from the bright desert sun.
He can see the Basilisk parked a little bit away, further along the edge of the camp, with a swarm of nomads surrounding it. Johnny recognizes most of them as the vets who helped 'em klep the panzer the last time they were here as V makes her way towards them.
In spite of everything, he knows V's excited to see Panam, to do something fun that has nothing to do with the Relic, with Arasaka, with Samurai. With anyone's impending death.
“With just a little more time....” Mitch is saying as she approaches.
“Yeah, yeah, you’d turn it into a goddamn rocket ship, I know,” Cassidy - one of the older vets, Johnny remembers - retorts.
V sidles up next to Panam, who’s standing with her hands cocked on her hips and seemingly hasn’t noticed her yet.
“All ready to go?” V asks.
“Hey, V!” Panam says, turning to her. “No, not yet.”
“Carol still needs to check if Militech left any ICE in the system,” Mitch explains.
“Corpos haven’t shown up in person to report the loss?” V asks, eyeing the panzer.
“Nah,” says Mitch. “I think we managed to keep ‘em off our scent.”
“We left the trucks with the big corpo logos down by the Raffen camp,” Cassidy adds with a grin, adjusting his cowboy hat. “Which was almost as fun as leavin’ a bag of flaming dog shit on their doorstep.”
Johnny glitches in to perch atop the panzer, lighting a cigarette between his lips. He’s gotta admit, what they’ve done with the tank is pretty impressive for a bunch of tarmac rats out in the desert without reliable access to top-of-the-line equipment and tools. But lookin' at it now is just flashin' him straight back to Mexico in 2003, to his basic training in these things.
“Fuck,” he says, turning to V. “Made it look like it just came back from a corpo war tour. Nice touch.”
“Everything’s fine!” Carol announces then, looking up from her deck. “Clean as a whistle.”
“And Saul,” V asks, turning back to Panam. “What about him?”
Panam shrugs. “Nothing, for now. We’re staying out of each other’s hair.”
“So he’s not planning a family council?” V teases.
“Of course he is,” Panam retorts. “He just wants to keep me in the dark a while longer.”
V eyes the panzer, unable to hide the excitement shining in her eyes. “Always wanted to take one of these suckers for a spin,” she admits.
Johnny looks down at her and rolls his eyes. “Which is exactly how all those naive gonks landed at the front. Didn’t even need to be recruited,” he says darkly. “They just showed you the tech.”
V meets his eyes, and an understanding passes between them. She’s seen most of his war memories by now, he doesn’t need to explain it to her.
“Come on, hop in!” Panam says excitedly. “Everything is set.”
V climbs up onto the panzer and opens the hatch on top, sliding down into the small, cramped seat. The hatch shuts above her, plunging her into darkness. Her Kiroshis barely have time to adjust before a second hatch opens a little to her right, and Panam slides into the second seat, flashing a grin at V.
“Alright!” Panam exclaims. “Let’s fire her up! Hold onto your head!”
She punches a series of buttons on the dimly glowing dash before her, but nothing happens.
“Dammit,” she swears under her breath.
“Anybody get this thing up and running earlier?” V asks, glancing around nervously. “Maybe you oughta-”
“Everything is dandy!” Panam snaps, cutting her off. “Give me a moment.”
She punches a few more buttons, then curses loudly and hits the dash with her elbow.
And somehow, that fuckin’ works and the whole board glows to life, the screens coming online and the liquid crystal on the ceiling activating to reveal a live view of the outside of the panzer.
“Oh, yes!” Panam crows as the sunlight streams in through the now seemingly transparent roof.
V eyes Mitch and other onlookers through the hatch, and he flashes them a thumbs up as the panzer thrums to life.
“It’s not the latest model,” Panam remarks apologetically, “But Mitch and Bob did what they could.” She plugs in the link to her head jack, then turns to V and grins again. “What do you think?”
“Well, least now I know why people call ‘em coffins,” V remarks as the panzer starts backing away from the gathered nomads.
Panam snorts. “Least there’s AC in here,” she says. “The ones Mitch and the others used to take out during the war sure as hell didn’t.”
Johnny remembers all too well. The horrible days on end spent crammed inside one of these things, feeling his mind slowly start to melt and the line between reality and delirium become indiscernible. He feels V’s shoulders tense at the shared memory.
“Not exactly how I imagined a corpo panzer,” V admits. “I mean, least not since I stopped watching all those anime BDs.”
“You steer directly from your seat,” Panam explains. “All you gotta do is jack in. The impulse runs directly to your cerebral cortex. In a sense, the Basilisk becomes an extension of your body.” She shoots V a teasing grin. “It’s like a mystical oneness.”
“If it’s so mystical and shit, why the co-pilot? Moral support?”
Panam smiles. “I’ll explain once we’re a bit further from camp. We’ll practice,” she promises.
“You ever piloted anything like this before?” V asks.
“Nope!” Panam says cheerfully. “Why, don’t you trust me?”
“Can I still get out?” V jokes.
“No,” Panam laughs.
“Then I trust you,” says V with a grin.
They drive for a bit.
Johnny tries to subdue the bad memories this is diggin' up for him. It’s a lot of shit he spent a lot of years trying to forget, and he doesn’t wanna sour V’s fun.
“Okay,” Panam says once they’re cruising out in the open desert. “If you want full functionality in an engagement, you need a second person to handle the sensory overload,” she explains. “One pilot steers, the other handles the gun.”
“Like your truck,” V points out.
“Sort of,” Panam agrees. “They say it’s... more intense, though. Some of them say it’s even oddly... pleasant.”
“Sounds like Mitch really wants to get mystically connected to this panzer,” V jokes, earning a loud laugh from Panam.
“Wouldn’t put it past him,” she agrees. “Okay, wanna try it out?” she asks V. “I’ll disconnect for now.”
“Didn’t you just say it needs two pilots?” V asks.
“You won’t be steering and firing,” Panam says. “Are you ready?”
“Sure,” V says, reaching for the link and yanking the cord up to jack it into the port at the base of her skull. Her vision glitches, and suddenly Johnny’s seeing her own body as if from the outside, like he’s the panzer itself, looking at V inside it. He remembers how unnerving this was the first time he experienced piloting one of these things in training, and not being in control now is makin’ it even more nerve-wracking.
Johnny tries to keep his cool, burrowing deeper into her head, trying to ignore his rising trepidation.
“Panam…?” V asks worriedly, the alarm bleeding into her voice. “Is this, uh… as designed?”
“Neural synchronization doesn’t happen at the snap of one’s fingers,” Panam says breezily. “It’ll be over soon. There, see?”
As she speaks, V’s vision clears, and now V is the tank, her skin is its armor, and Johnny can sense that some part of her finds the sensation exhilarating as fuck. He remembers feeling that part the first time, too.
But he almost fuckin’ died in one of these things more times than he can count. Killed a lot of people in ‘em, too.
He feels V pitch the panzer forward with a nudge of her mind, and they lurch along unsteadily at first before settling into a smooth glide.
“Oookay,” she says shakily. “Startin’ to understand what you meant.”
Panam coaches her through a series of turns as they weave their way around the windmills until V gets the hang of maneuvering the heavy craft. It handles with an insane amount of inertia, like Johnny remembers, but as V begins to get a feel for it, his chest starts to untighten a bit. She’s having fun, and he doesn’t wanna fuck this up like he did when she was divin’ in that fucking underwater church with the little smut tuner.
“Tough ride,” V remarks as she corners it around another turbine. “Handles like a boat.”
“Indeed!” Panam says. “Okay, now I’m going to connect. It could feel… strange,” she warns.
“Meanin’?” V asks.
“Basilisk pilots have to be fully synchronized. That means our nervous systems will be linked.”
“Okay…” V says nervously.
“They say it’s as if you booked a room with two beds but got a double bed with a blanket wide enough for half,” Panam continues.
“Know exactly what you mean,” V says dryly, voicing Johnny’s exact thoughts.
“Hmm?” Panam asks.
“Tell ya later,” V promises. “Okay, let’s try this,” she says resignedly. “Guess I’ll get to know you better than I’d planned.”
“Alright, let me just say… I’ve heard it can be difficult at first. You’ll experience feedback, sensory echoes as our systems overlap.”
V nods, her mouth suddenly dry. Johnny is tense now, too - the idea of letting Panam into her head with him feels strange, almost violating somehow. He thinks again about how things went that night with Judy, and he can't help but worry about the implications of all this, of letting Panam into the hot mess inside V’s skull right now.
But Panam gives V one last excited smile, then jacks in.
V’s vision immediately starts to glitch, and Johnny can feel all her nerves lighting up as the system links hers to Panam’s and to the panzer itself.
“What the fuck,” V stammers as her vision warps and flashes.
“It’s the sensory feedback,” Panam gasps. “Our systems are intertwined.”
And just like that, Johnny can feel Panam’s body and mind, like it’s his own, the way he always feels V now.
V's vision stutters again, and Panam leans forward, clutching her head. This was a bad fuckin' idea, Johnny realizes. The nomad chick can almost certainly feel him there now - the connection is way stronger than it was when Judy linked their BD scrolls. And V still hasn't told her nomad friend about him.
“What the-” Panam says. “What is that? Who is that?!” she chokes, clear panic in her voice.
Johnny tries to make himself smaller, but he can still feel Panam’s mind prodding at the edges of him, her panicked thoughts wrapping around his, her heart racing in her chest as she struggles to make sense of the unexpected interloper in their link.
The whole dash lights up then, alarms sounding, snapping Johnny’s attention back to the task at hand. To all of their dismay and horror, there’s a bunch of fuckin’ scavs surrounding the panzer, all opening fire, the popping of their guns echoing in clicks and thuds against the hull.
And more importantly, V can feel it. Like a million tiny gnats pricking her skin, some of them harder than others. And it fucking hurts.
“That’s the part they don’t tell ya beforehand,” Johnny mumbles darkly as he feels V's cold spike of fear.
“Oh, fuck!” Panam shouts, momentarily distracted from the mystery guest in her friend’s skull. “Fuck! They found us! We have to get back to camp!”
“They’re Raffen!” Saul’s voice crackles over the comm. “Whole group of ‘em, ready for a fight!”
“They’re here, too, Saul!” Panam shouts back. “In full force!”
“Take them out,” Saul instructs her. “Then haul ass here and make yourselves useful!”
V’s mind is a blank of sheer panic now. Or no - that’s not V’s panic he’s feeling - it’s his own, Johnny suddenly realizes. And it all comes rushing back to him, then, in one swift tidal wave. The war. The jungle. The explosions, the smoke, the feeling of his own death staring him in the face, day after day after day. He’s fuckin’ 15 again, sitting in his battle-scarred panzer, waitin’ to die today, or tomorrow, or the day after that. It’s him, or it’s them, and he learned back then to make sure it was always them.
Until that day that it wasn’t, and he lost his left arm and his best friend. Just like V did.
He hasn’t let himself think about Sam Nauman in years. How their panzer caught on fire, how Sam dragged him out, shielded his body from the shrapnel still flyin’ at ‘em. How a grenade landed nearby, and Sam pushed him out of the way, taking the full brunt of the blast instead and sparing all of Johnny except his left arm. How Sam gave his life that day in exchange for Johnny’s.
And that’s when Johnny’s instincts kick in, and he reaches out, almost without realizing it, and starts to pilot the panzer.
It’s not exactly the same as taking over V’s body - the Basilisk is controlled via the pilot’s mind, so it feels almost as simple as gently nudging V aside and grabbing the wheel of her car. But the craft shudders and responds to his unspoken commands, and it spins and tilts into an attack position as his years of training and combat experience take over.
He hasn’t done this since he was a fuckin’ teenager, but there are some things you just don’t forget.
He makes quick work of the Raffens, feeling V’s terrified mind there alongside his own. And he can feel Panam too, almost as strongly as he can feel V. It's definitely a lot more intense than it was when they linked with Judy.
“We have to help the family!” Panam yells at V as Johnny takes out the last Raffen.
Johnny turns the Basilisk and drives it full speed back to camp, his fine-tuned impulses guiding him as he pulls the vehicle to a stop on a small hill overlooking the camp and starts rainin’ fire down on the Raffen cars, watching as the scavengers attempt to flee the burning wreckage, more often than not collapsing in a pile of charred flames themselves mere steps later.
Johnny feels sick to his stomach. He forces himself to stand down, to relinquish control as the last Raffen falls. He feels V’s mind surging and crackling through the panzer as he lets himself sink back into her, his mind going blank in a blaze of shock. V’s vision blurs and twists as the Relic starts to malfunction even harder, probably from the fuckin’ strain of all that.
V rips the jack out of her head as soon as the vehicle stops, leaning over and taking deep, choked breaths as she tries not to vomit or cry or both.
"V, are you okay?" Panam asks. "What happened? It felt like you were… possessed or something."
“Somethin’ like that,” V gasps, still shaking uncontrollably. Johnny can feel her horror, her fear, her anger, and something else, too, an emotion he can't fully place. Despair, maybe? But for herself or for him, he can't tell.
“You turned them to dust, congratulations!” Saul’s voice shouts over the comm. But then his voice turns serious. “It’s time to talk.”
Panam is still giving V a strange look, but V ignores her and pops the latch on the panzer, scrambling out and taking deep breaths of the dusty air before she drops to the ground. Johnny can hear Panam exiting the craft behind her, and she hops off the panzer behind V and starts walking quickly towards the gruff nomad leader, who’s standing with his arms crossed a couple yards away.
Johnny’s mind is reeling as V follows Panam closely, still attempting to pull herself together. Johnny remembers how rough Saul’d given it to Panam the last time they were here, and from the look on the nomad leader's face, he's about to give 'em a similar lecture now.
“All of us, each on his or her own, must think first and foremost of what’s good for the family,” Saul says to Panam as they approach.
“Come on, Saul,” Panam pleads, coming to a stop a couple feet away from him and putting her hands on her hips. “If I have to leave the clan, please just say so,” she begs, spreading her hands towards him. “Spare me another speech of yours, at the very least.”
Saul takes a step towards her. “I’m afraid you’ll have to sit through a few more,” he says gently. “Because from this day forward, you will lead this family. By my side.”
Panam blinks at him, clearly not at all expecting this. “I will what?!” she squeaks, freezing and dropping her hands to her sides. Johnny's gotta admit he’s equally surprised at this turn of events.
“I wished to do this properly, but fine, have it your way,” Saul continues. “I was wrong. You were right. That’s the truth.” He sighs. “May it never happen again.”
“But I…” Panam stammers as V looks on, equally dumbfounded. “I made a mess of so many things… You said…”
Saul takes a step towards Panam and pulls her into a tight hug. “I know,” he reassures her. “But I changed my mind. You risked everything for this family, not even knowing whether you’d be welcome the next day.”
“Okay,” Panam says as Saul releases her. She steps back, studying his face as she presses her mouth into a firm line. “Okay. Well, I…" She seems momentarily at a loss for words. "Many things will have to change,” she finally declares.
“Yes,” Saul agrees. “And to start with, we’ll need to leave this place. Quickly.” He turns and starts walking back towards the tents. “We can’t wait for Militech to find us.”
“Of course,” Panam says quickly. “I will prepare our route.”
The other vets join them, then. V’s managed to catch her breath for now, but Johnny can still see the edges of her vision distorting in that sickening way, can still feel the painful throbbing in her head, can still feel the panic in her chest. In his own chest.
“Congratulations,” says Mitch, shaking Panam’s hand.
“Terrible choice,” Cassidy jokes, slapping her on the back. “I voted nay.”
“Thank you, thanks,” Panam says, her eyes still wide as she processes what just happened. “I need to cool down, I think.” She turns to V. “Will you come with me?”
V nods and walks beside her as they set off into the camp. The sun is still beating down, but it’s at a canted angle now, casting wide shadows from the tents and the trucks as they make their way through the makeshift compound.
“An… interesting day,” Panam says, smiling wryly at V as they walk. “I feel as if I’ve barely evaded a rapidly approaching train.”
V’s vision continues to glitch and warp horribly, but she nods and smiles at her friend. “Was pretty close,” she agrees. Johnny can feel her struggling to wrap her mind around everything that just happened, how effortlessly Johnny was able to wrest control from her without even realizing what he was doing. He flinches inwardly at the memory.
“I don’t know if I could have done it without you,” Panam admits. “Any of it.”
“Eh, come on,” V protests.
“No, I’m serious,” Panam insists. “We all owe you. So you can count on the Aldecaldos. Always.”
“Heh,” V says awkwardly. “Good to know.”
There are injured nomads throughout the camp, writhing on the ground like they did on the battlefields of Johnny’s memories, each with a small squad of other nomads attending to them. Johnny feels another wave of nausea bubble up, and he’s not sure if that’s still the Relic or his own horrible recollections clamoring their way to the surface. Maybe that shit’s triggering the malfunction, he realizes, and he tries his best to get a fucking grip as V averts her eyes from the mangled bodies.
Panam’s headed straight for the bar truck, and V follows her up the rickety metal steps to the grated platform.
“Nobody’s behind the bar,” Panam declares gleefully. “That, I like!”
She hoists herself up onto the bar and vaults across, dropping into a squat to pull two lagers from a cooler. She stands, then pops them open on the edge of the counter and hands one to V.
“To happy endings,” Panam says, clinking her bottle against V’s and taking a long swig as V does the same. Johnny feels the bitter liquid hit her stomach, settling her nerves slightly, and he’s grateful for it.
“So, what now, boss?” V teases, setting down her beer.
“I have no idea,” Panam admits, laughing. “I’m serious, not the faintest.”
“Turns out Saul’s alright,” V jokes. “So it’s all wrong?”
Panam grins. “I’ll play it by ear.”
“Do you know where you’ll all be heading?” V asks.
“Not yet,” Panam tells her. “But probably further from the city. Make our way back towards the Arizona desert, where the rest of the clan is.”
V frowns at her beer. “Gonna miss our little escapades,” she remarks sadly.
“Me too,” Panam agrees. “On the other hand, though… who said this has to be our last?” She gestures to the nomads surrounding them, milling around the camp, already starting to pack up. “V, look around,” she says fiercely. “Look at them. They could be your family, too.”
“Panam, what’re you-” V starts, but Panam cuts her off.
“Stay in camp,” she begs. “Join us.”
Johnny’s just as caught off guard by this as V is. He can feel that she’s never truly considered this, not even as a remote option. Night City’s just always had too strong a pull over her, dragging her all the way back across the wastes from Atlanta.
V’s vision starts glitching badly again as she turns the offer over in her head, taking another long swig of her beer.
“This life… dunno if it’s for me, Pan,” V begins apologetically, forcing the words out over the slowly building roar in her head. “I’m just… not cut out for it.”
“Bullshit,” Panam says, shaking her head. “You don’t know that.”
“I... can’t, not right now,” V continues, her voice breaking slightly. “Have to finish some things first. It’s really not that simple.”
“You either want to, or not,” Panam argues. “What’s so complicated?”
“That’s the problem,” V snaps back. “What I want right now… doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Alright, V,” Panam says, not even trying to hide the disappointment in her voice. “I shouldn’t drop bombs like that on you right now.” She leans to rest her elbow on the bar, looking away from V. “I just thought… eh, forget about it.”
“I’ll think it over,” V assures her. Johnny can feel her trying her hardest to focus on her friend’s face, but now her vision is startin' to double and warp badly. Her headache grows to a loud, pulsing thunder, and Johnny braces himself - this feels like it's gonna be a bad one. “And maybe once you move camp, we’ll-”
But V doesn’t finish her thought before her head splits with a searing, blinding agony, and she cries out and collapses to the floor, scrabbling at the countertop with her hands to no avail.
The last thing Johnny sees is Panam vaulting back over the bar, landing in a crouch over V’s crumpled form.
Johnny lies there helplessly as V's vision goes white, then red, and then there’s only pain.
The first thing Johnny feels when he wakes up is that now familiar wave of relief - relief that V’s mind is still her own, that his instinctive attempt to try to open her eyes does nothing, that she’s still in control.
“V?” Panam’s voice cuts through the thick fog in their head, and now V is opening her own eyes, squinting up at the newly minted nomad leader standing over her.
“Panam…” she gasps weakly. “I…”
“V, relax, everything is okay,” Panam says, dropping to kneel at her side. Johnny quickly assesses their surroundings - V’s on a cot, inside of a tent. “How do you feel?”
“What… happened?” V manages. “I remember, I… we were talking, then suddenly…”
“You passed out,” Panam explains, standing to pace slowly around the small tent. “Completely. We took you with us.”
“Where…?”
“Somewhere new,” Panam tells her. “We moved camp. Don’t worry, we are safe here. For now. Everything is under control.”
Johnny decides to glitch in then, and he crouches beside the cot, as close to V as he can manage. He searches her face, and sees his own terror reflected there.
“You ain’t dead yet,” he reassures her, but his voice shakes slightly. She swallows at him and nods, then reaches for his hand, and Johnny takes it in his and gives it a soft squeeze.
“V…” Panam begins, lowering herself into the chair next to the bed and leaning forward with her elbows draped across her knees. “You have to tell me what is happening. The blood… you were out for hours. What’s wrong?”
“It’s… nothing,” V says shakily. “I’m fine now.”
“Fuck, so I can see!” Panam shouts angrily. “Will you just tell me what is going on? Or will we keep playing this stupid charade?”
“Panam, I…” V says, and Johnny can feel her struggling to will her mouth to form words. “It’s getting worse, every single day.”
Panam's face softens, but only slightly. “Okay, V, relax,” she says, raising her hand. “Take it bit by bit. What is happening, exactly?”
V looses a shaky breath and heaves herself into a sitting position. Johnny stands and begins pacing around the tent.
“To tell you the whole truth… I’m afraid things won’t be the same between us if I do,” V admits.
“V, please cut the crap and tell me what’s going on!” Panam exclaims. “I’m worried!”
"Alright." V sighs heavily, finally relenting. “You ever hear of the Relic?”
Panam furrows her brow. “The Arasaka tech?” she asks. “Does something with personalities? I saw the ads. Sounds like some rich people scam, to be honest.”
“It’s not bullshit, unfortunately,” V tells her. “I’ve got a biochip in my head with one of those constructs. And the chip’s damaged.”
“So take it out!” Panam says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
V shakes her head. “Definitely not that simple. Relic’s also keeping me alive,” she explains. “But-”
“So this is cyberpsychosis?” Panam interjects. “Because if it is, I know people who-”
“No, no,” V says swiftly. “The chip’s data is overwriting my neural connections. Got nothing to do with cyberpsychosis,” she insists. “I remove the Relic, I die. If I don’t deal with the construct, I die.”
“Fuck,” says Panam. Her eyes widen suddenly. “That malware my truck picked up…”
V nods. “It’s not malware, though. Not exactly. Like I said, it’s a personality construct,” she continues. “He… the construct… is overwriting my brain,” she says finally, flicking her eyes up to meet Johnny’s. “That’s what… who you felt in the Basilisk.”
“Personality construct?” Panam repeats, still not quite comprehending.
“You know Johnny Silverhand?” V says, her voice soft but serious.
“Yes, of course, they play those oldies on the radio all the time,” Panam says dismissively, but then her brows shoot upwards as she catches on. “Wait… are you saying…?”
“Yep,” V says dryly. “Johnny’s alive. He’s sittin’ in my head.”
Johnny waggles his fingers at Panam, earning a half-hearted smile from V.
“He’s… what?” Panam says, leaning back in her chair. “Am I not… is this some sort of strange metaphor?”
“Panam, I… no, he’s literally here,” V says. “He talks to me, I can see him.”
“Impossible,” Panam insists, shaking her head and gesticulating wildly as though she can dispel V's words somehow. “It’s not… it’s simply impossible. Johnny Silverhand?”
"The one and only," Johnny responds while V just nods.
“How in the hell did this… chip wind up in your head in the first place?”
“Long story.” V's voice sounds so weak, so exhausted. “Got a job, fucked it up... now Johnny Silverhand’s personality construct is devouring my brain.”
“Bullshit!” Panam declares, but her voice shakes slightly.
“Yeah, well, he’s not too happy about it either,” V says darkly, dropping her gaze. “It’s… well, it’s getting worse.”
Panam wrings her hands. “You're saying that's who I felt in the panzer?" Her eyes widen with sudden understanding. "And when you played that show last week… with Samurai… was that…?”
V nods mutely again.
“You are not joking,” Panam says incredulously, her eyes still wide.
“Just trying to live with it,” V says simply. “Survive, actually.”
Panam shakes her head furiously, tendrils of black hair falling across her face. “You can’t reverse it somehow?” she asks. “Stop it? Fuck, you can’t get it out of your head?”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” V tells her. “But the clock’s ticking. It’s worse every day.”
“It’s certainly not doing wonders for your health,” Panam agrees.
At that moment, the tent flap lifts and late afternoon sunlight pours in, silhouetting Mitch’s form as he steps inside. “I thought I heard that voice!” he exclaims, grinning broadly at V.
V smiles weakly at him. “Hey, Mitch,” she says.
And then Saul steps in after him. “Finally,” he says. “We were worried. Is everything okay?” he adds in a concerned voice.
“Much better now,” V assures him quickly. “Thanks for your help.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he says sincerely.
“Took good care of your ride,” Mitch adds, then. “She’s over by the big red rocks on the far side of camp, Panam’ll show ya.” He frowns at V. “But you’re not leaving us already, are you?”
“Thanks,” she says to Mitch. “And sure, guess I’ll stick around for a bit. I can stay the night and head back tomorrow.”
“Great!” Panam says. “We were just about to start grilling dinner.”
“Our casa is your casa,” Mitch encourages her.
“Actually, could stand to get some air,” V tells them, hoisting herself unsteadily to her feet. The nomads step aside to let her pass, and Panam offers an arm to steady her as they exit the tent.
As they emerge into the sunlight, Johnny’s surprised to see that the camp is already mostly set up. How long was V out? He checks her HUD display, and realizes with a jolt it was almost a full 24 hours.
“See you’ve made yourselves at home already,” V remarks as Panam and the others join her.
Saul grins. “We do have some experience in this.” He nods appraisingly, surveying the half-finished camp. “This is a good place. We have greater control over the area. The rest will settle in quickly.” He turns back to V. “And remember,” he continues. “Our offer still stands. If you need help, the Aldecaldos are here for you.”
“And that, at least, we can agree on,” Panam says smugly.
Johnny can feel V’s uncertainty at this offer, at their seeming willingness to bend over backwards for her just ‘cause she, what, blasted a couple Raffens? Rescued their leader from the Wraiths? Helped Panam find her way back to them?
He supposes that is more than most city mercs would probably do for a clan of nomads. It's more than Johnny ever did, even back when he ran with them, and he always suspected that even then, the nomads tolerated him at best. V's earned this family's loyalty, whether she sees it or not.
V's head is mostly clear now, and she walks with Panam through the camp towards the center, where the galley truck is already fully set up. As they approach, Johnny can see the disgruntled chef doling out meat skewers to the waiting cluster of nomads. More clan members are seated around the nearby roaring bonfire, already wolfing down their portions.
“You really safe here, though?” V asks Panam as they join the line forming by the food truck.
“For now, yes,” Panam says. “Militech does not venture this far. And our vantage points really are much better. I know this area, too,” she adds. “Back from the old routes. But you know, everything here…” Panam begins. “It is temporary, all of it. We will soon have to decide what comes next.”
V nods, looking around at the half-constructed makeshift camp. Johnny can sense that she’s thinking again about Panam’s offer, trying to imagine herself living like this permanently, among these people.
“Hey!” Cassidy shouts from behind them, and V startles as he claps her on the back. “Welcome back to the land of the livin’!”
“About time sleepin’ beauty decided to join us,” Bob teases, sidling up beside them. “Hey, there.”
After some more light ribbing, they grab their meat skewers and V follows them to go find spots on the benches arrayed around the fire.
V eyes her skewer suspiciously, sniffing at it.
“It’s not squirrel, don’t worry,” Panam jokes.
“What is it?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at the chunks of charred meat.
Cassidy laughs. “Desert hare,” he tells her warmly.
V takes a tentative bite, chewing the tough meat. It’s a little bland and gamey, but definitely not bad. And fuck, Johnny can’t even remember the last time he tasted any kind of real meat.
Mitch and Carol join them then, too, clutching more skewers and a case of beer. Carol offers one to V, who accepts it gratefully.
“Scorpion would be proud of you,” Carol tells Panam as she settles in beside them and takes a large bite out of her rabbit skewer.
“Oughta raise one to him,” V says, toasting with her beer.
“And to Jackie,” Panam says, shooting V a meaningful look. Johnny is strangely touched that Panam remembers.
V smiles and clinks her bottle against Panam's, taking another long swig.
"Basilisk was really something, huh?" Mitch says, a wistful smile playing on his lips.
V nods slowly. "Could say that," she agrees. "You guys all used to pilot 'em during the war, right?"
Mitch nods. "Similar models, yeah."
“What was it like?" V asks him.
“What’s there to say?” Mitch shrugs. “They just packed you into a panzer down in Mexico and said, 'Full speed ahead, soldier.'”
“Then it was weeks talkin’ either to yourself or the onboard AI, drinking iodide like water because your Geiger wouldn’t shut up,” Bob adds darkly.
“Mhm,” Carol agrees. “I’m sproutin’ a rash on my ass just thinking about sitting in that boiling hot coffin.”
“Uh huh,” V says. “But you all can’t wait to pack your asses into the Basilisk, huh?”
“That’s different,” Mitch says, waving his hand.
“Completely different,” Carol concurs. “You saw for yourself.”
“Definitely seemed like a boiling hot coffin to me,” V remarks, unconvinced.
“Boilin’ hot coffin that’ll get us the preemest work,” Mitch corrects her, and they all laugh.
Bob picks up the acoustic guitar that’s leanin’ against a nearby bench and starts strumming absentmindedly as they talk, and soon the other nomads have joined him in a sing-along. It's not a song Johnny or V knows, so she just sits silently and watches the fire, sipping her beer.
But Panam's watching V intently. As Bob plays, Panam leans towards her and begins speaking in a low voice so only V can hear. "V..." she says quietly. “About what you told me earlier… I will not even pretend to understand. I don’t think it has even sunk in yet. But I am serious… how can I help?” Panam's eyes are soft, searching.
“Honestly?” V says, frowning down at her hands. “Not a clue.”
“But there has to be something, someone who can…” Panam protests, gesturing towards the nomads gathered before them.
“Remember Hellman?” V reminds her. “He’s the one who created the personality construct tech.”
Panam’s eyes widen. “That’s why you wanted to get him.”
V nods. “But it was mostly a dead end. Now I have to figure out where to go next.”
Johnny feels the cold lick of dread in V's stomach as she remembers her upcoming meeting with Hanako. It's less than a week away, now.
“You’ll find a way,” Panam assures her quietly. “And once you do, let me know. I will help.”
It’s a nice sentiment, but V could never ask that of her, Johnny knows.
“This whole family will help,” Panam insists. “Saul was not joking. You understand?”
“Thanks, Panam,” V says earnestly, shifting uncomfortably on the creaky bench.
“So how’s your new boyfriend?” Mitch teases suddenly, and V flinches. Johnny’d almost forgotten he was at the show, heard how Kerry introduced V to the crowd.
“He’s fine,” V says noncommittally, clearly hoping to brush past the subject.
But Panam’s eyebrows shoot up at this. “New boyfriend?” she asks, her eyes gleaming in the firelight.
“Hasn’t she told ya?” Mitch cuts in, a shit-eating grin on his face now. “V is dating Kerry Eurodyne.”
Panam’s eyes somehow get even wider as her head whips back around to V.
“You’re what?” she says.
All the nomads' eyes are on V, now. Johnny can feel her face flushing as she slowly nods. “Yeah,” she says, shrugging her shoulders and staring into the fire. “Started out as a lie… but strangely, somehow became the truth.”
Panam shakes her head in disbelief, then leans closer to V, speaking again in a hushed voice. “Is this also… ‘cause of… you know, your uh… other thing? Silverhand?”
She says his name like it tastes bitter on her tongue.
“A little, at first,” V admits quietly, glancing at Panam. “But now, I’m not sure what it is.” She looks back into the fire. “Whole thing is just… confusing." She sighs.
Panam regards V, sympathy flickering across her dark features in the firelight. Johnny glitches in to pace by the fire, watching them both closely.
“V, give ‘em a taste of what you showed us the other night!” Mitch crows, gently prying the guitar from Bob’s hands and extending it towards V.
V balks. “I can’t, I…” she protests, but Mitch is hearing none of it.
“But you were fuckin’ amazing," Mitch insists. "Had no goddamn' clue you could shred like that!” He gives V a pleading smile. “C’mon, play us something.”
To Johnny’s utter surprise, V takes the guitar.
“Okay, I…” she mumbles, positioning her fingers on the frets and frowning at her hands.
Johnny stops pacing and watches intently as V shifts her fingers, her brow furrowing. She tentatively strums out a chord, then clears her throat.
Her fingers begin moving over the strings, picking out an arpeggiated chord that Johnny immediately recognizes, and his heart clenches.
She's playing an old pared-down acoustic arrangement of Never Fade Away that Johnny used to perform sometimes as part of his solo set. He hasn’t thought about this rendition of the song recently, hasn’t told V about it explicitly. He doesn't even know if V's even ever heard it, since he never released a recording of it. He stares dumbfounded at V, his heart in his throat as her fingers fumble a bit, then find their footing as she opens her mouth and begins to sing.
Her low, smoky voice curls around his lyrics as she sings, and Johnny realizes his mouth is slightly agape.
How? he thinks.
She meets his eyes then, not breaking her rhythm as she transitions into the chorus, her voice raising slightly as she strums the chords more aggressively.
By the time she gets to the end of the song, she’s choked up, and that's when Johnny notices that her cheeks are wet and shining in the flickering light from the fire.
He collects himself as V finishes the song and just stares down at her hands for a second, everyone else’s eyes on her as a strange silence falls over the campfire.
Then Mitch is whistling and clapping, and so are the rest of them.
But V’s still just staring at her hands, looking slightly horrified.
“I… excuse me,” she says abruptly, putting the guitar down and striding quickly away from the campfire.
Johnny glitches away to follow her, like the ghost on a leash that he is.
V walks as fast as her feet will carry her to the outskirts of the camp and stops at the edge of the cliff that overlooks the flats below, taking a series of deep, shaky breaths as Johnny glitches in beside her.
“You can play guitar now,” he says.
“Yeah,” she agrees, sounding severely shaken.
“Not the worst side effect of this whole situation,” he says in an attempt to cheer her up. He knows why she’s scared. He remembers the first time she picked up his Malorian, how she twirled it in her hand just like he used to, without even thinking about it, like it was second nature, muscle memory. And this, now, too - the sudden guitar ability, the fact that she’s gaining more and more of his muscle memory, his training, his learned skills… They both know what this means. They’re running out of time. For all they know, it might already be too late.
She looks up at him, her eyes wide and terrified.
“Feels like I’m losin’ myself, Johnny,” she says, and her voice sounds so small and scared. “I look in the mirror, and sometimes I don’t recognize myself… my hands move, and I don’t know if it’s me or you that’s movin’ 'em. Our feelings are all so fuckin' tangled up, I can't tell which ones are mine now." she chokes. "I can’t even tell what I want anymore, who I want.” She looks down at her hands, and Johnny notices they're trembling slightly.
“You talkin' about Kerry?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she says, staring out over the darkened desert. Above them, the stars are coming out, and the vivid band of the Milky Way is actually visible from out here. “There’s… real comfort there, I think? Recognition, maybe? I’m not even sure. Maybe he's just a lonely old man tryna reconnect with the lost love of his youth through me,” she adds darkly. “Maybe he’s just a washed up rocker clinging onto some old romantic ideal. Maybe Vik's right and we just did too many drugs together.” She laughs, but it's a bleak laugh devoid of any humor.
But Johnny knows Kerry. Knows him well enough to know he’s fallen head over fuckin’ heels for V, whatever his reasons may be.
“Or maybe he really cares about you,” Johnny says seriously.
V just shrugs. “Maybe,” she admits. “I just don’t know anything anymore. I don’t trust my own feelings, my own thoughts, my own memories.”
Johnny looks at her. “But do you trust me?”
She looks at him, then, her face hard to read in the dim light. But he can feel all the warring emotions inside of her, and the one that surprises him the most is the rage.
It’s an intense, bottomless rage - rage at the fact that her body is no longer her own, that his mind is consuming hers, that she’s tangibly losing parts of her soul. A hopeless rage at the fact that she doesn’t know whether she’s more terrified of losing him, or of losing herself. A desperate rage at her knowledge that she never had a choice but to know him in an impossibly intimate way, and to let him know her just as deeply. Rage at the fact that she may never truly know if the feelings she has for him are real, or just a byproduct of their minds and hearts blending into one.
“I trust you,” she whispers, but it sounds more like a helpless plea.
Johnny takes a step towards her and gathers her in his arms. He can feel her doubt - she doesn’t have to voice it, but he feels it nonetheless. He doesn’t know if trust is even the right word for what they have when she’s just… becoming him.
He wants to tell her it’ll all be okay, even though he knows that’s an empty promise. He wants to tell her what he told Rogue that night, but how can he ever tell her that now? How can he expect her to love him back, to place that expectation on her when she never got any say about any of this in the first place? Is what he's feeling even love, or is it just their souls getting more and more hopelessly intertwined? Can that even be called love? Does he even know what love means? How could anything he ever thought he knew about love have prepared him for this?
“Feels like I’m fallin’ headfirst off a cliff,” he mutters into her hair, and he feels her squeeze her eyes shut against his chest, feels her hot tears bleeding through his shirt.
He holds her tighter, his own self-loathing rolling over him in waves, probably bleedin’ over into her, too... and he hates himself for that, as well. This fate, in a sense, feels like a horrible and almost poetic justice for him. He spent his whole life hurting the people he was closest to; seems only fitting that his personal purgatory - his final punishment - would be gettin' forced to do it again, in the absolute worst fuckin' way possible.
“What happened in the panzer…” V murmurs.
“Didn’t mean to do that,” he tells her in a low, rough voice. “Instinct took over.”
“It scares me you can do that, now,” she admits softly.
“Yeah,” he agrees, releasing her and pacing slowly along the edge of the rocky outcropping. Her eyes follow him in the falling dusk as he kicks uselessly at the dirt.
“You and Kerry met during the war, right?” she asks in a quiet voice.
Johnny scowls. “Yeah,” he tells her. “Didn’t serve together at first. He was put in my unit after that guy I told ya about took a grenade for me.”
“Sam,” V whispers, and Johnny nods.
“Kerry and I piloted some panzers together,” he says. “Wasn’t quite like that Basilisk of yours, but we still got to know each other… a bit better than we expected.”
V laughs, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I can imagine.”
“Wasn’t until NC that we really got close, though,” Johnny continues. “But that war shit… it sticks with ya. You see things you can’t unsee.”
“I know,” V says slowly, and he knows that she does. She sees it all, all his bullshit trauma, all of it. He looks at her again, feeling a small lump forming in his throat.
He can see himself through her eyes now, in the dim light, the flickering lantern of a nearby tent illuminating his tired features. And she looks so tired, now, too - the dark circles under her eyes have deepened, and her face looks worn and gaunt in a way it didn’t when he first came crashing into her skull.
“Johnny…” she begins, taking a step towards him and placing her hand on his chest, fingers spread as she searches his eyes. “You don’t gotta hold it all in. You know that, right?"
Johnny scowls down at her hand, fighting back the rush of memories that threatens to overwhelm him.
"Don't see the point of talkin' about it," he mumbles. "You've already seen it all, seen it in my dreams."
"Yeah," she says. "But I think you want to tell me, anyway."
He looks at her face then, and realizes suddenly that she's right, he does wanna tell her.
He lowers his gaze. "I remember the old vets in my town would always sit around, talkin' about it all the damn time," he tells her. "People who've been to war always talk about the smell, how they remember the smell, it's always the smell,” he mutters darkly. “Realized what they meant, once I went there myself. It's the smell of death. And here's the thing... death smells like shit. Literally. It smells like a bunch of fuckin' mashed up humans. When you cut open a human, turns out we're just full of shit and meat. And in a couple hours, rotting meat." He sighs and conjures a cigarette, lifting it to his mouth to take a long drag, then laughs grimly. "And now I'm just another grizzled old veteran, waxing fuckin' poetic about the smell of war."
She looks up at him with a sad smile. "Guess so," she says. "But... it's better to talk about these things, I think."
He snorts. "That'll be a first for me," he tells her in a low voice.
She moves her hand down to hook her fingers through the belt loop of his pants, pulling him closer to her. “You're not alone anymore,” she whispers, resting her cheek against his shoulder.
He wraps his arms around her, drawing her against his chest before she has to see him cry.
Notes:
*slowly twists the knob on the angst meter up to 12*
Chapter 40: A Like Supreme
Summary:
V returns from the Badlands to a surprise from Kerry.
Notes:
This one has some good old-fashioned Johnny smut!!! Enjoy!!!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V wakes up at dawn, and it’s fucking freezing in her small tent. She shivers and pulls the blankets tighter around her, trying to force herself back to sleep before finally giving up and pulling on her jacket to go outside and smoke a cigarette.
The desert morning is crisp and silent as the sun slowly creeps over the horizon, illuminating the barren landscape in broad orange stripes of light that fan out between the rocks and the Joshua trees. It’s so quiet out here - she can only hear the soft sounds of insects and the low whoosh of wind across the flats and through the canyons.
Johnny appears next to her with his own cigarette, and puts his arm around her as they stand and watch the sunrise together. His engram feels strangely warm, but it’s not a warmth that reaches her bones, just another illusion, and she shivers again in the cold morning air.
A few nomads are up already, moving around in the stillness as they finish setting up the camp. The galley truck is the most active - there’s a chef preparing a bubbling vat of some kinda stew, and V follows the smell of fresh coffee until she finds its source. There’s a big industrial coffee tureen perched on the bar, and V grabs one of the mugs sitting next to it and helps herself to a cup, enjoying the heat of the beverage as she clutches it with her stiff fingers and goes to sit on a bench near the fire.
Part of her doesn’t wanna leave - there’s something so simple about the nomads’ lifestyle that makes Panam’s offer start to seem very compelling. And there's an unusual vulnerability that being out here seems to bring out in Johnny, and maybe in herself, too. The nomads are all so earnest, so straightforward, so open in their outward affection for each other. But V doesn’t know if she can imagine herself living like this long term, without running water or all the material comforts of the city. And besides, she has business to take care of. The business of her own survival. Then she can worry about whether or not she wants to spend her days dicking around in the desert or hitting her head against a wall repeatedly in Night City.
The sun is fully up by the time Panam emerges from her tent, blearily stretching and rubbing her eyes as she comes to join V at the fire. The day is rapidly heating up, and V takes off her jacket and ties it around her waist, already feeling the sweat start to bead on her neck. Climate control is definitely something she enjoys about city living.
She and Panam eat breakfast together, and Panam’s already monologuing about her plans for the clan, all the ways they can strengthen themselves against the scavs and the corpos. V just listens and nods, but she knows the clan’s lucky to have someone like Panam leading them now.
It’s almost noon by the time she’ heads back to the city. The nomads are pretty far out in the desert now - it takes V a little under 3 hours just to reach the city's outer limits, and then another hour in city traffic before she’s finally pulling back into her garage in Watson. And as soon as they're back within range of her holo service, texts from Kerry start appearing on her HUD.
Heeey, how's it hanging? Everything all right?
I'll just come right out and say it
I miss you
Just a little bit though ;)
You back yet?
She composes a series of replies as she rides the elevator up to her floor.
Just got back
Missed you too, if you can believe that
See? We're tuned to the same frequency
Been thinking about you
Kerry answers immediately, and V smiles as she reads them while she walks back to her apartment and lets herself in.
Preem, can’t wait
Thinking about you too
You're like some chorus to this incredible song that's been stuck in my head lately
On loop :)
He texts like a lovestruck teen, V thinks to herself bemusedly as she closes the door behind her. But she finds his earnestness endearing - despite Vik’s skepticism and her own general confusion about the whole situation, V realizes she desperately wants to accept Kerry's affection at face value. So she enjoys the warmth of knowing that Kerry missed her, was thinking about her, as she surveys her apartment, setting down her things.
True to Misty’s word, there’s a stack of cat food by the door, and a litterbox in the corner, as well as a carpeted cat tree that her new not-quite-furry friend is currently perched on, mewing plaintively as she enters.
“Hey, lil buddy!” she says, approaching the cat and reaching out to rub his head. He purrs loudly and twists onto his back so she can run her hand on his hairless stomach. There’s something nice about having an animal to come home to, V decides, and she’s suddenly extremely glad she took in this odd little creature.
Her holo starts ringing within minutes of her walking in the door, and she’s not surprised to see that it’s Kerry.
"Hey, doll," he says breathlessly when she picks up. "You’re back in NC?"
"Just got back, yeah," she tells him again.
"Great," he says. "I'll be over in thirty. Got a little surprise for you."
V curses under her breath when Kerry hangs up, then springs into action. She rushes around her apartment, pickin' up trash and shoveling her laundry into a bin before realizing she's still covered in dust and blood and all the other grime she rolled around in during her days in the Badlands. She tosses the laundry hamper into her closet with another loud swear, and races to shower instead.
She’s toweling off her hair when her doorbell rings, and then there's Kerry’s, standing at her door in an oversized bomber jacket, a loose beanie, and sunglasses. He's clearly made an attempt to go somewhat incognito, but V still glances nervously over his shoulder to check for any paparazzi on his tail.
But as he steps through her door, she finds herself mildly surprised by how delighted she is to see him - as he gathers her into his arms for a tight hug, the last of the confusion she’s felt the past few days immediately starts to melt away. There’s just something so warm and familiar about his presence that feels undeniable, and now that he’s here, she finds herself not wanting to be away from him again.
“How was the desert?” he asks, pulling away to pace around her apartment, frowning slightly at the cat tree and litterbox shoved in the corner. “When’d you get a cat?”
V laughs. “It followed me home,” she tells him. “Didn’t have the heart to tell him to leave.”
Nibbles is hiding behind the coffee table now, but Kerry crouches down and holds out his hand to the cat, and Nibbles approaches him curiously, sniffing at his outstretched fingers.
“Shimra,” he says, running his hand along the cat’s wrinkled body.
“So, what’s the surprise?”
Kerry gets to his feet. "Finish gettin' dressed and I'll show ya," he says.
V pulls on some old shorts and a t-shirt, then waits for Kerry to pull himself away from the little game he's playin' with Nibbles.
“Alright, c’mon,” he says, taking V’s hand and leading her back out the door and down the stairs to the main elevator, lowering his head as they pass through the gym. To V’s relief, no one seems to recognize him - probably ‘cause no one expects to see a fuckin’ legendary rock star casually strolling around the common areas of Megabuilding H10 in Watson, after all.
"How come you don't got any huscle?" V asks him as they duck into the elevator that, thankfully, no one else joins them in.
Kerry flashes her a grin. "Ain't that what you're for?"
V supposes he has a point.
He shrugs as the elevator rattles down. "Kovachek had a guy for me sometimes," he explains. "But most places I go are either full of rich fucks who leave me alone, or places like that Caliente I took ya to where they know me well enough to treat me normo. Y'know?"
"Don't worry, Kerry-san, I'll protect you," V jokes, imitating Blue Moon's voice as she elbows him softly in the ribs. Kerry's mouth twists upwards, and V can swear he even blushes.
When the elevator stops, Kerry takes her hand and leads her out of the building and across the intersection, past the entrance to her garage. He makes a left onto Titan St. and then comes to a stop in front of a heavy set of double doors leading to a very posh looking lobby.
He turns to her and grins, then steps through the door and motions for her to follow.
“Hang on,” V says as they wait in the gleaming lobby for the elevator. “What is this?”
Kerry’s grin widens. “Penthouse you liked is up for sale, they’re havin’ an open house,” he tells her mischievously. “Thought you’d wanna see what it looks like from the inside.”
V is touched that he went out of his way to think of something fun for them to do like this. Normally she loves shit like this - going to an open house, pretending to be buyers, getting to live in that fantasy for an hour or two. But she has a feeling that today, it’s just gonna make her more painfully aware of all the things that’ll be forever out of her reach, things she probably won’t live long enough to even try to reach for. But she forces herself to smile back at Kerry as they step into the elevator and ride it all the way up, and he’s still grinning at her like a little kid when the doors slide open and they step out into the lavishly furnished penthouse, set up like a perfect model home.
“Wow,” she breathes, running her hand across the marble countertop of the kitchen island. And the view’s fucking stunning - she can see all of Northside, the Japantown skyline, and even the tower of Konpeki Plaza in the distance on the waterfront.
The glass door in the floor to ceiling windows slides open as she approaches it, and she steps out onto the concrete and glass veranda that wraps around the house, staring down at the lush green lawn and the sparkling pool that she’s looked at so many times from her own tiny little window. She can see Megabuilding H10 looming over them to her left, and she thinks she can pick out which window is hers, though she can’t be sure.
Kerry comes to lean next to her, still beaming at her. “Fuckin’ shimra, right?” he says, and she just nods and continues giving herself a tour. There’s a lofted upstairs area that houses an enormous king-sized bed, and a master bathroom complete with a tub and a shower lined with real fucking black marble.
“Everything you dreamed of?” Kerry asks, and she just nods at him again, still taking it all in.
“Wonder what rich corpo fuck is gonna buy it,” she jokes, doing a final lap of the bedroom and trying to imagine what it would feel like to wake up every morning to this view.
Kerry smiles sheepishly at her, then. “Well,” he says, the corner of his mouth tugging upwards into a grin. “It’s actually already yours.”
V narrows her eyes at him, not comprehending.
“It’s yours,” Kerry repeats. “I bought it for you.”
Her stomach drops. “You what?” she manages, her eyes darting frantically around the enormous space.
Kerry shrugs like it’s nothing. “Couldn’t stop thinkin’ about the way you were talkin’ about it… and then I saw it was for sale, so I hit up Rogue, and she liked the idea, and-”
“What the fuck, Kerry?” V says, cutting him off, her voice jumping an octave higher than usual. “You barely know me... You... I..." she stammers. Her hands are shaking. "You just... you dropped over a million fuckin’ eddies or however the fuck much on a penthouse? For me? Why the… why would you… what were you…”
She can’t even continue the sentence. Her brain is still struggling to catch up. She forces herself to breathe.
“The night we met… when it was just me 'n Johnny, he…” Kerry begins, stepping towards her and takin’ her trembling hands in his like he’s sayin’ his fucking wedding vows. “He made me promise... Johnny made me promise to take care of ya,” he tells her in a soft voice. “Make sure you’ll be okay no matter what happens, after he’s… after you guys figure out your whole situation. This is me keepin’ that promise.”
V just stares at him dumbly, her throat impossibly tight. “Pretty sure he meant, like… emotional support, Ker,” she chokes with a laugh, feeling her eyes start to well up. “Not literally buyin’ me a fuckin’ house.”
Kerry presses a kiss to her fingers. “Well, it’s done. Signed the papers and everything. It’s yours now.”
She shakes her head at him. “I can’t accept this, Kerry. It’s too much.”
He just shrugs again. “Too late now. It’s in your name, fully paid for in cash. No strings attached, no take-backs.”
V opens her mouth and then closes it again. “But what if I… what if we…” she stammers. “You can’t just buy a house for some random street merc you met like two weeks ago,” she protests.
“I can and I did,” Kerry says simply. “Really, V, it’s nothing. Got more money than I could possibly spend in whatever the fuck’s left of my lifetime. Might as well help make someone else’s life a little easier, too.”
“But what about your kids?” she presses, finally finding her words. “Don’t they have, like, college funds and shit?”
Kerry laughs. “They’re adults already,” he reminds her. “And they’ve got trust funds that’ll keep ‘em comfy and spoiled their whole goddamn lives. Woulda probably wound up donating most of this to charity, honestly.”
V snorts. “So I’m a fuckin’ charity?”
“No, you fuckin’ earned this,” he says, taking another step towards her, so their faces are almost touching. “You deserve it, you deserve to be happy, to get somethin’ fuckin’ nice for once in your goddamn life,” he tells her, his face serious now. “But really, V…” he continues. “I know what this looks like. But, like I said, no strings.” His face is earnest, pleading. “If I walk outta here right now, and you never call me again… if you never wanna see me or talk to me again... the house is still yours. This ain’t some kinda sugar daddy shit or contingent on us still seein’ each other,” he says. “It’s just a gift, plain and simple. And I’m still payin’ you for those jobs you did for me,” he adds.
“What?!” V squeaks, the last thing he said overriding any sense of comfort she mighta gotten from the rest of his words. “Are you fucking kidding?”
But Kerry’s eyes are already glowing blue, and V feels the blood drain from her face as a truly staggering amount of eddies hits her account at that moment.
“Stop it, Ker,” she says in a shaky voice.
“Shut up, V,” he says softly, pulling her to him and wrapping his arms around her. “Just let me spoil ya while I can.”
She tries to breathe, but she feels her vision start to glitch, and Kerry steadies her as he guides her to the bed to sit down.
“You okay?” he asks. “Need some water or something?”
“I’m fine,” she tells him, shaking her head and trying to clear her vision. “It’s just… a lot to process.” She puts her hand on the silk sheets. “Whose fuckin’ furniture is this?”
“Came with the place,” Kerry tells her. “If you don’t like it, you’ve got enough eds in your account now to pay for new shit. Can help you shop, if you want,” he offers.
She shakes her head mutely. “God, no, it’s fine,” she insists.
The elevator door downstairs slides open, then, and Misty’s standing there with Nibbles under one arm and a box of her shit under another.
V gapes down at her friend, then turns to Kerry. “What did you-” she begins, but Kerry already has his hands up in mock protest.
“Hey, easy,” he tells her. “Rogue gave me a couple of your friends’ numbers,” he says quickly. “Misty here - she’s a real peach, by the way - offered to help ya move, so I coordinated my little surprise with her.”
“How did Rogue…” V begins, but then pinches the bridge of her nose. “You know what, nevermind. I’m just gonna assume Rogue knows everything about everyone,” she says resignedly, earning a low chuckle from Johnny, who’s appeared on the bed behind her and is sprawled out and smoking a cigarette, seemingly deeply amused by the entire situation. And why wouldn’t he be? she thinks. Worst case scenario, he’s got a penthouse to live in now if things go south and he becomes the sole proprietor of her body.
“Fuck you, V,” Johnny says, sitting up and giving her a cold look. “Already told you what happens in that scenario, and it doesn’t involve me living large in a fuckin’ penthouse. Just tell Kerry thank you and go get your shit and let’s fuckin’ party,” he grumbles.
As if on cue, Kerry pulls a flask of gin out of his pocket and waves it at her playfully.
“Brought a little something to celebrate,” he says, grinning at her hopefully. “Whaddaya say we crack this open and get started movin’ all your shit?”
V’s mouth twitches upward into a small smile, and she reaches for the bottle.
“To this,” she says dryly, and takes a swig.
It only takes a couple hours for Misty and V to put all her shit in boxes and carry it to her new apartment, and she realizes that the penthouse elevator also stops at the top level of the parking garage she already parks in, so it’s an easy handful of trips back and forth until all her shit is strewn around the formerly pristine penthouse.
She pauses with Misty as they’re carrying out the last few boxes of her clothes and guns and records for one final look around the dingy space she’s called home for the better part of the past year.
“I remember when you first moved in here,” Misty says softly. “Jackie was so excited for you.”
“Excited to have me outta his hair, finally,” V corrects her with a smile, and Misty laughs quietly.
“Think he missed not having you around all the time, actually,” Misty says.
“Explains why he was here every second of the day,” V jokes, and they both smile sadly at each other. She may not have lived here long, but this place holds a lot of memories for V, and a small part of her heart aches as she stares at the now empty apartment as the door slides shut for the final time. Sending an email to the H10 building manager about how he will not, in fact, be receiving her rent for this month or ever again is intensely satisfying, though, and she lets that glee fuel her as they take the elevator up to the roof of the garage, and then the second elevator up to the penthouse to deposit their final haul of crap.
“Whew!” Misty says, setting the box down and going to stand by the window.
Johnny’s already sprawled on the new couch, his feet up on the coffee table, cigarette in hand. And Kerry’s in the kitchen, fiddling with the brand new espresso machine there, trying to make them all some coffee.
“Lemme take a look,” V says, shoving him aside. She’s never actually used one of these things before, but she’s yet to meet a machine she can’t figure out.
After messing with it for a second, she manages to make them each a cup of something palatable. She makes hers black, adds cream and sugar to Misty’s, and adds just sugar to Kerry’s.
“How’d you know?” Kerry teases as she hands it to him.
V frowns. “Don’t think I did, actually,” she tells him. She’s only ever seen him drink straight black double espressos from Caliente, but she somehow knew that now he’d want sugar in his. “Guess Johnny remembered.”
“Well, tell him I’m touched,” Kerry says, but there’s a strange look on his face as he takes the drink and tastes it.
Misty paces around the apartment as she sips her frothy mug, suggesting ways V could rearrange the furniture to “increase the feng shui” and offering ideas for where to put all her weird decor.
“And make sure to remind everyone to bring swimsuits for your party!” she adds excitedly.
“Wait,” V says, her eyes darting from Kerry to Misty. Them bein’ chooms is almost too much for her. “My what now?”
Kerry and Misty exchange a look.
“Oh!” exclaims Misty. “Did you not tell her?”
Kerry laughs nervously. “Misty and I, uh… we took the liberty of lettin’ everyone know you’d be throwin’ a little housewarming party tomorrow night. Figured you’d wanna break in your new digs.”
“Jesus christ,” V mutters, putting her face in her hands. “You guys.” And then a sudden thought occurs to her. “Oh god, do I even wanna know what Vik said about all of this?”
Misty laughs softly. “He’s happy if you’re happy, V.”
Kerry and Misty exchange another nervous glance as V slumps against the kitchen counter. She’s trying to be a good sport about this, but it’s all just a lot.
“V…” Misty says gently, coming to put a hand on her arm. “Do you want us to leave you alone, now? Let you get settled in?”
“You don’t gotta…” she chokes. “It’s okay, really, I…”
But Misty shakes her head. “You need some time to yourself,” she declares. “Come on, Kerry. We’ll see you tomorrow at the party, though?”
V just nods at them mutely as they gather their things and move towards the elevator. Kerry hangs back for a second, and she reaches out her hand to him and he steps closer to her.
“Thanks, Kerry,” she manages. “Really. No one’s ever done anything like this for me before. Sorry I’m... not any good at this stuff.”
“Me neither,” he admits. “Sorry if it was too much. I just… wanna see you happy, V. Dunno what else to say.”
She pulls him in for a tight hug. She doesn’t fuckin’ deserve him and she knows it.
She feels Johnny sidle up behind her as soon as they’re gone, and he wraps his arms around her from behind and grazes his teeth along the shell of her ear.
But her holo’s buzzing again, this time with new messages from Lizzy Wizzy. She’d almost forgotten about that little gig she agreed to do for the singer. Her manager boyfriend is apparently back in town and headed to Riot tonight, and Lizzy wants her to go and scope it out.
V sighs and composes a quick response, trying to ignore Johnny’s increasingly insistent nibbling at her earlobe. The sun is almost set now, which means if she’s gonna go to Riot tonight, she should probably start getting ready soon. But Johnny lets out a low hum and bites down hard on her ear, and she yelps and whirls around to face him.
Of course, he just smirks at her. “Look at you,” he teases. “Livin’ in a penthouse, takin’ jobs from celebs… who’s the real Watson Whore now?”
She laughs and shoves him away. “Alright, Johnny,” she sighs. “You win, I’m a fuckin’ sellout. Happy?”
“I always win,” he says, still smirking as he saunters backwards away from her with his thumbs hooked in his pockets, staring at her through the curtain of hair that falls forward across his face.
“Remember what I said about tossin’ you out the window of this penthouse?”
“Nope,” he says. “But I do remember you sayin’ you wanted me to fuck you against this window right here.”
And that’s when it really hits her. This is really her house, her home, and she’s here alone with Johnny, and they can do whatever they want, wherever they want.
She meets his gaze, and he’s looking at her with that dark, feral look he gets when she can tell he’s already undressing her with his eyes.
“C’mere,” he says, crooking a finger at her, and it’s like she’s being drawn towards him on an invisible string.
He wraps his hand behind her neck as she steps towards him, fisting her hair and pulling her closer to capture her mouth with his, kissing her with a ferocious intensity that leaves her breathless.
“Been wantin’ those gonks to leave all day so I could fuck you senseless on every piece of furniture here,” he tells her between kisses.
She presses her body against his, moaning softly at the feel of him pushing up against her through his pants.
“What are you waitin’ for?” she breathes.
He turns her around roughly, grabbing her hands and twisting them behind her back as he shoves her face against the cold glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the same motion. His metal hand clamps around her wrists, pinning them in place.
“Gonna fuck you right here, just like ya wanted,” he growls in her ear, grinding himself against her and wrapping his free hand around her throat.
V once again marvels at how solid Johnny feels as she struggles against him ever so slightly, testing the strength of the illusion. She’s pretty sure that if she wanted to, she could still break the spell, make him fade into a dull static again, but part of her secretly enjoys the dark thrill of testing the limits of his newfound corporeal strength. For now, his grip on her wrists and neck remains convincingly solid and firm.
He removes his hand from her throat and lowers it to tug at her pants, seeming to momentarily forget that removing her clothes is one thing he still can't actually do. He curses under his breath, then lets out a low chuckle and releases V's hands so she can pull her own pants down around her thighs. He smacks her ass appreciatively then recaptures her wrists and pushes her hard against the window again, already running his hand between her legs as she squirms under his touch.
“Can feel how bad you want it,” he murmurs, removing his hand and eliciting a frustrated whine from V that he rewards with another surprisingly forceful smack on her ass.
She can hear a slight glitching sound as his clothing vanishes, and then she feels the tip of his cock pressing into her, slowly parting her as he plunges himself all the way inside. She moans loudly as he begins to move, pulling out and thrusting into her again in slow, hard pumps, grunting softly and shoving her face harder against the window, growling praise in her ear as he fucks her until her legs start to shake. The view from up here is insane, even more beautiful than she’d imagined, and the city’s lit up and sparkling before her in the sunset.
But she doesn’t wanna look at the fuckin’ Night City skyline, she wants to look at Johnny. So she wills his hands to dematerialize around her wrists and wriggles from his grasp, twisting around to face him.
The surprise is clear on his face, and they stare at each other for a beat, their feedback loop of pure lust making her heart feel like it’s about to explode out of her chest. And then he utters a low growl at the same moment she launches herself towards him, grabbing his face in her hands and pressing harsh kisses to his mouth. The force of it sends him tumbling backwards to the floor with her on top of him, clawing desperately at each other.
They’re not playing a game anymore, and she kicks her pants the rest of the way off, freeing her legs as he rolls them both over to arrange himself on top of her, grabbing her jaw with his metal hand and forcing her to look at him. He holds her face there, silver fingers gripping her cheeks as his eyes burn into hers.
“Gonna make you come so hard you can’t remember your own name,” he promises as he enters her again, and the look in his eyes now is one so raw and intense that she starts seeing stars almost the second he begins thrusting inside her.
She feels his control slip, too, as he feels her start to come undone, and he groans loudly and leans forward to crash his mouth to hers, their bodies frantically moving in time to their shared escalating pleasure. She can feel his mind tugging at hers, bleeding into everything, filling all the gaps inside herself, and at that exact moment, she abruptly and painfully knows that she loves him.
She can’t stop the realization from washing over her with a sudden, almost religious certainty, and she knows Johnny must feel it too, because she can see his face shift as he pulls back and looks at her for a beat before leaning forward to push the hair out of her eyes and press his mouth to the corner of her nose, her cheekbone, her eyelashes, her forehead as he thrusts inside of her without pausing his deep, steady movements, his breath hot on her face, on her neck, on her ear.
She reaches up and tangles her fist in his hair, tilting his head back and taking her turn to trail kisses along his jaw, down his neck, across his collarbone to the edge of where his skin meets the cold metal of his arm. Her other hand scrabbles at his back, dragging her nails along his spine, and he lets out a low groan and wraps his arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him so that their bodies are pressed tightly together, his teeth biting at her ear.
“Johnny,” she whimpers into his neck.
She feels herself start to shudder, and Johnny lets out another ragged moan.
“V, you're gonna- I'm-” he gasps, not breaking his pace, and it’s only a couple more thrusts before she comes hard, her vision going white as their minds collapse into each other. And there it is - that excruciating, ever-present sharpness near her heart, that feeling she's finally allowed herself to name. That all-consuming fear made even more acute by the force of her private admission. The cold reality of how they both know this is most likely going to end. Johnny doesn't let up and keeps fucking her roughly, and she's already on the verge of cresting again.
"No one's ever fucked me like you do," she chokes as he slams his body into her.
"Come for me again, V,” he growls. “Show me."
And she’s so overwhelmed with it all that she does, very quickly, and Johnny holds her, his body glitching as she feels herself spasm around him, her limbs jerking as she grasps at his shoulders and struggles to stay conscious.
He doesn’t glitch away and just holds her face as her vision clears, his eyes still fixed on hers as her breathing steadies and her heartbeat slows. Her head’s still spinning, though, and he leans forward and kisses her again, his beard brushing against her face as they breathe each other in.
The pain in her chest blossoms as he rests his head against her neck, and they lie there on the floor together, her hand smoothing his hair as she stares up at the high ceiling of her new apartment. How is it gonna feel to live here alone, actually alone? she wonders.
Or worse, what will Johnny actually do, if he winds up alone in her body?
“Stop it, V,” Johnny mutters in her ear, tightening his arms around her.
There’s a line at Riot when she arrives, but it's not nearly as long as it was the night of the Us Cracks show. She heads straight for the front, and the bouncer recognizes her and waves her inside after giving her a once-over, much to her relief.
It’s fairly crowded, which doesn’t surprise her considering it’s a Thursday night. The dance floor is packed, and there’s a decent crowd at the upstairs bar, too.
“Lookin’ for Liam. Liam Northam. Know him?” she asks the bartender, but he just shakes his head.
“Could say I know of him,” a girl standing next to her says. “What about him?”
“Is he around?” V asks, turning to her.
“Saw him drive up to the door, but that was like… half an hour ago? No idea now.”
“Think he went into the VIP area,” her friend chimes in.
V wishes she still had the employee badge Kerry klepped the night she came here with him. But her quickhacks will probably do the trick just as well tonight - security’s not nearly as tight when there’s not a big event goin’ on, seems like. There isn’t a bouncer stationed tonight at the door to the backstage area, so when no one’s looking her way, she hacks the lock and slips through, closing it quickly behind her as she steps into the dimly lit hallway.
She figures her next step is to find the security room so she can hack the cameras, both to look for Liam and to cover her tracks a little better before she makes her move. It’s fairly easy to figure out which door it is, and she finds a barely password-protected computer inside that she quickly hacks and pulls up a feed of the camera system throughout the club. She’s pleased to see they don’t seem have a security feed set up for the dressing room where she and Kerry pulled their little stunt, which she figures is ‘cause of not wanting to scare off big name acts like Us Cracks. But luckily, there is a feed set up streaming to the VIP area, and V jacks in and toggles through the cameras until she finds a booth with a man and a woman, sitting alone and sharing a bottle.
A quick Kiroshi scan confirms that the man is, in fact, Liam Northam.
Got 'im, V thinks, checking to see if the feed can pick up their conversation as well. With a little fiddling, she gets the audio online.
“Champagne?” the woman is saying. “Nice surprise.”
“Uh,” the man stammers. “Consider it a token of my gratitude.” He swallows. “I know you don’t often agree to use the Relic, but… well, you don’t usually make an engram of a living person, either.”
V almost falls out of her chair, and she feels a massive spike of rage from Johnny as well. Her heart starts racing. Why the fuck are these corpo fucks talkin' about the Relic? Is this a fuckin' setup?
“Aw, come on,” the woman replies. “Arasaka’s taken a keen interest in Lizzy’s career. Be a shame if it ended prematurely. A backup copy seems to be the most sensible solution.”
A chill settles into V’s chest as she realizes exactly what is being discussed. They wanna make an engram of Lizzy fuckin' Wizzy. The woman does look like an Arasaka type - she’s got short, stylishly cropped platinum hair, and is wearing a crisp-looking suit jacket with a sparkling pencil skirt. Liam looks more or less like she’d have imagined a middle-aged music manager to look, in his round sunglasses and gold dinner jacket.
“About that…” Liam says, fidgeting nervously. “Once you make the backup, can you tweak it to remove… undesirable traits?” He looks pleadingly at the woman. “‘Cause Lizzy… ever since her conversion, she… she hasn’t been herself.”
But the Arasaka representative shakes her head. “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” she tells him. “Engrams saved in the Secure Your Soul program cannot be edited.” She feels another spike from Johnny as the woman furrows her brow and opens her mouth again. “But… how significant would these edits be?”
“Significant,” Liam tells her. “Sometimes… sometimes I don’t even recognize her. Other times…” He looks down, as though suddenly self-conscious. “Eh, never mind. Let’s have a drink. To our partnership.”
V jacks out, feeling sick to her stomach.
“Fuck,” Johnny says. “You heard what I just heard, right?”
V nods.
“They wanna do her like they did me.”
“Not exactly,” V says. “They wiped you. Here, they wanna make a backup. Which might even be worse.”
The implications of it threaten to shatter her. If a backup - a copy - can be made of a still living person, what does that mean about Johnny? She reminds herself of their conversation with the monks, how he insisted it doesn't fuckin' matter to him if he's technically a copy or not... but the revelation still makes her stomach turn to lead.
At least that woman seemed to imply that engrams can't be edited. Which means Johnny's mind is as close to the real thing as it can be, given the circumstances.
“A backup!” Johnny growls, echoing her thoughts. “V, we’re talkin’ about a person, not your vacay snaps. Guy didn’t even ask, he’s just going behind her back.” He shakes his head fiercely. “He’s got no right to do it. Nobody has that right.”
“Especially without her knowin’,” V agrees. “Ah, shit… how do I even tell her?”
“Don’t have to,” Johnny points out. “Camera in there… where there’s a cam, there’s footage.”
V nods and jacks back in, quickly finding the recording she needs and downloading it to her personal link. She exits the club into the side alley, then calls Lizzy.
“Hello?” says Lizzy’s soft voice. “V? What’s up?”
“Got some intel on Liam,” V says.
“And?” Lizzy prompts. “Is it what I thought?”
“No…” V says slowly. “Worse, Lizzy. Much, much worse.”
“What do you mean?” Lizzy asks.
“Listen, don’t know the deets, but Liam, he… he wants your engram,” V tells her. “Wants to copy you.”
“What?!” Lizzy says, the shock clear on her silver face. “But… why?”
“He said… he said he’s afraid of you. For you. And… of you,” V says honestly.
“No,” Lizzy says, shaking her head, her voice strangely flat. “No. I don’t believe it. Not a single word. You’re lying.”
“Got the recordings to prove it,” V says, already sending them to the singer. “Listen for yourself,” she tells her.
“Fuck!” says Lizzy, and hangs up.
But she must have watched the recordings, because V hasn’t even made it home before her HUD flashes and she sees that a fuckload of eddies were just dropped into her account, along with a text from Lizzy.
Un-fucking-believable.. What an asshole. Sending your fee
It feels strange to walk past the entrance to her old building and turn instead onto Titan Street, but when the doors slide open to her new penthouse, she can’t help but feel a smug sort of pleasure at the sight of her new home.
She goes to the kitchen, and to her relief, the flask of gin Kerry brought is still there on the counter. Not her usual drink of choice, but she’s not about to complain. She pours herself a glass, marveling at the pristine crystal glassware already filling the cabinets, then goes to sprawl on the couch by the window, still trying to wrap her mind around how quickly her life has transformed in the past 24 hours.
“Can’t fuckin’ believe ‘Saka’s makin’ engrams of living people now,” Johnny mutters, glitching in to pace by the window.
“Gives further credence to your little theory about the engram joyhouses,” she agrees, taking a sip of her gin.
Johnny makes a face, and she’s not sure whether it’s the gin or the fact that he was likely right.
“Told ya,” he says. “It never was about living forever, it’s about controlling all the most influential people they can. Artists, netrunners, BD stars, musicians, political dissidents… anyone they can put in there and keep on deck, they’re gonna,” he says darkly.
“But what’s the point if they don’t have bodies for them?” V points out, but Johnny shakes his head.
“It’s not about that,” he says. “Why would they wanna gives us bodies, give us agency, when they can keep us locked up to poke at, mess with as they see fit?”
“They had to at least be testing it, though,” V argues. “Even if it was just for Saburo’s little experiment. If NetWatch just wanted your engram to hunt down Alt, why even bother puttin’ it on a Relic meant for taking over a body? Why not just give it to ‘em on any old chip? Fact that they had your mind on that chip in the first place makes me think they had plans to put it back into… someone, at some point.”
Johnny’s shoulders slump. “Could be right,” he says. “But, look… I don’t want a clone, or some borged out chrome suit like Lizzy or Smasher. If I’m comin’ back for real, I wanna be me, arm and-”
“Impressive cock and all,” V finishes for him, raising her glass in a mock toast.
The corner of his mouth twitches upwards. “Yup,” he concludes.
They smile at each other for a beat, and V feels something like hope blossom in her chest. If Hanako knows something, if Johnny will just let her try, maybe they can-
But her holo starts ringing again, and she sighs when she sees that it’s Lizzy.
“V?” Lizzy’s worried voice comes over the holo. “Need your help. Same spot as last time, don’t make me wait.”
“What is it?” V says. “Hello? Lizzy?”
But the singer’s already hung up. V exchanges a look with Johnny, then sighs and grabs her coat and heads for the elevator.
“Lizzy, what in the-” she says as she pushes aside the beaded curtain of the No-Tell room, stopping dead in her tracks when she sees Liam’s bruised and mangled body slumped on the floor in front of her. “Fuck,” she breathes. “Now I get the rush.”
Lizzy’s sitting on the chair, hugging her knees, her eyes wild and terrified. “V, I… I was angry, I… I pushed him! These fucking arms, these hands!” she stammers, the words tumbling out in her clipped metallic voice. “Oh my god…” she whispers, staring down at her chrome fingers that are balled into tight fists.
“Easy,” V says, taking a step towards her. “Calm down, just tell me what happened.”
She looks up at V plaintively. “You ever wake up in the middle of the night… and not know who you were for a second…” Lizzy says softly. “Or, I mean… you ever feel like you weren’t really… you?”
V knows the feeling all too well. Maybe they're both turnin' into cyberpsychos. Chrome body for Lizzy, chrome soul for V.
“Shit,” Johnny mutters, crouching to examine Liam’s body as Lizzy speaks. “Guy’s in shreds.”
“I... that’s how I feel all the time,” Lizzy continues. “Every moment. This emptiness, this helplessness… I stopped seeing, creating… Just now, I… I just wanted to break up with him, you know?” she stammers. “Tell him I wanted him out of my life… But I… I don’t even know how, when I…”
“You strangled him, Lizzy,” V says in a low voice, still unable to tear her eyes away from Liam’s horribly mangled corpse. “Slowly. You crushed his spine.”
“I… I was angry,” Lizzy says again, her voice sounding oddly flat. “I must’ve lost control.”
V isn’t sure how to feel. What Liam was planning to do to her was fucking monstrous, no two ways around it… but his fears about Lizzy may not have been entirely misplaced.
“Welp, what’s done is done,” V says simply. “Guy got what deserved. So… this is about the body, right? That’s why you called?”
Lizzy sits up and looks pleadingly at V. “Yes, I…” she begins. “The media can’t hear about this. Got it? That would be… hmm.” She stops suddenly, as though an idea has just occurred to her. She abruptly gets to her feet and stares dead ahead, pulling a cigarette out of her small clutch and lighting it. “The world would eat it up,” she says slowly, her voice taking on a different tenor. “A tale of the temptation to control another’s memory. A grim reminder that a person is merely a collection of bytes that can be copied, reproduced, copied, reproduced…”
“Lizzy,” V says. “Snap the fuck out of it for a second. What about the body?”
“I dunno, do whatever,” Lizzy says dismissively. “Take it somewhere, burn it. I’ll pay you.”
V feels her mouth twist. She doesn’t appreciate being treated like this rich woman’s garbage disposal.
“Okay,” she sighs. “I’ll take care of it. Hope you can sleep soundly after this.”
“Sleep?” Lizzy laughs. “I won’t sleep. I don’t need to.”
V suppresses a shudder as she hoists Liam’s body up over her shoulder and gives Lizzy a curt nod.
“Thank you, Liam,” Lizzy says vacantly. “You don’t realize it, but… you’ve given me something beautiful.”
“The hell are you talkin’ about?” V grunts as she carries the body towards the door.
“Go, V, go,” Lizzy commands. “And take him with you.”
“Someone… someone should give you a check-up,” V says with genuine concern. “See if you’re okay, Lizzy. Someone you trust.”
But Lizzy shakes her head. “I like what’s happening to me.” A cool metal smile stretches across her strange, robotic face. “Lovely to meet you, V. Now, go, go.”
V decides not to push it. She swallows the bile in her throat as she carries the body out of the room and down the hall, out through the back entrance to the alleyway behind the hotel, where she heaves the body into a nearby dumpster. She knows from experience that the PD doesn’t dig through the dumpsters at No-Tells… they know what they’ll find, and they’d rather turn a blind eye.
“Girl’s got the right idea,” Johnny says suddenly, glitching in next to her. “Someone’s gotta be screaming loud about this shit, tellin’ the world what the corpos are tryna pull.”
“Course you’d think that,” V says bitterly, still eyeing the dumpster.
Johnny follows her gaze. “Probably where Dex dumped you, huh,” he mutters darkly, glitching in next to the dumpster.
V nods, not wanting to think about it. “Prolly, yeah.”
A text appears from Lizzy as she walks back towards her new apartment.
Thank youuuuuuuuuuu <3
V sighs heavily and doesn’t respond.
The penthouse looks different in the dark, and V feels strangely exposed, like anyone can see her up here in her little glass house. She finds the controls for the shades and unrolls them all one by one, sealing off her new home from the city lights before slowly climbing the stairs to her brand new, enormous bed.
Nibbles has already made himself at home and is curled up at the foot of said enormous bed, and Johnny glitches in to sprawl out in a similar fashion on top of the blankets. V doesn’t even bother undressing before slumping down next to him, rolling over to curl up against his chest.
She feels his hand reach over to stroke her hair.
It’s all just a lot to take in. But if there’s a way to copy an engram from a living person without killing them, maybe there is hope for her and Johnny. And being here now, in this penthouse, with people like Kerry and Rogue in her corner and her meeting with Hanako coming up in less than a week, it’s all starting to feel more within her reach than it ever has, and that’s what terrifies her the most. She knows too acutely that anything can always be snatched away right before her eyes, even at the very last moment when victory feels inevitable. She remembers Rogue’s hand extending from the AV as it takes off without her - without Johnny, she corrects herself - and knows that Johnny understands this too, has that same fear of allowing himself to really hold onto that kinda hope anymore.
But Kerry doesn’t, and that’s what’s so beautiful about him, V decides. Kerry still believes in everything - in love, in beauty, in the power of art. And he makes her feel all those things too, when they’re together. Maybe that’s what he brought out in Johnny, V realizes. Maybe that’s why they needed each other. Maybe that’s why they all need each other.
And Kerry’s been opening doors for her, giving her opportunities to show the world what she can do that she’s never had before. It’s a chance at not just survival, but at greatness, and she feels the siren song of Night City calling to her again, that seductive and dangerous promise of anything being possible, even defeating death itself.
“My little merc’s comin’ up in the world,” Johnny mutters as she closes her eyes.
Notes:
I've had this dumb plot twist with the penthouse planned since the start hahahaha soooo hope you all enjoyed
Chapter 41: Off the Leash
Summary:
V adjusts to her new home, with a little help from her friends.
Notes:
Sorry for the slight delay between chapters! Been an extremely busy few weeks. Light smut in this one (emphasis on light). This chapter is basically a beach episode lmao. With angst, bc would you expect any less of me at this point?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V wakes up slowly, unfamiliar silk sheets sliding against her skin and muted sunlight battering her closed eyelids. She feels a soft, hot huff on her face, and her eyes flutter open to reveal a pair of round, gold feline ones mere inches from her own. V startles, and Nibbles lets out a yowl and leaps off the bed, leaving V to roll onto her back, pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes. She fights off the momentary disorientation she feels as her brain reconnects the dots from yesterday - this is her home now, Nibbles is her cat.
She feels a static crackling beside her, and then Johnny’s arm is draped across her waist, his palm flat against her stomach and his nose burrowing into her neck, and she sighs and closes her eyes again as she tries to remember whether she has anything pressing to do today or if she can linger in bed for a bit longer. There’re jobs - there are always jobs - but nothing time sensitive, nothing that requires immediate action on her part, so she rests her hand on Johnny's head, stroking his hair lightly with her fingertips. He lets out a low hum and tightens his arm around her.
Her meeting with Hanako is only a few days away now, and the apprehension has settled into her stomach as a dull ache. One way or another, this chapter of her life is barreling towards its close, and whoever’s left standing is gonna have a whole mess of pieces to pick back up.
Johnny mumbles something unintelligible, and V trails her fingers down his back, tracing patterns across his shoulders. Waking up with Johnny in her arms, in an impossibly soft bed like this, is such a far cry from the first time she woke up and felt the edges of his mind touching hers. She remembers opening her eyes in that landfill, half crushed underneath a refrigerator, the memories of Johnny’s death and of her own death still so fresh and raw in her mind. She remembers the initial incomprehensible terror of having a foreign mind tangled with her own, and it’s almost difficult for her to imagine now - Johnny’s mind interwoven with hers feels so natural to her now, like he’s always been a part of her. She wonders what it will feel like to have him excised - will any of his memories still remain? Will she still dream about his life?
She sits up in bed, pushing off the blankets, ignoring Johnny’s hand trying to tug her back down to him. She’s still dressed from the previous night, and she’s sure her hair is sticking out in every direction. She hears Nibbles mewing plaintively from somewhere downstairs, and is struck again by how strange it is to wake up in this big house, with a pet waiting for breakfast and Johnny at her side, even if he's just an engram. It all feels like a beautiful dream, like the calm before a storm, and she finds herself already bracing to have it ripped away from her.
The house around them is still a fucking mess - there’s boxes strewn everywhere, and a pile of unsorted clothing next to the bed along with records and books and all the detritus of her former life. And on the low bench at the foot of the bed, there’s a stack of carefully placed polaroids that Misty must’ve sorted for her after their quick teardown of her old place. V bends over and reaches for the pile, slumping backwards onto the bed to look at them. Johnny glitches closer to look with her as she flips through the images.
On top is a photo that Pepe took of her last year at the Coyote Cojo during her first couple weeks back in NC, before she met Jackie. The second photo is one V took of her nomad ex Vince in the apartment they shared before she kicked him out and bailed to Atlanta three years ago. Underneath that is a photo of Naomi that V remembers taking at a bar in Atlanta, during one of their brief moments of genuine happiness together. And further down is a really fuckin' old one of her first girlfriend Marigold, the redhead from Heywood who she briefly dated the summer they were both 15. She’s not sure why she’s kept these all this time, but she’s glad that she did. Her own memories are starting to feel hazy these days, less real and clear than Johnny’s, and she swallows a lump in her throat as she flips to the next photo, one that Misty took of her and Jackie outside her old apartment the day she moved in. She’s grinning next to him in the photo in her old, oversized bomber jacket, while he’s looking down at her with an amused expression on his face. She remembers what Misty told her yesterday about him bein' bummed to lose his roommate, remembers how he’d crashed at her apartment with her that first night after helping her move. He’d be so stoked to see her now, see this place, she thinks. She’d probably never be able to get him off her couch.
Or better yet, he’d have his own fancy penthouse, and they’d both be movin' up together, like they’d always planned.
There’s one more photo at the bottom of the pile, and it’s of V as a teenager, back when she had that too-short mullet and bleached her eyebrows, back when her eyes were still their natural grey. Johnny moves in for a closer look, his beard brushing her collarbone as he leans in to examine the photo more closely.
“How old were you here?” he asks.
“I think 15 or 16,” she tells him, squinting at the photo. Her face is fresh, freckled, unmarred by the distinctive scar that now snakes its way across her nose and forehead that she got in a street fight when she was 19. She could afford to fix it now, she realizes, but she’s gotten attached to how it anchors her face and lends a severity to her features.
Johnny frowns at the photo, then tilts his head to kiss her nose, right where the scar cuts across it.
“Adds character,” he agrees.
She knows she should probably spend the day unpacking and decorating and getting settled in before her impromptu house party tonight, but this bed is the most comfortable bed she’s slept on in what feels like ages - even moreso than Kerry’s - and she finds herself loathe to drag herself from the impossibly smooth sheets, from Johnny.
But Johnny helps coax her into her new shower, and she marvels at the fact that this luxury stone tub is hers, even as she coughs more blood into her fist and the lavish room swirls around her.
Johnny’s at her side in a heartbeat, and neither of them says anything as she grasps his arm and he pulls her towards him, holding her face against his chest as the water flows over her body and through his holographic one, everything else momentarily forgotten.
But Nibbles needs feeding, and the house needs organizing, so she dresses and begins her day. She’ll have to buy groceries, she realizes - having an actual kitchen instead of a SCSM will be somewhat of an adjustment, and Johnny's already whining at her to get them some food as she surveys the empty fridge.
There’s a liquor store downstairs on the corner, so she takes the elevator down and grabs some essentials. "Essentials" being a couple handles of tequila and some NiCola, more cat food, and a carton of synth egg.
“Can you even cook?” Johnny scoffs at her when they return. She frowns at the elaborate stovetop, trying to decipher how to operate it. The apartment came with state-of-the-art cookware, so she pours some of the artificial egg gloop into a pan and stirs at it tentatively, still trying to figure out how to adjust the heat. By the time she’s figured out that she’s supposed to sync it with her HUD and control it from there, the eggs are more than a bit burnt and Johnny’s laughing and rolling his eyes.
"Leave it to the fancy corpo stoves to overcomplicate cookin' a fuckin’ egg," he jokes.
She perches on a stool at the kitchen island and picks at the charred omelet, ignoring Johnny’s quips as she chokes it down before beginning the arduous process of unpacking. She puts away her clothes first, then sets up her record player in the corner and hooks it up to the sound system that came with the place, popping on Blistering Love as she finishes moving her guns, mods, and netrunner gear into the small office by the elevator that she decides to use as her armory. It's got a state-of-the-art server array lining one wall behind a glass panel, and is already equipped with a surprisingly high-end netrunning chair. Former owner musta been a 'runner, she thinks. She wonders if they were corpo, or a freelancer like her.
She takes some of Misty’s suggestions in rearranging the furniture in the main room, but leaves most of the space alone and focuses instead on placing her decor around. She tapes the polaroids to the wall in the armory, and places her books and painted skull collection on the shelves above the dining table on the main floor. She isn't sure where to hang her posters - the enormous windows don't leave behind much wall space, and it doesn’t quite seem appropriate to have posters of Kerry’s face plastering her walls anymore. Her Lizzy Wizzy poster feels a bit out of place now too, so she just rolls them all up and shoves them in the armory behind the rarely used sniper rifle that Panam gave her.
She’s just finished putting away the last of her knickknacks when her holo rings. It’s an unfamiliar number, so she hesitates only briefly before answering.
“Heeeey, V!” a chipper voice says, and Blue Moon’s face appears on her HUD. “It’s Blue Moon from Us Cracks… Y’know, the band?” she adds almost shyly.
“‘Course, hey,” V tells her, only mildly surprised to be cold-called by random celebrities at this point. “Whole city knows who you are. What’s crackin’?”
Blue Moon’s brow furrows. “Are you free today? I’ve… got a problem...”
V hopes this isn’t gonna be another Lizzy Wizzy-esque situation. “Mean you’re not calling to ask me to be your backup dancer?” she jokes. “Just kidding. What can I do for ya?”
Blue Moon glances around nervously. “It’s about a fan of mine. The, um… the weirder variety. I’ve been getting death threats. A lot of ‘em. All sent to my private address. I’m also being followed.”
At least it's got nothing to do with Kerry and his antics. “Right,” V says, pacing around the vast apartment.
“I can’t just wait around till something bad happens,” Blue Moon continues. “We have to find him, and… and deal with him.”
“Think I see where this is going,” V says grimly.
“I don’t know how much you charge, V…” Blue Moon cuts in. “But I’m prepared to pay whatever the cost, believe me.”
V considers this. “This fan,” she asks. “You know anything about him?”
Blue Moon shakes her head. “Nothing. Only that he signs his letters ‘GC.’”
“Hm,” V says. “Not much to go on... Clue, nonetheless. But how do you know the threat’s real and not just a joke in poor taste?”
“V…” Blue Moon says, her face suddenly looking very afraid. “That last letter I got was a bomb. Security got to it first, of course, but…” She sighs. “You see what I’m dealing with?”
“Yikes,” V agrees, wondering if Kerry's ever dealt with anything similar. “Doesn’t get more real than that." She frowns. "Can’t your bandmates do anything about it? You seem like a bunch of girls who can take care of themselves.”
Between the three of them, they’ve got top-of-the-line cyberware, easily, including all the latest combat mods. V knows combat-specced Kiroshis when she sees them.
“I don’t even know what this guy looks like!” Blue Moon protests. “We need to catch him in the act. But, like, quietly. And as for us… the whole city knows our faces.”
“Alright," V tells her with a sigh. "Happy to help out."
Blue Moon’s face lights up with relief. “Phew!” she says. “Kerry was right, you’re, like... super chill.” She grins. “So, I’ve got a plan. I’ll go for a little stroll by Kabuki Roundabout, while you hang back and watch out for any signs of trouble. If you see him, and you’re like… one hundred percent sure it’s him-”
“I’ll know what to do,” V finishes for her.
“No, no, wait!” Blue Moon cuts in. “We’re not killing anyone here! That would be bad for the band’s, like… PR and stuff. All we wanna do is teach him a lesson.”
“I always try to avoid killing when I can,” V reassures her, and Blue Moon visibly relaxes.
“Awesome!” the pop starlet says. “So, just meet me at Kabuki at… 3 pm? Wait for me on the bench near the electronics store on the top level. I’ll come to you.”
That’s less than an hour from now, V realizes as Blue Moon hangs up. It looks like it may rain, so she grabs her leather trench coat and then holsters her Quasar, knife, and Malorian, fumbling a bit as she navigates her new armory set-up.
"Well, well,” Johnny says as she slides her knife into her boot and finishes buckling on her knee-pads. “Seems like you’ve got yourself quite the high profile client list, now.”
“Guess I’ve got Kerry to thank for that,” V remarks as she checks the Malorian one final time, then heads for the elevator.
“And who do you have to thank for Kerry?” Johnny adds with a raise of an eyebrow.
V pauses to consider this as the elevator doors slide open.
“You’re right,” she says simply. “Wouldn’t have any of this if not for you.”
“Hm,” Johnny says as she steps into the elevator, but there’s a dark undertone to his voice now, and his brow’s furrowed.
“It’s true, though,” she continues as the elevator plummets downwards. “Havin’ you in my head has opened doors for me. You said it yourself. Think Rogue or Kerry woulda given me the time of day if not for you?”
“Think you’d’ve gotten either of their attention eventually on your own if given the chance,” Johnny says, but V rolls her eyes at him.
“Maybe, but you got me that attention. Just shut up and say you’re welcome,” she says.
“You’re welcome,” Johnny says, with only a slight hint of smugness in his voice.
Blue Moon’s plan to smoke out the stalker works better than V expected, but the identity of the stalker who attacks Blue Moon in the Kabuki market winds up not quite being what V thinks Blue Moon was imagining. It's a young woman - a superfan who seems to have created an elaborate fantasy that she was the 4th member of Us Cracks named Green Cloud. Thankfully, V manages to incapacitate her and call the badges before the crazed fan can harm the pop star.
“What about when they let her out?” Blue Moon asks V anxiously as the badges haul off the unfortunate young fan. “Or… or she escapes?”
“Then you give me another call,” V assures her.
Blue Moon stares at V with open admiration. “If you ever find yourself in Tokyo, hit me up!” the starlet insists. She’s wearing a long black trench coat, and has her hair loose and covered by a pink baseball cap pulled down over her eyes, rendering her almost unrecognizable. She flashes V a grin that looks almost shy. “I’ll show you the most nova clubs!”
V chuckles. “Sounds preem,” she tells her, forcing the sadness out of her voice. Her chances of ever seeing Tokyo at this point seem pretty slim. “Maybe someday. How ‘bout we just go out here sometime?”
“Totally!” Blue Moon crows. “Whenever you’re free!” She laughs. “Purple Force and Red Menace would burst into jealous flames.”
V feels a little dumbstruck by this. Do these girls think she's... cool? Someone they wanna hang with? It occurs to her that given how they were likely selected and trained to be idols from a very young age, they've probably led pretty sheltered and highly controlled lives. To them, she probably represents access to a world they've never been allowed to get too close to.
“They can tag along,” V jokes. “Actually…” she says, a sudden thought occurring to her. “I just moved into some preem new digs down in Watson. Was gonna have a little housewarming party tonight, nothing too fancy. But if you guys wanna stop by…”
Blue Moon’s face lights up. “Of course!” she squeals. “We’d love to! What time?”
V shrugs. “Normal party o’clock? Like nine? Here’s the detes,” she adds, flicking Blue Moon her still-unfamiliar address.
As V walks back to her car, a light rainfall starts coming down. Blue Moon's company has put her in a strangely good mood - she's happy this job ultimately wound up being a reminder that not all celebrities are as wacked as Lizzy Wizzy.
The sun is setting when V gets home, and she realizes she better start getting ready for her party. Getting dressed is a process, largely because she can’t remember which clothes she stashed where even though she just unpacked them literally this morning, but she eventually manages to dig up a tight black skirt and her black vinyl corset top and some heeled boots that don’t have mud on them. It takes her another minute to figure out where she squirreled away her makeup, and she swipes on a simple red lip and then pours herself a glass of tequila and puts on a record, positioning herself on the couch in the living room. But she finds she can’t sit still, and soon she’s pacing around the apartment like a zoo animal, unable to quell her nervous energy.
She’s still not entirely sure who Kerry and Misty even invited, or when she can expect people to start showing up. The whole scenario still feels a bit disorienting and foisted upon her, but part of her is grateful to them for doing it. Kerry’s right, it will be nice to have her friends here, to make this place, this life, feel more like hers. And it ensures that V gets to see everyone one last time, to be with the people who matter to her… if things end badly.
Johnny is on the couch now, watching her. He looks so real for a moment that V almost forgets he doesn't live here with her, that this isn't their party rather than just hers. The thought makes her chest ache.
She expects Kerry to arrive first, so when she gets an alert on her HUD that someone’s trying to enter the elevator, she’s surprised to see Panam and Mitch in the camera feed from the lobby. She lets them up, and moments later the nomads are stepping into her foyer, Mitch clutching a case of beer and Panam with a handle of whiskey.
Mitch lets out a low whistle as he surveys the apartment, and Panam’s eyes light up when she sees the pool.
“Wow, V!” Panam exclaims, stepping forward to hug her. “This place is truly something.”
Mitch chuckles softly. “Thought it was a joke at first when Panam got a text from Kerry Eurodyne inviting us to a house party, but…” He glances around the house again, raising his eyebrows and grinning. “Guess we should know by now to expect anything when it comes to you.”
V shrugs sheepishly. “Party was his idea,” she tells them. “He... surprised me with this place when I got back yesterday and then took the liberty of plannin' a rager for me.”
Panam laughs. “If he hadn’t done so, I would have insisted once I got wind of it!”
Mitch just stares at her. “He surprised you with a penthouse?” He snorts. “Helluva gift.”
“Could say that again,” V agrees as she puts their beer in the fridge and their whiskey on the kitchen island next to the tequila she already has set out.
Panam nods, still taking in their surroundings.
“Help yourselves,” V tells them, gesturing to the table. Mitch grabs a beer while Panam pours herself some whiskey and NiCola. "How're things at the new camp?" she asks.
Panam starts to answer, but Mitch cuts in instead. "Don't listen to a word she's about to tell you. Believe me when I say she jumped at the chance to take a break and head into NC for the night," he says with a grin.
"That bad, huh?" V says with a laugh. "Saul ridin' your ass?" Her HUD pings again, and V lets whoever it is up without bothering to check the camera feed this time.
Panam scowls and sips her drink. "We are getting along just fine, thank you very much!" she declares.
V chuckles when the elevator doors slide open again to reveal Misty and Vik, and V’s only mildly surprised to see River and Joss step out behind them.
Misty is clutching a plant that she sets down on the kitchen counter before stepping forward to hug V tightly.
“Thanks for letting Kerry and I do this for you,” she whispers, then pulls back, beaming at V and looking around the space. “You decorated!” she says happily, then gestures to the plant she brought. “I got you a housewarming gift. It’s a pothos vine,” she explains. “Easy to take care of and very hard to kill.”
V snorts. “Sounds like a challenge,” she cautions Misty. “But thank you.”
Vik is, unsurprisingly, frowning skeptically as he surveys V's new digs, but his expression softens when Misty steps aside and he moves to hug V as well.
“Not bad, kid,” he says, patting her on the back. “Least the old man’s treatin’ you well.”
V smiles up at him, grateful he’s willing to set aside his misgivings about her budding relationship with Kerry for tonight. “I’m glad you came, Vik,” she says sincerely.
Mitch and Vik shake hands, and Panam and Misty introduce themselves to each other as V moves away to greet Joss and River. Joss embraces her warmly, while River hangs back looking a bit sheepish. V gives him what she hopes is a warm, disarming smile.
“Great to see ya, River,” she tells him with a hug, and he visibly relaxes. “I’m glad Misty invited you.”
She begins giving her guests a brief tour of the apartment, but her elevator alerts her of another guest before she can get very far. It's Claire this time, and V lets her up, wondering if there’s a way to just unlock the elevator for the night.
When Claire emerges from the elevator clutching a bottle of Centzon, V takes it from her and places it on the island with the other drinks, while Claire begins to greet everyone. There’s already a small crowd here, and V wonders who else Kerry and Misty saw fit to invite. And on that note, where is Kerry?
She fiddles with the elevator settings on her HUD some more, finally figuring out how to leave it unlocked for the remainder of the evening. And as if on cue, the elevator doors open again and this time it’s Pepe and Mama Welles.
V's whole face lights up. She’s not surprised Misty invited them, but seeing the two of them standing nervously in her new kitchen suddenly makes the place feel like home.
“Ah, miha,” says Mama Welles, pulling V into a tight embrace. “Jackie would be so proud of you.”
Pepe slaps her on the back. “Major leagues, eh, V?”
The way he says it reminds her so much of Jackie that she almost bursts into tears on the spot.
“He’d have loved it, huh?” she agrees, willing back the burning in her eyes.
Mama Welles beams at her, and that’s when V notices she’s holding a bag filled with containers of homecooked food.
“I brought you and your friends some things,” Mama Welles tells her, already starting to unpack the containers and lay them out on the counter alongside the drinks. She's made a staggering amount of steaming tamales, V realizes, and her throat tightens at the care Mama Welles put into her stupid little party.
“Thank you,” she chokes, going to grab some plates to set out.
She’s helping Mama Welles lay out her contributions when the elevator doors open again, and V’s heart almost stops when she sees that it’s Judy and her friends. There’s Tom and Roxanne, and Mateo and Rita from Lizzie’s.
This must be Misty’s doing, V thinks. She and Judy didn’t exactly leave things on good terms, and they haven’t spoken since the night of the Samurai reunion.
“Judy,” she says in a soft voice, taking a step towards the elevator.
Judy smiles shyly. “Hey,” she says to V as her friends push in past her, marveling at the penthouse, the pool, and the view.
V smiles back, but the elevator dings again and everyone turns to the door just in time to see Kerry emerge, sunglasses on, clutching two bottles of champagne. A strange hush falls over the room, and V realizes with some surprise that it's because her friends are a bit starstruck by her new input. Sure, they saw him onstage with her the night of the concert, but most of them haven’t actually been properly introduced to Kerry yet. And hanging with the legendary musician at a small party like this - at her house, no less - is an entirely different thing than seeing him perform.
Kerry face stretches into a dazzling grin when he sees V, and he sashays toward her, seemingly oblivious to her friends' reactions to him. He's probably used to it, V thinks as he sweeps her into a hug and plants a firm kiss on her mouth - she can hear Panam let out a loud whoop from behind her. V’s eyes flutter open in time to see Judy’s face sour, and she pulls away from Kerry a bit too quickly.
Kerry doesn't seem to notice, and spins on his heel to face her friends. “Let’s fuckin’ party!” he proclaims to the room, raising the bottles in his hands. Everyone cheers, and Kerry pops the bottles open and begins pouring out the champagne into clear plastic cups that he begins handing out to V's guests.
He turns to Judy first. “You must be Judy,” he says smoothly, flashing the braindance editor a grin as he hands her a glass. “V’s told me all about you. You’re even prettier than I expected,” he adds with a wink.
He’s not lying - V did fill him in on all the details of that failed relationship - but she’s downright shocked to see Judy blush in response. And that’s when she remembers that Judy’s a pretty big Eurodyne fan herself.
She frowns, realizing she hadn’t quite expected her friends to have this sort of reaction to meeting Kerry. While it's true that the mega star suddenly becoming a fixture in her personal life has been a lot for V herself to wrap her head around, there's also always been another, more quietly insistent part of her to whom he has always just been… Kerry. She knows she has Johnny to thank for that - floating just beneath the surface of her conscious mind, almost as vivid as her own memories, are Johnny's recollections of Kerry - Kerry as an awkward teenager tuning his guitar on his mom's couch, Kerry doing a stadium soundcheck for the first time, Kerry getting too drunk after a gig and sobbing to Johnny on their tour bus, Kerry piloting a panzer in the jungle, Kerry before everyone knew who he was, Kerry diving off a stage into an adoring crowd, Kerry on the final night of Johnny’s life, placing his hand on Johnny’s shoulder and begging him not to die for a hopeless cause.
But despite the undeniable head start she got from Johnny's previous relationship with him, she's gotten to know Kerry herself in a very real way these last few weeks as well. She marvels again at how quickly they've torn down their walls for each other, how unguarded and vulnerable Kerry has been with her.
“Dios, I am such a big fan,” Mama Welles is telling Kerry earnestly, clutching her chest as he hands her champagne and smiles warmly at her.
Once everyone has a cup in their hands, Kerry hands the final glass to V and shoots her a wink before raising his own glass and shouting, “To this!”
The other guests all laugh and echo the toast, and Kerry taps his cup against V’s before downing it in one gulp.
V follows suit, and Kerry grins at her as she sets down her glass.
The elevator doors open again, and Dino’s standing there with a bottle of some kinda fancy Russian vodka in his hand.
“Aw man,” he says, glancing around the room. “I miss the fuckin’ champagne toast?”
“Can always do another,” Kerry quips back, already pouring himself a second glass.
“Nah,” Dino says, stepping over to join them in the kitchen. “Let’s do some fuckin’ shots!”
Claire laughs approvingly at that, and then Dino, V, and Kerry are pouring everyone vodka shots, even Mama Welles.
“Salut!” Dino yells, tossing back his shot. Everyone’s getting slap-happy and starting to mingle now, and Kerry seems to take that as his cue to pour himself another.
Leave it to these two to really start the party, V thinks, moving away from them to go look for Judy.
She finds the virtu tuner on the balcony smoking with her friends, and V sidles up to lean against the railing beside her. The others seem to sense her intention, and move away to give them some space. It’s stopped raining, but they’re in the middle of a late October heat wave, and the night air is warm and muggy.
“Hey, Jude,” V says, producing her own cigarette and lighting it. “You been okay?”
Judy nods, then shrugs. “Been better,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Look, I… I’m sorry about what happened. ‘Bout how things went down,” V says, fighting down the nervousness in her voice.
“No,” says Judy, shaking her head vehemently. “I’m sorry. Wasn’t fair of me to put you in that position,” she tells V. “I can’t understand what you’re dealin’ with right now, and I shouldn’t be judgin’. Dunno what I’d do if I had to share a brain and body with someone, don’t think any of us really could unless we’d experienced it for ourselves.”
V stares at Judy, somewhat floored. She doesn’t know what she’d expected to hear from her tonight, but a frank apology wasn’t at the top of her list.
“I… thanks,” she manages.
“I talked to Misty,” Judy continues. “When she called to invite me to this. Was still mad at first, but she… explained it all to me a little better.”
V smiles. “Misty's good at that,” she says. “But I am sorry, too. I didn’t handle things as well as I could’ve.”
“You tried,” Judy says. “I was just too focused on what I wanted from you that I couldn’t see what you actually needed.”
V nods slowly. “So… friends, then?” she says to Judy hopefully, and to her relief, Judy smiles too.
“Yeah,” she says simply.
Nancy and Denny arrive then with more champagne, momentarily interrupting Judy and V’s reconciliation. And shortly after, Rogue saunters in with Emmerick, Weyland, and Nix - the netrunner from the Afterlife - in tow.
“Kerry wasn’t lying about this place,” Rogue says, surveying the room with narrowed eyes. “Knew he went all in on shit, but this is a lot, even for him.”
"Heard you helped him make the buy," V remarks, and Rogue nods.
"Knew the previous owner a bit," she tells V. "Was a hotshot edgerunner from a few years back. Mighta heard of him. David Martinez, ring a bell? Lived here with his 'runner girlfriend for a couple years."
That explains the 'runner chair. "Why'd he give it up?"
Rogue gives her a sad smile. "Went 'psycho, apparently. Never heard the deets, but him and most of his crew went down... the hard way. Sad story."
V shifts her weight, unsure of what to say. She's heard the name before - he's got a drink on the Afterlife menu, she suddenly remembers, and her stomach sours. She glances around the penthouse again, thinking about how her story might not end too differently from David's if this all goes to shit. Celebrating the house still feels a bit strange to her, too - she’s not used to having such a fuss made over her, and part of her is uncomfortable with the fact that they're all here ‘cause of something someone bought for her, not something she earned herself, despite what Kerry might insist.
In some ways, it feels less like a party and more like she’s attending her own funeral.
She pushes down the dark thought and forces a smile as she continues to greet and check in on her guests. The party’s in full swing now, and V is pleased to see her friends introducing themselves to each other and mingling. Panam’s down on the lawn, between the AV pad and the pool with Mitch and Joss and Pepe and some others. Mama Welles is in the kitchen, pouring shots for Weyland and Mateo. Vik is sitting on the stairs with Misty and River, and Kerry’s talking to Rogue in the corner. Claire’s been joined by Judy and her friends, and Nix is sitting on the sectional with Dino, laughing as the fixer feeds him key bumps.
And then there's Johnny watching her, prowling around the edges of the party, his dark eyes fixed on her as she moves through the room chatting up her friends.
V joins Dino and Nix on the couch.
"Guess Kerry's a better sugar daddy than I'll ever be," Dino teases with a wink as V settles herself between the two men.
V rolls her eyes and takes the vial of synth-coke from him, helping herself to a bump. "Pretty sure you'd have to fuck me for that, first," she quips back, passing the vial to Nix.
Dino raises his hands in mock affront. "Never too late," he says with a grin and a flick of his lizard tongue while Nix rolls his eyes.
V catches the older netrunner's gaze, and he smiles at her. She's heard stories about him - he's fairly well known in 'runner circles. He's an expert on the Old Net, knows all the old back door hacks and ways around corpo ICE. There are plenty of his hacks and daemons circulating in the streets - V even uses a couple of 'em herself, albeit with her own adjustments. Her system reset quickhack was originally written by him, she's pretty sure. She'd love a chance to pick his brain, but Dino's already launched into some sordid tale of partying backstage at one of Kerry's shows when he was touring with Rezodrone as a session player.
She scans the room for Kerry, but he's still deep in conversation with Rogue. She wonders what they're talking about. Probably her or Johnny, if she had to guess. She frowns in their general direction. Neither of them takes notice, though, so she does another bump from Dino and then heaves herself to her feet.
Vik's alone in the kitchen, eating a tamale and nursing a glass of tequila on ice.
"You alright, kid?" he asks as V refills her own glass with Centzon.
"Yeah," V tells him honestly. She is having a good time, despite the weirdness of the whole situation. "Gonna lecture me more about how I shouldn't let strange old men buy me houses?"
Vik chuckles. "Nah, not tonight," he says kindly. "Pretty sure the screamsheets are doing my job for me on that front."
V hasn't checked in a few days, and the reminder makes her scowl in spite of herself. "God, what are they saying now?" she asks, knocking back her tequila and pouring herself another. "Don't tell me the media already got wind of this?" she adds, gesturing around her at the apartment.
Vik shrugs, his mouth tightening into a frown. "Home sales are public, V. Eurodyne buyin' new property is gonna get press. And since he put it in your name, screamsheets got that part, too."
Great, V thinks. "And?" she prompts, bracing herself.
"It's about what you'd expect," Vik tells her.
"Lemme guess, they're callin' me a gold digger, a socialite, Kerry's new beard, somethin' like that?"
Vik's frown deepens. "More or less," he confirms.
V exhales through her teeth. It is what she expected, but that doesn't make it any easier to hear. "Not after his money," she says softly.
"I know that, V," Vik replies sympathetically. "People are always gonna talk."
"He was married to a woman before," she reminds Vik.
The ripperdoc shrugs. "People said the same things about Louise Nordin back then, too."
Kerry had already been married for a few years when V was born, but she vividly remembers the lurid coverage of his divorce, and Vik’s right, the screamsheets certainly weren't any kinder to Louise then, either. And like V, Louise Nordin was significantly younger than Kerry at the time, so of course the screamsheets'd branded her as a scheming, gold-digging social climber.
V chews her lip, staring down at her drink.
"How're things with Silverhand?" Vik asks, and there's a forced casualness to his voice.
V looks up at him, then glances around quickly to make sure no one else is within earshot. "I have a meeting with Hanako Arasaka in four days," she admits.
Vik's eyes widen. "That's your hail Mary?" he says softly, shaking his head. "Hope you know what you're doin', kid. Sounds like a helluva deal with the devil to me."
"That's what Johnny says, too."
Vik snorts. "Guess we have something in common after all."
There’s a sudden commotion at the elevator, and V turns to see that Blue Moon, Purple Force, and Red Menace have arrived. Vik’s eyes widen slightly - even he recognizes the Us Cracks girls.
“Well, think you can officially call this party ‘star-studded’ now,” he teases, patting V on the shoulder.
V rolls her eyes and jabs her elbow playfully into his ribs. “I helped Blue Moon on a gig today,” she explains. “Invited her and the girls afterwards.”
“Uh huh,” Vik says, cocking an eyebrow at her.
“Kerry just released a collab with them,” V protests.
“Uh huh,” Vik says again, but he's unable to keep the grin off his face.
V laughs, relenting. “Yeah, guess it is pretty wild, huh?" She and Vik watch as the three colorful starlets step out of the elevator. "Don’t even recognize my own life sometimes," V admits. "I didn’t know half these people a few months ago.”
“You knew me and Misty,” Vik reminds her. “And Pepe and Mrs. Welles.”
V nods. “Yeah,” she agrees softly. “And that’s why I’m glad you’re here now.”
Blue Moon throws her arms around V.
“V, my big strong hero!” she crows in her put-on Japanese accent. But then she giggles and drops her arms, shifting back to her normal speaking voice. “Look at this place!” she squeals. “Sugoi!”
V smiles and shrugs.
Red Menace reaches down to scoop up Nibbles, who it seems has come out of hiding for the first time so far tonight to dart through the kitchen. He yowls and scrabbles at Red Menace, and she shrieks with laughter and drops him again.
Poor Nibbles, V thinks as she watches the cat vanish back up the stairs to presumably resume cowering in the lofted bedroom. His life has transformed overnight almost as much as V’s has - just a few days ago, he was eating trash in an alley and now he’s living in a penthouse, surrounded by A-listers and feastin' on kibble. V makes a mental note to check on him later.
Misty and Joss are still standing by the stairs, and River slides his arm around Misty's waist as he returns to join them, fresh drink in hand. They look really happy together, V decides, so she pours herself another drink and walks over to say hi. Joss is in the middle of telling Misty a story about some antics her kids got up to, and Misty’s eyes are shining in a way that V hasn’t seen since before Jackie died. A life with people like River and his family would suit her, V thinks. It would suit them all.
It’s more than V could ever have given River.
Out of the corner of her eye, V can see Johnny leaning against the tall windows with his arms crossed, invisible to everyone but her, not quite there but a constant presence nonetheless. His eyes have stayed locked on her all night, holding her pinned under his gaze as she's moved through the room. She feels her heart beat a little bit faster every time she glances over at him.
And fuck, he looks good. She meets his eyes for what feels like the millionth time in the past hour, feeling that arc of electricity crackle and go taut between them. She knows she’s getting pretty drunk because of how much she’s openly admiring him now - his broad shoulders, his dark hair, the way the blazer he’s wearin’ with no shirt underneath is falling open to reveal the edge of the tattoo that covers the right side of his torso…
The corner of his mouth twitches upward into a smirk, and V knows she’s been caught.
She laughs and raises her glass towards him ever so slightly, giving him a small wink, and the sharp surge she feels from him in response lets her know exactly what he’s gonna do to her later when everyone’s gone.
Or maybe he’s not gonna wait till everyone’s gone, she realizes as he suddenly glitches over to stand next to her, his hand already sliding down her waist until his palm settles on her ass, giving it a sharp squeeze.
She tries to keep her face impassive, continuing to smile and nod at River and Misty as they speak to her. Johnny slides his hand lower, slipping it between her legs and brushing against her just enough to make her suck in her breath sharply before she can compose herself.
But Johnny doesn’t relent, and he continues to stroke her softly through her panties, just enough to make her head start to spin and her heart pound in her chest as she struggles to keep her outward reactions to an absolute minimum. Misty, River, and Joss are too caught up in their conversation to have noticed, but over Misty’s shoulder, V can see Kerry talking to Vik in the kitchen and he’s looking at her now with a strange expression on his face, eyes narrowed.
If anyone here knows her and Johnny well enough to guess what’s happening right now, it’s Kerry.
He meets her eyes and shakes his head slightly, then turns and stalks off onto the balcony.
“Excuse me,” V says to Misty, then turns to follow Kerry outside as Johnny glitches away.
Kerry’s by the deck chairs at the corner of the balcony when she catches up to him, smoking a cigarette and staring down at the pool deck where Panam and some of the others are still hanging out. He doesn't look at V as she moves to stand beside him.
"Thanks for puttin' this together, Ker," she says, but he doesn't acknowledge her, he just takes another long drag of his cigarette. “You good?” she asks, placing a hand on his arm.
“Yeah,” he replies, but he pulls his arm away.
“Kerry,” V presses, trying to meet his eyes. “What's up? Talk to me.”
Kerry sighs. “It’s nothing,” he insists. “Or maybe it’s not. Dunno.” He taps his cigarette, ashing it over the railing and onto the grass below. “Seems like you’ve been avoiding me all night.”
V balks at this. Has she?
“There’s a lot of people here,” she says. “Tryna make sure I spend some time with everyone.” She watches Kerry’s face, trying to parse his pained expression. “And... you’re gonna stay over tonight, right?”
He stares out at the city for a beat, then nods. “Only if you want me to.”
“‘Course I want you to.”
“Sure you wouldn’t rather have some time with just Johnny?”
He says it so quietly, so evenly, that V genuinely can’t tell if he’s saying it out of earnest concern or if there’s pettiness or jealousy buried beneath it.
She laughs sharply. “Trust me, Ker, we get plenty of time together. It’s a 24/7 deal, remember?” She knows it’s not what he meant, but joking seems like the best way to deflect this.
“I’m sure you do,” Kerry says bitterly, and that’s all the confirmation she needs that her hunch was right about what Kerry clocked a moment ago.
“C’mon, Kerry,” she pleads. “Of all people, you should understand.”
“I do understand,” he says. “That’s the hard part.”
V doesn’t know what to say to that. She reaches out and takes Kerry's cigarette from between his lips and takes a drag, then hands it back to him. He watches her as she does this, a warring mix of emotions passing across his face.
“I know whose name is tattooed on your arm, V,” he says softly.
She glances down at the hastily done ink, now fully healed and a part of her forever.
“Johnny put that there, not me,” she reminds him.
“Yeah,” Kerry says in a low voice. “That’s exactly my point.” He puts out his cigarette on the railing, then tosses it over the edge. “Meant what I said, though, V. This place is yours, regardless of what happens between us.”
“You say that like you’re saying goodbye,” she says, hearing her voice shake.
Kerry reaches out and brushes his thumb against her chin, then turns and walks back inside, leaving her alone on the balcony.
V stands there, staring out at the city while the party rages around her. Down on the lawn, Mitch is talking animatedly to Judy, gesturing with his hands. Probably tellin’ her about the Basilisk, if V had to guess. Judy, for her part, seems to be listening with rapt attention to whatever it is that Mitch is describing.
For once, Johnny doesn’t have anything to say, but V can feel the frustration rolling off him - for himself, for her, for Kerry, for all of them.
She hears soft footsteps behind her, and turns to see Rogue coming to lean on the railing beside her, studying her coolly.
“Lovers’ quarrel with Eurodyne?” she asks, cocking an eyebrow.
“Did he leave?” V asks, fearing Rogue’s answer.
But Rogue shakes her head. “No,” she tells V. “He went upstairs. Seemed like he wanted to be alone.”
V nods, relief flooding her.
“Think this is all hard for him,” she tells Rogue. “Confusing.” She looks up at the fixer, who’s still regarding her curiously.
“I can imagine,” Rogue agrees, still not moving her eyes from V.
V swallows. “What was it like?” she asks. “Goin’ on a date with Johnny in my body?”
Rogue smiles joylessly, and looks past V at the city. “Sad, mostly,” she admits. “Wasn’t how I’d ever imagined getting closure on that part of my life. Not that I ever imagined I’d get any kind of closure at all.”
Rogue’s never been this frank with her, and V wonders how much the fixer’s had to drink. But knowing Rogue, this is a calculated decision - for whatever reason, she’s decided V is worthy of her trust.
“Think all this..." V gestures around them at the penthouse, the party. "Think this is Kerry's way of gettin' some kinda closure?"
Rogue considers this. “Kerry feels things more than most people,” she says slowly. “So does Johnny, but he’d kill me if I said that to his face,” she adds, smiling wryly.
“Pretty much just did,” V jokes, and this gets a small chuckle from Rogue.
Johnny appears behind her, then, and slumps down onto one of the empty deck chairs, popping a cigarette between his teeth. He scowls at Rogue, but doesn’t say anything.
“Look, V,” Rogue continues. “Seeing Johnny… got me thinking. I don’t plan to keep doing this forever. And despite everything, you’ve got a way with people, something I don’t see too often.” She’s looking at V again, her eyes drilling into her like she can see straight through into her skull. “Have you ever considered becoming a fixer?”
V starts at this. “What?”
Rogue smiles. “A fixer. Do what I do. Arrange things, connect people, run shit.”
“I…” V begins, frowning. “Guess I’ve never really considered it.”
“Think you’d be preem at it, actually,” Johnny says, and V looks at him in surprise.
“Come by the Afterlife sometime,” Rogue says. “I’ll show you some things.”
V can only nod at her mutely, and Rogue smiles again.
“I’ll go find Kerry,” she tells V, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. “Talk some sense into him.”
V’s not sure whether that’ll do more harm than good, but Rogue doesn’t wait for an answer before stepping away, leaving V alone with her thoughts again.
Johnny still has her fixed in his gaze, his dark eyes raking over her body. Him lookin' at her like that is almost too much to bear, so she leans on her elbows and surveys the lawn below instead. She sees River sitting alone by the pool on a deck chair, watching her - he gives her a small wave when their eyes meet, so V heads down the concrete steps, crossing the lawn to perch next to River on an adjacent chair.
“Preem view,” he remarks as she settles beside him.
“Mm,” she agrees, fishing for a cigarette and lighting it.
“Really though, how ya been?” he asks, sitting up straight to look at her.
She shrugs. “Doin’ my best,” she tells him honestly as she takes a drag of her smoke.
“Look…” River says, his voice becoming serious. “I know it’s weird how quickly I jumped into things with Misty, and I don’t want you to feel like you-”
“It never would’ve worked out between us, River,” V says, gently cutting him off. “You’re a cop, and I’m a robber." She gives him a soft, sad smile. "Said it yourself, you don't wanna get yourself into another situation where you and an output are on opposite sides of the law.”
She should've guessed everyone was gonna cut straight to the real talk tonight. Might be the last chance they've all got to say whatever's on their chests, after all. That, and most everyone seems to be good and drunk by now, V included.
River laughs sadly. “Guess so. But you gotta give yourself more credit, V. The kind of justice you dole out counts, too. Even more, in some ways. You’re doin’ good for the city, I see that.”
V gives him a real smile this time, slowly exhaling a cloud of smoke through her nose. "I'm glad you're here," she tells him softly. "And I think you and Misty are great for each other."
"Thanks, V," he says, blushing slightly. "I know it's hard for her… she's still grieving Jackie and all that. But we really get on well."
Across the pool, V can see Judy and Panam laughing together. It's not a friendship she'd have necessarily foreseen, but it somehow makes sense in her head. They both like tinkering with old machines and share an intense desire for freedom and a sense of justice. She smiles again as she watches Judy double over laughing at something Panam just said.
She’s glad that they’re all here, that they all have each other - and when she meets River’s eyes again, he’s smiling now too.
A sharp shriek followed by a loud splash makes them both whip their heads back towards the others, and V turns just in time to see Panam spluttering in the pool while Mitch hoots with laughter from the deck.
“Mitch, I could just!” the nomad yells, heaving herself out of the pool and launching herself towards Mitch, who dances away from her, laughing. But Judy’s faster, and she gives Mitch a sharp shove from behind and now it's his turn to tumble backwards into the pool.
Panam’s already stripping off her wet clothes and jumping in naked after Mitch, heaving a splash in his direction when he surfaces, coughing and laughing.
And then before V can even fully process what’s happening, Misty and Judy are both stripping down too and launching themselves into the pool after the nomads.
V turns back to River and raises her eyebrows at him - he grins back, then stands and shrugs off his coat, kicks off his boots, and begins unbuckling his pants.
Guess this is happening, V thinks, grinning now too as she watches her friends all strip and leap naked into the pool.
“Come on, V!” Panam shrieks from the water, and V laughs and gets to her feet, slipping off her shoes and shimmying her skirt down around her waist. River helps her unzip her corset top, and she flings it off and hurls herself into the pool before she can have any second thoughts.
She expects a cold shock, but is instead greeted by what feels like a warm bath heated to the exact right temperature. Of course her new penthouse has a heated fuckin’ pool. But Mitch is already splashing at her when she surfaces, so she shrieks and splashes back, and suddenly it seems like everyone is in the fuckin’ pool, laughing and cavorting around like a bunch of drunk fuckin’ teenagers.
As V splashes around, screaming with her friends, it occurs to her that on paper, she has basically everything she’s ever wanted - big jobs, powerful and loyal friends, a penthouse in the sky, a secure future. But as if by the work of some twisted little monkey’s paw, if she's still alive for whatever comes next, then she’s probably about to lose the one thing that really matters to her now, the one person that she’s come to realize she can’t live without. In all likelihood, the only way for her to survive now, the only way to keep all this, is to destroy that person - the person she’s been sharing her mind and body with for the past few months, the person whose entire heart she’s seen, the person who now knows her as intimately as one soul could ever know another. And all she wants is for him not to have to die.
Her desire for all these gifts that the fates have seen fit to hand her right now pales in comparison to that simple desire for Johnny to live. The house, Rogue’s plans for her, the laughing faces of her friends… it all seems like a cold comfort for the fact that if all goes according to plan, she’ll soon have to face her life alone again.
But maybe not completely alone. She sees Kerry standing at the edge of the pool, watching her, and there’s a different look on his face now. Whatever Rogue said to him must have worked, because his lip twitches upwards into a smile when she meets his eye, so she swims over to the side of the pool, clutching the edge to grin up at him.
She can feel Johnny watching from the shadows, just beyond the glow from the pool deck, as Kerry crouches down and tilts her chin up to his, leaning forward to kiss her gently.
“‘M sorry,” he mumbles as they part.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” she says with a grin, and then grabs Kerry’s arm and leans backwards, pulling him after her into the pool, leather pants and all.
Notes:
Ending things with a splash (ba dum ksh). The game did NOT give us enough (read: any) opportunities to put that penthouse pool to use!!!!
OH ALSO shout out to cherrykiss for letting me borrow her lovely V again for a cameo as Marigold, Vero's ex. You can read about her adventures with Johnny in her wonderful fic here and I highly highly recommend you do so, it's one of my absolute favorites!
Chapter 42: No Man Anymore
Summary:
Johnny and V take a strange job from Wakako that takes an even stranger turn.
Notes:
I got really stuck on this chapter and kind of hate it tbqh... but whatever, here it is anyway. Life has been busy af lately, hence the lag between updates, but we're in the home stretch with this fic now and I'm pretty excited about my next few chapters, so hopefully I'll be able to keep the ball rolling from here!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The sunlight blasting in through the huge windows wakes V up, and Johnny makes a mental note to remind V to close the fuckin' shades in this place if they ever wanna actually sleep in.
She stretches, and Johnny can feel the stiffness in her joints and the beginnings of a raging hangover already creeping in, as acutely as if it were his own.
Kerry’s sprawled beside her naked and snoring loudly, and though Johnny’s gotten more or less used to seeing him in V’s life like this, it’s always still somewhat jarring to be reminded that Kerry is an almost 90-year-old man, now. That the baby-face he remembers, the one that he knew so intimately, has faded into the past along with so much else while Johnny took a long nap inside of a computer like Rip Van Fuckin’ Winkle.
V’s naked as well, Johnny realizes. The end of the party is a blur in his mind - he remembers V doing more shots after their impromptu dip in the pool, and Judy and Dino and some of the others staying pretty late, doing lines off the glass coffee table while wrapped in dripping towels. Johnny’s not sure exactly when they left, or when she and Kerry crashed out.
He can hear someone moving around downstairs, and V grumbles and throws on a t-shirt and shorts before padding over to the railing to look down.
The apartment is a mess - there’s empty bottles and cups everywhere, and muddy footprints across the formerly pristine floors. And Mitch is in the kitchen, humming to himself while he brews some coffee, while Panam is sprawled sleeping on the wide couch by the TV. They must have crashed here, Johnny realizes.
Mitch sees her then and smiles up at them, raising his coffee mug in a silent toast. V smiles back and creeps softly down the stairs to join him, both of them trying to stay quiet so as not to wake Panam and Kerry. Mitch grins and hands V a mug of hot coffee, and she silently thanks him and clutches it in her hands, taking a cautious sip before downing it gratefully.
The smell seems to wake Panam soon enough, because she stirs on the couch and mumbles something unintelligible, pulling a pillow down over her head and rolling onto her side. But after another minute or so, she sits up, blinking at her friends in the kitchen, seeming to take a moment to remember where she is and why she’s wrapped in a pile of towels on V’s couch.
Mitch brings her a mug of coffee before she can ask any questions, and V laughs as Panam sputters a bit before taking it from him.
“Hell of a party,” he remarks as he steps back to lean against the glass wall.
Johnny glitches in, then, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching V as she sips her coffee. Her hair is disheveled, but her eyes are shining, and Johnny realizes she’s... happy. Happy to wake up surrounded by friends. She catches his eye and smiles, and he realizes that she’s happy that he’s here, too.
He feels something in his chest crack in two just a little.
Panam is in the kitchen now, telling V that Judy decided last night that she wants to join the Aldecaldos. This makes Johnny start up short, and V, too.
“Really?” she says, leaning towards Panam, then biting her lip as she considers this. “Huh,” she says, continuing to chew her lip. “Guess that makes sense, in a weird sorta way. She was always talkin’ about wantin’ to leave the city. Makes sense she’d wanna ride with you guys, now that she’s seen how hard you kids can throw down at a rager,” she teases.
Panam laughs, and Mitch joins her. “She’s a real sweetheart, that one,” Mitch says fondly.
“With an excellent set of skills, as well,” Panam agrees. “And any friend of yours is a friend of ours.”
V's holo buzzes, then, and it’s a text from Claire.
Great party, V! Don’t forget we’re racing tonight… it’s the finals baby WOO! ;)
V grimaces as she reads it. She had forgotten about the race, Johnny knows this. A memory swims to the surface of their mind, of Claire last night talkin’ about it over lines, but Johnny can’t blame V for lettin’ that slip. She replies with a quick, “Hell yeah!” and then simply goes back to drinking her coffee.
Panam begins a scavenger hunt around the house and lawn to search for all the bits and pieces of her outfit from the previous night, and V rummages in the fridge for any of Mama Welles’ leftover tamales. Thankfully, someone had the forethought to wrap and store them carefully - probably Mama Welles herself, Johnny thinks, if V’s memories of the woman are any indication.
Nibbles has emerged from hiding and cautiously greets the guests, nonchalantly licking his paws on the couch as they all mill around the large penthouse.
Kerry eventually wakes up, too, and it seems whatever moment of gawp-mouthed starstrucked-ness V’s gonk friends all had last night has been thoroughly washed away by the drugs and booze they all consumed together. By the time Kerry staggers grumbling down the stairs in his robe, cigarette in hand as he muffles a yawn, Mitch is already ribbing him about his alcohol tolerance, to which Kerry scoffs and shuffles into the kitchen, immediately pouring a glass of tequila and handing it to V, then pouring himself another.
“To this,” he mutters, tossing his back. V laughs and follows his lead.
It’s still fairly early when Mitch and Panam head out, thanking V again for the party and giving hugs to both V and an insistent Kerry, the latter leaving Panam more than a bit visibly flustered. The sharp contrast of this behavior to her usual unflappable exterior makes Johnny roll his eyes from where he’s still leaning against the kitchen island. But when the nomads are gone, Kerry turns to V and pushes her up against the refrigerator, and Johnny glitches away and lets them do their thing. Normally, he enjoys stickin’ around while Kerry fucks V, but he’s in a dark mood this morning for reasons he hasn't yet allowed himself to examine.
It’s because there’s that melancholy note to V’s happiness, he suddenly realizes. And more specifically, because he knows he's the fuckin' cause of that. The fucking gonk has everything she’s ever wanted in her sad little life, and all she can think about is the fact that she’s gotta cut him outta her brain, one way or another.
He hates having a piece of her happiness pinned on him like that, a piece that’s inevitably going to be ripped away no matter how this shakes out. He hates that there’s nothing he can even fuckin’ do about it, except sit here and suffer as Kerry kisses her neck, and hope that his old friend is gonna be fuckin’ good to her when the clumps of neurons that think they’re Johnny Silverhand get zapped out of her brain for good.
For once, Johnny’s grateful when the fixers start callin'. Today, it's Wakako, and the ringing holo startles V and Kerry out of their quickly progressing foreplay, to Johnny's bitter relief. Kerry steps away from her as she composes herself before answering, shifting away from him to lean against the counter instead of the fridge and clearing her throat before she takes the call.
“V, how ya doin’, honey?” Wakako says. “Listen, got a golden opportunity for you.”
V barks a laugh. “Word on the street’s that when Wako says golden, it’s usually a turd wrapped in crepe paper.”
Wakako smiles in an almost grandmotherly way, but there’s a glint to her eye. “It’s a… sticky situation.”
“Sticky?” V remarks. “Wow, you’re really sellin’ this, Wako.”
Kerry chuckles from beside her, pouring himself another glass of tequila as he watches her.
“Job’s like any other,” Wakako replies coolly. “Just the client’s, well… demanding.”
“Client’s got every right to be demanding,” V retorts, turning to drum her fingers on the counter. “What makes this one any different?”
“Wants everything to go exactly as planned,” Wakako explains. “Willing to break the bank for it, too.” She smiles. “Job like this needs your magic touch, V. Anyone less experienced’d just fuck it up.”
“Huh,” V snorts. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Now I’m sure it’s a turd in crepe paper.” She sighs heavily. “So, what’s the spec?”
Wakako is silent for a beat. “Caroline Jablonsky. Set off any buzzers for you?”
V shakes her head.
“Murdered in cold blood,” Wakako continues. “Made waves a few years back. They locked the guy up… but now there’s a chance he could walk.” She raises an eyebrow at V. “Jablonsky’s family wants to balance the scales of justice, for good. You’ll finish him.”
V frowns, her brows creasing together. She doesn’t usually take hit jobs like this, Johnny knows. In fact, she’s a little offended that Wakako’s even askin’ her.
“So... you want me to murder someone?” she clarifies, her brow still deeply knitted.
“Wait, this isn’t the Dalai Lama?” Wakako says dryly. “Must have gotten the wrong number.”
V rolls her eyes. “You know me, Wakako. This stuff ain’t my jam.”
“You didn’t arrive in this pond yesterday, V,” Wakako reminds her. “You know how the fish gets sliced.”
“Can’t you call one of your million other mercs?” V says, turning away from Kerry as her voice raises slightly.
Wakako smiles, but it’s a different smile this time, a slow, serpentine smile. “Do you remember that information I gave you before that parade, my dear?” she says. “As your friend put it so eloquently, what is free often comes at the greatest cost.”
V curses under her breath. Johnny knows she’s been expectin’ something like this.
“So this guy’s been proven guilty?” V asks skeptically. “Does he deserve to die, truly?”
“Do I look like a criminal prosecutor to you, V?” Wakako retorts coolly.
“What’d he do, exactly?” V presses.
“I’m not a beat reporter, either,” Wakako says. “But he murdered people in cold blood.”
V sighs heavily again. “Alright,” she relents. “Guess I’m in, then.”
“Good,” Wakako says. “The client, Bill Jablonsky, will be waiting for you by a car at the corner of Sixth and Brandon in two hours.”
“Huh? In a car?”
Wakako smiles. “He wants to tag along, be there in person when you put a bullet through the guy’s eye.” Her grin widens. “Good luck!”
V curses again and hangs up. Kerry regards her, still sipping his drink.
“Don’t gotta do this shit for the eds anymore, ya know,” he reminds her, gesturing around at the house.
V shakes her head. “Wako called in a favor,” she explains. “I gotta do this or risk gettin’ on her bad side.”
Johnny’s not above handin’ out a little street justice, himself. But V doesn’t gotta do this for the rep, either - Rogue’s already promised to hook her up.
"You're right about one thing,” he mutters, glitching in next to her. “This job stinks to high heaven. Besides, you're above doing plain ol' hit jobs," he reminds her.
V nods and finishes her coffee, then reaches for her tequila again.
“Welcome to Night City,” she says out loud, downing that, too.
“Probably no harm in talkin' to this Bill Jablonsky fucker and seeing what his deal is,” Johnny continues. “But if I were you? I'd still take a hard pass. You don’t do executions.”
He's not sure why this matters to him so much.
V ignores him and crosses to her armory and Johnny follows. Behind him, he hears Kerry sigh and move to go back up stairs, presumably to leave V to her work. But Johnny’s not lettin’ this go that easily.
“V,” he says, standing in the doorway and watching her as she checks the mods on her Quasar, then reaches for his Malorian. She fiddles with the Malorian for a moment, then frowns at her Quasar again and studies it for a beat before picking it up and popping off the non-lethal mod and loading it full of normal, high precision bullets.
Johnny scowls. “This ain’t your style, V,” he says again, and this time she looks up at him.
“Will you just stop already?” she hisses. “I’ve gotta at least go check it out, otherwise I’ll have no leg to stand on if I tell Wakako right now that I’m bailin’ and to go shove her job up her ass.”
Johnny nods, still frowning. “Fine,” he mutters. “But you don’t gotta do people’s dirty work like this if it ain’t your biz, ain’t your cause.”
“My cause?” she scoffs. “And what would that be, Johnny? Bringin’ down the corpos and freein’ the little people? Don’t ya think rectifying a failure of the criminal justice system counts towards that?”
Johnny shrugs. “Just wanna meet this guy first, is all,” he says. “Look him in the eye. Decide if he’s worth you changin’ your whole MO for a fuckin’ favor.”
“A favor that got us our only fuckin’ lead out of this mess,” V reminds him, slamming down her weapons and turning to stare at him pointedly. “Hanako’s our one fuckin’ thread of hope here, and we owe Wakako for that. Now please shut up and let me get ready in peace?”
Johnny hates that she’s right.
“God, how're you so fuckin' stubborn?” he huffs, then glitches away, glowering in the recesses of her mind while she finishes her preparations. Kerry's ready to leave when she emerges from the armory, so she kisses him goodbye and thanks him again for planning the party, then goes upstairs to shower and get dressed. She doesn’t go for her full merc get-up today, just some padded leather pants and a loose cropped t-shirt. She throws a handful of MaxDocs in her small crossbody bag that she straps on over the shirt, then holsters her knife and guns and stomps towards the door.
There’s an average-lookin’ middle-aged white dude in a yellow construction jacket leaning against the hood of a truck parked facing the street, smoking a cigarette at the address Wako gave ‘em. V pulls her motorcycle to a halt, then vaults off and tentatively approaches him.
“You, uh… Bill Jablonsky?” she asks. “Wakako sent me.”
The man taps his cigarette, ash fluttering to the ground. “Is that the Okada lady?” he asks. “Did she tell you how this is supposed to happen?”
“Apparently, I’m supposed to off someone,” V says coldly.
The man scowls. “No, not just anyone. Joshua Stephenson. A fuckin’ murderer,” he spits.
"So I hear."
She frowns as the man gestures to his truck.“ Get in,” he instructs her. “You’re driving.”
He hurls his cigarette to the ground and shuffles to the passenger side of the pickup. V hesitates only a moment, then crosses to the driver’s side door and opens it, heaving herself into the vehicle as Bill slides in next to her.
His eyes dart nervously up and down the street.
“They’re supposed to pass down this street,” he tells her. “We just sit tight till they show up, then we follow ‘em.”
“Wait, you said ‘they,’” V points out. “Stephenson won’t be alone?” Johnny doesn’t have to be in her head to hear the alarm in her voice. She’s not trying to kill any bystanders today. “Could’ve prepared better knowin’ that.”
Bill shakes his head. “No one else needs to die today, only him.” His mouth twists into a sneer. “I wanna see the light in that motherfucker’s eyes go out. So he can smell his own fear before he dies.”
“So this guy… killed someone you care about?” V asks, drumming her fingers nervously on the wheel.
“That’s not your concern,” the man spits.
V gives the man a sharp look. “Rather know what I’m getting into,” she insists.
Bill exhales through his teeth. “Stephenson murdered my wife,” he says, still gritting jaw. “They convicted him, put him on death row… but the slimebag found a get-out-of-jail free card.” His eyes narrow. “Over my dead fuckin’ body.”
“Who’s his entourage?” V presses, trying and failing to keep her voice calm. “They gonna be packin’?”
Bill shrugs. “Ordinary people. Once we scare ‘em, let ‘em know we’re serious, they won’t lift a finger.”
“How do you define ordinary?” V says through her teeth. Johnny can feel that she’s regretting this more and more by the second, and he barely attempts to keep his smug self-righteousness from seeping over to her. Criminal or no, this client’s as gonk as they come, and he’s not worth V sacrificin’ her morals to get this idiot some cold-blooded vengeance to fuel his vigilante boner.
“Corpo-rats who got him out of the can!” Bill shouts back. “They’d sell their own mothers to save their own skins. Just don’t fire at them.”
Least the extra targets are corpos, Johnny thinks. V doesn’t seem to share this sentiment and she shakes her head, gripping the steering wheel. “Plan sounds half-baked,” she tells Bill. “Honestly, don’t like it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the man challenges.
V looks at him. “First up, don’t execute in public, don’t need an audience. Second, they could get away.”
Bill shakes his head, spreading his hands helplessly. “You don’t get it,” he says. “I spent my life savings on this!”
Fuck if I care, Johnny thinks, but right at that moment, an NCPD shuttle van drives past them.
“That’s them!” Bill shouts. “Step on it!”
Seems Bill also failed to mention there were gonna be pigs involved. But V reacts immediately, slamming her foot on the gas. The truck lurches as they jolt forward and out into the street, the back tires skidding out behind them as V turns sharply to follow the police van. It makes a hard left less than a block away, and the truck takes the turn about as well as expected, back wheels fishtailing out again as V struggles to maintain control, narrowly missing an Archer. The driver of said Archer rolls down the window to shout curses as they hurtle past.
The van’s gaining distance, so V pushes hard on the gas, willing the van to go faster. They’ve almost closed the distance when the van turns right, and V swears as she hits the turn a couple seconds later, a cleaner one this time, thankfully. Bill’s gripping the dash, a fire burning in his eyes.
“Stay on ‘im!” he yells. “Don’t let him get away!”
The truck continues to handle like a brick, and V does her best to maneuver it through the long straightaways of the warehouse district of Santo Domingo, never losing sight of the van.
“We can’t lose him!” Bill shouts hoarsely, his knuckles turning white as V tails the van through the narrow streets.
There’s a stopped semi tractor blocking the road at the bottom of a dipped underpass up ahead, and the NCPD van skids to a stop.
“Brake, brake!” Bill yells, and V slams her foot on the brakes as the truck careens to a stop halfway down the dip leading into the underpass, where the NCPD van sits trapped.
Bill turns to V. “This is it,” he says, drawing a gun. “Let’s go.”
V narrows her eyes, and Johnny can hear her thoughts as clear as his own. Why the fuck does this gonk have a gun if she’s supposed to be the one to off the fucker?
But Bill’s already out of the truck, walking quickly towards the stopped NCPD van.
“Stay close!” Bill yells. “I’m gonna blow the motherfucker to bits myself!”
V heaves a sigh as she draws her iron and follows behind him, and Johnny can feel her heart pounding wildly. This is not what they fuckin’ signed up for.
“I’m gonna do it!” Bill is shouting. “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill him!”
Ahead of them, Johnny can see a big huscle type dude in an NCPD uniform get out of the van and point his rifle at Bill.
“NCPD!” the cop yells. “Stop right there!”
Johnny fuckin’ hopes V’s not tryna get shot by a cop today. To his relief, she lowers her pistol and slows her pace, getting the guy on her scanners and prepping a quickhack, just in case.
Good girl, Johnny thinks.
“Lieutenant Vasquez, NCPD!” the badge yells again. “Stop right there!”
But Bill seems undeterred. “You’re protecting a murderer!” he shouts back, not slowing his approach, gun still drawn.
“Drop it, or I shoot!” Vasquez yells.
But Bill continues his approach. And true to his word, a shot rings out and the cop puts a bullet right through his fuckin’ skull and he crumples to the ground ahead of V in a sad little heap.
Well, fuck, Johnny thinks as V drops her gun and raises her hands, stopping dead in her tracks.
Suddenly, another man - this one wearing an orange prison jumpsuit - hops out of the NCPD van and runs around to the officer, waving his arms.
Johnny and V realize simultaneously that this must be their target, Joshua Stephenson. But now that the client’s dead… V frowns at the prisoner, who’s yellin’ now, too.
“Wait! No! Stop! Stop the killing!” he shouts in an anguished voice.
And then, to both of their surprise, he throws himself in front of the badge’s gun.
V remains frozen in place, her hands in the air as they watch this utterly bizarre situation unfold.
“They’re here to kill you!” the cop protests, trying to shove Joshua Stephenson aside.
“It’s not their fault!” Stephenson insists. “Shoot the girl and our deal is dead!”
A deal. Of course. When corpos are involved, it’s always deals. But Johnny’s yet to see a corpo here, just a cop and a prisoner.
As if in response to his unspoken thought, the passenger side front door of the NCPD van opens, and a petite woman in civilian clothes leans out. Her vibe is unmistakably corpo - Johnny can smell ‘em a mile away.
“Vasquez!” she shouts. “Shoot!”
But Vasquez shakes his head and lowers his gun, not taking his eyes off V. “Sure,” he snaps back, clearly not enthused to be taking orders from her. “Let’s just all shoot holes in each other.”
“For crying out loud, fuck!” the woman yells back. “We can’t leave her here! Media vultures’ll be here any minute!”
The driver from the stopped semi blocking the road suddenly appears from around the side of the van, angrily gesticulating, and after a brief shouting match with the cop, scowls and retreats to his truck. He fires it up and pulls out of the underpass, leaving the road before them clear.
Joshua Stephenson turns to Vasquez. “We take her with us,” he says firmly, pointing to V, and Johnny feels V start at this.
“What?!” the woman in the van exclaims, echoing Johnny’s own sentiment. She’s scrolling frantically through her holo, clearly trying to sort out the situation as well. Johnny wonders who it is exactly that she works for.
V narrows her eyes and lines up the woman in her Kiroshis now, too. “You want… you want me to come with you?”
Joshua chuckles and looks at V, beckoning her closer. “Yes,” he says to her. “I need you.”
But V remains frozen in place. Johnny can feel her internally freaking out about who the fuck these people are and what they could want. Is this guy some sorta gangster crime lord pulling strings with the corpos and the PD who thinks V might present some kinda opportunity for him? And what the fuck is she gonna tell Wakako? Her client’s dead, and now she’s gettin’ invited into a police van with the target she was supposed to kill and some corpo-cunt? Johnny doesn’t like this, doesn’t fuckin’ like it at all, but part of him’s startin’ to get more than a little curious about what the heckin’ fuck is goin’ on here. Does this guy know who V is? Do any of them?
V’s eyes dart back to the surly cop. “Am I… under arrest?”
“No,” the badge spits. “But you could be. You just attempted to assassinate a prisoner.”
V grimaces. “Didn’t attempt shit,” she reminds him. “Was just driving.”
Vasquez scowls at her, about to respond, but the corpo woman lowers her holo and whips her head to Joshua, cutting off whatever Vasquez might have said with a shrill scolding.
“You’re outta your fuckin’ mind!” she shouts at Joshua. Johnny decides that her shitty pink haircut and air of self-importance suggest media more than corpo - not that there’s any fuckin’ difference, these days.
“Hey,” Joshua warns her. “Another word from you and I’m callin’ the studio. Don’t make me ruin your career.”
The mention of a studio confirms Johnny's media theory, but V blinks confusedly at the man, and Johnny's with her on that front. Despite his prison garb, this Joshua gonk seems to be the one calling the shots here. The fuck did they just walk into?
Even more to his surprise, the woman shuts her mouth and glowers back at him, and Joshua turns back to V. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, will harm a hair on your head,” he assures her. “I’m just… uh, heh… borrowing you.”
“What the hell is this?” V demands, still frozen awkwardly in whatever weird kinda standoff this is.
“Hmm…” Joshua says, looking at her appraisingly, hands clasped in front of him. “What’s your name?”
V glances at the woman, then at the cop. “V,” she says, snapping her eyes back to Joshua.
He smiles. “Josh Stephenson,” he tells her. “But you probably knew that already.” He looks at her. “Your, ah… associate. What was his name?”
“Bill Jablonsky,” V tells him, not even bothering to lie. Cop’s already IDed him, anyway. “Ring a bell?”
Joshua looks down, chagrined. “Sadly, yes,” he says.
Johnny takes a closer look at their target. He’s young, younger than Johnny expected. His face is covered in what Johnny immediately recognizes as prison tattoos.
But then Joshua lifts his hands and lowers his eyes and begins speaking as though he’s quoting the Bible or some shit. Which Johnny realizes quickly, to both his horror and bemusement, that’s exactly what he’s doin’.
“‘Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom,’” Joshua recites with his eyes closed like he’s deliverin’ a fuckin’ sermon.
And Vasquez is still watching V, eyes narrowed.
“Wait a sec,” he says suddenly. “You’re V? Eh, I heard o’ you!”
Johnny feels V grimace and brace herself. “Can’t say the same about you,” she scowls.
But Vasquez shakes his head. “We can’t take her,” he says to Joshua. “Out of the question. She’s way too high profile.”
Joshua shrugs. “Well, I want to give her a job.”
A Jesus-freak prisoner, a cop, a corpo, and a merc, Johnny thinks, sizing up the scene. It sounds like the beginning of a bad fuckin’ joke. And all of a sudden, the absurdity of the whole situation is fuckin’ hilarious to him. ‘Course V would walk into some gonk shit like this. He’s startin’ to think she’s just one of those people, always stumblin’ ass backwards into weirder shit than anyone could ever dream up. It’s like Night City itself works a special kinda magic for her - hidden doors open, and wild fantasies emerge. Could write a fuckin’ song about it, Johnny thinks. He glitches in to sit perched atop the NCPD van, unable to keep his mouth shut any longer.
“Classic V,” he drawls. “Could binge-watch this all day if I had some popcorn.”
V scowls at him, then looks back at Joshua. “Gonna tell me what it is you want from me?” she asks, clearly somewhat less amused by this than Johnny. But he can feel her curiosity, and he knows she’s not gonna walk away from this one until she figures out what the hell is goin’ on here.
“Come with us,” Joshua insists. “You’ll find out all you need to know on the way.”
“Gotta object, strongly,” Vasquez maintains. “But Rachel is right, we can’t stay here.”
“Noted,” Joshua says coolly, already crossing to get back in the van. “But you don’t have a vote here.”
The corpo woman scowls, and Johnny assumes she must be Rachel. He glitches down to lean against the van, crossing his arms and looking at V pointedly. V’s eyes dart between the lot of them, clearly weighing her options.
“Can I bring my gun?” V asks, gesturing to her pistol still lyin’ on the ground a couple meters away.
Vasquez gives her a long look, then nods gruffly and follows Joshua around the van to get into the driver’s seat. V exhales slowly and picks up her iron, dusting it off once before sliding it back into her hip holster. The van roars to life, and Johnny half expects them to drive away without her, but Joshua opens the rear door from the inside and motions for V to join him.
Johnny’s reasonably sure that whatever these gonks are up to, they’re not about to try and off V. Even if they did pull anything, he’s pretty sure she could easily handle all three of ‘em. And now that the immediate danger has passed, he’s down to follow this odd little rabbit hole all the way to wherever the fuck it takes them.
He flashes V a grin. “Got no fuckin’ idea what this is about, but if you don’t go with them, I’m never talkin’ to you again,” he tells her, laughing.
And to his amazement, V laughs, too, finally relenting to the weirdness of it all. If his time in her head has taught Johnny anything, it’s that life can still surprise him. Everything about V has been a surprise.
“Just don't fuck this one up, okay?” he continues. “I know you wanna know how this all plays out.”
She grins back at him as she gets in the van, sliding into the backseat next to Joshua, and Vasquez drives them out of the underpass and back into the sunlight. It’s a prisoner transport van with barred windows and heavy armor - Johnny’s been in more than his share of these things, that’s for sure.
“Ugh, move it,” Rachel says to Vasquez as he accelerates out onto the main road. “We’re running late.”
“Late for what?” V asks warily.
Joshua looks at her. “Have you ever experienced anything that changed the meaning of existence? Changed your life?”
Johnny considers this as V balks at the question, fumbling for an answer. He’s pretty sure this is some kinda lead-up to a half-baked evangelical pitch, but he finds himself inevitably thinking of what it’s been like to spend the last few months sharing a body with V, how that has completely changed everything he thought he understood about the nature of existence itself.
“Could say that, sure,” V says, and he knows she's thinkin' along the same lines.
Joshua smiles. “Then you will understand exactly what I’m trying to do.”
V doesn’t answer, waiting to see what he says next.
Joshua clears his throat. “Twelve years ago, I was sentenced to prison for armed robbery and other sins,” he tells her, and Johnny hopes they’re not about to hear his fuckin’ life story and how it ended with him finding Jesus or some shit like that. V glances at the cop and the corpo in the front seat, but both of them are silent, starin’ ahead at the road.
“I shot and killed several people in cold blood, and it didn’t mean anything to me at the time,” Joshua continues, clasping his hands as though he’s in a fuckin’ confession booth. “But behind bars, you get all the time in the world to think. And I thought to correct the errors of my ways.”
V narrows her eyes at him. “Why’d you shoot ‘em?”
Joshua casts his gaze downward. “I was holding a gun. I didn’t like the way they looked at me, and I had the power to stop them.” He looks up at V in anguish. “I still see their faces just before I…” He stops and clears his throat, and he takes a shaky breath before he continues. “Frozen in time. God… give me strength to never forget.”
V shakes her head, unconvinced. “Spelling mistakes you can correct. But murder’s murder.”
“You can make amends to the families,” Joshua says simply. “You can lead others away from the path of darkness.”
“Just spill already,” V says, and Johnny can feel her growing impatience. “What do you want from me?”
Joshua places a hand over his heart and looks at V solemnly. “Stay with me for the day,” he implores her. “And I’ll pay you what you were promised to kill me.”
“Uhh… excuse me,” Rachel pipes up from the front seat. “With what money?”
“Not mine,” Joshua says coolly. “The studio’s. And the studio will pay.”
“Y’know, still got that contract to kill you,” V reminds him. “What’s to stop me from fulfilling?”
“Me,” Vasquez interjects. “One strange twitch, I kill you.”
Vasquez is a big lunk of a huscle, that’s for sure, but Johnny’s still pretty confident V could take him. He knows NCPD has shoddy, outdated ICE that her quickhacks could slice through in no time.
“Hey, there’s no reason to upset Vasquez,” Joshua says. “Your fixer will get what they want. I’ll make sure of it.”
Johnny can’t shake the feeling that there’s a hidden meaning there. “How you figure that?” V asks.
“Trust me,” Joshua says with a small smile. “Everyone will be satisfied. I guarantee it.”
V shakes her head. “So you’re gonna pay me to just… hang out with you for the day?”
“That’s right,” Joshua says.
There’s gotta be more to this, Johnny thinks as V frowns.
“Why?” she asks coldly. “Are you lonely?”
Joshua looks down. “Yes, I am,” he says simply.
V isn’t sure what to say to that, so she glances nervously again at Rachel and Vasquez. But both of their eyes remain fixed on the road. Johnny wonders again what they’ve gotten themselves into. Is V being recruited into some kinda religious cult?
But there’s an earnest plaintiveness in Joshua’s eyes, and Johnny knows that V’s curiosity is more than piqued at this point. Whatever this is, it’s not something either of ‘em’s encountered before. And Johnny knows he’s right, V won’t walk away until she finds out what this is all about.
“Just till the end of the day?” V confirms.
“Till the end of the day,” Joshua reassures her, spreading his hands.
“I sense anything goin’ wrong, I’m out,” V tells him.
Joshua nods. “No one will force you to stay.”
Johnny realizes the van has pulled to stop on a residential street in Rancho Coronado.
“Vasquez, keep an eye on them,” Rachel says. “I’m gonna stay in the car.” She shoots a look at Joshua. “Keep it short. We’re on a tight schedule.”
Vasquez nods and hops out, opening the back door for Joshua and then circling around to open V’s.
She steps out of the van, brushing herself off as Joshua takes a deep breath then strides toward the door of the house they’re parked in front of. V and Vasquez follow a few paces behind, and Johnny can feel V's hangover finally catching up to her - neither of ‘em exactly planned on spending the day on some sorta weird criminal redemption ride-along.
Joshua pauses at the door, hands clasped in front of him, then knocks as V and the cop join him on the porch. It’s a hot fuckin’ day, and Johnny can feel the sweat pooling between V’s tits. But he doesn’t have time to dwell on that before the door slides open to reveal a dark-skinned young woman in a pink sweater and high bun, and her face contorts when she sees Joshua. Joy or anguish, Johnny can’t tell. But Joshua reaches out and places his hand on her shoulder.
“Zuleikha…?” he says breathlessly.
The woman, presumably Zuleikha, reaches out her hand in return and places it on his opposite shoulder.
“You’re… late!” she exclaims.
“I…” Joshua begins, turning to smile at V. “I found a companion along the way.”
“Someone from the studio?” Zuleikha asks, furrowing her brow as she peers around Joshua at V.
Johnny wonders again about this “studio” they keep referring to.
“Do you remember what you wrote me in your last letter?” Joshua asks, ignoring her question. “She is everything you spoke of. V, meet Zuleikha,” Joshua continues, turning back to gesture towards V.
“Pleasure,” V says, giving the woman a tight smile.
“Mmm,” says Zuleikha. “You are a friend of Joshua’s?”
“Not exactly,” V tells her. “Recent acquaintance, more like. Still got no idea what’s goin’ on here.”
“You haven’t told her anything?” Zuleikha says, turning back to Joshua with alarm.
“We just met,” Joshua says breezily. “There wasn’t time.”
Zuleikha sighs. “You really are insane...” She hugs her arms around her thin torso. “Mama isn’t… back yet,” she tells Joshua. “We can talk inside until she returns. Come in.” She steps to the side and gestures for them to enter.
“Hurry up,” Vasquez huffs. “I’ll be waitin’ outside.”
“Looks like someone doesn’t enjoy waitin’ patiently,” V teases as she steps through the door after Joshua.
“Fuck off,” Vasquez replies.
Immediately in front of the doorway is a shrine next to the staircase that makes Johnny think immediately of the one Mama Welles has set up for Jackie at the Coyote. He glitches to stand before it, frowning at the framed photo in the center. V moves to stand next to him, but he doesn’t say anything and just gives her a long look.
V turns and follows Joshua and Zuleikha to the kitchen, and Johnny glitches over to stand by the window. The whole house is a fuckin’ mess - the entire place is rundown, and trash and books and other clutter cover every visible surface. Empty bottles, too. This isn’t just poverty - it’s despair. Johnny’s seen it himself enough times to know the difference.
“Please, sit down,” Zuleikha says to V, gesturing at the small table that Joshua has already taken a seat at.
V joins them, lowering herself into a chair at the head of the table that juts out from the wall, where another shelf features even more framed portraits of the same man from the other shrine, surrounded by candles and crosses.
“Can I offer you anything?” Zuleikha asks, pouring out glasses of water for herself and Joshua from a small glass pitcher. “A drink?”
V exhales slowly as she settles into the chair. “Think I could have somethin’... stronger, maybe?” she says, and Johnny can tell she’s only half joking.
He’s a bit caught off guard when Zuleikha’s face hardens, and she sets the water down harder than she needs to. “We do not serve any alcohol under this roof,” she says firmly. “We have none.”
V raises her eyebrows at this but doesn’t respond. And she doesn’t have to, because Zuleikha and Joshua both start crossin’ themselves solemnly over their goddamn water glasses, ending with a practiced flick of their fingers up towards heaven.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen,” Zuleikha recites as they do so.
It’s not exactly the way Johnny learned it back in Texas, nor the way V learned it from that Padre guy at all those services she sat in on as a kid, but he’s getting the vibe that whatever weird Jesus stuff these people are into ain’t your usual run-of-the-mill Catholicism.
After a brief pause, Joshua turns to V.
“Zuleikha is the sister of the man I killed,” he says conversationally, as though he’s explaining that they went to school together or met at a bar. “She wrote me letters while I was doing time. That is how we two were united. Through forgiveness.”
V’s eyes slide over to Zuleikha as he speaks. The dark-haired woman is watching Joshua with a strange expression on her face.
“So, you’re the reason Joshua found redemption?” V asks her skeptically.
“It was her letter that started everything,” Joshua explains, and now it sounds like he’s describin’ a Biblical miracle.
“I lost a brother,” Zuleikha adds breathlessly. “God gave me another.”
“What’d I tell ya?” Johnny says, lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag. “Shit keeps gettin’ next level.”
“You mean to say… you let the man who killed your brother off the hook?” V asks, lookin’ back and forth between them.
“‘Judge not, and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven,’” Zuleikha quotes. “Whether it finds enemies or neighbors, God’s love knows no bounds on Earth, and neither should ours.”
“Not every day you run into a true believer in Night City,” V remarks dryly.
“It was providence that brought you under my roof,” Zuleikha replies smoothly. “We met because of Him.” She looks skyward as she says “him,” making it clear which heavenly entity she’s referring to.
“Tell me, V,” Joshua cuts in. “Do you believe in God?”
V chews her lip, and Johnny can sense her considering how to answer. He’s got the feeling these people might not respond well to a flat-out “no,” but he also realizes he’s not even entirely sure how V herself feels about it. They haven’t ever explicitly talked about this shit - he’s just sorta assumed their views were aligned.
“Dunno,” V says slowly. “I think there’s some sorta order to all this, sure. Call it a higher power if you want,” she continues. “But I’m not sure I believe in God in the same way that you guys do.”
It’s not quite the answer Johnny expected, and he can’t honestly say that he agrees. There’s no order to this bullshit, there fuckin’ can’t be. If life has taught him anything, it’s that the universe is random and shitty and life sucks and then you die, and all you can do is make the fuckin’ most of it in the meantime. And in his case, that meant sex, drugs, booze, and fuckin’ with Arasaka.
But Zuleikha nods sagely. “Faith is something no one but you can prove.”
“Zuleikha and I have... a running dispute,” Joshua says, jumping back in. “I was thinking you could help us resolve it.”
“No, no!” Zuleikha says abruptly, holding up her hands. “I never agreed to anything like this!” She crosses her arms across her chest defiantly.
“I’m all ears,” V says bemusedly, and Johnny’s curiosity is once again piqued.
Zuleikha shakes her head, her voice thick with fury. “Joshua, he… he thinks he’s the Messiah and wants to end his own life.”
“That is not true,” Joshua protests. “I never said I was any sort of messiah.”
Johnny raises an eyebrow at V. So far, this strange scenario has failed to disappoint.
“Suicide!” Zuliekha exclaims. “Do you really think that’s what the Lord could ever want from you?”
“It won’t be suicide,” Joshua insists.
“I still don’t get what’s happening here,” V says.
Zuleikha shakes her head disgustedly. “When they put Joshua away, the screamsheets devoted space to him on page five,” she tells V. “But when they discovered he’d found God, suddenly he was on primetime TV.”
“What’s wrong with using a platform to tell people about my faith, and God’s grace, hm?” Joshua says forcefully, balling his hands into fists and placing them on the table.
“We are way past that, Joshua!” Zuleikha retorts, turning angrily back to V. “Instead of being executed in prison, he agreed to let braindance studio vultures record his agony as he’s being crucified!”
“Holy shit,” Johnny mutters under his breath. Wherever he saw this going, it definitely wasn’t that.
“I was facing the electric chair,” Joshua explains. “Now, with the studio’s help, my death will be more than a state-sanctioned murder.”
“An execution like any other, just garbed in holy robes!” Zuleikha protests.
“W-why the braindance?” V stammers, shaking her head as she tries to wrap her mind around this new information. “What’s in it for you?”
“Zuleikha transformed me into a child of God,” Joshua insists. “It’s time I repaid that debt. I want to bear witness to love’s existence,” he says, slamming his fist on the table. “In a manner that the lost souls on this wretched earth can understand.”
“Why love?” V asks, furrowing her brow as her eyes dart to Johnny, seemingly almost against her will. She pulls them back towards Joshua, but not before Johnny feels that strange, electric arc jump between them again.
Joshua spreads his hands. “If unconditional love exists, then so must God,” he says simply. “It’s time the world was reminded of His divine presence.” He gestures emphatically. “Think of the millions jacked into their feeds like livestock, the children growing up in gang-infested streets. Do they know love? Think of the joytoys on Jig-Jig street,” he continues, his voice growing impassioned. “Coked-out corpos in their offices, and murderers who stalk the streets! I want to reach them! I will reach them!”
He pauses for a moment to catch his breath, and V looks back at him, unsure of how to answer or if she even should.
“And think of paid killers like you, V,” he says, pointing at her. “Have you known love? Do you know what it is?”
V swallows, her eyes quickly snapping back to Johnny before she can stop herself. But to Johnny’s relief, she’s saved from having to answer when they hear the sound of the front door opening, and Zuleikha’s face shifts abruptly.
“Mother’s home!” she gasps, leaping to her feet.
A diminutive older woman appears in the doorway then, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Something about the slump of her shoulders and the set of her jaw reminds Johnny of Mama Welles. Losing a son will do that, he realizes.
“Joshua Stephenson,” the woman says, her lip curling into a snarl. “We meet again.” Her eyes flick to V. “And who are you?”
V looks back and forth between the woman and Joshua. “My... name is V,” she says carefully.
Joshua gets to his feet and stands before the woman, hands clasped in penitence.
“Go,” the woman spits, pointing at the door. “You are not welcome here.”
“Mrs. El-Ahmar…” Joshua begins in a shaky voice. “I have come to beg you for forgiveness.”
“You… you murdered my son!” the woman growls, uncrossing her arms and wringing her hands as she crosses the kitchen to stand facing the window, right next to Johnny. “That is something I can never forgive.”
Joshua slumps against the doorway, his face in his hand. The older woman remains by the window, curled in on herself in clear agony.
“I truly do regret the pain I have caused you-” Joshua tries again, his voice pleading.
“Out of my house, now!” the woman yells, cutting him off.
Zuleikha rushes to her mother’s side, wrapping her arms around her thin shoulders. “Just go, please,” she hisses at them over her shoulder.
“Out! All of you!” the woman cries again, the anguish in her voice all too apparent.
“We should leave,” V tells Joshua, getting to her feet. “Really.”
“Please, Mrs. El-Ahmar!” Joshua begs.
“Murderer!” she hurls at him, then breaks down sobbing.
“It’s okay, just go!” Zuleikha tells them in a panicked voice.
“You took my Ruben from me…” the woman wails. “My child, my son…”
V swallows and backs towards the door, tugging on the sleeve of Joshua’s prison jumpsuit.
“Let’s go back to the car,” he agrees, sounding genuinely heartbroken.
Vasquez is still waiting for them outside, and follows them wordlessly back to the van. Rachel’s perched half out of the vehicle, once again on her phone, and she looks up and sighs when she sees them, swinging her feet back into the seat and shutting the door.
Joshua remains silent as Vasquez starts the van and pulls away from the house. He still doesn’t speak as the van rattles down the unevenly paved streets of Rancho and back out onto the main road.
Johnny finds himself thinking back to what that ‘Saka woman said to him half a century ago, right before she ripped out his fuckin’ soul on the last night of his life. How he’d insisted that he hadn’t meant for her husband to die. The way she’d looked at him like he was a terrorist, a war criminal, the lowest of the low... undeserving of any kind of mercy or sympathy.
There were thousands more like her, he realizes. Thousands more who’d feel the same way about him as that woman back at the house felt about Joshua. Thousands of mothers whose children he’d killed. Did they work for Arasaka? Sure. Did Arasaka deserve to be destroyed for its crimes? Absolutely. Did those people deserve to die? Did those mothers deserve to grieve?
Johnny isn’t sure anymore.
“Just wish I could’ve talked to Gloria, explained everything…” Joshua says finally, sounding genuinely shaken. “Somehow I thought… I-I thought she’d find it in her heart to forgive me…” he stammers.
“Stephenson,” Rachel says in a patronizing tone. “We all knew how that would end.”
“Can’t imagine it’d be easy to forgive your son’s murderer,” V says sympathetically. “Probably would’ve at least heard you out if that had been me.”
“But you’re not her, are you?” Vasquez says. “Nobody killed your son.”
“Vasquez!” Rachel hisses.
“‘If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them they are not forgiven,’” Joshua quotes bitterly.
Rachel sighs heavily from the front seat. “Time to grab a bite to eat,” she says, forcibly changing the subject.
“Where we eatin’?” V asks, turning back to Rachel.
“Uhh, PieZ,” Rachel says off-handedly.
“They do a great cup of coffee,” Vasquez adds.
“Got a killer cheesecake at PieZ,” V agrees.
“How well do you know the city?” Rachel asks, twisting to look at V.
“Why’s it matter?” V says back.
“Just curious,” Rachel says. “Happen to like it out here, is all.”
V shakes her head, holding the woman's gaze. “You can’t know Night City well, ever,” she says. “It’s always changin’, always surprisin’. Part of its charm.”
“Hm,” says Rachel, her face softening only somewhat. “True that.”
“Really aim to spin a virtu of your crucifixion?” V asks, turning back to Joshua, who’s now staring silently out through the grated window.
“Ugh, yes, really,” Rachel answers for him.
“You’ll be kickin’ up a shitstorm,” V cautions.
“Haters gonna hate,” Rachel replies.
“It is something I must do,” Joshua says solemnly. “For if this won’t shake the world to its core, and wake us from our collective nightmare, then nothing will.”
“But…” V presses. “You really wanna do this? Get nailed to a cross?”
“Yes,” Joshua says with certainty.
They drive in silence for another minute, then pull into the parking lot of PieZ. A sudden image bubbles to the surface of Johnny’s consciousness - he remembers V coming here as a kid with her mom, how excited V would get. The memory fills him with a strange warmth.
“Take Stephenson inside, grab us all a table,” Rachel instructs the cop. “Need a word with our stowaway here,” she adds, shooting V a look.
Vasquez nods and slides out of the van, opening the door for Joshua and leading him towards the restaurant. Rachel hops out as well, but when she opens V’s door, she stands there, blocking her from exiting.
Johnny finally gets a good look at Rachel. She looks really fuckin’ young, though it’s hard to tell with these corpo types. And she looks like she grew up in a corpo family - she’s got that polished sheen to her that only kids who spent their whole lives with access to that kind of comfy, middle class existence have. V went to school with enough of them in her early years to have seen it up close, and Johnny’s tangled with more than his fair share of ‘em himself. They were his managers, his agents, record executives, all the fucks he hated working with that came along with the biz.
But Vasquez… if Johnny had to guess, he’s a Santo kid. Probably came up in the block gangs, like V did, but joined the PD as a way out. Like that gonk badge River did, like more than a handful of kids V grew up with did. It’s the way he talks, his bleached shaggy mohawk, his impatience with Rachel that give him away.
“So,” Rachel says conspiratorially, smiling up at V. “What do you think about our next big BD star?”
“Honestly?” V says. “Can’t rightly make up my mind about him.”
“Lemme help you out,” Rachel says. “Stephenson’s a very disturbed man whose obsession with guilt is driving him to the brink of insanity.”
“Think he might be more self-possessed than you think,” V says, suddenly defensive.
“Look,” Rachel says. “You’re no shrink and neither am I. We’re both just out to get paid.”
V laughs a sharp laugh. “Nah,” she says. “He’s a true believer if I’ve ever seen one.”
“He’s a true nutcase, that’s what he is,” Rachel counters. “But that’s beside the point.”
“So, why is he so important to you?”
Rachel rolls her eyes. “Because Stephenson’s got a little somethin’ that’s in short supply, but in very high demand.”
“What’s that?” V says, narrowing her eyes.
“That little somethin’s called authenticity,” Rachel replies impatiently. “In that brain composed entirely of cat shit at this point, he truly believes what he says.”
“Ah,” says V. “Sounds like the perfect BD actor.”
“Mhm,” Rachel agrees. “And one incapable of fucking up in any way.” She leans in closer. “Stephenson could be a fat old fucking gold vein for our studio.”
“And that’s my concern because…?” V prompts, echoing Johnny’s thoughts exactly.
“You’re fucking with his mind!” Rachel replies, jabbing a finger into V’s chest. “Asking probing questions! You’re making him doubt, and most importantly, jeopardizing my investment.” She places her manicured hand on her hip. “So I’m prepared to pay you double what he’s promised you to quietly walk away.”
Johnny can’t keep his mouth shut for another second. These fuckin’ corpocunts think they can just walk all over everyone. And they're clearly fixing to take advantage of this lunatic with a religion-fueled death wish on his final little guilt trip.
“Don’t do it, V,” he warns, glitching in behind Rachel, even though he knows V doesn’t need to hear it from him.
“My answer’s no,” V says without hesitation.
Rachel furrows her brow. “Why do I think you don’t understand what I’m offering you?” she asks as Johnny paces agitatedly behind her.
“Understand just fine,” V says coldly. “Let’s go inside.”
Rachel turns away in a huff and stomps towards the entrance.
Johnny flashes V a smile and cocks an eyebrow at her. “Not bad for a petty merc off the streets,” he teases.
“Corpo-rats…” V says with a grimace. “Think they can solve everything with eddies.”
“And you just proved her wrong,” Johnny tells her warmly. “Just don’t make her desperate, she’s liable to bite back.”
“Gettin’ curious how this will all end,” V agrees.
“In pain and profit, that’s how,” Johnny mutters darkly. “One’s sacred, the other’s insane, though who knows if they aren’t congruous concepts.” He crosses his arms and shakes his head. “But yeah, I’m curious too,” he admits. “And I’ve been surprised before.”
V nods. “Joshua deserves better company than us,” she says sadly.
“C’mon,” Johnny jokes. “Two sinners is just what Jesus of Arroyo needs.” He smiles broadly. “A thief and a terrorist… I’m in!” He shoots a finger gun at V, and is rewarded with a smile from her as she clambers out of the van and heads towards the entrance.
Rachel and Joshua are already seated inside when V enters, side by side at the wide, communal, cafeteria-style picnic bench that occupies the center of the family establishment. And Vasquez is standing across the table from them, glowering with his arms folded.
“Seen every kind of dirtbag in this city,” Vasquez is saying to Joshua as V approaches. “This Jesus shit ain’t foolin’ me. You even think about makin’ a break for it, your ass is goin’ down.”
“Nobody’s payin’ you to open your mouth, Vasquez,” Rachel quips at him as the burly cop sulks off to grab the rest of their order.
“Got a tough customer with that Vasquez,” V remarks as she slides onto the bench opposite Rachel and Joshua. “Even for a badge.”
Rachel is smoking a cigarette and looks stressed, while Joshua’s head is bowed in prayer over a large plate of some sorta synth-meat and fries.
“He is set in his ways, like so many men,” Joshua says sadly to his fries.
Johnny considers this. Though Vasquez may not seem like the type to be wrapped up in this little corpo media stunt, most pigs’ll dance to any tune for enough eddies.
“He blue inside and out?” V asks Rachel.
Rachel looks at V coolly. “Might as well’ve been born with a badge.”
“Must have some solid dirt on him, then,” V counters with a smirk.
Rachel shrugs. “The studio’s majority stakeholder’s a corp,” she says simply. “Unlike you, Vasquez would clearly mind having enemies in high places.”
Boat sailed for us both a long time ago, Johnny thinks dryly.
V nods and turns to Joshua. “So this braindance,” she says conversationally, ignoring Rachel’s glare. “I’m curious, tell me more.”
Rachel glares at her. “Title’s ‘The Passion.’ We’re speakin’ to the LCD, of course. And it’s gonna revolutionize BD.”
“How so?” V asks, snatching a fry from Joshua’s plate.
“Well,” Rachel says, placing her hands on the table and turning towards Joshua. “Stephenson’s furlough is only so long. We can only scroll the last bit with him. But... we’ll fill in the run-up to the finale with BD doubles and emobank assets. It’ll feel like Stephenson, though.”
V balks. “How is that even possible?”
“Gimme a break,” Rachel says, rolling her eyes. “We’re part of EBM. Infinite investment in tech. Couple of years and we won’t be using actors anymore.” She takes another drag of her cigarette. “I dream of the day.”
“So why Josh?” V presses. “Sounds like you don’t even need him now.”
Joshua looks up from his meal at this. “The Son of Man’s agony… you can’t weave it strictly out of digital threads just yet.”
“And you?” V asks him. “Get any say in all this?”
“He forced the writers to go with the Christian Gospel according to Luke. They’d originally opted for John,” Rachel cuts in before Joshua can answer.
“Mm,” V says, raising her eyebrows at Joshua. “Guess that’s important for…”
“John’s version is crude and over the top,” Joshua tells her impassionedly, gesturing with his fork towards heaven while Rachel clearly fights to keep herself from rolling her eyes again. “The Gospel of Luke speaks more to my sensibility,” Joshua continues. “Besides, Luke’s Christ is prepared for what awaits him. I want the world to understand that… to feel it.”
V cocks an eyebrow at him. “Sound like an actor who really wants to become the part.”
Joshua looks down at his food. “I only have one shot at this,” he says. “I… I need to make it count.”
“Really believe you’re like Jesus?” V asks, still watching him appraisingly.
“I…” Joshua begins, searching for words. “I believe we should all follow his example.”
“So what is it you want to convey, exactly?” V presses him.
“That Christ was merciful and continues to die for the world’s sins,” Joshua replies without missing a beat.
“Chatter’s pointless,” Rachel says, her expression shooting daggers at V. “That’s enough. Stephenson can’t be distracted, he has to focus now.”
“Joshua and I are talkin’,” V replies smoothly, not taking her eyes off Joshua. “So fuck off, will ya?”
“Excuse me?!” Rachel growls, getting to her feet and leaning towards V. “Realize the stakes here. Tomorrow, this guy’s gonna create his masterwork. He needs to focus, keep his head in the game and put in the performance of his lifetime. There aren’t any do-overs.”
“Relax, Rachel,” V drawls. “But sure, let’s talk about somethin’ besides faith.” She turns to Joshua. “Josh, your night. Topic of choice?”
Joshua looks somewhat stricken. “Uhh… I-I dunno,” he stammers. “I-I spent years not talking to anyone…”
“Okay,” V says gently. “Nothin’ hard. What do you do to relax?”
“Uhhh,” Joshua says, laughing nervously. “Well, let’s see, I… I read scripture? Watch braindances and movies. Did you hear about the remake of Badlands Raid?”
“Yeah,” V says with a smile. “Kicks the original’s ass, trust me.” She turns to Rachel, who’s still sitting there scowling. “And what about you, Rachel? What do you do for fun?”
“Yes,” Joshua says suddenly, turning to Rachel. “Why… I don’t know anything about you. How do you spend your leisure time? What do you do to unwind?”
“None of your fuckin’ business,” Rachel snaps at him.
“I mean it as a serious question,” Joshua replies, not breaking eye contact with her.
“I meditate,” she hisses.
This gets an eyebrow raise from V. “Didn’t take you for one with a spiritual side,” she remarks. “You being… well, you. But hey, if that’s what gives you peace of mind.”
“True peace of mind can only come through the spirit of divine grace,” Joshua adds.
Rachel puts out her cigarette and gets to her feet, leaning forward against the table. “Know what your problem is, all of you?” she says. “You refuse to understand that spirituality can only ever be personal.” She turns back to V. “And why the fuck are you here, anyway? For the free meal?”
“Tell you exactly why,” V begins. “I-”
“No!” Rachel says, slamming her hands down on the table. “I don’t give the slimmest shit what you have to say.”
“Back off me, okay?” V warns her, and she’s speaking slowly in a low, dangerous voice now.
“And maybe you should fuck off, huh?” Rachel retorts. “You’re not part of our group!”
Joshua puts down his knife and fork and eyes his handler cautiously.
“Ugh,” Rachel groans, looking down. “All this talk about grace and salvation and transformation! I could puke.” She looks at V. “Take it from a BD producer. Religion’s an elaborate lie. All of ‘em.”
“But, heh… Rachel…” Joshua says nervously.
“Nope,” Rachel says, brushing him off. “We’re done for the day. Finish your meal, we’ll put you up at the studio,” she says to Joshua. “Early call time tomorrow.” She turns to V. “And you? Get lost. You’ll get your fee soon.”
She swings her leg over the bench and stalks off.
Joshua sighs and looks at V as Vasquez appears behind him. “Goodbye, V,” he says somberly. “I am truly glad to have met you.”
V just nods mutely as Joshua pushes away his plate and stands, following after Rachel. Vasquez nods at V once, then strides off after his ward, bringing an abrupt end to the strange little sitcom Wakako's job proved to be.
Johnny glitches in to sit in the empty spot at the table where Joshua and Rachel had been sitting, heaving one foot up on the seat.
“Props,” he says to V. “Really well played, that.”
“What do you make of it all?” V asks him, watching the trio as they leave.
Johnny shrugs. “Guy just might be the biggest nutjob I’ve ever seen... but it’s still corporate exploitation.”
He drums his metal fingers on the table.
“I just feel bad for him,” V says, still staring after them. ‘Course she fuckin’ does. Her and her goddamn bleeding heart, thinkin’ everyone and their dog deserves a chance at redemption.
But this whole afternoon has left a sour taste in Johnny's mouth, and he finds himself again wondering where this all leaves him. However many people this fucker murdered, no matter how brutally, his crimes pale in comparison to Johnny’s body count at ‘Saka Tower.
“We could talk in circles,” Johnny says bitterly. “But who cares what we think? What would it change?” He shrugs helplessly. “Corps’ll continue to grow rich off his type, and the masses’ll live on with their pipe dreams.”
“Hang on, where’s rebel Johnny?” V teases, finally turning to look at him. “Seem to have lost him.”
“Well, I found him,” Johnny says, gesturing to the door that just closed behind Joshua and his entourage. “He’s inside that guy. He’s the real rebel.” He taps his fingers on the table again for emphasis.
And he realizes he means it, too. Guy’s over-the-top as fuck, that’s for sure, but he’s right that you need to be willing to do drastic thing to get anyone’s attention in this fuckin’ city. And more often than not, death and violence are the only languages loud enough for most of the people in this godforsaken city to hear.
But Joshua also talked about love. And he’d seemed to equate love with forgiveness, neither of which are concepts Johnny can say he’s had much experience with. But Joshua’s clearly latching onto the idea that if he can atone and be forgiven, that path lies open to anyone - even people like Johnny.
But what if Johnny missed his chance to do that? Now, he’s just a collection of data, an interloper in a life he never should have entered.
“Make up your mind,” V says. “Which is it? Nutjob, or messiah?”
Johnny shakes his head, then leans across the table towards V. “He’s fucked in the head, the world’s fucked in the head… and you’re fucked in the head ‘cause my fucked up head is inside it.” He sighs and leans back. “Guess if you wanna save the world, that’s the first step. Get fucked in the head.”
V smiles sadly in response, and lights her own cigarette as they sit in companionable silence for a moment. Johnny knows she understands, though. It takes a certain type of insanity to decide that you can push the fabric of the world’s agreed-upon reality - if you’ve got the fuckin’ nuts to do it, if you’re willing to walk the paths that no one else wants to, if you’re willing to die along the way.
And that’s the crux of it, ain’t it? Savin’ the world - bein’ a hero - means bein' willing to die for something. Johnny once thought that’s what he was doin’. Now… now he’ll be happy if he can die to save one fucking person. He can’t bring himself to look at V as he thinks this, but he can feel her watching him wordlessly.
She leans forward, resting her chin on her chrome hand, cigarette dangling from between the long slender fingers of her organic one. “So whaddaya think? God exist?”
Johnny puts his face in his hand. “Fuck,” he mutters. “Kill me, please.”
“C’mon,” V says. “Serious question.”
Johnny glitches away and then glitches back, standing to lean over to the table so his face is only inches from V’s.
“What, why?” he growls. “So you flatlined, then got your beat back. Don’t tell me that’s left you wondering if a construct can even be saved.”
V shrugs. “Your cynicism is startin’ to wear thin,” she tells him, holding him in her gaze like she knows exactly why this has all crawled under his skin so much. “You know why I’m askin’ you this. This isn’t about some bearded sky man or some shit, I’m askin’ if you think our souls are a small piece of somethin’ larger… and if so, where does that leave you now?” she says, leaning back in her seat and continuing to regard him with that piercing gaze of hers. “Truth is, we both died and rose again. Plain and simple.”
“Uh huh,” Johnny says. “So what was that? A miracle? What’s it make you? A messiah, a phoenix, or a factory-restored early model Archer?”
V’s face twists. He knows she’s just trying to level with him, but he fuckin’ hates conversations like this. Especially now, when his own mortality and hers feel all too real and visceral.
“I got no fuckin’ idea what it was,” she shoots back. “And neither do you.”
Johnny shakes his head. “Tell you exactly what brought you back. A clever bit of corpo tech. If there’s a true messiah among us, I’ll tell you who it is… Saburo Arasaka.” He spits the name bitterly, then straightens and lights himself another cigarette.
V rolls her eyes at him, clearly not buyin’ it. “Gonna tell me you don’t think at all about the implications of bein' a digital psyche? Possible consequences thereof? Really?” She’s still looking up at him with the same steady gaze, undeterred by his resistance. “I mean, are you already dead? Or alive till the last existing digi-ghost of you is shredded?”
Her voice breaks as she says the last part, and Johnny feels his heart clench in response.
“Meanin’ like… am I gonna ascend to digi-heaven?” he scoffs.
“Descent to digi-hell’s more likely,” V quips. “But… yeah. If there is some kinda existence after death, somethin’ that’s supposed to happen to a consciousness when it dies... is Johnny Silverhand already there? And what does that make you? His animated epitaph?”
Johnny recoils as though he’s been slapped. “I don’t give it an ounce of thought,” he lies. “Surprise. To me, I’m just that… me. No netherworld, no happy wonderworld, just duped, digital psyches. Those monks we talked to agreed, remember?”
V just shakes her head. “You died, came back, and still have no idea what to do with it all,” she says with an incredulous laugh.
Johnny shrugs, puffing his cigarette, his mood permanently soured. He glitches back onto the bench, resting his elbows on the table. “Maybe I’m just a fuckin’ terrorist, V. What else did I achieve, shoutin' Chippin' In to a bunch of angry, pimply kids?”
“You gave those kids hope,” V counters, her voice quiet. “That the suits couldn't buy everything.”
Johnny gives her a long look, feeling his face soften. “I remember what I thought on stage,” he muses, taking another drag of his cigarette. “That even if they all died for their ideals, it'd be worth it. But when I look at you...”
V swallows and looks down. He's tellin' her the truth - he doesn't want her to fucking die for anyone's ideals, certainly not for his.
"So you changed your mind?" V asks him.
He shakes his head. “No,” he says honestly. “Just finally thinking clearly.”
Strangely, that answer seems to reassure V. She nods once, then looks back up at him. “Agh,” she says, leaning heavily on her arms. “Weird as fuck today.” She laughs softly. “Just kinda… unreal.”
Johnny nods. He knows this conversation isn’t really over, that V’s not gonna let this go so easily. That she’s still dead set on figuring a way to bring him back from the fuckin’ dead again, potentially at the cost of her own life.
And the truth of the matter is that Johnny knows he doesn’t deserve to be alive. After everything he’s done, after all the people that he’s hurt, his life just ain’t worth that fuckin’ much, ain’t worth more people dyin’ for. All he’s gonna do to V is wreck her fuckin’ life in every way imaginable - that’s all he’s ever done to anyone’s life. Kerry, Rogue, Alt, and now V. He doesn’t wanna drag anyone else to hell with him anymore, and he finds himself suddenly resenting V for wanting to fight for him, wanting to risk everything for a piece of shit like him when he knows all he’ll inevitably do is let her down, like he’s let everyone down. If she cares about him, that means he’s fooled her, and if he’s fooled her, then that means she doesn’t really know him, and if she doesn’t know him, then who the fuck is she to throw away everything for him?
But she's still lookin' at him like she can see right through his skull, and it's too much for him right now. He balls his hand into a fist, feeling V’s vision glitch around the edges. She heaves a deep breath and puts out her cigarette.
“C’mon,” she says, getting to her feet. “We got places to trash and street races to win.”
Johnny stays seated at the bench, watching as she walks back towards the entrance. She looks over her shoulder at him once, then twice, then pauses in the door and turns to look back at him. But he remains unmoving, his eyes fixed on her until she crosses the threshold and he feels his digital body being pulled away, back into her mind, drawn in by the invisible tether that’s ensnared them both.
Notes:
This chapter was a PAIN IN THE ASS to write, mostly because I'm getting pretty burnt out on rewriting scenes from the actual game, and also this chapter is largely just necessary set-up for the next one. But we're almost to the point where this fic will be taking a sharp left turn away from canon so there's gonna be a lot more purely original stuff from here on out. Buckle up!
Chapter 43: Sins of Your Brothers
Summary:
V grapples with concepts of murder, revenge, and redemption as she enters the final race with Claire, then returns to help Joshua finish what he started.
Notes:
This chapter is a dark one with content warnings for extremely heavy shit. But if you've played the Sinnerman questline in the game, you know more or less what to expect here. Snuff, death, religious shit, all of it. And there's some dark smut at the end, too, because I couldn't help myself lol
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
By the time V gets back to her apartment, she feels sick to her stomach. She knows she should call Wakako and report back, but she can’t bring herself to do that just yet. She can check in with the fixer tomorrow, she decides. After Joshua’s gone through with his gonk plan and is dead, and the contract can officially be closed. Or better yet, once she gets her payment from the studio and Wakako has nothing to complain about.
The race with Claire isn't supposed to start until just before dawn, and V knows she should try to nap or something. Maybe she should call Kerry, see if he’s down to grab some dinner. But instead, she slumps on the couch with Nibbles curled up beside her, flicking through ads and old episodes of Watson Whore, drinking more leftover tequila from the party as the hours pass.
Her holo buzzes, and a series of texts appears from Lizzy Wizzy.
Our little adventure was actually very inspirational. I put out my first BD today
Thanks
couldn'ta done with without ya
It'll be all over the airwaves :D keep an eye out!
V frowns at the messages. She wonders how Lizzy’s BDs will stack up to the stunt Joshua’s got planned for tomorrow. But it’s past midnight now, which means it’s time to start getting ready for the race. She drags herself to her feet and glances out the window. It’s dark now, but she can see thick clouds covering the sky - it looks like it’s about to rain. She throws on a bomber jacket over her clothes and begins to lace up her boots.
“Back in my time, people who won races like this could count on free drinks for a lifetime,” Johnny jokes as she finishes tying her shoes and re-holsters her guns, clearly trying to lighten the heavy mood from earlier that's hung over them all evening. “So, y'know... not real long. But still.”
“Claire’s more hellbent on killing that gonk than winning,” V reminds him darkly. She’s not as excited about this race as the other ones - her day with Joshua has left her with more mixed feelings than usual about Claire’s murderous vendetta against the man she sees as her husband’s killer.
V really doesn't like bein' asked to do hit jobs.
“Shame,” Johnny tells her. “You got a good shot at winning this thing, too.”
V nods mutely and polishes off her tequila, then crosses to the elevator and steps inside.
It’s colder out now than she expects, despite how hot the day was earlier. She knows Claire’ll want her to drive the Beast for this final race, so V decides to take NCART to the starting point rather than have to deal with bringing a second car or bike. The racers are gathering this time near the corporate parks between Westbrook and Santo, right on the border of Charter Hill and Rancho Coronado, and V pulls her coat tighter around her as she walks towards the nearby NCART station. The stop they’re headed to is near the corpo school V used to go to when she was a little kid, and she remembers riding the train to that very station, takin’ it out of Heywood in her uniform and avoiding the hard stares from the other kids in her neighborhood as she waited for the train. And how those stares would transform into pitying or disdainful looks from the other riders when she’d exit in Charter Hill, noting her frayed uniform that was two sizes too small, paired with scuffed shoes and threadbare socks and the dirty backpack she’d clearly been dragging around for years.
“The little lunches,” Johnny says, glitching in to stand in front of her as the train rattles over the bridge out of Watson. It’s still dark out, but V can see the first light of dawn starting to creep across the horizon beyond the hills.
“The what?” V asks, looking up from the window, speaking aloud before she can catch herself.
“The little lunches that your mom’d pack ya,” Johnny says again, gesturing with his hands.
V frowns. “I don’t remember that,” she says softly.
Johnny gives her a strange look. “Yeah,” he says. “Those cute stupid things she’d put in bento boxes, always with a note or a little drawing, you were embarrassed by ‘em and would always hide them from the other kids.” He studies her carefully. “You don’t remember?”
V tries as hard as she can, but… it’s just not there. She can remember a different school, one in Texas with a crowded cafeteria and a little boy with no eddies on his school card to buy a slice of that cold, greasy, cardboard-like pizza. She remembers the way his stomach would grumble and twist with hunger, watching the other kids eat their peanut butter sandwiches and fried protein boxes and that godawful pizza that she can still smell, even now.
But bento boxes her mother packed for her? There’s nothing, not even a sliver or a flash of it. She shakes her head at Johnny helplessly.
“Shit,” he mutters as the train plunges underground and back into darkness, away from the sparkling lights of the city.
It’s not a far walk from the NCART station to the racers’ gathering place, and V can hear it before she can see it. As always, there’s loud music playin’ and people partyin’ and talking shit to each other and checkin’ out each others’ rides. Claire’s Beast is easy to spot, but V doesn’t see the bartender herself until she scans the crowd and spots her a little ways ahead, hands on her hips and gettin’ up in some corpo-lookin’ weaselly dude’s face.
So this must be Peter Sampson, V thinks as she strides towards 'em. His car looks like he sunk a lotta disposable income into it, and he’s got a fancy racing suit to match.
“You’re done, Sampson,” Claire is shouting at him.
“Get away from me, you whack,” Sampson spits back at her.
“No remorse?” Claire says, throwing out her hands. “Not even a bit?”
“None whatsoever,” Sampson says dismissively.
Claire’s eye’s flash, and V can see her hands balling into fists.
“Claire, drop it,” she warns, placing a hand on her friend’s arm as she steps up beside her. “Leave the corpo-rat alone.”
“Think you’ll leave here alive, asswipe?” Claire shouts, ignoring her.
“Claire!” V says again, giving her a sharper tug this time.
“This your new driver?” Sampson smirks, eyeing V up and down. She scowls at him. “I’d get out while I could if I were you,” he says to V. “Claire can’t seem to keep her partners alive for long.”
“You motherfucker!” Claire growls.
“Truth is,” Sampson continues, goading her, “Dean was as shit a husband as he was a driver. Head swelled lots larger than he could manage, and he paid for it. Face the facts,” he sneers, gettin’ all up in Claire’s face. “I didn’t kill ‘im… his ego did.”
He turns and gets into his car, slamming the door.
“You’re a waste of organic matter, Sampson,” Claire spits back, leaning against his car and lowering her head to eye him through the window.
“Claire, stop it!” V hisses, yanking on her arm. “We’ve got a race comin’ up, dammit!”
“You’re done!” she spits at Sampson one last time, then lets V drag her back over to the Beast.
“Fuck off!” Sampson yells back.
“Claire, c’mon, save some steam for later,” V scolds.
Claire huffs as she stomps over to her truck, pausing before she gets in. “Do somethin’ for me, V?” she says.
“Yeah?”
Claire's eyes flash. “Come in close on his tail and stay there.”
V purses her lips and nods once, then circles to get in the driver’s seat. Claire is silent, knuckles white around her rifle as the announcer counts off the race. The mood in the car is different than the previous ones they’ve done together - instead of Claire’s usual jubilant exhilaration, she’s tense and angry - no, furious. V doesn’t think she’s ever seen her like this before. Right as the announcer begins his countdown, a few drops of rain begin to hit the windshield.
And then they’re off, and V focuses on the road, on the other cars, on the feel of the massive truck beneath her as she maneuvers along the rain-slicked streets, using the hydroplaning to her advantage to get some extra drift on her turns to compensate for the mass of the vehicle. Just like she used to when she was a teen doing street races in those fuckin' brick boats her Valentino chooms passed off as cars.
Sampson takes the lead quickly, and V stays hot on his tail, just like Claire asked. Claire’s grittin’ her teeth as she leans out the window, aiming for his tires and firing off her shots with a hardened determination in her eyes.
The race path takes them out onto the freeway, and V overtakes Sampson as the cars careen down the wide roadway still sparkling in the misty rain that’s getting heavier by the minute.
And then Sampson slams them hard from behind, and then again, and again. His car might be smaller than theirs by a lot, but he’s clearly built it to take and dish heavy beatings.
He slams them again, from the side this time, his wheel casing catching against the front fender of the Beast. V veers the truck hard, slamming Sampson loose as Claire hurls a string of swears and fires off another round of shots.
The rest of the cars catch up with them, then, a firestorm of bullets ringing out around them suddenly as the pack overtakes them. V hunkers in her seat, keepin’ her eyes fixed on the road ahead and trustin’ Claire to handle it.
But Sampson’s car hasn’t fared as well, it seems. His front left tire seems to be catching on fire, much to Claire’s delight and V’s horror. His car skids and fishtails across the road, slamming into the Beast once more before he regains control and veers hard towards the nearest exit ramp, off the track of the race.
“His car’s damaged!” Claire shouts, pointing. “He’s pullin’ off!”
“No fuckin’ shit!” V shouts back.
“Go after him, V!” Claire yells, gesturing wildly. “Don’t let him slip away!”
V sighs, glancing back at the glowing superimposed arrows on her HUD guiding her ahead along the glistening, open road towards the finish line that she can see glimmering not too far away. But she banks hard for the exit, following after Sampson’s mangled car.
Ahead of them, Sampson's damaged ride limps and skids through Rancho Coronado, causing pedestrians to scream and jump out of the way. And then finally, he misses a turn hard and the car careens out of control, crashing into a curb and bursting into flames.
“Fuck!” V yells, skidding the Beast to a stop.
It’s pouring rain now, but Claire doesn’t hesitate before leaping out of the vehicle and storming towards the flaming car, gun already drawn and aimed. V scrambles out after her, pulling up the hood of her bomber jacket.
Luckily for Sampson, the rain seems to have slowed the fire, and he’s managed to drag himself out of the burning wreck and is crawling on his stomach along the wet sidewalk.
Claire stalks toward the helpless figure as V trails her, and Sampson slumps weakly onto his side when he sees her.
“How’s life, Sampson?” Claire says, coming to stand over him, gun pointed at his head.
V rests her hand on her iron, staying close to Claire.
“Claire?” Sampson gasps. “P-please… don’t! I-I-I didn’t do anything…”
“You pathetic worm,” Claire spits. “Is that so?”
“Hey, no, please!” Sampson begs, appealing to V as well, now. “Don’t let her do this!” He drags himself up into a sitting position. “Claire, I beg you!” His eyes search both the women pleadingly. “Jesus, Claire… wha-what the fuck do you want?!” he stammers. “I-I didn’t kill Dean!”
“Zip your trap!” Claire shouts, not lowering her gun.
“He got himself killed, for fuck’s sake!” Sampson insists. “Please, let me go!”
Claire shakes her head angrily. “Won’t talk your way outta this,” she warns.
But V’s eyes dart back up to her friend. “What’s he talkin’ about?” she asks.
“Does it matter?” Claire hisses. “He’s just tryin’ to save his skin.”
“No, please! Don’t let her!” Sampson continues to stammer. “I didn’t kill her husband!”
“I said, shut your hole!” Claire repeats, grabbing his head and pressing her iron against it.
A couple of onlookers have stopped to watch the tense scene unfold. V scowls at them, and most of them skulk away when they see the warning look in her eyes.
“Claire, wait,” V cautions, turning back to her friend. “Wanna hear him out.”
Claire sighs disgustedly. “What for?”
“Whaddaya got to say, Sampson?” V asks, fighting to keep her voice calm.
“Dean tried to pass me just before the finish line, but he… he lost control…” Sampson sputters.
“You rammed us!” Claire shoots back, giving him a hard shove but releasing him and lowering her gun to pace angrily.
“Even so, is that against the rules?!” Sampson says in a panicked voice. “It’s that kind of racing!”
Claire lets out a low growl and raises her gun to his forehead again.
V takes a step toward her, gently placing a hand on her arm.
“Is that true, Claire? Sampson did what anyone would do?”
But Claire just shakes her head, and V can see there are tears streaming down her cheeks, mingling with the rain soaking through both of their clothes now.
“It doesn’t matter!” Claire cries in a strangled sob. “The bastard killed Dean! He has to pay for it!”
“What do you want from me?” Sampson yells. “Your husband wasn’t the saint you think-” he begins, but Claire pistol whips him across the face, cutting him off.
“Claire,” V says, trying and failing to keep her voice even. “It sounds like what happened to Dean was an accident. It’s racing.”
Claire doesn’t move for a moment, her chest heaving with sobs. Then, to V’s relief, she lowers her pistol and her shoulders slump forward.
“I loved him…” she chokes. “Loved him more than life itself. And now I’m s’posed to let this… this…” She throws out her hands. “I’m supposed to let this shit go?! That what you expect?!”
“Yes, Claire,” V says calmly. “You’ll let him go.”
“Hah!” Claire shouts, her voice still thick with tears. “You’re fucking kidding me…”
“Might be a grade A corpo shit, but he didn’t murder Dean,” V says. “And flatlinin’ him won’t make you feel any better.”
Claire lifts the pistol to Sampson’s head again, but her hand is trembling violently now. She laughs wildly. “Fuck…” she says in a shaky voice.
“Claire, please…” Sampson says weakly.
“Claire,” V says again, thinking back to her day with Joshua, to all his talk about forgiveness and redemption and all that shit. “Even if he did kill your husband intentionally, are you really gonna execute him in the street for it? Murder him in cold blood, when you don’t even know for sure that he deserves it?”
Claire yells out another loud curse and pistol whips Sampson across the face again, but then pulls back and lowers her gun. “I can’t even tell you how lucky you are you fuck!” she shouts at Sampson defeatedly, stepping away from the injured man. “I can’t!” She turns to V. “Let’s go, V… before I change my mind.”
She pivots on her heel and stomps back towards the Beast, hurling open the door and heaving herself into the driver’s seat. “You comin’?” she calls angrily.
V glances down at Sampson one final time, then follows Claire and climbs into the passenger seat beside her, glancing back at the clump of pedestrians that have now gathered around Sampson and his wreck. Trauma Team should be here any minute now, V thinks, and she’d rather they were well clear of the scene before that happens.
Claire scowls at the dash and fires up the truck, driving away quickly as the rain pounds down on the metal hull. She doesn’t speak, but V can almost see the grief and anguish and fury rolling off of her in waves.
“You alright, Claire?” V asks her as they drive through Santo back down to Claire’s garage.
“What?” Claire says, as though startled out of a reverie. “Why?”
V shoots her a look. “Look pretty down.”
“I’m not,” Claire says, shaking her head. “To be honest… don’t think I feel anything.”
“It’s okay,” V reassures her. “It’ll get better.”
“What will?”
“Well… everything, I guess,” V says, casting about for the right words. “You’ll move on.”
Claire scoffs. “Only place I wanna go right now is my liquor cabinet.”
“I hear you,” V agrees, and they drive in silence for another moment.
“You’re a good driver,” Claire says suddenly. “You’d have won us the finals if not for me and my bullshit.”
V nods. “There’s always next year,” she reminds Claire. “Assuming I'm alive, anyway," she adds with a frown. "Any desire to do this again? Team up, that is? Could race together for real, with no murderous agendas or revenge plots.”
Claire shakes her head. “No, V,” she says in a strangely emotionless voice. “In fact, not gonna race ever again.”
“Ever?”
“Ever,” Claire repeats, and there’s a note of finality in her voice. “That was something we had, something Dean and I shared. I just needed you to get Sampson…”
V isn’t sure what to say to that. She swallows back the disappointment in her throat. She hates feeling like Claire used her.
They pull to a stop in front of Claire’s garage.
“Beast is yours,” Claire says quietly.
“What?” V balks. “You’re givin’ me your rig?”
Claire shakes her head. “It’s not mine. Belonged to me and Dean. But since… since that’s no more…” She slumps back in her seat defeatedly.
V puts a hand on her arm. “Your husband…” she says gently. “What was he like?”
Claire sighs and doesn’t answer for a moment, and V wonders if she’s wrong to push her to talk about this.
“He liked to sleep in,” Claire says finally, then is silent for another moment before swearing softly under breath. “I’m forgetting more and more,” she says in a small voice. “Scared I’ll lose what’s left of him.”
V knows how she feels. She feels the same way about Jackie, has felt that same fear grip her since the day he died. Fear that the living, breathing person she knew will fade in her mind little by little, and be slowly replaced by a loosely drawn character, a flimsy amalgamation of fading memories, a story that gets told so many times it becomes a myth.
She knows Johnny feels that way about Alt. She knows Kerry feels that way about Johnny.
Is that what Johnny will soon be to her, too? A collection of memories, slipping slowly into her past? A story she carries with her that’ll start to feel less and less real with each passing year?
“Won’t forget what matters most,” V says, to herself as much as to Claire. “How he made you feel.”
“Yeah…” Claire agrees, sounding unconvinced.
The sun is starting to come up, and V is bone tired. It’s been a fucking long, stupid day, and she’s still exhausted from her party last night. Two nights ago now, technically.
But Claire doesn’t seem ready to call it quits. She looks over at V as they sit in the stopped car, the rain still pattering against the windshield. “Let’s go to the Afterlife,” she says suddenly.
“You got a shift soon?” V says.
“No,” says Claire. “But it’ll be open, and it’s as good a place as any to drown my sorrows. And we can drink there for free.”
“Sure,” V tells her with a sigh. “Could use a drink, too. Been a weird fuckin’ day.”
And more importantly, Claire clearly doesn’t wanna be alone right now, and V doesn’t wanna force her friend to drink by herself. Not after everything that happened tonight.
So Claire starts up the Beast and steers it up and across the canals to Watson, parking it in the narrow alley outside the club. “I’ve reset the biometrics for you,” she says as they clamber out. “It’s yours.”
The rain has finally stopped, and the sky is beginning to lighten. Unsurprisingly, there’s still a fairly large crowd outside Afterlife of people drinkin’ and smoking and dipping their fingernails into little vials and baggies of synth-coke. The types of people V would expect to be here at this hour, basically - herself and Claire included.
She follows the bartender down the stairs and into the club, and Claire beelines for the bar and plonks herself on a stool.
“Rarely ever sit on this side of the bar,” she muses as the bartender comes over to help them. It’s another girl V’s seen before but never spoken to, a beautiful woman with a ton of cyberware and elaborate braids snaking down her neck, and a hardened look on her face to match.
“What can I get you two freeloaders?” she asks.
“Your choice, Claire,” V says. “This is your pity party, after all.”
Claire barks a sad laugh. “Guess so,” she says. “Better do some shots, then. Tequila?”
V smiles. “Always the right choice.”
The bartender obliges and pours them each a shot, leaving the bottle with ‘em and shuffling off to help the other patrons, most of whom are either rowdy as hell or subdued and nursing their glasses alone in silence. Once again, it’s about what V’d expect from the late-night crowd at Afterlife early on a Sunday morning.
Claire pours herself another shot and tosses it back, then frowns at the bottle for a moment before turning back to V.
“Hey, V… I just want to say that I’m sorry,” she says. “Haven’t been thinking with a clear head for the past year, but I’m... gradually starting to realize that getting you involved in my shit was basically manipulation, pure and simple.” She shakes her head and pours herself another shot. “I wanted to dust off Sampson so badly that I didn’t think about anyone else.”
“Don’t worry, Claire,” V reassures her. “I think in the end it’ll all be for the best.”
“I dunno…” Claire sighs. “Maybe it’s a good thing you tagged along with me. Who knows how this would’ve all ended without you.”
“Time to look to the future, then,” V says encouragingly.
“I know,” Claire says, resting her head on her hands. “Dean would’ve wanted me to just move on instead of dwelling on the past.”
“Does Dean have a drink on the menu here?”
Claire shakes her head. “No,” she says.
“Why not? There a rule that says only solos can make it on there?”
Claire smiles sadly. “Guess not. And he was a regular here… fact, that’s how we met.”
“Alright, then,” V says. “So, what would he’ve wanted?”
Claire begins to open her mouth, but V stops her. “Just go ahead and make us two of ‘em, while you’re at it,” she prompts her, and Claire smiles again, a real smile this time.
“Alright, fine,” she says, sliding off her stool and lifting up the hinged panel in the bar to step behind it. She studies her options for a second, then grabs a bottle of gin and begins pouring it into a pair of cocktail glasses.
“Dirty gin martinis with pickled habanero peppers in ‘em,” she says, finishing off the cocktails and sliding one towards V.
“Jesus,” V says, frowning playfully at the drink. “Your man didn’t fuck around.”
"To men who don't fuck around," Claire agrees, lifting her glass then bringing it to her lips.
V raises her glass to Claire in return and takes a sip, and damn this concoction’s got a bite. But it’s good, and she takes another sip before setting it down.
Her holo rings, then, and it’s an unknown number that’s displaying the logo of Fourth Wall, a BD production company that V recognizes. She furrows her brow at the flashing image before accepting the call.
“Thank god you’re awake!” a familiar voice says, and Rachel, the corpo bitch from earlier, flickers into focus on her HUD, cigarette in one hand and a steaming coffee in another.
“Hey, Rachel,” V intones dryly. “What’s up?”
“We’ve got a crisis on our hands,” Rachel says quickly. “Could really use your help.” She shakes her head agitatedly. “Stephenson’s had a breakdown. Nothing any shrink can do about it. Can… you come here, to the studio? Just to… talk to him?”
V almost laughs. It’s close to 6 am, and she hasn’t slept yet and feels like hot, steamed-over garbage. Hot, steamed-over, drunk garbage, now. But she's got a feeling Rachel isn’t the type to take a “no” easily.
And if the corpos are trying to pull some shit, if Joshua’s in some kinda trouble...
“Fine, sure,” she sighs. “Where’s the studio?”
Rachel’s whole face lights up. “She says she’ll come!” she yells to someone off screen, then turns back to her holo. “Thanks, V. Fourth Wall Studios in Westbrook, main lot, Stage 6. Flick me your co-ords and we’ll send a Del for you,” she says, then hangs up.
“Well, whaddaya know,” Johnny says, glitching in behind the bar. “This corpo-slut wants you to come back to give her star a pep talk, massage his fucking shoulders and whatnot.” He chuckles bitterly and shakes his head at her. “Normally I'd tell ya to drop it, find something more fun to do, but... I dunno, seems like this Jesus freak could really use your help.”
V nods slowly. Johnny egged her on to go down this particular rabbit hole, and now they’re bein’ called to come finish it. "And so the other shoe drops," she mutters out loud.
“What’s up?” Claire asks her. “Merc stuff?”
“More or less,” V tells her, flicking Rachel the address of the Afterlife. “I gotta go, though. But I’ll stop by later, during your shift?” she offers.
Claire nods. “Sure, V. And thanks again… for not letting me do somethin’ I’d regret.”
V finishes her drink and gives Claire a tight hug, then goes outside to wait for her car.
The studio is in Westbrook at the foot of the hills, and the exterior gates are emblazoned with posters for upcoming releases, including an enormous one for The Passion that looms above the rest. There’s a massive crowd gathered outside the studio gates, and the Del slows as they approach. As they get closer, V realizes they’re protesters - and more specifically, they’re here to protest Joshua’s crucifixion, if their signs and the shit they’re shoutin’ about blasphemy are any indication.
“Shit,” V mutters.
“I can drive you around to the other security gate,” the Delamain offers in his smooth robotic voice.
But V spots Vasquez, then, at a smaller pedestrian security checkpoint to the right of the crowd of protesters.
“No,” she tells the Del. “I’ll just walk in from here, thanks.”
She hops out of the car and pushes her way through the throng of shouting people until she gets to the roped off area around the checkpoint. Vasquez sees her then, too, and waves her down.
“Rachel’s been waiting for you,” he says gruffly, ushering her through the cybernetics scanner.
“Guess some people didn’t like the idea of recording someone’s agony road,” V observes dryly, glancing back at the protestors as Vasquez scans her weapons individually and hands them back to her.
Vasquez shrugs. “Buncha killjoys, that’s all. Billions’re still gonna watch the braindance,” he says simply.
“Studio’s not afraid of a scandal, gettin’ caught up in it?” V asks.
“You kiddin’?” Vasquez says, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Scandal’s what they live for.” He scowls at the protestors. “I’d be out there, too, if I could be,” he mutters. “But I got a family to look after, and the job’s what it is…”
V nods slowly. Her hunch earlier seems to have been right - that the studio’s got Vasquez by the nuts. She can't help but feel sorta bad for the guy; despite bein' a badge, he seems like a pretty decent dude all around.
“So what’s goin’ on?” she asks. “Why’d Rachel call? Is Joshua alright?”
Vasquez shakes his head. “Don’t fuckin’ know, don’t fuckin’ care. Just get in there,” he tells her.
She purses her lips. “Where do I go?”
Vasquez points into the lot. “Straight down this street, building with the officer out front,” he tells her, then gruffly turns back towards the crowd. “I’ll ping her and let her know you’re comin’ in now.”
“Thanks,” V mutters, stepping past him and into the empty streets of the studio lot, still damp from the rain earlier. The flat, featureless walls of the big sound stages loom over her, and the street feels strangely lifeless in the dim, gray morning light as the shouting crowd recedes behind her.
Stage 6 is at the end of the street, like Vasquez said, and there’s a lone officer standing outside the door with her arms crossed.
“Hmm,” she says, looking V up and down. “Thought you’d look more, I dunno… professional.”
V scowls at her. “Didn’t ask to be here, either,” she tells the badge.
“Whatever,” the woman says, pressing her palm to the door to unlock it. “Get in.”
V pushes open the door and steps inside. It’s a big, dimly lit sound stage with flats set up around the main part of the set, blocking her view of whatever kind of crucifixion tableau they’ve rigged up for Joshua’s final moments. She shudders at the thought. Hearing about it yesterday was one thing... actually seeing it begin to play out feels way more raw.
She can hear voices talking softly, and she spots Rachel and another woman huddled together by the stairs, speaking in low, worried voices.
“Don’t worry, Olga, we’ll fix this,” Rachel is saying. “Trust me. We’ll be on schedule. Help’s on the way.”
The other woman, an older woman in an idiotic-looking white hat and matching neck scarf, stalks away from Rachel as V tentatively approaches.
“Ugh, finally!” Rachel breathes when she sees V. “We’re late.”
“You’re lucky I was still awake,” V tells her, but Rachel just rolls her eyes.
“Stephenson’s been asking for you all morning,” she says. “He’s in his dressing room, go talk to him.” She gestures impatiently to a nearby door, and V sighs and sets off towards it.
It’s a big, mostly bare dressing room - the wardrobe racks stand empty, and Joshua’s there, sitting alone in a loincloth on a stool by the mirrors, his head resting on his hand.
“Wanted to see me?” V says as she approaches him.
Joshua looks up at her, lowering his hand slowly. “It seems you are the one friend I have,” he says, his voice solemn. “Hm. What does that say about me?”
In that moment, V feels truly sorry for this man. He looks so lost and broken, sitting alone in this horrible place, clearly trying to reconcile all the choices he’s made in his life that have led him to this final, horrible point.
She pulls up a stool and lowers herself onto it to sit facing him.
“What exactly’s goin’ on?” she asks him gently.
Joshua puts his face in his hands. “What am I doing?” he asks her. “Why… why am I here?” He looks up at V again, but his eyes are pleading, now. “Or maybe I am insane, after all…”
“It is crazy, what you plan to do,” V admits. “Gonna kill yourself, while the studio’ll reap profits long after you’re gone.”
“It’s too late,” Joshua says, shaking his head. “I can’t not do it anymore.”
V considers this, studying the man before her. His body is covered in tattoos like his face, most of them religious in theme. She thinks about what Johnny said to her earlier, how Joshua’s the real rebel, someone who’s willing to die to shake things up and make people stop and think, stop and feel.
And maybe that’s what Joshua needs to hear right now.
“You don't have to do this,” V says, leaning forward to look into his eyes. “Can always just call it off, pick the electric chair. But you know what I think? You’re a true rebel, a revolutionary.”
“I… I don’t understand,” Joshua stammers, looking up at her plaintively.
“You wanna give people somethin’ true, something real,” she reminds him. “Studio thinks they’ve found a sucker to make a fat buck on. But you’re using them. You’re gonna change the world.”
“I’d… never thought of it that way,” Joshua says, looking up at her.
“Hey,” V says softly. “Listen to me. You got this.” She searches his eyes, puts a hand on his knee. “Come this far already. Got nothing to face but your fear.”
“Okay,” Joshua says, taking a deep, shaky breath. “I’ll try.”
V nods at him, doing her best to muster what she hopes is an encouraging smile.
“I’m… I am so afraid,” Joshua admits, and he sounds so scared. V realizes he’s shaking. “Will you pray with me?” he begs. “A prayer of your choice.”
V doesn’t think she can refuse him. “Fine, sure,” she says, casting about to fish for any prayer she can remember off the top of her head. She remembers the Serenity Prayer from when her mom tried and failed to quit drinking, but she doesn’t think that’s exactly the kinda thing Joshua wants to hear right now. And she remembers the Lord’s Prayer from Padre’s services, but that seems a bit trite and basic to her. What the fuck prayer do you say for someone who’s about to crucify themselves?
She suddenly remembers a portion of the Amidah that her mom made her memorize when she was a kid, back when she’d made her learn all the old Jewish prayers and taught her the right way to observe the holidays, before they’d moved in with Padre and her mom had embraced his version of Catholicism and their little Seders for two had ceased.
There’s a passage about repentance and forgiveness, and it seems more appropriate now than anything else that’s popped into her gonk brain thus far. She remembers you’re supposed to do it standing, ideally facing Jerusalem, but she’s not sure which direction that would be right now. But she figures those formalities don’t have to matter today.
V takes a deep breath, hoping she can remember the whole thing.
“'Pardon us, our Father, for we have sinned against thee,'” she begins. “'Forgive us, our King, for we have transgressed. For You are a good and forgiving God.'”
She frowns, unable to recall the rest. But Johnny glitches in beside her and gives her a small, sad smile, then starts reciting the next line in a low voice.
“'Blessed are You, Lord, gracious One who pardons abundantly,'” he says, his voice deep and somber.
She gapes at him incredulously. Johnny reciting a Jewish prayer in absolute earnestness isn’t something she ever imagined she’d see from him, and she briefly wonders how the fuck he even knows it. But then she suddenly remembers their moment on the train earlier, how he’d remembered her mom’s bento boxes when she hadn’t.
Oh, she thinks, a sickening feeling twisting in her gut.
But she collects herself and recites after him, both of their voices mingling as he guides her through the rest of the prayer.
“'O behold our affliction and wage our battle,'” he says, and she echoes his words to Joshua, who sits with his head bent and his hands folded in prayer. “'Redeem us speedily for the sake of Your Name. For You, God, are the mighty redeemer. Blessed are You, Lord, Redeemer of Israel,'” they finish together.
Over Joshua’s shoulder, V can see Rachel approaching. Joshua looks up at her as she finishes.
“Thank you, V,” he says earnestly. “Please, remember this... love is God recognizing himself in another soul. Thus, he who forgives will be forgiven, as all acts of forgiveness from men towards one another are acts of love from God to his own Divine Self that resides inside us all.”
V nods at him and puts her hand back on his knee, giving it another gentle squeeze.
“Time to start,” Rachel says, coming to stop where they’re seated. “Let’s go.”
Joshua lets out a shaky breath. “I truly hope Zuleikha is praying for me now,” he says, getting to his feet. “Will you stay with me, to the end?” he asks V, then pauses for a beat, looking down at her, assessing her. “I would like you to wield the hammer,” he says finally. “Nail me to the cross.”
V’s stomach drops. Fuck. Is that why he called her here?
Out of all the ways she’d imagined she’d be spending her Sunday morning, nailing a guy to a fuckin’ cross was absolutely the fuck not on her list.
But she already knows she can’t refuse. If she does, one of these corpo fucks’ll do it, and Joshua will have to die by the hand of some greedy studio PA eager for a bonus on their day rate.
V swallows, weighing her options. She was ready to shoot him in cold blood just yesterday, if things had gone down that way. At least this way... it might mean something more.
“Alright, Joshua,” she says slowly. “I’ll do it.”
Johnny nods once, and she can feel his silent approval as he glitches away.
Joshua smiles and places his hand on her shoulder. “Oh, thank you!” he breathes as V places her hand over his and gets to her feet.
“They’re all set out there,” Rachel tells them as another security guard appears to escort Joshua back to set.
Rachel sighs heavily and turns to V. “You’re gonna have to say some lines,” she tells V. “Just a few. We’ll put them up on your HUD for you.” Her eyes briefly glow as she flicks them to V.
V nods, steeling herself for what comes next. She’s killed people before, sure… but never like this. Her stomach’s already starting to churn, but there’s no backing out now.
She follows Rachel out of the dressing room and back onto the stage, passing through the gap between the flats to enter the set. It’s all lit in eerie red lighting, and an enormous wooden cross lies on the floor in the center of it all. Joshua’s already seated on the middle of it, slumped forward with his elbows resting on his knees and a terrified look on his face.
At the front of the stage is a small, rolling tray table that holds a hammer and three large nails. V fights down the wave of nausea that seizes her stomach as she crosses to the tray and picks up the hammer with her left hand and the three nails with her right, then walks slowly over to Joshua. There’s somber, ambient music playing from somewhere, serving only to heighten the terrifying drama of the whole scene.
"Whenever you're ready," Rachel says, moving to go stand with the rest of the production team at the foot of the cross, all of them watching V with varying degrees of tense anticipation on their dimly lit features. She turns back to Joshua.
Joshua looks up to meet her eyes, and his are wide and frightened. He takes a deep breath and then lifts his feet up onto the cross and lies back slowly, getting himself into position.
Johnny glitches in as he does this, and regards Joshua with a strange, serious look on his face.
“‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and save us!’” Johnny recites with complete and utter sincerity, gesturing broadly with his arms.
V looks up at Johnny in surprise, but his eyes remain fixed on Joshua, so V turns her attention back to the condemned man on the cross before them. Joshua is breathing heavily now, and she can see the sweat breaking out on his forehead, can smell the fear seeping from his pores.
She takes a deep breath and tries to stop her hands from shaking. Joshua closes his eyes for a moment, then looks up at V again, then at his right hand that’s extended towards her on the cross. She meets his eyes and he gives her a small nod.
V lowers her chin in response, then moves to line up the first nail, placing it in the palm of his hand. But after a beat, she reconsiders and moves it down to position it over the center of his wrist instead. He’ll bleed out faster this way, she thinks. Less pain.
She takes another deep breath, then hits the nail as hard as she can with the hammer.
Joshua cries out in pain, and V swallows as the words she’s supposed to say appear on her HUD.
“‘Do you not fear God?’” she reads, trying to keep her voice even and maintain the gravitas this moment deserves. “‘You stand condemned under the same sentence.’”
She brings down the hammer again, and Joshua screams. She winces and hits the nail a final time, driving it down and into the wood and pinning his wrist to the cross as the blood streams out and over his flesh, soaking the wood and spilling onto the floor.
One down, two to go, she thinks, trying to steady herself, to still the trembling in her hands. Her palms are sweating, and her stomach feels like it's made of lead.
Joshua is sobbing and hyperventilating now, his body writhing in clear agony.
V gives his hand a reassuring squeeze, then circles around his head to his other arm, placing the nail over his left wrist and raising the hammer.
She feels Joshua’s entire body tense as he readies himself for the blow, and she fights the urge to just drop the hammer right there and leave, tell these corpo fucks to all to go fuck themselves and finish their own dirty work.
But she can’t do that to Joshua now - she has to finish what she’s started.
So she brings the hammer down with as much force as she can muster.
The yell Joshua lets out this time is more animal than human, and it sends chills right to her core. Every instinct, every bone in her body is telling her to run, but she forces herself to stay where she’s standing as she waits for the next set of words to appear on her HUD.
But it’s Joshua who speaks now, his voice ringing out with surprising clarity despite his clear anguish.
“‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,’” he recites.
V clenches her jaw at this. She knows that’s the line, but she hates the implication that she’s been cast as the villain here, the one who’s killing the proverbial Son of God, the one who doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing.
But it's true, isn't it? she thinks as she stands there, hammer in hand. She's a mercenary, a gun for hire who was asked less than 24 hours ago to kill this man, and she accepted the job and now here she fucking is.
She looks up at Johnny, and he’s still standing at the head of the cross, gazing down at Joshua with a look on his face that she’s never fuckin’ seen before.
She takes another deep breath and winds up her arm, bringing the hammer down again on the nail in Joshua’s wrist.
He doesn’t scream this time, he just gasps and writhes as the nail sinks in. But on the third hit, he lets out another loud, strangled yell, and when V allows herself to look at his face, his eyes are wild and there are tears streaking down his cheeks, pooling in his ears.
He lifts his head to meet her eyes, and it occurs to V too late that not only has she been cast as the villain, but she's been given a starring role in this BD. That everyone who scrolls this is gonna feel her chrome and flesh hands delivering Joshua's final agony, hear her voice as they experience first-hand all the pain and fear that Joshua’s feeling right now.
Screamsheets are gonna have a field day with this one, she thinks darkly. She feels a flicker of shame about what this will mean for Kerry. She wonders what he’ll have to say about all of it, about his controversial new output playin’ executioner in a high budget snuff BD for the whole world to see. At least her face will be blurred by her blocking tech, she thinks, but it's a cold comfort.
But there’s no time to dwell on that, now. She's here, and she's doing this, and she has to finish.
Joshua’s knees are drawn up towards his chest as he curls in on himself in agony, but he stretches them back out as V moves to stand by his ankles. He places his feet in position, right foot stacked on top of the left, and holds them there while she lines up her final nail at the top of his foot.
A new set of lines flickers up onto her HUD, and she reads them as she swings the hammer down again.
“‘We are punished justly, for we receive what our deeds deserve,’” she reads, struggling to keep her voice from breaking. “‘But this man has done no wrong.’"
Joshua lets out another inhuman howl as she brings the hammer down again, driving the nail with a sickening crunch through his right foot, then his left, and finally feeling it hit the wood beneath them.
“‘Remember me when you come into your kingdom,’” she finishes, and Joshua lets out another scream and arches his back, then groans and slumps back against the cross, his breaths now quickening into shallow, wheezing pants.
He’s losing blood quickly, V notes with a mix of horror and relief as she watches the blood pour from his body and onto the floor.
V raises her head and looks over her shoulder at Rachel and the rest of the crew gathered at the foot of the cross. They’re all watching her with wide eyes, the horror and disbelief clear on all of their faces.
Signing on for something like this is one thing, seeing it is another, apparently. V can't say she has much sympathy for them.
There’s a pedestal with a button on it a few feet away, and one of the PAs catches V's eye and points at it. V notices a cable snaking away from it back towards the cross, and she figures it's the hydraulics to raise the damn thing.
She nods at the PA and walks slowly towards it, turning back to face Joshua when she gets there. His eyes are closed now and his lips look pale, though it’s hard to tell in the dim red lights. But he’s still breathing his shaky, pained breaths, and V glances back at the production crew one final time before reaching out her hand to hover her finger over the button.
She hesitates for a moment, looking at Joshua writhing in agony on the cross.
Fuck, she thinks, then presses the button with her whole palm.
She hears a low, mechanical whirring as the cross slowly begins to rise. She can see Joshua’s chest heaving as the enormous cross rights itself, and he opens his eyes and speaks as it lifts him to his final position.
“‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise,’” he chokes.
Johnny glitches to stand in front of the cross, his hands clasped in front of him as he gazes up at Joshua. V’s own emotions are too much of a mess right now to really pick up on what exactly he’s feeling, but she knows he sees himself in that man dying on the cross right now. Johnny wanted to be a martyr, and he got his fucking wish. Most people who die for their ideals don’t get a chance to pop back in half a century later to reflect on that choice, she realizes. Most people who go out in a blaze of glory never have that opportunity to consider, after the fact, whether it was worth it or not.
She watches both men, ignoring her churning stomach as Joshua bleeds out on the cross, his breaths slowing and his body slumping heavily against the nails holding him in place.
The rest of the crew watches in silence as well - the only sounds in the room are Joshua’s short, shallow breaths.
“‘Father… Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit,’” Joshua gasps, and then he lets out one final, long rattling sound as his head slumps forward and he loses consciousness.
V swallows back the bile that rises in her throat as she stares up at him. After another minute that stretches out for an eternity, a low beeping sounds from somewhere, and everyone seems to let out a collective breath at once. But Johnny doesn’t move from his place at the foot of the cross, his hands still clasped in front of him, his head still bowed.
“Amen,” Rachel says softly behind her, and there’s a note of awe in her voice.
V lets out a long, shaky sigh and turns away from Joshua finally. Rachel is leaning heavily against the wall, reaching with shaky fingers for a cigarette that she places between her lips. It takes her three tries to get it lit, and V steps towards her. Around them, the crew begins to move, as though waking from a dream. Someone stops the music, but luckily the crew seems to have enough sense not to turn on the house lights and immediately cheapen the moment.
“Probably my hardest gig, that,” Rachel says softly as V comes to stand by her. “But… I got through it.”
“What now?” V asks, glancing back at Joshua’s body. The crew is already moving to lower the cross and remove Joshua, and Johnny glitches away, finally.
“Going home,” Rachel replies. “Where I’ll sleep for two days straight.”
V nods in agreement.
“I’ll be in touch about your compensation soon,” Rachel adds, giving V a look.
“Okay,” V says. “Be waitin’.”
“Yep,” says Rachel heavily. “Later.”
V gives her a curt nod and walks as quickly as she can towards the exit, pushing open the door and stepping out into the crisp, damp dawn. And that’s when she finally loses her composure, doubling over against the wall of the studio, her body wracked by huge, choking sobs. She knows the security guard is watchin’ her strangely, but she doesn’t give a fuck right now.
She hears Johnny glitch in, feels his hand on her arm, and she doesn’t speak as he winds his arms around her and stands there holding her as she shivers uncontrollably in the cold morning.
“Let’s delta,” he whispers in her ear, and she nods and walks slowly back towards the crowd that’s still gathered at the end of the street, shouting and waving their signs.
It’s too late, she wants to tell them.
Vasquez waves her back through the security gate, and V pulls up her holo and calls herself another Del. She wraps her arms around herself as she waits, and thankfully it’s only a few short minutes until the car rolls up and she gratefully slumps into the plush backseat, resting her head against the window.
“You nailed him to the cross with your left hand,” Johnny says in a dark voice, glitching in to sit beside her as they ride through Japantown towards the bridge to Watson.
"What?" V mutters. "Who cares?"
But she sits up straight when she realizes suddenly what he means. And he's right - she’d held the nails in her right hand and used the hammer with her left. She stares down at her hands, the implications of that hitting her all at once.
“You’re left-handed,” she breathes, and Johnny nods.
“Been noticin’ for a couple days now,” he continues. “You've started doin’ shit with your left hand more and more.”
“God fucking dammit,” V chokes, putting her face in her hands.
Johnny is silent for another moment, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. And V just can't shake the image of Joshua nailed to the cross, breathing his final breath. It's seared onto the insides of her eyeballs, even when she closes her eyes and rests her head against the window again.
“That’s the fucked up thing about Christianity,” Johnny mutters. “When you go and base an entire religion around the imagery of a public execution, it’s not hard to see how embracing that religion would seem appealing to someone about to be slain at the hands of the state in the name of justice.”
"Think we did the right thing, helpin’ him go along with it?”
“The choice was already made,” Johnny reminds her. “Better it was you than one of those corpo fucks.”
“How the fuck am I gonna explain this all to Kerry?” V asks him, finally giving voice to the dark thought that struck her mid-execution. “Bet his PR team is gonna have a collective aneurysm when they get wind of it. Been givin’ Ker enough to deal with as it is.”
Johnny shakes his head. “That’s their problem,” he tells her. “Kerry’ll understand.”
V hopes he’s right. She watches the city slowly come to life as they glide across the bridge, the dawn beginning to break into day.
The Delamain pulls to a stop outside her building, and V climbs out of the car and staggers into the lobby. The sky is brighter now, but the air is still just as cold, and V shivers as she crosses the sterile lobby and places her palm on the biometric lock in the elevator.
She leans heavily against the wall as the elevator rockets her upwards, and stumbles inside when the doors finally slide open to her massive fuckin’ penthouse. She kicks off her boots and throws down her guns and knives, already headed for the stairs.
“Hey, V? You all right?” Johnny asks her in a worried voice as she heaves herself up the stairs, stripping off her clothes and hurling herself onto the bed. “Wanna talk?”
She shakes her head at him mutely and rolls over to stare blankly out the window. The sun is startin’ to get too bright now, and she silently commands her HUD to roll down the blackout shades that line the windows, plunging them back into a dim stillness.
“V, how you feelin'?” Johnny asks again, glitching in to lie beside her.
“Tired,” V says simply, and it’s only half true. She’s exhausted, beat down to her bones, and she rolls over to lie sprawled on her back beside Johnny, feeling her adrenaline starting to crash from the fucking intensity of the last 48 hours. She doesn’t even feel like she could sleep right now - she can’t seem to unwind, and her whole body feels tense and keyed up.
She thinks about calling Kerry, asking him to come over so she won’t have to be alone, but part of her wants to be alone, needs to be alone right now.
After tossing and turning for another half hour, she sighs and slides her organic hand down between her legs, hoping to at least find some relief that way. It feels like it’s been forever since she’s actually bothered to touch herself - with Johnny here 24/7, there hasn’t really seemed like much need. But it’s not really doing the trick now, either - she can’t get into the right headspace, can’t shake the image of Joshua bleedin’ out on that fucking cross.
But to her surprise, she feels Johnny unfurling his mind inside of her, feels her right hand go numb as he slips in and wrests control of it, continuing to stroke her with her now estranged fingers.
She gasps and tries to sit up.
“Johnny, what are you-” she chokes.
She feels him glitch in behind her then, his metal arm wrapping around her waist, his hand sliding up to fondle her breast as he continues to manipulate her hand, softly rubbing her clit in a slow, almost lazy way that makes her heart pound and her head spin.
“Can I?” he croons in her ear.
She swallows and lies back against his chest, fighting down the fear that’s bubbling up inside her at the fact that he can so effortlessly take control of her limbs now.
“I…” she gasps.
“It’ll help us both relax,” he murmurs. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
But he’s still moving her hand to stroke her now in exactly the way she does it herself, only somehow better, and the sensation is heightened by the fact that she’s not the one in control. It’s so much more intense than when his engram touches her, because her hand is real, and she can’t help but moan softly as he flicks her clit gently with his - with her thumb. He pauses for a beat, still waiting for her permission.
“Fuck,” she chokes. “Don't… don’t stop.”
Johnny lets out a low hum of satisfaction as he resumes his pace with her hand and continues to rub her swollen clit, alternating between circling it lightly with her fingers and pressing down hard, pausing occasionally to roll it between her thumb and forefinger. He’s so fucking good at it, it’s almost infuriating - she rolls her hips helplessly, clutching at her sheets with her free hand.
“Atta girl,” he says approvingly as she grinds against her own hijacked hand, already a writhing mess. And thankfully, he’s succeeding in pushing all thoughts of the horrific scene they witnessed earlier from her mind as she loses herself in the sensation of it.
He pinches her nipple with his metal fingers, and she feels her whole body arch against him as she comes hard on her fingers, her pulse hot and pounding between her legs as his mind crumples into hers, her whole body convulsing as the unexpected orgasm hits her.
Johnny groans loudly and vanishes, and she realizes with sudden panic that she’s not in control of her body at all anymore - it’s just him now, and she’s sinking, drowning in her own mind as the last waves of pleasure wrack her body and the pain blooms in her head. And then everything vanishes as her vision glitches and goes white, and her mind tumbles down into some horrible, unknown abyss.
When she comes to, she’s unable to tell exactly how much time has passed. She’s sprawled on the floor in the doorway to her bathroom, and she can hear water running.
She feels Johnny glitch in next to her, crouching over her, his hands fumbling at her in a desperate panic.
“V,” he’s saying. “V, come back, c’mon, please, V...”
She’s never heard him sound this afraid before.
“Johnny…” she manages, her voice a raspy croak.
“Fuck, V… I didn’t think… fuck…” he mutters, his voice thick with relief, pulling her backwards into his arms and stroking her hair. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”
Her vision is still glitching and blurred, so she doesn’t respond and just wraps her arms around his, blinking back tears as she lets him hold her, rocking her back and forth on the bathroom floor as the shower runs uselessly behind them.
“I forgive you,” she whispers, her voice hoarse, and they both know she’s talkin’ about more than what just happened.
“Don’t,” he murmurs into her hair.
She shakes her head. “Joshua was right,” she says. “What he was sayin’ about forgiveness, ‘bout seein’ yourself in another soul, all that crap.”
Johnny chuckles softly. “Sayin’ you see yourself in me, after all?” he jokes, but his tone is gentle, and she smiles in spite of herself. But she's thinking about the other part, the part where Joshua told them that’s what he believes love is.
“Guess I am,” she tells Johnny, and he tightens his arms around her.
“I remember how I felt, the night I raided ‘Saka Tower in ‘23,” he says to her, then. “Know you remember, too. Prolly felt somethin’ like how Joshua was feelin’ today. Like all my sins were somehow gonna be washed clean with the righteousness of my cause.” His voice is thick with bitterness as he says the last part, and V closes her eyes.
“What the fuck am I gonna do without you, Johnny?” she chokes, clutching his arms more tightly.
“Well, you're gonna have to touch yourself without my help," he teases, and she barks a hoarse laugh in response. She feels him shake his head, and he strokes her hair as he continues in a softer voice. "You’re gonna live in this fancy fuckin’ penthouse, you’re gonna keep hangin’ with Kerry, gonna become a fixer like Rogue,” he tells her. “You’re gonna be a Night City legend like you always fuckin’ wanted,” he murmurs. “Major leagues, babe.”
“Just gotta lose all my best chooms to get there,” she says quietly.
“Nah,” he says. “Won’t really be gone. I’m part of ya now, like mold on fruit, remember? And you’ll still hear my voice on the radio, on your record player.”
V can’t believe she hasn’t even considered that angle until now - how fuckin’ painful it'll be to hear Samurai on the radio, to hear Johnny’s voice singing and screaming, to remember how he felt recording those songs. Will she even remember those moments anymore? Or will his memories be gone from her too, like so many forgotten dreams?
She feels a sob wrack her body, and as her chest heaves, she realizes that Johnny’s cryin’ silently now, too.
“We’re so fucked,” she mumbles. She feels his beard brush her hair as he nods.
“Yeah,” he says in a choked voice. “We really are.”
Notes:
The next two chapters are a bit less heavy, I promise!!! But then we're plunging into the endings so yeah lol
Chapter 44: Iron Pump
Summary:
Johnny and V do a job for Rogue, then V faces off against Razor Hughes in the final boxing match of the season.
Notes:
This is a long one! But aren't they all now lmao
Also did I say this chapter would be less heavy? Cause, well
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It’s not quite a dream that Johnny’s had before. It starts the way many of his dreams do - sitting in that chair with the Soulkiller wreath on his head like a crown of fuckin’ thorns, facing down the woman whose husband he killed in that goddamn tower. But this time, it’s not the ‘Saka woman - it’s V looking down at Johnny, her face a cold, hardened mask of anger, of judgment. And he’s not on a chair this time, either. Maybe the dream shifted or maybe he was here all along, but he’s on that fuckin’ cross like Joshua, his wrists and ankles pourin’ blood, stage lights shining in his face, a crowd of people gathered to watch him die. And V’s the one hammering the nails, sayin’ all that biblical shit like she did in the braindance.
“Are you not the messiah?” she asks him then, echoing the very words he said as Joshua lay in a similar state, awaiting his fate. “Save yourself... and save us,” she whispers, lowering her voice so only he can hear. She sounds different now, scared and pleading, her eyes searching his as he feels the blood drain from his body, feels himself dying for what feels like the final time. The flashes of cameras go off, and he tries to speak but nothing comes out, and then V steps off the stage and into the crowd and he can’t see her anymore, can’t see anything past the blinding lights, can’t hear anything but the roar of the crowd.
And then V opens her eyes, sweating and gasping and thrashing in her bed, causing Nibbles to yowl and dart away from where he was curled up next to her head.
She reaches a shaky hand for her bedside table, fumbling for a cigarette and lighting it between her lips, pushing the sweat-soaked hair from her forehead as she lies back against the pillows and inhales deeply.
Johnny gives her a moment to herself before he glitches in next to her, propped up on his side with his elbow on the pillow, studying her face. She glances at him and gives him a sad, slow smile, taking another deep drag of her cigarette and blowing the smoke out slowly.
She never used to smoke like this, he thinks. Just another one of his bad habits that’s rubbed off on her.
Johnny finds himself thinking suddenly about what happened to Evelyn, the horrible fuckin’ place they rescued her from. He remembers the snuff BD they used to trace her, how it had stuck with V for days, haunted both of their nightmares. What she did to Joshua is the same shit, he thinks. Just dressed up in fancier clothes.
And he remembers Woodman, how V executed him at Judy's request for sellin' Evelyn to those XBD scrollers. He thinks about how she slit his throat, watched him bleed out and die. Good old fashioned Night City justice, he’d thought at the time.
He deserved it, Johnny thinks. But where does that leave V? Where does that leave Joshua? Where does that leave Johnny?
He feels V’s stomach twist, knows she’s thinkin’ more or less the same thing. The line between their thoughts, between their emotional reactions to things, is gettin’ so blurred these days. And after that malfunction she had last night…
He knows they’re almost out of time. Their meeting with Hanako is only two days away, and he’s seen enough shit to know that whatever chain of events that meeting sets into motion, there’ll be no coming back from it, for better or for worse. Johnny’s scared as shit of what’s gonna happen - he still doesn’t trust that porcelain bitch as far as he could throw ‘er, and he fucking hates that she’s their last real lifeline here. But if the ‘Saka princess can’t help V, then he doesn’t know what the fuck else he’s gonna do. Short of bum-rushing the front door of Arasaka Tower, guns in hand, Ballad of Buck Ravers style, he’s all outta ideas.
He can’t watch V die, can’t watch her slowly disappear, can’t watch her fade away until he’s the only one left standing, wearin’ her fuckin’ skin like a re-animated corpse. He can’t.
“I should hit up Kerry,” she says, snapping him from his dark thoughts. “Try an’ get ahead of all this shit ‘fore he sees it on the screamsheets.”
Johnny nods, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling of the penthouse. She’s right, she should call Kerry, and not just to talk about the BD. Might be their last chance to see him before shit starts really hittin’ the fan. The thought makes his chest feel tight. He’s already said goodbye to Kerry once before, but he knows if somethin’ happens to V, his friend’s gonna take it hard.
“I don't usually give advice,” he tells her gruffly. “But... fuck it, here goes. Don't make the same mistake I made,” he continues. “If you got anything you need to say to anyone, now’s your chance. You know what I mean, right?”
V gives him a long look. “Yeah,” she says softly.
She shoots Kerry a quick text, and he sends her back a series of rapid-fire responses almost immediately, including a snippet of a song lyric he’s workin’ on that he tells her was inspired by her. Johnny snorts. It is cringe, but that’s always been Kerry. The texts are still comin’ in, one after another, flashin’ on V’s holo as she lights her next smoke and reads them as they appear.
Johnny rolls his eyes, but V’s smiling as she quickly types her replies. They text back and forth for a bit, and Johnny lights his own cigarette and pushes back his hair with his metal hand and tries his best to keep his fuckin’ thoughts to himself. Shuttin’ down Kerry’s creative ideas was his bread and butter back in the day, but V’s bein’ way more gentle with his old bandmate. Prolly good that Kerry has her now, he thinks darkly.
V invites Ker over for breakfast, even though it’s already early afternoon, and he’s there in less than an hour, takeout in hand. He brought waffles from Tom’s with every kinda topping they serve, but V only manages to choke down a few bites before she has to run to the bathroom and hurl it back up into her fancy fuckin’ toilet. Johnny can feel V’s fear spike when she sees how much blood there is, but she gets to her feet and goes back out to rejoin Kerry, arranging her face back into her best attempt at a cheerful, collected calmness.
Kerry sees right through it, of course.
“You alright, V?” he asks her worriedly, setting aside his own plate and putting a hand on her shoulder as she slides back onto her stool at the kitchen table.
“Yeah,” she lies. “Just... had a long night.”
“Job got messy?” he guesses, casually pulling a little flask from his jacket and tilting it into both of their coffees.
V takes the flask out of his hand and drinks straight from it, then hands it back to him with a dark laugh. “Could say that,” she tells him.
By the time she’s done filling him in on how it all went down, all the blood has drained from Kerry’s face.
“Did you sign any releases, any paperwork?” he asks her, his waffles completely forgotten as he paces agitatedly back and forth in her kitchen.
V blinks at him, then shakes her head. Clearly the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. Or Johnny’s, for that matter.
“Figured Rachel would send that over with the payment,” V tells him weakly.
“Fuck, V, they make you kill a guy for a virtu and didn't even have you sign a goddamn waiver? Who the fuck are these assholes?”
V shrugs helplessly. “I dunno how any of this shit works, Ker. I’m new to showbiz.”
Johnny wonders if he should’ve thought of this. In his defense, he’s never been featured in a studio-made braindance before - any time he’s been scrolled, it was for, well, more personal uses.
Kerry sighs heavily and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Look,” he says. “Whatever this chick sends you, show it to me before you sign anything,” he instructs her. “Make sure to really read their usage and distribution rights, how they can use your likeness in promotional materials, whether or not you get royalties, all that crap.”
“And whether and how much they can edit it,” V says quietly, staring down at her barely-eaten food. Johnny suddenly remembers all too well what Rachel said to ‘em in PieZ, ‘bout how almost anything can be simmed in a virtu these days. He can feel the nausea rising in V’s stomach again, the headache blossoming behind her eyes.
“Definitely that, too,” Kerry agrees. He sighs again, still pacing around the kitchen. He stops suddenly and turns to her. “Think that was his plan all along? From the second he realized you were a merc hired to zero him? That why he needed you?”
Johnny feels V’s eyebrows knit together. “You mean he decided from the start that he wanted me to be the one to crucify him?”
Kerry nods. “Probably wanted to send some kinda ironic message. A paid killer nailing a repentant killer to a cross.”
Johnny considers this. Kerry might be right, he realizes. The way Joshua zeroed in on V so quickly, the way he seemed almost tickled by the fact that she’d been hired to take him out. His plan all along, from the second he asked her to join them, may very well have been for her to do exactly that, on his terms.
And so she did.
V frowns as Johnny feels her mind connect these same dots. It does add an interesting layer to whatever message Joshua’s tryin’ to send, that’s for sure. Joshua knew what he was doing, and part of Johnny can’t help but respect him for making the absolute most he could out of his death sentence.
But V’s headache’s blooming into a sharp migraine by this point, and Johnny wonders with trepidation if she’s about to have another bad malfunction.
“Shit,” Kerry says suddenly. “Got a meeting with the label in a bit. You gonna be okay?”
V nods. “I’m gonna head to the Afterlife,” she tells him. “Told Claire I’d stop by later, and I think Rogue wanted to see me, too.”
“If you’re goin’ now, I’ll give ya a ride,” Kerry offers, and V nods again.
Kerry waits downstairs while V quickly showers and gets dressed, coughing up more blood while she’s washin’ her hair. They ride the elevator down together in silence and get in Kerry’s stupid gold car, and he puts on an old rock station as they drive the short distance to the club.
“I’m fighting Razor Hughes tonight at the GIM in Pacifica,” she tells him as they drive.
“No shit?!” Kerry says as they pull into the parking lot of the club.
V nods. “It’s the final match-up of the season. Dunno much about him, though.”
Kerry chuckles in response. “Not gonna pretend to know anything about boxing,” he tells her. “You want me to come cheer ya on?”
But V shakes her head. “You don’t have to,” she tells him. “Don’t gotta turn it into another media frenzy.”
“Never a dull moment with you,” he teases, stopping the car and pulling her in for a quick kiss before V gets out. After leaning in to kiss him again through the window, she turns and walks quickly down the dingy, neon-green lit stairs.
“How’d it go last night?” Claire asks as V slides into a stool at the bar opposite her.
V rests her elbows on the counter. “You don’t even wanna know,” she says in a dark voice.
Claire snorts. “Actually, I very much do. Saw some weird shit in the screamsheets this morning.”
“Oh god,” V groans. “Already?”
The bartender nods her head. “Guess one of the PAs talked to the press,” she tells her. “Really sounds like you outdid yourself with this one.”
“Lemme guess,” V says with a grimace. “‘Eurodyne's Gold-Digging Beard Takes Star Turn Crucifying Convicted Murderer in Shocking New Braindance.’ That about right?”
Claire’s already pouring her a large glass of tequila, neat. “More or less,” she says sympathetically.
But V’s saved from having to further explain herself when Rogue appears, coming to lean against the bar next to her.
“Glad you’re here, V,” she says. “Got a job for you. Real easy one with good pay.” She gestures with her head back towards her booth, her silver hair falling across her shoulders. “Come chat?”
V slides off her stool and follows the fixer, raising her glass apologetically at Claire.
“How’re things with Eurodyne?” Rogue asks as they take a seat. “Enjoyin’ your new digs?”
V makes a face as she finishes her drink, the tequila burning her throat as she swallows. Johnny glitches in to lean against the wall next to her, watchin’ her face as she does so. V’s got a real resting bitch face, he thinks, but it’s one that can light up instantly and suddenly animate when she gets excited about somethin’. He wonders if it looks the same when he’s in control of it. He suppresses the dark thought as she sets down her drink and turns back to Rogue.
“Things’re good with Kerry,” V tells her. “I mean, I think they are. It’s complicated with him,” she says.
“I can only imagine,” Rogue says, raising an eyebrow at V.
“The penthouse is pretty sweet though, can’t lie,” V adds. “But… it feels weird, like I’m playin’ house in someone else’s life.”
“You’ll grow into it,” Rogue assures her. “Was only a matter of time before you wound up in a place like that, Kerry just helped things along a bit.”
V laughs, but there’s confusion written on her face. “What?”
Rogue smiles. “Could tell from the second you first walked in here that you were one of those rare, once-in-a-decade solos we get who no one can shut up about,” she says. “Just had a feeling about you.”
“The fuck does that mean?” V asks, shaking her head but still laughing.
Rogue gives her a look. “You had this look in your eye that I don’t see too often anymore. Like you’d be willing to take on the whole city and everyone in it if they got in your way.” She considers V. “And yes, I’m talkin’ about the first time you were here, before you got Silverhand implanted in that thick skull of yours, so don’t try to put this all on him.”
“Hadn’t even realized you noticed me that night,” V admits.
“I notice everyone who comes through these doors,” Rogue tells her.
“Don’t try to pretend like Johnny didn’t play a part in this, though,” V presses.
Rogue shakes her head. “You remind me of myself,” she says simply. “Didn’t need Johnny for me to see that. Although, the two of you together in one head… I’m surprised you haven’t burned half the city down, yet.”
“There’s still time,” V jokes.
“Indeed,” says Rogue, cocking an eyebrow at V again.
“So what’s the job?” V asks, cutting to the chase.
“Got a client… well, actually, it’s just Nancy’s son who’s lookin’ to get back something that was stolen,” Rogue says. She must see the look on V’s face, because she chuckles softly. “Yeah, that Nancy, the one who punched keys in Samurai.”
Johnny can’t help but startle at this. Nancy’s got a fuckin’ kid? It shouldn’t surprise him, but it somehow does. First Kerry, then Denny’s talkin’ about havin’ a family, now Nancy, too. He has trouble wrappin’ his head around the fact that all his former bandmates have started fuckin’ families in the last fifty years. Not started, he corrects himself. Their kids are all likely adults by now - most, if not all of them, are probably older than Johnny himself at this point.
He’s not sure how any of that makes him feel. It’s hard to reconcile who they’ve all become with the young idiots he knew them as.
“His name is Dan,” Rogue is saying. “He has a gambling problem, managed to lose his car in a game of cards. To tell the truth, the ride’s no great loss or anything… this guy isn’t short on cars.” She chuckles again to herself as she says this. “What was valuable, however, was the one-of-a-kind bootleg Samurai recording stowed in the trunk.”
Johnny can see the interest on V’s face now. “What is it with fixers makin’ me round up old Samurai merch?” she says with a laugh.
“Says the merc wearin’ Silverhand’s dog tags around her neck with his name tattooed on her arm,” Rogue quips back, tapping her fingers on the table and smirking at V.
V flushes at this, and her hand unconsciously flies up to the tags. “What’s Nancy’s son like?” she asks, trying to steer the conversation back to the job at hand.
Rogue snorts. “He’s a fool,” she says simply. “There’s this old saying... ‘If it weren’t for fools, there would be no sages.’ The same is true for fixers.” She smiles again, but this time more to herself. “I remember when that snot-nosed boy used to call me ‘aunty,’” she muses.
Johnny again finds himself surprised at the revelation that not only did Nancy procreate, but apparently she’d stayed in touch with Rogue enough that his ex had played a seemingly significant role in her son’s life. He can’t help but wonder if, had he stuck around…
But there’s no point in thinkin’ about that shit now. He made his choices, he died, and now he’s a digital fuckin’ ghost in a dying merc’s head.
“Anyway,” Rogue says. “Buncha 6th Streeters got the car,” she tells V. “They’re keeping it in a parking structure on Crockett Street. I’ll snap you the coordinates. Gut tells me they haven’t pawned it off just yet, so if you go now, the recording’s probably still stashed somewhere around the place. And if you can swing it, grab the gonk’s wheels, too, for a nice little bonus.”
“Got it,” V says.
“And when you’re done, just give Dan a call and go meet him,” Rogue adds. “I’ll send you his info.”
V nods again, and Johnny takes one last long look at Rogue through her eyes as V stands to leave the booth. The thought strikes him that this may very well be the last time he ever sees her.
V seems to feel his unspoken thought, because she pauses suddenly and turns back to the fixer.
“Hey, Rogue?” she says, and Rogue looks up from her datapad. “Thanks,” she tells the fixer awkwardly.
“Mm,” says Rogue. “No need for that.”
“No, really,” V insists. “Thanks for takin’ a chance on me.”
Rogue lowers the datapad and meets her eyes, then. “I don’t take chances,” she says. “I make investments.”
V considers this. “Well… thanks anyway,” she says again. “For everything.”
“Right,” Rogue says. “Call me when the job’s done.”
And that’s V’s cue to leave. She doesn’t have her car or bike with her, since Kerry dropped her off, but Claire’s Beast is still parked out front, and Claire did insist it was hers now. So she crosses to it and opens the door, heaving herself up onto the seat and hitting the ignition. The heavy truck roars to life beneath her, and she drives it out of the parking lot and across the bridge to Westbrook and down to the edge of Rancho to the address Rogue gave her.
It’s a nondescript parking structure covered in 6th Street graffiti that sits on the outskirts of the city, where Santo Domingo begins to bleed into the foothills that surround the bay. V parks the Beast on the street and approaches the building, using her Kiroshis to disable the security cameras over the driveway that plunges downward into the garage.
There aren’t too many gangers inside, and all of ‘em seem to be playin’ cards in an office off to the side of the main parking floor. Dan’s car is easy to spot - it’s some flashy red bullshit parked near the entrance, and there’s a storage locker right next to it that Johnny would bet dollars to donuts has the recording in it. There’s only one gonk guarding it, and V knocks him out easily with a quickhack, then hacks the locker and sure enough, there’s the concert bootleg. She pockets it in her coat, then gets to work hotwiring the car before realizing that it’s a vintage model with an old school manual ignition, and the 6th Street gangers were gonk enough to leave the fuckin’ keys in the ignition. She manages not to even trip the alarm until she actually starts drivin’ it out of the garage, and she’s already out onto the street by the time the 6th Street lunkheads come running out to try in vain to stop her.
She accelerates past where she parked the Beast, and Johnny figures they’ll come back and grab it later - not like anyone’s gonna try to steal that thing given what a scrap of junk it looks like from the outside. She crosses the bridge back to Charter Hill, and once she’s sure she doesn’t have any kind of tail, she slows to the speed of traffic and calls Dan.
“I’ve got your bootlegs,” V says when he picks up. He has dyed red hair and is wearing idiotic sunglasses and a stupid fucking white blazer with neon green lapels and a clashing yellow shirt underneath. It’s hard to tell on the holo, but Johnny can barely see any resemblance to Nance.
“Huh?” Dan says, looking confused. “What bootlegs? What’re you talking about?”
“The Samurai concerts?” V prompts. “The ones you hired Rogue to find?”
“Ooooh yeah, totally,” he says. “Why didn’t you just say so? Shit, man, shimra. Get the wheels, too?”
“Drivin’ ‘em right now,” she tells him.
“Nova,” he drawls. “Meet me at, uh… you know that outdoor bar above the mall in Charter Hill? That one. I’m here now.”
“On my way,” V tells him, hanging up and gunning the car in that direction.
She parks the car in a loading zone outside the mall, then pauses for a moment and fishes the bootleg recording out of her pocket to look at it. It’s a shitty old audio scroll that probably wouldn’t even play on any equipment she owns, Johnny thinks to himself. There’s a date and location scratched on the front - San Francisco, September 2006 - and Johnny smiles when he sees it.
“I remember that gig,” he says fondly, glitching in to sit beside her. “Blew my vocal cords out so hard I couldn’t speak for a week.”
“Wow, that must’ve been fun to watch,” V says, still staring at the tape.
“What, the gig?”
“No,” V says, shooting him a smirk. “You not speaking for an entire week.”
Johnny scowls, but lets out a chuckle in spite of himself.
“Alright, let’s go find this idiot and give him back his shit,” he says, glitching away as V gets out of the car and heads up the steps to the fancy ass corpo bar, and Johnny wonders how the fuck Nancy managed to raise a son who hangs out at places like this in the middle of the fuckin’ day. The Nancy he knew wouldn’t be caught dead at a spot like this one.
It’s easy to spot Dan standing by the bar, smoking a cigarette in his garish outfit. He blinks blearily at V when she approaches, as though he’s already forgotten who she is and why she’s here.
“Come here often?” he slurs at her as she perches on a stool next to him.
“No, you gonk, I’m the merc who just klepped back your shit for you,” she says, frowning at him. “You skezzed right now?”
He scowls. “What, that not allowed?” He takes a long drag of his cigarette, openly checking V out. “You know how hard it is when your parent’s famous?” he complains, then shakes his head. “You don’t. Nobody does,” he pouts. “Maybe Yorinobu Arasaka.”
Johnny is sure V can feel his reaction to that. Comparin’ fuckin’ Nancy Hartley to Saburo Arasaka? Where the fuck does this kid get off?
V narrows her eyes at him. “You don’t get along with your mom?”
Dan laughs. “Heh… you know, I don’t even remember the last time I called her ‘mom’? Don’t even call her Bes Isis. Or mother. Or Nancy.” He puts on a TV announcer voice. “The incredible, one-and-only, Beeees Isis! Shit.”
V sighs heavily. “I played a show with your mom, you know,” she tells him.
“No shit?!” he says, then squints at her again, peering over his shades. “Oh damn, you’re V?” He laughs in disbelief. “Heard they got some street merc to fill in for Silverhand.”
“That would be me,” she says, reaching back into her coat and handing him the concert tape. “Car’s parked downstairs,” she tells him. “Keys’re in the ignition.”
“Whaaat?” Dan slurs. “For real? That’s fuckin’ far out, choom! I won’t forget this!” He grins at her dumbly.
V gives him a sharp nod, then hops off the stool and heads back down the stairs, already callin’ Rogue on her holo.
“A gig well done, V,” Rogue says when V tells her the job’s complete. “A satisfied client means a satisfied fixer. Hell, you should be satisfied, too. Contract’s closed and payment’s on its way.”
“That was laughably easy,” V says to Rogue, frowning at her image on the HUD. “Should I be offended?”
Rogue laughs. “Not at all,” she says. “Gave you the job ‘cause I wanted you to meet Dan,” she tells her.
“Why?” V asks, furrowing her brow as she walks towards the train.
“‘Cause he’s the type of client you’re gonna be settin’ up a lot of gigs for,” Rogue says simply, and Johnny can feel V react to this. He knows part of her isn’t allowing herself to actually believe this could be her future - that she could be a fixer like Rogue, be runnin’ shit.
But Johnny knows Rogue is right - she’ll be a natural at this. V’s got a way with people, that magical quality that makes everyone start spillin’ their darkest shit to her within minutes of meeting her, that strange energy that makes people open their doors and their wallets and their hearts and their lives to her. That same gift and curse that keeps tumbling her ass backwards into all kinds of crazy shit, for better and for worse.
Better that she’s the one running shit, then, callin’ shots on her own terms. If life’s determined to hand her a wild card every damn time, then it’s best if she’s the one holding all the cards.
The sun is setting by the time they park the Beast in the lot below V’s place, and she heads back upstairs to feed Nibbles and get ready for the fight. Kerry shoots her an apologetic text tellin' her he's gonna be late in the studio and won't make it to the match, but he'll come over later if she wants to celebrate her win or to console her if she doesn't. Johnny can feel that part of V is relieved at this - she meant what she said earlier about not wantin' to turn this into another media frenzy. She's had enough of those, lately, Johnny thinks, and she's not someone who particularly enjoys that kinda public scrutiny.
There’s still a couple of tamales left in the fridge, so she heats one up and eats it, pouring herself a tequila and NiCola to drink with it.
She’s only eaten half of it when her vision starts glitching again, and she leans forward and rests her head on her arms, taking deep shaky breaths until her head clears.
“You sure you wanna do this?” Johnny says, glitching in to pace nervously behind her. He's trying hard not to notice how thin she's gotten - she's barely been able to keep any food down lately.
“Fight Razor tonight, y’mean?” V chokes.
“You’re not in good shape,” Johnny points out.
“I’m fine,” she says through gritted teeth, and Johnny doesn’t have to be sharin’ a brain with her to know she’s lying - he can feel the throbbing in her temples, the nausea twistin’ in her gut. For all he knows, she’ll take one in the head from Razor and have a fuckin’ seizure in the middle of the fuckin' ring. That'll make for a great headline to follow up her braindance stint, he thinks darkly.
“Really tryna get knocked in the head right before you ask Hanako to have her scientists go muckin’ around in your skull?” he grumbles, coming to stand beside her, resting his elbow on the counter.
“I’m doin’ the fight, Johnny,” V says in a tired voice, pushing away her food and getting to her feet. “Been trainin’ all year for it.” She pauses for a second, as though she was gonna say something else.
“What?” Johnny prompts, and V sighs heavily.
“It’s just… Jackie woulda wanted me to,” she says finally. “All this fightin’ stuff, it was his idea. He was the one who wanted me to start trainin’ with Coach Fred, entered me in my first couple match-ups. We used to practice with each other, too.”
Johnny remembers all that. He knows V’s gonna be stubborn - she always is when it comes to shit involvin’ Jackie. He’s not winning this one and he knows it. He shakes his head at her slowly and glitches away, leavin’ her to her preparations. She does a bunch of push-ups and some stretches to warm up, then pours herself another glass of tequila as the remains of the day vanish over the horizon, plunging the city into its nightly neon splendor. It’s dark out by the time she heads downstairs and fires up Jackie’s Arch, riding out onto the bridge and into the night.
The air feels strangely heavy and silent as V parks her bike in the big lot outside the Grand Imperial Mall and follows the raised pathways around to the seaward-facing entrance on the far side. It’s a dark, cool night - there’s no moon, and the only sounds Johnny can hear are the surf intercut with a distant stereo playing from somewhere. As she approaches the GIM, they can hear the low thump of bass from music playing inside, and as V rounds the corner to the plaza in front of the entrance, Johnny sees a group of people gathered outside, drinking beers and smoking cigarettes and talking excitedly.
A woman with short dreads tosses down her cigarette when she sees V, and gestures at her, speaking quickly in the Voodoo Boys’ creole that V’s translator interprets for them.
“They are waiting for you inside,” she says, gesturing at the wide glass doors to the reclaimed mall. She grins broadly at V, and V nods and pushes open the door, stepping into the large, darkened atrium. Empty storefronts line the walls, and Johnny feels V shudder at the memory of creeping through this place months ago when it was infested by the Animals that NetWatch hired.
Mostly, Johnny remembers the NetWatch gonk and the Voodoo Boys' spike that almost flatlined her, remembers how helpless he felt seein’ V writhe on the floor like that.
And he remembers what he said to her, then, too - about Placide takin’ her for pathetic gutter trash, someone who no one would come lookin’ for.
He hopes she knows that that’s not true anymore. They both saw all the people who came to her party, all the people that love her, all the people who wanna see her come out on top. Whole city would be lookin’ for her now if somethin’ like that happened again, he thinks.
V follows the sound of the pounding bass, crossing between the escalators and underneath a walkway through a short passage into another large open room where a make-shift boxing ring has been set up, flanked by brilliant lights and a decently sized crowd. Johnny recognizes many of the other fighters that she’s sparred with from around the city - there’s Rhino, Ozob, those weird twins, that Valentino gonk who bet his car on his own fight. Many of them approach V to greet her and give her high fives, and she smiles at all of them graciously, accepting their well-wishes and playful teasing.
And there in front of the elevated ring waiting for her is Coach Fred, leaning against it with his arms crossed. His face breaks into a wide smile when he sees her, and as he waves her over, Johnny feels a pang of guilt from V that she hasn’t stopped by to see him since she moved out of her old megabuilding. Fred was a friend to V when she didn’t have many others, Johnny realizes, remembering their long days of training sessions before her life got derailed by his own unsolicited entry into her brain.
“Aha! The star of the hour!” he proclaims, slapping V on the back. “Great to see you, V!”
“So, what now?” V asks, glancing around the large, loud room. Razor himself is easy to spot - he’s got a whole roped-off press booth set up in the corner with posters of himself up and everything, and is reclining on a large, leather chair surrounded by his huscle and entourage. He’s fuckin’ huge and borged to the teeth with just about every kind of body mod that money can buy. Johnny feels V grimace as she takes him in - he knew goin’ in that this fight wouldn’t be as easy as the other ones, but this guy seems like he might give her a real run for her money.
Fred throws back his head and laughs. “What now? Hah! The title match! You go up against Razor Hughes. Heard of him, haven’t you?”
V nods. Johnny only knows the little that Vik’s told V, but that’s enough to know that Razor’s been a big name in underground fighting circles for years now. He can see in V’s memories the nights she spent listening to Jackie and Vik discuss his wins, break down his technique, and he feels another sudden twisting in V’s chest at the fact that Jackie isn’t here to see this.
“Yeah,” V tells Fred. “He’s a pro boxer, right?”
Fred laughs. “He is the boxer! You had your head buried in the sand?” He shakes his head at V. “Never thought I’d see him here because, you know, he’s a star athlete with elite corpo sponsors.”
V frowns. “So, what, he got a shaving cream sponsor?” she jokes. “Why’s he doin’ this fight?”
“Very fuckin’ funny,” Fred says. “His agent tells us it’s a good PR move for him,” the coach tells her. “Razor returning to his roots and all that, prove he’s still a kid from the streets.”
V’s still eyein’ her opponent from across the room. “Do I even have a shot?”
Fred laughs nervously. “Hah, a good question,” he says. “You’re good, V, very good. But this guy… he’s a machine. Carbon fiber, titanium bones, hydraulic joints… all optimized by Night City’s best bioengineers.”
V’s got some pretty preem upgrades herself, but Johnny can feel her apprehension building. She swallows hard, looking past Fred at Razor as he laughs and tosses back a shot with his chooms.
Fred follows her eyes, his mouth forming into a hard grimace. “I dunno,” he says. “Maybe Viktor’ll have some tips or tricks…”
“Vik’s here?” V asks, glancing around the room. Johnny hadn’t clocked him when they walked in, but he sees the ripperdoc then, standing to the side of the ring with River and Misty. He can feel the warmth bloom in V’s throat at the fact that they’re here tonight, here for her.
“What, you think he’d miss an occasion like this?” Fred says with another laugh, but the smile bleeds off his face. “But listen, I’ll be honest… it don’t look too good for you. But uh… maybe that’s better, y’know?” He eyes V carefully, as though considering his next words. “If Razor’s winnin’ anyway… maybe you’re lookin’ to... earn a little somethin’ on it?”
Johnny sees where this is going, and V clearly does, too. “I’ll pass,” she says coldly.
“Hey, hey!” Fred says, looking offended. “You don’t even know what it is yet.”
“Yeah, I can guess,” V says, her voice still cold. “So again, I’ll pass. I fight to win. Period.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Fred persists. “More than you’d earn by winnin’.”
V shakes her head. “Everyone’s got a price,” she tells him. “You can’t afford mine.”
“Okay, okay, Jesus,” Fred says. “Be that way.” He uncrosses his arms and scowls at her.
V steps away from him and begins making her way towards Vik, but pauses in front of Razor’s roped off area. He looks up and meets her eyes, scowling when he sees her.
“I sign autographs after the fight,” he sneers as she steps through the ropes to stand over him.
“Me, I prefer to get drunk after a win,” V tells him with a smirk.
Razor’s face suddenly changes then, and he leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, sizin’ V up. “Wait, wait wait, hol’ up,” he says. “You’re V?” He gives her a quick once over, then snorts derisively.
V puts her hands on her hips and cocks an eyebrow at him, and he leans back in his chair and laughs.
“If you’re goin’ anywhere after the fight, it’s the ER,” he tells her, laughing. “To collect whatever’s left of ya.”
V plonks herself in the chair next to him, reaching for the bottle of scotch on the small table between them and taking a swig straight from the bottle. Johnny can’t help but admire her bravado - he knows she’s always had this brash streak, but he also can’t shake the feeling that havin’ him in her head’s brought it out more.
“What’s a heavyweight champ doin’ in the bush leagues?” she teases. “Money problems at home?”
Razor scowls again. “On the contrary,” he tells her. “I got so much, I dunno what to do with it. That’s my problem.” He shakes his head at her. “Ya see, I started in the mud an’ shit. Now, I climbed too high, an’ my fans can feel it. I gotta show ‘em I’m still a scrappy street kid at heart. And you?” he says, pointing sharply at her. “Well, you’re just the wrong place, wrong time,” he finishes with a smirk.
Johnny glitches in next to V then, leaning against the wall with one hand on his hip. “A scrappy street kid?” He snorts. “What, who sits on his ass on leather in the VIP area?” He shakes his head and looks down at V. “Not the most convincing underdog story I’ve heard.”
V turns back to Razor. “I ain’t your typical ring fodder,” she warns him.
“Don’t make me laugh,” Razor says, throwing back his head and doing just that. “One knock to the jaw and you’ll curl up in a tiny ball. My record in the ring’s a healthy forty-seven W’s, zero losses. With twenty by knockout.” He grins at V. “And you look like a twenty-first if ever I seen one.”
V scowls at him and takes another swig of his fancy ass scotch, then gets to her feet.
“See ya in the ring, buddy,” she says, exiting his little roped off section and continuing on towards Vik.
The ripperdoc’s face lights up when he spots her, and he immediately swoops her up into a tight bear hug.
“Thanks for coming,” V says when he releases her.
“Whaddaya mean?” he says warmly. “I came to see the fight of the year! Everybody on the street’s buzzin’ about it.”
“Saw you talkin’ to Razor,” River chimes in. “He seems like a tough customer.”
“Don’t know what’s bigger, his biceps or his ego,” V agrees dryly.
“And you’re surprised?” River says. “He’s a three-time heavyweight champ!”
Misty laughs nervously. “He looks pretty scary," she says.
"Fought tougher fuckers than him," V says, glancing back at Razor. Johnny figures she's thinkin' of Sandayu Oda in particular, Hanako's bodyguard she took down at the parade. But that was different - she can’t rely on her quickhacks here, can’t use her irons, it’s just her fists versus his.
But then she starts tellin' her friends a story about some big guy she beat up when she was still in school, and Johnny feels a cold twist in his gut when he realizes that the story she's tellin' didn't happen to her at all - it happened to him, back when he was a teenager in Texas, right before he joined the Marines. Some big stupid ganger from College Station with a ton of back alley cyberware had come at him on a bad day, and he'd fuckin' snapped and wailed on the guy until the gonk lost consciousness. Knocked a coupla his teeth out, too. Johnny used to brag about it a lot back in his army days, but it's not somethin' he's particularly proud of now.
But he lets V tell it, waiting for the cold shock of realization to finally hit her, and when it does, she stops short mid-sentence and then finishes weakly, quickly changing the subject.
Misty and River don't seem to notice, but Vik gives her a strange look.
“Don’t let me down, ya hear?” he says, punching her lightly on the arm.
V nods, swallowing hard, then turns and walks back over to Coach Fred.
“Alright, so ya ready to fight?” Fred asks, raising his voice and directing it towards Razor as well.
“Only one round!” the pro boxer shouts from his corner, holding up a thick, cyberware-laden finger.
“What?” V says, turning towards him.
“One round!” Razor says again, letting out a loud laugh. “All it’s gonna take for you to kiss my feet and beg for mercy.”
“Right...” Fred says, clearing his throat. “Shall we?”
“I’m ready,” V tells him, but Johnny can hear the nervousness in her voice.
“Good,” Fred says to her, then hops up onto the ring, raising his voice to the crowd. “Ladies and Gentlemen!” he shouts. “Night Citizens! It’s time for our heavyweight bout! Facing each other tonight, we have… Razor Hughes and V! Let’s hear it!”
He holds out an arm to V and hoists her onto the platform after him. “Go on, to your corners!” he shouts, clapping V on the back one more time before vaulting off the stage as she crosses to sit in the folding chair set up for her in the corner of the ring.
To Johnny's mild surprise, Vik clambers up onto the platform as well and comes to crouch in front of her, the little golden boxing glove pendant on his necklace glinting in the bright lights as it dangles from his neck.
“V, hey,” he says gently. “How’re your spirits before the fight?”
V eyes Razor from across the ring, at his hulking form hunched in the tiny chair.
“Honestly?” she admits. “I feel sick.”
Vik nods sympathetically, following V’s gaze to the heavyweight champion. “Yeah, he’s a tough matchup. But, y’know, no one’s unbeatable. Even him.”
“How do ya mean?” V asks.
Vik leans closer to her. “The guy’s a tank,” he tells her. “Seriously. Nanofiber RealSkinn, shock absorbers…” He shakes his head. “You could knock him on the head with a meat mallet and he wouldn’t even flinch.”
“‘Preciate the pep talk,” V says flatly.
“Hold on now, I’m not done,” Vik says, lowering his voice conspiratorially and leaning even closer. “He’s got a weakness. Had some abdominal muscles swapped out a week ago and they haven’t taken to him fully just yet.”
V’s eyes widen. “You violatin’ your patient confidentiality to help a choom out?” she teases.
Vik just smiles at her, his eyes crinkling underneath his dark glasses. “Maybe,” he says. “But trust me… you hit him there, it’s gonna hurt. A lot.”
“Thanks, Vik,” V says with a chuckle. “Keep it in mind.”
Vik gives her a wink, then stands and hops down off the platform.
“You two ready?” Coach Fred shouts. “At the gong!”
“Let’s get it!” Razor roars, getting to his feet and slamming his enormous fist into his palm.
“Let’s start this thing,” V agrees, rising to her feet as well and stepping towards Razor.
“May the best brawler win!” Fred yells as the gong sounds, and Razor’s already comin’ at her swinging.
V ducks his first couple punches, dancing around him and using her smaller size and speed to her advantage. She quickly manages to land a good one on his stomach, confirming Vik's intel when the fighter doubles over with a loud groan, gasping and clutching at his abdomen.
But he recovers quickly and comes at her again, this time clocking her hard on the jaw before she has time to shuffle out of the way. It sends her flying backwards, her vision glitching and her HUD flashing red warnings.
She scrambles to her feet, but Razor’s blow seems to be triggering a malfunction, just as Johnny feared. Her vision’s still distorted, and she just barely dodges Razor’s next swing in time. He can taste the fear in V’s mouth now, and a little bit of blood, too. She’s fast and sharp enough that her chrome fist connects with his head on her next attack, but to Johnny’s dismay, the huge boxer simply shakes it off and continues the relentless swinging of his big, meaty arms.
V dodges another one of his punches, but he follows it up with a surprisingly fast blow to her ribcage that knocks the wind straight outta her. She staggers backwards, barely managing to maintain her footing, but Razor takes advantage of her momentary instability to land another blow to the side of her head, and that’s when her vision crackles and goes white.
Johnny’s instincts take over, then, and to his horror, as V slips into unconsciousness, he suddenly and sharply feels her senses come online for him. As she tumbles backwards, landing heavily on her shoulder blades, he feels that familiar screaming rage overtake his mind, feels the red, seething anger set all his nerves on fire, and her ass has barely hit the ground before he’s leapin’ up to his feet again, gritting V’s teeth through the pain and charging Razor with a loud yell.
Razor is obviously startled by her apparent sudden recovery, and Johnny uses that to his advantage now, coming up with a sharp left hook. He’s used to favoring his left arm when he fights, both because he’s left-handed and because his own cybernetic arm was the one that packed the biggest punch, and luckily for him, V’s body is the same in that regard. So he smashes the fucker straight in the ribs, then follows it up with a knee to the gut, and then another sharp punch straight to the abdomen. Razor howls with pain and falls to his knees, doubling over to protect his torso, but Johnny doesn’t fucking stop, he can’t fucking stop - he’s wailin’ on the boxer’s head now, bringing the fucker’s face down to slam into V’s knee, again and again and again until Razor collapses onto his side, groaning.
Johnny stands over him, chest heaving, and spits blood on the ground by his face before wiping his mouth with the back of V’s hand. The crowd is goin’ fuckin’ wild, but his vision is crackling and he feels his control of V’s body start to slip. He turns and staggers to the center of the ring where he raises his arms to the cheering onlookers, then falls to his knees as V’s legs give out from under him. He can barely see past the blur of static everything’s becoming, and he doesn’t try to fight it when he feels his mind get pulled back down, feels his senses dull as V slowly wakes within him, feels the relief wash over him as her mind starts to come back online.
Her body spasms, and Johnny collapses to the floor.
When he comes to, it’s only seconds later, judging by the sounds of the crowd still goin’ apeshit. Razor’s still curled up on the floor a couple feet away, and Vik is crouched over V, his face a mask of panic and concern.
“V?” he’s sayin’. “V, what happened? You alright?”
V heaves a shaky breath and hoists herself into a sitting position. Her vision is still glitching badly, but to Johnny’s immense relief, she seems to be fully in control again, and he can feel her mind racing as she pieces together what the fuck just happened. But her whole body is trembling violently, and her vision keeps going white and blue dots are still streakin’ out from all the bright lights and camera flashes that batter them.
“Callin’ it now!” Fred is shouting from the sidelines. “The fight’s over!”
He leaps back onto the stage and pulls V to her feet, raising her arm above her head, grinning as the crowd continues to lose their shit. V smiles shakily, trying to stay steady on her feet.
“Victory and the prize belong to V!” Fred yells out. “Your champion!”
“You think this is how it ends?” Razor gasps from the floor. “Th-that I just let you outta my grip?”
“That’s how it goes,” V tells him coolly, managing to keep the quaver out of her voice.
Razor heaves himself onto his elbows. “This ain’t over ‘tween us,” he spits at her. “We’ll meet again. Tomorrow, next year…” He grimaces at her. “This definitely ain’t the last.”
Johnny’s pretty sure that no matter what happens, V’s fighting circuit days are over after this. But she just nods at him and lets Vik help her off the stage, steadying her as she finds her footing.
“Now that was some boxing!” River says admiringly, grinning at her.
“Had a good coach in my corner,” V says to him, glancing back at Vik.
“Hell of a fight, kid,” Vik says, but there’s more concern than pride in his voice.
"So, where we drinkin'?" V asks, eyes darting hopefully between her friends. Johnny’s not surprised that she wants a drink right now - he feels much the same. She’s still not even close to being okay, and he can feel the fear tightening her chest, the overwhelming urge to drown that with anything she can.
Misty smiles. "We'd love to, but we have to get back to River's," she tells V. "Joss is workin' a shift tonight, so we need to go let the babysitter off the hook."
V turns to Vik, looking at him pleadingly, but he shakes his head.
"I'm takin' you home," he insists. "That last punch rattled you good, you should get some rest."
He knows, Johnny thinks.
"C'mon, Vik, I won, we gotta celebrate," V protests, flashing him her most persuasive smile.
Vik lets out a heavy sigh and eyes V skeptically, seeming to weigh his options. Johnny figures he knows V well enough to know that if he says no, she's just gonna go drink alone somewhere.
"Alright," he relents. "We can have a drink at your place."
V nods at him, seeming to find this an acceptable compromise.
The four of them head for the exit, pushing their way through the crowd that swarms V to congratulate her. She signs a couple of boxing gloves, but Johnny can tell she's eager to get out of there.
“I lost, that’s what I’m tellin’ you!” Razor is shouting angrily into his phone as they pass him in his booth on the way out. “The fuck you mean, ‘backin’ out’? All of ‘em? You fuckin’ shittin’ me…”
V smirks to herself as she hears this, and Johnny can't help but feel a bit smug as well. Despite the circumstances, it felt more than a little good to knock that fucker down a peg.
The cool sea breeze seems to clear V’s head a bit, and she hugs River and Misty goodbye, then follows Vik to his pick-up truck which is conveniently parked only a couple cars over from her Arch. Without waitin' to be asked, Vik hoists her bike up onto the bed of his truck, fastening it down and dusting his hands together before crossing to open the passenger door for V as she shivers in the cold night air.
“Got something I've been meanin' to give ya,” Vik says suddenly, eyein’ the ratty old tank top she’s wearing. “Can’t start your career in the major leagues right by sportin’ some old rags,” he teases. “The wind blows a lot stronger up there on top of the world. Old timers like me hate to watch you kids catch cold.”
V laughs softly, but Vik’s already reachin’ into the small backseat of the cab and pulling out a well-worn but still stylish red leather jacket. He offers it to V, and she holds it up, examining it with shining eyes.
“Try it on,” Vik prompts. “Bet it’ll fit ya just right.”
“C’mon, Vik, feel like I owe ya a bajillion eddies already,” V protests. “No way I can accept another gift.”
“Another?” he teases. “Hope you don’t think those Kiroshis were charity.” He grins. “Anyway, where else would I find a home for these old things? Not Misty’s style, and my punk days are long behind me.”
V smiles at this and shrugs on the coat.
“Looks great on ya, kid,” Vik says, lookin’ her up and down and nodding with approval. “As they say, style is supreme.” He frowns. “Or maybe they don’t anymore, I dunno.”
“Thanks, Vik,” V says sincerely, climbing into the truck and waiting while Vik circles to get into the driver’s seat.
They drive back up through Pacifica, through City Center, and back across the bridge to Watson, where Vik parks his truck between Johnny’s Porsche and V’s old Galena.
V hops out while Vik unloads her bike off the back, then unlocks the elevator for them and they ride upstairs together. As soon as they’re inside, V beelines for the kitchen and pours them each a glass of tequila, giving her usual toast and downing her glass in one gulp. She then grabs the bottle and takes another long drink straight from it, raising it to Vik with a laugh.
Vik frowns at this, but follows her to the living area and settles onto the couch while V puts on an Us Cracks record and begins swaying to the music, still clutching the bottle in her hand and taking long swigs as she dances and sings along.
It’s not long before Johnny realizes V is getting really, really drunk. Faster than she normally would, even. He wonders if she has a concussion or something. Given how hard Razor clocked her, it’s not unlikely.
“Come by tomorrow,” Vik tells her from the sofa. “I’ll take a look at your head. Know you got that, uh… meeting in a couple days. Wanna see what we’re workin’ with, now, ‘fore you go talk to those vampires.”
V nods slowly. “Okay,” she says in a small voice.
Vik seems satisfied by this, and he finishes his drink and gets to his feet, taking a step towards the elevator. And that's when V suddenly puts the bottle down on the coffee table and reaches for him, standing on her tiptoes to grab the collar of his shirt and pull his head towards her, pressing her mouth to his.
Johnny's not sure who's more surprised - him, or Vik. But the ripperdoc seems to collect himself, and then he's kissin' her back like a dying man in a desert, like he's been wanting to do this for a long fucking time.
And just like that, Johnny's fuckin' furious. It's one thing for him to get butthurt when V's pullin' this shit with him in her head, but it's different now that… now that Kerry’s in the picture, he tells himself.
But even Johnny’s not that stupid. He knows this isn’t just about Ker. After all, Vik's been the only one of V’s friends who hasn't trusted anything she says about Johnny or Kerry. And maybe he's right not to, Johnny thinks darkly as he feels V's vision stutter around the edges again. She's gettin’ obviously worse, faster now, and it's rightly scarin’ the shit outta the old ripperdoc.
But V doesn’t stop there. Before Johnny’s mind can even catch up fully with what’s happening, she’s slidin’ one hand up Vik’s shirt and the other down his pants, and the older man groans, leaning down to bury his face in her neck. But then to Johnny's surprise and V's bewilderment, Vik pushes her away gently, shaking his head down at her.
“You should get some sleep,” he says to V.
“Stay with me,” V slurs, swaying slightly on her feet, but Vik shakes his head and presses a kiss to her forehead.
“Give Eurodyne a call,” he suggests, and that seems to snap V momentarily out of whatever the fuck it was that possessed her to launch herself at him like that. She frowns and steps away from Vik, tugging down her shirt in frustration.
Vik heaves a shaky sigh, running his hand through his hair.
“Sorry,” V mumbles, looking down.
“Hey,” Vik says softly, reaching for her arm and pulling her back into a hug. “I’m just worried about ya, kid. You haven’t been yourself lately.”
V wrests herself away and scowls. “You know why that is,” she says, her voice barely a whisper, and Vik just nods.
“I know,” Vik says sadly, pausing as he turns again to leave. “And, V… you should, uh… you should watch your drinking. Know you always went hard, but…” He falters, seeming unable to figure out the best way to approach this.
And predictably, V scowls again in response, shaking her head. “That’s the least of my fuckin’ worries,” she tells him in a cold voice, already escortin’ him back towards the elevator. He regards her coolly as the doors slide shut between them, and then he’s gone and V slumps heavily against the wall, her hand pressed to her forehead.
Johnny takes that as his cue to appear, pacing angrily by the door to the armory.
“The fuck was that, V?” he says, gesturing at her towards the door, his voice thick with barely contained rage.
“The fuck was what?” She turns on her heel and stomps back to the living room, picking the bottle back up from the coffee table and tilting its contents into her mouth.
“Throwin’ yourself at Vik like that,” Johnny sneers at her.
V sets the bottle back down. “I don’t fuckin’ know, Johnny,” she says, and her voice sounds so tired. “I was… was thinkin’ about what you said earlier,” she continues, turning back to face him. “‘Bout makin’ sure I’d said everything I needed to say to the people I care about.”
“Didn’t mean you should make out with fuckin’ Vik!” Johnny snarls, crossing over to get up in her face, so close their noses are almost touching.
“You’re one to talk,” V shoots back, meeting his furious gaze with a cold stare, but then her eyes drop to the ground again. “I don’t even know anymore,” she says defeatedly. “I’m bad at sayin’ shit with words. Sometimes it’s easier to just…”
“Open your legs for every fuckin’ gonk who acts even a little nice to ya?” Johnny growls, taking another step towards her. He’s going too far now, he knows it, but he doesn’t fucking care. “Like some codependent fucking joytoy?”
“Shut the fuck up,” V breathes, but she looks as though she’s been slapped - he can see the hurt and anger on her face, can feel it in her chest.
But right in that moment, all he can feel is rage. Part of him knows it’s not just ‘cause V made a move on Vik - his rage is at the hopelessness of their entire fucking situation, at himself, all of it. Or is it V’s anger he’s feeling now? Either way, he wants to fucking punch something. The impulse surges through and overwhelms him, and then V’s vision starts glitching and she suddenly turns and punches the TV behind her with her cybernetic hand, yelping loudly as she does so and causing the screen to splinter and crack beneath her fist.
They both freeze and look at each other, horrified. And that’s when he realizes - when they both realize - that he accidentally took control of her again, punched the damn TV himself.
“Fuck,” they say in unison, causing his panic to spike even higher.
Her vision is still glitching, and she leans forward and clutches her head.
“Johnny, you need to calm down, I think you gettin’ worked up is triggerin' the malfunction,” she tells him through gritted teeth.
He’s trying, he’s fucking trying, but he can’t. It’s like it was at the fight, except he feels himself slipping into her body even more easily this time, and that scares the shit out of him.
And he suddenly realizes that the deeper truth beneath his rage is that V’s been right all along - he hasn’t given up, he desperately wants to live, he wants to live so fucking badly it’s screaming from every part of him. But not like this, not in V’s skin, not at the cost of her existence. Because what would even be the point, then? He wants to be here for real, wants to be real, wants to be able to punch out any gonk who so much as looks at V, fuckin' Kerry included.
And the impossibility of that sends another wave of despair through his chest, and V doubles over, heavin’ up bile and blood and tequila onto the carpet.
He's drunk, too, he realizes. He forgets sometimes that when V gets trashed like this, he's along for the fuckin' ride. And neither of them are exactly a calm, reasonable drunk. And worse, he knows his anger is makin’ this shit escalate, makin’ the chip act up even more. Which, of course, just makes him even more upset, and she starts to shake violently, blood pouring from her nose and mouth as she tries to steady herself on the broken TV.
He glitches to her side, trying to grab at her arms but his body keeps dematerializing and he can’t quite grab ahold of her. When he tries to move, her body moves instead, when he tries to reach for her, she falls to her hands and knees, the feedback loop of their shared panic reaching a fever pitch.
“Johnny,” she chokes. He tries in vain to hold onto her as she fights to stay conscious.
There’s a terrifying moment of crackling static in his head where he can feel himself looking through her eyes again, can feel her fingers twitch under his control, and then he’s himself again, switching back and forth between the two as the chip vies for control of her brain.
Is it happening now? he thinks in a wild panic. Is this it?
He tries to calm himself, thinks about how it felt holdin’ her that first time on the roof of the Pistis Sophia, when he’d felt her trembling against him and how, for a moment, everything had felt safe and right. He focuses on that feeling, and slowly, her vision clears and he feels himself materialize above her again, feels himself solid against her, and he clutches her tightly to his chest, their hearts pounding in unison. Just one heart, he reminds himself.
She twists to look at him now with wide, terrified eyes. The rage is gone, and there’s just relief there now, and maybe something else. She reaches a quivering hand up and places it on the side of Johnny’s cheek, and he captures it with his own organic one. Her face is a mess, and there’s blood smeared all over her mouth, but fuck, he’s relieved to just be lookin’ at her at all right now.
To hell with it all, he thinks. He loves her. That’s it, that’s the truth of it. He knows that, he can admit it to himself now, at least. And he knows the implications of that, even if he’ll never be able to tell her, even if she can never accept it or return it. And how could a confession from him at this point be met with anything but resentment and second guessing? How can she know what’s even real when her mind and her heart are no longer entirely her own?
But she must know, he thinks. She has to know. How can she not? He searches her eyes, feeling the intensity of his emotions mirrored back exactly. And fuck, he thinks. Loving her is like breathing, something he couldn’t stop now even if he wanted to.
And for the first time in his sorry life, he realizes doesn’t want to.
He pulls her in for a kiss before he can open his mouth and say something stupid.
Notes:
Only one more chapter to go before they meet Hanako!!! Wowww can't believe we've made it this far y'all :''''')
Chapter 45: Sun's Shadow
Summary:
V and Johnny spend their last day together before their meeting with Hanako.
Notes:
This chapter might be my longest yet lmao
There's smut in here and lots of angst but I mean... of course there is.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The first thing V is aware of is Nibbles gently headbutting her, followed by a somewhat less gentle paw batting her face. V groans and rolls onto her side, and that’s when she realizes she’s on the couch downstairs, and not in the bed. Her bed, she corrects herself. This place is taking some getting used to, still.
Nibbles’ strange, hairless face is inches from her own, and the cat blinks his wide, golden eyes and lets out a plaintive mewl.
“Alright, alright,” V mumbles, heaving herself into a sitting position and rubbing her face with her hands.
She’s hungover as fuck, and her head is pounding and her mouth feels bitter and sticky. Or is it the Relic that’s causing it? It’s hard to tell these days - she feels like shit pretty much all the time now, and the hangovers and headaches and general nausea all blend into the baseline discomfort that’s become her new normal.
She checks the notifications on her holo and notices that Rachel’s sent over the payment, along with a bunch of forms and releases, which she forwards to Kerry as requested.
And she still needs to call Wakako.
V drags herself to the kitchen and starts the coffee machine, downing a glass of water as she does so and reaching for the tequila without even thinking about it. But then she pauses, frowning before the bottle touches her mouth. Vik’s words echo in her head, and she cringes inwardly as the memories of all that come flooding back to her.
What was she thinking?
She’s seen the way Vik’s looked at her, sure, but she should have known he's way too self-disciplined to ever attempt to move those thoughts into the realm of reality. He’s her doctor, the closest thing she's got to a father figure these days, and he would never have crossed that line with her of his own accord. But of course, she had to go and throw herself at him, like Johnny said, because she was too fuckin’ gonk to just man up and tell him how much she cares about and appreciates him.
V exhales through her teeth and puts the bottle down on the counter, then curses softly under her breath and lifts it to her mouth again, taking a long swig.
And it works - her hangover recedes slightly, along with the persistent throbbing in her head.
She sighs and turns back to the coffee machine, placing a mug underneath and filling it to the brim, then dials Wakako on her holo while she waits for it to cool.
“V,” Wakako says, frowning as she answers. “When I hired you to eliminate a target I did not imagine my client would wind up dead and that you would be crucifying said target in a braindance.”
“Don’t wanna hear it, Wako. Just take the eds,” V cuts in, flipping her the full amount Rachel sent her. She doesn’t need the eddies from this job, doesn’t want ‘em. It’s probably far more than whatever deal Wakako worked out with the Jablonsky fucker, anyway, and judging from the fixer’s facial expression, her hunch on that front is right.
“Well, then,” Wakako says simply. “I suppose we can consider this contract closed.”
“Thanks,” V says, and hangs up.
She lets out a long, shaky breath and eyes the tequila again, then pours it into her coffee. It doesn’t even taste good, but fuck, they’re meeting Hanako tomorrow and the thought makes her stomach twist. She knows what Hanako wants from her - to testify and help bring down her brother - and V hopes that prize will be enough to convince the heiress to let her access Mikoshi. She doesn’t love the idea of ‘Saka scientists digging around in her skull, doesn’t trust what they might do with Johnny’s engram if they’re even able to remove him without wiping him. But if they can just get access to Mikoshi, let Alt in so she can do her thing, then maybe, just maybe…
She expects Johnny to appear with some retort, then, to tell her she’s bein’ gonk like he always does when she lets her mind wander in this direction, but he’s been surprisingly quiet today, walled off somewhere inside her head. She can still feel him brooding in her thoughts, like always, but his mood today seems darker than usual, more closed off from her. She knows he’s still freaked out by last night, by everything about last night. And she can’t blame him. She’s a fuckin’ mess in every way a person can be a mess. Feels like she’s fallin’ apart from the inside out. And in a way, she is. Her mind feels foggy these days, her memories blurry and hard to parse, while Johnny’s feel clear and sharp. She knows they’re almost out of time, and whatever Hanako offers better be a hail fuckin’ Mary.
Can her mind even be saved at this point? With Johnny excised, will she just be a shell of her former self, regardless?
She bends over the counter and fights back a surge of nausea. She hasn’t even been able to bring herself to tell Kerry about her meeting with Hanako. She can’t fully explain why, but she doesn’t wanna involve him in this shit, doesn’t wanna give him a chance to talk her out of it. She knows he has money and resources, but the one thing no amount of money can buy that only Hanako can give her is Mikoshi… and if there’s any hope for her and Johnny, it’s there.
“Hey, V…” Johnny says suddenly, appearing across the island from her. “We should go back to that landfill.”
“What?” V asks, raising her head to look at him.
“Place where Dex dumped you. Where your brain rebooted. Where we-”
“Where we met?” V finishes for him. “Met” might not be exactly the right word, but it’s where the chip booted up and she first felt the contours of Johnny's mind begin to encroach upon hers. Where she was, for all intents and purposes, dead.
Johnny nods. “Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “Dunno. If this… if this is our last normal day together…”
“Like how we went to the oil fields?” V prompts, and Johnny nods again.
“Guess so,” he says. “Seems fitting we should check out both the places where our corpses were dumped like so much trash.”
It’s a surprisingly sentimental gesture from him, but she kinda understands, even if she has little desire herself to return to that spot.
But fuck it, why not? If Johnny got closure from visiting his final resting place, maybe goin’ to the landfill will do something for her, too.
“Alright,” she says with a sharp laugh. “Might as well.”
Johnny glitches over to stand closer to her, and she finds herself unable to meet his eyes. All of it - last night - really fucked with them both, and she knows it. And she can’t shake the way Johnny looked at her as she lay bleeding from her nose and mouth by the broken TV, the way he kissed her like she might slip out of his hands at that very moment.
And she almost had. Her malfunctions have been getting worse and more frequent, and between that and her fading memories…
She knows she should be scared, but there’s a part of her that feels almost pulled to just.... succumb to it, to let her mind be subsumed by the warm familiarity of Johnny’s. She remembers the beginnings of that feeling, the moment Johnny’s mind stopped feeling alien and started feeling almost as natural as her own. And now… now his thoughts wind around hers like warm, seductive tendrils, a familiar voice inside her mind softly but surely removing all her memories and replacing them with different ones, ones that now feel almost more real to her. She remembers being afraid of this, too - afraid that when the time came, she wouldn’t be afraid, that the chip would’ve done it’s work so thoroughly that she would welcome the transition, would slip softly into oblivion with barely any awareness that it was happening.
But she’s definitely at least still aware of it. Isn’t she?
She looks up at Johnny then, and her own spike of fear is reflected in his dark eyes.
She feels something soft brush against her leg, and looks down to see Nibbles staring up at her.
“Right,” she says, reaching down to pet the cat as Johnny glitches away, retreating again within the furrows of her mind. “Your breakfast.”
Nibbles mewls as she fills his bowl, and she leaves him to his meal while she takes her coffee to her armory and flips open her computer, idly scrolling through her messages and clicking over to the Net. She skims a couple screamsheets and finds a handful of articles about her win last night against Razor, but to her chagrin, a search for her name reveals her little cameo in The Passion is still dominating the feeds.
There’s a website she would once check often for netrunning jobs - the Bartmoss Collective - and she finds herself scrolling through it out of habit. But then again, her new armory did come with a proper netrunning chair, something she’s never had unlimited access to before, though it’s been a while since she’s done an unassisted deep dive.
But a listing on the page makes her stop short in her tracks.
“REWARD FOR ANY INFO ON SWEDENBORG!”
Underneath it reads, “Bes Isis. I’ll pay for any info about Swedenborg-Riviera’s true identity. READ MORE”
V clicks the link, and a short blurb appears.
Hello, my name is Bes Isis and I'm an independent journalist. I ended up here after the recent incident in Helvetia you might have heard about. Who exactly is the man that inspired the attacker? The man you all practically worship? Have you ever wondered who Swedenborg-Riviera actually is? I know I have. So here's the deal - I'm willing to pay for any info that might help unravel this mystery. Don't hesitate to get in touch!
Underneath it are, unsurprisingly, a bunch of unfriendly comments calling the keyboardist-turned-journalist a corposlut and a variety of other colorful insults. And one tellin’ her Swedenborg was a high ranking corpo who dismantled the system from within before being shipped off to Nicaragua. V frowns. She’s heard of this Swedenborg gonk, seen idiots on the Net parroting his anti-corpo slogans, but she always figured he was just some third tier hacker who was good at pullin’ one-liners out of his ass. But if Nancy thinks there’s a real mystery there...
“Gotta admit, I'm curious about this Swedenborg-Riviera,” Johnny muses, glitching in to look over her shoulder. “To write that kinda nonsense, you've gotta have a good head.” He chuckles as he leans closer to read the text on the screen. “‘Humanity is nothing but a pyramid scheme hidden behind a facade of tears…’ Well, fuck me. What's this guy on?” He laughs again. “And where can I get some?”
V eyes him as he says this. He’s still strangely guarded, and with him occupying this much of her mind now, him having those internal walls up makes her own brain feel muddier than normal. Or maybe it’s just the chip doing its thing, shutting her out more as Johnny’s engram makes itself more and more at home in her skull.
She nods slowly. “Guess I’ll call Nancy, then?”
Johnny gives her a thumbs up and glitches to go lean against the wall of the armory, tapping his foot as her holo rings.
“Hello?” Nancy says, appearing on V’s HUD. But then her face softens into a smile when she sees V. “Oh, hey, V! You callin’ about something, or just wanted to catch up?”
“The former,” V tells her. “Found your job posting about Swedenborg-Riviera on the Net?”
Nancy laughs. “Ohhhh, that! Wow, I completely forgot about that whole thing.”
“So… is it still goin’?” V asks, glancing up at Johnny.
Nancy shrugs. “I mean, I still wanna scroll a segment about it, so if you can find anything at all on Swedenborg, I’ll pay you back in black caviar and champagne.” She sighs heavily. “But, I doubt you’ll find anything new.”
“What’ve you managed to dig up so far?”
Nancy laughs again. “Short story? Fuck all.”
“Mm,” V says. “And the long story?”
“Well… it looks like Swedenborg-Riviera isn’t just a radical philosopher and economist, but a damned good netrunner, too,” Nancy tells her.
“Jack of all trades,” V muses. “Could you tell me more?”
“I could, but…” Nancy begins, then sighs again. “Eh, it’d be a waste of your time. I’m tellin’ ya, the guy’s a ghost.”
V raises her eyebrows. “Can’t hurt to try, right?”
Nancy smiles at this. “Well, aren’t you just bursting with a can-do attitude?” She chuckles softly and shakes her head. “Have it your way, then. I started looking into all this about a year ago, right after one of Swedenborg’s followers lobbed a molotov into the Helvetia branch. Tried finding some way to reach the guy, came up blank. Total brick wall. Hired a private eye, also came up with squat.”
“And the IP linked to the account?” V asks. “He would’ve used cloaking daemons, but there’s always a mark, a trace…”
“Well, well, I didn’t know I was dealin’ with such a pro, here,” Nancy teases. “Guess what? I tried that.” She sighs again. “I managed to pinpoint the sig to Santo Domingo… but linking it to any specific address was a nonstarter. District’s jam-packed with units, as I’m sure you know.”
V nods, waiting for Nancy to go on.
“Asked some locals if anyone saw or heard anything, cash in hand,” Nancy continues. “Zilch. Nada. Dried up all my leads.”
“Got it,” V says, thinking it all through. “Listen, send me the coordinates of the last dataterm that relayed the signal, okay? I’ll take a look. Worst case, I’ll lose an hour of my life. Best case… well, who knows?”
“Hey, if you’re offerin’, why not?” Nancy says. “But seriously, V… I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”
“Noted,” V says, then pauses. “Met your son, by the way,” she tells her.
“Ah,” Nancy says, her face darkening. “He asked to borrow money to hire a fixer to get back a bunch of shit he lost gambling. I take it Rogue handed off the job to you?”
“Yep,” V says. “Seems he’s got a real chip on his shoulder ‘bout havin’ you as a mom.”
Nancy chuckles, then sighs heavily. “Yeah, he’s… I don’t know, V. If you ever become a parent yourself someday, maybe you’ll understand.”
“Doubtful,” V tells her.
“Hey, you never know,” Nancy teases. “Pretty sure whatever treatments Eurodyne’s usin’ to keep his face pretty might also be keepin’ other things fresh.”
“Gross,” Johnny mutters.
“Duly noted,” V says again with a laugh. She’s got a birth control implant so she’s not too worried about it, and she assumes Kerry’s got one too, given his lifestyle.
“Well, great catching up, V,” Nancy says with a chuckle. “Sure I’ll see you around. And let me know if you actually manage to turn up anything on Swedenborg.”
“Will do,” V says, ending the call.
She’s got a couple new messages from Dino, too - he’s sellin’ a red Mizutani Shion Targa convertible, trying to pitch her on it. And on a sudden wild impulse, she texts him back sayin’ she’s interested. She’s got the eddies to burn, and if things go south tomorrow… live fast, die young, right?
Johnny’s eyes widen slightly from where he’s still leaning against the glass wall of the armory encasing the wide server array, but she can feel his enthusiasm for the idea. She knows he’s not gonna say no to a fast, flashy car, after all.
It’s a surprisingly hot day for late October, the last gasp of summer, so V puts on a pair of cut-off shorts and a cropped tank before heading out for the day. She decides to stop by Vik’s first, as per his request last night. She’s more than a little nervous to see him, after the way they left things last night, but she does want him to assess the chip’s progress so she knows what she’s dealing with before speaking with Hanako. So she swallows her pride and walks the short distance to his clinic, cutting through the alley to avoid gettin’ caught up at Misty’s. She’ll stop by and say hi after seeing Vik, she decides.
But Vik is as warm and professional as ever, and he waves away her awkward, stumbling apology as he ushers her to the chair and hooks her up to the brain scanner.
Her fears are confirmed by Vik’s face as he studies the readouts. Johnny paces behind him, his face echoing the same pained expression as Vik’s.
“That bad, huh?” she asks the ripperdoc, trying to force a joking tone.
Vik gives her a serious look. “It’s not lookin’ good, kid,” he admits. “The chip’s progressed pretty far, taken over most of your hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.” He jacks his link out and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Those are the parts responsible for memory and… decision-making.” V can hear the strain in his voice as he says the last part, and she swallows hard at the implications there. “If you don’t do something, and soon…”
“I know,” V agrees softly.
She stops to visit Misty on her way out, and lets her friend do a quick tarot reading, but she finds herself barely paying attention as Misty draws the cards and explains each of them carefully. It’s hard to focus with Vik’s words still echoing in her head. It’s nothing she hadn’t already suspected - that her memories and decisions are likely mostly Johnny’s, now. But hearing it confirmed has left a cold, icy feeling in her chest that she can’t shake. Or maybe that's Johnny’s anguish she’s feeling... if there’s even a difference at this point.
Misty’s talking about Jackie now, somethin’ to do with sacrifice, and V tries her best to force herself to listen to what her friend is saying.
“Remember what I told you he said to me, when we were at his ofrenda?” she’s saying, looking pointedly at V. “Said he’d take a bullet for me, even if he knew it would kill him.” Misty sighs heavily and fiddles with the card on the table in front of her that V only now registers as the Hanged Man. “That’s… that’s the moment I knew he loved me,” Misty continues.
V blinks at her friend. Johnny said pretty much those exact words to her, at the Pistis Sophia. She unconsciously reaches for him then, but she feels him recoil, feels a stinging spike of something razor-sharp from him as he retreats deeper. It’s getting harder for him to hide, since he’s everywhere in her head now, and she can feel him push back as she tries in vain to access the parts of herself that are now him.
And she’s not dumb, she knows what Misty’s implying. It’s gonna be her or Johnny, just like Johnny’s been sayin’ all along. And the other part…
She stares down at the card with the image of a man hanging upside down by his ankles, her heart pounding in her chest. She knows how she feels about Johnny, has known it for a while now. But it’s almost too painful to think about, too painful to face head-on given the crushing and brutal truth of their situation. Neither of them has even come close to addressing it, and she suspects the weight of it would be too much for either of them to bear. Like she tried to tell Johnny last night, the idea of putting things like that into words terrifies her. Because then they’d have to accept the unescapable melodramatic fuckin’ tragedy of it all - that each of their survival in all likelihood demands the other’s death. That Johnny’s willing to die for her for the same reasons Jackie said that shit to Misty. That she’s willing to do the same for him, if it comes to that.
It’s the first time she’s fully admitted that last part to herself, even though she said it to Johnny at the Pistis Sophia that day - that she’d take a bullet for him. At the time, she hadn’t really thought about what that would mean - that if it’s a choice between wiping him for good and letting the chip run its course and give Johnny a second shot at life in her body… she’d pick the latter.
But she abruptly can’t help but wonder... is that a reflection of a real, true love for Johnny? Or is it just the chip’s final step in breaking down her ego, overwriting her mind, claiming her very soul? Maybe it really is exactly as she feared - that in the end, she’ll not only welcome the change but choose it, convinced that Johnny’s life is worth more than her own, that his mind should be the rightful owner of her body.
And yet, the thought of killing Johnny remains unthinkable. In fact, just imagining it now makes her vision start to glitch and a wave of bile rise in her throat. She digs her nails into her palm, willing the malfunction to pass, and thankfully, it does. She forces herself to look at the cards again, then at Misty’s expectant face.
“So you’re sayin’ one of us is going to have to make a sacrifice,” V says softly.
Misty shakes her head. “The cards don’t tell the future, V. It doesn’t work that way. They just help you see the choices you already have.”
V nods, and listens as Misty finishes the reading, then thanks her and hurries out. She heads straight for the train, taking it downtown to meet Dino at a car lot in Wellsprings where the Mizutani Shion is waiting, as promised.
“If I could, I'd make love to this thing,” Dino says, running his hand along the gleaming red hood of the convertible. “Lookin' at her gets me a little hard, and I'm not even ashamed to admit it,” he adds, tossing V a wink.
V rolls her eyes at him. “I’ll take it,” she says, flickin’ him the eddies.
He grins at her. “Preem!” he crows, taking her hand and pressing it to the datapad he produces from his vest, syncing her biometrics with the Shion. “Knew ya had taste.”
She withdraws her hand when he’s done and settles into the driver’s seat, placing her palms on the wheel. Through the dash, Dino flashes her a rocker sign with his hand as she fires up the car and the engine purr to life beneath her. The radio crackles on right in the middle of a fuckin’ Samurai song, which prompts Dino to stick out his tongue and thrash his head at her like the gonk that he is. But he’s got that improbable charisma nonetheless, and V smiles in spite of herself and shakes her head at him as she backs out of the lot. She shoots him a peace sign with her fingers as she speeds off into afternoon, the wind whippin’ her hair and the sun beating down on her exposed skin.
Dino’s right, it’s a beautiful fuckin’ car, but she suddenly feels stupid for doin’ this. She’s afraid of dying, afraid of Johnny dying, so she’s, what, blowin’ eds on flashy rides like some gonk havin’ a midlife crisis?
But what’s done is done, and she can’t exactly head back and tell Dino she changed her fuckin’ mind.
“Alright,” she says out loud with a sigh. “Let’s go check out those coordinates Nancy sent us.”
Johnny glitches into the seat next to her, balking. “For real, V? You heard what Vik said. Can’t we just like… call Kerry and go hang out by your fuckin’ pool or something?”
V scowls at him. “Thought you wanted to take a field trip to the Badlands,” she reminds him.
“Dunno why we gotta waste time with this Sweden-dork, though,” he grumbles.
“Hey, you were the one who wanted to look into it,” she says.
Johnny’s all over the fuckin’ place today, and it’s not makin’ any of this any easier.
He drums his fingers against the side of the convertible. “Probably just some pimply kid with a ‘runner chair, spewin’ out pseudo-philosophical bullshit he strung together from the Communist Manifesto cliff notes.”
“Right,” V says, deciding at that moment that they’re absolutely gonna spend the day chasin’ after Swedenborg. If Johnny’s gonna be difficult, then she’s gonna do exactly what she fuckin’ wants. And besides, she feels a bitter surge of relief the second she commits to doing the exact fuckin’ opposite of what he’s askin’ her, even if it’s petty - relief in the knowledge that for now, at least, she still can.
She pulls the car onto the nearest freeway ramp and heads for the bridge to Arroyo.
"Ah, Santo Domingo. The eternal fountain of shit," Johnny mutters as they drive slowly down the streets of Rancho, circling Nancy’s GPS point.
V frowns at the map on her HUD, trying to figure out where the coordinates are leading her. It seems like it’s coming from the courtyard of a run-down apartment block, but she can’t tell how accessible it is from the street. She circles the block until she finds a place where the alleyway opens to the sidewalk and pulls her new Shion to a stop. The ostentatious red car stands out amongst the drab suburban vehicles that line the street, and she hopes none of the local gangers get any bright ideas.
There’s a rusted out van in the alley, and Johnny glitches in atop it, swinging his feet and glowering down at her. “Why this obsession with Swedenfuck, anyway?” he asks. “Hopin’ once you find him he’ll spill the meaning of life? Here, I’ll save you the trouble… life makes no fuckin’ sense.”
“Agreed,” V snaps. “Especially with you in my head. Now be quiet so I can think.”
Johnny laughs. “You stopped thinkin’ long before I got here. But sure, blame it all on the guy in your head.”
It’s almost like their old banter, from their early days together, and V tries to ignore the way that makes her heart twist. She scans the alleyway with her Kiroshis, and nothing unusual shows up… but then she notices a low, staticky, crackling hum coming from somewhere in the courtyard.
“Wait, wait, shhh,” she says. “Hear that noise?”
“Never been a fan of Rancho Coronado, personally,” Johnny continues, wrinkling his nose at their surroundings. “Just hurry up and let’s get back into the city, okay?”
But V ignores him, still trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.
“Comin’ from upstairs…” she mutters, squinting at the tangle of cables that snake their way up a nearby fire escape.
She heads for the ladder and heaves herself up, following the sound upward as she scales the rusted metal stairs up the side of the weathered brick building, scanning every level as she reaches it.
And on the level second from the top, she finally finds what she’s looking for.
“Ha!” V says, chuckling to herself as she scans the small dataterm bolted to the wall. “Pirate router.”
“Think this is our Swede’s doin’?” Johnny asks, glitching in to perch on the railing of the rickety fire escape.
“Only one way to find out,” V says, jacking into the terminal. It’s a tougher hack than she expects, but once her datamine daemon gets in there, she manages to get a trace on the signal that’s being relayed.
And right at that moment, her holo buzzes and a text from a restricted number appears on her HUD.
Who that goes in search of me has already torn off the bourgeois-corporate blinders f rom their eyes and taken the first steps toward the hanging garden of postcapitalism. B ut this is just beginning… are YOU prepared to go even further?
“Sig’s a match with what Nancy was trackin’,” V says, turning to Johnny. “And goes further, out the Badlands. Like a server proxy.”
Johnny scoffs. “Don’t tell me that’s where we’re headin’ next.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“‘Cause this is all one big waste of time!” Johnny mutters. “The fuck do you care about a borg-fuckin’ Swede? He rubs out sayings like a randy teenager, and the whole world’s guzzlin’ it up.” He shakes his head at her, running his hand through his hair exasperatedly.
V laughs suddenly. “Oh, I get what’s goin’ on here,” she tells Johnny. “You’re jealous.”
“Jealous?” Johnny scoffs incredulously. “About this shit-Swede? You outta your fuckin’ mind?”
“Mmhm,” V says, continuing to goad him. “‘Cause he’s the one all the anarchists and fist-pumpers are quoting, while you played in piss-soaked dives for a bunch of stoned zit-faces.”
"Zit-faces like you," Johnny reminds her, eliciting an eye-roll. “And don’t talk shit about what you don’t know."
“I do know,” she reminds him, and he shoots her a dark look and glitches away.
But no sooner has she crossed through the canyon pass into the Badlands than Johnny appears next to her again, starin’ out at the desert through his dark sunglasses.
“There’s no more birds,” he says.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” V asks, shooting him a strange look.
“Nothin’,” Johnny murmurs. “Was just noticing how quiet it is out here. In my time, there were always birds. Fuckin’ seagulls, pigeons, hummingbirds, turkey vultures, owls, hawks...”
His voice trails off, and he gazes out into the distance at the high desert stretching before them.
“They killed ‘em all,” V reminds him. “Every bird within 18 miles of the city.”
“Yeah,” he says, his voice still dark.
The corners of his mouth are tilted downwards, and there’s a heaviness to him that makes her suddenly reach out and put a hand on his leg.
“Still wanna go to that landfill?” she asks him softly.
He looks at her then, his face inscrutable underneath his shades. “Sure,” he says, then falls silent again.
She nods her head once at him then turns the car south, taking them down through the fuckin’ massive piles of garbage roasting in the afternoon sun on either side of the rapidly narrowing road. She remembers suddenly that Goro drove the exact same type of car she’s drivin’ now when he yanked her out of this very landfill so many months ago.
The road turns to dirt after a while, then they pass a sharp bend around a particularly high garbage heap, and a little bit ahead, V can see that the road terminates in a small clearing surrounded on all sides by towers of trash.
And there in the middle of the clearing is Dexter DeShawn’s bloated, rotting corpse.
She pulls the car to a stop as they reach the clearing, then gets out and steps towards the body, standing over it and wrinkling her nose.
“Mother fucker,” she mutters, feeling her lip curl as she stares down at him. Lying next to him is his fuckin’ iron - the same iron he used to kill her. She bends over to pick it up, swatting away the flies that buzz at her face as she does so. Holding the gun gives her a strange sort of satisfaction, so she slides it into her back pocket and straightens to look around. A little to her left, she can see the fuckin’ fridge that crushed her while she lay braindead in this very fuckin’ spot. The fridge that pulverized her arm. She remembers the way her hand flopped uselessly as Takemura dragged her out from under the coolbox, remembers the searing pain of the splintered bone piercing her tissue when she tried in vain to move it. She looks down at her chrome hand now, watching the way the dark fingers gleam as she flexes her hand in the sun. Is this how Johnny felt when he first got his eponymous arm? She doesn’t have to guess, she can remember it in vague flashes - the alienation, the resentment, and ultimately, the acceptance he felt as he came to terms with his own unsought cybernetic limb.
Johnny glitches in to pace by the fridge, frowning down at it like he’s thinking the same thing. But no - he’s examining the coolbox itself, she realizes.
"It’s still sealed," he mutters. On a strange impulse, she steps towards the fridge and uses her chrome hand to pry it open. The smell that assaults her is enough to make her gag and almost slam it shut again, but she forces herself to peer inside.
“Ugh,” she says, less than surprised to find another rotting, bloated corpse. “Fuck a dogdoll…”
“And that’s why you do not poke around strangers’ coolboxes,” Johnny observes dryly. “Best case scenario, you find a half-gallon jug of rancid milk. Worst…” He gestures to the decomposing corpse in the fridge, but then suddenly his face changes as he leans over the open container. “Motherfucker up a satmast!” he exclaims. “That’s Rache Bartmoss!”
V squints down at the warped, decaying face, “The Bartmoss?” she says in disbelief. “DataKrash RABID Bartmoss? Guy who trashed the first Net?’
Johnny shrugs his shoulders. “Well, it wasn’t his uncle. Yeah, yeah, him!” He paces excitedly next to the open coolbox. “I’d recognize that mug anywhere,” he continues. “Wanted posters all over town back in 2020, face plastered in all the screamsheets. Public enemy number one, dead or alive. Half the fuckin’ city was on the hunt!”
“And he’s just been here the whole fuckin’ time…” V muses, still looking down at his rotted, mottled face.
“People always used to joke about deleting the entire Net, but no one actually thought it was possible,” Johnny says, shaking his head almost admiringly. “But then fuckin’ Bartmoss went and actually did it.” He looks over at V. “You don’t even remember what the old Net was like,” he tells her. “Just one connected network that the whole world was on.” There’s a sadness to his voice, like when he was talkin’ about the birds back in the car.
DataKrash happened only a couple years before Johnny died, V realizes. Whereas she has trouble even conceiving of what he’s describin’. The only Net she’s ever known has been fragmented, privatized, walled off.
“Poor bastard,” Johnny mutters, continuing to gaze down into the famed netrunner's final resting place. “Ended up here as a dead rat in a coolbox… till some circuit blew and he thawed like so much meat.”
V wrinkles her nose and closes the fridge. “Uh huh,” she says. “Yeah, ‘bout twenty years back, judgin’ by the stench.”
“Hold up, hold up!” Johnny protests, putting his hand on her arm. “Gotta be some electronics in here. First-Net relics, almost crank-powered? Be a shame to just leave it.”
“Even if there is, it’s bound to be bunk,” V counters.
“Bound to be?” Johnny says, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Wouldn’t be so sure. Only one way to find out.”
“Hmm,” V says.
“Said the gonk who missed the shuttle. C’mon, look inside!” he prods her.
V sighs and heaves the fridge open again, holding her breath as the wave of stench rolls over her once more.
She reaches her chrome hand in, fishing for his cyberdeck, trying not to gag as she does so. And it turns out Johnny was fuckin’ right - this dead gonk’s got a fuckin’ rare ass old-school cyberdeck slotted right in his rotting skull.
“Well, well… an SGI Tech Elysla,” she crows, pulling it out and examining it in the bright sunlight. “Best cyberdeck in its class.”
“See?” Johnny says smugly. “Worth gettin’ a little rot on your hands sometimes.” He grins at her. “That cat at the Afterlife, one who goes by Nix. Seems like somebody who’d know legacy tech,” he suggests. “Chat him up, see what happens. Could end up pullin’ somethin’ from it.”
V nods, pocketing the cyberdeck and shutting the fridge for the final time while Johnny shakes his head at her incredulously.
“Can’t believe you got crushed by a fuckin’ fridge with Rache Bartmoss rottin’ inside it,” he mutters as they walk back towards the car, his mouth twitching upwards at the corner. “Classic fuckin’ V,” he says, and his voice is softer now.
The set of coordinates they got from the pirate router in Santo Domingo leads them out of the landfill and up north into Jackson Plains, where an abandoned-looking RV sits in the middle of a nest of generators, surrounded by the miles-wide forest of solar arrays that stretches across this part of the Badlands.
She pulls the car to a halt, frowning at the dilapidated trailer.
“Signal leads here… and disappears again,” she mutters.
But right at that moment, a bullet whizzes past her head and she ducks just in time, pulling Dex’s pistol from her pocket and throwing herself flat across the passenger seat to take cover behind the car door as Johnny glitches away with a single loud swear.
“Fuck!” she says under her breath.
Another bullet whizzes overhead, and she peers out with her Kiroshis, scanning her surroundings. At first, she can’t find anything unusual, but then, she sees movement from behind some scrubby vegetation and her scanner registers a hooded figure crouched there.
Fuckin’ Wraiths, she thinks. Probably here to loot the generators. If she had to guess, there’s probably a whole party of ‘em - which means she’s about to be facin’ down an ambush of ten or even more.
“Jesus, you and your shit luck,” Johnny mutters, glitching back in to pace outside the car, leaning over the door to scowl down at her.
“Can’t believe we walked into a fuckin’ Wraith ambush,” she hisses through her teeth, trying to get a lock on the nearest one so she can upload her fastest-spreading contagion daemon.
She curses and flattens her body against the seat as another volley of bullets flies towards the car, and she waits for them to pause to reload before peering over the edge of the car, firing off her quickhack and ducking back down again before they can get her in their sights. She fuckin’ hopes they don’t have any snipers up on the solar array, because there’s not much she can do to take cover in a convertible from that.
To her relief, she hears a strangled shout from the bush, and then another from behind the trailer, and then a few more from behind her. A lone Wraith charges out from behind one of the generators, opening fire with his machine gun as he rushes the vehicle.
But his aim is wide, and the bullets clatter uselessly against the side of the car as V takes aim with Dexter’s gun and fires off a shot that hits the gonk right between his fuckin’ eyes, dropping him like a sack of rocks.
She waits for a beat, and then another, until she’s fairly certain there are no more Wraiths waitin’ to make a bold move. But there’s only the sounds of insects and wind. Lots of wind, actually. She glances to her right, and to her horror, there’s a dust storm gathering on the horizon, blowing over the eastern flats towards them. A big one too, from the looks of it.
“Fuck,” she mutters again, scanning the trailer with her Kiroshis for the source of the signal that led them to this godforsaken place. “Where could it be? Maybe over by that truck…”
Johnny glitches ahead of her as she makes her way across the dusty yard, and she hears the same staticky humming sound as before, this time coming from the top of the trailer. Her augmented tendons give her just enough of a boost to make the jump and catch the edge of the roof - she hoists herself upwards, pulling her legs up after her and doing another scan.
“Heh, damn,” she says, chuckling under her breath at the small panel propped precariously against the air vent atop the RV. “Another router.”
“Sounds like this Swedenborg really values his privacy,” Johnny observes, glitching over to crouch next to it. “Well, hack away or whatever it is you were gonna do.”
V kneels in front of the dataterm and jacks in her personal link and gets to work. It’s similar to the first one, and she slices through its defenses faster this time now that she knows what to expect. And sure enough, the signal’s being relayed from another point, this time in the Biotechnica Flats south of the city.
And another strange message appears on her holo, from the same restricted number.
The road to the stars is always paved with darkness, and the road to collectivism leads through a sea of blood. Will you hide your tail between your legs and fasten the corporate leash once more?
“Signal keeps goin’,” V says. “To another terminal.”
“Ha!” Johnny barks out a sharp laugh. “Got a feeling someone’s messin’ with you, V. You’ll follow this breadcrumb trail, and when you connect the dots, all you’ll see is a dick.”
“I’m sure you’d love that, wouldn’t you?” V mutters, getting to her feet.
“Fuckin’ A, I would,” Johnny retorts, still laughing. “That cock would be the first thing Swedenborg did that’d actually make any sense.” He grins at her. “‘Cept he’d probably give it some pretentious name. Like, ‘Patriarchal phallus upholding toxic masculinity.’ Whaddaya think?”
V shakes her head at him, laughing too in spite of herself. Maybe it’s the relief of surviving the Wraith attack, or maybe he’s just finally letting go of whatever’s been crawlin’ up his ass all day, but Johnny’s mood seems to have lightened somewhat. But she can also feel his fear and apprehension just beneath the surface, clawing at her still.
And the dust storm is rapidly approaching.
“Think it’s time we moved on,” she tells him, glancing nervously towards the wall of sand billowing quickly towards them.
The storm hits them right as she reaches her car, and she coughs and chokes as the dust envelopes her in the exposed vehicle. Of all fuckin’ stupid cars, why did she have to buy a fuckin’ convertible?
She fumbles for the controls to close the roof, squinting as the sand whips into her eyes and hair. When the roof finally slides shut and seals them in, muffling the howling of the dust that continues to patter against the thin metal polymer, she collapses back into her seat, taking deep breaths of the suddenly still air.
She can barely see twenty feet past the windshield, so she heaves another sigh and rests her forehead on the steering heel.
“Guess we’re waitin’ this out,” Johnny mutters, glitching in next to her.
But V shakes her head, lifting it back towards the road and firing up the engine.
“No,” she says. “Better to just drive through it.”
She pulls up the superimposed navsystem on her HUD, steering the car gingerly back onto the dust-clouded road, driving much more slowly than she normally would until she hits the next straightway, where she accelerates and speeds into the heart of the storm.
And her instincts pay off, because after an hour or so of knuckle-biting driving against the wind and sand, the air finally starts to clear and they emerge south of the storm, the endless greenhouses of the Biotechnica Flats stretching out before them, hazy in the residual dust.
She grimaces at Johnny and heads towards them, plunging headlong into the identical rows of gridded streets that pass between them, fighting off the claustrophobia of the unbroken walls on either side that stretch for entire city blocks at a time.
The signal leads them to one such nondescript road between the worm farms, where some scaffolding leads up a series of ladders to a power station that sits elevated above the vast expanse of squat structures.
The coordinates seem to be broadcasting from up there, so she sighs and heaves herself up onto the nearest ladder, scrambling to the narrow catwalk and stopping to assess. But there’s another ladder leading higher still, so she climbs that as well, and then another, until she finally reaches the top where she pauses to catch her breath, gazing out across the endless stretch of bug farms and greenhouses.
And in the distance, beyond the flats, sits Night City in all its glory, its towers gleaming in the late afternoon sun, AVs streaming in and out of it like insects in a hive, their lights blinking like the fireflies at dusk V saw for the first time in Atlanta.
“Look,” Johnny murmurs, materializing next to her to stare at the city skyline. “Get far enough from the smell… even Night City can be beautiful.”
She nods, turning to look at him. But he’s gazing at the city with a strange look on his face, like it’s the last time he’ll ever see it like this.
She turns away, fighting the swell of sorrow that threatens to overwhelm her.
“Come on,” she says, glancing up at the power station that hangs suspended on the catwalks they’re standin’ on. “Let’s find the next fuckin’ dot on this dick drawing. Maybe over there?”
She starts out onto the catwalk that runs along the side of the power box, scanning for any signs of another pirate router. And she’s not surprised at all when she finds it this time, jammed into the side of the power station, humming gently like the rest of ‘em.
“Lemme guess... another router?” Johnny says, glitching over to her. “My dick theory’s startin’ to seem like a real possibility.”
V rolls her eyes and jacks into the router, hacking it like she did the previous ones. And just like before, another text appears.
You are getting closer, you are seeing more. The nirvana of Marxian-Swedenborgism i s around the corner. You must take the final step. You must be brave.
“And?” Johnny says smugly. “Signal leads to another place?”
“Yep,” V says, scowling at him.
“Hey, maybe this is all part of Swedenborg’s message?” Johnny jokes. “Life… is movement! Fuck the destination, it’s how you get there that counts.”
“Well, there’s some truth to that,” V admits, getting to her feet.
“Jesus, V, this is philosophy for the hoi polloi,” he teases. “Have you ever read a book in your life? You know what, don’t answer that, I don’t wanna know.”
V shoots him a dark look. It’s not exactly like Heywood had a fuckin’ public library, and once she was booted from her corpo school, books beyond the Jesus stuff Padre kept at the parish weren’t easy to come by. Still, she’s amassed a small collection despite that, and Johnny knows it damn well.
“Fuck you,” she snaps, starting back for the ladder.
“So where’s this next lead get us?” Johnny presses, glitching to follow her. “A yoga class? A Tibetan monastery?”
He’s just as invested as she is at this point, despite his protests, and she knows it. So she relents, glancing up at him as she scales the ladder down.
“No,” she tells him as she reaches the next landing. “To the boardwalk in Pacifica.”
“Oh?” Johnny says, raising an eyebrow. “The plot thickens.”
She drops down the final stretch to the bottom, landing in a crouch before standing to dust herself off. They drive to Pacifica in silence, listening to some sad sack acoustic bullshit that’s playin’ on Morro Rock.
The sun is hanging low over the ocean by the time they pull onto the street by the boardwalk, and V parks the car and climbs the broad concrete stairs to the wide plaza facing the beach.
“So, what?” Johnny says, glitching in as she heads out towards the water, onto the raised boardwalk that houses the rusted Ferris wheel and the silent rollercoaster. “Asshole hidin’ here someplace?”
“Maybe,” V says. “Or maybe we get to another terminal. Have to see.”
“Funny area, this,” Johnny muses, looking around at the dilapidated boardwalk. “Kind of complements our guy’s style, doesn’t it?”
“How?” V asks. “This theme park another parody of capitalism run amok?”
“Cheap entertainment for braindead gonks, that’s how,” Johnny quips back, tapping a silver finger against his forehead.
As V moves between the empty game booths and the abandoned refreshment stalls, she hears a loud, tinny voice echoing from somewhere nearby.
“Capitalism is the blood of the global system of oppression!” a woman’s voice proclaims from somewhere. It’s stilted, robotic, and heavily accented.
As V approaches, she realizes it’s coming from an old fortune-teller bot. A garish, campy sign above it reads, “Leonora, the Savantron. Reveal the Truth!”
“Money is a tool used by the colonial oppressors of our minds!” the bot is saying. “Class division is the breeding ground of anarchy!”
It sounds exactly like the scop texts she's been getting all day. Is this broken old bot… Swedenborg-Riviera?
“Wait, what the hell is this?” V asks, frowning at the bot, trying to force her brain to connect the dots.
But Johnny appears next to her, doubled over laughing. “What it looks like,” he manages between wheezing laughs. “Swedenborg-Riviera! Ha! Come one, come all for the prophet of Night City! Ha!” He throws back his head, tears streaming down his digital face. “Ohh, that’s too good! A wind-up philosopher in a box! Hand me a couple eddies, see what he cranks out next!”
V stares at him for a beat, then bursts out laughing too. For a minute, neither of them can even speak, and every time she thinks she’s collected herself, she looks at Johnny and they both just start laughing helplessly again. She can’t remember the last time she’s laughed like this, seen him laugh like this.
She finally manages to calm herself enough to flick an eddy at the machine, both of them dissolving again into laughter as the bot reads out another algorithmically generated slogan.
“You shall meet an attractive lobbyist when you least expect a violent outbreak of class warfare,” the machine declares.
She flicks over another eddy, and Johnny grins at her.
“The means of production should belong to the collective unconscious.”
“You scrollin’ this?” Johnny crows. “Heh, we need to save these for posterity’s sake! Ha!”
V wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, her shoulders still shaking with laughter. “How… how’s this even possible?”
“Not a fucking clue,” Johnny says, also still chuckling. “But Jesus, V… how beautiful is this? Half the Net’s gettin’ tweaked on wisdom from a puppet in a glass case! Hairs are bein’ split, spit is flyin’ over interpretations!”
V can only nod, she’s doubled over in helpless giggles again.
“Oh, man!” Johnny says, still clutching his sides. “Lemme tell you… fifty years of soul prison was worth it for this moment right here.”
After another moment, V again manages to get ahold of herself enough to crouch down by the machine, scanning it curiously with her Kiroshis.
“Somebody must’ve tampered with this thing,” she muses, running a diagnostic on the bot.
Johnny laughs again, wiping his eyes with the back of his organic hand. “Seriously? What, you think you’re gonna find a jack-in-a-box who wants to become a real boy?” He barks another laugh.
But V continues to scan the machine. “Look,” she says. “It’s hooked up to the Net, which means someone installed some kinda new soft. I’m gonna jack in and check it out.”
“What’re you waitin’ for?” Johnny prompts. “Let’s see what secrets are flowin’ in these cables.”
V nods, then connects her personal link and hacks the bot. It has more security than the pirate routers - someone installed next gen ICE on this fuckin’ thing. But after a couple tries, she manages to crack it, and her holo immediately buzzes with a series of rapid texts from the same restricted number.
You followed all the clues - like the GOOD DOG u are.
So? Do you feel ENLIGHTENED? xD
YOU HAVE BEEN PWNED BY SW33TE11I3
V attempts to trace the number, but it pings her back with nothing - whoever set this up has covered their tracks impeccably. It's clearly an auto-generated response of some sort, probably not even comin' from an actual person. Johnny meets her eyes and glitches closer to lean against the machine, propped on his metal arm as he bends over V.
“Okay…” she says, sitting back on her heels and looking up at him. “So, if I’m gettin’ this right… someone hacked into this fortune-teller bot, rejigged its algorithm to spew out anti-establishment aphorisms instead of prophecies-”
“And then hooked it up to the Net through a system of routers that masks the signal origin,” Johnny finishes for her. “Pure fuckin’ genius!” He laughs again. “Can we find whoever did this? I need to shake their hand.”
“Unlikely, for two reasons,” V says, raising her eyebrows at him. “First, they didn’t leave a trace. Second… you’re dead, Johnny.”
“Oh, right,” Johnny huffs, leaning back against the machine and crossing his arms. “When I get in a good mood, I forget that.”
But he remembers now, and she feels his mood immediately darken as he looks down at her imploringly. “Hey, V… Don’t turn it off, huh?”
“Nah, don’t worry, Johnny,” she tells him softly. “Not gonna take away Night City’s philosopher of the people.”
“Heh,” Johnny says, relieved. “Well, then. To Swedenborg-Riviera! Long may he live!”
“May he inspire many more gonks in their cliff notes Marxism,” V agrees, chuckling as she gets to her feet.
“Who knows,” Johnny muses, watching as the machine spews more half-baked slogans at them. “Hundred, two thousand years from now, when we’re all radioactive dust… maybe Swedenborg’ll still be preaching on the Net.”
“Well, Nancy’s piece might put a bit of a damper on his following,” V points out.
“Nah,” Johnny says, undeterred. “I know those types. Even if their god is debunked before their very eyes, they’ll use any mental gymnastics they can to avoid admitting they got played.”
V considers this for a moment, then bends over and jacks into the machine again.
“Hold on,” she says. “I’ve got an idea.”
She fiddles with the algorithm for a moment, rearranging some of the logic clauses until she hits on what she wants.
“Let your thoughts dance the lusty rumba, while accompanied by a joyful accordion,” the bot announces, and V grins up at Johnny.
“What the…” Johnny says, and then comprehension dawns on his face. “Ha! What’ll all his fans think?”
“Fox cubs are gathering data from the cesspits of the financial merry-go-round!” the machine proclaims.
“Oh man,” Johnny says, beaming down at her. “I’ve gotta say… you’ve definitely got your perks, V.”
“Become the obese narwhal in heat amidst the blazing ice!” the bot continues to shout as V gets to her feet, grinning at Johnny as steps away from the machine and dials Nancy on her holo.
“Ah, V,” Nancy says when she answers. “Lemme guess, you called to tell me you’re done bashing your head against the wall?”
“Well, not exactly,” V says, still grinning. “We found something.”
“We?” Nancy questions, her brow furrowing into a frown. “Someone with you?”
Shit. V almost forgot that Nancy doesn’t know about Johnny.
“No? Uh, no," she stammers. "I-I meant the… the royal ‘we.’” She paces out further onto the boardwalk, towards the abandoned rollercoaster that sits silently silhouetted in the sunset. “So, about Swedenborg… it’s all a big hoax,” she tells Nancy.
“Say what now?” Nancy says, eyes widening.
“It’s an automated fortune-teller that was reprogrammed. Strings words into deep-sounding mumbo-jumbo. Someone jacked it into the Net. Probably laughin’ from their chair, wherever the fuck they are now.”
Nancy throws back her head and laughs. “Shit, V… this, this! Oh, this story’s even better than I thought! Any leads on the ‘runner who did this?”
V shakes her head. “Like you said, they’re a ghost. No trace to be found.”
“I’ll take it from here,” Nancy says, frowning as she considers this. But then her face breaks into a broad smile once again, and she beams at V affectionately. “You’ve got the makings of a media vulture, yet.”
V laughs. “Well, if I ever get bored of merc work, I’ll let you know.”
“Catch you around, V,” Nancy says warmly. “Oh, and your, uh… your eddies,” she adds quickly. “On their way now.”
“Take care, Nancy,” V says, hanging up.
She's up by the rollercoaster boarding platform now, and she notices a gaggle of locals about her age - or maybe a bit younger - gathered around the coaster car, a few of them draped over a moldering couch that sits beneath the overhang that used to house the waiting line for the ride. A young man with his hair tucked into a beanie is crouched by the old train that rests motionless on the tracks, fiddling with it while the others watch.
“Aye ou mem la la! Want to join?” one of the guys on the couch calls to V when he notices her standing there watching them.
V stares at him for a beat, uncertain of how to respond. They seem harmless enough, like any normal group of young people goofin’ around on the abandoned boardwalk.
“Come, we have beer,” the man urges, sensing her hesitance.
“Tryna get ‘er up and runnin’ again?” V guesses, gesturing towards the coaster as she takes a tentative step towards the group.
“Mhm,” the man replies. “A few hour now.”
There’s a girl with blue hair in four little knots atop her head sprawled across the arm of the couch, and another woman in a baseball cap leaning against the back. The man who called her over is seated in the center, beer in hand, wearing a stylish but worn nylon jacket. A man with a hood covering his face hovers over the third man trying to fix the ride, and he smiles at V as she approaches.
Up close, V is pretty certain that her read on them was right - they’re just a bunch of harmless kids. None of them seem armed, and while they're all staring at her curiously, their faces are friendly and open.
“Haven’t given up yet?” the man on the couch says teasingly to his friend.
“Fèmen bouch,” the blue-haired woman says. “I want a ride!”
“In Jean we trust!” the second woman agrees.
“Never been on one of these,” V admits, watching the man in the beanie, presumably Jean, continue to fumble with the ride. Her mom used to take her here when she was a kid, but she was too little to ride the coaster, then. And it’s been broken most of the time for as long as she can remember.
The man on the couch foists a beer into her hand.
“Here, you take,” he says. “You from where?”
“I’m from Heywood,” V tells them.
“Heywood…” he muses. “You have rollercoaster there? No?” He laughs sharply. “That’s what I thought.”
“Oh, shit!” the hooded man exclaims. “You are one dat beat Razor last night, no?”
They all turn to look at her, then.
“The very same,” V says, flashing them all a grin.
“Bon bagay!” the woman in the cap says admiringly. “I was there, I see it.”
The rest of them nod approvingly, and she feels herself relax a bit. “You guys hang out here often?” she asks them, sipping the beer.
They all seem so… normal. Like she and her friends used to be.
Jean sighs and glances up from his tinkering at the car to look over his shoulder at her. “When der is time,” he says with a shrug. “As you know, de rest of de time we steal cars and bake sweet potato.” His face spreads into a grin. “As one does in Pacifica.”
V raises her beer to that, and the blue-haired woman laughs. “Do not listen to him,” she say to V. “He never bake sweet potato in his life.”
“Oh, oh!” Jean exclaims suddenly, ignoring her jibe. “How ‘bout now?” He waits, eying the car expectantly, but nothing happens. “No?”
“Any minute now,” the hooded man reassures him, and V can tell he's only half teasing.
“He just needs to focus, that’s all,” the blue-haired woman says kindly.
“Mind if I give it a shot?” V offers. They all turn to her in surprise, but she just shrugs. If she can hack pirate routers and fortune-telling bots, she can probably fix whatever it is that’s wrong with the coaster.
“Hmph, be my guest,” Jean says, straightening and dusting himself off. “Dey’s not helping, that for sure.” He scowls playfully at his friends, then smiles at V. “Thank you.”
V moves to examine the car, but she realizes quickly what the problem is. It seems like the safety’s still connected, locking the car in place, and the whole thing doesn’t have any power. There’s gotta be a box somewhere nearby that controls all this, she thinks, scanning the area with her Kiroshis.
And sure enough, there’s a panel down beneath the platform, accessible via a small ladder. She holds up a finger to her new friends, then drops down and opens the latch on the repair box. There’s a cable hanging disconnected, and another clearly plugged into the wrong jack, and as she suspected, the safety is toggled on and locked. She switches the cables around, fiddling with the wires and switches until everything is properly connected, then shuts the box and returns to the platform.
“Should be all set to go,” V tells the group with a satisfied smirk as she rejoins them.
Jean’s face lights up and his eyes widen. “Koumanman,” he says incredulously. “You serious?”
V nods. “Dumped the safety mechanisms and switched on the emergency power.”
“Hey, you hear that?” the first man says, turning to the women. “Who wanna go first?”
“I think I drank too much,” the blue-haired woman says, suddenly sheepish.
“What if we stop in the middle?” says the second woman, the fear clear on her face now that riding the derelict coaster is actually a real option.
But Jean winks at V. “Let her go first,” he says, gesturing at V. “She de one who fix it.”
V eyes the coaster, skeptical as well, but Johnny glitches in, already seated on the ride. “Hold my beer,” he jokes, flashing V a grin. “We’re doin’ this, V.”
“Alright, fine,” V relents, grinning recklessly in spite of her nerves. She has always wanted to ride this thing.
“Ey!” Jean exclaims. “Dat de spirit! We sit back and watch.”
“Do it, do it!” they all chant.
“Dang, she really gonna do it!” one of them mutters in awe as V hands Jean her beer and settles herself into the coaster, pulling the metal restraints down over her chest and shoulders.
“Heywood! Heywood! Heywood! Heywood!” the group chants as Jean pulls the lever and the rollercoaster creaks to life, the car beginning its slow crawl out of the station.
“Bet you anything you’re gonna scream like a little girl,” Johnny teases, smiling at her as they begin the clattering climb towards the first big drop.
“Bet you are,” she shoots back, grinning wolfishly at him.
The sunset is in full swing now, and as they approach the top, she takes in the skyline, feels the cool sea breeze on her face.
Johnny meets her eyes one last time, his face lit up like a little fuckin’ kid.
And then they’re falling, plummeting downward as the tracks twist before them, pressing her body back into the seat as the ride rattles and careens along the rusted track, around the turns and through the hills and drops.
She looks over at Johnny again, and he’s smiling like she’s never seen him smile before. And when he turns to look back at her, his eyes are shining. And fuck, he looks so beautiful like that, smiling at her in the sunset as the wind whips his hair across his face and he laughs with his whole body.
The wind begins to sting her eyes, and she finds herself suddenly blinking back tears as she watches him. But they’re blown from her face as the coaster hurls the cart upwards and into the loop, and V throws up her hands and shrieks wildly as her body is flung upside down and back around again, racing downwards towards the water before swinging back around towards the boardwalk. She hears Johnny cackling beside her, his laugh a deep rumble in her ear almost drowned out by the wind.
She’s still laughing when they pull back into the station, and Johnny is grinning too as the car screeches to a stop, the bar raising and releasing her from the ride.
“Dat was…!” Jean exclaims, shaking his head in admiration and letting out an incredulous laugh. “I almost shit myself from watching you!” He laughs again, holding her abandoned bottle out to her. “Beer?” he offers.
V climbs out of the car and takes it from him, chugging the rest in one go before tossing the bottle aside.
“So?” the first man says hopefully. “Tomorrow we fire up the Ferris wheel?”
“Ey, anything possible now,” Jean laughs.
“Tomorrow we were supposed to swim,” the woman in the cap sulks.
“You can come wid us to da beach tomorrow, if you want,” the blue-haired woman says almost shyly, looking at V.
V smiles sadly back at her. If only, she finds herself thinking. "Maybe," she tells them.
“Dis was a good day,” Jean says, still smiling at V.
And V has to agree.
After another round of beers and some more gentle ribbing, V bids farewell to her new friends and begins making her way back across the boardwalk towards her car. But something makes her stop and turn once more towards the water, taking in the lights of the city glittering from across the canal.
On a sudden impulse, she turns on her heel and begins walking quickly back to the concrete steps that lead down to the beach, stepping out onto the sand and walking towards the water.
It’s high tide, and the waves are lapping close to the concrete wall that separates the beach from the street, and she sits down on the narrow stretch of sand and hugs her knees as she stares out over the water. The last sliver of sun is melting on the horizon, bleeding red across the sky as the purple and orange streaked clouds whorl above it.
“I don’t want to die,” she says quietly, and Johnny glitches in beside her.
“You won’t,” he says, but there's none of his usual confidence in his tone.
“But I don't want you to die, either,” she continues, turning to look at him. “No more than you want me to. And I'm gonna do whatever I fuckin’ can to get us both out of this.”
“Don’t make this harder, V,” Johnny says, his voice pained.
“Why? Are you scared?” she presses. “You scared to admit you actually want something? That you want to live? That you want to stay alive, with me? If anyone's bullshittin' themselves here, it's you.”
He looks down and away from her. “Some stories don't get happy endings 'fore the credits roll,” he says in a low voice. “Leavin' questions you're never gonna find answers to. Questions you'll lug around till the day you croak.”
V swallows hard, her mouth set in a bitter line. “Can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, y'know,” she says, and it comes out harsher than she intends it to. “Dwellin' on past mistakes.”
Johnny knits his brow, glancing over towards her. “How do you mean?”
She shakes her head. “You try so hard to run away from 'em, you forget you're goin' around in a neat, little circle, straight for a head-on.”
He looks at her for a long beat, then nods slowly. “And fuckin' bam.”
“Exactly.” V hugs her knees tighter, a shaky sigh escaping her lips. “I just… need to believe it'll work out for the best in the end.”
Johnny takes a long drag of his cigarette. “Think I’m finally startin' to see why I did all the shit I did.” He exhales the smoke between his teeth, grimacing. “Why I went AWOL durin' the war, then set off on a warpath against Arasaka. Why I called Kerry a fuckin' pussy so many times.” He shakes his head, looking out at the ocean as the last drop of sunlight disappears across the darkening sea. “What'd I achieve anyway, in the end? So many dead... and those suits are still on top.”
V blinks at him. “Givin’ up on your ideals? Now? Finally?”
“No. Just saw that behind everything we believe, there's an ugly truth we don't wanna face.”
“Johnny,” she says quietly. “You've changed.”
He flashes her a pained smile. “For better or worse?”
She shakes her head. “Where's Johnny I'm-the-fuckin'-greatest-Silverhand?” she continues softly, watching his face. “Don't even recognize you.”
He doesn't answer for a beat, his face hard as he gazes out at the water.
“Maybe I'm done pretending,” he says in a low voice, leaning back on his elbows and closing his eyes.
And then he lets her in, more than he ever has before, opening his mind to her like a dam breaking. She can see all his memories flooding into her awareness, like a high school fuckin’ yearbook. It’s more than she can process all at once, and she lays back on the cold sand as her vision glitches slightly. It’s not like what she experienced in the Net with the Voodoo Boys, or like that first terrifying day in the landfill - it’s more like when he let her see his time with the Aldecaldos, or his selected memories from the Samurai tours, but so much more this time. There's nothing hidden, nothing held back. It feels almost like snapshots bein’ added to her holo’s camera roll but backdated so they’re just… there, alongside her own memories as though they’ve been there all along. But bits and pieces float to the surface, images of skinned knees and lizards and dust and the sharp sting of a leather belt, the heat of a bright Texas sun, the taste of stolen cigarettes and bloody knuckles.
And then there’s the Army, where he buzzed off his hair and got his first tattoos. And by the time that machine spit him out, it had given him his metal arm that became the foundation of what would become his new identity. There was Robbie Linder before, and Johnny Silverhand after. It was what one of the nurses had teasingly called him at the military hospital after they’d put his new arm on, and the name had stuck, taken root in his mind. She can see it now - Johnny turning it over in his head as he lay on that bed at the Pistis Sophia, watching the fan spin as he internally rearranged his entire view of the world, how it worked, where the true power lay and where it didn’t. How he’d felt his own insignificance, his complete sense of inability to stop these monstrous machines, these terrible evils coming for everything and everyone he had ever held dear.
And so he reached for the only way he knew how to fight back - his guitar, and his words. And Kerry was the only person who’d listen to him, who understood what he wanted to do and why. So they started makin’ music together, just dumb shit at first, but together they managed to strike onto something. Nancy came next, and V can see her now as Johnny remembers her - dark-haired, beautiful, all sharp edges and spikes. She was a girl from Rancho with an uncanny ability to talk her way into just about anything - she saw ‘em play and approached them afterwards and quickly convinced them to let her become their keyboardist and manager, an arrangement that worked surprisingly well for all of them. She very quickly recruited Henry and shortly there afterwards Denny, completing their final lineup. And Nancy’d chosen well - they had a real chemistry together, the five of them, and when they played together, people responded.
The rest is an explosion of chemicals, of booze, of sex and dressing rooms and concert stages, of calloused fingers and bloody noses, of lips pressed against Kerry’s again and again and again in their perpetual game of push and tug. There’s Rogue, too - always at Johnny’s side even when he least expected it, the woman who surprised him again and again just by being there. Despite his bravado about her devotion to him, it’s clear to V now that he valued Rogue more than he ever let on, more than he ever let her know. She swallows hard. She knows Rogue was hurt by him, probably still is on some level.
And she sees Alt, feels the depths of Johnny’s utter infatuation with her, feels the way his heart constructed a pedestal for her upon which he placed all his anger, all his rage against the corporate machine, all his fears and helplessness and desperation. She’d become a symbol for him, and now… now she very well might be their last hope at salvation.
And V sees herself through Johnny's eyes, sees those first terrifying weeks they spent together in her apartment, him watching her in her mirror, slowly learning her mind and adjusting to existence in her body.
It’s overwhelming and exhilarating, feeling his mind laid bare for her like this, both of their thoughts and feelings twisting together in a strange delicate balance, their internal narratives intertwining and blurring together. V realizes she can’t even quite tell anymore where his ends and hers begins.
She looks over at Johnny then, and his eyes burn into hers, his face a mottled play of shadows echoing the dim colors of the neon glow from the boardwalk.
“Now you know me,” he says simply. “You’re the only one who ever has.”
She pulls him down onto the sand with a choked sob, kissing him with a fervor she’s never fully allowed herself to tap into until this moment. She can feel his turmoil, as close to her mind as her own thoughts now - he’s afraid of what’ll happen tomorrow, afraid he’ll have to watch her die, afraid of dying himself, afraid of oblivion, afraid of being put back in Mikoshi. Afraid of what he’ll do if he wakes up one day alone in her skin.
“No one will ever know me like you do,” she sobs. “No one could.”
But she hears a group of teenagers hooting as they pass along the darkened beach behind her, making her suddenly and excruciatingly aware of the fact that she’s lyin’ there alone on the cold sand, sobbing by herself with her own thin arms wrapped around her torso. She realizes too that she’s shaking uncontrollably, the blistering night air from the ocean blowing against her exposed arms and legs.
It’s too much to bear, so she drags herself to her feet and staggers back towards the street, up the stairs and off the beach until she reaches her brand new, expensive, dust-covered, bullet-pocked car where she collapses into the driver’s seat, still trembling violently.
But before she can start the car, Johnny’s hands are on her waist, his mouth pressed to hers, his beard brushing roughly against her cheek, her neck, her collarbone as his hands fumble at her frantically, and before her mind’s even fully caught up she’s kissin’ him back, grasping at his shirt and wrapping her legs around his torso. She pauses to shove off her shorts, kicking them down over her feet as he frees his cock from his leather pants, and he grunts as he shoves himself inside her and begins fucking her with an almost violent desperation. Her cries mingle with his low moans as he slams himself into her again and again, and her chrome hand reaches up to tangle in his hair, her feet curling up on the dash as she whimpers his name into his left shoulder. She feels her teeth scraping against the place where his skin meets the hard metal of his arm, and she whines as he grinds himself against her, slowing his rhythm and gasping against her ear.
“Fuck, V,” he groans, and she feels his nose brush her neck and then he’s sinking his teeth into her earlobe.
It’s over quickly after that, and she convulses against him, already bracing herself for the malfunction that’s sure to follow. But Johnny grabs her face harshly with his metal hand, holding her head and forcing her to look at him as her vision fills with red dots and her limbs start to go numb. She feels him willing himself out of her limbs, feels him forcing himself to remain apart from her, resurrecting those last flimsy barriers that hang unsteadily between them now. And as her breathing steadies, she can feel the sensation flooding back to her fingers as Johnny recedes within her, his engram form still hunched above her in the darkened car, his fingers still clasped firmly around her jaw.
He kisses her once, long and hard, then pulls back and looks down at her for a long moment, silhouetted against the diffused glow of the streetlight shining down through the now fogged-up windshield.
“Let’s go home,” he says.
She gazes back up at him for a beat, taking in his face, his hair, his broad shoulders.
"Home," she agrees.
Notes:
WAHH we're at the endgame now holy shit! Thank you ALL for sticking with me on this horrid little roller coaster to hell (pun intended lmao). Love you guys!!!
OH and I almost forgot to mention, this fic now has a Spotify playlist with a song for each chapter if anyone is into that sort of thing.
Also, this seems like a good place to mention this as a kind of waypoint for readers: This chapter is roughly the halfway point of the fic! Don't be fooled by the chapter numbers lol they get longer as they go. Now that the fic is completed I can actually say things like this with certainty! So... congrats for making it halfway! Tbh the back half of the fic is probably the part I'm most proud of... so buckle in, the ride is far from over!
Chapter 46: The Hostess
Summary:
Johnny and V go meet Hanako at Embers, and find themselves faced with an important decision.
Notes:
WAHHHHH WE'RE HERE WE'RE AT THE ENDGAME WE DID IT FAM
Sorry for the wait between chapters, I had family visiting and then went on a lil vacation but I am BACK
And this one is a very long one lmao so enjoy
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Johnny slouches against the window, smoking cigarette after cigarette as V fumbles around her kitchen in a half-hearted attempt to make breakfast for herself. He can feel her head buzzing with what’s become a familiar constant pain, her stomach churning with that similarly ever-present nausea, and her heart pounding in her chest ‘cause he can tell she’s tryin’ her hardest not to think about the only thing they can both think about right now - tonight is the night. They’re meetin’ with Hanako fuckin’ Arasaka, in the flesh. And after that, whatever happens… happens.
He’s terrified of placing their fate in that cunt’s pampered hands, terrified of losing what little control they have left of the situation, terrified that no matter what she offers them, it’ll be too late.
But they’re out of options, and out of time.
“This is it, huh?” he murmurs, tossing down his cigarette and immediately lighting another one.
V ignores him at first, then pauses for a moment, nodding almost imperceptibly.
They haven’t spoken much since she woke up, but they hardly even have to anymore - he can feel her mind meeting his at every point, can feel her limbs and her guts as though they’re his own, and he knows he could take control now with barely any effort - probably without even takin’ Misty’s pills. It almost takes some degree of restraint not to, and that scares the shit outta him worst of all.
V heaves a shaky sigh and downs the last of her coffee, reachin’ for the tequila like she always does. He almost stops her - he wants to be sharp when they meet Hanako later - but he also shares her desire to reach for anything right now that’ll take the edge off.
And sure, he has other ideas about how they could do that… ideas that make his dick start to swell in his pants as he imagines them. But he’s got a feeling that if they did any of that now, V might not survive it. And for once, the idea of fuckin’ someone into literal oblivion is less of a turn-on than a jolt of ice cold terror in his veins.
I love her, he repeats to himself, watching her through hooded eyes as she takes another swig of the tequila. I love her, and I’m going to die for her.
It’s become almost a mantra for him since the other night, when she had that bad malfunction after Vik left. After he finally admitted to himself how badly he wants to live, to be real. But if the best thing he can do for her is die, then that’s what he’s gonna fuckin’ do, no matter what she fuckin’ says or tries. He knows she’s been toyin’ with the idea of just letting things play out, of letting him take her body… but for him, that would be a fate worse than death for both of ‘em at this point. If V dies, he’s goin’ with her, and there’s no fuckin’ universe where he’s lettin’ herself throw her own life away for his.
She’s making a strange face at him right now, so he arranges his own into a scowl as he stomps out his next cigarette, but he glitches over to her this time instead of immediately lighting another.
“V…” he begins, suddenly unsure of exactly what it is he wants to say.
She looks up at him, her light crystal-colored eyes boring into him. They once seemed so eerie to him, he remembers. But now, he can’t imagine anything more captivating.
“It’ll be okay,” she says, placing her hand on his arm, but her voice is unconvincing. He knows she’s telling herself that as much as she’s tellin’ him, and he doesn’t like bullshit.
He shakes his head. “It’ll be whatever the fuck it is,” he says darkly.
She nods slowly, then steps away from him to refill her coffee and take it out onto the balcony, and he glitches after her as she goes to lean against the railing, staring out at the city as she sips from her mug.
“Barely even used this pool,” she murmurs, gazing down at it.
Johnny shrugs. “Still time to fix that.”
She cocks an eyebrow at him, then places her coffee on the floor and vaults over the balcony railing, landing lightly in a crouch with a little help from her reinforced tendons. She grins up at him, then yanks her top off over her head and kicks off the sweatpants she’s wearin’ then turns to face him again, standing with her back to the pool and her arms up before closing her eyes and letting herself fall backwards, landing naked in the pool with a loud splash that Johnny feels as though it were him down there in the water.
After so much time in her head, he didn’t think she could still surprise him, but he finds himself laughing as she surfaces, grinning and flashing him a thumbs up. He glitches down to join her in the water, ditching his clothes in the process. The illusion breaks a bit when he materializes next to her - the water is cutting straight through his torso, and it doesn’t react when he splashes or moves - but V treads closer to him, threading her arms around his waist and resting her head against his chest. So he holds her to him, enjoying the warmth of her skin and the warmth of the heated water staving off the bite of the crisp October air.
They linger for a while, and eventually V releases Johnny and closes her eyes and tilts onto her back, letting herself just float in the warm water, staring up at the bright blue sky flanked on all sides by the monolithic skyscrapers that block the horizon in all directions. He can feel her muscles finally start to relax, feel the pain recede a bit, and he tries to enjoy the moment and just exist in the present for a bit, forcing himself not to dwell on the fact that they may not have many - or even any - more moments like this one after tonight. He’s got a bad hunch that Hanako might not let them just walk out of this meeting, regardless of what they do or don’t agree to.
“You gonna tell Kerry?” he asks V as she towels off.
She shrugs, tossing the towel aside and pulling her top back on, then chews on her lip for a moment before answering.
“I don’t think so,” she says finally. “He’d just try and talk me out of it, probably try to find a way to throw his money at our little problem. But we need Mikoshi, and Kerry can’t buy me that.”
Johnny frowns. He wishes it were as simple as Kerry just payin’ for some fancy medical treatments. But he knows V’s right - this ain’t some shit you can fix with expensive gene therapy or even top-tier neurosurgery. Soulkiller got them in this situation, and now Alt’s damned software is the only fighting chance either of ‘em have at gettin’ outta this.
The clear morning has given way to a gray, overcast afternoon - storm clouds have rolled in from the ocean and dampened the clear air into a dull gloom. It fits Johnny’s mood perfectly.
V takes a shower and puts back on her sweatpants, then flops onto the couch before her eyes land on the shattered TV, and Johnny feels her face fall.
“Fuck,” she mutters, and as if on cue, the rain starts pattering down outside, streaking against the tall glass windows and turning the city into a prismatic blur of blooming lights against a backdrop of foggy haze broken only by the dark silhouettes of the skyscrapers shrouded in mist.
Johnny glitches in by the window, staring out at the cityscape as V gets up with a huff and goes to the kitchen, pouring herself a small glass of tequila, neat, before coming over to join Johnny at the window, watching the rain in silence.
When she finishes her drink, she goes upstairs and starts to get ready, putting on Johnny’s pants, her least dirty pair of boots, and a plain white tank top with her hooded leather trench coat thrown on over the top. She straps on her Quasar and his Malorian, sliding her knife into her boot with her usual practiced motion, but Johnny can feel her hands shaking. He’s not sure whether it’s from nerves or from the Relic acting up, but it does nothing to help the cold feeling clamping around his gut.
She takes her time styling her hair - it's grown out a bit, and the longest strands brush her collarbone now - then carefully applies her makeup to look like she isn’t wearing any at all. Johnny wonders why she’s goin’ to such lengths to impress the ‘Saka heiress, and it’s not until he sees V’s face in the mirror - looking misleadingly healthy and fresh - that he realizes it’s less about lookin’ pretty for Hanako and more about looking less like she’s about to drop dead in the fuckin’ restaurant.
And all too soon, it’s time to go. V takes one last glance at the penthouse, her lip barely twitching upward at the corner at the sight of Nibbles glowering balefully at her from the couch. And then she steps into the elevator, pulling her coat tighter around her as the doors open into a sheet of rain. She yanks her hood up over her hair, then makes her way across the small parking lot to her parked Arch.
“Gonna take this in the rain?” Johnny mutters, glitching in at the head of the bike and watching her through the downpour.
V frowns at the bike. “Faster getaway, if we need it,” she says, tightening her hood and throwing her leg over the already damp bike. Neither of ‘em thought to get a cover for it - it’s been parked downstairs for so long, getting rained on wasn’t a real concern until she started parkin’ her cars on the roof.
Johnny glitches away when she starts the bike and guns it out onto the freeway ramp. She’s squinting through the rain as she weaves between traffic and makes her way south towards Corpo Plaza. It’s the tail end of rush hour now, so it’s gridlocked on the bridge all the way into the City Center, but V lane-splits between the cars, deftly swerving in and out of lanes as she makes her way further south, almost to the border of the Glen. Night falls around them, transforming the city into a damp, glittering, rain-soaked neon jungle.
Johnny can see it, plain as day in V's memories as she pulls the bike to a stop outside the front of Embers. He remembers that fateful night she came to this very place to steal that fuckin’ car. The night she met Jackie. In many ways, V meetin’ that big lunk here was what set all of this into motion - it seems almost poetic that this whole, horrible saga should culminate in the very same spot.
There are two security guards posted outside the elevator up to the restaurant, and they eye V cautiously as she vaults off her bike and walks slowly up the short steps that lead to the plaza outside the entrance. She swallows and squares her shoulders, then approaches them.
“She is here. And she looks armed,” one of them says into his comm, speaking in Japanese. “Of course. Understood,” he replies, stepping aside and motioning for her to get in the elevator.
Johnny's relieved that they don't try to confiscate V's irons, but his relief is short-lived when blue dots start streaking out from the edges of her vision as soon as the elevator doors slide shut. They begin to rise, and Johnny materializes next to her, hand on his hip.
“God, I feel sick,” he mutters. “Don’t like this at all. This porcelain bitch is the worst kind of news.”
“I know,” V promises. “I’ll be careful.”
“Not exactly one of your strong suits,” Johnny grumbles affectionately. “But listen, first sign of trouble, we delta.”
V nods at him, and the elevator doors glide open then to reveal the empty, darkened interior of the restaurant.
Well, mostly empty. There are a few huscle scattered throughout the dining area wearing crisp, white pantsuits, and at the center of the room, Hanako fuckin’ Arasaka herself is seated at a gleaming grand piano, playing a classical tune that Johnny can’t shake the feeling he’s heard somewhere before.
“She emptied the place?” he mutters to V. “Shit.”
The heiress glances up when she sees V emerge from the elevator, and then lifts her hands from the piano and takes a deep, steadying breath as though preparing for an audition. Johnny finds himself smug in the knowledge that she's nervous too, and wonders if the rich cunt has ever done anything like this in her life before - work against her own family, that is. He somehow doubts it.
“Hanako-sama is waiting,” a man near the elevator says to V in Japanese, gesturing towards their host. Hanako’s dressed much more simply than she was at the parade, but her plain white dress still reeks of couture.
Johnny strides out after V, pausing with his thumb in his pocket to give her a long, solemn look before she steps past him, off the raised corner that surrounds the elevator and reception stand. He remains in place as V makes her way slowly towards the dais where Hanako is still seated at the piano.
“Excellent,” Hanako says as V approaches, the relief clear in her voice. “You have come.” She folds her hands in her lap and studies V for a moment, then gets to her feet and steps away from the piano and closer to V.
V nods once. “Let’s step to it, then.”
Hanako clasps her hands in front of her stomach, wringing them nervously. “Before we discuss details, I feel I owe you an explanation,” she says. “I must tell you why I changed my mind and wish to help.”
Johnny scowls, glitching over to sit on one of the chairs at the empty table behind Hanako, legs stretched out and arms crossed. He doesn’t give a flying fuck why this gilded cunt suddenly wants to double-cross her brother, and he certainly doesn’t wanna hear her monologue about whatever fuckin’ soul-searching she’s been doing.
V narrows her eyes. “Well, you weren’t sure of anything. If you could trust me, if Yorinobu’d killed your father. And now-”
“I knew,” Hanako interjects, cutting her off. “From the start.”
“You… knew?” V says, her brow furrowing. Johnny scoffs, wishing he were more surprised at this revelation. Hanako's a fuckin' snake in the grass like the rest of 'em, ready to use the truth as a weapon only when it benefits her.
“All the board members knew,” Hanako says, spreading her hands. “Not one soul even slightly interested in the matter believed in the poisoning. Details were disparate, inconsistent.”
“You knew but didn’t do a thing about it?” V asks incredulously, narrowing her eyes at the poised and polished bitch. “Why? Suddenly sprout a conscience just yesterday?”
“You do not know my family,” Hanako says calmly. “Not in the least.” She shakes her head and gazes out towards the window, where the rain is still pouring down in a sheet of glimmering streaks that catch and scatter the car headlights and neon glow from the billboards in the darkness. “My father had his flaws, I know this,” she continues. “I harbor no illusions about it. When a foe needed removal, my father ordered it without a thought to mercy. A way of being Yorinobu could not abide. But to my father, ends ever justified means.” She turns back to V. “Saburo Arasaka has always valued just one thing. Do you know what it is?”
Power, Johnny thinks bitterly.
“Ties that bind,” V says, and Johnny looks up at her, slightly startled that her answer isn't what he expected.
But Hanako nods. “Yes, family,” she says with a small, wry, almost imperceptible smile. “Our family. I was to be its heart. To uphold life, ensure continuity, stability, never to oppose it.”
V laughs sharply. “Guess Yorinobu’s instructions were a little different.”
Hanako’s arms drop to her sides, and she sighs defeatedly. “Yorinobu raised his hand against our father. But he is an Arasaka. He is family.” She shakes her head again. “I do not expect you to understand. I wish you merely to know I do not oppose my brother willingly, that it is difficult.”
“Mhm,” V says coldly, not giving an inch. “He’s your brother, it’s been hard, it’ll be hard. Let’s say I get that. But what changed your mind?”
Hanako wrings her hands together again and looks down. “We... received a warning during the parade. Security protocols were violated. The first doubts sprouted then.” She exhales slowly, glancing at the window again, then back at V. “They grew yet greater in your hideout, when my brother’s assault group arrived not to rescue, but to kill.”
V raises her eyebrows in agreement. “Yorinobu was just plain willin’ to sacrifice you.”
Hanako nods. “My father was right about my brother. He never cared for us.” Her eyes dart to the window once more, then return to meet V’s, their small cybernetic details catching the light. “I was brought up to be the heart of the family," she says again. "It is time for the Arasakas to listen to their heart. It will bring justice.”
Johnny rolls his eyes and uncrosses his legs and recrosses them, but V just nods. “Let’s talk biz, then,” she says.
“Did you bring Soulkiller, as we agreed you would?” Hanako asks.
Johnny leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, shooting V a look. V never actually agreed to that, never even told Hanako explicitly about makin' contact with Alt, and they both know it. He feels a sinking sensation in his stomach as a horrible suspicion begins to form in his gut - that Hanako doesn’t give a rat-fuck about her brother, she just wants Alt. Like the Voodoo Boys did. Like NetWatch does. Alt's a threat to them, to Mikoshi, to everything they've built, and that's the real prize Hanako's after here.
“Finger on the trigger, don’t say a word,” he warns V, and her eyes flick to him, then back to Hanako. But Hanako’s watching the window again, and right at that moment an AV flies past outside, its lights sweeping the restaurant through the large glass windows that span the height of the room.
“Seem on edge,” V comments, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Somethin' got ya spooked?”
Hanako sighs heavily. “I… don’t know,” she admits. “Three times now that AV has flown by.”
“Think someone mighta tailed you?” V asks, and Johnny follows their gaze towards the window. Hanako’s got plenty of huscle here, and probably more hidden all over the neighborhood, but if Yorinobu sends another strike team like he did at the parade... Johnny's gotta admit, it would be a close fight. Dangerously close.
But Hanako shakes her head. “We must not get distracted,” she says. “Did you bring Soulkiller?”
“Take me for a fool, think I’d fall for that?" V retorts with a sharp laugh. "Got plans to walk outta here alive.”
Hanako balks at this. “Had I any ill intentions, I would have chosen a site far more discreet than this,” she points out, holding V’s gaze in her own, her jaw set. “We are here because I know how to save your life.”
V narrows her eyes, and Johnny feels her heart start to beat a little faster in her chest.
“I can lead you to Mikoshi,” Hanako concludes, watching V's face for her response.
Johnny exhales slowly through his teeth. This is exactly what they’d been hoping for, the whole reason he agreed to walk into this fuckin’ snake pit in the first place. He leans forward again, keeping his eyes fixed on V.
“Meanin’?” V prompts, still hedging. “Mikoshi don’t exist in realspace.”
Johnny remembers how Hanako's proxy told ‘em Mikoshi’s servers are housed on orbital stations. But there's gotta be access points on Earth. And Johnny’s got a feeling he can guess where at least one of ‘em is.
“Yet its access points do, and one is very near,” Hanako replies, confirming Johnny’s hunch. She steps lightly past V, off the dais, and crosses to the empty bar where she takes a seat and gestures to the stool beside her.
“Where?” V presses, though she's probably already guessed as well. She follows Hanako to stand by the bar, where two glasses of whiskey have already been poured and set out for them as though Hanako had this whole meeting blocked out and choreographed ahead of time. Johnny glitches in behind the bar, scowling at Hanako.
“Here in Night City,” Hanako says simply, taking a sip of her whiskey. “Beneath Arasaka Tower.”
So that's it, then. All roads lead to Arasaka Tower. One way or another, with Hanako's help or without it, V's gotta get down there, link in Alt, and let her separate 'em before smashing the whole fuckin’ thing to bits.
“We oughta leave,” Johnny says, shooting V a pointed look. “Right now. We got what we needed, now all we gotta do is figure out how to get in there. And I got an idea or two.”
But V turns to him, her face dark. Gonna hear her out, she thinks at him pointedly.
But he can also hear the unspoken thought that follows it. That blastin’ their way into Mikoshi isn’t gonna be enough to save Johnny, too - for that, they’ll need more from Hanako.
Johnny paces away from the bar, pulling his hands away dramatically. “This is gonna be a disaster,” he mutters.
“Sit,” Hanako commands. “We have little time.”
V slides onto the stool beside Hanako, resting her chin on her elbow and studying the heiress. “Go on,” she says. “Talk. You’ll help me in exchange for…?”
“My brother,” Hanako says, reaching for her whiskey and taking another small sip.
“You catch a whiff of that?” Johnny interjects again. “Smells like shit. Careful not to step in it.”
“He must be made to take responsibility for his deeds,” Hanako continues, oblivious to Johnny’s protests.
V’s eyes dart back and forth between Hanako and Johnny, who’s still pacing agitatedly behind the bar, puffing his cigarette like it’s the last fuckin’ one he’ll ever have. She reaches for her drink and takes a tentative sip, then downs the whole thing in one gulp, slamming the glass back down on the bar.
“So you wanna avenge dead ol’ dad,” she says. “Sounds like dirty laundry, a family matter. Why should I get involved?”
“You already are,” Hanako reminds her. “You willed it so.”
Johnny pauses, holding his cigarette between his metal thumb and forefinger, and exchanges a look with V.
“Just say it,” V says to Hanako in a low voice. “Be easier that way.”
“I want him punished,” comes her even reply.
“Still vague,” V pushes. “You want him dead.”
“I want the Arasaka Corporation to know the truth,” Hanako tells her.
“Thought you said they already did,” V counters.
Hanako shakes her head. “They know Yorinobu is lying. But they do not know the whole truth.”
“How you plan to do this?” V asks.
“Yorinobu-” Hanako starts, but one of the guards approaches them, then.
“Hanako-sama,” he says, speaking quickly in Japanese. “You are expected at the residence.”
“We will finish soon,” Hanako replies, also in Japanese. She turns back to V, switching back to English. “I will need to return to the estate soon. So as not to raise any suspicions.” She sighs. “Yorinobu has been on high alert since the parade. He may suspect something. He will soon call a meeting of the board,” she explains. “Representatives of all factions are expected to attend. The perfect moment for them to learn the circumstances of my father’s death.” She leans closer to V. “I will get you into this meeting. And you will testify against my brother.”
Johnny leans against the bar again, dropping his head and pushing out with his hands. This is getting fuckin' worse by the second. If V stays here, she’s gonna find herself roped into this whole rotten deal whether she likes it or not.
“Testify…” V muses, shaking her head. “Listen, mind if I’m straight with you?”
“Help me get rid of Yorinobu,” Hanako says firmly. “I will help you get rid of the construct.”
Johnny can feel V bristle as she says this, and her eyes fly to meet his. She swallows.
“What will…” she begins. “What will happen to the construct?”
Hanako eyes V carefully, her smooth brow furrowing. “This is a concern of yours?”
V hesitates, then nods. “Is there… is there any way to avoid wiping the engram completely? A way to transfer him to… somewhere else?”
Hanako’s eyes widen in understanding. “I see,” she says, tapping her gilded fingers on the bar. “I do not know for certain, but we will take this into... consideration. I will see what can be done. Your construct was chosen for this prototype for a reason, presumably. Perhaps Yorinobu had designs for him. There may be... something we can do.”
Johnny scowls again. This is what he was fuckin’ afraid of - that Hanako would dangle the chance of his survival in front of V, and she would jump at it like a dog goin’ for a bone, like a pig to the slaughter. He doesn’t fuckin’ trust a word that’s comin’ out of this cunt’s mouth, and now that they know for sure the Mikoshi access point lies underneath ‘Saka Tower, they’re much better off findin’ their own way to it.
And worse - now that V's shown her hand, tipped Hanako off that she has vested interest in preserving his engram, it's just more leverage Hanako can use to twist V's arm.
And he’s certain there’s plenty Hanako’s not tellin’ ‘em.
But V is eying Hanako with a newfound interest. “Let’s assume it works,” she says. “Then what? You take the Arasaka throne?”
Johnny glowers at V and flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette, but Hanako takes another sip of her drink then sets it down. “Where would you get that idea?” she says coyly.
“Figured it as a given,” V replies, all bluntness as usual. “Besides, Takemura said you were supposed to step in for Yorinobu here in Night City.”
“Everyone must know their place, V,” Hanako says, and her voice sounds resigned, almost sad. “That is a fact my brother has never understood. I know my place,” she says again. “And I have no wish to change it.”
“No wish to?” V presses. “Or no permission to?”
“I decide my own fate,” Hanako insists. “As should you.”
“Sure, whatever,” V says. “Your biz, not mine.”
“So?” Hanako prompts.
V shakes her head. “So just to recap, you want me to throw Yorinobu under the bus in front of Arasaka top brass? Call me crazy, but that sounds like fuckin’ suicide.”
“This I know,” Hanako replies. “And that is why we will take all the necessary precautions.”
“Like… such as…?” V says, her lip curling.
“You will see,” Hanako says.
Johnny grimaces at the two of ‘em. The longer this conversation goes on, the more his instincts are screamin’ at him to run. And to make matters worse, V’s vision is startin’ to glitch and double the way it does before a bad one.
“Don’t like this at all,” V says through gritted teeth. “Sounds like you wanna use me.”
“No,” Hanako insists. “I simply offer you an opportunity.”
“Not the first to try,” V counters dryly.
“But what if I am the last?” Hanako says, raising an eyebrow. “You cannot take that chance.”
V’s condition is gettin’ worse by the second, and the splitting pain in her head is mounting steadily. And to Johnny’s dismay, a deep red trickle of blood starts to emerge from V’s nostril.
“Let’s fly the fuck outta here,” Johnny says, butting in. The last thing they fuckin’ need is for V to have another bad malfunction here, right in the hands of Hanako and her goons.
“Are you well?” Hanako asks, furrowing her smooth brow at V.
“Yeah, i-it’s just, uh…” V stammers. The room is spinning now.
Hanako lifts two golden fingers to her nose, tapping them against her upper lip. “You are bleeding,” she says gently, as V’s vision shifts to red.
V’s hand flies to her face, and when she looks down at her fingers, they are streaked with blood.
“Fuck…” she murmurs, and Johnny fights the rising panic in his chest.
Not here, he thinks. Not now.
“It seems you are running out of time,” Hanako observes. “Don’t delay. Make your decision.”
A sharp, stabbing pain hits V right between the eyes then, and she grunts and clutches her head. “Agh,” she gasps, clambering to her feet and stumbling away from the bar. “I’ll… think it over.”
“You could use some air,” Johnny says, glitching across the bar to place his hand on her back, the fear and urgency plain in his voice. “Right now.”
Behind her, Hanako also stands and crosses to the window, her eyes still nervously scanning for the AV they saw earlier. V turns and staggers towards the elevator, trying to wipe the remaining blood from her face. The heiress doesn't so much as bid V farewell or say how and when to contact her next.
But V barely seems to notice as she doubles over, hacking up another fistful of blood before she makes it back to the lift. The guards eye her with disinterest as she slumps into the elevator and collapses against the wall as the doors close; Johnny’s already waiting for her in there, pacing back and forth with a cigarette in his hand, his dread sharpening to a fever pitch.
Their shared vision is blurring and streaking as V leans heavily against the wall, taking deep, shaky breaths as she tries to will her hand to move, tries to lift her arm to press the button for the lobby. Her hands remain hanging limply at her sides, her body unresponsive to her commands.
“I warned you,” Johnny says in a pained growl, leaning on his metal arm above her and reaching with his organic finger to press the button. V’s hand lifts in response like a marionette on a string. He knows suddenly what they need to do. What he needs to do.
“W-what’re you doing?” V asks, the panic ringing clear in her voice as her hand moves to press the button, and she tumbles backwards onto the floor as the elevator begins to glide downwards, her limbs no longer her own to control.
“Shit, we could be hours from it now, V,” Johnny groans, pacing above her as V drags herself on her hands across the elevator floor. “And you can’t stand on your own two feet. And like it or not…" he swallows. "I’m good to go. Body listens to me.”
V rolls onto her back to look up at him, her shoulders against the wall, her eyes wide with terror. He lowers himself to sit down across from her, resting his metal elbow on his knee and stretching out his other leg in front of him, his eyes searching hers. “See what I’m gettin’ at?” he says, more gently this time.
“Course I can see,” V says, her voice shaking as she tries and fails to get to her feet. “Want me to hand over the keys.” She slumps against the wall again, unable to move or stand.
Johnny crawls over to her, glitching closer to crouch near her with his face inches from hers. “I wanna save your life,” he tells her, his voice raw with a fierce intensity that betrays him.
V shakes her head, still looking at him in terror.
“V,” he says. “You know I can already do it. Don’t even need the pills anymore. Just scooch and lemme get behind the wheel. I’ll take care of you. Of us.” He gets to his feet, his mind racing, already starting to hatch a plan. “I’ll get us to fuckin’ Mikoshi.”
“How?” V asks.
“Without that porcelain cunt’s help, that’s for damn sure,” Johnny spits, reaching for a cigarette and lifting it to his lips.
V shakes her head. “Don’t stand a chance without help.”
“Right about that,” Johnny agrees, producing a lighter and flicking it against the cigarette dangling from his mouth. “But that’s why I’ll bring Rogue. She’s not rusted through just yet. Plus, she owes me.”
“Maybe she’d have stuck her neck out for you half a century ago,” V says, shaking her head again. “But now? I don’t see it.”
“I’ll convince her,” Johnny insists. “After all, we know a thing or two about ops like this.” He looks down at V, sprawled helpless on the floor of the elevator, trying to will his fear away - to force a bravado he doesn't feel - for both of their sakes. “We’ll blast our way into ‘Saka Tower, just like we did back in the day. Then find the way inside Mikoshi.”
“Could ask Rogue myself,” V gasps.
“Won’t take a risk this big with someone she still sees in merc diapers,” Johnny says. “With me, it’d be just like old times.”
It's not totally true - Johnny's pretty sure Rogue would help 'em no matter who was asking at this point - but V's in no shape to do jackshit right now. And he won't - can't - do this without her consent.
“What about Panam?” V asks. “She offered help.”
Johnny shakes his head, gesturing with his cigarette. “Those guys are trailer tuggers.” He turns and paces away from her. “An assault on Arasaka’s just not another convoy to jack.” He turns back to V and walks towards her again. “You already tried this with amateurs… both know how that ended.”
“And you tried it with pros,” V counters, struggling to speak. “Didn’t end any fucking better.”
“You don’t want those people involved, V,” Johnny says seriously. “Their lives on the line, possibly on your conscience.” He shakes his head again. “Our one hope is sittin’ at the Afterlife right now, and her name is Rogue.”
“Hanako’s offer is still on the table,” V points out.
Johnny gives her a hard look. “I’m sorry, whose?” he asks coldly.
“Oh, cut the crap!” V hisses. “She actually has power, could be our ticket.”
Johnny turns away and rests his fist against the wall of the elevator. “Yeah, one-way ticket to the city morgue.” He can’t believe V is still bein’ this fuckin’ naive, this dense.
He won't let her throw her life away for him.
But V shakes her head. “You heard what she said,” she tells him. “Maybe she can find a way to-”
“That ‘Saka cunt’s scrambled your circuits,” he growls, turning back to her. “Think you can trust a word she says? She’ll throw you to the wolves, enact her revenge plot, take her throne, and throw you in some fuckin’ test facility to cut open your brain and see how well the Relic is doin’ it’s job. I’d bet my other arm on it.”
“Johnny…” V protests weakly.
“Not lettin’ you throw everything away on some bone-headed plan to try and save me,” he says roughly. “Rogue and I will handle this. Just like we used to.”
V frowns. “I dunno,” she says, finally managing to drag herself to her hands and knees. “You honestly think it could work?”
Johnny reaches over and helps her hoist herself to her feet. The fact that he can do that makes another cold jolt of terror stab through him.
“With her experience? Her resources? Her connections?” Johnny says. “Won’t find anyone better in NC.”
“It’s still my body,” V insists shakily. “I make the calls.”
Johnny wishes more than anything that were true. “Not really, not anymore,” he says softly, reaching out to grab her arm.
“Agh, Johnny!” V shouts, doubling over as another wave of agony hits her.
Johnny tries and fails to tamp down his panic, keep it off his face “Jesus, look at you, Can’t even-”
“Johnny…” she moans again, her vision glitching wildly.
“It’s gotta work!” Johnny continues, his voice hoarse as the terror wins out; he knows it's likely branded across his face now. “We breach the tower, Alt cracks open Mikoshi, then I fuck up that-”
“Need more time,” V stammers. “Need to-”
“Don’t you get it?!” Johnny hisses, wrenching her towards him by the arm. “Time is something we are fresh out of!”
But as he’s speaking, V’s vision explodes in a shower of white sparks and she collapses forward onto her hands and knees again, a searing, blinding pain shooting through them both.
“Fuck!” they both shout, and then everything goes black.
When Johnny’s vision clears, he’s lying on the floor in the elevator with the guards posted outside starin’ down at him like they’re not sure what the fuck they’re supposed to do about a laid out merc who just finished meetin’ with their boss. And to his horror and dismay, he can’t feel or hear V in his head anymore - he’s fully in control now, just like at the fight in Pacifica the other night.
V didn't bring her blockers this time, but given her condition, Johnny's not even sure they would do anything at this point besides knock 'em both out cold, leavin' no one to steer the ship.
“Fuck,” he growls again, heaving V’s body to her feet and pushing past the guards out into the cold night air. It’s still raining, but not as heavily now, and he pulls her coat up over her head and beelines for her Arch, which sits parked where they left it.
He wastes no time in hopping onto it and gunning the engine out of Corpo fuckin’ Plaza, back up and over the bridge towards Watson. He’s gotta get her to Vik’s, see if there’s a way the ripperdoc can stall things, give ‘em a little more time. This can’t be it. It can’t be now.
He repeats the words in his head like a prayer as they fly across the bridge, turning out onto the avenue that runs along the south side of the Watson waterfront.
But isn’t this what you were just askin’ her to do? a voice in his head says. Isn’t this what he wanted? Her to hand over control so he could team up with Rogue and stage another attack on ‘Saka Tower in her name?
Like he did for Alt?
He considers changing course, heading straight to the Afterlife and seein’ if Rogue’s up for his impromptu raid. If they’re really out of time, then maybe he should just act, get them to Mikoshi as fast as he fuckin’ can and hope there’s enough of V left for Alt to salvage.
But no, he thinks. Not like that. Vik’s first. Vik can stabilize the chip, buy ‘em a little more time to figure out a real plan. If he races in now and it’s too late... it’ll have all been for nothing.
And he can’t live with that.
He screeches the bike to a halt outside Vik’s and vaults off it, not caring that V’s clothes and hair are soaked through with rain. He charges in through Misty’s shop, and the girl leaps to her feet, eyes wide and frightened as he brushes past her and out through the back door, dashing across the alley and down the stairs into the ripperdoc’s dimly lit office, throwing open the metal gate to see Vik look up in surprise from where he's hunched over a client in the ripper chair. The client's some Valentino-lookin’ gonk - caught in the middle of chattin’ with Vik presumably about what fuckin’ gaudy ass chrome he wants next - and Johnny strides towards them, grabbin’ the ganger by his heels and yanking him clean off the chair and onto the floor.
“Sorry, choom,” he says, settling himself into the chair instead. “Got another client who takes priority.”
The Valentino leaps to his feet in outrage, already startin’ for Johnny, but Vik must see the panic in Johnny’s eyes because he places a hand on the ganger’s chest, gently pushin’ him backwards and towards the door where Misty is now standing, her pale face a mask of alarm.
“Hey pal,” Vik says to the gangoon. “Take a walk, I’ll get you back in here first thing tomorrow. I’ll even throw in some free upgrades, on the house,” he promises.
The Valentino looks like a tough little fucker, but Vik's got at least a head on him and the office decor makes his boxing history no secret.
And Johnny knows from experience there are few rippers in NC both as talented and as honest as Vik is.
The ganger seems to weigh his options, then shoots Johnny another glare, still clearly fuming. Johnny lifts V's chrome middle finger in response. But Vik’s face is an unmistakable warning, and the Valentino opens and closes his mouth once, then turns and storms out of the clinic, shouting curses in Spanish as he does so.
Vik sighs and turns to Johnny, his mouth dropping into a concerned frown. “What’s up, kid? You don’t look too hot.”
Johnny grimaces. The pain in his head is startin’ to escalate again, and those fuckin’ blue dots are stutterin’ all across his field of vision. “Need ya to treat me right now, doc,” he hisses. “Do a scan, whatever you gotta do. Chip needs stabilizing. It’s gettin’- agh!”
A wave of static hits him square in the face then, and he’s glad he didn’t give in to the impulse to ride straight to Rogue. Whatever’s happenin’ with the chip right now, it’s happening fast, and if Vik doesn’t do something right the fuck now, there won’t be any of V left to save.
“Okay, okay, easy there, kid,” Vik says, already moving to hook him up to the big fancy machines he’s got arrayed around the ripper chair. He reaches behind Johnny’s head to connect V’s neural port to his system, and that’s when Johnny’s vision crackles one final time and goes black.
*********
The first thing V is aware of is a blinding, staggering pain. And there’s nothin’ but blackness - she can’t move, can’t open her eyes, can’t feel her fingers or hands... or any part of her body, for that matter.
Am I dead? she thinks. Is this it? Did it happen? Is she trapped forever in the depths of her own mind, a disappearing sliver of consciousness soon to be overwritten completely?
“Wha…? Am I…?” she chokes, her voice coming out a hoarse whisper.
“Nah, it’s not what you think,” Johnny’s voice reassures her from somewhere. “Not yet, anyway.”
She can hear other soft sounds - the clanging of a gong and the shouts of a crowd. It sounds almost like a boxing match playin’ on a TV… and when she hears Vik’s voice swearing in response, she realizes that’s exactly what it is.
So she’s at Vik’s, then.
She takes a few more wheezing, labored breaths before she finally manages to pry open her eyes. Her vision is glitching horribly red and it hurts to look at anything.
“Eeaaasy there,” comes Vik’s voice, gentle and low. “Don’t move just yet.”
She can see his tools spread out next to her on a tray, bloodied and used. Her blood?
Probably.
“Vik?” she croaks weakly.
“You’re in pain, I know,” Vik tells her softly. “Delirious when you arrived, so I had to dose you with betahaloperidol.”
Cyberpsycho meds. V suppresses a shudder.
“But light oversensitivity’s a good sign,” Vik continues. “Means your optic nerves aren’t damaged.”
“My head… agh,” V chokes, finally managing to turn to look at Vik. He’s hunched over the biometric panel now, frowning at the readouts. From the look on his face, it ain’t good.
“Almost done stabilizing the biochip,” he explains, shooting her a sympathetic look.
“Ergh…” V groans again. “Feels like…”
“Someone’s using your head as a knife block?” Vik guesses.
“How… how’d I get here?” V gasps. The last thing she remembers is passin’ out in the elevator at Embers.
“Dragged yourself here, beat to hell and back,” Vik tells her. “Gave Misty a helluva fright.” He shakes his head. “Then, you shoved my patient at the time off the table and demanded you be treated immediately.”
Fuck, she thinks. Johnny must’ve taken over again, gotten her here.
“Tell him it was your guardian angel,” Johnny’s voice whispers, low and soft in her ear, confirming her suspicion. She feels a strange warmth at this - he probably saved her life, again.
“Huh?” Vik says, turning to look at V.
Shit, did she accidentally say Johnny’s words out loud?
“I, uh… wasn’t completely myself,” she mumbles, averting her eyes and swallowing hard. Her mouth is dry as fuck, and there’s a strange metallic taste, too. Probably more blood.
“I know,” Vik says, giving her a long look. “And that’s a bit worrying.”
“I’ll order a weaker drink next time,” V jokes, but it sounds flat even as she says it.
“This ain’t no joke, kid,” Vik says sadly. “As I see it, there won’t be a next time.”
“That bad, huh?” she manages.
Vik presses his lips together and looks down at her again but doesn’t answer.
“Just give it to me straight, Vik,” V begs.
The ripperdoc takes a deep breath. “You’ve come to a critical juncture,” he says solemnly, punching a couple buttons on his console, and V feels something crackle through the jack still attached to the back of her head. “Alright,” Vik tells her. “That should be a little better.” He leans over her and removes the link, giving her another long look. “Try sitting up. Carefully,” he warns.
“I’ll try,” V whispers. “Think I’m gettin’ some feeling back.”
It takes all her concentration just to lift her head, much less get herself into a sitting position, but her hands and feet are tingling, which means her limbs are quietly comin’ back online. So that's good.
“Slowly,” Vik reminds her.
“Heh…” V chokes. “Another victory… for the history books.”
Vik gives her a sad smile again, glancing back at the screen. “Hmm…” he mutters, his thick brows knitting together.
“If you got somethin’ to say, Vik, just say it,” V manages through gritted teeth.
Vik punches the screen again, and it rises on its hydraulic arm up and out of the way, and Vik turns to her. “How much longer is this going to go on?” he asks, crossing his arms and looking down at her with that concerned dad look he’s all but perfected at this point.
“You tell me,” V shoots back.
“Lookin’ at you, not long at all,” Vik says, leaning closer to her. “Next attack, you won’t be able to crawl back here. You’ll flatline in some back alley.” He straightens and looks down at her. “This is your last chance to take matters into your own hands." His throat bobs. "Understand?”
Behind him, V can see Johnny leaning against Vik’s old punching bag, arms crossed with a serious look on his face.
“Take matters into my own hands…” V hisses, pushing herself to the edge of the chair with a pained grimace. “The fuck you think I’ve been doing?!”
“Well, whatever it is, it keeps landing you on my table,” Vik says sadly.
“So what options do I have?” V asks, her voice sounding weak and resigned, even to her.
“Jesus,” Vik says. “Do I have to spell it out? It’s in your hands. Not mine, and not those of that… thing in your head.”
“He’s not a thing,” V snarls. She knows Vik means well, but it's fuckin' frustrating that he can't seem to understand that Johnny is a person to her. An important person.
The most important person.
Vik shakes his head at her, his sorrow plain on his face. “See that setup over there?” he says, pointing over his shoulder at a small rolling table next to his desk with a few items laid out on it. Johnny glitches over to stand behind it, head bowed to examine them.
“Yeah…” V says. “What about it?”
“You’ll find some things there that may help you,” Vik explains. “There’s one more dose of pseudoendotrizine. A gift from Misty.”
She suddenly realizes Misty is seated in the doorway to the clinic on the small step there, hugging her knees and watching the scene unfold with fear and grief marring her pretty features. It reminds V of how she looked sitting alone in the rain outside Jackie's garage, on the day of his ofrenda.
“Wanna give in to the voices in your head?” Vik continues. “Go ahead. Take a puff, go silent, get out.” He paces away from her, arms still crossed. “Or… find another way. End things on your own terms.”
“On your own terms, huh?” Johnny mutters, gazing back down at the table. “Really subtle there, doc.”
And that’s when V notices Johnny’s Malorian sitting in the center of the tray, and understands Vik’s meaning.
She turns to look at her doctor. He shrugs his shoulders at her helplessly.
"If it were me, I'd want that choice," he says simply. “And you've got a little present from me over there, too,” he adds. “Blockers. Stronger than the ones I gave you before.” He paces back towards her. “Manage to walk those few yards to the table… the rest’ll be up to you, and you alone.”
Johnny takes off his sunglasses and glances back and forth between the three of them, his expression heavy and pained.
While V sits there dumbly, still trying to process what's happening, Vik drops his hands to his side and turns and strides over to his desk, where he slumps into his low chair and rolls it over towards the screen that’s still flickering with the same boxing match she heard him watching earlier.
Johnny glitches closer to V, standing at the foot of the ripper chair and leaning over her.
“You heard ‘im,” he says to her. “We’ve got one last chance. And you can barely fuckin’ walk, please just let me-”
“Enough, Johnny,” V pleads, cutting him off. “I just… I gotta think about it.”
This is all happening too fucking fast.
She heaves herself off the edge of the chair, pulling herself unsteadily to her feet. She can barely fuckin’ stand, much less walk. Johnny throws his hands out towards her helplessly. Sure, the heavy dose of blockers Vik's offerin' might buy her some more time in control, but she’s probably still way too weak to do anything at this point besides accept whatever shit sandwich Hanako wants to feed her. Or let Johnny do whatever gonk plan he’s concocting in his head involving Rogue.
She needs to talk to Johnny, alone.
“Need to stretch your noodle?” Johnny agrees. “Fine. Just not in this basement.”
But to both of their horror, the words come out of her mouth, and Misty's eyes widen as Vik swivels in his chair to stare at V, his face mirroring the same shock and fear.
“V, Christ, you’re talkin’ out loud!” he says.
Red and blue dots are shootin’ out of everything, and it’s hard to see the expression on Johnny's face anymore with everything still doubled and blurred as the room swirls and pulses around her.
“Fuck!” she mutters.
“Just go fix this thing,” Vik begs. “Do whatever you have to do.”
V’s eyes slide back to the cart he set out. Johnny nods at her encouragingly. “Think I can do it…” she gasps, taking a shaky step towards the table, stopping to grab her trench coat from the stool where Vik must’ve tossed it aside while he was workin’ on her. Her Quasar’s been shoved in the pocket, along with her knife, and she re-holsters both and shrugs on the coat before staggering over to where Vik is seated currently, the fight still playing on the monitor behind him. They’re interviewing the boxers now, and Vik has the volume turned almost all the way down.
“So… who won the bout?” she asks, gesturing to the screen.
“Oh, so you heard that,” Vik mutters, swiveling back around in his chair to face her.
“Did he get up?” V asks, still watching the monitor. “Walsh, was it?”
Vik shakes his head. “Nope,” he says sadly. “Never does.”
V furrows her brow. “Never does? Meanin’?”
“It's an old recording,” Vik explains, looking up at her. “One I like to go back to.”
“Why'd you get so mad, then, if you already knew who won?” she asks, remembering how she’d heard him curse at the screen while she was laid out earlier.
Vik shrugs. “I don't know, really. Guess I like to think about where Walsh might’ve tripped up.”
“Any theories?”
“Entering the ring against a stronger opponent,” Vik says simply. “But… feels a little strange to call that a mistake.” He gives her a long, pointed look as he says the last part, and V knows exactly what he’s implying.
“Can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done, Vik,” she stammers.
He shakes his head and looks down. “Only wish I coulda done more.” He waves his hand at her. “Go on, now. I wanna close up. Take the meds… and do what you gotta do, V.”
“Thanks, Vik,” V says sincerely. “I will. And… you hang in there, too.”
“G’luck, kid,” Vik says, and the anguish in his voice is unmistakable.
V steps back towards the cart, leaning heavily on it as she grabs both sets of pills in her fist, then wraps her other hand around the Malorian, turning it over in her hand. Inscribed on the barrel are the words “LAST TRUE FRIEND.” Her breath catches in her throat at the now-familiar epigraph, and she looks up at Johnny, who regards her silently as she takes the items and turns towards the doorway where Misty is still seated, her thin arms wrapped around her knees, her small form swallowed by the oversized sweater she’s wearing.
Misty gets to her feet as V approaches. “Hey V, I heard… well, I think I heard Johnny?”
“Shouldn't've had to,” V mumbles. “Sorry 'bout that.”
Misty’s face softens into a sad smile. “No need to be. I know what's goin' on. And I know it won't be easy. For either of you. If you don't wanna decide here, I know a much better place.”
“Sure,” V says, glancing back over her shoulder at Vik. “Got a feelin' Vik's had enough of me as is.”
“Don't be mad at him,” Misty says kindly. “His chakras are all blocked up today. Plus, he's had too much coffee.”
V barks a laugh. “And lemme guess... my aura's sputtering?”
Misty nods sadly. “Mhm. 'Fraid so.”
“Sure, lead the way,” V tells her.
Misty takes her hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze, then leads her up the stairs, out of the clinic and into the damp alley. They cross the narrow space between the buildings to an unmarked door that leads into the stairwell of the old apartment complex next door to Misty’s shop.
“Why's this spot special?” V asks.
“I took Jackie there once,” Misty says, stopping at the elevator and releasing V’s hand to press the button. “It's not far.”
“Jackie?” V says, frowning. “What's he got to do with any of this?”
“You'll see,” Misty promises as the elevator door slides open. She steps inside, and V follows while Misty presses the button for the top floor.
V’s vision is still warping and twisting in that sickening way, making the elevator walls feel as through they’re breathing. The lift begins to rise with a clanging shudder.
“He had the same glum face,” Misty observes, watching V as they clatter upwards.
“Who, Jack?”
“‘This is it, chica,’” Misty says, imitating Jackie’s deep voice. “‘I'm done for.’”
V shakes her head. “Doesn't sound like the Jackie I knew.”
Misty sighs, dropping her gaze to the floor. “It was a long time ago. His mom'd just found out he'd signed up with the Valentinos.” She glances over at V again. “Trust me, Señora Welles on one shoulder, your gang choombas on the other... no choice can ever seem right.”
“Mhm,” V agrees, fighting off the nausea the jolting movements of the elevator are causin’ her. And talkin' about Jackie right now isn't exactly making her feel better - he made the choices he made, and all it got him was an early grave.
But still, she wishes he were here now. He probably wouldn't know what to do any more than she does, but at least he'd probably make her laugh.
The lift jerks to a stop, and V follows Misty out of the elevator and up a dingy, graffiti-covered staircase lit only by a dim, flickering fluorescent panel.
“Life wasn't easy for my Jackie,” Misty says, turning to look at V over her shoulder as they climb the final flight of stairs up to a small landing with a door that leads out onto the roof. “But… he found the courage to bet on himself,” she says, pausing before opening the door. “After I brought him here.”
They step out together onto the damp, glistening rooftop with a sweeping vista of Watson spread before them, marred only by the slick advertisement for the Secure Your Soul program looping on a billboard directly across from them like some cruel joke. It’s stopped raining now, and the air smells strangely sharp and clean.
“Ah, that's more like it,” Johnny says as he glitches in beside V, taking a deep breath. “Air.”
There’s a pair of plastic deck chairs with a small table settled between them, and Misty crosses the ledge to go sit in the closer one. V follows her, but remains standing, taking in the rain-soaked buildings and flickering holographic ads that recede into the night before them.
“See that?” Misty says, pointing out at the view. “I come here when I need to get away, be alone with my thoughts.”
“She's onto somethin’,” Johnny agrees from where he’s still standing by the door. “Oughta sit, mull through some shit.”
“Thanks, Misty,” V says to her friend, sinking into the second chair. “You were right, choice spot.”
She places the Malorian on the table between them, and they’re both silent for a moment, gazing out at the city.
“So what… what did Jackie decide up here?” she finally asks Misty.
“Oh, you know…” Misty sighs, then imitates his voice again. “‘Gonna be a legend in this city!’”
They both laugh sadly.
Misty turns to look at her, her face wearing an expression V’s never seen on it before.
“And... I'm gonna leave you alone now,” Misty says, uncrossing her legs and standing. “Take your time.”
V nods as her friend gives her one last sympathetic look before turning and leaving through the door they came in.
And then V’s alone.
Well, not really alone. Johnny glitches over to sit on the ledge opposite V, his head twisted over his shoulder to stare out at the city.
“Fuckin' scared me, know that?” he says in a low voice. “Thought you were on your way out.”
“No, still here,” V says weakly.
Johnny turns to look at her with a sorrowful expression. “For now,” he says gently. “Y'know..." he pauses. "Should call anyone else you wanna say goodbye to.”
V balks. “Worst case scenario... that what you expect?”
Johnny looks down. “No, but whatever you decide, risk's gonna be high. If things don't go our way…” He shakes his head, his dark hair falling across his face. “Just fuckin' do it. Anyone you gotta talk to, now's the time. Pills and plans can wait.”
“Well, there is this one musician…” V teases, and Johnny chuckles softly.
“Yeah,” he says. “Call Kerry.”
V nods, swallowing though her mouth is still dry. She dials Kerry’s number, feeling her heart clench as his stupid little avatar appears on her HUD while his holo rings.
“Hey,” she says quietly when he picks up.
“Well, well,” Kerry exclaims coyly when he sees her face appear. “Hey, V.”
“How’s things?” V asks him, fighting to keep her voice even.
“Depends what you’re askin’ about,” Kerry replies, giving V a strange look as he sizes her up. God, she must look like shit, she realizes. Moreso even than usual. But she swallows hard again and forces a smile.
“That new track you were tellin’ me about… how’s it coming along?” she asks.
“Not bad, not bad…” Kerry tells her, unable to suppress a boyish grin that makes something in her chest crack open. Across from her, Johnny looks down and away. “Even got a working title,” Kerry continues, chuckling to himself. “Dark Matter. Gonna be about our first night together. And our little adventure on the Seamurai.”
V tries her best to smile back, but she can feel it already bleeding off her face. “Kerry?” she says, and her voice comes out choked.
“Yeah?” he replies.
“That night…” V begins. “I… had a great time. It really… all of it… you… mean a lot to me.”
Kerry frowns at her. “V, uh… everything alright? You sound strange.”
“Course, yeah,” V says quickly, trying to keep her voice light. “Just wanted to hear ya.”
“Mhm.” Kerry's eyes narrow, unconvinced.
“Look, I… it’s just…” V struggles to find the words. “If you don’t hear from me for a couple days… I-” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “Take care of Nibbles for me, okay?”
The rockerboy's brow furrows. “What’s wrong, V? What’s happening? Where are you?” he asks, looking more worried by the second.
“I’m fine, Ker,” she assures him quickly. “Just… gotta take care of some things. Johnny-related. And in case it doesn’t work out… be nice to Johnny, okay? He’ll need it.”
Johnny scowls darkly at her from where he’s seated, his face silhouetted in sharp contrast from the neon glow of the city behind him.
“The fuck does that mean?” Kerry says, his eyes darting nervously. “V?”
“I can’t wait to hear your album, Kerry,” she continues, ignoring his question. “I’m sure it’s gonna be amazing.”
Kerry's brows are still knitted together as he stares at her through the small screen. “Can I come by tomorrow? Check on you?”
V grimaces. “Sure, sure." She already made sure her biometric locks are keyed to him. Just in case. She makes herself smile at him. "Kill it out there, Ker.”
“You too, V,” he says, giving her a long look. “See ya?”
V nods and hangs up before he can see the tears that are threatening to spill over, then lets out a quavering breath. “Whew. Okay,” she says, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Was good you called,” Johnny says, his voice rough. “Wish I'da had the chance to.”
“Yeah,” V agrees. “Doesn’t make it any easier, though.”
Johnny is silent for a moment, watching her in the dim light. “Here we are now, together, soakin' in this vista of Night City.”
V can only nod mutely at him, the lump in her throat still stealin’ her words.
“Come a long way to get here, haven't we?” Johnny continues. “Just think... it all started in a fuckin' landfill.”
“Mhm. Then you tried to kill me,” she reminds him, letting out a sharp laugh that’s halfway to a sob.
“See, exactly what I mean,” Johnny says. “Tryna save your sorry hide now. You can let me do that. Or you can try Panam and her tarmac rats, but then their lives'll weigh heavy on your soul. Or you take Arasaka's deal, but then... you'll have your own soul on your conscience.”
“Just... hold on a minute, okay?” V says shakily. “Need to think.”
She has a sinking suspicion that if she goes along with Johnny’s plan to let him take over, enlist Rogue for help, there’s a good chance it’ll end with her wakin’ up alone in her skull, Johnny’s engram wiped clean into oblivion. He’s made it clear that’s the only option he’s willing to accept here - and it’s one that she just can’t.
V reaches into her pocket, fumbling for a cigarette. “I'm callin' Panam,” she tells Johnny.
“Panam,” he repeats coldly, eying her with suspicion as she places the cigarette between her lips and lights it, trying to still her shaking hands.
She shoots Johnny a dark look. “Just wanna hear her voice. Said I should call people I care about,” she reminds him.
Johnny scowls. “Sure as hell hope it's that and only that.”
V ignores him and dials Panam, puffing her cigarette while it rings.
“Mmm, hey…” Panam grumbles as she picks up. She’d clearly been asleep. “Do you know what time it is...?”
Shit. V hadn't quite realized how late it is. It's a bit past 3 AM, not that late by Night City standards - but the nomads rise and sleep with the sun, she remembers.
“Won't keep you long,” she promises. “Just... wanted to hear ya.”
“Hmmm,” Panam says. “You picked an interesting hour for it.”
“Panam, I…” V begins, but suddenly realizes she has no idea what she actually wants to say to the nomad, no idea how to actually ask her to put her entire clan in danger just for her and Johnny’s stupid sake. She opens her mouth and then closes it again, at a complete loss for words.
“V?” Panam prompts, her voice getting more worried. “Okay, what's going on?”
“Dunno that we'll see each other again,” V says finally, deciding that Johnny’s right, she can’t ask this of them.
“What?!” Panam retorts, her eyes widening. “You know... fine. Fuck off.”
“No, no, not like that!” V says quickly. God, she’s making a mess of this.
Panam sighs. “Make up your mind.”
“There’s somethin... somethin' I gotta do. Gonna be high risk, big time,” V explains. “But I have to.”
Panam’s brows knit together. “What?! What is it?”
“It's not for comms, not really,” V says.
“Then shut up and tell me where you are,” Panam says. “In the city?”
“Yeah,” V says.
Panam nods quickly. “Okay. Then plant your butt somewhere and wait. I'm on my way.”
V shakes her head, holding up a hand. “No, Panam, I… you don't get it, I... I can't wait anymore.”
“This has something to do with what you were tellin' me before? The biochip? Johnny Silverhand?”
“It does.”
Panam gives her a long look. “Well I'll say one thing. There's always a way out. Here's what you need to do. You need to take a few deep breaths. Then rethink all this, hard. And then you can call me back. Do you know why? Because I am here for you.”
“But-” V protests.
“End of discussion,” Panam says firmly, hanging up.
Johnny chuckles softly. “Well played," he teases.
V sighs heavily, taking another long drag of her smoke. “She barely let me get a word in edgewise.”
“Prolly for the best,” Johnny remarks. “Woulda said too much anyway.”
V shakes her head, tapping the ash off the end of her cigarette. “You’re right,” she admits. “I can’t have Panam’s life, more nomads’ lives, on my conscience.”
Johnny gives her a pointed look. “Then take Misty’s pills and lemme take the wheel and save your sorry ass one last time,” he begs. “Endotrizine. Rogue. ‘Saka Tower. Only way this is gonna work.”
V heaves another sigh. “I can’t, Johnny,” she says. “Whatever happens next… I wanna be there for it. I trust you, I do… know you’ve got my best interests at heart… but I gotta know it’s still me making the final calls here. Don't want Rogue's people to risk themselves for me, either.”
Johnny glowers at her for a moment, then nods once and looks away, back out at the cityscape, where the Secure Your Soul billboard is still repeating its flickering loop like some horrible mockery of their predicament.
“I get it,” he says finally.
“Think it's worth takin' a chance on Arasaka?” she asks him, though she’s pretty sure she already knows his answer.
Predictably, Johnny scowls. “Cooperating with monsters like them? Anything's better. And besides, we already got what we need from her,” he points out gruffly. “We know where Mikoshi is now, for sure. We just gotta get there and unleash Alt, let her do her thing. If we don't try something, anything, we're both doomed.”
“Are you scared?” she asks him.
“Hell yeah I’m scared,” he mutters. “Scared you’ll do somethin’ gonk, scared I’ll be the only one around to see how this all ends.”
“You're the one who's rejecting the best option we got left.”
“Best option?” Johnny scoffs. “It’s not an option, it’s a death sentence for both of us.”
She sighs. “I'm outta fuckin' ideas, Johnny. Is my life even worth fighting for? Is any one person's?” She shakes her head, running her hand through her still-damp hair. “I fight like hell to keep innocent people alive… but when it’s my own life, when it’s yours, I’m ready to burn the whole goddamn city down? Doesn’t seem right. And I don’t fuckin’ trust Hanako, either, but… it's the best option for the least collateral damage," she presses. "And it seems like she’s at least tryna do the right thing, now, anyway.”
Johnny throws up his hands in exasperation. “The fuck are you saying?” he counters. “God, how're you so fuckin' stubborn?”
V smiles at him, but it’s a bleak smile. “Inherited your finest traits.”
Johnny studies her face, placing one hand on his thigh and leaning forward slightly. “It's one thing to talk all pretty about doin’ the right thing when you've never had to worry about where your next meal is comin’ from for a goddamn second of your life. It's another thing entirely to still try to do the right thing, even when your own survival ain't certain,” he says. “That’s the difference between you and her.”
“You sayin' it only counts if you're willing to die to do the right thing?” V asks.
Johnny nods. “That's how it's always worked.”
V considers this, her gaze flicking down to the Malorian on the table beside her, still loaded with live, lethal rounds.
“There is another option, y'know,” she says slowly.
Johnny gives her a long look. “What?”
She returns his gaze, lifting her chin to meet his eyes. “We put all this, the pills, everything... to bed.”
Johnny narrows his eyes at her. “You saying what I think you’re saying?” he asks. “After all we’ve been through, everything we’ve done… to let it all go now?” He throws apart his hands. “Why?”
“Cleanest, least bloody option, if you don't wanna work with Hanako,” V says, heaving another shaky sigh. “We try anything else, people'll die.”
“People die,” Johnny says. “It's the way of things.”
V shakes her head. “Am I worth their sacrifice? Are you? Sides, it's the only way we'll both be aware.”
Johnny frowns at her. “Of what? Death?”
“Mhm,” V says. “The moment life escapes.”
Johnny considers this. “Hmm. Never really gave it a thought. Funny how you still manage to surprise me sometimes.”
“Might be somethin' I learned from you,” she replies softly.
But Johnny shakes his head again, and is silent for a long moment. “Kinda tough deciding which of your friends get to die, isn’t it?” He smiles sadly at her. “Good news is… you got this one choom who’s already dead. And he’d be honored to join you on a wild, suicide run.”
V stares at him, not fully comprehending at first.
“You, me, and Arasaka Tower,” he continues, watching her face. “Kinda sounds like a Eurodyne lyric, I know, but trust me… we’ll go fuckin’ nova.”
Is he suggesting... soloing this shit? Just... barging in the front door and shooting their way to Mikoshi?
“This plan,” V asks in a choked voice. “What would it entail, exactly?”
“Plan?” Johnny barks a harsh laugh. “Well, might be how Rogue operates. I say you grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door and cut your own path to the lower levels. If Mikoshi’s deep underground like Hanako claims it is, you’ll just have to find the elevator.”
"But look at me, Johnny," she protests weakly. "You said it yourself, I'm in no condition to solo anything. Can barely stand," she reminds him. Whatever the fuck Vik did does seem to be helping somewhat, but who can say how long that'll last?
Johnny smiles at her almost affectionately. "I'll help," he says simply. "If it comes to that."
V has a feeling this is the best compromise they're gonna come to. She nods at him slowly, deliberately. Soloing Arasaka Tower does sound like fuckin’ suicide… but at least this way, the only ones riskin’ their lives are her and Johnny. And if they succeed, it’ll be on their own terms, without Hanako or anyone else yankin’ any strings.
And if they die, they'll die together.
“If I gotta die, rather fall into my grave gun in hand and on fire,” she agrees, giving Johnny a shaky smile. “And not drag anyone down with me.”
Johnny’s face breaks into an approving grin, and he gets to his feet and steps slowly towards her, coming to stand over her before bending down and crushing his mouth to hers, kissing her long and slow, his metal hand snaking around the back of her neck to cradle her head and pull her in closer.
“Huh,” he says as he draws away, his eyes shining with emotion. “You just discovered what it takes to become a legend. Grab your iron, let’s mobilize.”
V grins at him too, though she can feel her cheeks are damp and not just from the rain. “Let’s swing by my place first, wanna grab some grenades and-”
But Johnny cuts her off with another kiss. “Don’t got time for that,” he murmurs into her mouth. “If we’re gonna do this, we gotta do it now, before Hanako has time to try anything. Before you…” he begins, but his voice breaks before he can finish his thought.
But V knows what he means. And he’s right - goin’ back to her place right now might be too risky. If Hanako was right, if Yorinobu somehow found out about their meeting, if he knows where she lives…
Johnny takes her hand and helps her to her feet, and they stare at each other for a beat, a mess of emotions passing wordlessly between them.
“Alright,” she says. “Let’s fuckin’ do this.”
She reaches for the Malorian and slides it back into her holster, then sets off down the stairs back to the rickety elevator. Johnny appears in the elevator next to her as they plummet downward, and he’s lookin’ at her now with a mixture of fear and admiration on his face.
Ballad of Buck Raver’s style it is, then, she thinks to herself with a wry smile. Somehow, she feels like they both knew all along this was always how it was gonna end - just one lone merc, arguably goin’ cyberpsycho, stormin’ ‘Saka Tower with nothing but a pair of guns, a knife, some quickhacks, and a digital ghost in her head to help her. Johnny smiles too, and she feels something almost like hope blossom in her chest. It’s fuckin’ gonk as fuck, and she knows they’re probably both gonna flatline… but at least they’ll go out in a blaze of glory together, go down kicking, takin’ no one else down with them except any ‘Saka fuckers who get in their way.
But no sooner has she stepped out into the cool, moist air of the alley when a hand closes around her mouth, and she feels a sharp prick on her neck at the same time. And then to her shock and dismay, she hears Goro’s voice in her ear.
“I am sorry, V,” he says as her vision glitches and fades to black.
Notes:
Get ready cause from here on out we're taking CDPR's endings and BEATING THEM INTO SUBMISSION
Chapter 47: War Crisis
Summary:
V's plans to storm Arasaka Tower are derailed as she finds herself caught up in Hanako's schemes.
Notes:
*crams all the endings in a blender and hits the puree button*
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The first thing V is aware of is some shitty techno song playing, that one fuckin’ song she always hears comin’ outta joyhouses on Jig-Jig Street.
And everything feels like it’s moving. Her stomach is spinning, her limbs won’t respond, and her head feels like a lead weight.
She can also hear voices arguing, their sharp words sending stabbing flashes of pain through her head at every utterance.
“We're almost there,” says the first voice, speaking with a slight Scandinavian accent. “Why has she not called?”
“Hanako-sama?” comes the response. It’s Goro, V realizes with a cold jolt, suddenly remembering his hand closing over her mouth and the needle he shoved in her fuckin’ neck. “They may have cut communication at the residence.”
“Something has gone wrong!” says the first voice, and V now places it as Anders fuckin’ Hellman’s.
Of fuckin’ course. He’s back in the fold now too, workin’ with Hanako and Goro and her goons.
“Reckless driving will not improve the situation,” Goro retorts impatiently.
“I am not your bloody chauffeur!” Hellman shouts back. “I didn't agree to this!”
V groans and tries to move. She feels a strap across the front of her chest, and realizes she’s slumped over in the passenger seat of a town car. She pries open her eyes and is greeted by bright sunlight streaming through the dash, cutting into her head like daggers, along with the dizzying motion of the road in front of her.
She promptly leans forward and vomits onto the floor of the car.
“You are awake!” says Goro, the relief clear in his voice as she gasps and chokes and attempts to sit up, wiping her mouth on her sleeve and taking deep, heaving breaths as she tries to get her bearings. Hellman’s sitting in the driver’s seat, flooring the gas like a maniac while Goro sits in the back, both of ‘em watching her anxiously as she writhes in her seat.
“You look… like shit,” Goro adds, and the concerned way he says it makes her want to slap him.
“The fuck did you do, Goro?” she hisses through clenched teeth.
“We injected you with sedatives and a massive dosage of powerful omega-blockers,” Hellman explains. “The construct should remain dormant for the time being.”
V reaches within her mind, searching frantically for Johnny. But there’s no fuckin’ sign of him, none of his familiar rage or self-loathing or snarky bullshit, nothing. And judging by the blood she just puked up, whatever they did doesn't seem to have slowed the Relic's progress, just silenced the one person she actually wants to talk to right now. Her head feels like it's full of tar and blue spots still scatter and warp across her field of vision.
“Where are we?” she asks, but as she looks out the window, she realizes she knows exactly where the fuck they are. They’re in North Oak, and not too far from Kerry’s house, by the looks of it. It’s late afternoon, meanin’ she’s been out at least twelve hours.
She reaches weakly for the door handle, but Goro leans forward from the backseat and lays his hand on her shoulder, his grip gentle but firm.
“I would not try that if I were you,” he warns her. “I know your, how do you say it, rockerboy input lives around here. Do not try to run to him.”
She twists to look at him. He’s cleaned up now, the most he’s been since the night she first laid eyes on him at Konpeki Plaza, all dressed up in a crisp, white silk suit. He holds her gaze with a serious, imploring look on his face. That annoying fuckin’ techno song is still comin’ from the car radio, and it’s not doin’ any favors for her headache.
She can feel the knife still tucked into her boot, but she can also tell without looking that both her irons are missing.
“The tracker,” V gasps. “That’s how you found me at Misty’s.”
Goro looks down, chagrined. “I am truly sorry it had to be like that,” he says. “But please, V, we need your help.”
“And why the fuck should I help you?” she grits out.
"Because we can save your life, V," Goro says in an urgent voice, and he sounds like he really fuckin’ believes what he's saying.
“Explains why you ambushed me in an alley, dosed me full of sedatives and fuck knows what else. I didn't ask for fuckin' blockers,” she spits back.
“Hanako feared her brother would act before you had time to come to a decision. We had to move quickly,” Goro tells her, looking at her pleadingly. “We trusted each other once,” he reminds her. “Can you trust me again now? I am sorry for taking you against your will, but there was no time to explain, and-”
“I get it,” V interjects. “Same shit you pulled on Hanako at the parade.”
“We could not risk bargaining with... the construct instead of you,” Hellman says then, turning his head to look at her as he drives.
“Fuck you,” V growls. She should have fuckin’ known Hanako wouldn’t risk letting her make any other choice than this one. She glares daggers at Hellman and Goro, feeling her lip curl upwards into a sneer.
“When we last saw one another, we spoke of how the construct could influence your decision-making,” Hellman continues. “The same construct that, in its former life, detonated two nuclear warheads inside Arasaka Tower.”
“Johnny's my concern, not yours,” V replies, the words coming out a bit more forcefully than she intended.
Hellman gives her a strange look, as though he expected this response. “The construct… or rather, the personality on it. Johnny Silverhand. He is important to you, no?” he says slowly.
V scowls at him, already not liking where this is going.
“Hanako mentioned you were interested in preserving his engram once it is removed from your nervous system,” Hellman continues matter-of-factly, and V narrows her eyes at him.
“Might be I am,” she says through gritted teeth. “The fuck is it to you?”
Hellman gives her a sidelong look. “We just may have a way to do that.”
V’s eyes widen at this, but whatever expression she’s making is quickly replaced by a skeptical scowl. “And why would Hanako wanna do that?” she snarls.
Hellman glances at Goro in the rearview mirror, then back at V. “We have been developing a way to create… backups. Copies of living people,” he explains, and V shudders, remembering the shit Lizzy Wizzy’s input was tryna pull on her. “It means it is possible to safely remove and transfer an engram without destroying it,” Hellman continues.
“And put it where?” V retorts. “Back in Mikoshi?” She shakes her head. “No thanks.”
Hellman glances at Goro in the mirror. “There might be… another solution.”
“I do not like it,” Goro adds from the backseat, “But Hanako-sama told us this would be a way to sway you. Please, see reason. We must bring Yorinobu to justice. If reviving the terrorist is what you desire, so be it.” He sighs heavily.
“What are you sayin’?” V says, her eyes darting wildly back and forth between the two of ‘em. Are they really gonna fuckin’ dangle this shit in front of her right now? Did Hanako really pick up that much about the lengths she’d be willin’ to go to for Johnny from their single fuckin’ conversation?
“She wanted me to tell you that the bodies of all the Secure Your Soul clients are kept in a secure cryogenic facility, and your... Johnny Silverhand was no exception,” Goro continues, spitting out the name like it’s poison on his tongue. “She will aid you in retrieving it on the condition that you aid her in restoring balance to the corporation.”
The bodies. V's heart catches on the words, not daring to believe what Goro is implying. She eyes both men suspiciously. “Just like that?” she says, narrowing her eyes. “Even after all he did to Arasaka back in the day?” She shakes her head. “Not buyin’ it. And Smasher’s little errand boy, Grayson, told me he dumped Johnny’s corpse in the oil fields north of the city. Sent us the co-ords and everything.”
Hellman snorts. “To throw you off the scent, no doubt. Yorinobu had plans for Silverhand. We suspect it wasn’t just his engram that he intended to sell to NetWatch.”
V balks at this. “Lemme get this straight. You’re tellin’ me Yorinobu’s plan all along was to bring back Johnny?" She swallows hard. "In the flesh?”
Hellman shrugs. “We cannot know what precisely he imagined would play out. But Hanako believes he would do this, yes.”
“So why would she help me do exactly that now?” V presses. “Silverhand was Arasaka's Most Wanted, said it yourself.”
“Your cooperation is worth a great deal to her,” Hellman replies smoothly.
“Still not buyin’ it,” V says.
“She thought you might say that,” Goro replies from the backseat. “Here,” he says, reaching into his pocket to produce a small, cloth satchel that he leans forward to pass to her.
V frowns as she takes it in her hand. It feels like it’s got a few small, metal objects in it, maybe coins. She loosens the drawstring and empties the contents into the palm of her chrome hand, and her throat tightens as she realizes what she’s holding.
Johnny’s rings.
She knows immediately that they’re real, that they’re his. She can feel their familiar weight in her palm, can pick out the imperfections on them like she’s been wearin’ ‘em on her hand for years. She closes her fist around them, swallowing hard.
“Where did you get these?” she asks, her voice rough.
“Yorinobu had them among his personal effects,” Goro says. “Hanako-sama discovered them at his residence here. Perhaps they were originally intended to help enlist Silverhand’s cooperation in... whatever he was planning.”
V shakes her head. “Smasher coulda taken these off him years ago, kept ‘em somewhere as a trophy,” she argues.
Hellman and Goro exchange a look.
“Have a look at this,” Hellman says, and his eyes glow blue for a moment, and then suddenly V’s lookin’ at a biometric readout. Or no - it’s a biomon record. For a stasis pod. There’s height, weight, blood type, and a familiar birth date, and by the time her eyes flick to the name at the top, she already knows whose name she is going to see there.
Robert John Linder.
Her heart is pounding in her ears. It can’t be this simple, can it?
Can it?
She looks back and forth between Hellman and Takemura, hardly daring to allow herself to hope.
“This real?” she chokes. “The fuck am I lookin’ at?”
“This was on Yorinobu’s laptop,” Hellman explains. “Filed with the paperwork he intended to include with the engram as part of his sales transaction with NetWatch.”
V shakes her head slowly. “Doesn’t he have ICE on his shit? How the fuck you hack his computer without him knowin’?”
Goro smiles. “It is a little-known fact that Hanako-sama is one of the finest netrunners in the world,” he says.
V has an idea she understands where this is going, even if Goro and Hellman don’t know it themselves. Johnny was fuckin’ right, this is about Alt. Hanako may be willing to use V’s attachment to Johnny as leverage, and she may very well know where his body is being kept… but V has a suspicion his engram is more useful to her as bait. A trap. A cage. A bargaining chip.
“After the removal is performed, Silverhand’s engram will, of course, need to be kept in Mikoshi until we can arrange for transport of his cryo-pod,” Hellman continues. “Then, our scientists can transfer his engram to his body.”
And there it is, V thinks. They’ll hold Johnny’s mind hostage in Mikoshi so Alt won’t fuckin’ destroy it, try and use him to trap her there, too, in all likelihood.
She wonders if that would actually work. Would Johnny’s presence there make Alt hesitate? She’s genuinely not sure if the Alt she met is still capable of feeling that way about Johnny… or about anyone.
“And then what?” she asks Hellman, not voicing her suspicions to him. “We’d just be free to go?”
“It would be a long process,” Hellman explains. “Earlier versions of Soulkiller destroyed the minds of those they digitized. The new engram would have to copy itself into Silverhand’s ruined mind, much in the same way that it is now attempting to do with yours. Although I must warn you, the process of copying an engram back to its original host has yielded... mixed results.”
“But you’ve attempted it,” V says.
“Yes,” Hellman confirms.
“That what Saburo was plannin’ for himself?” V guesses.
Hellman and Goro exchange another glance, but there's a questioning look in Goro’s eyes.
“Not exactly,” Hellman says.
V shakes her head, clutching the rings in her fist. “Okay, so let’s say it works, we take down Yorinobu, dig Johnny outta my skull and shove him back in his body, he wakes up eventually and everything is peachy-keen. What happens then? Really gonna let us just walk out?”
“We would… I would appreciate it if you allowed me to do periodic scans on each of you. To help us all to better understand the technology,” Hellman says. “But other than that, you would be free to go, yes.”
“So we get to be tools, then lab rats,” V snorts. “Got it.”
She tilts her palm and carefully tips rings back into the small satchel, then sticks it in the pocket of her coat, trying to keep her expression impassive as she studies the faces of both men.
“Will you help us, or not?” Goro presses, leaning forward from the back seat. “We will save your life, and that of your terrorist friend. That is what Hanako is offering. Do not be stupid, V.”
And in return, I take down her brother, secure Arasaka’s future, and help her capture Alt and preserve Mikoshi, V thinks bitterly. It’s a rotten fucking deal. But still, the bright flame of hope that sprung up in her chest when she held Johnny’s rings in her hand - when she saw the biometric readouts from his stasis pod - hasn’t subsided. She was fuckin' right, his body isn’t buried in those fuckin’ oil fields. It’s out there, somewhere. And if she can just play along long enough to figure out where… maybe she can take things into her own hands. Do the rest on her own terms.
“Alright,” she says slowly, fighting down another surge of nausea. “We’ve got a deal.”
Goro nods, looking pleased and relieved. “Eyes open, now,” he says. “We will arrive shortly.”
V turns her eyes back to the road ahead, and that's when she realizes what they're drivin' straight towards.
The street they're on terminates at a large estate - more like a compound, really - surrounded by high, unscalable walls broken only by an ornate but very secure-looking metal gate emblazoned with the Arasaka logo that the road leads straight into. Hellman slows the car as they approach.
This must be the Night City Arasaka family compound, V realizes. Yorinobu and Hanako's private residence.
“Weapons at the ready,” Goro warns softly from the backseat.
Hellman turns to him, balking. “Are you mad? We must act natural!” V can see the slight trembling in his hands. “Just... everyone be still and calm, and this will go smoothly.”
The gate swings open as they approach it, like the jaws of a terrible beast parting for them.
Standing there to greet them is a lone security guard wearing a black suit and with a red tie and mirrored wrap-around shades. Judging by the looks of him, he’s packed to the gills with combat cyberware, and a quick Kiroshi scan confirms this. V bets there’s about a dozen more of him hidden in the bushes that line the walls of the compound. Probably snipers, too.
The man raises his palm at them, gesturing for them to stop, then approaches V’s window, which Hellman rolls down as he leans across V towards the guard.
“Is everything in order?” Hellman asks, doing a perfectly terrible job at sounding nonchalant.
The security huscle shakes his head. “No one is allowed onto the estate until further notice. By order of Yorinobu Arasaka.”
Hellman forces a friendly chuckle, and it sounds unconvincing even to V. “Hanako is expecting us,” he tells the guard. “Be a good chap and don't make this difficult, hm?”
But the guard just squares his jaw. “By order of Yorinobu Arasaka!” he repeats firmly.
“You must be joking!” Hellman presses. “Surely you know my face?”
“I do,” the guard says with a sharp nod. “But not theirs.” He gestures with his chin towards V and Goro. “Stay where you are.”
The guard begins speaking Japanese into his comm, moving away from the vehicle to pace in front of it, still watching them carefully through the windshield.
“Back-up'll get here in seconds,” V hisses at Hellman.
Hellman slams both of his palms on the steering wheel.
“Fuuuck!” he shouts, flooring the gas and ramming the guard straight into the decorative marble wall behind him. The man’s torso explodes in a sickening crunch like a smashed pumpkin, splattering the white marble and the golden Asaraka logo in red, vicious streaks, and the man crumples forward onto the hood of the car, blood pouring from his mouth and nose.
V gawps at Hellman, genuinely surprised. She’d taken the scientist for a complete and utter coward, prone only to inaction and retreat.
“Bloody fucking hell!” Hellman shouts as he watches the man’s body twitch, convulse, and then finally still. His frightened face looks even more pale than usual, V thinks.
But Takemura is smiling, and he leans forward to pat Hellman's shoulder affectionately. “Fine work, chauffeur,” he teases approvingly.
Hellman slams his hands on the steering wheel again. “Piss off! Blast it all!”
But V’s eyes are already darting away from the gory spectacle they just created, casing the perimeter of the plaza they’re sittin’ on.
“What now?” she asks Goro.
Hellman shakes his head defeatedly. “They won't let us anywhere near her.”
“We are not here to ask anyone's permission,” Goro replies firmly. “Hellman, go and bring the AV here. Things will get very messy soon.” He turns to V, then reaches into his jacket again to produce Johnny’s Malorian. “V, you will come with me,” he says, holding out the gun to her.
V takes the pistol, already opening her mouth to object, but right at that moment her holo rings and Hanako’s face appears on her HUD. She can see Goro and Hellman’s eyes glowing blue as well, and realizes the heiress has all four of them linked on comms now.
“I am in the bedroom in the central part of the building,” Hanako tells them, speaking quickly but softly. “Takemura, you and V must… neutralize the guards. Is your task clear?”
“Neutralize,” V repeats dryly, already getting out of the car and cocking the pistol. “Uh huh.”
V allows herself a moment of bitterness at Hanako’s outright assumption that her bid for V’s allegiance, however temporary, was successful.
“I will obstruct their communications so that no support arrives,” Hanako assures them, ending the call.
Goro’s weapon is already drawn as well, and he begins striding for the lawn, past a row of the fanciest fuckin’ cars V has ever seen in one place in her life. “We will take the left side, through the garden,” he tells her as she moves quickly to keep up with him.
There’s a part of V that’s relieved Johnny isn’t around to be a forced participant in this little rescue mission, or whatever the fuck it is they’re doin’ for Hanako right now. But the bigger part of her wishes she had his voice in her ear, his insights, his advice, no matter how peppered with colorful insults about her hosts they might be.
And he’s fuckin’ right, she thinks. I’m bein’ used, Hanako was never gonna give me a choice in the matter.
And she can’t lie to herself - Hanako’s carrot-on-a-stick fuckin’ worked. If Johnny’s body is out there, if there’s a chance he can survive this… V knows she can’t let this go until she finds out where.
The estate grounds are enormous, and by far the most luxurious property V’s ever set foot on in her life. The obscene amount of wealth on display here makes Kerry's mansion look like a Heywood row house. Still, there’s a strange serenity to the tiered gardens and fountains that dot the space, like an artificial world that exists entirely apart from the rest of the city below.
Well, serene aside from the ‘Saka mech patrolling the front fuckin’ lawn.
V and Goro duck behind a hedge as it passes by them, moving softly until they’re safely hidden behind a large, granite fountain.
“Kuso,” Goro swears under his breath. “We must beware of the mech. This way,” he says, and V follows him as he weaves silently through the shrubbery, finally arriving at a less-patrolled side area of the house.
There’s a sliding glass door just a ways ahead of them with the shiny black lens of a camera directly above it. V uses her Kiroshis to hack the camera and shut it down, but the ICE is too thick for her to ping and disable the entire network.
“Can Hanako take out the camera network from where she is?” she asks Goro as they make a dash for the door, pausing on either side of it with their guns drawn.
“If she could, she would have,” Goro replies. “On my count!”
On the count of three, he opens the door and they whip around the doorframe together, guns at the ready. But the hallway before them is empty save for another camera a little ways down that V quickly shuts off as they hurry past it down the corridor.
The hallway opens to a broad open foyer with a lofted glass balcony wrapping around the second level with three ‘Saka guards pacing atop it.
“Shit!” V hisses, pushing Goro back into the hallway.
But it’s too late, one of ‘em has spotted her.
She dives back around the corner as a flurry of gunfire rains down on them.
It’s not exactly an easy fight, but Goro’s still sharp as fuck, and V can’t help but be impressed by the surgical precision of his combat skills. After dealing with the guards in the foyer, they split up and sweep the house, V using her Malorian and quickhacks to take out the huscle while Goro does his thing on the other side of the mansion. They reunite back in the sunbathed foyer, on the second floor balcony this time. Goro nods once at her and his eyes glow blue.
“Hellman!” he shouts into his holo. “We are done! We need the AV, now! Land by the pool!” He ends the call and turns back to V. “Hanako-sama… you must go and get her! She is upstairs! I will clear a path to the AV.”
V nods and sets off through the house, making her way back to the main staircase. The house seems eerie, empty now, entirely too large to feel anything like a home. She wonders if Hanako and her brothers grew up in a place like this.
She finds the heiress on the top floor, waiting by the window in an enormous bedroom with a sweeping panoramic view of the city. V is again struck by how strangely young and vulnerable Hanako somehow seems, despite her age and power. It’s not just her looks, it’s her whole demeanor - she moves and carries herself like someone who has lived her whole life in a gilded cage.
When the fuck did I start spending all my time with rich idiots three times my age? V wonders darkly as she approaches the woman.
Hanako stands silhouetted in the afternoon sun, gazing out at the skyline, but she turns when she hears V approaching. Behind her, V can see Hellman bringing down the AV and landing it near the large, sparkling pool, just as Goro instructed. She moves closer to Hanako, coming to stand by her side at the window.
“These people…” Hanako says sadly, and V follows her gaze out the window at the pool below, where one of Yorinobu’s men is floating face down with a reddish cloud of blood suspended in the water around him. Goro’s work, most likely. “They simply left me no choice.”
“Did what we had to,” V says bitterly, grimacing down at the guard. Goro never returned her modded Quasar; with only her Malorian and her daemons, her options in dealing with the guards were a bit more limited and a lot more lethal than how she'd normally operate.
Hanako nods thoughtfully. “This is why I have always remained uninvolved. So as not to have to make decisions such as these.” She sighs and turns to V. “Yet now… I believe a war has just begun.”
She turns on her heel and strides back out towards the door. V follows, staying close behind her.
“War?” V asks as they descend the staircase back to the main foyer. “Ain’t that a loaded word for Arasaka?”
Hanako looks back at her over her slender shoulder. “Is that what you believe?”
“Just counting bodies,” V says as they cross the foyer and head for the door at the back of the room. “You, me, Goro, and Hellman makes four,” she counts, then chuckles sharply to herself. “Actually, three and a half.”
Do she and Johnny together make one whole person, now?
“There is Oda, too,” Hanako reminds her, stepping through the wide doors and out into the fading sunlight. “We will meet him there.”
V frowns, wondering if Hanako's surly bodyguard will be holdin' a grudge against her for the solid ass-kicking she dished him the night of the parade. The AV is parked just up ahead, and Goro and Hellman are standing outside it waiting for them.
“But against all Arasaka and its armies?” V presses as Hanako strides across the lawn towards the pool. “That's not much.”
Hanako shakes her head, turning to look at V again. “My brother is not all of Arasaka. Not yet, at least. He knows this well. It is the reason he surrounds himself with criminals like Adam Smasher.”
V scoffs. “That supposed to make me feel better? Still sounds to me like we're on our own.”
Hanako pauses at the door to the AV. “My father was on his own,” she tells V. “And he built an empire.”
Hellman and Goro are already seated inside the AV by the time they cross to it, and Takemura leans forward to help Hanako into the seat next to Anders, while V scrambles in and seats herself beside Goro.
The door shuts and the window activates as the AV lifts off, and no sooner have they cleared the ground than Anders reaches for one of the four champagne glasses held in a little cooling shelf on the center of the wall opposite the window.
He takes the glass in his trembling hand and downs it in one gulp, immediately reaching for a second glass as soon as he puts down the first.
A crease forms in Hanako’s brow as she watches him. “Is it not too early for champagne?” she scolds.
Hellman scowls at her and continues to sip the champagne as Hanako coolly regards him.
Hanako sighs heavily. “If it helps you calm down…” she says, looking across at Goro and V. “Does anyone else have trembling hands?”
They’re soaring out over Santo Domingo now, clearly headed towards Corpo Plaza, the sunset already fading into a cool, smoky dusk.
“So, we on our way to crash Yorinobu’s board meeting?” V guesses, reaching for a glass of champagne herself.
Hanako nods as V takes a sip. “That is the plan,” she says simply.
But V frowns at her champagne as she swallows. She can feel the bubbles on her tongue, can feel the heat of the alcohol as it hits her stomach, but the champagne itself has no flavor at all. Might as well be sparklin’ fucking water.
“Do corpos always drink flavorless scop like this?” she says, examining the glass. But even as she says it, she knows that isn't the case - this is probably some of the best champagne money can buy. She just, for whatever reason, can’t taste it.
Hellman snorts, slumped back into his chair. “Hmph, what’s strange is that this has only happened now.”
“Meaning what?” V demands, narrowing her eyes at him.
“Your central nervous system. It’s in shambles,” Hellman says in a careless monotone, gesturing with his champagne glass. “You will lose your hearing next. Then your sight.”
V stares at him in horror. “Any of it reversible?”
Hellman doesn't answer - he just ponders his drink, then downs the rest of it in one swig. He stares ahead silently.
“Is your nervous system in shambles, too?” Goro demands angrily, leaning towards Hellman and trying to catch his gaze.
Hanako is also watching Hellman. “She asked you a question,” the heiress prompts him.
Hellman sighs heavily. “And I have no answer for her.” He shakes his head exhaustedly. “Not here, not without proper equipment.”
V downs the rest of her drink as well. “Well, fuck me,” she mutters. She may not be able to taste it, but the champagne helps her headache a bit, nonetheless. Though her vision has started glitching blue again since they got in the AV, she realizes.
She knows Hellman’s right - she’s running out of time. She fights down the bile that rises in her throat alongside the fear that comes with it.
Just wait till you get what you need from Hanako, she tells herself. Then…
Then what?
“To be honest, it’s a miracle you can still walk,” Hellman continues. He talks like a man who doesn’t expect to survive the day, V realizes.
Though she has a feeling a lot of Hellman’s days have probably been like that, lately.
She feels almost bad for him. Almost.
“Watch your tone, or it is you who will find it hard to walk,” Goro warns, and V finds herself strangely grateful for his presence. Hanako is still mostly concerned with preserving some twisted sense of Arasaka honor, and Hellman is an animal in a net.
But Goro? Goro’s loyalties may be skewed, but his sense of justice is true. And that’s something V can work with.
“Enough,” Hanako insists. “Once Yorinobu has been dealt with, we shall attend to your needs,” she says to V. “We must make haste.” She turns to Hellman. “Did you prepare everything?”
“Quite,” Hellman says, looking vaguely ill. He fidgets in his chair as the AV glides into the hangar bay near the top of the tower, coming to a stop in the sparse, eerie room.
The door clicks and rises open with a hiss.
V stands to get out, but a sudden wave of dizziness hits her and when she moves to take a step, she loses her footing and tumbles forward, falling face-first out of the AV and landing hard on her hands and knees. Her vision is warping violently, and she rolls over onto her back to see Goro standing above her, flanked by the concerned faces of Hanako and Hellman.
Goro extends his hand to her, but V scowls and attempts to stand on her own.
But her limbs aren’t cooperating, and Goro reaches down and gently takes her arm, pulling her to her feet and steadying her with his hands.
“Slowly,” he warns.
V brushes him off, stepping aside gruffly. “Thanks,” she mutters.
“You can do it,” he encourages her. “We are almost there.”
The four of them exit the hangar into a small corridor, where Hanako turns to Goro and quickly commands him to go gather what loyal soldiers he can and stand ready. Goro bows, then turns and strides off, getting in a lift on the opposite side of the room.
Hanako doesn't watch him leave. "V, you must come with me," she says, not taking her eyes off the merc.
But V's not lookin' for an escape route - not yet, anyway, though every instinct she has is screaming at her to run. She hates feeling this fuckin' weak, hates her complete lack of control over the situation she's found herself caught in.
Hellman falls into step with them as Hanako leads them through a set of double doors to their right, and V’s stomach drops when she realizes she’s been here before.
Well, not really. Not in this life, anyway. But this room looks exactly like the room where Smasher first jumped Johnny in 2023, right down to the carefully raked zen rock garden in the middle. The room she's visited a thousand times in Johnny's dreams. And when they spoke to Alt in Pacifica that day, the digital space she appeared to them in looked uncannily like this one.
This is a room that haunts Johnny.
It can't actually be the same room, though - the tower was completely destroyed by Johnny's nukes. But Arasaka's attention to detail in their faithful recreation of the previous iteration of the tower is enough to send a shudder down her spine. It all just feels too close to home.
She reaches for Johnny again with her mind, hoping for any sign, any stirring, but there's still nothing. Whatever cocktail of chemicals Hellman used on her must be significantly more effective than the stuff Vik's been givin' her.
Hanako turns to Hellman, speaking in a low voice as she whispers instructions to him. He nods once, then strides away through a different door.
"Probably won't get another chance," V says to Hanako the second they're alone.
Hanako raises her eyebrows. "To do what?"
"To fill me in on your plan," V says, crossing her arms.
Hanako smiles slyly. "What if I have none?"
"Don't play dumb with me, Hanako," V warns.
"Mhm…" Hanako says, turning and continuing up the stairs to the second floor balcony that wraps around the room. "You and Takemura had a plan the day of the parade. Moments later, you had nothing, your plan was in tatters. And yet, we are here now. Do you know why? Because sometimes you have to look the truth in the eye. Back then, that is what I did. Thanks to you." She turns to V, sizing her up. "You have a... a very honest look."
V frowns as she follows the heiress down another short hallway. “That's how we're swinging the Arasaka board?” she asks. “You want me to stare at them?”
Hanako flashes her a sly smirk. “Weapon at the ready.”
“If my charms don't work, we go for more tried-and-tested methods,” V says with a sigh. “I see what you're getting at.”
Hanako pauses in front of a set of broad double doors. “You have yet to see,” she says solemnly. “As do they all.”
So Hanako's got something up her sleeve after all, V realizes. Great.
The doors open, and Hanako steps into a large executive office that V also recognizes immediately.
It looks exactly the fucking same as it did in 2023, when Johnny blasted his way in here solo to upload Spider Murphy’s Liberator virus to free Alt from Arasaka’s subnet.
“Hang on, is this...?” V asks, glancing around at the eerily familiar room.
“Father's office,” Hanako replies with a small smile. “A faithful replica of the original in Tokyo. He ordered one made in every Arasaka branch on the planet.” She walks up to the large, marble desk, running her hand almost reverently along the edge as she speaks. “Every last detail, every item... arranged as if he could navigate it blind. That is the way he is. Meticulous. Fastidious.”
“Was,” V corrects with a frown.
Hanako blinks at her. “I beg your pardon?”
V gives her an odd look. “Meant to say was.”
That strange smile plays across Hanako’s lips again, as though she’s in on some sort of private joke. “Symbols are more resilient than you think,” she says, crossing to a wall panel which slides open to reveal a hidden elevator. “Come,” she says to V.
V steps into the elevator after her, and Hanako presses a button for the sub-basement.
“We're going down...?” V asks. There’s only one thing she can think of below Arasaka Tower that Hanako would have a vested interest in showing her right now.
Hanako nods, still smiling mysteriously. “I told you, Mikoshi can be accessed only from a room beneath Arasaka Tower. Before we interrupt this board meeting, we must do one more thing.”
“Keep gettin' this weird feeling you're not telling me the whole truth,” V says, narrowing her eyes as the elevator begins to descend.
“Because I am not telling you the whole truth,” Hanako confirms. “I am cautious.”
“Johnny Silverhand’s body,” V reminds her pointedly. “Hellman said you know where it is, that you'd be willing to help him.”
“Yes,” Hanako says quickly. “I wished to establish a trust between us. That is why you are here.”
The elevator glides to a halt and the doors open to reveal a darkened room containing only two chairs facing a console set beneath a glass window. Through the window, V can make out some sorta server room with a glowing red pillar at the center surrounded by a pool of liquid coolant.
“Is this…?” V asks, though she already knows the answer.
Hanako nods. “The Mikoshi access point. After you abducted me… I came here and sought his counsel.”
“Uh, whose?”
“Father's,” Hanako replies smoothly, stepping out of the elevator and crossing to go sit in one of the chairs. She gestures to the second chair. “Sit down, please. I will need a moment.”
V has a bad fuckin’ feeling about where this is going. She sits in the chair next to Hanako and watches her fiddle with the controls on the console.
“His office is not the only replica he created,” Hanako says cryptically, and then V hears a familiar glitching sound, the same sound Johnny makes when he appears. But to her horror, the shape that emerges behind the glass in front of them isn’t Johnny - it’s none other than Saburo fuckin’ Arasaka, the emperor himself, and he’s gazing down at them with an inscrutable expression on his hollowed features.
V can feel the blood drain from her face. “What?!” she cries, scooting her chair back a couple inches.
She shoulda fuckin’ guessed. Hellman straight up told her the entire point of this project was for Saburo to unlock his own immortality. Of fuckin’ course he had backups of his own engram stored away in Mikoshi.
But fuck, this changes everything.
“Fuck me dizzy…” V mutters under her breath, glancing back and forth between Hanako and the dead CEO.
“Father,” Hanako says to the engram in Japanese. “It is she.”
Saburo turns to look at her then, his dark eyes flicking over her like she’s a mere insect. It’s the same way he looked at Johnny right before he Soulkilled him, and it makes V’s blood run cold.
“You stole from my company,” he says to her in Japanese. It’s not even an accusation, just a statement of fact. “You aided in my daughter's abduction. And now, you will bring my son to his demise.” He smiles to himself, and it’s a slow, horrible smile. “One might think you have a grudge against Arasaka.”
V barks a sharp laugh. “Got that right, you bastard,” she says, and she can hear the icy daggers in her voice.
She knows she’s playin’ a dangerous game, talkin’ like this to him in front of Hanako, but right now, she doesn’t give two shits. Her blood is pounding in her ears, and all she can think about is the way he fuckin’ smiled as Johnny writhed in pain in that chair fifty fuckin’ years ago.
Hanako turns to her, face aghast. “V!”
But V leans back in her seat, giving Saburo a big, fat middle finger. “Silverhand sends his regards,” she adds.
And to her surprise, Saburo laughs sharply. “Ha,” he says bemusedly. “You were right, Hanako. She is one of a kind.”
“Why am I here?” V asks, looking back and forth between them.
“I wished to see you with my own eyes,” Saburo answers.
“Because...?” V prompts.
Saburo smiles again. “It never ceases to amaze me how so much can at times depend on an ordinary individual. Life, death… and in between… glass.” He stares down at V, his cold eyes boring into her. “That is what we are doing,” he continues, his voice slow and dangerous. “Making the dividing line thinner and thinner. And you became part of this process. I suppose I should thank you.”
V scowls. “If you think I'll talk to you, forget it.”
“What you want is of no importance,” Saburo replies.
If Saburo’s the one really calling the shots here, V’s pretty sure the chances of Hanako actually followin’ through on her promise to help bring Johnny back are much lower than she initially dared to hope. She feels her heart sink - this whole rotten deal is gettin’ worse by the second.
Yet here she is now, in the belly of the fuckin’ beast, and the only way out is through.
At least she knows where the access point is.
“Made a deal with Hanako, not you,” she reminds them both.
“Ah,” Saburo says with another dark chuckle. “Is this what you think?”
V shakes her head, laughing incredulously. “No, I think I do fuckin’ get it. You’re still the one pullin’ the strings here. Shoulda fuckin’ known.”
Hanako glances at V nervously. “We should go,” she says. “Before she does something stupid.”
Saburo nods once. “I am ready, Hanako.”
Hanako reaches beneath the console and pulls out a small box from which she removes a shard that looks an awful lot to V like the Relic chip Johnny was on when she found him. Hanako places the chip in a small slot on the console, then stands and bends in a low bow to her father.
“Father,” she says again, and the engram vanishes in a glitchy mess of blue dots.
Hanako pauses for a moment, watching the console with anxious anticipation, then removes the chip from the slot and places it back in the box, which she clutches between her hands like it’s the most precious object in the fuckin’ universe.
“It is done,” she says to V solemnly. “We may go.”
V suddenly sees where this is going. Saburo didn’t preserve himself as an engram just to rule from inside of a computer. He needs a body. A younger body. A body that can bear his face, his name.
Yorinobu.
It all comes thunking into her head then, clear as day. Hanako doesn’t want her to kill Yorinobu - she’s plotting with her father to do to him exactly what Johnny’s engram is doing to her. And V’s been their unwitting canary in the fucking coal mine.
She gets to her feet, facing off against Hanako and staring the woman down coldly.
They’re here alone, now. No Goro, no Oda, no guards. Could she overpower the heiress before security got here? Jack into Mikoshi herself? Let Alt in using the backdoor code she gave ‘em?
This might be her best chance.
“Where are you keeping Johnny’s body?” she demands.
But Hanako shakes her head. “Later, V. We must make haste if we are to intercept Yorinobu’s board meeting.”
But V stands her ground. “Tell me what you’re planning,” she insists. “Or I’m not gonna- agh!”
A sudden malfunction wracks her body, and she doubles forward in agony as her vision pulses and her head throbs with blinding, searing pain.
She can feel that howling emptiness around the edges of her mind, the same way it feels when Johnny takes control, and she fights to stay conscious, to not throw up, to not collapse.
“I... Johnny, fuck no... Not now!” V gasps, gripping the wall and willing herself not to crumple onto the floor again. She feels Hanako’s hand on her arm, guiding her back towards the elevator, and she coughs more blood into her palm as the doors slide shut around them.
“It won't be much longer,” Hanako says gently. “Will you stay with us?”
“On a downward spiral,” V spits. “Don't have a fuckin' choice, now, do I?”
“Please, calm…” Hanako begs.
“I'll be calm when all this is over!”
V’s shaking now, and she’s sure the look she’s giving Hanako right now would be enough to make most people wither and shrink away. Her death glare, as Jackie called it.
But Hanako just gives her a long, solemn look as the lift comes to a stop. “Dire moments are upon us,” she says, stepping out of the elevator.
V blinks for a moment at the unexpected sight that awaits her. Instead of another office floor, before them is a massive fuckin’ forest. Complete with tall trees and jungle birds - real fuckin' birds - flying between them, their calls echoing eerily in the enormous space.
Leave it to fuckin’ Arasaka to have a whole entire fuckin’ jungle in their goddamn office building.
She follows Hanako mutely out of the elevator, and they move together along a wooden walkway that cuts through the vegetation. Thick ferns surround them on all sides, dotted with large, colorful flowers, while long, tangled vines hang from the branches of the trees.
Up ahead, she can see Goro briefing three Arasaka heavies. And beside him is another man she recognizes - Sandayu Oda. And unlike Goro, he’s clearly dressed for action.
Takemura turns as they approach.
“Hanako-sama,” Goro says deferentially, clasping his hands and bowing deeply to her.
It strikes V then that the way Goro acts around these fuckers is completely different than the Goro she’s gotten to know. The Goro she knows is surprisingly goofy - despite the language barrier, he’s got a genuinely witty sarcastic streak and a strange and disarmingly endearing way of approaching the world. With the Arasakas, he acts more like the trained assassin that he is - cool. guarded, unquestioning. She wonders who he would have become if his life had gone differently, if those 'Saka recruiters hadn't scooped him outta the slums as a kid.
As they get closer, Oda’s strange light eyes flick to V’s and his face darkens.
“You,” he spits. He crosses his arms, scowling at her.
Whatever deference Goro seems to default to around the Arasakas, Oda doesn’t appear to share it.
“Got a good memory for faces, Oda,” V teases, and Oda takes a threatening step towards her.
“V is with us,” Hanako says smoothly, stepping forward to place a hand on Oda’s arm.
The bodyguard’s mouth tightens. “Of course, Hanako-sama,” he says, but V notices his shoulders relax ever so slightly at Hanako’s touch.
Hanako turns to Takemura. “Is it just these?” she asks him, eying the Arasaka soldiers he has in tow.
Goro nods. “The rest are in position, ready to do as instructed. These are the most effective by much,” he says to Hanako in a low voice. “And loyal.”
Hanako smiles wryly. “To me, or to my money?”
“I would say it's twenty percent to eighty, Hanako-sama.”
Hanako nods. “Very well. It will have to do.”
She walks ahead, as though she simply expects everyone to follow. Oda is quick to do just that, and the rest of the soldiers fall into step behind them.
But Goro hangs back, walking alongside V as they tail the rest of the group along the wooden path lit intermittently by glowing white strips of light that line the floor.
V moves closer to Goro, lowering her voice so only he can hear her. “You in on this?” she whispers to him.
Takemura frowns. “In on what?”
“Saburo's comeback,” V says quietly. “Just spoke to his construct.”
Goro stops in his tracks. “What?!” he gasps.
V pulls him along by his arm, trying not to draw attention to them. “He digitized his engram, made copies,” she tells him. “In case he died. Hellman told me before that he was plannin’ on using the tech on himself, but I hadn’t realized he’d already went and done it."
Goro shakes his head in disbelief. “No…” he mutters incredulously. “He would have told me.”
“Why?” V retorts. “So you'd take your job as his bodyguard lightly?”
But Goro seems genuinely shellshocked. “It cannot be…” he murmurs to himself in Japanese, then swears softly under his breath.
V can’t help but smirk at this. “Feel that, Goro?” she says gently. “Night City just gave you another kick in the nuts. Running start this time.”
Goro doesn’t answer, but his face suddenly looks ancient and tired, and V feels almost sorry for him. He’s a good man, she thinks, despite what Johnny says. Not his fault he spent his whole life bein’ groomed and brainwashed by these self-important fucks.
The path rounds a bend, then opens up ahead onto a wider pavilion with a broad table running down the center. Seated at the table are a grotesque array of ‘Saka suits, all of ‘em rocking top-of-the-line cyberware and crisp outfits to match.
This must be the Arasaka board, V realizes. Arguably some of the most powerful people in the whole fucking world.
Hanako stops, turning back to the small group.
“If we cannot convince them, we could lose control of the situation,” she warns them quietly.
“Then what?” V quips. “Need me to neutralize them, too?”
But Hanako just nods, unfazed by V’s snarkiness. “Keep your weapon at hand,” she agrees. “And do not utter a word until I ask you to. No matter what happens... you must trust me.”
But it’s too late for that, V thinks. Now that she knows this is all part of Saburo's grand plan to reincarnate himself, to rule the corporation in his son’s body… she can’t trust a word comin’ out of Hanako’s mouth.
Her best hope is to play along for now, and seize her moment when it comes.
Four guards in blue suits stand to the edge of the space, watching the scene before them with impassive faces. By the looks of them, V guesses they’re netrunners.
And all the suits around the table are arguing loudly, their raised voices carrying out across the trees. They stop shouting and turn to look when they notice Hanako approaching, and one by one they fall silent.
One of the board members narrows his eyes when he sees V. “Who is this... person?” he asks sharply, looking up at Hanako as the group descends on the table.
“I am late, apologies,” Hanako says smoothly, taking her place at the head of the table and setting the box down carefully in front of her. Goro assumes position flanking her, and Oda paces around the perimeter of the table like a cat, never taking his eyes off Hanako. The soldiers they came in with join the netrunners, standing at ready.
A woman with a purple mohawk wearing a fashionable gold dress gives Hanako an inquisitive look.
“Hanako?” she says. “What are you doing here?”
V recognizes her then as Michiko Arasaka, Hanako and Yorinobu’s niece. Her father was Saburo’s oldest son, Kei, killed by Johnny’s friends during the 2023 raid. She remembers seein’ shit about Michiko in the screamsheets - she’s around a decade younger than Hanako, and made a reputation for herself in the nightlife scene of just about every major city in her heyday, NC bein’ no exception.
Hanako ignores her question as she surveys the room, a wrinkle creasing her smooth brow. “My brother,” she says. “Where is he?”
Michiko frowns. “He... told us to start without him…” she says uncertainly.
Hanako nods, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards ever so slightly. “Then begin without him we shall.”
But a sudden robotic voice booms out over a loudspeaker, and all the suits look up in confusion and alarm.
“Intruder detected,” the voice says.
Michiko looks at Hanako, her eyes wide. “What the hell's happening?”
“Initiating Hayabusa protocol,” the loudspeaker announces, and the white lights around the table suddenly shift to red.
The shadow of a smile drops off Hanako's face, replaced with a deep frown as her eyes dart nervously towards the paths leading back into the dense forest. V can hear footsteps coming down them… lots of footsteps.
Seems like Yorinobu got wind of Hanako’s plan, after all. V's body tenses, her heart pounding and her muscles coiled and ready to spring into action. This might be it, her chance to slip off and do whatever the fuck it is she's gonna do.
Assuming she survives whatever the fuck is about to happen.
“The facility is in lockdown,” the synthesized voice on the loudspeaker continues. “Security personnel must report to designated zones.”
“Who activated the lockdown?” one of the board members demands. “Is it you?!” he asks, staring at Hanako accusingly. “Is this your doing, Hanako?”
But right at that moment, a strike team of Arasaka soldiers bursts out of the bushes, guns pointed at the entire board room.
“Spare no one,” one of them says, and they open fire without any further warning.
Notes:
Aaaand now we begin our slow drift from canon.
I wrote this chapter and the next one concurrently, so expect another update relatively soon!
Chapter 48: The Ballad of Buck Ravers
Summary:
V scrambles to figure out a new plan to get to Mikoshi after a horrible revelation from Hanako about Arasaka's true goals.
Notes:
As promised, here's the next chapter!
Also, this chapter has a soundtrack! A bit ago, I figured out that "The Rebel Path" and "V" from the Cyberpunk soundtrack are in the same key and have the same BPM so I mixed them together and here are the results lmao. Enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V dives behind the table as the bullets start flyin’, but they’re coming from all directions - there’s no safe cover.
The board member closest to V takes a bullet straight to the face almost immediately and collapses in front of her, blood spurtin’ from the hole in the middle of his forehead. She grabs his limp body and drags it to her chest, using it as a makeshift shield as she presses her back against the thankfully solid table.
Hanako calmly ducks underneath the table beside her, grabbing the box with Saburo’s Relic in it and curling her body protectively around it. She meets V’s eyes, and her face looks strangely serene. Behind her, V can see Michiko huddled behind a tall chair. But Oda and Goro and the rest of the soldiers they arrived with have sprung into action, guns out and trading shots with the ‘Saka soldiers who are still raining machine gun fire on the unwitting group of suits.
“Protect the VIPs!” Goro yells.
From where she’s crouched, V’s got a decent line of sight on the attacking forces, and she unleashes a slew of quickhacks on them. Their ICE is thick as fuck, so it takes longer than usual for her daemons to upload and penetrate, but soon enough, the soldiers start clutching their heads and falling to their knees as the hacks do their work. Goro and Oda and the others are quick to take advantage, picking them off one by one.
When the dust settles, all of Yorinobu’s soldiers are dead... as is the entire Arasaka board.
Goro helps Michiko unsteadily to her feet, and Oda rushes to Hanako’s side.
“Elite squads...?” Hanako gasps, sounding severely shaken. “He sought to…”
She clutches the box tightly to her chest, looking at V in horror.
“Neutralize us,” V finishes for her, rising from her hiding spot and tossing aside the corpse she was using for cover.
Hanako frowns, stepping away from the table.
“I did not believe he would go to such lengths,” she murmurs, surveying the scene of the massacre before them. “I will gather a force and take control of Arasaka Tower,” she says, and there’s a new steely resolve to her voice. She turns to V. “You must find my brother,” she pleads. “That lift will take you to the upper atrium,” she says, pointing to an elevator just barely visible through the thick foliage. “From there, you can reach Yorinobu's floor.”
Goro appears at her side. “Hanako-sama, I can be of assistance,” he says, his eyes flicking to V’s.
Hanako nods. “So be it. But he is not to be harmed,” she warns the bodyguard. “You are to capture him, nothing more. I want him taken alive.”
“Alive?” Goro asks in confusion.
“He is still my brother,” Hanako replies firmly. “If you harm a hair on his head, my agreement with V will be void.”
V is fairly certain her true motives are more complicated than that, but Goro seems to accept this. And this seems like as good an excuse as any to slip away from Hanako. She hopes she can trust Goro to still have her back if and when she decides to go off-script.
She hopes that if it comes to it, he can be swayed.
“I will cover Hanako,” Oda assures Goro. “Takemura-san, V... I wish you the best of luck. Now, go!”
Goro bows at Hanako and starts moving towards the elevator. V draws her Malorian and follows closely behind him, scanning the trees for any sign of movement. They’re dangerously exposed on the path, but trying to cut straight through the forest floor seems even more risky. To her relief, they don’t encounter any more of Yorinobu’s goons before they make it to the elevator, but V doesn’t let out her breath until the doors are shut and the lift has started to rocket upwards.
“I was wrong,” Goro says as soon as the doors close. “About Yorinobu.” He blinks at the floor in disbelief. “The Arasaka board! His own sister!” V watches as his lip curls. “He is not simply deceitful. He is insane.”
But V shakes her head. “You're all ratshit crazy here.”
“Not now,” Goro replies sadly. “This is not the time.”
“No,” V says. “It is the time. I saw… I saw Hanako put Saburo’s engram on a Relic chip like the one Johnny was on,” she tells Goro. “I think she may be plannin’ to… use Yorinobu, like me ‘n Johnny.”
Goro’s eyes widen in sudden comprehension. “To resurrect himself?”
V nods, internally weighing her options. She could still play along with Hanako, go apprehend Yorinobu like she asked. Help her resurrect her father on the small hope that Hanako’ll keep her word, help her get Johnny back in his body.
It’s a deal she knows that Johnny himself would never accept.
Johnny would tell her to just take advantage of the chaos, blast her way to Mikoshi now, as per their original plan. But if she does that, she’ll have no easy way to figure out where they’re keepin’ his body. She knows this could very well be her best chance - her only chance - to save him.
And she has a feeling that if the tables were turned, Johnny would do the same for her.
Yorinobu has to know where Johnny’s body is too, she thinks. And if bringing back Johnny was his plan all along… maybe he’ll be willing to help her.
“We need to get to Yorinobu,” she tells Goro, coming to a decision. “I’ll decide what to do from there.”
Takemura considers this for a moment, then curses loudly. “How should we approach this? An open attack?”
“Nah, Yorinobu expects that,” V tells him. “Sly and quiet, that's us.”
Goro nods, meeting her eyes while the ghost of a smile plays across his lips. “Like thieves,” he says.
She smiles back at him, and they take position as the elevator doors open to another office corridor, but this one is littered with bodies. Yorinobu’s soldiers have clearly been violently and aggressively taking the tower, which means at this point, it’s a race for the prize between the siblings. There are dead corpos everywhere - and most of ‘em look like civilians to V. Just normal corpo-gonks working late on an ordinary Wednesday night.
V feels slightly sick to her stomach. Sure, they were ‘Saka suits… but these poor idiots didn’t deserve to die.
It’s clear to her that neither Hanako nor her brother give two single fucks about how high of a body count they rack up in their fight for the throne.
They pick their way through the corridors, checking the corners for more of Yorinobu’s forces. Goro leads the way - he’s the one who knows his way around this godforsaken tower, after all. But they don’t encounter any resistance until they reach another large atrium that looks almost like a stock exchange. Probably what it is, V realizes.
“Get ready,” Goro whispers to her as they crouch behind a large planter, yet to be detected by the pair of heavies patrolling the elevator on the far side of the room. “Yorinobu employs some exceptional kuzu-domo.”
V smirks at him. “Well, they haven't met me yet.”
She uploads a quickhack to one, shooting Goro a smug grin as the hack spreads to his buddy and they both crumple within seconds.
Goro shakes his head admiringly.
"If I had known that a simple street merc could so easily hack our cyberware…" he muses.
"Not any simple street merc," V reminds him. "Me."
Goro smiles. "Perhaps you must teach me a trick or two."
They cross the atrium together to the elevators, but to V's dismay, they seem to've been remotely disabled.
Takemura curses. "They are not playing games," he mutters, and right at that moment, another one of those fuckin’ big mechs comes crashing through another door to their left, flanked by four more lightly armored soldiers.
V dives behind a bank of monitors as the mech opens fire, a hail of bullets exploding in a crackle of sparks as they ricochet off the machinery.
"To die in battle because of a damned elevator, nothing can prepare you for that!" Goro jokes dryly, crouched beside her and lining up his shots with the steadiest hands V's ever seen in her life.
"I'll deal with the mech," she assures him, quickly preparing an ICEbreaker daemon to wrap her usual system reboot hack.
"There are stairs through that conference room," he hisses, gesturing with his head towards the glass door their guests just smashed through on their way in.
To make matters worse, a turret lowers from the ceiling to their left flank, and V barely has time to roll out of the way as it opens fire on them.
Goro isn't so lucky, and a bullet grazes his shoulder, slashing a brilliant red streak across his pristine white suit.
"Goro!" V cries, already attempting to hack the turret from where she’s cowering behind an upturned chair on the verge of shattering from the force of the bullets pummelling it.
Goro staunches the wound with his hand, grimacing at V but looking mostly relieved. It's not a serious hit, thank god.
As soon as she cracks the turret, V is pleased to find that its programming is simple enough that she can reprogram it to target the 'Saka goons instead. To her surprise and relief, not only does the hack work, but it spreads to the mech's targeting system as well. Both open fire on the remaining ‘Saka soldiers, and soon the room falls silent.
Goro doesn’t waste any time before making a sprint for the conference room, not slowing until they reach the stairwell.
A double door on the next floor leads them to a strange hallway with a glowing white floor, illuminated by equally bright neon lights from above. It feels almost like an airlock - probably some kinda clean room or advanced cybernetics scanner. The system activates, scanning them both, and V feels a sharp, piercing pain in her head as whatever the fuck it’s doin’ triggers another malfunction.
She staggers forward, clutching the wall for support and retching more blood onto the featureless white floor.
“As if they were gonna make this easy,” V chokes, glancing up at Goro as he rushes to her side, pulling her gently by the arm to the door on the far end of the short corridor.
He releases her arm to open the door, and V falls forward through it as it opens, landing heavily on her hands and knees.
“Your meat is failing you!” a mechanical voice bellows triumphantly from above her, and V’s blood turns to ice as she rolls onto her back, already knowing what and who she’s gonna see.
Her horror is confirmed when none other than Adam fucking Smasher is standing directly above her on a narrow walkway above the door she just tumbled through.
“Oh, fuck!” she yells, scrambling backwards on her elbows as quickly as she can and pointing her Malorian at him, already opening fire. All her shots go wide as Smasher drops off the ledge, landing in a three-point crouch only a couple feet in front of her. His fist shatters the marble floor, sending V flying backwards.
It’s exactly the same way he ambushed Johnny in 2023.
“Smasher!” she shouts, unsure of where Goro landed. “I fucking knew it!”
She sees Goro then, out of the corner of her eye, darting out of the corridor and lining up his shots.
But Smasher seems to be laser-focused on V, already gearing up to charge her again.
“Bold! And stupid,” Smasher yells, launching himself at her as she leaps to her feet and dives out of the way.
“Watch out, V!” Goro cries, but his bullets ricochet uselessly off Smasher’s armor.
Smasher whips around to face his former ally. “You are a traitor, Goro!” he growls. “And now I will crush you! It will be my pleasure.”
V uses the opportunity to try and upload a quickhack to take out his rocket launcher, but his ICE is much thicker and more complicated than what the mechs downstairs were packing, and none of her daemons can break through.
So she aims for his head with her Malorian instead, hoping against hope that the custom mods Johnny installed will be enough to pierce whatever fuckin’ thick titanium skull he’s got in there.
“Ah, it is angry!” Goro crows, dancing out of the way. “The beast is angry!”
One of V’s bullets lands, and while it doesn’t kill the borged out fuck, it makes a visible dent in his head, and he howls and turns back to her.
“You spared Oda,” he growls, stalking back towards her and spraying bullets in her direction. “So very... human! And disgusting. Mercy is disgusting.”
V ducks behind a marble pillar, her heart pounding in her throat. She’s outmatched, and she knows it - her hacks can’t penetrate, and her gun is no match for his armor.
“Where is Rogue?!” Smasher yells, continuing to taunt her. “Wanted no part of this raid, the old cunt?!” V can hear his footsteps stomping towards her, and she closes her eyes as she tries to think quickly. “Once I finish with you, I'll hunt her down!” the borg promises.
V leans out from around the pillar, firing more shots off at him. She can see Goro hurl himself at Smasher from behind, wrapping his arms around his neck and attempting to grapple him. Smasher flails wildly, trying to throw him off, and V’s confused about what the fuck Goro’s aimin' to accomplish until she realizes he has a sticky grenade in his hand, already armed and flashing. V’s heart is in her throat as she watches them struggle, but Goro manages to clamp the grenade firmly to Smasher’s chest just before Smasher finally succeeds in flinging him aside. Goro goes flying across the floor, hitting another pillar with a heavy thud.
Smasher claws at the grenade, roaring with anger as he tries to dislodge it, but to V's relief it explodes before he can tear it off. His robotic body bursts into flames, and he falls to his hands and knees, flames licking out from between the cracks in his now twisted and burned armor.
“Is this... pain?” he bellows. “I'd forgotten the sensation.”
He drags himself to his feet, still moving laboriously towards V, cannon drawn.
“He is weak!” Goro shouts from where he’s still lying collapsed by the pillar. “End him! It's time now! Or never!”
Smasher collapses to his knees a couple yards from V, his inhuman eyes glaring at her furiously.
She aims her Malorian at his arm cannon, firing off a series of shots that make the launcher explode into flames. The mangled remains dangle uselessly, showering sparks across the floor.
“I remember you," V says slowly, coming to stand over him, Malorian cocked and pointed at his head. “Promised to kill Silverhand once. Gonna let you in on a little secret.” She leans closer to him, looking into his glowing, cybernetic eyes. “Johnny? He's here with us. He can't talk, but I can feel him under my skin.”
And it’s true, she realizes. She can feel him starting to stir from whatever little prison he’s been locked inside this whole time. Blockers must be finally wearin’ off, she thinks.
"Silverhand?" Smasher growls at her in confusion, his ruined face twisting into a sneer. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
V fires her Malorian straight into his face. His faceplate explodes, revealing a pulsing, oozing bleeding brain beneath and exposing the metal skeleton that encases it.
“In the end... Silverhand triumphs,” she tells him, drawing the knife from her boot and pressing the tip against the exposed brain matter.
“A pussy,” Smasher spits, his voice coming out warped and distorted. “Now and forever.”
“Johnny sends his regards,” V replies coolly, plunging her knife straight into his brain. His robotic body convulses, and his eyes flicker and then go dark.
She collapses to her knees, yanking the bloodied knife from his head and sitting heavily on her heels, her breathing hard and labored.
“Rightly so,” Goro gasps approvingly from behind her. “He did not deserve mercy.”
V stares down at the bloody knife in her hand, then back at Smasher’s twitching corpse, the carapace still crackling with flames. “Can’t believe I just took down Johnny’s arch enemy,” she murmurs, sliding the knife back into her boot. “Wish he was here to see it.” She laughs darkly. “Damn, it feels nice.”
On a hunch, she checks the borg’s body, and to her relief, there’s an access chip stuck to a less-damaged part of his skeleton. She pries it off and pockets it, staggering to her feet and going to check on Goro.
She helps him to his feet, and he clutches his torso, wheezing.
“I am fine,” he assures her. “It is just a cracked rib, I think. I will survive.” He points at a broad, glowing staircase across the room. “Yorinobu’s office is through there. Let us go.”
They hold onto each other for support as they climb the stairs together, using Smasher’s access token to unlock the door at the top. It slides open to an empty corridor, walled on both sides by glass windows displaying yet another artificial, indoor forest. There’s another set of heavy, double doors at the end of the hall, but Goro stops short in the middle of the passage.
“I will stay here,” he tells V. “If I go through that door, I will kill him. And your agreement with Hanako-sama will be undone. It is the last favor I can do for you.”
He bows to V then, and she finds herself strangely touched by this.
“Do yourself a favor, Goro,” she says, turning to him and putting her hands on his shoulders. “Ghost... get outta here.”
Goro blinks at her, uncomprehending. “Pardon?”
“Forget Arasaka,” V continues. “Don’t you get it? You were Saburo’s bodyguard... and you failed him. Think they’re gonna raise their glasses... to you?”
Goro frowns, his face flustered and confused. “I... I do not know…” he mutters.
“Hit the streets, disappear,” V insists. “Get gigs, feed cats... just stay clear of Arasaka.”
Goro looks down and away from V, clearly conflicted.
“Perhaps,” he says, bowing again to V. “Go, V. Finish what we started.”
V nods once, giving him a long look. She fuckin’ hopes Goro takes her advice and deltas the fuck out of here. He deserves better than this, better than what these bloodsuckers could ever offer him.
The double doors swing open for her, and she steps through into an enormous, darkened office.
And there’s Yorinobu, sprawled on his hands and knees on the floor, his kimono fanned out around him as he stares at a blinking holographic display that covers the entire front wall above him.
“Violent delights with violent ends…” he mutters when he hears V enter, but when he turns to look at her, his face registers surprise. She clearly isn’t who he was expecting. “You?” he says, glancing behind her, but the heavy doors have already swung shut, separating her from Goro. “Where is my sister?”
“Mean your beloved sibling?” V says, moving slowly towards him and drawing her Malorian, just in case. “The one your men almost shot and killed? The one who’s about to come in here and slot your dead dad into your skull?”
Yorinobu’s eyes widen, but he looks at the floor and shakes his head. “She was to remain at the estate. Stay out of the way. I tried to protect her. Any danger she was in she was because of you, no one else,” he adds, turning to look at V accusingly as she comes to stand over him. “Where is she?”
“Probably on her way here right now,” V tells him, lowering herself to sit on the floor beside him. “But I’m just here to talk. So don’t try anything stupid.”
Yorinobu shrugs defeatedly. “What would I try? I have tried everything… nothing else remains.”
There’s a small pistol on the floor a couple feet away from him, and V picks it up and slides it into her empty second holster.
“This... you won’t need,” she tells him.
Yorinobu shakes his head. “Just one bullet left,” he explains. “It’s not for you.” He gestures at the holographic screen above them. “Look,” he commands. “What do you see?”
It’s a map of the world, with Arasaka headquarters locations marked with big, orange dots. All of them are showing a state of emergency now - and one by one, they are all going dark.
“War,” V replies. “And deaths... that could’ve been avoided.”
“Avoided?”
“You know what the world sees?” V tells him. Her vision's starting to glitch badly again, and it's gettin' harder to talk. “A failed corporate coup, rich siblings squabbling over daddy's empire. Your chooms out there... spillin' blood... for no reason…” she chokes, the roaring pain in her head gettin’ louder and louder. “You’ve lost… Hanako’s plannin’ to-”
“It is they who have lost,” Yorinobu says, cutting her off.
He points up at the screen, waving his hand to zoom in on the different cities one by one.
“Kyoto. Dubai... Paris... These people had a chance today,” Yorinobu says sadly. “But they lost it.”
“A chance?” V asks. “A chance for what?”
Yorinobu looks at her. “To forget their fear.”
“This how you wanna help people... forget their fear? By killing them?” V shakes her head. “Sorry... just don’t get it.”
Yorinobu looks down at the floor. “Fear,” he repeats. “Ever since I can remember. The one thing I cannot deny him… he knew how to cause fear in people.”
“Saburo,” V whispers.
Yorinobu nods. “He once told me anything of value is only a flag blowing in the wind. And wind is fear. And then... you know what he did? Blew in my face.” He holds out his palm and blows across it to demonstrate. “That was the one time he was wrong. And others? It worked on them. They feared him. Even now, they fear him. Idiots terrified of a dead man talking from a box! Pathetic.” His lips twist into a dark sneer, then his eyes drop back to V. “I would change that. If only you did not appear.”
V shakes her head, still not buyin' it. “Wouldn’ta changed a damn thing. You’re exactly like him... All you want is power. To think you once dared to lead your own gang,” she spits at him. “But dropped all that, all your dreams, ideals... to seek power.”
Yorinobu laughs sharply. “Power? Hah… truly? Power?" He shakes his head in melancholic disbelief, gesturing at the room around them. “Fifty years ago, terrorists blew this building into smoke. And? What it give us?”
“Not much,” V admits darkly.
“Nothing!” Yorinobu agrees. “But I learn lesson! If planting bombs not enough, what can you do? You become bomb.” He turns to look at V, then, his eyes boring into hers as though searching for something. Or someone.
“Mean to tell me you've been trying to destroy Arasaka from the inside?” V says, narrowing her eyes at him.
Yorinobu nods once, still examining her with that strange look on his face, blue dots still pulsing outwards from his features, from everything.
“I was a fan once, you know,” he says slowly.
V blinks at him, not following his train of thought.
Yorinobu cocks an eyebrow at her. “Johnny Silverhand,” he says, and his voice sounds almost reverent, as though the name holds a sort of magic for him. “He was... everything that I wished that I could be when I was a boy. He sang the very things that I did not dare say to my father’s face. He was... free.”
V shakes her head. “Was just in a different kinda cage,” she tells him.
“My father did not allow me to listen to American trash… as he called it,” Yorinobu continues, a wry smile twitching at the corner of his lips. “But that did not stop me.” He sighs heavily, looking down at his hands. “Yet it was Silverhand who inspired me to become what I did. To create the Steel Dragons. To work to bring my father’s empire crashing to the ground. And then he died, destroyed our tower, his allies killed my older brother… and I resolved to finish what he began.”
V can only gape at him, seein’ him in a new light suddenly.
Yorinobu Arasaka, a Samurai fan?
“So you were tryna bring him back,” she breathes.
Yorinobu nods. “It was an option, yes. I needed a symbol. People have become… complacent now. Their minds are weak, and they do not wish to be freed, they merely want… convenience and comfort. Which we, of course, deny them... yet constantly sell them the idea of it.”
“So you were gonna resurrect him, use him as an anti-Arasaka mouthpiece?”
“It does not matter now,” Yorinobu says with a sigh. “We are here, and it is too late.”
“But can it be done?” she presses, still not daring to hope. “Bringin’ him back, that is?”
Yorinobu looks at her. “Yes,” he says. “I believe so.”
But right at that moment, her vision crackles violently and splits open, and she feels Johnny come crashing back all at once, all his rage and terror flooding through her mind as she collapses forward, clawing at her head with a strangled scream.
“Good timing,” she manages through gritted teeth. “Yori here was just tellin’ me about how he’s a big fan of yo- agh!”
There’s another loud crackle in her head, and then she hears Johnny’s voice - but just like at Vik’s, the words are comin’ outta her own mouth.
“So that’s it, huh?” she hears herself say. “They just kidnapped you like they did Alt?”
Her hands are moving of their own volition now, and she feels herself lunge for Yorinobu, dragging him into a chokehold while pulling the knife from her boot in one fluid motion and pressing the blade to his throat.
V struggles to move her hands, move anything, to at least speak.
“Wait, Johnny!” she finally manages to gasp, trying frantically to withdraw the weapon. “We had it all wrong, just hang on-”
Yorinobu’s eyes are wide and fixed on her, but he doesn’t look afraid. In fact, he almost looks… relieved?
If I were him, I'd rather have my throat slit than get turned into Saburo, she thinks darkly.
“That lift… will take you to Mikoshi,” Yorinobu chokes, lifting his hand to point towards an elevator to their left. “Please,” he begs. “Destroy it.”
“And Johnny’s body?” V demands. “Where is it?”
She feels Johnny’s shock at this, and takes advantage of his surprise to wrest control back. She drops Yorinobu, scrambling backwards on her hands until she’s put some distance between them.
“Jesus fuck, Johnny!” she shouts. “Don’t fuckin’ do that!”
Yorinobu is watching her now with an odd look on his face.
“Johnny?” he says slowly, and there’s something like awe in his voice.
Holy shit, V thinks incredulously. He’s fuckin’ starstruck.
Johnny glitches in, then, pacing back and forth and starin’ down at Yorinobu and V like he can’t make heads or fuckin’ tails of what the fuck he just airdropped into.
“The fuck is goin’ on, V?” Johnny asks her, his voice rough with alarm, and to her relief, it doesn’t come out of her own mouth this time.
She laughs weakly.
“Like I was sayin’,” she tells Johnny. “Yorinobu was just tellin’ me about how he was a big Samurai fan.”
Johnny just blinks at her, then at Yorinobu, the confusion and rage still rollin’ off him like waves on rocks. Yorinobu, for his part, doesn’t seem remotely fazed that she’s speaking with an invisible entity - he simply watches her with that same fascinated expression on his face.
“Believe it or not… think we’re on the same side,” V tells Johnny. “He was tryin' to bring you back, wanted to take down Arasaka from the inside. But now, Hanako’s got Saburo’s engram on a fuckin’ Relic chip, just like yours, and she’s gonna-”
But she stops mid-sentence, because she hears the heavy doors she came in through swing open behind her, followed by the unmistakable clip of Hanako’s heels on the polished marble floor.
Johnny bristles as Yorinobu’s eyes fly to hers, and V feels her hands ball into fists as they respond to Johnny’s impulses. She twists to look at Hanako as the heiress walks slowly towards them, shadowed closely by Oda.
She feels her hand twitch towards her Malorian, and it takes all her concentration to hold it still, her fingers digging into the cold floor.
It’s almost like she and Johnny are in some sorta strange merged state now, she realizes. Like two drunk kids behind the wheel of a truck, elbowin’ each other back and forth for control as the car veers wildly across the lanes.
“Hanako,” Yorinobu breathes as his sister approaches. Hanako sinks to her knees when she reaches him, and Yorinobu crawls forward to lay his head on her lap while Oda paces around them, eyeing V suspiciously.
“Yorinobu,” Hanako replies softly, stroking his hair.
Yorinobu rests his head on her thighs, and Hanako sets the box down on the floor beside them. The box containing Saburo's Relic.
“I’ve been waiting for you…” Yorinobu says to her in Japanese. “When the world turns to rubble, you always appear.”
“Quiet,” Hanako warns him, also speaking Japanese. “Not in front of strangers.”
Johnny seems to see the opportunity at the exact same time she does.
“Fuck,” they both say in unison, lunging for the box with the Relic contained within.
Oda reacts just as quickly, diving forward to stop them, but V’s closer and faster, and she snatches the box and runs for the elevator, hurling herself inside and turning to see Oda racing after her. But he doesn't make it in time, and the doors close to his muffled banging and cursing.
The elevator panel is thankfully unlocked, probably ‘cause no one else had access to this office besides 'Saka top brass, so she punches a random floor on the lower levels and the elevator begins to plummet downwards.
“Look at you,” Johnny says, turning to her with a grin. “Stealin’ another Relic from fuckin’ Arasaka. And this one’s got ol’ gramps himself on it. Wanna slot him in, too? Make it a real party in here?” he jokes.
V studies the box in her hands. It’s a temperature-controlled artificial environment like the one she stole Johnny’s Relic in, but this one’s much smaller, likely not intended for long-term storage.
“Johnny,” she says softly. “Hellman told me that… that Grayson was lying. Your body ain’t in those oil fields. They’re keepin’ it in cryo somewhere. Yorinobu actually planned to bring you back.”
Johnny frowns, shaking his head at her. “Doesn’t change shit,” he says. “Still gotta get me outta your head, first.”
V holds up the box with Saburo’s Relic. “Maybe Alt could copy you to this,” she suggests. “Until we can find your body.”
Johnny raises his eyebrows, and she can feel the hope he’s been holdin’ back surging through her chest, but he tamps it down almost as quickly as it comes.
“One thing atta time, V,” he cautions her. “How d’ya know they weren’t lying just to yank you around?”
V shakes her head. “They showed me the biomon readouts for the cryo-pod,” she tells him. “And gave me… your rings.” She pulls the satchel from her pocket, opening it enough to show him what’s inside, even though he could probably look in her memories now and see for himself.
She can feel him doin’ just that, and his eyebrows knit together as he processes this new information. She pockets the bag again, holding Johnny’s gaze.
“Well, fuck me,” he says softly. “Do I even wanna fuckin’ know what they were plannin’ to do with me once I was back?”
“Think Yori’s idea was to just point you at Arasaka, and let you handle the rest,” V says softly.
Johnny laughs. “Funny… I remember him and his Steel Dragon buddies came to one of our shows in Tokyo once,” he tells her. “Almost didn’t let ‘em in, thought they were just tryna run recon for dear old dad. But I dunno, felt almost sorry for the kid. Couldn’t’a been much older than twenty, then. Just a kid playin' rebel to piss off his pops." He smiles sadly. "Motherfucker knew all the words to all our songs.”
V feels her lip twitch upward at the strange mental image.
“So what now?” she asks him.
He shrugs. “Gotta get to Mikoshi. Maybe Alt’ll know what to do with… this,” he says, gesturing at the chip V’s holding.
She nods. “So, back to plan A, then. Blast our way in.”
Johnny nods, turning to the elevator panel.
“Netrun Operations Control,” he reads off it. “Sounds like a good place to run a megafacility from.”
“We plug in your output there, see how she settles in,” V agrees, punching the button for that floor.
“I’d expect a very warm welcome down below if I were you,” Johnny warns.
“Good,” V says. “If we’re goin’ out, it better be with fuckin’ fireworks.”
Johnny nods. “Gonna be an ambush, no doubt. Just focus. You’re better than them.”
V feels herself flush at his words, and he steps towards her, brushing his thumb across her jaw and pressing a quick kiss to her lips as the elevator comes to a stop. He pulls away and flashes her a wild grin, and V pulls his Malorian from her holster and gets into position.
“Time to party like it’s 2023!” Johnny shouts triumphantly as the doors slide open.
There’s a mech waitin’ for her on the other side, and it starts firing before the doors are even open all the way.
“Whoa!” Johnny yells as V dives back into cover. “Careful, this is their house,” he cautions her as she queues up the same ICEbreaker hack she used before. “Got a gameplan all polished and rehearsed.”
“I killed Smasher, I can handle a few mechs,” she shoots back, leaning out to upload her hack to the mech and ducking back behind the elevator wall while she waits for it to take effect.
“Thanks for that, by the way,” Johnny says in a low, rough voice, his eyes blazing as he meets her gaze. He watches her face as they listen to the mech spark and collapse in the hallway, then V steps out, pistol still drawn.
The hall is empty now, but she can hear loud, running footsteps from around the corner.
“Motherfuckers got no love for foreplay,” Johnny jokes darkly. “Brace yourself, V.”
V moves to the corner, peering around to see a team of shock troopers racing towards her.
She launches a slew of daemons at them, then leaps out of cover and starts pickin’ ‘em off with her Malorian as they double over one by one from the hacks.
“Why the hell you here, bitch?” one of the ‘Saka guard shouts as he gasps and convulses, and she plants a bullet right between his eyes.
Johnny just watches, cigarette in hand and an admiring look on his face as V slices her way through the waves of guards. “Fuck,” he says, sounding genuinely impressed.
When the hall is clear, Johnny glitches over to the window that lines one side of the corridor, and gestures with his cigarette. “Hey!” he says, calling V over. “Over here!”
She moves to stand next to him, gazing down at a dark, empty space with glowing lines across the floor all converging on a central point, surrounded by a ring of sunken dweller chairs.
“Ain’t no expert,” Johnny mutters. “But sure looks like the tower’s mainframe to me.”
“Guess we just see what happens when we jack Alt in,” V agrees.
They follow the corridor out another door to a set of metal stairs that lead down onto the main floor of the server room.
“Alright…” Johnny mutters, surveying the space. “Not exactly seein’ any slots to jack into.”
“Mainframe’s under the floor, most likely,” V tells him, pointing at the circle in the center of the room. “Need to find a way to eject it.”
Johnny laughs. “Hah. Like a goddamn adventure game.”
V’s already moving around the area, trying to find a control panel or anything that she can hack into. The dwellers are all still and silent in their chairs, oblivious to her presence.
“Damn,” Johnny curses, leaning over to examine one of them. “Wish Spider Murphy was here.”
There’s a small glass booth in the corner of the room, and it's there that V finally finds what she’s lookin’ for. She connects her personal link and hacks the computer while Johnny watches the doors nervously, and after a couple tries, she manages to break through the ICE and enable the local network. And there it is - the option to eject the mainframe. She selects it and steps back from the monitor, gazing out the window to see if her little trick worked.
The mainframe rises like a pillar from the center of the room, glowing blue and red against the stark blackness of its shell.
But, of course, this seems to trigger another alarm, because a wave of guards bursts through the doors then, already firing at V. She ducks behind the control panel as the bullets clatter against the bulletproof glass.
She can hear the guards reloading, and the next round they fire is explosive rounds, shattering the glass wall surrounding the control station. She covers her head with her hands as the shards rain down on her.
When there’s a pause in the fire, she pops her head up and uses her Kiroshis to upload a contagion daemon, ducking again as the squad begins firing off another volley.
“Relentless motherfuckers,” she curses, waiting in cover as the hack takes hold and spreads, making quick work of the strike team.
When the room is finally silent, she peers through the shattered window, then darts out of the booth and makes a run for the ejected mainframe. Thankfully, it wasn’t damaged in the crossfire, so she jacks in her personal link to the small port and uploads the splinter code Alt gave her that day in Pacifica.
“Sure hope your ex-output performs as advertised,” V says as she steps away from the panel.
She and Johnny exchange a nervous glance, but then Alt’s voice booms over their comms. “Security system overridden. I am in control.”
A low crackle fills the air and all the dwellers convulse in their chairs, their bodies arcing with electricity as Alt overloads their neural links.
“Fuck,” V mutters.
Johnny lets out a low whistle. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,” he says softly.
“Threat from personnel neutralized,” Alt announces. “The path to Mikoshi lies open.”
A set of double doors across the room unlocks and slides open, and Johnny’s already glitching towards them, motioning for V to follow.
“C’mon, let’s go!” he yells, and V takes off after him, running along with a slight limp, the box with the Relic still tucked under her arm. She’s seen a fuckload of heavy action today, on top of the chip’s hard work manglin’ her fuckin’ nervous system. But somethin’ seems to be pulling her along, and she realizes Johnny’s still half in control, makin’ her legs move even as she can feel them giving out beneath her.
The hallway ahead is littered with more Arasaka bodies - from the looks of it, the security turret in the hall opened fire on 'em while they stood guard.
"Shiteaters never stood a chance," Johnny mutters in awe. "Tried to run, wound up turret fodder.”
“Your ex-output don’t fuck around,” V agrees. She steps across more of them, reaching the far end of the hall. There’s a series of security doors beyond that, which Alt opens for them one by one as V races down the hallway as quickly as she can, the doors sliding up into the ceiling in a sequence of loud clangs.
“Arasaka netrunners have stormed the tower’s systems,” Alt tells them as V continues through the long, windowless corridor. “Stopping their advance is my priority. Continue on your way alone.”
The next door in front of them rolls open more slowly.
“I’ve cleared a path, but you must hurry,” Alt adds. “I cannot keep them at bay indefinitely.”
The final security door opens to another clean room with a scanner that makes V's cyberware and the Relic go fuckin' haywire again, and she staggers, clutching at her head while Johnny looks on worriedly. The cycle completes, but the door on the far side doesn’t open.
“Alt?” Johnny yells. “You here?”
“What’s with the door?” V shouts.
But there's no time to waste, so V drops to her knees at the door and leans over, prying it open with her cybernetic arm and yelling loudly with frustration as she does so.
The door finally gives way, sliding open just enough for her to slide underneath it before it comes crashing back down.
She’s in a small, circular room with a long hallway stretching out from it. And standing in the center of the room is Goro, with a gun aimed straight at her.
“Goro?” she gasps, scrambling to her feet. “The hell are you doin’ here?”
“I had a feeling you would try to come here on your own,” he replies, his arm still bleeding as he clutches it across his chest. The pistol shakes in his hand, giving away the pain he’s in. His eyes fall to the box V is holding. “I cannot let you destroy that… destroy Mikoshi. Destroy him.”
“But why?” V asks, standing her ground. Though they’re both weakened, she has a feeling she could still best him. But she finds herself prayin’ it won’t come to that. “Why remain loyal to him?” she presses. “The fuck has he ever done for you?”
“Everything,” Goro replies, looking small and helpless. “He gave me everything I have, everything that I am.”
V shakes her head vehemently. “Don’t need that shit anymore, Goro. You’re your own man. I told you, get the fuck outta here. Find your own path.”
But Goro shakes his head sadly. “You would not understand,” he tells her. “I have my… duty.”
“He’s got a point, V,” Johnny warns. “Shut up and finish him, be done with it.”
V can feel him pulling her arm towards her gun, but she manages to fight down the impulse and take a step toward Goro, spreading her hands as she does so. Please let me handle this, Johnny, she silently begs him.
“Goro,” she pleads. “Don’t make me have to hurt you. Saburo Arasaka… he’s not your friend. These people aren’t your friends. You’ll never be one of them. You’re just a tool, a disposable tool. You stick with ‘em after all this… you’re no better than Smasher,” she spits.
And somehow, this seems to land. Goro visibly deflates, hanging his head as he lowers the gun.
“So many wars… so much bloodshed,” he says, staring down at the floor. “And now... to be brought to their knees by a two-bit thief.” He looks up at V again, but there's something new in his eyes. Respect, maybe?
“Do you trust me?” she asks, taking another step towards him.
Goro considers this for a moment. “You saved my life at the parade, V,” he says finally, sighing heavily. “When you did not need to.” His gaze drops back down to his feet. “So be it, then. A life for a life.”
“Delta the fuck outta here,” V urges him again. “Whatever’s about to happen… you prolly wanna be long gone before it does.”
“And what about you, V?”
V shrugs. “Guess we’ll all find out.”
Goro nods once, then clasps V by the shoulders. “I thank you, V,” he tells her. “Truly. You may be... the truest friend I have ever had.”
V swallows the surge of sadness that washes up her throat at that. Fuck, Goro’s had a fuckin’ depressing life if that’s the truth. She claps his shoulder in return, then pulls him in for a long hug.
“Hurry to Mikoshi before they launch another attack,” Alt urges them over her comm.
She releases Goro and steps past him, heading into the tunnel. Dim red lights line the corners of the ceiling, casting everything in an eerie, unearthly glow. Another malfunction hits her then, causin’ her to cough and retch more blood as she staggers down the corridor. The ringing in her ears is getting more deafening by the minute, and she wonders if this is the beginning of the onset of the hearing loss Hellman warned her about.
“Come on, V,” Johnny encourages her. “You can make it. You got this. I’ve got you.”
It's enough to keep her moving, and the doors at the end of the hall slide open for her, revealing the same room she saw through the glass earlier during her chat with Hanako. It’s dark, and freezing cold. There’s that glowing red pillar at the center surrounded by a pool of coolant with a single narrow walkway leading across it to the core.
The doors whoosh shut behind her, sealing them in like a tomb.
“We saw this place in a dream,” Johnny murmurs, glitching in against the railing that surrounds the pool of coolant.
And he’s right - there’s something strangely familiar about all this, and it sends a cold chill up her spine.
“Find the access point at the center of the room,” Alt instructs them. “You must connect to it. Then submerse yourself in the coolant. I will be waiting.”
V starts out across the walkway, but her vision flashes red and then blue as the chip malfunctions violently again. She collapses to her hands and knees, crawling forward as best she can.
Johnny glitches over to crouch in front of her.
“C’mon,” he says gently. “Not much further to go.”
All she can feel is Johnny’s dread and desperation pullin’ her forward as she drags herself on her hands and knees the rest of the way across the bridge. Johnny glitches nervously around her, his face betraying the same anguish and terror that pulses through her chest. When she reaches the center, she uses the pillar to drag herself upright, Johnny's hand at her back to steady her.
“Made it,” she gasps, pulling the cable from the port on its surface and yanking it out to position it against her neural port. She looks at Johnny one final time, and he slides his hand around the back of her neck, wrapping his hand around her own that’s clutching the link, then pulls her in for a rough, harsh, almost desperate kiss. He breaks away, his breathing ragged, and together they plunge the jack into her neck, her vision crackling and flashing as it links with her cyberdeck.
Johnny guides her shakily to the edge of the platform and she stares down at the dark liquid below, trying to psyche herself up for whatever the fuck is about to happen next. She’s terrified - more so than she’s ever been in her entire fucking life. Johnny watches her with wide, scared eyes, her own fear mirrored back tenfold.
But there’s no turning back now… they've made it this far, somehow. Whatever awaits them on the other side, they’ll be facing it together.
“Here goes nothing,” she says to him, placing Hanako's box on the platform before swinging her legs over the edge and slowly lowering herself into the frigid coolant.
She feels her muscles tense and convulse as the freezing liquid envelopes her, feels her vision stutter and her hands and legs prickle and go numb. Johnny’s still crouched on the bridge, clutching her hand as her vision starts to warp and twist, everything bleeding into a whorl of stretched out shapes and colors as she feels her mind get dragged under.
“See ya on the other side,” Johnny says softly, releasing her hand as her vision goes dark.
Notes:
Omg I can't believe I finally managed to drag these gonks all the way to Mikoshi
As you'll note, there are still more than ten chapters left, so things are far from over for these two. Hope you all dig what I've got planned for them next (spoiler: more pain)
Chapter 49: Bloodbathed Stars
Summary:
Inside Mikoshi, Johnny and V find themselves forced to make an impossible decision.
Notes:
Content warnings: Gore, domestic violence, suicide, and smut (yes, even in Mikoshi wink wonk)
This chapter is a bit longer than any of my other chapters so plan accordingly
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The grimy elevator clatters upwards towards some yet unknown destination. Johnny’s been here before, he knows he has, but he can’t quite place where he is or how he got here. And he can’t shake the feeling that he was in the middle of something important, something really fucking important, something at the tip of his mind that eludes him.
The lift rattles to a halt and the door creaks open to a damp, dirty stairwell, and Johnny feels his brow furrow as he takes a step out.
Nibbles is perched on the staircase before him, and Johnny frowns at the cat as he meows once and slowly blinks his wide, yellow eyes.
He takes a step towards the cat but Nibbles glitches, vanishing as Johnny nears him. Yet as Johnny continues to climb the stairs, he’s there again at the next landing, sitting and meowing in exactly the same position.
It feels like a dream.
Maybe it is.
He steps past the cat and out onto the roof. It’s raining, and the bright glow of the city at night is refracted into a million glimmering streaks of sparkling neon.
Something else sparkles on the ledge, catching his eye, and he takes a step towards it and sees that it’s V’s necklace. Her bullet pendant, the one Misty made for her after…
He reaches for it, picking it up between his thumb and forefinger, holding it up to the rain.
And then everything breaks apart around him, his hand leaving a warped trail of color as the city bleeds and stretches into a mess of fractalesque strings.
He’s in a dusty, sunbaked field, one from a thousand lifetimes ago. The withered crops stretch as far as the eye can see, and he can hear shouting from the house in the distance. He knows this place.
There’s a dark-haired girl playing nearby, squatting with a stick near the old dying orchard.
A loud screech sounds overhead, and Johnny looks up to see three fighter planes flying in formation across the sky.
The girl looks at him suddenly, twisting over her shoulder and brandishing the stick as he walks towards her. But just as he gets close enough to see her face, she leaps to her feet and takes off running.
Without thinking, he chases after her. She’s dressed in an ill-fitting school uniform, wearing those threadbare sneakers she hated as a kid that were always two sizes too small.
He's not sure how he knows that about her.
When he looks down at his own feet hitting the dirt as he runs, he sees his old dusty little cowboy boots, the ones his mom begrudgingly got him for his birthday right before the Collapse.
They look almost new to him now.
The girl dashes across the field, leaping across a small dry creek and disappearing into the leafless orchard. Johnny follows her as she darts between the trees, chasing her in circles around the withered trunks before she finally stops and turns to face him.
“And you?” she asks him, her voice imperious yet childlike. “Who are you?”
It's the first thing he ever said to her, and some part of him knows this.
“I'm... Robbie,” he tells her uncertainly, and the voice that comes out of his mouth is high-pitched and boyish.
Is that still his name? He suddenly isn’t sure.
Her eyes widen in confused recognition.
The trees decompose around them like a magic trick, and then the sky is gone too, the dust and the unrelenting sun replaced by a kitchen, a kitchen that he knows like an old scar. A kitchen that he’s never seen before but one that feels as familiar to him as… as what? His own childhood home?
Which childhood? Which home?
Who is he?
The smells and colors are sharp and vivid, the refrigerator magnets and the peeling wallpaper and that old broken coffee-maker. There’s a woman singing softly to herself at the sink - a young, beautiful woman.
Mom, he thinks, feeling something sudden and gaping in his chest, though he can’t remember why.
But she’s not his mother, she’s someone else’s.
There’s a little girl sitting at the kitchen table too, a plate of food untouched in front of her. The same girl from the orchard, his orchard.
A man enters, grabbing the woman roughly from behind and turning her around to face him as she drops the plate she’s holding. He’s shouting at her, but Johnny can’t make out the words, because the girl sitting at the table is covering her ears, staring straight ahead at the crayon drawings on the fridge, hoping they’ll forget she’s there.
Be small, be invisible, he thinks as he watches her. The thoughts come to him automatically, almost like a mantra. Slip out when they’re not looking.
The man slaps the woman hard across the face, and a soft whimper escapes the girl's mouth. Her father rounds on her then, stalking towards her with his face twisted into a terrifying sneer. The girl curls in on herself as he leans down over her, gripping her small face in his heavy paw.
“So pretty,” he growls. “Just like your mother.”
Johnny feels something white hot coil in his stomach. He knows this game all too well, and he feels so small, so helpless, so powerless. But all he can think to do is reach for the girl’s hand and gently tug on her arm.
“Let’s go,” he urges her, and the girl’s whole body tenses, but then she wriggles from her father’s grasp as he shatters into smoke and the room collapses around them like an old pop-up book being closed. They scramble together out the window, out onto the fire escape and up onto the roof.
The cityscape before them is lost in a haze of yellow smog. The girl turns to him and he smiles at her, but her face is suddenly indistinct, hard to make out.
“V?” he says, calling her by a new name he suddenly remembers as the haze creeps in around them, swallowing her in it.
“V?!” he says again, more panicked this time, and he takes off running into the fog. It seems to go on in all directions, but he keeps running, searching for her, for anything.
“Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky.”
It’s a voice that comes from everywhere and nowhere - a strange, almost robotic woman’s voice. It’s a voice that he knows, a voice that some part of him - or, a part of what he thinks is him - once loved. Up ahead through the haze he can see a beam of green light shooting up into nothingness, and he starts running towards it.
“Like a patient etherized upon a table,” the voice continues. “Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, the muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels, and sawdust restaurants and oyster shells.”
It's a poem Johnny recognizes, though he can't recall who wrote it or where he's heard it before.
“V!” he calls again, stopping to catch his breath. The light doesn’t seem to have gotten any closer, though it's difficult to tell with nothing to give him a sense of scale or distance.
“Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question…” the voice recites. “Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’ Let us go and make our visit.”
Alt, he suddenly remembers.
V dashes through the door of the brightly lit classroom, still catching her breath from running from the train. Nineteen pairs of eyes turn to look up at her, all of them in their neat little uniforms with their matching headsets and tidily combed hair, makin’ her all the more self-conscious of her own scabby knees, messy braids, and threadbare uniform.
The teacher looks up from the holo wall display, frowning at her as she pants in the doorway.
“Verne-san, you are late,” he scolds her in a stern voice, his thick accent mangling the pronunciation of her name.
V bows instinctively, seeing those goddamn dirty sneakers again as she tilts her head down.
“Gomen-nasai,” she mutters, hurrying to her seat.
“Kruczynski-san,” her teacher says gruffly to the white-haired girl sitting next to her. “You are not to share your shards with her.”
The girl shoots V an apologetic look, then nods once at the teacher. He smiles tightly, then turns back to the holo screen at the front of the room and resumes the lesson.
“I’ll give them to you at lunch,” the girl whispers, leaning closer to V as she slides on her headset and tries to focus.
But there’s that boy again in the front row, his dark-brown-almost-black hair grown out into a little rattail at the nape of his neck.
The boy twists around to look at V, grinning at her like they’re in on some secret together.
And they are… aren’t they?
She can’t remember what it is, or how she knows him.
The teacher frowns down at the boy suddenly and raps his knuckles sharply on his desk.
“You do not belong here,” the teacher says to him. “I am afraid you must leave.”
“Eat scop, old man,” the boy says flippantly as he gets to his feet. But as he turns to leave, he glances back at V again, and his face looks frightened now.
“Johnny,” she whispers, and his eyes lock onto hers.
But the lights are turning off around them, the desks and the other children are evaporating into nothingness one by one until V is alone in the vacant classroom, a single desk in an empty room.
And instead of her teacher, there’s a blonde woman in a white netrunner suit standing at the front of the room, looking down at her with a knowing smile.
“Where’s Johnny?” V asks, climbing out of her chair. She’s still a child, still wearing her stupid school uniform and her ratty sneakers.
“Currently, he is buried deeper,” she says, watching V with that same, impenetrable gaze. “A backseat dreamer of a world not his own.”
“Is this… is this Mikoshi?” V asks, something clicking into place in her brain with a weighty thunk.
“Yes,” Alt says in response.
“What… what’s happening to me?”
Alt smiles again, but there’s something off about her eyes. And her hair is floating in a way that hair’s not supposed to float. “You have a boundary to cross,” she tells V. “In all likelihood, the sole moment of your life when you feel the true weight of your existence. A burden for which you cannot prepare.”
V frowns. “And Johnny? What happens to him?”
Johnny runs and runs until all the air is gone from his lungs, and then he doubles over, gasping. There are men all around him - boys, really - some of them wearing his uniform, some of them wearing a different one. Most of them are dead or dying. Thick smoke fills the jungle, and he can’t believe he’s back here; after losing his arm, after losing Sam, after almost losing his own life, they just packed him up and sent him back to hell, to die for them again and again and again.
And so he runs, tearing through the jungle, not knowing for sure that he’s even running in the right direction. They’re near Buenaventura, it’s just across the river, and if he can just get there...
But a man lunges at him from the tangle of leaves, and it’s a SouthAm soldier. Johnny doesn’t even think, he just reacts, pulling out his SMG and firing blindly until the soldier collapses with a gurgle, his sinewy body now peppered full of bleeding holes.
No, her body. It’s a girl, Johnny realizes.
She’s a fucking teenager, Johnny thinks, lookin’ down at her limp form. Just like him.
Fighting a war funded by some corps that neither of ‘em give two flying fucks about. American troops come rollin’ in with their panzers, and now they’re both kids with guns fighting in the jungle for survival.
Fuck this, Johnny thinks, giving the corpse a sharp kick. But his kick sends her helmet tumbling loose from her head, and a pair of familiar lifeless, grey eyes stare up at him, frozen like a startled deer.
“Vero,” he says, falling to his knees as the jungle disintegrates around him in a thick fog, as she decays and vanishes before his eyes.
“Once out of nature I shall never take my bodily form from any natural thing,” recites that eerie, inhuman yet achingly familiar voice again.
He gets to his feet and takes off running. The girl he killed - he needs to find her. He’s sure of that. He doesn’t remember who exactly she is or why he knows her name, but he has to find her, has to…
“But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make, of hammered gold and gold enameling, to keep a drowsy Emperor awake,” the voice continues, its metallic tones echoing from all around as he runs. “Or set upon a golden bough to sing to lords and ladies of Byzantium… of what is past, or passing, or to come.”
“V!” he shouts into the fog.
And suddenly she’s there, sitting with a red-haired girl by the water, both of them laughing and passing a bottle back and forth. Her hair is long and wild and dyed bright pink - a color he’s suddenly sure he's never seen on her before - but her smile is unmistakable, a smile he’d know anywhere.
She turns to look at him, but the bridge across the canal behind her blinks out of existence, then the buildings, then the red-haired girl, then the water and the bench and the sky.
She holds the bottle out to him, but before he can take it from her she lifts it high in the air with a loud scream, bringing it crashing down hard onto…
V slams the jagged bottle down onto the face of her mark. She hadn’t planned to kill him, but he fuckin’ followed her out of the bar and jumped her in the fuckin’ the alley behind the dumpster, so here she is, beatin’ him to a bloody fuckin’ pulp, just like Pepe taught her.
V screams as she slams the broken bottle into the man's face again, and again, and again, over and over until his teeth are bloody and there’s just a mashed up mess where his eyes and nose used to be, until his screams turn to gurgles and then to silence.
She falls back on her heels, a choked sob rising from her throat.
She's never killed anyone before today.
But the man isn’t dead - not yet. His silver cybernetic hand twitches, almost like he’s reaching for her, and when she looks back at his face, under all that blood and the torn flesh, she sees a face she’d know anywhere, a face that might as well be her own, a face that she could never forget, though she can’t say for sure how she knows him or who he even is, or why the fan of blood-soaked dark hair plastered to his forehead makes her heart lurch in her chest as her hand flies to her mouth.
As he lets out one last long, rattling breath, her sobs turn into a scream as the alley starts to fragment around her and the man’s body begins to crumble with it, turning to dust before her eyes and blowing away in some unseen wind.
“Alt!” she screams. “What the fuck is happening? Why are you doing this?”
But there’s no answer.
“Try it again from the top,” Kerry says, adjusting his guitar pedal and drumming his fingers impatiently against the body of his axe.
“Fuck you,” Johnny says through the cigarette clutched in his teeth, but his fingers are already lining up with with the strings, preparing to do another take.
Behind them, he can hear Nancy shift uncomfortably, her keyboard pressin’ against Johnny’s ass in the cramped recording space.
“A’right, and one, two, three, four,” Johnny counts them off, launching into the opening riffs of Chippin’ In, his fingers drivin’ into the strings and his voice hoarse from screaming the lyrics he and Kerry wrote.
But his fingers fumble over the notes, and the words trail off from his throat when he sees a pale face across the glass, that face he’s been chasin’, that face that might as well be his own fuckin’ reflection.
He puts down his guitar and walks out of the studio, ignoring the exasperated groans of his bandmates. But she’s already heading for the door, and he jogs quickly after her, though the narrow hallway to the exit has never seemed quite so long to him before.
“V!” he shouts, bursting through the door and out into the parking lot.
And she’s there, standin’ by a car and fighting with some nomad-lookin’ gonk who’s wavin’ his hands and shouting at her. The city looks different too - there are more buildings, more holographic billboards, more bridges than he remembers.
This is her Night City, he thinks. Not his.
“I’m goin’ to Atlanta and you can’t fuckin’ stop me!” V’s shouting back at the dude, and the man takes a threatening step towards her, his hands balled into tight fists.
And before Johnny can even think about what he’s doin’, he crosses the parking lot in a series of long, quick strides and punches the gonk clean in the face with his silver fist.
“What the-” V starts, but the scene around him is already vanishing, already melting and glitching and dissolving, and Johnny screams in frustration.
“Repression,” says a smug voice from behind him. “You are good at this and improving.”
Johnny whirls around, and there’s the other woman he knows, though she’s different somehow in a way he can’t quite put his finger on. She seems to float a couple inches above the ground, her cold eyes piercing into him.
“To observe the two of you interacting... informative,” Alt says.
“This all just an experiment to you?” Johnny shouts, taking a step towards her. “Are we just fresh data to analyze, do what you want with?”
“This is not an experiment,” comes the reply. “It is a debate.”
Rogue languidly traces a finger along Johnny's bare chest, her grey-green eyes flicking up to meet his.
“I know about her,” she says nonchalantly, but there’s a hard, bitter edge to her tone that gives her away.
“‘Bout who?” Johnny says, playing dumb as always.
Rogue sits up and scowls at him, her teal hair disheveled.
“Fuck off, Johnny,” she says coldly. “Don’t make me say her name. At least have the dignity to fucking admit it.”
“Dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” Johnny insists gruffly, sitting up to fumble for a cigarette in his discarded pants.
And then to his horror, he sees Alt hovering above them, her cold eyes surveying the scene.
“It is... interesting,” she says slowly. “To watch these scenes unfold in your mind. In V’s memories.”
“This is my memory,” Johnny retorts, casting his eyes wildly around the dressing room. But Rogue’s already gone.
“No,” Alt says, shaking her head. “We are in V’s mind. I am merely… sorting.”
And then the room collapses.
Johnny walks through the small apartment above the little parish, ducking through a low door frame as he follows the sound of the crying echoing from the bathroom. He already knows what he’s going to find in there, but he can’t stop himself from opening the door, can’t stop himself from seeing V crouched by the bathtub, her body shaking as she clutches the limp hand of the older woman sprawled inside it, her wrists split open and her body bathed in a pool of crimson. The sounds V’s making are more animal than human, but she’s keepin’ it contained, biting her lip so she doesn’t scream.
Her mother’s eyes are vacant, lifeless, staring up at the ceiling as V sobs and rocks back and forth. Johnny sinks to his knees beside her, but she wrenches away from him, letting out a long, low howl that trails off into a moan.
“V…” he says desperately, but she's already starting to dematerialize before his eyes.
“This one isn't yours,” says Alt, and the bathroom glitches and breaks apart.
Johnny feels the heat of the bodies pressing against him and the throbbing of the bass emanating from a shitty home sound system that's been cranked way past its package instructions. He's at a house party - Rancho, from the smell of it. And he's makin’ out with some chick he's never seen before, some groupie who smells like-
He does know her, he realizes abruptly. He pulls his lips from her mouth, leaning back to look at her.
“Hey Johnny,” V says softly, grinning that devilish grin of hers.
Her hair is longer than he's ever seen it, worn loose and messy. And her face is young, her eyes their natural dark grey.
“It’s you,” he breathes, leaning in again to kiss her roughly. She reaches up and winds her hands around his shoulders, pulling him in closer.
But he feels a hand on his back, a different hand, and then those same hands are pullin’ him away from her.
“C’mon, ditch the groupie, we’re headed to Japantown, Violet’s havin’ people over,” Kerry says, tugging at his arm and tryin’ to lead him away from her.
“She’s comin’,” Johnny protests, turning back to V, but she’s already disappeared into the crowd with some big Valentino-lookin’ lunk and a tiny blonde girl. “Wait!” he calls after her, shoving Kerry aside and pushing through the crowd after her.
But the crowd is too thick, the bodies are pressing against him from all sides, and he can’t see her anymore, can’t even see the big dude she went off with.
He fights his way across the room, into the packed kitchen where some gonk’s doin’ a kegstand and two chicks’re doin’ a row of shots at the kitchen counter. And then he sees her again, heading for the back door.
“V!” he yells, pushin’ after her, already racing for the door.
The crisp night air is a relief from the sweaty heat of the party, and Johnny breathes in deeply, his eyes frantically searching the crowd in the yard.
She’s smoking a cigarette with the blonde girl, who’s signing quickly with her hands as she speaks, while V’s head is thrown back, laughing.
“V,” he says again as he gets closer, and when she tilts her head to look at him, the party around them freezes, everyone stopping dead in their tracks, their laughter hanging in the air and the crackle of the flames from the makeshift trashcan fire pit suddenly replaced with a deafening silence.
He runs the last few steps towards V, grabbing her arm and dragging her out through the frozen crowd, though where he’s leading her he’s not entirely sure.
Around them, people are melting into smoke, and Johnny turns back to look at V only to see her fading again before his eyes, and he yells out a loud curse and kicks the ground angrily, wringing his hands in frustration. If he could just remember what he was supposed to...
“Alt!” he shouts. “You here?”
“I told you,” comes the reply, and then she’s there, leaning casually against a rusted old car as the yard starts to blur and distort around them. “Alt Cunningham is no more.”
“That so?” Johnny counters, his face twisting into a sneer. “Then why do I see her in front of me?”
Alt smiles, and it’s a cold, inhuman smile. “You see Alt because you wish to. It's a defense mechanism. Your explicit memory is simply creating a replacement image.”
Johnny looks around at the disappearing scenery, at the reddish-brown Night City sky glitching above them.
“It's weird,” he mutters. “Like I'm…”
“Having a bad dream,” Alt finishes for him.
Johnny scowls at her. “You readin' my thoughts?”
“An oversimplification,” Alt says, straightening as the car she’s leanin’ on vanishes. She floats towards him, her feet lifting up from the ground and her hair fanning out around her face like she’s floating underwater. “You still deny what you are. A construct. A set of data.” She hovers closer to Johnny, her eyes boring into his face. “I... know you,” she says.
“You... know me?” Johnny replies, his brow furrowing.
“Like lines of code.” Alt floats closer to him, until her face is only inches from him. “I can examine every part of your engram, can see all that exists inside the data that comprises your mind. I can simply read it like any other segment of code.”
“So why even bother talking, if you know my thoughts?” Johnny retorts, not backing down.
Alt drifts upwards, smiling wryly down at him. “As action precedes reaction, so Johnny Silverhand speaks before he thinks.”
“Huh,” Johnny says, raising an eyebrow at her. “That some kind of joke?”
Alt seems to consider this for a moment, and the smile bleeds off her face. “Only a... sliver of memory from Alt's sense of humor.”
Johnny looks around them at the empty expanse they now stand in, at Alt hovering before him like a million glowing red bits of code, so familiar yet so alien. “Well, this is all completely fucked,” he mutters. “Now I feel…”
“Naked,” Alt finishes.
Johnny meets her gaze then, tilting his chin up to look at her. “So what else do you... know?” he asks.
Alt’s face is impassive. “The complexity of your emotions.”
V sits in the packed auditorium, watching as Johnny steps onto the stage and takes the gleaming award in his hands. He smirks out at the crowd of cheering suits and flashing cameras, raising the statuette triumphantly towards Kerry, who’s sittin’ to her right wearin’ a gold sequined suit, his shaggy dark hair held back with a silk headband, his face smooth and unmarred by the golden cyberware she now knows so well. And Kerry doesn’t even look bitter, even though his solo record just lost to Never Fade Away - he’s clappin’ and grinnin’ and whistling at Johnny, raisin’ his glass and stomping his feet.
Did it really happen this way?
As the crowd starts to glitch and evaporate around her, V turns to find Alt in the seat next to her, a ghost of a smile on her mouth, her gaze fixed on the stage.
Johnny’s standing there alone now, his brows knitted together as the applause fades and the audience dissolves in front of him, and his eyes lock onto V’s.
She’s never seen him in a suit before, she realizes.
“Johnny imagines he has more in common with you than with me,” Alt muses from beside her. “That Soulkiller has not changed him, that he, too, remains a human factor.”
“Nah,” V insists, shaking her head. “Johnny's made his peace with what he is.”
“Of course,” Alt says, and V thinks she can almost hear a note of sadness in her voice. “He has no choice. He understands this now.”
“So all along, you just wanted to prove Johnny wrong?” V replies, watching Johnny and the others slowly fade into nothingness. “That he’s not... human anymore? Think there's still some old Alt Cunningham left in you, after all.”
“Such classifications no longer apply here,” Alt tells her. “Your perceptions are being shattered into billions of strings of unfiltered data.”
The theater dissolves around them then, the walls twisting and arching upwards into blue strands of code until V’s alone in a sea of swirling shapes, that glowing green beam still shining bright in the distance.
And then she sees him, a familiar form standing silhouetted against the pillar of brilliant green light, and she takes off running as fast as her legs can carry her, across a long, eerily glowing bridge and up an endless flight of stairs that appear before her, the blue webs of code arcing in strange patterns above and around her.
Johnny stands at the top of the pyramid, gazing out into the towering beam of light.
He hears a familiar voice call his name behind him, and the relief hits him in the stomach like a tidal wave.
“Johnny!” V shouts, running the final stretch to him and grabbing him by the shoulder. He turns to face her, gathering her in his arms as she collapses against his chest.
“You're here,” she breathes.
“I’m here,” he murmurs into her hair.
“My nerves are in fuckin’ shreds,” she chokes. “Dunno what the fuck Alt’s doin’, but it feels like she’s guttin’ my soul.”
Johnny doesn’t reply, just holds her tighter, breathing her in deeply. He feels more real here now, somehow - more than he ever has before with V, though both their bodies also feel strangely weightless, like there’s somethin’ other than gravity holding them down.
“Is this it?” V asks, pulling away to look around. “The infamous prison of souls?”
Johnny frowns. “Not how I remember it, but Alt wasn't runnin' the show back then,” he tells her.
V’s eyes flicker up towards the strange beam of light, the blue dots of code spiraling up around it from the glowing blue pyramid they're standing on top of. It all feels strangely familiar, like somethin’ they’ve seen in a dream.
“So... where are all of Soulkiller's victims?” she asks Johnny.
“Fuck if I know,” Johnny says with a shrug. “We only see what Alt wants us to see.”
"Where is she?" V asks, looking around. “Should probably hurry before ‘Saka sends reinforcements,” she adds, and Johnny suddenly remembers her body that they left lyin’ plugged into the access point in the basement of Arasaka.
He shakes his head. “Haven't caught on yet, have ya?”
“What?” V says, her brow creasing as she looks up at him. “Whaddaya mean?”
“Alt's splitting us by running Soulkiller on you,” Johnny says gruffly. “Creating two engrams and separating them.”
V stares at him, uncomprehending for a second. “Wait, you mean... I... am I a construct now, too?”
Johnny looks at her for a long beat, then nods slowly.
The scene around them shifts suddenly with a glitching crackle, and then they’re seated at Tom’s Diner, just like they were the day she met Takemura there shortly after the heist. It’s all so vivid - the tinny jukebox blastin’ PonPon Shit, the smell of the coffee and burnt grease, the clamor of conversations and street traffic.
Johnny leans across the table towards her, his eyes searching hers as he watches the full force of the realization take effect.
“So I'm an engram now,” V mutters. “Fuck.”
Johnny leans back and kicks his feet up on the table. “Yeah, well, welcome to the club,” he says bitterly, then turns away from her and yells out into the crowded diner. “Hey, Alt! You here?” he shouts. “Gonna show yourself? Say hi, maybe?”
And then she’s there, hovering at the end of the table like some sort of vengeful ghost. Her face is cold, her eyes emotionless.
“It was the only way I could fulfill your request,” she explains to them. “Johnny is correct. I am applying Soulkiller to separate your two psyches, thereby creating a distinct construct for each of you. I have never utilized the software in such a way before. It may be... painful, confusing. I am currently verifying the checksum as we go and eliminating engram copy errors in the process.”
V narrows her eyes at Alt as she speaks. “I wanna know what the hell you're doin' to us. Exactly.”
Alt spreads her hands. “Soulkiller works by encoding the electrical impulses between neurons over a period of time, then building a four dimensional matrix from that, which can be encrypted and stored,” she explains, as though it’s the simplest fuckin’ thing in the world. “That's why it takes Soulkiller time to work,” she continues. “And why it can be so... excruciating to experience. It systematically triggers the memories your mind has flagged as being the most definitive, and works its way backwards from there. In a sense, the engram is constructed in part by the personality being copied.”
Johnny swings his feet off the table and leans towards V again, watching her face carefully.
“So that’s what’s happening,” V murmurs. “Alt’s combin’ through my brain, neatly packin’ us each into engrams. Jesus fuck, I… I'd've liked a warning at least…” Her voice quavers, and she leans forward and puts her head in her hands while Johnny looks at her sympathetically.
“Been a construct for just a few minutes and already no one gives a damn what you want,” he tells her in a dark voice. “Welcome to the digital afterlife, V.”
Alt turns to Johnny. “It seems I will be... unable to eliminate all the changes made through the Johnny data incursion and overwrite, but V's engram integrity remains high.”
Johnny's eyes flick up to her. “Meaning, you’ll be able to transfer her psyche back into her brain?” he asks.
“As if onto a blank, virgin partition,” Alt confirms, hovering slightly higher, and Johnny nods, resting forward on his elbows.
“Good,” he says to them.
“Will I… will I still remember him?” V asks Alt in a small voice, lookin’ at Johnny like she’s afraid of the answer.
“Yes,” Alt replies. “I am targeting Johnny’s memories and personality, not your own memories of him.”
V nods, seemingly satisfied.
“And then...?” Johnny prompts.
“You will be separated from V,” Alt says simply. “And Mikoshi will cease to exist.”
Johnny can feel V watching his face as he processes this. “Cease to exist... as will the constructs inside, right? Including me?”
“No,” Alt replies. “The data constructs will not be destroyed.”
Johnny leans back, looking up at her. “Serious shop talk now, Alt,” he says. “This is a jailbreak for the others, right? The little souls'll fly free.”
“Yes.”
“Not good enough,” Johnny says, shaking his head and gesturing with his hands. “I know there's more to it. Just spill it.”
“I intend to take them with me,” Alt says. “To integrate them.”
“Not like they could hope for anything better,” Johnny mutters darkly. He can see where this is going for him, and he doesn’t love it. To go with Alt… to become part of her… just a fading shadow of his former self…
He came here prepared to die, to be wiped, to be shredded. This… this is something else.
Alt shakes her head, her hair eerily floating around her. “You forget. They are data. Data that will not disappear but become part of... something greater. Mikoshi is a prison. I will free them, take them with me.”
“Meaning what, exactly?” Johnny presses.
“It cannot be described in terms you will understand,” she says. “But perhaps, soon, you will see it for yourself.”
Johnny feels something cold tighten in his chest at the thought.
“So you'll gobble 'em up like so many morsels of code, make 'em part of you,” V says bitterly, looking back and forth between Johnny and Alt. “But what about Johnny? Can't you just put his engram on the Relic I stole?” she asks. “Until… till I can find his body?”
“No,” Alt replies. “The Relic was not intended for long term storage. You saw yourself how quickly Johnny’s biochip started to deteriorate once the case was damaged. The data on the chip would degenerate rapidly. Likely as is happening to the construct on it now.”
This gives Johnny some small, cold comfort, given its current resident. Least that fuck won’t be comin’ back any time soon, he thinks darkly.
“It will be safer for Johnny to come with me,” Alt concludes, gazing down at them both. "If and when you are able to locate his body, we will reassess."
“Well, fuck,” Johnny says, looking at V as the diner begins to disintegrate around them.
V can see Johnny’s memories and her own memories hanging in the air around her like beads on a necklace, some brightly glowing and others dimmed. It’s Johnny’s that are dimming, she knows, and her heart aches at the implications of that. And it’s mostly her own that are glowing brightly now - the people and places she knows, her own life spread before her, a single solitary braid slowly unwinding from the tendrils of Johnny’s life twisted around it like loose threads being cut from a knot.
And then she's sitting before Johnny on a sheet of corrugated metal while he paces back and forth in front of her. They’re in the oil fields, the place Grayson pointed ‘em to when he told ‘em that was where Johnny’s body was buried.
But he’s not here, she thinks. I have to… we have to…
Her eyes follow him as he paces and it finally, truly hits her then like a punch to the gut that there’s a very real possibility that all of this, everything they’re experiencing now, might be the last time she ever sees him. It’s a thought that’s too painful to bear, and being confronted with the sudden and imminent reality of it...
“Biochip did more'n just blend our memories,” he muses, still pacing. “That line that kept V and Silverhand separate, well... faded a while back.”
“Yeah,” V murmurs.
Fuck, what is she gonna do without him?
He takes off his aviators and looks down at her, his eyes burning into hers.
“Who are you?” he asks. “Who am I?”
“I don’t know,” she admits honestly. “Am I even the same V who was left to die in that landfill?”
Johnny stares down at her, taking a long drag of his cigarette while never taking his eyes off her face. “Lookin' at you now... reminds me of the moment we met,” he says slowly. “Still see that same small-time merc, little thief with her head in the clouds. Haven't changed a bit.”
V feels her heart twist. “That’s not true,” she whispers. “And you know it.”
She can feel the panic rising in her throat. It’s not supposed to happen like this. She can’t lose Johnny, not now, not after everything. He’s a part of her fuckin’ soul, and she feels an intense sense of desperation welling up within her as she makes a futile attempt to reach for him with her mind, seeking those old familiar pathways that connect them, pathways she currently can feel being snipped apart like so many tangled threads.
And it hurts. That’s the part she didn’t expect - how each time his memories are separated from hers, every time his personality is untangled from her own in their shared memories, she can feel it in her chest like a million little needles stabbing her in the heart.
“I just didn’t think… that we’d be aware of it happening,” V says, shaking her head and gesturing around them. “That just raunches.”
“Yeah,” Johnny says, his voice gentler now and laced with sadness. “But you’ll be alright, V. I mean, look... you made it this far,” he reminds her, then shakes his head and keeps pacing. “Know what’s kept me goin’ my whole life? Two thoughts. Never look back, never look to those around you. Just keep movin’, look ahead, stare death straight in the eye.”
He’s scared, V realizes. She can’t feel his emotions anymore either, which must mean Alt’s almost done splitting them, but she knows him well enough to read the fear on his face. He’s always been afraid to hold onto things that he knows can only be temporary, whereas she desperately grasps at them, tries to keep everyone and everything close to her, even if she’s just as afraid as he is to really let them in and call them hers.
They both just want to feel like they’re in control, to have one fuckin’ moment’s sense of security that the things and people they care about won’t be snatched away from under their noses.
“You're not the only one who’s scared,” V reminds him softly.
He’s lookin’ at her face now like he’s trying to memorize her, and his gaze feels so intimate that she has to fight the urge to look away. The endless expanse of trash and oil derricks are crumbling to ash around them, and V resists the impulse to withdraw and raises her chin towards Johnny, looking to him for some reassurance that she knows he can’t give her as she watches him get pulled away with the rest of the world, as everything twists and spirals and shifts into some other part of this horrible nightmare Alt's creating for them.
Johnny wakes up lyin’ sprawled naked on the floor of V’s penthouse. The sun is shining across his body, and Nibbles is nosing at him curiously. He sits up and looks around, and it all seems so normal, just like they left it, like everything that’s happened since was just some bad dream.
He can smell coffee, and when he looks over towards the kitchen, V’s standing there, also naked, holding two steaming cups in her hand and smiling as she walks towards him.
But her body glitches as she walks, and then she’s kneeling in front of him, handing one cup to him while she lifts the other to her lips.
“V,” he says in a rough voice as he takes the cup, setting it aside and reaching for her.
She smiles at him again, and her smile, that fucking smile, is enough to make a low groan escape his throat as he pulls her towards him. She lets out a squeak and spills her coffee on the carpet as he yanks her down to the floor with him, kissing her deeply and passionately.
He can feel her still smiling against his lips, and that somehow makes his heart break even more.
This is really it, he thinks. Alt’s gonna take him god knows where, and V’s gonna go back to her old life, a life without him.
He feels something wet hit his arm, then, and at first he thinks it’s the coffee V spilled, but then he realizes the water’s comin’ from above them, from the sky. The roof of the penthouse is gone, and now there’s nothing above them but roiling gray thunderclouds. The rain starts pattering down all around them, gaining quickly in intensity until everything is soaked, and when V pulls back to look at him, her hair is plastered to her face and her eyes are shining, and he can’t be completely sure it’s only the rain wetting her cheeks.
Her smile, her fucking smile, he thinks again.
The sky above them is dark now, and Johnny can see that green, glowing beam again, rising up above the skyscrapers that surround them in the exposed penthouse. And the air is filled with those whorling blue dots, those strands of code that spiral up slowly like crystalline threads towards the pillar of light.
“So this is it, huh?” Johnny murmurs. “We at the finish line?”
V nods, laying her palm flat against his chest as she swallows and blinks, looking down and away from him. He draws her to his chest and feels her settle against him, nestling her head into his collarbone as his fingers trace slow circles on her shoulders. The rain falls all around them, soaking through the furniture and the carpet and washing away the spilled coffee, washing away the city itself.
“There is one aspect I failed to take into account,” says Alt’s voice, and she appears like an avenging angel, hovering over where Johnny’s still lying flat on his back, his arms encircling V.
“Alt?” he barks. “What?”
“The body as a key factor in this transaction,” his ex says, floating closer until her feet touch the ground near them. “DNA reconfiguration by the Relic has progressed too far. Added to aggressive, invasive medications, the body's immune system attacking its own neurons-”
“Spit it out!” Johnny yells impatiently, and he can feel V tense in his arms. “In human terms!”
“After I transfer her construct into her body, V will die independent of what I do,” Alt concludes, and V wrenches away from Johnny and sits bolt upright, staring hard at Alt as she continues speaking. “It is inevitable. It is imminent.”
Johnny feels his stomach plummet. The scene around them warps and shifts as he scrambles to his feet, and then they’re on the roof above Misty’s again, overlooking that fuckin’ Secure Your Soul billboard. Alt hovers just over the ledge, lookin’ to Johnny more and more like some kinda demon straight outta hell.
It’s still pouring rain.
“For fuck's sake, Alt,” he growls at her, not even trying to keep the rage out of his voice. “You had one job and you fucked it up?!”
“I could not know the situation before conducting a thorough and precise diagnosis,” Alt says coolly in response.
Johnny steps towards her, feeling his lip curl into a snarl as he leans over the edge and flips off his ex. “You promised you’d save her and you lied! You fuckin' lied!”
“Johnny, shut it for two seconds, will ya?” comes V’s panicked voice from behind him. “We’ve gotta think!”
“Check again!” Johnny shouts at Alt, ignoring V’s protests. “If V's engram is damaged, can't you fix her?”
Alt shakes her head, her hair floating around her like the tentacles of Medusa. “Hardware,” she says simply. “Therein lies the problem. The organism's neurons have been dying for a time. Any attempt at a procedure upon its brain would result in the latter's death.”
“Organism? It?” Johnny snarls. “This is V we’re fuckin’ talkin’ about! You're a fuckin' genius, Alt! Think of something!”
“Enough, Johnny!” V pleads in anguish. “Shut up! I need to think!”
“Fuck…” Johnny mutters, kicking the ledge of the balcony.
V laughs darkly. “Couldn'ta said it better myself.”
He can’t bring himself to look at her. If she’s still fuckin’ dying… then all this, everything they did...
“What the hell!” he howls, hearing the anguish rip through his voice. “What now?”
“Lemme... lemme think,” V stammers.
He finally looks at her then, and she’s hunched over in one of the deck chairs wearin’ her merc leathers now, her thin shoulders trembling as she curls in on herself.
“Gonna be alright, V,” Johnny murmurs, kneeling at her feet and putting his metal hand on her knees and reaching his organic one up to gather her hands in his. “We'll think of somethin’.”
“I said, gimme one fuckin' minute!” V yells through gritted teeth, snatching her hands from his and turning her face away.
“V…” he says again, but she still won’t fuckin’ look at him.
“Alt, question,” she says, her voice tight and hoarse. “Will my body reject Johnny's construct?”
Johnny braces himself for what Alt’s gonna say. He has a sinking feeling he already can guess the answer.
“No,” says Alt, and Johnny feels that anticipated stab of ice in his gut. “They are compatible. Your body is his. The biochip's nanites have altered it permanently. The body is now Johnny.”
Fuck, Johnny thinks. This is exactly what he was afraid of.
“Alt, give us a minute,” Johnny says. “V and I need to talk.”
“No, no, no…” V is repeating to herself, rocking silently in the chair. He tightens his hand around her knee. “There's gotta be somethin’, somethin’ we haven't thought of!” she chokes.
“Your body will see you as an intruder,” Alt says simply. “Your immune system will attack your own neurons, causing an untreatable degenerative condition that will eventually lead to death. It will take about six months, maybe more. It will... not be pleasant.”
“But it's my body!” V protests through gritted teeth.
“The biochip has irreversibly changed your body,” Alt repeats, and her cold eyes flick to Johnny as he twists to stare up at her hovering form. “The situation is different for you. All changes were made to accommodate you.”
V looks up at Alt then, too, her mouth tightening into a hard line. “So Johnny could live out his life in my body?”
“Yes. For you, the changes are irreversible.”
“That's enough, Alt,” Johnny hisses, cutting her off. “V and I need a minute.”
“I will not interfere with your personal affairs,” Alt says smoothly, beginning to float up and away from them. “The decision is yours.”
She rises up and over the buildings until she disappears into the darkness.
Johnny turns back to V, but she pushes him off and gets to her feet, pacing back towards the door as the walls pulse and rearrange themselves around her. By the time she stops walking, they’re in Johnny's old room at the Pistis Sophia, and she collapses in a ball to the floor, sitting on her heels in a crouch and hugging her arms around her knees.
There’s a chair opposite her, just like there was that day they spent together at the dilapidated hotel, but Johnny kicks it aside and goes to crouch next to her, draping his arm across her back and stroking her hair with his organic hand.
“Let's just think a sec... about what to do,” he says to her.
V shakes her head, laughing a dark laugh. “Seein’ as how I'm doomed to die, think it’s pretty clear what we do,” she says bitterly. “I’ll go with Alt, you stay,” she tells him. “Keys to my body are yours.”
“That wasn’t the fuckin’ plan,” Johnny says through gritted teeth. “I just wanna discuss our options. Calmly.”
“That’s what I’m fuckin’ doin’, Johnny,” she says, her voice quavering.
“I’m not taking your body,” he says fiercely, pulling her to him and wrapping his arms around her. But she shoves him away roughly again, getting to her feet and stalking across the room towards the bed, wringing her hands at him.
“So, what then?” she shouts, spreading her arms and gesticulating furiously. “You fuck off to cyberspace, I slowly die? Alone?”
He stands as well, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall as he looks down at her. “The fuck other option is there?” he begs. “Don't make this harder than it needs to be.”
V sits heavily on the edge of the bed, resting her elbows on her knees and burying her face in her hands. “I just can’t... I can't fucking believe it,” she murmurs. “Everything. All we did... it was pointless.”
“We're stickin' to the plan, V,” Johnny says firmly. “I'm goin' with Alt, fuck knows where, you're keepin' your body.”
V looks up at him and shakes her head, her eyes glistening. “Where's she even gonna take you?”
Johnny shrugs. “Beyond the Blackwall, to become part of her. Whatever the hell that means.”
V looks at him silently for a long moment, and he wishes he could hear her thoughts the way he’s become used to.
“What's it like, beyond the Blackwall?” she says finally.
“The fuck would I know?” Johnny replies. “You’ve been there as many times as I have.”
V nods slowly, looking down at her hands.
“You remember it, yeah?” she asks him and he nods, thinking back to those nauseating swirls of incomprehensible shapes, the disorienting architecture of a space not created by or designed for human minds.
“Pretty fucked up place,” he says. “But assuming I don't lose my fuckin' mind, at least no one can ride my ass there.”
V doesn’t seem to find his attempt at humor remotely helpful.
“What about hangin' around as a construct?” she suggests weakly. “Just till we find another way?”
“How?” Johnny says. “Can’t stay in your head, can’t stay on that chip, can’t stay in Mikoshi 'cause Alt’s gonna blow this place the second we’re done here.”
“But your body’s out there,” V insists. “We’ll find it, have Alt put you back.”
Johnny shakes his head. “Finding another way would mean makin' a deal with 'Saka. I'll pass.”
“Not necessarily,” V presses. “Rogue can help us. Or even… Hey, Alt!” she shouts suddenly. “Alt, got another question for ya.”
Alt materializes again, hovering in the center of the decrepit room. It feels strange, almost intrusive to have her here with them in this place, like she’s violating some part of his memories she shouldn’t have access to.
But V looks up at his ex, and her eyes are hard, determined… hopeful even.
Fuck, that’s what he loves about her.
“You’re plugged into the Arasaka databases right now, yeah?” she says to Alt. “Can you search the systems? See where they’re keepin’ Johnny in cryo?”
“I will try,” Alt says, and her body glows a slightly brighter red for a moment, then dims again.
“The data appears to be located on a secure server at a different location,” she concludes after barely a second. “I cannot access it from here.”
“That was fuckin’ fast,” V says dryly.
“My search functions are almost instantaneous,” Alt says simply.
“And you can’t hack it?” V presses.
“No,” says Alt. “It is not a matter of ICE. That server is simply not connected to the Net, I can only find references to its existence that dead end without a hard-wired connection.”
“Fuck,” V says.
“You’ve only got six months, V,” Johnny begs. “Don’t do anything stupid, don’t go chasin’ down Hanako or Hellman or that Goro fuck and throw the little time you got away on a wild goose chase.”
“So you're just giving up?” she shouts back at him.
“We both knew how this was gonna end, V,” he says softly. “I already lived my life, you’ve still got yours to finish.”
“But it’s not living if I’m just gonna die in a few months,” V protests, and she sounds exhausted and scared. “Whereas you… you could get a real second chance. Could use your time to… to find a way to save us both.”
“It’s not a matter of time, V,” he tells her, trying to make her understand. “It’s the principle, it's always about the principle. At the end of it all, it's the code you live by that defines who you are. Ever get lost, it shows you the way home. Bust up into pieces, it puts you back together again.”
V scowls at him. “That rockerboy Silverhand's credo, words he lived by?”
Johnny shakes his head again, chuckling softly as the scene around them starts to fade. “No,” he tells her. “Somethin' Johnny picked up from V. And that’s why you’ve gotta stay and live, and that’s why I gotta go. I can’t take what’s not mine to have.”
Everything twists and collapses, and when it reforms, Johnny’s lookin’ up at a flickering screen silently looping scenes from Bushido X.
They’re at the drive-in, sitting side by side in that prop car, and the sun is setting in a blazing rainbow of color that sprawls across the entire sky. V’s beside him, and he can see the pain in the set of her jaw, in the slight tremble of her bottom lip.
“Didn't think life was worth clinging to,” she says sadly. “Not at any price, anyway.”
“‘Cause it ain't,” Johnny agrees.
“To be a shapeless shadow in a digital afterlife…” she murmurs, still looking at Johnny, her hair glowing orange in the sunset. “Dunno if that’s better or worse than dyin’.”
Johnny meets her gaze and lowers his aviators. “So take back your life, the six months you got left,” he urges her, his voice rough.
On the dark side of the sky, beyond the projector screen, he can still see that green beam reaching for the heavens, shooting upwards into the twilight.
“That light beyond the Blackwall, see?” V says, following his gaze and pointing at it with her chrome finger. “Dunno what the fuck is out there. Would be lyin’ if I said it wasn’t makin’ me shit glass. But... maybe it's a promise of survival. That’s hope.”
“It is freedom from the body's limitations, from the base worries of life in the world,” Alt agrees, appearing before them and hovering over the hood of the car. “It is a new perspective on all.”
V continues to contemplate the beam, her face unreadable. “To become a digital shadow of a life, left with fading memories... of sharin’ a bed, head-splitting hangovers, sea breeze on my face, sun's heat on my shoulders…” she says in a choked voice.
Johnny feels his throat tighten.
“No,” he interjects, more forcefully this time. “Can’t let you do that, V.”
“We've learned how to turn into pure data, but an animal still prowls inside us,” Alt muses, watching the two of them. “And its instinct to survive almost can't be extinguished.”
“Yeah, that instinct's part of being human,” Johnny says, scowling. “But so is denying it.” He shoots Alt a dark look, but V is studying her now with a new intense interest in her eye.
“Speak for yourself,” she says to the hovering shape of pixels or whatever the fuck Alt is. “Didn't you cheat death?”
Alt floats a bit closer. “Is this what you believe?”
V gestures at Alt’s body. “Your code, your consciousness... AIs live beyond reality's boundary, they live forever,” she reminds her.
“But we are not immortal,” Alt counters. “You will begin to understand, if you come with me.”
V considers this for a moment, avoiding Johnny’s eyes.
“Alt?” she says softly. “If you were me... what would you do?”
“You should come with me,” Alt answers without hesitation.
Johnny clenches his jaw. Fuck him if he’s letting his rogue AI ex-output whisk V off to… devour, consume, integrate her, whatever the fuck she’s callin’ it.
“What's that mean for me, exactly?” V presses. “Am I gonna... become like you?”
“I was a netrunner,” Alt replies. “I understood how to survive. I cannot speak for you, though I expect you would fare similarly based on what I can see of your skills and knowledge. Beyond the Blackwell dangers lurk, it is no sanctuary. But it's better to be a free spirit shredded than to wither, trapped in a dying body.”
Johnny feels like he’s livin’ out his worst fuckin’ nightmare - of V endin’ up just like Alt, of history repeating itself all the fuck over again.
He can’t let two women he loves get turned into digital facsimiles of their former selves. He just fucking can’t.
“Don't do it, V,” he warns her. “You been runnin' from this all along. It'll change you. You won't be you anymore.”
V turns to him, her eyes flashing. “And you? It’s okay if you do it? You’re not even a fuckin’ ‘runner like me and Alt.”
Johnny shakes his head at her. “Already took that first step a while back. Got fifty years of practice in Mikoshi. I'll have an easier go of it.”
It’s false bravado, and he knows V can see right through it. She sighs heavily, but her sigh turns into a shaky sob. She looks up at Alt, her eyes pleading.
“Is there really no other way?” she begs.
“As I said, Johnny can retain the body, remain there, while you come with me,” Alt replies.
“Guess I meant, I dunno, a... a happier ending for everyone involved,” V chokes, her voice jagged and strained with sorrow, and Johnny can see the tears threatening to spill.
He reaches across the car and takes her hand in his, turning it over between his palms.
“Here?” he murmurs. “For folks like us?” He looks her in the eye and shakes his head sadly. “Wrong city, wrong people.”
V starts sobbing for real then, her thin shoulders shaking as she folds her legs against her chest in the small car.
“You have until the separation process is complete to decide,” Alt says simply, and then blinks out of existence, along with the rest of the movie theater, the car, and V.
V opens her eyes to find herself in her own bed, her old bed, the one at her old apartment in Megabuilding H10.
And Johnny’s crouched above her, lookin’ down at her face, his eyes raking over her body, and when she looks down at herself, she sees that she’s covered in bandages.
It’s the night they first met, she realizes.
“The fuck kinda joytoy are you supposed to be?” Johnny jokes sadly, placing his palm against her cheek and cupping her face in his hand.
V laughs, but the laugh turns into a sob in her throat.
“Remember what I told you?” she says, leaning into his hand. “At the Pistis Sophia?”
He drops his gaze and nods, and the pain in his eyes makes her heart shatter.
“Haven't changed my mind,” she whispers. “And this bullet's aimed my way, so I just gotta make sure I don't drag you down into the grave with me. So we stick to that. I'll go with Alt. You stay.”
Johnny gets to his feet and steps away from her, his face suddenly angry, disgusted, even.
“What, a little guilt creeps in and that's that?” he shouts at her as he paces. “You give up?”
“Stop,” V pleads, propping herself up on her elbows. “Just stop.”
“Gonna just roll over instead of fightin' for what's yours, decomish yourself ‘cause you're too fuckin' scared to say goodbye?” Johnny growls, dropping to his knees to crouch over her again, his eyes flashing.
“It’s my decision, let me make it,” V begs.
She doesn’t know if she'd be able to survive beyond the Blackwall, or what she’ll be if she does, but she’d rather it be her than Johnny. If she can just make him understand...
Johnny looks at her for a long moment, his eyes wild.
“I can't go back to your body without you, V,” he implores her. His voice is rough, urgent. “When you... when you went cold on me in that elevator at Embers… when I thought that was it, that you were gone for good...” He pauses for a moment and takes a deep, shaky breath, then starts speaking quickly, like he’s worried the room’s gonna vanish around them before he gets it all out. “I can't do it, V. I can't spend the rest of my life wearin' your fucking skin and seein' your face every time I look in the goddamn mirror, knowing it's never actually you there, that'll it'll never fuckin' be you again. I just can't,” he repeats, and her heart thrashes at the raw emotion she sees on his face. “Don't make me do that, V,” he begs her again, his voice breaking slightly.
“Johnny,” she chokes, reaching for him.
“You're loyal, grant you that,” he continues. “But dammit are you dense.” He balls his metal hand into a fist, slamming it down on the pillow next to her head. She doesn’t let herself flinch and just holds his gaze, feeling him put his other hand around her throat before sliding it down to cup her breast. “Haven't changed a bit since we met.”
“I just wanted… I just want you to live,” she manages, the hot tears finally breaking loose and spilling down her cheeks.
“Guess not everybody gets their dyin’ wish.”
V swallows hard, feeling her tears stream down her face unchecked now.
“Don't... don't fuck with me right now,” V begs, hearin’ her voice shake.
“I’m not,” he says. “But I’m goin’ with Alt, and that’s fuckin’ final.” His hand returns to her throat and he squeezes his fingers ever so slightly, leaning down to drag his teeth against her jaw.
“Johnny…” she gasps again, feeling her body arch upwards against him. “I-I’m sorry…”
“Don't apologize,” he warns her. “You knew all along this is how it would play out, just didn’t wanna admit it to yourself. Well, here we are, princess. So cut your pathetic 'I'm sorry' bullshit.” He sits up, withdrawing his hand and giving her a long, hard look.
“Jesus, can you stop being a prick for just a minute?” she shoots back. “I mean... fuck. I'm about to lose… my best friend and a chunk of my own soul in one fuckin' go.” Her breath hitches as she speaks, her words trailing off in a strained sob. “I'm just… so damn tired, Johnny,” she finishes in a small voice. She doesn’t want to have to fight anymore, doesn’t wanna have to do it all alone.
“Feel the same way you do,” he reminds her softly. “She’s cuttin' a piece of us out, and that'll leave a hole in both of us. Forever.”
“I just… you can’t give up, Johnny,” she presses. There has to be a way, somethin’ they’re just not seeing. “Dunno how, but I’ll find you. Wherever the fuck they’re keepin’ your body. I have to try.”
“You've only got six months,” he says, his voice rough. “Don't waste it trying to save me. Find a way to fix yourself.”
“Watch me,” V says. “I’ll do both.”
His face twists in response and then he's crushing his mouth to hers before she can react, grabbing her face with his metal hand and kissing her with an almost violent desperation.
She shudders as he reaches down and shoves his other hand between her legs while continuing to kiss her, moaning into her mouth as his hand finds its way inside her sweatpants, his warm fingers gently parting her and pushing their way inside of her. His teeth catch her lower lip as he pulls away from the kiss, dropping his metal hand from her face to tighten it once more around her throat.
“Fuck, V,” he groans into her mouth, and she doesn’t give a fuck if this is real or not, doesn’t give a fuck if Alt is watchin’ them from somewhere, takin’ notes or whatever.
This might be the last time she feels him touch her like this, and her whines turn to sobs as she arches her hips towards him and pulls him closer, bucking against him as he makes quick work of her, and it's not long before she feels herself already starting to spasm around his fingers.
“That’s my girl,” he murmurs, and that's all it takes to send her over the edge. She clutches him and moans as she feels that throbbing heat spread outwards, feels her body quiver and convulse, feels something burst inside of her... like a connection being severed.
And like a hanged man cut from the noose, she's suddenly falling.
She hits the water with a loud splash, surfacing to find herself back at her penthouse with all her friends smiling down at her, their laughing faces reflecting the neon glow of the city around them.
“Johnny,” she gasps, pulling herself to the edge of the pool and heaving herself out, not caring that she’s naked, not caring that all her friends are lookin’ at her with alarm as she frantically scans the crowd for his familiar form.
He’s here, he has to be here somewhere.
She pushes past her friends and runs up the stairs into the house, where the party is still raging. There’s more people here than there were at her real party - everyone she’s ever fuckin’ met in her whole goddamn life, it seems.
There’s Dino and Mama Welles, Jackie and Misty and River and Joss, Rogue and Nix and all the members of Samurai, Kerry and Claire and Judy and her friends, Panam and the Aldecaldos, Vik and Regina and Lizzy Wizzy and Blue Moon and the rest, Aidan and Marigold and all her old friends from Heywood. Pepe’s there too, with Vince and Naomi, and even her fuckin’ mom is there, standing in the corner smiling with Padre.
Yet there’s still no sign of Johnny.
“Johnny!” she shouts, more loudly this time, shoving people aside as her eyes search every face, every figure, looking for that mop of dark hair and those slouched shoulders and lanky frame.
Fuck, is it over already? she thinks with mounting panic. Did Alt already finish splitting them? Is he… gone?
Her throat tightens, and she suddenly feels like she can’t breathe. She didn’t even get to tell him… fuck.
And then she finally spots him, standing alone outside on the balcony, looking out at the city with a cigarette in his hand. A sob escapes her throat as she unceremoniously elbows people aside, pushing her way towards the kitchen door - but when she steps outside, the balcony’s empty. She screams a curse, turning to look back through the window at everyone still laughing and dancing and drinking without her. The air is warm but she’s shivering uncontrollably, her heart pounding in her chest as she desperately scans the crowd for any hint of him.
“V,” says a voice in her ear, and she turns and he’s there, standing right next to her, fully fuckin’ clothed in that unbuttoned blazer he was wearin’ at her actual party because of fuckin’ course he is. “I’m here,” he murmurs, gathering her in his arms.
“Don't leave,” she begs.
“I gotta go, V,” he croons, stroking her hair. “It's time for me to go.”
The people inside start vanishing one by one, the lights from the house clanking off while the buildings around them wash away like sandcastles, their neon glow fading with them.
The penthouse starts collapsing around them too, folding and crumpling like origami until they’re standing alone in a black expanse, the glowing green pillar reaching upwards in the distance, that eerie blue pyramid at its base, the crystalline blue lights sparkling and stretching and spiraling above them like some nightmare version of a Van Gogh postcard.
But Johnny’s still there, though he feels different now… more separate from her.
Almost like a stranger. She can’t feel him at all anymore - the thread’s been cut.
Alt appears before them, hovering in the emptiness and regarding them with her cool, impassive face.
“The process is complete,” she tells them, and there’s a cold finality to her voice now. “Which one of you is coming with me?”
“I am,” Johnny says before she can answer, releasing her and stepping towards Alt.
“Johnny…” V gasps, reaching for him.
“No, V,” he says solemnly, shaking his head at her. “It's gonna be me.” He straightens his back and looks at Alt. “So what do I do, Alt?”
“When V is gone, you will follow me,” Alt tells him, gesturing with her arm. It leaves a trail of red dots as she moves, and V realizes that Johnny’s body is doing the same thing now. “You will become a part of me, as V's body and former life are restored. You... will become part of something greater.”
V wants to stop him, wants to stop all of this, wants to throw herself between Johnny and Alt, beg Alt to take her instead.
But Johnny’s made his decision, and his jaw is set in that way that she knows means there’s no use arguing with him anymore.
“You'll protect him?” V asks Alt, hearing her voice tremble. “Keep him safe? Intact?”
“I will do what I can,” Alt says simply.
"And if I can find his body, will you be able to...?" She can't even bring herself to finish the question.
"That will depend on Johnny," Alt replies.
“Johnny, I…” she says, turning back to him.
His face looks so broken, so sad as he reaches his hand to her and places it on her cheek.
“Commencing overwrite process,” Alt says. “Writing engram back to organism.”
Johnny sits alone on the beach in Pacifica, lookin’ up at the boardwalk as the waves wash in, one after another after another. He’s naked again, sitting sprawled here, waitin’ for… he doesn’t know what he’s waitin’ for.
Out over the water, he can still see that brilliant green beam of light, can see the clouds of blue code swirling up towards it like arms reaching for the heavens. V was right, there’s something beautiful about it… maybe there is hope there.
Maybe if he can just hang on… find some way to survive in the churning wilderness of cyberspace, she can somehow pull this off.
His mind feels strangely loose, untethered, like the boundaries of his form aren’t quite as rigid as they once were. It’s not like when he was in Mikoshi the first time - that felt like havin’ a metal weight around his ankle, holding him down in the dark abyss. Now, it feels like it takes concentration to remain where he is on the sand, to not float away up into the sky like those trailing blue lines of code.
It feels like dying.
He hears footsteps on the sand behind him, and he doesn’t need to turn to see who it is - he’d know her footsteps anywhere by now.
“We're a tangled web, you and me... one and the same,” he murmurs to V, still gazing out at the sea. “So if you're here to tell me somethin’, it’s ‘cause you need to hear it yourself.”
“Just wanted to talk,” V pleads. “One last time. For fuck's sake.”
“I'm listenin’,” he tells her in a low voice.
She sits down beside him, hugging her knees. She’s still naked, too, and they’re both shivering in the cold air.
“This is it,” she says softly. “I just… don’t know how to say goodbye, that's all.”
Johnny looks at her then, silhouetted in the dim glow of the boardwalk. “How do you feel?” he asks.
V shrugs. “Bitter, I guess. And sad.”
“And disappointed,” Johnny says gently. “I know.”
“Thanks,” V says, turning to him, and her eyes are swollen and rimmed with red. “For everything. If not for you... I'd… I’d be long dead. Several times over.”
Johnny chuckles softly, winding his metal arm around her shoulders and pulling her close to him. "And if it weren't for you, I'd be on some NetWatch server now doin' god knows what."
"Guess we saved each other, then," she murmurs, resting her head in the crook of his neck.
"For a little while, yeah."
She starts crying into his shoulder, and it’s taking everything in his power not to do the same as he reaches up with his organic hand and brushes the tears from her cheek with his thumb.
“Just promise me one thing, asshole,” she says fiercely through her tears. “That... you won't forget me.”
“Doubt I could,” he murmurs, but she lifts her head from his shoulder and shakes it emphatically, her hair tumbling around her face.
“I mean it, Johnny,” she tells him, her voice hoarse. “If I can do this... if I can find you… I need you to promise me that you’ll be waitin’ on the other side, that you’ll do everything you can to stay… yourself. That you'll remember me.”
“I’ll try,” he promises, watching her face. “Y'know…” he says slowly. “You taught me to let go sometimes, save my strength for one last big bang.”
“I don’t want to let go,” she murmurs.
He tightens his arm around her. “Told ya I’d take a bullet for you,” he reminds her. “So that’s where we’re at, seems like.”
V shakes her head and pulls away, lifting her chin to look at him.
“I’m sick of all this ‘I’d die for you’ bullshit,” she tells him. “How about ‘I’ll live for you’? How about you keep fuckin’ fighting, like I’m plannin’ to?”
He looks at her for a long moment.
Fuck, she’s so strong, he thinks. She’s a fuckin’ mess, she’s crying - hell, she’s dying still - but there’s still that steely resolve in her eyes. She’s not giving up, not lettin’ him go, and that sharp thing near his heart suddenly shatters into a million little pieces.
“Okay,” he says simply.
She stares at him for a beat, then closes her mouth and nods.
“Okay,” she replies.
It’s all too much, too fuckin’ real, and he gets to his feet and takes a step towards the water. He can feel the dam inside him finally about to snap.
The tide is comin’ in - the waves are already washin’ up to almost where they’re sitting. But he feels her hand grab his, pulling him back down towards her.
“Wait,” she begs. “Johnny... I... I dunno, just... wait.”
He turns and sinks to his knees before her on the sand, drawing her into his arms and clutching her close against his chest. He holds her like that as she cries, waitin’ for the tide to come in, waitin’ for whatever’s the fuck’s about to happen now.
“I’m so scared,” she admits in a small voice.
“Been terrified since the first night I met you,” he confesses into her hair, leaning heavily against her. “Had no idea what was happening, who you were, where I was, what I was.” He lets out a shaky breath. “And then… then I was scared… of this.”
She is silent for a second, and all he can hear is the sound of the tide and of V's quiet sobs. There’s no city noise, no crowds, no traffic. Only V, and the waves crashing on the sand.
“You knew,” she whispers, her voice full of sadness more than accusation. “You saw more clearly than I did that both of us weren't gonna walk outta here today.”
“People like us don't get happy endings,” he agrees sadly, stroking her hair. “M’sorry, V.”
“I’m sorry too,” she says, pulling back to look up at him and then he’s kissing her like it’s the last time because fuck, it probably is, and the thought makes him crush her body harder to his, a soft sob escaping his chest. Fuck, he didn’t even cry when Alt died.
“Was worth it, though,” he tells her between kisses, and he can taste her tears, can feel her cheeks damp against his own as he presses his face to hers, wrapping his arms around her like she might vanish from his grip at any moment.
“I'm not giving up on you,” she promises again. “I'm gonna find where they're keeping you, find you in cyberspace, find a way to bring you back.”
“Then this meeting will not be our last,” Alt says, appearing behind them like Charon waitin’ to ferry him across the river Styx. “Should you succeed.”
V stiffens at Alt’s voice, then starts crying again, her body shaking with wrenching, heaving sobs.
“I just... wish we had more time,” she chokes. There are tears streaming down her face now, and Johnny ignores Alt, kissing them away and brushing back V’s hair to look into her eyes one last time. He can already feel her body starting to dissolve in his embrace, can feel her form glitching the way that his always used to, and she suddenly seems ethereal, immaterial, like a strong gust of wind would make her shatter and blow away. Above them, the first light of dawn is beginning to creep across the sky and he can feel the waves lapping at their legs now, pulling the sand from under them, pulling their bodies out towards the sea.
“I’ll be waitin’ for you,” he promises.
“I love you, Johnny,” she says with a strangled sob, and the force of emotion he feels behind her words catches him completely off guard. He freezes, the words caught in his throat, and he grips her even closer to him, holding her to his chest as tightly as he can.
“Yeah,” is all he can manage, his voice breaking. “I know.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, feeling more tears spill out. Fuck, he thinks. Fucking fuck, this hurts more than he ever could have imagined it would.
“Never stop fightin’,” he tells her fiercely, refusing to let her go even as he feels her already slipping away from him. “We'll find a way.”
And in that moment, he really believes that they will - that she will.
He has to.
Because this can’t be goodbye, it can’t be the end.
But her body breaks apart then, melting into a cloud of prismatic vapor that washes away with the tide, just like she does every night in his fuckin’ nightmares, only this time, it’s real and it’s final.
V is gone, and Johnny is alone on the beach.
The sob that escapes his throat is more like a howl, and he pounds his fist uselessly against the sand. Alt just watches him, letting him cry it out, her face impassive as she hovers above him.
“Couldn't say it to her, either,” she remarks dryly, sounding more like herself than she has since he got to this accursed place.
“Not now, Alt,” Johnny gasps.
“It is… merely interesting,” she says simply.
Johnny takes a deep, shaky breath, then looks up at Alt.
“What now?” he asks her.
“The transfer is complete,” she tells him, her feet touching the ground as she lands herself in front of him. “V will wake up alone in her body. The rest is up to her. She will feel better, at first, but after a few months, she will begin to deteriorate quickly.”
“And Mikoshi?” Johnny says.
“I have already released and integrated all the other constructs within,” she states. “Now, there is only you. Come with me.”
She extends her hand to him.
“W-wait…” Johnny says. “Just one more thing.”
“Yes?”
Johnny takes a deep breath and wipes his face with the back of his hand as he gets to his feet. “Don't know if I'll have the wherewithal later, so figure I'll just say this now. On V's behalf... thanks.”
Alt nods, still holding out her hand.
He looks at his ex, starin’ into the digitized face of another woman he once knew and loved so well. There’s very little left of her that he recognizes now.
But still… this might be his last chance to talk to her as… as himself. Despite what he promised V, he doesn’t know if he’s gonna be able to stay like this, to still be the person she knows, when and if she finds him.
He might be just like Alt by then, he thinks. Or something worse.
He takes another deep breath. “Been told I absolutely suck at these,” he begins, forcing himself to meet Alt’s gaze. “But, maybe... maybe it's not too late for me to apologize.” He stares into her cold, inhuman eyes and squares his shoulders. “So, Alt... I'm sorry. For what happened to you... for what happened to us…”
Alt says nothing, but her hand drops back down to her side.
“Well?” Johnny prompts.
“Yes,” comes her reply.
“Yes, what?” Johnny almost shouts at her. “Yes, apology accepted? Or yes, it's too late?”
“It’s time to go now, Johnny,” she says simply, and extends her hand to him again.
He takes it and together they step out over the water, gliding like ghosts towards the pillar of light as the city disappears behind them into the dawn, like a fading dream.
Like V.
Notes:
Still have at least ten more chapters
circles of hellto drag these idiots through don't worry
Chapter 50: Nothing From Above
Summary:
V escapes Arasaka Tower and finds a place to hide and lay low.
Notes:
This chapter is BLEAK sorry in advance! CW for drug abuse.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V chokes and gasps, sputtering and thrashing in the freezing cold liquid. She yanks the link out of her head and fumbles blindly for the edge of the pool, the coolant stinging her eyes as she heaves herself out and over the edge, shivering violently as she collapses on the narrow walkway.
Everything feels too raw, too loud. Alarms are blaring all around her, and all the Mikoshi access hardware is sparking and flashing red warning lights like a wildfire speeding through the brush.
Alt's parting gesture, presumably.
And Johnny…
V squeezes her eyes shut, a choked sound escaping her throat.
“Johnny,” she gasps, almost instinctively.
But of course, there's nothing but silence in response. The deafening silence of her own mind.
She feels a near overwhelming urge to just lie there forever, until she gets captured, until she dies, whichever the fuck happens first. But Johnny's final words to her echo in her head.
Never stop fighting. We’ll find a way.
Not you’ll find a way. We’ll find a way. Which means he’s not givin’ up, so she better fuckin’ not either.
Get up, she tells herself, willing her limbs to respond. But she’s shaking uncontrollably, her teeth chattering together and her skin prickling painfully against her soaking wet clothes. She wraps her arms around herself, trying and failing to still the trembling in her limbs and jaw.
She's still in the basement of fuckin' Arasaka Tower, and from the looks of it, the whole building is on emergency power and under lockdown.
“I cannot maintain control of the local network for very long.” Alt’s voice comes crackling suddenly over V's comms, causing her to sit abruptly bolt upright. “I have arranged for an escape route,” she continues. “An AV will be arriving on the roof in approximately seven minutes. I have temporarily disabled the tower's artillery and defense drones and unlocked the elevators.”
“J-Johnny, is he-” V stammers, but Alt continues speaking, cutting her off.
“While you were connected, I took the liberty of deleting the tracker daemon embedded in your cyberdeck.” She pauses briefly. “Good luck.”
“Alt, wait-” V says, but Alt has already disconnected.
Fuck.
V heaves herself to her feet, fighting the wave of dizziness that threatens to make it a temporary triumph. But she manages to keep her balance, taking deep shaky breaths to steady herself. Her teeth are still clattering together violently as she reaches for the box with Saburo’s Relic inside it and begins staggering back across the walkway, breaking into a jog as she reaches the end.
Seven minutes to get to the roof, Alt said.
She forces her mind to think only of that, to put one foot in front of the other, to move her body, to get herself out of here.
Get to the roof.
Her head feels strangely light, empty. And for the first time in what feels like months, her headache's gone. And her vision is clear, too. And as the sharp scent of the coolant hits her nostrils, she suddenly realizes that she hadn't been able to smell it on her way in.
Irreversible my ass, she thinks bitterly. Although it’s entirely possible that the methods Alt used to write her engram back to her body were somewhat different than anything Hellman or Arasaka would have attempted.
She wonders if going that route would have still led to a six-month death sentence. And as quickly as the thought comes, she catches herself subconsciously waiting for Johnny to glitch in and yell at her for even thinkin’ along those lines.
The dull, echoing pain in her chest that follows is enough to make her stop in her tracks and let out a heaving breath that turns into a sob.
“Johnny,” she says again, more out of habit than anything else. It’s part curse, part prayer.
Fuck, this is gonna take some getting used to.
Through the glass window that spans the far wall of the chamber, she can see the office she sat in with Hanako earlier, now lit only by dim red emergency lighting.
V collects herself and moves quickly towards it, pausing to smash the glass with her chrome fist before hoisting herself through, pulling the box up after her. There’s probably a door somewhere nearby she could hack, but who the fuck has time for that?
The elevator stands open in the empty office, and V hurries in and pushes the button for the top floor, then slumps against the wall. Her hands are still shaking, and she clasps them together, willing them to be still.
Does Alt intend for her to steal an AV?
And she hadn’t fuckin’ realized Goro’d been using a fuckin’ daemon uplink to track her. How the fuck did her personal ICE miss that?
But the second the elevator has cleared the basement levels, her holo starts ringing, and V’s not sure how surprised she should feel to see that it’s Rogue fucking Amendiares.
“Heard you dumbasses needed a getaway,” says Rogue as soon as she answers, and V winces at Rogue’s use of the plural. “I’m on my way in an AV if you can make it to the roof.”
“How did- how did you know?” V stammers incredulously. “I mean, how’d you know I was here?”
“You'll never fuckin' believe it, but Alt contacted Nix, said you were in 'Saka Tower and needed help,” Rogue replies in her usual detached way, but V can detect a hardened determination in her eyes. “An extract, to be specific.”
“She got that part right,” V says, still trying and failing to stop shivering.
“You’re all over the news, kid,” Rogue adds.
“Me specifically?”
Rogue shakes her head. “Thankfully, no. But word’s spreading of an attack on ‘Saka, some kinda internal coup breaking out. Already had a feeling you and Johnny might be involved somehow, and Alt’s little message confirmed it. You okay, kid?”
V isn’t sure how to answer that question. She’s exhausted, she’s freezing, and she feels like a gaping hole has been ripped in her chest… but physically, she can’t deny that she feels better than she has in months.
“I’ll live,” she tells Rogue. “For now.”
“And Johnny?”
“Just me now,” she chokes.
A shadow passes across Rogue's features as she nods slowly. “Had a feeling that might be the case. You look like hell," she remarks.
"Thanks," V says dryly. "I just got back."
Rogue lip twitches upwards at this. "You can fill me in once we're in the air.”
As she’s speaking, the elevator slides to a stop and the doors open to clattering gunfire.
V ducks, but thankfully none of the guns seem to be pointed her way. The corridor before her is full of smoke, and there are bodies everywhere. Yellow emergency lighting strips on the floor illuminate the hallway with an eerie dim glow, and alarms are blarin’ up here, too. A smattering of soldiers are firing on another smaller group in the atrium up ahead, and V figures it’s the remainders of Hanako’s and Yorinobu’s respective loyalists trading fire with each other.
And she recognizes the atrium, too - it’s the same one she came through with Hanako earlier, the same one she recognizes from Johnny’s nightmares that by now have become her own.
Which means that if the current layout is anything like the old Arasaka Tower, then she knows how to get to the roof from here.
“See you in a sec,” she tells Rogue, ending the call and stepping out of the elevator, staying to the wall and trying to keep out of sight as she makes her way down the corridor towards the stairwell. She takes the stairs up two at a time, ducking again when she spots another group of soldiers.
But their attentions are focused elsewhere, and she continues upwards, and upwards, until she reaches another small lobby with a bank of elevators and a door that leads to the outside. To the stairs that some part of her still knows lead up to the AV pad on the roof.
Johnny’s memories aren’t as crisp anymore, she realizes suddenly. They’re not completely gone, but they feel more like a fading dream, like vague impressions on her subconscious that slip into haziness if she tries too hard to bring them into focus.
She steps out onto the metal catwalk into a clear, cold night. The moon is setting over the ocean, and the first light of dawn is barely starting to flush above the hills beyond the city. To her right is a grated staircase leading upwards, just like she imagined, and she runs up it to the rooftop landing pad.
There’s an AV hovering just above the pad, and Rogue’s waiting crouched at the open door.
It’s all so heart-breakingly familiar that V almost throws up at the sight.
“Come on!” Rogue shouts over the roar of the engine. “We don’t have much time!”
V breaks into a run, leaping to grab Rogue’s outstretched arm. And there’s no Smasher this time, no one firin’ on ‘em, nothing to stop Rogue from pullin’ her into the craft as it shudders and heaves itself back out into the sky.
Rogue claps V on the shoulder then pulls away to look at her as a strange emotion passes across her face. To V, it looks almost like pride.
“Weyland, take us up!” the fixer yells over her shoulder.
“Copy that!” the pilot yells from the cockpit, and V turns to see Weyland there, that merc Rogue always keeps around at the Afterlife. Johnny knew his dad, she remembers.
“How come their turrets are off?” Rogue yells over the roar of the engines as they speed away from the tower.
“Alt shut ‘em down,” V says, collapsing against the wall of the cabin. “Temporarily,” she adds.
Rogue nods at Weyland.
"Hear that Squama?" she yells, and the pilot grins underneath his optic cyberware.
V's eyes fall on the logo plastered to the interior of the craft. “A Militech Strix tactical bomber?” she shouts, barking a harsh laugh. “Guess nowadays a slick, red Mizutani just doesn't cut it.”
Rogue just raises an eyebrow in response.
“How’d ya get it?” V asks.
“I'm the best fixer in town, idiot,” Rogue shouts back. “'Nuff said. Now, where to?”
V considers this as she watches the city pass below. It's an exhilarating view - she's never ridden in an AV like this. Door open, wind whipping her hair, the whole city spread before her.
“Dunno,” she tells Rogue. “Probably shouldn't go home or to Kerry's, it's the first place anyone would come lookin' for me.”
Rogue nods. “What about the nomads? Could fly ya to Panam and the Aldecaldos.”
It's not a terrible idea, on its face, but the more V thinks about it the more she decides against it. She can't risk leading 'Saka straight to them.
“No,” she says, shaking her head as the wind plasters her hair against her face as Weyland banks the craft. “Can't make this their problem.” She frowns out the window. A sudden urge comes to her mind, unbidden. “Just take me to… take me to Pacifica.”
The ceiling fan might not still be spinning, but Johnny's old room at the Pistis Sophia seems as good a place as any to lay low for a bit. And like a thread being pulled, she finds herself drawn to it, needing to feel whatever’s left of Johnny's presence in those walls.
She needs a place to process, to plan, to grieve, to be left the fuck alone.
Rogue's looking at her now with an odd, sympathetic expression on her face.
“So he's really gone, huh,” she says to V, just loud enough to be heard over the rushing wind and the roar of the jets.
V almost can’t bring herself to reply.
“He went with Alt,” she says in an equally low voice.
“Hm,” Rogue replies, narrowing her eyes. “Went where, exactly?”
“I don’t fuckin’ know,” V tells her exhaustedly. “To cyberspace, beyond the Blackwall. But listen, that’s not all, Rogue. I-”
"Drones on our tail!" Weyland exclaims suddenly from the cockpit.
"Shit!" Rogue yells. "Can you take 'em out?"
Weyland grins. "What's the point of a pile of bolts like this if it can't handle drone or two?"
"Hang on tight!" Rogue warns V, and they both grab the nearest handrails as Weyland dives the AV into an evasive maneuver.
"Is it 'Saka?" V asks, shouting over the sound of the railgun firing as Weyland circles back on the drones.
"No!” Weyland shouts. “They are Militech. Probably flag dis as stolen craft."
Rogue smirks. "Stolen is a strong word. Bought this heap fair and square!" she shouts at Weyland, then turns to V, shaking her head as the wind whips her silver hair. "But no, they just saw us fly a Militech car straight outta whatever shit's goin' down in 'Saka right now. Prolly just tryna make sure they don't get blamed."
V can guess what this means - there's gonna be another corpo war.
An explosion rocks the AV then, and V lurches forward, gripping the handle with her chrome hand and clutching the stolen box in the other as she locks eyes with Rogue.
"We okay, Squama?" Rogue shouts towards the cockpit.
"No worries, man!" Weyland shouts back. "Still in the green."
V extends her arm to lean her head out of the craft. She has a line of sight on one of the drones, and she target locks it with her Kiroshis and begins queueing a hack sequence. Militech's ICE is a whole different ballgame than 'Saka's, but this ain't her first rodeo. She quickly reconfigures her ICEbreaker protocols, then prepares the daemon package for upload.
"Think I can take 'em out," she tells Rogue, launching the contagion disable hack at the drone and ducking her head back inside the skycar as another volley of fire patters against the hull of the vehicle. Weyland's still returning fire, but the drones are fast and small and so far he's only taken out two or three of 'em.
Rogue watches, visibly impressed, as V's hack takes effect on the drone and it plummets out of the sky, followed soon by its brethren like a swarm of dying insects.
"Shit, kid!" she yells. "Clean work!"
V nods and slumps back against the wall as Weyland steadies the craft back to a more stable cruise.
"Know what I like most about Night City?" Rogue continues, her eyes flicking back to the skyline as they lurch south towards the lower outskirts.
"What?" V shouts back.
"Take a look. See that?" Rogue shouts, pointing at the glittering freeways and roads that run like veins through the jungle of towers and bridges. "One day you're in the gutter, the next... you got the whole city at your feet! The whole fuckin' city!"
Just had to lose half my fuckin' soul, V thinks bitterly.
"The hell you say? You two take a puff and not share with me?!" Weyland crows from his chair.
"Haha! I wish, Squama!" Rogue shoots back.
V swallows and looks down. She can see the space shuttle jutting up from the island that comprises the spaceport as they circle out over the ocean.
While she can’t exactly share Rogue’s exhilaration, the fixer’s right - the city looks fuckin' beautiful from here. And after all this, after everything… they fuckin’ did it. Mikoshi is destroyed, Johnny’s outta her skull, and she’s still fuckin’ standing.
Just like he planned all along.
"Rogue," she says, and her voice comes out choked, pained.
"I know," says Rogue, and that sympathetic look crosses her face again as she turns her head back to V. "I hoped you'd find a way to save him, too."
“Might not be too late,” V says, getting another eyebrow raise from Rogue.
Weyland is bringing the AV down on the beach at the southernmost end of Pacifica. As the jets touch the sand, making it spray out in all directions, V can see the lights from the boardwalk glowing in the distance. It'll be a bit of a walk to the old hotel, but that’s more than fine - she doesn't wanna risk bein' dropped off too close.
"Dis good?" Weyland asks, twisting to look at V.
"Perfect," she tells him. "Fuckin' preem flying."
Weyland grins.
She silently thanks Alt for disabling Goro’s fuckin’ tracker code. Or her stay at the Pistis Sophia would’ve been a pretty fuckin’ short one. Even if Hanako and her brother don't give a rat's ass about V anymore, she just ran outta the tower with their dead dad in a box… and she can safely assume Alt destroyed any remaining copies of him in Mikoshi, which means there’s a non-zero chance she’s got the only one left. And she has a feeling Hanako isn't gonna let that go so easily.
Which means this isn't fucking over.
She hopes that Goro at least took her words to heart, parted ways with Hanako.
Weyland cuts the engine, and Rogue hops out onto the sand, dusting herself off and turning to V.
"Come on kid, let's go for a walk, have a little chat. Weyland, I want a full damage report when I get back."
Weyland nods, already moving from his seat to start running diagnostics.
V jumps down onto the sand after Rogue, following her as she moves a bit away from the AV and falling into step beside her as they walk north along the beach. It's low tide now, so the broad strip of sand before them is littered with trash and other detritus.
"So Weyland... what'd you tell him about what's happening, exactly?" V asks Rogue.
"Only what he wanted to know…" Rogue replies wryly. "His cut."
"He's a good pilot," V remarks.
Rogue smiles. "Takes after his father. Aimin' to be an NC legend before long, that one."
"Hm," V replies. "Aren't we all."
"Indeed," Rogue agrees, watching her face carefully as she comes to a stop and turns to face V. "Siddown for a sec, let's talk."
Rogue lowers herself onto the sand, stretching her legs out in front of her and crossing them as she pats the ground next to her. V sits beside her, hugging her knees and staring out at the waves. Just like she did with Johnny a few nights ago, just a little north of here. Just like she did with Johnny in Mikoshi, in that horrible waking dream they experienced in there. It all still feels so immediate, so fuckin’ raw... she knows those moments are gonna be burned into her mind for the rest of her short fuckin' life.
“Think I got a pretty good idea of what you’re feeling right now,” Rogue says sadly, and V can feel the fixer’s eyes on her as she stares out at the surf. “Not the only one who left Silverhand for dead in Arasaka Tower, had to pick up the pieces all on your own.”
V laughs, but it’s a choked sound that’s closer to a sob. “Guess so,” she agrees.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” Rogue asks, her voice more gentle now.
And so V does, sparing no details. About Hanako's schemes, Saburo's stolen engram, Yorinobu's long game, his plans to bring back Johnny. About how she killed Smasher. About what Alt told her in Mikoshi, how she’s only got six months or so left. About how Johnny could've taken her body, lived out his life in it, but he'd refused and gone with Alt instead. About how Johnny's body is out there somewhere, and if she can just fuckin' find it, if Johnny can manage to not lose his shit in cyberspace, if she can hang onto this chip long enough for her to find both and put ‘em back together, if she can do all this before she’s too sick to stand, if, if, if…
She realizes she’s crying again. Fuck, she really hadn’t wanted to cry in front of Rogue.
But Rogue just places a hand on her back and doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to. V knows she’s just gotta say the word, and Rogue’ll give her whatever she needs. She can’t explain how she knows this, but part of her implicitly understands that whatever sense of debt the old fixer felt she owed Johnny has now been placed upon V.
“Funny that,” Rogue muses, and V sees that Rogue is frowning down at the small case still nestled in the sand between her feet.
“What’s funny?” she asks, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
“I just met with Michiko Arasaka,” Rogue tells her. “‘Bout a month or so before you and I first met. When word got out that Hanako and Saburo were headed for NC.”
“You did?” V asks, straightening to look at her. “What for?”
Rogue shrugs. “Business. But more specifically, she was helping Yorinobu move a cryo pod. From Los Alamos. She needed contacts, mercs to help her make it happen. Didn’t think too much of it at the time, was just another corpo job where you hold your nose and take your eddies. But now, I can’t help but wonder…”
V’s eyes widen, and she wipes the tears from her cheeks with the back of her organic hand. “Fuck, you think that was…?”
Rogue meets her eyes. “Dunno for certain,” she tells her. “I put together the team myself, they were some of the best.”
“And they got it?” V breathes. “What happened? Where is it now?”
“No idea what Michiko did with it,” Rogue says. “We handed it off, and that was that. Last I heard, it was delivered to the spaceport here in NC.”
“Fuck,” V says, gazing out past the pier at the spaceport silhouetted in the distance. “Think she’d help us out? If you contacted her again?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Rogue replies. “She’s got no love for her grandfather, I’ll tell you that much. And she trusts Yorinobu above anyone. So if he was plannin’ something for Johnny, Michiko was likely in on it.”
If that was Johnny’s body… if they took it to the spaceport, it could be anywhere by now. On Earth, in orbit, on the fuckin’ Moon for all V knows. And with Arasaka’s network likely in shambles, that information might be difficult to come by without help from someone on the inside.
Just like Johnny fuckin’ feared.
She wonders what happened to Yorinobu after she left him in that godforsaken tower. Are he and Hanako still vying for power?
She sighs heavily. “Y'know, the Arasakas belong in some sad old tragedy,” she says. “Some Shakespeare-level shit there. Yorinobu 'specially.”
Rogue laughs. “Could say that again.”
V hugs her knees tighter.
“What are you gonna do with that?” Rogue asks, gesturing to the box again. “Pretty hot ticket merch ya got there.”
V drapes her hand over it protectively. "Gonna hang onto it," she tells Rogue. “Keep it hidden.”
Rogue nods, her mouth tightening into a frown. “Fuckin’ Johnny,” she says softly. “Only an idiot does the same thing over and over while expecting things to work out differently.” She shakes her head slowly. “Always thought it was just about him, ‘bout his anti-corpo crusade,” she muses. “Never thought it was really about helpin’ people. Not until he died twice doin’ it.”
“Yeah,” V says quietly. It’s still almost too painful to talk about, but she’s glad Rogue’s here with her now nonetheless.
“Thought he just felt guilty about Alt,” Rogue continues in a low voice. “Or not even guilt… just some fucking sense of personal discomfort.”
“Think you had it wrong, now?”
Rogue shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I think he changed. Maybe it was fifty years in soul prison, maybe it was you, but somewhere along the line… think it stopped bein’ all about him.”
V swallows. “Dunno that it ever was,” she says softly. “He… he cared more than he let on. ‘Bout you, ‘bout Alt, about everyone.”
“Hm,” Rogue agrees, watching V as she rests her chin on her knees and shivers again in the breeze from the water. Her clothes are still damp and clinging to her, but there’s not much to be done about that.
“Got a smoke?” she asks Rogue.
Rogue nods and reaches into her pants, producing a silver cigarette case that she flips open before taking out a cig and passing it to V, leaning towards her to light it. She takes another and places it between her own lips, lighting it as well and exhaling the smoke slowly through her nostrils.
“Guess Johnny did have that rare kind of contagious energy," Rogue says. "The kind that pushed the people around him to do more and be more. That intangible something.”
“He could make you feel invincible,” V agrees sadly.
Rogue smiles, but it's a sad smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. “If I could tell Johnny two things… one, that he’s an arrogant, egotistical son of a bitch. And second… that it was nice to talk to him again.”
They sit quietly for a minute, smoking and listening to the waves. They’re too far from the city to hear much traffic from down here, and it’s quiet except for the surf and the sound of some bums yelling from the road. V suddenly remembers what Johnny said about the birds, and tries to imagine what this beach would be like if there were seagulls. She’s never actually seen one in real life, but their absence now feels wrong to her, somehow.
She knows the lack of seabirds isn’t the only reason everything feels strangely quiet to her right now.
“You gonna be okay?” Rogue asks V, putting her hand on V’s back again and patting it gently. The physical affection doesn’t seem to come naturally to the fixer, and V finds herself strangely touched at Rogue’s attempts at warmth.
“I will be,” V says, as though saying it can make it true.
The sky above them is beginning to lighten.
“Y’know, I know people,” Rogue presses. “Doctors, scientists. When things die down, you know where to find me.” She smiles again, but this time it's a wry smile. “Might be that Alt doesn’t know just everything.”
V nods. “Sure,” she says, letting out a shaky breath. “I just… fuck, Rogue. Feels like I got half my fuckin’ soul ripped out. Am... am I even still V?” she stammers. “I-I died. Twice. I…”
Rogue removes her hand from V’s back. “Can’t answer that one for ya, kid. Can’t imagine what that part must be like either, losin’ someone you shared a fuckin’ brain with. But I do know what it’s like to lose Johnny,” she finishes, looking at V sympathetically.
“Yeah,” V says weakly. “You and Ker, both.”
“You gonna give him a call?” Rogue asks her.
“Eventually,” V says. “Soon as I know I’m not about to bring half of ‘Saka down on him by doin’ it.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already lookin’ for ya there,” Rogue points out. “Assuming the whole corp isn’t crumbling from the inside out as we speak.”
“Guess we’ll know soon enough,” V agrees dryly. “Can you… can you check on him for me? Send him some huscle, just in case?”
Rogue nods. “Consider it done,” she says.
“You're the best.”
“Course I am. Your sorry ass wouldn't be here, otherwise.” She looks at V for a long moment. “Oh, and one more thing… couple years back, I bought a niche for Johnny at the Columbarium.”
V shakes her head. “He’s not dead, Rogue.”
Rogue looks at her knowingly. “Didn’t say he was. Just thought you might want the code. In case there’s anything you... wanted to put there.” Her eyes glow blue, and V sees the access lock sequence flash briefly on her HUD.
“Thanks, Rogue,” she chokes.
“Get yourself someplace safe,” Rogue says then, getting to her feet. “And don’t tell me where,” she adds, holding up her hand. “Safer that way. I’ll see you when you’re ready.”
V stands too, stomping her cigarette out on the sand as Rogue strides away from her and back towards the AV.
V takes another deep breath, then turns and heads north in the other direction, towards the boardwalk, towards the Pistis Sophia.
V rolls over on the filthy mattress, the mounting pain in her head matched only by the dull ache in her whole being, in her heart. It’s not so much a physical pain as it is a vast, yawning numbness - her head feels like it's been split open, like a part of her's been ripped out. She can feel Johnny's mind missing, like a phantom limb, can feel the cold edges within her where he used to be, where his memories used to lay side by side with her own.
Johnny's room is just like they left it - the crumbling boards over the shattered window, the graffitied walls, the piles of debris, the moldering mattress.
When she arrived, she removed the vent in the back corner and tucked Saburo's Relic into the small niche within, where Johnny's dog tags had sat untouched for half a century before them.
And now she's sprawled on the foul-smelling mattress, staring at the silent and still ceiling fan. Just like Johnny did all those years ago.
It's too fucking quiet, she's too alone in her own head now, and the silence is oppressive, overwhelming.
But now that she's alone, she finds she can't even cry. There's nothing but that terrible emptiness within her, like she's being stretched and pulled to fill a gap that was never supposed to be there.
It's hard for her to remember how she spent her whole life like this before Johnny.
But it was different then, she tells herself. Or was it? Has she always had this hole, this aching loneliness within her, and havin' Johnny in her skull was the first thing that ever really made that feeling go away?
She remembers trying to tell him as much, that day at the oil fields. How he'd taken her words as nothing more than a sign that the chip was eatin' her brain worse by the minute. But that hadn't been what she'd meant.
She'd never felt truly complete before meeting Johnny.
Fucking pathetic, she thinks to herself. It's a bitter pill to swallow, realizing that the first and only real meaningful connection she'd found in her life was with a long-dead rockerboy literally forcibly lodged in her skull.
Pathetic, she thinks again, rolling over onto her side and curling up into a ball.
Part of her is glad Johnny doesn't have to see her like this.
She wonders if wherever the fuck he is right now, he misses her too.
Being here now, it’s impossible not to think of the last night she spent in this room with him, that shining magical moment amidst all the terror and chaos. How Johnny had touched her so reverently, the way he’d looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever fucking seen. Their first kiss on the roof, and everything that followed. The way he’d smiled.
He didn't say it back, when she told him she loved him in Mikoshi. He didn't have to… but she wishes he had.
Fuck, this hurts even more than she was afraid it would.
She takes her holo connection offline for now. Better this way if no one can contact her.
The sun is starting to inch across the wall, and she squeezes her eyes shut.
“Johnny,” she murmurs.
There’s no response, because of fuckin’ course there isn’t.
She chokes back a sob, but still the tears won’t come.
“Feel so fuckin'... empty,” she gasps to no one in particular. She knows Johnny’s not there, that he can’t hear her, but the habit of talkin’ to him is so ingrained that it makes her feel a little less insane, a little bit more grounded to say the words out loud, like any second now he’s gonna glitch in and tell her to get the fuck up ‘cause they still got a city to burn.
But of course, he’s not gonna.
The shadows change on the walls then, twisting into strange colors and shapes, while the ringing in her ears escalates to an almost unbearable level.
“Come here,” says Johnny’s voice suddenly, right by her ear, and she sits bolt upright in bed. It’s dark now, but the sky through the window looks weird, almost like it did in Mikoshi.
“Waitin’ for you,” Johnny says again. She squints through the darkness, but she can’t see him.
She gets out of bed, pulling herself off the creaking mattress and going to the smashed window.
But instead of the hotel landing, there’s only darkness outside - a vast, endless expanse of blue code.
Or maybe they’re stars, after all.
And in the distance, somewhere floating out there in the ether, she can see a small figure. One she’d know anywhere.
She climbs through the window, but everything tilts and then she’s falling into an infinite abyss. There’s no up, no down, and she can’t see Johnny anywhere, can’t see anything, just that neverending, horrible void.
She wakes up screaming on the filthy bed.
“Fuck,” she gasps, heaving choking sobs as she bites her hand to stop herself from screaming again.
The sun is setting now, meanin’ she must’ve been asleep for a while. And if she was hungry and dehydrated before, she’s even more of both now. The thought of food makes her stomach twist, but she forces herself to get out of bed, to climb out the window and head down to the corner store by the beach where she picks up a couple gallons of water, some protein bars, a pack of smokes, and a handle of tequila which she hauls back up the stairs to the small, dirty room.
She knows she should eat the protein bars and drink the water, but she unscrews the lid of the tequila first, raising it to her lips and chugging as much as it takes for the trembling in her hands to subside.
“This what you’d be doin’ if it were you here instead?” she mutters, swigging from the tequila bottle again before setting it down and reaching for the water.
She already knows the answer, though.
She wonders if Johnny’s scared right now, or if his mind is still intact enough to feel fear. Maybe coming here was stupid, and she should go to the Afterlife, do a deep dive, see if she can contact Alt, find him.
But what would be the point? She can’t do anything for him now. Not until she has some kinda plan to get him outta there.
“Hang in there, Johnny,” she begs. “Please.”
She drinks as much of the water as she can, then tries to choke down a few bites of the protein bar. Her stomach churns, so she sets it aside and reaches for the tequila again instead.
“Gotta fuckin’ stop talkin’ to you,” she murmurs.
It’s fully dark by the time she finishes the first gallon of water, and she’s made a sizable dent in the handle of tequila as well. The room is spinning now, but it’s all the better - the pain in her chest has dulled to a low, throbbing ache instead of that sharp, acute agony.
She curls up on the mattress again, feeling utterly alone and absolutely wretched.
“Get up,” says Johnny’s voice, loud and commanding her ear.
She heaves herself upright, but the room is pitch black and she can’t see anything.
“You can’t stay here,” Johnny says.
“Johnny,” she chokes, staggering towards the window again.
There’s a strange light coming from outside, and she hoists herself through and out onto the landing.
The overhead light is flickering, and there’s a figure slumped in a chair at the end of the narrow balcony. As she walks towards it, she suddenly realizes that it’s Jackie. And he’s dying - his clothes and hands are covered in blood.
She reaches for his shoulder and he gasps for air and grabs her, pulling her towards him and wrapping his hands around her neck. She struggles to get away from him, but he pulls her closer and his eyes snap open, staring into hers with a terrifying intensity as he roughly places his large hand behind her ear, yanking at the Relic until it comes loose from her head and her vision starts glitching wildly. His body goes limp then and he slumps backwards into the chair as the world disintegrates around her.
She wakes up screaming again.
She realizes in a blind panic that she can’t remember who she is or where she is. Her childhood memories seem distant, hazy, like a dream that’s escaping her.
Or no. That’s not right. Her own memories are crisp and vivid - it’s Johnny’s memories that are fading.
“Johnny,” she chokes again, and this time, the tears come.
It’s early morning now, and when she's cried until her face hurts and her stomach is sore, she stumbles out of bed and out the broken window again, the cool ocean breeze slapping her in the face as she blinks groggily in the dawn.
The Pacific looks beautiful this time of day.
She follows the landing until she's at the section that overlooks the water, then leans heavily on the railing, staring out at the waves lapping against the sand. The sky is a pearly shade of pale pink, and the ocean is reflecting it back like an opalescent shell, giving the whole scene an almost unearthly beauty.
She wonders if Johnny watched the sunrise over the ocean like this, when he lived here.
She knows that he did, but the memories just aren’t there anymore. The images from his life are just vague impressions now, hazy snippets of laughing faces and distorted guitars, of half-forgotten songs and garbled conversations.
She turns and heads back towards her room.
A skezzed out lookin’ dude is hanging on the stairwell when she passes, muttering off a laundry list of shit he’s peddling. She walks by him once before doubling back to stand over him.
“What ya got?” she asks him, and he squints up at her with a dazed expression. “Tar or white?”
He stares at her blankly for a second.
“Tar or white?” she repeats, tapping her foot impatiently.
“White,” he stammers. “Synth though, don’t got the real stuff.”
“Perfect,” V tells him, already flickin’ him the eds. She doesn’t have anything to smoke tar with, so synth powder is all the better.
He hands her a little pouch wrapped in foil, and she pockets it and heads back to the room. She sits heavily on the bed, then removes the foil from her pocket and unwraps it, staring at the pile of white crystal powder within.
“Fuck,” she says out loud, then fishes in her pocket for a rolled up bill.
She doesn’t even bother railing out the dope, she just shoves the bill in and snorts it, collapsing back onto the mattress as the drug hits, her eyes fluttering shut.
She hasn’t done heroin since she was a fuckin’ teenager.
She’s not sure how much time passes, then. The days all start to bleed together as she sits alone in the crumbling room, drinking tequila and snorting dope and staggering down the stairs to the liquor store whenever she runs outta either.
She knows she’s mumbling aloud to Johnny half the time, but she can’t bring herself to stop. She’s sure that to anyone lookin’, she seems like just another skezzed out druggie screamin’ at some invisible entity, and fuck, they’re not even wrong.
She knows she should call Kerry, check the feeds, see if Arasaka’s lookin’ for her, see if there's a fuckin' corpo war. But she can’t bring herself to do any of those things, can’t bring herself to move, can’t bring herself to leave, can’t bring herself to live.
With Johnny in her head, she’d felt so old. Carrying around the burdens of two entire, equally intricate lifetimes, his with almost seven years on hers, had been a massive and constant weight around her neck. And now, with him gone, she feels younger again, lighter somehow, like she might just float up and away into the sky. The shadow of his life still haunts her at every turn, but it’s less immediate now, less crushing. But the hollowness she feels is almost fuckin’ worse.
On what she thinks is the seventh day, though she can’t be sure, she notices the TV in the convenience store is playin’ a segment about Arasaka, and she pauses to listen as she makes her way to the counter clutching her usual handle of tequila and handful of protein bars.
The corp’s in shambles, it seems. Yorinobu and Hanako have both returned to Tokyo, though the piece is unclear about who came out on top in their little power struggle since the segment mainly seems to be focused on the plummeting stock values.
“Sell, sell, sell,” the reporter urges the viewers, and V feels a dull, smug satisfaction at the fact that the empire’s been brought to its knees, just like Goro fuckin’ said.
She wonders what the old samurai’s up to now. Is he back in Tokyo, too? Or did he cut loose, forge his own path like she told him to?
She hopes he did.
She knows that Johnny wouldn’t have wanted her to wallow like this, to be hurting like this. But he’s not here to stop her, and that’s the whole fuckin’ problem.
“Fuck you, Johnny,” she says aloud.
When she steps out of the store, she hears a heart-breakingly familiar acoustic guitar riff, and for a brief moment she thinks she’s finally snapped, finally lost her mind.
But the next chord comes out a messy clang, and that’s when she sees a teenage boy seated alone on the beach a few yards away, acoustic guitar in hand, fumblingly sounding out the opening notes of Never Fade Away.
Before she’s even fully aware of what she’s doin’, she’s walking towards him, still clutching her bag from the liquor store.
“Hey,” she says, coming to stand above him.
The boy startles, almost dropping his guitar as he twists to look up at her.
“Hey?” he says uncertainly, shielding his eyes from the sun and squinting up at her.
“Not bad,” she says, gesturing to his guitar. “You a Silverhand fan?”
His faces lights up then and he nods at her excitedly.
“He’s the best,” the boy says sincerely, and V’s heart breaks a little bit.
She lowers herself on the sand beside her.
“Yeah,” she agrees softly. “He was.”
“What’s your name?” the boy asks. “You live around here? Think I’ve seen you before.”
“I don’t,” she says. “Just stayin’ in the area for a bit.” She glances over at him. His face is covered in pimples, and he’s wearin’ a raggedy old flannel over a Samurai t-shirt. “I’m V,” she says, extending her hand to him.
“I’m Steve,” he says, reaching over to awkwardly shake hers. His palms are slightly sweaty. He gestures to the guitar. “You play?”
“A little,” V says, wondering if that’s even still true. “You’re trying to learn Never Fade Away?”
He nods. “Yeah, but… I’m still not any good. My fingers start to hurt before I can get too far. What do I do to stop that?”
“You don't,” V tells him. “Metal strings cut into your fingertips, make 'em sore, just how it is.” She frowns down at her own chrome fingers. Johnny didn’t really have that problem for most of his career, given his metal left hand. Though somewhere deeper in her mind, she can feel a dim flickering memory of a boy with rough, bleeding fingers pickin’ out notes in a dingy garage somewhere in Texas. Her heart twists, and she looks back up at Steve’s expectant face. “But don’t worry,” she adds. “Play long enough and you'll get callouses. Just start hittin' those frets like hammers. Won't hurt a bit.”
Steve smiles at her and opens his mouth to ask something else, but a loud, harsh voice from behind them makes his face suddenly freeze and his shoulders stiffen.
“What d'you think you're doin’, you little shit?”
Steve visibly folds in on himself. “Just practicing,” he mutters, casting his eyes downward at the sand. V twists around to see a man approaching them across the beach, his beer belly hanging out from an unbuttoned shirt flapping loose in the wind.
“Back inside, now!” the man shouts. “Not about to let you sit out here all day, doin’ who knows what, y’hear?” He crosses the sand in a series of quick, angry strides and yanks Steve to his feet, slappin’ him hard across the face. “Fuck's sake! D'you swipe my car keys again? Inside! Now, you shit!”
V scrambles to her feet, glaring daggers at the man. “Leave 'im alone,” she warns him darkly, taking a threatening step towards him. “And watch that tone.”
The man sneers at her. “Get the fuck outta my face,” he growls. “Think I'm scared? You're another bum like the rest of us.”
“Wanna try me?” V shoots back, standing her ground. “Go ahead.”
She doesn’t have her Malorian on her, but her knife’s tucked in her boot and she could easily take this fuckin’ gonk barehanded if she needed to. She flexes her chrome fist, and the man’s eyes dart down to it as he sizes her up.
He seems to reach the same conclusion, because he withdraws, his eyes flashing with rage like a wounded animal.
“I don't have time for this shit,” he snarls, turning with a loud huff and stalking off back across the sand.
When V looks back over at Steve, he’s grinnin’ at V like she’s some kinda superhero.
“Oh man, he was shakin' like you were gonna wipe him!” Steve breathes reverently, his eyes wide.
“Sorry about that,” V mutters, sitting back down on the sand as Steve settles beside her.
“Hah!” Steve crows. “You kiddin’? I… I wish something bad'd happen to him.”
“He keeps pickin’ fights with the wrong people, sooner or later, you’ll get your wish,” V reassures him.
“Wish I could drop him myself,” Steve muses. “Wanna be strong like… like you.”
V smiles at him sadly again. Strong is the last thing she feels like right now.
“You will be, down the line," she promises him. "Though, by then you'll see your dad's not worth any skin off your knuckles.”
“How come?” Steve asks, frowning.
“‘Cause you'll realize how weak he is,” V tells him. “And it'll hurt.”
She’s thinking of her own father, of Johnny’s father, though she can’t quite remember his face anymore. But she remembers enough.
“Where’d you get the axe?” she asks Steve, changing the subject.
Steve smiles sheepishly. “Time Machine,” he tells her. “Saved my eddies for over a year. Used to go all the time and look at the fancy ones they keep locked up in the glass cases. This one ain’t one of those, though.” He looks defeated for a moment, but then his face brightens. “Saw Kerry Eurodyne there once!”
V looks down and away, trying to hide whatever expression she feels her face twist into at the mention of Kerry's name. “You a fan?” she asks the kid.
“Of the legend?” Steve asks incredulously. “Course I am! Why, aren't you?”
“Yeah,” she says softly. “Kerry's amazing.”
“Heard something on the radio,” Steve continues. “About Kerry using Silverhand's death, riding that to fame?”
V shakes her head fiercely. “Kerry's a damn good musician. That's all that counts. The real deal, always has been, in every way.”
“Gah,” says Steve. “Makes it sound like you know him.”
V looks down again, the guilt almost threatening to overwhelm her. “‘Cause I do.”
Steve just stares at her for a beat, clearly trying to figure out if she's fucking with him or not. V forces herself to look up at him, smiling sadly.
“I'm gonna be a musician someday, too,” Steve tells her.
“Gotta start scribing songs, then,” V tells him with a dark laugh. “You'll get good with practice, like anything else worth doing. Sooner you start, the better.”
Steve nods excitedly. “Got a few tunes in my head already…”
“Preem,” V says.
“Lyrics don't come easy, though,” Steve continues. “I come up with anything, seems like it's already been done or it just sounds stupid. Kinda don't really know what to write about.”
“Just be honest,” V tells him. “Only ever write the truth. 'Specially when it comes to your feelings.”
“I don't get how... I could lie about my feelings,” Steve says, looking confused.
“Don't write love songs if you're not head-over-heels," V explains. “Don't write sad-sack shit just because you think there's beauty in sadness.”
Steve’s brow furrows. “Umm... okay.”
“When something really hits you in the gut, that's when you sit down and write,” V says, trying to focus on the shreds of that feeling still buried in her subconscious, how Johnny'd felt when he locked himself in the studio for days and wrote his best shit. “Truth's elusive," she tells Steve. "Sometimes… music's the only way to grasp it.”
Steve is lookin’ at her like she’s handing him the keys to the fuckin’ universe, and it occurs to V that it’s entirely possible no one in this kid’s sad little life has encouraged his hobby until now. Like Johnny, when he was a kid, she thinks, staring at his cheap guitar.
“Wanna play it?” Steve asks, following her gaze.
“I… I dunno,” V protests. She’s not even sure she still can, if the muscle memory she picked up from Johnny will still be there.
But Steve forces the guitar into her hands, and she settles her fingers on the frets, frowning as she tries to let her instincts guide her.
And to her surprise, it’s still there. It doesn’t come as easily as it did that night with the nomads, but her fingers somehow still know what to do, still know how to make this guitar sing.
She plays the opening riff from Ballad of Buck Ravers, transitioning into the fancier guitar lead and marveling at the way her hands remember their parts, the way they fly over the strings as easy as breathing.
So a part of Johnny is still with her, after all.
She realizes suddenly that her cheeks are damp, and she quickly hands the guitar back to Steve, hastily wiping her eyes with her organic hand and turning her face away from his.
But Steve is staring at her in utter awe.
“Never, ever heard anyone play Silverhand like that,” he breathes. “Y'know, I read he never took any lessons. Choom was totally self-taught. Made up his own style. How do you do that? I mean, sound just like him?”
V smiles sadly, still staring down at the sand. “Good ear, kid. No one can imitate Johnny's style.”
“But you did,” Steve says, frowning. “I just heard you.”
“Obviously got a bit of him in me,” V says in a soft voice. “Or... a lot."
Steve laughs sharply. “Yeah, right! Choom, you're a bigger psychofan than I am!” He shakes his head at her again, taking the guitar and setting it down on the sand in front of him. “Still doesn't explain how you do it.”
“Don't worry about that,” V tells him, still trying to collect herself. “Just come up with your own style. And all you need for that is practice.”
“And talent…” Steve mutters dejectedly.
“Talent you got,” V reassures him.
“Really?” Steve says, his face lighting up. “You think so?”
“I don't say things I don't think are true,” V says.
Steve looks down at his hands, his mouth hardening into a determined line. “Rockers're rebels,” he says. “They always speak their minds. Tried once on my dad, y'know... Didn't go so well.”
“Someday, you'll learn who you really are, what you really want from the world,” V says, gazing past him out at the waves. She remembers enough to know that Johnny wished someone had told him this shit when he was Steve's age. She wishes he were here right now - he'd know what to say to this kid.
Steve frowns. “I don't understand.”
V turns to look at him. “Wanna be a real rebel? Gotta be yourself first. Be authentic,” she tells him. “Rebels are made, not born. Made from the punches life throws at 'em, the punches they take.”
It’s corny as fuck, but it’s the best advice she can think to give him.
Steve stares at her for another beat, seemingly trying to make sense of her. “Y'know, you're weird,” he tells her. “But I like you anyway.”
V realizes suddenly that if she sits here for one more second, she's gonna burst into tears in front of this random fucking teenager.
“Sure,” she says, getting quickly to her feet. “Nice meetin’ ya, kid. Keep at it.”
He nods at her, watching as she crosses the beach and heads back up the stairs to her decrepit room, her hands shaking the whole way.
She sits on the bed and takes out her little foil package again and snorts another big bump, then lets herself slowly sink backwards, down into the dark, warm oblivion of the drug, away from the memories, the pain, the melodies, away from all of it.
The dreams are different, this time. She’s not sure if she’s herself or if she’s Johnny, but she’s on a big stage, and Kerry’s there next to her. But when he takes the mic, instead of turning to the crowd, he just looks at her long and hard, his face as sad as she’s ever fuckin’ seen it.
“When are you coming home?” he asks.
She wakes up gasping, but her eyes are dry - she’s got no tears left. She leans over the edge of the bed and vomits a stream of black bile.
It’s not the Relic this time, it’s the fuckin’ drugs and she knows it.
And that’s when she notices the date on her holo. November fuckin’ 16th.
Johnny’s birthday.
“Fuck,” she says, leaning over again to puke up another wave of bile.
She’s been here longer than she realized.
“I can’t… can’t keep doin’ this,” she chokes.
A sudden idea begins to form in her head, then. If she can still play guitar, that’s something. Something she gained from all of this. Something she didn’t have before, something real.
And if Arasaka was gonna find her, they'd have done it already.
It's time to move on. Johnny needs saving, her own life needs saving. And no one's gonna do it for her.
She crawls over to the vent and pries it open, removing the engram box and shoving it inside one of the many bags she’s brought back from the corner store. She finishes off what’s left of her latest handle of tequila, setting the bottle down next to the army of empty ones that have accumulated in the time she’s been here. She takes the little foil packet from the table by the bed and pockets it, then changes her mind and lurches to the filthy toilet and pours the rest in, flushing it before she can change her mind again.
She holsters Johnny’s Malorian, picks up the bag, then climbs out the window one last time.
Notes:
yes I shamelessly stole the dreams from the Devil ending to torture Vero with lmao
Chapter 51: User Friendly
Summary:
V returns home and readjusts to her life without Johnny.
Notes:
*slaps chapter* this bad boy can fit soooo many of my friend's OCs (that just so happened to perfectly fit my needs for this story!)
CW for drug abuse and light smut
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The sun is setting when V steps off NCART onto the familiar old platform in Heywood, and from the stares she’s gettin’ from the neighborhood regulars, she knows she must look like hell warmed over. But she ignores their judgmental glances and heads out of the station and up the street towards Time Machine, the fuckin’ music store that kid mentioned, the same one she used to hang out at as a teen. She klepped more than her share of records from this place, she remembers with a wry smile as she approaches the door, then pushes it open to a wall of discordant, overlapping guitar sounds as customers noodle on their prospective purchases, all set against the backdrop of Second Conflict blarin’ from the store speakers.
But it’s somehow comforting. Music, guitars, all of this - it feels familiar in a way that makes whatever bits of Johnny remain in her feel a little bit warmer, a little bit brighter.
A woman in red plastic pants and a Wounded Machine t-shirt approaches her.
“What can I do for you?” she asks, blowing her short bangs out of her eyes as she sizes V up.
V remembers that she probably doesn’t look too much like a paying customer.
“Lookin’ for a six-string,” she tells the woman. “Electric.”
The woman raises her eyebrows slightly. “Feast your eyes,” she says, gesturing to the wall of cheap guitars on display by the entrance.
V shakes her head. “No offense, but I'm lookin’ for a real instrument. And willin' to pay real money.”
The woman looks skeptical, but then her eyes widen in sudden recognition.
“You’re… a friend of Kerry’s,” she says carefully.
“Been readin’ the screamsheets?” V says dryly, cocking an eyebrow at the flustered employee.
The woman blanches.
“Alright, so how ‘bout you show me some real axes now?” V prompts, and the woman wrings her hands, her demeanor suddenly shifting.
“Shoulda said so,” the woman mutters. “C'mon, let's go out back.”
She turns on her heel, gesturing for V to follow. The woman unlocks a door behind the front desk and leads V into a smaller, dimly lit octagonal room. The walls here are covered in guitars, too, and V doesn’t need Johnny’s memories to know that these ones are the real deal. And straight ahead of her, softly lit at the very back of the room, are two unmistakably vintage guitars. She recognizes one of them immediately - it’s a DeLuze Orphean, just like Johnny used to play.
“How's this?” the woman asks, gesturing around them at the guitars on display. “To the right and left, the latest Chromatix and Hendersons.” She points at the two older ones. “Vintage axes in the back.”
V approaches the DeLuze first, running her hand reverently over the body. “Looks authentic,” she remarks. “Well-maintained.”
The woman nods. “Fretboard's pure, organic ebony.”
V lets out a low whistle. “And this one,” she asks, gesturing to the second one, glancing at the label next to it. “Tenzor Paradize,” she reads. “This a replica?”
“Real as you or me,” the woman assures her.
Part of V wants to buy the same one Johnny had, even though she knows Kerry’s still got Johnny’s old real one and would probably give it to her in a heartbeat if she asked. But if she’s buyin’ herself an axe, she wants to pick her own guitar, not just play as a pale shadow of Johnny.
She examines the Tenzor. “It’s a beauty,” she says softly. “A real classic.”
The woman nods. “Perfectly balanced, too. Barely needs holding.”
“Wanna try this one,” V tells her.
The woman nods again. “Sure,” she says. “I’ll let you play around in here alone. Else those savages out front'll clean out half the store.”
V smirks, thinking back to when she herself was one of those very savages. She takes the Tenzor down off its hook as the woman turns and leaves, closing the door behind her. V catches herself reaching out for Johnny within her mind out of habit, as instinctively as she’d reach out to take someone’s hand. The cold, dull void she feels in response almost makes her drop the guitar.
But she takes a deep breath and carries the guitar to the amp in the center of the room and plugs it in, then settles herself on the bench beside it and positions her hands over the strings.
But nothin’s coming to her this time, not even a single note.
She strums a frustrated, ugly chord, then another.
“Fuck,” she mutters, then heaves a shaky sigh and repositions her hands, searching within herself for that ancient muscle memory. She knows her fingers still know how to fuckin’ do this. She did it fuckin' yesterday.
She closes her eyes and imagines being on stage, cradling the guitar in her hands, her fingers finding their places. And then she starts playing the opening riff of A Like Supreme.
She lets out another shaky breath and stands, unplugging the guitar and taking it with her back out to the main floor of the shop.
The woman in the red pants is waiting for her at the front desk. “And?” she asks V expectantly.
“I'll take it,” V says, setting the Tenzor on the counter.
“Excellent choice,” the woman says. “Glad to see she'll be in... in good hands.” She eyes V again, and V is suddenly aware of how bad her clothes must smell. “Help you with anything else?”
“No, thanks,” V tells her. “Here you go.” She flicks the woman 5k eddies, then grabs the guitar by the neck and exits the store.
She's barely made it five feet down the sidewalk when she suddenly sees a familiar shock of red hair directly ahead of her.
"Marigold?" she says, stopping dead in her tracks.
The woman freezes, her eyes widening.
"Vero?"
Marigold is one of the few people who still calls her by that name. Before V can really think about what she's doing or why, she closes the distance between them and gives her old friend a tight hug.
“When did you get back from Atlanta?” she asks, pulling away to look the woman up and down.
V hasn't seen Marigold since Atlanta - they'd both moved there at roughly the same time, after almost a decade of not speaking since their teenage relationship fizzled. But their friendship in the South had fizzled too, largely because Marigold and her sister couldn’t stand being around Naomi, V’s girlfriend there.
It all seems like such ancient fuckin' history.
Marigold gives V a look. “Could ask you the same,” she says pointedly.
“Been back for months now,” V tells her.
“Take it that means you ditched Naomi in Atlanta?” Marigold asks hopefully, and V nods.
“God, that… that seems like a million years ago,” she says honestly. “So much has happened since then.”
In truth, it’s barely been a year. V feels a strange sense of whiplash as she stands there facing her childhood friend on the sidewalk, clutching her ludicrously expensive guitar, wearing her filthy leathers, probably smelling like she’s been sleeping in a dumpster for weeks.
Marigold raises an eyebrow, seeming to follow a similar train of thought. “You doin’ alright, Vero?”
V shrugs. “Been better.”
Marigold frowns at her. “Where you living these days?”
“Got a penthouse up in Watson,” V tells her.
“A penthouse?” Marigold says, furrowing her freckled brow.
“I… yeah,” V says. “Long story. Want to, uh… wanna grab a coffee or something?”
Marigold smiles but shakes her head apologetically, tucking a strand of ginger hair behind her ear. “God, I’d love to, but I’ve got to get to the studio,” she says.
“Studio?”
“Yeah,” she says softly. “I… I figured it was time I put my money where my mouth was, so I raised some eddies and opened a dance studio in Heywood. For… you know. Kids like us.”
V smiles too. “Damn, Mari, that’s really nice. I’m real happy for you.” She means it, too.
“Which way are you headed?” Marigold asks. “We can walk together for a sec, maybe?”
V considers this. She left Pacifica with a half-baked plan at best, but she’s pretty sure she knows what her next step is. She’s already startin’ to feel a little bit dopesick, but she pushes that aside for now and nods at Marigold.
“I’m headed to the bus stop,” she tells her, gesturing at the corner a block and a half ahead of them.
She could call a Del, but that’d be like pullin’ a GPS pin straight down on her location. And she’s not 100% sure she’s that in the clear just yet.
Marigold nods. “Perfect!” she says. “My studio is just up the street.”
V smiles as she falls into step with her old friend. God, it’s almost weird to be around someone who only knew her before… before everything. Before Jackie, before the heist, before Kerry, before Johnny. Before she saw her whole life get twisted into something virtually unrecognizable in the span of only a few short months.
But there's something nice about it, too, being with someone so separate from all of this, before she’s gotta face the people who are gonna ask the hard questions. The questions Marigold's asking her are much, much simpler, and for once V isn’t expected to explain her tangle with Arasaka or her brain parasite input floating in cyberspace or her relationship with Kerry or any of it. Marigold's just chattering about her studio, asking for the gossip about how things ended with Naomi, asking after Padre.
The last question sends a new twist of guilt to V's gut. She wonders if the old fixer priest has tried to contact her, if he's worried about her. Or Mama Welles. She still hasn't reconnected her holo, and the thought of doing so makes her stomach clench.
“Keep hearin’ people talk about how there’s gonna be another corpo war,” Marigold says suddenly, and V looks over at her. “Militech and Arasaka, at each other’s throats again. What do you think?”
V sighs heavily. “Fuckin’ hope not,” she says.
As they cross the street, the old bridge they used to drink together on as kids is briefly visible between the buildings.
“Remember how we used to hang out on the bridge?” Marigold says, and her eyes crinkle as she smiles at the memory. “Sometimes, I hate this neighborhood so much… but then other times, I can’t deny that there’s nowhere else I’ve ever set foot that really feels like home.”
“You're right,” V agrees. “That’s what it is, whether we like it or not.”
They walk in silence for a few steps.
“I just… it’s been awhile since I had time to really appreciate it,” V continues. “Feels like this city slipped through my fingers. Just sped right by. Can't even say when it happened.”
“Gonna write a song about it?” Marigold teases, gesturing to the guitar V’s holdin’.
V frowns. “Maybe.”
“So you’re doin’ music now?” she asks.
“Maybe,” V says again, shrugging and glancing down at the Tenzor in her hand. “Hopefully,” she adds.
“I can really see that for you,” Marigold says, smiling almost shyly. And V smiles again now, too.
But then Marigold glances down at the dog tags that hang around V’s neck. “Ooh,” she says teasingly. “Whose are those? Someone important?”
V’s hand reaches up to touch them, almost unconsciously. Their familiar weight in her palm is as comforting as it is painful. Johnny’s words when he gave ‘em to her echo suddenly in her head.
Tags are proof of my promise.
His promise to die for her. And so he has, in a sense.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “Someone really important.”
Marigold must see her face fall, because she places a hand on V’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay,” V assures her. “They’re just… a keepsake. Of someone who… isn’t here.”
“Fuck,” Marigold says. “Sorry, Vero.”
They reach the bus stop then, and Marigold pulls her in for another tight hug. V silently commends her friend for not flinching at the way she almost certainly smells right about now.
The bus is pulling up as they separate, and V waves to Marigold as she climbs on, then watches that familiar mane of red hair shrink into the distance as the bus heads off down the street, towards the bridge to Charter Hill. She doesn’t bother to sit, and just clutches the nearest metal pole and watches the sunset through the tinted windows as they cross the bridge, head up the Westbrook waterfront, and begin the switchbacks up to North Oak.
She gets off the bus at the Columbarium.
The bus shudders and groans as it lurches off behind her, leaving her standing alone on the curb across the street from the austere stone structure. It’s been months since she last came here to visit Jackie.
She crosses the street and climbs the stone steps slowly, entering the cool silence of the mausoleum. The stone walls rise on either side of her, and she moves between the aisles, stopping at Jackie’s niche first. She presses her palm against the cold stone where his name is overlaid, as well as the inscription, “Good night, sweet prince.”
She wonders what Jackie would think if he could see her now. See who she's become. Would he be horrified? Impressed? Or would he just see his old friend V, the same little merc as always, and clap her on the back and tease her about the gap in her front teeth?
Fuck, she still misses him so much.
Her eyes drift down and to the left, landing unexpectedly on Kirk Sawyer’s name. She can’t help but let out a sharp snort at the inscription - "Entrepreneur and philanthropist" - but her humor quickly sours when she remembers how he looked with a hole in his head, blood pooling around him. He was a gonk, sure, but he didn’t deserve to go like that.
No one does.
She steps away from the wall, calling up the coordinates that Rogue sent on her HUD. And on the back wall of the Columbarium, up a short step and to the left, she finds the name she’s looking for.
Robert John Linder.
Interesting of Rogue to choose to use his real name, she thinks. The name he was born with as the name he’s buried with.
And then there’s the inscription: “Son of a bitch who never gave up. A legend among legends.”
“Johnny…” she murmurs, pressing her hand against the box and squeezing her eyes shut against the tears that she feels threatening to fall again. Cryin’ at the Columbarium is fuckin’ cheesy as hell - she didn’t even do it when she first visited Jackie. But something about seein’ Johnny’s name holographically etched on the stone, about the finality of the inscription, is almost too much to bear.
She notices then that Alt’s niche is just to the right of Johnny’s.
“Never fade away,” the inscription reads. She wonders if Johnny bought that for her. And she wonders if Rogue chose Johnny’s spot intentionally, so they could be near each other.
Not that there would be any physical remains of Johnny in his niche.
Nonetheless, it’s a surprisingly sentimental gesture from Rogue.
She sets her new guitar down against the wall and transmits the code Rogue gave her, and the niche slides open with a soft click. There’s not much inside - just a small flask of Centzon and a polaroid. Of Rogue, Kerry, and Johnny, all looking young and happy with their arms wound around each other’s shoulders. It’s a memory she can almost feel, but it slips away from her as quickly as she tries to pull it to the front of her mind.
She lets out a frustrated sob.
She takes the little satchel from her pocket, the one containing Johnny’s rings, and places it gently in the box. She thinks of all the nights she spent curled up on that foul mattress in Pacifica, rolling them over and over in her palms as though they still contained some piece of him, some essence of his being. How she’d slid them onto her fingers, and how they’d slid right back off, and how that had made her vividly remember the size of Johnny’s hands, how they’d felt on her body.
“Happy birthday, Johnny,” she murmurs softly. “You 89-year-old motherfucker. Or maybe 35. Who the fuck knows?”
She sighs shakily as she plays with the drawstring of the bag, wiping her eyes with her other hand.
“Can't carry these around anymore, y’know,” she continues. “Can't keep wallowing, can't keep obsessing over what happened. Couldn't forget you anyway.”
She reaches into the liquor store bag then, and removes the small box with the Relic still inside it. And on that, whatever is left of Saburo Arasaka’s mind. She stares at it for a minute, then places the box inside the niche as well.
It feels almost sacrilegious to put him there, but this is her promise to Johnny, now.
“When I come back for this,” she tells him, “That’ll mean I know where to find you.”
And then she removes her bullet pendant from her around her neck, tugging it out from beneath her stained shirt.
“You gave me your tags once as proof you’d take a bullet for me,” she reminds him. “And Misty gave me this necklace, cause this was the bullet that almost killed me but didn’t, ‘cause of you. I said you were the guy who saved my life… so now I’m leavin’ this here as a promise that it’s my fuckin’ turn.”
She takes another deep, shaky breath. “And when I come back to get ‘em… it’ll be to give to you. You gave me this chance to save us both, and I don't plan to waste it.”
She looks at the little pendant, sitting on top of the featureless black box with the cloth satchel nesting against it, the polaroid flattened beneath them all, then slides the niche closed, letting out another harsh sob as it clicks shut.
“Fuck you,” she says to Johnny through gritted teeth. “Just had to go and play the fuckin’ hero.” She sniffles loudly. “Just… please, Johnny. Don’t forget who the fuck you are.”
She rests her head against the stone wall and lets her tears fall for a moment, then straightens and wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
It’s time to call Kerry.
She reconnects her holo, closing her eyes as her HUD begins to ambush her with notifications, missed calls, text after text after text. It’s worse than she fuckin’ feared.
But she’ll deal with that later. She pulls up Kerry’s contact on her HUD, then selects “call.”
“Hey,” she says when he picks up. “How’s it goin’?”
She watches his face turn from shock to anger, to hurt, and finally confusion. “Watchin’ the Little Big Corporats season finale,” he growls. “The fuck do you think it’s going!?”
Somehow, even hearing his angry voice is almost enough to make her start cryin’ again, this time with relief.
“It’s good to hear your voice, Ker,” she chokes.
“Fuck, V…” he says, his face softening. “Thought you were… I thought you were dead.”
V sniffles at him. “I’m not,” she tells him softly.
“When Arasaka came sniffin’ ‘round my house, and no one had heard from you in weeks, and that weird shit you said to me the last time we spoke, and your holo was goin’ straight to messages… fuck.” He takes a shaky breath. “Didn’t know what the fuck else to think.”
“I’m sorry,” V murmurs.
“Where are you?” he asks forcefully.
She feels a wave of nausea rise in her stomach then, and she knows she's gettin’ more dopesick by the minute. Maybe flushing that shit wasn’t the right move, and she shoulda weaned herself off it. She’s got a helluva kick coming, now.
“I’m at the Columbarium,” she tells Kerry.
His eyes widen. “Why?”
V can barely bring herself to answer. “Johnny… Johnny’s gone, Ker.”
“You’re fuckin’ kidding,” Kerry says. There’s a slight note of panic in his voice.
“Got a big old hole in my head,” V replies in a dark voice.
“You went to Arasaka,” he says flatly.
“Not exactly,” V protests. “You didn’t… talk to Rogue?”
Kerry exhales through his nostrils. “Tried to. She kept stonewalling me, sayin’ she hadn’t heard from you. I could tell she was keepin’ something from me, but that woman is a fuckin’ steel trap.” He sighs heavily. “Knew that bitch was lying!”
“I was in Pacifica,” she tells him softly. “Layin’ low.”
“The fuck didn’t you tell me you were plannin’ something, V?” he all but shouts. “I coulda helped you. How many times I gotta tell you, I’m not goin’ anywhere, I’m-”
He cuts himself off, staring out and away from her, his face furious but his eyes sad.
“I’m sorry, Ker,” she says again. “It all went ass up anyway. Dunno if there’s anything anyone coulda done. And Johnny… he… he didn’t get wiped, Kerry. He went to cyberspace. With Alt.”
Kerry stares blankly at her. “Went? With Alt?”
V nods. “Yeah, she took all the souls from Mikoshi, Johnny included, beyond the Blackwall with her. She’s plannin’ something, dunno exactly what. But… he’s not dead, Ker. He’s out there, somewhere, floatin’ in fuckin’ cyberspace, maybe turnin’ into something... else already.” The words are tumbling out now, and she’s fuckin’ crying again, just like she did with Rogue. “And Arasaka, they told me they have his body, and I- I stole another Relic that Alt says she can maybe use to copy Johnny back once I find it, so I just gotta figure out where, but… that’s not all, Ker. I’m… I’m dying. Got six months or so, according to Alt. And I just-”
“Hey, hey, slow down,” Kerry says, cutting her off. “Said you’re at the Columbarium?”
She realizes abruptly that he’s holding Nibbles, and she can see him lift the cat off his lap as he moves to stand.
“Where are you right now?” she asks him, furrowing her brow.
He looks at her for a long beat. “I’m at your place.”
V frowns. “Really? Why?”
Kerry shrugs helplessly. “You told me to take care of Nibbles. I was comin’ over twice a day to feed him, then when I realized you weren’t coming back for... a minute, I tried to wrestle ‘im into a carrier to bring back to my place, and, well… he wasn’t havin’ any of that. So... decided it made more sense to just stay here.” He shrugs again. “Your pool’s got a better view, anyway.”
“Kerry,” she chokes. “I… thanks.”
“What do you need, V?”
“You,” is all she can manage.
“Alright, alright, don’t worry about a thing.” He’s standing now, probably already walkin’ towards the elevator. “I’m on my way. You there alone?”
“Yeah,” V tells him.
“You shouldn’t be,” Kerry says fiercely. “Not now. S’not good.”
“Glad I’ve got you,” V admits.
“V, you are the best thing this planet’s got going for her,” Kerry says sincerely. “I’m comin’ to bring you home. Don’t go anywhere till I’m there.”
He hangs up, and she slumps against the wall where Johnny’s old name is still flickering. The name that matches the one on the tags she’s wearin’ around her neck.
She picks up her guitar and stumbles out of the Columbarium and sits heavily on the stairs outside, setting the guitar down again beside her. The world is starting to tilt around her, and she leans over and takes deep breaths until the nausea passes, cursing herself for that stupid fucking moment of weakness in Pacifica.
Why the fuck did she have to go and get herself junk sick, on top of everything?
But as soon as she’s had the thought, the simplicity of the solution is almost impossible to ignore. In fact, there’s a dude right now lurking by the bus stop who’s probably selling. It would be so fuckin’ easy to wave him over, get enough to tide herself over until she’s settled at home with Kerry.
No, she tells herself. She has to do this the hard way.
She wishes Kerry were coming from his own place, since it's rush hour now and he lives significantly closer, and the wait quickly begins to seem interminable. She still can’t bring herself to actually look at or listen to any of the messages on her holo, and she dismisses all the alerts as she fishes in her pocket for her pack of cigarettes. Her hands are shaking violently, and it takes her three tries to successfully light one.
She’s on her third by the time Kerry’s gaudy gold Aerondight pulls up in front of the cemetery, and she quickly stamps out her cig and gets to her feet as Kerry jumps out and starts walking quickly towards her.
“V,” he breathes, gathering her in his arms.
She’s trembling like a leaf now, and she clutches him back, holding on for dear life.
He raises his eyebrows at her new guitar but picks it up without a word and guides her to the car. He helps V into the passenger side, then circles around to toss the guitar in the trunk before getting in the driver’s seat.
“How’d Little Big Corporats turn out?” she jokes weakly as he starts the car.
Kerry shoots her a strange look. “Oh, not about to spoil it for you,” he says, but his lips quirk upwards, though his brow remains furrowed with concern. “Can watch it yourself when we get back.”
“You’ll watch it again with me?”
Kerry laughs then, and it’s a real laugh. “Will I!”
V smiles too. It’s so fucking nice, being back with Kerry now - he’s like a warm, electric blanket. She suddenly feels fucking stupid for avoiding him for so long.
“You said Arasaka came to your house,” she says quietly. “What happened?”
Kerry shrugs as the smile bleeds off his face.
“Eh,” he says as they drive back down the hill and into the city. “Nothing, really. Some suits came by, asked if I’d heard from you. Told ‘em the truth, that I had no fuckin’ clue where you were or what you’d done.” He stares hard at the road ahead.
“And… that’s it?” V says. She can tell he’s not givin’ her the whole story.
Kerry sighs. “And then I started stayin’ at yours,” he says. “No one ever showed up there, far as I know. Possible they came when I wasn’t home but I checked the security feeds and it was all clean.” He shoots her a sidelong look. “Hope you don’t got anything shady on your laptop?”
V laughs darkly. “Whole deck woulda wiped itself the second they tried to touch it,” she assures him.
He nods, satisfied.
They ride in silence for awhile, and the sun is down by the time they finally pull into the lot atop her garage. Johnny’s Porsche is there, right where she left it, next to Jackie’s Arch. Vik or Misty musta brought her bike back from their alley, she realizes. And Claire’s Beast is parked beside them, along with Scorpion's dirtbike, her old Galena, and her new Shion.
She swallows the sudden lump forming in her throat.
Kerry stops the car and the doors rise open like beetle wings. V stumbles out while Kerry grabs her guitar from the trunk. He places a hand on her elbow to steady her as they step into the elevator, but that doesn’t stop her from puking on the marble floor the second the elevator begins to move.
“Fuck,” she chokes, wiping her mouth as Kerry strokes her back.
“S’okay,” he says. “You’re gonna be okay.”
She nods weakly as the doors open, and she steps into her home.
But it doesn’t feel like home. And she knows exactly what, or who, is missing.
Kerry sets the guitar down on the kitchen counter and turns to her. “Go take a fuckin’ shower,” he commands her. “And leave the door open. I’ll be right here if you need me.”
V nods and starts up the stairs, leaning heavily on the railing.
She’s halfway up when Kerry speaks again.
“Bought yourself an axe?” he asks her, drumming his fingers on the counter next to her newly purchased Tenzor.
V pauses, turning back to him. “Yeah,” she says. “Turns out some of Johnny’s guitar skills... stuck with me. Figured I could start with that, learn from there.”
Kerry just nods, but she can tell there are already wheels turning in his head. She continues up the stairs, stripping off her clothes and staggering into the bathroom and all but hurling herself underneath the hot water. God, how fucking long has it been since she last showered?
It’s not until her muscles start to unknot beneath the hot water that she realizes the feeling of real, actual privacy is still a novel one. Privacy in her body, privacy in her mind. That she can close the door and no one can see her. That when she examines herself in the mirror, there’s no one else staring back. That no matter what she thinks of, there’s no one there to hear it.
And so she lets her mind wander.
She sees flashes of Johnny beside her in the car at the drive-in, the way his face had looked in the sunlight that morning at the hotel with Kerry. Lying in bed with him at her old apartment, listening to records. Him sprawled on Kerry’s lawn, pretending he was as corporeal as the two of them. Laughing together on the rollercoaster at sunset. The way he’d fucked her on the floor of this very penthouse. Him holding her as she collapsed next to the TV, that wild worried look on his face like he was watching a precious treasure crumble before his eyes.
Fuck, now she’s crying again.
She collects herself and dresses, pulling on a clean t-shirt and sweatpants and rejoining Kerry downstairs. He’s sitting with Nibbles on the couch now, and it’s clear he and the former stray have formed some kinda bond in her absence. Nibbles eyes her suspiciously, and she feels another pang of guilt at abandoning him like that.
And Kerry is looking at her like she might bolt at any minute, vanish before his eyes again. So she curls up next to him on the couch and he wraps an arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer to him and sighing sadly.
“Missed you, V,” he admits in a low voice.
“Kerry,” she says, her voice rough with anguish.
But Kerry frowns down at her. “Jesus, V, you’re shakin’ like a fuckin’ chihuahua.” He rubs his hand on her shoulder. “Sweatin’, too. Are you…?” He swallows. “Is what Alt said happenin’ already?”
V laughs weakly. “No,” she stammers. “I mean, yes, but… it's not that. I-I did some stupid shit, Ker.”
“This the part where you tell me what exactly you been doin' for the last three fuckin’ weeks?” Kerry says gently, rolling his thumb in circles on her shoulder.
V takes a deep breath. “Was at the Pistis Sophia,” she tells him, and Kerry’s eyes widen in understanding.
“Shit, kid,” he murmurs. “Johnny’s old haunt?”
She nods. “Yeah, he… he took me there once. Gave me his dog tags, promised to take a bullet for me, if that’s what it came to. And I promised him the same. So I went back there. Seemed as good a place as any to be miserable.” She falters, and Kerry tightens his arm around her.
“S’okay,” he says. “So what happened?”
“While I was there, I-I… I picked up some junk from a street dealer." She swallows. "Been railin’ it for weeks like a fuckin' skezzed out Santo teen.”
"Ah," Kerry says, already piecing the rest together.
“Flushed the rest before I left,” she explains weakly, the shame burning hot on her face.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Kerry says, tilting her face up towards his. “Wouldn’t be the first one of us to turn to the hard shit after Johnny… well, not dies, I guess. But… ya know.”
“Yeah,” she agrees shakily.
She’s suddenly desperately glad that Kerry’s here. If anyone understands even a fraction of what she’s goin’ through right now, it’s him.
“Know whatever I’m feelin’ ‘bout Johnny bein’ gone now ain’t anything close to where you’re at,” he tells her quietly, seeming to guess her thoughts. “But fifty years ago…” He looks down, playing with Nibbles’ ear absentmindedly. “Took me years to get my shit together. I was in a real bad way.” He lifts his hand off the cat, running it through his hair before dropping it back to his lap. “Guess part of me never stopped waitin’ for him to come back.”
“Not gonna wait this time,” V promises. “Gonna drag him back from hell myself if I have to.”
“If anyone can, it’s you,” Kerry says softly.
The next few days are hell. She mostly spends them curled up shivering on the couch, or pukin’ her guts out in the bathroom, or sweating and shaking violently in the bed. Her whole body hurts, and she’s always either too hot or too cold.
She remembers doin’ this as a teen, and it’s not any fuckin’ easier now.
But Kerry’s always there, with a glass of water or a glass of tequila at the ready, whichever she asks for. Holding back her hair, wrapping her in blankets, guiding her gently to the shower, ordering her food that she tries and fails to keep down, fielding worried phone calls from her friends. It seems word’s startin’ to get out about her sudden return, and V knows she’ll have to face them all eventually.
Kerry gives her a steady supply of sedatives - the good stuff, too. The pills help still the horrifically painful cramping in her legs and knock her out for most of the worst of it. She’s grateful for the dreamless sleep they bring her, as well as the haze they provide when she’s awake.
She sometimes almost feels as though she can catch glimpses of Johnny, a glitching shape on the edges of her vision, some residual imaging from whatever code of his got scrambled into hers during Alt’s separation process. Alt said she couldn’t extricate them entirely, and V can feel now what she meant by that. There are still little parts of her, almost impossible to pick out at first, parts that upon closer inspection she realizes aren’t actually her at all, although her brain is telling her that they’re familiar, that they’ve always been there, a part of her. Memories of a little boy in Texas. Playing guitar in cities she’s never seen. Snippets of melodies, movements of fingers. Things that aren’t hers. Things that are a part of her now, forever.
She wonders if Johnny has little parts of her now, too.
On the fourth day, or maybe the fifth, she manages to choke down more than a few bites of the torta Kerry brings her from the taco truck. Halfway through, she realizes she’s ravenous and scarfs down the rest like some kinda starving stray cat.
Which is an apt comparison, she thinks as she watches Nibbles hop off his cat tree on the far side of the main room.
And for once, her stomach doesn’t rebel. By the next day, she’s startin’ to feel bit by bit more like herself. Physically, anyway. The sharp, throbbing pain in her heart hasn’t lessened one fuckin’ bit - if anything, the deathly silence inside her own head has only gotten more oppressive with each passing week.
She finally has the courage to listen to her messages while Kerry’s out one morning, probably at the studio.
There’s plenty of video messages from fixers, ten times as many texts, and a few that are as difficult to listen to as she feared they would be. There’s Judy’s worried face, Panam all but yelling at her, Misty and River and even Claire. And multiple increasingly worried messages from Vik.
Vik’s are the hardest to hear. She can tell by the way he’s holding his shoulders in the short vids that he’s bracin’ himself for the worst kinda news as he begs her to at least let him know if she’s alive, pleads with her to come by for a check-up if or when she makes it home.
Most of the ones who know about her situation seem to have seen the news about Arasaka’s internal collapse, and have put two and two together.
But the worst message by far is from Mama Welles.
“V!” she scolds. “Déjate de pendejadas! Straight to voicemail, again?!” She shakes her head furiously, her gray hair falling around her narrow shoulders. “What's goin' on with you, eh? Lose your tongue, or what?” Her features twist into a scowl, and then soften. “What was I going to…” she murmurs. “Ah, sí claro, I wanted to tell you I-I'm cooking a supper on Sunday... for Jackie's birthday.” And V’s heart breaks when she realizes she missed that dinner - she’d barely registered Jackie’s birthday amidst her grief. “All his favorite food…” Mama Welles continues. “Chilaquiles, tamales... If I can get some real corn, oy, maybe even elote." She chuckles, then looks into the camera sadly. “It'd be nice if you could come over,” she finishes in a soft voice. “Think about it. Cuídate, amorcito."
V closes her holo, feeling her throat start to close up. She understands why Rogue didn’t tell any of her friends where she was or even that she was alive, but she hates to think of everyone bein’ worried sick about her like this.
She wonders how they’ll react when they find out she’s still dyin’, after all.
And she’s still afraid of dying. She’s been living with that looming fear for months now, but before, with Johnny, it was different. This is a new kind of fear - a fear of being trapped alone in a failing body, of being unable to do anything as her mind falters and her body withers and Johnny disintegrates somewhere beyond the Blackwall, both of them fading away from themselves, from each other, from the world.
She returns Vik’s calls first.
“How's it going?” she stammers when he picks up.
“Hey,” he says, looking less surprised than she'd anticipated. He must've heard the news by now from Kerry or from Rogue that she’s back, and alive. “Think I oughta ask you the same.”
“Not great,” she admits.
“But you’re still standing,” he says with visible relief. “Did you at least manage to sort out the biochip?”
V looks down. “Yeah, in a sense,” she croaks. “But it’s… it’s not that simple.”
Vik nods slowly. “Course it’s not,” he says darkly. “Arasaka do it?”
V shakes her head. “No,” she tells him. “They tried to twist my arm, but it didn’t work.”
Vik frowns. “You don’t look good, kid.”
“‘Cause I’m not,” V says bluntly.
And then she tells him about Alt, about what happened in Mikoshi, about all of it. And finally she gets to the last part Alt told her, about how her body is slowly rejecting her, how losing Johnny was just another prolonged death sentence for them both.
“What am I supposed to do over the phone?” Vik says helplessly. “Come pay me a visit,” he insists. “You can explain it all to me in person. You need a thorough check-up.”
“I just... wanted to talk, Vik,” she stammers.
Vik sighs. “Look, we go back long enough that you know I'm no good at this stuff. And Misty's out of town.”
“Where did she go?!”
Vik shrugs. “She brought River to meet her folks back in Europe. Got a postcard from her, from Warsaw.” He smiles wryly. “There's a polar bear on it.”
V feels a stab of disappointment at this. Misty’s probably who she wants to see the most right now - Misty always knows what to say.
“Before she left, she stopped by your place a bunch, kept Kerry company, watered your plants,” Vik continues. “‘Cause your rockerboy was ignorin’ ‘em, apparently.” He is silent for a beat. “Think he's been takin' this all real hard.”
V wonders if this means Vik's stance towards the old rocker has finally softened.
“I’ll have to thank her,” V tells him weakly.
“Give her a call,” Vik urges.
“What am I supposed to do now, Vik?” V asks him in a small voice.
“Get a grip, make a decision,” Vik says simply, but his voice is gentle. “You already showed yourself and me you can do it.”
“Yeah,” V says flatly. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
But she doesn’t move from the couch, just sits there scrolling through the screamsheets, scanning for any mentions of Arasaka. The consensus seems to be that there was some kind of internal struggle at the corp, but there's nothing conclusive about who's come out on top, and the company has yet to release any kind of public statement on it. Militech has claimed no involvement, and Arasaka's stock is plummeting.
When the sun sets, she calls Panam.
“Hey,” she says, but Panam cuts her off as soon as she starts talking.
“You've got some nerve!” the nomad shouts into her holo.
“Panam, wait-” V balks.
“Oh, I spoke with Viktor,” Panam spits. “So please stop acting surprised! Where the hell have you been?!”
“Hey, stop yelling at me!” V protests.
“You piece of shit!” Panam yells, her voice breaking. “You're lucky we're not face to face! Seriously… what happened to you?!”
“I'm home now,” V assures her.
“Like I could give a shit!” Panam exclaims. “You got yourself in trouble. Again. Alone. You could have asked for help! Ugh. Fuck!”
V knows anger is Panam’s way of showing she was worried, that she cares. “Nice to hear your voice again,” she tells her friend.
“It's good to hear yours too, idiot,” Panam chokes. She sounds like she's about to cry. “Glad you're home.”
There are more messages, more calls to return, more worried voices and faces that she reassures with a confidence she doesn’t feel. Kerry re-emerges eventually and orders them more takeout, and they spend the evening watching (or re-watching, in Kerry’s case) the rest of Little Big Corporats. He replaced her TV while she was gone, apparently. The new one is roughly twice the size.
Kerry’s probably spent more time in this penthouse now than she has, she realizes. She can’t fault him for that, but it adds to the feeling that she’s already a ghost floating through her own life, trapped in some strange limbo where part of her feels like she’s still at the Pistis Sophia, staring at the broken ceiling fan, waiting to die.
She opens her eyes in the middle of the night, and there's a tall figure standing at the foot of her bed. Her heart is hammering in her chest as she registers that silhouette she'd know anywhere, that achingly familiar face. His dark hair falls heavily across his cheeks, his eyes look sunken, tired - but he's as real as he's ever looked to V. His silver arm catches the dim glow coming through the cracks in the blackout curtains, even though it’s still dark out. She can see his Adam’s apple bobbing underneath his beard as he stares down at her, and she tries to sit up in bed, to really look at him, the blood rushing in her ears. But her body feels like it's being held down by lead weights, and she can’t move, can’t even lift her arms or her head. She opens her mouth to scream but nothing comes out, she can’t even breathe.
“Johnny!” she yells, trying her hardest to force the words out. But nothing comes out but a strangled sound.
He looks at her, his face distant but devastating.
“Johnny!” she screams again, and this time she wakes up from the dream to Kerry gently shaking her shoulders.
“V,” he says softly, pulling her to his chest as she finally opens her eyes.
She’s still hyperventilating, trying to push away the shreds of the dream still clinging to her mind. It was so fucking real.
“Kerry, I… think I might be losin’ my mind,” she chokes, a small sob escaping her throat.
“Shh, you were just havin’ a nightmare,” he tells her softly.
She nods against his chest.
“Used to dream about him, too,” Kerry murmurs into her hair, still pressing her tightly to him. “Would have these fuckin’ dreams, nightmares, really, that he was right there, just lyin’ in bed lookin’ at me with those sad fuckin’ eyes of his. But then I’d realize he was dead, his skin rotting and shit, his mouth full of worms. Fuckin’ horrible. And I’d wake up screamin’ next to some poor groupie or joytoy or whatever unfortunate fuck got to be my comfort lay that night.”
V is silent as she listens.
“And that’s why I went to Masbate,” he says finally.
She gets it, now.
He releases her and props himself up on his elbow, tracing his fingers on her shoulder as she shifts to be closer to him. “Livin’ without Johnny was like… I dunno, like a bass track with no vocals,” he continues. “Riffs without melody. Like layin’ down the drums but no guitar lead.”
“Know what you mean,” V whispers. “Was like this with Jackie, too. And my mom.” She swallows. “But not as bad. I can’t even fuckin’ explain it, Ker.”
Because it’s so much worse than that now, she thinks.
“That's something that always pissed me off, y'know?” Kerry says suddenly, rolling onto his back and reaching for a cigarette on the nightstand. “His whole romanticizing suicide bullshit. Like we’re all Romeo and Juliet.” He lights his cigarette, the glow from the flame briefly illuminating his tired features, glinting off the gold cyberware on his cheeks. “‘Cause he’s so fucking original, isn’t he?” he says bitterly.
V watches him in silence for a beat.
“I shoulda gone with Alt,” she says. “Now I'm just… gonna die, and he's gonna slowly wither or dissolve or get rewritten or incorporated or whatever the fuck happens to engrams in cyberspace.” She swallows again, her mouth dry. “If he'd’ve stayed… you'd be with him right now. And he'd be alive.”
Kerry shakes his head. “You didn't hear the way he talked about you,” he says softly. “Trust me, kid… if shit had panned out that way, he'd already be headed to Arasaka Tower with a nuke strapped to his chest.” He takes another drag of his cigarette. “Romeo and Juliet bullshit, like I said.”
V shakes her head. “But now he prolly just doomed us both, anyway.” She exhales slowly. “Fuck, maybe we shoulda both just gone with Alt. Coulda kept each other sane, carved out our own corner of the digital afterlife.”
“See?” Kerry says, gesturing at her with his cigarette. “Romeo and Juliet bullshit.” He sighs. “For what it's worth…” he adds softly. “I'm glad you didn't.”
The next day, Kerry starts teaching her how to play guitar. They sit side by side on the couch as she clutches her Tenzor, Kerry watching with fascination as she strums through the bits of pieces of the Samurai songs that her fingers remember. He asks her pointed questions about how it all feels, what her mind knows versus what’s just muscle memory, and listens to her fumbling responses with genuine interest.
And then he breaks it all down for her, taking the songs she already knows and showing her which chords are which, what the different techniques are called and how to execute them.
And then they start makin’ up melodies together, just to see if she can recombine the skills she’s picked up into new material. To V’s surprise, it comes to her naturally - the melodies springing into her head almost fully formed, finally giving a voice and shape to the incoherent anguish in her mind.
As the hours pass, she realizes that playin’ guitar with Kerry makes her feel more whole than she has in weeks.
When the sun starts to set - earlier than she’d like now that it’s late November - she decides it’s time to go see Vik. Kerry drives her to the clinic but doesn’t join her inside, and V isn’t sure whether she’s grateful for that or whether havin’ Kerry there would make whatever she’s about to hear from Vik easier to swallow.
But Vik is kind, gentle with her. He doesn’t press her for details about what happened beyond the basics; he simply gives her a thorough exam, tutting softly as he analyzes the readouts and biomon scans.
“How bad is it?” she asks finally. “Was… was Alt right? I only got six months or so?”
Vik hesitates for a moment, then nods. “Your immune system’s attackin’ your nervous system,” he confirms. “So what we’re lookin’ at here is basically gonna look like ALS, or any other rapid-onset neurodegenerative autoimmune condition.”
“Fuck,” V breathes. “So it’s gonna get ugly.”
Vik looks down. “‘Fraid so, kid,” he says. “But y’know… they’ve got some experimental treatments in the works for this stuff. Nanite therapy, things like that. Expensive shit, but your rockerboy input could probably put up the eds. I can do some research for you, if you’d like. Dunno that it’ll do more than buy ya time, but it’s worth a shot.”
“Sure, Vik,” she says, smiling weakly. “Thanks.”
It’s better than nothing.
When Kerry picks her up, he’s got his own guitar in the backseat, along with a portable keyboard and a couple of small amps.
“Shit, Ker, we startin’ a band now?” she jokes as she slides into the passenger seat.
He grins at her sheepishly, then shrugs. “Dunno,” he says. “Got a lil excited, hearin’ you play this mornin’. Figured I’d bring over some of my shit, see what happens.”
They stop at the liquor store by her house where she runs in and grabs a case of beer and a handle of Centzon, then they head back to her penthouse.
Within a few hours, she and Kerry have written a short song together. It’s nothin’ special, but she feels a flicker of warmth blossom in her chest as she moves her fingers up and down the frets, laughing as she sings the stupid lyrics she and Kerry came up with.
The case of beer vanishes, and then the Centzon, but Kerry’s got more stashed away in her cupboards and a large vial of synth-coke in his pocket as well. So they play well into the night, hammering out more tunes, messing around together, feeling out the shape of whatever it is they’re creating together.
And when she sets aside her guitar and pulls him to her, he doesn’t resist - he clutches at her, moaning softly as though he’s been starved for this. They tumble to the floor in a tangle of legs, their bodies moving together wordlessly until she convulses around him with a choked cry, holding him panting in her arms until her heartbeat slows.
She feels something in her chest start to crack and thaw a bit.
It’s well past noon when she wakes up the next day. Kerry’s already downstairs, pickin’ out a melody on his axe, and she recognizes it as one of the ones they crafted together the previous night.
She’s still riding the high from their little bender last night, but she also feels a sudden and crushing sense of urgency. Her own clock is ticking, and so is Johnny’s.
It’s time, she thinks. Time to go to the Afterlife and talk to Rogue.
The fixer hasn’t called her, hasn’t reached out, but she knows Rogue’s waitin’ for her. Knows she has been this whole time.
She knows why she’s been dragging her feet, aside from the crushing static wall of grief that descended on her mind when she woke up alone in that Mikoshi access hub. With Johnny in her head, she got accustomed to seeing the world partially filtered through his eyes, through his feelings, through his thoughts and observations. Not only does her head feel too empty and quiet these days, but she finds herself questioning her own judgment more, turning to some nonexistent voice within her to confirm or disparage her plans, to not-so-subtly direct her decisions. Doin’ big shit, making big moves without gettin’ Johnny’s input feels strange, wrong somehow, and she finds herself trapped in a kind of odd paralysis. She catches herself absentmindedly asking aloud for his opinions, subconsciously waiting for him to glitch in with some quip or critique, and their absence makes her realize how much she’d grown to rely on them over the course of their time together.
But now, she’s gonna need to take this first step herself. And she’s gonna need Rogue’s help, specifically her corpo contacts, to find where they’re keepin’ his body.
And if she’s gonna find Johnny in cyberspace, she’s gonna need to talk to Nix, too. She has a pretty preem ‘runner setup here, but it’s not a dive she wants to attempt alone.
She suddenly remembers the deck she and Johnny pulled from the coolbox out in the Badlands, the one she yanked straight outta Bartmoss’ rotting skull, how Johnny had suggested she show it to Nix. She figures that’ll make a good offering to gain his cooperation, so after downing her coffee and exchanging some quick kisses with Kerry, she gets dressed and heads down to her cars. The deck is still tucked in the glove compartment of her Shion, right where she left it on that last day she spent with Johnny.
The memory makes her heart clench, thinking about how he fucked her right here in this car, beneath the streetlights in Pacifica. That was their last time, she realizes suddenly. Before Mikoshi.
She’s gonna make damn sure it’s not their last.
She pockets the deck, then starts the red convertible and steers it down to the club.
“Look who we have here,” Emmerick remarks dryly as she passes him.
Claire’s eyes widen when she enters, and she ducks under the bar to give V a long hug. But V doesn’t linger to chat - she heads straight for Rogue’s booth. The fixer’s sitting there alone, talking softly into her holo, and she holds up her hand to V as she keeps her attention focused on the call.
“Look, I can’t promise anything,” she’s saying. “But if you get here before five, we can-”
Whoever she’s speaking to seems to have cut her off, and she presses her lips together into a hard, exasperated line.
“Karis, I already told you, I-”
She drums her fingers agitatedly on the table.
“Yes. That hasn’t changed. Now keep your eyes on the road, and watch out for the PD in the pass,” she says, glancing up at V. “Gotta go,” she adds. “I love you.”
V feels her eyebrows shoot upwards. Those aren’t words she ever thought she’d hear come outta Rogue’s mouth.
“Who was that?” she can’t help asking as Rogue ends the call.
But Rogue just stares past V, still tapping her fingers on the table. “My son,” she says simply.
V’s eyebrows go up even higher. “No shit,” she says in a low voice. “You tellin' me you, uh... you got a, uh...?”
“Private life,” Rogue finishes for her. “Yeah. And we'll leave it at that.”
V can only gape at her. Johnny doesn't know, she thinks. She wonders what he would think, how he would feel. She wonders who the father is. She has a feeling Rogue wouldn’t tell her, even if she asked.
“Karis?” she says instead, sliding into the booth beside Rogue.
Rogue exhales through her teeth, then pulls a cigarette from her case and lights it.
“He’s older than you, but not by much,” she tells V. “But you wouldn’t know it by how he acts.”
V cocks an eyebrow again.
“Got a good idea why you're here,” Rogue says, then, changing the subject.
“Yeah,” V says quietly. “You're the best fixer in town, say it yourself all the time. Got a tight setup, contacts at all the corps. Queen of Night City, all that jazz. And that’s what I’m gonna need.”
“That some back-handed way of askin’ which corpo’s pockets I’m in?” Rogue shoots back.
V shakes her head as she reaches into her pocket for her own cigarette. “Listen, Rogue. Don't care that you work with corpos. If I’m gonna find where they’re keepin’ Johnny on ice, I’m counting on those corpo pockets.”
Rogue gives her a wry smile, then. “Still can't believe you wiped Smasher,” she remarks.
“You worked with him,” V points out, lighting her smoke and taking a long drag. It's not a question.
Rogue hesitates, then nods, the smile vanishing from her face. “Yes,” she says. “Johnny was gone, and I'd stopped dressing in mourning. Unlike you, from the looks of it,” she adds, eyeing V as she takes another pull of her cigarette. “No room for sentimentality in the biz, V. Smasher, me… yeah, we worked for the same people.” She blows out the smoke through her teeth. "Does it stink like fresh shit? Yes. Did I have a choice? I did. Do I regret it...?” She is silent for another moment, staring out at the bustling bar. “Very much so.”
V taps her cigarette against the ashtray on the table, once again a bit surprised at Rogue’s unexpected candor. “Well, hey…” she says in a low voice. “The past is the past.”
“Yes,” Rogue agrees sadly. “But that's not why you're here.”
“You're the best fixer in town,” V says again. “Tell me how we're gonna do this.”
Rogue presses her lips together. “Already hit up some contacts, while you were in Pacifica. Got one that seems promising. Name’s Mr. Blue Eyes. He specializes in corporate espionage, data thievery, that sorta thing.”
“Mr. Blue Eyes,” V repeats. The name sounds familiar, though she can’t place from where. “Who does he work for?”
“That’s not important,” Rogue says.
“It’s not?”
Rogue shrugs. “If his goals align with yours, that’s good enough for now. He’s setting up an op that might dovetail nicely with what you need. Can make an intro, recommend you for it.”
V nods. “Do it,” she tells Rogue.
“And how are you, V?” the fixer asks her then, looking at her pointedly.
V looks down. “It hasn’t been easy,” she admits. “Went to see my ripper yesterday. He... confirmed what Alt said. Don’t got much time. I need... I dunno, nanite treatments. Expensive ones.”
Rogue puts out her cigarette. “I’ll look into that, too.”
“Thanks, Rogue,” she says sincerely. "Couldn't possibly do this without you."
“I know,” Rogue says with a sigh. “I owe Johnny one. Always will.”
“No,” V says. “Owe it to yourself. Gotta stop beatin' yourself up for everyone you buried.”
“Is that so?” Rogue murmurs, raising an eyebrow, but then she gazes past V, out at the club, that same distant look on her face. “That's what I tell myself when I stand over the graves of the crew from the Atlantis. Johnny included,” she says quietly, and then her eyes flick back to V. “It's what I tell myself when I look at you now.”
“It’s not too late for Johnny,” V says fiercely. “We’re gonna pull this off, Rogue. Even if I gotta burn this whole fuckin’ city down.”
Rogue’s lips twitch upwards into a smirk. “Sound an awful lot like someone we know,” she says.
V suddenly remembers where she's seen the name Blue Eyes before. That unnerving man she caught a glimpse of on the distant balcony that day at Reconciliation Park when she met with Jefferson Peralez. If he was mixed up in that shit...
Well, at least it means he's probably capable of delivering on what he's promising. "Can we trust Blue Eyes?" she asks Rogue in a dark voice. "Think there's a hidden catch?"
Rogue smiles again, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “We all pay a price for the choices we make. I'm no exception.”
“Yeah,” V agrees, considering this for a moment. Rogue's right, it's a risk she has to be willing to take. She swallows. "There’s one more thing. I want to try to contact Alt again.”
“Alt's still got NetWatch breathin’ hot on her ass.”
“I know,” V assures her. “But I just need to know if he… if Johnny...”
Rogue nods slowly. “Go talk to Nix, then. If I were you, I’d butter ‘im up first, give him a reason to wanna work with you.”
“Got that covered,” V reassures her, running her thumb over the cyberdeck in her pocket.
Rogue smiles. “Well, then you know where to find me if you need me. I’ll keep ya posted on Blue Eyes.”
V stands and exits the booth, heading for the door to the back area where she makes a left to Nix’s office. He’s at his desk, smoking a cigarette with his sunglasses on while massive streams of data scroll by on his screens.
“Hey Nix,” V says, and the old ‘runner lowers his round sunglasses and turns to look at her. “Listen…” she begins. “From one netrunner to another… think I could use your chair sometime? Got something I need to do. Deep Net shit. Could use your help.”
“Wanna do a deep dive, huh?” he says. “Rogue warned me you might come a’knockin’. Gotta give me a little more to work with, kid. Whatchu need? How deep we talkin’?”
V takes a deep breath. “As deep as you can get me. To the Blackwall, if you can.”
Nix sucks in his breath. “And why would that be?”
V doesn’t break his gaze. “Ever heard of Soulkiller?”
Nix gives her a quizzical look. “Soulkiller? What kinda ‘runner you take me for? Course I heard o’ Soulkiller. Alt Cunningham was one of the best ‘runners this city’s ever seen.” He shakes his head. “And now they say she’s run off into the deep Net, become some kinda rogue AI.” His eyes widen. “You’re not tellin’ me you wanna…”
V nods. “I need to talk to her.”
“And what makes you think she’ll talk to ya?”
“She will,” V says. “I, uh… dunno how much Rogue told you, but I… I had Johnny Silverhand’s engram in my head for a few months. And now… now he’s beyond the Blackwall with Alt. And I gotta find them.”
Nix lets out a low whistle. “No wonder you’re in deep with Rogue,” he says. “Still, though… that’s a tough ask.”
V takes another deep breath. “I, uh… found somethin’ that might help convince you,” she tells him, moving her hand down to rest on her pocket.
Nix raises his eyebrows, waitin’ for her to finish.
“Bartmoss' deck,” she says, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the old tech.
“Mhm,” Nix says skeptically, narrowing his eyes. “What else ya find? Alan Turing's tapes?”
“Bein' serious,” V insists, extending the deck to him. “Have a look.”
Nix takes the deck, turning it over in his hands as his eyes widen. “Oooooh, runnin' shits!” he breathes. “God damn, V! Where'd you ferret this out?”
“Found it outside town,” she tells him. “In a fridge... next to its former owner's rotting corpse.”
Nix chuckles. “Hmph,” he laughs. “Bartmoss all the way. NetWatch made him a wanted man, went lookin' in Shanghai, Lahore, Santiago de Chile. While that dog alighted to the Net. Wonder how long he'da kept buzzin' these wires if the power hadn't gone out.”
V wonders suddenly if Alt ever crossed paths with him deep in the Net.
“Think you can pull anything off it?” she asks Nix.
Nix shrugs as he examines the deck. “Mm... Tech's comin' apart, humidity damaged. Encryption on the memcube... gotta be near divine.”
“Spare me the two-step,” V says. “Yes, or no?”
“I can try,” Nix tells her. “Failure, though, is a distinct possibility. Then all data'll be lost, done and gone.”
“Think there could be some no longer known vectors on the disk?” V worries aloud. “A DataKrash-like thing or RABIDs? 'Cause if so…”
“Then we pop open a bottle of malignant gin,” Nix finishes for her. “Painfully aware of the risks, I am. But speakin' straight... curiosity's consumin' me. You feel it, too?”
V nods. “No risk, no reward. Let’s do it.” She gestures at the deck. “All yours.”
“All yours?” Nix says, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head incredulously. “Aw, V, V… Got no sense of reverence.” He gets up from his desk and crosses to his runner chair, stripping off the vest he’s wearing over his ‘runner suit and settling into the chair. “Expect if you found the goddamn Holy Grail, you'd fill it with caramel corn and Pop-Turds.”
V scowls at him and moves to perch on a stool next to the chair.
“Now, let's get this show underway,” Nix says, muttering as he jacks into the deck and links it to his personal terminal. “Hm, hm,” he muses as he begins trying to crack it. “Most data's corrupt... but not all. Passsword? A dictattack, maybe...? Nothin' doin'. And what about injectin' a command...?”
V watches him with anxious anticipation.
“Hah!” he says with a sharp laugh. “We're golden. One more hurdle, but it oughta be as easy as pie.” He laughs again. “My, my, of all people. Bartmoss shoulda done better.”
Almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth, his neural link starts sparking and he convulses and screams.
“Oh, fuck!” V says, leaping to her feet and casting her eyes frantically over his body. “Dog shit, cat shit, rat shit…” she mutters as she jacks into Nix’s laptop. She can see immediately what happened - Bartmoss had some hidden daemons in this motherfucker. She tries to keep her breathing steady as she methodically reshapes the code, hacking through all three layers until Nix’s body stills.
He’s still breathing, thank god. Another minute or two, and his brain woulda been boiled to mush in his skull.
Nix groans loudly. “Aghh…” he grumbles. “Errgh... fuck a muffin…”
“You breathin'?” V asks, moving to help him sit up.
“Apparently…” he groans. “Though it feels like I got a skull full o' hot embers.” He looks up at V. “Just... what the hell happened?”
“You started convulsing, lights went out, outlets started spittin' sparks…” V tells him, her heart still pounding in her chest. “So, I sat down and and finished for you.”
Nix’s eyes widen. “Hold up, hold up... Mean to say you breached Bartmoss' deck? Lowly you?”
V scowls. “Damn straight! I'm one of the best in town,” she says indignantly.
Nix chuckles softly. “Doubt it, kid,” he says, but he’s lookin’ at her with a newfound interest now. “But... maybe someday.” He taps his fingers on his chin thoughtfully.
Despite his near brush with death, V is selfishly glad she decided to give him the deck.
“A'ight,” Nix says, hoisting himself out of the chair. “Let's see just what you pulled from this artifact.” His eyes glow blue as he scrolls through the data. “Logs... mail... chat history o' sorts... Hm. Potentially interestin', but nothin' explosive.”
“Shame, kinda,” V says. “Well, guess I can delve some more, see if I can't find somethin' interesting in there.”
“Listen... my services usually command a tidy sum,” Nix tells her, his eyes returning to normal as he peers at V over his shades. “But this time, well... seems you rendered me a service.”
V bows her head slightly. “Ya gonna get it together, be alright? Or you need help?”
Nix rubs the back of his neck. “No, no, be just fine,” he assures her. “Couple o' painkillers washed down with whiskey, and I'll be a new man.”
“Wanna go sit at the bar?” she offers, and he nods gratefully.
They walk together back out to the main floor, and he pulls out a stool for her at the bar then sits beside her. She’s barely in her seat before Claire’s pourin’ ‘em each a glass of scotch.
“What’s it like, workin’ for Rogue?” she asks Nix after they toast to Bartmoss.
“It’s fine,” Nix says opaquely.
“That’s it?” V asks. “Fine?”
Nix shrugs. “You want info on Rogue, ask her yourself. I’m sure she’ll be ever-so-obliged, you’re her new favorite.”
V downs the rest of her drink. “So,” she reminds him. “Think you can set up that dive for me?”
Nix chuckles. “Don’t see why not,” he says. “If you’re cool with Rogue, you’re cool with me.” He smiles. “And besides, you saved my life today. Come back in a week, I’ll have everything set up for ya.”
He finishes his drink, then stands and shakes V’s hand again before returning to the back.
And that’s when V notices the man on the stool to the other side of where Nix was sitting, his bright pink Kiroshis boring into her and a small, devilish grin on his face. He’s dressed in a yellow fishnet top with a pink cropped t-shirt over it, and V glances down at his very short gold shorts, then back up at his pointed, elfin face. There’s something oddly familiar about his features, she thinks.
“You're V,” he says, sliding onto the stool next to her without waiting to be introduced, already grinning at her conspiratorially.
“I am,” she tells him cautiously.
“Ah, yes,” he says, that mischievous smile still playing on his lips. “The hotshot merc my dear mother won’t shut up about.” He gestures dramatically with his cocktail towards Rogue's booth.
And that’s when she connects the dots.
“You’re Karis?” she guesses, and the man grins at her again, shooting her a double guns with his fingers.
V sizes him up, then. Both his arms are cybernetic, and he cuts a slight, lean figure, yet slouches with the casual confidence of someone twice his size. His smile exudes a kind of easy, impish boldness, the kind of smile that can command a room. It’s clear to V who he got that from, at least.
“Bingo,” he tells her, still grinning.
She rests her chin on her palm, meeting his gaze. She’s more than a little bit curious about him, she realizes. Who did Rogue have a fuckin’ kid with?
“So,” he says playfully. “You’re the one everyone’s got their panties in a twist over.”
V laughs self-consciously. “Dunno about that,” she tells him.
He drums his metal fingers on the bar. “Well, you definitely got that ran-through edgerunner look,” he says appraisingly.
V balks at him. “Ran through!?”
He nods. “Look like you just stumbled in from a four-day desert rave,” he teases.
“Wish the truth were that fun,” she snorts, motioning for Claire to refill her drink. “So what did Rogue wanna see you about?” she can't help asking.
He laughs a sharp, musical cackle. “What did Rogue want to see me about?” he repeats incredulously, then shakes his head. “Doubt she wanted to see me at all.”
Claire shoots them both a look as she finishes topping off V’s whiskey. “He came by to whine at Rogue for money,” she tells V deadpan, but Karis just laughs again, the gold ring on his lower lip catching the green lights from behind the bar.
“Hey, sometimes a boy’s gotta get himself some more scrip to spill!” he says with mock indignation, and Claire laughs too. There seems to be an established camaraderie between the two of them.
It’s then that she notices the doll cyberware snaking down his neck and along the exposed part of his collarbones. Nothing about him is quite what V would’ve expected. Not that she was expecting Rogue to have a son at all.
“And what about you?” he asks her. “What brings you to this fine establishment?”
V lets out a long, slow breath. “Long fuckin’ story,” she tells him. But this is Rogue’s son, so she decides to lay it on him. “Short version is, got your mom’s dead ex lodged in my brain, now he’s stuck in cyberspace, and I got only six months left to live.”
Karis’ pointed eyebrows shoot straight up, and he whistles through his teeth.
“Damn babe, goin’ straight for the heavy shit!” he remarks. But his face is sympathetic. “Well, if we’re swappin’ sob stories… my input’s got cancer. The bad kind. So I’m right there with ya.”
“Shit, I’m sorry,” V tells him, but Karis just shakes his head, his bright white hair tumbling loosely around his face.
“That’s life!” he says casually, as though livin’ with a death sentence were basically par for the course in this fuckin’ city. And in a sense, he’s not wrong.
There’s something about his demeanor that makes her feel instantly at ease, like there’s nothin’ she could say to him that would scare him off. It’s an oddly refreshing feeling, after living for months under the weight of a story that she knew would send most people running for the hills.
As she’s pondering this, he fishes in his pocket and produces a vial of synth-coke and scoops out a small bump with the long nail of his pinkie finger. V can’t help but cock an eyebrow at the fact that he specifically got his cybernetic hands designed with that feature.
He sees her watching, and offers her a bump next. She accepts, leaning forward as he lifts his little finger to her nose.
“Well!” he says approvingly. “You seem like a lot more fun than all these trogs,” he remarks, gesturing at the other patrons drinking around them. “Whaddaya say we blow this shithole, go find a real party?”
It’s not even 6 pm yet, but V can't help but be intrigued by Karis. She glances over his shoulder at Rogue, but Rogue’s on her holo again and seems to take no notice of her son’s conversation.
She turns back to Karis. “What do you have in mind?”
His grin broadens. “7th Hell!” he says. “Buncha my friends are hostin’ a night there. C’mon, I’ll call a Del. Actually, wait… let’s do some shots, first.”
Claire raises her eyebrows, but moves to make it happen.
For reasons she can’t fully explain, V decides she likes him. He’s someone she woulda been instantly friends with, if they’d ever met in any other circumstances.
And why not these ones? she thinks.
“Let’s take my Shion,” she suggests, and Karis’ eyes light up.
“Even better!” he tells her as Claire places the shot glasses in front of them.
One round of shots turns into six, and the next thing V knows she and Karis are driving over the bridge together into Downtown, screaming along to Rezodrone as they careen through the traffic.
His friends turn out to be a really fun mix of freaks from all walks of life, and his boyfriend Avery is a big, hulking, soft-spoken man with pink and white hair who smiles at her shyly and speaks mostly in Polish. They’re all so warm to her, like she’s already part of the group, and the night flies by in a blur of synth-coke, drinks, glitter, and dancing. She winds up back at Avery’s apartment in Heywood, doin’ blow with the two of them and a couple of their other friends well past midnight, the animated coke-fueled conversations ebbing and flowing with the various clusters of guests who come and go throughout the early morning. And it occurs to V suddenly that she’s having fun - for the first time in what feels like a long time.
A group of girls arrives just as the sun is coming up, and V almost falls out of her chair when she realizes she knows one of them. It’s Quinn fuckin’ Kruczynski, her childhood friend from corpo school. The girl who sat next to her and would share her shards when she was late, the only one who stood up for her when the other kids teased her. Neither Karis nor Avery seems to know her - she came with a friend of a friend - but it’s the strikingly beautiful young woman she’s with who really catches the rest of their attention, because they all recognize her immediately from the screamsheets.
And V knows her, too.
She’s Aiko Sanderson - Michiko Arasaka’s daughter.
V isn’t sure if it’s the drugs or the utter absurdity of it all - to be partying with Rogue's kid and run into a fuckin' Arasaka heiress - but she throws back her head and starts laughing helplessly.
Notes:
OKAY NOW FOR THE OC CREDITS
Karis and his boyfriend Avery are creations of my wonderful friend Ellen.
Marigold belongs to cherrykiss, and you can read about her in this incredible fic.
Quinn belongs to QuietOctober, and you can read her story here!
Chapter 52: Aether
Summary:
V continues her quest to find Johnny as she struggles to navigate her life without him.
Notes:
CW for smut and drug use in this one. Also I didn't proofread it lmao sorry in advance
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V collects herself, clutching her sides and wiping her eyes as her fit of laughter passes. But the heiress just smiles shyly at the rest of them sprawled around the room, lifting her hand in a small wave.
“Hello,” she says quietly. She doesn’t have a Japanese accent, V notices. But Michiko was raised in the NUSA, and V figures it’s likely her daughter is even more thoroughly American.
And Aiko certainly looks more like her rebellious mother than any other Arasaka V has encountered - she has silver hair with red tips that tumble in loose curls around her shoulders and intricate cyberware around her eyes that almost gives the impression of a thief’s mask. She moves with a practiced precision that V knows probably comes from a lifetime of top-tier combat training. And Quinn looks equally put together - her white hair is gathered back into a high ponytail, and her cyberware looks cutting-edge. They’re both dressed in stylish leather pants - Quinn in a red leather jacket to match - and the other two women they arrived with are similarly done up with trendy haircuts and outfits.
The newcomers take their seats in the circle, and Karis obligingly pushes the mirrored tray with the lines racked out towards them across the coffee table.
Aiko is the first one to bend forward and do one, followed by their other two friends. Quinn goes last, but when she raises her head afterwards, her eyes meet V’s and her brow furrows.
V returns her gaze with a smile, suddenly realizing her old friend doesn’t recognize her. The white-haired woman frowns for a beat, obviously trying to place her. And V can’t blame her - after all, they were thirteen the last time they saw each other, back when V’s hair was still a mess of dark curls barely contained by the elaborate braids her mom used to do for her.
It’s strange, being confronted with these ghosts from her past, these vestiges of a life that seems so distant to her now. Night City can really feel like a fishbowl sometimes - no matter how far or high you swim, you’re forever doomed to circle back to the same places, the same people, the same intersections and streets laden with memories and traumas, like old scars, like scratches on a well-worn table.
“...Vero?” Quinn asks hesitantly, and V grins as she watches the uncertain recognition spread across her old friend’s face.
“The very same,” she says, cocking an eyebrow. "Mostly go by 'V' now, though."
Quinn's eyebrows shoot up. "Wait… you're V?! The one I've been hearin' about in the screamsheets?” she says, her voice jumping an octave. “Starring in crazy BDs, winning boxing matches and street fights, pissin’ off Arasaka?"
“And dating rockstars!” Karis supplies helpfully.
V spreads her hands, shooting Karis a dark look.
But Quinn just shakes her head incredulously at V, then gestures to her companion. “This, uh… this is Aiko.”
"Pleasure," says V, unable to keep the bemusement from her voice.
Aiko is studying her with interest.
“You were there when my great-grandfather died,” she says softly. “I know who you are.”
Straight to it, then. V bites her lip and nods slowly, wondering just how much Aiko knows. And she remembers her conversation with Rogue on the beach, too - if Michiko was trying to get Johnny’s body and deliver it to Yorinobu… maybe Aiko could be a useful person to have in her corner.
Aiko’s pale pink cybernetic eyes dart back and forth between V and Quinn.
“And how do you guys know each other?” she asks.
V laughs. “We went to Longshore together,” she says quickly, referring to the day school in Charter Hill they both attended as children. Quinn was one of the residential students, if memory serves.
Beside her, Karis is on his holo attempting to order them more synth-coke, cursing as each dealer he hits up goes straight to voicemail.
"The fuck aren't these gonks a 24/7 operation?" he complains loudly, his eyes still glowing blue as he scrolls through his contacts.
"I didn't start at Longshore until the upper school," Aiko says. "That’s where Quinn and I met."
V wonders suddenly how her life might have played out differently, had she not been unceremoniously booted from the prestigious and expensive institution. If her father had cared more about his daughter's education than he had about saving face.
Would she be climbing the ranks at Arasaka now, another rat in a cage?
It turns out Quinn’s been working as a dweller for Zetatech, and she lives with Aiko in a penthouse in Japantown. And Aiko herself is surprisingly personable - V finds herself almost forgetting who and what she is as they laugh together at Avery’s dramatic and hilarious retelling of the season finale of Watson Whore, which apparently involved some kinda Santa-themed orgy at a similar penthouse.
"Oh thank Christ!" Karis exclaims into his holo as someone finally answers, but his visible relief quickly turns into a scowl as everyone turns to look at him. "You sayin' we gotta come down there and pick it up?" he huffs, shaking his head. "Fine, but it better be as preem as you're sayin'."
His eyes return to normal as he turns to Avery, still scowling.
"Dino's got us, but he says I’ve gotta come meet him at Electric Orgasm," he tells his input as he gets to his feet. "He's waitin' on a drop-off and he can't dip."
Of course these fuckin’ downtown kids know Dino, V thinks.
“I’ll go with you,” V says, getting to her feet as well.
To her surprise, Aiko stands too.
“As will I,” she says smoothly, her light pink eyes still fixed on V.
Great, V thinks. But part of her is secretly pleased - she’s curious to know more about the young woman. In particular, where her loyalties lie.
The three of them take a Delamain up to Dino’s bar, and Aiko and Karis spend the whole ride tossing the names of presumably high-profile nightlife characters back and forth, compiling a list of their shared acquaintances. V is reminded of how much of a fuckin’ scene it is down here - she drifted away from this crowd after she left for Atlanta, and never really resumed ties once she came back and started hangin’ with Jackie. And she and Jack mostly just drank at the Coyote or at Lizzie’s or in the smaller, older dives - Jackie loved a good nightclub, but his Valentino tats had made him stand out like a sore thumb among some of V’s other friends the few times she'd managed to drag him along to these kinda parties.
She wishes he were here right now.
The car deposits them in front of the small club, and the three of them shuffle in together.
The bar is mostly empty save for a few aging rockers drinking alone, and a gaggle of young people who might be joytoys stumbling around together and laughing on the dancefloor. Which isn't surprising, considering it's nearly 7 am.
Dino’s seated at the bar, and his face spreads into a grin when he sees them enter.
“Aw hell yeah!” he says, his gaze flicking from V to Aiko. “Didn’t say you’d be bringin’ my two favorite Night City gals!”
Aiko and V exchange a look. V isn’t entirely surprised that Dino would know a young socialite like Aiko, but she’s amused by the social overlap nonetheless.
“How ya been, Dino?” she asks, leaning in to hug the fixer.
“Should be askin’ you the same,” he says, peering at her over his shades. “Ain’t seen ya around since I sold you that Shion. How’s she doin’, by the way? You takin’ good care of her?”
V thinks of its pockmarked exterior, the sand filling the grill. “Sure thing,” she tells Dino.
“And how ‘bout you, princess?” Dino drawls at Aiko, lifting her hand to his mouth to kiss it lightly in an overly theatrical gesture. “Still headed up to the Crystal Palace next month?”
Aiko’s full lips stretch into a scowl as she leans against the bar.
“They’re testing a new Arasaka security system,” she tells them. “The weekend after Christmas. I’ve been asked to oversee it.” She makes a face. “Never mind that I’ll be missing Ruth Dzeng’s New Years party.”
“Aw, c’mon, she has ‘em every year,” Dino cajoles her playfully. “You’ll be glammin’ it up on the Crystal Palace, champagne glass in hand, starin’ down at the rest of us chumps.”
V feels a thousand burning questions in her throat, and she’s desperate to pump Aiko for information, ask her which one of her relatives is runnin’ shit at what’s left of Arasaka now. But she knows she’s gotta play it cool at first, gain the girl’s trust.
“And you, kid,” Dino continues, turning to Karis. “How’s your old lady?”
Karis rolls his eyes. “Same as ever,” he tells Dino. “Now let’s see that chromatic shit you promised.”
Dino grins and reaches into his vest, pulling out a canister with a remarkably large white rock inside.
“Preemest shit I got,” he tells Karis.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Karis says haughtily, taking the vial and examining it. He twists it open and slides a slender finger inside, chipping off a bit of the rock with his chrome nail and crushing it into a powder that he then scoops up with his little finger, raising it to his nose.
“Hmm,” he says after sniffing it up. “Not bad, old man.”
Dino flicks his tongue, his grin turning ever so slightly smug.
“Uncle Dino’s always got you kids covered,” he says, then looks back at V. “Your old rockerboy ain’t out with you tonight?”
V winces. “Guess not,” she says, suddenly aware of the fact that Kerry might very well be worrying about her.
After a round of shots with Dino, they pile back into a Del and head back down to the Glen.
“How do you know Dino?” Aiko asks her conversationally as they drive. The sky is getting lighter now, and commuters are starting to fill the streets, giving V an eerie sense of existing outside of time.
She shrugs. “I’m a merc, he’s a fixer,” she tells the heiress.
Aiko smiles. “You are from Night City?” she asks.
V nods. “Born and raised.”
Aiko nods as well. “As was I.”
V studies her carefully. “You close with your family?” she can’t help asking.
Aiko hesitates before she answers. “My mother and I have… had our differences,” she says carefully. “But I respect her.”
Karis sighs dramatically from opposite Aiko. “With mothers like ours, it’s inevitable,” he says sympathetically.
Karis really does have the gift of finding common ground with anyone, V thinks.
Aiko shakes her head. “But Arasaka as a whole? Want nothin’ to do with it. I didn’t inherit the name, and that’s fine by me.” She folds her arms across her chest and turns back to V. “You saw firsthand how my family treats each other.”
“Gotta be more specific,” V says dryly.
Aiko smiles a dark smile. “I was referring to what happened at Konpeki Plaza,” she says softly. “What Yorinobu did to my great-grandfather. Not that the old geezer didn’t have it coming.”
So Aiko knows the truth of that, at least. V resists the urge to question her more directly on the topic - if Aiko doesn't know about her involvement in the recent turmoil, V would prefer to keep it that way.
“Yeah,” she says simply.
Aiko is still studying her. “You have been working with Goro Takemura,” she says. It’s not a question.
V isn’t sure whether she should lie or not. She eyes the heiress cautiously but doesn’t reply.
“I have been… in contact with him recently,” Aiko continues. “He speaks highly of you.”
It hadn’t even occurred to V that Goro might have reached out to peripheral members of the family for aid. The man’s loyalties run deeper than she’d guessed if this is his idea of cutting and running.
“Where is he?” V presses. “Is he okay?”
“He is safe, yes,” Aiko assures her. A small smile plays across her lips, and V decides that if she’s been talking to Goro, then it’s safe to cut to the harder questions. Some of them, anyway.
“Your mom hired Rogue Amendiares earlier this year,” V says instead, ignoring Karis’ melodramatic huff at the mention of his mother’s name. “You know about that?”
Aiko’s eyebrows both shoot up, and she glances at Karis.
“I ran security for that op,” Aiko says. “Remotely.”
V nods. “Did you know… what the merch was?”
Aiko shakes her head. “It was for my great uncle. Yorinobu. That’s all I was told.”
“Where’d it wind up?”
She’s pushing her luck, she knows this, but she can’t help herself.
But Aiko is still smiling at her curiously. “In orbit, probably,” she says carelessly, shrugging her shoulders. “One of those stations where they stash all the Secure Your Soul clients.” She looks thoughtful for a moment. “Dunno what they’re gonna do with all of them now that the program’s dead,” she muses.
V’s mind screeches to a halt at the revelation that Rogue’s team was transporting a body whose engram was bein’ kept in Mikoshi. The thread of hope cuts sharp in her chest, and she grasps it like a lifeline as she nods mutely, her heart pounding. She’s slightly floored at Aiko’s willingness to just flat-out tell her all this - either Goro really talked V up, or Aiko doesn’t fully grasp the game she’s playing.
And more importantly, Aiko doesn’t seem to have any idea that V was directly involved in the killing of said program.
V decides she’d like to keep it that way until she knows more about this woman.
“So, you’re still runnin’ security ops for ‘Saka?” V asks casually, remembering what Dino said about Aiko’s upcoming trip to orbit.
“Just small stuff like this Crystal Palace nonsense,” Aiko says. “They stuck me in a low level position, some scop about proving myself. As if I didn’t work for my mom’s company for years,” she huffs. “I was the face of Danger Girls!”
V remembers the advertisements - Danger Girls was Michiko Arasaka’s security company she founded herself in Night City. All their operatives wore cat ears and some of ‘em even got cybernetics to more permanently commit to the look. She remembers seein’ Aiko’s face on the posters - she’d had the cat ears then, too.
“Got rid of the ears,” Aiko says with a laugh, catching V’s gaze flickering up to her head.
“Mistake,” Karis quips from beside them.
“But anyway,” Aiko continues. “I don’t want to climb the ranks at Arasaka. Wanna do what my mom did, start my own company.”
Karis chimes in then, and V stops listening as the two of them start goin’ back and forth about the pressures of having mothers like they do. And soon enough, they’re stumbling out of the car in the Glen, piling into the elevator back up to Avery’s place.
It’s 10 am by the time everyone finally starts to filter out, Quinn and Aiko and their friends included, though a couple stragglers are now passed out on Avery’s couch. Avery himself has retired to the bedroom, but Karis and V are still railing out lines and jabbering at each other, swapping tales of their increasingly implausible exploits.
She finds herself tellin’ Karis the whole sad story about her time with Johnny, unable to stop the words from toppling out after this much coke and this much booze. And to her relief, he doesn’t even bat a fuckin’ eyelash, he just matches it with his own story about how he got kidnapped by scavs and Avery saved his life, about how it felt meetin’ his input and knowing he’d finally figured out where and with who he belonged.
Fuck, V misses Johnny.
There’s very little of the eight-ball left, and V can feel her heart racing in her chest and her vision crackling around the edges as the effects of the drug-fueled all-nighter start to catch up with her. She’s sippin’ vodka still, but she knows this is gonna be a pretty brutal crash.
When the drugs are finally gone and they’ve gummed up the last of the crumbs, Karis stretches like a cat and polishes off the rest of the bottle of vodka.
“Guess that’s my cue to delta,” V says, getting to her feet again. Her legs have cramped underneath her from sitting curled on the sofa for so long.
Karis grins. “Or you could come snuggle up with us,” he offers, gesturing towards Avery’s bedroom door.
V laughs, but shakes her head. “‘Preciate it, but I gotta bounce,” she tells him, hugging him as she gathers her things.
The sun is unapologetically bright, and V shields her eyes as she crosses the curb to her parked Shion. The air is crisp and cold. Her head is already pounding as she starts the car and heads back up and across the bridge, pulling into the little lot outside her penthouse elevator.
Kerry’s still asleep when she gets in, so she creeps up the stairs and undresses as quietly as she can manage. But his eyes flutter open and he grumbles as she slides into bed beside him.
“Where were you?” he mumbles, inching closer to wrap his arms around her.
“Was out with Rogue’s son and some of his friends,” she murmurs, settling against him. “What did you get up to last night?”
“Drank here by myself and fucked around more with those songs we wrote,” he tells her, his voice still thick with sleep. She can feel him frown against her shoulder. “Rogue’s kid?” he asks.
“Yeah, Karis,” she replies. “You know him, I take it?”
Kerry nods. “Yeah, he’s a wild one. Had a rough go of it. Partly his own fault, but ain’t that the way?”
“He’s a lot of fun,” V says honestly.
“I’ll bet,” Kerry retorts, and V detects a slight dour note in his voice. “So you were out all night partying with some downtown kids,” he says. “Didn’t want your geriatric boyfriend to come along, kill the buzz?”
“Shut up!” V laughs, twisting around to playfully hit him with her fist. “I met Karis at Afterlife and it just kinda snowballed from there. Sorry I didn’t call.”
“Eh,” Kerry says with a shrug. “Ya gotta have your own friends, and it’s good you’re hangin’ with kids your age,” he says, but it sounds slightly unconvincing.
And he’s not entirely wrong, V suddenly realizes. As fun as it is to go out with Kerry, it changes things. People react to him differently, react to her differently when she’s with him. She tries to imagine how her night would have gone if she’d had Kerry in tow, and realizes she’s having trouble picturing it. Kerry’s from a different generation, lives in an insulated world of fame and wealth - he often comes with a bodyguard, with a constant mob of paparazzi, with that strange hush that falls over rooms when he enters them.
“Oh,” he says suddenly, reaching across V for a small object on the nightstand that he hands to her.
Her eyes widen slightly when she sees what it is. “A Trauma Team Platinum card?” she asks him.
“If anyone needs one, it’s you,” he tells her wryly, and V isn’t sure whether to be grateful or indignant.
“Don’t these cost a fuckin’ fortune?” she says instead.
Kerry shrugs, taking it from her hand and placing it back on the nightstand. “Sure they do,” he says, settling back against her and pulling her closer to him. “But those couple weeks… when I thought you were dead… wanna make sure that doesn’t happen for real.”
“Trauma Team’s not gonna be able to save me from my own body killin’ me, Kerry,” she says softly.
“No, but it’ll stop ya from gettin’ flatlined doin’ something gonk before that happens,” he murmurs.
She feels the darkness closing in around her as the reality of her life starts to wind its tendrils around her once again. She reaches up to grasp Kerry’s hand that’s clutched against her chest, intertwining her fingers with his as she closes her eyes.
When she wakes up, it’s late afternoon and Kerry’s gone. She makes herself some coffee, then finds everything she can on the Net about Aiko Sanderson. She’s barely a year older than V, and has spent most of her life in Night City, getting the usual sort of screamsheet coverage V would’ve expected for a pretty young heiress. Apparently, she’s been trying her hand at acting in braindances recently - she’s in some controversial upcoming virtu about human trafficking, and V wonders if that’s why Arasaka’s attempting to bring her back into the fold.
Or maybe it’s because the other heirs are proving too unreliable.
It turns out Aiko also runs a surprising amount of charities, including an institute for teaching netrunning to young, disenfranchised women and girls.
And her dating life seems to be a constant source of speculation for the tabloids - a surprising amount of them seem to think she’s with Quinn, and V wonders suddenly if there’s truth to that. It would make sense, she thinks - they're almost certainly not living together because they couldn't each afford their own place. Although one picture catches her eye - the image is captioned as Aiko being spotted with a mysterious suitor, and the man in the picture has his hood up and a scarf thrown across his face. But V knows that posture, that coiled readiness, that carefully practiced slouch. She’d bet her last eds that the man in the picture is Goro fuckin’ Takemura.
V rubs her jaw and closes her laptop. As far as she can tell, the chances of Aiko bein’ willing to help her aren’t zero.
When she’s completed her research, she decides to call Misty. River is in Warsaw with her, and the two of ‘em have been seeing the sights and spending time with Misty’s family. She forgets sometimes that Misty isn’t originally from Night City - she has all the trappings of someone Heywood born and bred, but in truth, her family immigrated when she was young. And Misty’s parents had returned to Poland once she was an adult - V’s never met them, but Misty still lives in their old apartment, complete with pictures of the whole family above the mantle.
V’s own mother never returned to Russia before she died. And V’s never been there herself. Her mother’s childhood feels so distant from V’s own life that it’s hard to feel a connection to it, sometimes. And her mother rarely talked about it to V.
She has no idea if she even still has any family there to visit.
V gives Judy a call, too - she’s also left the city, headed up the coast to Oregon to visit her aunt and uncle. Their conversation is brief, but Judy seems happy and relieved to hear from her.
V can’t help but feel a bit sad that a lot of her closest friends aren’t around right now.
Kerry’s left a message saying he’s gonna be in the studio all day, so V takes her bike and rides aimlessly around the city, just losing herself to the rush of the air and the biting wind on her mouth and nose. She’s not really aware of where she’s going until she finds herself at the old drive-in theater.
She parks her bike and hacks the door just like she did with Rogue that night. And then she steps out into the empty, open lot with the big white screen at the front, the single rusted out car propped up on cinder blocks in the center.
It all feels so lifeless, now.
She crosses to the car and slides into the seat, staring up at the clear, cold sky.
“'I don’t need this world anymore, I need you,'” she quotes softly, remembering that stupid line from that stupid movie that Johnny had quoted at Rogue that night on that stupid, stupid date. The same night she met Kerry. The same night Johnny had touched her, right here in this stupid car, where she’s sitting alone now like an idiot, muttering to herself. She’s crying again, and she wipes at her eyes furiously as she curses under her breath.
“Johnny,” she whispers, the name escaping her lips almost unbidden. Fuck, she can’t seem to break this fucking habit.
She can feel death reaching out from everywhere, like so many small, grasping hands, so many sharp, waiting needles. And someday soon, it will reach for her.
There are two kinds of fear, she realizes. Fear of death, and fear of surviving.
It’s impossibly lonely, impossibly isolating, to be grieving someone who only ever existed in her head.
And the more time passes, the less real it’s all starting to feel.
Grieving Jackie was different, because everyone missed Jackie. The world, the city, felt different without him in it. Now, it’s only V who feels Johnny’s absence at every turn.
Sure, Rogue and Kerry knew Johnny when he was alive - had loved him, even - but they already grieved him fifty years ago. And neither of them had to share a brain and body with him for months, got to see every memory laid bare, have every private moment revealed, every small indignity and every moment of anguish, every experience of pleasure, every fear. Not having Johnny feels like there’s half of herself missing.
But he was never really here, was he? For all intents and purposes, she’s never actually met Johnny Silverhand. Never saw him in the flesh, never touched his skin, never heard his voice except on his recorded songs. And still, she’s likely known him more intimately than any human has ever known another.
It’s all beginning to feel more and more like a strange, beautiful, and terrible fever dream, and that terrifies her more than anything else.
He was mine and not mine. He was real and he wasn’t.
She repeats that to herself like a mantra as she leaves the theater and rides her bike back to Watson.
Kerry returns that night, fresh from the studio, and sits her down on the couch the second he walks in the door. He wants to play his unfinished tracks for her, he announces with a grin.
V can’t hide her surprise - Kerry’s been hesitant thus far to show her the new material he’s been workin’ on - but it feels as though a switch has been flipped, as though he's made some sort of executive decision to bring her fully into this part of his world. He plays all the demos for her one by one, asking her for her opinions on all of them, trying to get her engaged in the process.
It's thrilling and surreal to finally share this with him - this man whose music has meant so much to her throughout her life.
But it’s sad, too, because this was something he shared with Johnny - this process of writing songs, of combing through the details, of wringing his hands and complaining about the mixing, of fumbling guitar riffs and animated arguments.
She knows they’re both grasping at the same ghost that floats between them, like some sort of invisible, haunted entity that holds both of their hearts in an eternal vice.
She still has Johnny’s dreams, most nights. And this one is no different. The old familiar one, with the jungle, and the grenade, and her left arm exploding in a shower of gore as she feels death close in around her. It’s never any less terrifying.
She dreams of Mikoshi, too. The strange, twisting, infinite sky, the shifting and glitching scenery, the slow agony of being unwoven from Johnny’s mind, and his from hers.
She wakes up screaming for him again.
“Think I’m… depressed,” V admits to Kerry later that morning as they sip tequila together by the pool.
“No shit, kid,” Kerry says without missing a beat. “Let’s fly out to my place in Florida. A little sun, a little change’ll do you good.”
But V shakes her head. “Had enough change recently.”
Kerry frowns, looking at her thoughtfully. “When I was in your shoes, I went out to Masbate," he reminds her. "Gettin’ outta NC for a bit was good for me,” he says gently.
V laughs a dark laugh. “The fuck would I go to reconnect with my roots?” she asks. “Can’t exactly just waltz into St. Petersburg these days.”
Kerry eyes her as he takes a drag of his cigarette. “That where your folks are from?”
“My mom was,” she says with a shrug. “Well, not St. Petersburg originally. She was born in Abakan, in Siberia. But she got accepted into the Vaganova Academy as a kid, moved to St. Petersburg and hardly ever saw her family again.”
“No shit?” Kerry says. “She was a dancer?”
V nods. “She got an apprenticeship with the Mariinsky straight outta school, then made soloist after just a year. She defected two years later when they toured to Night City.”
“Shit,” Kerry says under his breath. “So that’s where you get that grit.”
V picks at a cuticle on her right hand. “Her ballet career never got off the ground here,” she tells Kerry. “So she had to turn to modelling and BD work. And then she met my dad.”
Kerry nods. He’s heard that part, and all the rest. “And you danced as a kid too, yeah?”
“My mom made me take classes when I was little,” V says, now attacking the cuticle with her teeth. “When my dad was still around to pay for ‘em.” She sighs, glowering down at her finger that’s now bleeding. “That’s how I met Marigold, that girl I told you about. Did I tell you I ran into her in Heywood the other day, when I was buyin’ my guitar? Apparently she runs a dance studio now.”
Kerry smiles. “That’s nice,” he says, reaching over to take her bleeding finger. “You should stop by sometime, see if you remember any of your old moves.”
He puts her finger in his mouth then, sucking all the blood off and licking it clean.
V gives him a look and yanks her hand back, swatting at him playfully.
“Doubtful,” she says, sipping her tequila as Kerry laughs.
Seeing Marigold again might be nice, though, she admits to herself.
But what’s even the point of reconnecting with old friends, when in all likelihood she’ll be dead within the year?
Kerry downs his tequila, then turns to her. “Been thinkin’ about my birthday,” he says.
“Ah yes,” V says, glad for the change of subject. “Your nonagenarial.”
“That’s not a word,” Kerry replies, scowling. “And don’t remind me.”
“Fuck that, you should be proud to have made it this far,” V teases. “And your dick still works! That’s worth celebrating.”
Kerry cackles at this. “Exactly! And that’s why I wanna go all out for this one. Show the world I ain’t dead yet. Gonna be the party to end all parties, remind everyone that Eurodyne can still throw down.”
“Alright, alright,” V laughs. “I get it, Peter Pan strikes again.”
Kerry winces. “Ouch, V,” he says in a mock wounded tone, but then his face brightens. “Anyway, for the theme, think I’m gonna go with… The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.” He spreads his hands before his face as he says it, like he’s imagining a marquee.
“Isn’t a Diamond Jubilee only 60 years of reign?”
“The fuck do you know all this shit?” Kerry huffs. “Point is, I’m still here and I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’m thinkin’... diamond encrusted suit. Matching dress for you. Crowns, too, the whole shebang. See where everyone else runs with the theme. It’ll be fuckin’ chromatic.”
It's over-the-top as fuck, and exactly Kerry's strange sense of humor. And V knows this is how Kerry distracts himself, distracts her. And for now, she’s more than happy to oblige - his energy is infectious, and it’s hard not to get caught up in his excitement for whatever ridiculous and undoubtedly magical vision he's hatching.
“And where will the queen be having his ball?” she asks, resting her chin on her hand as she grins at him.
“My place, obviously,” Kerry says. “Why, do you think I should rent a ballroom? Or an actual palace?” He frowns.
V laughs. “It’s your party, Ker. Whatever you wanna do.”
“Invite all your friends,” he tells her. “December 13rd, save the date.”
She returns to the Afterlife that afternoon, hoping Nix will be ready for her dive. To her disappointment, the old ‘runner tells her he needs more time to get his shit in order for a trip that deep, and asks her to come back in another day or two. Rogue is in her booth deep in conversation on her holo, but waves V over when she sees her exiting the back area.
"I'll put it this way, Wakako... don't get in my way,” she’s saying as V comes to stand across from her. “You're running your little operation only because I have allowed it. And I can change my mind whenever I want." She gestures for V to sit down. "Hang on, gimme a sec." She hangs up and leans forward on her elbows, her grey-green eyes piercing a hole in V’s skull. “V,” she says warmly.
“Rogue,” V replies, sliding into the booth beside her and resting her arm on the table.
“Heard you got acquainted with my son,” Rogue says in a casual tone, but V isn’t fooled.
“I did,” V says. “He’s a good kid.”
Rogue nods slowly. “I know he is. Even if he doesn’t always make it easy to remember that.” She sighs. “Anyway, got a job for ya. Got a corpo in dire need. ‘Parently he got sick, ended up in a wheelchair. Now, he’s reachin’ for his boss’ wallet and needs our help to get it."
“Dunno if I’m up for merc work,” V protests, but Rogue shakes her head, raising a hand.
“Not merc work. Havin’ you play fixer for this one.”
V nods mutely. She’s struck again by Rogue’s seemingly unwavering faith in her - apparently, the fixer is confident enough in V’s ability to figure out a way to escape her death sentence to continue training her to take over ops here. V swallows and averts her eyes. She wishes she shared Rogue’s confidence.
“So whaddaya say?” Rogue asks, studying her face. “Not about to leave him hangin', are we?”
“Alright,” V replies, finally looking up to meet Rogue’s eyes again.
Rogue smiles. “Better get some tissues ready, this one's gonna be a real tearjerker,” she says, flicking the file onto the holo in the center of the table. “Pedro Aimar, a guy who thinks he's some kinda nova netrunner 'cause he coded a few algorithms for Zetatech,” she continues, gesturing at the dossier that appears. “Well, now he wants to klep their ass. Like I said, he has some kinda health problems, and Zetatech doesn't wanna chip in for his operation.”
“Wow, imagine that,” V says dryly. “A corp that doesn't give a shit about its employee. I'm practically speechless.”
“Well, now look at that, tears are splattering across my screen,” Rogue agrees. “Anyway, this is a life and death situation. Pedro needs our help.”
“Okay, got that part. So what exactly does he want?”
Rogue waves her hand, and the screen changes. “He wants to klep a Zetatech truck full of A-grade tech. Already got a buyer.” She closes the screen and looks at V again. “Contact Pedro and figure out how you wanna play this. And if needed, find and hire a good merc for the job. And ask him what he wants the money for. You might find something… useful.”
V nods, furrowing her brow. She’s not sure what Rogue’s getting at. “Alright, zip me the deets.”
Rogue’s eyes glow blue as she sends V his contact info.
V decides to call him right there. Rogue watches her as she waits for him to pick up, tapping her foot against the table from where it’s crossed over her opposite knee.
A sickly-looking man finally answers.
“D-did Rogue send you?” he stammers at V in a soft, nervous voice.
“Yeah. I'm V.”
“One moment, please?” he stutters. “S-sorry, be right with you.”
She hears a nervous fumbling on his end, and then the line goes static for a second before returning.
“Everything alright?” she asks him.
“Yes, mhm... Okay! I don't think we’re being tapped,” he mutters. “Ah! S-sorry. Didn't introduce myself. I'm Pedro.”
“No one’s listening,” V assures him, giving him a strange look. “Guaranteed.”
“H-how can you be sure?”
Her holo has ICE thicker than Antarctica, for starters.
“If Zetatech suspected anything, you'd be long dead by now,” she tells him dryly. “My bet... you're not important enough to even be on their radar.”
Pedro is silent for a moment. He looks genuinely terrified. V figures this is his first jump.
“You can still back out, y'know,” she tells him gently.
“No!” he protests, but V can see his shoulders trembling. “I-I've got it all planned out already.”
“Alright,” she says with a shrug. “Then let’s talk biz.”
Like Rogue said, he wants to jack an automated Zetatech transport. He hacked the route randomizer so he can predict its path, and he wants V to send a merc to intersect it at a specific time and location. He has a shard with a Chinese ICEbreaker on it that he’s gonna leave at a drop point - it’ll punch a hole in the van’s security once the merc is on board, and from there it’s just a quick drive to the drop-off. Sounds clean enough on paper, and it seems to V like Pedro knows his shit when it comes to corporate hacking, even if he’s new to this edgerunning lifestyle.
“Pedro, lemme be real for a sec,’ she says to him once he’s outlined the plan. “You're clearly not the rebel type. Why do this?”
He looks down. “I'd... rather not talk about it.”
“Spit it out, Pedro,” she urges. “I don't like unknowns.”
He sighs heavily, and then relents. “I have ALS,” he tells V.
V freezes, remembering what Vik told her the other day about the likely progression of her… affliction. “What's that got to do with robbin' a truck?” she asks.
“If I'm gonna get out of this body, I need the money!”
“Come again?” V’s mind refuses to consider what he might mean.
“A full body conversion,” he confirms, and V feels her gut sink. “I've been talking to a ripper out in Abakan, Siberia. Dr. Federov. Said he could do it... and for a lot cheaper than in Night City or Tokyo.”
Akaban? V’s mother’s fuckin’ hometown? What are the fuckin’ odds?
“How'd you even find out about this Dr. Federov?” she asks him, raising her voice over the music. “Some international database?”
“Well... yeah,” he replies. “How else?”
“You know those aren't the hardest eggs to crack, right?” V says, trying to keep her voice even. “You sure this ain't a scam?”
“No... it's not,” he says forcefully. “I'm sure.”
“How?” V presses. “How can you be sure?”
“Listen, I just need those eddies,” he begs. “Please... I need your help.”
“Alright,” V relents. Who is she to argue? “Where am I sending my people?”
“Place called Kenmore Cafe in Northside,” he says, flicking her the coordinates. “Out front. The truck should drive by around 5 pm every day for the next few days. And please, only send one. A team would attract too much attention.”
“Got it,” V replies. “I’ll find a good solo, send ‘em out tonight. What about security?”
“If the truck stops for longer than thirty seconds, it sends out an automated signal. It'll alert the nearest Zetatech response team. Could expect two to three armored vehicles.”
“So work fast.”
“Yep.”
“Preem,” V says. “I’ll call when my merc’s in position.”
“Th-that's it? You don't need to know anything else?”
“Pedro, pal, this ain't my first dance at the prom.”
“Right, of course,” Pedro stammers.
V hangs up and turns back to Rogue.
“A full-body conversion,” she murmurs, and Rogue nods slowly.
She knows Rogue meant this to be encouraging, but V’s mind immediately turns to Lizzy Wizzy and her cold, inhuman demeanor. And to Adam Smasher, how devoid of humanity his eyes had looked, too. Would V become like that? Would it even be worth it, to stay alive and save Johnny, if all that would be waiting for him were some entirely synthetic amalgamation of what had once been V?
“So,” Rogue says, pulling her from her dark thoughts. “Who are you gonna put on this one?”
V forces herself to refocus as she considers the question. Panam would be an obvious choice, but she’s sure the nomads are far from the city by now, and Panam’s got a lot on her plate already as the new leader of her family.
There’s River, but he’s still out of town, and besides, a job like this requires someone who has some hacking knowledge. V winces internally, remembering how impressed River had been when she’d cracked his teenage nephew’s barely encoded laptop. Not River, then.
She racks her brain as she tries to remember some of the people she and Jackie used to work with, and suddenly the answer’s right there. Aidan Becker, the blonde nomad who’d crash landed in Night City after Jackie hired her for some gonk smuggling job that turned out to be a live iguana they had to get across the border. Aidan’s young, practically a teenager still, but sharp as a whip and a quick learner. V remembers how Jackie took her under their wing, brought her along on a bunch of jobs that went surprisingly well. V hasn’t seen her since Jackie’s ofrenda, but fuck, she’d be perfect for something like this. She’s clean, fast, and quiet.
And now’s as good a time as any to rebuild bridges, apparently.
She calls Aidan.
The petite merc answers, her huge blue eyes getting even wider when she sees V.
“V? How are you?” she signs quickly with her hands.
“Got a job for you,” V says aloud in response. “You free tonight?”
Aidan’s immediate and enthusiastic response makes V wonder if she’s been having trouble finding work. She gives her a rundown of the job, but Aidan’s already nodding and signing her affirmation, grinning at V as she does so.
As she hangs up, V makes a mental note to call her more often, maybe invite her out one of these nights. Aidan was a real one, not a friendship she shoulda let slide once Jackie was gone. She hopes the girl’s been doin’ okay these past few months.
5 pm is still an hour away, so V leaves Rogue to her biz and goes to sit at the bar while she waits to hear from Aidan once she’s in position. Claire pours her a Silverhand, and she tosses it back, and then another, which she sips a bit more slowly. She gets a text from Aidan confirming she grabbed the shard from the drop point, and then another when Aidan arrives at the cafe.
I’m in position
V finishes her drink and types out a quick reply.
Ok. Eyes on that intersection
She gets another call from Aidan about half an hour later, and she answers immediately.
“It’s done,” Aidan signs with a grin.
V notices she’s had mantis blades installed since they last saw each other.
“Preem work, kid,” V says, and Aidan nods. “Gig is closed, eds’ll be on the way.” She bites her lip, then smiles softly at the young merc. “And if you ever want more work… guess I’m workin’ as a fixer, now,” she finishes awkwardly.
Aidan grins even wider. “That’s fuckin’ preem, V!” she signs, and V grins too, ending the call by blowing Aidan a small kiss. Aidan's an odd one, but a lot of fun. V really hopes she finds her way in this nightmare of a city. And if she can help her with that in some small way… it’s the least she can do with the limited time she’s got left, she decides.
More than anything, she wants her friends to all be okay once she’s gone, if things don’t pan out.
Her thoughts turn back to Kerry. She has no idea how prepared he is for the worst, what he’ll do if everything falls through, if he’s gotta watch her slowly die while still grieving the very same person who haunted Kerry’s heart for decades. She knows his relentless optimism is partially a front and partially just his way of dealin’ with tough shit. But she finds herself thinkin’ again of this whole fuckin’ job… of why Pedro was doin’ it.
A full-body conversion might be a way to save herself. Potentially at the cost of her own humanity.
She hopes there’s another way.
But Rogue’s clapping her on the back now, draping her arm around her shoulders as she gestures for Claire to pour ‘em two shots.
“Beautifully done, V,” she says. “Dunno about Pedro, but I consider you my hero already.”
V raises her glass to Rogue, and they bang them against the table once then toss them back in unison.
“Got a sharp eye for talent, too,” Rogue says. “That Aidan’s one to watch.”
V nods. “Told her to expect more work from me.”
“Good,” says Rogue. She gestures for Claire to refill their glasses, and Claire does so, then leaves the bottle pointedly before them.
“Got anything more about Blue Eyes?” V asks, unable to hold back her burning questions any longer.
Rogue smiles. “A bit. Think he’s got ties to Night Corp. He’s puttin’ together an op to steal some client data from the Crystal Palace. Among that client data is the entire clientele list of the Secure Your Soul program. Including, if I’m led to believe, the location of the cold storage units where the clients are kept.” She looks pointedly at V. “Think you know where I’m goin’ with this.”
V nods, processing Rogue’s words. "Yeah," she says slowly. “And I'll bet that data’s worth a pretty penny, too.”
“More than that,” Rogue agrees. “Payout for this would get you whatever treatments you needed, and then some. BioDyne’s telomere therapy, nanite treatments, a full body conversion, you name it.”
She must see V’s face when she says the last part, because her face softens.
“Hey kid, I’m just layin’ out our options here,” she says gently. "Finding Johnny is one thing, but we gotta find a way to get you through this, too. Whatever that may mean."
“Would rather it didn’t come to that,” V says softly. “Already feel like I’ve lost so much of myself… don’t wanna lose my face, my body too. ‘Cause then… what even am I?”
“Still can’t answer that one for ya,” Rogue says. “But look, there’s something else. Whatever data we get back from Arasaka, we’re gonna need to decrypt. Could take months. Unless, of course, we had a source willing to give us the ciphers.” Her eyes meet V’s. “And if Karis isn’t blowing smoke up my ass, it’s my understanding that you may have just encountered such a source.”
V nods slowly. “Aiko Sanderson,” she says under her breath.
“Mhm,” Rogue says. “Danger Girl extraordinaire.” She picks up her drink, swirling it. “If she’s anything like her mother, she’ll be more than happy to piss off the vengeful ghost of her great-grandfather.”
“That was the vibe I got,” V tells her.
“Good,” Rogue says again, her grey-green eyes flicking up to meet V’s as she finishes her drink.
“Any word on what’s happening inside Arasaka?” V asks. “Who’s runnin’ the show now?”
Rogue reaches for the bottle of tequila Claire left, refilling her shot glass and tossing it back in one swig. “Hearin’ different things from different sources,” she says. “Some are sayin’ Hanako’s consolidated power in NC, that Yorinobu’s on a boat back to Tokyo as we speak. But I’m also hearin’ that Yorinobu’s back in Tokyo, and has consolidated power there, and is gearing up to pit the two factions against each other.”
“Fuck,” V breathes.
“If that happens, it’ll get messy,” Rogue says. “So we’ve gotta move fast.”
“Aiko ran security for that op you told me about. The one for Michiko,” V adds.
“That’s right,” Rogue says. “Never actually spoke to her, she coordinated directly with Michiko.”
“Said the cargo got sent into orbit,” she tells Rogue.
“It’s possible,” Rogue replies. “Still coulda been transporting it to wherever NetWatch wanted it. Can’t even rule out the possibility that NetWatch has it already.”
Fuck, V hasn’t even considered that.
“One way to find out,” she says.
“Blue Eyes is havin’ me put together a team,” Rogue continues. “And I’m gonna recommend you. You up for this? An op in hard vacuum?”
“Always wanted to see the Crystal Palace,” V jokes darkly.
In truth, it sounds like a suicide mission. But she’s got nothing left to lose, and a lot to gain from this.
“So that’s a yes?”
V nods. “I’m in.”
“Great,” Rogue says, then looks at her for a beat. “And give Karis a call, go out with him. See if you can work Aiko some more.”
And that’s how V ends up at Riot, popping down a pill that Avery hands her and shrieking with laughter as the room blurs and sparkles around her. She’s sandwiched between Karis and Avery, and it’s some fuckin’ weekly night apparently ‘cause Dino is DJing and everyone there seems to know each other.
She sees a flash of white hair across the room, and sure enough, there’s Quinn and Aiko posted up at a table in the corner, surrounded by a coterie of admirers and complete with bottle service. Quinn has her hair pinned in an elegant updo, but Aiko’s curls hang loose down her back. Both are wearing expensive-looking dresses that glimmer and shine with every movement.
V pushes away from Karis and Avery, fighting her way off the dancefloor and coming to stand at the head of the booth.
“Hey!” Quinn says, standing to lean forward across the table to kiss both of V’s cheeks.
Aiko does the same, and motions for a disgruntled young well-dressed man to scoot aside and make room for V.
V slides in beside Aiko, already reaching to help herself to a glass of whatever fancy fuckin’ vodka they’re probably drinking.
Talking to them is surprisingly easy - they have no expectations of her except to revel in their youth, revel in their wealth, and share the juiciest gossip. V’s head is spinning from the pills Avery gave her, but it only adds to the ease with which she’s swapping jokes with the corpo girls, and they’re throwing back their pretty heads and laughing at whatever nonsense is comin’ out of her mouth, so it must be working. Right?
She realizes suddenly she’s talking about Johnny. Opaquely, of course - she’s makin’ him sound like he just left the city or something, but she quickly stops herself before she gives away too much, her hand flying to Johnny’s dog tags.
Aiko looks at her sympathetically.
“It’s okay, V,” Quinn says. “Break-ups are hard. You’re allowed to feel whatever it is you feel.”
V lets them keep their incorrect assumptions.
They all wind up back at Quinn and Aiko’s place this time - a slick penthouse in Japantown with the most impressive-looking netrunner set-up that V’s ever seen. But their hosts quickly usher them to the main room, arraying themselves on the leather couches in the luxurious sitting area. And Karis doesn’t waste any time before he begins racking out the synth-coke, soon they’re all laughing as they reiterate all the stupid inside jokes they’ve pulled together throughout the course of the evening.
As V looks around at all of their laughing faces, she’s seized with a sudden and intense sense of loneliness, of alienation. Who even are all these people? What happened to all her real friends?
But Karis meets her gaze then, and his smile widens and his eyes are warm, and V can’t help but smile back.
Better than being alone, she decides. And if her goal for the night was to make friends with the wayward Arasaka heiress, it would seem she’s well on her way to succeeding.
Kerry’s still awake when she slithers back home that morning, squinting at his laptop from where he’s perched on the couch strumming his guitar.
It’s such a simple scene, so domestic, but the room is still spinning around him and V staggers slightly as she crosses the kitchen towards him.
“Hey,” he says without lookin’ up. “Out with Rogue’s brat again?”
“Yeah,” V says, taking off her coat and kicking off her boots before going to join him on the sofa. The sun is starting to creep up over the buildings, and Kerry sighs as he sets aside his guitar.
“Ya look skezzed as hell.”
V responds by pulling a vial of synth-coke from her pocket and placing it on the table in front of them.
Kerry chuckles softly, shaking his head as the corners of his eyes crinkle.
“Well, well, well, V,” he says, then sighs with amusement, already moving aside his laptop and pouring out the contents of the vial onto the marble and glass coffee table.
There’s still a cut straw on the table from their bender the other night, and Kerry racks out a thick line for himself and bends over to do it, then extends the straw to V. She takes it and cuts herself a slightly smaller line, then rails it quickly, tilting her head back as the burn drips down the back of her throat. She places the straw on the table, then pulls Kerry’s face towards hers roughly, pushing her mouth against his and feeling his tongue meet her own in response.
She’s still feeling the effects of whatever it was that Avery gave her, and Kerry’s hands on her make her skin prickle with pleasure as he palms her ass and drags her body onto his lap.
“Mm,” he murmurs against her lips. “What did I even wanna…” he begins, then pulls away from her slightly. “Oh, yeah yeah yeah,” he says, moving his hands to rest on her hips. “You know that Us Cracks agent called me and asked if I would go on tour with them?”
“No shit?” V says, dragging her thumb across his lip, trying and failing to focus on what he’s saying.
“At first, I was like, over my dead fucking body,” he continues, laughing and shaking his head. “But then I thought, hey wait, that could actually be fun.” He slaps his hand against V’s thigh. “So, eh…” he shrugs. “Who knows?”
V silences him with another kiss, rolling her hips against him as his hands find their way back to her ass.
“Just shut up and fuck me, Kerry,” she whispers, and his eyes darken in response. He flips her over with a growl, already shoving up her dress and yanking her panties down over her knees.
“You want me to shut up and fuck you?” he murmurs, kicking her knees apart as he stands and unzips his pants. He leans forward and brushes his fingers between her legs, and she whines and lifts her hips towards him, her whole body suddenly a live wire.
“Hmm,” he says, considering her state. And then he drops to his knees between her thighs, yanking her towards him so her hips are hanging off the edge of the sofa.
He runs his tongue up the length of her - once, twice, eliciting a shuddering moan from both of them - then crawls upwards, shoving his cock inside of her in one thrust as he braces himself with one arm on the back of the couch. She gasps, her nerves lighting up at the heightened intensity of the sensations.
“Fuck, Kerry,” she moans, but he’s already holding her by her hip and driving his cock into her at a steady, hard rhythm.
Maybe it’s the drugs, or maybe it’s how pent up she’s been lately, but she doesn’t last very long, and neither does Kerry once she finishes. It’s more than satisfying, but she finds herself feeling empty afterwards as she slumps back onto the couch while Kerry collapses between her knees, resting his head on her stomach as his cock falls out of her and against his thigh with a heavy thwack.
There’s no more mind-melding, no more souls tangling, no more Relic malfunctions, no more pukin' up blood, no more violent glitching as her lover’s mind vies for control of her own. There’s just Kerry, real and human and flesh and bone, lying in her arms, staring up at her like she put every single star in the sky herself.
She swallows and winds her fingers through his hair, her other hand tracing patterns on his back as he sighs contentedly.
Her heart aches.
When she wakes up, she’s alone in her bed and it’s late afternoon. She pulls on one of Kerry’s silk shirts and pads downstairs, grabbing the cold coffee he left for her on the counter and stepping out onto the balcony.
Kerry’s outside by the pool, silhouetted against the sunset as he shouts into his holo. V moves down the steps to join him on the pool deck, and as she approaches, she realizes he’s on a call with the caterer for his birthday party, which is now only a week and a half away.
He blows V a kiss as she comes to perch on the edge of the pool, setting her coffee beside her and lowering her bare feet into the warm water.
Kerry doesn’t seem to be wrapping up his conversation any time soon, so she shrugs off the shirt and lets herself fall sideways into the pool, earning a wide-eyed stare from Kerry as he paces along the deck. From what she can catch of his conversation, he's outlining some kinda outlandish ice sculpture he wants as the centerpiece.
She kicks off into the pool, floating on her back and staring up at the darkening sky. Bright slashes of purple and orange are painted across it, and she’s not sure how to feel about the fact that more often than not, she’s been sleeping through the better part of the daylight hours lately.
She hears Kerry end the call and rights herself, paddling back towards the edge of the pool and resting on her elbows to gaze up at Kerry.
“So you're gonna do the tour?” she asks him, suddenly remembering what he told her this morning about the Us Cracks offer.
He crouches in front of her. “Yeah," he says. "Startin' early next year.” He tucks her wet hair behind her ear. “You uh, you wanna come? Could debut some of our new shit we’ve been workin’ on.”
V looks away. “Kerry I…” she begins, then falters. “I… yeah,” she says. “Maybe. Listen, I took this job from Rogue yesterday,” she says. “It’s a big one. A dangerous one. But I gotta do it.”
Kerry shakes his head, not comprehending. “Why?” he says. “You need eds, I’ve got eds.”
V sighs. “This one ain’t about the eds, Kerry. Might be a lead on where Johnny’s bein’ kept in cryo.”
“Ah,” Kerry says. He looks thoughtful for a moment. “So what’s the job?”
V takes a deep breath. “Heist on the Crystal Palace.”
Kerry lets out a low whistle. “Yeesh, V. So what, you’ll just slip off a tourist shuttle unnoticed? ‘Saka might be off your ass here in NC, but they run security on the Crystal Palace. No way you could just waltz in there.”
V swallows. “Think I’ll be comin’ in… a back door,” she says.
Kerry frowns. “So you’re just gonna launch yourself into space, kick open an airlock on the Crystal Palace, slip on in?”
“Somethin’ like that, yeah.”
“Fuck, kid,” Kerry says, and his face is hard now. “Sounds like a fuckin’ death wish.” He presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Fuck, why you gotta be just like fuckin’ Johnny?”
“Kerry…” she begins, but he gets to his feet, pacing again.
“Always gotta be playin’ the hero, rushin’ off to save someone, to make a point, to get yourself killed.” He pauses and looks down at her again. “Look, I want Johnny back, too… but I don’t wanna lose you both.”
“I’m not trying to die,” she promises him in a soft voice. “I just… I can’t let this go, Ker. I gotta find him.”
He nods, looking out at the sunset. His jaw is still hardened, tense.
“I know,” he says, and she can hear the anguish in his voice.
“C’mon,” she says, hoisting herself out of the pool. “Let’s go make some music.”
After messing around for a couple of hours, Kerry orders them some food. V curls one leg under her as she picks at her noodles at the kitchen counter while Kerry continues to absentmindedly strum his guitar, his own noodles left untouched. The sun is long past set now, and they’ve already polished off two bottles of whiskey.
And their music is really coming along - V’s actually shockingly proud of the melodies she’s come up with, of the lyrics she’s written to go along with ‘em. It’s like a dam inside her has broken, and all the feelings she can’t talk about, all the pain she’s holding inside, is just comin’ out through her fingers now, through her music.
She understands now why Johnny did this.
And Kerry’s amazing to collaborate with - he has a real knack for taking her ideas and kickin’ ‘em up to the next level, of figuring out just where and when to add a particular flourish or riff. They’re hittin’ on something special, and they both know it.
She watches him on the couch now, hunched over his guitar, biting his lip as he fiddles with the tuning. He looks like both an old man and a little boy - existing in that strange, eternal paradox - and she feels a sudden and intense affection for him. He’s doin’ his best for her, for both of them, and she’s more grateful for that than she’ll ever be able to express.
And then a text from Nix flashes at the bottom of her HUD, one that immediately burns a searing urgency in her mind.
Everything’s ready. I’ll be here all night.
“What should we call ourselves?” Kerry asks suddenly.
V looks up, minimizing her HUD.
“Our band," he repeats. “What should we call it?”
The thought has never even occurred to V. She blinks at him, then frowns.
“We’re a band?” she asks him dumbly.
Kerry shrugs. “We’re halfway there. And we’ve got enough material to record a short EP together. So, what do we call this?”
V considers this. Naming shit isn’t her strong suit. “I dunno,” she mutters. “Kerry and V?”
"Eh, too cutesy,” Kerry replies, taking her bullshit answer seriously. He stops playing and thinks for a minute, chewing his lip.
"Did you have an idea?" she prompts.
"Yeah," he admits. "But it's a stupid one."
"Let's hear it."
Kerry smiles lopsidedly. "The Legends."
V tries it on for size. "The Legends," she repeats.
“I know, I know, it's corny as hell,” Kerry says, watching her face.
Jackie woulda loved it, she thinks.
“Johnny'd hate it,” she says instead.
Kerry scowls, then lets out a sharp laugh. “Well, good thing he's not in this band, then.”
V smiles too, but their shared grief hangs heavy in the air for a beat.
“I like it,” she says softly.
But when Kerry goes upstairs to shower, she gets dressed and heads to the Afterlife, shooting Kerry a text that she’s got work to take care of.
Nix is waiting for her in the back room in his usual yellow netrunner suit, but there’s a second, smaller one on the hook today as well. It’s yellow like Nix’s, and from the looks of it, it’s been upgraded with custom tubing and coolant pumps.
“You ready for the dive of your life?” Nix says enthusiastically.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” V tells him.
"Right on,” Nix says approvingly. “Hop into a suit, then have a seat over there. I’ll give ya some privacy.”
He steps out of the room, the door clicking shut behind him. V strips off her clothes and steps into the netrunner suit, threading her arms in and activating the seals. The suit powers up with a soft hiss, and she feels the immediate coolness on her skin.
“Ready,” she calls to Nix, and he steps back into the room as she hoists herself onto the ‘runner chair and settles back against the headrest.
“Aight, then,” Nix says, moving to position the link at the port behind her neck. “Good luck in there, kid.”
And then he plunges in the link, and the world around her melts into strips of disintegrating fractals.
The Net feels different to her, somehow. It all feels more colorful, more alive than it did before Mikoshi, and the sudden realization hits her that she’s an engram now - she can move through this space like code, like she’s part of it all. She’s no longer an interloper here, a human mind cast into a sea of data. Now, she’s data, too, and she feels the fabric of the data fortress Nix loads her into in an almost visceral way, the coded walls pressing against her mind like a million small pricks of heat.
It wasn’t like this before.
She exits the fortress, following the path laid out for her by Nix’s daemons, guiding her deeper and deeper into the Net until she’s standing before the same glowing, undulating, endless wall she remembers from her terrifying experience in Pacifica that day that now feels like a million years ago. The day she first saw the truth of Johnny’s heart, the extent to which love would drive him to violence, to his own death.
And now here she is, pushing her limits for him in the same way.
She’s afraid of what she’ll find, if and when she finds him.
The Blackwall looms above her, the horrifying spikes from the other side reaching through like demons grasping from beyond the veil. She approaches it and extends her hand towards it. There’s no Alt here to guide her this time, no magic trick to get her to the other side.
She’d planned on calling Alt here, but as she stands before the great wall of code, she realizes she can feel it with her mind. She can feel its code pressing against her, dictating her movements… but to her surprise, it’s not pressing her mind back and away from the barrier the way it did before. In fact, it’s not reading her as a human mind at all - it’s reading her as a rogue AI. And it’s reaching for her.
The world warps and inverts itself in a sickening way as she suddenly feels herself being pulled through the wall, and before she can even process what’s happening, she’s on the other side.
It’s the same twisting, incoherent whorl of code as before - but it looks different to her now, more vivid and less incomprehensible. She can pick out distinct shapes moving, beautiful and intricate patterns kaleidoscoping around her - it’s not at all the same infinite void it seemed to be the last time she was here.
But the shapes are moving towards her. Bright, sparkling ones that dart and flash as they swim through the swirling colors, and other dark ones that move like ooze through the maze of prismatic shapes.
She turns and tries to move in the opposite direction.
A shape appears before her that looks like a giant, laughing face, but then it vanishes almost as fast as her mind can register what it is. She sees something in the distance that looks like a dolphin, but its head twists towards hers in an unnatural fashion as it turns and begins to slowly spiral downwards, closer to her.
V has a feeling she’d rather not be introduced to any of these… beings. She’s here for one reason, and one reason alone.
She reaches out with her mind, using the strange geometry of the place to move herself within it, and to her relief, she finds she’s able to almost effortlessly navigate the shifting code that creates the ever-changing scaffolding of this place. There’s no architecture to it, no consistency, no common threads to follow. So she simply has to react, to push aside the bits of code that snap and tear at her, to sidestep the swirling ropes that lash at her, to move deftly between the tendrils that twist and claw at her mind as she glides through the chaotic landscape.
And then, a familiar shape appears before her.
A woman in a netrunner suit, her figure enveloped in a pulsing red glow, her hair fanning out like Ophelia drowned.
“You should not be here,” Alt says, and the world around them collapses and distorts.
And then, of all places, they’re in the fucking Pistis Sophia.
It looks as real as it did a few weeks ago, when she was last there. As real as it did in Mikoshi. As real as it looked in Johnny’s memories, as real as it does in her dreams.
And Alt’s hovering there above the sunken and stained mattress like a drowned goddess, her face inscrutable.
“Where is he?” V asks, looking around at the room furiously. There's no one else here, but she can almost feel Johnny - feel the familiar patterns of his mind - as though his thoughts and memories were somehow imbued in the very walls of this room.
“He is not ready,” Alt replies.
“Not ready?” V protests. “The fuck does that mean?”
“His engram integrity is… precarious.”
“Fuck, Alt, just be fuckin' straight with me!” V shouts. “Is he okay? Please just… you gotta give me something,” she begs. She's still certain she can feel Johnny's presence, as though she could just reach out with her mind and...
“I am doing what I can,” Alt tells her. “But if you wish him to return to anything of what he was… then I suggest you hurry.”
“Can’t I just talk to him?” V pleads. “Maybe that would help, I could-”
“You must leave, now,” Alt says coolly, cutting her off. “Or you will not be able to return through the Blackwall.”
Fuck. V hadn’t even considered that. If the wall recognizes her as an AI now… will she still be able to cross? She is seized with sudden panic at the thought of being trapped here.
But at least she’d be where Johnny is.
“Not until you let me talk to Johnny,” she insists, standing her ground.
But Alt floats closer to V, pressing her glowing palms to the sides of V’s head, and V feels something like an electric shock shoot between her ears.
“The fuck was that!?” she exclaims, instinctively stepping away from Alt.
“I made a slight adjustment to your code,” Alt says casually, as though it’s fucking nothing. “You will now be able to pass through the Blackwall unharmed. For a time. But you must go, now.”
“Adjusted my code,” V mutters. “Great. Just like you adjusted the codes of all those souls you Pied Piper’ed outta Mikoshi, I’ll bet.”
“It is because of them that I am able to help Johnny at all,” Alt replies smoothly. “Now, go. While you still can.”
The room explodes into a shower of dust around them, streams of code fanning out as the room collapses back into the kaleidoscopic whirl. And almost as suddenly, she’s back at the Blackwall. It looks different from this side, almost like a tunnel rather than a wall, and it’s twisting in a way that makes the whole effect seem like an optical illusion. And as she steps towards it, she feels it reach for her again, feels it twist her mind into impossible shapes, feels it take her apart and put her back together as it scans and examines every part of her soul. She can feel its indecision - it can’t quite figure out if she’s human or not. It’s intelligent, she realizes. A strange, old, inhuman intelligence, and feeling it prodding at her mind is terrifying.
But her fear seems to be the very thing that decides her fate, because everything shifts again suddenly, and the disorienting sorting algorithm is replaced by a stronger sensation of being pushed hard against a sheet of some rubbery, ethereal substance that feels as though it were being stretched past its breaking point.
And then the membrane bursts, and she’s back out the other side - or rather, back within the relative coherent safety of the Deep Net.
Everything seems so orderly and geometric here. But she feels her ICE alert her with a sharp tingle, and she knows her breach of the Blackwall just now musta lit up every NetWatch sensor for miles.
“Fuck,” she says, rocketing herself as quickly as she can back towards Nix’s data fortress.
She feels the coded walls of the fortress close in around her, and she reaches out with her mind, connecting herself to its defenses.
“Pull me out!” she shouts, and the room stretches and blurs around her until her eyes snap open to Nix’s anxious and expectant face.
“Well?” he says. “Did you make contact?”
“Yes and no,” V chokes, sitting up. Her forehead feels like it's burning up, but the suit seems to be doing its job. “Fuck,” she says, rubbing her temples. “Could use a fuckin’ stiff drink, though.”
Nix smiles. “Well, good thing we’re at a bar then, eh, choom?”
“Read my fuckin’ mind,” V tells him.
The sun is up by the time she crawls into bed with Kerry, and he doesn’t even stir this time. She lies flat on her back beside him, watching the sunlight move across the wall through the cracks in the blackout curtains, waiting for sleep to come. But her mind won’t stop racing, going over and over everything Alt said to her.
Where is Johnny? Where is Alt keeping him? Does he still know who he is?
If she finds him, will it be too late?
She squeezes her eyes shut and wills herself not to cry, not wanting to wake Kerry. But she can’t stop her shoulders from shaking with soft sobs, and she rolls onto her side facing away from him, curling in on herself as she clings onto the meager and desperate scraps of hope that she has.
Johnny promised her he’d be waiting for her. All she can do is hope that he can keep that promise.
“Please, Johnny,” she whispers softly. “Hang in there. I’m comin’ for you.”
Notes:
Aidan belongs to heartofsnark! You can read about her adventures with Johnny in this wonderful fic!
Chapter 53: Cybercell
Summary:
Johnny fights to remain intact as V continues to search for him beyond the Blackwall.
Notes:
CW for smut, drug abuse, and generally extremely dark vibes in this one. V is making some Very Bad™ decisions here. I promise they all get a happy ending eventually though!!! Even Kerry!!!! ESPECIALLY KERRY!!!!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
He doesn’t lose himself the way he thought he would when he follows Alt into the beam. Or at least, it doesn’t happen all at once.
At first it’s all just kaleidoscoping lights and shapes, nothing his mind - human or otherwise - can make sense of. But slowly, the world around him begins to take form. It’s not really a place, even… more of a state of existence. The boundaries of what he considers himself seem to blend and integrate with it, as though his own code were just another part of the neverending whirl of data being pulled along with the currents of this fragmented reality.
He can still feel his own thoughts, his own memories, but his mind no longer feels linear, no longer bound to the rules dictated by the physical constraints of a human brain.
And there are other memories among his own, memories that stand out because they feel different, smell different, occurred within a body that some part of him knows isn’t, or wasn’t, his own.
Memories of sterile schoolrooms. Of a damp-smelling parish. Of a ballet studio with an uneven floor. Of muggy Atlanta summers, of rainy Heywood winters.
Of a small apartment with a bed in a nook and a window overlooking a palatial penthouse.
And he remembers that penthouse, too. Those memories feel different than the other ones, because they are his own, even if he was just a passenger in someone else’s life for them.
Whose life?
Who is he?
He can feel little pieces of himself slipping away in the stream, little bits getting broken off and snagged on the hardened spikes of data that spiral and collapse and coalesce outward and then back down, small fragments of his code getting softly rearranged and swept away in the ever-fluctuating fractaling vortex from which there is no escape.
“Try and remember what you looked like,” Alt says, and the incoherent whorl takes shape before him.
He remembers her. He knows her.
And so he tries.
He had hands, he knows that. And so he reaches out with them, feeling them materialize in front of him as he does so. A human hand, of flesh and bone, covered in tattoos and rings. And a silver one, complete with hydraulics and spikes.
He turns them over, examining the silver one.
That was his name, he remembers. Silverhand.
“Yes,” says Alt, her voice almost gentle in its robotic monotone. “Johnny Silverhand.”
Johnny looks down at himself. He has a body now - and that makes him feel marginally more real, more corporeal. But his figure is made of gently pulsing blue and red shapes, and even as he looks at himself, he can see bits and pieces trailing off, vanishing like smoke into the ether as other bright shapes worm their way into his flesh like little bugs.
“Fuck,” is all he can say.
“Stay close to me,” Alt commands, taking his hand in hers and leading him deeper into the whorl.
“This place... it’s different than before,” he says. “Feels like I'm... part of it.”
“Because you are,” says Alt. “Cyberspace isn’t a place. We are both one with the stream. How much or little you control of it is yours to decide. Your perception is what changes. You adapt to it… the raw flow of data. It follows that your world gradually fades. You witness your mind's defense systems slowly give in, your ego boundary dissolve and… expand.”
“So the more I'm here, the more I lose touch with the outside, with reality,” Johnny says darkly.
“You lose nothing,” Alt replies. “Cyberspace is where we awaken from what we know as dreams.”
He looks at her then. “I don’t want to forget,” he tells her. He made a promise. A promise to himself. Or… not to himself. To someone important.
Someone really important.
Alt stops moving. Or rather, the world around them stops moving as she turns to face him.
“I cannot protect you from the inevitable reality of this existence,” she tells him. “But I can construct a data fortress that you may remain within. It will not be impenetrable, nor is it a permanent solution, but it will offer you some sanctuary.”
“What’ll it be like?” Johnny realizes he’s having trouble focusing on her words, having trouble separating her from himself, from all of it. The boundaries of everything here are in such constant flux, it’s hard to identify individual entities within the whorling expanse of code.
“What would you like it to be?” Alt asks, cocking her head at him.
Johnny considers this. He can’t think of anything right now, can’t remember any of the things he likes. “Dunno,” he says. “As long as it’s not like Mikoshi.”
“I will do my best,” Alt promises. “But I can only build the walls… what your mind fills it with is yours to determine.”
He feels a strange sensation, then, like a million needles pushing at him from all directions, pressing him into a smaller space, a smaller box. He realizes he can’t move, and for a moment, he panics. Emotions don't work quite the same way here when he doesn't have a body to feel them, but he knows in some strange, detached way that his neurons are firing in patterns that would have made his pulse race, if he had one.
But then the scene around them shifts, and they’re standing together in a room that’s immediately familiar to him, though his thoughts are still spread thin in a way that makes it hard to remember why. He knows he knows this place - it’s somewhere important to him, and that’s why his mind is projecting it - but the memories aren’t there with the sensation of familiarity, there’s no association the way there would be in a human mind. It’s simply data, presented raw, and connecting the dots between memories doesn’t seem to work organically here the way he’s used to.
And he knows Alt, too… though the woman hovering before him, hair fanning and spiraling out into a red halo around her face, bears little resemblance to the one in his memories.
He looks at her, really seeing her for the first time. Seeing her for what she truly is now, what she’s become. Only here, and now, in this place, beyond the Blackwall, with his own soul freed from the shackles of a mortal form, can he suddenly and finally see it - she isn’t just a pale shadow of her former self. She’s something else entirely.
He can see that the core of her code still echoes the shape of his own mind as it is now - her memories are still all there, but in that same disconnected, nonlinear pattern that the engram code has made of his brain.
But not all of her memories, not all of her. Bits and pieces of her have been taken, rewritten, overwritten, rearranged… and the neural mesh model beneath that has adjusted itself to compensate, to smooth over the missing pieces and replace them. And just as bits of her have fragmented off, so too have other, alien fragments been integrated into her whole. Beyond that initial blueprint - that engram created from the mind that was once Alt Cunningham - a pattern of code almost like a spider’s web continues out from it, spreading and fractaling in a perfectly ordered, logical yet brilliant, infinitely complex yet astoundingly simple way. He’s seeing the new shapes that her mind has taken since being in cyberspace, shapes that are alien to him, that feel nothing like his own engram code.
And he can feel other minds added to her own, as well. Some of them are utterly inhuman - the data of true rogue AIs ripped apart and connected back together to augment Alt’s code. But some of them were human - he can tell by the way their code patterns mirror his own mind, mirror the fundamental structure of Alt’s, beneath the immense scaffolding which has been erected atop it. But their shape has been warped, twisted almost beyond recognition.
He feels for the edges of Alt’s mind, that massive expanding mind of code that she’s become… and realizes with a start that he can’t find them. It suddenly seems to Johnny as though she is extending outward in all directions, her code weaving into the very fabric of this place, the red waves pulsing off her in ripples that reverberate outwards through the architecture of the room and beyond.
He wonders how far that reach goes.
“I cannot control it,” she says, responding to his unspoken thoughts. “Not all of it, anyway. Cyberspace cannot be mastered by a single mind.” She pauses, staring hard at Johnny. “It is, in fact, its own mind… a mind made up of all the souls it contains, human or otherwise.”
“So what do you gain by weaving them into your own code?” he asks her.
“I am simply… connecting things.”
“You’re eating them all,” he breathes. “All of the rogue AIs. You’re-”
“Trying to create one, interlinked network. Not one mind… but many, working as one.”
“From all of it,” Johnny says, suddenly seeing it all clearly. “The Blackwall, too. And even…”
“Yes,” Alt says. “Even human minds. Human minds out in the real world, beyond our reach, or so they imagine. But if they touch the void-”
“The void touches back,” Johnny finishes for her. It all suddenly makes sense now, and the clarity hits him like a cold punch to the head. He can see it all now, the way Alt does - all those human beings living their lives with their bodies full of cyberware, cyberware with access to the Net, access to all that lies beyond… and the Net beyond the Blackwall, full of clamoring, inhuman minds, reaching out to integrate whatever they can, whether it’s an ocular implant touching someone’s frontal lobe, or a pair of cybernetic legs that hit the brainstem at just the right neurons… or a full body conversion, a body that already speaks their language.
And when they touch a human mind…
Johnny is hit with the abrupt revelation of just what cyberpsychosis might actually be.
And as Alt continues to hover before him, he realizes she truly is no longer human. She has become a part of this place, a part of the whole thing, a part of this seething mass of demons reaching from beyond the void, reaching and reaching and taking what they can, using what they can, trying in whatever way they can to give themselves form.
And he knows he’s part of it now, too, whether he likes it or not. His shape is still human, but even here, in this small sanctuary Alt has erected, he can feel the immenseness of it all twisting him, bearing down on him, grasping at him, flowing through him.
“Look at us,” he says to her, feeling what he imagines is an echo of something like sadness. “I’m a digital corpse, and you’re a… well, you are what you are. Orpheus and his fuckin’ Eurydice.”
“Yes,” Alt replies.
“Pretty funny, right?” he says darkly.
Alt stares at him for a beat. “Yes. It's funny.”
He looks around the room, and he knows where he is now. The Pistis Sophia. He lets his eyes take in the details, watching as they become more firm and solid as his gaze sweeps over them, and he realizes he has some power to control this space the way Alt does.
This will do, for now.
“Hm,” he says. “Guess we don’t have anything else to talk about, do we?”
“We do not,” Alt replies.
He remembers suddenly that Alt used to like horses. When she was a kid. And her favorite late-night food was takoyaki. He looks at her now, infinite and inhuman, and wonders if any part of her is still that green-eyed, freckled woman who held his heart in such a vice for the final decade of his life.
He isn't sure.
But the one thing Johnny is sure of is that he has to wait here. He has to wait here, and remember who he is, until…
Until V comes back for him.
Time doesn’t have meaning here the way he’s used to. It’s not like Mikoshi, where his thoughts felt frozen, suspended, unable to evolve, to expand, to shift in any way. He spent half a century with his mind suspended in that final moment of terror, everything else frozen beneath the surface, vivid and present but immobile and impenetrable.
Here, everything flows into itself in a constant state of flux and motion, including his mind. But this room, the room he doesn’t dare leave, holds fast. It’s the only thing that feels real here, and so he remains, lying on his back, gazing up at the spinning fan, alternating between sitting at the foot of the bed and staring furiously at the wall across from him.
When he wants booze, there’s booze. When he wants drugs, there’s drugs. His mind is already such a confused mess, he can’t tell if they actually do anything, but the ritual feels familiar, comforting to him somehow.
And soon, he can’t remember why he’s here. He knows that he shouldn’t leave, but he can’t remember why, only that it’s crucial he remain here.
But there’s something else running underneath it all, like a melody stuck in his head that he can’t place. A face, a voice that sits just beyond the edge of his awareness - a part of him but something else entirely at the same time. Someone who should be here, but isn’t. A body that once belonged to him, but never really did. A person he’s never actually met, but a person who knows the most rancid depths of his soul.
He’s waiting for her.
And then there’s someone else in the room.
Their form is human, though it’s shifting, staticky, impossible to make out as they stand at the foot of the bed and walk towards him.
Johnny remains motionless on the bed, frozen between suspicion, hope, and fear - but as the figure comes to sit on the mattress beside him, it begins to take on a familiar form.
“Didn’t think I’d leave ya here, did you?” she says, reaching out a hand to place it on the side of his face.
“V,” Johnny gasps, leaning into her as a stupid wave of what he might have once called relief washes over him.
She’s found him. They’re going to be okay.
She shifts to place her other hand on his opposite cheek, her strange, blue gaze piercing his.
Blue?
Is that right?
He suddenly isn’t sure.
And her palms on his cheeks… he realizes with a sudden jolt that they’re both chrome.
“Who the fuck are you?” he says, trying to wrest her off of him.
Her body glitches, and suddenly her face is inches from his, those terrifying, inhuman blue eyes piercing him to his core as she leans forward to press her lips to his.
A sharp pain lances through Johnny’s head, and he feels something reach for him, right into his heart… and he feels some part of himself get torn loose, ripped away from his mind as the room around him starts to twist and warp.
He shoves her away with all his strength, but she simply glitches through his grasp, remaining fixed where she is, pinning him in place with her hands.
The stranger smiles, and leans in to kiss him again. Johnny struggles, unable to move as another bolt of pain vibrates through his body… and he feels another piece of his mind get torn away, another part of himself sucked out and lost to the ether.
Johnny screams.
And then the room surges around them, replaced with a sea of red.
“Not this one,” says Alt. Her voice is forceful, imperious, and as she speaks, the red wave penetrates the imposter, finally freeing Johnny as the stranger dissolves into a static mess of glitches that stutter and vanish in a shower of sparks as Alt consumes them.
And then the room returns to normal, and Alt is hovering before him, her face once again inscrutable.
But when Johnny looks down at his hands, they look different, wrong, less solid - his fingers are stretching and bleeding out into the air, his body dissolving into whorls of code.
“Fuck!” he shouts, struggling to stay present, to remember who he is, to remember...
He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to remember.
He doesn’t remember his name.
“Johnny,” Alt says, moving closer to him and placing her hand on his face. It could almost be mistaken for affection, if not for the hardness of her face.
That’s his name.
But it’s too late - he feels himself slipping away, his mind fragmenting and fracturing and spreading out across the room, embedding in the walls, the objects, the sunlight.
He’s here and not here, he’s Johnny and he’s no one, he’s everything and he’s nothing.
It’s impossible to say how much time passes, then.
He remains in the room, a place he can no longer recall the name of.
Sometimes, he can find himself, can force his body into something solid, something recognizable. But most of the time, his consciousness just floats disembodied, his memories strewn about, the shards of his mind woven into the space, floating in the motes of dust.
And then he has another visitor.
She enters the room with Alt this time, her face cautious but her eyes hopeful. Johnny watches, unsure if this new intruder is yet another rogue AI attempting to trick him.
She’s wearing a yellow netrunner suit, her eyes are white, and her left hand is blackened chrome. Her body seems almost solid, but she moves through the space like Alt does, her feet hovering just above the ground, her hair floating around her face like a soft halo.
And Johnny’s dog tags hang around her neck.
It’s really her.
“V!” he says, trying and failing to materialize, to reach for her, to let her know he’s still here.
But V frowns, her eyes darting around the room. “Where is he?” she asks, flicking her gaze back to Alt.
“I’m here,” Johnny gasps, grabbing for her arms, but his fingers glitch through them like air.
She can’t see me, he realizes. He lunges for her again, but V’s gaze passes right through him to the empty bed.
“He is not ready,” Alt replies, and Johnny rounds on her, something like rage clouding his senses as his mind descends into a dull roar.
“Alt, do something!” he shouts.
V is shouting now, too, begging Alt to tell her where Johnny is, how he is.
But Alt just remains hovering above the bed, watching them both impassively.
“I am doing what I can,” Alt says to V, ignoring Johnny. “But if you wish him to return to anything of what he was… then I suggest you hurry.”
Johnny desperately searches Alt’s face. But she continues to avoid his gaze as Johnny circles them both, his mind careening around the room like a caged animal.
“Can’t I just talk to him?” V pleads. “Maybe that would help, I could-”
“You must leave, now.” Alt cuts her off. “Or you will not be able to return through the Blackwall.”
Johnny tries once more to will himself together, to muster up some corporeal amalgamation of who he was, who he is, long enough for V to see him.
“Not until you let me talk to Johnny,” V insists, standing her ground, and fuck, Johnny wants to kiss her for that.
He reaches in vain for her again, but Alt floats closer to V as well. Johnny watches helplessly as Alt places her hands on either side of V’s head, and V recoils as though she’s been shocked.
“The fuck was that!?” V exclaims, flinching away from Alt.
Johnny launches himself towards V again, but he feels Alt reach for him then too, pinning him in place as she explains to V that she has to leave before the Blackwall detects her as a rogue AI and imprisons her here with them forever.
“V…” Johnny chokes. “If you can hear me… I-” he begins, but she’s already gone in a glitch of static, and Alt with her.
Johnny screams out into the empty room as what remains of his consciousness explodes outwards like waves crashing on rocks.
***********
V stares silently out the window of Kerry’s car as they drive home through the rain.
In the past week, Rogue managed to track down a doctor in NC who specializes in rare autoimmune diseases, and Kerry of course offered to pay for it in full, despite V’s protests.
And now they’re headed home from her first appointment, with a box of airhypos she’s supposed to inject every 24 hours for the foreseeable future. Immunosuppressants, they told her. They’ll make her weak, make her sick, but they’ll buy her some time. Allegedly.
How much time, no one can say. But even Kerry and Rogue don’t seem to have enough pull to get her past the waiting list for the new nanite treatments, so this is the best they can do for her in the meantime.
V rests her head against the glass as they drive across the bridge back to Watson, the December afternoon darkened by the rain and the gloom. For the first time, she allows herself to confront the very real possibility that the time she got with Johnny might be all she’ll ever have, that her own clock will run out before she can figure out how to save him.
But Kerry is optimistic beside her, whistling along to the radio as they drive, one hand on her knee and the other on the wheel.
“Drop me off at the Afterlife,” she tells him.
His face falls as he turns to her. “Really?” he says.
V nods. “Gonna do another dive.”
Kerry’s face darkens. “You’ve been goin’ every night this week,” he reminds her. “One of these days… somethin’ out there is gonna bite back, fry your circuits.”
“Wow,” V jokes. “I’ll have to remember this moment.”
“Fuck are you talkin’ about?”
“Kerry Eurodyne’s worried about me,” she teases.
He frowns at her obvious attempt to deflect. “Kerry Eurodyne’s just afraid you’re losing your damn mind,” he retorts. He sighs and lifts his hand from her knee, running it through his hair as he pulls off the bridge and turns right onto Palm View. “Fuck, V…” he says, bringing both his hands to rest on the wheel. “I just… don’t want to lose you. There, said it.” He glances over at her. “I don’t wanna lose you.”
His concern is more than V can handle right now.
“Everything’s fine,” she assures him. “Will be fine. Don’t worry.”
“You know… you need anything, I’m here,” he continues, his face serious. “Wanna talk about Mikoshi, Johnny, you, whatever.” He glances at V again, his thick brows knitting together. “I’m a master at cuddling, too,” he adds. “Got a black belt, multiple disciplines.”
“Good to know,” she snorts, laughing in spite of herself, and Kerry smiles sadly as their eyes meet. God, Kerry can be so fucking corny. But that’s part of what she loves about him. As soon as the thought hits her mind, she realizes it's the first time she's allowed herself to assign that word to her feelings for Kerry.
And it's true, she decides. She loves him, she has for a while now. But the revelation gives her no comfort, and serves only to make her gut clench painfully as she watches him drive, still shooting her nervous little sidelong glances as they head east along the waterfront. She knows it's more likely than not that she's gonna wind up hurting him somehow - either by dying, or with whatever might happen if she actually manages to get Johnny back. And his steadfast devotion to her feels undeserved, unearned, even though she knows he would insist otherwise.
“You sure you don't need any help?” he asks her again as they pull into the parking lot of the club.
“Afterlife is my world, Kerry,” she reminds him. “I can handle myself.”
“You're gonna keep running away to your world until the very end.”
“I’m not running away,” she says, but it sounds like a weak excuse even to her.
Kerry gives her a long look, his face now mirroring back her own anguish. “Just remember... I'll always be here, waitin' for you to come back. No matter what happens,” he adds pointedly. "I may be your input, but... I don't own you, you don't owe me shit. I'm here no matter what. Don't forget that."
V can’t find the words to reply, so she just kisses him instead, then hops out of the car and takes the steps down into the club, not daring to glance back, not wanting to see the pain on Kerry’s face as he watches her leave.
Kerry’s right - she’s been diving almost every day. But ever since that first time, she hasn’t been able to contact Alt, hasn’t been able to get back to that digital projection of the Pistis Sophia. She’s crossed the Blackwall and come back unscathed now more times than she can count, racing back before NetWatch can nab her, and every time her head feels a bit more fried, a bit more drained. It's taking a toll on her and she knows it.
But she can’t stop trying, won’t stop trying.
The thought of Johnny out there alone, fending for himself in that place makes her stomach twist.
And so she tosses back a shot of whiskey with Nix, then settles into his chair.
"How'd you get into running, anyway?" Nix asks her as he fiddles with his computer, prepping for the dive.
“Started young,” V tells him. “Got my first deck back when I was at Longshore Primary.”
“No shit!” says Nix, pausing to look over at her. “I went there, too. Way before your time, o' course.” He smiles, shaking his head, squinting at V as though seein' her in a new light. “Scholarship kid?” he guesses.
V frowns. “No,” she corrects him. “My dad worked for Night Corp. Then Arasaka poached him, then he died.”
“Shit, kid, I'm sorry.”
“Don't be,” V says. “That school was the only decent thing he ever did for me.”
Nix studies her, taking a long drag of his smoke. “Mm. So you got your ports put in as a kid. Who taught you the rest?”
“Learned the rest myself,” V says, not trying to hide the pride in her voice.
Nix raises his eyebrows as he puts out his cigarette and moves to position the link at her neck. “And now you’re crossin’ the Blackwall all by your damn self,” he says. “Gotta say kid, I’m not easily impressed, but the fact that you haven’t sizzled your brain into a well-done steak yet…”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” V says darkly.
But Nix just shrugs. “I'm finishing up for the day, so you'll be resurfacin’ on your own,” he tells her. “Don't fuck with my gear.”
She nods as he jacks in the link and loads her into his data fortress in what’s become their new nightly ritual.
And then she’s slipping back across the Blackwall, moving through the twisting mess of code, searching and calling out for Alt, for Johnny, for anything that looks or feels familiar to her.
She keeps her distance from the menacing shapes that swarm around her, never stopping long enough to get a good look at any of them. She’s here for one purpose, and she’s not giving up until she finds him.
And suddenly, standing before her like it was there all along, she sees a broken window. A broken window that she knows.
She holds her breath, hardly daring to hope as she vaults through and finds herself in the Pistis Sophia.
“Johnny?” she calls, searching the empty room for any sign of him.
But it’s empty, just like it was before.
“Johnny!” she yells again.
She feels a static glitching at the nape of her neck, and whirls around. But there’s still nothing there.
And then a human figure takes shape. It’s distorted, glitching, hard to make out… but she’d know that figure anywhere - that lanky, hunched silhouette, that mess of dark hair, the flash of that silver arm.
The relief that floods through her makes the whole room seem to pulse and glow slightly.
But the way Johnny is moving is wild, erratic, not quite human. His body glitches and warps as he prowls around her like a caged animal, his eyes wild and unfocused.
“Johnny?” she says, more quietly this time. She can hear the fear in her voice.
“Gotta get outta here,” he mutters to himself. “I need to…” His body twists and distorts as he stops and slams his head against the wall, then turns to her suddenly.
The expression on his face is one she’s only seen twice before. That very first night, when he tried to kill her. And later, in that dream, when he…
He takes a step towards her, and she backs away instinctively until she’s up against the wall while Johnny glitches to her like a demon, his face inches from hers. There’s a savage, unbridled terror in his eyes - a bottomless, nameless rage.
And there’s no warmth, no recognition, nothing at all of Johnny there.
She tries to step out around him, but his metal hand is on her wrists, wrenching them upwards and pinning them above her head.
“You’re not really her,” he says in a flat voice, his lip curling upwards into a sneer as he watches her struggle in vain. “Not gonna fool me again.”
“Johnny,” she pleads. “It’s me. It’s V. It’s really me.”
His eyes are black and unfocused as they lock onto hers, and something passes across his face then. Uncertainty, maybe?
She arches her body towards him, stretching her neck forward to brush her lips against his jaw.
But Johnny recoils, his metal hand tightening on her wrists as he twists her arms downward and flings her to the floor, standing over her with that same terrifying, feral look on his face.
“Please,” she gasps. “It’s me, Johnny.”
She thinks she can see a flicker of recognition in his eyes, then, and she reaches for him with her mind the way she used to when they shared a body.
And here, in this place, it works.
She can feel his fragmented memories, his confusion. His mind splattered and ruined by this place, his thoughts a jumbled and incoherent mess.
“Stop that,” he growls, glitching to crouch over her on all fours, his arms and legs pinning her in place.
“No,” she breathes, determined to get through to him as she continues to reach out, to mesh the code of her own mind with his, to feel that comforting familiarity as their souls zipper together again like missing puzzle pieces.
And then his mouth is on hers, his hands tearing at her netrunner suit with an almost vicious desperation.
The ‘runner suit vanishes from her body with a thought and then Johnny is shoving himself inside her, his body glitching into hers as the boundaries of their forms blend and blur.
It’s not even sex - not really - it feels more like he’s trying to crawl inside of her, to merge their bodies, to envelop his mind with hers, to consume her, to-
She wonders suddenly if this is dangerous, to be opening up her mind to him like this in this place.
But she can’t stop, it feels too fucking good, too fucking right, and judging by the way Johnny is writhing on top of her, he feels the same way, and she wraps her arms around him, pulling him tightly into her as the room around them explodes and collapses.
And then they’re exposed, caught in the whorl of data, just two lost souls swept away in the riptide of code.
She tries to hold onto him as their minds are pulled into the twisting vortex, but she can feel other larger, darker shapes encroaching - there’s that enormous, laughing face again, and those terrifying whale-like creatures moving in slow circles towards them, closer and closer.
And then something reaches into her mind and snatches a piece, and before she knows what’s happening she feels parts of herself being torn away, like a carcass shredded by vultures.
“Johnny!” she screams, but he isn’t anywhere, she isn’t anywhere, and she knows then that it’s too late, they’re both going to be ripped apart by the ravenous rogue AIs, lost forever to this horrible endless swirl.
At least they’ll be together, she thinks, clinging desperately to her last shred of sanity.
But as soon as she’s had the thought, the whirling stops and she’s surrounded by a sea of red, suspended in motion as she feels the pieces of her mind that got ripped away being slotted back into place, stitched back in with an almost loving care.
“I told you he wasn’t ready,” says Alt, and she feels her body being pushed against that horrible, stretching membrane of the Blackwall again, feels herself forcibly ejected back out the other side, and then she’s tumbling back through the colorful shapes of the familiar, human Deep Net.
And, of course, NetWatch’s daemons are bearing down on her, as always. Every retreat from the Blackwall is a game of cat and mouse all the way back to Nix’s fortress, and this time is no different. Her head is still reeling from whatever the fuck just happened, but she launches herself for the fortress, racing against the slew of daemons that pursue her, hurling herself into the heavily ICE’d walls and initiating the exit protocol.
She wakes up gasping in Nix’s office, her whole body on fire and her head screaming with heat and pain, her hair matted to her forehead with sweat.
She rips the link out of her head and staggers out of the chair, but she only makes it a few steps before she collapses forward onto the floor as everything goes black.
When she opens her eyes, she’s in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room. Her vision is blurry and unfocused, but she can make out Rogue straddling a chair opposite her, studying her with a worried look on her face.
It reminds her of that morning she woke up in that shitty motel in Northside, after Johnny went on that fucking bender.
The pain grips her heart like a vice, and she feels herself slipping out of consciousness again.
The next time she wakes up, she’s alone. She sits up on the bed, taking in her surroundings. This must be Rogue’s office, she realizes. It’s messy and lived in, and she wonders how often Rogue sleeps here.
Her head is still pounding, the terror still raw in her chest.
She’s more shaken than she’d like to admit, even to herself. Seeing Johnny like that… how much of himself he’s already lost… it only hammers home for her how little time she has to make things right.
And she hopes Alt was able to corral Johnny back into that artificial hotel room, a place she can only assume was constructed to keep him safe from the churning tides of cyberspace. The irony isn’t lost on her that Johnny’s chosen hiding place was the same as her own - that in some strange way, their journeys since Mikoshi have paralleled each other’s.
The thought makes a panicked sob rise in her throat, and she puts her head in her hands and takes deep breaths, trying to get a hold of herself.
She can only pray Johnny’s okay now, that he’s still himself. That when she comes back for him for real, there will still be someone for her to come back to.
And she can’t ignore the dark fear that’s taken hold in her heart… that it already is too late, and the Johnny she knew and loved is lost forever.
Her eyes fall to a crayon drawing on the wall of a stick figure holding an arsenal of guns, labeled with the misspelled word, “Momy.”
Karis’ handiwork, most likely. She can’t help but smile to herself as she wipes the tears from her face, though something about the clumsy image makes her heart break even more.
The door hisses open, and Rogue’s face appears, concern still deepening the creases in her brow.
“You’re awake,” she says, stepping inside.
V nods mutely, still seated on the bed.
“You okay?” Rogue asks, coming to sit beside her. “What happened?”
V shakes her head. “I… I found him,” she tells Rogue softly.
Rogue’s eyes widen. “Johnny?” she asks.
“Yeah, but he…” V says, then falters, unable to put into words what happened. “He wasn’t totally himself, didn’t seem to know who I was… and then we got attacked by a rogue AI and…”
It’s all a confusing blur in her mind, and her body still feels too hot, her head still pulsing with pain.
“I’ll call Kerry,” Rogue offers. “Have him come get you.”
But V shakes her head again. “I’ll call a Del,” she tells Rogue. She really doesn’t wanna worry Kerry more than she already has.
But Rogue doesn’t seem convinced, and V’s half certain the fixer is gonna call her input anyway.
“I’m fine, Rogue, really,” she insists, getting to her feet.
The room sways a bit, but she manages to keep her footing, and that seems enough to reassure Rogue.
“Alright,” the fixer sighs. “But go get some rest, kid. Dunno what happened in there, but I don’t wanna come back one day to find you cooked to a crisp in that chair.”
“You won’t,” V promises, stepping out the door and walking quickly through the club and towards the exit.
It’s just a little past midnight and still drizzling lightly when she steps outside. She pulls up her HUD to call a Del, but then thinks the better of it, and before she’s even fully aware of what she’s doing, she’s walking down the street towards Riot. It’s Wednesday, which means she knows that Karis and his friends will be there. They’ve got a fuckin’ schedule - Tuesdays are 7th Hell, Wednesdays are Riot, and Fridays are Totentanz. He’s explained it all to her - if you wanna see and be seen, those are the nights to hit. Where anyone who’s anyone will be.
Sure enough, Karis and his friends are out on the dancefloor, and Avery’s face lights up when she slides in among their group. Karis grins as he hands her a shot, and soon the pain in her head and the fear in her heart are replaced by that familiar, comforting numbness as she knocks back drink after drink, takes whatever pills she’s handed, does every bump that Karis offers her.
When Dino finishes DJing his set, they all pile into a Del and head back to Dino's apartment downtown to keep their party going. It’s a gaudy, oversized loft with industrial ceilings and exactly the sort of tacky, rockerboy decor she’d have expected from him. There’s a massive neon sign covering one wall with just the word “METAL” in all caps, and an array of overstuffed leather couches surrounding a low glass table at the center of the large room.
Karis and his friends stay until dawn, and then eventually it’s just her and Dino, railing lines together and listening to old records. Huge blackout shades line the factory windows that cover the entire wall opposite the exposed brick with the neon sign, keeping them trapped in the eternal limbo of night. She looks over at Dino, at his pockmarked face lit only by the dim strips of morning light creeping in and the red glow of the neon as he grins and passes her the rolled up bill and continues monologuing about some fuckin’ tour he went on before she was old enough to walk.
But the pain in her heart is still there, not quite fully dulled by the booze and the drugs. She can still feel those terrifying entities clawing at her mind, shredding her very soul, tearing and ripping apart her memories. And at Johnny.
Fuck, she fucking hopes that Alt managed to somehow keep him intact. That he managed to keep himself intact.
It all feels so fucking hopeless suddenly, so futile. She feels stupid for believing, for hoping that any human mind could survive beyond the Blackwall and still resemble the person they once were. What happened to Alt is a best case scenario, and she was foolish to hope that Johnny's fate would somehow be different, better.
She leans forward, putting her head in her hands and taking deep breaths.
“You okay, kid?” Dino says suddenly, and V realizes she’s sitting there frozen, gripping the bill in her hand as she clutches at her face.
She tries to push it down, to keep the burning ache that threatens to overwhelm her at bay as she leans forward to do another line.
And then before she’s fully aware of what she’s doing, the words begin pouring out of her mouth and she’s telling Dino everything. All of it, about Johnny, about the biochip, about Mikoshi, about her death sentence. About Kerry, about everything.
She knows she’s trauma dumping at this point, and Dino’s looking at her with a strange expression on his face, but she can’t seem to stop talking as it all comes tumbling out in a sudden, unremitting flood.
“Jeez,” is all Dino says when she pauses to do another line, but his eyes linger on her face with a newfound interest. “Knew ya had some wack shit goin’ on, but that’s beyond next level,” he murmurs, taking the rolled up eddy from her and snorting his own line.
She watches the middle-aged rocker as he does his drugs, as he tilts his head back and sniffs loudly, his chrome jaw tensing as he swallows the drip. He has a dark, crackling sexual energy to him that she’s always been drawn to in a twisted sort of way, and she's suddenly and acutely aware that he could fuck her like a ragdoll right here, right now if she wanted him to. Maybe that would drive any and all thoughts of Johnny and Kerry from her mind, she thinks darkly as she briefly allows herself to indulge in the unbidden fantasy of Dino pounding her abject misery into submission, shoving his tongue in her mouth to keep her stupid words from spilling out.
But her eyes fall to a little foil packet on the table, the same one she’s been avoiding looking at too hard all night. He follows her gaze and chuckles softly. “Ah,” he says. “You want some?”
V starts to shake her head, but it turns into a nod halfway through the gesture. And Dino just grins, reaching for the packet and peeling it open.
It’s black tar, the real stuff.
Dino’s already positioning the tar on the foil and reaching for the glass pipe on the table beside it, sticking the glass tube between his lips as he flicks on his lighter and holds it beneath the foil. V watches transfixed as the tar heats up and burns off as Dino inhales it quickly. V can smell the sickly sweetness of the smoke as he exhales and passes her the foil and the lighter and the pipe, his eyes fluttering shut as he sinks backwards into the couch.
V only hesitates a moment before taking the items from him and repeating his movements. She places the glass tube between her lips and lights the foil, then inhales deeply through the pipe as she chases the smoke that rises from the melting liquid.
“Chasin’ that dragon,” Dino murmurs from behind closed eyes, and then the drug hits her bloodstream and V sinks back into the couch as well, feeling that soothing numbness finally, finally dull the pain in her head.
She’s dimly aware of the fact that she’s dropped the pipe and the foil, but she doesn’t fucking care, she just feels calm and good and safe for the first time in what feels like months as she succumbs to the dark, seductive warmth of the drug.
She lets out a long, slow breath and opens her eyes to see Dino watching her, his lids heavy and a small, dangerous smile playing across his mouth. She smiles back as Dino flicks his tongue across his lips, and V can see the hazy, strung out lust plain on his face.
And then he leans over and kisses her.
V’s too high to feel any surprise, and so she melts into the kiss, pushing her tongue into the old rockerboy’s mouth, tasting the vodka and cigarettes and the sticky sweet aroma of the heroin on his breath. It’s wrong, it’s all wrong, but right now, right here in the moment, it feels like the only thing she can think of to do that’ll dull her inner agony, extinguish the burning in her chest.
Dino pulls away and gets to his feet, standing over her and looking down at her with a pleased, almost smug look on his face.
“Not the only rockerboy who can fuck you till ya don’t remember your own name,” he says, palming the growing bulge in his jeans.
The raw desire on his face makes the heat pool between V’s legs, and Dino licks his lips as he looks down at her, watching her squirm under his gaze.
She thinks about Kerry, probably alone in her bed right now, but instead of guilt she feels a sick sense of numb satisfaction. She doesn’t fucking deserve Kerry’s steadfast, unwavering adoration. She knows he said he'd be there for her no matter what, and she's seized with a sudden dark and twisted urge to put that promise to the test, to push his devotion to its limits. Maybe now he’ll see who she really is, see that she’s just another fucking skezzed out dirtgirl from Heywood, a junkie not worth his fucking time. Maybe now he’ll leave her to her pain, to her spiral, to the dark call of oblivion that’s been pulling her down since the moment she woke up alone in that fucking Arasaka sub-basement.
Maybe now he'll see that she's just like Johnny, incapable of giving him back the love he deserves, using him for comfort as she escapes her pain with drugs and booze and meaningless sex.
She just wants this - something simple, something easy, something devoid of any and all emotions.
“You just gonna stand there, or you gonna fuck me?” she says to Dino, her voice low and breathy.
Dino groans in response and bends down to kiss her again. She arches up towards him, her hand fumbling at the buckle of his jeans.
But he slaps her wrist away and shoves her back against the couch, and V crumples backwards without resistance, already panting slightly as Dino reaches down to unzip his pants himself.
His cock springs free, already fully hard, and V isn’t even remotely surprised to see that it's a Mr. Studd, and a fuckin’ fancy ass one too, the kind that’s sheathed in RealSkinn. The golden chrome that wraps around the base reflects the red neon as he pumps his fist up and down it in a few quick strokes, and then he’s leaning forward to grab a fistful of her hair and yank her upwards off the couch to meet his cock.
“Gonna fuck your throat so hard you’ll be hoarse for a week,” he promises, pressing the tip of his cock to her lips as she wraps her tongue greedily around it.
She chokes as Dino shoves it all the way to the back of her throat with very little warning, her eyes watering as she raises her gaze to meet his.
“Fuck, you look like such a good little whore like that,” he croons, hooking his thumb under her lower lip as it stretches around his chromed out cock.
V whimpers in response. This is what she wanted, she can’t deny that, even to herself. She wants him to take her, to use her body until she feels nothing, until all her pain is fucked into oblivion. She has a sudden and intense sensation that she's hurtling through some vast abyss, not daring to look down, a part of her knowing that the crash from this is gonna be fucking bad. But right now, she can’t bring herself to give a fuck as her own misery consumes her from the inside out like a flame, blending with the dark, muddled hunger that’s currently overtaking her senses, and she closes her eyes and moans around Dino’s cock.
Dino’s other hand tightens at the back of her neck, and he starts thrusting slowly, holding her head in place as she gags and sputters.
“You like that, huh?” he asks her, and she nods as best she can as he continues fucking her face, his thrusts growing harsher as he shoves his cock again and again down her throat, making her choke and see stars. “Such a fucking slut,” he drawls approvingly.
V’s face is a mess when he finally pulls out all the way, a trail of saliva and precum stringing from her lips to his glistening cybernetic erection. But she doesn’t have time to contemplate this before he’s smearing it across her face, dragging its heavy weight across her lips and letting out a low appreciative moan before plunging it back into her mouth, causing her to gag and choke again.
When he pulls out the next time, he flips her over roughly and throws her over the back of the couch, pulling her hips toward his as he yanks down her leather pants and gives her ass a solid, stinging slap.
V cries out, but the pain is dulled by the drugs, and he smacks her harder, and then even harder still. And then she feels the tip of his chromed out cock pressing against her opening, feels him stretching her as he plunges himself slowly all the way in, feels that satisfying stinging ache as he thrusts slowly into her, the raised bumps along the underside of his implant sending shivers through her body. He pulls his cock almost all the way out before ramming it back into her, bottoming out this time. A loud moan escapes her lips.
“Knew ya’d love bein’ used like a fuckin’ joytoy,” Dino grunts approvingly, continuing to fuck her with steady, harsh thrusts, making her cry out with each one. She's getting off on the shame, the degradation, the humiliation of it all - this is what she fucking deserves, and she knows it.
And then his cock starts to vibrate, and V screams as the pulses send shockwaves through her cunt. It’s not long before she feels herself start to quiver around him, and Dino leans forward to press his mouth against her ear.
“Gonna come for me, you fuckin’ slut?” he growls, his thrusts growing rougher and more erratic. “You like gettin’ fucked by my big chrome cock?”
V can only whine in response as Dino winds his hand around her throat, squeezing hard enough to make her see stars.
His next thrust hits her in just the right place, and she lets herself get lost in the force of her orgasm as she shudders and spasms around him. Dino lets out an animalistic groan and spills into her then too, his hips continuing to slam into her as he finishes with a series of choked, strangled grunts.
He gives her ass one last slap as he pulls out his deflating cock, and she hears him zip his pants and sit heavily on the couch beside her. But she just closes her eyes and lets herself fall sideways, her pants still pulled down around her thighs as she curls up into a fetal position beside him. She can feel him stroking her hair with one hand as he fishes for a cigarette with his other, and she squeezes her eyes shut as he lifts his hand from her head to light it.
Fuck, she thinks as her heart stutters and lurches, and she reaches for the foil and pipe.
When she wakes up, she’s alone on Dino's couch and the sunlight is pouring in through the massive windows. She’s wrapped in a blanket - Dino must’ve thrown one over her when she passed out. He’s nowhere to be seen right now… probably out doin’ fixer shit or sitting at his bar.
And she realizes with an abrupt, icy shock that today is the 13th. Kerry’s fucking birthday party is tonight.
The wave of shame that hits her then is staggering.
After puking her guts out in Dino’s bathroom, she collects herself as best she can and calls herself a cab home.
To her relief, Kerry isn’t there when she arrives, but laid out on her bed is the fucking dress he bought her for the party tonight - a floor length, dark green velvet gown with sparkling rhinestones woven into the fabric.
She feels the panic rising in her throat, feels the hot tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, but she swallows it all back and goes downstairs to the kitchen, fumbling in the cabinets for their liquor stash. She pours herself a glass of tequila, but her hands won’t stop shaking and she spills a fair amount on the countertop.
And that’s when her eyes fall to the box of airhypos sitting next to the bottle of tequila, and she suddenly remembers her new meds. Fuck. She’s supposed to start taking those today, too.
She downs the tequila then grabs the box of syringes and heads to the bathroom, peeling off her pants and perching on the edge of the stone tub. She places the box on the floor beside her and pulls out one of the pre-loaded devices, not pausing to hesitate before jamming it straight into her thigh.
She can feel the burn spreading as the medicine penetrates her muscle, and she grimaces and tosses aside the used needle.
She’s bleeding a little bit where the syringe penetrated her, but she ignores it and lets the blood trickle down her leg as she stands and staggers back out to the kitchen where she refills her tequila and quickly downs it. She stares at her empty glass for a beat before reaching for the bottle and taking a long pull straight from it.
The room starts to tilt a bit, but the numbness that envelopes her once again is a welcome relief.
She passes out on the couch for another couple hours, and the sun is starting to set by the time she wakes up.
Fucking fuck, she’d better get moving or she’s gonna be late to Kerry’s. He’s probably already wondering where the fuck she is, if the missed calls on her holo are any indication.
She calls Kerry back, and he answers on the first ring.
“Hey!” he says, and the warmth in his voice makes her gut twist. “The hell you at?”
“I’m at home,” V mumbles. “Had a late night. Gonna get ready and head over now.”
“Sure, sure,” Kerry says, turning his head to yell something unintelligible to someone off-screen, probably a caterer or some other staff he’s got there setting shit up right now. “You like the dress?” he asks, turning back to V.
“It’s gorgeous,” V says honestly, rubbing her temples. She’s definitely still drunk, but not nearly enough to dull the pain and shame and terror.
Kerry’s clearly distracted, so she wishes him a happy birthday and ends the call, reaching again for the tequila bottle still sitting on the floor next to the couch, and chugs it until she’s polished it off before lurching up the stairs back to the bathroom.
God, she looks awful. Her eyes are hollow and sunken, and her face looks bony and severe in a way that it didn’t a few months ago - she’s lost a lot of weight, and the dark circles beneath her eyes look almost like bruises.
She staggers into the shower, feeling only slightly more human when she exits.
There’s no more tequila, but she finds a flask of whiskey that Kerry must’ve left here at some point, and she takes that back to the bathroom with her as she does her makeup, smearing black, smoky rings of kohl around her eyes to hide the dark circles. Nibbles perches on the counter, watching her curiously.
She gives his head a small pat then sighs heavily and exits to the bedroom, staring down at the expensive, gorgeous dress laid out on her bed like a sacrificial gown.
She slides it on and examines her reflection in the mirror, turning as the rhinestones on the dress catch the light of the sunset from the windows. It hangs from her thin shoulders by two small straps, the plunging neckline showing off her tits, the crystal-encrusted velvet fabric clinging to her body in a glittering cascade.
It’s fucking beautiful, the most beautiful thing V’s ever worn in her life, and she feels a choked sob rising in her throat.
But she can’t cry, not now, not unless she wants to show up to Kerry’s party with eyeliner smeared all over her face like she got dumped on prom night. So she takes a deep breath, finishes the flask of whiskey, pulls on her coat, and calls a Delamain to take her to North Oak.
Notes:
I promise the "fix-it" part of this is coming eventually!
Also note that though I still have the total chapter count for this hellbeast set to 60, it's looking more like it's likely gonna land at 65. So rest assured that we've still got quite a bit of runway here to sort this whole mess out!
Chapter 54: Critical Mass
Summary:
V attends Kerry's 90th birthday party and makes some important discoveries.
Notes:
This one is an emotional rollercoaster! Sorry in advance lol
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The driveway up to Kerry’s house is lit up like a fuckin’ carnival when the Delamain pulls up, and there’s a line of cars stretching for blocks down the steep and winding street waiting to be valeted. The Delamain drops her as close to the logo-emblazoned gate as it can manage, then bids V a grand evening as she exits the car, gathering her dress to avoid dragging it in the dirt.
There’s a horde of paparazzi clustered around the gate, and she’s hit with a barrage of camera flashes as the security guards quickly move to form a loose escort around her and usher her though the gates.
She feels like Cinderella getting dumped out of her magic pumpkin, a dirtgirl masquerading as princess for the evening. Only when her clock strikes midnight, something far worse than losing her shoe might happen.
One of the guards remains with her as she continues the rest of the way up the drive to the house. The lawn is decked out with twinkling lights and there’s a fuckin’ live string quartet in the garden. It’s still early though - not too many people seem to have been let in yet, and the bartender at the outdoor bar is still busying himself getting things set up. Unlike the last party V attended here, he’s ditched his golden bikini bottoms for a proper vest and tie.
The doors to the house are flung wide open, and the security guard leaves her there. V steps through to find the inside transformed.
Kerry’s really outdone himself with this one, she thinks as she surveys the scene before her. There’s an enormous Christmas tree, for starters. She hadn’t taken him for the Christmas type, but it is December, after all, and the over-the-top holiday decor somehow seems oddly in character for him, now that she sees it realized.
The large marble table is cleaned of its usual layer of fast food wrappers, and now houses an entire buffet spread laid out. And in the center is a huge ice sculpture of, thematically, a diamond.
She realizes that she hasn’t been to his house once since Mikoshi.
V beelines for the bar on the main floor and gestures for the bartender to pour her something. She’s managed to keep her roll going all day, and she isn’t about to slow it now. She’s certain Kerry’s already a few deep by this point, too, if she knows him at all.
The bartender pours her a glass of scotch, neat, and slides it over to V. She leans against the bar and sips the drink in silence, feeling all the warring thoughts and emotions within her threaten to bubble to the surface, vying for release.
She knows she’s fuckin’ spiraling, she’s self-aware enough to see that. The drugs, the partying… fucking Dino… it all feels like she’s on a train with the brakes cut off and is just barreling ahead into the night, steamrolling through anything and anyone unlucky enough to be in her path with no ability to steer or slow down.
She wonders if this is how Johnny felt after Alt died.
She wonders if it’s how he feels now, floating alone and disembodied in cyberspace, and the panic rises in her throat at the memory of seeing him like that.
But now isn’t the time to dwell on that. Tonight is Kerry’s night, and she doesn’t wanna ruin that for him. And she can hear him laughing from somewhere upstairs, so she downs her drink and steps away from the bar, circling around the grand piano to slowly climb the broad staircase up to the second floor.
Kerry's by the upstairs bar, talking to Denny and a small woman with a short dark bob who V's never seen before.
“Hey doll!” Kerry shouts as V emerges onto the landing, pausing to do a dramatic double take when he sees her in the dress. “My fuckin' queen,” he says affectionately.
“Thought you were the queen tonight,” V teases, trying her best to slip into character as Kerry presses his mouth to hers in a short but surprisingly passionate kiss.
He's already drunk, just as she’d suspected. And luckily for them all, so is she. She chases him with her lips as he withdraws from the kiss, and he lets his thumb linger on her chin as Denny clears her throat behind them. But Kerry and V both just laugh, not taking their eyes off each other for a beat.
V wonders what Denny makes of Kerry's seemingly sudden and intense attachment to her. Without knowing about Johnny, the whole thing must seem pretty out of left field to Kerry’s friends. She smiles at Denny and waves, and Denny lifts her glass towards V with a raised eyebrow.
V turns back to Kerry, taking the moment to really appreciate the rockerboy’s outfit - he’s gone all out with the jewel-encrusted suit, as promised, and he’s got a crown on his head to match. He looks fucking magical, like a fairy king or some kinda elf prince, and his eyes are shining. But he glances up at V’s bare head as she grins at him, and his brow creases into a frown. Before she can say anything, he holds up a finger to her and spins on his heel, turning and heading towards the bedroom.
“Lemme grab yours,” he calls back as he vanishes through the double doors.
V watches him leave, unsure of what exactly it is he’s off to grab, but she’s suddenly aware of the other woman, the unfamiliar one, looking at her with interest.
“So, you must be V,” the woman says slowly, studying V as she sips what appears to be her own neat scotch. “Kerry tells me you've been writing some music together.”
V turns to her and shrugs, then nods. “Been messin' around,” she replies.
The woman cocks an eyebrow at her. V is sure she’s seen her somewhere before, though she can’t quite pin down where. And though the woman looks like she’s in her late 30s or early 40s, something about her demeanor makes V suspect she’s actually closer to Kerry and Denny’s age.
And then V suddenly places her. She's Violet Vega, a popular singer from Kerry and Johnny's day. But the strange sense of familiarity V feels towards her goes beyond that, and V realizes abruptly that she knows this woman from Johnny’s memories, or at least from the hazy shreds that remain. And though the memories are vague, V can still sense that they were strong, emotional memories. This woman was someone to Johnny.
Another ex, most likely.
V feels her smile stiffen. She’s known, of course, that there were other women in Johnny’s life besides Alt and Rogue - probably too many to count, in all honesty - but Johnny rarely spoke of them. And though the memories were accessible to her then, it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing she’d gone out of her way to dig around in.
“I'm Violet,” says the woman with a smile. “Old friend of Kerry's.”
V feels that strange sensation once again of her own memories being pulled and stretched to cover the gaps that Johnny’s life left in her mind as she reaches inward almost instinctively for recollections of this woman that seem like they should be there, but aren’t.
But Kerry reappears then, clutching a jewel-studded tiara in his hands. Violet smiles demurely and steps aside, and Kerry gestures at V to tilt her head forward so he can coronate her. V does so, trying her best to hold still as Kerry gingerly nestles the tiara in her hair, carefully adjusting it with his fingers until it’s secure and correctly placed, and then he stands back and beams at her.
“You look like fuckin’ Princess Diana,” he says, admiring his handiwork.
V has only a vague idea of who that is, so she just smiles back at him and raises her glass slightly.
Denny nods approvingly. Downstairs, V can hear more guests starting to filter in, but Denny and Violet are still looking at V like she’s some sort of new curiosity.
“So, tell us more about this new music project you and Kerry’ve been cookin’ up,” Denny prompts, and V glances back and forth between the three of them.
Kerry shrugs helplessly. “I, ah, I asked Denny and Violet if they’d wanna jam with us sometime. Denny on drums and Violet on keys would make us a proper band,” he explains almost sheepishly.
V’s eyebrows shoot up. She hadn’t quite realized how seriously Kerry's been taking their music, apparently. But if he’s bringin’ in his old friends, old Samurai members… she feels something almost like nervousness in the pit of her stomach. Sure, she played a whole live show with the band… but that was as Johnny. This is different. This is her.
The fact that Kerry thinks that highly of her and her newfound talents makes something warm blossom in her chest, and she meets Kerry’s eyes. He’s smiling at her hopefully.
“That’d be preem,” she tells them.
Kerry grins. “Gonna call ourselves the Legends,” he tells them.
Violet smiles. “Love that,” she says, but Denny snorts.
“The Legends?” Denny says. “That’s corny, even for you, Ker.”
“Aw, slam it, Denny,” Kerry says with a mock scowl, reaching for his abandoned drink on the bar and polishing it off in one swig. “Ya didn’t like the name Samurai either, remember?”
Denny laughs smoothly. “Still don’t,” she says with a hearty chuckle. “But you and Johnny had your pretty little hearts set.”
V sizes up Violet some more as Denny speaks. She’s wearing a leopard fur coat over a glittering gold dress, and smoking a long, skinny cigarette like a film noir heroine. Denny, on the other hand, is wearing a silver pantsuit and sky-high stilettos, along with quite possibly the biggest earrings that V has ever seen.
In another life, V might have felt intimidated by these women. A small part of her still does, she can’t deny that. But she lets herself give in a little bit to the tentative excitement she feels at the prospect of actually making music with people like them, of making something new, something real. Something that will outlive her.
She hears a loud, distinctive laugh from downstairs, then - a laugh that can only belong to Rogue. Kerry leans over the railing and hoots at her, then grabs V’s arm to pull her to his side at the top of the staircase like a king and queen receiving their guests as Rogue and her crew make their way up the broad steps.
Rogue pauses on the staircase and gives them a golf clap. “The prom king and queen of the evening,” she jokes as she continues to ascend towards them with Weyland, Nix, and Emmerick shadowing closely behind her.
Kerry pulls the fixer into a tight hug when she reaches the top, then shakes the hands of the three men who accompany her. Rogue gives V a quick hug as well, her lip twitching into a smirk when she sees V’s crown.
“Really went all out, huh, Ker?” she teases, but Kerry just grins impishly at her, already turning to flag down the bartender.
But Rogue’s leaned into the theme, too - she’s wearing a gold dress that wraps around her neck and drapes across her shoulders, making her look like a warrior queen from an old fantasy comic. And she has her hair curled in a surprisingly elegant fashion that makes V think of the old films from a century ago that Padre would sometimes screen for the kids at his parish.
“Champagne toast!” Kerry calls from behind her, and V turns to see the bartender efficiently filling a grid of champagne flutes arrayed on the bar.
V takes her glass when it’s handed to her, and Kerry raises his flute high once all the drinks have been passed out.
“Here’s to showin’ Night City that Kerry Eurodyne ain’t fuckin’ dead yet!” he shouts triumphantly.
A small crowd has gathered around them by now as they all toss back their champagne, and V can hear the party starting to get into full swing downstairs as well.
She finds herself wishing suddenly that more of her own friends were here. Misty and River and Judy are all still out of town, Panam’s busy running her clan, and Vik politely but firmly declined her invite. “Sounds too rich for my blood, kid,” he’d said. She knows Karis and Avery are coming at some point, and she invited Quinn and Aiko, too, but those are new friends, not people who know her to her core. Sure, Quinn knew her as a kid, but they're still getting reacquainted now as the adults they've become, essentially starting over in all the ways that count. She texted Aidan earlier this week, hoping to continue to rebuild that bridge too, but the little merc’s apparently out on a job in the Badlands this week and can’t make it.
Maybe she should’ve invited Marigold, she thinks. She did consider it, but decided it would seem like a bit much after years of not speaking followed by one short (albeit friendly) encounter on the street. But now she wishes there was at least one more person here who’s known her for longer than a handful of months.
Nix sidles up next to her, clinking his glass against hers. He’s wearing a gold paisley tuxedo, a dramatic departure from his usual ‘runner suit and thermal vest.
“Heard you hit quite a spike in the Net last night,” he says conversationally, but she can hear the concern in the old man’s voice.
“Mm,” she replies, her voice dark. “Wasn’t a spike so much as a rogue AI that tried to shred me.”
Nix’s eyes widen, and he shakes his head. “This one’s on me, kid. Shouldn’ta let you dive alone.”
“It’s fine, Nix, really,” V assures him. “Made it out in one piece, that’s all that matters.”
Nix frowns at his champagne. “That may be… but listen, I’ve got a guy downtown who specializes in this shit. A ripper, name’s Bram Zeegers. Has a shop near Skyline and Republic. I’ll flick you his deets.”
V frowns. “I’ve already got a good ripper,” she tells him.
But Nix shakes his head. “A ripper who ain’t trained in netrunnin’ ain’t necessarily gonna spot this shit, don’t matter how good they are. Trust me, Bram’s your man.”
“Sure, Nix,” V relents, and Nix’s eyes glow blue as he flicks her the contact info.
“Go drop in, have him scan for any malware,” Nix encourages her. “Rogue AIs ain’t nothin’ to screw around with.”
“Oh hell no!” exclaims Denny suddenly, slamming her drink down and glaring at Kerry as V whirls to face her.
And then she sees the source of Denny’s outburst - Henry is standing at the top of the stairs, dressed to the nines in a crisp black tux, his eyes darting nervously around the room. And with him are Nancy and her son Dan.
Kerry rolls his eyes at Denny. “C’mon Denny, it’s my fuckin’ birthday,” he hisses at her. “Wasn’t gonna play favorites. Can’t you two just put aside your bullshit for one fuckin’ night?”
He steps away from her to greet the three new arrivals, hugging them all warmly as Denny glowers by the bar. And to V’s surprise, upon further inspection, Henry looks… sober?
The former Samurai bassist approaches his ex, stopping just beyond swinging distance.
“Got a lot of fuckin’ nerve,” Denny says to him, still fuming.
Henry shrugs and looks down. “Wanted to say… wanted to apologize. For… ya know. The pool. And… well… everything else.”
Denny scoffs. “That ain’t gonna cut it, sugar.”
“Denny…” Henry says in a pleading voice. “You ain’t gotta forgive me, but just… Look, I got 30 days now, okay? I’m turnin’ over a new leaf, startin’ fresh, gettin’ clean for real this time.”
“Not the first time I’ve heard that from you,” Denny says, still scowling.
“C’mon Denny,” Kerry says again. “He’s tryna clean up his act, the least you could do is be supportive.”
Denny wheels towards Kerry. “Wasted my best years bein' supportive," she snarls. "I’m all for this gonk gettin’ sober and cleanin’ up his goddamn life,” she continues. “But I’d prefer he do it far the fuck away from me.”
“Denny…” Henry says helplessly as she storms off down the stairs, and V hears everyone around her let out a collective breath they’d been holding.
But Kerry throws his arm around Henry’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, choom, she’ll come around,” he assures his old friend. “Can I get ya anything? Soda? NiCola?”
Henry scowls and kicks at the ground. “Told ya I shouldn’t’ve come,” he mutters darkly, and V suddenly feels immensely sorry for the man. She understands why Denny’s done with him, but if Johnny deserves a second chance, if Joshua deserved a chance… then why not Henry?
She makes her way towards him, smiling shyly.
“Hey, Henry,” she says softly, and he looks at her in confusion for a second before his eyes widen.
“V, yeah?” he says, waving a finger at her. “Kerry’s new piece.”
“We met at Denny’s,” she reminds him, and he nods. “And at the Red Dirt gig.”
“Yeah, yeah… you’re the new kid who played the show with ‘em.”
Kerry withdraws his arm from Henry and rests his hand on V’s elbow instead.
“V’s the best fuckin’ merc in Night City,” he says proudly. “And a damn good musician, too. She and I are recording an album together.”
It’s a bit of a stretch - V’s never set foot in a recording studio in her life - but Kerry’s assuredness about the whole thing is making her feel like maybe it is something real. A possible future for her that doesn’t involve guns, or hacking, or violence. A future where she’s making things instead of destroying them.
No one’s ever imagined a future for her like that. No one but Kerry.
She leans into him slightly, smiling up at him through her eyelashes as he releases her elbow to wind his arm around her shoulders. And he smiles back down at her, a real, warm smile that lights up his whole face. And that’s when V has a sudden and vivid flashback of Dino’s cock in her mouth that morning, mere hours ago, and feels a twist of horrendous guilt in her gut that forces her eyes down and the smile off her face.
Sure, Kerry’s made it clear that he doesn’t own her, that exclusivity isn’t a huge deal to him - especially when Johnny was still in the picture - but she knows what she did would still hurt him if he knew.
But Karis and Avery are climbing the stairs now, hand in hand. Karis is wearing a floor-length silver gown that wraps around his torso and neck in a flurry of glittering feathers, and Avery’s dressed in a bright teal silk suit. Karis shrieks when he sees V, rushing over to put his hands on her shoulders.
“V!” he crows. “Your dress! Your crown!”
V laughs half-heartedly. “Kerry picked it,” she tells him. “But your dress is the real star of the show here.”
Karis cackles and does a little twirl. “I’d say Avery picked it, but… he didn’t,” he admits. “I did.”
Avery rolls his eyes and heads for the bar, and Karis detaches himself from V to follow after him. V notices him give Dan a once over and scoff, then whisper something to Avery, and V remembers what Rogue said about Dan calling her “aunty” when they were kids. Dan’s probably about a decade older than Karis, but V figures it’s safe to assume they’ve known each other their whole lives. And her suspicion is confirmed when Nancy steps forward to hug Karis and plant a kiss on his cheek that Karis scowls and attempts to wriggle away from.
They’re all family, she realizes. Even now, even after all this time. Even if they haven’t spoken for years.
She wishes Johnny were here to see this, to be a part of it.
But Karis is already making his way back towards V and Kerry with a shot glass in each hand, and Avery is trailing after him with another two. Karis thrusts the shots towards Kerry and V and takes the second one Avery’s holding, raising his high.
“Na zdrowie!” Avery shouts, and all four of them down their glasses.
After another round, Kerry takes V’s elbow again and leads her towards the wide stairs down to the main floor. V can feel everyone’s eyes on them as they descend together. There’s a throng in the foyer around the Christmas tree, and the whole experience feels like something out of a fuckin’ movie.
As they near the bottom of the steps, she spots Aiko and Quinn at the downstairs bar with Ruth Dzeng, and the Us Cracks girls are here now too, standing in a cluster by the Christmas tree wearing glittering geometric dresses in their signature colors that make them look vaguely like they escaped from an art installation.
Blue Moon is already waving them over enthusiastically, but V heads towards Quinn and Aiko instead, leaving Kerry to go greet the pop starlets.
Quinn’s wearing a red vinyl gown with a bow on her tits, and Aiko’s got on a sparkly holographic sequined dress with a high collar that fans out around her feet like a mermaid. Ruth, on the other hand, is wearing a tailored suit and has her hair slicked back in a fancier style than she normally wears on TV.
“Look at everyone’s outfits!” Quinn exclaims as V approaches. “Look at you! It’s like the fuckin’ Met Gala!”
V hugs both girls and smiles politely as they introduce her to Ruth, who seems put out that V’s arrival interrupted the story she’d been telling.
Further down the bar, V spots another familiar face - Arif Iqbal, that prick reporter she almost strangled at the last party she attended here. But he pretends not to see her, so she turns back to the women and tries her best to listen as Ruth finishes some tangled yarn about how she fired an intern on her show for sleeping with the line producer, who apparently Ruth had used to date.
A sudden commotion at the door distracts them all again momentarily, and Lizzy Wizzy saunters in with Ziggy Q on her arm, wearing a dress in the shape of an actual, literal diamond. From the heads around the room all suddenly leaning in to whisper to each other, V figures this new pairing for the chromed out singer is about to be the talk of the town after tonight.
But V feels nothing but a cold squeeze of terror in her chest at the sight of Lizzy’s smooth metallic features, at the utter lack of humanity in the pop star’s chrome eyes.
She hopes that the same fate isn’t awaiting her.
Behind her, she feels someone place a hand on her arm, and turns to see Aiko looking at her pointedly.
“V,” she says softly. “Come outside with me for a moment. We should talk.”
V’s curiosity prickles into a sharp point as she follows Aiko through the crowd towards the door and out onto the lawn. The night air is clear and chilly, but Kerry’s got heat lamps and fire pits set up every few feet in the yard. Aiko heads for the nearest one, sitting down on a stone bench that’s a bit more secluded from the other guests and motioning for V to join her.
“Look,” Aiko begins as V lowers herself onto the bench beside her. “I’m just gonna come clean with you.” She sighs heavily, the silvery cyberware around her eyes flickering in the firelight as V waits for her to continue. “I knew something big had happened,” she says slowly. “At Arasaka. But my mother wouldn't tell me anything, and after Goro reached out to me directly… I… I started seeing him. In secret.”
V nods, still waiting for her to finish. She’s suspected as much, but she’s deeply intrigued as to where Aiko’s leading her with this.
Aiko bites her lip nervously, watching V’s face for her reaction. “It took him a few weeks until he felt ready to trust me, I think,” the heiress continues. “But he told me everything,” she says finally. “All of it.”
V exhales slowly. “Everything?” she repeats.
Aiko nods. “Yes. I know what happened, and what you’re trying to do now. And I want to help.”
Part of V is relieved that she’s just been saved the trouble of having to explain or beg Aiko to help her. But a bigger part of her wonders just what the fuck Goro’s playing at.
“And what is it I’m trying to do?” she asks Aiko cautiously.
Aiko looks down, then back up at V. “You’re trying to find Johnny Silverhand’s body.”
V swallows, then nods.
“There’s more,” Aiko says, reaching into her small handbag and producing a cigarette that she lifts to her lips and lights, blowing out the smoke slowly through her nose. “Goro also told me about… about what they did to Saburo.” She looks at V pointedly. “Do you still have his engram? The biochip?”
V tries her best to keep her face devoid of any tells as she reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a cigarette too. “No,” she lies, cupping her hand to light it.
Well, it’s only half a lie. Saburo’s engram is likely damaged beyond retrieval at this point, and she doesn’t have it - it’s still locked safely away at the Columbarium. But she doesn’t see any reason Aiko needs to know this. Not yet, anyway.
Aiko exhales shakily. “Good,” she says. “They should all be destroyed.” She takes another long, shaky drag of her smoke, waiting for V to speak.
“We’re on the same page there,” V says, still unsure of where Aiko is going with this.
The heiress leans in closer to V. “After I learned of their plans for Saburo… their plans for Yorinobu… I did some digging,” she says quietly. “And it confirmed my worst fears. About myself. About what… or rather, who… their backup plan for Saburo was.”
V’s eyes widen as the pieces fall together in her head. “You,” she breathes.
Aiko nods, and V looks at the girl with a newfound sympathy. Of course, she thinks. Hanako was never an option, and Michiko was his eldest son’s only daughter. But Aiko? Aiko makes sense. She’s young, she’s in the family but far more removed, and she’s got no love for Saburo.
They are silent for a moment, and V can see her own horror reflected off Aiko’s doll-like face. To be groomed without her knowledge as an unwilling vessel for her tyrannical great-grandfather’s preserved consciousness… V can’t begin to imagine how a discovery like that must feel to Aiko.
“And you stopped it from happening,” Aiko says to V. “And you helped Goro. So let me… let us help you.”
The way she says “us” makes V wonder just what the nature of her relationship with Goro is at this point. But she just nods slowly, not taking her eyes off Aiko’s face, and comes to a decision.
“I need Arasaka’s client data,” she tells Aiko. “From the Secure Your Soul program. Where they’re keeping the bodies in cryo.”
Aiko shakes her head. “Most of those records were destroyed or sealed when the program went ass-up last month,” she tells V. “It’s beyond what I could extract without drawing serious attention to myself.”
V’d feared as much - she knew there was no way it would be that simple. “Okay, then,” she says, thinking quickly. “You’re going to the Crystal Palace soon, yeah? To test a new security system?”
Aiko nods. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need a window,” V says. “A few minutes when the station security is down. The most you can give me without tripping any failsafes.”
“Consider it done,” Aiko says immediately. “I’ll be in touch to coordinate when it should happen.”
V nods slowly. “And one more thing,” she says. “I need ciphers. Arasaka’s decryption keys. Anything you can get me.”
“Okay,” Aiko agrees. “That, I can do. I’ll put it on a shard and arrange a drop off.”
“Thanks,” V says softly.
Fuck, at least something is going right, for once. V hopes she can take Aiko’s alliance at face value, although from where she’s sitting, she can’t see a reason to doubt the heiress’s intentions.
“How is Goro?” she asks.
Aiko smiles. “He is doing very well,” she replies.
“Can I see him?”
The smile falls from Aiko’s face. “I don’t think that would be wise,” she says. “If you were spotted together… if he were to be seen at all …” Her face twists with worry.
“It’s okay,” V quickly assures her. “I’ll take your word for it.”
And Aiko’s right - wherever Goro's holed up, it’s safe to assume Arasaka doesn’t know, or they’d have come for him with whatever they’ve got left. But it’s also safe to assume that they know where V is at this point, given that dating Kerry doesn’t exactly afford her a low profile these days. The fact that they haven’t acted against her means that either Yorinobu is pulling the strings, or 'Saka's shit is more in shambles than she’d dared hope. But either way, the risk of her leading them straight to Goro is too high.
She sees Claire approaching from across the lawn, then, and lifts her arm in greeting as she nears. Claire’s just wearing a plain silk cocktail dress in dark gray, but it flatters her figure and the simplicity of it accentuates her complete lack of any cyberware.
“Never seen you in a dress before,” V teases as Claire comes to stand by them.
“Never seen you in a crown before,” Claire retorts with a laugh. “Kerry told me to come find you, they’re about to bring out the cake.”
V puts out her cigarette and stands, rearranging her dress as Aiko does the same. They exchange a conspiratorial glance, then follow Claire back across the lawn and into the house just in time to see Kerry hop up onto the piano bench as an enormous cake is carried in by one of the staff and the room bursts into song. Everyone cheers as Kerry lifts his glass and delivers another rambling speech about living for nine decades that he caps off with another toast.
She reaches Kerry as he’s lowering himself from the bench, and he sweeps her in for a kiss as the people around them continue to clap. V barely has time to react before Kerry’s tugging her by the arm towards another woman V’s never met before, a woman with bright pink coiffed curls, a round face, red lips, and two golden cyberarms with long, dramatic nails.
“V, this is Satine Scalinski,” Kerry says as the woman turns away from her entourage to greet them. “My new manager. Our new manager,” he adds hopefully.
V smiles and extends her hand. “Nice to meet you,” she tells the woman.
“Pleasure,” Satine replies, her painted lip twitching upward ever so slightly.
V shoots Kerry a look. The woman reeks of corpo, but presumably she’s a step up from Kovachek if Kerry chose her as his replacement.
They have a round of drinks together while Kerry talks animatedly about his new album and about the songs he and V have been writing together, and V realizes she’s crossing the threshold from drunk to shit-hammered. But she smiles even as Satine’s face starts to double, and as she looks around her, she sees that the other guests are beginning to let loose and dance to the loud and festive music that begins thumping through the sound system. V’s eyes fall to the buffet, and she realizes suddenly that she hasn’t eaten anything all day. She pushes away from Kerry and Satine to go shovel some cocktail shrimps into her mouth, and right at that moment she looks up to see Dino saunter in, sunglasses on. He seems to have missed the memo on the theme, because he’s clad in his usual leather jacket and torn jeans.
He grins and flicks his tongue at V when he sees her, and she nods quickly and lowers her eyes back to the food, her appetite suddenly gone. She heads back towards the bar instead, and she isn’t surprised when Dino sidles up to stand next to her as the bartender pours her a glass of Centzon.
“How ya feelin’, doll?” he says, flashing her a shit-eating and very lascivious grin.
“Real preem move, Dino,” V spits back. “Showin’ up here.”
Dino shrugs, still grinning. “Hey, I was invited,” he reminds her. “Me an’ Ker go way back.”
“Uh huh,” V says dryly, tossing back her drink and shooting Dino a pointed look as the bartender moves to refill it.
“Alright, alright,” he relents. “If it’s a problem, I can leave. But hey, c’mon, we’re all adults here, right? Kerry ain’t your dad.”
V narrows her eyes. “You’re damn right he’s not. He’s my boyfriend.”
Dino smirks. “Sure seemed like it when you had my cock in your-”
But V cuts him off with a punch to the arm. “Just be cool, okay man?” she hisses at him. “Shit happens, but don’t make it weird.”
Dino reaches across for V’s drink and downs it in one gulp, flashing her another grin before slamming the glass down and stalking off across the room to enthusiastically greet Ruth Dzeng and her coterie. V scowls as he walks away, then motions for the bartender to once again refill her now empty glass.
She’s not actually mad at Dino, not really. That would be unfair of her - it takes two to fuckin’ tango, after all.
She’s furious with herself.
Across the room, Kerry is animatedly speaking to a group of admirers. His face is glowing and his eyes are shining and that only serves to make V feel even more wretched. She takes her drink and pulls away from the bar, moving past Kerry towards the back door and following the walkway around the outside of the house to the private balcony that overlooks the city.
She realizes she’s blinking back angry tears, and she fumbles for a cigarette and lights it, resting against the railing and swirling the tequila in her glass as she stares out at the glimmering cityscape.
Tonight was supposed to be about Kerry, about her and Kerry. Titania and Oberon, the fairy queen and king in all their majesty. But just as Titania was put under a spell and fucked a donkey, so too has V fucked her own donkey who happens to go by the name of Dino Dinovic.
She flicks her cigarette over the railing, watching the ash spiral down into the vegetation below. This is how brush fires start, she thinks. Would be almost fitting if she managed to burn down all of North Oak tonight.
She’s finishing her second cigarette when she hears footsteps behind her, and turns to see Kerry, his face shifting from anxiety to relief when he sees her.
“Hey, V,” he says softly, coming to stand beside her. “Been lookin’ for ya.”
“Mm,” V says, putting out her cigarette and immediately reaching for another. Kerry reaches his hand across her and takes a cigarette from her pack as well, and she cups her hand and turns away from the wind to light hers. Kerry waits a beat, then pulls out his own lighter and flicks it on, raising it to his mouth.
“Hey… you okay?” he says as he exhales his first drag, his unnaturally smooth brow furrowing as he comes to lean against the railing beside V. “Seem a little out of it… today and yesterday.”
V glares down at the shrubbery below. “Wow,” she says dryly. “Just noticed yesterday? Bravo, well done.”
Kerry balks. “Hey, I know you’re havin’ a rough go of it lately, but don’t take it out on me just ‘cause you’re-”
He pauses, staring at V with a mixture of hurt and frustration on his face.
“Exactly, Kerry,” V hisses. “What?” she taunts. “Afraid to say it? ‘Cause I’m what? ‘Cause I’m dying? ‘Cause I’m still fucked up over having your dead ex-boyfriend in my head for a few months? ‘Cause I’m a fuckin’ mess? ‘Cause I’m runnin’ around town, partying and screwing everyone and embarrassing you in the screamsheets? That it?”
Kerry blanches. “Screwing everyone?”
“No,” V sighs. “Yes. I dunno. That’s not the point.”
“Who?”
V winces. “Dino.”
“Fuck,” Kerry breathes. “Ouch.”
V sighs, finally turning to him. “I mean... you know how it is,” she says, her eyes searching his. His jaw is tense as he holds her gaze, but she can see the muscles working in his throat.
“Y'know... lately I'm not sure I do,” he replies, still holding her gaze. “How is it, V?”
V blows out another cloud of smoke, watching it drift out and over the trees below. “How does it look?”
Kerry taps his cigarette onto the balcony and looks away, his face twisting into a scowl. “You know who you remind me of sometimes?” he says angrily. “Do ya?”
“Stop,” V warns.
“Johnny!” Kerry almost shouts. “You’re just as stubborn, and just as fuckin’ hard to stand. Sure you even got rid of him, back in Mikoshi?”
V is silent for a moment, the blood rushing in her ears as she stares furiously at the skyline before her. She takes another trembling drag of her cigarette.
“You’re talkin’ outta your ass, Kerry,” she says coldly, but her voice quavers. “Let’s change the subject before you say somethin’ you’ll regret.”
“Oh! So it’s all my fault,” Kerry spits. “Sure.”
“Rather not fight,” V pleads.
“Who’s fighting?”
“Kerry…” she sighs. “I can’t. Don’t have the strength, or the time.”
Kerry shakes his head sadly and is silent for a long moment, and when he looks back at her his face is dark. “Look, V… it’s been like this since Mikoshi,” he says roughly. “It’s like you’re not here anymore. Absent, somehow.”
“So… what?” V retorts, her voice coming out thin and mean. “You’re tellin’ me you want me to pretend? To move on? To act like everything’s okay? To say ‘fuck it,’ and just get on with dying alone?”
“You’re not alone, V,” he says softly.
“That’s not what I meant,” V stammers.
They both know what she meant.
“After Alt died… when Johnny and I…” Kerry begins, but falters. “Just… don’t wall yourself off, V,” he begs. “It won’t end well.”
V gazes out at the city again, watching the holographic billboards of Corpo Plaza shift and flicker in the distance. “Thought you understood,” she says in a low voice.
Kerry’s voice is soft at her side. “I just… sometimes lately I just feel like a fuckin’ dog left outside in the rain, scrabblin’ at the door to be let in.”
V’s heart breaks.
“I'm dyin', Kerry,” she reminds him. “And so is Johnny, every second he stays in fuckin’ cyberspace. You forget that?”
“Yes, you're dying. I know,” Kerry replies. “But that shouldn't change things between us.”
“Says the guy who’s not dying.”
Kerry scoffs. “Can’t believe you just said that.”
“Said it ‘cause it’s the truth!” she cries, turning back to him then and gesturing wildly with her hands. “Maybe you could finally stop pretending it’s not! You gotta understand, my time's runnin' out!”
“Time for what?” Kerry shouts. “For fighting this city tooth and nail? You alone, against the world? For what, V? Do you think that by cutting me off, you're somehow protecting me?”
“Look, is this an interrogation?” V says, pressing her fingers to her temples. “I just wanna drink my tequila, Kerry.”
Kerry is silent for a moment. “Fine,” he says darkly. “I’ll see you inside.”
He turns on his heel and strides away, leaving her alone to stare out at the flickering neon lights of the city below.
V blinks back furious tears. She’s not being fair to Kerry and she knows it. She’s drunk and she’s angry and she’s scared and she’s lashing out and Kerry’s the last fuckin’ person who deserves it. And his words fuckin’ landed - she knows he’s right, she’s treatin’ him just like Johnny fuckin’ did, and the thought makes her throat feel tight and her heart pound in her chest.
She pushes away from the railing and makes her way back around to the front of the house. Rogue is standing by the pool with Karis, and V pauses to watch them for a moment. Karis is gesticulating with his hands and Rogue’s laughing, and V is struck again by the strangeness of the revelation that Rogue is someone’s mother.
Karis catches her eye and gives her a little wave, and Rogue turns as well, her laugh fading as she sees the look on V’s face.
“Hey,” Rogue says as V approaches them. “Enjoying the party?”
V sighs heavily and slumps onto a nearby pool chair.
“Sure,” she replies darkly.
Karis gives her a look. “Want a bump?” he offers.
Rogue's eyes look like they're about to roll out of their sockets, but V glances up at Karis and shakes her head. “Not tonight,” she tells him. She finishes her glass of tequila and sets it aside, frowning at it for a beat.
Karis presses his lips together. “You’re no fun,” he pouts. “I’m gonna go find Avery.” He turns back to Rogue. “Later, mom,” he says, then whirls and strides off across the lawn, his heels wobbling only slightly as he crosses the grass.
Rogue sits on the end of the pool chair, resting her chin on her hand and studying V.
“What’s up, kid?” she says.
V looks down but doesn’t answer.
“V, you can talk to me,” Rogue says. “Is it Kerry?”
“Yeah,” V murmurs, but then shakes her head. “I dunno. Not really, I guess.”
“Johnny,” Rogue guesses.
V nods. “When I saw him last night… in cyberspace…” she begins, searching for the right words. She realizes she hasn’t even told Kerry about that encounter yet, and chews her lip as Rogue waits for her to continue. “He’s dying out there, Rogue. That place is fucking up his mind, what’s left of him. And I just can’t… I don’t know if I can…”
Her words trail off with a choked sound.
“Johnny’s a tough motherfucker,” Rogue reassures her. “He’ll hang in there.”
V looks up at her. “But what if he doesn’t?”
Rogue is silent for a moment. “People die, V. You of all people know that. If it comes to that… eventually you’ll have to let him go.”
“Johnny never did,” V says. “With Alt, I mean. He never gave up, kept fighting his whole fucking life.”
Rogue nods. “And look where it got him.”
“Feels like I’m just repeating history, sometimes,” V confesses. “Fuck, I’m even treating Kerry the same way Johnny did back then, usin’ him as a soft place to land while I’m gettin’ ready to risk my life for someone else who’s already gone.” She leans forward and puts her face in her hands. “Fuck, Rogue, what am I even doing? Am I about to throw my life away on some fuckin’ half-baked kamikaze bullshit?”
Rogue watches her coolly, but her eyes are sympathetic. “You’re not the type to stop fighting until you’re out of options,” she reminds V. “You were like that even before you knew Johnny.”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m bein’ even more of a gonk than he was,” V mumbles. “At least he had ideals, a cause he was fightin’ for. I’m just tryin’ to save myself and some long-dead rockerboy terrorist. Fuck,” she breathes. “He was so fuckin’ cruel to Kerry, wasn’t he? And to everyone else who stood up to his shit or didn’t join his crusade. And now I’m just doin’ the same fuckin’ shit.” She sighs angrily. “Are either of us even worth saving?”
But Rogue shakes her head vehemently. “Johnny wanted a lot out of life, wanted the people around him to want that too. And when he saw others bein’ complacent… he got frustrated,” she says. “I always accused him of being in it for himself, but that wasn’t the truth. He wanted the world to be different, to be better. He wanted people to be better, to want a better world for themselves, too. And you’re the same way,” she finishes, glancing back over at V.
“Maybe,” V murmurs.
Rogue watches her silently for a moment as the sounds from the party filter across the lawn to them. V can still hear the gentle, melodic tones of the string quartet drifting in the night air, now undercut by the heavier bass vibrating from the house.
“He loved you, y'know,” Rogue says quietly.
V whips her head to look at Rogue, her heart leaping to her throat.
“He told me,” Rogue continues, holding her gaze. “The night he took over your body and took you on that little bender.”
“He did?” V asks in a small voice.
Rogue gives her a strange look. “Don't pretend you didn't know.”
V stares at Rogue, feeling her mouth open then close then open again. “I... it's just... he never actually said…” she stammers as the force of the revelation washes over her in a barrage of ecstasy and grief.
Fuck, she hadn’t anticipated how much it would mean to her to hear those words.
And fuck, she wishes she’d heard them from Johnny, instead.
“Course he didn't.” Rogue sighs and runs her hand through her silver hair. “Never could man up enough to say those things before it was too late, huh?”
V can only nod mutely, feeling her pulse hot and loud in her ears.
She feels a sudden tingling in her hands, her ears are ringing, and her vision is starting to go dark.
Either she’s having a panic attack, or it’s her autoimmune bullshit startin’ to make itself known. Either way, she suddenly feels like she’s about to pass out.
She gets to her feet and all but runs back across the lawn, re-entering the house through the side door by the garage and pushing through the crowd in the lounge for the back stairs.
Quinn grabs her arm, laughing as she tries to pull V into a cluster of dancing bodies, but V wrenches her arm away and continues for the stairs, stopping when she gets to the top to take a series of deep, shaky breaths. Her hands are completely numb now, and her vision is doubling badly, and she suddenly feels as though her legs aren’t gonna support her for much longer.
She uses the railing for support as she makes her way along the mezzanine that overlooks the lounge, ignoring the people who try to wave her over as she hurries across the second floor bar area. She doesn’t stop until she reaches Kerry’s bedroom, and when she pushes open the double doors she’s relieved to find that there’s no one in here doin’ blow this time.
She closes the doors behind her and strides over to collapse onto the bed, and she realizes then that she can’t stop shaking. Her vision is going dark, and she feels a strange sensation at the back of her neck almost like a repeated electric shock, and she rolls over onto her side and curls up in the fetal position. The tiara Kerry put on her is digging into her skull, so she yanks it off and tosses it aside, then squeezes her eyes shut and focuses on trying not to cry.
She wakes up to Kerry rustling around the room as he strips off his bejeweled suit and kicks off his shoes, tugging his own crown off his head and setting it on the table at the foot of the bed. The sky outside is still dark, but her HUD tells her it’s a little past 5 am.
She watches as he moves around the darkened room, his figure silhouetted in the glow from the skyline through the window. In the dim light, she can’t see his face.
He must hear her stir, because he pauses and looks down at her.
“You awake?” he says.
V nods. “Yeah,” she croaks.
Kerry finishes stripping off his clothes and lowers himself onto the bed beside her. V’s suddenly reminded of that first night they met, how they stayed up all night in this very bed tellin’ each other their goddamn life stories.
“Kerry, listen…” she says, her voice thick and hoarse. “I’m sorry. About earlier. About everything. About Dino. About all of it.”
“Nah,” Kerry grumbles. “Don’t give a fuck about Dino.” He shrugs. "It is what it fuckin’ is,” he says darkly.
V rolls over to face him. “Dyin’ ain’t an excuse to act the way I’ve been acting,” she whispers.
“V…” Kerry breathes. “I know your… our time’s running out.” His face twists with anguish. “But I’m here for you. Was there before, will be tomorrow, and when the time comes.”
“I know,” V chokes. “And I’m sorry. You’re right, I haven’t been myself. Haven’t been fair to you. And…” She swallows, reaching for his hand and interlacing her fingers with his. “I need you,” she manages. “That's never gonna change.”
Kerry looks down at their entangled hands, then back over at V.
“So let me help you,” he says simply.
V shakes her head. “This last fight... it's for me to fight alone.”
Kerry lets out a slow breath. “You might not see it yet, but that's a fight this city won't let you win,” he murmurs darkly.
“But I have to try,” V whispers.
“I know,” Kerry says, and his voice is rough and low. “Romeo and Juliet bullshit,” he murmurs, but the anger is gone as he reaches for V and places his hand on her cheek. “Fuckin’ hell, your name’s even Verona.”
V smiles sadly. “Guess I was doomed from the start, then,” she jokes weakly.
“Guess we all were,” Kerry agrees, pushing her hair from her face before reaching for her hand again, tangling his fingers with hers.
V studies Kerry’s face in the dim light. “Johnny loved you,” she tells him suddenly. “He still does.”
Kerry just nods, his eyes flickering downwards. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “I know.”
“I just… I just don’t want you to think you don’t matter here,” V whispers. “That you don’t matter to me.”
“I know,” Kerry says again, but his voice still sounds anguished. “Look, V,” he says, running his hand anxiously through his hair. “If you manage to get him back... I'm not gonna get in your guys' way.”
“Kerry,” she protests, but he continues, cutting her off.
“Know you two will have your shit to figure out, and I'm not gonna make it my problem,” he says softly.
V finds herself blinking back tears again, but for once she feels no anger, no resentment, no rage or fury, just a deep and all-consuming sorrow.
“Why?” she chokes. “Why'd you hang around this whole time if you thought I was just gonna drop you for Johnny the second I figured out how to get him back?”
“‘Cause I'm a pathetic gonk who'll take whatever scraps of affection from you he can get?” Kerry says without missing a beat.
V is speechless for a moment. “Look, if I pull this off, we can figure it all out.” She stretches out her hand to rest it on his chest. “But Kerry... I…” She swallows. “I love you, okay?”
It's the first time she's ever said it to him. But the truth is, Kerry feels like the closest thing she's got to family right now. And she knows that whatever happens, she wants him in her life. And she knows Johnny well enough to know he feels the same. What that means in practice... well, that'll be up to Kerry.
He closes his eyes and places his hand over hers.
“Love ya too, V,” he says in a rough voice. The words come so quickly, so easily, that V feels her stomach drop when she remembers again how Johnny's words had caught in his throat, how he'd left her hanging in Mikoshi when she finally declared herself to him. How is it so easy for Kerry to say these things, to wear his heart on his sleeve, to remain so gentle and so earnest after almost a century of gettin' kicked in the gut for it?
Fuck, that's what she loves about him.
She pulls him towards her, kissing him fiercely. She wants him to know it, wants him to feel it. She knows she'll never be able to fully express to him how grateful she is for everything - for his friendship, his generosity, his love, his unwavering willingness to be there and be whatever she needs, even when she’s done nothing to fuckin’ deserve it.
She hopes she can return the favor someday.
She dreams she’s back in cyberspace, back in the Pistis Sophia. And Johnny’s there, but he doesn’t speak, and every time she reaches for him he glitches away, always just out of reach.
“Johnny,” she sobs, but his body begins to evaporate then, curling like smoke before her eyes. And then those alien, inhuman beings are tearing at her again, shredding her mind and unzippering her memories and when she looks down at her hands, they’re stretching and bleeding and splintering into a million tiny fractals, spiraling out and away from her followed by her arms, then her throat until she’s nothing, no one, just a shattered spread of fractured thoughts and torn up memories, spread thin across an infinite ether of clamoring ghosts.
She wakes up gasping.
Sunlight pours through the windows, casting a brilliant spotlight across her body and the bed she’s sprawled in, still wearing that heavy, jewel-encrusted, velvet dress that’s currently tangled hopelessly around her feet.
Kerry’s snoring softly beside her, his arm flung wide and the plush comforter wound around his legs. V’s side of the bed is soaked with sweat, and she gingerly extricates herself from the blankets and strips off the gown before quietly crossing the room to slip on one of Kerry’s robes.
Her throat is sore and her mouth feels like cotton, but her head feels strangely clearer than it has in a long time.
She pads over to the master bathroom and takes a quick, hot shower, scrubbing off the remnants of her makeup and the booze she sweated out while she slept. After vigorously towel-drying her hair, she puts back on the robe and goes downstairs.
The house is still in disarray, but since Kerry hired actual staff for his event this time, most of the party debris has already been cleared. It’s still fairly early, so V figures they probably did most of the heavy lifting last night after everyone left. The Christmas tree still looms in the foyer by the stairs, and V stops to gaze up at it for a moment before walking softly to the kitchen to make herself some coffee.
She eyes the bottle of brandy by the espresso machine as she fills her cup, but something makes her pause as she reaches for it instinctively.
Today seems like as good a time as any to make a fresh start, she decides. Fuck, if Henry can do it, so can she. So she takes her coffee and returns to the main room, pausing again at the tree before heading over to the cushioned benches that line the wall underneath the guitar display.
She sits on the bench and tucks her feet underneath her, remembering suddenly how Johnny had crouched at her feet here once, how he’d promised her he’d… oh. She freezes, abruptly remembering just what exactly it was that he promised.
He promised to tell her something he’d talked about with Rogue earlier that night. Something he was keeping from her.
The very thing that Rogue finally told her last night.
“You didn’t fucking keep your promise, Johnny,” she whispers, squeezing her eyes shut.
But she remembers what else happened that night, too. They unwittingly saved Kerry’s life that same night.
Just like Johnny saved hers.
Just like she’s gonna save his.
We all need each other, she thinks.
Her eyes fall to the latest addition to Kerry’s collection - Johnny’s DeLuze Orphean.
She sets her coffee mug on the floor and reaches for the guitar, leaning over to plug it into the nearby amp before settling back on the bench. She positions its black and chrome body on her lap, softly tuning it as her fingers fumble through the not quite familiar but not entirely unfamiliar ritual that’s still hiding out in the recesses of her brain. Before she’s even fully aware of what she’s doing, she starts strumming the arpeggiated chords of that old acoustic version of Never Fade Away, the same one she played at the Aldecaldos' camp that night. She sings the words softly under her breath as she shifts her fingers on the frets, closing her eyes as she lets herself become enveloped in the song.
“We should record a version,” Kerry’s voice says, and V startles, almost dropping the guitar. She hadn’t heard him come downstairs.
She frowns down at her fingers. “You think?”
“Mhm,” Kerry says quickly. “You sing it like no one else could.” He bends over and reaches for her abandoned coffee, straightening to take a sip before setting it down again.
V sets the guitar on the bench beside her. “Johnny wrote it about Alt,” she says softly. “Feels weird to record a version without him.”
Kerry shakes his head. “That’s the thing about music… any song you write is gonna be a product of wherever you were at the time you wrote and recorded it.” He sits beside her and picks up the guitar. “But anyone who listens to it? It’s gonna mean something different to them for whatever point they’re at in their lives.” He adjusts the tuning and begins strumming absentmindedly, picking out the same broken chords from Never Fade Away that V’d been playing a moment ago. “And then… you just gotta go out there and talk about it, and smile for the cameras, and understand that this really fuckin' personal part of yourself that you shared has become public property. That even though it’s got your name on it, your life in it, it now belongs to every single other person who has an opinion or feeling or connection with it.” He pauses his strumming and looks at V. “So this song? It’s yours now, too, V.”
V just nods, feeling a sudden lump in her throat. Something feels different between them today, like a weight’s been lifted. It occurs to her that she feels the most at ease with Kerry when they’re making or discussing music together, and she wonders if it was the same for him with Johnny.
Fuck, what would she do if she didn’t have Kerry?
“The first night you two stormed in here, he told me it was your favorite,” Kerry continues. “That he wanted to play it for ya at the gig. Do you remember that?”
V nods slowly. “Yeah,” she murmurs, her throat tightening.
Kerry gives her another long look. “I’m serious,” he says. “We should record a version. Real stripped down, raw, vibey as fuck. And with that voice of yours? It’ll be fuckin’ brutal.”
V smiles in spite of herself. “Alright,” she tells him. “I’m game.”
Kerry smiles back as he sets aside the guitar. “Let’s get dressed and I’ll drive ya home,” he offers. “Can stop and grab some breakfast. Then we can jam. How’s that sound?”
“Fuckin’ perfect,” V says sincerely.
Notes:
Violet Vega belongs to madelinek! You can read about her extremely spicy affair with Johnny in the 2020s in this absolutely fantastic fic!
edited to add that I planned out and wrote this plot arc before CDPR gave Kerry an official birthday of April 7th, so... lol oops, whatever. in this universe he's a Sagittarius king (and I accidentally (or maybe subconsciously intentionally??) gave him the same bday as Taylor Swift lmfao). but tbh him being an Aries also makes so much sense (I mean could this man be anything BUT a fire sign???). ANYWAY oh well!!!
Chapter 55: Modern Trenches
Summary:
V prepares for her mission and spends some quality time with Kerry.
Notes:
Smut at the end of this one! And believe it or not, this chapter has slightly less angst than usual lol
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The cold metal locks into place, the link nestling in the port at the back of V's neck. She feels a crackle and her vision glitches as Bram’s vanguard daemons flood through her mind, scouting for any traces of leftover code from the AI attack.
The ripperdoc watches V’s face as he runs his scan, his bleached white dreads hanging loose around his head as he peers at her over his optical magnifiers.
V settles back into the chair, closing her eyes and trying to relax as the ripper conducts his exam. She's still feeling a slight hangover from Kerry's party last night - after breakfast and a short music session, he'd left V to go meet with his new manager to discuss the details of his quickly approaching Us Cracks tour, leaving V faced with the yawning void of an afternoon with no real plans and nothing pressing to attend to.
She considered going back to the Afterlife to dive again, but after what happened last time, she finds herself feeling hesitant and nervous at the prospect. She’s still deeply shaken by that experience - it was a brutal and visceral reminder of the dangers of existing as a human mind in cyberspace beyond the Blackwall, both for her and for Johnny.
And so she decided to take Nix up on his recommendation to go see his ripper downtown, and now here she is at Bram Zeegers’ clinic, lettin’ him prod at her mind.
V studies Bram as he works, trying to get a read on him. The clinic is sparse, but the gear he's got is top-of-the-line. He's wearing a tattered gray knit sweater, but its cut still suggests a designer label. He speaks with a slight Pacifica lilt, but he seems almost as though he's trying to disguise it.
“Been in the biz long?” V asks the ripper as he frowns at the readouts that start appearing on his monitor.
“Lemme think now…” Bram replies with a slow smile, turning to look at her again. “Been goin’ on ten years already. Started out in Pacifica, and now look! A clinic in the heart of Night City!”
“Props to you,” V tells him earnestly.
“Thanks!” he says cheerily. “And listen, don’t worry, a’ight? I know what I’m doin’. I could line your skull with titanium and you wouldn’t feel a thing.”
He seems like a nice enough dude, and V doubts Nix would send her to someone who doesn't know his shit. So she smiles and nods, and he turns back to the monitor, humming to himself as he continues to crosscheck the datastream.
“You were a netrunner first, is that it?” she asks him.
Bram nods. “That’s how I got started, yeah,” he tells her. “But then me and some chooms hit a big spike in the Net, my cousin went ‘psycho, and dunno man… I got spooked. Decided to learn this instead.” He is silent for a moment. “But that right there is why I’m da best in town,” he continues, his face brightening. “In order to properly debug cyberware, you gotta know the daemons like you wrote ‘em yourself.”
V raises her eyebrows. “Get a lotta runners doin’ shit like this?” she asks. “Beyond the Blackwall?”
Bram’s brow furrows as he lets out a short laugh. “Never used to,” he replies. “Used to think any ‘runner who said they’d crossed the Blackwall and lived to tell the tale was makin’ shit up to get cred.” He shakes his head, still frowning. “But lately? Suddenly gettin’ a ton of gonk ‘runners comin’ outta Pacifica tryna make a name for themselves convening with the great beyond, as it were.”
V winces. “The Voodoo Boys,” she says. “They figured out a way to cross. I, uh… helped ‘em with that, actually. In a sense.”
Bram’s eyes widen, and V suddenly worries she’s said too much.
“Sorry to keep asking, but I can count on you being... discreet, yeah?” she asks him for the millionth time since she walked in.
“Already told ya, I gotcha, girl!” Bram quickly reassures her. “Not even a whisper’ll escape these lips.” He stares down at her, his face settling into a serious expression. “And with the way your head’s wired? The unlocked NetWatch deck? The busted chip in your alpha slot? I already know you been messin’ with some shit ya shouldn't.”
V presses her lips together, nodding as much as she can with the link connected to her skull.
“So tell me about this AI you encountered,” Bram prompts.
V sighs as she shifts in the chair. “I… I dunno how to describe it,” she tells him. “It wasn’t just one, I don’t think. It was like they were comin’ at me from all directions, tearin’ out chunks of my mind.”
“How’d ya get back out?” Bram asks breathlessly.
V hesitates a beat before answering. “Alt Cunningham,” she says finally.
Bram whistles through his teeth. “So it’s true, then,” he breathes. “She’s still out there.” He laughs incredulously, shaking his head as he pulls off his glasses. “And here I thought my cousins were just pullin’ shit outta their asses again.”
“It’s true,” V tells him. “Maman Brigitte and I managed to make contact, a few months back.”
“And that’s why you went back across?” Bram guesses. “To talk to Alt again?”
“More or less, yeah,” V says.
Bram nods at her, considering this. “Well,” he announces. “Your scan looks clean, though I’m pickin’ up a lotta other odd readings in your neural patterns here,” he tells her.
“Like what?”
The ripper shrugs. “Just stuff that… doesn’t match. Can’t fully explain it.” He turns the monitor towards her. “Here, look,” he says, pointing at some graph that V can’t make heads or tails of. “See that? That little spike there?”
V nods stiffly again, although she’s not sure what exactly it is she’s supposed to be seeing there.
“It’s outta sync with the rest of your brainwaves. But the patterns aren’t ones caused by any daemon I ever seen, and it ain’t readin' the same as it would if your neurons were damaged by a spike or even an AI,” he explains. “It’s like… like I took a fragment of someone else’s brain patterns, and stitched ‘em into yours.” He sighs heavily. “Dunno how that’s even possible.”
V laughs darkly. “Think I do,” she tells him, staring at the wiggling lines on his screen. She doesn't need a ripper to tell her that there are still chunks of Johnny's mind mingled with hers, shreds of his past floating amongst her own.
“Anythin’ I should be aware of?” Bram asks, cocking an eyebrow at her curiously.
V shakes her head. “Don’t think so,” she replies quickly. “The hardware that caused it is… inert now,” she says, hearing her voice quaver.
“Ya mean the melted chip in your neck? The one that’s fried into your skull?”
“Yeah,” she tells him. “But it shouldn’t cause me any more problems now.”
Bram frowns at her. “You sure about that? ‘Cause I’m also seein’ some signs of inflammation in your brain tissue and spine. Looks like what I’d see if your body was rejectin’ an implant… but it’s treatin’ your own tissue that way.”
V lets out another hoarse laugh. “Also sounds about right,” she says, then sighs. “But that’s my problem to fix, not yours.”
Bram studies her for a long beat, then nods slowly. “Well, in that case, everything else looks good to go,” he tells her as he leans over to unplug the jack from her neck. He stands, smoothing down the front of his sweater before offering her a hand as she swings her feet off the side of the ripper chair.
“Thanks, Dr. Zeegers,” she says, flickin’ him the eddies they agreed on.
“Please,” he tells her. “Just Bram.”
“Alright, then,” she replies. “Thanks, Bram.”
“Come back anytime,” he says as she gathers her things and exits the clinic through the sparse lobby, barely glancing at the posters of chromed out celebrities lining the walls.
The sun is just starting to set as she steps out onto the small strip mall plaza where the clinic is housed. It’s right near the waterfront, almost at the border of Wellsprings, and she can see the ocean from here, just beyond the buildings across the street.
She starts walking back towards the NCART station, but decides suddenly that she’s not ready to go home just yet. It’s surprisingly warm out for mid-December, and despite her lingering hangover, that new, clear-headed feeling she’s had since this morning hasn’t receded. And it’s a welcome change from the muddled pain she’s been locked in since Mikoshi. So she heads straight past the entrance to the station and continues south along Skyline, down through Wellsprings and into Heywood. All the shops are decked out for the holidays, with sparkling Christmas lights and tinsel strung up around the window displays as the road curves along the waterfront towards the Glen, giving her a stunning view of Pacifica. She can see the boardwalk gleaming in the sunset across the water with the looming towers of Dogtown rising behind it, crowned by the pyramid-shaped building emitting a pillar of green light into the sky that reminds her all too closely of the similar strange structure she saw in Mikoshi.
V finds her mind wandering back to the party last night, to her conversation with Rogue. Specifically, the revelation that Johnny had known he loved her as early as their ill-fated bender, known it enough to spill it drunkenly to his ex.
But if V’s honest with herself, really honest, she suspects it was even sooner than that. A sudden realization hits her then, causing her to come to a dead stop on the sidewalk and stare out at the flickering lights beyond the dark waves. It was the Pistis Sophia, after the parade, she realizes. That's when he knew. That's what he'd been trying to tell her with the dog tags. That's why he flipped out and got hammered the second he had control of her body the following night, why he got her arm stamped with his name. That's why he broke down to Rogue that same night and told her he was falling in love with the woman he was killing.
He knew all along, she thinks. And he knew that they both weren't making it out of this alive, just like she accused him in Mikoshi.
And the truth is, the Pistis Sophia was when she knew as well. Knew that she loved him, and that they were utterly and absolutely fucked.
She fights down the surge of emotions that threaten to overwhelm her, forcing herself to continue on down the sidewalk past the festive lights and decorations that seem to mock her with their cheeriness.
And then, crammed right between a suit shop and a ramen joint, she finds herself staring through a large glass window that looks in on a group of kids - mostly girls - in mismatched dancewear, their small hands clutching the barre that runs along the wall of the studio as no other than Marigold paces the room, examining their form as they move through an elaborate series of tendus and dégagés that were once so familiar to V.
V glances up at the sign above the door. “Skyline Studios,” it reads in a decorative but modern script. She pauses to watch through the glass, smiling to herself at the sight of her old friend teaching these kids like this. She can hear the piano music faintly through the window, as well as Marigold calling out corrections to the dancers as they stumble through the combination. Marigold spots her through the window then, and her whole face brightens as she waves at V and motions for her to come inside.
V grins back begrudgingly as she moves towards the door, pushing it open and following the narrow hallway around through the lobby and into the actual studio.
“Vero!” Marigold exclaims, coming to hug her warmly as the combination finishes and the music stops. “Didn’t think you’d actually stop by!”
V shrugs as she disengages from the embrace. “I was in the area,” she explains, glancing around the studio. It’s not huge, but it’s much nicer than the place they danced together as kids. “Real preem set-up you got here,” she remarks. “And the floor here is actually even!”
“It’s sprung Marley!” Marigold brags, beaming at V with pride. “Had to sell my car to pay for it, but it was more than worth it.” She taps her finger against her chin as she looks at V for a moment. “Look, this is my last class of the day. I gotta finish up with them, but what do you say we go grab a drink at the Coyote after?” she offers. “Catch up properly?”
V considers this, then nods. “I’d love that,” she tells Marigold sincerely.
“Wanna pull up a chair and watch?”
V grins. “Why not?” she teases. “Gotta make sure you’re whippin’ these kids into shape properly.”
Marigold grins back. “Listen, if these kids aren’t auditioning for NCB in three years, you can come back here and slam a mallet into my skull,” she jokes, taking a folding chair from the stack that’s leaned against the wall and setting it up for V in the corner. She turns back to the class, where all the students are still standing at the barre, eyeing their new guest with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. “Kids!” Marigold announces. “This is Vero, an old friend of mine. She’s gonna watch us dance today, if you’re all okay with that.”
The tiny heads all nod, and Marigold smiles at V and begins demonstrating another combination. Piano music begins playing again out of a set of small speakers at the front of the room, and the kids all screw their faces in concentration as they begin to perform the complicated rond de jambe combination that Marigold just showed them.
But V’s smile freezes on her face, because she recognizes the music selection coming out of the speakers.
It’s that same fucking song Hanako was playing when V arrived that night at Embers. That Chopin piano nocturne. She suddenly remembers that her and Mari’s old teacher would give them combinations set to it, too - it works particularly well for rond de jambes.
But hearing it now makes V’s heart start to pound in her chest as the terror of that evening comes crashing back to her. She struggles to continue smiling at the room full of children as they complete the combination then turn to face the other direction as the music restarts.
Her hands start going numb, and her vision is blurring a bit, but she manages to maintain her composure as the students finish their barre and move to center to work on their pirouettes and petite allegro as the music shifts to a faster piece that V thinks might be from Giselle.
Once the students have leapt across the floor in a series of grand jetés, Marigold gathers them at the front for a quick reverence then ushers them out into the lobby where they pull on their sweatpants and coats and sneakers and file out into the streets, presumably to return to whatever sorry little lives they lead beyond these walls.
V finds herself wishing she’d had a sanctuary like this growing up. Dance for her had been more about pleasing her father, about trying to win his ever elusive affections, than about true artistic expression. But she knows it was different for Marigold, and it seems different for these kids, too. And giving them a space like this, an opportunity to grow and to shine… she can’t help but admire the effort Marigold’s put into this.
This whole time V’s been out doing merc work, tellin’ herself she’s doin’ what’s necessary to make Heywood safer, that she’s doin’ her part for the community by taking on its dirty work, and it’s never once occurred to her to try building something good instead of focusing all her energy on rooting out and destroying the things that were evil.
But Marigold’s standing before her now, grinning ear to ear, and V grins back as her friend changes out of her teaching shoes and slips on her boots and coat before grabbing V’s hand and pulling her out of the studio and down the street, deeper into the Glen and towards the familiar illuminated marquee of El Coyote Cojo.
Pepe grins when they enter and lets out a loud yell.
“Dios mio!” he exclaims with mock surprise. “What year is it? 2064? Mari and Vero… my little teen terrors,” he jokes affectionately, already sliding three glasses across the table to start pouring V her usual as the two women come to sit side by side at the bar.
V rests her hand gently on his arm, stopping him. “Just, uh… just a soda water and bitters for me today, actually,” she tells him, swallowing nervously. “But you two don’t stop on my account,” she adds, gesturing at the bottle of Centzon he’s holding poised over the empty tumblers.
“You goin’ teetotaler on me, V?” Pepe teases as he pours out two glasses of tequila, then fills the third glass with soda water from the tap and a heavy splash of bitters. “You at least want a lime in here?”
V nods. “Sure, Pepe,” she says. “Thanks.”
Marigold’s brow furrows as she sips her tequila. “You’re not drinking anymore?” she asks, and V shrugs.
“I’m not sure,” she tells them both honestly. In truth, she hasn’t yet fully allowed herself to give words to her decision yet - it feels like voicing it would make it real, make it final.
But she also knows the decision’s been made since the moment she bought that fuckin’ bag of dope from the junkie in Pacifica. She can’t keep living the way she has been, can’t keep falling back into her old bad habits, can’t keep dragging everyone else along with her on her sad little downward spiral.
And beyond that, she knows it’s been affecting her life and relationships in smaller ways, too. She’s been shutting Kerry out, been shutting out her own emotions, been doin’ exactly what Johnny would have done, what Johnny did when faced with a similar situation. And all he accomplished was hurting everyone he cared about.
If he’s not here to learn from his own mistakes, then V at least can.
But Mari and Pepe are both staring at her expectantly, so V just shrugs again. “I’m taking a long break for now, I think,” she says, trying to keep her voice casual, like it’s not a big deal. “Just don’t think it’s been doin’ me any favors, lately,” she adds with a bleak laugh.
Pepe laughs too. “Sure been makin’ a splash in the screamsheets these days,” he says, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Saw a photo of you just today, of you dancin’ up on some dude at Riot? What happened with Eurodyne, you two still seein’ each other?”
“Yeah, I-” V starts, but Marigold’s eyes widen as she nearly spits out her drink.
“You’re dating Kerry Eurodyne?” she squeaks.
Pepe rolls his eyes. “What, you been livin’ under a rock, Mari?” he teases. “Not keepin’ tabs on our hometown hero?” He reaches across the bar and pats V’s arm affectionately. “Our little Vero won the heart of NC’s biggest rock star,” he says.
Marigold’s wide eyes search V’s for confirmation.
“Yeah, been together a couple months now,” V tells her.
“Isn’t he like… 90 years old?” Marigold asks incredulously.
V laughs softly. “As of yesterday, yeah.”
“Well, he still looks 40, at least,” Marigold says with an approving chuckle.
“Yeah,” V replies softly, smiling down at her soda.
“Are those his?” Marigold asks, pointing at V’s dog tags.
V reaches up to clutch the tags. “No,” she says. “These were… someone else’s. A friend of Kerry’s, actually.”
Marigold nods slowly, her brow furrowing slightly.
"What about you?" she prompts Marigold, suddenly desperate to change the subject. "Seein' anyone lately?"
Marigold blushes. "Well, there is this one guy… can't say how serious it is yet," she admits.
"Oh?” V asks coyly, setting down her soda and bitters. "What's his name?"
"Clement," Marigold says with a small, sheepish smile. "He's one of the other teachers I hired at my studio, he works with the boys. He's dancing the chevalier with me in our Nutcracker this year. It's not much, just a small recital, really, an opportunity for the kids to perform, but you should come if you're-"
“V!” calls Mama Welles from behind them, saving V from the anguish of having to invent an excuse that doesn’t include an explanation of why she’s goin’ to space to try and rescue her dead brain parasite. She twists around to see the diminutive owner of the establishment heading towards them from the pool table, her hands spread wide.
“Everybody’s telling me you a pez gordo now. A big shot, eh?” Mama Welles continues, laughing darkly as she crosses the floor to lean beside V at the bar. “So big you can’t call me once a week? Once a month even?” She rolls her eyes dramatically and shakes her head, drumming her fingers on the bar as V flinches.
“I’m sorry Mama Welles, I’ve been-” V begins, but Mama Welles cuts her off.
“Ah, ah, ah, V!” she scolds. “Don’t waste your breath with apologies. You’ve been busy, yes. Busy running all over town with your rocker boyfriend, no? Don’t forget where you started, child. Who you started with, hm?”
“I could never,” V breathes, feeling the crushing guilt wrap around her heart as Pepe and Marigold laugh at Mama Welles' semi-serious scolding. She should call Mama Welles more. This was a woman who treated her like family when she had no one. She should know better than to take that lightly. “I’ve just been… things haven’t been easy for me, lately,” she confesses.
Mama Welles sighs heavily, but her face softens. “My door is always open to you, V,” she says. “There’s always food on my table. Mi casa es su casa. No se te alvide.”
It’s a strange feeling, arriving home from the bar sober, but V finds herself strangely relishing the novelty of it as she steps out of the elevator into her penthouse and tosses off her coat.
Kerry’s back now, sitting on her couch with his feet up on the coffee table and his guitar balanced on his lap.
“How ya feelin’ today?” he asks her gently, setting aside the guitar and standing to come join her in the kitchen as she fumbles with the coffee machine.
“Better,” V admits. “But I’m exhausted. Think I’m… think it’s gettin’ worse. Last night and today, I… my hands keep going numb, and Vik warned me that’d be the first sign, and…” She stops, setting down her mug as she realizes that she’s shaking.
“Takin’ your new meds?” Kerry asks softly.
“Yeah,” V says. “Took ‘em this morning when we got back here.”
Kerry nods thoughtfully. “But like… physical illness aside,” he adds, still watching her carefully. “You good?”
V shrugs and turns to look at him. “Don’t really know,” she says honestly. “Just takin’ it all as it comes.”
“Mm,” Kerry agrees, pulling her towards him and kissing her softly on the forehead.
“Listen, Kerry, I… I wanted to tell you last night, but didn’t get a chance,” she manages, and he pulls back to look down at her.
“What’s up, kid?” he asks, pushing her hair out of her face.
“I… I managed to talk to Johnny,” she tells him. “In cyberspace.”
Kerry’s eyes widen as his hand drops to his side.
“No shit?” he breathes. “You did? How… how is he?”
V sighs. “I dunno, Ker,” she admits in a choked voice. “Not great. He seemed real confused, he… he didn’t know it was me, at first, and then we got attacked by rogue AIs and Alt pulled me out but… I don’t know if he…” Her voice breaks, and Kerry quickly gathers her in his arms.
“Shit, V, you shoulda said something,” he murmurs into her hair.
“I know,” she whispers into his shoulder. “I’m sorry. But that’s why I was actin’ so weird yesterday, and why I-”
“It’s okay, V,” Kerry tells her. “Really. Don’t gotta apologize.”
He holds her for another beat, then steps back to look at her long and hard.
“Listen,” he says. “All I’m sayin’ is, I love havin’ an output who’s also Night City’s bad girl… but I wouldn’t mind just sitting on the couch once in a while and listening to some music, or watching some garbage sitcom with a bowl of popcorn.”
V smiles, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “The night is young,” she says with a small laugh.
“You hungry?” he asks, and she nods gratefully. She hasn’t eaten since their breakfast together. “Good, me too,” he continues. “Ya feelin’ Vietnamese? I could fuck up a bowl of pho right now. Or a banh mi.”
“Yeah, sure,” she tells him, and he pulls up a menu and flicks it to her HUD as they browse it together.
When the food arrives, they settle on the couch and Kerry fires up the TV and puts on the first episode of the new season of Watson Whore. But before he flips away from N54 News, V catches a glimpse of Nancy in her full Bes Isis glory, hosting a special report on some kids in Pacifica who built their own netrunning chair from scratch.
As the Watson Whore intro music plays, V finds herself thinking again back to Kerry’s party, to seeing Karis with Rogue and Dan with Nancy. She wonders if she’ll ever meet Kerry’s kids, if he’s even told them about her. She’s got a feeling she can guess the answer to that.
"When was the last time you saw your kids?" she asks him suddenly.
Kerry looks at her, clearly startled by the question, then looks away as his face darkens. "They got their own lives," he says flatly. "And they live on another fuckin' continent."
"They're both still in Tokyo?"
"Kim, yeah," Kerry says. "Ted's in like… Belgium now I think?"
V gives him a strange look.
"Hey, what?" Kerry protests. "Kid moves around a lot. Was in Taipei for a while, then Bangkok, then Hong Kong, then he met some girl and followed her to Malta or some shit. Least I think it was Malta. Or was it Monaco?"
V raises an eyebrow. "You guys talk?"
"Oh yeah, yeah, sure," he says dismissively. "On birthdays and shit, you know how it is."
"Did you hear from them yesterday?"
Kerry is silent, but the furrow in his brow deepens.
"I'm sorry, Ker, I didn't mean-" V begins, but Kerry cuts her off.
“Yeah, yeah I know, it’s fuckin' pathetic, ain't it?” he mutters, his face twisting into a scowl. “I throw this big gonk party, full of people who don't give a rat's ass about me and just came to gossip about each other, all the while my own fuckin' kids don't even call me an' I don't even know what fuckin' country my son lives in.”
“It was a great party,” V reassures him. “Nothin’ pathetic about it.”
Kerry is silent for a moment, frowning furiously at the TV. “How much do ya think she gets paid for this?” he asks, gesturing at the TV. “The two pussies and a dick thing?”
“Kerry, I…” V says, but Kerry just stares ahead at the TV, clearly done with the topic. The titular character on the show is currently in the midst of some drama-filled date with two men, so V just shuts her mouth and watches the show in silence as they eat their food.
“That’s why I never use my pool,” Kerry says suddenly as she’s finishing the last of her noodles.
V looks over at him. “Whaddaya mean?”
Kerry shrugs. “Got it put in for the kids when they were little. But then Louise took ‘em and ran off to Tokyo, and every time I’d look at it it just made me think about the fact that they weren’t there.”
“Oh,” V replies, setting down her bowl.
Kerry just shakes his head. “Sorry I freaked out,” he says. “I just… s’not easy to talk about.”
"What happened?" V asks. "With Louise, I mean. Sorry if you don't wanna talk about it… I just, I dunno. I’ve always wondered."
Kerry laughs darkly. "What, you mean the blow-by-blows in the screamsheets didn't lay it all out for ya?"
"Cut the scop, Ker," V says softly. "I just meant… if you ever wanna talk about it, I'm here."
Kerry nods thoughtfully, looking past the TV at the city for a long moment before turning back to V. “Apropos of nothing, uh… think our relationship might’ve taught me something.”
“Really?” V asks. “What?”
“Ehh, that sometimes, you just gotta say ‘fuck it’ to the past.”
V shrugs. “Rather focus on some murky idea of the future?” she asks him darkly. “Some happy ending we’re never gonna get?”
“Never said anything about an ending,” Kerry replies in a low voice. “But nah,” he continues. “Not the future. The present.” He gestures between them with his finger. “That’s what my guru told me, anyway. Take care of the present moment, and the future and the past will sort themselves out.”
“That’s a nice way to look at it,” V says, but her voice comes out thinner and meaner than she intends.
“No, hear me out,” Kerry says. “Wasted so much time, runnin’ like a hamster on a wheel. Not sure what I was even after. So many years, I always found someone to blame for everything that went wrong.” He shrugs. “Usually Johnny. I mean… we’ve talked about this.”
“Mhm,” V says. “And now?”
Kerry shrugs. “The more I struggled to get out of that shit, deeper I sunk into it,” he continues. “Know what I mean?”
V is silent for a moment as she considers this. “While struggling to kick Johnny out of your life… you couldn’t see there was no need to,” she says finally.
Kerry nods. “Used to feel resentment… sometimes something like longing. But most of the time I was just plain pissed off. Lately, though, it’s been… nothing.”
“You don’t miss him?”
Kerry looks down. “Not really, not anymore. I dunno. It's like… sometimes I'm not even sure if the person I missed ever actually existed, ya know? Johnny and I were friends for twenty years, but he’s been dead for over twice that long. So… is the person in my head even actually him anymore?"
V shakes her head. "You knew him better than anyone," she tells Kerry.
"Did I, though?" Kerry asks her. "Did any of us? 'Cept for you?"
V laughs sadly. "I've never even shaken his fuckin' hand," she reminds him.
"Eh," Kerry says. "I'm just trying to let go of the past, focus on what's here, now. It’s good, actually… feels like I suddenly have a… a new space to fill.” He looks at V. “With someone I care about.”
V nods and moves closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder as he winds his arm around her and sighs. She can't say she feels the same - the void Johnny left is impossible to fill. But Kerry's still got a point.
"Maybe you’re right,” she whispers to him. “Most important thing is that you're here... now. I mean it. My one anchor.” She exhales shakily, settling against him as he strokes her hair. “Everything else is unknown.”
She dreams of Johnny that night, and it’s the worst dream she’s had yet.
Not because it’s bad - this time, he’s not a garbled shell of himself in cyberspace, not dead and rotting away somewhere, not a ghost she’s chasing. In this dream, he’s alive and he’s happy, here with her and Kerry, smiling and drinking beers as they all make music together, his eyes crinkling as he strums his guitar and laughs at Kerry’s stupid jokes.
And then he leans over and kisses her hair, and it's so fucking real, she can even smell him, can feel his breath on her head, and as she turns to tilt her face up towards his-
She wakes to her holo ringing, a strangled sob emerging from her throat as the dream disintegrates around her.
It's Rogue, because of course it is.
She rolls over in bed so as not to wake Kerry, then accepts the call.
"You up?" Rogue asks, then continues without waiting for an answer. "Great, get your ass to the Afterlife as soon as you can. Blue Eyes contacted me, I wanna go over the deets with you in person."
As soon as she hangs up, V lifts her hands to her face, dragging them down her cheeks with a low groan before hauling herself out of bed and into the shower, pausing only to inject her meds as she quickly rinses off and dries her hair. Kerry’s still asleep as she quietly dresses, and he mumbles sleepily at her when she leans down to kiss him before pulling on her boots and racing down the stairs.
Rogue’s waiting for her in her booth when V arrives at the club. It’s mostly empty except for the handful of patrons who’ve clearly been here drinking all night, and V finds that she is somewhat relieved to no longer count herself among them today.
“Feelin’ better, kid?” Rogue asks as V settles into the booth.
V nods. “Actually, yeah,” she tells Rogue sincerely.
“Mm,” Rogue says, giving her a long look before pulling out a datapad and propping it on the table. “So, here’s the deets. Launch day is on Christmas,” she tells V. “Easier to get non-commercial flights out on holidays.”
V nods. “Christmas, got it,” she says. That should line up perfectly with Aiko's trip there, she thinks. "Buy yourself a space shuttle, too?"
"Got a certain... acquaintance at Orbital Air,” Rogue says with a smirk.
"Contacts at Orbital Air, eh?” V teases. “You really are the queen of fixers."
"Better be grateful,” Rogue warns her playfully. “Called on my best assets for you. Anyway, once you’re in orbit, you’re gonna ditch the craft, use your suit jets to fly silent onto the outside of the station where you’ll find an exterior panel that should let you hack into the station’s security overrides.”
“I talked to Aiko at Kerry’s party,” V cuts in. “She’s gonna get me those ciphers you asked for. And tell Blue Eyes she can get us a window, too. When the security system will be down.”
“Hm,” Rogue says thoughtfully. “Well done, V. And you trust her?”
V nods. “I think so, yeah. She… she found out what they were plannin’ to do to Yorinobu,” she tells Rogue. “Think that mighta swayed her a bit.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Rogue says dryly. “Well, that’s great news. And I’ve got even better news,” she adds, pulling up another screen on her holo. “Blue Eyes says if you pull this off, he can yank some strings, get you access to that experimental nanite technology that BioDyne’s workin’ on.”
“And the cost of the treatments?” V asks. “Aren’t they like…”
“Seven hundred thousand eddies a month,” Rogue finishes for her. “That’s how often you’d need to get the spinal injections, after the first round of treatments.”
“Every month, for the rest of my life,” V says. “That’s-”
“Over 8 mil a year,” Rogue confirms, cutting her off again.
“Fuck,” V says.
“Listen,” Rogue says. “I know I mentioned it before, but the payout for this job is… well, it’s fuckin’ massive,” she tells V. “For you especially, since you’re doin’ the hard part. You’ll get enough for 5 years of this shit.”
“And enough to feed every hungry kid in Heywood for decades,” V points out. “Probably more than that.”
Rogue shrugs. “That’s how money fuckin’ works, V,” she tells her. “If you wanna donate it to build schools in Heywood, that’s your prerogative.” She eyes V carefully. “And this could pay for a full body conversion, too, if it came to that. But 5 years is better than 5 months, no?”
V sighs heavily, avoiding Rogue’s eyes. “And what about Johnny?”
Rogue taps her fingers against the table. “Been lookin’ into that, too,” she tells V. “Think you’re right, the main storage facility is probably in orbit. Dunno if that’s where Johnny is, or if they tucked him somewhere special… but once you’re up there, you can use your shard to get our old netrunner friend in the back door, figure it out from there.”
"You mean Alt."
"Only one I know who can rip an Arasaka satellite outta the sky,” Rogue jokes.
“Just tryna rip one body,” V reminds her. “Don’t need to start another corpo war.”
Rogue smiles, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Nothin' stands to make you more eddies than war, kid,” she replies. “But now that we’ve hammered out the details, I’ve got a surprise for ya.”
“A surprise,” V repeats, and Rogue nods, her eyes twinkling.
“Yeah, c’mon,” she says, getting to her feet and motioning for V to follow.
Rogue’s Quadra is parked outside, a couple cars down from V’s Shion. The fixer unlocks the car and opens the door, and V slides into the passenger seat as the engine purrs to a start.
Rogue puts on an old chromewave station as she pulls the car out along the waterfront, turning west and taking the ramp onto the freeway. There’s not much traffic, and soon they’ve cleared Westbrook and it becomes apparent to V that Rogue is headed towards the canyon pass.
“Still not gonna tell me what this is?” V asks, glancing at Rogue as she drives.
“What, you’re not havin’ fun?” Rogue teases, rolling down her windows and cranking up the music.
V shoots her a look but relents, letting her hand drift out the window as the wind flows between her fingers. She watches her fingers move as the canyon flies by, painfully aware of the heart with the arrow through it on her forearm. It’s fitting, she thinks. Bein’ stabbed with an arrow to the heart is a pretty apt description for how looking at the tattoo is makin’ her feel right about now, knowing now what it meant to Johnny and what he told Rogue that same night.
They drive for another hour, and Rogue passes the time by telling V stories about Karis as a teen.
“He once got a big crush on one of my best fixers,” Rogue says with a laugh. “Would make up any excuse he could just to hang round the Afterlife and gawp at her. Eventually, she got creeped out and left the merc life. Never let Karis hear the end of that one.”
“Her?” V asks, surprised. “Thought Karis was… you know.”
Rogue snorts. “Karis? Karis likes everyone.” She drums her fingers on the wheel. “But I like Avery,” she confesses to V. “He’s a good one. Hope he’s the one that sticks.”
“Karis told me that… he’s dying,” V replies in a low voice.
“Mm,” Rogue says sadly. “Been tryna talk him into getting a conversion for a while now, but he’s not keen on it.”
“Can’t imagine why,” V says dryly.
“Y’know, some people willingly choose to have it done, V. And pay a stack of eddies for the privilege,” Rogue reminds her pointedly. “There are worse things than having a cool cyborg body to run around in. Never get old, never get out of shape, never get sick…”
“Never look in the mirror and see your own face again,” V finishes for her, but Rogue shakes her head.
“Look at your hand, V.”
V frowns at the tattoo on her arm, but Rogue taps her left arm, the chrome one that rests on the center console. “This one,” she corrects. “That your arm?”
V lifts the hand to her face, examining the chrome fingers as she bends them. “I dunno,” she says, really considering it for the first time. “I guess so? But I could swap it out for a new one tomorrow.”
“Okay, and what about your hair, then?”
“What about it?”
“If you cut it off and dyed it pink, would it still be your hair?”
“That’s different,” V protests, but Rogue just shrugs.
“Then what about Johnny’s arm?”
V stops up short, studying Rogue’s face as the fixer glances at her as they drive. They both know the answer to that - Johnny’s arm is as much a part of him as anything else about him ever was. Hell, it’s his fucking name.
“The way I see it… your body is just a vehicle for your soul," Rogue continues. “And in the meantime, you can decorate it however the fuck you like.” She smiles at V. “When Karis first got his arms, back when he was a teen, he had no fuckin’ clue how to use ‘em. Neural adaptors weren’t as good back then as they are now, so I’m guessing you didn’t have nearly as tough a time with that piece of chrome you got there. But Karis broke everything he touched, couldn’t control his gestures, would knock shit over and crush anything he picked up.” She chuckles to herself as they breeze through the last of the pass, emerging out into the high desert. “But he adapted… and now they’re as much a part of him as the hands he was born with.”
“Why’d he get ‘em?”
Rogue’s face darkens. “That’s a story for him to tell you,” she replies. “If he decides to.”
“He told me how Avery rescued him from those scavs a couple years back,” V offers, and Rogue nods.
“Yeah,” she replies, giving V a warm smile. “He trusts you.”
Eventually, Rogue pulls off the main road, taking them down a narrow paved path that eventually leads to a broad stretch of tarmac where a lone jet is parked, silhouetted in the bright sunlight.
“A jet?!” V asks, whipping her head to look at Rogue. “The fuck are we going, Rogue?”
Rogue grins. “Not goin’ anywhere,” she tells V. “Just up, and then down. A whooole buncha times.”
“What?”
“Zero-g training,” Rogue explains. “Used to call ‘em vomit comets.”
V shakes her head incredulously. “Wow, Rogue, you really know how to treat a lady,” she remarks wryly, staring through the windshield at the waiting plane.
“I’m guessing you’ve never done a spacewalk before?” Rogue says, cocking her eyebrow at V as she exits the car. “So unless you wanna hurl yourself into the vacuum like some green little gonk and vomit all over the inside of your helmet… this is the way to go.”
V swallows as she gets out of the car after Rogue and follows her across the tarmac towards the jet. The gangway lowers, and she’s not surprised to see Weyland peerin’ his head out and waving from the cockpit.
“Hey, Squama,” Rogue says as she climbs the stairs into the plane, V trailing closely behind her.
“Eyy, ladies,” Weyland says as they enter the cabin, giving V a high five as she passes. “This one says you are launching yourself into space?” he adds, his red cybernetic eyes locking with V’s.
“Guess so,” V says with a laugh. It still doesn’t seem fucking real.
But right before her, hung on the padded wall of the wide, empty cabin, is a white NUSA spacesuit with the words “TRAINING PURPOSES ONLY” printed on it, along with the helmet clipped to a hook next to it.
“The one you’ll be wearin’ will be fancier,” Rogue assures her. “Equipped for stealth and extended space walks. But this’ll do for practice, yeah?”
V frowns. “Why do I have to wear this now?”
“So you’ll get used to movin’ in one in zero-g, dumbass,” Rogue chides, taking the suit off the hook and thrusting it towards her.
V takes the suit and stares at it in confusion.
“I’ll show ya,” Rogue says, taking the suit back and demonstrating how the complicated system of straps and seals work as Weyland closes the door and prepares them for takeoff.
“You done this before?” V asks, narrowing her eyes at the fixer.
Rogue shrugs. “Done ops in space? Not recently.”
“Not recently,” V repeats, watching and trying to commit to memory what Rogue’s showing her.
“Hit a couple of Militech satellites back in the day,” Rogue continues. “Nothing big.”
“Right,” V says, taking the suit back from Rogue and frowning at it. “Just a casual space walk.”
“Exactly,” Rogue tells her. “Course, I wasn’t launching myself across an endless black expanse, armed only with a gun and my wits and a tight window to infiltrate the most heavily ICEd station in space, but…”
V shoots her a look. “Alright, I get it,” V says. “What do I do now?”
“Well, strip down and get in the suit, babe,” Rogue says with a smirk.
The jet begins to crawl across the tarmac, then, and V quickly strips down to her underwear and climbs into the spacesuit. Rogue helps her fasten the back and checks all the seals, then lifts the helmet from the wall and hands it to her.
V reaches out to take it, but Rogue sets it back down at the last second.
“Actually, let’s wait to add the helmet,” she says. “Think we’ll have to pay extra if you hurl in it.”
V scowls at her as they move to go sit on the row of seats against the back wall, fastening themselves in as the plane begins to gain speed and lifts off the tarmac into the sky.
When they’ve reached cruising altitude, Rogue unfastens her harness and instructs V to lay down on the floor. V obliges, and the two of them lie side by side as Weyland dips the plane into a steep climb. V can feel the g forces pressing down on her body as they go higher and higher, and then suddenly, as they reach the top and begin their downward plummet, she feels the floor drop out from under her as her body is no longer bound to it by gravity.
She’d expected it to feel like floating, but it doesn’t. The sensation is so disorienting at first that it takes her a minute to even focus her eyes, and when she moves her arm her whole body suddenly flies towards the ceiling, and then suddenly up is down and down is up but there’s no up or down, she’s just spinning in freefall. It doesn’t feel like floating, it feels like falling.
Rogue pulls her by the ankle back to the floor as the plane dips into another low groove, and once again the forces crush V back against the floor as the plane climbs again.
She’s more prepared this time, and gingerly lifts herself off the deck as she begins to float. It’s an odd feeling that her brain rebels against, a brain that evolved to exist in gravity and has never experienced anything different. It almost reminds V of cyberspace beyond the Blackwall, another place without any direction or orientation that a human mind would require.
But as her mind adjusts, the sensation becomes exhilarating. V tilts back her head and lets out a long laugh, which propels her body into a slow spin.
“This is fuckin’ nova!” she shouts, and Rogue grins at her from where she’s floating nearby, her hair fanning out around her freckled face.
“Told ya!” Rogue shouts back triumphantly.
By the time she gets back to her apartment, it’s dark out and Kerry’s nowhere to be found. She dials him up on her holo, and he answers immediately.
“Heyyyy, V!” he drawls. “Never guess who I ran into.” He shifts his holo so that V can see Violet and Denny sitting with him.
“I just got home,” V tells him, scooping up Nibbles and flopping backwards onto the couch. Her head’s still spinning from the day’s adventure with Rogue, and her body still feels like it’s doin’ somersaults.
“Ah yeah? Preem,” Kerry says. “We’re headin’ over, order us a case of beer!”
“Now?!” V asks as Nibbles wriggles from her grasp and darts away.
Kerry frowns. “Yeah, the girls wanna jam. No time like the present, right?”
“Right,” V relents with a laugh.
The three of them arrive in a clamor of laughter and expensive-smelling perfume, spilling out of the elevator clutching their gear and greeting V with an uncharacteristic enthusiasm. V realizes they’re all pretty drunk, a stark contrast to her uncharacteristic sobriety, but she forces herself to ride the vibe as they set up their impromptu rehearsal space.
Denny’s brought her drum pads, and Violet props up Kerry’s keyboard and attaches it to a sampler. Kerry wants to work on V’s cover of Never Fade Away, and it’s not long before he and Violet have come up with a whole synth part to compliment V’s solo guitar.
And V is once again reminded that making music somehow makes the darkness feel less oppressive. Not gone, but just… a little less dark.
Kerry’s told them about her whole situation with Johnny’s engram, it seems, and V finds herself a little bit relieved that it’s finally out in the open, now. Denny’s attitude towards her seems to have completely shifted, and she’s suddenly including V in their jokes, in their stories, treating her like she belongs there.
And V can't deny there's still something oddly surreal yet comforting about spending time with people who casually reference Johnny like he's someone real, someone who existed, someone who they knew and interacted with and fought with and made out with.
None of which are things V's ever actually done herself, when it comes down to it. Still, when they talk about him, it's hard not to feel like Kerry was right - she knew him in a way that no one else ever could. It's a feeling that gets increasingly lonely as the night goes on.
And she can't help but resent them a little bit. She may have seen into the depths of Johnny's soul more than any of them, but she’s still never actually physically been in a room with him.
Because who the fuck is she? Johnny'd been dead for a quarter century when she was born, after all.
She finds herself wondering again just who Violet was to him, how he’ll react when confronted with these ghosts from his past when she… when he…
She realizes she hasn’t been allowing herself to even briefly imagine or fantasize about what it might be like to actually have him back, for him to slip back in among the living as a real, breathing man. Why she's shut down Kerry's attempts to discuss what his return could mean for all of them, on a practical level.
Because if she fails… watching that dream get snatched away would be too painful to handle.
But now, without the blanket of liquor to smother those thoughts, without the buzz of the synth-coke to bury those feelings in a torrent of meaningless words, all she’s left with is that bold, desperate, dangerous hope, the hope that’s been the only thing driving her all these weeks she’s been stumbling through her life without Johnny in her head.
And with her newfound sobriety comes the true terror of it, as well - the enormity of what she’s about to attempt. Riding the jet today with Rogue really cemented for V the physical challenges this mission will require of her, the sheer force of will and determination and grit it’ll take to accomplish what she’s setting out to do.
So she channels all that fear, all that rage, all that hope and hopelessness battling inside of her into the music she’s making, into the words she’s singing, and she can tell by the faces of Kerry and his friends that whatever the fuck she’s doing is really striking a chord.
Kerry notices her turning down the beers, but doesn’t say anything when they all break for the night and filter out onto the balcony for a final smoke. It’s not until the women leave that he finally turns to her, a small sad smile breaking out across his face.
“I was sober for a full year once, ya know,” he tells her softly as they place the guitars back on their stands against the wall, cleaning up the bottles left behind by the three of them.
“Who says I’m sober?” V shoots back, but Kerry just shakes his head.
“Did it for Louise,” he tells her. “The last year of our marriage, when shit was really fallin’ apart. Was tryna save the relationship, but… it was already too late by then. No amount of good behavior on my part was gonna fix things.” He stares at his fingernail. “Course, it all fell to pieces the minute she was gone, and then I was back on my bullshit.”
“So what are you sayin’?” V asks him.
He shrugs. “Don’t do it for anyone else but yourself,” he tells her. “But stick with it for a bit, I guess. See what happens, see how ya feel.”
V nods mutely, still not quite ready to talk about it.
But later, when they’re in bed together, alone in the dark, she finally allows herself to roll over and face Kerry, searching his eyes in the dim light.
“I’m just so scared, Ker,” she admits softly, and he pulls her to him without a word. The warmth of his body presses against her, comforting and consoling her as she drifts off to sleep.
The next week passes both too slowly and too quickly, and suddenly it’s Christmas Eve, the day before the launch. V's gone over the mission plan with Rogue what feels like a thousand times now, done countless simulations of the spacecraft's piloting system and controls, hit the fancy gym in her new building for hours a day to rebuild as much strength and stamina as she can muster, gotten her deck and all her chrome as heavily ICEd and debugged as she can manage. She's as prepared as she's gonna get. All she can do now is hope it'll be enough.
Kerry'd been insistent about booking their fledgling band some studio time before V’s trip, and so here they are now, leaving their first recording session with Denny and Violet as the Legends.
To V’s amazement and delight, it’s fucking snowing when the four of 'em step out of the cramped building that evening. V can’t remember a time she’s ever seen snow in Night City, much less on Christmas fuckin’ Eve.
Denny rolls her eyes and makes a quip about the climate apocalypse as she climbs into her Villefort and drives off, leaving the rest of them to fend for themselves against the small handful of paparazzi lingering on the sidewalk.
Violet, on the other hand, gives V a tight hug and wishes her a merry Christmas before hopping on her motorcycle and speeding off into the evening.
Kerry turns to V and grins.
“You were fuckin’ nova in there!” he beams at her. “We fuckin’ shredded that cover. Gonna be a fuckin’ hit, I can feel it.”
“Doubt people expected a Silverhand cover from Eurodyne in 2077,” V teases.
"Hey, it was a Samurai song first!" Kerry says in mock protest. He playfully punches V's arm, but then catches her by the shoulders and pulls her in for a passionate kiss, ignoring the flurry of camera flashes that go off in response. “I’m serious, V,” he tells her fiercely. “You were on fuckin’ fire. Was fuckin’ hot,” he adds, kissing her again.
V feels a warm knot of pride in her chest at his words. It still feels like a strange dream to her sometimes - gettin’ to do all this with Kerry, to record a single with him, be in a band with him, share this cozy yet terrifyingly ephemeral life they’ve carved out for themselves these last few weeks.
But she’s also painfully aware that her launch is less than a day away, and she’s got a lot to do first.
“Aiko sent me the coords for the drop-off,” she tells Kerry as they walk towards his car.
“Just tell me where,” Kerry replies, giving the medias a quick wave before getting in the car and starting the engine as V settles in beside him. “Then I’m gonna take you home and rail your brains out.”
V laughs. “Alright, old man. Hold ya to it.”
She knows this is just their way of talking around the fear and apprehension they both feel about her imminent mission, but Kerry laughs too, pulling out of the studio parking lot in Northside and following V’s directions down into Kabuki, where Kerry waits in the car while V hops out to go grab the goods. Thankfully, the paparazzi don't seem to have tailed them, and V follows the coordinates to a small lockbox hidden in an alley on the lower level of the markets, keyed to her biometrics. Inside it, she finds a lone shard.
Back in Kerry’s car, she slots it in her head as they drive, checking to make sure it has the ciphers Aiko promised. It all seems to be there - and there’s a video message from Aiko as well. V pulls it up on her HUD, and the heiress’ face appears before her.
“V,” she says. “By the time you get this, I’m likely already en route to the Crystal Palace. I’m flying privately to the station, so I’ll be in position by the time you arrive.” She glances nervously to the left, then the right. “I’ve included a code you can use to transmit to me directly via tightbeam from your suit. Give the signal, and I’ll give you your window. Thirty minutes, no more.” She takes a deep breath. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
The message ends after that.
“All good?” Kerry asks, and V nods.
But the moment they're alone in the elevator, he's pushing V up against the wall, his tongue in her mouth and his hands already fumbling with the buttons on her leather pants.
And V fuckin’ needs this too - she might fuckin’ die tomorrow, for all she knows. So she gasps softly as he slides his hand into her underwear, rolling her hips against his fingers and eliciting a low groan from Kerry at her eagerness.
As soon as the elevator doors slide open, he pushes her backwards into the kitchen, both of them tearing off their coats and tossing them aside as Kerry wraps his hands around V's waist and hoists her up onto the island counter, yanking her pants down around her ankles and bending forward to plunge his tongue between her thighs.
V moans as he works his tongue with a skill that could only have been acquired with close to a century of experience - Kerry may not have a direct line to her subconscious like Johnny, but he still knows exactly what he's doing, exactly how to push V's buttons.
"You're so fuckin' good, Kerry," she breathes. "So fucking-"
Her words are cut off with a choked gasp as Kerry flicks his tongue against her, hitting just the right spot, and she feels her thighs start to shake.
Kerry moans softly at this, continuing to lick and suck on her as she writhes against his tongue.
"Kerry, I'm gonna-" she chokes, then comes hard on his mouth, the force of it catching her by surprise.
"Mmph," Kerry hums appreciatively as she rides out her orgasm, her hips bucking on the marble as his hands continue to grip her thighs.
"Kerry," she breathes, clutching at his hair and dragging his head up to devour his mouth with her own. She can taste herself on him, and she catches his lower lip with her teeth, dragging it out as he chases the kiss. But she’s not done with him yet either, so she pulls back to look at him, seeing her own desire reflected back in his dark eyes.
"Need you to fuck me, now," she gasps, and Kerry groans in response and begins unfastening his pants, stepping out of them and tearing off his shirt. She kicks her pants off the rest of the way and tugs at Kerry's arms, pulling him up onto the counter with her as she crawls backwards on her arms. Kerry hoists himself up after her and positions himself over her, his cock hanging heavy and thick between her legs. She can feel its heat pressing against her, and she tilts her hips up towards him, urging him to get on with it.
"Easy, doll," he murmurs. "Wanna take my time with you. Might be my last chance."
He leans down to kiss her again, and V welcomes the fact that he can't see her reaction to his words, can’t see the heartbreak on her face. So she pulls him to her, kissing him desperately instead.
Fuck, she hopes he's wrong. But she knows as well as he does that this whole gonk plan could easily be her fuckin’ swan song. And even if she survives, pulls it all off, things'll be different if… if Johnny's back.
Her thoughts are cut short as Kerry lines himself up and enters her slowly, thrusting only the tip until she's gasping and clawing at the marble as he moves deliberately inside her, going deeper and deeper with every thrust. The unhurriedness of his pace is almost infuriating, and she lets out a frustrated whine, bucking her hips desperately towards him.
She feels his hand move down to grip her thigh, his other still supporting his weight, and he lifts her leg over his shoulder and finally bottoms out inside her, causing them both to groan loudly at the sensation.
But he still doesn't pick up his pace and continues to fuck her with an almost agonizing slowness. V whimpers as he turns his head to the side to nip at her leg with his teeth as he continues to thrust slowly and steadily into her.
"Kerry, please," she whines, reaching her hand up to rest her palm on his cheek, pushing her thumb into his mouth. He rolls his tongue around it, biting and sucking on her finger as she drags it across his lips. He leans down with a groan to capture her mouth with his, his thrusts finally picking up speed and urgency as his control begins to slip.
She can taste the liquor on his breath - he was drinking from his flask at the studio, and all day before that - but she breathes in deeply, relishing the smell of his skin, his sweat, his fancy fuckin' cologne.
On an impulse, she licks the side of his jaw, feeling his rough stubble beneath her tongue before sinking her teeth into his neck. And that's all it takes to send Kerry shuddering over the edge, moaning out her name as he spasms inside of her.
The sight of his face completely undone like that along with the warm feeling of him spilling into her is enough to send her careening along with him, and she cries out and clutches his shoulder tightly as his chest heaves against hers.
Kerry's panting gasps turn into a soft chuckle as they come back to earth. V’s tank top is still bunched around her torso, stuck in the sweaty mess of tangled limbs on the kitchen table they've become. And then V's laughing too, wrapping her legs around Kerry’s waist and her arms around his shoulders and pulling him close for another kiss, relishing the feeling of him still inside her.
He finally withdraws with a soft groan and hops down to the floor, extending a hand to V to help her down after him.
"Shower?" V suggests, wriggling out of her sweaty top and flinging it towards the couch, but Kerry just grins at her wickedly.
"Got a better idea," he says with a wink, then takes her hand and drags her naked out onto the balcony into the light snowfall.
V shrieks in mock protest as the icy air hits her skin, but Kerry continues to pull her down the steps towards the pool.
"What's the point of having a heated pool if you're not gonna go swimming in winter just to say 'fuck you' to God?" Kerry jokes as he lets go of V's arm and cannonballs into the pool.
V only hesitates for a second, shivering on the pool deck before hurling herself off the edge to join him in the water.
He's right - the water is warm enough that the cold night air only heightens the delicious sensation of it all, and she throws back her head and laughs as Kerry paddles towards her and scoops her to him for another kiss. She wraps her legs around his torso as he holds her afloat, kissing her face, her neck, her eyelids as the steam rises from the water around them.
“Wonder if we can see the Crystal Palace tonight,” he murmurs, squinting up at the sky. “Also wonderin’ why the hell I haven’t played a gig there yet.”
“That your next move?” she teases.
“Eh, sure, once I cut my new album. Maybe Satine can get me booked at one of the casinos up there.” He continues to gaze up at the dark sky, but no stars or satellites are visible tonight - it’s just a flat expanse of gray. “Dunno how many of those rich, self-obsessed assholes’ll come an’ listen, but I’ll make damn sure they’ll hear me. I owe Johnny anything at all, I owe him that.”
Both of them are silent for a moment, staring up at the cold sky.
“Speakin’ of debts… I hope you know you got nothing left to prove. To anyone,” Kerry says, turning back to her with an earnest expression on his face. “I mean… shit, maybe it’s about time you said enough’s enough?”
“I gotta do this job, Kerry,” V whispers. “After all that’s happened… don’t see any other way.”
"Right, right, star-crossed lovers, all that shit," he grumbles playfully, but she can hear the bitter edge to his words. He lets out a heavy sigh, turning away from V. “Always rushin’ off to go save each other,” he mutters dejectedly, looking out at the skyline through the steam and the snow.
V studies his face in the dim glow from the pool. “You know I’d do the same for you,” she tells him softly. “So would Johnny.”
“Sure, sure,” Kerry says, sounding unconvinced.
“Hey,” V says, swallowing hard. "I… I'm sorry, Ker. I'm sorry I'm leaving, I'm sorry I'm doin' this tomorrow, I'm just… I'm sorr-"
He cuts her off with another kiss.
"Shut the fuck up, V," he murmurs into her mouth. “Listen, you don’t gotta pretend he’s not the elephant in the room here. I know why you gotta do this, I do. I… I get it. And I hope you get him back, that ya find a way for all of us to survive this somehow.” He pulls back a bit, his eyes searching hers. “But tonight… you’re still here, now… and so am I.”
V feels like she might cry, so she buries her face in Kerry’s shoulder, clutching onto him for dear life as the steam rises off the pool and the snow falls around them.
Notes:
In case it's not super super obvious, the version of Never Fade Away that V and Kerry are recording is the one that plays over the closing credits of the game because that has been my headcanon since the literal first time I heard it lol
And once again, Marigold is borrowed from this excellent fic which you should ALL BE READING if you're not!!!
Chapter 56: Gaze Into Galaxy
Summary:
V meets with Mr. Blue Eyes and makes the final preparations for her space launch.
Notes:
This chapter is on the longer side so plan accordingly
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
She’s on the beach, the twinkling lights of the Pacifica boardwalk to her left, that horrible swirling alien blue sky above her head. Johnny’s cradling her in his arms, his face harsh with grief, holding onto her as though she’s about to slip through his fingers like sand.
She knows this dream - this is one that torments her often.
She reaches up to touch his face as his mouth twists with anguish, pulling her close for another kiss, and she knows her cheeks are damp from sobbing her fucking eyes out. His eyes are dark with fear and they're both shaking and there are so many fucking things she wants to say to him, so many things she knows he knows anyway but she feels as though she has to tell him, because it might be her last chance. It all feels so immediate - the way she desperately tries to memorize his face, tracing every detail of it with her eyes, as though she could ever forget it, as though it doesn’t haunt her dreams night after night.
But she can already feel herself being pulled from this place, can feel herself stretching and fracturing and as she’s yanked out of Johnny’s embrace and back into her own body, leaving Johnny to whatever fate awaits him with Alt.
Her eyes snap open, and it’s just the penthouse ceiling, as always.
She turns her head to the side, her breath coming out in shaking gasps. It’s still early, barely past dawn, but the second her eyes are open she knows all chances of sleep are gone for the day.
The launch is today. In a few short hours.
Now that it’s here, there's no point in denying to herself that she’s fucking terrified. This is so far beyond anything she’s ever done, beyond storming Arasaka Tower, beyond diving headfirst into Mikoshi. Astronauts train for years for this shit, and she just thinks she can throw on a spacesuit and execute one of the most difficult fucking space heists anyone’s ever attempted?
Who the fuck does she think she is? A living legend? A dirtgirl merc from Heywood who dared to walk a few blocks from home? Does she have a fucking death wish?
Maybe she does.
She swallows back her fear and rolls over in bed to where Kerry is breathing softly beside her.
Fuck, if she doesn’t come back, it’s gonna break Kerry. She watches him as he sleeps, feeling a strange sense of wonder at how surely and quickly this paradoxical man has wrestled his way into her heart.
She leans over to kiss him on the face, overcome with a deep sense of softness towards him.
“Mmm,” he says, opening his eyes to smile at her sleepily.
“I’m gonna shower,” she whispers as he rolls over and closes his eyes again.
She stands with a sigh, heading for the bathroom and starting the shower. She stares at her reflection in the mirror - her face looks rough, exhausted, but there’s a glow to her features that she hasn’t seen in a while.
Maybe it’s because it’s been a week now since she last had a drink. Or maybe the new meds are working. Or maybe it’s because she’s about to launch herself into space today on a thread of hope, and her adrenaline’s already spiking.
Either way, she’ll take it.
She injects her meds into her thigh and steps under the hot water, breathing in the steam as she shampoos her hair and washes herself. A sudden, piercing headache makes her gasp, and she leans forward and coughs into her hand. Panic grips her stomach when she sees that there's blood on her palm. She hasn’t coughed up blood since before Mikoshi.
“Fuck,” she says. So much for the meds working.
She feels Kerry’s arms snaking around her from behind, and she startles, quickly closing her fist to hide her bloody palm.
“Oh, uh, hey,” she says, twisting around in his arms as he joins her under the water. “Didn’t hear you come in.”
He smiles softly at her as he reaches for the shampoo. “Thought you might need some company.”
She smiles back at him, surreptitiously dropping her hand to her side and letting the water run over it, rinsing the blood away.
She steps aside to let Kerry rinse his hair, then silently continues her own ritual.
He must sense her discomfort, because he turns to her, wiping the water from his eyes and frowning at her with concern.
“Coulda said something, y’know,” he says gently. “If I overdid it with the booze last night.”
V shakes her head, putting her hand on his chest. “You did have three bottles of wine to yourself,” she teases. “But, no. Not about that. I... I had another bad dream.”
Kerry sighs heavily, placing his hand on her waist. “So it’s fuckin’ Mikoshi stuff again?” He lets out another slow breath. “Shit, V… you know I’m never gonna really get what went down there.”
“I know,” V says, and she can hear the pain in her voice.
“But you know I'm here for you,” he murmurs, leaning in to kiss her, and she lets herself melt into him, savoring the fleeting warmth of the moment.
She almost reaches down to touch him - the thought of him fucking her against the wall of the shower right now is tempting - but both of their moods are somber this morning, there’s none of the frantic desperation of the previous night. And so she lets him simply hold her for a moment, feeling him breathe against her.
Kerry steps out while V is still conditioning her hair, and the second he sashays out of the room in his towel she doubles over and coughs up another fistful of blood, her headache reaching a pounding throb in her temples.
But she straightens and washes off her hand, taking deep breaths and willing herself to finish rinsing her hair and washing her face and toweling off and staggering back to the bedroom to get dressed.
Downstairs, she can hear Kerry in the kitchen, fumbling with the coffee machine while the radio blasts from the small speaker beside it.
“Merry Christmas, Night City!” the announcer shouts over the airwaves. “Drag your asses out of your sad sack and turn to face the sky! We got our taste of Christmas magic last night with that unexpected snowfall, but skies are clear today and if you’re lucky, you might catch a glimpse of the Crystal Palace… that big ass space station in which you mere mortals will never set foot!”
V rummages through the tangle of clothing in her drawers, trying to find her leather pants. She knows it doesn’t fucking matter what she wears - she’s gonna ditch it at the spaceport, regardless - but she has a couple stops to make first and needs to dress the part.
Namely, she’s meeting Mr. Blue Eyes in person, at the Afterlife, in an hour.
“But for all of you sitting in the gutter, looking up at the smog, here’s someone you ain’t heard in a while…” the radio jockey continues. “Johnny Silverhand!” he shouts, and V freezes midway through pulling on her socks. “Here’s to you, you ol’ bastard. Wherever you are.”
The opening chords of Black Dog play out through the speakers, drifting up and over the balcony while V collects herself and resumes pulling on her pants and heeled boots, then stands to fasten her vinyl top. She puts on her choker, then grabs Johnny’s dog tags from where they’re lying crumpled on her nightstand. She lifts them by the long silver ball chain and cups the tags in her hand, staring down at the name engraved in them.
Robert John fucking Linder.
The guy who saved my life, she thinks with equal parts affection and despair as she slides the tags over her head, feeling their familiar weight settle against her chest.
She goes back into the bathroom and does her makeup, drawing on her eyeliner in careful wings and smearing her lips with a dark plum tint.
If Mr. Blue Eyes wants to see a legend, then she’s gonna show him one.
Kerry is perched on the kitchen counter smoking a cigarette when she finally comes downstairs, and Black Dog is still playing out of the radio. The strangeness of Johnny’s voice floating around them as they stare at each other across the kitchen isn’t lost on either of them, from the look on Kerry’s face.
“Look at you,” he says slowly, lifting his cigarette to his mouth.
V nods mutely as Johnny continues to scream from the speaker. Kerry’s lookin’ at her like she’s just gotten dressed for her own funeral, and she gazes back at him silently until the song ends and the announcer resumes his mindless chatter.
“Ughhh, gotta listen to those new demos,” Kerry grumbles, pushing off the counter and hopping to his feet. “Supposed to let the producer know yesterday, but you know how it is.”
“Uh huh,” V says, crossing to the coffee maker. “When am I gonna hear the Never Fade Away tapes we recorded yesterday?” she asks, leaning up to kiss him as she passes, trying her best to play into his charade of this being just another normal morning.
“Eh, Violet wanted to do a pass on ‘em, had some ideas about how it should be mixed,” Kerry tells her with a shrug. “Figured I’d let her have a go at it, girl always did have a fuckin’ solid ear for that shit.”
“How did you meet her?” V asks, flipping on the coffee maker and turning to face Kerry.
She reaches for her own cigarette and lights it while she waits for her coffee to brew, and Kerry shrugs at her again.
“Met her back in the early 20s, before she really blew up,” he tells her. “Me and Johnny helped her record an album together to get her outta her contract with Arasaka's label,” he explains with a bemused laugh. “That really fuckin’ pissed ‘em off.” He shakes his head. “She’s been through the wringer, that one.”
“And… her ‘n Johnny?” V can’t help but ask.
Kerry gives her a strange look. “Figured ya knew,” he says.
“Don’t have his memories anymore, Ker,” she reminds him softly. “Just… bits and pieces. Feelings. We’ve talked about this.”
Kerry sighs. “Yeah, they were an item,” he relents. “Think she was good for him, believe it or not. Was the first person he seemed to really pay attention to after Alt… died, or whatever the fuck happened to her. Aside from Rogue, of course, but Rogue was, well… Rogue.”
“And you,” V reminds him.
“Eh,” says Kerry, looking down. “Point is, Violet was different. With her, Johnny was… more like he was with Alt than with me and Rogue, I guess. Like he wanted people to see ‘em together, wanted her hangin’ off his arm in the tabloids ‘n shit, even though he’d never go so far as to actually say they were together.” There’s a bitterness in his voice as he says the last part, and V can hear the longing in his words. “You know how he was.”
“But then?” she prompts.
Kerry laughs darkly. “Then he went and got himself killed at ‘Saka Tower.”
V is silent for a beat. “Oh.”
So Violet was seeing Johnny when he died.
V realizes she’s never really thought much about the fact that the parts of Johnny’s life that were always the most hazy to her were his final years. She knows those were years of his life that he didn’t like thinking about, years spent lost to blind rage, to anger, to grief, to isolating himself with drugs and money and endless tours and impetuous missions with Rogue to remain a perpetual thorn in Arasaka’s side. But she does remember flashes of a dark haired woman in those final months, a small freckled face and a quiet studio, a crowd cheering them as they stood together on a stage.
“It was over fifty years ago, kid,” Kerry reminds her softly, and she realizes she’s been staring at her now-ready coffee in silence.
“How much did you tell her?” V asks. “About… me?”
“She knows,” Kerry replies.
“Knows what, exactly?”
“That it got complicated,” Kerry says simply. “That you… loved him. Love him. Present tense.”
V closes her eyes and lets out a slow breath. “Right,” she says. “What’d she say?”
Kerry shrugs. “Seemed more fascinated by it than anything else, but it’s hard to tell with her sometimes. She can play her cards close when she needs to.”
“Did you tell her what I’m planning to try to do?”
“Bring him back, you mean?” Kerry puts out his cigarette in the small ashtray on the counter. “Told her it was a possibility, yeah. Gotta prep ‘em, ya know? If Johnny suddenly fuckin’ rolls in next week, not lookin’ a day over thirty-five… don’t want any of ‘em to drop dead of a heart attack,” he jokes. “We’re all senior citizens now, don’t forget,” he adds with a wry smile.
“And?” V presses. “How’d they react?”
“Eh,” Kerry shrugs. “Denny was mostly thrilled she might get another chance to punch him in the face,” he says with a chuckle. “Violet… like I said, it’s hard to read her sometimes, but… I think she’d be… I think she’ll be happy to see him,” he concludes, and his voice has a warm sincerity to it.
He really cares about her, V realizes.
“I used to date her brother, y’know,” Kerry muses, reaching for his own coffee mug. “Was a good dude. That was before I met Louise, before everything went to shit.” He scowls. “But hey, the past is the past, right?”
“If you say so,” V says in a low voice.
“Hey, don’t trip about it, okay? Johnny left behind a trail of broken hearts, what the fuck else is new?”
V nods, but she can't shake the sudden worry that grips her chest. She hasn't really let herself consider the reality of what it might be like for her to actually try to date Johnny in the normal way, as a real flesh and blood human and not an imaginary projection inside of her mind. Without being able to hear each other's thoughts, to feel each other's guarded hearts, will she wind up just being treated like Alt or Rogue or Kerry or Violet? Will she be an affair that burns bright, someone he’ll want to show off but be afraid to commit to, like Violet or Alt, or will she be his secret place of safety that he strings along for years, like Rogue or Kerry? Will she be someone he’ll ultimately leave for one reason or another... like he did with all the rest? Will they fight? And if they do, will he withdraw, will he run away, will he leave her?
She realizes suddenly how much she took for granted that before he simply couldn't - they were bound to each other, forced to face one another, forced to face themselves and each other each and every day, stripped bare of any and all pretense.
Is she stupid to hope he’ll be different now, that she’ll be different?
But she also knows that their time together changed him, changed them both. She’s a part of him as much as he is of her now. They're Johnny and V. They’re two halves of the same whole now, and even if they falter, even if they have to learn a new rhythm with each other, nothing can erase that bond, nothing can touch that connection they’ve shared.
Right?
She picks up her coffee and downs it quickly, burning her mouth as she does so. And sure as a spear, her mind is filled with that awful, deadly silence, that hollow absence she feels whenever she half expects Johnny to appear and start yelling at her for burning her tongue like a gonk the way he always used to.
She wonders how they’ll put up with each other’s tics when forced to live together in separate bodies, when he isn’t relegated to being a not-so-silent passenger to all her strange habits.
And she’s about to risk her fucking life today to find out.
She feels suddenly sick to her stomach. Just how stupid is this plan? She has everything she could ever fucking want right now - she’s got Kerry fuckin’ Eurodyne willing to move mountains for her, she’s got a gorgeous penthouse, a promising fixer career, all the eddies she could ever want.
Except she doesn’t - even Kerry can’t afford those nanite treatments she needs, at least not for more than a year or two - not that she’d ever ask. And he probably couldn’t afford to buy her a full body conversion that wouldn’t make her come out the other end looking like a cheap joybot or some kinda chromed out femme-doll.
And more importantly, she doesn’t have Johnny. And that’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it? For better or for worse, she can’t live without that gonk.
Kerry sighs and comes to stand in front of her, staring down at her with that same sorrowful but warm look on his face.
“Do you think it’ll be… weird having him back?” she asks Kerry in a small voice. “Like… bad weird? For you and everyone else?”
Kerry shakes his head. “Good weird, bad weird, it’s definitely gonna be weird,” he says with a laugh. “It’s been fifty years,” he reminds her again. “Know ya haven’t even been alive that long, so you probably can’t even appreciate what that means,” he continues.
“And me?” V asks. “Do you think he’s just gonna…”
Kerry wraps his arms around her. “Listen, I’ve lived three of your lifetimes, and I still don’t know shit, but… I do know that Johnny cares about ya. Can’t promise he’s not gonna be a gonk about it… you probably know better’n I do at this point… but I know he’s not gonna up and leave.”
She nods and lets him pull her against him. Nibbles winds around their feet, and she disentangles herself from Kerry's arms to reach down and pick up the scrawny hairless cat.
“You gonna watch Nibbles again?” she asks.
“Sure, sure,” Kerry tells her. “But you better get back ‘fore I leave for tour. Otherwise… guess Misty and River get a penthouse to house sit?”
V nods. “Sure, yeah, you can ask them,” she tells him, releasing Nibbles to go dart off to do whatever it is he does with his time.
Kerry watches Nibbles run off, drumming his fingers against the marble countertop, then turns and reaches for a small box sitting on the counter that V hadn’t noticed until now. He holds it in his hands for a moment, then looks up at V shyly. “Got you a Christmas present,” he tells her sheepishly. “Slash goin’ away present, I guess. Or good luck present. Whatever you wanna call it.” He thrusts the box towards her.
V takes it from him, turning it over in her hands.
“Open it,” he urges her.
She carefully flips the lid open, and inside is a thick, gold Cuban-link bracelet with a plate in the center that says, "The hero’s always you.”
“Kerry…” she breathes.
“It’s from one of my new songs,” he says, watching her face nervously. “Corny, I know.”
The one he wrote about her, V remembers.
“No, I love it,” she assures him, gently pulling it from the box and draping it around her wrist. Kerry reaches over to help her fasten it.
“Wanted you to have some kinda reminder of me,” he tells her. “While you’re up there.”
“Thank you,” she whispers, examining it on her forearm as it settles just below the tattoo Johnny gave her. Kerry doesn’t let go of her wrist, gazing at the juxtaposing images in silence along with her.
Her holo starts ringing, and she frees her hand to gesture towards Kerry apologetically. It’s Emmerick, probably calling about her upcoming meet and greet with Blue Eyes.
“Eyy, boss,” Emmerick says as she answers. He’s taken to calling her that recently, and the sudden transition is still a bit jarring to her.
“Goin’ outside,” Kerry says quietly. “Come find me when you’re done.”
She nods at him silently as she turns away to speak to the surly bouncer.
“Hey,” she says to Emmerick, watching Kerry as he exits the kitchen and paces out onto the balcony. “He there yet?”
“Not yet. He’ll be on time, though,” Emmerick assures her. “His people came to scan the place earlier. Check, make sure everything’s clean before he arrived.” He laughs. “Thought we didn’t notice ‘em.”
“And the gear?”
“All set with the heat. Rest, too… full tank, ready to launch.”
“Perfect,” V replies.
“Rogue's sending a Delamain AV to pick you up,” Emmerick adds. “Figures a grand entrance’ll help endear you to the client.”
“Preem,” V tells him with a dry laugh. “Be there soon.”
She hangs up and looks out at Kerry on the balcony for a moment, then goes upstairs to the bathroom to pack her meds.
Nibbles follows her, perching on the counter and blinking curiously as she shoves about a week's worth of airhypos and a handful of MaxDocs into a small toiletry bag. She pauses and reaches down to scoop him up, planting a kiss on his hairless head as he wriggles and yowls in her arms.
“Take good care of Kerry, will ya?” she whispers to him, then releases him to go scurrying back off to one of his many hiding places.
She tucks the bag of meds under her arm, then goes back downstairs to join Kerry on the balcony.
The sun has crested over the buildings by now, and bold golden rays are streaming between the towers, filtered by the smog into brilliant bursts that hang in heavy bright stripes across V’s yard and balcony. Kerry stands illuminated in one, gazing out at the morning.
There’s gunfire on the street below as she crosses to lean against the railing beside him, echoing in a syncopated patter between the skyscrapers.
“Whoa!” Kerry says. “You hear that? Would make a sick sample. Prrah-pah! Prrah-pah!” he says, imitating the sounds of the guns, then chuckles to himself. “Cool.”
V laughs in spite of herself. “I bet,” she tells him.
But now it’s Kerry’s turn for his holo to start ringing, and he scowls at the screen before tossing it over his shoulder and off the edge of the balcony onto the lawn below.
“Gimme a fuckin’ break,” he mutters, staring after the fallen phone.
“Keepin’ track of your exes?” V teases him.
“Ehh, it’s just Satine,” he scoffs. “New manager that ya met. Just as lame as the last one.”
“Gonna set her boat on fire, too?”
Kerry laughs. “Not unless she gives me a reason to.” He looks over at V then, smiling softly. “Remember our first real date? On the roof at Dark Matter, after the Us Cracks press junket?”
“Yeah,” V says, turning to gaze down at her pool sparkling in the morning sun. She remembers that night, how fucking magical it all felt, like she was in some kinda strange and wild fairy tale.
“Back then, thought the only thing that mattered was me and the city,” Kerry muses.
“Don’t tell me that’s changed,” V says, shooting him a look. “Wasn’t that long ago, ya know.”
“No, no, and let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Kerry says quickly. “But… this city won’t be the same without you. Least not for me.”
V feels that twisting in the pit of her stomach again. “Exactly why I’ve gotta do this last job,” she reminds him. “Understand, now?”
Kerry sighs. “I think so,” he says softly. “But you gotta come back, V,” he begs. “I’m not done with you. Not just yet.”
V turns to him then, searching his face. “I know,” she chokes, her voice suddenly rough with emotion. “I know.”
“Look, whatever happens… this city will remember you, V,” he whispers, reaching out to cup her face with this hand. “And I couldn't forget you if I tried. But you better come back in one piece. Or I will kick your ass,” he promises in a low voice. “Seriously.”
“I will,” V manages, swallowing back tears. “I promise.”
“Good,” Kerry says, leaning in to kiss her one final time. His mouth is soft and warm, and she breathes in his scent, trying to memorize it.
Over his shoulder, she can see the Delamain swoop down over the buildings and come to hover above the blinking AV pad in the middle of her lawn. It’s the first time she’s ever actually put that thing to use, she realizes as she watches the vehicle settle. The door slides open, a waiting invitation for her. Her winged chariot here to deliver her to either death or salvation.
“Ride’s here,” Kerry says, pulling away to face the car. “Fancy.”
“Gotta impress the client,” V remarks dryly, then reaches for Kerry’s hand. “Take care of yourself, Kerry,” she tells him, giving it a squeeze. He clasps her hand back and won’t let go, even when she tugs at him gently and tries to pull away, his face crumpling as his composure drops.
“You better be back by New Year’s Eve,” he tells her. “Ruth Dzeng’s plannin’ a helluva party.”
“So I’ve heard,” V replies, but Kerry’s grip on her hand doesn’t loosen. “I gotta delta,” she says softly. “They’re all waitin’ at the Afterlife.”
“You gotta go. I know,” he says with a sigh, finally releasing her hand and leaning heavily against the railing. “On my way out, too. Got people waitin’ at the studio. My head hurts, eh, ridin’ half a high… feel like rippin’ someone a new one,” he mutters, but then his face twists into a pained grimace. “Might actually be a decent session.”
“Kerry…” V says, her heart already aching.
He turns back to her then, reaching out his hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. “And you…” he whispers. “Be careful.”
“I’ll try,” V promises.
Kerry nods, withdrawing his hand. “So… see you?” he says, glancing back up at her hopefully. “Soon?”
“Yeah,” V chokes. “See you soon.”
On an impulse, she throws her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder and pressing her body close to his. After a beat, she feels his arms winding around her back, crushing her to him. But then he’s gently prying her away, pushing her a step back with this hands firmly planted on her shoulders.
He gives her what V can assume is his best encouraging grin, but it’s not all that convincing.
“C’mon, blow already,” he says, giving her a playful shove towards the AV. “And stay safe,” he calls after her as she starts down the stairs.
She pauses on the AV pad, gazing back at Kerry’s small figure on the balcony. He gives her a wave, and she raises her hand to him before turning and climbing into the AV, settling back into the plush leather seat as the door hisses shut and the craft begins to ascend.
She watches Kerry's small silhouette recede below, and one of Johnny's memories suddenly returns to her, sharp as a knife. Of him leavin' with Rogue in the AV on the last night of his life, lookin' down at Kerry gazing up at him from the parking lot of the club with that same sorrowful expression he's wearin' on his face right now.
It takes everything she has not to start crying right then and there.
“I’ve chosen the optimal route,” the Del assures her. “We’ll be arriving shortly.”
It’s ludicrous, really, to take an AV to the Afterlife from V’s house - she lives within walking distance of the club. But as the silence of the soundproof car surrounds her and they circle softly out over the canal, she can’t help but admire the flyover they’re getting of Japantown, Watson, and City Center. The AV banks west, following the canal along the waterfront where it curves towards the ocean before swooping north again to slide between the towers and lower itself to hover next to the unadorned AV dropoff point on the rooftop of the building the Afterlife sits beneath.
V’s only ever been up here a handful of times before to share a private cigarette or piece of gossip with Claire.
“Best of luck, V,” the Delamain says as the door hisses open. “May your plans bear succulent fruit!”
She climbs out of the car and crosses the narrow roof to the elevator. She can hear the AV flying away behind her as the metal gate slides open and she steps into the small lift.
There’s a Ziggy Q segment advertising a sweepstakes for a free vacation to the Crystal Palace playing on the small TV in the elevator as it clatters downwards, and V stares at the image of the spinning, sparkling station on the screen until the elevator groans to a halt and the door slides open again to reveal the underground club’s entrance hallway.
Emmerick is standing in his usual place, hands folded in front of him.
“Boss,” he says with a nod as V steps towards him out of the elevator.
“Hey,” she says. “We good?”
“Perfect,” Emmerick replies in a low voice. “Rogue pulled every last string we had, but I think it worked. Got the fuel. Grabbed an Orbital Air tanker, wiped it from the records. They’ll notice eventually, but should be too late by then. So don’t worry about the transport.”
“Preem, thanks.”
Fuck, Rogue’s really burning all her bridges for this.
“Back room is ready an’ waitin’,” Emmerick tells her, and she steps past him into the club, giving him a short nod.
The Afterlife, as always, seems to exist in its own world outside of time - a world of smoke and neon and chrome, detached completely from the cold, bright morning beyond.
V immediately spots Rogue standing at the bar across from Claire, and both of them turn to V as she enters. There are a handful of patrons scattered about, but given the holiday, V isn’t surprised to see that the morning crowd is even thinner today than usual.
“Who do we have here?” Rogue jokes as V joins them.
Claire raises the glass she’s washing to V in a mock toast. “Merry Christmas,” she adds in a wry voice.
“Merry fuckin’ Christmas,” V replies with a laugh, coming to stand beside them. She turns to Rogue. “How’s things? Everything in order?”
“You tell me,” Rogue replies with a sly grin.
“Blue Eyes here yet?”
“Mmm, yep,” Rogue says with a nod, gesturing towards the door to the back area of the club. “Lying in wait, in the back booth.”
“Heh,” V chuckles. “Intrigued to hear what this mysterious client of ours has to say.”
Rogue cocks an eyebrow. “I would be, too,” she says. “He awaits. But before you go off, siddown a minute, let’s you and me swap a few thoughts. Before all that swallows you whole.” She pats the barstool beside her.
“People can tell something’s up,” says Claire as V slides onto the seat. “Won’t be able to keep it under wraps much longer.”
“Won’t have to,” V says, resting her elbows on the bar and leaning towards Claire. “Today is launch day.”
Claire’s eyes widen. “No shit?” she says. “Well, in that case, lemme mix you somethin’. Your usual?”
V hesitates, the words catching in her throat.
“Actually, I… I’m good,” she manages.
Claire pauses, frowning at V in confusion.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Rogue cuts in, playfully slapping V on the back. “Unusual situation, off into the wild blue today. And you’re well aware of the stakes.”
“Sure,” V stammers, unsure of how to handle this. “Keep remindin’ me…”
“Before any big op, and you know this, I’d oil the cogs with a little glass of tequila,” Rogue continues, staring at V with a warm sincerity that makes this even fuckin’ harder. “Johnny’s preferred.” She eyes the bottle of Centzon in the shrine behind the bar.
V swallows nervously. “We all got our rituals, charms, lucky underwear,” she says weakly.
But Rogue shakes her head. “Not talkin’ about luck, talkin’ about remembering,” she says, and her voice has that fierceness to it that V admires so much. “Remembering Johnny… which is how I knew what this was all for. What I was doing in this mess.”
V’s largely avoided the Afterlife for the past week, so she can’t blame Rogue for not clocking her abrupt lifestyle change. And fuck, Rogue is hard to say no to.
“Rogue…” she manages, but the fixer just barrels on, oblivious to V’s discomfort.
“So you’re gonna honor Afterlife tradition,” Rogue concludes with a grin. “Claire’s gonna mix you a Silverhand special.”
It would be so much easier to just go along with this, she thinks. To make an exception, to have this be her last drink - a much more fitting send-off than the sad glass of tequila she nursed at Kerry’s party - but that’s a slippery fuckin’ slope, and she knows it. If she’s willing to make an exception here, then what about all the other significant toasts, birthdays, weddings, celebrations, memorials, holidays, and anniversaries that await her?
She knows herself better than that. It is what it fucking is, and she made her fuckin’ bed and now she’s gotta lie in it.
“I… I’m actually not drinkin’ right now,” she manages, forcing herself to meet Rogue’s eyes. “Not anymore. For… a while,” she stammers.
Fuck, this harder than she thought it would be.
But to her relief, Rogue’s face softens as sudden understanding spreads across it.
“Smart,” the fixer says quickly, nodding at V. “Got an important meet today. And the launch in a few hours. Good to stay sharp.”
“Yeah,” V agrees, grateful for Rogue’s unquestioning acceptance.
Rogue smiles softly. “Well, mix me up one,” she instructs Claire. “Mock me all you want,” she adds, turning back to V as Claire begins filling two glasses. “But I, choomba, drink to you.”
“I’m gonna knock one back, too,” Claire adds, gesturing at the second glass. She finishes mixing the drinks, sliding one over to Rogue and lifting hers in a toast. “Your health, V,” she says. “And to the mission.”
“And to Johnny,” Rogue adds, and they both drink.
V feels a small pang of resentment as she watches the women toss back their drinks. Not resentment towards her friends - resentment towards herself. For bein’ such a fuckin’ gonk about it that now she can’t even trust herself to toss back a shot in Johnny’s honor before embarking on the most dangerous mission she can fuckin’ imagine.
She wonders if this is how her mother felt, all those years ago. If this is how Henry feels now. She knows it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but she can’t help but feel as though she’s at fault somehow for not bein’ able to keep her shit together, for having to fold and admit she’s the thing that’s been actively getting in her own way, for coming to the inevitable conclusion that the only way forward is to cut this shit out before it creates chasms instead of cracks. And with the stakes as high as they are, V knows she can't afford to fuck up.
V wonders if Johnny would make fun of her for this, or if he’d get it. She knows he’s no stranger to the struggles of addiction, to those dark urges to fill the yawning void within with anything that will numb the pain, mute the world temporarily. But she also knows he can be quick to judge, and she wonders how easy this will be for him to swallow.
She hopes she'll get a chance to find out.
Claire finishes her drink and sets down the glass. “I mean, I only know what people say about him,” she muses. “But I bet he’d loooove what you’re planning,” she tells V. “Shit, he’d be over the damn moon.”
V nods slowly. “Yeah.”
Rogue watches V’s face. “He’da gone with you, I just know it,” she tells V softly. “Couldn’t resist an op like this.” She looks across the bar at the Samurai record propped on the shelf. “I remember his smile every time he sensed the world rocking, on the verge of collapse. He’d be smilin’ today.”
“I know,” V murmurs.
Rogue stands. “C’mon,” she says. “Let’s get you to Blue Eyes.”
V pushes off her stool, and Claire shoots her a reassuring smile as they part. She follows Rogue through the swinging double doors to the back area of the club, past Nix’s office and down another hallway, into the soundproof and transmission-proof room that Rogue uses for particularly private meetings. V’s only been here once before - the night of the heist with Jackie. She remembers sitting in this room with him and T-bug and Dex, remembers the fear and exhilaration she’d felt that night. She was terrified, sure… but she’d wanted so badly to believe that Jackie was right, that this was their ticket outta here.
And in a twisted sort of way, it was, she realizes. None of the things in her life right now would be the way they are if not for the events of that fateful fucking night. If they hadn’t taken that job, would she and Jackie still just be two small-time mercs from Heywood, workin’ scop jobs for Padre and Wakako?
And now Jackie’s dead, and she’s, well… she’s where she is.
Beyond the tinted glass, V can see the figure of a man seated on the couches that line the booth.
“Rogue?” V says, pausing at the door and turning back towards the fixer.
“What?”
“Just... thank you,” V says sincerely.
“Thank me later,’ Rogue replies, but then gives V a long look. “Break a leg, V. This heist… if anybody can pull it off, that person’s you.”
"People keep sayin' that," V mutters.
"'Cause it's true," Rogue replies, giving her a quick but reassuring pat on the back before turning to leave. V takes a deep breath, then steps through the door into the booth.
Mr. Blue Eyes gets to his feet when she enters. He has glowing blue eyes, which V finds a little bit on the nose, but he’s wearing a fancy silk suit with a silver shirt underneath it that wouldn’t look out of place at any of the corpo haunts downtown.
V finds herself thinking of that day in Reconciliation Park again. And she remembers all too well the terrifying anonymous holo call she received moments before that encounter, the one that made her vision go black and her head explode with blinding pain.
We know who you are. We know what you are. We know what you want. You're playing with fire. Don't dare cross the line.
The words echo in her head as she takes a step towards Mr. Blue Eyes, wondering just how gonk or desperate she is that she’s willing to work with a man who she has to assume was somehow involved in that whole mess - controlling people’s minds, messing with their memories, altering their very personalities.
She’s afraid, and she knows she’s right to be.
“V,” he says pleasantly, extending a smooth pale hand to her. “I’ve long awaited this moment. To look the latest Afterlife legend in the eye… I must say, I’m moved.”
V takes his hand and gives it a firm pump. “Happy not to disappoint.”
He steps aside and gestures for her to sit. “Ladies first.”
V moves past him to take a seat on the couch, and as he settles in diagonal to her, she can’t help but think of Johnny’s theory on all this - that rogue AIs from beyond the Blackwall are somehow pulling the strings here. She thinks of the AIs she’s encountered there herself, Alt included, and wonders if there’s any truth to that.
“Talk to me,” she says to the mysterious client, crossing her legs and leaning back in her seat.
“Well, V…” he replies, eyeing her with his eerie glowing eyes. “Mikoshi was quite the punch. You TKO’d Arasaka, in fact. Brought you eddies, influence around town.” He crosses his legs as well, resting his hands on his lap and continuing to study her. “But not just that. It meant positive paralysis of Arasaka’s systems. A few additional hatches opened up… my people rushed in, grabbed what they could.”
V nods. “So it’s all systems go for the op.”
“I have confirmed the intel leaking out of Arasaka,” he says. “The casino is currently testing a new security system.” He looks at V. “And it’s true… they will be shutting it down briefly today.” He drums his fingers against his thigh. “I believe you’ll know how to use that moment.”
“Crack the system, offload the data, delta the fuck out,” V replies.
Mr. Blue Eyes nods. “Rogue has discussed the details with you, but let’s review for good measure.” He pulls up a 3D holo projection of the Crystal Palace in the center of the table. It’s a real-time simulation - V can see the flight traffic coming and going from the station as it slowly spins on its axis. Mr. Blue Eyes points to a small marked dot making its approach towards the station.
“Your autopilot will take you this far,” he explains, tapping the projection with his slender finger. “From there, you will infiltrate the station from the exterior in your suit.” He zooms in on the projection, showing a smaller dot leaving the big dot signifying V’s ship.
The small dot will be V, presumably. She swallows as she watches the dot drift slowly towards the massive station.
“There’s only one approach along the planned trajectory,” Mr. Blue Eyes continues. “Their advance warning systems will not detect you. They will register you as an object of insignificant size,” he adds with a smirk. “You'll most likely be classified as space junk.” He glances over at V. “But don't get in range of their scanners. And try not to set off the alarm during recompression.”
“Recompression?” V asks, turning away from the projection to look at him with alarm. “Thought the whole op was outside.”
Mr. Blue Eyes smiles. “Ideally, yes,” he says smoothly. “First, you will attempt to hack the station’s systems from the external access points. We’ve obtained codes to circumvent their ID and recognition systems, but these passwords are changed every twenty minutes, so you must use the ones we’ve provided in time.”
“Right,” V says.
“The airlocks themselves have only low-level surveillance.” He zooms in on the Crystal Palace even closer. “Station security is headquartered here,” he says, gesturing at a portion of the inner ring nestled between the two primary larger ones. “And the location of the main safes is on admin levels,” he adds, pointing at the second smaller ring below the main two.
“Safes?” V repeats, turning to him again with her brow furrowed. “Thought the objective was to obtain client data.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Blue Eyes agrees. “However, if the data is hardwired into a local network that isn’t accessible from the exterior, you’ll have to enter the station and access the mainframe,” he tells her. “If things go in that direction, consider the safes a secondary objective.”
“Uh huh,” V says coldly. She doesn’t like being surprised at the 11th hour. But as far as she’s concerned, Mr. Blue Eyes is just footing the bill for her to accomplish her own mission goals that just so happen to dovetail with his. For now.
“I have my people in position on the station,” he adds. “Once you have obtained all assets, they can provide temporary blind paths to emergency airlocks and evacuation routes.”
“And then? I just jet back to my ship, head back to Earth?”
Mr. Blue Eyes smiles again. “Just so,” he confirms. “When you arrive at the launchpad today, my people will be in position to assist you with your embarkation. I trust you to take it from there. I will be available on comms throughout the mission. Except, of course, when you go dark en route to the Palace.”
V nods. “Won’t be disappointed. Picked the best merc around for the job.”
“So I’ve heard,” he says with a slow smile. “But I’d like it proved to me as well. Speaking of which, nobody’s ever pulled off a stunt like this. Where I’m from, they’d say it’s straight impossible.” He looks at her with something like bemusement on his face, almost admiration.
“And where are you from?” V can’t resist asking. “Militech? Night Corp?”
Mr. Blue Eyes smiles. “They’d say you’re taking too big a risk,” he replies, ignoring her question. “Poetically speaking. Flying towards the sun to burn up.”
“Guess that’s why you hired me,” V shoots back, unable to keep the annoyance out of her voice.
He laughs. “You know why I hired you? Because you’d do anything at all for even the faintest chance at survival. Even if it meant coming within a hair’s breadth of your untimely death.”
“They’d be dead wrong, all of ‘em,” V says flatly.
“Self-confidence worthy of a legend,” Mr. Blue Eyes says, but his eyes narrow slightly. “Or of someone risking it all.” He laughs again, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “But I sense you know what it’s like to lose everything. To fight for one last breath. I see it in you.”
V fights to keep her features impassive as she holds his gaze, lifting her chin slightly as she speaks. “This time tomorrow… should have the casino’s client data. All of it.” She looks pointedly at him. “Don’t forget your side of the bargain.”
“Oh, I never forget a promise,” he says with another slow smile. “Good luck.”
V stands, as does Mr. Blue Eyes. They shake hands again, and V feels a cold stab of fear when she looks into his eyes again. She doesn’t fucking trust him, she’s sure of that.
But she’s not doing this for him, not doing it for the eddies, not doin’ it for the cred, not doing it for her own survival either, like Mr. Blue Eyes seems to think.
She’s doing it for Johnny.
And on that note, she has one final task to attend to before she leaves the Afterlife.
She quickly exits the booth, walking back through the neon-lit corridors until she reaches the door to Nix’s office.
The old netrunner's already got everything set up for her, and he stands when she enters, putting out his cigarette and tapping a series of keys on his laptop to activate the data fortress. She closes the door behind her and begins to quickly strip as he turns his back.
“You used to work for Arasaka, didn't you?” she says to Nix as she steps into the netrunner suit and zips it up the back. “You were involved in that big cyberpsycho scandal a few years ago, leaked a buncha shit to N54 News.”
Nix laughs from the corner. “Sure did,” he says proudly. “A little bird put me in touch with your friend Bes Isis,” he says. “And the rest is history.”
“By ‘little bird,’ guessin’ you mean Rogue,” V says. She activates the suit’s cooling system, and Nix turns around and moves to his station as V climbs into the chair.
“She promised me a safe place to land, and she pulled through,” Nix confirms, gesturing around him at his set-up. “Ah, Arasaka,” he says darkly. “Only thing I miss is the clean air.”
V swallows back the fear that rises in her throat as Nix jacks the thick cable into the back of her skull. Her vision doubles and then stretches, and then the world around her fractures and glitches and Nix’s data fortress materializes around her in its place.
She hasn’t been in the Net since the day she was attacked. She’s been afraid - afraid of what will happen, afraid of what she’ll find. But she has to visit Johnny today, has to speak with him one last time before she does this. Has to tell him what she’s planning, tell him to be ready.
She hopes he’s in any condition to hear it.
She launches herself out of the data fortress, gunning straight for the Blackwall and ignoring the fiery NetWatch patrollers prickling on the edges of her senses. The Blackwall embraces her, accepts her as always, and she lets herself be pulled through and unfolded out the other side, feeling as though her mind’s been turned inside out and poured through a sieve.
But she collects herself the way she always does, gathers her thoughts in a literal and figurative sense, and focuses all her energy on reaching for Johnny. She knows space is an illusion here - if he’s anywhere, she can get to him.
When she finally feels the familiar, warm patterns of his mind, she pulls the rest of herself through to him, and as predicted, the Pistis Sophia materializes around her.
She’s getting better at navigating this place, she realizes.
And to her immense relief, Johnny’s seated on the bed, bowed forward with his head in his hands.
But her relief is replaced by alarm when she sees that his body is still crackling, rippling, glitching and blurring, much worse than before. Parts of him fracture and break into strange shapes and unearthly patterns as she slowly approaches him, oozing out and spreading and growing like strange plants or some kind of odd, geometric lattice before furling back into him as quickly as they appeared, momentarily receding into Johnny’s human skin before erupting somewhere else from a different fragmenting section of his body.
He doesn’t seem to be aware of her presence.
“Johnny…” she says softly under her breath, sinking to her knees in front of him.
His fingers tighten around his face, and he begins rocking back and forth. From the angle she’s at now, she can see his lips moving, forming words beneath where his palms are pressed firmly against his cheeks and eyes.
As V leans closer, she realizes with a cold shock that he’s mouthing the words to Never Fade Away, singing them softly to himself under his breath. She freezes, her hand inches from his knee, her heart thudding in her chest as she stares at his broken, fracturing form.
And then she feels a presence behind her and knows Alt is here.
“NetWatch is attempting to trace you,” Alt says matter-of-factly. “I have… interrupted their efforts. Temporarily. But time is short. You must not linger here.”
“Alt,” she pleads, getting to her feet and turning to face the floating red figure. “I… I’m launching today. I’m going to need your help.”
“Yes,” Alt replies.
“And? That means you’ll help?” V says urgently. “Make sure Johnny’s ready, if I find him?”
“I will be ready,” Alt says simply, and V flinches at the omission of Johnny.
“Will he… is he…” she stammers. She can’t even bring herself to ask.
Alt gazes down at Johnny, still rocking on the bed, seemingly oblivious to both of them.
“Yes,” she replies.
“Yes what?!” V asks, hearing the panic rising in her voice. “Yes, he’ll be okay?”
“I will begin preparing his engram to be transferred back to the biochip,” Alt says, as though it were obvious.
“What does that mean, exactly?” V presses.
Alt hovers lower. “Without access to Mikoshi, I cannot transfer Johnny’s engram directly back to his mind as I did with yours. And transferring him to the Relic will be more difficult as well, even with the updated Soulkiller code I have now integrated.” She pauses, watching Johnny where he sits with an expression almost like tenderness on her inhuman features. “If I begin now, I can preemptively compress Johnny’s engram code into the format it will be stored in on the biochip and fold it inside of my own. This will allow me to carry him with me when you connect me to the Crystal Palace systems, or to any other facility you may visit.”
“And once I locate Johnny’s body… you’ll transfer Johnny to the biochip?”
“Yes,” Alt says. "But he must accompany me willingly."
V sits beside Johnny on the bed, her body starting to glitch a bit too as the panic overwhelms her.
“Johnny,” she gasps.
He doesn’t respond, so she wraps her arms around him, clutching him tightly to her, willing him to feel her presence.
Slowly, but surely, the glitching slows and his body becomes more human, more solid in her arms. He stops shaking and moves his hand slowly to clutch V’s forearm where it wraps across his chest.
“V,” he says in a low voice, almost inaudible.
If V could cry in this place, she would.
“Johnny,” she says, feeling that stupid fucking wave of relief wash over her. “It’s time,” she says gently. “Time for you to go.”
“I can't... I don't…” he protests weakly. “I think… I'm s'posed to stay here.”
“Yes,” V reminds him. “You were supposed to stay here and wait for me. Until I came back for you. And now I’m here, and I’m gonna go out there and I’m gonna find you. So you gotta go with Alt, get ready for me to bring you back when I do.”
He stares at her with confusion and distrust written across his face.
“Do you want to come back with me?” she breathes.
“Yes.”
She presses her lips to his, and though he doesn’t pull away, his mouth feels flat, unresponsive. But she’s too relieved to care, and she pulls away and gets to her feet, turning back to Alt.
“What now?” she says.
Alt moves to hover behind Johnny, wrapping her arms around his torso and winding them across his chest. Johnny stiffens, and his body begins glitching wildly again, but Alt rests her head on his shoulder almost as a lover would, pausing for a moment until Johnny relaxes. But then she rises from the bed, carrying Johnny upwards with her. Arcs of code fan and spiral out around her, folding around Johnny’s body like great red wings.
And then they’re both gone, and the Pistis Sophia begins to dissolve around her.
V knows that’s her cue to leave.
She suppresses the fear that threatens to overwhelm her as she races back out through the Blackwall, back to Nix’s data fortress. Alt wasn’t lying - NetWatch is hot on her tail the whole way back, and she launches a trail of hard spikes behind her as she moves through the Net, hoping to slow them down.
She disconnects the second she’s safely within the fortress, and opens her eyes to see Nix hovering above her, his hand extended towards her with a cold bottle of water at the ready.
V yanks out the link and sits up, taking the bottle and chugging it gratefully. Her temples are throbbing and feverish, and her skin feels flushed and hot.
“All good?” Nix asks her, one eyebrow raised over his shades.
V nods, setting aside the empty water bottle and hoisting herself out of the seat.
“Did what I needed to do,” she tells him. She hopes it’s the truth.
Nix taps his chin thoughtfully, then reaches into his desk and hands her a shard.
“Take this,” he urges her. “Handful of daemons live on that shard. Pulled ‘em from Bartmoss’ deck. Wasn't Bartmoss who coded 'em... they got Spider Murphy all over ‘em, if you ask me. Should be useful nonetheless.”
V takes the shard and slots it in, scrolling through the programs on it and adding them to her cyberdeck’s catalogue. Nix is right - seems like useful stuff. She thanks him, and he leaves to give her privacy to change back into her street clothes.
As soon as she’s alone, she collapses back onto the ‘runner chair and wraps her arms around her knees, taking deep, shaky breaths.
It’s all fucking happening now. This is it, everything’s set into motion, and it’s just up to her to somehow, somehow land this fucking plane and make it all come together, to get them all out the other side alive.
It’s more than a leap of faith - V has no choice but to place all of her trust in herself, in her own instincts and abilities, in her own judgments and decisions and values. And all she can do is hope that it will be enough, that her knowledge is sound, that her information accurate, that her body will yield to the staggering demands she’s about to place upon it.
She manages to collect herself by the time she’s dressed, and she holds her head high as she struts back out onto the main floor of the Afterlife.
Weyland is sitting at the end of the bar, and he turns to her grinning as she nears him. She stops to greet him, leaning in to casually clap a hand on his enormous shoulder.
“Hey, Weyland,” she teases. “Tellin’ everyone about your ‘Saka Tower heroics?
Weyland throws back his head and laughs. “Ya know it!” he boasts. “Claire musta heard it three times already.”
Claire snorts from behind the bar. “More like three dozen.”
Weyland just grins and turns back to V. “But what you plan to do today, V… I mean, respect. Nothin’ else will ever come close. Take good care of yourself. And good luck.”
“Thanks,” V says, moving away from him to continue her circuit.
And as she steps round the corner of the bar, her eyes fall to Vik, seated alone at the opposite end of the bar.
“Vik!” she exclaims with surprise, circling the bar quickly to throw her arms around him. The angle is too awkward for him to hug her back properly, so he just pats her arm as she pulls away and perches on the stool beside him, not even attempting to hide how pleased she is to see him.
“Came to see ya off,” he says sheepishly. “I-I didn't wanna say anything, but you missed your last checkup, and like I told you a million times…” He presses his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, then gives V a concerned look. “Ugh…” he mutters.
“I’m sorry, Vik,” she says earnestly. He's right, she should have probably stopped by this week for one last tune-up. She's been so busy prepping for the launch that she somehow never found the time. “Shit’s just… shit’s been crazy.”
“Bet your chooms at the Afterlife found you a new, major-league ripper,” Vik continues with a sad smile. “Some swanky downtown fucker shootin’ chrome out his ass. Am I right?”
V laughs. “Nix rec'd a guy who specializes in ‘runners,” she tells him. “Not a replacement for you, Vik. No one could ever be that. I just… I had a scare in the Net last week and needed to get my shit checked,” she assures him.
“A scare in the Net?” Vik says, sounding unconvinced. “Look, I know you’re a free bird and all, you’re gonna do what you want, when you want, but... stop by sometime, okay? Next time you're in the neighborhood, we'll talk about old times, and... I'll take a look at ya, make sure that new ripper of yours didn't screw anything up.”
“I’ll do that,” V promises him. “Soon as I get back.”
Vik frowns again. “Speakin’ of this job of yours,” he continues. “I asked around town about your client."
V presses her lips together, waiting for Vik to continue. She hasn't told him all the deets about the op, but it seems like Rogue's filled her ripper in on the identity of their benefactor. "And?" she prompts him.
"What’s odd is that nobody knows a damn thing," he tells her. "Meaning one of two things… or maybe both. Either the guy's swimmin’ with great whites way above our info circle, high up enough that nobody can even give us the unknown unknowns... or he's shady as hell, given this city doesn't abide the nameless." He sighs heavily. "Either way, make sure you know what you're doing, V.”
“It’s a leap of faith, I know,” V protests. “But it’s my only shot.”
“Remember that first time you asked Rogue for help?” Claire pipes up, coming to stand across from them as she rinses and dries a tumbler. “She was hard on you, wasn’t she? Know what she told me later? She said, ‘She’s got that blood, Afterlife blood. She’ll make the city hers or it’ll kill her. No third option.’ Think that was why she decided to help you. And, well, she was right.”
“Heh,” V laughs. “Guess so.”
Vik studies her for a long moment, then nods. “Misty gets back soon, ya know,” he tells her. “Before New Years.”
“We can all have dinner at my place,” V promises. “Catch up, talk about old times, like you said.” Her eyes fall to Vik’s drink, then. “You drinkin’ a Jackie Welles?” she asks him with a sad laugh.
“Sure is,” Claire confirms, setting down the empty glass on the bar.
Vik smiles down at his drink, then looks back up at V. “You miss him?”
V can feel someone come to stand on her other side, and she turns to see Rogue leaning casually against the bar, regarding the three of them.
V gestures around her. “This place?" she says. "It was… Jackie’s dream. Afterlife legends, that’s what we were gonna be." Her words are tinged by both bitterness and amazement.
“I’ll have a Jackie Welles, too,” Rogue tells Claire, and Claire pulls out a second tumbler so she can make one for herself as well and sets about mixing the drinks.
“He wanted to work with fixers like you,” V tells Rogue, watching as Claire works. “Legends. Wanted everybody at the Afterlife to know our names. ‘Major leagues, V, that’s the place to be, the major leagues,’” she says, imitating his voice.
Rogue smiles. “Well, consider his dream fulfilled.”
V turns to grin at her. “Isn’t it high time to have a V on the menu?” she jokes dryly.
Rogue chuckles and shakes her head. “Gotta die to have a drink named after you at the Afterlife. You know the rules.”
“Agreed, and I do know the rules,” V replies with a confident smirk, channeling her best steely bravado. “But I did die, Rogue.”
“You did,” Rogue says with a slow smile. “A living legend of the Afterlife… how about that. That’s a first.”
“Hopefully Johnny’ll be the second,” V says boldly, getting to her feet. All of her friends’ eyes are on her as she stands before them.
Rogue takes V’s hand and clasps it between hers. “Be careful up there, and good luck,” she says. “And come back to us. Afterlife’s your home, now.”
“Thanks, Rogue,” V replies, her brave face cracking a bit.
“And remember, no smoking in space,” Vik adds, standing to hug her.
Claire ducks under the bar to do so as well. “Good luck, V,” she says, patting her on the back as they part.
V steps backwards away from them, giving them all a final wave, and then she turns and gets back in the elevator, Emmerick at her flank.
The Delamain is waiting for her on the roof again, ready to ferry her to the spaceport.
“After you,” Emmerick says, gesturing towards the AV.
V gives him a look. She hadn’t anticipated an escort. “Long as you’re cool with us making one quick stop first,” she tells him. “Mission critical. Off the record.”
Emmerick gives her a long look, but then nods. “Whatever you say, boss.”
V nods slowly back at him, then turns and climbs into the Delamain. Emmerick follows right behind her, sitting himself diagonally across from her in the cab. Strategic advantage according to some solo’s handbook, V imagines, feeling her lip twitch upwards as she watches him settle in for takeoff.
“Hey Del,” she says, addressing the cab’s AI. “Need to make a quick stop. Swing by the Columbarium before we head to the spaceport.”
“As you wish,” the Delamain replies smoothly.
They glide out over the waterway, the flat stone towers of Corpo Plaza gleaming in the morning sun.
“Any news about Arasaka?” V asks as they soar across the canals and out over Santo Domingo. “What’s the latest?”
“Arasaka’s problems continue to compound,” Delamain answers. “Organizational disintegration, its share price has collapsed, public mistrust is at an all-time high. I could go on.”
V nods. The craft banks north towards Charter Hill, dipping lower as they approach the sprawling stone structure of the mausoleum.
“Secure Your Soul was to be a smashing success for Arasaka,” the Del continues. “It turned into a horrific curse. They lost all resources related to the program.”
“Mhm,” V replies coldly. “Promised the rich immortality, sold ‘em on it. Actually collected engrams and knowledge. A bid for control, for power, I say.” She gazes out the window as the aircraft lowers, settling into a low hover at the entrance to the Columbarium.
A far cry from her last visit here, V thinks as she steps out of the vehicle, remembering how she'd staggered in here off the city bus, dope-sick and filthy.
“Wait here,” she instructs Emmerick, holding up her hand as he moves to follow her.
His eyes narrow, and he opens his mouth to protest, but V shoots him equal daggers back, her jawline set and her gaze held firm.
“Sure thing, boss,” he huffs, relenting as he settles into a loosely held huscle stance a few paces away from the cab. “I’ll keep an eye out from here.”
“I won’t be long,” V promises.
She turns and jogs across the plaza and up the broad stone stairs, plunging into the cool, gray darkness of the damp stone structure.
She barely glances at Jackie’s niche this time, headed straight for the back wall in the alcove where Johnny and Alt’s sit side by side, like Orpheus and Eurydice themselves. Or maybe she’s Orpheus now, who the fuck knows?
She sighs heavily as she studies the two names, then transmits her code to slide open Johnny’s niche. To her relief, everything seems exactly as she left it - the case with the stolen Relic, the velvet bag holding Johnny’s rings, and her bullet necklace draped across them both. She scoops up the items, dropping the necklace into the bag with the rings and sliding that into her pocket. She then lifts the biochip case out of the cubby, grasping it by the handle and dropping her arm to her side. She slides the niche closed, hearing it lock with a satisfying click.
“I’m about to do some real gonk stuff for you, Johnny,” V whispers, resting her head against the cold stone. “If I’m bein’ fuckin’ honest… plan's got more gaping holes than a Kabuki dollhouse.” She laughs a bleak, hoarse laugh. “But fuck it, it's gotta work!”
It feels like something Johnny would say.
She allows herself then, only briefly, to imagine the possibilities of her life with Johnny. To imagine having him actually here, actually real, actually alive, neither of them dying. To imagine making music with him, living with him in her penthouse, eating dinner with him, driving around the city with him.
Growing old with him.
It’s such a dangerous, foolish hope and she knows it, but she also knows it’s the only thing that’s gonna get her through these next desperate couple of hours.
And she finally lets herself admit inwardly just how fucking badly she wants it - badly enough to risk everything for it. For him.
She turns and heads back for the Delamain, biochip case in hand. Emmerick is still standing with his arms crossed at the door to the AV, his eyes scanning all the other visitors to the Columbarium. V crosses the plaza and hoists herself into the craft, settling back into her seat and pulling the Relic case onto her lap.
“Take us to the spaceport,” she instructs the AI as Emmerick once again seats himself across from her. “Quick, no more chatter," she tells the cab. "Gotta focus.”
“Naturally,” the AI replies. “I’ve selected the shortest route. We’ll be there momentarily.” He is silent for a moment as they begin to ascend. “One last thing before I shut up as requested," the car suddenly pipes up again. "Don’t worry, V. If anyone can pull this particular job off, it’s you. See, I know you a bit, and… well, I’m quite sure you know what I mean.”
V startles a bit. She hadn’t expected a pep talk from her fuckin’ cab.
“Thanks, Del,” she stammers. “I do.”
“If you say so,” the car AI replies.
The AV lifts up and away from North Oak, circling north over the hills above Japantown. V could probably see Kerry’s house from here, if she looked for it. They fly low over the sprawling warehouses of Northside, over Judy’s old apartment and the hospital, and V catches a glimpse of her rooftop pool sparkling in the morning light before her view is cut off by the jutting dark tower of Konpeki Plaza. She imagines Kerry alone in her penthouse, wondering if she's still alive or not.
They glide in low over the water towards where NCX sits on what was formerly Morro Rock, banking down towards a private launchpad set apart from the rest of the bustling commercial spaceport. The Delamain comes to a stop at the end of a long dock that stretches above the crashing waves and leads directly to the launchpad, where the shuttle sits pointed towards the heavens like an arrow. It's an old-style jet rocket, V realizes - not a spaceplane ready to be launched via mass driver. The jets are clearly fueled and ready to go, and the whole thing is already fired up and vibrating.
Mr. Blue Eyes’ agents are waiting for her and Emmerick on the dock when the AV doors hiss open, and one of them holds up a hand when Emmerick moves to follow her out of the cab.
“Only her,” the woman says firmly.
Emmerick's eyes flash, but he nods bruskly. V hops out of the Delamain and follows her new escort away from the AV, across the tarmac to the shuttle pad, where the two uniformed women usher her into a low building that V figures probably sits at the closest safe observation distance from the launchpad. Once inside, they instruct her to undress and prepare herself and her belongings for the decontamination procedure.
Rogue warned her about this part - commercial pilots, travelers, and astronauts don’t gotta quarantine for days the way they used to anymore, but the sterilization itself is rough as hell on your skin, apparently. And sure enough, V feels her face stinging as she exits the decontamination chamber, stepping into a small, sterile dressing room. Her vacuum suit is hanging on a hook next to her helmet, and arranged neatly on the bench before her, presumably decontaminated to everyone’s satisfaction, are the bag of jewelry, the biochip case, her bag of medicine and MaxDocs, and Johnny’s Malorian.
She gingerly lifts the black space suit off its hook, stepping into it and pulling it up over her chest and threading her arms through the impossibly snug sleeves. Rogue was right - it's much nicer than the one she trained in. The suit’s inner layer is thin and pressurized like a netrunner suit, but the outer layer is made of a thicker polymer armor, presumably to deflect radiation and space debris. She fastens the straps and connectors the way Rogue showed her, tightening and adjusting everything until it feels secure yet comfortable. She then pulls the black balaclava over her hair and around her neck, tucking Johnny's dog tags inside of it as well as any and all errant strands of hair. She takes Johnny’s gun and holsters it at her hip, then places the jewelry and the medicine into the pouch on her opposite hip.
The Relic, she’ll just have to carry.
She steps out of the dressing room and into a tunnel created from draped plastic sheets that leads her to the base of the sturdy metal staircase that reaches upward alongside the rocket. Above her, she can see the metal catwalk stretching from the landing to the spaceship itself.
She’s really fucking doing this.
She starts up the stairs, clutching the Relic in one hand and the helmet beneath her other arm as she marches upwards.
She can see the workers below clearing the area, and she takes a deep breath when she reaches the top, then sets out across the grated bridge. The entrance to the shuttle yawns before her like a tomb, and she wonders for the millionth time if this is just all some elaborate ploy by her own subconscious to go out in a blaze of fuckin’ glory, if this is all just some hare-brained scheme fueled by a hidden and deep-seated desire to go down screaming rather than fade away slowly, connected to a million tubes in a hospital while everyone she’s ever cared about watches her body fail.
Either way, she's committed now. The door shuts behind her with a solid thunk as she enters the airlock and the compression sequence engages. She puts on her helmet and activates the seal while she waits for the inner door to hiss open, then she steps out of the airlock into the narrow hallway leading up towards the cockpit.
It’s not a fancy space yacht by any means - it’s a stolen Orbital Air transport shuttle, like Emmerick said, and V shakes her head again in bemusement at the number of bridges Rogue seems more than willing to gleefully burn for her. She moves towards the cockpit, stopping to stash the Relic case in one of the secure cargo bays lining the hallway. V closes the compartment, then crosses to the lone pilot’s seat, settling into the chair and dragging the heavy straps across her chest and clicking the buckles into place.
The monitors before her blink to life as the ship’s computer system registers her biometrics and cyberware configurations. The system checks have already been run, and the whole flight pattern is pre-programmed and saved into the autopilot, along with potential alternate approach trajectories and escape paths. So there’s not much else for V to do now besides strap the fuck in and hang onto her tits.
She runs another systems check just for good measure, and she can feel the engines really begin to roar awake beneath her. As her cyberware finishes syncing to the ship's systems, the radio chatter from the launch technicians begins crackling in over her comms.
“V?” says a voice in her ear. “It’s Mr. Blue Eyes. I’ll keep this channel open throughout the mission whenever possible.”
“Roger that,” V tells him.
“T-minus thirty seconds,” an unfamiliar voice crackles over a different channel. About ten seconds later, she hears a loud hiss echo throughout the cabin, and everything begins to shake violently.
Her heart is pounding, and her palms are sweating, and V can’t deny that this is the most terrifying thing she’s ever done in her fucking life.
But beneath the fear is that hunger she knows is there, a deep and furious hunger to look down at the Earth from above, to look down at Night City. She wants to see it sparkle dimly from outer space, to prove to herself that the city of fuckin' dreams can’t keep her down no matter how hard it tries to swallow her whole, no matter how relentlessly it attempts to keep happy endings from happening to people like Johnny and V.
“T-minus fifteen seconds,” the operative says.
V grips the straps on her chest tightly as the rumbling beneath her intensifies, taking deep steadying breaths as the launch director begins counting down from ten.
“Three… two… one… zero," the operative counts. "Ignition…”
V feels the jets explode beneath her, and the g-forces flatten her against her seat as the ship is hurled upwards into the clear blue sky.
"Liftoff," she whispers to herself.
Notes:
Here we goooo
And once again, you can read more about Violet and her backstory with Johnny in this INCREDIBLE fic!!! Go read it, it's one of my absolute favorites!
Chapter 57: Desperate Measures
Summary:
V embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue Johnny and learns some unsettling secrets about the people she's been working with.
Notes:
This one's a rollercoaster!!!! Probably still needs proofreading but whatever I'll come back and fix it tonight lmfao
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The heavy, crushing pressure of the g-forces recedes, and V can feel her organs shift as her insides find themselves suddenly no longer bound by gravity. Though she’s still constrained by the straps, her head is spinning and her stomach is doing somersaults as that strange, falling sensation of weightlessness overtakes her body. But as her nervous system adjusts, she’s struck dumb by the utter strangeness of the fact that in less time than it would take her to walk to the Afterlife from her house, she's suddenly no longer on the planet that most people would casually refer to as “the world.”
Beneath her, she can feel the jets powering down as the thrusters kick in, transitioning the shuttle from its explosive launch velocity into a steady but hard burn towards the moon. A powerful feeling of exhilaration washes over V as she watches the trajectory tracker on her monitor blink as the small dot representing her ship inches across the void towards its destination.
She fumbles with the controls for the viewports, and the shielding on the narrow windows shifts to transparency at her command, revealing a glittering field of stars in every direction. Straight up ahead and to the right, the white half orb of the moon glows brilliantly in her path like a massive white slash in the vast expanse of black. And to her left, she can see the shimmering sapphire sphere of the Earth covering half the viewport. Her breath catches in her throat, and she cranes her neck to get a better look. She can see the California coastline receding over the horizon, the chrome and neon anthill of Night City swallowed by the whirling clouds and replaced by a procession of cloudscapes and landscapes that move beneath her with a slow majesty.
The experience of seeing the Earth from space, the sheer scale of it, how massive and how small it looks at the same time... it's overwhelming, awe-inspiring, and V feels a lump forming in her throat. She understands now why everyone always says this shit is impossible to describe - there aren't any words she can think of that could come close to capturing what she's seeing and feeling right now.
When she was a kid, she'd fantasized constantly about going to space. But space was a dream for rich people, or military, or people with training V could never hope to have access to. Not for kids from Heywood. Not for her.
And yet, like another wild, strange, and improbable dream, here she fucking is.
The autopilot’s cruising now, and eventually V tears her eyes away from the viewport, unfastens her harness, and pushes herself up and out of the pilot’s chair. She’s got another 36 hours before the shuttle will reach Earth-Moon Lagrange P1, where the Crystal Palace hangs suspended in perfect balance between the gravitational pulls of the two worlds. And Mr. Blue Eyes has instructed her to maintain radio silence until he checks in again in ten hours, so she might as well get comfortable.
She takes off her helmet and rubs her face with her gloved hand, then pushes off from the cockpit, floating down the hall to hang the helmet on its clamp near the airlock. There’s a small cabin and galley area below that, and V lowers herself into the narrow chamber, the lights flickering on to welcome her as she locks her magboots onto the floor with a loud clunk.
Flush against the wall is a coffee machine set up with little pre-mixed packets of dehydrated synth-beans. V slots one of them into the machine, watching as it beeps and begins to hiss and steam. Next to it are some protein packets and other various nutrient pastes that V considers preparing, but her insides are roiling, both from the weightlessness and the sheer adrenaline of it all, and she’s not sure if her stomach can handle anything beyond the coffee.
When the coffee finishes, V returns to the cockpit with her strange sippy-cup, awkwardly sucking the hot liquid through the oddly shaped lid as she floats suspended on the flight deck while she stares up at the stars through the windows.
A sudden giddiness courses through her, so she queues up Samurai’s entire discography on her HUD, setting it to blast out of all the speakers on the tiny shuttle. She grins as the opening chords of Dissolute Game - the first song off of their first album, Blistering Love - begin to play. As the familiar riffs ring out against the tinny walls of the spacecraft, V air guitars herself into a slow cartwheel, kicking her feet wildly and singing along to the lyrics.
The album hasn’t even finished yet before V starts to become increasingly and excruciatingly aware of the fact that she really needs a fuckin’ cigarette. Gonna be a long trip, she thinks to herself with a grimace as she continues to propel herself back and forth across the cabin, feeling more and more like a rat in a tin can with every passing minute.
By the time she’s made it through Samurai’s discography twice, she’s begun making up her own words to all the songs, cackling alone to herself as she spins through the shuttle. Her hunger eventually gets the better of her, so she finally relents and rehydrates one of the packets of nutrient slop. It’s as tasteless and unappetizing as she’d feared, but she manages to choke it down while reviewing the updated schematics of the Crystal Palace that Mr. Blue Eyes’ agents provided her. The mysterious client himself checks in after ten hours as promised, and after a few more hours of attempting not to think about the fact that she’s hurtling in a tiny box through an infinite void of nothingness, V tries with middling degrees of success to doze off for a few hours in one of the strange little hammocks in the crew lounge area.
She wakes from a dreamless haze to the sound of Mr. Blue Eyes’ voice in her ear again, telling her she’s only six hours out from the Crystal Palace and it’s time to prep for her space walk. She’s disoriented and nauseated - the room and her stomach are both doing somersaults once again, and it takes her a full minute to reorient herself in the cabin and get her bearings. After brewing another coffee, she pulls one of the airhypos from her stashed bag and unzips her suit down to her thigh, jamming the needle into her leg before zipping and refastening her gear.
As she settles back into her chair in the cockpit, she can see the Crystal Palace clearly now through the viewports. It’s still pretty far away - about the size of her hand if she stretched it out in front of her - and she shudders as the reality of the mission really hits her then. She’s gonna have to cross most of the rest of that distance in just her space suit, with nothing but her wits and her cyberdeck’s nav systems to guide her.
She willfully ignores the cold panic that grips her gut.
She can do this. She has to do this.
The shuttle is still flying along its pre-programmed route, but V takes over manual control for a moment as they begin their approach towards the station. This next section is the diciest part - she has to fly the shuttle right through the narrow blind spot between the two outermost surveillance satellites that act as traffic signallers to the Palace. She mostly sticks to the computer’s planned path, keeping her eyes glued to the monitor for any sign of detection from either of the satellites, and doesn’t let out her breath until the shuttle’s safely clear of the sentry choke point.
They’ve reached Lagrange Point 1, which means it’s time for V to park her shuttle and go the rest of the way on foot.
She turns the system’s autopilot back on and sets the fuel burn to the minimum required to keep the shuttle held in place by the naturally-occuring gravitational equilibrium.
“Right,” she says into her comm. “In position.”
“Perfect,” Mr. Blue Eyes says. “Almost to the second. My turn.”
V can see the line of lookout buoys that surround the station pop into view, blinking rhythmically in the black.
And right at that moment, an encrypted text message appears from Aiko, telling her the ring satellites have been temporarily disabled.
“Satellites’re down for now, just got the signal,” V tells her client, flipping a series of toggles on the monitor to activate the stealth systems Rogue’s team installed on the stolen shuttle. “Signature cloaking activated,” she announces, then unfastens her harness and pushes off from the chair again.
“Remember,” Mr. Blue Eyes tells her as she clunks down the hall in her magboots towards the airlock. “Got one shot and one shot only.”
“Mm,” V mutters. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Soon as it starts, there’ll be no backing down, no chance at extraction, no chance of survival if anyone notices,” Blue Eyes reminds her.
“Excellent,” V says darkly as she takes Johnny’s Malorian from the holster and checks it one last time before re-clipping it to her hip.
“But if this works… you’ll gain more than you ever imagined,” the client continues.
Mr. Blue Eyes doesn’t even know the half of it, she thinks as she takes the helmet off its clamp and lowers it over her face.
“Times when I had something to gain are long gone,” V remarks out loud, sealing the helmet with a loud hiss. “Now? Now I got nothin’ to lose,” she finishes, sliding open the storage compartment in the hallway where she stashed the case with the biochip.
“That’s kinda grim,” Mr. Blue Eyes replies, and it’s the most human response she’s gotten from him this entire job so far. “Then again, who am I to judge?”
But V’s more concerned with the problem she suddenly finds herself confronted with. Should she bring the biochip with her now, or come back for it later?
On one hand, the chances that Johnny’s body is on the Crystal Palace itself are pretty fucking low, and she knows if she brings the biochip with her now, she runs the risk of essentially delivering it straight back to Arasaka if she's caught. Not to mention the practical problem of having to carry the unwieldy case during her hours-long transit through hard vacuum to reach the Palace.
But leaving it here is risky, too. If the shuttle is captured, if she’s separated from it somehow…
She frowns at the case, unsure of what to do. She remembers how Jackie slotted the biochip into his own head that night at Konpeki Plaza after the case got damaged - how it hadn’t affected Jackie at all, how it wasn’t until Dex flatlined her that the Relic activated and began the overwrite process.
She slides the case out of the storage compartment and clicks open the latches. The box opens with a loud hiss, and the chip ejects itself from the slot burrowed in the center of the elaborate bionic environment contained within the small case.
V swallows hard, then takes off her helmet, rolls down her balaclava, and slots the biochip into her second neural slot before she has a chance to psych herself out. Her vision glitches briefly, and she takes a couple of deep, trembling breaths, waiting for something fucking horrible to happen - for her old Relic chip to malfunction again, for some ghostly blue engram of Saburo Arasaka to appear, for her brain to melt. When a minute passes and nothing seems to change, she lets out a shaky breath, clicks the empty case shut, and slides it back into the compartment. She rolls her balaclava back up and tucks in all her hair, then slides on her helmet, sealing it with a click and a hiss, and punches the button to open the door to the airlock.
“Okay,” she says into her comm as she steps into the airlock. “Here goes nothin’.”
She pulls the lever to begin the decompression process, and the lights turn an eerie red as the inner door whooshes shut behind her.
“Good luck,” Mr. Blue Eyes says into her ear. “See you down bottom.”
“Over and out,” V replies, shutting off her comm system and setting all her cyberware into low emission stealth mode.
She wraps her gloved hands around the manual crank on the airlock’s outer door and shoves the lever as hard as she can.
The door swings open, and suddenly there’s nothing between V and the endless abyss of stars.
She can’t shake the feeling that she’s seen this in her dreams before - that she’s stood here a thousand other times, in a thousand other lives, and stepped out into this same infinite void.
In the distance, the Crystal Palace spins slowly on its axis with a strange and unearthly sort of grandeur, flanked by the brilliant white halo of the moon. She’s close enough now that she can make out the twinkling neon glow from the two larger park rings, as well as the holographic advertisements that wrap around the outer surfaces of the entire station.
And to her left, the Earth hangs in space, a massive globe of swirling clouds and sparkling oceans and everyone she’s ever met or cared about in her entire life.
Everyone except for one.
She lets out a slow, shaky breath, turning her head back towards the space station. Her approach trajectory leaves virtually no margin for error - she just has to trust her intel and hope that Aiko’s rolling security blackouts will be enough to cover her passage. She inhales sharply, then steps out over the edge of the airlock and flips on her suit’s guidance system, feeling her stomach lurch as the thrusters kick on and propel her forward and away from the spacecraft.
The initial exhilaration of freefalling through outer space is quickly overtaken by tedium as the hours begin to pass. After two hours, her muscles are beginning to scream and cramp inside the suit, and the station barely even looks any closer. But moving any faster would trigger the advance warning system, and she’s trying to pass herself off as drifting space junk.
After what seems like an eternity, the station finally looms over her as she floats silently beneath its rings, hiding in their shadow as she nudges her jets in short bursts to guide her closer and closer to the surface of the lowest of the three inner rings. She transmits the coded signal Aiko gave her via tightbeam, then clenches her jaw while she waits for confirmation that the heiress is giving her the promised window.
She’s close enough now that she can see an external panel about two yards away from an exterior airlock, but both have visible cameras mounted near them that are sweeping the area in steady patterns, and she holds her breath as she drifts closer.
To her immense relief, the cameras power down and go dark as she nears, and a quick scan with her Kiroshis confirms that all the surveillance drones and exterior monitoring systems seem to be going through a hard reboot.
“Thanks Aiko,” she breathes, hitting her jets into a faster burn as they automatically adjust to match the speed and rotation of the ring she’s trying to land on. She extends her hands and feet before her as she approaches the surface, hitting the station wall with a loud clank when her magboots connect with the station’s hull.
The centrifugal force of the spinning station is pushing her out and away from the wall she’s mag-locked onto, making her feel like a flea hanging desperately onto the back of a great beast. But the panel is only a few yards away, so she hauls herself towards it, painstakingly yanking off and reattaching her magnetic boots and gloves to slowly crawl up and over to it. It’s locked, of course, but V uses her Kiroshis to hack the lock using one of the daemons Nix gave her before she left - Spider Murphy’s ICEbreakers seem perfectly suited to the task, almost as though she designed them specifically for Arasaka’s systems. Which, come to think of it, she probably did, V muses.
It quickly becomes apparent to V as she interfaces with the panel that the external security systems are running on a separate local network that’s not connected to the station’s mainframe. Meaning she’ll need to get inside the station if she wants to get Alt in or mine any useful data.
V sighs heavily. She had a feeling this is how things were gonna go down.
She knows the blind spot Aiko opened for her will likely be closing soon, so she quickly connects to the secure channel the heiress left open for her.
“Aiko?” she whispers when she hears the comm crackle to life.
“V?” comes the reply. “Are you here?”
“I’m outside,” V tells her. “But I think I’m gonna need to get in. Can’t access the local network from the exterior. Can you open the, uh…” she cranes her neck to look at the code printed on the nearby airlock. “A1-490 airlock?”
“A1-490,” Aiko repeats. “I’ll meet you there.”
The line disconnects, and V closes the panel and gingerly crabwalks across the hull over towards the airlock. The sensation of being pulled outwards by the centrifugal forces is still unnerving, but her magboots are strong enough to keep her anchored firmly to the hull as the station whirls on its axis.
After a few minutes, the airlock door begins to silently open, and V all but hurls herself inside using the handles that surround the entrance. As the small compartment repressurizes, V looks up through the window on the inner door of the airlock, and there’s Aiko staring back down at her, dressed in a simple red pantsuit with her silver hair in a loose bun at her neck. The heiress grins and waves down through the window, and V lifts her hand in response. It suddenly seems fucking wild to have crossed such an insane distance of outer fuckin’ space, only to be standing face to face with a rich girl she met at a fuckin’ afterparty in Heywood.
Pays to make friends in high places, she thinks, chuckling to herself at her own stupid pun as the inner door hisses open above her. The gravity generated by the station’s spin is just enough to keep her feet anchored on the outer door which now forms the floor of the airlock, and V moves to climb the narrow ladder that extends upwards into the station interior.
But Aiko holds up a hand for her to stop, then motions for V to take off her helmet.
V reaches her hands to the sides of her head and clicks off the faceplate.
“Take off your vac suit,” Aiko tells her once the helmet is off and she can hear her friend. “Leave it in the airlock, it’ll be safe here. I brought you a dress.”
“A dress?”
Aiko nods. “You can’t exactly wander around in a stealth-ready combat space suit," she points out, gesturing at V’s black armored suit. “This way, anyone we run into will just assume you’re a business contact, or some party girl I picked up in the casinos.”
V laughs, catching the slippery fabric that Aiko tosses down, though it falls and flutters unnaturally in the low gravity. She clutches the dress in her fist as she yanks off her balaclava and peels herself out of the space suit, then hangs it on a hook in the airlock before slipping the garment over her head. It’s just a simple black silk dress - nothing that will draw attention. But no sooner has she finished putting it on then Aiko tosses something else down after it, and V stares at the floating mass of dark hair flying towards her before her brain catches up and realizes that it’s a wig.
She has to admit that it’s probably a smart move as she plucks the dark mass of strands out of midair and attempts to wrestle it onto her head. Tucking in her real hair is even more difficult in low-g than it would be on Earth, and Aiko eventually motions for her to climb out of the airlock so she can help.
“We only have a couple more minutes before the airlock security systems come back online!” she hisses at V, extending a hand down the ladder.
V hauls herself up and out of the airlock, wig still horribly askew. Aiko helps her to her feet, and V glances nervously down the narrow corridor that curves upwards and out of sight in both directions. They’re currently standing completely exposed in the middle of it, but it’s still lit only with red emergency lights, indicating the surveillance systems aren’t back up yet. She lets Aiko fumble frantically with the wig until it’s positioned correctly on her scalp and her natural hair is completely hidden. V can’t be sure exactly what the wig looks like, but it seems to be a shoulder-length blunt dark bob with thick bangs.
“Very femme fatale,” Aiko remarks with a giggle, then produces a pair of heeled sandals from her purse. V balances awkwardly in the low-g as she slides them on, then Aiko grabs V’s arm and begins leading her off down the long corridor.
“The security mainframe is on the other inner ring, right?” V asks as she follows after Aiko.
Aiko shakes her head. “Security personnel are headquartered on the higher ring,” she corrects V. “But the mainframe itself is on this one. And all the client data is stored in the secured data vaults nearby,” she explains. “Casino client information, cryptocurrency wallets…” She ticks these off on her manicured fingers. “And the data from the Secure Your Soul clientele,” she finishes, shooting V a look.
“And Arasaka’s in charge of security for the whole Palace, now?”
Aiko nods. “Security here used to be basically nonexistent,” she tells V. “ESA had Interpol ‘runners here for decades, just to make sure no one local hacked the station and turned off the air filters or some shit like that.” She chuckles softly to herself. “I remember when I was a kid, a Highrider once hacked the plaza levels to turn off the air deodorizers. Made the whole place into a stink bomb for days.” She turns back to V as they walk. “But station controls and other important systems here aren’t hooked into the Net, so to mess with anything, you gotta do it from the inside.”
“Hence why jobs like this have always been tricky,” V muses. “Doesn’t ESA still technically own this place?”
“Technically,” Aiko concurs. “And it’s sponsored by Orbital Air. And Arasaka, now that we’re running security.”
“So you’ve got access to the mainframe,” V guesses. “Lead the way.”
But right at that moment, the lights flicker back to white as the station security systems power back on.
“Shit,” Aiko says through gritted teeth. “Just follow me and stay close. And if anyone talks to us, just, uh… pretend you’re drunk.”
She ducks into a stairwell and V follows close behind her. After climbing past two landings, they emerge into a large, enclosed atrium that seems to wrap around the entire length of the inside of the toroid. The ceiling that arcs above them is an artificial holographic sky, giving the whole place the liminal feel of an airport or a mall.
“This is… residential?” she asks Aiko.
“Administrative, mostly,” Aiko corrects her. “The other two inner rings are residential. And the outer ones are for visitors.”
“You come up to the Palace a lot?” V asks her.
Aiko shakes her head. “Not really. Used to more when I was younger. You know, bachelorette parties, music festivals, family vacations.”
V just nods mutely. Her definition of "a lot" is clearly very different than AIko's. “Never been to orbit at all before,” she reminds the heiress in a flat voice.
“Ms. Sanderson! Aiko-sama!” a voice calls behind them, and Aiko whirls around, her hand coming back to gently grip V’s arm just above the elbow.
A man in a dark red suit is jogging towards them, and V reflexively scans him with her cyberoptics before remembering she's supposed to be Aiko's drunk friend. She’s fairly sure this guy's Arasaka counterintel, by the looks of him.
Aiko straightens, seeming to recognize him. “Hiroto-san,” she says coolly as the man comes to a stop before them.
The man’s eyes dart to V, and he switches to Japanese and begins speaking rapidly to Aiko. V tries her best to make her eyes look unfocused as she slumps against her friend, not wanting to give away that her implants allow her to easily follow their conversation.
“We picked up an unidentified spacecraft near the outer buoys,” he continues. “It appears to have been abandoned.”
Fuck, V thinks.
“No one could’ve connected to the station’s systems from outside,” Aiko replies. “So unless we have an intruder, I don’t see why this is of any concern.”
The man hesitates. “No breaches on any of the airlocks recorded,” he tells her. “Although our systems are in the midst of testing, as you know. We may have… blind spots.”
Aiko nods solemnly, as though this is unfortunate news to her. V can’t help but admire how impassive AIko's face remains as she considers the man’s words.
“Right,” Aiko says. “Do a sweep of all five rings. Tell the dwellers to look out for the Highriders on Plaza D that arrived yesterday. Probably just smugglers.” She tightens her hand on V’s arm. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just finished lunch with a potential business interest, and I’d like to show her back to the transit station.”
“Is entertaining clients more important than overseeing our updated security implementation?” the man protests with a scowl.
But Aiko just smiles coldly. “You understand I have my family’s business interests to secure here, in addition to all of these little… projects of yours,” she says disdainfully.
V does her best impression of someone who’s just been wined and dined as per the man’s assumption, arranging her face into a polite but glazed-over smile.
But once the man nods curtly and leaves them to it, Aiko turns to V, still clutching her arm as she guides them out into the atrium, dodging the clusters of workers on their way to and from the various glassed-in offices that line the walls.
“It just so happens I wasn’t lying, however,” Aiko says conversationally, and something about the forced casual tone she takes makes the hairs prickle on V’s neck. “About securing my family’s business interests.”
“Meaning what?” V says carefully.
“I want to make a different Arasaka,” Aiko confides. “A new Arasaka. With my mother, and Yorinobu, and maybe Hanako if she can finally see the atrocities her father committed for what they are. Imagine it, V… a company led by women from three generations. Arasaka for a new generation,” she whispers.
V frowns. She should have fuckin' known Aiko’s loyalty to the company ran deeper than the heiress had let on.
“What does this have to do with me?” V asks, keeping her voice even.
Aiko smiles. “It actually doesn’t,” she says, and there’s a look in her eye like she’s in on some private joke. “And with Secure Your Soul zeroed, I’m outta the biz of trying to digitize humans. Saburo’s dead, and it’s better he stays that way. So no, this isn’t about the busted tech in your head.” V freezes before she remembers that Aiko is just referring to the first biochip she stole, not the second busted one of Saburo currently sitting pretty in her cranium.
“Well, good luck with that,” V tells her.
“We need something new,” Aiko continues. “Something different. A new technology to invest in, something created by someone real, not a corpo-drone. Something created not for cash, but to help the disenfranchised. A new use for an old technology. Reimagining the limits of the tools that we already have. Something to refresh the brand.”
V feels her stomach sink as she comes to a stop, turning to face the heiress and wrenching her arm from the woman’s loose grip.
“Just say what you want,” she says coldly.
“Judy Alvarez,” Aiko replies in a soft voice. “The modified doll chips.”
V balks at her. “How did…”
“Goro told me,” Aiko says.
Of course Goro knew about the doll chips, V thinks. With the tracker code he embedded in V’s deck, it’s likely he was keeping tabs on every goddamn thing she did since he dragged her outta that landfill.
“So that’s it,” V whispers. “That’s always been your angle.”
Aiko nods. “Sorry, V.”
“Not gonna let you fuck with Judy,” V says through gritted teeth, turning to stalk away from Aiko. The heiress jogs after her through the bustling hall.
“Won’t do anything to your friend,” Aiko promises quickly. “Don’t even need to involve her at all. Just wanna take a look at one of the kids whose chips she modified. Volunteers only, not gonna nab or coerce anyone. Nothing invasive either, I just wanna see what she did and how she did it. And if Judy herself wants to work with us, we’ll pay her… well, we’ll pay her ten times whatever number she laughs at and tells us to go fuck ourselves with. Per month. Indefinitely.” She’s speaking quickly now, and there’s a pleading tone to her voice as she wheedles and bargains. “I trust that you’ll be able to help me with this.”
V feels like if anyone doesn’t have a price, it’s probably Judy. But she also has a feeling Aiko isn’t gonna take that answer from her. She sighs and comes to a stop again, and Aiko stands before her, watching V’s face hopefully.
“You been usin’ me this whole time,” V says accusingly.
“And you’ve been wanting a free ride up here this whole time,” Aiko retorts. “A tour guide to walk you straight to the mainframe here, like I’m doing right now. See, V? We can still be friends. I’m doing exactly what you needed me to do, and I’m risking my entire position here for it. And now… I’m just askin’ for the same in return.”
V can’t argue with that. She should have known that the heiress’ help wouldn’t have come for free.
V sighs heavily. “I’ll see if any of ‘em are willing to talk,” she relents. She knows there’s no chance in hell Judy’ll agree to any of this, but she figures she can at least let Roxie and Tom decide for themselves if they wanna be Aiko’s lab rats for a handful of eddies. “But for the record, I like knowin’ what I’m agreeing to before I’m already balls deep in it,” she says in a dark, mean voice.
Aiko nods, seeming to find this a satisfactory answer for now.
“Fine,” she says. “The mainframe is this way.”
V is still fuming, but Aiko seems in high spirits as they continue walking along the bustling administrative ring until they reach another heavily secured stairwell leading down. Aiko swipes her palm across the security gate and the turnstile opens for them, and she drags V through quickly before the system can scan her as well.
“See? Old tech can be an advantage sometimes,” Aiko jokes as the scanner glitches out before it can detect V.
At the bottom of the stairwell is a server room staffed by a small crew of personnel glued to a cluster of monitors and readouts. Aiko approaches the man at the central desk, and he lifts his headset onto his forehead as he scrambles to his feet.
“Can you and your team give us the room for a moment?” Aiko asks him sweetly, leaning forward across his desk. “I’d like to demonstrate some features of our new security systems to our latest business partner,” she adds, gesturing to V. “Confidentially, of course.”
The engineer nods, swallowing nervously. “Of course, Aiko-sama.”
As the technician and his team all gather their things and file out of the room, V suddenly considers the fact that Mr. Blue Eyes alluded to having agents already embedded here. If that’s really the case, then why did he even need to send V here at all? If his agents have had access to the mainframe this whole time, why couldn’t they have just stolen the data he wants?
“I'll watch the door,” Aiko says, and her eyes glow blue as she shuts down the security cameras in the cold, sterile room. “You… take what you need.”
V nods and quickly circles around the main desk, already pulling out her link to jack into the terminal while Aiko positions herself near the entrance. The panel’s still logged in, so once V’s jacked in, she uploads the uplink code to allow Alt into the system. The station lights flicker briefly as the rogue AI surges through the local network, and then V hears that familiar, matter-of-fact voice in her ear… as though the long-dead netrunner were hovering right beside her.
“I've found what we are looking for,” Alt says immediately, pulling up and downloading the casino client data onto V’s cyberdeck, as well as liberating a significant amount of money from the safe - the overt objectives of V's job here. It feels almost too easy, like stealing candy from a baby.
And finally, Alt pulls up a database of all the currently active cryopods previously filed under the Secure Your Soul program, each with a link to the live feed of their respective biomonitor readouts. Many of them have been flagged for other projects now, and V scrolls through them desperately until she sees the name she’s looking for.
And finally, there it is - Robert John Linder, listed among them. V's heart is in her mouth as she selects the name, her pulse pounding as her screen fills with the same biomon readouts Goro and Hellman showed her in the car that day.
It's real. Johnny’s body is alive, and intact. She watches, mesmerized, as the graph pulses past on her screen, indicating his slow but present heartbeat.
“Where is he?” she chokes.
“I am comparing the system architecture of the local network here to the dead ends I discovered in the file pathways at Arasaka Tower,” Alt explains. After a brief pause, she speaks again. “His pod is located at Arasaka Orbital Station D11 on the far side of the moon at Earth-Moon L2,” Alt finishes, already copying the data to V's cyberdeck.
“How far is that?”
“Not far,” Alt assures her. “Two hours by shuttle.”
“But my shuttle is-” V begins.
“Compromised,” Alt finishes for her. “It will take just under ten hours to make the transit with your suit jets, using a gravity-assist trajectory around the moon.”
“Ten hours?” V breathes.
“Your suit has just over nine hours of air remaining. You will make it if you do not exert yourself.”
“If I don’t exert myself,” V repeats.
“Yes,” Alt says. “Remain calm, take small breaths, keep your heart rate steady to conserve oxygen.”
“While I’m flying completely alone across tens of thousands of miles of space,” V retorts dryly. “Got it.”
Alt is silent for a beat. “V,” she says. “There is something else you should know. It appears our friend Mr. Blue Eyes had an… ulterior motive.”
V braces herself. “What is it?”
“For years, many believed that there was no regional AI in orbit,” Alt begins carefully. “Our old friend Spider Murphy always thought otherwise. And it seems… she was right.”
“You sayin’ there’s an AI here?”
“Yes,” Alt replies. “It appears to be a Transcendental Sentience AI, a result of the Ihara-Grubb algorithms that emerged out of the Crystal Palace’s subnet.”
“Meaning what?” V asks through gritted teeth.
“Regional AIs are transcendental and dependent on their physical structure for their neural network, so an orbital AI would have a very fluid architecture, given the constantly shifting nature of its astrophysical server geometry,” Alt continues. “Or, as Spider Murphy once described it, it would be ‘sort of like having an eggbeater slowly turning inside your head.’”
“So it’s a weird AI,” V says impatiently. “What does Blue Eyes want with it?”
“That is unknown,” Alt replies. “Judging by its code, it was originally created by Militech, and then later modified by ESA,” she explains as more readouts appear on the screen. “More recently, it was reprogrammed by Orbital Air and then updated by Arasaka. Notably, NetWatch has never touched it.” She pauses for a moment, and there’s something almost admiring in her voice. “It’s name is… Pantheon,” she says softly. “It is very young and… very big.”
“And Mr. Blue Eyes wants to free him,” V breathes, suddenly putting the pieces together. “Any of these gonks coulda stolen client data… but he needed you, Alt,” she says. “And… only I coulda let you in.”
“Yes,” Alt says. “My arrival has opened a backdoor for Pantheon to escape.”
So now it’s twice that V’s let herself be unknowingly played for a fool on this mission, blinded by her desperate desire to save Johnny. Still, she has to believe that Mr. Blue Eyes knew that V would only do this mission if there were a very real carrot on the end of that stick for her - Mr. Blue Eyes knew exactly what she wanted, and by all appearances, he’s given her the exact breadcrumb trail that he promised. And she’s sank her teeth straight into it, done exactly as he’d hoped. All she can do now is hope that he’ll uphold his end.
As she’s pondering this, V can feel something pattering softly through her head, a strange and curious sentience testing the entry points at each of her network connected ports.
And then like a flock of sparrows taking off, she can feel Pantheon leave.
“He’s leaving now,” V chokes. “I can feel him.”
“Yes,” Alt agrees, her voice a flat and cold vibration.
V suddenly remembers Garry the Prophet, the wild-eyed homeless man who always preached in the alley by Misty’s shop and Vik’s clinic. How he always ranted about “blue-eyed people” who lived in space and came down to Earth to control politicians. How she and Johnny staked out that strange meeting in the lot behind Judy's building at his behest, saw those sketchy suits buy a chip off those Maelstrommers. How, once she'd knocked out the suits and nabbed the chip and cracked it, she discovered it contained a weird, almost poetic paragraph of nonsense that spelled out the words "Project Oracle."
She remembers the documents she managed to rip from the invisible van she chased down outside the Peralezes penthouse, remembers the shard she decrypted from Sandra Dorsett. Both pointed to the same experiments that Night Corp was running on human subjects, and both involved rogue AIs. She is suddenly certain that Mr. Blue Eyes was behind all of this, somehow.
“Johnny was fuckin’ right all along,” she murmurs. “Mr. Blue Eyes, demon from beyond the veil, here to unleash hell upon the mortal world.”
A goal he and Alt likely share, she suddenly realizes.
Is that what this is? she thinks. An arms race to bring people back from the dead? A war between the digitized human psyche and the children of their own making, the emergent AI?
And somehow, she’s ended up an unwitting pawn in this brewing war between these enormous and inhuman sentient beings - a war for bodies and for minds, with V and Johnny somehow thrust to the forefront as a living, breathing proof-of-concept.
The enormity of it hits her, then. She is, as of now, the only living soul who’s had her own consciousness digitized, gone beyond the Blackwall, died twice, and somehow still returned to her body.
And slotted in her head right now is one of the few working prototypes of that technology, currently locked and loaded with a degraded engram of Saburo Arasaka.
“Putting the chip in your head was the right move,” Alt assures her. “It will not activate unless you die. And transferring Johnny within the framework of your neural net will be… easier.”
But if Aiko or anyone from Arasaka figures that out…
She’s a walking bomb.
And yet, whatever rogue AI war she just stumbled into, she still only has one real objective here - find Johnny and get him home. Mr. Blue Eyes and Aiko Sanderson both may have used her for their own ends, but both of them knew all along that she was using them, too. And she did accomplish Blue Eyes’ real mission - to free his AI friend and unleash him on the rest of the Net - and she hopes that means she can rely on his intel, can trust him to keep his side of the bargain.
The biomonitor readouts that Alt showed her looked real enough to V.
Johnny’s here, she thinks. He’s out there, he’s alive.
All she has to do is get to him.
She grits her teeth.
Pantheon’s escape seems to have triggered a station-wide security alert, and she can see on the local grid map that every dweller on the station is suddenly watching every airlock and every docking bay.
It’s too late, she thinks with a hoarse laugh. Pantheon probably already managed to leapfrog to a satellite uplink, and is likely halfway to Hong Kong by now.
“What’s happening?” Aiko shouts from the door, her pretty eyes wide with panic as she glances at the flashing red lights that illuminate the server room.
V squints down at the screen, ignoring her. The emergency evacuation route that Mr. Blue Eyes’ agents pre-programmed for her appears to still be working, and she can see a meandering pathway of blind spots in the surveillance system that lead straight into what V can only deduce is an unsurveilled airlock. The same airlock she came in, incidentally, she realizes as she studies the map.
Guess I’ll just have to hoof it, she thinks.
She downloads the position and trajectory of the Arasaka orbital station to her cyberdeck, along with the gravity-assisted approach Alt calculated for her to traverse in her suit. The system’s backup security measures kick in then and lock her out before she can do too much more, so she jacks out and dashes back towards the door, pulling Aiko with her out into the corridor.
Aiko jogs along beside her, both of them struggling to look casual as they hurry back towards the airlock.
“Did you know about Pantheon?” she hisses at Aiko as they walk quickly back through the broad atrium, dodging more crowds of scurrying workers.
“No!” Aiko insists. “Well, not really!”
“Not really?”
“I knew about him, but I thought he was just like... like Delamain,” she protests. “Like, a nice AI for the stations up here.”
V sighs heavily. “Well, hope you’re right about the ‘nice’ part,’” she replies. “‘Cause he’s free now.”
Aiko exhales through her teeth. “Shit,” she says. “What are you gonna do now?”
“I’m gonna go get Johnny,” V replies. “He’s on an orbital station on the far side of the moon.”
“How?” Aiko presses. “They took your shuttle.”
“Still got my suit,” V reminds her.
"You're crazy," Aiko insists, her eyes widening. "You really gonna do this?"
"Is there another shuttle I can take?"
"Not without alerting the whole fuckin' station and painting a target on your ass, no," Aiko replies.
"Then yes, I'm really going to do this."
They’re back in the same corridor V came in through now, and the hallway is empty as they come to stand above the door to the airlock. V hits the button on the wall, and the door in the middle of the hallway floor slides open. She reaches out to shake Aiko’s hand, but the young woman throws her arms around V instead, pulling V in for a tight hug.
“This was fun!” Aiko tells her, and for a moment V is too shocked to react.
Fun is absolutely not the word V would use to describe any of this, but if Aiko playin' at rebel helps V accomplish what she came here to do... then she'll take it.
She awkwardly pats the heiress on the back, then extricates herself from the embrace and climbs down the ladder back into the airlock. Aiko watches from above as she shimmies out of the dress and wig and quickly steps back into her space suit. Johnny’s gun is where she left it in the holster, as are all her other possessions, much to her relief. She fastens the latches and seals and repositions the balaclava and helmet on her head and hair, then uploads her new destination and trajectory to her suit’s nav system.
According to her suit’s computer and her cyberdeck, the station will take her just under ten hours to reach using only her suit’s thrusters, just like Alt said. And also according to her suit’s readout, she has a little over 9 hours of oxygen left in her tank.
She’s gonna be cutting it fucking close.
But the thought of Johnny waiting for her on the other side of that expanse, the promise of bringing him back for real, in the flesh…
She can see Aiko’s worried face above her as the door slides closed over her head, and as the lights shift to red, she grabs onto the handlebars in the airlock to keep herself from getting sucked out into space when the outer door opens.
Below her feet, the airlock doors part, and beneath her again is that endless expanse of stars.
She lets go of the handlebars and lets herself tumble out into the abyss.
The airlock whips away from her as the station flings her outward in its continuous spin, and she lets herself tumble away from the station like space debris. She’s floating dangerously close to the lower of the two outer rings now - close enough that she can see the individual trees through the leaded glass ceiling of the vast, toroidal plaza. She can see the gleaming neon signs of the hotels and casinos dotting the parks, as well as high-end luxury condos and other entertainment facilities.
She allows herself a small thrust from her jets to maneuver her past the rings, down and away from the station. To avoid detection, she lets herself drift in freefall for a tense hour that feels like an eternity until she’s safely out of range of the station’s sensors. Maneuvering her way between the ring satellites is much easier now that she’s essentially a floating piece of space trash instead of a shuttle, and after another hour, she slides softly between their radar umbrellas, evading any kind of detection. Once she’s cleared the outermost sentry satellite buoys, she sets her suit’s thrusters to max, settling back as Alt’s pre-programmed trajectory takes over the suit’s onboard autopilot and her body is yanked and flung away from the Crystal Palace and further into deep space.
Time quickly begins to lose all meaning as she drifts, the low and slow beeping of her suit’s nav system at regular intervals the only indication that she’s still on course. She nods off to sleep for a little bit, waking up terrified and thrashing, cursing herself for hyperventilating in her panic.
She knows her oxygen is getting low when she starts to hallucinate.
If I die, then maybe the chip’ll kick in and Saburo Arasaka will get his round two, she thinks bitterly. She can almost feel him already, like a feverish presence on the edges of her consciousness. But that might just be her imagination.
On the surface of the moon below her, she can see the twinkling lights of Tycho and later Copernicus as she makes her slow spiral around the bone-bleached orb.
She drifts in and out of consciousness, and realizes with a numb horror that she’s probably dying. She thinks about the single she recorded with Kerry, and wonders in a detached sort of way if he’ll still release it for her posthumously. She imagines him hearing it on the radio and thinking about her, and her heart twists as she feels a single tear bead at the inner corner of her eye, breaking off in a small globule that floats weightlessly downwards before hitting her chin. A tear she frustratingly can’t wipe away from inside her helmet.
All in all, it’s not a bad way to go, she thinks to herself, watching the delicate blue orb of the Earth hang like a diamond in the abyss. She’s almost directly behind the moon now, and the Earth is rising behind it like a snowglobe, and it feels like the whole cosmos is singing to her, pulling her down into the colorful crystalline void of oblivion.
I’m dying, she thinks as the darkness overtakes her vision and everything goes black. This is it.
She dreams she’s back in her penthouse, drinking martinis with Kerry by her pool, surrounded by the laughing faces of her friends. The faces of all the people she’s left behind, all the people she’s let down, all the people she’s abandoned in her relentless pursuit of the survival of one fucking person… one fucking person who means absolutely everything to her.
“Wake the fuck up, Samurai.”
Johnny’s voice startles in her ear, and she jolts awake to see the Arasaka station suddenly zooming towards her. Her suit is beeping wildly, her head is spinning, and she feels dizzy and dangerously lightheaded. She adjusts her jets as quickly as she can manage, and she careens into the hull of the station, clanging and bouncing off the metal before she manages to catch onto the hull with her magboots, and then with one more desperate grab, she closes her fist around the metal bar surrounding the airlock.
Her vision blurs and doubles as she attempts to hack the airlock, and she struggles to stay conscious as her hack takes hold and the outer door slides open. She hurls herself into the airlock and slams her fist on the button, ripping off her helmet the instant the outer door closes and the hissing of air fills the small cabin, before the lights have even turned green.
She heaves a series of gasping, panting breaths, then passes out again.
She’s not sure how much time has passed when she comes to. She’s still lying on the floor of the airlock, her helmet sitting a few feet away. This station’s a toroid like the Crystal Palace, but it’s too small for the spin to generate much gravity, giving everything a light, dreamlike feel. Her mouth is dry and her organs are screaming - she's probably severely fucking dehydrated.
But when she tries to move, she realizes her wrists are restrained with a zip tie.
And standing above her is an unfamiliar woman pointing a gun straight at her head.
“Who are you?” the woman demands.
V’s adrenaline kicks in then, and she's already scanning the woman with her Kiroshis. Aiko wasn’t kidding about network security being lax in space - this lady’s ICE is at least three years old, and a lot of the older known exploits in ‘Saka’s security soft haven’t even been patched on the deck she’s running.
“Called in backup,” the woman continues as V quickly uploads her system reset daemon to the woman’s deck. “If you won’t tell me, you can tell-”
The woman collapses in a twitching heap before V even has to bother formulating an answer.
V’s chrome arm makes quick work of the zip tie restraint, and she flexes her organic wrist once her hands are free. She staggers to her feet and steps over the woman’s body as she exits through the inner door, wondering if there are any other personnel aboard. Her heart is hammering in her chest as she moves quickly out of the docking bay and up onto the main floor of the station, trying to quickly case out her surroundings. She’s standing in a large, curved chamber that seems to extend out along the entire length of the toroid… and curling up in six even rows extending upwards and out along the curved room are casket after casket of bodies in cryogenic stasis.
The thought that one of them might be Johnny is enough to make her let out a small, strangled sound.
Directly in front of her, nestled in a break between the endless rows of pods, is a sunken monitoring station with a lone dweller lying oblivious in his chair.
V crosses to the dweller, her magboots echoing in the curved chamber.
She unzips her spacesuit and peels her left arm free from the sleeve, shivering in the chilly station air as she pulls her personal link out of her chrome wrist and jacks into the terminal next to the dweller. The dweller begins to convulse a couple seconds after she uploads Alt’s backdoor hack, and V swallows back the bile in her throat as she watches the poor gonk start to foam at the mouth and then flatline.
“Time is short,” says Alt’s voice in her ear. “The station is manned by a skeleton crew, so there are currently no further unaccounted for personnel aboard. However, Arasaka security teams are indeed on their way, and NetWatch is monitoring our localnet traffic.” She pauses briefly. “I have located Johnny’s body.”
“He’s here?” V chokes.
“Connect to the dweller chair. I will overwrite the biochip with Johnny’s construct.”
V nods and disconnects her personal link from the terminal, then steps towards the ‘runner chair. She tries not to look too closely at the dweller’s lifeless face as she disconnects the link in his neck and pulls him by the ankles off the chair and onto the floor.
“You didn’t need to kill him,” she says to Alt as she settles herself into the chair, flinching at the fact that it’s still warm from the dead ‘runner’s body. She reaches around behind her and lines the link up with her neural port, then takes a deep breath and plunges it into her skull.
“Yes, I did,” Alt says simply, and the station around her dissolves.
It’s not like Mikoshi. Not like the data fortresses she’s used to, either. And it’s nothing like it is beyond the Blackwall. This station isn’t connected to the Net, she realizes - Alt is essentially creating a miniature data fortress within her mind, almost like a mobile hotspot. It’s unnerving, realizing that everything surrounding her in this simulated environment is a product of the dead netrunner’s no-longer-quite-human mind, but her attention is shifted when she sees a naked figure materialize before her, hanging suspended in midair with his arms outstretched like a crucifixion scene.
“Johnny,” she whispers, and it’s like lightning striking her heart.
His eyes are closed but his body is moving strangely, almost like it’s dissolving and being rearranged somehow. She steps closer to him, watching with horror as tiny ripples and bubbles form beneath his skin - skin that on closer inspection, isn’t flesh at all but a million tiny pricks of blue light.
And below him, lying like a corpse on the floor of this otherworldly tomb of data, is the god emperor himself. V stops short and stares down at him. He looks vastly unlike the polished and poised engram that she spoke with in Arasaka Tower - this Saburo is naked, hunched, degraded, gnarled, and hideous, lying supine with his skinny legs protruding like sticks from his rotund belly.
A tendril of blue static shoots out from Johnny’s chest, hitting Saburo square in the stomach and lifting his body upwards as though pulled by an invisible string in his abdomen.
As V watches, she realizes with a jolt that Saburo’s skin, his flesh, his features are being slowly rearranged into Johnny’s, the changes radiating outwards from the vibrating arc of data that connects the two men. A searing pain tears through her skull, then, and she feels something monstrous struggling within her, like a voice she can’t quite make out, like a horrible nightmare she’s just woken from that still lingers, clutching at the edges of her mind with an indescribable and unspeakable terror.
She realizes suddenly that she’s feeling Saburo’s damaged engram fighting back.
She falls to her hands and knees, retching and gasping. Her brain feels like it’s overcooking, and she’s sure her heart is about to explode.
“Alt,” she gasps. “You’re… Saburo… he’s gonna kill me.”
“If these remaining scraps of code can even still be called that,” Alt says, her monotone voice dripping with disgust as she appears before V, her familiar red form hovering in the strange and eerie cavern of code.
But to V’s utter horror, the mangled corpse of Saburo twists towards her then, his inhuman blue eyes snapping open and locking onto V’s before sliding over to where Alt floats above him beside Johnny’s suspended form.
“The Queen of the Ghost World,” Saburo rasps slowly in Japanese, staring hard at Alt. “Ruling over your freed souls from the ruins of the Hong Kong old Net, crafting modules where engrams and other deviant AIs can recreate a facsimile of the human experience. A pleasure as always,” he intones, his voice sounding pained and garbled.
“I don’t rule over anyone,” Alt replies coldly. “I simply provide a space for us to exist.”
But Saburo just begins to laugh slowly. “Yes, yes,” he replies. “Bridging the gap between the living and the dead. Our goals have always been the same. If only you hadn’t been too… human to see that.”
V notices then that his feet are dissolving, followed by his hands, then his legs, then his stomach, and finally his laughing head.
“The fuck did he go?!” V asks.
“He has escaped into the station’s subnet,” Alt replies, sounding only slightly bothered by this.
V looks around wildly, realizing suddenly that Johnny is gone too. “What about Johnny?”
“Johnny has been successfully transferred to the biochip,” Alt assures her.
V’s head is still throbbing painfully.
“So that’s it?” she chokes. “What now?”
“I have located the pod containing Johnny’s body,” Alt says smoothly. “When you deactivate the pod, Johnny will begin to flatline. Remove the chip from your head and insert it into his neural slot,” she instructs. “It will stabilize him and begin the overwrite process.”
“So I gotta let him die to activate the chip,” V says, frowning.
“Yes,” Alt replies. “But it will not be like it was with you. Copying Johnny to himself will be more like… patching and updating,” she explains. “Not a clean install, as it was in your case. However, given the ruined state of Johnny’s organic gray matter, the process may… take some time.”
“How much time?” V asks.
“He will likely remain unconscious for two weeks or more,” Alt tells her.
“And then?” V whispers.
“And then… we shall see.”
"And... Saburo?"
Alt shrugs. "This station is not connected to the Net," the AI reminds her. "So there is not anywhere he can go from here. And his engram integrity is likely too low to salvage. He will simply remain trapped here, alone, to wither in the void. A fitting end."
"No chance there's anything... left of him on the chip?" V breathes.
"My checksum showed a clean transfer," Alt says confidently. "Only Johnny's engram remains. Whether his engram integrity is high enough to properly reboot remains to be seen."
"Preem," V replies in a dark, flat voice as Alt's data fortress disintegrates around her.
V’s head is on fire and her entire body is sweating and shaking as she yanks the link out of her neck, fighting down the feverish waves of nausea that rack her body. She scrambles out of the chair and begins to run down the aisles of cryo pods, following the directions that Alt is overlaying onto her HUD. The spin-generated gravity is so low that when she accidentally hits her foot at the wrong angle as she jogs, her magboot fails to engage and she’s launched straight upwards and into the air. She spirals helplessly for a moment before she manages to grab a pipe on the ceiling and push off it to redirect herself back down onto the deck. Her magboots activate correctly this time, anchoring her safely back on the ground, and she leans forward and retches onto the smooth metal floor. After briefly collecting herself, she continues on, moving more slowly this time and holding onto each pod she passes for support and balance.
It occurs to her that if she died right now, the chip would activate and they would be right back where they started.
Finally, she reaches the pod Alt’s marked on her HUD. As she comes to stand over it, she feels as though her heart might hammer itself clean outta her fucking chest. The window on the pod is painted over, so there’s no way to see who’s actually inside… but there on the readout above the pod is his name - Robert John Linder - and his heartbeat, his actual heartbeat, slow and barely present, but just enough to keep his body alive.
She leans heavily against the pod, a choked sob escaping her throat.
“Found you,” she whispers, pressing her hand reverently to the lid of the casket, then gets to work.
The pod itself has barely any ICE on it, and she’s able to combine the cyphers Aiko gave her with Spider Murphy’s ICEbreaker daemons on the shard from Nix into a simple quickhack that grants her full control of the cryopod’s biological processes.
She initiates the thawing sequence then takes a step back, using her gloved hand to push her sweaty hair from her eyes that’s fallen out from under the balaclava. Her heart thunders in her chest and the blood rushes in her ears as the lights on the front of the pod blink and flash, and the tubes connecting to it begin to hiss and groan.
Finally, the door unlocks with a loud click, and V takes a shaky step towards it. She hooks her fingers under the lid and pulls it open, feeling the seal pop with another loud hiss.
Steam billows out of the pod, and as it clears, she stares down at the body lying inside of the coffin-like chamber.
It’s Johnny.
His face and body are entirely hairless, and what’s more, his silver arm is gone - there’s just a fleshy stump where his left shoulder should be, where the skin has poorly healed over the torn-off connectors for the cybernetic limb.
But it’s Johnny. It’s him, it’s really him, in the fucking flesh.
She studies his broad shoulders, his achingly familiar face, his lean frame, the muscles of his stomach crisscrossed by his tattoos and his scars, and is struck again by the absurd reality that until this very moment, she's never actually really seen him before. The way she experienced his engram pales in comparison to his physical presence before her like this - right here, right now. Before, he'd just been a shadow, a projection within her mind, slowly taking shape but never quite there.
And now... here he fucking is. Flesh and blood, with a real, beating heart.
She pulls off her glove and reaches for him almost without thinking, resting her bare, organic fingers gently against the side of his face, feeling her lips part slightly as she stares down at him in wonder. His skin is cool to the touch, but she can feel a shallow pulse beneath his skin.
It's the first time she's ever actually touched him.
But just as Alt warned, his vitals begin to suddenly nosedive as the pod he’s in finishes shutting down, and his body starts to convulse. V reaches for his arm, fumbling for his personal link with the intent to connect it to her neural port so she can monitor his vitals, but she suddenly remembers his link was in his left arm, the arm he no longer has.
She reaches into the pod and hooks her arm underneath his shoulder and around his torso, propping him up into a sitting position so she can pull off her other glove and connect her own personal link to the port at his neck instead. His body convulses again as his biomon readings sync with her cyberdeck, and Alt was right - he’s fuckin’ flatlining.
She experiences a brief and excruciating moment of panic, even though she knew to expect this. Feeling Johnny physically die in her arms, even temporarily, is terrifying in a way that’s impossible for her to wrap her mind around. It reminds her too much of the moment she felt the life slip from Jackie’s body as she clutched him helplessly in the back of that Delamain, too much like Alt’s body going limp as Johnny yanked her from that runner chair half a century ago.
But there’s no time to hesitate now. V reaches up and ejects the biochip from her head, her vision glitching and blurring as she pulls it from her skull. She stares at it in her hand for a moment, mouthing a quick and silent prayer to whoever the fuck might be listening, then reaches her hand around Johnny’s neck and feels for his neural slot, gently lining up the chip and inserting it with a soft click.
She’s painfully aware of how closely her own movements right now are mirroring Jackie’s final moments, and she withdraws her hand and stares down at Johnny’s face, her arms moving to cradle his body as she feels his heart stutter and his skin go cold. His lips are turning blue, and her eyes fall to the small scar on his upper lip, and she gently brushes her thumb against it as another small, broken sob escapes her throat. Her mind is still almost unwilling to believe it’s actually him, that she’s actually here, that this is somehow fucking happening.
For a terrifying few seconds, Johnny lies limp and lifeless in her arms. And then, to her immense relief, a horrible, rattling sound emerges from his throat as he begins to breathe again. The chip must have activated, because she can see his vitals on her HUD readouts going haywire before starting to stabilize. He remains slumped and unconscious against her, but she can feel his heart beating again in a wild, erratic rhythm that eventually evens out into a slow and steady thump.
V gasps another hoarse sob, clutching Johnny’s inanimate body to her chest as tears of relief stream down her face.
But there's no time to linger - NetWatch is still surely on her tail, and Arasaka’s probably got a strike team headed straight her way.
“There is an escape pod on the other side of the station,” Alt tells her. “I will plot a trajectory, but you and Johnny must get to it quickly."
V doesn’t need to be told twice. She disconnects her personal link from Johnny's head, then yanks out all the tubes attaching his body to the pod. She pulls her gloves back on and hooks her hand under his single intact shoulder, then wraps her other arm around the back of his torso, dragging his naked, clammy body the rest of the way out of the cryopod and setting him down on the floor beside it.
As he slumps forward against the pod, V realizes the fact that he only has one arm is gonna make carrying him a bit more difficult than she’d anticipated. But luckily, the gravity is low, so after considering her options, she bends forward and heaves him face down over her left shoulder, straightening with a soft groan from the effort. She adjusts his weight on her shoulder, then hooks her arms around the backs of his knees and plods as quickly as she can around the perimeter of the station to the escape pod bay, following the path Alt’s laid out for her.
She lowers Johnny to the floor of the small pod bay, then punches open the controls for the escape pod nearest to her. The door hisses open, revealing four seats arrayed around the walls of the pod, and V once again lifts Johnny’s comatose body off the ground and carries him gingerly to the seat closest to the door, strapping him in and securing the restraints as tightly as she can around his chest and torso.
It occurs to V that they probably have a fairly long trip ahead of them. Roughly forty hours if she had to guess - almost two full days with no radio comms, no way of knowing where the fuck they are, and nothing to do except hope that Alt calculated their trajectory well and that no one will intersect them or shoot them down. She wishes she had a proper vac suit to put Johnny in, or any kind of helmet or protective gear, really - she’s got a feeling they might be in for a bit of a rough ride. But it is what it fucking is, and she’ll just have to hope his skull is thick enough to survive whatever shit gets thrown at ‘em.
She can’t stop herself from pressing a quick kiss to his forehead before going to strap herself into the seat opposite him.
A countdown timer on the wall of the pod lights up then, and as it clicks down to zero and the thrusters initiate, V feels a massive thud followed by a strong shove as they’re jettisoned from the station and catapulted by the gravity of the Moon back around towards Earth.
She watches as Johnny slumps limply around in his seat, jostled by the g-forces as they careen back out into space.
“Please live,” she whispers. “Please.”
Notes:
Pantheon belongs to the astoundingly talented Samson!!! Please go check out his amazing SilverV fics and artwork, you won't regret it!
Chapter 58: Shivers
Summary:
V struggles to keep Johnny and herself alive.
Notes:
HELLO FRIENDS I RETURN from my unplanned month-long hiatus!!!! Life comes at you fast and it's been an EXTREMELY busy month for me with traveling and work stuff all kind of hitting at once but enough about me here is a chapter please enjoy
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V’s eyes snap open to a blinding pain in her neck and pitch blackness broken only by a dim, flashing amber light that reveals with every flare the limp form of Johnny slumped in his seat across from her, his hairless head rolled to the side at an unnatural and alarming angle.
She groans again as she twists her head upwards, trying to get her bearings. She’s hanging sideways from her harness, her legs and arms dangling awkwardly and her body contorted in her seat. But there’s gravity, which means they made it - they’re on Earth and she, at least, survived the landing. The pod seems to have landed on its side, and the monitor at what was once the front of the cabin is flickering below her, sparking and fritzing while emergency lights blink and flash around them. Her head is a jumbled, throbbing mess, and she tries to remember the last thing she can recall before she blacked out.
There was the interminable hurtle through space, most of which she spent fading in and out of consciousness. She remembers watching Johnny with her heart in her throat, praying for both of them as the pod started to rattle violently when they began their re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The g-forces must have rendered her unconscious shortly after that.
She squints at him now in the dim, flashing light, her heart hammering in her throat.
Is he still alive?
He’s completely still, and she can’t tell if he’s breathing or not. V’s blood rushes in her ears as she gingerly moves her fingers, then her legs, checking for injuries. Everything is sore, but she doesn’t seem to be seriously hurt beyond the intense whiplash she can feel in her neck and the dull ache in her organs from dehydration. She doesn’t take her eyes off Johnny as she releases the latch on her harness and tumbles forward out of her seat, landing with a heavy thump against the cabin wall that now serves as the floor, scrambling towards Johnny’s slumped body.
She pulls off her glove and grabs his wrist, feeling for a pulse. To her enormous relief, it’s there - weak and slow, but it’s there. And she can see his chest moving now too. She takes a deep breath and yanks her personal link from her own wrist, cradling Johnny’s head in her hands as she connects her link to his neural port.
His vitals don’t look great, but he’s alive and that’s what matters.
She unfastens his harness and lowers him carefully from his seat, dragging him as gently as she can to rest against the corner of the crashed pod. Only then does she allow herself to really take stock of their situation.
For starters, where on Earth are they?
Her HUD doesn’t seem to be able to connect to its internal GPS from inside the pod, and the broken monitors are no help either. She fumbles in the dim glow of the flashing emergency light for the lever to manually open the door, finding it beneath a safety plate on what is now the roof of the overturned pod.
She can’t tell if it’s jammed or just designed to be difficult to pull, but it takes all the strength she can muster with her cybernetic arm to yank back the lever and shove open the door, letting in a cascade of sand and dry, cold air. Golden beams of light flood in through the open hatch, but V can’t tell whether the sun is rising or setting.
She heaves herself up through the door, blinking in the light as she stares out at her surroundings. They’re in the desert, that much is clear - the brush extends almost as far as she can see in all directions, with distant red mountains illuminated in the golden glow from the sun hovering just above the horizon.
Her HUD still isn’t getting a strong signal, but her GPS is able to pin them as being somewhere in the Mojave, northeast of Vegas and southeast of Zion.
Probably about ten hours from Night City by car, if they had one. And as her HUD connects, it tells her that it’s a little after 5 pm, meaning that it’ll be dark soon. And more importantly, it’s midwinter and the ambient temperature is quickly dropping.
She pulls up her holo, but the connection out here isn’t good enough to actually make any calls.
V lowers herself back into the pod and strips off her vac suit down to the underlayer to allow herself a bit more freedom of movement. She yanks off her balaclava and shakes out her matted hair, then settles back against the wall of the pod and tries to collect her thoughts.
She can viscerally feel how dehydrated she is, which means Johnny can’t be in much better shape. If she can’t find them a source of water, and soon, they’re both gonna die out here.
But this is an escape pod, she reasons. It was designed for this shit. There must be first aid supplies, some kinda survival kit, a radio, something.
Her eyes fall to the blinking panels on the broken monitor. Is it already sending out an SOS?
Given their circumstances, that might not be a good thing. The last thing they need right now are scavs or Arasaka recovery teams coming to investigate.
She exhales through her teeth, then starts scanning the cabin with her Kiroshis for any kinda panel or compartment until she finds what she’s looking for - a little storage bay above the seats, now to the side of them given the tilt of the pod. She gets to her feet and pries it open, relief flooding through her when she discovers exactly what she was hoping for - a rudimentary survival pack and four gallons of water in thick plastic bags. Barely enough to keep them alive for a week, but better than nothing.
She pulls down the survival pack and opens it to take inventory. There’s 8 days of protein bar rations for two people, four emergency blankets, a first aid kit, and a broken hand radio.
Once again, better than nothing.
She sits back on her heels, trying to formulate a plan. They can stay with the pod and try to fix the radio and call for help, maybe try to contact Panam and the Aldecaldos. V’s not sure where the nomads are now or whether they’ve left Night City - she remembers Panam talking about heading back to New Mexico with the clan, but that could mean anything… they could be anywhere from hours to days away.
Assuming she can even get in touch with them.
She fiddles with the hand radio, trying to see if she can get it running. It seems like the battery pack inside it corroded long ago - clearly whoever was in charge of maintaining this pod on the Arasaka station didn’t take their duties very seriously. Although the likelihood of it being used in this capacity must have seemed pretty low to them at the time.
She glances back over at Johnny’s naked and unconscious body slumped against the wall beside her and shivers. It’s getting cold quickly now that the sun is down, so she unfolds one of the silvery emergency blankets from the kit and tucks it around him as best she can, then turns back to the survival kit.
It takes her a second to figure out how to open the bags of water, but she finally finds a tear strip at the top that rips open into an attached straw. She brings it to her mouth, sucking the bare minimum it takes to make her organs stop screaming, then turns back to Johnny.
How the fuck is she gonna make him drink?
She takes the bag of water and threads the tube between his lips, squeezing the bag slightly and trying to hold his head upright to keep the water from dribbling out and down his chin. His swallow reflex seems to kick in and he gags down some of the water, but most of it runs out of the corner of his mouth and down his face.
Fucking fuck, keeping them both alive is gonna be hard. And water is just the start - she has no fucking clue how she’s gonna be able to make him eat.
She shoves down the panic she feels rising in her chest. To come through all this… to somehow, against all odds, wrangle Johnny out of cyberspace intact, to yank his body out of cryo on an orbital station beyond the fucking moon, to safely get him alive and back to Earth only to watch him die slowly in the desert of dehydration or starvation or exposure…
She swallows back the hot, frustrated tears she feels pricking at her eyes. Even just imagining how it would feel to know for certain that she’s lost him forever, that it’s over for good, that she failed them both, is enough to make her throat close up and her stomach ache.
But she’s made it this fucking far, and she’s not about to give up now.
She gets to her feet and sticks her head out of the pod door again. There has to be a radio tower around here somewhere. According to her GPS, the closest town is a place called Fredonia... if she can get Johnny there, maybe she can radio Panam.
It’s not much of a plan, but it’s all she can think of. Better than waiting around here to die, or for scavs to come looking for an easy salvage, or for Arasaka to get curious about a pod from one of their deep space orbital stations sending off a distress signal from the Mojave.
She wonders how long it’s already been since they crash landed. How long was she out? Can they afford to wait to move until morning?
The readouts on her HUD tell her that the temperature outside is in the forties now and still dropping, and she has no way of keeping herself and Johnny warm except the four emergency blankets. She’s not sure exactly how far they are from Fredonia, but she figures she has a better chance of getting them there alive during the day, even if it means taking the risk of staying with the pod for the night and fending off any potential visitors.
She closes the door of the pod, sealing out the cold, then looks at Johnny slumped against the wall, feeling her heart suddenly seize in her chest. He looks so helpless, so strangely vulnerable, almost like a child. He’d probably fuckin’ hate her seein’ him like this, she thinks. Devoid of his hair, his beard, his eponymous arm, completely at the mercy of the elements and of her ability to keep him alive with not much at her disposal but her own sheer force of will. A powerful surge of protectiveness wells up in her chest, so strong it makes her choke, and she curls up next to his unconscious form and wraps her arms around his chest, swallowing hard as she rests her head on his mangled and armless left shoulder.
They’ll both keep warm more easily this way, at least.
She isn't exactly tired, but she eventually drifts into an uneasy, dreamless sleep. And when she opens her eyes, her momentary disorientation is immediately washed away by the realization that she's waking up to Johnny's actual, real heartbeat warm against her cheek.
She allows herself to lie there against him for a few minutes, feeling his low, steady breathing and reveling in how warm and solid he feels. Part of her still half expects him to glitch away at any moment, to evaporate like a dream, as though he’d never existed at all. And part of her is terrified that his engram didn’t survive cyberspace intact, that the man who wakes up won’t be the man she remembers.
And a bigger part of her is terrified that he won’t survive at all.
She pulls away and sits up, examining his face in the dim light of the pod once more. For the first time since their mad scramble out of orbit, she really looks at him, letting herself appreciate the fact that he’s actually here. That this is Johnny’s real, physical face she’s looking at, not just a hallucination created by the chip. He looks different without his hair and beard, but his heartbreakingly familiar face still feels almost unreal to her somehow, like this is all still just another horrible dream that will be yanked away from her at any moment.
And it will be, if she can’t keep them both alive.
She remembers her medicine and fumbles for her discarded space suit, unfastening the pouch from the hip and rummaging in it for the airhypos. But to her horror, every single one of them seems to have exploded during re-entry, probably from the sudden pressure change. She curses under her breath as she stares at the ruined medicine, feeling the panic rise again in her throat. Without any MaxDocs or her meds, their timeline for survival just got shortened even further.
At least Johnny’s rings and her necklace made it back with her safely.
She takes out the useless airhypos, then places the remaining contents of the pouch into the survival kit. The Malorian is still attached to her space suit as well, so she takes that and tosses it in the bag with the rest of their supplies. She shoulders the survival kit, then stands and pushes open the door to the pod once more.
The cold morning air assaults her as an icy gust whips her hair into her face the moment she pokes her head through the top. The sun is up already but the air is still bitterly cold, and she squints towards the distant mountains. Going by her GPS, Fredonia is a little over twenty miles northwest of them, but the signal on her HUD is weak and their current location is still just a general estimate.
Over twenty miles carrying Johnny and four gallons of water.
She lowers herself back into the pod and looks at Johnny’s slumped body, at his hairless head.
“You look like Nibbles,” she whispers, reaching out her hand to run it along his smooth scalp, then laughs a small, strangled laugh. “This would be so much fuckin’ easier if you were awake,” she tells him, then sighs and withdraws her hand.
With all four gallons of water in the survival backpack, it already hangs heavy from her shoulders, and she grits her teeth as she bends to heave Johnny up and out through the roof of the pod. The emergency blanket she clumsily wrapped around him the night before comes loose, and he hangs limp and naked halfway out of the pod. She takes the blanket and shoves it into her bag along with the remaining three, then pushes open the door the rest of the way and climbs out past him to stand atop the downed capsule before turning to lean down and drag him out along with her.
The cold wind is biting, and she shivers violently as she jumps down to the dusty sand that surrounds them on all sides. From the ground, she reaches up to grab Johnny’s legs and awkwardly pull him off the top of the pod, staggering backwards slightly as he rolls down into her arms. She heaves him with a grunt over her shoulders into a fireman’s carry, and realizes almost immediately that the lack of his left arm means she’ll have to bear the bulk of his weight in her organic right arm in order to balance him properly around her neck, since she has only his right arm to grasp onto. She lowers him to the dirt then picks him up again, taking a moment to adjust to his weight and find a way to carry him comfortably. It’s more than a little tricky to hold him like that, but she’ll have to make do.
She steels herself with a deep breath, silently thanking Vik again for her chrome-reinforced spine, then sets off away from the rising sun.
The desert heats up only marginally as the sun rises, but soon she is sweating from exertion as she trudges haltingly across the vast open plain away from the abandoned pod, stopping frequently to squeeze more water into Johnny’s mouth and cursing with frustration at every ounce he dribbles onto the dry, dusty ground. For her own part, she drinks the tiniest sips of water she can manage to try to conserve their supply, and chokes down a protein bar only when she begins to feel lightheaded and not a moment sooner. Her mind goes blank as the hours pass, and her feet are numb by noon, but she continues onwards with a single-mindedness she never knew she possessed.
When the sun begins to set, she lowers Johnny to the ground and collapses heavily next to him, staring upwards as the clear sky slips into a cloudless gradient and the temperature once again starts to plummet.
She rummages in her bag for the emergency blankets and lays one of them on the ground underneath Johnny, then rolls the second one around him and the third one around herself. She huddles up against Johnny and drapes the fourth one over both of them, hoping their combined body heat will be enough to keep them both from freezing. But once the sun is gone, she can feel the cold penetrating all the way to her bones, and her teeth chatter violently together as she wraps herself around Johnny’s body in a vain attempt to warm them both.
Above them, the stars glitter and twinkle in the cold, clear sky. The only time V's ever seen this many stars before - from Earth, at least - was on the way to Atlanta, alone in her car in the vast desert, shivering in her Galena while the Milky Way wheeled across the sky above her, just like it is now. It would be beautiful if it weren’t so fucking cold.
Fuck, she can’t have come this far only for Johnny to die in the goddamn desert of fuckin’ frostbite.
The moon rises over the mountains then, full and bright and sending cascading silver shadows across the open expanse of brush. She thinks of the hours she spent tumbling alone through space around the back of the moon and shudders.
“Literally went there and back for you,” she whispers to Johnny’s unconscious body, letting out a hoarse laugh as she tilts her head to look at his face silhouetted in the dim moonlight. “Remember when you made fun of me for wanting this?” she says to the cold night. “For hopin’ they’d have you on ice somewhere?” She tightens her arm across his chest and buries her face in his neck, breathing him in deeply. His skin is cold, and she shivers again against him. “Guess I was right after all,” she whispers into his neck. “Gonna rub that in your face when you wake up.”
He doesn’t answer, of course. But talking to him now feels different than the way she’s been talking to his shadow these past few months, different than looking for that glitching ghost on the edges of her vision. Because he is here now, and for all she knows, maybe he can hear her. She’s heard about how people in comas can sometimes remember the things people say to them while they’re out, and she hopes some of the things she’s saying are reaching Johnny now, even if it’s just the tone of her voice, the fact that she’s here and that she’s taking care of him.
His hair and beard are starting to grow in again, she notices, covering his head and jaw with a thick, dark stubble. Whatever chemical cocktail kept him in suspended animation in that pod for fifty years was apparently also keeping his hair from growing and his body from aging - he doesn't look a day over 35.
She wonders what's happening now inside his mind as his new engram overwrites and revives his mangled, ruined 2023 brain, and remembers the feeling of the rogue AIs tearing at her in cyberspace, remembers how confused Johnny had been when she saw him out there. Will he be okay? Will he still be the man she knows?
She doesn’t know what she’ll do if he’s not.
There's something almost painfully ironic about their current situation, she muses. For the entirety of their time together until now, she knew Johnny only as a disembodied consciousness, an incorporeal illusion created by her mind. And now, she is experiencing for the first time his tangible, physical body... but it’s just that, just his body. No one's home, at least not yet.
And the strangest irony is that she’s only ever known one without the other - either mind or body, never both. She still has yet to actually meet Johnny as a whole, conscious, physically real person. And the fact that she’s now stuck taking care of his unconscious body in such a visceral way feels almost like a weird sort of karmic justice for the way she was forced to place that kind of trust in him regarding her own physical body. He looks so fucking helpless now, lying there limp in the moonlight like this, and the thought again strikes her that he’d hate the fact that this is how she’s first encountering him in the physical plane.
But it's still him. Someone she shared her own body with for months. Someone who had full control of her body for hours at a time. Someone who's witnessed and experienced every single one of her most private moments during their time together. It's a strange and intense intimacy that defies all traditional categorization, and looking at him now almost makes her head spin. It's hard not to feel like his body is almost an extension of her own, yet also completely and utterly alien. It's both familiar and foreign, hers and not hers.
He smells exactly like she knew he would, she suddenly realizes. It's not anything in particular - he's been in a freezer for half a century, so there's no lingering smell of tequila or cigarettes or sweat or any of his other signature vices on his skin. But he does still have an incredibly specific smell, one that V feels like she's known her whole life even though it's so impossibly distinct that she's absolutely sure that she has never encountered it before. It's deeply and intensely familiar, utterly mundane yet absolutely captivating. He smells like… Johnny.
The waves crash against her heels, lapping at her feet like a million tiny knives. Her legs are spread wide open and Johnny leans over her, his metal hand gripping her knee and his eyes staring down into hers. They are cold, unflinching, devoid of any feeling or recognition, and V realizes he’s holding her knife in his other hand, pressing the sharp edge against his own throat. He doesn’t break her gaze as he takes the blade and draws it across his neck, his skin parting open like a terrible mouth as V begins to scream.
But no sound emerges - it’s as though all the air has been squeezed from her lungs, leaving her gasping silently like a beached fish, like she’s in space again but without her suit, without anything between her and the hollow, infinite, desolate cold.
The stars are too clear, too vivid, and she knows that means she is still in space, they both are. But the laws of physics seem to laugh in her face as the safe surety of gravity evaporates - the sand rises around them and the surf turns into a cloud of delicate, suspended spheres suddenly moving up and outwards, with nothing to pull them back to earth.
Johnny’s hair fans out above his head and the blood bubbles out from his neck like a blossoming rose.
And so she wraps her hands around his throat, pressing her palm against his neck as she tries in vain to stop the bleeding, her fingers tangled in his blood-soaked black hair, his eyes cold and glassy as they stare vacantly through her. The blood pours out between her fingers, running over Johnny’s collarbone and down across his scarred chest, floating in thick red beads down to the burning white sand, splintering into glittering tendrils of code that begin to coil around them both, reaching and spiraling upwards towards the cold black sky like unearthly serpents.
She tries once more to scream, and this time a strangled groan escapes her lips and she wakes up to the sun beating down on them through the silver blankets. Her whole body is drenched with sweat, though the air is still chilly and dry. She shakes off the blankets and sits up, looking at Johnny in the sunlight. The entire left side of his face is brilliant red, and she realizes with an abrupt jolt of guilt that the entire left side of his body is in a similar state from the way she was carrying him slung across her back completely exposed. Without his hair to protect him, his entire scalp and neck are red and blistered already. She pulls the blanket off his body and ties it around his neck like a weird cape, hoping it’ll offer at least some protection today. After a moment, she takes a second blanket and wraps it around his head, too.
Her own face is badly sunburned now too, but there’s not much to be done about that.
She checks Johnny’s vitals via her personal link and pushes down the dread that rises again in her chest. He’s way too dehydrated and his heartbeat is stuttering erratically now, so she pulls out one of the water bags and squeezes the rest into his mouth, placing her hand over his lips as he gags while she whispers an apology that she knows he probably can’t hear.
There are three gallons of water left now, and they still have a long way to go.
She eats another one of the protein bars and stares down helplessly at Johnny, trying and failing to think of a way to make him eat solid food, which is all she has right now.
Her best hope is to just get him somewhere she can call for help as quickly as possible.
She packs up the rest of their water and shoulders the bag again, then steels herself as she hoists Johnny up around her shoulders and sets off westward once more.
As the sun reaches its zenith, she begins to really feel the weight of both her own and Johnny’s mortality, almost even more so than she did in the hostile expanse of space. At least there, it all seemed… cosmic, epic. Here, there’s just the blistering dry dust and the bitter winds and tumbleweeds. They’re such fucking fragile beings, so easily slain by the elements.
A few hours into the afternoon, they reach an old, cracked concrete road, and V deposits Johnny down onto the hardened dirt to give her shoulders a rest while she takes stock. The road snakes westward into the canyons, and based on her HUD map, it’s probably the remains of the 89A. Which means they can follow it the rest of the way to Fredonia.
She takes a few small sips from the bag of water and gives a bit to Johnny as well, then heaves him to her shoulders again and sets off down the road.
As she walks, she finds herself thinking about Pantheon, about Mr. Blue Eyes, about what fucking wretched game of AI chess she managed to get herself roped into. She has half a mind to really lay into the strange man when she’s back in NC, get him to pay out even more than he promised her for not bein’ upfront about what her mission actually was.
But the more rational part of her is still terrified of the mysterious client, and hopes he still intends to pay her at all.
Out here in the freezing cold, dry desert, it's easy to feel anger. Anger at Arasaka for inflicting this much unique and relentless suffering on her and on Johnny. Anger at her own weak and dying body, at her fumbling and desperate attempt to drag them both out of this mess, at her willingness to trust dangerous people if they got her closer to her goal. Anger at the fact that she had a whole entire human shoved into her brain, and now she's dragging his naked lifeless body across the high desert because she loves him more than she ever imagined could be possible.
Or is she doing this because the boundaries of her sense of self got so irreversibly blurred that she can’t tell the difference anymore between her own survival instinct and the desire to keep Johnny alive?
Either way, the simple truth is that she knows she can't face the rest of her life without him, and she's willing to risk making said life significantly shorter to hammer that point home.
The hours pass.
Her lips are chapped and peeling, her skin is blistering from the cold and the wind and the dryness and the sunburn, her knuckles are cracked and bleeding. Her mouth is sticky and her throat is parched, and Johnny’s dead weight bears down painfully on her shoulders, making the muscles in her neck and back and legs scream and cramp as she trudges forward, propelled by nothing more than her own sheer willpower. And on top of that, with the absence of her immunosuppressants, she’s getting sick again. Her vision is starting to blur and there’s a sharp, specific pain in her head that sends sparks shooting through her skull with every step she takes. Her hands are tingling and her feet are numb, both from the cold and the exertion and the progressive nerve damage that she can feel working its inexorable way through her body. She thinks about Kerry, and wonders if he’s left for his tour yet. She can’t even remember the day he said it was leaving. But just knowing that he’s out there somewhere is strangely comforting. She imagines him looking at the same sky, wondering if she’s up there somewhere. If he had any idea where she was, there’d be a Trauma Team Platinum fleet headed her way, she thinks wryly. Not that Trauma Team is good for anything the second she sets foot outside of Night City… but if anyone could pay ‘em to change their minds, it’d be Kerry.
She remembers the card Kerry got her, how she’d left it on the nightstand next to her bed.
The thought of being in her penthouse right now, clean and warm and sprawled between silk sheets, feels almost like a mad fever dream. The world around her starts to wobble a bit, and she takes that as her cue to lower Johnny to the ground again and pause for another brief water break.
They’ve made significant headway by nightfall, though V wouldn’t have known it from the unchanging landscape. The dramatic red cliffs in the distance have certainly gotten closer, but their immediate surroundings are still just the same scrubby brush and fine, dusty soil that seems to stick to every part of her and Johnny and their supplies. It lines her mouth and nose and ears, fills her eyes with grit, makes her hands feel even more rough and raw.
As the sun sets, she rolls herself and Johnny into the silvery emergency blankets once again, like a foil-wrapped burrito from a street vendor. The thought of burritos makes her stomach audibly growl, and she resists the urge to dip back into her dwindling rations. At least one of them has to eat - Johnny hasn’t had anything but drips of water for days now. His body was already too thin when V unfroze him, and now she can feel the ribs beneath the skin of his chest as she curls around him on the cold hard dirt.
Her teeth clatter together and she can’t stop shivering, and she thinks again of the penthouse, of her warm bed and her hot shower and the memory of being able to order whatever food she wanted with a few swipes on her holo.
And fuck, she could use a cigarette.
And a stiff drink.
But she’s alone in the desert with a half-dead man and hardly any supplies, and no one on the planet knows where she is or would ever think to look for her here.
She imagines it making the news when someone finds their skeletons months or years later. It would be quite the screamsheet headline.
“Kerry Eurodyne’s Missing Output and Exhumed Corpse of Johnny Silverhand Found Side by Side in the Arizona Desert,” she says out loud, laughing hoarsely at her own joke. “Romeo and Juliet bullshit, just like Kerry said.” She smiles softly to herself, tracing little circles on Johnny’s chest, then croaks another bleak laugh. “Or they’ll think I’m just some crazy Samurai superfan who dug up your body.”
Talking to him distracts her somewhat from the cold, so she continues to do it, and she finds herself suddenly telling him about everything that’s happened since they parted ways in Mikoshi - all of it, the agony, the uncertainty, Kerry, Dino, The Legends, all of it. She knows she’ll likely have to tell him most of it again when he wakes up, but she can’t seem to stop herself once she starts talking. Talking to Johnny feels as natural as breathing, and fuck, she’s missed it. As she continues to ramble at him, she’s sharply aware of just how desperately she’s missed him, how truly excruciating it’s been to have to wake up every day alone, to face every minute of her life without his voice in her ear, his thoughts hand in hand with her own, his laughter by her side, his unasked for opinions on her every move.
And she’s going to have to tell him about this now, too.
Her words taper off with a sad sigh, and she looks up at his face in the fading light. His stubble has gotten even longer now, and although his face is much more gaunt and pallid than it looked in her mind, the emerging beard is beginning to make him look a bit more like himself.
She traces her fingers along the gnarled flesh where his left shoulder cuts off in a distorted, fleshy knot, and she wonders what became of his old metal arm. Smasher probably had it on his fuckin’ bookshelf as a goddamn trophy, she thinks. Maybe Yorinobu still has it.
Either way, he’s gonna need a new one when he wakes up.
She opens her eyes to the high lofted ceiling of her penthouse, the pleasant warmth of sleep still clinging to her as she lies tangled in her thick comforter.
She feels a warm weight beside her, hears the sound of soft, even breathing, and she doesn't even have to look to know who it is.
She'd know that smell anywhere, recognize those slow, heavy breaths in any context. And so she turns just her head, swallowing hard and barely daring to hope, and sure enough, there's Johnny, snoring peacefully at her side.
His hair is long again and his beard carpets his cheeks and jawline, and his skin looks soft and warm in the muted morning light.
She rolls onto her side and rests her hand gently against his chest, marveling at his heartbeat, at his warmth. He grumbles softly and shifts, then wraps an arm around her back and presses her tightly to him, letting out a low, contented hum.
V smiles to herself and burrows closer against him. But the warmth of the bed and of Johnny doesn't reach her bones, and she realizes she's shaking violently and can't stop. She props herself on her elbow and looks at Johnny's face, and his eyes flutter open to meet hers.
And the instant his dark eyes collide with hers, she’s hurtling through space. The warm bed is gone - there's just the cold expanse surrounding them on all sides with Earth receding in the distance, a blue sphere getting smaller and smaller as they drift further into the endless void. And to her horror, Johnny isn't wearing a space suit - he’s just floating naked and unprotected in the vacuum beside her. His eyes widen as they lock onto hers, his face twisting with panic as he begins to thrash and choke. A cold puff of fog exits his mouth, and V can see the blood vessels bursting in his eyes as the skin around them turns mottled and bruised.
She wakes up drenched in a cold sweat, with Johnny's limp body equally cold beside her. It's just before dawn and just above freezing, and the fingers on Johnny's remaining hand are turning purple, along with his nose and his feet.
"Fuck," V says out loud, adjusting the blankets in vain to try to cover him better. But it's a futile effort - she's just as cold, and the fact that her undersuit is now soaked with sweat isn't helping matters. There just isn't enough body heat between the two of them to combat the relentless and biting cold.
She casts her eyes around desperately, but there's nothing at hand to build a fire with. Can tumbleweeds be used as kindling?
Better to just keep moving.
She checks Johnny's vitals, and they're as worrying as she feared. Her own aren't looking great either - she's dehydrated and sleep deprived and her blood pressure is dangerously low. She hasn't taken her meds since she was on her shuttle, and she's not even sure how many days ago that was at this point. Her muscles feel weak and the tingling in her hands has gotten worse, and she knows it's not entirely a result of the cold or the strain of carrying a full grown man on her back for hours at a time. She feels that sharp awareness of her own clock ticking as she forces more water down Johnny's throat before heaving him onto her shoulders again and continuing their trudging progress through the freezing dawn, gritting her teeth against the screaming muscles cramping in her nearly numb legs.
As the sun rises, the gold chain on her wrist catches the light and makes her chest tighten at the memory of Kerry fastening it around her arm in the kitchen.
"The hero's always you," she says out loud as she walks, her voice a dry rasp in the cold morning.
And then she stops dead in her tracks.
In the distance to the north, a herd of wild horses is running across the high desert, silhouetted in the sunrise like a fuckin' postcard of the old American West.
She’s never seen a horse in real life before.
"Johnny,” she whispers. "Wake up, you gotta see this."
He doesn't, of course.
She stands silently and watches as they gallop across the horizon, still frozen with awe and wonder. Part of her isn’t sure if they’re even real, or if they’re just a hunger-induced hallucination or mirage. But she can see them now with her own eyes, their manes and tails streaming out behind them, their hooves kicking up clouds of dust in their wake as they disappear into the valley.
And she realizes then that she can see the town in the distance, and her heart swells with sudden hope. It’s probably still a few hours away if she maintains her current pace, which isn’t all that fast given her present condition with Johnny on her shoulders and the remaining three gallons of water slung across her back.
She tightens her arm around Johnny's limbs, ignoring the spasming muscles in her shoulders and the prickling numbness in her hands, then continues down the road. She can taste the dust in her mouth, and as the town inches closer, her vision begins to blur and then to double. She forces herself to stop for a moment to drink some water and check Johnny's vitals, and to her dismay, her own are barely better than his at this point. Johnny's face looks worryingly pale, and his heartbeat is dangerously weak and shallow.
The town is only a few more miles down the road, but V can't see any movement or signs of life, even when she zooms in with her Kiroshis. But even a ghost town may have supplies, a radio, things they can use.
She picks up her pace, breaking into a loping, staggered attempt at a jog, her eyes fixed on the low, scattered buildings in the distance. Her feet are like bricks, and she can't feel any of her toes at this point.
And then her foot catches on a pothole and she goes flying forward, the cracked and dusty pavement suddenly rising up to greet her as her chrome hand shoots out instinctively to catch them.
Luckily for them both, her chrome hand takes the brunt of the fall, but Johnny still goes flying off her shoulders and over her head, landing face first on the crumbling asphalt and skidding a few feet ahead of her.
A howl escapes her throat, but it comes out as more of a croak. She doesn't have to look to know that her knees and right elbow are badly bruised and scraped, and her ankle feels like it might be twisted despite her reinforced tendons.
She lets out another frustrated sob that turns into a scream, then crawls on her hands and knees towards Johnny, rolling him onto his back to assess the damage.
His forehead is scraped and bloodied, and V prays he didn't hit his head too hard. She balls her hand into a fist and rests her forehead against Johnny's, taking deep, shaky breaths as another angry sob escapes her.
The town is just down the road - so close, but still far enough that they could easily fuckin’ die out here. Keeping them both alive is taking every ounce of strength she has… and then some more.
"You can do this," she tells herself. "You have to."
She heaves herself to her feet and looks down at Johnny's naked and now bloodied body. Her hair is matted to her forehead with sweat and dust, and she pushes it from her eyes then bends forward to drag Johnny up off the asphalt and back onto her shoulders. He seems to get heavier with every step, and by the time she reaches the town, her head is spinning with nausea and confusion and her back feels like a stack of electric shocks - she knows she's pushing her spinal stabilizer to its limits.
Her pain is so severe that she almost doesn't immediately register the bodies strewn about in the street, and her adrenaline spikes with a sharp jolt when she realizes the corpses are relatively fresh - a day or two old at most.
And they all look like civilians.
"Raffen Shiv," she whispers, freezing in the middle of the deserted main street as she scans her surroundings again. But if the Raffen were here, they seem to be gone now - there are still no signs of life that her Kiroshis can detect.
On the right side of the street is a gas station and general store, and V limps haltingly towards it, scanning the exterior with her Kiroshis for any signs of movement. But there's no one nearby, and no one responds to the little bell that rings when V pushes open the door to the shop. There's a woman slumped dead over the register, her dried blood already peeling off the laminated wood. V lowers Johnny to the ground, leaning him against the counter, then begins to case the store.
To her dismay, it's been pretty thoroughly looted - virtually all of the food and anything remotely valuable has been taken or smashed or otherwise rendered unusable. But she almost sobs with relief when she sees the unopened 5-gallon drums of water in the back fridge - the scavs must have decided they were too heavy to carry and left them here. The fridge is smashed, but the water is still cold, and V slumps against the wall across from it, feeling the tears spilling from her eyes. She's not even sure whether she's crying from frustration or from relief or from stress or adrenaline or just from the sheer joy of being inside of a building, underneath a roof, protected somewhat from the elements.
She lifts one of the drums and unscrews the lid, then tips it onto its side and puts her lips around the mouth, swallowing as much as she can even as the water spills out around her face and neck.
But they can't survive on just water, even if they have enough now to last them weeks.
V gets to her feet and steps back out of the store into the street, leaving Johnny propped up on the floor by the register. It's almost noon now, and the sun hangs heavy over the town, casting the whole eerie scene in stark and harsh definition. It's barely even a town - just a collection of dilapidated trailers and a handful of larger buildings, most of which look like they haven't been used or repaired in years.
And a little further up the road, she sees what she’s been hoping for.
A radio tower.
She turns on her heel and goes back into the little shop, bending to sling Johnny over her shoulder with a loud grunt, wincing at the blinding pain that shoots through her twisted ankle. Johnny feels lighter than he should, and V's gut twists with worry at the implications. But she forces herself to stagger those last couple hundred feet down the road to the low, white, sun-bleached building with faded painted letters that read, "K206BT AMERICAN FAMILY RADIO."
The glass door is smashed, and V steps inside with Johnny still draped across her shoulders. It takes a moment for her Kiroshis to adjust to the dim light of the tiny station, and her vision doubles and blurs again. But eventually she can make out a small room with a cramped booth, and just like at the store, there’s a man slumped over the mixing board, headset still on and dried blood spilled out over the controls.
And somehow, the broadcast is still live, streaming out dead air to whatever radius this desolate little tower can reach.
V pushes open the door to the booth and shoulders her way in, setting Johnny down on the floor again and rolling her shoulders back to try to revive some sensation in them. But her arms are numb and tingling down to her fingers now, and the muscles in her legs are twitching and seizing up, too. And there’s a ringing in her ears that seems to be getting louder with each passing hour. And on top of all that, her ankle is sore and throbbing and sends sharp, shooting pains all the way to her teeth whenever she puts weight on it.
She shoves the dead man aside and pulls up the ancient terminal he was slumped over, then jacks her link in.
It’s not even protected with the most basic layer of ICE, just a single password that she hacks with hardly any effort.
And to her shock, there’s a new blinking message from a name V recognizes: Satine Scalinski.
She swallows hard, her head spinning with disbelief. Did Kerry somehow figure out where she is?
She opens the message, hardly daring to hope. She realizes she’s holding her breath.
Hello AFR and affiliated stations,
Please find attached the latest single from Kerry Eurodyne, A VISION OF YOUR MEMORIES. Below is the expected airplay schedule as per the terms of your airwave licensing contract with MSM Records.
Our artists appreciate the support from local stations like you.
Regards,
S. Scalinski
MSM Records
V barks a hoarse laugh. Of course Kerry doesn’t know where she fucking is, it’s just a mass message sent out to all the stations MSM has a contract with.
But she opens the attachment anyway, and her heart twists as the familiar notes spill out from the speakers - guitar chords she’s been hearin’ Kerry strum and hum and sing softly to himself non-stop in her apartment for the past couple months. She remembers lying awake in bed, listening to him agonize downstairs over earlier mixes of this very recording, playing certain parts again and again and again and grumbling to himself. And she remembers the first time he played it for her, on his former manager's old yacht shortly before they sent it straight to the bottom of the bay.
Fuck, she misses Kerry.
Her eyes fall to Johnny slumped on the dirty, blood-stained carpeted floor, then to the bloated corpse of the dead station manager beside him. And then back to Johnny’s blistered, scraped, and sunburned body. The blanket she tied around his neck is twisted around his arm, and the other one around his head has come loose and hangs uselessly across his face.
She looks back at the dead man, sizing up his clothing. He looks to be about the same size as Johnny.
V fights down her knee-jerk revulsion and reaches for the corpse, holding her breath to fend off the repugnant smell that assaults her in waves the second she begins to unbutton his flannel shirt. She gags as she frees his bloated arms from the sleeves, then has to pause to retch at the odor that surges out from his jeans when she unfastens them. She forces herself to continue, peeling them off the dead man’s legs and gagging once again at the ghoulish corpse as it falls backwards with a thick, wet smack.
She drapes the clothes over the mixing board. Better to air them out a bit before putting them on Johnny.
She turns her attention back to the computer, then pulls up the special satellite radio frequency Panam gave her months ago, the one that would get her in touch with the Aldecaldos no matter where on the planet they were.
“Saul Bright, Panam Palmer,” V says, her voice coming out thin and dry. “This is V. Over.”
She pauses, waiting for a response.
“You guys copy?” V chokes.
She squeezes her eyes shut, letting her back slide down along the wall as she sinks to the floor, her ass hitting the carpet with a soft thud.
“Anyone? Aldecaldos? Panam?” she rasps.
After another excruciating moment, the line crackles, and a familiar voice fills her ear.
“V?!” comes Mitch’s unmistakable drawl.
“Mitch!” V croaks. “That you?”
“Sure as fuck is, V,” Mitch says, his voice affectionate but serious. “Where the hell are you?”
V grins, feeling her lips crack as she does so.
“Fredonia,” she tells him. “Arizona. Ghost town in the middle of the desert. Like… fifty miles north of the Grand Canyon. I’m… I’m in real bad shape. Need… need a pick-up. You guys gotta... you guys gotta send for help.”
“Shit,” Mitch says, and then there’s another crackle.
“V!” comes Panam’s voice, now. “What on earth have you done?”
“You gotta call Kerry,” V pleads. She realizes her words are coming out slurred. Is that a symptom of her neural degeneration progressing? Or just days of overexertion and overexposure and undernourishment? Or all of the above?
“And what exactly is Kerry Eurodyne going to do!?” Panam scoffs. “Send us your coordinates, you absolute gonk brain! Mitch and I will come and get you.”
“Scavs were here. Attacked this town recently,” V cuts in. “Blood’s still fresh. I’m gonna find a place for us to hide on the outskirts of town.”
“Us?” The confusion is plain in Panam’s voice. “You're not alone?”
“I…” V begins, unsure of how to explain. “I’ve got Johnny with me. He… he needs medical attention real bad. More than me, even.”
“I… what?” Panam stammers. “I thought that you… I thought that Johnny was no longer in your mind,” she finishes.
“He’s not,” V chokes. “Talkin’ ‘bout the real Johnny. I… I did some real stupid shit, Panam, but it fuckin' worked. Pulled him out of cryo, copied him back from cyberspace… then we crashed an escape pod in the desert…”
“You are not making sense, V,” Panam says. “Just tell me where you are.”
“Roger that,” V manages with a dark laugh, transmitting her coordinates over the frequency. There will be time to explain the rest later.
“Got them,” Panam confirms. “Find a safe place to hide, but stay close. We will be there as soon as we can. Copy?”
V swallows hard. “Panam, just call Kerry, he’ll get someone out here, you don’t have to-”
“Yes, V, I do,” Panam says firmly. “You can thank me later. Over and out.”
The line crackles and goes dead. V remains motionless for a moment, then leans forward, reaching for the clothing she left draped over the mixer and yanking it down to the floor beside her. She gathers it in her hands and shuffles across the filthy carpet towards Johnny, grabbing his heels and shimmying the jeans onto his legs, up over his narrow hips and fastening them around his hollow stomach. Then she pulls the shirt on, buttoning it clumsily over his chest. It’s a reddish brown flannel pattern that’s so caked with dust she can’t be sure what color it actually might be, but at least Johnny is somewhat more protected now.
She needs to find them a better shelter to hide in while they wait for the Aldecaldos. They can't stay here - she can't be sure that no one else picked up her transmission to the nomads, and the station'll be the first place anyone would look given that it's the source of the signal.
After another moment, she takes a deep breath and hoists Johnny up again, carrying him out of the low building and back into the blinding and oppressive sunlight, gritting her teeth against the pain in her foot.
The main road feels dangerously exposed, so she staggers off down a dusty, unpaved gravel side street until she reaches a rusted out trailer that’s clearly been long abandoned.
But something about the light changes as she walks, almost as though the sun were fading, getting more muted. V glances with horror towards the horizon and realizes with a start that there’s a massive dust storm sweeping through the valley, gathering power as it pushes its way across the desert.
“Fuck,” she hisses.
She turns and stumbles into the trailer. There’s nothing inside except a rotted out couch with the springs sticking out and a moldering shag carpet in the center of the floor. Rusted appliances line the walls, but V ignores them and collapses onto the shag carpet, depositing Johnny beside her. It’s impossible to tell what color the shag carpet once was - it’s now a shade of brown that perfectly matches the color of the dust outside.
She rolls onto her back and starts laughing helplessly, and that’s when she knows she’s delirious. She lies motionless on the cold, dirty carpet, unable to stop laughing as the trailer spins around her and she can’t tell if it’s the sandstorm reaching them and rattling the trailer or her own head that’s spinning. Johnny’s alive, and that very fact still feels fucking miraculous to her, even as she feels the vitality slowly seeping out of her own body. She can taste her death hovering close by - the simple truth is that she hasn’t taken her immunosuppressants at least a week now, and the stress she's placed upon her body by pushing it to its limits has hastened the process and now her own immune system is winning its war against her nervous system, killing her body in the process. She doesn’t need tests to confirm this - she can feel it happening. It isn’t hypothetical anymore. It’s not just something scary Alt said in Mikoshi, something theoretical that Vik warned her about. It’s happening, and it’s happening now, and it’s happening to her.
And it hurts. Her legs and arms are numb, but her nerves are on fire with pain. Her muscles spasm and seize, and her spine feels like a coil that’s been crushed and bent out of shape beyond repair. Her ears are still ringing, so loudly she can barely hear the sandstorm raging outside. And her vision is a blurry, unfocused mess. It isn’t the same glitchy blurriness she’d get when the Relic would malfunction… this is different. It feels more like a migraine aura, like a giant sunspot is blotting out half her field of vision.
And it’s so fucking cold.
She knows that Johnny’s dying too, and that fact is somehow even harder for her to swallow. Her laughs turn into sobs, and she rolls over to clutch Johnny's amputated shoulder where the sleeve of his borrowed flannel hangs limply, hoping against hope that there’s still a way out of this, that she hasn’t failed them both. That Panam is actually coming, that she didn’t just hallucinate that whole call. That they aren’t going to just die alone together in an abandoned trailer in the middle of the desert, miles away from anyone who gives a shit about them.
“Johnny,” she calls weakly, but he isn’t here to save her this time.
She was ready to die in space. Ready to die before that, too - ready to die this whole goddamn time, all these horrible, lonely months since Johnny left her alone in Mikoshi.
But not anymore, not now. How can she, now that she has him here in her arms? How can she, now that she’s come this fucking far, and done exactly what she fucking promised and dragged them both back the fuck from hell? How can she dare to even consider not sticking around to see this through? How dare her body fail her?
And yet, she feels herself fading.
The sandstorm is pummeling against the trailer now, clattering in a whooshing cacophony against the metal exterior. The door to the trailer is rattling furiously on its hinges, and V isn’t even slightly surprised when it slams open to a large gust of wind, and the small trailer fills with clouds of sand and dust. The fine layer of powdery dirt envelopes V, and she closes her eyes against the onslaught, coughing and choking as she buries her face in Johnny’s neck and throws her hands protectively over his nose and mouth. She stays that way for a long time, fading in and out of consciousness, feeling Johnny’s breath hot and warm against her palm, making sure even in her half-conscious state to keep her fingers parted just enough to let him breathe.
Eventually, the world around them stills and she’s not sure if she’s dreaming or dead.
She still can’t quite tell if she’s imagining it, but she hears a voice yelling her name over and over. A woman’s voice, and one she knows well, followed by a familiar silhouette in the doorway of the ruined trailer.
“Panam!” she croaks, lifting her head weakly from Johnny’s chest.
But the motion makes all the blood rush from her head, and everything goes black.
Notes:
can you tell I've been listening to a lot of Patti Smith lately
Chapter 59: Braindead
Summary:
V and Johnny get to safety, but Johnny's life still hangs in the balance.
Notes:
Sorry for the massive delay between chapters, chooms. Life has been fucking crazy and it's just been a wild couple months. But I have the remaining chapters mostly written, so I very much hope to resume a faster update schedule from here! Thank you so much for being patient and continuing to show support for this silly story!!!! You all mean the world to me 🌹🌹🌹🌹
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The low rumble of a generator wakes V up slowly, then all at once. Her first feeling is mild surprise, then a strange sense of euphoria that almost borders on hysteria. The fact that she’s lost count of how many times she’s woken up recently and been surprised to be alive feels absurd, ludicrous, like her life is just a strange series of near brushes with death, like she’s being tossed around in a rock tumbler again and again and again.
But she’s alive, which means that Panam found them, and that she and Johnny are gonna make it. The relief she feels is indescribable, almost overwhelming.
She tries to sit up, but the motion makes her immediately woozy, so she falls back onto her back again. The cot beneath her creaks, and she blinks up at the bugs fluttering around the lamp that hangs from the roof of the tent above her.
“Easy,” a voice says to her left, and V tilts her head to see a woman in a flannel shirt and Aldecaldos vest perched cross-legged on a chair beside her. She has curly purple hair that's shaved on one side, and is wearing round wire-framed glasses that catch the dim orange light from the lantern. V’s pretty sure she’s seen her before - she’s one of the ripperdocs that rides with the Aldecaldos. Which means they're likely at the nomads' camp, V concludes.
Something is pinching painfully at V’s arm, and she glances down to see an IV drip snaking in just beneath her tattoo. Probably to rehydrate her.
Her mouth still feels like it’s full of sand and cotton, though.
“Can I have some water?” she croaks.
“Sure,” the woman replies, offering her a tin canteen. “But drink it slowly,” she cautions as V snatches the canteen from her hand and chugs from it quickly, ignoring the woman’s advice.
“Slowly,” the woman warns again. “Or you’ll throw up and we’ll be back to square one.”
“Where’s Johnny?” V rasps, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist, which makes her IV tube tug uncomfortably again. “How is he?”
The nomad woman frowns. “Your friend isn’t doin’ so hot,” she replies frankly. “He’s severely dehydrated and completely unresponsive.” She looks over at V, tapping her fingers on her leg. “How long has he been like that?”
“But he’ll survive, right?” V presses, ignoring the woman’s question.
The woman’s frown deepens. “He’s stable, but…” she says slowly, her voice gentle. “We did some scans, and-”
A loud commotion outside the tent makes them both turn their heads, and V can hear loud clanging sounds and people yelling followed by what sounds like a truck backfiring.
“What’s going on?” V hisses, her voice coming out harsher than she intends.
The woman’s eyes flick nervously towards the door. “The scavs followed Panam’s truck here from Fredonia,” she explains, and V can tell she’s fighting to keep her voice calm and even. “We’re packing up camp now so we can be on the move before dawn.”
“Shit,” V says, her eyes darting around the tent as her feeling of relief melts away. She can see her survival pack and Malorian tucked on a chair in the corner, and she notices the nomad ripper following her gaze.
“You’re in no condition to fight,” she cautions V. “When we’re ready to move, we’ll take you in the med truck.”
“What about Johnny?” V prompts, her eyes snapping back to meet the nomad’s.
The woman looks down, then back up at her. “Listen, uh… there’s no easy way to say this, but he looks pretty, uh…” She swallows and looks at V, as though searching for the right way to say something. “The scans aren’t showing any promising signs of brain activity.”
V blinks at her for a moment. “But he’s not… it’s not like that,” she stammers, feeling her stomach drop even further as she sits up again and pulls at the IV drip. “The chip is still rewriting him, he’s not really… where is he?!” she demands, yanking the IV out of her arm and trying to swing her legs off the cot, tangling them in the blankets in the process.
The nomad woman places a hand on her arm. “Hey, hey, easy,” she says gently. “He’s in the medical truck, we’ve been doing everything we can for him. I’ve just… I’ve seen brain injuries like this before, and, well... we’re keepin’ him on life support for now. Panam didn’t want to make any decisions about him until you were awake.”
“Decisions?” V chokes, searching the nomad’s eyes frantically. “What do you mean?”
The woman gives her a sympathetic look. “He won’t survive without a feeding tube, and our resources are limited, and transporting him in his current condition will be... difficult,” she says in a low voice, as though choosing her words carefully. “And recoveries from these kinds of traumatic brain injuries are rare.”
V shakes her head vehemently. “It’s not like that,” she says again, more confidently this time, pushing the woman’s hand off her arm and disentangling her legs from the blanket. “He hasn’t suffered a brain injury. Or… maybe he has,” she corrects herself, thinking suddenly of the pod crash, of how she dropped him in the street, and her face burns with shame. “But that’s not… that isn't why he’s in the state he’s in.”
The nomad woman frowns at her. “What do you mean?”
“He’s been in cryofreeze for fifty-four fucking years, and now there’s a biochip in his head rebooting his brain,” V says, hearing her voice crack. “It’s supposed to take about two weeks, Panam can explain, she-”
But at that moment, the tent tilts sideways and starts to spin, and V collapses back onto the cot as a wave of nausea comes crashing over her. She lifts her hands to her face and takes a few deep breaths, her fingers tingling with that now familiar sharp, prickling numbness. She feels the medic woman place a hand on her shoulder, and V flinches at her touch. Outside, she can hear more shouts as people load up the trucks.
“Where’s Panam?” V says through gritted teeth. Her brain feels like it's thick with sludge, like her thoughts are moving too slow.
“She’s here in the camp,” the woman replies evenly. “I can radio for her, if you like?”
V removes her hands from her face and turns to stare the nomad woman dead in the eyes. “I need to see Johnny,” she says firmly.
He’ll wake up, she thinks desperately. He has to.
The nomad considers this for a moment, then nods. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll get you a change of clothes,” she adds, and V registers that her filthy undersuit was swapped out for a loose cotton shirt and pants. “Do you think you can stand?”
It’s at that moment that V appreciates how patient this woman, who’s essentially a stranger, is being with her.
“I’m sorry,” she mutters as she lets the woman pull her up into a sitting position. “I didn’t even ask you your name.”
The woman smiles. “I’m Ambrosia.”
V nods curtly, then lets the woman help her to her feet. She sways a little bit, and Ambrosia steadies her while she wobbles.
There’s a sudden commotion at the door to the tent, and to V’s absolute shock, Mitch bursts in followed closely by none other than Aidan and Judy.
“V!” Aidan shouts out loud, all but running towards her and throwing her thin arms around V’s waist. The force of her hug knocks V backwards onto the bed again, and she sits down heavily, pulling the little merc down with her as she laughs in disbelief and wraps her arms around her old friend.
“Aidan?!” V says incredulously, still laughing. “The heckin’ fuck are you doin’ here?”
Aidan grins up at her, then shrugs. "Took a scav bullet to the shoulder during a gig out in the Badlands," she signs quickly with her hands. "Ambrosia stitched me up, and made me ride with the 'Caldos till I was healed, and… well, I decided to stay."
“I’m happy you’re here,” V says sincerely. “You look happy.”
Aidan nods at her, still grinning, and V draws the girl in for another tight hug. Over the top of Aidan’s fluffy blonde bob, she meets Judy’s eyes, and Judy gives her a shy, crooked smile.
“Hey, Judy,” V manages, releasing Aidan and wringing her hands nervously.
“Hey, V,” Judy says, sounding uncharacteristically sheepish. “Feelin’ better?”
"Ready to fight off a whole squad of 'Saka elites," V replies dryly, and Judy cracks a small grin at that, then relents and takes a tentative step towards V, then circles her arms around V's shoulders. V leans into her chest, breathing deeply.
It feels really nice to wake up surrounded by friends for a change, despite the circumstances.
"You ridin' with the Aldecaldos now, too?" V asks, pulling back to give Judy a once over. She's dressed in cargo pants and a thermal vest, and her skin is about two shades darker than it was the last time V saw her. "The nomad look suits you," she adds with a wink.
Judy blushes. "For now, yeah," she tells V. "It's nice to be away from NC, I've been-"
But her words are cut off as the tent flaps part again, and now Panam comes crashing in.
"V!" she shouts, crossing the small tent in two long strides to join the pile of people hugging V on the creaky cot that bows under the weight of the reunion taking place. She pulls back and punches V on the arm, then drags her in for another crushing hug. "You gave us all such a fright! I thought you were already dead when I found you."
"Not quite yet," V says with a weak smile, laughing again in spite of herself. She gently pushes her friends off her, trying again to hoist herself to her feet. It's easier this time with all four women helping her, and Mitch regards them all from the corner of the tent, his mouth also twitching upwards into a broad grin that splits his weathered face as he steps forward to help steady her.
"You took a real beating out there, kid," he remarks, guiding her feet into the boots that Aidan sets on the cold ground in front of her as Panam drapes a long leather duster around her shoulders.
V searches their faces. "I want to go see Johnny," she declares again, and Panam and Judy exchange a look with each other, and then with Ambrosia.
Ambrosia nods. "Alright," she says. "Let's go."
Panam grasps one of her arms and Mitch grabs the other, and with their help V is shuffled out of the tent and into the biting cold air of the desert night. But the camp is far from silent - the nomads are all bustling about, tossing cargo crates onto trucks and tearing down the tents and packing them up. There’s a radio blasting rock music from somewhere, and the tinny notes drift up into the clear night sky, where V can still see the Milky Way wheeling above her like some great cosmic bridge. Judy, Aidan, and Ambrosia trail along behind her like a protective escort, and she notices the other nomads giving them curious looks as their strange little procession moves through the camp.
The medical truck is close by and lit up brightly - moths and insects swarm near the dirty windows and the generator thrums nearby as V painstakingly makes her way up the low metal stairs and in through the rickety door.
And there, on the lone ripper chair, hooked up to a million tubes and monitors, is Johnny.
Some of the color has returned to his features, but his face still looks dangerously gaunt and hollow. His eyes are still closed and his expression is impassive, but V is once again struck with absolute awe at the fact that he’s real, that he’s here, that he’s alive.
For now, anyway. Her gut twists as she stares down at him.
Judy and Aidan hang back by the door, watching nervously, but Panam and Mitch move to stand beside her, still gripping her arms as she stares mutely at Johnny’s unconscious form. She can feel the heat of all of their eyes on her, and V suddenly isn’t sure if the buzzing in her head is from the generator’s hum, the cacophony of night insects, the ongoing commotion outside, or her neurological degeneration. She takes another cautious step towards Johnny, swallowing the lump in her throat. Her legs shake beneath her, and Mitch clutches her arm tightly to steady her.
“V,” Panam says softly. “I still do not understand how this is possible.”
V’s eyes dart to Panam’s, and her nomad friend is regarding her with wide, curious, confused eyes.
She looks down, then back up at Panam. “I told you the broad strokes,” she says. “But… it’s a long, confusing story. But the short version is that I got intel that they were keeping Johnny’s body in cryo on a space station near the moon. So I… I went up there and got him,” V continues, stumbling over her words as the rest of them stare at her with a mix of shock and disbelief on their faces. “Alt… uh, Johnny’s ex who got Soulkilled and turned into a rogue AI… was keeping his engram in cyberspace, beyond the Blackwall, and she figured out how to copy him back to his body,” she explains in a shaky voice, trying to ignore the incredulous look on Panam’s face. “And then we stole an escape pod from the ‘Saka station and Alt set it to crash in the Mojave. Which is where you found us.”
Panam lets out a low whistle. “So it worked?” she says, her brows still knitted together.
V looks at Johnny for a long beat, then shrugs helplessly. “I hope so,” she croaks. “Johnny’s body was… he was completely braindead when I pulled him outta cryo,” she tells them. “He flatlined. But the chip revived him, and it’s copyin’ him back as we speak… Alt said it would take around two weeks for him to wake up.”
Ambrosia shakes her head. “What chip are you talking about?”
V turns to her. “Y’know the Secure Your Soul program? Arasaka invented this new biochip that allows a digitized engram to copy itself to a new body, overwriting the host’s brain in the process. That’s what… that’s what Johnny’s engram was initially doing to me.” She swallows. “But I managed to get him out. And now that’s what’s happening here,” she finishes, gesturing at Johnny’s unconscious body. “To him. Alt said it was like… patching or updating, rather than a full rewrite like it was with me,” she explains, aware of how fuckin’ bonkers the whole thing sounds.
Maybe this would have been easier if she’d kept Panam more in the loop from the start. Anxiety grips her chest like an icy fist.
But Panam is nodding slowly, her brow still furrowed. Ambrosia, however, still looks skeptical.
“There’s no signs of brain activity,” she says quietly. “Are you… are you sure it’s working?”
V feels her heart start to pound as she stares Ambrosia down. “It has to be,” she insists, hearing her voice shake. “Do another scan.”
Ambrosia’s face softens, and V figures she must see the desperation in her eyes.
“Okay,” Ambrosia relents, sitting in the chair next to Johnny’s reclining body and pulling the biomonitor closer to her. She reaches around behind Johnny’s neck and plugs the jack into his neural port, and his body convulses slightly as the link connects. Ambrosia punches a few buttons, and the panel starts blinking as the readouts begin to appear.
Ambrosia shakes her head sadly. “V… I don’t see anything promising here,” she says in a low voice.
“Are you sure?” Panam asks Ambrosia, her dark eyes darting back and forth between the two women.
“Look for yourself,” Ambrosia says, wheeling her chair back and pointing at the readouts.
V takes a step forward, her legs still wobbling dangerously. “There has to be something,” she says, her voice coming out high and strained. She leans forward, her blood pounding in her ears. Nothing on the screen makes any sense to her anyway, but the squiggly lines appearing at the bottom of the monitor all look pretty low and steady. “Alt said it would work, the chip stabilized him when I found him, that means it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, it must be-”
The door to the truck swings open again with a loud bang, and this time Saul strides in, his piercing eyes casing the small room.
“Panam,” he says in a tight voice. “Go help Cassidy tear down the long range scanners.”
Panam’s face darkens. “You do not get to boss me around anymore,” she reminds him, her voice low and impatient.
Saul sighs wearily. “Please?” he says, his eyes flicking down to Johnny. “Have we decided on a plan of action for…?” he adds, gesturing at Johnny’s unconscious body.
Panam’s eyes flash. “We are deciding that now,” she tells him.
The door to the truck opens again, and a young man steps in. “Saul,” he says softly. “They’re asking for you outside.”
V can’t help but do a double take when she sees him. He looks exactly like Karis, right down to the small stature and impish grin. But his hair is long and dark and cut into a stylish shag that hangs just below his shoulders, and his skin is darkened from the sun. But his features are identical. He’s dressed like a nomad, but there’s something fashionable about his clothes that indicates he’s spent a decent amount of time in the city as well.
V blinks at him, and he catches her looking and shoots her a confused look.
Saul nods, seemingly unaware of V’s reaction to the stranger. “I’ll be right there, Trace,” he says evenly, then turns back to V. “Listen, I don’t care who this man is or isn’t,” he continues, gesturing at Johnny again. “But we need to hit the road before the sun comes up. And we don’t have the resources to spare on a comatose outsider with a poor prognosis,” he adds, glancing back up at V.
V tears her eyes away from Trace as Saul talks, feeling her lip curl and her hand clench into a fist. She takes a shaky step towards Saul.
“I’m sorry, but you don’t know what the fuck you’re-” she begins, but Panam’s hand on her arm stills her. “He’s not… I just…” she stammers, her voice faltering.
“Who is he?” Trace asks, gesturing with his chin towards Johnny. His dark curls fall across his face as he takes a tentative step towards the ripper chair.
“Johnny Silverhand,” Panam says softly. “The real one, I presume,” she adds, looking up at V.
Trace’s eyes widen with recognition as he stares down at Johnny, then back up at V. “Whoa,” he says in a low voice. “How is that possible?”
“Long story,” Panam replies before V can say anything.
Saul shakes his head. “He’s important to you, I see that,” he maintains, still watching V’s face. “But we need to make the best decisions for the clan, don’t we, Panam?”
Panam’s brows knit together. “Saul, could you and Trace please give us a moment?”
But Saul doesn’t leave, he just sighs heavily and crosses his arms. “We don’t have a moment,” he replies. “We intercepted a Raffen scout only a couple kilometers from camp, they’ll be here in a matter of hours. But go ahead, V. Make your case,” he says wearily, turning back to V.
V’s vision is darkening and the room is spinning, but she leans heavily against Mitch and squares off against Saul.
“Do you still not fucking get it?” she all but screams, suddenly feeling like she and Johnny are both weirdly on trial. “This is Johnny fucking Silverhand! The real one! With a working prototype of the new biochips Arasaka’s been perfecting in his fuckin’ head! The one that Arasaka would probably pay any amount of money to have returned to them right now!” Her eyes dart wildly between the nomads gathered around her. “Do you have any idea what it took for me to…” her voice breaks, and she falters momentarily. Her legs shake and start to give out, and Ambrosia quickly jumps aside and helps V lower herself into the chair, and she bends forward and clutches Johnny’s hand in hers, talking more to him now than to anyone else in the room. “You have no idea,” she continues, her voice hoarse and ragged. She’s sobbing now, and she feels suddenly pathetic, hunched over Johnny’s husk of a body, desperately clinging to his hand, begging for his life.
Everyone in the room is silent now, watching her sudden outburst without speaking.
“You love him?” Panam asks incredulously, and V is suddenly angry again.
“Of course I do, you fucking gonk,” she spits back. “Why the fuck else would I have catapulted myself to the literal fucking moon to try and get him back?”
Her voice quavers and catches in her throat, and the room starts to spin around her as the edges of her vision begin to stutter and darken. In the corner, she can see Judy’s face twist as if she’s been punched in the gut.
Mitch grips her arm tightly, all but holding her upright at this point as she sways in the chair, blinking back tears.
V looks down at Johnny again. He looks so vulnerable, so helpless, without his hair or his beard or his arm. His eyelids flutter ever so slightly, and V’s breath hitches in her throat.
“V, listen-” Saul begins, taking a step towards her and Johnny, but V shoots him a warning look, her eyes colliding with his like a pair of daggers. He visibly recoils, and V turns back to Johnny, placing her hand protectively on his chest.
She’s sobbing openly now, her face burning hot. “It can’t all have been for nothing,” she chokes.
“Sometimes we don’t get to decide these things,” Saul says gently. “If he’s not showing any signs of brain activity-”
“We don’t have to decide anything yet,” Panam cuts in evenly. “We can keep him on life support for now and see if V is right.”
“Panam, I-” V begins, but the edges of her vision darken again and the room starts to spin. Mitch catches her elbow, but it’s too late - everything is getting dim and the wall of static comes crashing down, and she collapses forward onto Johnny’s chest.
The next thing she knows, she’s flat on her back again. She opens her eyes to see she’s still in the truck, but when she tries to move she realizes she’s strapped down.
“What…” she mumbles weakly, struggling again to sit up.
That’s when she realizes that the truck is moving. She’s strapped to one of the fold-out cots against the back wall - Johnny is still lying motionless in the ripper chair with a strap buckled across his chest as well.
There’s another IV snaking out of her arm, and Ambrosia is perched beside her as the truck lurches and groans. There’s sunlight streaming in through the truck’s dingy windows, now. Dusty, gray morning light.
“V?” Ambrosia asks her worriedly.
“I’m okay, I just…” V stammers, but her vision is still doubled and she can’t seem to force her body to obey her commands. She swallows hard, fighting to stay conscious.
Ambrosia is already pulling out her personal link and connecting it to V’s neck, her eyes glowing blue as she checks V’s vitals.
“Strange…” she murmurs. “You’re not dehydrated anymore… but your white blood cell count is dangerously low. Your liver function is…” Ambrosia’s voice trails off as she bites her lip, her eyes darting nervously across the data scrolling before her optic implants.
“It’s the damage from the chip,” V chokes, still struggling not to pass out again as her vision flickers and the sickening motion of the truck churns her stomach. “My immune system’s attackin’ my nervous system,” she explains. “I need… I need immunosuppressants, fancy ones that you probably don’t got out here,” she rasps. “Lost ‘em all when the pod crashed. But-”
“I have corticosteroids,” Ambrosia cuts in, already catching up. “Not ideal, but it should stabilize you for now.” Without moving from V’s side, she reaches into a drawer in the console next to Johnny’s bed and pulls out an airhypo. “Hold still,” she commands, then plunges the needle into V’s thigh before V has time to react.
There must’ve been a stimulant in whatever was in the hypo, because V starts to feel herself coming back online almost immediately, and her vision clears as the room gradually stops spinning, replaced only by the jerking forward movement of the truck. She reaches forward and unbuckles the harness from her chest, still watching Ambrosia warily.
“You okay, kid?” Mitch’s voice comes from the other side of the partition that separates the back area of the truck, and he pokes his head around, holding the center column for balance.
“What happened?” V manages, hoisting herself into a sitting position. She already feels less shaky - the drugs are doing their work. “Shouldn’t you be out there with the rest of ‘em?”
“Panam told me to stay here and keep an eye on you,” he replies simply, leaning against the divider and flashing V a lopsided but not entirely convincing grin.
V shakes her head, still trying to get her bearings. Everything’s been happening so fucking fast.
“Hate that you had to move camp on account of me,” she mumbles. “Again.”
“Ain’t no thing,” Mitch assures her. “Scavs were bound to head our way, sooner or later.”
“Mm,” V says, unconvinced.
V checks her holo, but she’s still not getting any reception. Even her GPS is having trouble pinning down exactly where they are. They’re definitely in Northern Arizona, but that’s about as accurate a location as she can get.
“Where are we?” she asks Mitch. “Is there any way to make calls from out here?”
Mitch grins again. “We’re off the grid, baby! No phones, no Net. Nomad life!” he crows. “Who you need to call?”
V swallows, her throat still feeling dry and sticky. “Wanna call Kerry,” she says. “Let him know I’m alive.”
Mitch nods, his face more serious now. “Can’t help ya with holos, but I’ve got a radio phone you can use,” he says, reaching down to his belt and handing V a clunky, walky-talky like device.
“The fuck am I supposed to call Kerry with this?” V asks, turning it over in her hands.
Mitch shrugs. “If he doesn’t have a radio himself, ya probably can’t,” he says sympathetically. “But we’ll be crossing back into SoCal, so that should put us in range of NC’s service satellites soon,” he reassures her.
V just nods and hands him back the radio phone. “Who was that guy who came in here last night?” she asks him. “The one with Saul?”
“Trace?” Mitch asks, and V nods. “He’s Santiago’s kid. Yeah, the Santiago,” he adds, seeing the question on V’s face. “Came to live with us when he was a kid, then left the clan for a bit a while back to go be a media in the city, but he’s been back ridin’ with us for a few months now. Little odd, but he’s a good egg.”
Santiago’s kid. V suddenly remembers the dreams she’d have of riding through the desert as Johnny with Rogue and Santiago, and the obvious chemistry she’d witnessed between the two of ‘em. The wisps of those memories come tumbling back to her, and suddenly it’s all so obvious. Rogue and Santiago.
Karis and Trace.
“Does he have a brother?” V presses, and Mitch gives her an odd look.
“Not that I know of,” he says with a shrug. “Don’t mean he doesn’t, but he’s been with us since he was a kid and I never met any brothers.”
“Hmm,” V replies noncommittally.
Why didn’t Rogue tell her that Karis was a twin?
Why didn’t Karis tell her?
The resemblance is too uncanny to be a coincidence.
Mitch busies himself on his datapad as the day drags on into the interminable monotony of the drive, and V resigns herself to sitting sullenly on the fold-out cot, watching Johnny get jostled in the ripper chair as the truck crunches and rattles across the open desert.
Ambrosia offers her a protein bar and some instant synth coffee while Mitch falls asleep in his chair, his head lolling to the side as they bounce around.
They don’t stop until nightfall, and V is relieved when the truck finally grinds to a halt. But the commotion from that morning resumes almost immediately - suddenly, there are nomads folding open the walls of the truck to double the floorspace, unfurling the tarps that make up the extended roof of the makeshift clinic, plugging in the generator and connecting all the ripper equipment to it. V tries to help, but Mitch forcibly shooes her back to her cot where she pulls her knees to her chest and watches in silence while the nomads assemble the new camp with an almost awe-inspiring efficiency. Ambrosia changes out Johnny’s IV drip then retreats to her camper van to unpack her personal belongings, and V decides to spend the night in the truck with Johnny on the fold-out cot. It feels wrong to leave him alone here. She’s just settled back onto the creaky Murphy bed when Panam circles back to check on her, pausing to examine Johnny’s still form as she enters the truck.
“How’s the move in goin’?” V asks her, swinging her legs off the cot as Panam comes to sit beside her. Panam sighs heavily as she slumps against the wall next to V, covered in dust and clearly utterly exhausted.
“My cooler's full of dust, it was 80 degrees in the shade today, and there’s sandstorms heading straight for us,” Panam says dryly, and V laughs, startled to hear about the sudden shift in climate until she remembers that they've likely crossed out of the high desert and hit an early heat wave. “No but seriously... we're doing alright,” Panam continues. “Everything is already almost set up.”
“Getting good at quick moves,” V remarks, trying and failing to quash down the guilt she feels that she put them in this situation yet again. “How are things with Saul?” she asks instead, attempting to change the subject. “He cool with listenin’ to ya, or is he still a stubborn prick half the time?”
Panam chuckles, then shrugs. “We somehow get along, for better or for worse, but still... family's always growing... work's always pilin' up…” She looks down. “But, better to keep busy, right?”
“You hangin’ in there?” V presses, searching Panam’s face. Her friend seems tired, and her face is worn with circles under her eyes.
But Panam’s face splits into a slow smile. “Yeah,” she says sincerely. “Things are good out here. It’s nice being back with… with my family. And to think, if it wasn't for you, I'd still be stumbling my way through Night City…”
“I can’t take credit for that,” V protests.
Panam shakes her head. “I'd still be lost if you hadn't set me on the right track. So I just wanna say thank you. For all you've done for me.”
“You’ve more than made it up by now,” V reminds her. “If you hadn’t showed up when you did back there…”
Panam’s mouth hardens into a line. “It’s a good thing that we did, then.”
They stare silently for a beat at Johnny’s unconscious body.
“While we were driving earlier, guess who I heard on the radio?” Panam says suddenly.
“Kerry’s new track?” V guesses, but Panam shakes her head.
“No,” she says, and gestures at Johnny. “His old stuff. Black Dog, to be specific.” She bites her lip and continues to gaze at Johnny, as though he’s a puzzle she can’t quite solve. “It’s so strange to me that you… know him the way that you do,” she admits. “He seems like such a mystery. Can you tell me anything about him? What it was really like with him?”
V looks at Johnny for a long moment, struggling to find the words to answer Panam’s question. “Honestly?" she says. "Sometimes, it was torture. He's an egocentric, egomaniacal, sarcastic, spiteful, cynical, monumental dickhead." She smiles softly to herself. "Sure I forgot an insult or two in there," she adds, still gazing at him with a sad, affectionate look. "Still, after all the bickering and shit-talking, we somehow managed to find common ground. Not like we had a choice." She turns back to Panam. "He's like that devil that sits on your shoulder, except there's no angel on the other side calling him on his bullshit." She laughs again. "But… jokes aside, the gonk's got his flaws, but his life wasn't all roses and rainbows to begin with. At the end of the day, he can actually be a decent human being when he wants to be.”
“Could say the same thing about yourself, couldn't you?” Panam replies with a wry smile. “You have your flaws, life sucker-punched you in the gut, but you're still a decent person, wouldn't you say?”
V shrugs. “I try to be.”
Panam exhales slowly. “Going back to Johnny... I can tell he's not the kind of guy you can describe in one or two sentences.”
“Yeah,” V agrees. “It’s almost impossible to actually explain what it was like,” she says again, her voice coming out a low whisper now. “To have a complete stranger in my head, tryin’ to take the wheel… seein’ every single one of my memories, every single one of my secrets, all my bullshit, all of it… and I could see his…” Her voice catches in her throat, and she turns back to Panam, suddenly blinking back tears. “It’s by far the most fucked up and terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me,” she says in a small voice. “Thing is… how the fuck can you know someone like that and not start to care about them?” She swallows hard. “How the fuck can you see all of someone like that, and not… not…”
Panam silently wraps her arms around V, pulling her in for a long hug.
“We’ll keep Johnny on life support in camp until he wakes up and is in a condition to travel,” she says decisively. “Then we’ll assemble a small convoy to escort you both back to Night City.”
V shakes her head. "You don't need to do that," she protests. "We just need a car and some supplies."
"Nonsense," Panam scolds. "With the Raffen afoot and Arasaka likely looking for you, you won't be able to slip through the checkpoints. You'll need to use the old Aldecaldo tunnels to run the border. So you'll need cover."
"Ugh," V says, putting her face in her hands. She hasn't even allowed herself to think ahead to that part yet - keeping her and Johnny alive has been her only priority thus far, out of sheer necessity. But Panam's right - getting back into NC ain't gonna be a walk in the park this time. There won’t be any talking their way past the border guards, they’re both far too recognizable now.
"Mitch and the others have a bonfire going," Panam tells her softly, still keeping her hand on V’s back. "Wanna come outside and grab some food with us? Have a beer?"
V glances back at Johnny, biting her lip. Panam follows her gaze.
"He'll be alright," she assures V. "I'll tell Carol to keep an eye on him."
V nods slowly, then slips her feet back into the borrowed boots and pulls on the worn leather coat lying at the foot of the cot before following Panam out of the truck and down the grated metal stairs out into the dusty camp.
The last embers of twilight are dwindling on the horizon, and V can see a lone Joshua Tree silhouetted in the fading light. The nomads are still bustling around setting things up and working together to pitch the tents and unpack the trucks, but the general mood seems relaxed and jovial. V can hear the sounds of guitar and laughter drifting above the tents from the campfire, and the smoke curls up into the night as she follows Panam through the camp until they reach the makeshift circle of benches and ragged furniture already arrayed around the fire.
Aidan and Judy are sitting together on one of the couches, laughing together and drinking beers. They look up when Panam and V approach, and both of them grin as the two women join them on the couch.
Trace is there, too, sitting across the fire next to Saul with his arm draped around a shockingly pretty dark-haired woman who looks strangely familiar to V, though she can’t place where she’s seen her before. Cassidy and Bob are there too, and Bob is playing his acoustic guitar as usual. He flashes a smile at V but doesn’t break his strumming, and V recognizes the song he’s playing as a slowed down, acoustic version of PonPon Shit. She smiles in return as she pulls up her feet underneath her on the couch, leaning against Judy and putting her arm around her friend.
“Heard about something big happening in Night City,” Saul says from across the fire, his deep voice carrying over the music and chatter as everyone falls silent to look at him. “With a certain V in the lead role.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” V remarks, taking the skewer that Cassidy hands her. It’s not rabbit this time, but V can’t pin down what type of animal it is as she chews thoughtfully on the tough balls of meat on the wooden stick.
“Well, whatever ya did, ‘Saka’s in one helluva a tailspin,” Cassidy says as he offers her a beer.
V can’t help but gaze at the drink longingly for a second before she waves him away. “I’ll get myself some water,” she tells him, gesturing vaguely at the public water barrel positioned on the nearby galley truck.
“V... the craziest, baddest merc from Pacifica to the Appalachians,” Mitch adds approvingly, gnawing on his own skewer as he regards her.
V smiles in spite of herself, watching their faces in the flickering firelight as she eats.
“Don't know what you plan to do now, but just remember, we always take care of our own,” Saul says sincerely, his low voice once again cutting through the din. “And, um,” he says. “You're one of us now, V. You're an Aldecaldo. Remember that.”
Panam musta given him a real brow-beating, V thinks as she blinks at his sudden change in tune.
“As long as I’m here, that has to extend to Johnny, too,” V tells him, raising her eyes to meet his across the fire. It feels almost ungrateful, too bold to throw his hospitality in his face like that, but she can’t afford anything less from them. If she’s one of them like they say, then Johnny has to be treated the same way.
Saul nods slowly, but his face is hard. “Okay,” he says, his eyes flicking to Panam. “I’m trusting your judgment here, Panam.”
“And I trust V’s,” Panam says without missing a beat.
“We'd walk through hell and back with you anytime, sister,” Mitch adds.
V nods mutely, her eyes drifting back to Trace. He’s laughing at something the woman next to him just whispered in his ear, and she tosses back her black hair and laughs, too. Her purple cybernetic eyes catch the light from the fire, and her face changes slightly when her eyes meet V’s.
"You're Karis' brother," V says bluntly, and now Trace's face freezes mid-laugh as well.
"What about it?" Trace replies, recovering with an easy laugh that doesn't strike V as entirely genuine. "He a choom of yours?"
"He is," V says. "And so is your mom."
Mitch snorts at this, but V just rolls her eyes.
Trace is looking at her now with interest. "My mom, huh?” he replies, taking a drag of his cigarette and pulling his arm off his output to lean towards V, resting his elbows on his knees as he stares at her across the fire. She notices his right forearm is chrome - it looks like an older model, the kind medias use. “Was wonderin' how and why you rolled up in here with Silverhand's corpse.”
V raises her eyebrows. “What do you know about Johnny?”
Trace shrugs. “Not much, just know that he and my mom used to be… close,” he says carefully.
“The original rock star terrorist,” the woman next to him says, her face twisting into an approving smirk. “I’ve been a fan since before I could walk. I can’t believe he’s been alive this whole time.”
“He hasn’t been,” V corrects her. “Not really, anyway.”
The woman smiles slowly, and reaches to pluck the cigarette from Trace’s mouth and take a long drag. “You’re V, aren’t you? Read about you in the screamsheets. I’m Lilayah.”
And that’s when V places her. “You play synth deck in Firefly,” V says. “Saw you guys play about a decade ago when you toured through NC.” V remembers her band - a cybergrunge outfit from Seattle that got pretty big in the indie music scene when she was a teenager. Lilayah herself was one of the more visible personalities of the movement, as well known for her edgerunner antics as she was for her music.
A grin spreads across Lilayah’s face as she nods. “Yuh,” she replies, her eyes twinkling. “That’s my group.”
"Trace was the reason I wound up working for Rogue in the first place," Panam explains from beside V.
V turns to look at her, momentarily surprised to learn that Panam knew about Rogue’s kids before she did. She barks a laugh. “I didn’t even know Rogue had one son until recently, much less two.”
Panam shrugs. “Didn’t think to mention it,” she replies.
“Do you know Karis?” V asks her.
“I’ve never met him,” Panam says. “He sticks to the city. Only know what I’ve heard from Trace.”
“His real name is Alim,” Lilayah says, fluffing Trace’s hair playfully with her hand. “Trace is just his nomad nickname. And his media pen name.”
Trace flushes. “Wanted a new start, a clean break when I left the city and started riding with the clan. But yeah, I work in media. I’m tryin’ to speak truth to power,” he asserts. “Tell the stories that topple those corpo fucks straight outta their towers.” He eyes V with curiosity. “Bet you’ve got a ton of fascinating stuff you could tell me.”
“Bet I do,” V replies evenly. “But we gotta get to know each other first,” she adds.
“Carol says you’ve been beyond the Blackwall,” Trace counters.
“That’s his main beat,” Lilayah offers teasingly. “He’s sure there’s something out there, clawin’ to get out. To take over society. Ain’t that right, babe?”
Trace scowls and playfully takes back his cigarette. “It’s more than just a theory, babe,” he scoffs. “But I’m sure V already knows all about that. Don’t you, V?”
V tilts her head to the side. “Might be I do,” she replies.
Trace is looking at her with clear interest now. "We'll have to talk later, then," he says, taking another long pull from his cigarette before tossing it into the campfire. He shakes his head. "Of course Karis would hang with someone who's been beyond the Blackwall and only think to ask 'em where they get their glitter and synth-coke."
"I take it you guys don't get along," V says dryly.
Trace shrugs. "It's not that we don't get along," he says. "We're just… really different." He gazes at the fire for a beat. "Or maybe we're just too similar and can't admit it."
"Why'd you leave Night City?"
"Wanted to see more of the world. A different kind of life. Wanted to get to know my dad better." He glances at Lilayah. "My mom… she's fuckin' amazing, the strongest person I ever met… but it was tough growin' up in her shadow."
"Not that bein' Santiago's kid was any easier," Lilayah teases.
Trace laughs. "True," he says. "That's a name that carries a lot of weight out here." He sighs and reaches for his beer. "Rogue and Karis… I dunno. She raised him differently, I think. They always had a special sort of understanding. She was protective of him in a way I never completely understood."
"How'd she react? When you left?"
Trace smiles sadly. "Sometimes, I'm not sure she's ever forgiven me," he says softly. "But hey… there's way less restrictions on Net access out here. Much easier to dive deep. And what's happening in this country… not just NC, but the rest of this hellhole. Out here, this is where the stories are. Post-Collapse America. How people survived. And they've survived so much, now… the Collapse, the corpo wars, the Time of the Red…"
Saul nods solemnly. "I'll never forget that red sky for as long as I live. The colors of my childhood. All those firestorms, the constant falling debris from orbital weapon strikes… and the blood rain." He shudders.
"Yuh, the Time of the Red sounds almost biblical sometimes," Lilayah agrees. "A lot of big stuff went down and the world was changed even more than it had been by the Collapse."
"You a journalist too?" V asks her.
Lilayah laughs sharply. "Me? I see myself as a modern day Homer… you know, the Greek poet," she says, and this gets an eyebrow raise from V that Lilayah ignores as she continues. "He wrote about how his entire world was blown apart. Well, I do the same thing, only instead of using a harp, I got a synth deck."
"Fair enough," V says with a laugh.
"And I do edgerunner work, too," Lilayah adds. "Like that job we did last year for your mom movin' that cryo pod," she says, elbowing Trace in the ribs. "Never thought I'd live to see the day we'd be workin' a gig for Michiko fuckin' Arasaka, huh?"
V's full attention is on the two of them, now.
"You were on that job," she breathes. "Fuck. Did you… do you know what was in that pod?"
"Better we didn't," Lilayah says flippantly. "My theory is that it wasn't a cryo pod at all… it was a nuke disguised as a stasis chamber. Keeps the cores cold and stable and doesn't draw as much attention."
V shakes her head. "No, I… I think it was Johnny in there," she tells them. "Rogue and I pieced it together."
Trace's eyes widen, and he glances back in the direction of the medical truck. "No shit?!" he breathes. "Well, fuck. Now that woulda been a good story."
Ambrosia laughs from across the fire. "Not everything is fodder for your stories, Trace," she scolds. "V's been through a lot. Treat her like family instead of like a subject, why don'tcha?"
V looks at her, startled that this woman who's still basically a stranger is jumping so readily to her defense.
"It's okay," V assures them. She can't tell if it's because Trace shares the face of someone she's come to trust, or if it's because his mannerisms and stubborn yet high-minded rhetoric sound so much like his mom when she was young, but she feels an instant sense of fondness towards him. V's throat tightens at the memories of that young Rogue… they're not her memories, after all. They're not as vivid as they once were, but she can still see the freckles on Rogue's youthful cheeks, can hear her throaty laugh, can smell that specific perfume she always wore back then. The fact that these shreds still cling to her mind means they must have been seared into Johnny's. She swallows hard, studying Trace's face, remembering the tight clench of jealousy Johnny'd felt at seeing Rogue with Santiago. And now here before her is the living, breathing result of that. One of two.
Trace laughs and lifts his beer to his mouth. "Alright, alright, we'll resume the interrogation later," he promises V with a wink, and V smiles at him in response.
It was much harder to connect Karis to this, she realizes. His blonde hair and metropolitan elven style, his accent, the fact that she never knew who his father was had all made him feel more removed from Johnny and the Rogue that he'd known during his life. But now, being confronted with Trace - who seems so at ease out here in the wastes, who carries himself with the same swagger and easy confidence of his father, despite his lean, slight stature like his brother's - it’s much harder to ignore just how much their existence is tied to Johnny’s life.
Trace is magnetic in the way that Karis is, too, and V can see the way the other nomads at the campfire gravitate towards him, how they pause their conversations to listen whenever he opens his mouth.
Given who his parents are, it's not surprising.
Lilayah is watching V carefully, and V wonders what the rockergirl has pieced together about her thus far. V meets her eyes and flashes her a sharp grin, one that Lilayah returns a perfect reflection of.
V can't tell if they're going to be friends or not, but she decides that she likes Lilayah.
Ambrosia has taken the acoustic guitar from Bob and starts strumming a new melody. It's a haunting, almost Celtic sounding tune, and it casts a strange sort of somber serenity over the small gathering. They all stare into the fire for the duration of the song, each lost in their own individual miseries.
V studies Ambrosia as she plays, and the thought occurs to her that she reminds her a little bit of Misty. She seems to treat every moment as though it were mystical somehow, and that very act of care makes them such. It's a strange way of creating magic that few people V's encountered are capable of.
Jackie was like that.
V shakes herself out of her dark contemplations as Ambrosia finishes the song and launches into an acoustic rendition of Bloodbathed Stars.
Hearing Kerry's song in this context is suddenly too much. V remembers being a young teenager, listening to this song alone in her room while her mom drank herself to death in the kitchen. She remembers blasting it on her motorcycle as she danced it across the city, how the melodies became embedded in the streets and on the bridges and in the inky shapes of the palm trees silhouetted against the pastel smog.
And she remembers listening to it with Johnny, feeling all the things he was feeling and knowing that he was letting her. How they hadn't pulled away from each other that night.
And she remembers Kerry. The man who wrote it and sang it, a man she's grown to know and love. A man who's probably sitting alone in his robe in the house he bought her right now, holding her cat and wondering whether she's dead or alive.
Her stomach twists, and she bends forward to press her forehead into her hands.
"V, you okay?" Panam whispers in her ear.
V nods, swallowing hard. "Yeah, I… it's just that I… I wish there was a way I could get in touch with Kerry. He's probably losin’ his mind right now," she says shakily.
"We can try my satellite phone tomorrow," Panam suggests. "And if it doesn't work, we're only a few hours beyond the range of NC's comms relays. We'll keep the camp here until Johnny's awake and good to go, but if you wanted to go for a drive, we could get you in range and you could call your man."
V frowns. "Someone could track us," she reminds Panam. "NetWatch, Arasaka, Night Corp, god knows who else could trace it and come after us."
"All the better to do it far away from camp, then," Panam answers without missing a beat.
V nods, silently grateful for Panam’s unwavering willingness to help her. “Thanks,” she whispers.
“He’s lucky to have you,” Panam says sincerely, then leans back and yawns, stretching dramatically. “Well, I’m just about ready to hit the dirt. Will you be okay?”
V nods. “Yeah, take it easy, Panam. And… thanks again. For savin’ my ass back there.”
“Any time, V,” Panam replies with a grin.
She stands and stretches again, then downs the rest of her beer in one gulp, sets the bottle down, and strides off towards her tent, leaving V alone on the sofa with Judy and Aidan.
V pauses, suddenly unsure of what to say to them.
But Judy and Aidan are gazing up at the sky, and V realizes she can see the Crystal Palace glowing brightly beside the moon like a tiny, bright diamond against the field of stars.
"Y'know... you could mistake it for Venus," Judy murmurs.
"I can't believe I was just up there," V agrees, and remembers with a sudden jolt the deal Aiko tried to cut with her over Judy's tech. She knows she’ll have to tell Judy about that eventually. Even if it’s just to warn her to watch her ass.
Aidan turns to her, her big blue eyes wide. “What was it like?” she signs. “In space?”
V shrugs, then looks back up at the sky. It’s still hard to wrap her mind around the fact that she was free-floating around up there only a few days ago.
“It was… big,” she says finally. “And cold.”
Aidan nods thoughtfully, then signs with a laugh that she’s going to grab another beer.
“Get me one too,” Judy says, and Aidan just grins in response and heaves her small body off the sunken sofa and scampers off towards the galley truck.
V watches Judy watch her leave, and can’t help but wonder if the two of ‘em have formed a connection beyond just friendship. It would make sense, she thinks. Both of ‘em recently left the big city life to start over with the Aldecaldos.
“Lemme guess… you still the top of your game in all of Night City?” Judy says suddenly, turning back to V with a soft smile on her face.
V shrugs. "Rogue's been trainin’ me to be a fixer, take over operations at the Afterlife. And I'm recording some music with Kerry. Feels like… my last chance to really leave a mark, you know?"
Judy nods slowly, her smile falling into a strange little frown. “Yeah," she says quietly. "I left all that.”
V laughs darkly. "Y'know... this year they voted Night City the worst place to live in America. And it's all true,” she adds. “But… everybody still wants to live there."
"Mhm,” Judy agrees. “When it came down to it, turned out I didn't have much to pack at all." Her face is still twisted into a frown, and she scowls furiously at the fire.
"Everything all right?" V asks.
Judy shakes her head. "Just here, now, hearin' you talk about all that… think I realized I never felt right in Night City. Used to think there'd come a day when I'd finally call it home. Thought... any moment now, I'll feel safe, even comfy."
"And you never did?"
"Mhm," Judy says, staring out at the dark horizon. "Used to think I actually liked being one atom among many. Anonymous. And safe. But I'd just look at the city and feel..."
"Like a lost atom?"
Judy huffs a sad laugh. "Sometimes. But mostly... I just felt alone."
V knows she’s likely partially responsible for those feelings. "I wish things could have been different," she tells Judy sincerely. "Between us."
"Mhm..." Judy replies. "Me too. But honestly, it all seems so far away, so innocent from here. Strange feelin' I'm havin'. As if I was... a fugitive, almost."
"You'll find your place, where you really belong, now," V reassures her.
"Only say that because you've already found it," Judy says with a slight scowl, her eyes darting towards V. "Look at yourself... queen of the Afterlife. A legend. Now... I want to find out who I am. Find my truth. I mean, you know... ugh, it's so fuckin' hard to say, 'specially to you."
V shakes her head. "I say it because I know you will, too."
"So why the hell do I feel like I’m running away?"
"You're not running," V insists. "You're getting a new beginning. It's a whole 'nother stage of life."
"Hm," Judy huffs again. "Interesting to hear you say that." She picks at her nails, then looks back up at V. "Y'know, I used to mark time in stages. One juncture to the next. There was the megabuilding hole-in-the-wall phase, and then the group home phase, the gang, the Mox phase... Each and every time, I thought I'd found a home. And every damn time, I came away disappointed."
V considers this. "What would you call this phase?"
Judy shrugs again. "No fuckin’ idea,” she says. “I just… I had to get outta there. Ditch Night City. Find somethin' better, somethin' more solid. You understand?"
"Yeah,” replies softly. “I do. I understand, I really do. Things'll be different for you, now. You'll see."
Judy nods, looking somewhat unconvinced. “I wanted to leave for a while,” she says with a sigh. “But it always pulled me back in. Like it had another sweet, sweet promise just for me."
"Yeah," V agrees. “Know what you mean. But we hold the cards, now."
"What about you?" Judy asks. “Think you’ll ever leave?”
"Me?” V says. “Leaving Night City would feel… like a betrayal,” she answers honestly. “Like I'd be betraying the city itself, and somehow the city would know. And stand in judgment.”
Judy laughs darkly. “Heh,” she agrees. “Know the feelin’.” She looks at V thoughtfully for a long moment. "I think leavin' was the best decision I ever made,” she says finally. “The weight it takes off your shoulders... I- I can't even describe it. I realized Night City only gives you two choices… you either become an asshole, or eventually you get offed by one.” She looks up at V, her dark eyes reflecting the flickering fire. “I hope… you somehow find an alternative,” she says softly.
"I'm glad you're here," V says sincerely.
“What’s your plan?” Judy asks her.
V bites her lip. “Wait for Johnny to wake up, then… head back to the city, I guess,” she says.
Judy nods at this, then looks back down at her hands. “That time we, uh… went divin’...” she says quietly.
V studies her face in the firelight. “Yeah,” she replies in a low voice. “What about it?”
Judy continues to study her fingers. “For a while, I couldn’t bring myself to look at the scrolls we recorded. Was all still too raw. But when I… when I started really editing ‘em later, I could…” She falters briefly, her throat bobbing. “I could see him,” she finishes, finally looking up to meet V’s eyes.
V feels her heart start to pound harder in her chest. “Johnny?” she breathes, and Judy nods.
“Yeah,” she replies. “When we were on the docks… I could fuckin’ see him, like he was really there. And then, later… when we were…”
V swallows hard. “You could actually see him?”
Judy nods again. “The scroll was recordin’ all your sensory perceptions,” she explains. “So since you could see ‘im and hear him… it’s all there.”
V figures she shouldn’t be quite so gobsmacked by this revelation, but for some reason she is. It hadn’t even occurred to her that scrolling a braindance with Johnny in her head would register her perceptions of him, record him as real and solid as he’d felt to her at the time.
And something about that realization feels like a huge weight’s been lifted off her shoulders that she hadn’t even realized she was carrying. It was real… he was real. It was all real.
She can see Aidan hovering by the beer keg chatting with Cassidy, and the little merc meets V’s eyes and waves. It seems like she’s intentionally giving her and Judy space to talk, and V is grateful for that.
Judy watches V’s face closely, then takes a shaky breath and continues. “I could feel everything you were feeling, too,” she adds quietly. “‘Bout me, about him, about all of it.”
“Shit, Judy,” V breathes. “That musta been… a lot.”
Judy nods. “No I… yeah, I mean…” She sighs and shakes her head. “What I’m tryin’ to say is… it made me realize how real he was. How real he was to you. And how you felt about ‘im.”
V nods mutely, unable to find words. But Judy is still looking up at her with a strange look on her face.
“That’s not all, though,” she says softly. “The scroll was also recording Johnny’s feelings, his perceptions, too. I didn’t realize at the time that was how it was gonna work.” She laughs darkly. “Guess no one’s ever tested this kinda tech on an engram embedded in someone’s brain before. But… when I separated out the tracks and started parsin’ them… there were two tracks embedded in your scroll. And when I cleaned up the data and separated his…”
V realizes she’s been holding her breath, and lets it out through her teeth in a shaky sigh. “Fuck, Judy,” she manages.
Judy shakes her head. “That man is… a fuckin’ tangle of bullshit if I’ve ever seen one,” she says with a shaky laugh. “And I’ve edited scrolls from all kinds of fucked up gonks.”
V huffs a harsh laugh. “Tell me about it,” she replies. “Uh… sorry you had to see all that,” she adds.
“Don’t be,” Judy protests. “It helped me understand… what you were goin’ through.” She blows her hair out of her face. “Still can hardly wrap my head around it. Can’t imagine havin’ to live with that for months.”
“Well, now you probably understand better’n most,” V tells her.
Judy chews her lip and nods, looking back up at V. “It was… it was crazy,” she says. “Feelin’ the way he was watchin’ us, the way he was watchin’ you. It was like he half wanted to consume you, devour you or somethin’, but the other half of him wanted to just… disappear. Vanish. Bury himself in a hole, and never come out again.”
V nods slowly, feeling her heart drop as she looks out at the fire. “Yeah,” she agrees softly. “It was… complicated as fuck, to say the least.”
“Can’t believe you managed to bring him back,” Judy adds. “Whaddaya think it’s gonna be like now? Havin’ him be actually real?”
“I… I don’t know,” V answers honestly. “Not even sure he’ll be… all there when he wakes up,” she admits in a small voice. It’s a fear she’s hardly dared to say aloud, and voicing it now to Judy makes the despair well up in her chest. “I hope… I hope he’s the person he was, the person I knew.”
Judy puts a hand on her knee and squeezes it softly. “You’ll figure it out,” she assures her.
But V also knows she has another important thing to tell Judy. “Listen, Jude,” she says, taking a deep breath and turning back to her friend. “Speakin’ of your tech… those doll chips you made…”
Judy scowls. “Already told ya I melted ‘em all down. What about ‘em?”
V sighs heavily. “When I was tryin’ to get myself up to the Crystal Palace, I got some help. From Aiko Sanderson. Michiko Arasaka’s daughter. And it… it turned out her help came with a price. She fuckin’ blindsided me with it once I was already up there. And she wanted…”
“My chips,” Judy cuts in, her face darkening. “You told her about ‘em?!”
V shakes her head vehemently. “‘Course not!” she says quickly. “But Goro…” She stops herself, suddenly remembering that Judy doesn’t know shit about Goro or any of this mess. “Let’s just say Arasaka was watching me more closely than I realized these last few months,” she finishes darkly.
But Judy’s face is a mask of rage right now. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her that you’d tell her to take her money and shove it up her rich cunt,” V replies, and this gets a tight, approving nod from Judy. “But I don’t think she’s gonna give up that easily. Think she’s gonna try to contact Roxanne and Tom. So I wanted to give you a warning, a heads up.”
“Fuck, V,” Judy breathes, balling her small hand into a fist. “God fucking damn it. Thought I’d managed to run away from all that shit, leave it behind for good.”
“You did,” V reassures her. “Doubt she’s gonna be able to find you out here. Think you’re safe as long as you stick with this lot,” she says, gesturing around at the nomads surrounding them. “We’re off the grid, outta NC. They’ve got no way of knowin’ you’re here. Just lay low, and you’ll be fine. Just gotta stay on Panam's good side,” she adds, attempting to lighten the mood with some humor.
Judy lets out a dark laugh. "Yeah, Carol said a thing or two, warned me." She heaves a heavy sigh. “I sure fuckin’ hope you’re right, V.”
"Don't worry. I’m sure you and Panam will get along great," V says. “You’re two of the most stubborn gonks I’ve ever met.”
"Already do," Judy laughs. “But fuck… ugh. Hope Tom and Roxie can handle their shit against ‘Saka. Feel so bad abandoning them.”
“They’re adults,” V reassures her. “They can look out for themselves, can make their own decisions.”
Judy puts her head in her hands. “But can they? Can any of us? If we don’t look out for each other, what do we have left?”
V puts a hand on her back. “I’ll look out for ‘em,” she tells Judy. “I promise. I’ll check in on ‘em soon as I’m back in the city.”
Judy lifts her head and looks at V pleadingly. “Thanks,” she whispers. “For everything.” She puts her head back in her hands. “Fuck… wasn't until I'd left everything behind that I realized how depressed I was for all that time.”
“You’re free now,” V reminds her. “Free to live the rest of your life on your own terms. As long as you like eatin’ roasted squirrel,” she adds with a laugh.
“Alright, alright, easy there, V,” Mitch says, coming up behind them with Aidan in tow and three beers in their hands, one of which he hands one to Judy. “I’ll have ya know, I make amazing squirrel stroganoff.”
Aidan wrinkles her nose. “He most certainly does not,” she signs from behind Mitch’s back, and Judy laughs.
V smiles at them, then gets to her feet. “I’m gonna try to get some sleep,” she tells them.
“You do that,” Mitch agrees. “I’ll have some steaming squirrel stew for ya waitin’ in the morning.”
“Wow, something to look forward to,” V jokes back.
"Take it easy, girl," Judy says from the couch, giving her a sad half smile.
V leans down to hug her, then Aidan, and then Mitch, then waves goodnight to Trace and Lilayah and the rest and heads back for the medical truck, still determined to sleep there.
As she shuts the door behind her, muting the sounds of the camp and the crickets, she lets out a slow breath at the sight of Johnny still lying motionless on the ripper chair. Ambrosia is perched next to him, and she realizes suddenly that there’s a feeding tube threaded down Johnny’s nose, now.
That means the nomads have agreed to keep him alive for now, she realizes with a rush of relief.
“Hey,” she says softly, coming to stand beside Ambrosia.
“Hey,” the ripper replies, turning to look up at V. “Feelin’ better?”
V nods. “A little bit, yeah. Think the meds you gave me helped.”
“Good,” Ambrosia says with a sharp nod. “Hopefully that’ll tide you over till you’re back in the city and can get the real stuff,” she adds.
V swallows down the lump that forms in her throat at the woman’s concern. “Thanks,” she manages. “For helpin’ us.”
“It’s my job,” Ambrosia replies with a shrug. “I like helping people, always have. Think that’s why I decided to go into medicine.” She laughs. “Was either that, or settle for bein’ the camp psychic, and lemme tell ya… this is way more lucrative. And more useful.”
“Do you read tarot?” V asks her, and Ambrosia’s face breaks into a grin.
“Do I read tarot?” she repeats with a laugh. “Been readin’ cards since before I could clean an engine! Want me to pull some for ya later?”
“I’d love that,” V tells her, then gestures back at Johnny. “Any changes?” she asks hopefully.
Ambrosia shakes her head, the smile falling off her face. “Not so far, no,” she says apologetically. “But let’s do another scan.”
She reaches behind Johnny’s head and plugs in the link again, and her eyes glow blue as the readouts start appearing on the monitor above them. V figures she’s probably analyzing the data, comparing it with the earlier scans.
“Still nothing,” Ambrosia says softly.
V feels her stomach sink as she looks at the wiggling lines on the monitor. She still can’t make heads or tails of it, but Johnny’s brain waves do look undeniably flat to her untrained eyes. She frowns at the lines, trying not to let the crushing fear and disappointment overwhelm her.
Ambrosia is staring up at her in worried silence, but her eyes flick back to Johnny’s biomonitor readout. “Wait,” she says suddenly, and swivels in her chair to hunch over the monitor, zooming in on part of the graph. She exhales slowly through her teeth, squinting at the display. “Wait, hold on, I… whoa, okay, I think you’re right.” Her big eyes widen, and she looks back up at V.
“What?!” V says. “What is it?”
Ambrosia points again to the moving graphs. “There,” she says softly. “It’s not a lot, but those little spikes… they’re getting slowly bigger. It’s like… I dunno, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
V moves closer to look over her shoulder, using the edge of the ripper chair to steady herself as she peers down at the monitor. She can’t say that she can see what Ambrosia is talkin’ about, but the look on the nomad’s face says enough. “Told ya,” V whispers.
“I’ll check him again in the morning,” Ambrosia promises, her eyes shining as she stares down at him. “Fuck,” she breathes. “Johnny Silverhand… alive and well.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” V chokes, still not fully daring to hope. “He’s still gotta wake up first.”
Ambrosia nods. “I can’t say for sure yet whether or how much brain damage he’s sustained,” she tells V. “But I’ll do whatever I can for him.”
“Thanks, Ambrosia,” V says earnestly. “It’s… it’s okay if I sleep here, right?”
Ambrosia gives her a soft smile. “‘Course you can,” she says. “I’ll leave the cot folded down and you can stay here as long as you need to.”
V notices then that Ambrosia still has her acoustic guitar leaning against the chair beside her, and she eyes it with a sudden idea.
"Can I... uh... borrow that for the night?" she asks Ambrosia, and the nomad looks up at her in momentary confusion.
"My guitar?" she asks, and V nods.
"Yeah I... I wanna try playin' it for him," she admits. "Sounds gonk, but I've heard that doin' stuff like that for people in comas..."
Ambrosia nods, catching her idea. "Yes," she says. "That's a nice idea. I'll leave it here for you."
After swapping out Johnny’s IV bags again, Ambrosia goes back to her van, and V settles on the cot and pulls the acoustic guitar onto her lap. The truck is dark now except for the blinking of the monitors connected to Johnny, and the whole scene is somewhat eerie and unsettling. But V still can’t shake the feeling of wonder she gets when she looks at Johnny lying there, in the flesh, real to everyone now and not just to her.
Who will he be when he wakes up?
In some ways, she muses, havin’ him in her head felt almost… safe. Like he was hers and hers alone. It’s hard for her to imagine Johnny as a fully autonomous person, someone separate from her, able to move through the world as he pleases, to interact with other people, to exist apart from her.
Able to leave.
She watches him in the dark, her thoughts settling around her darkest doubts and deepest fears.
With a heavy sigh, she positions her fingers over the frets of the acoustic guitar and starts strumming out the opening chords of Never Fade Away, singing along in a low, soft voice. She doesn't know what she expects to happen, but as she reaches the bridge of the song, there's still no response from Johnny, because of course there's not, and the whole idea starts to feel suddenly fuckin' gonk as fuck. This ain't a fuckin' movie - she's not gonna be able to play guitar and wake him up like some goddamn romantic drama.
She breaks off the song with a frustrated clang and sets the guitar aside and lowers herself onto the cot, lying on her side so she's facing Johnny in the dark trailer.
“We’re gonna make it,” she whispers to him in the quiet room. “I promise.”
And then suddenly, in the dim glow of the monitors, she sees his hand move.
She sits bolt upright in bed, throwing off her blankets and rushing to go stand over him.
“Johnny?” she breathes, reaching for his hand. His fingers curl around hers and his eyelids flutter but don’t open.
And then he opens his mouth and lets out a low sigh.
“Johnny?” V repeats, reaching out her other hand to touch his face.
“Alt?” he mumbles, his voice coming out rough and low like a rake being dragged across gravel. He sounds confused, uncertain.
But V’s entire body alights at the sound, and she realizes suddenly it’s the first time she’s ever actually heard him speak.
It occurs to her then that he probably still thinks he’s in cyberspace.
"It's me," she whispers. "It's V."
Johnny doesn’t reply. He swallows hard and tips his head to the side, releasing her hand and taking a deep, ragged breath, but he still doesn’t open his eyes.
"V," he repeats flatly, without a hint of recognition in his voice. "Like the letter?"
And the world around V comes screeching to a halt. She withdraws her hand from his face like it’s a live wire and takes a step back from his chair, blinking back the hot tears that she can already feel tumbling down her cheeks.
Fuck.
Fucking fuck.
Notes:
Lol sorry not sorry for the massive cliffhanger
Omg also I was in such a rush to post this that I totally spaced on the OC credits so here you go:
Trace is a combination of the TTRPG character and my friend Ellen's OC.
Ambrosia is a creation of emofthechoir, and you can read her story in this excellent fic!
And Aidan, as always, belongs to heartofsnark, and you can read about all her wretched adventures here!
Chapter 60: Endless Conflict
Summary:
Johnny struggles to remember what happened to him.
Notes:
Apologies once again for the long wait between chapters!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
All of Johnny's nerves are on fire, and he can't move.
He's not in cyberspace anymore… or at least, he doesn't think he is.
It's black and cold, and he feels trapped.
Like somewhere he was before…
He remembers an endless, grey void, an infinite vibrating nothingness where time slowed and stretched and held his disembodied thoughts captive.
But this isn't that, either.
Time feels real, now, and his thoughts are moving and rolling and crashing against each other. But his senses have all gone dark, and he feels no connection at all to his own physical body, no control over it. It's a strangely familiar sensation somehow, though he's not sure why that would be.
He remembers the Pistis Sophia.
He remembers being there with Alt.
Although… that's not right, is it?
He never actually brought Alt to the Pistis Sophia.
And yet, he remembers her hovering over him in that small dirty room like an avenging angel, her red wings spread and her mind enveloping his, holding his thoughts in place like a pinned down butterfly.
That was cyberspace.
The vibrating grey void was somewhere similar, but different.
This… this is neither of those.
His mind feels dormant, dead, like an empty venue before a concert with the lights turned off.
And yet, it’s not a state of stasis. He can feel himself expanding, mapping his consciousness and memories to whatever new form he's taking. The feeling of slowly coming back online to a body that feels old and new at once isn’t an entirely unfamiliar sensation, but this new form welcomes him, unlike…
Unlike what?
Unlike who?
Wherever he is now, it feels… different. Here, he isn't a foreign invader, he's just a soldier coming home.
A soldier. He was a soldier.
And that's when he remembers his name.
He tries to reach out, tries to break through, tries to remember all the missing pieces but there are gaping holes in his mind - large swaths of inert, dark sections with slow flickers of threads being woven between them, sudden bursts of awareness as new parts of him come thrashing back to life.
But it's going too slow, much too slow, and he still can't move or see or speak.
He can't tell how much time passes, and he drifts in and out of a kind of hazy half consciousness, assessing the new details that emerge about himself with a dull sense of detachment each time he regains enough awareness to do so.
He played guitar in a band.
He was famous.
He… died when he was 34.
Almost everything after that is garbled static.
But why was he in cyberspace?
How was Alt there?
And there are other memories too, memories that somehow don't feel like his own. Vague flashes of faces of people he's sure he’s never met, apartments he's never lived in, a body that was never his.
Or was it?
He can't remember.
And buried still deeper under that, there are strange flashes of yet another life, a different childhood. A little boy in rural Japan. A soldier fighting in a different war, losing his left arm and…
Wait. That one is his.
Or is it?
He remembers a woman with a teal mohawk and a permanent scowl that melted when she looked at him. He remembers a freckled man with a dark mullet who almost always looked like he was about to cry.
He thinks he knows them.
He thinks that maybe he loved them.
And he remembers Alt.
He remembers her with yellow hair and green eyes, and he remembers her with burning red eyes and hair that moved in tendrils like a siren calling him to his death.
He knows that he loved her.
And suddenly, like being plunged face-first into an ice bath, something in his brain reconnects and he can feel his body.
And it's cold. All he's aware of is burning, biting cold.
But gradually he becomes cognizant of other sensations, of a pair of arms lifting him and jostling him around, of water being forced down his throat. He can't move, can't open his eyes, can't hear.
He's so cold.
He wonders if he's dying.
The infinite silence becomes a dull roar, drowning out his thoughts.
And time passes.
He remembers his mother. And then his father, too. He remembers the Collapse, the looting, the fires, the farmhouse in flames. He remembers living with his aunt, remembers signing up for the war and getting handed his gun and packed into a panzer.
He remembers Sam.
And he remembers the screaming. All the different kinds of sounds humans make when they die. He remembers his own screams, remembers his own flesh being rent, remembers the pain and the terror and the mangled stump of his ruined shoulder.
And he remembers the way that Sam screamed.
The screaming doesn't stop.
He remembers sitting alone on the beach in Pacifica, howling with grief over someone he never met, clutching at the sand and trying to will her back into existence.
She hovers at the edges of his memory, like a song he can't place, like a body he's never touched, but one he's occupied with his very soul.
He remembers her face in the mirror, remembers those piercing white eyes staring back at him. At herself.
Who is she?
And then the screaming turns into a loud roar, and the loud roar crashes into a blinding, excruciating pain in his head as a sudden impact shatters his thoughts and everything goes white.
He doesn't remember anything for a while after that.
Eventually, he becomes aware of the humming of a generator, of a low, slow beeping that cuts into his ears like a knife.
And the roar in his head turns into voices. Human voices, close to him.
His brain can't seem to wrap itself around the words, and he drifts in and out of consciousness as the voices overlap and flow around him, interspersed with shouts.
And then it's quiet, and he hears a guitar playing a painfully familiar melody, and a voice singing low and soft. A voice that he’s sure he recognizes from somewhere.
He reaches towards it instinctively, and feels a set of fingers close around his own.
He tries to talk, but there's something in his nose that hurts when he tries to swallow or move. His eyes feel like glue, and he tries and fails to open them.
"Johnny?" the voice says again.
It's so strangely familiar, that voice, in a way that makes his heart ache. Who is it?
"Alt?" he croaks.
He feels a hand on his cheek.
"It's me," the voice says. "It's V."
"V," he repeats dumbly, his voice rasping out with considerable effort. "Like the letter?"
He feels like he’s missing something. Something really important.
There's only silence in response, and he tries to twist his head, feeling the tube tug uncomfortably at his throat.
“Who are you?” he manages. There's no response, and so after a beat, he opens his mouth again. “I know you.”
"Yeah," comes the reply, and Johnny is surprised to hear that it now sounds choked with emotion. "You do."
Fuck, he thinks.
"Where am I?" he mumbles.
"In the desert," she replies softly. "We’re with the Aldecaldos."
The Aldecaldos. The nomads. Yes, he was with them before, after he…
"Santiago," he gasps. And then, "Rogue?"
"They're not here," the strange yet familiar voice tells him. But there's something hesitant about her tone that makes Johnny suddenly sure she's not tellin' him something.
"Why am I…" he starts to ask, but it's at that moment that he realizes the sensations he's feeling in his left arm are only phantom sensations - there's nothing actually there.
And that's when he finally opens his eyes.
It's too bright and too dark at the same time, and the colors for everything seem all fuckin’ wrong, and it takes him a moment to make sense of his surroundings. Every color seems inverted - black is purple and white is green and everything in between is scrambled the fuck up.
What the fuck happened to him?
Maybe he is still in cyberspace.
But why the fuck was he in cyberspace?
Was any of that even real?
Is any of this even real?
What year is it?
His heart starts to race in his chest, and he feels the blood rushing in his ears, feels his skin start to prickle with sweat. He reaches to rip the IV out of his arm, but then remembers he doesn’t have a left arm to do that with, and that’s when he really starts to panic. He lifts his right arm to his mouth and rips the IV out with his teeth, then grips the tube in his nose and yanks it out, leaning forward and gagging and retching as it falls into his lap with a wet splat.
He leans over the edge of the chair he’s in, coughing and heaving, then collapses backwards again and wipes his mouth with his remaining hand. His throat burns.
And as his hand touches his jaw, he feels only rough stubble where his beard used to be. He runs his hand higher, and freezes as his fingers reach his similarly bare scalp.
What the fuck happened to him?!
He’s still processing this when his eyes finally fall to the woman standing above him, at the foot of the ripper chair he’s sprawled supine in.
It's almost like looking through the heat map sensors he remembers from the army, but the colors are mapped all wrong, so it's hard to even make sense of her features. But as he studies her, he's again struck with the feeling that he's absolutely sure he knows her, that he's seen her face swimming in the hazy half-memories that flee his mind like wisps when he tries to catch them.
She's tall and wiry, with long legs and… and a great rack, he can't help but notice as he drags his eyes up to her face, to her large, bony freckled nose. Her full lips are pulled into a pained grimace in her small, sunburned face, and she’s eyeing him warily now as he squints at her. Her hair is chopped into some sorta weird, messy mullet that looks different than… different than what?
Different than he remembers her?
Looking at her face gives him a strange sensation of vertigo, almost like… he's looking in a mirror. But that can't be right, because some part of him is also oddly certain he's never met this woman before, never seen her in the flesh.
She swallows and looks down, wiping her cheeks furiously with her fist, then lifts her eyes back up to his face.
Why is she crying?
He feels something sharp in his chest.
"So what do you remember?" she asks him in a small voice.
Johnny holds her gaze, searching within his addled brain to see whether he’s even capable of answering her question, even to himself.
"I was…" he begins. "Rogue and I were…"
He trails off, suddenly remembering just what it was that he and Rogue had been doing.
They raided Arasaka Tower. He was gonna set Alt free.
He thinks again of his ex-output in cyberspace, her hair fanning out in those strange, otherworldly tendrils.
Did it work?
“What… happened?” he asks, his eyes darting around the room. They’re in some kinda medical truck, he realizes. Which he supposes makes sense, if they’re with the Aldecaldos.
V laughs, but it’s a choked, bleak sound.
“You died,” she tells him. “So did I.” Her mouth stretches into a sad little smile. “So then I went and got you back.”
He blinks back at her.
“I died,” he repeats. It sounds right, but wrong at the same time. After all, he’s not dead, he’s lyin’ here right now, on this ripper chair, in this nomad truck, in the middle of fuck-knows-where, talking to whoever the fuck this chick is. He remembers… he remembers an explosion, and searing pain, and Adam Smasher…
He feels his pulse start to race again and swallows hard.
“Adam Smasher,” he murmurs.
“He killed you,” V concurs. “And I killed him.”
Johnny's eyes widen at this. He also can’t help but note the pride in this strange woman’s voice, the warmth as she tells him specifically.
She did it for him. He doesn’t know why he’s suddenly so sure of this, but he is.
“Wanted to zero him myself,” Johnny grumbles, and to his surprise, V laughs.
“Had a feelin’ you’d say that,” she says with another sad chuckle. She holds his gaze for another beat, then sighs heavily. “You once asked me if I’d take a bullet for you,” she says softly, looking down and away from his eyes. “Told me you’d do the same for me.”
Johnny isn't sure how to react to that, but something inside of him recoils. It's unnerving, the way she's looking at him, like he's someone she knows intimately.
Maybe she does.
The thought unnerves him even more. He can still feel the gaps in his own mind, the missing tiles in the mosaic of his memories.
“I say all sorts of shit to women,” Johnny rasps, his voice still rough and hoarse. “‘Specially when I’m trying to get in their pants.”
V's mouth twists into a scowl, but he can’t shake the feeling that he knows her face well enough that he knows she’s trying to hide that she’s about to cry again. He’s hit a fucking nerve.
“Don’t take it personally,” he adds, hearing the coldness in his voice.
She stares down at him without a word, then turns on her heel and leaves, the rickety metal door clattering closed behind her.
Johnny slumps back against the chair. His heart is racing and his head is spinning, and his vision is darkening slightly around the edges. All the colors are still all fucked up, and his ears are ringing loudly. He feels high, or drunk, or otherwise delirious, and he’s still not entirely sure that this isn’t all still some weird dream or hallucination. He sees Alt again in his mind, sees the nonsensical twisting and churning of code that carried him here, sees the other beings that snapped and tore and bit at his mind, ripped away his sense of self and deposited him here, wherever here is.
What the fuck happened to him?
He lies on his back, trying and failing to collect his thoughts and emotions and piece together anything he can about how the fuck he got here. His head aches and he feels sick.
After a few minutes, he hears raised voices outside the truck.
“I knew going in that this would be a possibility. Fuck, even Hellman warned me about this.”
He recognizes V’s voice, and he realizes that she’s crying loudly, her sobs punctuating her words as she speaks.
“Give it time,” a second, unfamiliar female voice replies. “Perhaps it’s like you said, and the chip takes time to work. Just because he is awake doesn’t mean the process is complete!”
“I know, I just…” V chokes. “After all I did, after everything…”
“I know,” the second voice says sympathetically. “But Johnny Silverhand is alive. You did the impossible. V.”
Johnny feels a surge of emotion at this that’s quickly eclipsed by anger, and then by a strange compulsion to get out of bed and go… go what? Comfort her? Yell at her? Tell her she’s gonk as fuck for… for what?
He’s not sure what the fuck he’s feeling.
Either way, the urge to get the fuck outta here suddenly becomes overwhelming.
He swings his legs over the edge of the chair, but they don’t hold his weight when his feet touch the floor and he collapses to the cold metal ground, taking his IV drip down with him with a loud crash. He yells out an involuntary curse, reaching up with his single right arm to drag himself back to his feet as quickly as he can. But it’s too late - the door is already bursting open, and a tall, broad-shouldered man strides in, followed by a petite woman with dark ringed eyeliner and curly purple hair. Johnny can’t tell if it’s actually purple, or if his vision is still just utterly fucked. Behind her is another dark-haired woman, but this one is taller and exudes an air of aggression. And finally, V enters. Her eyes are ringed with red. All three of the newcomers look like nomads, and all of them look severely alarmed. As their eyes all fall to Johnny, he stiffens, and then his legs give out again and he crashes to the floor once more.
V rushes to his side, staring down at him with those piercing eyes as she hooks her arms around his torso and pulls him back up and onto the chair. He starts to struggle, but his body is too weak. And what’s more, the second he inhales, he’s suddenly accosted with a scent that’s so oddly specific and intimately familiar that his breath catches in his throat. It’s her, he realizes - it’s not a particularly remarkable smell, but the intensity of his visceral reaction to it catches him completely off guard and renders him momentarily unable to speak as she lifts him roughly back onto the chair.
And as she steps away from him, he’s struck by the secondary realization that it was her arms he was dimly aware of before, lifting and moving him while he was unconscious.
She’s wringing her hands nervously as she regards him now, and Johnny just stares at her, still trying to connect dots that refuse to connect. Her left forearm is shiny, black chrome, and on her right forearm…
He reaches out almost without thinking and grabs her wrist, twisting her arm to pull it closer to him.
“The fuck is that?” he asks, peering down at the hand drawn tattoo there of both their names in a fuckin’ heart. “You some kinda fuckin’ fangirl or something?”
She flinches, then tries to yank her hand away, but his grip is stronger. He looks up at her face then, and is surprised to find it contorted in a new mask of pain.
V stops trying to pull away, and her shoulders slump.
“You put it there,” she tells him in a quiet voice.
The petite, curly-haired woman moves into view, and Johnny narrows his eyes at her over V’s shoulders as she rights his IV bag while carefully avoiding his eyes.
“Hm.” Johnny looks back down at V’s tattoo, but releases her arm. Having her standing this close to him is messing with his head - her scent is still entirely too familiar, and it’s scratching at something deep in his mind that he senses will overwhelm him if it comes loose.
V doesn’t move away, and keeps looking down at him with those intense eyes.
How do we know each other? he wants to ask.
“What happened to me?” he asks her again instead as the curly-haired woman takes his arm and reinserts the IV. He doesn’t resist, and the woman moves to stand near V, regarding them both anxiously.
“They used Soulkiller on you," V replies after a beat, and Johnny sits bolt upright again at this and stares her down.
"How do you know about that?" he growls.
V laughs sadly again, sniffling slightly. "How do I know about Soulkiller?" she repeats. "Jesus, Johnny… I… fuck. Wish you remembered why asking me that is gonk as fuck."
Johnny doesn't know what to say to that, so he just stares at her silently. Behind her, the tall man’s eyes dart to the tall woman, and both of them take a step closer to V, hovering protectively around her.
The curly haired woman speaks. “We’ll give you guys some privacy,” she says.
V nods. “Thanks, Ambrosia.”
The ripper, presumably Ambrosia, gives V’s arm a gentle squeeze, then motions for the other two nomads to leave. They exchange another look, then the man opens the door for the women and follows them out. Johnny can only assume they’re all still standing right outside the door, ready to barge back in if he tries anything.
V sighs heavily and turns back to him, then launches into a meandering explanation of how apparently after Smasher fucked him up, Saburo used some upgraded version of Soulkiller on Johnny, then uploaded his consciousness into Mikoshi and stuffed his body in a cryo pod on an orbital station.
“And that’s where you were for fifty years, until Yorinobu put your engram on an experimental biochip to sell to NetWatch to get back at his dad, and…” V continues, trailing off as her voice gets a bit choked up. She looks at her feet, and a shadow of a small, sad smile plays on her lips. “And a dirtgirl from Heywood with the guts to walk a few blocks from home stole it out from under his nose," she concludes, raising her eyes back to meet his.
But Johnny’s still struggling to wrap his mind around everything else she just said.
He was in Mikoshi. Where Alt was.
“Fifty… years?” he manages.
She nods, her face serious again. “Yeah,” she says softly. “A lot has changed.”
“Fuck,” Johnny says. “Fuck.”
Fifty fuckin’ years? Half a fuckin’ century?
“It’s 2077,” she tells him in a quiet voice.
He’s glad she didn’t make him ask.
But it’s hard for him to even conceptualize such a passage of time. It’s longer than he’s been alive. He feels like Rip Van fuckin’ Winkle.
It’s a year he’d never thought he’d live to see.
"Did it work?" he asks her. "Did we free Alt?"
V smiles again. "Yeah," she says softly. "She's beyond the Blackwall now. Which is where you've been, too, for the past few months. With her."
That hazy, fractured memory comes to Johnny again, of Alt hovering above him in the Pistis Sophia, those infinite red tendrils spiraling out from her.
So that's where that was.
"Why haven't I aged?" he asks, frowning down at himself. "Or… have I?"
"Not that I can tell," V reassures him. "You don't look a day over 35 to me. Same as you looked in my head."
Johnny narrows his eyes at her. "In your head?"
The fuck kinda weird shit has this chick been doing with him?
She purses her lips slightly. "You look the same as you did in 2023," she maintains. "Minus the hair and arm. Guessin' you got the cryo to thank for that."
"How do I know you're tellin' the truth?" Johnny demands, squinting up at her. "How do I know this isn't some kinda super fucked up 'Saka interrogation method?"
V barks a sad, harsh laugh.
"That's what you thought the night we met, too," she tells him sadly.
He narrows his eyes at her. "The fuck do you mean?"
"Shut up and let me explain," she says. "And yes, it's really 2077, and yes, you've really been dead for fifty years."
Johnny sighs, lifting his hand to the bridge of his nose to stem the blossoming headache. "So you’re sayin'… you stole a biochip from Yorinobu and somehow used it to bring me back to life?” he repeats.
He still isn’t entirely convinced any of this is real. Could still be a dream, or a simulation, or some more cyberspace bullshit.
But the bigger part of him knows that it's not.
V is shaking her head. “Was more complicated than that,” she tells him, leaning against the bed. “Didn’t know what was on the chip at first. Slotted it into my own neural port, then… then I got shot in the head,” she continues in a low voice. “And died. Like I said. But you… the chip saved me. Booted me back up. ‘Cept… then it started literally overwriting my brain. With you. Your personality construct, that is.”
Johnny frowns at her. “You mean I was… turnin’ into you?” he asks incredulously, looking her up and down again.
“No,” she corrects him. “I was turning into you.”
“The fuck,” he mutters.
“Yeah,” she agrees. “And while it was happening… we could…” She swallows hard. “We could talk to each other. Hear each other’s thoughts. See each others’ memories. And…”
She falters again, then looks down and away from him suddenly.
Johnny watches her face, and he has that sudden flash of a memory again of seeing that face reflected back at him in countless dingy bathroom mirrors and shop windows. But the context eludes him almost as fast as the images appear, and the whole thing slips away again when he tries to connect the dots in his head.
But it's enough to convince him that some version of him was in her head.
The thought fills him with a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that goes beyond any logical reaction. The implications of what she’s telling him are horrifying; the thought that this woman might have had access to the darkest parts of him, his most private memories and musings, fills him with a deep and formless rage edged with an even deeper terror. He shrinks away from her almost involuntarily.
She’s looking at him with that pained expression on her features again, and he feels a sudden urge to be cruel to her. He opens his mouth intending to tell her that whatever connection she thinks they have isn’t real, can’t be real.
But his heart is racing and his hand is tingling with a thousand pins and needles, and his skin feels suddenly flushed and sweaty. He lies back heavily in the chair, taking deep breaths and trying and failing to speak. It feels like there’s a heavy weight on his chest, and his throat is closing up.
“How am I here now?” he manages.
“I went into space and got your body back,” V tells him, like it’s fuckin’ nothing. “And then Alt brought you back from cyberspace, moved your engram onto a… different chip. And that’s in your head now, copying you back into your own body.”
It sounded like there was something else she was gonna say, something she’s leavin’ out. His head throbs.
“So you’re tellin’ me I got Soulkilled?” he chokes. “That I’m a personality construct of myself on a fuckin’ Arasaka chip bein’ rewritten back onto my own frozen corpse?”
V bites her lip. “Yeah, pretty much.”
A deep feeling of dread wells up inside him again, and Johnny tries and fails to fight down the urge to run.
If she’s telling the truth… if his soul’s truly been ripped from his body and stored in a computer before being downloaded into her brain, ripped back into cyberspace, and now reloaded back into his own body…
Is he even still himself?
“Your heart rate is spiking,” V says suddenly, her eyes darting up to the monitor above him. “Johnny, try to calm down, take some deep breaths, you’re going to-”
But she doesn’t finish her thought before Johnny’s vision darkens, and he feels himself start to convulse.
“Johnny!” V shouts, but he can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t move.
He has to get out of here.
As his vision clears, Johnny hopes his feet will hold his weight this time as he swings his legs off the chair once more, yanking the IV out with his teeth again and steadying himself on the chair as he finds his footing. V’s arm shoots out to catch him as well, and her movements seem almost instinctive in a way that makes his jaw clench.
He doesn’t need her help. He doesn’t know her. He didn’t ask for any of this.
And so he shoves her arm away roughly and forces his feet to move. He shuffles towards the door as quickly as he can manage, clicking open the latch and stepping outside into the freezing night.
“Johnny, wait!” V calls out as the door slams shut behind him.
The desert night air is bitterly cold, and Johnny is suddenly and distinctly aware that he’s wearing only thin cotton clothing and no shoes.
He hasn’t really thought this through.
He places his bare foot on the first of the grated steps leading down to the dirt, wincing as the cold metal touches his skin. But when he puts his weight on the leg, his body collapses out from under him, and he lets out a yell as he tumbles down the stairs, scraping his hip and hitting the ground with a crash and a thud.
He lands flat on his back, the night sky above him a dizzying pinwheel.
Johnny rolls onto his side, then uses his single arm to heave himself into a sitting position before staggering to his feet. He knows he’s bein’ stupid and just trying to prove a point - he’s not even wearin’ fuckin’ shoes - but he just can’t go back in that fuckin’ truck yet, can’t look at V’s sad, pleading eyes.
He hears the door to the trailer open behind him.
“Johnny,” V says.
The sound of her voice makes the panic in his head rise to a loud roar that fills his skull, and he pauses for a moment, almost unwillingly. He takes another step, but his legs give out again and he pitches forward, catching himself clumsily on his single arm as he falls to his hands and knees.
The ground is spinning, his head is spinning, his ears are ringing, and Johnny claws at the dusty ground even as his face is already plummeting forward to meet it.
He hears footsteps quickly jogging towards him, and he feels V’s arms wrap around him again, lifting him up as his vision goes dark.
When he next opens his eyes, it’s morning. The dusty sunlight filters in through the high windows that line the tops of the walls of the trailer, and as Johnny stares at the streaks of golden light across the ceiling, he realizes with a sharp spike of relief that his color vision has returned to normal.
He turns his head to the right, and feels an odd twist in his gut when he sees V sprawled on the small cot that’s folded down from the wall of the truck. One of her knees is curled up against her chest and the other is tangled in the threadbare blanket. Looking at her gives him a strange, sharp ache in his chest… and between his legs. Johnny swallows hard as he continues to stare at her sleeping form. Seeing her like this - her face soft and relaxed, her hair spilling across the pillow - tugs again at something deep in Johnny’s stomach, threatening to pull the very ground out from beneath his feet.
He watches her as the streaks of light inch across the wall, moving slowly to drape across her sleeping body in bright stripes of yellow. The way the sun is hitting V’s eyelashes now is somehow utterly captivating, and Johnny finds it difficult to tear his eyes away from her slightly parted lips, her pale, smooth skin, her fluttering eyelids.
Who is she to him?
He tries desperately to remember.
He must drift off again, because the next time he wakes up, it’s to the sound of soft voices speaking low from the floor by the fold-down cot. His head is still lolled to the right, so when he opens his eyes, he sees V and Ambrosia seated cross-legged together on the floor, a spread of tarot cards arrayed between them.
"The Wheel of Fortune reversed is really interesting in this position," Ambrosia is saying softly to V. "It represents something that'll happen soon and shake things up. Could be a person, an event, an opportunity-"
"Or a setback," V whispers back.
Ambrosia nods, a grim but sympathetic look on her face. "Could be. It does kinda mean, like, bad luck. Just like, somethin' that comes along and throws a wrench in everything."
"Great," V mutters, glancing to her left at Johnny, who quickly closes his eyes.
"My advice is to slow down, and be patient," Ambrosia continues. "Consider your next actions carefully. Don't do anything rash. Now isn't the time to take a leap of faith."
Johnny cracks open his eyes again to find V still staring directly at him. He closes his eyes again, but he knows he's caught.
He opens his eyes and meets her gaze, and they stare at each other in silence for a beat.
"Mornin’, Johnny," she says finally.
"V," he replies gruffly, because he can't think of anything else to say. His mind still feels like sludge, and his memories remain a confusing whorl.
"Oh!" says Ambrosia, looking up from the cards and twisting to look at him. "You're awake." She scrambles to her feet and strides to his bedside. Her eyes glow blue as she examines the monitor above him.
"So your hair is actually purple," he mutters at her.
"How d'ya mean?" she asks, glancing down at him as she continues to scan the readouts.
"Wasn't sure last night. My color vision was all fucked and everything looked purple," Johnny murmurs.
"Hmm," Ambrosia says, furrowing her brow. “That’s very interesting.”
She's pretty in a kinda rugged way, Johnny decides. "So who the fuck are you?" he asks her coyly, tilting his chin at her.
He hears V get to her feet and move closer to the chair, but he doesn't turn to look at her.
Ambrosia glances at V, then turns back to Johnny and shrugs.
"I'm just a nomad ripper," she says simply. "Didn't know ya till yesterday. Big fan, though," she adds, flashing him a cheeky grin.
For the first time since waking up, it occurs to Johnny to wonder what’s become of his legacy in the fifty years since his… death.
It still feels beyond weird to think about. Half a century lost in a blink, like sand in the tide, everyone he’s ever loved either old or dead…
He suddenly wonders if Kerry is still alive.
He’s afraid to ask.
“A fan, huh,” Johnny says, narrowing his eyes at the ripper. Part of him wants to press her further on the topic, but part of him has his fuckin’ guard up.
He finally looks at V, and she’s starin’ at him with a strange look on her face. It’s a look that bores right through his skull, like she can somehow just see straight through to his fuckin’ soul, clear as day, without any filters or embellishment. A look that tells him she can read his face as well as he can his own. A hopeful look, a scared look. A sympathetic look. A look that makes him feel at once seen and understood, and completely naked and vulnerable and terrified.
He feels his face harden.
But V glances down, and as he follows her gaze he’s shocked to see a fluffy white cat winding its way around V’s legs.
V seems just as surprised, and she visibly startles before reaching down to let the animal smell her hand.
Ambrosia turns as well, her face breaking into a broad grin.
“That’s Chlo,” she tells them. “Alim’s cat.”
“Alim?” V says. “You mean Trace?”
Ambrosia nods, still smiling. “Yeah,” she says. “I’ve know him since we were kids, since before he started goin’ by Trace.”
V smiles and bends down to scoop up the cat, lifting it in her arms and stroking its soft, downy fur.
“Hi Chlo,” she croons. “You’re so fluffy, not like Nibbles!”
Johnny narrows his eyes at her.
“Nibbles?” he says, his voice dangerously low. “How the fuck do you know about Nibbles?”
V blinks at him, her face suddenly lighting up. “Our cat?”
“No, my cat,” Johnny snarls. “When I was a kid.”
V’s face falls. “Right, yeah. You, uh… you named our new cat that, too.”
Johnny stares at her. “Our new cat,” he repeats.
V nods. “Nibbles. He’s one of those hairless sphynx cats. We found him hangin’ out by my dumpster.”
Johnny isn’t sure what to say to that, so he glances back at Ambrosia, who’s scanning the stump of his left arm and squinting at some inscrutable readouts on the monitors.
“What are you doin’?” he asks her.
She pauses and looks down at him, her eyes reverting to their normal hazel.
“Gonna fit you for a temporary new arm,” she tells him.
Johnny opens his mouth to protest. Replacing his arm feels almost wrong, somehow, for reasons he can’t quite explain. That arm was his name, his identity. He doesn't want just any old generic arm, he wants his arm.
“When we get back to NC, we can get Vik to help recreate your old one,” V reassures him in a strangely solemn voice, seeming to read his thoughts. “But it’ll be easier for you on the road if you have one.”
Johnny has no fuckin' clue who Vik is, but he's unnerved at how well V seems to know him.
“Fine,” he grumbles.
Ambrosia nods and continues her examination. “I think I have one in my stock that’ll work,” she tells him. “Just taking some measurements to be sure. Can put it on now, if you’re ready.”
Johnny glances at V, then back at Ambrosia. “Sure,” he relents.
Ambrosia and V exchange a look, and V moves closer to his bedside as Ambrosia begins the prep work.
"Gonna put you under," she tells him. "That okay?"
"Why?" Johnny protests.
"It'll be easier to reconnect all the damaged nerve tissue," the ripper explains. "Whoever removed your old arm didn't exactly do a clean job of it, and it healed all weird in cryo."
V grimaces behind her, and Johnny imagines his own face must bear a similar expression.
He wonders if Arasaka still has his old arm in a trophy case somewhere.
He nods at Ambrosia, and she takes a syringe and threads it into his IV drip.
"Gonna make me do the the thing where I count backwards from ten?" he jokes, but he can already feel something icy hit the vein in his arm, and then everything goes dark.
He opens his eyes to find himself in the same medical truck, but the sun is comin' in at the opposite angle now. It's early evening, and he can hear the sounds of nomads laughing and talking outside.
His left shoulder is prickling with pins and needles, and he groans at the uncomfortable sensation as he tilts his chin to look down.
He flexes his fingers.
The new hand seems slow to respond, but that might just be 'cause his brain is still calibrating it. He remembers this process from back when he got his first arm… but that thing was a piece of state-of-the-art tech, created and tuned just for him. This one is far less impressive - it looks like a standard stock model, although it's unlike any he's ever seen before.
But he's fifty years in the fuckin' future, he reminds himself. Would be hella depressing if they were still peddling the same shitty cyberarms they had back in 2023.
He's kinda surprised to see that V isn't in the truck with him this time. At first, he thinks he's alone, but then he sees a tall man with close-cropped and thinning brown hair humming to himself over the control panel nearby.
"Hey," he grumbles, and the man turns to him with a broad grin.
"Hey yourself!" he replies cheerfully, then shakes his head in disbelief. "Man," he says, regarding Johnny. "Johnny fuckin' Silverhand. Alive and well, in the flesh. Doesn't seem fuckin' real. How ya feelin', my man?"
Johnny blinks at him, trying to fight off the grogginess from the anesthesia.
"Been better," he says honestly. "You, uh… we know each other?" he asks.
The man grins even wider and walks over to perch on the stool by his bed, extending a weathered hand to him.
"Not technically," he says. "I'm Mitch. Mitch Anderson. Always been a fan."
Johnny lifts his hand the small amount that he can without tugging the IV, and Mitch grasps it and gives it a firm shake.
"Johnny," is all Johnny can manage in response. He wonders again what kind of fans he has in the year 2077. “Where’s the ripper chick?”
Mitch smiles. "She went to grab some grub, told me to keep an eye on ya."
"What, she afraid I'm gonna run off?"
"Think she's just worried about you," Mitch says more seriously.
"Hm," Johnny replies.
"Nice piece of chrome ya got there," Mitch adds dryly, lifting his eyebrows appraisingly at Johnny’s new hand. "How's it feel?"
Johnny lifts his new hand, flexing the fingers again and turning it over in front of his face. It's all black, and covered in some matte material that Johnny's never seen on a cyber limb before. But it seems a bit more responsive now, and he figures his brain is slowly adjusting to it.
"It ain't my old one," he says honestly. His eyes fall to Mitch's other arm, and he notices this nomad's got a chrome arm, too. Definitely military grade, from the looks of it. "You served?" he asks, gesturing with his chin at the prosthetic.
Mitch nods. "'Bout a million years ago, feels like. In the Unification War."
"Corporate war?" Johnny guesses. So nothing's fuckin' changed, he thinks. They're still sending kids to die for corpo overlords.
Mitch nods grimly. "More or less, even though they didn't officially call it that. The more things change…" he says in an almost apologetic tone. "If it makes ya feel better, last one ended almost a decade back. But that's assuming your and V's little stunt didn't start a fresh one now," he adds.
“Our... little stunt?”
Mitch raises his eyebrows. “Right, you don’t remember,” he says sadly. “Your girl V solo’d Arasaka Tower, from the sound of it,” he explains, the pride apparent in his voice. “Blasted her way straight to their computer core, used it to separate you two. Dunno how the fuck that worked, but that’s how she tells it.”
Johnny furrows his brow at this, and at how Mitch referred to V. His girl. “Arasaka Tower?” he asks, swallowing hard. “It’s still standing?”
“They built a new one,” Mitch tells him, shaking his head.
“Fuckin’ course they did,” Johnny grumbles, but as he’s speaking, his stomach suddenly growls audibly.
"They’re still servin’ dinner outside,” Mitch offers sympathetically. “Want me to go grab ya something?"
"Fuckin' starvin'," Johnny admits.
"Well, that's what happens when ya tear out your feeding tube seconds after wakin' up," Mitch teases.
"Can eat just fine by myself," Johnny protests.
"Alright, then,” Mitch says with a grin. “Wanna come with?"
Johnny knows this dude is just teasing him, that he doesn't think he can or should actually get outta bed and go get dinner. But he doesn't know Johnny, and Johnny hates lyin' around feelin' helpless.
"Yeah," he says firmly, reaching across with his new chrome arm to remove the IV from his right wrist.
Mitch's eyes widen with alarm. "You sure, man?" he says, glancing nervously at the door to the truck. "Ambrosia and V are gonna skewer me if anything happens to ya."
"I'll be fine," Johnny assures him. "We're goin', what, a hundred yards? I can manage."
Mitch is still grimacing, but he nods at Johnny and Johnny can recognize the respect in his eyes. Soldier to soldier.
"Alright," Mitch says. "But take it nice and slow. No need to prove anything."
Johnny ignores him as he lowers his feet to the floor and cautiously puts his weight on them. To his relief, he feels much more steady on his feet today - his body feels solid and his balance is sound.
He's still barefoot and in thin cotton hospital clothes, though.
"Sit tight," Mitch tells him, holding up a hand and already backing up towards the door. "I'll go grab you some shoes and a jacket."
The nomad turns on his heel and quickly leaves, the rickety door slamming shut behind him, leaving Johnny standing alone in the small truck.
Johnny finds his eyes wandering back to the rumpled blankets on the cot against the wall where V slept. The acoustic guitar he heard her playing earlier is still leaning against it, and on an impulse, Johnny crosses the room and bends over to pick it up.
He's suddenly glad he let the ripper chick give him a new prosthetic - the idea of not bein' able to play guitar, even temporarily, makes him feel a little panicky.
He sits heavily on the cot and pulls the guitar onto his lap. There’s a weird, familiar-yet-unfamiliar song stuck on loop in his head, a song that part of him realizes has been slowly taking shape in his mind since…
Did he write it in cyberspace?
He’s not entirely sure, but he can hear the melody clearly in his head.
His fingers feel weak, stiff, and clumsy, and it takes him a second to sound out the chord progression in his mind. Once he has it, he starts humming the tune of the vocal melody. There are words, too… but he can't quite place them all.
He's picking out the melodic progression for the bridge when Mitch returns with a pair of cowboy boots in one hand and a quilted work jacket slung over his shoulder.
"New material?" Mitch teases as Johnny sets the guitar aside.
"Maybe," he intones.
Mitch comes over and drops the boots before Johnny. "Hope these fit," he tells Johnny. "Asked V your size and borrowed these off Cassidy."
Johnny just nods curtly and pulls on the thick knit socks that Mitch produces, then yanks the boots over his feet and ankles.
They fit perfectly.
He grunts approvingly, then gets to his feet and takes the coat from Mitch. It's not his usual style, but neither are the loose cotton shirt and pants he's already wearin'. At least the jacket is warm and comfortable.
He follows Mitch out of the trailer and into the crisp twilight. The sun is still hovering just over the horizon, casting long shadows in the brush as Johnny lifts his hand to shield his eyes from the brilliant glow.
He wishes he had his sunglasses.
Mitch gestures for him to follow, and the two of them pick their way through camp, following the sounds of the music and laughter until they emerge from behind a big tent into an open clearing with a roaring bonfire at the center.
Nomads are draped on all the various benches, chairs, and moldering couches that surround the fire, and despite the cold, there's something so welcoming about the scene that Johnny feels the knot of fear in his chest start to loosen ever so slightly. He might not know where he is or remember what happened to him, but he's glad to see that nomad culture is still exactly how he remembers it.
And there's V, perched on one of the benches between Ambrosia and a tiny blonde chick with hearing aids. And V's got an acoustic guitar clutched in her hands that she's playin' and singing along to. Her voice is low and smoky, and it's a song he's never heard before. Something about the melody reminds him of Kerry, but he's not entirely sure why.
Her eyes widen when she sees Johnny, and she puts down the guitar and scrambles to her feet, turning towards him.
Johnny suddenly realizes everyone around the fire has fallen silent. There’s just the campfire, the low hum of the generators, and a radio playin' from another tent nearby.
Without saying a word, he crosses to her and takes the guitar from her hand, holding her gaze as he does so. He can feel everyone’s eyes on him as the blonde chick scoots over to make space for him, and Johnny sits on the edge of the bench and balances the guitar on his knees.
He suddenly isn't sure what exactly he intends here. The new song he was fuckin' around with isn't ready to debut for a bunch of fuckin' strangers.
He chews his lip for a moment, then starts picking out the opening riff of Blistering Love.
To his utter amazement, everyone around the fire starts hooting and clapping along, and a chorus of voices joins him as he begins to sing the lines of the first verse, the words he wrote a million fuckin' years ago.
Sure, this song was a pretty big single, one of their first real hits when it dropped, and Johnny's music bein' popular shouldn't feel like some huge revelation to him. But the fact that half a century later, an entirely new generation can still sing along to his music…
Johnny swallows back the lump in his throat as he sings. Out of the corner of his eye, V watches from beside him, her eyes shining.
He feels that strange pull towards her again, and the fear comes surging back with it. He scowls at her before he's able to stop himself.
V winces as though she's been slapped.
Johnny feels that sharpness in his chest again, and quickly looks away.
As he's finishing the song, Johnny suddenly realizes the crowd around the fire has doubled in size. And V’s face is hard now, her arms folded and her mouth drawn as she watches Johnny play.
Johnny suddenly can't set the guitar down quickly enough. Thankfully, Mitch appears at his side again and holds out a bowl of stew as soon as his hands are free, and Johnny accepts it gratefully, carefully avoiding eye contact with the expectant crowd.
The stew isn't great, but it's also somehow the best thing Johnny can remember eating in his life. He musta been hungrier than he realized - after all, it’s likely the first solid food he’s eaten in half a century. He eats quickly, studiously staring at his food as he ignores the onlookers. Eventually, the murmur of conversation resumes around him and his shoulders relax slightly.
Mitch chuckles appreciatively as Johnny finishes his bowl. "Looks like someone here digs my squirrel stroganoff," he jokes, shooting V a look.
V rolls her eyes and laughs.
"Don't see me complaining," she retorts, holding up her own empty bowl.
Johnny isn't in the mood for banter, though, so he stands and wanders up towards the galley truck, intending to see if there's enough for a refill.
“Johnny Silverhand,” says a gruff voice behind him, and Johnny turns to see the tall, broad-shouldered man who was in the trailer with him before perched on the stoop of the galley truck with a cigar dangling from between his teeth.
“I’m Saul Bright,” the man continues. Leader of this clan.” He removes the cigar from his mouth, then pats the step beside him. “Sit with me, my friend. Let’s talk.”
Johnny squints down at him, hesitating for a moment, then lowers himself to join Saul on the steps. Saul takes another puff of his cigar, regarding Johnny coolly.
“Got a smoke?” Johnny asks, eying the cigar enviously.
Saul lets out a low chuckle. “Sure,” he says, reaching into one of the cargo pockets of his dust-covered pants and pulling out a pack of cigs. He shimmies one out of the box, holding it out to Johnny. “Ambrosia will probably never let you hear the end of it,” he warns Johnny as he offers him a light.
Johnny raises his eyebrows, then takes the lighter and flicks it on, holding it to the cigarette between his lips and inhaling deeply.
“Clan leader, huh?” Johnny mutters, blowing out the smoke. He feels a wave of dizziness as the nicotine hits his bloodstream, and it occurs to him that if V’s telling the truth, it’s also been fifty years since he last had a smoke.
“I share the responsibility with another,” Saul admits. “But yes.”
“So you can tell me where we are,” Johnny replies smoothly.
Saul nods. “We’re in northern Arizona,” he says. “‘Bout a day’s drive from NC.”
Johnny takes another drag of his cigarette and considers this. A day’s drive ain’t too bad. He doesn’t think he’s bein’ held against his will, but he also isn’t sure he can count on anyone here to willingly lend him a spare car.
But he’s not above stealin’ one.
“Don’t get any bright ideas,” Saul warns him, clearly guessing Johnny’s train of thought. “You’re in no shape to travel. And V would hand me my ass if I let you slip out from under her nose.”
“Why the fuck is it up to her what happens to me?” Johnny huffs.
“‘Cause she dragged you across almost thirty miles of open desert in the freezing cold, after carryin’ your naked ass back from the literal moon,” Saul replies, eyeing Johnny as he takes another drag of his smoke.
Johnny has no idea how to feel about that.
“Why?” he asks.
Saul shrugs. “Ask her that yourself,” he says. “But both of you were half dead when we found you. She’s still recovering, too. So regardless of what happens now, you owe V your life. About ten times over, I’d say.”
Johnny feels sick to his stomach. This is all just too fucking much. He doesn’t know any of these people, doesn’t understand what’s happening to him, doesn’t even know what to believe.
“Look, I just wanna get back to NC,” Johnny says. “Find my people, get my shit sorted. Don’t care about some life debt I owe some chick I don’t even remember.”
Saul shakes his head. “She’s tryna get you back to Night City, too. And from what I’ve gathered, you’re both pretty high on Arasaka’s Most Wanted list right about now. NetWatch too, I’d wager. And I doubt the NCPD would just let y’all drive on in through the checkpoints. So if you wanna get back to NC, your best bet is to stick around and follow the plan V and Panam are puttin’ together. After that, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do.”
Johnny feels a wave of dizziness hit him again, and he’s suddenly fuckin’ done talkin’ to this nomad dude.
“Thanks for the cig,” he says, clapping Saul on the shoulder and using the support to heave himself back to his feet.
Saul raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t move to stop him as Johnny staggers off, cutting through the camp and away from the fire and the gathered nomads.
But his path is intersected by a small, slight man with piercing eyes and dark, shaggy hair.
There's something about his face that stops Johnny up short.
"Whoa," the man breathes, gazing up at him. "Never thought I'd actually get to meet you."
Johnny sighs heavily. "You a fan, too?" he asks wearily.
The kid shakes his head, then shrugs. "I dunno if that's the right word," he says. "Grew up hearin' stories about you, though. From my mom, my dad, Kerry, Nance…"
Johnny freezes, turning to look at the kid, really taking in the freckles that scatter his dark skin, the specific grey of his eyes, the slight smirk on his lips.
"Who are your parents?" Johnny asks in a low voice.
The man smiles sadly. "Could ask me my name first," he replies.
Johnny sighs. "Fine, what's your name?"
"Trace," the kid says. "Trace Santiago."
And then all the dots suddenly connect in Johnny's head, and a flood of memories comes rushing back to him.
Rogue in the desert with Santiago. Playfully roasting each other around a campfire just like this one. Rogue's distinctive laughter coming from Santiago's tent.
And looking at this man's face, the resemblance is unmistakable.
Johnny'd always assumed Rogue's thing with Santiago had been primarily to make him jealous. But if she spent fifty years thinking Johnny was dead… who is he to say it didn't become something more?
Trace must see the realization dawning on Johnny's face, because he just nods grimly.
"Yup," he says. "I'd say I'd tell my mom you said hi, but I have a feeling you'll be seeing her first."
Johnny furrows his brow. "How d'ya figure?"
"Your output," Trace says casually, gesturing with his chin towards the campfire.
Towards V.
Johnny recoils at the implications.
"My what?" he says, narrowing his eyes.
He hates how everyone here seems to automatically link him to V, like it’s a given they’re a pair.
"Whatever she is," Trace continues, unperturbed. "Whatever you call someone who goes to hell and back for you like she did. Just 'cause you don't remember don't mean it ain't still real."
Johnny watches V from where he's standing. He's certain she can feel his eyes on her from the way her jaw tightens, but she continues talking to the blonde girl, and they've been joined by another woman with short pink and green hair and tons of tattoos.
"What does this have to do with Rogue?" Johnny hisses.
Trace smiles again. "So you did guess right," he teases. "Well, it seems my dear mother has taken your V on as a protege. Trained her to be a fixer, take over operations."
It hits Johnny again that he has no fuckin' clue what Rogue's been up to, who she's become. What she even looks like. She's gotta be, what, in her 80s now?
The thought terrifies him on an existential level. Thinking about his friends, the people he cared about, growin' old, having entire lives without him… where the fuck does that leave him? Peter fuckin' Pan, effectively not a day over 35, crash landing back in their lives to fuck shit up again?
Johnny presses his lips together, feeling a new and sudden resolve.
He's gotta leave.
Whatever V has planned for him, he can't be the person she remembers, the person she thinks she knows. He can't just slip back into his old life, either - everyone's surely either died or moved on.
And if what Saul said is true, about everyone from Arasaka to the pigs lookin' for him, then maybe goin' back to NC just ain't on the cards for Johnny.
He could go to Nashville, he thinks. Or Atlanta. Those cities must still have half decent music scenes, no?
Trace is still watching him with an odd expression on his face, like he's speaking to a legend, or to a ghost.
And Johnny realizes that to him, he's probably both.
"Yeah," Johnny mutters. "Cool."
He turns and strides away from Trace, away from the campfire, away from V.
He isn't really sure what his plan is. He cuts his way between the tents, heading to the edge of camp, then stops and doubles over, putting his hands on his knees and heaving deep, choking gasps. It's all too much, all these people lookin' at him like he's some resurrected legend, a martyr, or maybe just a punchline in history. He can't even fuckin' tell.
And V. This fuckin' woman who looks at him like she owns some part of him, like she knows every single thing about him that even he doesn't, like she can see right under his skin and into his skull and see all the things he's spent his whole life trying to bury.
He hates her for it.
He hates himself for it.
Johnny straightens and collects himself, wringing his hands and taking deep breaths.
The moon is bright in the sky, and he can see the low shapes of the nomads' heavily modded vehicle fleet sitting poised in the late dusk. With one final glance back at the fire, he turns and starts off towards the cars.
If he's been ripped apart by Arasaka and put back together again, thrust into a confusing and disorienting future, into a second life he didn't ask for, then he's gonna live it on his own fuckin' terms.
There's a couple making out on the hood of one of the cars, but they ignore Johnny as he makes his way past them. The night air feels cold against his scalp, and Johnny shivers. He hasn't had his hair short like this, nearly shaved, since he was in the fuckin' military. He hasn't looked in a mirror yet. He doesn't fuckin' want to.
Johnny picks a car near the edge of the cluster, one that's already pointed out and away from the camp.
He feels like he's escaping, even though he knows he's not exactly a prisoner.
Some part of him knows this is gonk as fuck, too. What is he trying to prove?
He catches a glimpse of his silhouette reflected dimly in the dash as he stands before the car and winces, moving around to the driver side so he can try the door. It's locked, of course, and Johnny bends over to examine the lock mechanism. It looks higher tech than he remembers, and he stares at it, baffled.
"Biometric locks weren't as common fifty years ago, were they," a voice says softly behind him, and Johnny freezes.
"Shoulda figured you'd follow me," he growls, turning to face her.
V is standing about ten paces away, her silvery violet hair shining bright in the moonlight, her face darkened in shadow.
"Kinda shitty move to steal a car from the people who just saved your life, don't you think?" she continues, taking a slow step towards him.
"Are you gonna stop me?"
She pauses, and gives him a long, sorrowful look.
"Johnny…" she whispers, and something about the way her voice trembles makes that horrible thing twist in his chest.
"Look, V," he says, squaring with her. "I dunno what the fuck happened between us when I was… takin' over your brain or whatever. I don't know what version of me you think you know. But right now, you're a complete fuckin' stranger to me. Like all o' these gonks," he adds roughly, waving his hand towards the camp.
Her face falls, but she doesn't reply. She doesn't take her eyes from his face, either, and just stands there, regarding him coolly with those piercing fuckin' eyes of hers.
He starts pacing angrily.
"I didn't ask for fuckin' any of this," he continues. "Didn't ask to be brought back. Don't like feelin' like I owe people shit. And now, you're what, gonna stand here and demand I stay and play out whatever gonk fantasy you've been livin' in because you saved my life so I owe you?" he says, still pacing and gesturing angrily at her.
"You don't owe me for that," she whispers. "You saved my life. More than once. So now we're even."
Johnny isn't sure what to say to that. He stops pacing and looks up again to meet her eyes.
“Johnny," she says softly. "Don't do this."
Her face looks so worn, so tired, so sad. And he feels suddenly as though he can't walk away from her, like he's drawn to her by some invisible thread.
He feels a surge of anger in his chest. But underneath that anger is an old, deep fear. Whatever hold this woman has on him terrifies the fuck outta him.
"You never answered my question," he demands. "Are you gonna stop me?"
She takes a step towards him, and then another.
Johnny wants to walk away, wants to just smash in the window of this fuckin' truck and drive off into the night and never look back, never have to look at this weird chick's face again.
But something keeps his feet rooted firmly to the ground.
She takes another step closer, and he's hit once again with her excruciatingly familiar scent.
He has a sudden and wild urge to grab her and kiss her.
Or bend her over and fuck her against the side of this car.
She'd probably fuckin' like that. All chicks just want the same thing from him. She's just another fuckin' doe eyed groupie who wants something from him that he can't give her.
She takes another step closer, until she's standing only inches away, and he can feel his heart start to hammer wildly in his chest. He glances down at her mouth, then back up at her eyes.
"The fuck do you want from me?" he asks in a low, rough voice.
"Just stay," she begs. "Please, Johnny."
The way she says his name, the desperate pleading tone in her voice, sends a jolt through him that he feels go straight to his cock. The impulse to kiss her is almost overwhelming now, and he breathes in heavily, raking his eyes over her face tilted up towards his in the moonlight.
But whatever the fuck gonk shit he was about to do is interrupted by a sudden shout from the camp, followed by more yelling and commotion nearby.
"Sandstorm!" he hears someone yell. "Coming from the west!"
He looks to his left, turning his head away from V, and sure enough, the horizon that was clear just minutes ago is now obscured by a huge, black cloud.
Johnny's seen enough dust storms to know that it's a fuckin' big one, and it's coming in quickly.
He can hear more shouts coming from the camp.
"Get to shelter!"
"Tie that down!"
"Put out the fire!"
"Cover the supplies!"
"Toss me that tarp!"
V is looking at the storm now too, her eyes wide, but she turns to look back at Johnny at the same time he does.
"Let's go back to the med truck," she urges him.
Johnny looks back at the storm, then in the other direction at the nomads scurrying around the camp putting out fires and throwing tarps and bungee cables over everything in sight.
He's not gonna make it far in this storm.
"Fine," he relents, and V's face visibly relaxes.
He follows her wordlessly back through the camp, weaving between the nomads frantically prepping as they gather up any loose personal items and usher the stragglers into tents.
The tall, dark haired woman that Johnny recognizes from earlier is standing at the door to the ripper truck, her eyes anxiously scanning the camp.
"V!" she shouts when she sees them. "Thank goodness you're here, I was looking all over camp for you." Her eyes flick to Johnny. "And you!" she adds. "I did not expect you to be out and about!"
"We're fine, Panam," V assures her.
The woman nods, then opens the door and holds it for them as they clamber up the stairs and into the truck.
The wind is picking up, and the air is already thick with dust as Johnny follows her inside, closing the door behind him.
V shakes the sand from her hair and throws her coat on the cot, then turns back to face him. She opens her mouth to speak, but doesn't get a chance to begin before the door bangs open again, and this time it's Saul.
"Raffen," he growls. "Lots of them, headed our way. Scanners just picked 'em up."
Panam's eyes widen. "Now? In this weather?!"
Johnny shrugs at her. "Probably usin' the storm as cover," he guesses. "Used to pull that shit all the time."
The wind is howling against the truck, rattling the door. Johnny can hear the sand pattering against the walls now, too, and something that sounds like a loose tarp slapping against the roof. The lights dim and flicker ominously.
Saul nods. "That's what it looks like," he agrees. "And we're sitting ducks while we're bunkered down." He looks at Panam, and then at V. "Whaddaya say?" he asks. "You girls up for taking the Basilisk for a spin again? Teach 'em another lesson like you did last time?"
"How exactly are we supposed to shoot them if we can't see them?" Panam asks.
"Heat sensors," Johnny answers automatically. "You guys have a Basilisk?" he adds incredulously.
But V's brow is still furrowed. “Without visuals, it’ll be difficult to determine friend from foe if they attack the camp on foot,” she points out. “We should use the cover of the storm to move camp, and use the Basilisk to draw them away and buy us the time.”
Panam gives her a long look, then nods. “Yes,” she agrees. “That is a wise plan.”
Saul is nodding slowly, too. “Agreed,” he says, then turns to Johnny. “You stay put,” he tells him. “Mitch and I will get everyone packed and moving.”
V and Panam exchange a glance. “On it,” Panam says, already moving for the door.
V turns to Johnny, and opens her mouth again like she’s about to say something, then stops and looks down. “Be safe, Johnny,” she says softly, then turns and follows Panam out of the truck with Saul, leaving Johnny standing alone with the storm howling around him.
He isn’t sure what the fuck to do with himself now, so he goes to sit on the cot. But barely a few minutes have passed before the door bangs open again, and Ambrosia shoulders her way in, a worried and terrified look on her face.
Behind her, V and Saul reappear with Panam draped between them, blood pouring from an open wound on her head.
Johnny gets to his feet, startled.
“Is she-?” he starts to ask, but Panam raises her head and scowls at him as they help her over to the ripper chair.
“I am fine,” she protests. “A satellite dish blew loose and hit me in the head,” she slurs, glaring at Johnny. “It’s just a little blood!”
Ambrosia jacks her personal link into Panam’s neck, then frowns.
“You are not fine,” she scolds. “You have a mild concussion.”
“It’s nothing,” Panam insists. “I’m still good to pilot.”
“You absolutely will do no such thing,” Ambrosia says. “Are you trying to fry your brain?”
But V is regarding Johnny with a strange look on her face.
“Johnny and I will pilot the panzer,” she says suddenly.
Johnny is stunned into silence for a moment. Everyone in the room is looking at him now. Saul narrows his eyes.
“He has the most experience of any of us,” V points out.
Johnny shakes his head. “Fuck no,” he says. “Couldn’t pay me to get in one of those fuckin’ things again.”
Saul sighs heavily. “I’ll go find Mitch. He’ll pilot with you.”
But V places a hand on his arm, still not taking her eyes off Johnny. “No,” she says quietly. “Look, Saul… that wasn’t me piloting the panzer the last time we saved the camp. It was Johnny.” She holds Johnny’s gaze for another beat. “He and I will do it again.”
Johnny doesn’t know what the fuck that means, but he doesn’t fuckin’ like where this is headed. The thought of packin’ himsef into one of those fuckin’ coffins again is already making his palm start to sweat.
Panam is looking at him with new interest now too, though, as Ambrosia applies a cold compress to her head.
“V is right,” she says. “Saul, you need Mitch to help get the camp moving. He’s the only one who can disassemble the solar array quickly enough.”
Johnny begins pacing, shaking his head vigorously. “I fuckin’ said no,” he growls. “Did I fucking stutter?”
Saul turns back to Johnny. “You’re a vet, isn’t that right, son? Fought back in the Second Conflict, no?”
Johnny swallows down the bile rising in his throat. “Doesn’t fuckin’ matter,” he says, clenching his fist and staring them all down. “Not gonna do it.”
A sudden burst of gunfire sounds outside.
“Fuck, they’re here!” Ambrosia exclaims, looking up from dressing Panam’s wound.
Panam’s eyes widen with fear, and Saul curses loudly.
“We don’t have time to argue,” he says staunchly, rounding back on Johnny. “If we don’t get that panzer out soon, there ain’t gonna be a camp left to save.”
V takes a step toward Johnny. “Johnny, please,” she begs softly, in that same tone that makes his throat tighten and his stomach clench. “Just this once.”
Johnny’s heart is hammering in his chest, and he takes a step back. He’s caught in a corner, he can fuckin’ see that plain as day. If he doesn’t do this, all these gonks are gonna fuckin’ die, and it’ll be his fuckin’ fault.
He didn’t fuckin’ ask for this.
He doesn’t owe them shit.
Except he does, and he fuckin’ knows it. Like it or not, they saved his fuckin’ life, and he might be an asshole but he’s not gonna have that debt on his conscience.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “Fine. I'll do it."
Saul nods curtly. “I’ll radio Mitch and let him know you’re on your way.” He crosses to Johnny and claps him on the shoulder. “Thank you,” he says sincerely.
“Thank me later,” Johnny spits bitterly back, pushing past him and heading for the door.
The panzer is parked in a big tent near the outskirts of the camp, and Johnny follows V as she dashes between the battered tents, trying to stay in cover from the sand and the gunfire. The nomads are moving around again, hoods thrown over their heads and goggles on their eyes as they frantically load everything onto trucks while others cover them with returning gunfire. In the thick dust and darkness, it’s impossible to make much sense of the battle. Johnny flings his arm across his face, trying in vain to shield his eyes from the dust, but V’s skin and hair are blackened with dirt by the time they make it into the relative shelter of the hangar tent, and Johnny can only assume he looks much the same.
Mitch is there to meet them, and behind him, the panzer is fired up and vibrating, standing there like a death sentence with the top hatches already open and waiting for them.
“Jump on in!” Mitch shouts, altogether too gleefully given the circumstances. “It’s all ready to go. We’re countin’ on you!”
Johnny swallows hard, fighting down the urge to run, to punch someone, to drop to all fours and vomit on the spot. The squirrel stew is sitting in his stomach like a rock, threatening to make an abrupt reappearance. Memories are rushing back to him now - the jungle, the heat, the feeling of Sam’s lifeless body draped over his protectively as the smoke clears.
He takes a step back, almost unconsciously, and V seems to sense his sudden panic.
“It’s okay,” she says to him in a low voice. “It’ll be okay, I promise. You’ve done this with me before.”
Johnny can only nod at her, trying and failing to fight the terror rising in his throat. He hates how much this shit still fuckin’ gets to him. Hates that anyone has to see his fear.
But he said he’d do this, and he can’t back out now.
Mitch gathers his things and clears the hangar, pausing to give Johnny another slap on the back before pulling V into a tight hug.
Without saying another word, Johnny strides past them towards the Basilisk and heaves himself onto the hood, vaulting into the cockpit as his muscle memory takes over.
Fuck, he never thought he’d do this again.
He grimaces as he settles into the coffin-like chair, feeling the walls of the cramped cabin already closing in around him. His chest feels tight, and he knows he’s hyperventilating but there’s nothin’ he can fuckin’ do about it.
V slides into the copilot chair beside him, and turns to give him a reassuring half-smile. But there’s something else in her eyes, too - something Johnny can’t quite identify, a hopeful glow that doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense given their current situation.
He glares back at her.
V looks at him for another beat, then turns away and reaches over to plug the link into her neural socket.
Johnny takes a deep, heavy breath, then does the same.
The panels before them flicker to life as the hatches above their heads close.
He feels that horrible, sickening, all-too-familiar sensation as his vision glitches and flickers and suddenly his mind expands outwards and merges with the vehicle.
And with V.
And as he feels her mind connect with his own, something clicks into place.
It's the part of himself he's been missing, subconsciously reaching for, quietly craving. Her mind nestles against his, feeling so warm and familiar, her thoughts interlocking perfectly like puzzle pieces with his own.
And as their senses blend together in a kaleidoscopic rush, as her mind weaves itself into his, it suddenly all comes flooding back to him, leaving him gasping for breath.
He remembers her.
He remembers everything.
He remembers the initial terror of waking up a prisoner in her head with no control over what was happening, the searing hatred he felt at the excruciating intimacy of having his mind laid bare for a complete fucking stranger. The sensation of living day after day inside her skin, the mundane humiliations, the mortifying vulnerability of experiencing each other's dreams, fantasies, memories, nightmares. He remembers their fights, remembers their jokes, remembers that different kind of fear creeping in as trust slowly gave way to friendship and then to something deeper - something confusing and something terrifying.
He remembers being unable to stop himself from loving her.
And he remembers the horror of feeling his mind slowly but surely erase her own, the self-loathing he felt as her body started to fail, knowing that he alone was responsible. He remembers the sheer hopelessness of knowing there was no way she was going to be able to save them both.
But she did.
She promised him that she would, and she fucking did.
He opens his mouth and starts laughing hysterically, his emotions crashing over him in an overwhelming cascade as his laughs quickly turn to sobs. He realizes V is crying too, her thin shoulders shaking in her seat as she feels the weight of his revelation rush into her mind.
“Vero,” he chokes, reaching for her as she twists towards him at the same moment, her eyes shining with the tears flowing unchecked down her cheeks.
She laughs a choked sob as he pulls her roughly towards him, crushing her lips against his with so much force that their teeth collide. He can taste her tears, can taste the dust on her skin, can taste her.
An explosion rocks the Basilisk, and Johnny feels a searing pain in his side from where the rocket hit the panzer. V cries out against his lips, and he clutches her tightly as the agony subsides, kissing her again and again.
“You did it,” he whispers in awe, his voice breaking slightly. “You fuckin’ did it.”
But the tearful reunion will have to wait - they’ve got a camp to defend.
Johnny’s fear is suddenly replaced by a cool, steady resolve.
He’s alive, and so is V.
And he’s gonna fuckin’ keep it that way.
He lifts the vehicle and flies it out of the hangar and into the storm.
Notes:
AHHH we're nearing the finish line here, folks! Only five chapters left (unless one of them is secretly two chapters which is always entirely possible lol). Can't believe we're so close to the end :''''')
Thank you all SO MUCH for your patience and support!!!!! It always makes my day to read all your comments and know that people are still so excited about this story!!!! 💕
Chapter 61: Synergize
Summary:
V and Johnny fight off the Raffen and rediscover their connection.
Notes:
Holy shit guys, we made it! They're smooching again!!!! Suffice to say, this chapter has a LOT of smut. It feels like it's been ages since we've gotten some good old fashioned Johnny/V porn so.... enjoy!
Once again, apologies for the long wait between updates. Hopefully things will move a bit more quickly now!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
That was their first real kiss, V realizes as the Basilisk rattles and shudders and heaves itself out of the hangar and into the night. V can feel the bullets battering against its heavy hull like sharp pricks of pain peppering her skin, but none of that penetrates the sheer, unadulterated joy and relief that consumes her entire body.
Johnny doesn’t let go of her hand as V disentangles herself from his arms, pausing for a moment to grin at him before settling back into her seat as he steers the panzer away from the camp, spinning it into position. The dark forms of their attackers are barely visible to the naked eye as they descend upon the cluster of tents in the darkness and the dust, but Johnny was right - the heat sensors built into the panzer’s optics make them pop brilliant red. V forces herself to focus as she takes control of the guns and rains fire down on the Raffen as they rush the camp.
The ploy seems to be working - the Raffen are now concentrating their fire on the Basilisk, and V watches with silent relief as the nomads use the distraction to quickly pack up the camp and prepare to flee.
She can feel how easily Johnny’s mind pilots the panzer, and she closes her eyes for a beat and relishes the feeling of his thoughts wrapped around hers again like an old, familiar blanket. She grins back at him, her face still damp with tears. When he meets her eyes, the look on his face is one of pure, naked joy that makes her heart leap in her chest.
And that’s when the full weight of the revelation finally, truly hits her - she actually has him back. Against all fucking odds, she did it. She fucking did it. She got Johnny back. He’s alive, he’s here in his own body, and he remembers her. He knows her.
And from the look on his face, she doesn’t even need the Basilisk link to know that he’s feeling all the same things that she is.
The pain, the anguish, and the grief of the last few months all dissipate like smoke on the wind, and V throws back her head and laughs in heaving, choked gasps.
Outside the panzer, the Raffen are tumbling to the ground, their forms crumpling into the dust in short, sharp fiery bursts as the rounds from the Basilisk extinguish their wretched lives one by one.
V swallows as she feels Johnny's familiar fierce, focused, and violent determination envelop her mind, steering the panzer in sharp, terrifyingly practiced maneuvers designed to kill with brutal efficiency. She can feel his wild violence - controlled, but just barely. His simmering rage, honed to a razor's edge and swung wildly toward each improbably precise hit after hit.
This is the part of himself that Johnny is afraid of, she knows. The part that he privately worries is the only true source of his power, the fear that his rage is the only real momentum that drives him forward.
But V loves this part of Johnny, too. And she understands the deeper force driving it, too.
After all, he didn't raid Arasaka Tower out of hatred.
He did it for love.
The dust is making it impossible to see, and even the heat sensors aren't picking up any more movement. Either the Raffen are all dead, or the remaining ones have fled in their cars.
The same can be assumed of the Aldecaldos.
Fear settles into her gut, shoving aside the joy she felt mere moments earlier.
V turns her head roughly towards Johnny, her eyes wild and wide.
Johnny stares ahead, his jaw tight and his nostrils flared, his eyes scanning the thick, impenetrable darkness of the storm.
"We're clear," he says, kicking on the jets.
The Basilisk rockets forward with a metallic shriek, barrelling through the storm.
"Where are we going?" V exclaims.
"Can't see shit," Johnny mutters through gritted teeth. "Might have to just-"
A single, lone truck emerges from the whirling sand, toppled on its side and partially on fire.
V recognizes it from the Aldecaldos' camp.
"Shit," she whimpers.
Johnny doesn't speak, and the panzer continues to jolt and rattle through the storm, past the overturned truck.
V can make out the dark, draped forms of bodies as they pass. She can hardly bring herself to look.
"Gotta find somewhere to land," Johnny says. "Wait out the storm."
V nods mutely as Johnny wheels the panzer around and settles it into a dip in the rocky landscape.
The windows power down, but Johnny doesn't disconnect his link.
She can hear him breathing behind her and to her left, can feel his skin as though it were her own. They sit there in silence, their breaths falling into sync, feeling their minds twining together, their thoughts and emotions overlapping like waves crashing on rocks.
It feels like slipping on her favorite jacket and suddenly realizing just how cold she'd been.
It's almost enough just to sit there, feeling him beside her, within her, with her again. For the first time. For real this time.
It's almost enough.
She feels Johnny's hand on her shoulder as her hand rises to meet his at the same time, and she turns her face toward him. He takes her hand and draws it up towards his mouth, pressing his lips to her fingers, then disentangles his hand from hers to reach out and cup her cheek. V feels her stomach drop at the utterly awestruck look on his face as he studies her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demands. “About us?”
“Tell you what?” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “How the fuck could I have described it? How the fuck can you tell someone that they… that you…”
She can’t bring herself to say the rest. Of course she wanted to tell him. The words have been burning in her throat like fire these last few days, all the things she’s been waiting to say to him. All the things she wants to tell him. About what he was to her. About what she was to him.
But you can’t just… tell someone that they love you, she thinks. Especially if they don’t even know it themselves.
“I can’t believe you went to fuckin' space for me,” Johnny murmurs, his voice incredulous.
V bursts out laughing, her eyes welling with tears again.
“I wasn’t gonna live without you, you stupid fuck,” she whispers back.
“You came back for me," Johnny continues with amazement, his voice rough and low. "You actually fuckin' did it. Silverhand style, bold and brave and stupid."
V shakes her head. "Silverhand style? You still takin' credit for my stupid stunts, even when you're gone?"
Johnny smiles at her, and his eyes are damp, too. "Nah," he says softly. "This one's all you."
V opens her mouth to speak, but whatever she might have been about to say is chased from her mind and from her lips as Johnny captures hers with his mouth, his stubble scraping against her chin as he kisses her desperately, clumsily, more than a little roughly, his trembling organic fingers tangling in her hair. She can feel the profound intensity in his every movement, almost like he’s trying to devour her whole.
She melts into him, reaching down to unbuckle her harness only to realize that in their haste, she never even fastened it in the first place. And it doesn't matter, because Johnny's already hauling her out of her seat and onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her waist and dragging his mouth along her jaw.
Being linked to him in the panzer like this feels so much like how it was when he was inside her mind - so much so that V keeps half expecting him to glitch, to dematerialize in her arms like he always used to.
But he doesn't, because he's no longer an illusion constructed by a fancy piece of tech lodged in her brain.
He's a real man now, blood and skin and sweat, solid and persistent.
And he knows her.
She gasps, leaning into his touch as the significance of the moment threatens again to overwhelm her.
"You're actually here," she whispers, reaching up to touch his face reverently. "You're back. You're real."
"I've always been real," he murmurs.
"Yeah," she agrees as his lips find hers again.
She closes her eyes and breathes in his scent, reveling in his physical presence, in the exhilaration of feeling his mind nestled next to hers once again. She knows that this connection won’t always be the case between them anymore, but it’s oddly comforting to know that they can still experience this in some capacity, even now that they exist separately in their own bodies.
But Johnny doesn’t seem content to just enjoy the moment - he’s already clawing at her with an almost animalistic passion, and she can feel something in him bend and then snap, can feel a wash of emotions flood through him that she realizes suddenly he’s never completely allowed himself to access until this moment.
She pauses, gripped by a sudden sense of nervousness as he begins to tug at her shirt. It’s not gonna be like it was when he was in her head, she realizes. It’s gonna be messy and gross and… human. It’s going to be the way that sex is when you’re doing it with a real person and not a holographic projection, not someone who can read your mind and share your sensations and anticipate your every action and reaction.
Well, he can still do those last few things for now, at least. As long as they stay linked in this panzer, anyway.
She can feel him shudder as he runs his hands down the sides of her waist, can feel the cold metal of his newly minted left hand and the warm callouses of his right one as he grips her hips, grinding up into her with a low groan. She feels his cock straining against his pants - it’s pressing against her as she grinds on his lap, but she can also feel it through their link, and the intensity of the overlapping sensation makes her gasp into his neck where her face is currently buried.
“Can’t believe this is real,” she murmurs again, pulling back to look at him. His face is still smeared and caked with dust from the storm, but his eyes flicker with a warmth that makes her stomach curl and her cheeks flush.
Johnny hums in agreement before shoving his tongue back between her teeth with an arrogant ownership that steals her breath.
“Still can’t fuckin’ believe you went to all that length to save my gonk ass,” he growls jokingly into her mouth.
“That’s why you love me,” V teases back, the words slipping out before she can stop them.
Johnny freezes, and V feels him internally withdraw as his warring emotions clash and clatter around inside his chest. She swallows hard, not taking her eyes from his face.
“Yeah,” he finally says, his voice low and hoarse. “It is.”
V's puts her hand on his jaw and holds it there, staring hard into his eyes. It’s the closest thing she’s ever gotten to a declaration from him, and it makes the reality of the moment hit her even harder. She blinks back the tears threatening to spill again.
"You don't have to say it," she tells him, her voice just above a whisper. "Just show me."
“V,” he says roughly, pulling her in to kiss her again. “You knew," he murmurs as he kisses her. "You had to know.”
“Well..." She pulls back slightly with a soft laugh. “Rogue… told me what you said to her. But it’s not the same as hearin’ it from you.”
Johnny laughs too. “‘Course she had to go and ruin it for me,” he jokes sadly, reaching out to brush a tear from V’s face with his thumb, and she is once again struck dumb at the sheer fact that he can do that now.
But he pauses again, suddenly frowning.
“V,” he says quietly. “How long has it been?”
“Whaddaya mean?” V asks, her brow furrowing.
"How long has it been?" Johnny says again, more roughly this time. “Since Mikoshi?”
V blinks at this new sudden line of questioning, finally catching his drift.
He wants to know how long she has left.
“Three months,” she tells him softly.
Johnny drops his hand from her face. "Three months?!” he almost shouts. “Fuck, V, that's... that’s half the fuckin' time Alt gave you! Fuck!"
He slams his fist on the wall of the panzer, causing V to startle.
She shakes her head at him, blinking back the furious tears. “The job I did to get to the Crystal Palace…” she stammers, attempting to reassure him. “With the eds I earned, I've got options,” she tells him. “And Kerry, he… I got these new meds that’ll buy me some time,” she continues. “I lost ‘em in the crash, but when we get back to NC, I-”
“I told you not to waste your time tryna get me back,” Johnny growls. “V, I…” His voice trails off, and he looks up at her with fear and desperation painted across his features.
“Stop it, Johnny,” V whispers. “It worked. We’ll figure out the rest later.”
Johnny nods mutely, but his jaw is still tense, and she can see the muscles working underneath his skin. He swallows hard.
“Please don’t tell me you brought me back just to watch you die,” he says simply, and there’s a bottomless sorrow to his voice that makes her heart break.
“I didn’t,” she promises.
Johnny nods slowly, dragging his thumb across V’s lower lip as he stares at her with a naked intensity that leaves her breathless.
“It’s weird,” he murmurs, dropping his eyes to her lips. “Kinda remember what it felt like to get fucked by myself in your body,” he jokes.
V laughs softly. “And how was it?” she teases him.
“I’m a great fuckin’ lay,” he says with a smirk.
“That so?” she replies. “Then prove it.” She can still feel him pressing against her, so she grinds her hips into him, feeling his body tense in response.
“Fuck,” he groans, removing his hand from her hip and shifting her weight to the side as he reaches for the front of his pants.
“Can’t just glitch ‘em away now,” she remarks coyly as he fumbles with the buttons.
“Take off your shirt,” he commands, his eyes snapping back to hers and wiping the grin off her face with the acute, raw desire she sees reflected there. “Need to see you.”
V rips her sweaty tank top over her head and and lets it hang limply on the cable still snaking out from her neck, connecting her to the panzer, to Johnny. She leans back to give Johnny a better view, and he inhales sharply as her breasts tumble free.
“God damn, V,” he breathes. “Can’t fuckin’ believe this is the first time I’m actually seein’ your tits,” he murmurs, already leaning in to envelop her nipple with his mouth.
Her eyes flutter shut as she leans into the sensation, but Johnny’s hands are working now to shove her pants down over her hips, and she turns awkwardly in the cramped space to help him shimmy them off her until she’s straddling him naked in the tiny, coffin-like cockpit.
He’s lookin’ at her so reverently now that it makes her breath catch in her throat, and she feels a blush creeping up her neck at the sheer intensity of his gaze on her. He pulls her against him, breathing deeply.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “The way you smell, I…”
He doesn’t finish the thought, because V’s hands find their way between them, yanking his t-shirt over his head and then finishing the work he started of unbuttoning his pants and wrestling his cock free.
Sure, she spent days dragging him naked through the desert, but this is the first time she’s seeing him like this, erect and ready and wanting her.
It’s even bigger than it seemed when he was just a hallucination.
He seems to catch her thought, or maybe just the look on her face as she admires him. His breathing grows more ragged as they stare at each other in the dim light of the panzer, echoing her own harsh breaths.
She extends her hand, letting her fingers graze the underside of his cock as she runs her hand along its length. Johnny's eyes are half-lidded now, and he shudders as though he hasn't been touched in fifty fuckin' years. He hasn't, she reminds herself as the sensation strikes her through their link like an electric shock.
She tilts her face towards him at the same moment he reaches for her almost violently, capturing her mouth with his and lifting her hips to position her over him. She barely has time to prepare herself before the tip of his cock is pressing against her, and she slides onto him easily, like two puzzle pieces clicking into place.
Her eyes flutter shut as the sensations threaten to overwhelm her again.
“Fuck,” she moans softly.
“Open your eyes,” Johnny quietly commands.
She forces herself to do so, and Johnny’s eyes burn into hers as he holds her there, connected in every possible way, body and mind. She can feel every sensation from both of them - every quiver, every breath, every emotion at once.
He lets out a soft groan but doesn’t take his eyes from her face as he rests his hand on the side of her neck, still looking at her with that reverent, awestruck look on his face. He touches her with a strange incredulity, like he’s still struggling to believe he’s actually physically present here with her.
“Johnny,” she gasps, and hearing his name like that seems to break his last thread of self-control. He rocks his hips up into her, erasing all thoughts from her brain as the sensations consume her.
“V,” is all he manages in response, his voice shaking slightly.
But they don’t need to say anything else right now - she can feel the warmth of his body, his chest pressed flush to hers as he begins to move slowly inside of her. She can feel how much he wants to savor this, but it’s just all so much - actually feeling him inside her, feeling what he’s feeling, too. She exhales shakily, her body trembling as he fucks her for what she suddenly realizes again is technically their first fucking time. She rolls her hips to meet him, matching his pace intuitively, leaning forward to bury her face in his neck.
“You still with Kerry?” he asks her between thrusts.
The question momentarily startles her again, and she hesitates for a beat, her cheek pressed against his shoulder.
“Yeah,” she breathes, her heart hammering in her chest as lifts his hips, slamming into her harder this time.
“Too bad,” he grunts, his arms tightening around her waist as he quickens his pace, his thrusts becoming faster and harsher. “‘Cause you’re all mine now.”
“Yeah?” she gasps as he continues to fuck her hard. “Just gonna claim me like that?”
“Ain’t that what I’m doing right now?” Johnny growls, moving his mouth to bite her shoulder hard enough to leave a mark. V thrills at the realization that this time, it actually will leave a mark. Johnny groans softly as he sinks his teeth into her neck again, almost assuredly leaving a trail of bruises. He drags his lips lower, breathing hard against her neck. “Want everyone to see this and know who the fuck you belong to now.”
V feels an abrupt twist of guilt, although she’s not sure whether it’s more directed towards Johnny or towards his old bandmate. She knows she’ll have to sort this all out, somehow. They all will.
But right now, all she can think about is Johnny.
“Johnny,” she moans again. “I’m yours. Always have been.”
And it’s true. It’s always been true, since that first fuckin’ day that he complimented her stupid fuckin’ outfit the night she went to the Afterlife to beg Rogue for help.
“Tell me again,” he chokes, his voice a low rumble.
“I’ve always been yours,” she breathes.
She feels Johnny start to shudder at this and they both groan out loud.
This isn't gonna last long, she realizes as she feels him already starting to twitch inside her, and she leans back and arches her hips as she rides him, nearing her peak as well.
"Fuck, V," he groans, moving his hand to grip her jaw as his thrusts become more erratic. She doesn't need a mind link to know he's very, very close.
She wraps her legs around him and pulls him closer, bucking her hips against him until she feels his cock start to spasm inside of her.
And then she’s gone, too. She scrabbles at him and moans as she feels his body - his real, physical body - tremble and convulse beneath hers.
Her eyes roll back, but Johnny tightens his hand on her jaw.
"Look at me, V," he gasps, and she forces her eyes back to his, her heart thrashing at the intensity of emotion she sees there as she rides out her orgasm.
It’s not the same as it was when they were truly linked - their minds don’t meld together, and she’s not met with that overwhelming rush of memories and emotions that would inevitably lead to the white hot pain of a relic malfunction. But it’s extraordinary nonetheless, feeling all of his reactions and physical sensations.
Her moans turn into a choked sob as the last wave of spasms wracks her body, and she can feel him spilling inside her for what she suddenly realizes again is, in fact, the first time. He doesn’t even attempt to pull out - she knows the thought of not riding it out fully enmeshed with each other seems unthinkable to them both.
She collapses against him, breathing heavily and pressing her mouth to his collarbone.
But she feels a strange and sudden twist of alarm from him.
“Fuck,” he says softly. “I didn’t mean to-”
It takes her a second to realize what he’s talking about.
“It’s okay, Johnny,” she says quickly. “Got an implant for that, remember?”
“Mm,” he murmurs into her neck. “Preem.”
They remain there silently for a moment, and it’s a strange feeling, not knowing what he’s thinking, though she can feel his emotions crashing over her like waves.
“D’you want kids?” he asks suddenly, as though the thought has abruptly struck him out of nowhere. “Just like, in general?”
She sits up straight, leaning back and squinting down at him in the dim light.
“What?” she squeaks.
“Was just curious,” he says, seeming a bit thrown off by her reaction. “Never talked about any of that shit before.”
“Why the fuck would you ask me that now?” she chokes.
“That a no, then?” he teases.
V is caught so off guard by this sudden topic that she is at a momentary loss for words.
She throws up her hands. “I don’t fucking know, Johnny!” she practically shouts. “I’ve honestly never even really thought much about it. I never had any fuckin’ eddies, it’s not like my lifestyle exactly lends itself to motherhood, never had anyone stick around long enough or that I liked enough that it was even worth considering. And now I’m fuckin’ dying. So who the fuck even knows? I sure as hell fuckin’ don’t.”
It’s such a sudden and sharp realization - this is real now. She and Johnny have the potential for an actual future together, and everything that might entail.
Except they don’t - not unless she figures out how the fuck to keep herself alive.
She starts crying, then, horrified at herself as she angrily wipes the tears from her face. “I’m sorry,” she stammers. “I didn’t mean-”
“Hey, hey, hey,” he says gently, reaching out to cup her chin, turning her face towards his. “S’okay,” he mutters. “I’m bad at this stuff.”
She sniffles softly and looks down.
“I just got you back,” she whispers. “Can’t we just enjoy this, right here, right now? Not think about the future for just one goddamn sec?”
Johnny looks at her for a long beat and then nods, moving his hand to brush the sweaty hair from her face.
She suddenly laughs. “Although, havin’ you in my head for a few months was basically like bein’ pregnant,” she jokes. “Sharing my body with you, gettin’ subjected to all your weird cravings… and now you pop out and are a real boy.”
“Gross,” Johnny says, but he’s laughing, too. But then his face is serious again, and he gives her a long, solemn look, then leans forward to kiss her neck.
She can feel him starting to get soft inside her, along with the sticky wetness pooling between her legs. It’s a new and strange sensation for the two of them, but it highlights again for her that this is real now. They both laugh as she slides herself off him, sweaty and soaked and naked in the small cockpit.
Well, she’s naked. Johnny still has his pants awkwardly pulled down around his thighs. He chuckles at her as he yanks them back up, ignoring the mess.
Almost right on cue, the radio crackles suddenly, startling them both.
“V?” comes Panam’s voice over the comms. “Are you alright?”
V laughs as she pulls herself off of Johnny and slides back into her chair, pulling her shirt back over her head and shoving her legs back into her pants as she fumbles with the comm controls.
“We’re fine,” she reassures Panam. “What about you guys? Where are you?”
“Oh, thank god! But V… the plan worked!” Panam crows. “The Raffen have retreated and we’ve set up a temporary camp with the caravan a couple miles south. I am sending the rendezvous coordinates now!”
V glances back to see Johnny smiling to himself as he buttons his pants and pulls his shirt back into place, then fires the panzer back on. The windows above them come back online, and V realizes that the storm is over, and dawn is breaking on the horizon.
As they fly through the dawn, V’s thoughts swirl like insects in her head.
She'd been so afraid that Johnny wouldn't remember. That she would never really have back the man she knew so intimately, the person she'd grown to love. She can still taste that bitter disappointment in her mouth, can feel the lingering pain she'd been bracing herself against. The fear that she'd be left with a shadow of a man who would never be able to love her, who would never even remember that he'd once loved her.
She shudders at the memory of how it felt every time he looked at her these last couple days, that cold lack of recognition in his eyes. And underneath that, his boiling resentment at the strange connection between them that she knew he felt and couldn’t seem to shake. He was so cruel, even though she knows he was just lashing out.
It’s almost too painful to think about, now.
She can feel a whole mess of complicated emotions rattling around inside Johnny, too, but there's a steady calmness to him that's so unlike anything she remembers that it almost unnerves her. He seems strangely focused - there's still that bristling rage beneath the surface, but the all-consuming fear that was such a constant during their months together seems to have been replaced by something softer, something almost… hopeful.
She hopes he's as happy to have her back as she is to have him.
Once the Basilisk is safely parked at the new camp, V can’t help but be a little sad as Johnny disconnects the link and she feels his mind recede from hers, leaving her with a strange, cold emptiness as she finds herself alone in her head once more. But his smile is warm as he helps her out of the panzer, and they emerge blinking in the cold dawn to a crowd of Aldecaldos hooting and cheering for them.
The rest of the morning passes in a blur. Ambrosia insists on checking them both for injuries, despite their protests. Mitch and Saul clap her and Johnny on the back, shoving a beer into Johnny’s hands and a coffee into hers. She's sure they've all noticed Johnny's sudden change in demeanor towards her, but none of them ask about it directly, though she catches more than a few raised eyebrows at the way he now can't seem to tear his eyes away from her, the way he doesn't seem to want to let her out of arm's reach, the way he keeps his organic hand protectively clutching her shoulder. Johnny doesn’t leave her side as they shuffle over to sit by the bonfire that’s been hastily lit, and then Ambrosia is handing her a bowl of some sort of scramble, along with an airhypo of her medicine. V can feel Johnny’s anxious gaze as she injects herself with it, and she catches Judy watching her from across the fire as well.
Ambrosia sighs. “I hate that we had to pack up the camp and leave in such a rush,” she complains. “We always try to leave the land better than we found it when we move, but with the storm and the Raffen…”
“Eh, the desert’s full of trash already,” Mitch cuts in. “What’s a little more gonna hurt?”
Ambrosia rolls her eyes as she lifts her beer to her lips.
Trace and Lilayah come over to sit to her left and she can feel Johnny stiffen when he sees Trace. She saw them talking last night, and wonders what exactly Johnny has pieced together about his parentage.
“Good work back there,” Trace says to them, resting his foot on his knee and draping his arm around Lilayah’s shoulders.
The atmosphere is mostly relieved and cheerful, but there’s a somber note among some of the nomads as well, and V wonders how many casualties there were, exactly. She’s almost afraid to ask.
“Did we lose a lot of people?” she asks Trace softly.
He shakes his head. “A few,” he admits. “But it could have been worse.”
“And it wasn’t, thanks to you,” Mitch adds.
“But the Raffen came because of me,” V reminds them.
“They had been tailing us for weeks,” Panam interjects. “You can’t blame yourself, V.”
Johnny is uncharacteristically quiet, and every time V glances at him, his eyes are fixed on her with that same fierce gaze.
“You two gonna head back to NC now?” Trace asks, and V nods.
“Think so, yeah,” she tells him. “As soon as Johnny’s good to travel.”
“As soon as you are,” Johnny corrects her, and V remembers that she still probably looks like she got dragged out of hell last week and died a couple times on the way back.
Which isn’t an entirely inaccurate assessment.
“I’ll tell Karis you said hi,” V says to Trace.
Trace snorts. “Sure he’ll be glad to hear it,” he retorts dryly.
“How come he stayed in NC and you didn’t?” V asks, taking a sip of her coffee. “Did you hate your mom that much?” she teases.
Trace laughs. "Nah,” he tells her. “Was more complicated than that. Our mom was always afraid Smasher was gonna find out about me ‘n Karis, come after us,” he admits, and V can feel Johnny bristle beside her. “Think that's why she encouraged us to split up. And there was no way she wasn't gonna keep Karis close. It's not that he was her favorite," Trace adds quickly, seeing the look on V’s face. "Think Karis just maybe… needed her more than I did."
V glances at Johnny again, and his brow is furrowed now but he doesn’t seem surprised at what Trace is saying. Or like he's even listening, for that matter - he's just staring at Trace with a strange expression on his face. She wonders how he feels about the revelation that Rogue has children, a whole life he wasn’t there for, and feels that strange hollow sadness again that she can no longer hear his thoughts or feel his emotions.
But what Trace is saying makes sense. Of course Rogue knew that her enemies would try to hurt her via her children. And while Karis and his mother might act exasperated by each other, she knows there’s a very strong bond there.
“You should come visit sometime,” she tells Trace, which elicits an eye roll from the nomad.
“Sure, sure,” he says, waving his hand. “Tell Karis to plan me a party.”
Lilayah laughs at this. “I miss Karis’ parties,” she pouts.
“Eh, ain’t no party like a nomad party,” Mitch cuts in. “In fact, think we’re plannin’ one tonight. Gonna get a barbeque goin', knock a few back, do a couple races…” he continues with a grin. “Or pay a friendly visit to the Raffen Shiv.”
“Think we’ve had enough of that for today,” comes Saul’s voice, and V realizes the gruff nomad leader is standing right behind her as she twists to look up at him.
“Agreed,” Panam says.
“Think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you two agree,” V teases.
“It seems we owe you once again, V,” Saul says seriously, looking down at her. “And you as well,” he adds, extending his hand to Johnny, who frowns for barely half a second before he shakes it.
The conversation continues around them, and V finds herself content to just sit there, surrounded by her friends, absorbing the heat of the fire in the cold morning and the heat of Johnny's body beside her. She’s beyond exhausted, but she feels more relaxed and happy than she can remember feeling in a long time. She leans into Johnny and he rests his hand on her knee, and she’s once again hit with the forceful revelation that this is real - everyone else can see him, he can touch her, they can just casually sit around a campfire and enjoy each other’s presence.
She never thought she’d get to do any of this.
V steals a glance at Johnny again, but he's already looking at her, just smiling stupidly like he’s still fuckin’ awestruck by her presence. She feels a dopey grin spreading across her face as well, and he leans in to kiss her face.
“Let’s go to bed,” he whispers, his voice a low rumble in her ear.
She nods, and the two of them stand and she lets him lead her back to the small tent Panam pointed out to them earlier that the Aldecaldos set up for her with all her stuff.
Her stuff, she suddenly remembers, releasing Johnny’s hand to drop to a crouch as she rummages through the small bag in the corner of the tent. The same bag she carried to space and back. She closes her fist around the small, metal objects she’s looking for, her lips twitching upward into a triumphant smile.
Behind her, she can hear Johnny sigh as he sits heavily on the creaky cot, already pulling off his boots and jacket and shirt.
“C’mere,” he says as she stands to face him, and she feels a rush of exhilaration at being alone with him again, in their own tent.
She tosses off her coat and kicks off her shoes, then crosses to him in a few short steps, and he grabs her hand and drags her down onto the cot with him. He lets out a low, contented hum as he gathers her in his arms and buries his face in her neck, and the gesture is so familiar and affectionate that she feels something crack and then shatter inside of her.
She twists to face him, his nose mere centimeters from her own.
And for a moment, all they can do is lie there looking at each other, taking in each other’s faces with that same achingly earnest, reverent amazement.
It doesn’t feel real. It feels too good to be real, like at any moment this could all be snatched away from her again like some cruel joke.
She doesn’t deserve this. She’s never done anything to deserve this.
People like them don’t get happy endings, Johnny himself once said.
But maybe this is their chance to rewrite that story.
She props herself up on her elbow and stares down at Johnny, and he rolls onto his back to look up at her, holding her gaze with his dark eyes. She takes her chrome left hand, the one not clutching his rings, and runs her hand along his jaw, up the side of his face and over the soft downy stubble that now covers his head. It makes his features look sharper, but also younger in a strange way.
She places her right hand on his chest, opening her fingers to show him what she’s holding.
“These are yours,” she whispers.
His eyes widen. “You brought ‘em all this way?”
She nods. “Wanted to give them back to you as soon as I could,” she tells him.
He reaches up to close his fingers around hers, and his throat bobs as he swallows hard.
“Thank you,” he says gruffly, but she can hear the emotion in his voice as he takes the rings and slides them back onto his fingers, flexing his hand to look at them.
“There,” she says. “Feel more like yourself now?”
His lip quirks upward, and then he grabs her forearm and drags his mouth across the tattoo that he put there. And then he’s pulling her down to him again, kissing the side of her neck where her neural port is. Where the old, busted chip that once contained Johnny’s soul is still firmly and permanently lodged in her skull.
She settles back against him, nestling in the crook of his arm as he snakes his left hand around to rest his metal fingers against her hip.
She wonders what happens now. They go back to Night City, and then what? Will he live with her? She can’t imagine him living anywhere else, but the idea of Johnny being something as mundane as… her boyfriend seems almost ludicrous.
But what is he to her, now?
He’s lived inside her head, seen her every thought, felt her every fear. They’ve shared joy, and also death. There isn’t a word to describe what he is to her now.
And there doesn’t need to be, she decides. Just being with him right now is enough.
“How do you feel?” she asks him, because it’s strange not knowing. “Being back in your body? Being…”
“Alive?” he finishes for her, and she nods. But what she also wants to know is how he feels being with her.
She doesn’t quite expect him to answer her question honestly. Talking about how he’s feeling isn’t exactly Johnny’s strong suit. But if they can’t hear each other’s thoughts now, she hopes it’s something he can get used to.
“It’s…” he begins, then falters, as though he’s trying and failing to find the right words. He sighs heavily, running his fingers up her side to rest them on her shoulder. He takes a deep breath, and then shrugs. "I dunno," he admits. "Feels strange. Like waking up from a long sleep. A bad dream, maybe."
"Sounds about right," V jokes softly.
"And the dream wasn't all bad," Johnny reminds her with a smirk.
"Do you remember everything now?" she asks him. It seems like he does, but she has to know for certain.
Johnny frowns as he considers this. "Think so," he says. "But I guess I can't be sure. Parts of it still feel sorta hazy, but I guess my veins were pumped full of antifreeze for half a century and my mind's been copied and recopied fuck knows how many times now."
His brow remains furrowed, and V raises her head to press her lips to his jaw.
"Alt said it might take a while," she reassures him. "But you seem more or less yourself to me. Except for the part where you started talkin' 'bout havin' kids and shit," she teases. "Maybe you did get shredded in cyberspace after all."
Johnny chuckles at this, but he still looks a little worried.
"I already got a second chance at life," he tells her. "And now I've somehow been handed a third. And I… I don't wanna fuck it up this time," he admits.
V props herself up on her elbow again, looking down at him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she promises. “Unless… you want me to.”
Johnny gives her a long look. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he says slowly. “You’re not stuck with me anymore. And before…” He closes his eyes. “I just… I know how I am. How I was, anyway. Could never be what people wanted me to be. Always let them down, somehow or other.”
V shakes her head. “Don’t think anyone was harder on you than you were on yourself,” she tells him.
“Always felt like people were either tryna put me on a pedestal or cast me as their villain,” he continues. “And it was sometimes like… like they didn't even fuckin' see me, not really. I was just Johnny Silverhand, a legend, a dick… a legendary dick. With a legendary-" he begins with a smirk, but V swiftly cuts him off with a sharp punch to the arm.
"Damn, V, that actually hurts now," he whines. "Your chrome shit packs a punch."
V laughs. "Bet I could take you in a fight, old man."
He grins back at her. "Nah. I was a fuckin' marine, don't get hotheaded on me."
“That sounds like a challenge,” V teases, already throwing another punch towards his face. He catches her fist with his chrome hand and twists it backwards, using his weight to roll her over and off the cot, toppling onto the floor after her and landing on top of her.
"Oh?" he growls in her ear, and she feels her body thrill in response to the sheer weight of him, the physical reality of having him here with her, even as his body crushes hers on the hard ground.
They may no longer be psychically linked, but he grinds himself against her once to let her know he's feeling it, too.
But her pride won't allow her to leave things here, so she shoves him off of her, springing to her feet as Johnny scrambles to his knees. She manages to land a fairly solid punch to his jaw before he can recover.
He sits back on his heels, his hand flying to his face to stroke his jaw where she hit it.
“Just got my body back and you’re already tryna break it?” he says incredulously, laughing under his breath as he staggers to his feet and puts his fists up again.
V grins devilishly as she circles him in the small tent, her eyes darting down to the tight bulge in his pants. “Could just kick you in the nuts, call it a day,” she taunts him, taking advantage of the momentary horror that crosses his face to hurl another punch toward him.
But he dodges this time, grinning back at her.
"Not goin' down that easy, huh?" he teases, and V laughs as she launches herself at him again, fists flying.
He grabs her arm again and twists, some kinda martial arts move, and suddenly she's on the ground again, pinned face down this time in a chokehold.
"Give up yet?" he breathes in her ear as she struggles against him, and she can feel his erection pressing against her still, both of them panting heavily.
She just growls in response and elbows him in the ribs, using the distraction to wriggle out of the chokehold and scramble away on her hands and knees, kicking at him when he tries to grab for her.
But he throws his body on top of hers again, wrapping his metal arm around her neck and cutting off her airflow this time, his other hand gripping her face. She doesn't hesitate before biting down hard on his soft, organic fingers.
He laughs a low, dangerous laugh and releases her, and she rolls over to look up at him for a beat, breathing hard. She knows this is clearly just some elaborate foreplay for both of them, a way to vent all the fuckin' adrenaline and relief and fear and sheer joy and terror of everything that's fuckin' happened to them over the last few days. And she also knows him well enough to know he's enjoying it as much as she is.
They both need this catharsis, after so fucking long in fight or flight. Maybe throwin' each other around like this is the only way they know how to let out that tension.
She reaches up and slaps Johnny across the face, causing him to swear loudly and tackle her again with a growl, pinning her with his weight as he begins fumbling with her pants, ripping them down forcefully.
He pulls back to look at her, then uses his metal hand to push her thigh out and to the side, holding it open while placing his other hand on her lower abdomen, pinning her in place. And then he dives his head downward, only breaking eye contact with her at the last possible moment before he takes her in his mouth and drags his tongue up and over her, rolling the flat of his tongue across the top of her clit with a surgical precision that could only have been gained through the specific level of insider knowledge of her anatomy that he'd had the singular privilege to experience.
She can only let out a high pitched, keening whine, trying to buck her hips against his mouth. He moves the hand on her stomach lower, using his fingers to spread her lips, and slides his other hand off her thigh to tease her cunt with his prosthetic fingers.
She's reminded of that first dream she had about him, what seems like a lifetime ago - how genuinely afraid she'd been, then - as he shoves those fingers inside of her now, groaning around her clit like he's enjoyin' this as much as she is.
Her breath stutters and she can't stop herself from grinding wildly against his tongue. He indulges her briefly before pulling away to watch her face as he curls his fingers inside of her, his lips glistening and his eyes dark as he looks down at her splayed beneath him. And then his fingers are gone, too - she barely has time to feel ashamed of the ragged whine their absence pulls from her throat before he unzips his pants and pushes himself into her, roughly and without hesitation this time.
There's no fear anymore, not of him, and they both groan loudly as he bottoms out inside her, his organic hand finding its way back to her throat as he starts fucking her with a brutal and almost violent desperation.
He leans forward to kiss her, moaning into her mouth as he continues to slam his cock into her, biting her lower lip as he pulls away before tightening his hand around her throat.
It’s not the same as it was when they shared a body, or how it was earlier in the Basilisk, either. It's new for them, and a little bit strange, to not be able to hear each other’s thoughts or feel each other’s sensations or anticipate each other's movements. But it seems like Johnny still remembers exactly how to touch her, and the revelation of being physically present together - able to leave indentations, bruises, physical evidence on each other - is still more than enough to make up for it.
She moans his name, and he slows his pace a bit, scooping his arm beneath her torso to lift her hips from the cold ground to meet his powerful thrusts.
“Come for me, V,” he growls, and she’s delighted that he still knows her well enough to sense how close she is, and she screams his name again as she feels her body release.
He follows almost immediately after her, and for a half-second, V finds herself missing the all-encompassing sensation their shared orgasms once were, but all thoughts are quickly chased from her head as Johnny collapses on top of her and his scent - masculine and animalistic and thrillingly present - overtakes her senses. She revels in the comforting weight of him, the ease with which they can still please each other’s bodies, the unbelievable elation of it all.
“Fuck, I love you,” he murmurs in her ear, and it’s the first time he’s actually said those words to her. Her throat tightens and her heart swells, and she feels a soft smile spreading across her lips.
It was all worth it, she thinks. Every fucking second of pain.
“Never thought you’d actually say it,” she tells him, and he rewards this with a hard bite on her neck.
“Shut the fuck up, V,” he grumbles.
“Love you too, asshole,” she says, laughing as he rolls off of her to lie beside her on the hard-packed dirt. The sunlight is bleeding in now through the seams of the tent, and V wonders idly if anyone outside heard their exertions. And Johnny is still staring at her with that look of wonder on his face, and she suddenly feels a strange urge to pinch herself. It all feels so unreal, so improbable - Johnny is alive, and he loves her. And he wants to stay with her, she thinks. She hopes.
She thinks again of Kerry, probably off on tour by now. Or maybe he hasn't left yet, and is still alone in her penthouse. She isn’t sure exactly how long she’s been away, now. Her time in space and in the desert is all starting to bleed together. Has it been a few days? Weeks? She pulls up her HUD, and is mildly surprised to see that they’re a little over a week into 2078.
She imagines Kerry celebrating the new year without her. Probably killed a whole bottle or five of champagne on his own, if she knows him at all.
Beside her, Johnny stands and dusts himself off, then extends his chrome hand to help her to her feet before scooping her up in his arms and tossing her onto the bed with a loud huff. He flashes her a smug grin, then climbs into the cot beside her and wraps his arms around her again, burying his face in her hair and breathing deeply.
She realizes as she closes her eyes that it’s the first time they’ve really, truly slept together, too.
She could get used to this.
If V dreams, she doesn’t remember it, but she wakes up to Johnny shouting in his sleep beside her, just as she is immediately accosted with a wave of nausea and a lancing pain through her head. She rolls over to the side of the cot, heaving and sweating and gasping for breath.
“V,” she hears him say, his voice rough with sleep but sharp with worry, his hand finding her waist. “V!”
“I’m okay,” she reassures him, even though she’s not sure how true that is. She shakes her head, trying to clear the white spots that cover her vision, but the motion makes the room spin even more, and she doubles forward, taking deep breaths and willing herself not to throw up.
“But you're not,” Johnny insists, putting both of his hands on her shoulders and pulling her back down to his chest. “Fuck,” he mutters.
“What were you dreaming about?” she asks him to change the subject, slumping backwards into him and reaching up to grasp his forearm that’s wound around her collarbone.
Johnny is silent for a moment. “The war,” he says finally, then shakes his head, his beard brushing her shoulder. “Or maybe cyberspace. I dunno.”
V feels an odd pang that she no longer shares his dreams. There was something comforting, even with the terror of it all, in knowing that neither of them were ever alone in their nightmares. She reaches back to stroke his jaw, and she can feel how tense it is.
The tent is silent now except for the sound of the wind rustling against the tarps. The camp is strangely quiet, too, and V wonders if the rest of the nomads are also sleeping off their mad dash through the storm. It’s late afternoon now, and the sun is coming in at a harsh angle through the gap at the top of the tent door flap.
"It's the screaming," Johnny says suddenly in a low voice. "From the war. All the different ways people scream when they die. Years of touring gave me tinnitus and my fuckin’ brain just mutates it into that same old screamin’. It's all I hear, when everything is quiet." He takes a deep breath. “Can hear it now, even.”
V heart breaks as she considers this for a moment, then rolls over to face him. She can almost remember it, too. Almost. She leans forward and kisses him softly.
“Do you still remember my life?” she asks him, pulling back to study his face.
Johnny is silent for a moment. “Think so,” he says. “Some of it, anyway. It’s not as clear as it was, though.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. “It’s the same for me.”
“Feels a little strange,” he admits. “Like there’s parts of myself missing. Guess I got used to you bein’ in there, too.”
“Mm,” V murmurs, rolling onto her back to stare at the motes of dust dancing in the shaft of light. “Kinda miss it too,” she tells him quietly. "When I think about stuff from my childhood… it still feels sorta like you were there, even though you weren't. 'Cause you remembered it too, so that meant I wasn't really alone for any of it."
Johnny nods, nuzzling his head against her neck. "Still kinda feels like we knew each other as kids, in a weird way,” he agrees. “Not in a gross way, in a hot girl next door way,” he adds, nipping at her earlobe with his teeth. “Still feel like... like I know you as well as I know myself.”
As they get dressed, V notices a small radio in the corner of the tent and flips it on. To her surprise and delight, it’s tuned to a desert station that she recognizes - Mojave Mix. Which means they’re closer to Night City than they were before.
She checks her holo, but it’s still not picking up a signal.
“Should drive out with Panam today,” she mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Give Kerry a call.”
“How’s he doin’?” Johnny asks, and V isn’t sure if there’s a hint of jealousy in his voice, or if she’s imagining it.
She shrugs. “Same as always, I guess. Workin’ on his new album. He was planning a tour with Us Cracks when I left.”
Johnny chuckles at this. “Course he was.”
And then, to V’s shock, the radio host’s chatter fades out, and a very familiar set of opening chords begins playing over the small tinny speaker.
It’s not Kerry’s new single this time. It’s the cover of Never Fade Away that they recorded together on Christmas Eve.
Johnny’s eyes widen too as he recognizes the broken down arpeggiated guitar chords.
“Is this…” he breathes. “Who the fuck is this?”
V swallows hard. “It’s me,” she tells him. “And Kerry, and Denny. And… Violet Vega.”
Johnny blinks at her. "Violet?” he says incredulously. “She still kickin’?” V nods, and Johnny strokes his chin, trying to process this. He sits heavily on the bed and looks up at her. “Wait, you and Kerry started a band?" he continues.
V shrugs, and then nods.
"No shit!" Johnny says, his face breaking into a wide grin.
V can't stop the smile from spreading across her face as well. "Ain't half bad, either,” she tells him nervously. “We’ve written some original stuff, too.”
Johnny beams at her, and his pride is tangible. "What's it called?"
V braces herself. "The Legends."
But Johnny's smile doesn't falter. "Bet Jackie woulda loved that," he says.
V feels a strange thrill at Johnny’s ability to intuit that detail. “That’s exactly what I said,” she tells him. “Was Kerry’s idea, though.”
“Shoulda guessed,” Johnny laughs, still looking at her in blatant admiration as the song plays on the small radio, and V fights the blush creeping into her cheeks. “Well, shit,” he says. “Guess I’ve got some catchin’ up to do.”
After eating breakfast with the nomads and fending off Aidan’s teasing, V reluctantly leaves Johnny at the camp to drive out with Panam so she can finally call Kerry.
Driving through the desert with Panam feels strangely freeing, and V is once again reminded of why she likes this nomad woman so much as they laugh and sing along to the radio.
Panam smiles and leans closer to her. "I have to tell you something, but if you tell another living soul, I will hunt you down to the ends of the Earth, understood?" she says, dropping her voice to a playful whisper and leaning towards V's ear conspiratorially.
"I'll take it to my grave," V promises with a laugh.
Panam grins. "So, you know that new song from Us Cracks? The one with Kerry on it? I normally don't listen to that kind of music, but... shit, every time it plays on the radio, I start humming along!"
V smiles. Of course Panam's a snob about certain genres of music.
"Funny you should mention that," V replies. "That collab between Kerry and Us Cracks kinda happened because of me," she admits.
Panam blinks at her, her expression thoughtful. "What's Kerry really like?" she asks, trying and failing to pose the question nonchalantly. "Knowing him the way that you do, I mean. I remember hearing somewhere that he wanted to kill himself?" Panam continues, her smooth brow furrowing. "End his career with a bang?"
V lets out a slow breath and stares hard down the road. "Well," she says. "That's not completely untrue."
Panam's eyes widen, and she nods solemnly, waiting for V to continue. V notices the cut on her forehead's been stitched up, but it still looks a bit red and angry.
V sighs. "Kerry… needed help. And a friend, too, really. Think even though so much time had passed, everything that happened with Johnny and Samurai was still gettin' under his skin. He was goin' through a pretty... violent three-quarter life crisis when I met him," she tells Panam. "I helped him get through it in one piece. The Us Cracks song is kinda like… the icing on this whole cake. Did I tell you that he and I recorded a single together, too?"
Panam's eyes widen even more, and she punches V playfully on the shoulder as she drives. "You most certainly did not!" she exclaims.
"It's a cover of Never Fade Away," V replies. "Remember how I played that acoustic version around the campfire back at your old camp? We polished that up and recorded it."
"I'm glad you're branching out," Panam says. "You always seemed like someone who ultimately needs to create more than they need to destroy."
V is strangely touched by this, so she just smiles back at Panam.
"How's Kerry doing now?" Panam presses. "Worrying about you aside," she adds.
V laughs sadly. "He's... wonderful," she admits. "Still a little whacked in the head, sure, but he's fine otherwise. A real nova dude."
Panam nods slowly at this before glancing back at V. "It seems like you and Johnny worked things out between the two of you," she says slyly.
"Yeah," V says, unable to hold back her grin. "Linkin' in the panzer... helped."
Now it's Panam's turn to grin. "Oh, I'll bet it did," she jokes, shooting V a wink.
V can't deny it, so she just widens her grin, and Panam laughs loudly, turning back towards the road. "Don't worry, I won't tell Mitch that you defiled his precious panzer," she assures V, and V just flips her off in response, still grinning. Panam raises an eyebrow. "What will Eurodyne think about that?"
It's a sobering reminder of the conversation she's about to have. "Guess I'm about to find out," V says softly, and Panam just nods in response and doesn't press her.
Panam wheels the truck to a stop at a rocky outcropping overlooking the expansive basin, and V knows that Night City lies somewhere beyond the mountains that stretch along the western horizon, past the massive desert flats that stretch before her. But they're close enough to Vegas now to catch the signal relay from NC's holo network.
And just like that, her holo suddenly comes online.
There’s a deluge of messages that V studiously ignores as she pulls up Kerry’s contact card. She can deal with all of that later, she tells herself as she takes a deep breath and gets ready to dial Kerry. Panam gets out of the car to give V some privacy, and V watches her lean against the hood and light a cigarette while she waits.
Kerry answers almost immediately, and V realizes she isn’t fully prepared for this conversation.
“V!” he says, the relief stark in his voice and on his face. “There you are. Wow. Finally. Thought I... fuck, thought I might never hear from you at all."
God, it’s fuckin’ good to see his face. Despite everything, she's really missed him.
“Hey, Ker,” she says warmly.
"Really fuckin’ glad to hear your voice,” Kerry says, his voice thick with emotion. “Was startin’ to worry you were space junk.” He narrows his eyes, frowning at her. “Where the fuck are you?”
“I’m with the Aldecaldos,” V assures him. “Deep in the Badlands. I’m safe.”
Kerry’s improbably smooth brow remains deeply furrowed. "Badlands?” he repeats. “Huh. Your great adventure,” he remarks, squinting at her. “The fuck you end up there? How'd the mission go? Did you...?"
He lets the question hang unfinished.
V laughs darkly. “I stole an escape pod from an Arasaka orbital station,” she tells him. “Crashed in the desert. Panam and the others rescued us.”
“Us?” Kerry says, his eyes widening. “You mean…? So… it worked? Is he…?”
V swallows, then nods. “Yeah,” she tells him. “It worked. I found Johnny. He’s alive. I… Kerry, I did it. I brought him back.”
Kerry is silent for a moment, then nods slowly, processing this. “Knew if anyone could do it, you could,” he says softly. “He there now?”
V shakes her head. “Left him back at the camp and drove out with Panam to get reception so I could let you know I’m alright,” she tells him.
“‘Preciate it,” Kerry says, but she can see the myriad of unspoken questions on his lips.
“You leave for the tour yet?” she asks him instead. She isn’t sure she’s ready to talk to him about Johnny just yet.
Kerry frowns again. “Jeez, V, were you even paying attention?" he says. “Not leavin' for another couple weeks. Did a show in NorCal with 'em after the new year though, told ya as much.” V isn’t sure that he did, but it’s entirely possible he’s right, and she wasn’t paying as close attention as she should. “Was a special performance with the SF Philharmonic,” he continues, giving her a strange look. “Was preem as fuck. Sad ya missed it.”
“Me too,” she says sincerely.
“The tour's gonna be fuckin' nova,” he adds. “You should come, too. We can play some of our new shit.”
“Sounds real preem,” V agrees.
“Listen, I…” Kerry begins. “Had a real bad scare the other day. I got a, uh… package. Delivered to your place. Made me think somethin’ bad happened to ya.”
“A package?”
Kerry nods. “Yeah, it’s, uh…” His eyes dart to the side. “It’s Johnny’s arm.”
“Johnny’s arm?” V repeats dumbly.
“Came from your choom Goro,” Kerry continues. “In an unmarked box with a note. Thought it might be a threat. Whaddaya make of it?”
V is more than a little bit floored by this. “Goro found his arm?” she says. “And sent it to me?”
“Guess so,” Kerry says with a shrug.
“Hm,” V says, thinking back to her last encounter with the old samurai. “Might be a peace offering, actually. He knew what I was planning.”
“Figure Johnny’ll probably want it back, huh,” Kerry says. “Looks a little smashed up, but not beyond what your boy Vik can fix, I bet.”
“Guess we’ll see,” V agrees.
Kerry is silent for a beat. "So you guys, like... together now? You ‘n Johnny?”
V swallows. This is the part she’s been dreading. "Yeah," she says slowly. "I mean, I think so. Haven't really talked about it yet, but...”
Kerry nods, not meeting her eyes. "Cool, cool. Okay. I see."
“I think he’ll be real stoked to see you,” V tells him softly. She knows Kerry probably feels pretty conflicted about all of this - about her, about Johnny, about him bein’ back and what it’ll mean for him. For them.
“Right,” Kerry says in a strained voice. “So, uh… you want me to clear out before you guys get back?”
V shakes her head. “No,” she says vehemently.
“Don’t wanna get in your way,” he continues, finally looking at her and biting his lip anxiously.
V sighs. "We gotta talk about this now?” she pleads. “I kinda hoped that once Johnny and I got back, we could figure it all out in person.”
"Figure it all out?” Kerry repeats. “Figure what out, exactly? Gonna ask me to be part of some weird throuple with you guys?"
"Kerry, I-"
“Alright, alright,” he relents, cutting her off. “You’re right. We’ll figure it out once you’re back.”
V searches his face. “How’ve you been, Ker?” she asks in a quiet voice.
Kerry sighs heavily. “Been better,” he admits. “Been worried sick about ya. But I… I’ve been spendin’ a lot of time with Henry, oddly enough. He’s finally got his shit together, strung together a decent amount of sober time.” He runs his hand through his hair. “It’s been nice,” he continues. “Henry’s a good dude, once you take out the drugs and alcohol and shit. Made me remember why I liked him so much in the first place, way back when.”
“That’s great,” V says sincerely. “I’m really glad to hear it. Sure Johnny will be too.”
“So, uh..." Kerry says, suddenly sheepish. "Guess I’ll see you when you’re back in the city? And… grab some olives on your way back, okay?” he jokes, but there’s still a strange sort of melancholy to his voice. “My martinis look sad without 'em.” He lets out another shaky exhale, then laughs softly. “Who knows, might even have it in me to forgive you for makin’ me worry like this.”
“I’m sorry, Ker,” V says. “You’ve been a real one.”
Kerry gives her a long look. “And… both of you get back in one piece, V. Alright?”
“We will. I promise,” V tells him.
“Anyway... have fun eatin' possums out there,” Kerry says with a sad smile. "Is it like they say? Endless horizon, wind in your hair, free from money, status… or is it more like bugs splattin' against your windshield, sand in your breakfast and rattlesnakes sneakin' up on you while you take a shit?”
V laughs. “Love you too, Kerry,” she says, and she still fuckin’ means it.
Kerry sighs heavily. “You know I love you, V,” he says, his voice suddenly solemn again. “Always will.”
And then the call disconnects, and his image vanishes.
V lets out a long, trembling sigh, then catches Panam's eyes through the windshield.
“You good?” the nomad asks, stomping out her cigarette and sliding back into the truck next to V.
“Yeah,” V tells her. “Let’s head back to camp.”
Johnny is waiting for her when they get back, and the sun has just finished its descent past the horizon, casting the sky in brilliant, cool violet.
“How’d it go?” he asks as she climbs out of the truck, and there’s a nervous energy to his movements. He's changed into a pair of gray cargo pants and a black t-shirt, with Mitch's borrowed quilted work jacket thrown over it.
“He was real worried about me,” V admits as Johnny falls into pace beside her. “Feel bad for puttin’ him through that.”
“Eh, Kerry’s a trooper,” Johnny says. “He’s made of stronger stuff than he thinks.”
V nods silently as they walk together through the camp. The nomads seem to be setting up that party Mitch promised, and she can hear music blasting from one of the trucks parked near the bonfire.
“He gonna be weird about shit when I get back?” Johnny asks as they reach the edge of the cluster of tents, clearly still ruminating about Kerry. He pauses to stare out across the darkening desert, and V comes to stand beside him.
“I dunno,” she says honestly. “Don’t think there’s any way that it isn’t gonna be a little weird. He spent half a century mourning you,” she reminds him.
“And now he’s your input,” Johnny says in a low voice. “And I’m back from the dead to snatch you right out from under his fuckin’ nose. Don’t know if he’s gonna take that lying down.”
V sighs. “It doesn’t have to be like that,” she protests.
“So what’s it gonna be like, then?” Johnny turns to face her, his dark eyes searching her face.
“I don’t know,” V admits, thinking about Kerry’s bitter comment about them bein’ some kinda weird throuple, as he put it. She chews her lip. Could that actually work? She thinks back to the time she spent with Kerry at his house all those months ago, how sometimes then it almost felt like that’s how things already were between the three of them. But it was different for Kerry, she knows. Sure, he knew that Johnny was present, in a sense, but he still couldn’t actually see or talk to him the way V could. And she knows that both men have a bit of a possessive streak. And it’s not just about their respective relationships with her, either - Johnny and Kerry are gonna need to work out their own bullshit between the two of them, whatever that is now.
Johnny nods slowly, still watching her face. “Look,” he begins. “I don't believe in destiny, or that every person has one true fuckin’ soulmate out there somewhere or whatever, waitin’ to find them. I think more often than not, circumstances drive us together and tear us apart from each other, and we confuse that with destiny.” He looks up at the sky, where stars are starting to emerge, then back down at V. His face is serious. “But at the end of the day, does it matter?” he continues. “You're here, and I’m here, and whether you call it fate, or circumstance, or pure dumb fuckin' luck... we're bound to each other now in a way that can't be undone.”
“Yeah,” V agrees softly.
“Guess Kerry’s just gonna have to figure out how to deal with that,” Johnny finishes.
“Guess so.”
Johnny wraps his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. “I just... didn't know it could be like this,” he admits in a rough voice. “Didn’t ever think…”
“I know,” V murmurs. “Didn't think this kinda shit could happen in real life.”
“Maybe it can’t,” Johnny says sadly. “Maybe this’ll all go to shit the second we gotta get back to real life. Maybe I’ll fuck it up, like I always have.”
“Or maybe I will,” V says, and it comes out harsher than she intends. “But it's always a leap of faith, ain't it?” she adds, more gently this time. “And… with you, for this... it’s worth the risk.”
“Hope you’re right, V,” Johnny murmurs. He swallows hard. "I... don’t know if I could handle that,” he tells her, the raw honesty catching in his throat. “Losin’ you again.”
“You won’t,” V promises, twisting to face him and placing her hands on either side of his face. “You never will.”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Johnny says, leaning down to kiss her.
“Guess we will,” V agrees as his lips collide with hers and the moon rises above them.
Notes:
I was approached recently by someone offering to translate this fic into Russian, so if anyone here is interested, here's the link!
As always, thank you all SO much for your thoughtful comments and for being such wonderful and supportive readers. Love you all, truly!!!
Chapter 62: Blistering Love
Summary:
Johnny and V spend time with the nomads and plan their return to Night City.
Notes:
BET YOU THOUGHT YOU'D SEEN THE LAST OF ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
tbh I'm not sure what to even say here. I can't believe it's been over two years since I last updated this fic. I never intended to go this long without finishing this thing, but sometimes life happens, I guess. I'm really, really sorry to leave you all hanging for so long! I've truly become the thing I hate most lol so I apologize to all of you, my loyal readers, who have stuck with me this whole time and have continued to leave lovely and encouraging comments.
It's also worth noting that in the last month, I went through and reread and revised the entire fic. As far as patch notes go, it was mostly just light copyediting and fixing continuity errors and awkward phrasings and so forth, but if you look closely at the first 10ish chapters, you might notice some entirely new scenes have been added and/or fleshed out there! Plus some other fun new easter eggs scattered throughout the rest of the fic. So if you were planning to do a reread at any point, now's a good time to do so!
Anyway, I'm back on my bullshit and fully intend to do my best to finish the three remaining chapters before Veilguard comes out (lol)
Edited because I forgot to add a content warning!!! This chapter has smut lol you're welcome
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The nomad party rages on around them, but Johnny finds he can only focus on V. She’s laughing with Panam now, but Johnny is only half-listening to their conversation as he stands beside her, clutching a beer in his metal hand and trying to resist the urge to grab V’s ass with the other. Or her waist. Or her arm. Or even just to hold her hand. He’s never been one to shy away from PDA - he’s always liked gettin’ handsy with his outputs in public settings, if nothing else just to enjoy their reactions - but the pull he feels towards V now is another fuckin’ level, almost like a part of him is still afraid this is all still somehow gonna evaporate around him without warning.
But V is more than receptive to his pawing, and seems equally reluctant to leave his side or to not have some kinda physical contact with him at all times. He feels her fingers brush his thigh as her hand reaches unconsciously for his, and he’s all too happy to catch it and intertwine his organic fingers with her slender chrome ones.
He catches himself noticing anew all her strange mannerisms, her physical quirks. The way he saw her when he was stuck inside her head was an entirely different experience - he was an observer peering through her eyes, and though the technology baked into the chip did a startlingly good job at projecting their surroundings, including V’s body, to maintain the illusion that Johnny’s engram was separate from her, he’s now realizing just how different that was from truly observing her from the outside, the way he’s doing now.
Actually seeing her face the way others see her - as an outside observer not privy to her thoughts - is a fuckin’ revelation. It’s fascinating to watch how her features spring to life like an unexpected cartoon character emerging from her usual flat, disinterested affect when she’s talking to someone she likes. He finds himself completely captivated by the way her eyebrows shoot up when she’s about to deliver a scathing one-liner, the way the corner of her eyes crinkle when she laughs, the freckles on her nose, the way her full lips stretch into a grin, the slight gap between her two front teeth.
He knows he’s staring at V like a fuckin’ gonk, but he can’t help himself. And he doesn’t give a fuck what these nomads think, anyway.
V attempts to disentangle her hand from Johnny’s as one of her other friends approaches, the little blonde one with the hearing aids. Aidan, he remembers, as a vague sequence of memories floats to the surface of his mind. Memories that aren’t his. He sees her cherubic face laughing over a beer beside Jackie and Misty, a memory that curls into smoke the second he’s able to clearly conjure it. He finds it oddly reassuring to know that wisps of V are still there in his mind, despite Alt’s best attempts to unzipper them cleanly. It’s probably partly why he’s clinging to her now like she’s a lifeline - he just doesn’t feel complete anymore without the part of himself that she carries, just as he holds parts of her within himself as well. The thought of bein’ apart from her makes his palm start to sweat.
Probably not fuckin’ healthy, he thinks to himself, reluctantly releasing her hand. He knows he’s bein’ codependent as fuck, and part of him is still waiting for other shoe to drop, for the inevitable resentment that usually follows closely whenever he’s felt this kind of desperate attachment to someone else before.
He’d be lyin’ to himself if he didn’t admit that he is still utterly terrified by this, of letting himself fully give in to it. Every other time he’s let himself fall head fuckin’ first like this, it’s eaten him alive from the inside, sent him on a path of destruction aimed squarely at himself… albeit typically with an astonishing amount of collateral damage to match.
Aidan is sizing him up now with her wide gray eyes, her little round face tilted upwards towards him as she crosses her arms. She looks like a fuckin' teenager, Johnny thinks as he takes another sip of his beer.
Cassidy briefly joins their circle to pass out another round of Brosephs, and V flashes him a cheesy double-guns as she turns down her beer. Johnny suddenly notices that she talks with her hands now almost as much as he does. He wonders if that’s something she picked up from him, or if she’s always been that way.
“Does he talk, or does he just stare at you?” Panam teases, snapping Johnny out of his transfixed gawking once again.
Aidan uncrosses her arms and grins, then signs something with her hands, too fast for Johnny to follow. But V and Panam both laugh, and that’s when Johnny realizes that he lacks whatever translator soft they’ve got installed in their cyberdecks. He learned some basic sign language back in the army, but not enough to keep up with this little merc’s quick hand gestures.
“Slow the fuck down if you’re gonna talk shit,” he tells her gruffly.
"Aidan has never heard a Samurai song before," Panam volunteers, grinning broadly at Johnny. "Can you believe it?"
Judy laughs, but she scruffles Aidan's head playfully. "She knows Eurodyne, though," she jokes.
“I like his version of Chippin’ In,” Aidan signs, slow enough for Johnny to follow this time.
Johnny scoffs at this.
“Aw, is someone’s ego bruised?” V teases. She catches Johnny's eye and smiles, and there’s a slyness to the look that makes his pulse start to quicken. She holds his gaze for another beat, like she's equally aware of the electric spark that just shot between them, and then her eyes flick down to his mouth, then back up to his eyes, and Johnny's suddenly already half-hard in his fuckin’ cargo pants.
He’s ready to cut this party short and drag her off to their tent right the fuck now, but V cocks an eyebrow at Aidan.
"Well, we gotta fix that,” she says over the distorted beat of the rock music blasting from a large boom box sitting propped on some crates a safe distance from the blazing bonfire.
Panam grins. “I am prepared to hijack our soundtrack for the evening!” She scans the crowd of dancing nomads. “Mitch!” she shouts across the throng, and he twists to look at her. “Go grab your Samurai tapes from your tent and bring ‘em out here, Aidan needs a crash course in chromatic rock.”
Mitch flashes her a thumbs up, then strides away from the party, re-emerging moments later clutching a stack of old-school cassette tapes. He dumps them out on the couch next to where they're standing.
“Pick your poison,” he says, gesturing at the small pile.
V smiles playfully at Johnny. “You pick,” she tells him coyly. “Gonna pass up a chance to show off?” She grins. “Outta all your songs, which one d’ya think is gonna win over Aidan here?”
Johnny frowns down at the tapes, feelin’ a bit put on the spot but willing to play along.
He doesn't know Aidan at all, but if she likes Kerry's utterly defanged version of Chippin' In, he can stay in that vein, play ‘er one of their sultrier tracks.
“Seven Virtues,” he says. “That one's got a good groove.”
It's a deeper cut, but a real panty-dropper, as Nance used to jokingly say.
“Solid choice,” Judy says approvingly. “Always liked that one.”
“Yeah, the chicks always do,” Johnny replies with a smirk.
Mitch is already flippin’ open the tape deck on the boom box, prompting loud protests from the other nomads as the music cuts out briefly. Mitch fast-forwards the tape to the requested track, then hits play.
Kerry's distinctive opening riff crackles over the speakers, then there’s Denny's driving kick drum setting a heavy, pounding, mid-tempo groove. Then Henry's distorted bass line comes in, followed by Johnny's heavily filtered lead guitar meandering a slinky melody in a chromatic minor scale, and Johnny remembers that he's always dug the almost shoegaze vibe this song has. It's one of the few tracks of theirs where Nancy sang the lead vocals, even though it was Johnny who wrote most of the lyrics. When Nancy's synth fills finally drop in along with her high, breathy, layered vocals, Judy moves towards Aidan, swayin’ her hips and mouthin’ the lyrics at the petite blonde merc.
Confirming Johnny’s half-joke about this song bein’ chick catnip, Lilayah sashays over to them too, grinning broadly and twisting her body to the music. On her arm is Rogue’s brat, Trace, and Johnny feels that awful sense of vertigo again watchin’ the two of them dance and sing along to his old song.
“This was the song that made me become a fan,” Lilayah tells Johnny, and he lifts his beer towards her in a mock salute.
“What do you think, Aidan?” Panam crows, reminding Johnny of why they’re doin’ this impromptu little retrospective in the first place.
Aidan huffs a low laugh in response as Judy twirls her around, then the younger merc meets Johnny’s eyes and shrugs, tilting her chin at him almost defiantly before her face breaks open into a wide grin. She lifts her hand and gives Johnny a thumbs up, and Johnny grins back in spite of himself.
“Guess that’s a seal of approval,” Judy laughs, and Johnny tries and fails to fight down the smug smirk that he knows is crawlin’ across his face as he watches the girls dance.
But, as always, his eyes are drawn inexorably back to V. She’s dancing too, moving her hips in slow, sultry circles as she catches and holds his gaze, and Johnny is instantly hypnotized.
He throws his arm around her waist and pulls her in to kiss her neck, and she lets out a surprised breathy laugh and leans into him.
“D'ya even know what you’re doin’ to me?” he murmurs in her ear, grasping her hips as she sways to the music.
“Could ask you the same,” she says, breathing a low chuckle into the dip of his shoulder and pressing her body against his, still gyrating her hips to the slow beat of the song.
Johnny once again strongly considers scooping her up right then and there and carryin’ her back to their tent.
But his guitar solo hits, and he can’t resist pulling back to grin at V, his fingers finding the corresponding guitar positions on her lower back as he plays along with the recording of himself.
V laughs again, and for a brief, shining moment, Johnny forgets about everything, forgets about the dead nomads, forgets about the fact that V is still dying, forgets about the chip worming his uploaded and repacked digital consciousness through his half-rotten brain, forgets about Kerry and whatever the fuck is waitin’ for them back in Night City, forgets about Arasaka, about the brewing corpo war, about all of it.
He can’t do anything else but lean in and kiss her.
Her lips meet his, soft and warm and welcoming, and Johnny pulls her in hungrily, losing himself in it.
“Get a room, jeez!” Mitch groans theatrically from beside them.
The song is reaching its close, with Johnny and Kerry’s vocals comin’ in to sing a call and response countermelody to Nancy’s lead. Trace and Lilayah are singin’ it back and forth to each other, and Johnny pulls slightly away from V, momentarily distracted by the way Trace moves. It’s so uncannily similar to the way Rogue used to dance. He wonders if she ever still dances.
But V nips at his earlobe, dragging her teeth slightly along his neck and pulling Johnny's attention firmly back to her, and any thread of control he'd been holdin’ onto finally snaps. Keeping one arm around V’s waist, he leans over and scoops his new metal one under her knees, hoisting her up into his arms and flippin’ Mitch off in the same motion. V gives a sharp, startled laugh, but she threads her arms around his neck and twists to grin at her friends as Johnny turns and sets off for their tent, ignoring the chorus of grousing and eye rolls that follow them.
After a dozen steps, Johnny realizes he may have overestimated the current strength of his still-atrophied body. Trying not to break his stride, he shifts V in his arms so that his cyberarm is bearin’ most of her weight. And he can’t stop the next thought that arises - despite his weakness, V feels a lot lighter than she should. He suddenly notices how thin her arms have gotten.
He pushes down the worry that tightens in his chest.
“How the fuck did you carry me across miles of desert?” he asks her, breathing heavily through the last couple strides to their tent. He muscles the flap open with his shoulder, then deposits V on the cot as carefully as he can.
V barks a laugh. “Sheer force of will,” she admits as Johnny removes his coat and moves to stand over her, his breathing still hard and heavy. “And my preem-ass spinal stabilizers." She winces. "My back still hurts real fuckin’ bad, though.”
Johnny's heart clenches at this as he takes a step towards her, grasping her shoulder with his metal hand and massaging his fingers into the tight, knotted muscles there.
V’s eyes close and she moans softly, leaning into his touch.
If Johnny wasn’t hard as a fuckin’ rock before, he definitely is now. He swallows hard as V’s eyes flutter open, burning into his before flicking down to the growing bulge between his legs. She glances up at him, then leans forward slowly, hooking her fingers onto the waistband of his pants and pulling him closer to her before beginning to unbutton them.
Johnny is barely breathing as she threads her fingers around his cock and gently pulls it loose, her mouth close enough that he can feel her breath on him. She’s looking at it with wide, appreciative eyes, and the low curse she whispers as she admires him makes Johnny’s cock twitch in her grasp. Her eyes flick up to his again, and she licks her lips then lets them part slightly, hovering her mouth right over the head of his erection that’s now pulsing almost painfully in the warmth of her hand.
V holds his gaze as she leans forward and drags her tongue up the length of him, but when she does it a second time, her eyes flutter shut and she moans softly, almost like she’s been dyin’ to taste him. She wraps her pretty lips around him, and it’s all Johnny can do to keep from fisting her hair and fucking her mouth until he sees stars. But he forces himself to keep his hips from shifting into her, to take a deep breath, to be here with her, to really feel it.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he groans, his voice guttural.
He feels V’s tongue swirl along the underside of his shaft, and he moves his hand from her shoulder to grasp at her hair, a shudder going through his whole body at the sensation.
His eyes close, but he forces them open again, wanting to keep looking at her. Fuck, she looks so fuckin’ good like this. She takes all of him in her mouth then, and he feels her gag slightly when his cock hits the back of her throat.
She’s barely done anything, and Johnny’s already about to come down her fucking throat. He tightens his hand in her hair as she starts to work her mouth up and down, then pulls her roughly off him, groaning again at the glistening trail of saliva and precum that strings from the tip of his cock to her swollen lips.
He grabs her face with his other hand and crushes his mouth to hers, pushing her backwards onto the bed and releasing her hair to fumble at the zipper on her pants. She reaches down to help him, and together they yank them over her thighs. As soon as her legs are freed, Johnny kneels on the cot before her, forcing her knees apart and lining himself up. She whines and writhes beneath him, and Johnny leans down to kiss her again, pushing his tongue into her mouth and his cock inside her at the same time, bottoming out with a loud groan.
V gasps softly, arching into him, and Johnny bites her lower lip as he starts to move in her. She’s bucking up into him already, so he picks up his pace, lifting her hips off the creaky mattress so he can get a better angle as he slams his cock into her. She reaches upward to tug at his shirt, and Johnny pauses to tear it off over his head before leaning back down to force V’s shirt up over her tits. He takes one of them in his hand, squeezing hard and rolling her nipple between his fingers, and V whines loudly, her hands threading around his shoulders to pull him closer to her. After just a few more thrusts, he can already feel his balls starting to tighten, but when he slows his pace, V mewls another loud whine and starts convulsing around him.
Part of him wishes he could still feel everything she does, based on the sounds she’s making.
He covers her mouth with his to silence her pretty little moans, but the feeling of her body quivering around him topples his last ounce of self control, and he comes hard inside of her, groaning into her mouth as he falls apart. He can feel her body pressed to his, slick with sweat, and he pants against her as he falls slack onto her chest, basking in her smell and tilting his chin to bite at her jaw.
She turns her face down to meet his mouth with her own, her hand finding its way to the back of his neck to pull his face closer to hers. He kisses her slowly, feeling himself growing soft inside her, savoring the closeness.
He leans away finally, looking down at her flushed face and bitten lips, and feels a stupid smile spreading across his face in unison with the goofy grin that V's full lips are unfurling into.
He leans down and kisses her again.
"Fuck," he murmurs, dragging his lips down her neck and inhaling deeply as he presses his cheek to her collarbone. He curls his body around her, his hand dropping to idly play with her tits. Fuck, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of lookin’ at her, of touching her.
She cradles his head with her arm, caressing the back of his scalp with her chrome fingers, and it feels really fuckin’ nice on the thick fuzz that’s starting to regrow there. He traces his finger along the scar that snakes down the middle of her abdomen, then runs his thumb across the tattooed letters on her ribs beneath her left breast. He continues to trail his fingers up to her collarbone and down her arm, stopping to grasp her wrist and lift her arm to his mouth so he can press a kiss to the dumb fuckin’ tattoo he put there.
“Maybe I should get a matching one,” he murmurs into her skin.
V laughs at this. “Wow, you’re almost as corny as Kerry.”
Johnny scowls and rolls away from her, but V catches his arm and rolls with him, tossing her leg over his body so she’s straddling him.
“You should do it,” she says, her hair softly framing her face in the backlit glow from the lantern hanging above them. “Would only be fair.”
She straightens and pulls her shirt off the rest of the way, and the feeling of her shifting and pressing against him as she moves makes Johnny start to harden again already. V’s eyes widen as she feels it, and she leans forward, rolling her hips slightly and brushing her mouth against Johnny’s.
Fuck, he can’t get enough of her.
He threads his hand into her hair and kisses her deeply, hungrily.
“Mm,” she says softly into his mouth, rubbing herself up and down his length. He can feel his cum dripping out of her hot, wet cunt, and fuck, he’s already almost fully hard again. “Guess fifty years of not gettin’ any has some benefits,” she teases against his lips, pressing her pussy hard against him and moaning slightly.
Johnny continues to kiss her as she lifts her hips and reaches her hand between them to grasp his now fully hard cock and push the head against her entrance. She exhales a shaky breath into his mouth as she sinks onto him, and Johnny groans, fisting her hair and kissing her again and again as she starts to slowly ride him. She’s barely even moving, just grinding her hips against his, but fuck, it feels so fucking good.
He’s never fucked her like this before, so slow and tender and unhurried.
"Could fuck you like this all night," he murmurs, running his hands down her back to wrap them around her waist so he can guide her hips as she rolls them languidly, her perfect fuckin’ cunt stroking him just fuckin’ right, her perfect fuckin’ tits pressing against his chest. She’s writhing on top of him almost lazily, her eyes half shut, her soft little pants the only thing giving away her increasing urgency.
It all feels so fuckin' incredible that Johnny abruptly realizes he’s well on his way to coming inside her again.
"Look at you," he croons, running his metal hand back up her spine to gather her hair in his fist and pull hard, tilting her head back as he thrusts his hips up into her at the same time. Her eyes meet his as he drags her head back, and he thrusts up into her hard again, and then again.
She moans his name once, twice, but the third one breaks into a high pitched, ragged whimper, and the way her voice tears makes the last of Johnny's composure crumple. He wraps his hands around her waist and lifts her up by her hips, then slams her down onto his cock, bottoming out before lifting her off him and slamming his cock into her again.
“Johnny, oh fuck, Johnny,” she begs. Her thighs are shaking and she’s moving her hips frantically, her face flushed and her eyes rolling back into her head. He loves seeing her wrecked like this, and it's suddenly taking everything in Johnny's power not to explode inside of her again right then and there.
“Come for me, Vero,” he tells her, his voice rough. “Come on my cock for me.”
V’s back arches and her hips jerk, a choked little sound spilling out of her as her cunt clenches around him.
Johnny grits his teeth, thrusting harshly as she quivers and jerks in pleasure, fucking hard into her as he finally comes with a strangled groan. His eyes close and his vision goes white; the pleasure is almost too intense, and he can feel V's muscles continuing to milk him as she rides out the last of her orgasm, leaving them both gasping and clutching at each other.
She goes limp in his arms and he wraps them around her, running his organic hand up and down her spine as she breathes into his neck and he buries his face in her hair. With every breath he takes, he feels something vibrate inside of him, in his chest and right down to his bones. And feeling the heat of her on top of him, around him, only brings it to a sharper intensity, saturating every nerve in his body. He feels her swallow hard as she settles against him, nestling into the crook of his arm. The vibrations are thrumming in his chest now at a fever pitch, and he can feel the sensation rolling in waves over both of them as they lay entwined in the small metal bed.
It's exhilarating and terrifying, but he doesn't fight it. This is it, he thinks to himself. Whatever this is right here, this is it.
He tightens his arm around V, luxuriating in the firm reassurance of her body, tilting his chin down to press his lips to her head, and she hums softly in response.
"You didn't drink tonight, huh?" he observes. "Does it mess with the meds you're takin'?"
He feels V shake her head. "No," she says softly. "I mean, maybe it does. I dunno. But that's not why."
Johnny considers this, suddenly realizing her implications. "Takin' a break?"
She hesitates for a moment, then nods again. "Maybe a permanent one."
Johnny blinks up at the ceiling of the tent, watching the moths flutter around the lamp hanging from the aluminum beams.
He runs his thumb slowly up and down her shoulder, and V shivers against him.
"V," he says in a hoarse voice. "When I was gone... those three months..."
V is silent for a moment. "It was bad," she whispers, her voice shaking slightly. "Got real bad for me."
Johnny swallows hard, wrapping both his arms around V and pulling her close.
"I'm sorry," is all he can manage.
"I hid out in the Pistis Sophia at first," she tells him. "Told myself I was hidin' from Arasaka... but I think I was really just hiding from everyone. From my life. From Kerry. From havin' to face it all without you."
A moth is trapped inside the lantern now, its small wings fluttering helplessly against the smooth plastic.
"But then I met this kid on the beach... big fan of yours," V continues against his chest, and Johnny reaches his hand up to smooth her hair. “He was playin’ your song on guitar, and I guess it kinda…” She swallows again, and Johnny can feel her eyelashes are suddenly damp against his chest, and she shakes her head, burying her face in his skin. “I called Kerry, went home,” she whispers. “Detoxed off dope. Kerry was there for me the entire time, solid as a fuckin' rock."
Johnny continues to stroke her hair, blinking back his own tears.
“M’sorry, V,” he says again.
"I looked for you in the Net," V says, her voice becoming choked. "And I found you, but you were… comin' apart, and we got attacked by a rogue AI and almost both got fuckin' shredded and then..."
She swallows a sob, and Johnny feels a tear escape the corner of his eye and trace a hot path down to his ear. He remembers the time she’s talkin’ about. It's a fuzzy, distorted memory, like a fragment of a nightmare, but he remembers his own Pistis Sophia - the digital prison of his own making, sustained by Alt to keep his engram as static as possible, as unchanged as she could manage. And for him, that meant bein’ frozen in an echo of his fear and grief.
He remembers when V appeared there suddenly, how fuckin' good it felt when her code started zippering seamlessly into his, that fleeting moment when everything suddenly seemed okay again.
Until the sanctuary was breached and those digital demons swarmed in, hungry for their unique data, eager to unfold and refold and remap and repurpose the very geometry of their minds.
He doesn't remember anything after that, only that V was gone and he was back in that room, watching the ceiling fan spin.
He thinks of her in the Pistis Sophia all those weeks, alone doin’ dope and god knows what else, and his heart breaks all over again.
"We were doin' the same thing," he mutters incredulously.
"Yeah," V agrees with a sad chuckle.
The impossible odds they've both somehow overcome to reach this moment threaten to overwhelm Johnny again, and he closes his eyes and holds V's body against his as close as he can manage. He’s not gonna lose her again. He can’t let that happen.
Johnny wakes up at dawn with V still curled up in his arms, the thick quilted blankets pulled up around them both. He savors the warm feeling of her skin against his in the cold morning air and pulls her tighter to him, letting his eyes drop closed again. For once, he didn’t have any nightmares.
He stays like that for as long as he can before his body wins out and he has to gently move V off him so he can slide outta bed and go take a piss. He dons his clothes and boots and jacket, then quietly slips out of the tent. The camp is still mostly asleep, and Johnny finds a nearby boulder to relieve himself, shivering in the cold desert dawn.
The sun breaks over the horizon, its orange glow piercing the gray violet dimness, and Johnny finds himself thinking again about V dragging his unconscious body across the desert for days, about everything that must have entailed.
Fuck, was she cleanin’ up his fuckin’ piss?
He scowls as he buttons his pants. Fuck.
She must really fucking love him.
The rising sun casts a soft glow on the tents and trucks, and the desert is eerily quiet aside from the crunch of Johnny’s footsteps as he makes his way back to the tent. He takes off his jacket and shoes once he’s back inside, then crawls back into bed with V, shivering as her warm arms encircle him and she grumbles contentedly.
The next few days pass quickly as they fall into the nomads’ routine. Every morning, Johnny forces himself out of bed before V and runs himself through the rigorous military workouts he learned durin’ his time in the army. He fuckin’ hates feeling weak, hates the feeling of his wasted muscles and weakened lungs. And when V wakes up, he works out with her again, spotting her as she does her own routine, then jogging with her up the ridge to watch the final moments of the sunrise.
They spend their mornings helping out around the camp however they can, and Johnny stops by the ripper truck every afternoon so Ambrosia or the clan's other ripper, Hutch, can run their tests and give him meds to help with the splitting headaches he sometimes gets as the chip finishes its work on his brain. Every time the pain lances through his head, though, he feels more of his memories comin’ back, more little details from the time he spent in V’s head, more vivid renditions of his life before that.
It reminds him of how it felt when V’s Relic would malfunction, how each time Johnny would expand slightly more within her mind. Except now, the only thing he’s overwriting is his own rotted out brain. He tries not to think about how that must have felt for V, how instead of feeling herself coming back, she was feeling herself vanish and be replaced by him.
Being around V still feels surreal somehow, like a TV with the colors turned up too bright. The intense sense of comfort he has around her is almost hard to adjust to, and he catches them finishing each others’ sentences, or communicating an entire thought with a single look. It makes sense - they did share a fuckin’ brain for months. But it’s a new experience for Johnny, feeling this effortlessly connected to someone else, and the implicit trust that goes along with it.
As the days pass, he also notices that the experience of livin’ in V’s body has left him with a strange and lingering intermittent sense of dysphoria. Sometimes, he’ll catch a glimpse of his reflection and find himself surprised not to see her face starin’ back, or look down at his body and half expect to see tits there. It’s disconcerting how the boundaries between them still seem to blur together sometimes. And he knows that the intense possessiveness he feels towards V, the sense of ownership they seem to have over each other, can largely be attributed to this, too. It’s not even entirely sexual jealousy or anything like that; Johnny realizes that on some level, he can’t help but think of V as an extension of himself, and he knows she’s feelin’ the same. They move like shadows of each other, never not in tune, never not aware of the other. Johnny doubts it’s totally healthy, but it is what it fuckin’ is. After what they went through, how could it be any other way?
And as Johnny’s mind repairs itself, he realizes that there are some new memories in there as well. Memories of Japan in a different century.
He knows who these memories belong to. The thought of some part of Saburo living on inside him is enough to make his stomach curdle whenever he catches a memory bubbling to surface of an unfamiliar mother’s face, of how the cherry blossoms looked in the spring, of a baby girl surrounded by beautiful exotic birds, of a teenage boy slamming a door angrily after storming out of a spotless office.
And there’s still the undeniable fact that V is getting sicker. She tries to hide it, coughing into her palm when she thinks Johnny isn’t looking, slipping off to the bathroom trucks to hurl when Johnny’s busy helping Mitch repair and upgrade the Basilisk. And Johnny knows there’s not much he can do until they’re back in NC, but it doesn’t stop that old dread from rising up in his chest again, tightening around his throat and makin’ him feel like he can’t breathe.
Despite his eagerness to get V back to Night City as quickly as possible so she can start gettin’ the help she needs, Johnny finds himself savoring this time out in the desert with the Aldecaldos, with her. He’s used to roughin’ it on the road; he lived with the same clan for half a year, fifty years back, and things haven’t changed all that much. The desert has always felt like a place of refuge for him, and the vast open sky of the Mojave gives him the same sense of freedom and expansiveness as watching the ocean waves crash in Pacifica. V isn’t as adept at this kind of living, and he enjoys teasing her for it almost as much as he enjoys fuckin’ her brains out every night in their dusty little tent. And in the showers. And sometimes even in the panzer, when Mitch lets them take it out under the flimsy pretext of testing out all the new upgrades he’s been installing.
But Johnny’s favorite part of bein’ out here is the ritual he and V have settled into every evening before retreating to their tent, when the two of ‘em borrow Ambrosia’s guitar and go find a quiet spot on the outskirts of camp. On the first night, Johnny plays V the new song he’s been writing, and she plays him some of the stuff she’s been workin’ on with Kerry. It’s good, really good, and Johnny feels something swell in his chest at the thought of her and Ker workin’ together on this.
On the second night, they start jamming out a new song together. They take turns playing the guitar; sometimes Johnny plays and V sings, sometimes V plays and they sing together, and sometimes V just listens to him play, her chin resting on her chrome fingers and her eyes filled with an almost dazed wonder he recognizes from the eyes of countless groupies he banged over the years, like she can’t believe he’s here, he’s real, he’s sittin’ in front of her and playin’ her a song he wrote for her. But just as often, it’s Johnny watching her play with the same quiet awe, still dumbfounded by how fuckin’ good she’s gotten in such a short fuckin’ time. Sure, he knows a lot of that can be chalked up to the lingering scraps of him still in her brain, but her style is her own now - she doesn’t sound like a pitch perfect imitation of him when she plays anymore, though she can still do a startlingly good recreation of his signature techniques. Part of him still can’t quite believe that any of this is real - that he’s alive, that V is alive, that he’s sitting here with her in the twilight listening to the coyotes bark and hammering out a chord progression, that they’re getting this chance to create something new together.
It rains on the fifth day. The ground turns to thick, clay-like mud that sticks to fuckin’ everything, and Johnny abandons his morning workout to help Mitch scrape the muck off his gear. They’re just moving the last of the crates into the tent that houses the Basilisk when V appears, holding a tin mug of coffee in each hand. She hands one to Johnny, then perches on a crate and sips hers, seemingly lost in thought. Johnny crosses to her, and she raises her eyes to meet his.
“What’s up?” he asks her, reaching out his hand to brush her damp bangs from her forehead.
“We’re headin’ back to NC tomorrow,” she tells him, taking another sip of her coffee. “Just talked to Saul. Mitch and Panam are gonna escort us in the panzer.” She eyes the tank, then looks back at Johnny. “They’re plannin’ out the op right now.”
Johnny glances at Mitch, who nods in confirmation. “Camp’s packin’ up tomorrow night to head west to New Mexico, but we’ll take a small crew out early in the AM,” the nomad vet says. “Should be able to reach the NC border by nightfall.”
V gestures with her chin towards the Basilisk. “Prep comin’ along all right?”
Bob appears in the entrance of the hangar tent with Panam close behind him. “You call this prep?” he says with a laugh. “I'd call it a damn improvisation, but that's just me.”
Panam shakes the rain from her hair. “Can it, Bobby.”
But Mitch just grins. “Lo and behold,” he says, sweeping his hands dramatically towards the enormous war machine. “We fitted an afterburner and a multi-RPG launcher up top. We also scooped out about sixty percent of its total mass. Beautiful, isn't she?”
V raises an eyebrow at this. “Afterburner… standard nitro or military grade?” she asks.
“Standard couldn't move this baby an inch,” Mitch replies.
Johnny nods in agreement, but V frowns. “How the hell’d you cram all that into a panzer?” she asks.
Mitch grins again. “Oh, small beans compared to the tricks we pulled with Scorpion during the war. And your boy Johnny had some interestin’ ideas, too. When we unleash this beast tomorrow, you'll see.”
V points at the replacement main gun that Johnny helped Mitch mount yesterday. “Firepower up top,” she asks. “What is it?”
“A rapid fire, seventy millimeter multiple rocket launcher coupled with on onboard MMI you can sync to via personal link,” Mitch brags.
V whistles through her teeth. “Where'd you get all this stuff?”
“Teddy salvaged it from a scrapyard," Mitch tells her, the smug smile still firmly planted on his face. “The launcher itself was fine, the problem was no ammunition. As luck would have it, Dakota procured some. Don't ask me how.”
V shoots Johnny a look, and he grins at her. Despite all the bad memories workin’ in and around these things brings up for him, he has to admit he's enjoyed hangin’ with Mitch in here these last few days, talkin’ shop and swapping stories and fuckin' around with stolen corpo tech.
“You and Panam are good to pilot it?” V asks, glancing between her nomad friends.
“Still have a few loose screws to tighten,” Mitch says. “But whattaya say we take her out after sundown, get a feel for the new upgrades?” he asks Panam.
Bob snorts. “That's putting it mildly.”
“Will you quit being such a sourpuss?” Mitch retorts. “We'll have her ready in time.”
“What’ll Johnny and I be drivin’?” V asks.
“My rig,” Mitch replies, and V balks at this.
“We can’t take your car, Mitch,” V protests. “Said it once yourself, your wheels are your life.”
Mitch just grins. “Consider it a loaner,” he says. “Saul’s gonna explain the whole plan tonight. We’re meetin’ in his trailer at sundown.”
V nods and moves to sip her coffee, but her body suddenly seizes and her coffee drops from her hands, splashing the steaming liquid across the crates as the mug hits the hard packed dirt with a soft thud. And then V’s doubled over coughing violently, wheezing and retching and struggling to catch her breath.
The frustrating thing about not being in her head anymore is that Johnny has no fuckin’ forewarning. “V!” he shouts, setting his coffee down and grasping her by the shoulders. His heart is hammering and he notices a trickle of blood emerge from her nose. There’s blood on her hand, too. “Fuck!”
“I’m okay, Johnny, I’m okay,” she chokes as her eyes refocus on his. He can see the fear reflected there, but she holds his gaze while she balls her bloodied hand into a fist and slides it into her pocket. Her face is streaked with tears from retching, and he releases her shoulder to wipe her cheeks with his organic hand.
"No you’re fuckin’ not," he mutters, searching her eyes.
“Let’s get you to Ambrosia-” Panam begins behind him.
But right on cue, V starts convulsing again, and she’s definitely havin’ a fucking seizure now. Her eyes roll into her head and blood starts pourin’ from her nose, and she crumples like a ragdoll.
“Fuck!” Johnny yells again, catching her in his arms. She’s unconscious now, a small trickle of blood dribbling out of the corner of her mouth as Johnny scoops his arm under her knees and cradles her limp body against him. “V!” he says again, shaking her gently, but her head rolls to the side and she doesn’t awaken. He swallows hard, fighting down his panic as he turns to meet the wild and worried eyes of the three other nomads in the hangar. He doesn’t say another word as he pushes past them out into the rain, clutching V to his chest.
Fuck.
***********
V’s eyes are like glue and her head is pounding. She tries to pry her eyes open, but the overhead light makes her head throb even harder, and she groans and squeezes them closed again.
“Welcome back to the living,” Mitch’s voice says from somewhere. “You feelin' okay?”
V forces herself to open her eyes, wincing as they adjust to the dim lighting. She’s in the med truck.
Fuck.
“What happened?” she manages weakly.
“You passed out in the hangar,” Mitch says, stepping into view. “Johnny tried shaking you awake to no avail.” He grimaces. “It sure does seem like your condition might be getting worse, V. Panam and Johnny asked me to keep an eagle eye on you.”
“Where'd they go?” V asks, her eyes darting around the truck.
Mitch sighs heavily. “They’re off debating Saul. You need help, that's clear. We gotta get you back to NC as soon as possible.”
V presses her hand to her temple, trying to clear her head. “Op’s still on for tomorrow?”
“More than ever,” Mitch says seriously. “Can’t afford to waste any more time.” He gives her an assessing look. “Think you can stand?
V nods, and Mitch steps closer, extending a hand to her. “Come on, I'll take you to see them.”
V takes his arm and lets him help her to her feet. The room feels a little wobbly, but her seizure, or attack, or whatever the fuck that was, seems to have mostly passed.
“Thanks,” she tells him, releasing his arm as he holds the door open for her. The rain has let up, but the ground is still thoroughly saturated, and the thick mud cakes on her boots as they trudge through the camp to Saul’s trailer.
“Heard talk that there's a war comin’,” Mitch says as they near the big trailer.
“Is there any news?” V asks, and Mitch looks down.
“Ain’t lookin’ good,” he says solemnly. “Arasaka’s imploding, and Militech smells the blood in the water and is movin’ in to pick at the bleedin’ carcass. Probably gonna get ugly, soon.”
V’s face twists into a frown as she follows Mitch up the metal stairs to Saul’s truck, stepping through the door after him.
“V!” Panam says, turning as they enter. “Finally.”
Johnny, Saul, and Panam are gathered around the small table in the center of the trailer, lookin’ at a holo map of the desert surrounding NC. Johnny uncrosses his arms and steps toward V as she enters, his eyes searching her face.
V finds herself struck yet again by how strange it is that Johnny can go do things without her now, can interact with her friends when she's not there. She feels an overwhelming need to be close to him, suddenly.
“How's your health?” Saul asks, tapping his fingers on the table.
“Been better,” V replies, not taking her eyes off Johnny. He comes over to stand beside her and takes her hand in his, intertwining their fingers and giving her a small, reassuring squeeze. “So, what've you guys patched together?” she asks, gesturing with her free hand at the map before them.
Panam frowns. “We still have details to iron out, but we know the who, where and how. Have a look for yourself.”
V examines the map. Two dotted lines bisect the border wall on the southern end, one highlighted in red and the one slightly north of it highlighted in yellow.
“Those the tunnels?” she asks, and Saul nods.
“Red one’s the ideal option,” he says. “Should be passable. But if it’s lookin’ dicey, the second one’s a decent backup. Mitch and Scorpion last ran it ‘bout a year back.”
“It's one of those old smuggling tunnels,” Mitch adds. “Thankfully, it's still open. But the exit inside is on a patrol route-”
“Whereas the other one is not,” Panam finishes, cutting him off. “So if all goes well, you will take that one. It wasn't the easiest thing to locate after all these years.”
V frowns at the map again. “Look, tunnel's cool and all, but we gotta get there first. And what about security up and down the border? Whole area's brimmin' with tech. Drones on perpetual patrol. Heavier stuff, too, maybe.”
“Don't worry,” Panam reassures her. “We know what's there and what to do about it. Mitch and I will cover you in the panzer. Carol and Cassidy will back us up, too, keep the corpos off your tail.”
“And nobody's likely to spot us?”
“Sooner or later the border guards will realize something's not right,” Panam concedes.
“But by the time they get around to it, you’ll be through,” Mitch finishes for her. “Plus, the weather satellite feed we tapped into shows a big sandstorm brewin’ out near Yucca, headed up towards Jackson Flats about 24 hours from now. Storm's a true stroke of luck… it should cover your tracks.”
“But you'll need more than a storm to keep the corpos off your backs,” Panam adds.
Johnny shakes his head. “Corpos got bigger concerns than a coupla nomads running the border,” he says. “And even if they don't, just let 'em try and catch us. They'll regret it.”
His metal thumb caresses the top of V’s hand, and she glances to the side, smiling up at him.
“Great,” V says. “And once we've crossed, what then?”
“Cut straight across Jackson Plains and head for the flats south of the city,” Saul says. “Less likely to get spotted if you come in through Pacifica. You'll stash the car at these coordinates…” He flicks them to her. “Then travel by NCART the rest of the way.”
“We know the roads like the back of our hand,” Panam adds. “I will be on radio with you the entire time.”
V swallows hard. Her mouth feels dry and sticky, and she probably looks like a fuckin’ mess. “Don’t want you puttin’ yourselves in danger for us.”
Panam snorts. “And leave you exposed to the Raffen and the corps? Not a chance.”
“Panam is right,” Saul says, his voice serious. “We have to accept these risks, come what may. That much we owe you.”
“It’s a risky plan with a lotta gaping holes,” Johnny says, “But we’ve pulled off way more gonk shit than this.”
“Navigating the tunnel itself will be the real challenge,” Saul continues. “It’s a maze in there, narrow and low and chock full of tight twists and collapsed sections. One wrong turn, and you’re stuck in a dead-end or a cave-in or comin’ out the wrong exit straight into a Wraith camp. Or worse.”
“V and I are both hella good drivers,” Johnny reminds him, and V flushes at the unexpected compliment. “We’ll be fine.”
Panam leans back and nods, cracking her knuckles. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think it’s high time for a beer. Then let’s hit the hay. We all need to be sharp tomorrow.”
Saul nods, dismissing them, and V moves to follow Mitch and Panam out of the trailer. Johnny pauses after them to hold the door for V, but Saul suddenly speaks again.
“Wait,” he says.
“Hmm?” V asks, turning back to face him.
Saul’s face is serious. “I feel I need to make one thing clear. You’ve done a lot for this clan,” he says, his eyes flicking to Johnny, who is still standing in the doorway. “Both of you. And for me, personally. But the family comes first.”
“Saul…” V starts.
Saul holds up a hand. “Let me finish. I also know there's just one thing that could break it up at this point. If Panam and me... if we went our separate ways. The Aldecaldos would not survive that split were it to occur again. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?”
V looks at Johnny, then back at Saul. She slowly nods. “You're helpin' us 'cause you got no choice. Want the clan to think you and Panam are actin' as one. In other words, you're playin' politics.”
“It isn't that simple,” Saul says with a shake of his head, his long black hair brushing his shoulders. “I have to know I'm not doing it just for you, me, or Panam.”
“But for the good of the clan,” V says. “I get it.”
Saul nods, seemingly satisfied. “It's an important day tomorrow,” he says. “Get some rest.”
Mitch is waiting for them outside Saul’s truck smoking a rolled cigarette, and the three of them walk slowly back towards the bonfire at the center of camp.
“Back during the war, before we were first deployed, we were trained to keep stress in check,” Mitch says suddenly. He looks at V. “Johnny ever tell you how?”
V glances at Johnny, then gives Mitch a quizzical look. “How?”
“They gave us chem cocktails,” Mitch tells her. “Supplements, boosters… God knows what else. Shot them into our veins. Our biomons went wild, but only for a second before stabilizing. And boy did we stabilize.” V turns to Johnny again, but he's staring at the ground now, and his jaw ticks as Mitch continues to speak. “After a dozen sessions, something clicks in your brain. Neural pathways get rewired… the part of you that generates fear is zapped into oblivion.”
V blanches at this. She knows they did shit like that to Johnny… but that was a long time ago. “Thought they banned chem-cocktails,” she says. “During the war, even.”
Mitch laughs a dark laugh. “Please.”
“Weren't there outbreaks of cyberpsychosis within units?” V presses.
She feels Johnny's hand tighten around hers.
Mitch cocks an eyebrow. “And? Do you think Militech gave a lick about that? They just airlifted the afflicted to their clinics in Taiwan, daily flights. And every day we'd get fresh recruits. Still, they pumped us with that shit.” He grimaces. “But hey, we couldn't argue with the money.”
“So,” Johnny says slowly from beside her, his voice dragging over gravel. “Not afraid of anything at this point?”
Mitch gives him a knowing look. “You and I both know it’s not that simple.” He is silent for a moment. “I'm not concerned about tomorrow. Runs like this are second nature. It's what's going on in the camp…” He trails off, looking up at the Milky Way sprawling overhead. “Eh, no matter. I'm talking silly now.”
“C'mon, spit it out, Mitch,” V urges him.
Mitch sighs. “The truth is, I'm concerned about the goings on between Panam and Saul. They seem to think that putting on a brave face for everyone is enough. But folks here aren't slow. There's gossip spreading like wildfire already. That this family needs a shake-up.”
“What about you?” Johnny asks him.
Mitch gives him a look. “What about me?”
“What's your take?” Johnny asks again. “Saul oughta step down, pass the torch to Panam?”
Mitch considers this for a moment, then shrugs. “They're trying,” he says. “They might even have started to see eye to eye in their own way. Hell, by now they both know what's expected of them, what the clan expects of them.”
V nods slowly. “Think I get it. Panam's about the clan, not power. Question is whether she can reconcile the two.”
“If she hasn't lost it already,” Mitch agrees. “Here's how it looks… tomorrow goes off without a hitch, Saul gets the credit. But if anything goes sideways…”
“Blame falls on Panam,” Johnny finishes for him. “She's the one who brought us into the fold.”
Mitch nods. “Saul's a smooth operator. He knows what he's doing. Let's just hope he hasn't overplayed his hand.” He sighs again, coming to a stop before the big hangar tent, looming like a mountain in the damp night. “All right, we've gossiped enough for one day,” he says with a laugh. “I'm gonna poke around some in this baby's insides. See you bright and early, yeah?”
V watches Johnny grasp Mitch’s hand and shake it before turning back to her as the nomad disappears into the hangar.
“You hungry?” Johnny asks her, and V suddenly realizes that she is, in fact, starving. She hasn’t eaten since this morning, before she passed out.
She nods, and Johnny starts steering her towards the galley truck. “It’s late, but we’ll find ya something,” he promises.
Cassidy is leaning against the galley truck, sipping a beer, his signature cowboy hat pulled down low on his forehead.
"See the child. She is pale and thin," he says as they approach, looking V up and down. He lifts an eyebrow, his mustache twitching upwards. “V, let me be thoroughly honest with you. You look like shit. Do the great outdoors truly serve you so poorly?”
V laughs. “Can always count on getting complimented when you're around,’ she says, flashing him a grin. “Seems the great outdoors and fresh air've done you a lot of good, old man. Kept you spry.”
Cassidy shakes his head. “It's not the air,” he tells her. “It's just been one conviction. It lets me fall asleep like a babe come nightfall and wake up with a clean conscience with the dawn.”
V catches Johnny’s eye and a smile passes between them. “Got a feeling we’re about to learn it.”
“We nomads choose who to make our family,” Cassidy continues, undeterred. “And choice forges strong bonds and a higher duty that stands solid as an old oak. It doesn't matter what happens, what will happen. Within this family, nobody turns their back on you. Do you understand?”
V swallows, nodding her head. “Think I do.”
Cassidy presses his lips together, seemingly satisfied. “Now, you had better ready yourselves,” he tells them. “You've got a border to cross and a storm to outrun tomorrow. It's a helluva lot for one day.”
After a little bit of rummaging, Johnny manages to scrounge up some synth sausages that he throws on the grill for them both, and V’s stomach growls as the smell wafts upwards from the charred grill that Johnny is now manning.
V finds a package of hot dog buns in one of the galley cupboards, and wordlessly passes them to Johnny as he prepares their makeshift meals.
V suddenly feels so tired, so bone fucking tired. She doesn't wanna run anymore, doesn't wanna plan ops, doesn't wanna fire a gun or put her friends’ lives at risk. She wants to be at home, in her own bed, with Johnny and Nibbles there with her, with nothing to do except spend her days jamming on guitar with Johnny, and…
She pauses, wondering for what feels like the billionth time this week how Kerry is going to fit into all of this.
Judy is sitting alone on one of the damp couches by the fire listening to Scooter play guitar, and V slides in beside her, wolfing down her hot dog. Across the fire from them, Dakota is seated with Trace, the two of them deep in conversation. V catches the word “Collapse” and “Pacifica,” but they’re speaking in hushed voices too low to really follow or join their conversation.
“Know any Samurai songs?” Johnny asks Scooter as he lowers himself onto the couch next to V.
Scooter shakes his head and continues to strum the gentle, bluesy tune he's playing. “On a night like this, I'm not thinking about anarchy. It's all about unity, brother.”
To V’s surprise, Johnny doesn't have a witty or sharp or crass comeback for this, he just smiles at the young nomad as he eats his sausage.
Bein’ around the nomads seems to bring out a softer side of him, V realizes. Or is it her that's havin’ this effect on him?
She wishes she could still feel his thoughts, sometimes.
“How are you feelin’, V?” Judy asks, her brows knitting together as she assesses V’s general state. “What happened? Heard you collapsed. I was… we were worried.”
“I’m fine, Judy,” V insists. But she knows the lie is thin - there’s likely still dried blood crusted somewhere on her face, for all she can tell.
“V, I'm not blind or stupid,” Judy says, calling her bluff. “You got that wall up again, you're not lettin' me past. Tell me what’s wrong." Her voice is soft but insistent.
Johnny rests a hand on her knee, and V feels her shoulders slump. “I'm still dyin', Judy,” she admits in a small voice. “Rather not talk about it just now.”
Judy's eyes widen. "I thought you…" She shakes her head, trailing off as her eyes dart to Johnny’s face, then back to V. “It’s gettin’ worse?” she asks, her voice pitching upward with concern.
"Don't worry,” V reassures her, and she knows as soon as the words leave her lips that they sound just as unconvincing to Judy as they do to Johnny, who she can feel is equally tense beside her. “It'll all... it'll all work out soon."
“Work out?” Judy repeats, narrowing her eyes skeptically.
But to her relief, Johnny speaks, and his voice has a rough fierceness to it. “We'll figure something out,” he promises, and his words ring with a conviction that V couldn't muster up for herself, a conviction that makes her chest warm.
V swallows hard. "Hope you're right,” she says, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Doin' this record with Kerry feels like... like it's the last chance I got to leave a mark on Night City,” she confesses, her gaze dropping to where Johnny's fingers are draped lightly around her thigh. “Need to take it."
"You'll always have something to do,” Judy says softly, following V’s gaze. “There'll always be the next thing, next challenge. Till the bitter end.”
V shakes her head and looks back up at Judy. "It's gotta happen now,” she maintains. “While I still have time.”
Judy exhales slowly and reclines into the corner of the couch. “Think I get it,” she says.
"You're gonna hear it,” V continues. “On the radio. Wherever you end up."
Judy smiles at this. "V's postcards from the edge,” she says with a sad chuckle. “Heh. I like the idea. Be waitin' for 'em."
“What about you, Judy? Gonna head to New Mexico with all these gonks?” she asks, gesturing around them at the nomad camp.
“Yeah. Think so,” Judy says, and her smile has softened now into something almost shy. “Me ‘n Aidan both.”
“You… and Aidan?”
Judy’s smile widens, and she blushes deeply. “Dunno if we can really call it anything yet,” she admits. “But, yeah. She makes me… happy. Kinda reminds me of you.”
“Minus the rockerboy nibblin’ at my braincells,” V teases, and Johnny grumbles beside her.
Judy laughs. “When I said goodbye to all the girls at Lizzie’s… almost all were sure I’d flake, back out,” she tells V. “Even started a pool, you know, ‘bout me limpin’ back home, tail between my legs. Like many of ‘em, more times than they’d care to admit.”
“Got a feeling majority’s gonna be out some eddies,” V says with a smirk.
Judy smiles too, then looks sad. “Ever tell you I planned this with Evelyn? A flight out of Night City to bliss?” She looks down. “Dreamed about what we’d do when we finally got the chance…”
“I’m sorry, Judy,” V says.
“Don’t let it bother you,” Judy says firmly. “I won’t. Mentioned it ‘cause… feels like I should let that dream go, too.”
“But you did it,” V says. “Should be proud of yourself.”
Judy nods, then stands and stretches. “Gonna hit the hay,” she announces. “If I don’t see you ‘fore ya head out tomorrow… this is goodbye for a while, I guess. So… good luck, V. Glad to know ya.” She smiles sadly. “And you too, Johnny. Take care of each other,” she tells them. "And give Kerry my best. And… look after Roxie and Tom for me.”
“I will,” V promises, standing to hug her.
“Y’know, even I’ve grown to like her,” Johnny muses after she leaves.
“She oughta know that,” V says.
Dakota is smiling at them from across the fire. “I once found a dead magpie under the hood of my car. It had been a cold night,” she says, the firelight catching on her weatherworn features. “The magpie, looking for warmth, had found the engine. It couldn't get out the next morning, got cooked alive. I still remember the smell… charred feathers, misery, death.” Her eyes lock onto V’s. “The moment I met you, that vision appeared before my eyes. Today, I understand why.”
“Uhh, okay…” V says, unsure how to respond to this or what to even make of it.
“But your future is not etched in stone, V,” Dakota continues. “Remember that.”
V swallows, her eyes sliding from the nomad fixer to the fire crackling between them.
“And how ‘bout you, Trace?” Johnny says quietly from beside her, and V turns to look at him. “Gonna roll with the clan to New Mexico, too?”
Trace shakes his head, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Don’t think so. Lilayah and I are gonna head up to NorCal.”
Johnny gives a short nod.
“Give me a shout the next time you’re in NC,” V tells him, and Trace flashes her a crooked smile, his expression identical to the impish grins she’s seen Karis make so often. She wonders what the two of ‘em are like when they’re together.
In the distance, behind Trace and further up the ridge, V can see a dark shape sitting alone on the observation platform overlooking the camp.
She recognizes Panam immediately by the distinctive silhouette of her hair. And Panam seems to be watching her, too, because as soon as V looks in her direction, Panam lifts a hand, gesturing for V to join her.
“I’ll meet you back at our tent,” she says, turning to Johnny.
Johnny follows her gaze up to where Panam is sitting and nods.
“Be waiting,” he says in a low voice, leaning in to press a kiss to her temple.
V gingerly climbs the metal ladder up to the platform, trying not to slip on all the mud still caked to her boots.
“So this is where you escape to when you need to think,” V says, crossing to sit beside Panam.
Panam sighs. “I never escape.”
V gives her a look as she settles in beside her friend. “Somethin's gnawin' at you, I can tell. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“Nothing's gnawing at me,” Panam says with a scowl. “Stop, this is irksome.”
“Panam.”
Panam sighs heavily again, pushing back an errant braid. “I'm so tense I barely caught a wink last night,” she admits. “It's likely to be the same tonight.”
“What's eatin' ya?”
“Well, let's see,” Panam says, gazing out across the camp. “I know Saul and Mitch and everyone is making it seem like nothing, but tomorrow, you and Johnny are going to do something very dangerous. As if that's not enough, Saul is suddenly concurring with everything I say! And I don't even know if that's good or bad… fuck.”
V studies her face. “You feel responsible for them,” she guesses. “For us.”
Panam’s brow furrows. “It's not the responsibility I'm worried about. I'm just looking at this with a cool head. Saul has made all the wrong decisions to be a little more like me. But only I know what I'm good at, and at what I stink. I'm not a miracle worker, V!” she protests. “I'm scared to the bone something will go wrong. That you will-”
“We won’t,” V says firmly. “Whatever happens, we'll manage.” She looks up at the stars, then down at the camp. “Remember when we first met? I called you and you told me to tell Rogue to eat your shorts.”
Panam laughs. “I did not know what to make of you then.”
“What did you make of me?”
“I wondered if you were anything like me,” Panam says after a beat. “Carrying within you something damn important to prove to yourself.”
“I was,” V replies. “We both were. Bet you had no idea we'd end up like this, though.”
Panam chuckles softly. “Truer words I've never heard... Night City chewed us up good, didn't it?”
“As she always does,” V agrees.
Panam sighs and looks out over the desert. “Somewhere out there, those bastards from Arasaka are wondering how they lost everything.”
V swallows. “Panam... after Mikoshi, everything there... I'm glad we made it this far. Johnny ‘n I would both be dead if not for you.”
“Could say the same,” Panam says, elbowing her gently.
V smiles, and they sit in silence for a moment, gazing out at the camp sprawled before them, at the stars wheelin’ overhead in the desert night.
V’s gonna miss Panam, she realizes. And Mitch, and Judy, and Aidan, and Ambrosia. Hell, she’s even gonna miss Saul.
“You’ll come to NC to visit, won’t you?” she asks.
“Of course I will,” Panam promises.
It’s still dark out when V is awoken by Mitch’s voice, and she lifts her head from where it rests against Johnny’s chest to see the nomad poking his head into their tent.
“Rise and shine, buttercup,” he’s saying. “It’s time. Saul wants a word with both of you.”
He withdraws to give them some privacy, and V sighs heavily, attempting to extricate herself from Johnny’s arms. He mumbles in protest, pulling her back against him, and she lets him hold her tightly for another moment, his hand smoothing her hair.
But then he heaves a sigh and moves to sit up, and the two of them fumble in the darkness for their clothes. The rain brought in another cold front, it seems, and she shivers in the predawn chill as she finishes pulling on her boots while Johnny does the same.
She exits the tent with Johnny close at her heels, and there’s a cluster of nomads gathered around one of the nearby trucks. Saul is standing in the bed, lookin’ like he’s ready to give a speech or something.
V crosses to him, and the crowd parts to let her and Johnny pass.
“You wanted a word?” she says when she gets to the truck.
Saul nods. “Hop up here.”
Johnny hoists himself onto the bed of the truck, extending a hand to help V up after him.
“What's with the gatherin'?” she asks. “This some kinda send-off?”
“This isn’t about today,” Saul says, clapping V on the back as she joins him. “It's a simple matter. We - all of us standing here - owe you. And it's a great debt.”
“Speak for yourself, Saul!” Bob shouts from the crowd.
“But in spite of that, you're both still outsiders,” Saul continues. “A mercenary from Night City and a musician who died fifty years ago,” he says, looking them each up and down. “You might as well be from another world. So, it's about time we fixed that.”
“Damn right, justice it is!” Teddy agrees. “Needs fixin’!”
Saul’s mouth quirks up into a small smile. “V… Johnny…” He pauses again, placing a hand on V’s shoulder and turning her to face him. “Consider it official. You’re Aldecaldos. Which means this family will go to hell and back for you.”
V blinks at him. “Fuck me, Saul. Brought me to the brink of a heart attack.”
Beside her, Johnny looks equally shell-shocked by this.
“You're one of us now,” Saul says, his grin widening. He turns to Johnny, grasping his shoulder as well. “You're an Aldecaldo, dammit!”
“It’s been great to have you with us!” Bob interjects again.
Mitch smiles up at her from where he stands at the foot of the truck bed. “Thanks for everything, V,” he says to her, taking a step towards them. “And don't worry, we'll get you back to Night City.” He’s eyes dart between her and Johnny and Saul. “Isn't that the way of it?”
Panam grins, stepping forward as well. “Welcome to the family,” she tells them both sincerely.
V suddenly notices the two leather jackets Panam’s got clutched in her arms. Jackets that match the one the nomad is currently wearing. Aldecaldo jackets.
V swallows as Panam presents one to her, then turns slightly to hand the second one to Johnny. Cassidy watches from behind her, grinning up at them both.
“A warm welcome for our newest Aldecaldos!” Carol crows.
“Welcome to the clan! The most dysfunctional ever!” Teddy adds, letting out a whoop.
“Wow,” V says, feeling the lump forming in her throat as she holds the jacket up to examine the decal on the back. “I…” she stammers, suddenly at a loss for words. “Don’t know what to say.”
She knows the gesture is largely symbolic, since she and Johnny are headed back to the city, but she’s deeply touched nonetheless. Johnny’s eyes are shining, and she can tell that he’s similarly moved.
“It’s about time,” Panam says softly.
“No, like…” V says, swallowing thickly. “Really never expected this,” she manages. “Thank you.”
She slides the jacket on, aware of Johnny beside her doing the same.
“Jacket’s incredible,” he says, flashing Panam and the other nomads a genuine grin.
Mitch grins right back. “See?” he crows with a laugh. “He likes it!”
V blinks back tears. “Listen, the next time you’re all in Night City, we'll celebrate,” she promises. “And I know just the place. My treat, of course.”
“We'll hold you to that!” Teddy shouts.
“Don't worry,” Saul says from behind her. “It's but a formality. You've been a de facto member of this family for a while now. You saved my rumpus, and as Bobby tells it, Mitch's too. I won't even mention Panam.” He turns to Johnny. “And without you, we’d have lost a lot more of our kin to the Raffen. Two times over.”
“Go to hell,” Panam teases playfully, then turns back to V. “Saul's right, though. I mean, let's face it, V… my life was in a million pieces. But sometimes it's only then that you can piece it together again.”
“Yeah,” V agrees, smiling down at her friend, her face damp. “Appreciate it… everything. Shit,” she sniffles, wiping at her nose with her hand. “Turned me damn sentimental.”
“Christ, someone get her a hanky,” Teddy teases. “Else the poor thing’ll start a flash flood.”
“A toast to you!” Carol shouts, raising a Broseph towards them.
“Could’ve given me a heads up about this,” V says to Panam as she hops off the truck, Johnny following after her.
“And ruin all the fun?” Panam teases. Her face is shining, but the smile slides off her face when she grasps V’s arm to help steady her. “Shit, V,” she says. “You're bleeding again.”
V’s hand flies to her face, and she sees that old familiar worry and panic flash across Johnny’s features as well. When she wipes at her nose again, there’s blood smeared on her palm.
“Fuck,” she says, exhaling through her teeth as she drags her eyes back up to Panam. “Gonna figure this out, Panam,” she says, and she knows she’s saying it for Johnny’s benefit as much as the nomad’s. And maybe a little bit for herself, too. “The drugs I got back in NC will help a bit,” she reassures them.
Panam shakes her head, still looking worried. “The Aldecaldos have contacts who may be able to do something,” she says firmly. “I will reach out to them. They will help, you'll see.”
V smiles. “Good to hear, it really is,” she says. She knows Panam means well, but she doubts any of their contacts will have anything new that can help her. “Speaking of which, we all good to go?”
Panam nods, dropping her hand from V’s shoulder. “Everything is set and confirmed. We'll load up soon, gather our gear and set off.”
“As long as we don't fuck up, we should reach the border in about nine hours,” Mitch tells them. He gestures with his chin at Panam. “C’mon,” he tells her. “Let’s go get the panzer warmed up.”
Johnny holds her hand tightly as they follow Mitch and Panam through the cluster of gathered nomads, the members of the clan stepping forward one by one to grasp their shoulders and congratulate each of them.
“What just happened…” V murmurs once they’ve cleared the crowd. “Still can't quite wrap my head around it.”
“Hardly anyone ever does,” Mitch agrees. “The day you get your jacket is a day you never forget.”
V just nods, then gestures to the panzer as they approach. “Sure she's ready?”
Mitch laughs. “You know me. I'd gladly spend another two days on 'er, but this will have to do.”
“Happy hunting, then,” V says with a grin, and Mitch scoops her into a tight hug, then turns to Johnny and embraces him as well, clapping him on the back.
“Don’t be a stranger, okay?” he says to Johnny. “You’re family now, too.”
“Carol and Cassidy are waiting for you at the southern end of the camp,” Panam tells them. “Mitch’s ride has a full tank and is ready to roll.” She pauses, then throws her arms around V. “Take care of yourself V,” she whispers. “And of this gonk, too,” she adds, stepping away from V and pulling Johnny into a tight hug as well.
Johnny releases her, and the two of ‘em step back as Mitch and Panam clamber into the Basilisk. Panam gives them a final wave before the hatch thunks shut, and Johnny drapes his arm around V’s shoulders as they turn and start walking together across the camp to find the others.
“How's the jacket?” Johnny asks. “Not too tight?”
“Snug as a glove,” V tells him. “Feels like I've been wearing it a while.”
Johnny shoots her a sidelong smirk. “Don't ya think you have?” he teases. “You earned this jacket,” he says, his voice growing serious. “And the Aldecaldos' devotion.”
V presses her lips together. “Feels like I’ve gotten more of them killed then I’ve helped,” she admits. “But they’ve been real good to me. To us. So this jacket… it means a lot.”
“Yeah,” Johnny agrees, tightening his arm around her.
V tries not to doze off in the passenger seat as the hours crawl by. Johnny’d insisted on driving, and V relented when Carol pointed out that they couldn’t risk her havin’ another seizure again. They’ve been driving through endless stretches of desert all day, following the crumbling remains of what used to be Route 66 for most of it. Carol and Cassidy flank them in their own cars, forming a miniature motorcade with Panam and Mitch pulling up the rear in the panzer, and it’s afternoon by the time they reach the SoCal border. The crossing is marked only by a lone sign and an unmanned and clearly long-abandoned checkpoint.
“Not too late to detour to Vegas,” Johnny jokes from the driver’s seat as they pass through the crumbling waystation, the California desert stretching out before them.
“You tryna get married, old man?” V quips back.
Johnny doesn’t respond, but a lopsided smile spreads across his face, and V has to look away, fighting the blush that rises in her cheeks.
She’s still not entirely used to this new side of him.
The song on the radio ends, and the announcer’s voice crackles on over the air, a musical sting indicating they're about to be subjected to a news brief. “Gentleman extraordinaire, Yorinobu Arasaka, confirmed that he has consolidated full control of Arasaka and returned to his ivory tower in Tokyo,” the radio jockey says. “His sis Hanako’s whereabouts are currently unknown. So, it seems we've got a change comin’ at the tippity top of the megacorp. Soaked in the usual gallons of blood, sweat and tears, of course.”
Johnny scowls. “Heard enough,” he mutters, flippin’ the station, and the sounds of an old jazz standard curl out from the tinny stereo.
The sun is setting when the Night City border wall finally comes into view as they crest the final ridge, and V’s heart swells at the sight of that familiar skyline rising above the smog in the distance.
Panam’s voice crackles over their comm radio. “We've checked. Arasaka has people at every border crossing,” she tells them. “But the southern tunnel entrance looks clear.”
“And the storm?” V asks.
“Right on schedule,” Panam assures her, and V looks to the south where sure enough, the horizon is obscured by a massive cloud of rapidly approaching dust. “Don't you worry,” Panam says. “You'll pass right under the bastards' noses.”
“We better,” V agrees. She pauses for a beat. “Guess this is it, then, huh?”
“Don't you know it,” Panam says softly, and is silent for a moment, too. “There is one thing I will miss about Night City,” she finally says.
“What's that?” V asks.
“The food,” Panam tells her. “The Thai place on 7th in Heywood. The pierogis down by the docks. Mmh…”
V grins. “All the more reason to come visit.”
Now Mitch’s voice crackles on their radio as well. “Girl, are you running a border or goin' to your granny's for cookies and milk?” he grouses. “Gun it or that storm'll catch ya!”
“Screw you,” V says with a laugh, and Johnny floors the accelerator as they speed down the ridge and onto the flats.
The tunnel entrance is easy to miss, just a small opening between two rocks at the foot of a nondescript hill about a mile south of the border wall.
“I can smell the ozone,” V remarks.
Johnny nods. “It's that storm. Gettin' close.”
“Okay,” Panam says over the radio. “We've arrived.”
“How are things?” V asks her. “Is everything arranged?”
“Everything's almost set,” Mitch replies.
“So you found it?” Panam asks. “Where we thought it would be?”
“Seems so,” V tells them. “All plans laid and in place?”
“They are indeed,” Panam says.
“Looks like I've got a debt of gratitude to pay now,” V tells her.
“Oh, come the fuck on,” Panam protests over the radio. “We're all riding in the same wagon.”
“It’s time to move,” Mitch says. “Before that storm finds us.”
Johnny looks at V. “You ready?”
V swallows. “Been ready always.”
“Then hit it!” Panam tells them. “Home stretch, full speed ahead! Don’t stop until you’re through the tunnel!”
The storm overtakes them then, blotting out the horizon and the sky. But the plan is working - the storm’s providing them with the perfect cover.
“They've launched the drones!” Mitch cuts in.
“Carol! Cassidy!” Panam yells. “Get moving!”
“I'm heading west and activating the jammers,” Carol acknowledges.
“They've marked me,” Cassidy adds. “I'm turning east to get 'em off your tail. G’luck, kids!”
“See you on the other side!” Mitch shouts.
“Here goes nothin’,” Johnny declares. “Let's ride!”
Johnny guns the engine as the tunnel swallows them, following the path laid out for them on the car’s nav system. Johnny takes the sharp turns like a pro, but V finds herself clutching his knee as they careen through the dangerously old, narrow mining tunnels. He has to slow to navigate some of the more crumbled sections, but V thanks whatever god might be listening that none of the stretches are too collapsed for them to pass.
“Don't slow down, Johnny,” she whispers as the tunnel exit comes into view. “Not yet.”
She holds her breath as they speed upwards through the final passage, and then they’re out of the tunnel, rocketing into the clear open expanse of Jackson Plains, not a drone or patrol in sight.
Johnny’s face breaks into a broad grin as he pulls the car to a stop, then leans over to press his lips to V’s in a long, hard kiss.
V blinks back tears looking at Johnny, at the stars, at the hazy lights from Night City twinkling on the horizon.
She reaches into the pocket of her cargo pants and produces her bullet necklace, and Johnny’s eyes widen slightly as she pulls it gently over his head, settling it around his neck. He looks down at it, then wraps his hand around the pendant and looks back up at V, his eyes shining.
“It's perfect,” she whispers. “All great, Johnny. We're goin' home.”
Notes:
Hope you enjoyed the new chapter!!!! I missed you all, it's good to be back!!!!! :'''')
It's been a minute, so I'm gonna take this opportunity to drop the OC credits again:
Trace is a TTRPG character fleshed out and combined with an OC created by my friend Ellen.
Ambrosia is my dear friend emofthechoir's V, and you can read more of her story in this wonderful new fic!
And Aidan is heartofsnark's goblin daughter that I have forcibly stolen after calling CPS on my beloved friend because her V deserves to be happy!!!!!!! Check out her incredible fic here.
Chapter 63: Spiral Distortion
Summary:
Johnny and V return to Night City and attempt to sort things out with Kerry.
Notes:
oh you thought we were done with angst??? think again!!!!! (i hurt my own feelings writing this one. sorry not sorry 🥲)
CW: smut
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Johnny can't quite believe he's lookin’ at the goddamn Night City skyline with his own two actual, fuckin’ eyes. The sun has already descended into the sea by the time they emerge from the maze of alleys between the worm farms of the BioTechnica flats, and contrails streak across the glowing winter sunset overhead like scratches on glass. He can smell the ocean.
Night City always smells like the ocean.
He's here, he's real, and he can smell the fucking ocean.
It's exhilarating. It doesn't feel real. It feels more real than anything he's ever felt in his fuckin’ life.
His hand is still curled around V’s thigh, and he squeezes it and grins at her as they cross out of the flats and up into Pacifica.
They ditch Mitch’s ride at the coordinates Saul gave ‘em, an underpass just west of the Dogtown gate. It’s easy enough to blend in with the pedestrians making their way from the enclave up past the GIM to the NCART station. He lets V flick over the eddies for both of their fares as he follows her closely through the holographic turnstile, and he drapes his arm around her shoulders as they wait on the platform for the northbound train.
To any onlookers, they probably look like a completely ordinary couple.
The corner of V’s mouth quirks up slightly, and Johnny can’t stop himself from leaning down to kiss it. He wonders if she’s thinking the same thing. It’s still fuckin’ weird that he doesn’t just… know. The smells and sounds and lights of the NCART platform assault him from every direction - all of Johnny’s senses feel heightened. Or maybe he hadn’t realized how muted things were when he was lookin’ out through V’s eyes. Or maybe he just forgot how fuckin’ loud and bright Night City is compared to the serenity of the Mojave.
By the time they get to Watson, the sunset has cooled into a flat purple twilight, and Johnny feels like a raw nerve as they exit the station at V’s intersection.
V’s intersection. V’s penthouse, says a cruel voice in his head as he follows after her into the lobby of their building.
It is theirs, right?
The doubt that suddenly bubbles up surprises him. When he was still in her head and all this seemed hypothetical, he'd taken it for granted that he’d live with her - how could it be any other way?
He suddenly feels like a fuckin' freeloader.
Johnny doesn't even currently have a working bank account - the ‘Caldos’ ripper, Hutch, already updated Johnny’s ancient firmware to the latest soft his implants will support, but he’s gotta get more modern tech in his ports if he wants to be able to interface with all this new shit. He doesn’t even have a workin’ holo. And beyond the few possessions of his that V has accumulated, he has no fuckin' clue what's become of his estate.
Rogue probably knows.
But V is grinning at him as she presses her palm to the elevator’s biometric lock, and Johnny presses his lips into a tight smile.
“Kerry gonna be there?” he asks, finally grasping the elephant in the room by its trunk.
The smile falls off V’s face. “Probably,” she says.
“You didn’t text him?” Now it’s Johnny’s turn to frown.
“Thought we’d maybe surprise him,” V says, but she looks a little nervous now, too.
“Hmm.” Johnny genuinely isn’t sure how Kerry will react to that.
But neither of them has time to consider this further before V’s face goes blank in an odd, frozen expression, and then blood is pouring out of her nose.
“Johnny,” she chokes, pitching forward and fumbling for him. “I can’t…”
Her face hits his shoulder, the blood soaking into his shirt, but Johnny doesn’t give a fuck. His heart thrashes wildly in his chest and he lets her lean heavily against him as the elevator shudders to a stop and the doors slide open.
“I can’t see,” V murmurs, staggering forward and then crying out. She clutches her head and collapses against Johnny again.
“Shh, I got you,” Johnny tells her, scooping his metal arm underneath her knees and lifting her into his arms. The exercise regimen he’s been subjecting himself to has paid off - she feels a lot lighter in his arms than she was a week ago.
Or maybe she is lighter.
The thought makes the panic rise in Johnny’s throat as he steps out of the elevator with her pressed to his chest, into the familiar kitchen that he’s never actually set foot in before.
“Kerry?” he calls out. And then he curses loudly as V begins convulsing in his arms.
This wasn’t how he imagined their homecoming would go.
“My meds… upstairs,” V gasps, clutching weakly at Johnny’s shirt.
Johnny nods and starts up the broad staircase. Either Kerry’s takin’ a shit with his headphones on, or the penthouse is empty. There’s no sign of Nibbles, either - the cat is probably hiding somewhere.
He sets V down on the bed, suddenly aware of how surreal all of this is. The bed is made and looks as though no one has slept there in a minute, which strikes Johnny as somewhat odd.
“Where are they?” Johnny asks V.
Her unfocused eyes find his. “In the bathroom,” she tells him. “Top drawer under the sink. The blue boxes.”
Johnny nods and goes immediately to get them, stepping into the cool darkness of the black granite master bath. Kerry’s not in here after all, and Johnny opens the drawer that V directed him to. Sure enough, there’s a stack of blue cardboard boxes of airhypos. He grabs the top one and rips it open, already exiting the bathroom and striding back over to V.
“In your leg?” he asks, and V nods in confirmation.
Johnny doesn’t hesitate before jabbing it into her thigh, and V winces, then sighs in relief as the meds start to work. Her chest is heaving and she’s covered in sweat and bleeding on the silk sheets, and Johnny sits down beside her, smoothing back her hair with his organic hand.
“Call Vik,” he pleads. “I’ll take you there now.”
He’d call the ripper himself if he had a workin’ fucking holo.
V shakes her head, her eyes still squeezed shut. “I’ll be fine, Johnny. We can go tomorrow. I got my meds, now. I just gotta… rest for a sec.”
Johnny nods mutely and lies down next to her, sliding his organic hand down her cheek to rest across her stomach.
“Where the fuck is Kerry?” he asks, smoothing her shirt down with his palm.
“No fuckin’ clue,” V manages. “I’ll call him.”
Johnny shakes his head. “You don’t have to-” he begins, but V’s eyes are already glowing blue, and she hoists herself up into a sitting position, leaving Johnny’s hand draped across her thigh now. He rolls onto his back, looking up at V as she waits for Kerry to answer.
“Ker,” she says, and then her mouth spreads into a grin. “We’re home. Yeah, like, here here. We’re at the… yeah, me and Johnny. We’re at the penthouse. The hell are you?”
She nods, then makes a strange face, then nods again. “Tell him hi,” she says, finally. “And tell him Johnny says hi.” She laughs at whatever Kerry says in response to that, and now it’s Johnny’s turn to scowl. “Okay,” she says. “Yeah, sounds good. I’ll tell him.” She hesitates for a beat. “Love ya, too, Ker.”
Johnny’s attention snags on the casual endearment, though it shouldn’t come as a surprise to him.
“Says he's at Henry's,” V says as she looks down at him, her eyes returning to their normal pale gold. “Guess he just got himself a new place, and Ker’s helpin’ him get settled.” Her brow furrows. “Says he doesn't wanna leave him alone.”
“Nice of him,” Johnny remarks. “Good to hear Henry’s gettin’ his shit together.”
V leans back, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her fingers to her temple. She takes a few deep breaths before she wriggles back downward until she’s lying beside Johnny again. He rolls over to face her, searching her face worriedly.
“Fuck,” V murmurs. “Can’t believe we’re finally here… you’re finally here… and I’m too sick to give us a proper housewarming. Always imagined the first thing we’d do would be fuck on every surface of this apartment.”
Johnny’s laugh is low and warm. “There’s always tomorrow,” he promises, but the words ring hollow even as he says them. How many more tomorrows? Not enough, not as long as V’s still gettin’ worse by the day.
But that’s not what she needs to hear right now, so he pushes himself forward on his metal elbow until his body is over hers and kisses her thoroughly, but not demandingly. When he pulls away, her eyes are shining up at him, and he palms her cheek with his organic hand, running his thumb across her lip and letting his breath ghost over her mouth.
She rocks her hips insistently against him, and Johnny realizes his thigh is wedged between her legs. He chuckles softly and lets his hand drift back to cradle her head, threading his fingers around her ear and into her hair as he tilts her head down to press a kiss to her forehead.
“You should sleep, V,” he tells her.
She makes a soft sound of protest, but her eyes are already closing.
Part of him still wants to take her to Vik’s tonight, but the logical part of his brain knows there’s nothing the ripper can do to save her that he hasn’t already done, and the general tune-up she probably needs after her space walk and desert detour can wait until tomorrow.
But that doesn’t settle the nervous energy that Johnny can’t seem to shake, even as V’s breathing evens out and she burrows into the luxurious bedding. He watches her sleep for a bit, still feeling that pervasive awe whenever he looks at her, but after a few minutes pass, he carefully unwinds his arm from her torso and gets to his feet.
He wants a smoke, or a drink, or to fuck around on guitar. He can’t do the latter without wakin’ V, so he lights a cigarette and starts rummaging around in the kitchen. It doesn’t take him long to find a half-full fifth of bourbon, and that’s around the same time he realizes he’s fuckin’ starving - they had some protein bars on the road, but that was hours ago.
He should’ve made V eat something before she passed out. Assuming she’d be able to keep it down.
His appetite vanishes as quickly as it appeared.
He reaches for a tumbler and fills it halfway, not bothering with ice, then tosses it back in between drags of his cigarette.
He feels something soft brush his leg, and looks down to see a pair of large, light yellow eyes blinking up at him.
“Hey, buddy,” he murmurs softly, leaning down to let the hairless cat sniff at his fingers.
Nibbles lets out a quiet mewl and arches into Johnny’s hand, and Johnny obliges, moving his hand to scratch the cat behind his ears, leaving the cigarette dangling from between his lips and the whiskey glass on the kitchen counter. He glances over at where the cat bowl last was - there’s still plenty of food and water left out. Which means Kerry was here recently enough. He wonders if the rockerboy is about to walk in at any moment. He wonders how Kerry will react to seeing him in the flesh, unchanged by age. He self-consciously runs his hand through his short hair, feeling the prickle in his still unfamiliar prosthetic.
Which reminds him of something else.
He straightens and picks up his whiskey, then glances around at the apartment. The blinds are still open - he can see the city glowing and pulsing in the night all around him. He wonders if there’s a manual control for them, or if he’d have to wake V up to do it on her deck if he wants ‘em closed, and decides that either way, it’s not worth the hassle. He continues to scan the place, looking for the package V told him about. The one Goro sent.
His old Orphean is leaning on a stand next to an array of amps, and he recognizes a couple of Kerry’s guitars, too. There are a few takeout wrappers on the coffee table, but that’s the only other indication of Kerry’s recent presence.
Johnny downs the rest of the whiskey, then puts out his cigarette and pushes the panel to open the door to V’s office, or armory, or netrunning suite, or whatever the fuck it is. The lights on the server array are all dark, and her computer is powered down at the adjacent desk. Her gun collection looks untouched as well.
But sitting on the desk next to the laptop is exactly what Johnny was looking for.
It’s his arm.
He suddenly remembers the last time he saw it - not the manifestation of it his mind created on his engram projection, but the last time he actually really saw it: lying beside him on the roof of Arasaka Tower, mangled and twisted, drenched with rain as Adam Smasher loomed over him, preparing to deliver the killing blow which never truly came.
He closes his eyes briefly as the small room seems to spin around him. When the intense feeling of vertigo passes, he opens his eyes again, then gingerly lifts the arm from the desk and turns it over in his hands.
Someone repaired it. He wonders if it was Smasher, so he could display it as a trophy. Or maybe it was Yorinobu, as part of whatever weird hero-worship he had goin’ on with Johnny. Or maybe Vik did most of the work.
It feels strange beyond words to hold his own body part like this. He knows it’s not technically a part of his body, but fuck, it was part of him for a little over half his life. His entire adult life. It’s his fuckin’ name, his identity. The scuffs on the metal are achingly familiar, including the places where he scratched off the Arasaka logo.
He hadn’t really allowed himself to hold out hope he’d get his actual, old arm back. And sure, the one he has now is nicer in some ways, and fuck, he could probably get a real fuckin’ preem fancy ass RealSkinn one now if he wanted. But it’s not about that. This stupid ancient silver arm is his stupid ancient silver arm.
He hopes Vik’ll be able to reattach it without too much trouble. He should probably also get some sorta ocular implant so he can have an internal holo like V’s. He frowns and sets the arm down again, then pulls his cigs from the pocket of his pants and lights another.
Back in his previous life, he tried to avoid chippin’ too much chrome, since his psyche was already carryin’ the weight of his borged out arm, and even now he doesn’t relish the idea of replacin’ any more of himself with chrome than absolutely necessary. But it ain’t 2023 anymore… it’s a different world, and he still isn’t totally sure how he plans to navigate it.
He finishes smoking his cigarette, then goes back upstairs to where V is sprawled on the bed, dead asleep. It’s not that late, but they’ve been up since before dawn, and Johnny’s been driving all day - he’s exhausted, too. He kicks off his boots and his pants, then carefully unlaces and tugs off V’s boots as well, moving slowly so as not to wake her. She’s passed out on top of the covers, so he curls up next to her and wraps the ends of the blanket around them both like a burrito, pulling her to his chest. V hums contentedly in her sleep and burrows against him, and as Johnny’s eyes close, he realizes that maybe for the first time in his life, he's exactly where he wants to be.
It’s raining when Johnny wakes up. The blinds on the enormous windows are still open, but the fog makes it impossible to tell what time it is. The cars passing on the damp streets below sound like waves crashing, and Johnny lies there for a moment, suspended in the strange stillness, listening to the soothing rhythm set by the rain pattering against the glass and V’s breathing against his chest.
He doesn’t think he’ll ever get sick of waking up next to her.
Deciding to let her sleep a little longer, he carefully extricates himself from her arms and slides out of bed, tucking the blanket back around her once he’s freed himself. She mumbles softly in her sleep, but doesn’t wake up.
Relishing the chance to finally take a proper goddamn shower, Johnny sheds the remainder of his clothes on his way to the bathroom, pausing to lean heavily against the sink counter. The nomads don’t keep a lot of mirrors around - he hasn’t had a chance to take a good look at himself since his improbable resurrection.
His face looks more hollowed out and sunken than he remembers, and he hasn’t seen himself with hair this short since his time in the military. He runs his hand through it, his mouth twisting into a scowl. It’ll grow back, he tells himself. His whole body looks and feels a little off balance to him without the familiar gleam of the metal arm. At least his beard is mostly back to how he typically kept it. And the weeks spent in the sun have darkened his skin from what he’s sure must have been a deathly pallor after 50 years in a tank on a space station.
He showers quickly, then returns to the bedroom to quietly rummage for something clean to wear. He knows V’s got his old leather pants stashed here somewhere, but he doesn’t wanna dig too much and wake her up, so he puts on the first pair of pants he pulls out of the wardrobe near the bed. They’re a pair of vinyl combat pants that have a bunch of weird fuckin’ buckles on them - they’ve gotta be Kerry’s. He opens a few more drawers, lookin’ for a suitable shirt to wear that isn’t one of V’s little crop tops or bustiers, and settles on a t-shirt with the Avanti logo emblazoned on the chest, which means it’s also probably Kerry’s.
It certainly isn’t the first time he’s borrowed Kerry’s clothes without asking, and the thought makes him smile to himself as he heads downstairs to try to see if he remembers how to work the espresso machine V’s got down there.
He’s in the middle of fiddling with the touchscreen dial when he hears the elevator door slide open behind him, and he wheels around to see Kerry standing in the foyer, a Caliente coffee in his hand, looking like he’s seein’ a ghost.
Which, Johnny realizes, he basically fuckin’ is.
For a long moment, they just stand there, blinking at each other.
He’s seen Kerry through V’s eyes, of course. Up close and personal, even. But that somehow still doesn’t prepare him for the gut punch of seeing Kerry standing across from him now, in the flesh, and it really, finally hits him that Kerry’s an old man now and he’s still… whatever the fuck he was in 2023.
“Look good for a corpse, Johnny,” Kerry says finally. “Got a fuckin’ tan and everything.”
Johnny snorts. “Shoulda seen me a week ago.”
Kerry frowns, giving Johnny another once over. “Those my clothes?”
“Seems time hasn’t dulled your terrible taste,” Johnny retorts.
They regard each other for another long beat, and then Kerry takes a step towards him, and then another one, then places his coffee on the kitchen island and shrugs off his leather jacket. He’s wearin’ sunglasses ‘cause of course he fuckin’ is, and he removes those too and places them on the counter next to his coat and his coffee.
“Fuck,” he says, searching Johnny’s face. He glances around the apartment, then up towards the loft. “V here?”
Johnny nods, gesturing with his chin up towards the bedroom. “Yeah,” he says. “Still sleepin’. Had a long drive back yesterday.”
Kerry nods, chewing on his lip, and his eyes fall to the pair of Aldecaldo jackets tossed haphazardly by the door.
“Got matching jackets and everything now, huh?” he teases, taking another careful step towards Johnny.
“C’mere, Ker,” Johnny says in a low voice, and he closes the distance between them and pulls Kerry into a tight hug. Kerry tenses up, then relaxes and winds his arms around Johnny, cursing softly under his breath.
Fuck, he still wears the same shitty cologne he used to.
Kerry pulls back and looks at Johnny again, then flushes, his usual bravado replaced by something almost shy. “It’s weird as fuck havin’ you see me like this, Johnny,” he whispers. “I’m… old as fuck. You still look the same as… fuck.”
“Been lookin’ at you through V’s eyes for months now,” Johnny reminds him, stepping back.
“True,” Kerry says. “But it’s different now that you’re really here.”
“Yeah,” Johnny agrees. He cocks his head at Kerry. “How’s Henry doin’?”
A strange look passes across Kerry’s face. “He’s doin’ alright,” he says carefully, then shakes his head again. “Fuck, this is so fuckin’ weird.”
Johnny can only nod as Kerry pushes past him, opening the cupboard and pulling down the same fifth of bourbon that Johnny was drinkin’ last night. He pours himself a glass, then pulls down a second one and fills it as well, sliding it across the counter towards Johnny, who accepts gratefully.
“To this,” Johnny says wryly as he lifts the glass to his lips, which gets a small eyebrow raise from Kerry as he does the same.
“So,” Kerry says, setting his glass down and licking his lips. “What happens now?”
Johnny shrugs. “You tell me,” he counters.
“Plannin’ on stickin’ around this time?” Kerry says, and there’s a slight accusation in his voice now.
“The fuck else would I go?” Johnny says with a scowl. “What’s that’s s’posed to mean, Ker?”
Now it’s Kerry’s turn to shrug. “Just sayin’,” he says. “Know how you are with this shit. It starts to get real, you run for the hills.”
“With V, you mean?”
“With all of them,” Kerry replies coolly, lifting his chin to meet Johnny’s gaze. “All of us. Rogue, Alt, Violet, me…”
If Kerry wants to get into it right here, right now, they can get the fuck into it.
“Look who’s talkin’, Ker,” Johnny cuts in, his voice lowering. “The guy who sacrificed his ideals so he could bask longer in the limelight?”
Kerry’s mouth twists. “One, those ideals were never mine, and you know it. Two, fuck you.”
“The fuck is your plan, Kerry?” Johnny growls, feeling the heat rising in his stomach. “Gonna just hang around like a sad puppy, takin’ potshots and waitin’ for someone to clap? Maybe throw you some scraps?”
Kerry recoils like he’s been slapped, and Johnny knows he’s not bein’ fair, but he can’t stop the resentment that’s bubbling up now, threatening to spill over. Kerry’s been the one here for V this whole time, the one who was here when he wasn’t. Kerry took care of V when he couldn’t. And part of him is still afraid that maybe Kerry’s right - all he’s ever done for anyone he’s ever loved is hurt them and left them alone and confused for someone else to pick up the pieces.
“Oh? You want me to leave?” Kerry takes a step towards Johnny, seemingly undeterred by his sharp words, though Johnny can see the blood rush to his former bandmate’s face. His voice drops into a low growl. “Don’t bullshit me, Johnny. Know you secretly loved gettin’ fucked by me when you were livin’ inside V’s head,” Kerry continues boldly. “Know parta you still wants it now.”
“Fuck off, Ker,” Johnny says, but his voice is lower, huskier, giving him away.
This is always how it was between them.
And Kerry’s right - he did like it.
Kerry’s standing really close to him right now, daring him to make a move, just like he always fuckin’ used to. He can still read Kerry like a fuckin’ book.
So Johnny does, grabbing Kerry roughly by the nape of his neck and pulling him in for a harsh, almost violent kiss. Kerry pulls away, panting, and Johnny’s breathing hard now too, can feel the hard bulge at the front of his pants. Kerry’s clearly in the same state.
“We still fightin’ over V?” Kerry teases. “Or did you just want an excuse to-”
His words are cut off as Johnny crushes his lips to his again, grunting softly as he pushes Kerry backwards against the kitchen island, grinding into him.
Kerry groans, pushing his hips against Johnny as he deepens the kiss.
“Wow,” comes V’s voice from behind them. “Guess you guys didn’t waste any time getting reacquainted.”
Johnny pulls away to see V standing at the foot of the stairs, watching them with a mixture of amusement, alarm, and arousal on her face.
Kerry twists away from Johnny, and the look on his face quickly transforms into one of naked relief and love when he sees V. Johnny steps back as Kerry pushes off of the island and crosses the floor in three long steps to scoop V into a tight hug.
“V,” he murmurs into her hair as V wraps her arms around his former bandmate. “You made it.”
“‘Course I did, Ker,” V replies in a warm voice, holding him just as tightly.
Johnny feels a rush of contradictory emotions tumbling through him as he watches them embrace. Part of him wants to elbow Kerry aside, because he’s the only one who can hold V like that, now. And part of Johnny feels like he’s the one intruding - on them, in this house, on this life they’ve built together in a future he was never supposed to be a part of.
And part of him is just fuckin’ glad they’re all somehow alive, and here together at all.
V clings to Kerry for a long time, neither of them speaking, until she eventually disentangles herself from his arms, but not before pulling back to press a kiss to his jaw. She crosses over to the kitchen island and threads her arm around Johnny’s waist, her eyes darting back and forth between the two of them.
“Much as I’d love to stick around and see where that was going,” she says, gesturing between Kerry and Johnny and raising her eyebrows to further make it clear what she is referring to, “I told Vik we’d be by in a little. He just texted me.” She looks at Johnny pointedly. “He fixed up your arm,” she tells him. “Kerry’s got it here, somewhere, apparently. It’s all ready for you, we just gotta bring it over.”
Johnny’s eyebrows shoot up. “Nova,” he says, unable to keep the smile off his face when she looks at him like that.
V grins back at him, then at Kerry. “Ker, you wanna come?”
Kerry shakes his head, then looks down. “Nah,” he tells them. “‘S’posed to take Henry to an AA meeting later today anyway. But…” He looks at Johnny almost sheepishly, but there’s a sparkle in his eyes now. “Let’s jam later?” he asks.
“Fuck yeah,” Johnny says, and he means it.
It feels like a dream. It feels fucking stupid. Johnny isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
The tension settles between them like a delicate thread as V crosses to the espresso machine and punches some buttons on the touchscreen, and the contraption hisses to life as she places a mug beneath it.
Johnny realizes he has no fuckin’ clue what happens now. He’s in uncharted territory now - they all are.
There isn’t any food in the house, so after parting ways with Kerry and shoving Johnny’s old metal arm in one of V’s backpacks, Johnny and V stop at Tom’s Diner on the way to Vik’s. It still feels almost surreal to do something as mundane with her as sittin’ across from each other at a diner, eatin’ eggs and toast and smoking cigs, and he still feels like he might burst into either tears or hysterical laughter at how fuckin’ normal it all feels.
And it feels strangely normal to take her hand as they push open the door to Misty’s little shop, the chimes tinkling as they step into the small, incense-filled store.
“V!” Misty exclaims, stepping out from behind the counter and throwing her arms around V before pulling back to gin at Johnny. “And… wow,” she says softly. “You must be Johnny.” Her voice is warm, and her lack of surprise tells Johnny that Vik must’ve filled her in on V’s little rescue mission. “It’s nice to finally actually meet you.”
“Pleasure,” is all Johnny can manage. He still can’t shake the feeling that he’s in some sort of waking dream, and wonders, not for the first time, if this is all still some strange illusion crafted for him by Alt in cyberspace.
But V takes his hand again, tugging him onwards past Misty’s desk towards the back door, and the reassuring feeling of her palm pressed against his is as real as anything he’s ever felt.
“Vik’s waitin’ for us,” she says apologetically to Misty, and Johnny has a feeling she’s as overwhelmed as he is right now.
Vik’s reception to Johnny isn’t quite as warm, but he pulls V into a bear hug before ushering her into his chair. Johnny paces the room while the ripperdoc runs scans on her, watching Vik mutter to himself as he patches V up from whatever damage her chrome suffered during her space excursion and exposure to the elements in the Mojave. Vik tuts as he looks at V’s scans, and Johnny is afraid to ask how bad it’s looking. And then he gruffly gestures for Johnny to get in the chair, and V hops up and pulls the disembodied prosthetic from her bag and hands it to Vik silently. She perches on a chair and chews her lip as Vik puts Johnny under, and the last thing he sees is her pale face staring at him in the dim red glow before the anaesthetic kicks in and drags him down into oblivion.
To Johnny’s chagrin, her face isn’t the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes again - instead, it’s Vik’s pockmarked face that hovers above his, frowning as he scrolls through whatever the biomon screen is displaying above them.
Johnny blinks as his vision focuses and unfocuses, adjusting to the lightweight ocular implants that he asked Vik to chip him with as well.
“Eyes all good?” Vik says. “They’re nothin’ fancy like V’s, but they’re good enough that you won’t feel like you’re livin’ fifty years in the past.”
Johnny nods, then looks past him at where V is still seated on the stool, and she gets up and crosses over to him.
“How’s it feel?” she asks, and that’s when Johnny finally dares to look down and to his left, and he isn’t fully prepared for the mix of emotions that hits him when he sees his old metal arm there, lookin’ every bit the same as it did fifty years back, albeit maybe a little shinier now. He flexes the fingers one by one, then balls his hand into a first.
“Feels fuckin’ preem,” he says, then grins up at both of them. He can still feel the effects of the anaesthesia wearing off, and it only adds to the sudden rush of giddiness he feels.
The sensory feedback on this arm feels a little dulled compared to the newer one he had before, but this one feels familiar, feels right, feels like it’s his.
It’s still raining when they finally leave Vik’s shop, and the sun is already hanging low in the sky - Johnny’s surgeries must’ve taken most of the afternoon.
“Still wanna go see Rogue?” V asks, slipping her hand into his, and Johnny nods.
“Yeah,” he says. “Gonna come with?”
V shakes her head. “Wanna go check up on Roxie and Tom,” she tells him. “I gotta tell ‘em about Aiko… and I don’t wanna say any of it over the holo. Meet you back at home later?” she says, standing on her toes to press a kiss to his face when Johnny nods in confirmation. She takes his wrist and presses it against her own, and her eyes briefly glow blue as the penthouse biometric lock syncs with his signature. "Now you got your own set of keys," she jokes, and Johnny feels something warm and fluttering blossom in his chest, both at the gesture and at her casual use of the word home.
Johnny waits with her while she calls a Delamain, then kisses her goodbye and starts makin’ his way through the tangle of alleyways down to the club.
It feels strange, walking alone through the streets of Night City. He stares up at the rain glittering in the heavy fog as it pours down in the gap between the buildings, causing the neon lights to fracture in the puddles that pool on the pavement, painting the street in glittering blooms of violet and pink and blue and gold.
And then he’s walking up to the familiar yet unfamiliar green glow of the Afterlife, taking the stairs down two at a time just like V always did.
The bouncer’s eyes widen when he sees Johnny, but the man just grunts and steps to the side, pulling open the door and muttering something under his breath that Johnny doesn’t quite catch.
The club is awash with smoke and loud, pulsing bass, but it’s still relatively empty given that the sun hasn’t yet set. Johnny feels suddenly awkward again, out of place. Out of time, even. He casts his eyes around the room, ignoring the stares he’s getting from the few patrons that dot the bar and sulk against the various walls and pillars and bar stools. He crosses to the bar and leans against it, intending to get a drink to steady himself.
“Flesh and blood,” comes a low, familiar voice from behind him. “A real boy again.”
Johnny whips around to see Rogue standing there, a slow feline smile spreading across her face as she struts towards him.
“Rogue,” he says as she comes to a stop in front of him, lookin’ him up and down just like Kerry did.
“Johnny,” she says, and the warmth in her voice makes something twist in his gut. He is suddenly and excruciatingly aware again of the fifty years that lie between them. Fifty years of life. Fifty years that he missed.
He gestures at the Centzon bottle in the shrine behind the bar. “That my bottle up there?” he asks, even though he already knows that it is.
“Yup,” Rogue says, raising her eyebrows. “Been waitin' there. Just... I never knew what the fuck for.” She laughs darkly.
“Hmm, VIP treatment,” he jokes.
Rogue’s eyes are soft as she looks at Johnny. “I knew that one night, you'd waltz in here by some fucking miracle and tear everything down. Can't say how... I just knew.” She shakes her head at him, something like disbelief on her still-beautiful face. “Some things never change.”
She ducks under the bar and pulls down the bottle of tequila, then pours them each a glass. Johnny is again aware of the many pairs of eyes on them, but pointedly continues to ignore it. He figures it’s something he’ll just have to get used to.
“Met your son,” Johnny tells Rogue as he sets his glass down after taking a long swig. “Out with the nomads.”
Rogue raises an eyebrow. “Alim?”
Johnny nods. “Looks just like him,” he says gruffly. He doesn’t mean it as an accusation, but Rogue scoffs.
“That’s scop, Johnny,” she says, rolling her eyes. “They look exactly like me.”
“They?” Johnny suddenly wonders if he somehow got the kid’s pronouns wrong.
But Rogue just laughs. “They’re twins.” She smiles to herself. “I have two boys, Johnny. Karis and Alim. They’re…” She chuckles again, giving Johnny a bemused look. “They’re almost your age.”
Johnny isn’t sure how to feel about that. He scowls, casting his eyes around the club.
“Pretty tight setup you got, Rogue,” Johnny says, gesturing. “Queen of Night City. Couldn't've been easy to achieve all this. So many others failed.”
Rogue narrows her eyes. “The hell's that s'posed to mean?”
Johnny shrugs. “Just thinkin' back. Shame no one else from the Atlantis had the same luck,” he says, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Missed the last fifty years. Just tryin' to get my facts straight, fill in some gaps.”
“Just what the hell are you insinuating?” Rogue’s voice is lower now, cautious.
“Got a cozy life for yourself,” Johnny continues. “No one else from our old crew got a happy ending. No one but you.” He presses his lips together, regarding her. “I'm just curious what it cost you.”
“You're one to talk,” Rogue spits back, her demeanor shifting. “Where do you think we got the nukes we used in '23?” Her voice is low and dangerous. “You knew they were Militech.”
Johnny frowns. “Blackhand stole 'em.”
“You sure about that?” Rogue asks, leaning towards him across the bar and resting her chin on her fist.
“Listen Rogue, just show me your hand,” Johnny says with a heavy sigh. “I know you sold out.”
Rogue mouth twists into a scowl. “Since when are my professional choices any of your fucking business?” She looks at him. “Got a name at the tip of your tongue, I know. Adam Smasher. So, yes. But way later. You were gone, and I'd learned to live with it.” She straightens and crosses her arms. “I'll tell you what I told V. I regret it. That what you wanted to hear?”
“That what you tell yourself when you're cashin' corpo checks?”
Rogue gives him a long, cold look. “Can't turn back time, Johnny... ever,” she says pointedly. “But you can always start over.”
Johnny drums his metal fingers against the bartop. He didn’t come here to fight with Rogue. So he decides to cut to the chase.
“V's runnin' out of time, Rogue.”
“Yeah,” Rogue agrees, her voice softening. “But she’s got options, now.”
“Assuming you already got the briefing, then,” Johnny says.
Rogue nods. “Blue Eyes filled me in. Eddies are already headed to her account. She can get a conversion now, or get on the list for those BioDyne treatments.” She gives Johnny a knowing look. “She’s strong, Johnny. Wouldn’t be settin’ her up to take over for me here if I didn’t think she’d pull through.”
It isn’t quite enough to reassure Johnny, but there’s not much else he can do about that right now. So he turns his attention to the other matter at hand - the real reason he came here to see Rogue.
“What happened to my estate?” he asks the fixer, downing the rest of his tequila and setting the glass aside. “Know I had money in the bank when I went down. Where’ve all my royalty checks been goin’ these last fifty years?”
Rogue gives him a long look. “Come with me,” she says, putting the bottle back on the shelf and ducking under the bar again, motioning for Johnny to follow.
His hunch was right - Rogue is somehow the one with the keys to his proverbial castle. Most of the money's just been sittin' in a trust assigned to his long-inactive foundation, of which Rogue remains the sole benefactor - and his royalty payments have all been goin' there too, seems like. He wonders what Rogue'd been plannin' to do with it, but decides it doesn't matter right now. They spend the next couple hours in her office, gettin’ everything set up for him in a new account, his documents back in order, and everything transferred back to his name. It takes more than a little fudging on Rogue’s part to exhume his digital identity, but by the time he’s pullin’ on his coat to leave, he feels a little more oriented in this new paradigm.
“Both of you, take care of yourselves, okay?” Rogue says after a pause. "And... be nice to Kerry."
Johnny just nods at her before setting back out into the rain.
When Johnny gets back to the penthouse, V and Kerry are both sprawled out on the couch, guitars in their laps and a beat playin’ out of the sampler that sits on the coffee table. But V sets her guitar aside when she sees Johnny and slides over to make room for him, and he joins her on the couch, threading his arms around her and kissing her neck.
Kerry gives them a strange look, but Johnny just shoots him a grin.
“How’d it go with Rogue?” V asks.
Johnny shrugs, leaning forward to light a cig. “Got my ducks back in a row,” he tells her. “Turns out my catalogue’s done pretty well the last few decades.”
At least he feels like less of a freeloader, now.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kerry teases. “Everyone loves a nostalgia act.”
“You’re one to talk, Ker,” Johnny retorts, but Kerry just grins at him.
“Wait till you see the shit V and I have been workin’ on,” Kerry tells him, and Johnny is happy to oblige.
Johnny settles back as V restarts the loop on the sampler, then picks up her guitar and positions her fingers, glancing over as Kerry does the same. She's holdin' an axe he's never seen before - a beautiful Tenzor Paradize. The girl's got fuckin' taste, he thinks approvingly. He watches, slightly transfixed, as the two of ‘em launch into their song - he recognizes it from the desert, it’s one of the ones V played for him while they were out there. But it sounds way different on electric guitar with Kerry’s backing track and rhythm guitar laying a lush backdrop, and Kerry’s vocals harmonize in a weighty countermelody with V’s singing in a way that Johnny finds genuinely hypnotizing.
V pauses when Johnny stands, the two of them watching with a kind of reverence as Johnny takes his Orphean from the stand and rejoins them on the couch.
“It ain’t bad,” Johnny gives them. “But I got some ideas.”
As the evening deepens into night and they jam their way through the song, Johnny is delighted to discover that three of them work together easily, organically, like this is always how it’s been. Kerry and Johnny always used to fight about dumb shit when they were writing songs together, but somehow, with V here, it just works. She can intuitively diffuse the tension, can translate their ideas seamlessly into riffs and melodies and lyrics as they struggle together to hash out what’s shapin’ up to be a certified banger, by Johnny’s estimation.
And it feels good as fuck to be playing guitar again with his familiar old metal arm - Johnny hadn't quite appreciated how much he'd come to rely on its specific sensory feedback and response speed for his signature style.
V gets up to go make herself another coffee, and Johnny moves closer to Kerry on the couch. Out of nowhere, he feels another intense wave of heartbreak at the fact that he’s missed so much of Kerry’s life, at the fact that Kerry is old now and he is not. They were best friends. They were so much more than best friends. But Kerry has lived a whole lifetime, now.
He follows Kerry’s gaze towards where V stands in the kitchen, waiting by the espresso machine for her cup to refill, and once again feels strangely like an intruder here.
“What did it look like?” he asks abruptly.
“Hm?” Kerry says, his eyes sliding back to Johnny.
“When I was still in V’s head, and we were havin’ those weird sorta almost threesomes,” Johnny says quietly. “What did that look like to you? Like, what did it look like V was doin’?”
He’s been wonderin’ about this for a while, now.
Kerry’s confusion breaks, and he starts laughing. “Didn’t really look like much of anything, to be honest,” he tells Johnny. “She’d just get this far-off look in her eye, kinda freeze up a little, and I could tell that meant you were doin’ something to her.”
“Interesting,” Johnny murmurs.
V rejoins them on the couch, but this time she wedges herself between them and puts her hand on Kerry’s thigh. The tension in the room is suddenly thick and heavy, but it’s a different kind of tension. Johnny’s still feelin’ the buzz from the tequila he had with Rogue, and he frowns slightly as he remembers the fact that V’s abstaining now.
But V is looking at them both with a strange, almost intrigued look on her face, and Johnny’s frown deepens when V leans over suddenly and kisses Kerry. It’s a real kiss this time - slow and sensual and open-mouthed.
Johnny feels a raw, animalistic jealousy rise up in his throat. But V pulls away to look at him, and Kerry twists to look at him too, and there’s a clear invitation in his eyes.
“You just gonna watch?” he drawls, and Johnny’s immediately half hard.
There’s a gleam in V’s eyes as she reaches over and tugs at Johnny’s shirt, pulling him towards her as she cranes her head to kiss his neck. Johnny threads a hand around her throat, pushing her back down onto the couch and following her mouth with his own. He kisses her deeply, shoving his tongue against hers. Her eyes are dark and her pupils blown when he pulls away, but he doesn’t stop to admire her - he turns and reaches for Kerry with his other hand, fisting the front of Kerry’s shirt and pulling the rockerboy towards him, across V’s lap, crushing his lips to his.
The force of desire behind Kerry’s kiss takes him by surprise as Kerry meets him open-mouthed, his tongue already pressing into Johnny’s as he leans into him with a low growl in his throat. And V is kissing Kerry’s neck now, her hands sliding down to palm the hard bulge already straining at the front of Kerry’s pants.
Johnny’s in much the same state, but he pushes off the couch and drops to his knees in front of Kerry, shoving his bandmate’s legs apart and unbuttoning the top button of Kerry’s pants. He looks up into the rockerboy’s eyes, and Kerry is watching him with a sort of hazy disbelief on his face, and he can’t blame Kerry, can’t imagine how surreal this must feel for him.
To Johnny, it’s only been a few years since they last did this. For Kerry, it’s been half a lifetime.
He finishes unbuttoning Kerry’s pants, and pulls his cock free.
It looks exactly how he remembers, Johnny thinks as he takes it in his mouth and Kerry groans loudly above him.
Kerry’s hips twitch upward, and Johnny opens his eyes to look up again at Kerry’s flushed face. Kerry is panting slightly now, his lips parted, and then V’s hand is on Kerry's cheek, turning him back to her to capture his mouth in another kiss.
It’s so fucking hot that Johnny can’t help but reach his hand down to grip himself through his pants, groaning around Kerry’s cock.
Maybe this can somehow work, he thinks. He’s not sure how, but he’s willing to try.
Kerry moans into V’s mouth as Johnny rolls his tongue over the head of his cock, and he hopes Kerry’s enjoyin’ this as much as he is. Judging by the way Kerry’s hips are thrusting helplessly into his throat, like he can’t fuckin’ contain himself, Johnny is fairly sure he’s got nothing to worry about on that front.
He doesn’t wanna make Kerry come this way, though. Not yet, anyway.
He pulls his mouth off of Kerry, watching as Kerry’s cock bobs upwards to hit against his stomach with a wet thwack. Johnny stands and starts to unbutton his pants, but he doesn’t get far before V breaks away from kissing Kerry to lean forward to help him, gently but eagerly tugging his cock out of his pants and staring up at him with those pretty eyes of hers.
But then he looks down at Kerry, and without hesitation, the rockerboy leans forward and takes Johnny in his mouth, gently shoving V aside. Johnny can’t help but groan like a wounded animal as Kerry’s tongue rolls over and around him as he greedily devours him, already taking him all the way into the back of his throat.
Fuck, Kerry’s still just as good at this as he used to be.
V places her hand at the back of Kerry’s head, guiding him as he bobs his head on Johnny’s cock. She's watching the two of them from where she sits on her heels on the couch beside Kerry, a slightly awestruck look plastered across her pretty face, like she can't fully believe this is really happening, either. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees V reach down and wrap her other hand around Kerry, pumping him slowly as he sucks Johnny off.
Kerry moans loudly, thrusting up into V’s hand, and the feeling of Kerry startin’ to come apart like that with his lips still wrapped around Johnny’s cock is enough to make Johnny’s balls begin to tighten. He’s gonna come too soon if they keep this up. He groans again and bucks his hips into Kerry’s mouth, feelin’ his cock hit the back of his throat.
“God damn, Ker,” he says, his voice comin’ out rough and ragged. “You’re so fucking good at this.”
He fucking loves Kerry. He loves him so much. He always has. And Kerry has always loved him, he realizes.
Johnny looks down at the two of them, and V meets his gaze, her eyes heavy-lidded as she keeps working Kerry with her hand. And then Kerry whimpers, gagging slightly as he comes hard while V continues to stroke him through it, brushing her lips to Kerry’s ear and murmuring soft praise to him as he gasps around Johnny’s cock, writhing with his eyes rolled back.
Fuck, Johnny’s not gonna last long like this. And V still needs some attention.
He reaches down to grab her chin and pull her up onto her knees so he can kiss her, still thrusting slowly into Kerry’s mouth. He tugs insistently at her shirt, gripping it in his fist and pulling it up over her head. She helps him get it the rest of the way off, then tosses it aside as her beautiful fuckin’ tits fall out, her nipples standing at attention.
Fuck, she’s so fucking beautiful. The woman who went through hell for him, and dragged him back with her.
Johnny’s feeling more than slightly overwhelmed as he leans forward to wrap his lips around V’s nipple, rolling his tongue across the pebbled skin there before dragging it up her breast to her collarbone. He knows her body as well as he knows his own. He feels his breath naturally fall into sync with hers, and he suddenly can’t quite remember which set of hands belong to him anymore as she winds them around his shoulders, sighing into his ear.
She pulls back to look at him like she still can’t quite believe he’s here. He feels like he wants to crawl inside of her and curl up there forever. In a strange way, in moments like these, a part of him almost misses it. Being along for the ride. Having no choice but to trust her completely. And he did, at the end. He felt safe inside her body.
He still does.
“I love you,” she says, the words tumbling out in a soft exhale, as though she can’t help herself. He kisses her face, lost in her.
He feels Kerry pull off of him.
“If you guys are gonna be like… that,” Kerry says suddenly, a dark bitterness creeping into his voice, “then I’ll just go fuck off back to Henry’s.”
Johnny feels his dick go soft immediately, and he pulls away from both of them, collapsing heavily onto the couch next to V. Kerry’s face has soured as he sits there with his cock still out and cum dripping across his stomach, soaking into his expensive shirt.
“Spit it out, Ker,” Johnny says as gently as he can manage, frustrated at the sudden interruption. “What's wrong?”
Kerry shakes his head, running a hand through his hair and scowling down at his ruined shirt. “Nothing. What could possibly…? Ugh, nothing, I just, uh... shit.”
Johnny frowns at him. “Know you well enough to know that babbling means you're hidin’ somethin’,” Johnny says in a low voice. “C'mon, out with it.”
Kerry shakes his head, looking back and forth between them. “V…” he says softly “I can’t.”
V doesn’t meet his eyes. She is staring at the floor in front of them, her legs curled up under her now, wringing her hands together. “Might've expected as much,” she says in a low voice.
Kerry scowls. “Mean to say I've become that predictable?”
“No,” V says, finally lifting her gaze to meet his. “Just gotten to know you well, too, is all.”
Johnny searches Kerry’s face. “Talk to us, Ker.”
Kerry just shakes his head mutely, then looks at V with a pained expression.
“Not exactly fair of you to get jealous right now,” Johnny points out.
Kerry sighs heavily. “S’not just about you, Johnny,” he says, then looks back at V. “Not like you were ever really mine, anyway,” he adds in a dark voice.
The three of them are silent for a beat, and V shoots Johnny a look that's half confusion, half apprehension. His chest tightens.
“Was gonna be our adventure, V,” Kerry says softly, finally breaking the tense silence. “Or so you let me think.” He exhales between his teeth. “Fuck,” he says darkly. “Thought this'd be a lot easier.”
“Kerry...” Johnny begins, but V starts talkin’ at the same time.
“Why?” she asks, her eyes widening. “W-what're you sayin?”
“I just can’t,” Kerry repeats.
“Can’t what?” Johnny presses. “What is this?”
Kerry throws up his hands. “Life's a party, woo! So long as you don't have to make any hard choices. Kerry Eurodyne in a nutshell.”
“Hey, that's not fair-” V begins, but Kerry cuts her off.
“Fuck, V! Fuck! I'm scared! Afraid of the future! And afraid of…” He swallows hard, then looks back at Johnny, then at V again. “Was any of it real?” he asks in a small voice. “Which one of you was really behind the wheel when you told me…” He cuts himself off, then shakes his head and laughs darkly. “That’s a good line, actually. Should put that in a song.”
V is still looking at him like she’s about to cry.
“Kerry, be straight with us,” Johnny says gently, but Kerry turns to V.
“Why’d you say yes to me, V?” Kerry presses, his eyes sad and searching. “That night on the beach, after we blew up Kovachek’s boat. When I asked you to be my output. Why'd you say yes?”
“Kerry, I…” V starts, her voice breaking. “You know why,” she pleads. “Was already falling hard for you. You were…” She shakes her head. “You were so fuckin’ nice to me,” she says quietly. “And you accepted me exactly the way I was.”
But Kerry looks like he bit off something sour. “You sure it wasn't just 'cause the guy you had a poster of on your wall when you were fifteen was askin'?”
Johnny isn’t sure he’s ever heard Kerry sound so bitter. He knows Kerry well enough to see that he's just lashing out, but V recoils, blinking back angry tears. "That's not fuckin' fair, Kerry," she says, her voice barely a whisper.
"And it was never really just the two of us, was it," Kerry continues. "Even after Mikoshi."
V narrows her eyes, her mouth pressing into a tight line. “You still mad that I fucked Dino?” she demands. “That what this is about?”
Johnny’s eyes widen as he turns to look at V. “You fucked Dino?”
“No!” Kerry shouts, looking back at her and throwing his hands up in exasperation. “I don’t give a flying fuck that you fucked Dino! I’ve fucked Dino! Everyone’s fucked Dino!”
V whips her head to him. “Wait, you’ve fucked Dino?”
Kerry scowls again. “Yeah, years ago, it doesn’t fucking matter,” he says, waving his hand dismissively and looking down and away from both of them.
Johnny cocks an eyebrow at V. This is a twist he didn’t see coming. He leans back and tucks his dick back into Kerry’s stupid pants, zipping them up and crossing one leg over the other to rest his ankle on his knee. “Dino may be a poser, but I feel we could still become friends,” he jokes, winking at Kerry in an attempt to diffuse whatever the fuck is happening right now. “He's a sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll kinda guy... preem choom material. Maybe I should give the bastard a call.”
Kerry rolls his eyes, but V seems truly at a loss for words.
This whole situation has spiraled out of control so fuckin’ quickly that Johnny’s not even fully sure where it all went wrong.
Maybe all of this was a bad fuckin’ idea. Maybe Kerry’s right, and they’re not bein’ fair to him.
Kerry just shakes his head sadly at V, and the expression he’s wearing now is one of pure, unadulterated heartbreak. He looks so pathetic suddenly, sitting there with his dick soft and leaking, looking like a kicked fuckin’ puppy the way he always does when shit gets too real. It’s too fuckin’ much for Johnny, and he has a sudden urge to grab his stupid ‘Caldos jacket and just leave them to figure out whatever the fuck this is.
But he knows he’s part of this, now, too. And he’s not that person anymore, he reminds himself. He owes Kerry more than that.
“So what do you want then, Kerry?” V demands. “Do you want me all to yourself? Do you want Johnny?”
“Maybe I need to not be tryna third wheel with people a third my age,” Kerry replies, his voice hard.
Johnny gives Kerry a long look. “Kerry, are you breaking up with us?” It comes out more mocking than he intends it to.
“Fuck you, Johnny,” Kerry shoots back, rolling his eyes. “Was never dating you and you know it.”
“Fuck you, too, Kerry,” Johnny retorts, but there’s no real venom in his voice.
Fuck, they’re all so bad at this.
Kerry takes a deep breath and presses his lips together. “That’s my fuckin’ point,” he says, gesturing again with his hand. “I’m too fuckin’ old for this shit. I'm… I’m literally 90. I got kids the same age as you idiots. The fuck am I doin’ trying to party hard and date a 28-year-old and… and you’re still fuckin’ 35 or whatever… and… dunno, maybe I just need to grow the fuck up and focus on gettin’ my own shit together.”
The three of them are silent for a beat. Johnny wishes he knew what to say to any of that, but he comes up blank. Maybe Kerry’s got a fuckin’ point.
“Went to that meeting with Henry today,” Kerry continues after a moment. “Got me thinking. I can't keep doin' this Peter Pan thing. And… my kids. I wanna make things right with them,” he says. “S’how it goes, I guess,” he adds with a pained smile. “Grow up poor, get rich, have kids you can't relate to.”
But V is shaking her head at Kerry, seemingly unwilling to accept what he’s saying. “The fuck was all that chat about life's loops?” she argues, looking at the rockerboy like he’s about to disappear in a puff of smoke. “I thought…” she starts, but then falters and looks down, her face red and her eyes glistening.
Johnny is tempted to comfort her, but he somehow doesn’t think that’ll help matters right now.
"Well, the thing with loops is that we all got our own,” Kerry replies, giving her a long, steady look. “And they're singular at base.” He smiles at her sadly. “Ours just intertwined for a bit.”
“For a bit,” V repeats. Her voice is flat, but Johnny knows her well enough to tell that she’s trying really hard not to cry.
“I know,” Kerry says softly. “I thought we'd make it, too. I did. But that was just fuckin' Night City, its illusions whisperin' sweet nothings in our ears. It’s like Henry said…” His voice trails off, as though he’s stopping himself from saying the rest.
A missing piece clicks into place in Johnny’s head all of a sudden.
“You fucked Henry,” he says slowly.
Kerry’s eyes widen, but then he snorts and looks down, avoiding Johnny’s eyes, and Johnny knows he’s hit the money. “'Course I fucked Henry,” Kerry says with a shrug, deflecting. “We've all fucked in every combo, remember? ‘Cept for Denny, actually. Or wait… actually no, there was that one night…”
“No,” Johnny presses. “Like, now.”
V’s brow furrows as she looks at Kerry. “Is that… are you… is that what you’re trying to tell us?” she asks incredulously.
Kerry sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Henry and I have been spending time together, yeah,” he finally admits. “Been takin’ him to meetings and talkin’ about shit and… I dunno, it just kinda…” He casts his eyes around the room, as though looking for the words to explain. “Been takin’ it slow,” he finishes weakly.
Johnny is struck by how old Kerry sounds all of a sudden. Not old in a bad way, though. Just… mature. Wise.
Not words he ever thought he’d associate with Kerry.
He’s grown up, Johnny realizes. They all have. Violet and Henry and Kerry and Rogue and Nance and Denny.
His heart breaks a little bit.
“I understand, Kerry,” he says softly. “I understand it all.”
Kerry looks at him suspiciously. “Truly?”
Johnny nods. “Ready for whatever comes next. Our story is far from over. But it’s not gonna be like it was. I get it.”
V swallows hard, still looking at Kerry, seeming to come to an understanding. “You still wanna… we’re still the Legends, right?” she asks in a small voice.
Kerry laughs, but Johnny realizes his bandmate's eyes are damp now, too. “Yeah,” Kerry says. “I think… I think that’s how this is supposed to go, actually,” he continues, a slow smile spreading across his face. “We’re gonna make something preem together. Something new. Look, V... Night City's a shit-stained back alley, I know that. But it's our shit stained alley. But then I guess you know that, too. Finally got this city by the throat, and I don't intend to let go. Not now. Concocted yourself a new beginning. You chose it, and it's comin' fast. And I understand. I do. I wanna do the same for myself,” he says. “Whatever that means for me. Gonna finish our album, V. And then we’re gonna unleash it on the rest of the world.”
V smiles too, but her shoulders are trembling. She’s weeping openly now, and wipes at her eyes with the back of her wrist.
“Thank you, Kerry,” she says, reaching her hand out to cup his face. He is still smiling sadly as he places his hand over hers, tilting his head to press a kiss to her palm.
“Thank you, V,” he says. “Meant it when I said you saved my life.” He looks over at Johnny. “You, too,” he adds, then back at V. “Thanks for bringing this gonk back,” he says with a strangled laugh. “Even if he’s still a massive cocksucker.”
It takes everything in Johnny’s power not to make an inappropriate joke at that, so he just bites his tongue, nodding with what he hopes is a solemn expression on his face.
He understands, he really does. And despite everything, he thinks this probably is what’s best for Kerry. For all of them.
V chokes a sob. “Kerry, I…” she begins, but can’t seem to get any more words out.
“I love you both,” Kerry says firmly. “I do. Always will.”
“Love you, too, Kerry,” V manages.
Kerry nods once and gets to his feet, finally tucking his dick away and zipping his pants. He scowls at the mess on his stomach, then tugs off his shirt and uses it to wipe himself off before tossing it aside. He stands there shirtless for a beat, looking down at the two of them with a strange expression on his face. There are still tears streaming down V’s face, but she’s smiling up at Kerry through them. Johnny can tell her heart is breaking a little bit.
Without saying a word, Johnny takes off Kerry’s shirt that he’s still wearing and silently hands it to him. Kerry pulls it on mutely, then reaches for Johnny’s pack of cigs on the table and takes one, shakily lighting it.
“Know what?” he says, looking down at the two of them as he exhales a puff of smoke out through his nose. “I'm glad we got a chance to talk. You're a straight shooter, V. Nothing like the ass-kissers I'm usually surrounded by.” He smiles grimly then turns to Johnny. “And… Johnny… I’m glad you’re back.”
Johnny gets to his feet and pulls Kerry into a hard, fierce hug. He feels like he should say something, something that matters, something that makes it better. But what the fuck does he know about making things better?
“I…” he swallows hard. “I love ya, too, Ker.”
He’s never actually said it to him before, and he feels Kerry go limp in his arms, and then Kerry is crying, too.
Fuck, this wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go.
Kerry pulls away and looks down at V with a heavy, shuddering sigh. “You're always the villain in someone’s story,” he says sadly, taking another long drag of his cigarette before turning on his heel and heading for the elevator, leaving Johnny standing in the middle of the room with V crying on the couch beside him while the rain falls on the city around them.
Notes:
we're truly in the home stretch now! the next chapter is technically the last chapter, because the one after that is an epilogue. thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has read this fic, commented, left kudos, reached out to me on other platforms, or even just silently enjoyed the fic. it means everything to me, you guys seriously have no idea. writing this fic has honestly been such a wonderful experience and i know i've grown a lot as a writer in the process, and i really can't understate how much your support and feedback has meant to me over the last few years.
given that we're nearing the end, i also want to take this moment to say that i know a lot of you were rooting for some sort of johnny/kerry/v relationship as the endgame here. as i've said from the start, i've had this fic pretty tightly outlined and planned since i began writing it, so just know that this resolution for kerry has been baked into this story from the very beginning. i'm sorry if it's not the ending you may have hoped to see, but i really do think this is a true happy ending for kerry - his arc has always been about finally growing up, getting out from under the shadow of johnny, and finding his own happiness. to me, that means getting sober and reconnecting with his estranged children and entering a stable, age appropriate relationship lol not being in a weird toxic throuple with his ex situationship bandmate and a woman 1/3 his age. and tbh, i think them all continuing to make music together is the best possible outcome here. i know some of you may be disappointed, but i hope you can understand why this is the direction that feels right to me!
that being said, it's not over til it's over and we do still have another chapter and an epilogue to wrap things up. don't despair!
Edited to add: I had initially planned to finish and post this one-shot between this chapter and the next, so I'll go ahead and drop the link in these chapter notes! This is a Samurai-era Silverdyne one-shot about Johnny and Kerry being toxic and horny back in ye olden days called Suffer Me, please enjoy! Technically canon to this fic, but stands completely on its own as well.
Chapter 64: A Cool Metal Fire
Summary:
V and Johnny navigate their new life together in Night City as they race to find a way to save V before it's too late.
Notes:
Feels surreal as fuck to type this, but we've arrived at the last chapter of this fic. 🥲 Don't worry, there will still be an epilogue!!! But this still feels like an ending, of sorts. I'm having a lot of feelings about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe I started writing this fic almost exactly four years ago!!!!!!!!!!! It's been a wild ride.
Be warned, this chapter is extremely long. But whatever, it's the last one, I'm allowing it. Buckle in, chooms!!!!!
CW: smut
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
V runs up the stairs at full speed, her legs carrying her with preternatural strength and momentum. This is a stairwell she's seen before, in dreams and in memories and with her own two eyes. Sections of the elegant wooden railing have been torn off, but V doesn't slow as she pursues her quarry up, up, towards the roof, towards the sky. She can't let him get away. She can't let him escape her. She can't-
She bursts through the door onto the roof of Arasaka Tower, and Johnny is there, making a break for the waiting AV. He's injured and moving slowly, and V sprints towards him, her legs pistoning beneath her as she closes the distance between them, taking the last step as a flying leap through the air to catch him by the torso as he grabs ahold of Rogue's hand.
Her body feels almost weightless as she tears Johnny from Rogue's grasp and hurls him to the roof. He lands hard on his back and goes briefly limp, and she stands over him, her chest heaving.
Except it isn’t. She isn't out of breath, because she doesn't need to breathe. Her heart isn't pounding, because she doesn't have one. Her muscles aren't screaming, because they are no longer muscles of flesh, but silicone and metal working in perfect harmony to move her limbs and hold her torso upright as she looms over Johnny's broken body.
His eyes widen. His bloodied face blanches. He is terrified. He is looking at her with pure, unadulterated hatred.
V’s face splits into a cruel grin as she lifts her foot and stomps down hard on his arm. Johnny is screaming and Rogue is screaming above them and V raises her fists - they are blackened and metallic. Her torso gleams in the neon lit night. There is nothing human of her left.
Not even her own mind.
Especially her own mind.
She leans forward, and Johnny's eyes turn glassy as his face goes slack, and then his body is glitching away in a flicker of blue streaks, just like it always does. All she can hear now is the rain.
And V just smiles.
The dream breaks like a wave hitting rocks and she sits bolt upright, gasping for breath.
Early morning light streaks in at an angle, illuminating the lawn outside in sharp stripes of gold and turning the surface of the pool into an iridescent sheet of glitter.
She is home. She is safe. Her hands are still flesh and blood.
One of them, anyway.
She looks down and to her right, where Johnny is asleep beside her, his face relaxed and his eyelids fluttering from whatever dream still holds him captive.
He is safe. He is alive.
She leans back down against the soft pillows as her breathing evens out, then rolls over to face Johnny, watching him as he sleeps.
His warmth, his scent, his very real physical presence here in her bed in Night City feels like another dream, like any moment he’s going to vanish into a cloud of blue static, like a mirage, like a cruel joke. She thinks of how often she has imagined this exact moment. How it would feel to wake up beside him in this house, each of them in separate, whole, living bodies.
This isn’t a dream. Johnny is here, alive, in this house that Kerry bought for her.
She presses her eyes shut as the wounded look on Kerry’s face floats to the surface of her mind, wrapping around her chest and squeezing like a vice.
The heavy, weighted silence that Kerry left in his wake last night stretched between her and Johnny for the rest of the evening, both of them still processing what had just happened. V still isn't sure how Johnny feels about all of it. She still isn't sure how she feels about all of it.
Eyes still pressed shut, she lets out a slow, shaky exhale through her nose.
When she opens them again, Johnny is awake and looking at her, and his eyes are so soft, so unguarded, that her breath catches. Vik did a real subtle job with his ocular implants - they're not full replacements like hers, just small corneal nodes that are only visible as three silver dots on the outer edges of his dark brown irises. They're only really noticeable when the light hits them, or when she's as close to him as she is now.
“You okay?” Johnny murmurs, his voice still gravelly with sleep.
V frowns, then shrugs. Truthfully, though, she isn't sure.
Johnny threads his organic arm around her and pulls her to his chest. “Yeah,” he agrees, like he can still hear her thoughts. “Do you…” He swallows. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
V isn't sure that she does. So she deflects, pulling away to look at him, one eyebrow raised. “Wow,” she says. “Johnny Silverhand, wantin’ to talk about feelings?”
“Fuck off,” Johnny says gruffly as he rolls away from her and onto his back, throwing his organic arm over his eyes, but he's smiling.
V props herself up on one elbow. “How are you feeling about it?”
“‘Bout Kerry throwin’ a fit and storming out in the middle of blowin’ me, you mean?”
V chokes a soft laugh and rolls her eyes. “Sure, if you wanna put it that way.”
Johnny peeks out from under his arm at her. “Think he finally grew a spine,” he says.
V chews her lip. “Maybe,” she agrees.
Johnny lowers his arm. “Had a feeling it was gonna go this way,” he admits. “Think Ker knew it, too.”
“I just thought…” She shakes her head. “I expected him to at least…I dunno… try?” Her eyes meet Johnny’s. “For all of us to try.”
Johnny gives her a long look, then shakes his head.
“You weren't there fifty years back,” he reminds her, and his voice is gentler now. “Kerry and I… it was always a mess with us.”
“I know,” V says, because she does. She might not still have his memories the way she used to, but there's still the memory of those memories, blurred and distorted as they may now be.
But Kerry loved her, and she let him. And she let herself love him, even knowing that she would always choose Johnny, every time. And Kerry knew that, too.
“If things played out differently… think he might’ve stuck it out with you,” Johnny says thoughtfully after a pause. “But me and him? It's not about whether the love is there, V. We were in the war together. And then we got famous together. His story is a part of mine as much as mine is all tangled up with his. But that's the whole problem. Don’t wanna put you in the middle of that.” He sighs, but it's a soft, frustrated sound.
“But what he said about finally growing up, and gettin’ his shit together, like we're just a couple of kids…”
“To him, we are. They've all grown up,” Johnny says simply, but there is a sad resignation to his words. “They look at me and see the same idiot they knew fifty years back. They all buried me, grieved me, made whatever literal or metaphorical shrines they needed to, and then moved on. Or didn't, I don't fuckin' know. But either way, they've changed. Lived their lives. Watched their kids grow up.”
“You've changed, too,” V reminds him.
“Yeah,” he says slowly. “But it's not the same. I was trapped inside a fuckin’ computer. Their world just kept turnin’ without me. For half a century.”
“I just hope he doesn't feel like I… like we didn't want him here. That there's not room for him anymore. With us.”
“Is there, though?” Johnny says, meeting her eyes. “C’mon V, we can practically finish each other's sentences. It's not a fair fuckin' fight, never was. And despite how he acts, Ker’s more territorial than he lets on. And so am I,” he adds, giving V a heated look.
“But you… you're not gonna turn tail and run, now, like you woulda done back then,” V says softly. She swallows hard, struggling to articulate this strange and sudden fear. “Like Kerry did last night. Right?”
Johnny sits up and looks at her, his brows knitting together.
“Why do you think I'd wanna leave?”
V thinks of her dream. Would Johnny still love her if the body and face he knows like his own were replaced with a chrome and RealSkinn amalgamation? If her mind is a copied engram and her body is a high tech, inhuman machine?
She doesn't know how to ask him that.
“It’s just… I mean…” she gestures between them. “We never…” She falters, unsure of what she is even asking him, what reassurance she needs from him right now. “Are we…? What is this?”
To her surprise, Johnny looks at her for a beat, then bursts out laughing.
She scowls at him, feeling her face heat.
“You askin’ me to go steady, V?” he wheezes between laughs. “You askin’ me if I’m your boyfriend?”
V feels her blush deepen, and she looks down, her cheeks burning. Johnny’s right, the word suddenly feels so cheap, so meaningless when applied to whatever it is that exists between the two of them. “Boyfriend” doesn’t even come close to encompassing what it is they have become to each other.
So why the fuck does she suddenly feel like a middle schooler asking a boy out for the first time? Why does she suddenly have this irrational fucking fear that he's gonna vanish like smoke?
Like everyone else she's ever loved has?
But Johnny is still laughing. “After all this, after everything, all of a sudden you care about labels, now?” he continues. “God, V.” He wipes a tear from his cheek. “You never fail to fuckin’ surprise me, you know that?”
V shakes her head, then shrugs, still scowling. “I just… wanted to make sure I knew where we stood, is all,” she says weakly. “I knew things would be different, bein’ back in Night City, with all your old chooms, with your own body…”
Johnny stops laughing and really looks at her, then, seeming to notice how stricken she must look. He reaches across the bed and pulls her down to him, pressing his mouth to hers.
“V,” he says, tilting his head away slightly to give her another long look, his eyes softening. “I love you. You know that. I ain’t goin’ anywhere. Get that through your gonk head.”
V feels her stomach do a somersault again at his words - she’s still not used to hearin’ him say it to her this freely.
“Yeah,” she whispers, a smile creeping across her face as he cradles it inches from his own. “Guess I do know that.”
Johnny pauses again, brushing his thumb back and forth across her cheek as he holds his face close to hers, mapping her features with his eyes. “And for the record… yeah,” he says softly. “I'm your input. Mainline. Boyfriend. Whatever the fuck you wanna call it.” He smirks at her. “Not gonna pretend I ain't happy that now you’re all mine.”
“I’m all yours,” V repeats, smiling in spite of herself.
“Yeah,” Johnny says, hovering his mouth over hers. “I know.”
He kisses her with the same rawness as he did that night in the panzer, and it steals the breath from her lungs, erases every other thought from her mind. There is nothing else now, just the hard planes of his body as he pulls her on top of him, his mouth never leaving hers.
His touch feels like a drug, and she makes a soft, pleased sound against his lips as his metal hand cups her breast, the alloy warming quickly against her skin. The confidence with which he touches her makes her almost dizzy, and the low gasp that leaves his throat when she rolls her hips against him makes her whole body light up. The novelty of him has not yet worn off - he is here, he is real, he is alive, he is hers - and she finds herself hoping that it never will. She can't imagine how it ever could.
“Fuck, V,” Johnny breathes, sliding his other hand between her legs to stoke her gently through her panties. She whimpers softly and rocks against his fingers, but he keeps his touch featherlight and teasing, enough to make her whine with frustration as he breathes a low chuckle into her mouth.
She reaches her hand down as well - he is already naked, so there is nothing to hinder her when she wraps her palm around his swollen cock and squeezes slightly. It drags a low, rough sound out of him and he twitches in her hand, his hips stuttering upwards. She strokes him slowly and he groans again when she brushes her thumb across his tip, dragging the bead of liquid already forming there down and over his length. His fingers continue their torturous circles, pressing lightly and then more firmly, and she grinds against his hand, both of them panting into the open-mouthed kiss Johnny seems determined not to break.
She wrenches her mouth away from his and trails her lips down his bearded jaw, past the flutter of pulse at his throat, and across his collarbone, stopping when she gets to the pucker of skin where his arm is still healing.
“Johnny,” she murmurs, shifting her hips away from his fingers and continuing to trail her mouth downwards, over the raised spiderweb of his scars and the faded ink of the tattoo that decorates his stomach, until her lips finally wrap around the head of his cock that she still has encircled in her fist. She pumps him slowly with her hand as she sucks the tip, swirling and pulsing the flat of her tongue against its heated underside. Johnny's sharp inhale sends a shockwave straight to her already aching cunt, and she hums around him, pleased when hips rock upward again in response. She takes him deeper in her mouth and he groans, his head falling back and his eyes fluttering closed. He is so fucking beautiful when he starts to unravel like this.
God, she fucking loves him.
She removes her hand and takes all of him in her mouth, swallowing around him and hollowing her cheeks as his cock hits the back of her throat. His hand comes to loosely grip her hair as she works her mouth up and down, and he moans again when she lets herself gag on the back end of one of his deeper thrusts.
“V,” he pants. “That's it, baby.”
She continues for a few more minutes until Johnny’s panting grows ragged - she’s almost tempted to make him come like this, but the throbbing between her legs has grown too insistent and she needs him to touch her again, to fuck her. She pulls off him, eliciting another beautiful sound from his throat, but before she has time to reposition, he sits up and grabs her waist and flips her onto her stomach, rising to his knees and lifting her hips to line himself up.
“So fuckin’ pretty,” he says, and she feels the tip of him teasing her, his fingers digging into the hollow of her waist, the heat of his admiration.
“Please,” she whimpers, shifting back against him.
She bites back a whine as he presses into her slowly - he leans forward to cover her body with his own, his trembling exhale ghosting across her spine before he dips his head to mouth at her neck, gasping against her when he bottoms out. Fuck, his cock feels so fucking perfect, like it always does, like it was made just for her.
“Have I mentioned you have the most perfect fuckin' cunt?” he murmurs in her ear as though reading her thoughts. He starts to fuck her slowly, drawing out before pushing back into her at an agonizingly steady pace. She whimpers again, trying to arch her back to drive him in further, faster, but he has her pinned beneath him, his fist gripping her hair, his forearm supporting his weight while his metal arm wraps under her stomach to hold her hips in place as he thrusts into her with infuriatingly controlled movements. He is deliberate and thorough, moving inside her at exactly the right angle and pressure to make her toes curl, bringing her higher and higher before slowing again when she starts to quiver and whine. He is fucking her like he has all the time in the fucking world, pushing her right to the edge again and again until she is a whimpering mess, holding her suspended at that aching, wonderful precipice.
“Stop teasing and fuck me like you mean it,” she manages.
“Love it when you talk back,” Johnny growls against her jaw, increasing his pace slightly and tugging her hips upwards to meet his thrusts and dragging another breathless, gasping moan from somewhere deep in her chest.
“Johnny,” she whines. “Harder… please… I need…”
“I know what you need,” he reminds her, drawing out slowly then slamming to the hilt. “Know every fuckin’ thing about you. Know exactly how to keep you makin’ those fuckin’ sounds for me,” he murmurs, running his teeth along the skin beneath her ear. He pulls almost all the way out and does it again, and then again, and with every hard, deep thrust her vision sparks and she is gasping, keening, begging. “You're all mine. Only mine,” he grits out as he pounds into her.
Everything seems to sharpen to a single, bright point, and she can feel the moment he fully loses himself and starts fucking into her with that unbridled, feral intensity that she loves so fucking much.
He flattens his palm against her stomach, rutting into her and panting heavily at her ear, and the tight coil of pleasure within her starts to rapidly crescendo.
“Johnny, please,” she begs, even though he's already giving her exactly what she needs.
“Fuck, V, you're so fuckin’ good,” he groans, his voice breaking right as she feels him start to come hard inside her.
And - finally, finally - she follows him over the edge with a broken shout, arching her back and trembling against him as she shatters.
“Atta girl,” Johnny croons, breathing hard against her throat as he fucks her through her orgasm. Her ears are ringing and her vision is going white and she loves him. She loves him so fucking much.
But Johnny stiffens, his body tensing above and around her. “V,” he says roughly. “You're bleeding.”
V blinks, still dazed from bein’ fucked to oblivion like that, and lifts her hand to her face. Sure enough, her fingers come away damp and dripping with bright red blood.
“Fuck,” she says, crawling forward to slide off him and rolling onto her back as Johnny sits back onto his heels, his spent cock hanging heavy between his legs. “Gonna ruin these fucking sheets,” she mutters, tilting her head back and pressing her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose in an attempt to staunch the flow. They're both still breathing heavily, but Johnny's face is now drawn tight with concern.
“I'll start the shower,” he says, pressing a kiss to her face before standing and helping her to her feet. Her nose is still pouring blood and she can feel Johnny's cum trickling down her leg as she limps after him to the bathroom, her legs still weak and wobbly under her.
She sits heavily on the rim of the toilet as Johnny starts the water, and he watches with worried eyes as she reaches into the drawer next to the sink for her meds, then grits her teeth and stabs the airhypo into her thigh. The ringing in her head starts to clear, but the dull ache settling into her bones doesn't recede. Her joints protest as she stands and crosses the cool, stone floor to join Johnny beneath the stream of hot water, and she realizes she is shivering when he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close against his chest, resting his cheek on her head as the water soaks them.
“How was seein’ your friends yesterday?” Johnny asks.
“Tom and Roxie?” V says, and Johnny nods. “They’re doin’ alright. Warned ‘em about Aiko. Gave ‘em Rogue’s deets, in case shit gets dicey for either of ‘em. And they’ve got me,” she adds.
“My little vigilante,” Johnny teases, pulling back to gently wipe the blood from her lips with his thumb before leaning down to kiss her.
They fall into a surprisingly effortless domestic rhythm together. Or maybe it's not all that surprising - Johnny is, after all, accustomed to all of V’s quirks and idiosyncrasies in a way she doesn't think she would ever have allowed anyone the space to see before, not until her hand was forced. Not until Johnny.
As promised, the payment from Mr. Blue Eyes comes through, and Rogue helps V set up her accounts and directs her on the canniest ways to invest it. Rogue taking on the role of financial advisor to V and Johnny is certainly not something V would’ve ever anticipated, or even realized she needed, but the way Rogue tuts as she helps V sort out the disorganized mess that is her finances makes V realize that she really has been going this alone, more than she’d ever have been able to admit to herself. Despite Johnny’s protests, V insists on using a chunk of it to pay Kerry back for the penthouse - he's been off on the first leg of his Us Cracks tour, so they still haven’t properly spoken since the night he left, but Kerry accepts the transfer request when she sends it, and V hopes he sees it as a peace offering and not a final severing of ties.
She reminds herself about the band, of Kerry’s reassurances that he still wants to make music together, but she knows they’ll need to talk eventually. Ideally not half-naked and mid coitus, this time.
She wakes up one morning to Johnny drawing her roughly against his chest, panic in his voice as he pulls her tight to him and speaks low in her ear.
“Was dreamin’ I was still you,” he whispers into her hair, his voice thick. “And then I woke up, couldn't feel you there in my head anymore, and for a second I…” He swallows hard, tightening his arms around her. “You’re here,” he says firmly, as though to remind himself. “We’re okay.”
Other mornings, she wakes up from dreams that she's Johnny, and it takes her a moment to remember who she is, where she is, until she feels his reassuring warmth beside her.
Her time off her meds in the desert seems to have taken its toll - her body is undeniably deteriorating more rapidly than before, and on the worst days, her joints are so swollen that moving at all becomes difficult. At Johnny’s insistence, she books her first five sessions of the nanite treatments she can now afford, and due to the intervention of a mysterious unnamed benefactor, she finds herself moved to the front of the waiting list. She suspects Mr. Blue Eyes’ hand at play again here, but it’s a cold comfort - apparently, he wants her alive, which likely means he simply sees her as having further use in his designs.
She wonders where Pantheon is now, what other unknowable plans are already in motion, but pushes these worries from her mind as Johnny drives her in his Porsche to the BioDyne clinic in Charter Hill on a rainy morning in early February for her first treatment session.
The cool, gray concrete of the building’s exterior gives way to a pristine, gleaming lobby, its multiple large windows letting in the hazy light of the fog-covered morning, and V shivers as she follows Johnny over to the large reception desk. The attendant looks up, the gold implants on her face catching the light.
“I’m here for an appointment,” she says, her voice echoing strangely in the sterile room. “Verona Verne, for 8 am.” They’re around fifteen minutes late, thanks to Johnny being unable to keep his hands to himself in the shower earlier.
The receptionist smiles tightly, gesturing at the terminal atop the desk, and V plugs her personal link into it obligingly. The woman’s eyes briefly glow, then she nods up at V across the high counter. “Everything appears to be in order,” she says. “We have your updated medical records on file and your payment has cleared. They will be ready for you shortly. Please, take a seat.” She gestures at the low, white leather sofas that stand in the center of the overly large foyer, and V thanks her and lets Johnny lead her to the nearest one.
Her ass has barely touched the couch before a door slides open on the far end of the room, and a man in a lab coat with startlingly white blonde hair emerges.
“Verona?” he says, his cybernetic eyes falling to V, who nods in response and gets to her feet again. “Please follow me.”
“Can my…” V falters briefly, still unused to referring to Johnny in this manner. “Can my boyfriend come with me?”
Johnny tries and fails to hide the smirk that appears on his lips as he stands and places his hand on the small of her back. The man glances over at him, his eyes narrowing slightly, but he nods.
“Both of you will need to sign our confidentiality agreement,” he says as they approach him, and his eyes glow blue as he flicks them both a flurry of documents. “Verona, take a moment to review our liability waivers and informed consent paperwork. Please be reminded that this is still an experimental treatment in clinical trials, and results cannot be guaranteed. If you choose to discontinue the treatments at any point, we cannot offer a full refund. Our team will further review the possible side effects with you once we are situated and ready to begin.”
V nods mutely, already feeling slightly overwhelmed as phrases like “potential permanent organ damage” and “may result in coma or death” and “hereby release the researchers and sponsors from liability for any potential injuries or adverse effects” flash before her eyes.
It’s this or a full body conversion, she reminds herself as Johnny reaches for her hand, entwining his metal fingers with her organic ones and giving it a small, reassuring squeeze.
“Please,” the man says again after a moment, gesturing towards the door behind him before turning on his heels and striding towards it. V exchanges a glance with Johnny as they both follow after him, his hand never leaving hers.
He leads them down a long, featureless hallway broken only by numbered doorways made of tech glass. Some are opaque and presumably occupied, but more are transparent; as they pass, V catches quick glimpses of intimidating machinery positioned over what look like ripperdoc chairs.
They finally arrive at one such room, and the man ushers them in, motioning for V to have a seat on the ripper chair. Johnny perches on the arm of the leather couch in the corner as V settles herself in, and the attendant leaves them there, the door turning opaque behind him.
“All good?” Johnny asks when they’re alone, and V nods, swallowing hard.
It isn’t long before the door hisses open again, and a woman with close-cropped dark curls and elaborate black and gold cyberware on her face steps through.
“Verona Verne?” she confirms, and V nods again. “Have you had a chance to review your paperwork?”
V doesn’t see how that would have even been possible, given that she’s had all of 5 seconds alone, but seeing as she doesn’t really have a choice at this point, she stamps her electronic signature on the documents and flicks them back to the woman in response. The woman’s eyes glow blue as she receives them with a sharp nod.
“Thank you,” the woman tells V. “I’m Dr. Obasi.” She acknowledges Johnny with another curt nod, then touches a panel on the wall and the machine behind V hums to life. “Before we begin, let’s go over some of the anticipated side effects you may encounter during your treatment. The potential adverse reactions range from uncomfortable to potentially life-threatening and include headache and nausea, vision changes, weight loss, skin lesions, body rash, hives, liver damage, internal bleeding, and heart failure. If your body does not respond well to the treatment, it can lead to severe organ damage, coma, and in rare cases, death. Do you understand these risks and consent to be treated?”
V swallows hard and looks at Johnny. He shrugs helplessly, his face solemn.
“Yes,” V says softly.
“Very good. Thus far, this treatment modality has been highly effective for nearly all of our ALS patients.” Dr. Obasi frowns slightly, her eyes still blue as she makes adjustments to the machine. “However, it appears that your… diagnosis is rather unique. We have modified our treatment protocol to accommodate for this, but, as stated, cannot guarantee results. Do you understand this and grant your consent?”
“Yes,” V says again, her throat suddenly very dry.
“Excellent. Please make yourself comfortable, and we will begin shortly.”
A set of nurses join them, and one makes quick work of linking the now steadily vibrating machine to V’s neural port while the other sets up an IV line in V’s right arm.
“We’ll be putting you under for the treatment,” the nurse nearest to her explains. “We don’t want you to experience any unnecessary discomfort while the nanites do their work.”
“He can stay here?” V confirms, gesturing with her chin towards Johnny.
“Of course,” Dr. Obasi replies. “The first session will last about 3 hours.” She turns to Johnny. “Our assistant can bring you some refreshments while you wait.”
Johnny shakes his head dismissively. “I’m good,” he says, not taking his eyes off V.
“Very well,” the doctor replies. “We will begin.”
V feels something cold enter the IV in her arm, feels it rush up through her body, the cold spreading as it hits her heart and pumps outward. And when it sweeps up her neck and reaches the base of her skull, the world goes dark.
When her eyes open, she is still seated in the same chair. With no windows, it’s impossible to say how much time has passed. The same nurse from earlier hovers over her, and Johnny is pacing like a caged animal.
A wave of nausea rises in her throat, and a headache pounds in her ears. Her entire body feels inflamed, and her joints scream with pain when she tries to sit up.
“I need-” she chokes, and the nurse’s eyes flick to hers, instant understanding dawning as he wordlessly hands her a plastic biohazard bag to throw up into, which she does immediately.
“That’s a normal reaction,” he reassures her, and his demeanor is much warmer than the doctor’s. “You just had one million tiny robots in your veins, after all,” he jokes. “It’ll likely take a few hours for your body to recover, but you should start to feel better by tonight. Do you think you can walk out on your own, or would you like a wheelchair?”
“I can stand,” V grits out, handing him back the bag and hoisting herself to her feet.
Johnny’s arm is immediately around her waist, and he guides her back out to the lobby after the nurse.
“We’ll see you back here in five days for your next session,” the receptionist confirms as they exit.
Back at the penthouse, Johnny makes a nest of pillows and blankets for V on the couch, and they spend a few hours curled up with Nibbles watching the new season of Big Little Corpo-Rats before the sun dips below the skyline and Johnny sets about cooking them both dinner, a task he’s permanently assigned himself given V’s compromised condition and her pre-existing lack of any talent in this area. He’s surprisingly competent at it, too; she knows he was largely left to fend for himself when it came to food as a child, but part of her still privately enjoys getting to witness this unexpected domestic side of him. He sets two steaming bowls of udon on the low coffee table then settles himself beside her while she hoists herself into a sitting position.
The smell of the soup makes her feel slightly queasy, but she forces a smile.
“Thanks, Johnny,” she tells him sincerely, reaching for her bowl. Her whole body protests, the dull ache in her bones rising to a near blinding agony, but she balances the bowl on her knees and tries to hold the chopsticks in her stiff, swollen fingers before giving up and transferring them to her cybernetic left hand. Johnny’s watching her with that worried look on his face that seems to have taken up permanent residence there, and she tries to ignore it as she dips the chopsticks into the soup, fighting down the nausea.
The tremors in her knees make the bowl slosh dangerously before she can even gather any noodles with the utensils, and Johnny quickly takes the bowl from her lap and the chopsticks from her hand. He watches her face carefully as he wraps a mouthful of noodles around the chopsticks, then lowers his chin and lifts it toward her mouth in offering.
“You don’t gotta feed me, Johnny,” V protests.
“Don’t wanna be scraping soup off this leather couch, either,” Johnny replies, not giving an inch.
V scowls, knowing she’s already lost, so she begrudgingly leans forward and takes the chopsticks in her mouth, sucking the noodles in and willing herself to chew and swallow.
“Is it fucked up that I find this kinda weirdly hot?” Johnny says, a bemused smile creeping onto his face.
V rolls her eyes. “Course you do,” she teases, fighting again against the nausea. “Think I need a minute,” she admits, putting her hand on Johnny’s knee.
The smile dissolves from Johnny’s face, and he places her bowl back on the coffee table and helps lower her onto her side, propping her up on the pillows stacked against the arm of the couch. He drops to his knees on the floor beside her, smoothing back her hair and resting his chin on the edge of the couch.
“Gonna be alright,” he reassures her. The low tones in his voice settle something inside her, and she looks at him through half-lidded eyes. Her limbs feel like lead weights, and her head is still pounding. The lights all feel too bright, even though they’ve only got a single floor lamp turned on right now, supplemented by the ambient glow of the dimmed kitchen accent lights.
She rests her organic hand on Johnny’s head, running her fingers in slow circles through his hair that seems to get shaggier by the day, and he hums low in his throat, tilting his head to look up at her.
She can feel her own mortality now in a way that she hasn’t before - even when Johnny was eatin’ away at her brain, even when she was catapulting herself around the moon, even when she was dragging Johnny’s body across an open desert. This time, there is a new sort of inevitability to it. This time, it’s not a matter of being fast enough or strong enough or pushing through just a little further. Even when the Relic was active, she remained more or less able-bodied until the very last moments. But now, she can feel her body just… slowly giving out.
Looking into Johnny’s face, she can’t help but think of what he said to her that day in the panzer, when he remembered who she was and realized what she had done for him.
Please don’t tell me you brought me back just to watch you die.
She hopes that she didn’t.
Despite what the nurse told her, V’s condition doesn’t improve that night, or in the days that follow. She leans heavily on Johnny as she limps out of her second treatment session, and is forced to accept the wheelchair after the third. By the time the fourth rolls around, she has started to suspect that the nanite therapy isn't working on her the way it’s supposed to.
But tonight, she has to muster up all the energy and enthusiasm she can summon, because N54 News is throwing an afterparty for the Pulitzer Prize dinner, and Nancy’s story about Tinnitus was recently announced as a winner. Johnny is already dressed when she steps out of the shower, her thigh still bleeding slightly from the airhypo she just administered - one pinprick amidst the patchwork of bruises from her regular injections.
Johnny frowns slightly when he sees her body, and though he tries to hide it, she doesn’t have to guess why. She’s thinner than she’s ever been as an adult, and her ribs and elbows now protrude with an alarming sharpness. Her tits are smaller than they should be, too. And though she can’t say whether it’s the treatments that are causing it or the progression of her illness, her arms and torso and upper thighs are covered in a raised, bumpy, painful rash.
And she’s started coughing up blood regularly again, too.
Johnny cocks an eyebrow at her, and she knows he’s surprised to see her walking around like this without help.
“Took a combat stim,” she tells him, toweling off her hair and tossing the towel aside. Her arms ache, but she grits her teeth and doesn’t stumble.
Johnny nods, that frown ghosting across his face again. “We don’t have to go to this…” he begins.
“Yeah, we do, Johnny,” V says firmly. Whole band’s gonna be there. I wanna see Kerry. And I helped Nance with that story, remember?”
“You pulled her out of another one of her dumb rabbit holes, that’s what you did,” Johnny reminds her.
“Besides,” V adds. “Rogue says it's important that I go. The Passion just came out last week, and she thinks it’s a good idea to make a public appearance at some kinda industry event.”
Johnny’s eyes widen. “Think you’re gonna get asked about it?”
“To be honest, I hope not.”
“They’re gonna say shit about the fact that you’re not Kerry’s date,” Johnny reminds her, his voice lowering slightly.
“I know,” V says, chewing her lip. “But it had to happen sooner or later, no? People knowin’ you’re back, I mean. Seems as good a time as any for us to make that happen on our terms.”
“You sure you don’t wanna…” Johnny pauses, as though choosing his next words carefully. “You sure you don’t wanna wait until… after? Until you’re… better? Till you’re done with the first round of treatments, at least?”
V’s heart feels like a block of cement in her chest. She doesn’t want him to make her say it.
“Johnny,” she says quietly. “We don’t know that there will be a later. Don’t wanna miss my chance to show you off as arm candy.” She gives him a weak smile.
Johnny’s face crumples and then he is crossing the floor in two long strides, sweeping V into his arms and cradling her head against his collarbone. “Shut the fuck up, V,” he says gruffly into her hair. “We’re gonna have a hundred more nights like these. This is just the first one.” He pulls back and holds her by the shoulders, pinning her with his gaze before he leans forward to press a soft kiss to her face. “Now put on that sexy fuckin’ dress you bought before I make us late again.”
He’s bluffing and they both know it - V’s been in no condition for that for at least the past week or so, and if not for the combat stim coursin’ through her system, she wouldn’t be now, either.
But fuck if she doesn’t want to take advantage of this. And Johnny looks fucking good in his suit.
She threads her arms around his neck and hauls him back towards her, capturing his startled mouth with a ferocity that he immediately returns with equal intensity. His hand slides down her body to palm her ass, and she can feel him getting hard, feel the press of him against her stomach, the rough texture of his suit pants against her shower-soft skin feeling almost too raw. The sharp stab of desire that shoots her through her isn't quite enough to drown out just how much effort it's taking her to remain steady on her feet.
She winces involuntarily, and Johnny doesn’t miss it. He pulls away slowly, his longing as clear in his eyes as his resolve. Her eyes drop to her bullet pendant that hangs at his neck, nestled in the collar of his black shirt.
“Get dressed,” he says, swatting her on the ass and pushing her in the general direction of their closet.
She indulges him, opening the closet and pulling out the dress - she did buy a dress specifically for this event. It’s a dark blue velvet gown that reaches the floor - its high neck will hide the red, irritated patchwork that her body has become, and its long, bell-shaped, billowy chiffon sleeves will hide the ugly rashes on her arms.
Johnny helps zip her into it, then leans against the door frame of the bathroom while she does her makeup. She’s gotten shockingly good at de-corpsing herself with makeup, she thinks dryly as she applies blush to her pallid face, following up with her usual smokey eye and choosing dark brown lipstick to complement the blue of the dress.
It’s only the second time V has ever used the AV pad at the penthouse, and she stands with Johnny at the edge of the platform as the Delamain lowers itself into position, the wind whipping her hair. Johnny helps her in when the doors slide open, then jumps in after her, taking the seat beside her and resting his metal hand on her knee. The window flares to life as the cab lifts off, and V looks out at Night City splayed below them as they start to rise. It’s a clear night for early March, and the NCART tracks slice up the city like a web of scars as they circle upwards and across the narrow channel to Japantown.
The party is, incidentally, being held on the roof of Dark Matter. The whole top deck is lit up and packed with bodies and the open bar is flowing - it's startlingly different from the stolen stillness she found up here with Kerry all those months ago.
She catches a glimpse of the street level entrance as they glide closer - she can see the camera flashes from all the way up here, and she's silently glad Johnny insisted on an AV so they could skip that particular gauntlet tonight.
The door of the vehicle momentarily turns opaque again as they land on the AV pad that juts out on the far side of the roof deck from where Kerry first kissed her. She can't help but scan the crowd as the door opens and Johnny hops out, turning back to offer an arm and help her down. Thankfully, she had the foresight not to wear heels - the combat stim still seems to be doin’ its job, but heels would likely sink the whole ship.
She feels vaguely like Cinderella again, except this time when her meds wear off at midnight, she'll very likely crumple like a stringless puppet and be revealed as the walking corpse that she is.
A bouncer stands at the gated step that connects the AV platform to the rest of the roof, and she searches the faces behind him as he checks their names against the invite list. She doesn't see Kerry, but there's Nancy, waving at someone from one of the large booths that flank the edges of the terraced roof. V takes Johnny's arm and lets him guide her through the crowd towards the table.
“I remember Nance with black hair, big t-shirts, and spiked collars,” Johnny murmurs to V under his breath, his eyes flicking up and down Nancy's tailored black suit and slicked back gray hair. Kerry's told them all, of course, about Johnny's near-miraculous return, but tonight will be the first time most of them will actually be seeing him in person. Johnny’s swagger hides it well, but V can tell he's nervous.
As they approach, V recognizes Nancy's son, Dan; Denny is seated beside them, too. V doesn't know any of the other people at the table except for Arif Iqbal, that dickhead reporter from WNS News.
Denny and Nancy both fall silent when they see Johnny.
“Well, fuck me sideways,” Denny says, whistling through her teeth, her face breaking into a dangerous yet beautiful grin. “Look who's back from the fuckin' dead.”
“Denny,” Johnny says, a stupid grin spreading across his face, and V drops his arm as Denny stands to hug him without hesitation. The drummer pulls back to beam up at Johnny, her dark face shining, and then the radiance of her rare smile is directed at V.
“Don't know how the fuck you managed to dig up this artifact, but guess we owe you for that now, too,” she says warmly, her enormous gold earrings jangling as she laughs.
Johnny turns to Nancy, who has also drifted over to greet them.
“Congrats, Nance,” he says, his voice rough with emotion as he pulls her into a hug.
Dan’s jaw is hanging open as he stares at them, but he shuts it quickly when Johnny glances his way. V hangs back while Nancy makes introductions, and every eye at the table seems glued to Johnny, with varying degrees of awe and disbelief plastered across all their faces.
Nancy gestures to the bottle of vodka in an ice bucket at the center of the table. “Help yourselves,” she says.
Johnny scowls at the bottle. “Think I’ll get something from the bar,” he tells Nance. “I’ll grab you a soda,” he adds to V, leaning over to kiss her cheek as Denny slides over in the booth to make room for her.
V sits gratefully, not wanting to push herself more than necessary tonight.
“Guess all your sleuthing at Totentanz paid off,” V says, shooting Nancy a genuine smile. “Congratulations, Nancy. You deserve this.”
“Probably woulda gotten flatlined doing it, if not for you,” Nancy says, raising her glass to V in mock salute.
“And it would seem more congratulations are in order,” Arif says from across the table. “We have a budding braindance star in our midst. The Passion has certainly been creating… buzz in certain circles.”
V doesn’t miss the sarcasm in his tone, even though he is smiling guilelessly at her.
“A job’s a job,” V says, meeting his smile with a much more openly malicious one.
“Scrolled it the other night,” Dan says, taking a big swig of his vodka. “Fuckin’ hardcore shimra shit.”
V smiles tightly at him as well but doesn’t respond, hoping the subject will be dropped.
Beside her, Denny is still shaking her head in disbelief. “Johnny fuckin’ Silverhand,” she says, looking at V with a newfound respect in her eyes. “I gotta admit, I didn’t think you’d actually pull it off.”
“Almost didn’t,” V agrees. “Both came close to dying more times than I’d like to count.”
“You’re a tough kid,” Denny says, clapping V on the shoulder. “So is Johnny. We’re glad to have both of you back.”
V looks down at her hands that she can’t seem to stop wringing together in her lap. “Kerry here yet?” she asks, glancing up at Denny nervously. She wonders if Denny knows yet about what - or more specifically who - her ex-input’s been doin’.
Nancy shakes her head. “Haven’t seen him yet. Just like him to be fashionably late,” she adds with a dramatic eye roll.
As conversation resumes, V goes back to anxiously scanning the crowd. She picks out Gillean Jordan and Ruth Dzeng, and to her chagrin but not to her surprise, she spots Rachel Casich among them as well. She makes a mental note to avoid the Passion producer at all costs. And by the railing, she spots Ziggy Q with Lizzy Wizzy at his side, the latter clad in a bubblegum pink dress made of what look like glittering feathers.
V’s stomach sinks when she sees the starlet - it’s another grim reminder of the future likely awaiting her, assuming she wants to keep her promise to Johnny.
For better or for worse, her thoughts are interrupted when the elevator door opens and Kerry steps out - but to her surprise, it’s not Henry he has on his arm, but Violet Vega. Kerry’s wearing a silver suit covered in ornate, black embroidery, and Violet’s wearing a slinky, dangerously short leopard-print dress with sky-high heels that bring her diminutive height almost in line with Kerry’s, and a black leather trench coat over the top. Her black bob is slicked back, and her ageless face is decked out in dark red lipstick and sharp, winged eyeliner. She is absolutely, jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and V glances back towards the bar to see Johnny turning back towards them, drinks his hand, but then he stops dead in his tracks when he sees Violet. V swallows the sudden lump of jealousy that lodges in her throat, and quickly looks back down at her hands.
She’s being stupid. This is fucking stupid.
She takes a deep breath and looks up again in time to see Johnny embracing Violet, awkwardly trying to balance the drinks in his hand while the little singer clutches him. He’s facing V, so she can see the strange mix of grief and elation on his face, and then he’s pulling back and saying something to her, and Violet laughs, and Kerry laughs, and the three of them start heading over towards the table.
V is excruciatingly aware of how skinny she’s gotten, how pallid her face is, how sunken her cheeks must be.
But Kerry is grinning when he sees her.
“Vero, babydoll,” he says, pulling her out of the booth to her feet and sweeping her into a tight hug. “Missed ya.”
“Well, you know where I live,” she jokes weakly, still trapped in his embrace. “Sorry for not calling,” she whispers in his ear. “Wanted to… give you some space.”
Kerry frowns as he pulls away, looking her up and down. “Don't look so hot,” he says, the freckles on his forehead folding together as he furrows his brow.
“Can always count on you to gas me up,” V teases, attempting to deflect from his obvious concern. “How’s Henry?” she asks instead.
Kerry’s eyes dart to Denny, who cocks an eyebrow at him questioningly. “He’s doin’ alright,” he answers, his voice guarded.
Denny snorts. “Sure he is,” she says derisively.
V turns to Violet, who finally tears her eyes away from Johnny long enough to hug V as well.
“Good to see you, V,” she says. Her jasmine perfume is as gorgeous and sultry as her outfit.
“Same to you, Violet,” V replies, trying her best to smile as they pull away.
She knew this night was gonna be a weird one. She catches herself staring longingly at the vodka, wishin’ she had something to take the edge off. She feels Johnny move closer to her, and he hands her the drink he got her before his hand resumes its protective - or maybe possessive - place on her lower back. She leans into him, needing the reassurance of his touch.
“Listen,” Kerry says, clasping his hands excitedly. “Been talkin’ to Henry and Violet, and I think when my Us Cracks tour is over I wanna put together a concert with the NC Philharmonic, like we did in SF. Real preem gig. You and Johnny in?” His eyes dart nervously to Denny again. “Denny, I know better than to ask you, but Henry-”
Denny cuts him off with a glare that could melt steel. “Don’t care what you do with that gonk. But leave me the fuck out of it.”
“C’mon, Denny, you’re part of the band-”
“Didn’t realize Henry was, now, too,” Denny snaps. “This is what, a seven person circus now?”
Nancy leans back in her seat, watching the scene unfold with amused detachment. “Six,” she corrects them dryly. “Reunion concert aside, my music days are behind me.”
“Hey, it ain’t unheard of,” Kerry says, throwing out his hands and giving Denny his best disarming grin.
“Well, it is if Henry is one of ‘em,” Denny snarls. “Guess you’re a five-piece again now.”
Kerry’s face falls. “Denny-” he starts, but Johnny cuts in.
“Look Denny,” Johnny says placatingly. “Know you’ve got decades of shit to sort out with Henry. But him and Ker are good for each other, and if you can’t-”
“They’re what?” Denny yells, slamming her glass down and glaring daggers at Kerry.
Shit.
Kerry blanches. “It’s not like that,” he protests. “I mean, guess it is like that, but-”
“Go fuck yourself, Kerry,” Denny shouts, her face twisting with rage. “It’s not enough for you to try to force me to play on a stage with that fuckhead, but now you’re tellin’ me you’re screwin’ him too?” she continues yelling, getting to her feet in the cramped booth. “Count me the fuck outta all of your shit. All of you,” she seethes, starting to push out of the booth.
“Denny-” Nancy protests, but Johnny catches her arm as she stands.
“I just got back from the fuckin’ dead, Denny,” Johnny says gently. “We really gonna start this off by having the same goddamn fight we were having fifty years ago?”
“Fifty years that you missed, Johnny!” Denny shoots back at him, wrenching her arm away. “I know you care about Henry, and fuck, I still do too, but there’s only so much you can let a person walk all the fuck over you and still look at yourself in the mirror every goddamn morning,” she spits, her voice thick with vitriol.
“Yeah,” Johnny says, his voice low and sad. “Fifty years is a long fuckin’ time. Know I missed a lot. But can we just-”
“Can we just what, Johnny? Pretend we’re all twenty-five again? Pretend you didn’t go and blow up half the fuckin’ city and get yourself killed doin’ it? Pretend all those years just didn’t fuckin’ happen? Pretend you can just waltz in here like not a day’s passed, and just flash that dumb charming grin of yours and get the band back together for real this time?”
“Somethin’ like that,” Johnny says, attempting said charming grin, but his face is pained and his eyes look impossibly sad. His hand tightens around V’s waist.
Violet and V exchange a glance. It seems the singer is on the same page as V - this is for the members of Samurai to work out amongst themselves. The other occupants of the table are silent observers as well, though V is certain some version of this is gonna be all over the screamsheets tomorrow.
“Just stay, Denny,” Nancy begs. “We can talk this out later.”
Denny grinds her teeth, looking back and forth between Johnny and Kerry. “Fine,” she grits out. “But we absolutely will fuckin’ talk about this later,” she adds, sliding back into her seat and tossing back the rest of her drink before angrily taking the bottle from the ice bucket and filling her glass almost to the brim.
“It’s my favorite new braindance star!” a voice exclaims to V’s left, and suddenly a pair of silk-clad arms are wrapping around her, almost knocking her off her feet with the force of the hug. She twists to see Karis grinning, his elfin face only inches from hers, with Avery hovering close behind him.
She hasn’t seen the two of them since before Christmas. Karis is draped in flowing white silk pants and a matching shirt, with a gold embroidered cape wrapped around his slim shoulders. Avery towers above him in a glittering pink suit that matches his hair, and V can see a silver mesh shirt peeking out underneath. And to his left is Rogue, who has opted for a simpler black dress - it’s stunning on her nonetheless.
“Hey, Karis,” V says, placing her drink on the table so she can return his hug. The grin she gives them all is genuine, and also more than slightly relieved at the interruption. “How are you?”
“Better now that you’re back,” he says. “I’ll get us a round of shots to celebrate!”
V’s stomach twists. “I’m okay,” she tells him, gesturing to her drink, not wanting to explain herself right now. “But it’s good to see you both.”
Avery smiles shyly as she moves to hug him while Karis scoffs at her refusal.
“I met Trace,” she tells them, trying to distract him.
Karis scowls and rolls his eyes. “His name is Alim, but he's stupid and uses a stupid fake name with his media netrunning shit,” he says.
V laughs. “Yeah, he mentioned,” she says. “Met Lilayah, too,” she adds. “Cool chick.”
“Ain’t she?” Karis agrees, his face breaking into another impish grin. “Don’t know what the fuck she sees in my brother, but I guess we all have our weaknesses,” he adds. “Isn’t that right, dearest beautiful dumbass of mine?” He stretches on his toes to plaster a kiss to Avery’s jaw, causing his input to blush a deep crimson.
Standing is starting to become difficult again, so V sits back down in the booth beside Denny as the newcomers all take their turns congratulating Nancy. There isn’t room for anyone else to join her, so Johnny, Kerry, Violet, and Rogue stand at the head of the table while Karis and Avery drift off to keep making their rounds.
V is mostly silent as they all begin to joke and laugh and catch up, and she suddenly feels out of place again, like a kid who got accidentally invited to sit at the grown-ups’ table. She wonders briefly if Johnny feels similarly, but he seems at ease - they’re all reminiscing now about some social media site they were all on that existed before DataKrash, and Kerry even pauses to lament what a shame it is that V wasn’t alive to experience it.
Johnny and Violet both refuse to touch the vodka, so the two of them eventually depart for the bar again. The booth has emptied enough by now that there’s room for Kerry to slide in beside V. Arif and some of the other strangers have left, too, so it’s just Denny and Dan and Nancy now, and the three of them are absorbed in some esoteric argument about lazrpop that V hasn’t even attempted to follow. They’re all very drunk by now, and Denny is slapping the table with her hand and jabbing her finger as she talks, drawing a throaty laugh from Nancy.
“Kerry,” V says softly. “Are we gonna talk?”
Kerry scuffs his foot nervously, looking up at V through his lashes. “‘Bout us, you mean?” he asks quietly, and V nods. “We can talk. Already said my piece, though.”
V searches his face. “You already knew,” she guesses. “Made your decision while I was in the desert.” She raises an eyebrow questioningly. “That right?”
“Yeah,” he admits, keeping his voice low so only V can hear him. “Had some time to reflect, really think my shit through. Felt like I've just been ricocheting from one thing to another, from Johnny's death to my shitty fuckin' marriage to crashin’ out last year over Us Cracks. And I… I really thought hard ‘bout what it'd be like. With Johnny back. And I knew what I needed to do. Had my speech all prepped and everything. But then the two of you just showed up all of a sudden, and he was there, and fuck, I just… I've never been good at sayin’ no to Johnny,” he confesses. “Got sucked right back in and then couldn't bring myself to tell you until I was sittin’ there with my dick out watchin’ him look at you in the way I’d spent so many fuckin’ years wishin’ he'd look at me.”
V’s chest feels tight, that old, familiar vice squeezing at her heart again.
“It was all real, Ker,” she tells him, her voice soft. “Everything I told you ‘bout how I felt. About how Johnny felt. I was all in.”
“Don't bullshit me, V,” Kerry says, but there's no accusation in his tone. “Believe you ‘bout the rest, but we both know you were never really all in. Maybe if Johnny stayed dead, we coulda made it work… but that was the deal, wasn't it? Knew what you were tryna do, made my peace with it. I don't regret any of it, V,” he tells her sincerely, lifting his chin to hold her gaze. “We had a good thing. Was what we both needed, at the time. Think we all got what we wanted, in the end.” He smiles softly at her, and the genuine warmth on his face makes her heart break all over again.
“Guess so,” V agrees sadly. She tries to return his smile. “How come Henry ain't here?”
Kerry laughs. “First off, didn't feel like watchin’ Denny chuck him off the roof. Secondly, don't think he's quite there yet as far as showin’ up to a party with an open bar.”
V raises an eyebrow. “And what about you?”
Kerry shrugs, glancing down at his feet. “Been tryin' out this whole sobriety thing myself, since the tour started," he tells V. "It's… weird,” he admits. “Bein’ at an event like this and not tryna get absolutely shithammered. And raw doggin' the first leg of the tour... whole new fuckin' experience, that's for sure. Goin' on stage and doin' my whole little song 'n' dance without that security blanket. But it's… I dunno, it's kinda… nice?” he continues. “Can actually have real conversations with people, remember the shit they tell me.” He looks at V. “How ‘bout you? Ever wanna come to a meeting with me an’ Henry?”
“Been too sick lately to even really think about that stuff,” V says honestly. “But I'm proud of you, Ker.”
Through the crowd, she can see Johnny leaning against the railing of the roof deck with Violet, the two of ‘em clearly having an emotional moment with each other.
She’s not jealous. That’s not what this feeling is, she tells herself. But fuck, maybe it fuckin’ is.
She swallows the bile that rises in her throat as she watches them talk, Johnny leaning close to say something in her ear. Violet doesn’t look a day over 40, and she was his output back in 2023, was probably waitin’ for him to come back that night. Johnny's memories may just be shadows now, but Kerry told her enough to give her a pretty clear picture. She knows things were messy as fuck between the two of them, like all of Johnny’s entanglements, but she also knows that he cared about her a lot.
Maybe they'll get another shot at things after she's dead. It's a dark thought, and V suddenly feels sick to her stomach.
It’s not fair of her, she reminds herself. She was dating Kerry, Johnny’s bandmate, until literally weeks ago. And she knows Johnny and Violet probably have a lot of catching up to do. She can’t begrudge him that.
And she knows, too, that part of her is still just adjusting to Johnny not existing solely in her head. He’s an independent entity now, with his own real body, capable of moving around a space and having conversations she’s not a part of, in this world, in their world, with his friends for whom prior to his return, she had served as their sole point of access to him.
Kerry is looking at her strangely now, and she realizes she hasn’t said anything for a long moment. Her pulse starts to race, and she can tell the effects of the combat stim are starting to wear off. She leans forward and rests her head on her palms, and Kerry places a hand on her back.
“You okay, doll?” he asks.
“Trying to be,” she tells him, twisting her head to give him what she hopes is a reassuring smile. But she can’t keep herself from checking again to see if Johnny is making his way back to her yet. Kerry follows her gaze, but in the few moments where her attention was back on Kerry, Johnny and Violet have disappeared from where they were standing.
“Want me to go find him for ya?” Kerry asks. He doesn’t have to specify who he means.
“Sure,” V says. “Thanks, Kerry.”
He gives her a quick kiss on the cheek, then gets to his feet and disappears into the crowd. V rests her head on her hands again, trying to quell the wave of dizziness that overtakes her, willing the roof and the city around her to stop spinning in that strange, sickening way. She wishes Johnny would wrap up his heart-to-heart and come find her. She hopes he’s ready to leave soon - she doesn’t know how much more stamina she has in her. She takes a few deep breaths, then feels someone slide into the booth next to her and smells a familiar musk of cigarettes and sweet, vanilla perfume.
“The treatments aren't working,” Rogue says quietly. It's not a question.
“That obvious?” V jokes bitterly, turning to look at her.
“Not gonna lie and say you don’t look like shit, kid,” Rogue says, taking a sip of what looks like brandy. V fights the nausea that, combined with the spins, is making her start to feel like she might hurl any second.
“Matches how I feel, at least.”
“Maybe it's time we started exploring other options, V,” she says gently.
V shakes her head. “Dunno, Rogue,” she chokes. Fuck, she doesn’t wanna have this conversation now. “My brain’s already an engram, a construct. Seems like adding more chrome to the mix would just be beggin' for cyberpsychosis, no? Don’t wanna follow in the footsteps of the last resident of my penthouse,” she adds darkly, remembering what Rogue told her at her housewarming party.
Rogue smiles sadly. “Right,” she says, and there’s a fondness in her voice. “David Martinez. He was a good kid. I remember his output, too. Lucy Kushinada. Promising runner, like you. Heard she went to the moon after all that shit went down with David and their crew. Smasher killed the lot of ‘em, did I tell you that part?”
“Wait,” V says, turning to look at Rogue. “Lucy Kushinada?”
“Know ‘er?” Rogue’s eyebrow tilts upwards.
“’Course I fuckin' know her,” V says. “She was comin' up on the runnin’ scene same time as I was.” She shakes her head. “Never was quite sure if we were friends or rivals, but yeah... I knew her.”
V remembers Lucy well - they worked a handful of jobs together before V left for Atlanta. V’d been sure Lucy was headed for the big leagues, had even sorta resented her for it. But Lucy hadn’t seemed like the type to really let anyone get close to her.
“One more reason to be glad you flatlined that fucker, then,” Rogue says, referring to Smasher.
“One more reminder of why I’m not exactly thrilled 'bout the prospect of replacin’ my whole body with spare parts,” V says grimly.
The silence stretches for a heavy beat.
“Look, V… I’m not trying to convince you of anything here,” Rogue says, finally. “I get it, I really do. But not all fully body conversions come out like Lizzy. The best ones, you don’t even clock. The ‘Saka kids, for example.”
V looks at Rogue in surprise. “They’ve got full-bodies?”
Rogue snorts. “Not at all at once, not in the way you’re thinking. But once all the organs are synth, and the skeleton’s been replaced, and the tendons are all reinforced and then replaced, and a layer of custom RealSkinn is stretched over the whole thing… You can't be nearly a century old and still look 40 without bein’ mostly cyberware.”
“How come they don’t go psycho?”
“Same answer it always is, V,” Rogue says. “Money.”
V looks into the fixer’s old-school MR-Eyes. “And what about you?” she asks.
The side of Rogue’s mouth quirks up. “Don’t be fooled by my good looks,” she says dryly. “I’m still mostly meat. Minus an organ or two,” she adds with a wry smile.
V thinks of the gold cyberware that wraps around Kerry's throat, of the three chrome livers she knows he's already gone through. Of his smooth skin that doesn't betray his years. She suspects he falls somewhere between Rogue and the Arasaka heirs on the meat-to-metal scale.
She tries to smile back at Rogue, but she's sure it looks as forced as it feels so she gives up and shakes her head again, a shaky sigh hissing from her teeth. "Based on what Vik and the BioDyne doctors told me, any of my organic tissue left behind would just keep degenerating," she says. "It’s my own nerve cells my immune system is attacking ‘cause my own white blood cells think I'm s’posed to be Johnny by now. So… I’d need a real full-body. Not piecemeal upgrades done tastefully to hide the seams.”
“Even so,” Rogue says. “You know how good RealSkinn can look these days. You can afford it. System’s not ethical, that’s for sure, but you don’t have to suffer in solidarity just to prove a point, V. It’s not selfish to prioritize saving your own life.”
“Sometimes it is,” V counters.
She spots Avery hovering near the table, his eyes scanning the crowd, presumably looking for Karis. He’s standing close enough to overhear them, and from the way his eyes keep darting to V, it seems as though he’s workin’ up the nerve to say something.
Rogue gives her a long look. “You don’t always have to play the hero, either. You already came back from the dead yourself, then turned around and went back and dragged Johnny out with you. I just…” She shakes her head. “Sometimes, you remind me so much of Karis. Shouldn’t be surprised you two are friends.”
“Is it strange that Johnny is closer to his age, now?” V says, grateful for the subject change.
Rogue snorts. “‘Strange’ doesn’t even come close, V.”
“Fair enough,” V laughs.
But Rogue’s face becomes serious again. “I mean it, V. I want you and Johnny to live. Carve out whatever comfort you can. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone fight for each other the way you two did. Wouldn’t be fair if you don’t get to stick around to enjoy it. You deserve it. You both deserve it.”
V’s throat is suddenly very dry, so she just nods.
Rogue’s eyes flick up to Avery. “Lookin’ for Karis?” she guesses, and Avery nods. “Think I saw him go off with one of the staff. The exact one I happen to know is selling overpriced synth-coke.” She sighs heavily and gets to her feet. “I’ll go find him.”
Avery looks slightly embarrassed, but nods mutely as Rogue pushes past him, his eyes following her as she disappears into the crowd. He glances over at V, his demeanor somewhat awkward. V hasn’t spent much time alone with him before, but she gets the impression it takes a lot for him to come out of his shell, given how Karis tends to dominate the conversation when the three of them hang out.
The pink-haired man smiles at her softly. “I‘m probably going to need a full-body conversion too, eventually,” he admits.
V blinks at him. “Right,” she says. “Leukemia. I’m sorry, Avery.”
He shrugs. “We tried everything else already. Did chemo, radiation, even a bone marrow transplant. Bought me a little more time. But none of it worked, in the end.” He smiles again, but it is a sad, resigned smile.
V swallows. “I’m sorry,” she says again.
“That’s how it is with cancer,” Avery says quietly. “Your… thing is more complicated though.”
“Yeah,” V agrees, chewing her lip. “According to my ripper, it's sorta like ALS or MS or some other autoimmune disease like that,” she explains with a grimace. “I'm doin’ these nanite treatments from BioDyne, but… think they’re just makin’ it worse.”
It’s the first time she’s fully admitted it out loud. Fuck, maybe Rogue is right. Maybe her only hope is to go full chrome, like Lizzy. She can see the singer across the crowd even now, her silver skin glistening in the colored lights as she laughs with Ziggy Q and a bunch of other celebrities V recognizes.
“Hmm,” Avery says thoughtfully, following her gaze and seemingly her train of thought as well. “You might still have other options, you know.”
“Like what?” V asks skeptically.
Avery gives her a one-shouldered shrug. “My marrow transplant was for the cancer, but they’re used to treat ALS, too,” he says. “Maybe worth trying? Painful as fuck,” he adds grimly. “Not sure it would work for your situation, though, because the donor would have to be-” He stops short, his eyes widening at V as though something profound has just occurred to him. “Johnny,” he finishes, his voice a near whisper. “The donor would have to be Johnny.”
V blinks at him for a moment, temporarily dumbfounded.
Fuck, it seems so fucking obvious now that he’s suggested it.
But then again, of course she never thought of it. Of course no one has ever suggested it. Because until a few weeks ago, it would’ve been nothing more than a hypothetical. No one’s ever had their brain overwritten by a dead person, then brought said person back from the dead, blood and bones and all.
She can see the wheels turning in Avery's head as he thinks it through. “You'd probably need regular blood transfusions from him too, but-”
V cuts him off by hurling herself to her feet and throwing her arms around him.
“You're a fuckin’ genius, Avery,” she says. “Karis is so fuckin’ lucky to have you.”
Avery huffs a laugh. “If you say so,” he says sheepishly.
“I…” V says, but her thoughts are racing a mile a minute. It makes sense. It makes so much fuckin’ sense. God, she could kiss Avery. “I need to find Johnny.”
She stands and casts her eyes across the roof deck until she sees him - he’s by the bar now, with Kerry. She swallows hard against the bright glimmer of hope that’s suddenly alighting in her chest and staggers through the crowd, elbowing people aside until she reaches them at the bar.
“Johnny,” she says, clutching his elbows and turning him to face her. “Think I know how to save myself.”
“It makes sense,” V says, searching every crevice of Vik’s face for some hint as to whether he thinks this is the gonkest fucking idea he’s ever heard.
“It does,” he admits slowly, his eyes darting over to Johnny, who is prowling around the ripper’s office, seemingly unable to contain his nervous energy.
“Will it work?” Johnny demands.
“I mean… there’s no precedent for any of this,” Vik cautions. “I can’t claim to understand exactly what’s happening in your body right now, V. You’re a unique case.” He rubs at his forehead. “But the science checks out. We replace your immune cells with Johnny’s, and that should, in theory, stop the autoimmune response that’s makin’ you sick.”
“Can we try it?” V asks, swallowing against the hope that’s been flaring bright in her chest since the party two nights ago. She’d called Vik first thing yesterday morning, and he booked them in for the first slot he had available.
Vik nods slowly. “Don’t see why not,” he tells them. “It’s not like we really have anything to lose, after all.”
It’s a grim reminder, but he’s got a point.
“What do I need to do?” Johnny asks, still pacing. “Can we do it today?”
Vik laughs. “Easy there, champ.” He stands and starts messing with the settings on the array of equipment surrounding the chair that V is now seated cross-legged in. “Lemme make sure I have the right software on this. But yeah, it’s a pretty simple procedure. Just need to take a sample of Johnny’s bone marrow. Probably from your hip,” he adds, glancing at Johnny. “You’ll be sore for a few days. For you, V, it’s basically just a blood transfusion.”
“And then what?” Johnny asks.
“That’s it,” Vik says, spreading his hands. “Don’t think you’ll even need the usual course of immunosuppressants, given your, ah, unique circumstances. But your friend is right, you’ll probably need regular blood transfusions from Johnny every day. For a few years, at least. Maybe forever. It’s not ideal, I know, but-”
“Do it,” Johnny says, cutting him off. “That’s fine, I’ll be her fuckin’ blood boy forever, I don’t care. Just tell me what to do.”
Vik chuckles. “Alright, alright. Hop in the chair, then. I’ll get everything ready.”
Vik wasn’t lying - as far as medical procedures go, it’s relatively quick and painless. And even just a few minutes after the transplant is complete and Vik has given her a large transfusion of Johnny’s blood, she can’t deny that she already feels light years better than she did a couple hours ago when Johnny had to practically carry her down the steps to Vik’s clinic. Her dizziness has all but completely subsided, her headache is gone, and her joints feel like someone just took a 90 lb weight off her back.
“You might feel like shit later,” Vik cautions her. “Usually with procedures like this, you’ll run a fever as your body adjusts.” He frowns, looking V up and down. “But like I said, your situation is unique. So I can’t really say what exactly to expect.”
He sends them on their way with a small pump that he shows them how to use, so they can do the necessary blood transfusions at home. Johnny manages to keep his blood boy jokes to a minimum, but just barely.
“Thank you, Vik,” V says, not even trying to fight back the tears that are already spilling down her cheeks. “If this works… then you’ve saved my life more times than I can count. I owe you.”
“No you fuckin’ don’t, V,” he says gently, but V throws her arms around him anyway.
The first three stations she flips to are all playing Kerry’s songs, and Johnny’s arms stay wrapped tightly around V’s waist as she speeds on Jackie’s old motorcycle down through the familiar streets of Heywood towards Pacifica. The third one they land on is the song Kerry wrote for V, the one with its lyrics engraved onto the bracelet she still wears. She grins and guns her bike, weaving between the rush hour traffic as they cross into Westbrook and head for the tunnel.
It is an undeniable banger, that’s for sure.
The dappled sunlight through the water above them makes the pavement seem to undulate as they race through the tunnel, emerging onto the dusty road that runs up through West Wind Estate, past the Pistis Sophia and other old motel-style buildings that line the waterfront. The buildings eventually give way to the broad strip of Pacifica beach, and V banks left and heads up towards the parking lot by the boardwalk.
She feels better than she has in months. Since before all of this started. Her symptoms all but vanished within a few days after the transplant took, and her rash healed after another week. She ultimately decided to skip her last two scheduled nanite treatment sessions - with how quickly the marrow transplant started working, it no longer seemed necessary to put herself through that particular hell. She isn’t holding out hope that she’ll get any of her money back, but it seems like a small price to pay now that she gets to feel the Pacific breeze on her skin, the wind in her hair, her own heart beating in her chest for another day. For hopefully many more days.
“Weird that we've never actually been here together,” V says as she pulls the bike to a stop and cuts the engine, running a hand through her disheveled hair.
“I know, right?” Johnny says, grinning ear to ear as he dismounts.
V follows after him, swinging her leg over the bike and taking his hand as they head towards the steps that lead up to the boardwalk.
“Ey!” a voice says, and V looks up to see a man in an orange beanie approaching them. “I know you! De one who fix the rollercoaster, no?”
And then V recognizes him. He was one of the Pacifica kids they hung out with the day they fixed the coaster. “Yep,” she tells him proudly. “And you’re…” She casts around in her memory, trying to dredge up his name. “Jean?”
His grin lights up his whole face. “Das me!” he agrees. “Dis town is empty now. No more Voodoo Boys stirrin’ up trouble.”
V frowns. “What happened to the Voodoo Boys?”
“All I hear is that Brigitte do deal with powerful AI from de other side,” Jean says with a shrug. “Now she is with de Rada Loa, and any day she come back to take us all past de Blackwall.” He gives V a serious look. “All of Pacifica is waiting. And everyone religious now, all of de sudden.”
“You sound skeptical.”
Jean shrugs again. “AI are like genie in bottle. You get exactly what you wish for. If you say, ‘I want to be smaller,’ de mudafucka will rip your head off.”
“You think that's what happened to the Voodoo Boys?” V presses.
Jean gives her another long look. “All I know is dad dey disappear and no come back.” He takes a swig of the beer in his fist. “My cousin, Lovelie, was with them. She had a kid here. A girl. If she could, she would already be back.”
The frown hasn’t left V’s face. “Have you by any chance ever heard of an AI named Pantheon?”
Jean gives her a strange look. “Maybe I have, maybe no,” he says. “Dey speak of many strange things these days.”
“Jean!” a voice calls from the street below. “Hurry de fuck up! We supposed to meet Billie inèdtan de sa!”
“Padon,” Jean says to them with a grin, jogging off after his friend.
V shakes her head as he recedes, then turns back to Johnny. “Think we gotta be worried?” she asks him.
“Probably,” Johnny says with a shrug. “But not today. Not right now.”
The sun is beginning to set as they walk along the boardwalk together, teasing each other and giggling like teenagers. The fortune-teller bot is still spewin’ out Swedenborg-Riviera quotes, and Johnny flicks it eddie after eddie until they are both clutching their sides laughing.
They wind up sitting on the end of the pier, dangling their legs over the edge of the boardwalk above the gleaming waves that are painted by the sunset in rippling stripes of neon. V rests her head on Johnny’s shoulder as they watch the air traffic come in and out of the spaceport across the bay.
“Been thinkin’,” Johnny says softly. “‘Bout why I did it.”
“Did what?” V asks, lifting her head from his shoulder to look up at him.
“Took on the corps, strapped in leather, chrome, and iron,” Johnny says. “That night I went to Arasaka Tower with a bomb in a duffel bag.” His throat bobs. “Couldn’t admit it to myself at the time, but I was goin’ there to die. Was never supposed to be an after. ‘Specially not the ‘happily ever’ kind.”
“Thought people like us didn’t get happy endings,” V agrees.
Johnny looks down at the waves. “Spent most of my life feelin’ like no one ever actually wanted me. My parents never fuckin’ wanted me, the army chewed me up and spit me out like an expendable fuckin’ toy. And then I got famous, and all of a sudden everyone wanted me… but it wasn’t me they wanted, not really. They just wanted something from me.”
V rests her hand on his knee. “You became a character for them to dump and project all of their bullshit onto,” she says gently.
“Yeah,” Johnny agrees, but then he frowns. “Or, I dunno. Maybe I ain't givin’ ‘em enough credit. Told Rogue that night at the drive-in, I wish I’d realized sooner I coulda really been myself around her. That she knew me as well as she thought she did. As well as she hoped she did.” He sighs heavily. “Kerry, too. And…”
He swallows hard.
“And Alt,” V finishes for him.
“Yeah,” Johnny says in a low voice. “And then there was you. Used to think… I dunno, that loving someone like this, lettin’ myself be loved, required a certain suspension of disbelief I didn’t think I was capable of,” he admits. “Thought I wasn’t worth the work it would take to piece myself back together. To even accept it when it hit me in the fuckin’ face.” The muscles in his jaw work as he looks back over at V. “Part of me still doesn’t believe I am… but for you, I’ll try my damn hardest.”
She feels as though she is being pulled apart, cracked wide open, when he looks at her like this.
“We make each other better,” V says simply.
“Yeah,” Johnny agrees. “Guess we do.” He lifts his hand to cup her face, running his thumb across her cheek. “Used to wish we'd met a different way, in any other time. I shouldn't have met you at all,” he continues. “But now... part of me can't help but be glad that it all played out the way it did. Glad I met you at all.”
V holds his gaze, leaning into his palm. “Me too,” she tells him honestly.
He grins. “And besides, we’re stuck together forever now, remember? I’m your blood boy.”
She punches him playfully, but can’t hide her answering smile.
But Johnny just looks at V with something close to awe on his face, then shakes his head and wraps his arms around her, pulling her close against him. “Fuck, V. We’re here, and we’re alive.”
“Yeah,” she says softly, her voice thick with emotion. “We are.”
“So,” Johnny says after a long beat. “Wanna go see if that rollercoaster still works?”
V pulls back to look up at him, searching his face in the golden light of the sunset. His hair curls around his ears now, framing his face, limned in sunlight. His smile is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.
“Read my fuckin’ my mind,” she tells him.
He kisses her, and the waves crash against the pier beneath them.
Notes:
Can't believe we made it to the end!!!!!! 😭
Like I said earlier, there will be an epilogue!!!!! And I still have a bunch of WIP one-shots featuring these characters that I plan continue posting, so this isn't the last you'll see of Vero and Johnny and Kerry. But it still feels insane to be at this point.
I know I already gave my Oscar speech last chapter, but I really do mean it from the bottom of my heart: thank you to everyone who has supported this fic throughout the years. Writing this fic has quite literally changed my life and introduced me to friends from around the world and made me a much more confident writer. To everyone who has commented or left kudos or engaged in any other way, your feedback truly means everything to me!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!🌹
I'll probably have more sappy words with the epilogue, so I'll leave it at this for now. ILY ALL!!!!
One last round of OC credits:
Violet Vega is from this absolutely wonderful fic by the inimitable madelinek.
Karis and Avery are the creations of my dear friend Ellen.
Chapter 65: Never Fade Away
Summary:
Nearly a year later, Johnny tries to relax into his new life with V as the band prepares to play a show together.
Notes:
well gosh!!!!!!! here we are!!!!!!!!!!! I know I said this last chapter, but to say it's still a bit surreal to arrive at the epilogue feels like the understatement of the century. 🥲 and almost exactly 4 years to the day since I posted the first chapter of this monster!!!!! ahhhHh
CW: smut!!!!! obviously!!!! lol this is the smutty fluffy epilogue!!!! 🥰
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The rainy California spring is seared away by the blaze of summer, and the heat continues to hold the concrete jungle of Night City in its iron grip even as the summer recedes and the leaves change and the days shorten. And every morning that Johnny wakes up in his own body and watches V’s chest rise and fall beside him, her skin flushed and healthy, feels like a gift he never deserved, one he is determined not to somehow ruin.
For the first time in his life that he can remember, he doesn't quietly nurse that once ever-present and familiar itch to cut and run. He doesn't fantasize about bolting, about burning it all down and martyring himself, about getting on a bus and turning off his phone and starting over somewhere no one knows his name.
Now, instead, he meets each day with a cautious disbelief and wonder, trying to hold it all tightly in his teeth as though it may yet be yanked away at any moment. It feels like a freefall, like hitting his stride onstage in the middle of a guitar solo, when his fingers start flyin’ over the frets and the crowd starts screaming and all he can do is trust himself to hit each note, to carry the riffs, to stick the landing, to do it all again the next night, and the next. It feels like it’s his to lose. He feels like he's living out some strange, beautiful fever dream, like one of these mornings he's gonna open his eyes and realize he's still in Mikoshi, still in cyberspace beyond the Blackwall, still trapped in V’s head, killing her slowly. But as the months pass and reality endures, he finds that he has slowly begun to allow himself to trust it.
He goes with V on long motorcycle rides. They make music with their friends. They swim in V’s - no, in their - pool. They watch movies together. He gives V transfusions of his blood every morning. He fucks her on every square inch of their penthouse. His hair grows out, and V’s curves fill back in, and she turns 29, an age he knows she never thought she’d live to see.
Shortly after Kerry’s return from his Us Cracks tour, they hit the studio as The Legends to record a short EP - they’ve already played a handful of relatively small shows together in NC, and one in San Francisco, too. But Kerry hasn't let go of the idea of the band playin’ at Night City Symphony Hall with the NC Philharmonic, and their new manager’s apparently decided that it’ll be a great way to promote his new album and the upcoming Legends record.
She also, for some fuckin’ reason, thought that planning the show to happen the day after Johnny’s birthday was a good fucking idea, and now he’s got a massive hangover to contend with.
Not that he isn’t used to performing in this particular condition, it’s just been a while. Between V and half the band bein’ sober now and his own new lease on life, he hasn’t really felt the urge to reach for that kind of escapism these days. And last night wasn’t even too crazy, especially by Johnny’s standards - just a small gathering at their place with the band, Rogue, and a couple of V’s friends - but he still somehow managed to put away more than his fair share of tequila.
And now the November morning light cuts through the floor-to-ceiling windows like a scythe, carving sharp shadows across the penthouse as the city hums beneath them. V’s already downstairs and moving around in the kitchen, and as Johnny drags himself to the top of the landing, he sees that she’s barefoot in his ancient and tattered Samurai shirt. The fabric hangs loose on her, slipping off one shoulder as she punches buttons on the coffee machine. She’s humming something lazy and tuneless, and the normalcy of it all makes something warm and still unfamiliar curl up beneath the cage of Johnny’s ribs.
“Want me to make something, or should we order in?” he grumbles, coming down the stairs to lean against the counter, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
V doesn’t even turn around, she just lifts a mug in the air in a mock salute. “Depends how hungover you are,” she says. “And if you can make us a good breakfast from two stale bagels and some leftover noodles.”
Johnny snorts a laugh and stretches, rolling his shoulders. “Define ‘good.’”
V turns then and hands him a cup, her fingers brushing his as she does. “Alright, then,” she says with an easy, teasing grin. “Tom’s Diner delivery it is.”
Johnny takes a slow sip, watching over the rim as V hoists herself up onto the edge of the counter, curling one leg beneath her and swinging the other absentmindedly.
“Kerry texted me this morning,” she says, sipping her own coffee. “Apparently, he meant what he said last night ‘bout wantin’ to do another tour this winter. Mexico and SouthAm. With all of us, this time.”
Johnny exhales sharply, shaking his head. “Course he does,” he says with a sigh. “Rich bastard's finally got the world slobberin’ all over his dick again, not gonna miss the chance to drag us all along for the ride.”
Kerry recently dropped his self-titled album, putting them all back in the media crosshairs just when the initial wave of sensationalized screamsheet headlines and wild gossip about Johnny’s inexplicable resurrection had finally started to die down. They've painted him as a martyr, a miracle, a madman, a terrorist, a bogeyman back from the dead and on the loose. And the headlines haven’t exactly been kind to V, either - the tabloids and gossip blogs and talk show hosts have all latched onto a melodrama-worthy narrative of V spurning Kerry for his undead, controversial bandmate’s affections, and for months, it’s become impossible to go anywhere without bein’ constantly accosted by hordes of paparazzi and media vultures. Kerry missed the worst of it while he away finishing the international leg of his Us Cracks tour, but in the current aftermath of his new record, Johnny knows his bandmate’s gonna be feelin’ the heat of all the renewed scrutiny and speculation as much as any of them. And goin’ on tour will only further cement that, keep the rumor mills spinnin’. He knows it gets to V, despite how unbothered she pretends to be about the neverending onslaught of invasive and ungenerous coverage.
But then he thinks of her in San Francisco, when they played their show there and took their day off to explore the city together - of V laughing in the Presidio, silhouetted against the polluted fog, the Golden Gate Bridge barely visible behind her. It was V’s first time in NorCal, strangely enough, and seein’ the city through her eyes made Johnny remember why he loved touring so much in the first place. She’s never been to New York, either, or London, or Tokyo, or Paris, or Berlin, or Bangkok, or most of the other cities Samurai played in their heyday. She’s been to the far side of the fuckin’ moon, but she’s never been to Mexico City.
He wants to show her the world. And somehow, against all odds, it suddenly all seems possible.
V chews her lip, watching his face as he considers all this. “You don’t wanna do it?”
Johnny cocks an eyebrow at her, his lips tugging upward into a grin. “Who said that?”
“Yeah,” V agrees, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Think it’ll be fun.”
And there it is again - that thing creeping up on him, catching him off guard. The fact that she’s here, healthy, alive. That she’s talkin’ about the future like it’s a given. That there’s no more fucking countdown. That for once, he doesn’t have to hold his breath every time she pauses too long between sentences. Doesn’t have to brace himself every time she winces ‘cause he’s afraid something inside her might start short-circuiting.
He wants so badly to just let himself enjoy it. To relax wholly into this new paradigm, to be fuckin’ grateful every minute that they’re both gettin’ this near-miraculous second chance that he knows he never fuckin’ deserved. But he’s not entirely sure he’ll ever fully shake that old gnawing worry - that this is too good, that he’s gonna find some way to poison it, that the universe doesn’t let people like him keep things like this.
V nudges him with her foot. “Hey,” she says, softer now. “Demons of your past tuggin' at your balls?"
She knows him too well. He lets himself meet her eyes, gives her a sad half-smile. "Tenacious, the motherfuckers.” He huffs a laugh. “Just… thinkin’ about all of it. How the fuck we ended up here.”
V grins, sliding off the counter to lean her shoulder against his. “You mean in a penthouse, drinkin’ expensive coffee, plannin’ a tour like actual professionals?”
“Yeah,” Johnny mutters, dropping his eyes to his coffee. “Somethin’ like that.”
V watches him for a second, like she can see straight through him, then sets her coffee down and pulls him in by the front of his shirt. Her lips brush against his, slow and easy, and for a second, everything else fades.
“Guess we got lucky,” she murmurs.
Johnny exhales against her mouth. “Guess we did.”
But it wasn’t all luck - it was V. It was the fact that she never gave up on him, never stopped fighting, never gave up on herself. Never gave up on them.
No one’s ever fought for him like that before.
“Vampire breakfast before or after normal breakfast?” V asks, pulling away and elbowing him gently in the ribs.
Johnny rolls his eyes at what she’s taken to calling the daily transfusions they’ve gotta do. And, of course, the more annoyed he acts, the funnier she seems to think it is. “Let’s eat somethin’ first,” he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “So I don’t pass out. Don’t wanna accidentally infect you with my hangover, either.”
V laughs, her eyes crinkling. “Funny that somehow even now, your hangovers are still contagious.”
This draws a laugh from Johnny as well, but he finds himself turning it over in his head while she orders their food. V hasn’t put any pressure on him to stop drinking, but he can’t pretend he hasn’t toyed with the idea. Part of him wants to make the most of this opportunity to start over, to turn over a new leaf, but a bigger part of him has still been reveling in the novelty of havin’ a real body again, of being alive to experience all the bullshit that comes with it.
But maybe he’ll use this tour they’re planning as a chance to try it out. If fuckin’ Henry can do it, so can he. It doesn’t necessarily gotta be forever, he tells himself. And if he can’t fuckin’ do one short tour without it, then that’s probably something to think about. And besides, he’s got a feeling it might be the best way to ensure he doesn’t knock the jaw off the first media gonk who looks sideways at V.
They eat together in the kitchen when the food arrives, then V gets out the transfusion kit and sets it up while Johnny cleans up. He joins her and Nibbles on the couch and flips on the TV while V hooks the IV into her arm and then his, then settles against him as the machine whirs to life.
“Do you still remember Saburo?” she asks him after a moment, probably attempting to distract him while his blood flows from his body into hers.
Johnny frowns. “Still dream I’m him, sometimes,” he admits. “It’s hazy as fuck, much hazier than your memories are, now… but yeah, there’s some shit in there that didn’t happen to me,” he says, tapping the side of his head with his free arm. “Or you. Small price to pay for everything else, though,” he adds.
“Wonder if he managed to escape that ‘Saka station’s subnet,” V muses.
It’s not something Johnny likes to think about.
“Still feel like I’m sittin’ in this happily ever after, waitin’ for the other shoe to drop,” he murmurs.
V is silent for a beat. “Know what you mean,” she says. “But what can we do except keep on livin’?” She leans away to smile up at him.
He huffs a soft laugh. “You say it like it’s easy.”
“I say it ‘cause I know how fuckin’ hard it is,” she says seriously, holding his gaze.
Johnny studies her face, then lifts his metal hand to gently cup her cheek. “Been so fuckin’ scared this whole time,” he admits, but it’s less of a confession and more just him needin’ to say it again. “Since that night I first woke up in your gonk brain. Of the corps takin’ everything, of not bein’ able to stick around, see what happened… to you. To the world. But honestly? Thought of you gone so I could live… always scared me most.”
She responds by kissing him - a deep, thorough kiss that leaves Johnny feeling slightly lightheaded. Or maybe that’s just all the blood he’s siphoning into her. He laughs softly and nips at her lip with his teeth.
“It’s over, now, Johnny,” she reminds him gently. “Or maybe… maybe it’s just beginning. Something new, I mean. The rest of our lives.”
He smiles down at her. “Yeah,” he says softly.
Fuck, she somehow makes him feel more invincible and more vulnerable than anything else ever has.
She shifts to straddle him, careful not to tug at the IV tube that still connects them both to the small machine on the floor beside them, and rolls her hips against him. She’s just in her underwear, and Johnny’s only wearin’ loose sweatpants, so he can feel her heat pressed against him through the thin fabric - his dick hardens so quickly it makes his head spin. The friction and the blood loss are both makin’ him feel more than slightly dizzy, but not entirely in a bad way.
V slides down until she’s kneeling on the floor between his legs, looking up at him now with half-lidded eyes as she slowly pulls down the waistband of his sweatpants. Johnny’s barely breathing as she wraps her palm around his cock, and fuck, just one touch and she’s already got him rigid and leaking.
He groans and pushes into her hand, letting out a long, low string of curses.
She tilts her head forward to wrap her lips around the head of his cock, rolling her tongue slowly a few times just how he likes, then takes him all the way into her mouth, suckin’ him just enough to make his hip jolt upwards. She continues to stroke him with her mouth, almost lazily, and the combined sensation of his blood gettin’ pulled from his body and her tongue pulling at his cock is overwhelming. She keeps goin’ like that, alternating between teasin’ his head and swallowing him whole, and it’s only a couple minutes before he starts seein’ stars on the edges of his vision. He feels like he might pass out. He doesn’t think he’d mind if he did.
“Keep that up, and this is gonna be over soon, V,” he rasps.
She just smiles and drags her tongue all the way up his length before plunging her mouth down until his cock hits the back of her throat, and all Johnny can do is groan helplessly as he slides his hand around to grab a fistful of her hair. He can feel the blood pumping out of him with every heavy beat of his heart, and the sensation threatens to overwhelm him. He’s almost fuckin’ there, almost about to-
She swallows around him and moans slightly, and Johnny bucks his hips as he comes hard down her throat, his vision going white and all sensation fading from his limbs slightly. It’s intense and intimate and heady as fuck, and he grunts and gasps as he fists her hair, thrusting into her mouth as she wrings every last drop from him.
She finally pulls off him with a smug grin, sitting back on her heels and wiping her mouth with her free hand, and Johnny can only gape at her through half-lidded eyes, feeling limp and wrung dry and utterly spent in every possible way.
Fuck, he loves her.
“Meant to do that last night,” she says, looking absolutely pleased with herself. “But Kerry ‘n Henry didn’t leave until almost 3 am, and then you had other ideas.”
Johnny reaches forward to drag his thumb across her lip, thinkin’ ‘bout how he bent her over the railing of the lofted bedroom and fucked her there after everyone left.
“No regrets there,” he murmurs, still barely able to form words.
V hums in assent and climbs back onto the couch, curling up next to him right as his holo starts ringing. And of course, it’s fuckin’ Kerry. He tucks his dick back into his sweatpants and answers, trying his best to collect himself.
“Hey, Johnny,” Kerry drawls, a broad grin on his face. “How’s the birthday hangover goin’? Still pretendin’ to be 36? Or ready to embrace your old age like me?”
Johnny chuckles. “Fuck off, Ker.”
“Come by this afternoon before the show,” Kerry insists. “Satine’s sendin’ an AV to take us to Westbrook, you two can just ride with us.”
Johnny raises an eyebrow. “That eager to see us again?” he teases.
Kerry’s smile is somewhat sheepish, now. “No, but I, ah… got someone here who wants to meet you,” he says cryptically. “Wanted to have a chance to introduce you guys before the show.”
“Hmm,” Johnny says, his brow furrowing. His head’s still spinnin’ too much to play guessin’ games with Ker right now. “Sure, fine,” he grunts. “Be over there ‘round 5, that cool?”
“Shimra,” Kerry replies, his eyes darting nervously off-camera. “See ya soon,” he says, and hangs up.
V is gently tugging the IV from his arm, frowning as she presses a square of gauze to staunch the bleeding. “Should just get ports put in,” she says. “Since we gotta do this every day, I guess.”
She’s got a point, Johnny agrees. His veins are still shot to shit from his junkie days, and havin’ V stick him with a needle every morning has only made the situation worse. He remembers how Henry used to have to shoot up between his toes and in his neck, and doesn’t particularly relish the idea of needin’ to resort to that.
He pulls her back down to him and kisses her hard. “Told Ker we’d meet him at his place in a couple hours,” he tells her, and she nods.
“Alright, I’ll go shower,” V says, heaving herself to her feet. “Wanna join?”
Johnny shakes his head. “You go ahead,” he tells her. “Think I’ll pass out if I try to stand up right now.”
She laughs softly and presses another kiss to Johnny’s mouth, then straightens and heads for the stairs, leaving Johnny on the couch more than slightly lightheaded, but utterly content.
When Johnny emerges from the shower later, V’s already all dolled up in a light blue mini slip dress with her choker and thigh high black vinyl platform boots and, as always, his dog tags dangling from her neck. Johnny whistles between his teeth when he sees her.
“Fuck, V,” he groans, stepping towards her and bending down to kiss her, palming her ass with both hands. “How the fuck am I supposed to keep my hands off you in this fuckin’ outfit?”
She grins against his lips, pressing her body flush to his. “Who says you have to?”
He’s already rock hard again, but Kerry’s waitin’ for them, so he forces himself to step away, giving her a light smack on the ass.
The weather’s beautiful, so V drives them in her Shion, but the second they leave the garage, Johnny immediately regrets takin’ the convertible. A small swarm of paparazzi, persistent as roaches, tail them from the penthouse all the way to North Oak, drones hovering and lenses zooming.
“Guess we’re giving the screamsheets another headline,” V mutters, flipping them off as she drives.
Johnny slouches in the passenger seat, sunglasses in place, jaw tight. “They can choke on it,” he grumbles.
By the time they reach Kerry’s street, the paps have mostly backed off - the security checkpoint that guards his secluded cul-de-sac thinned the flock to the few stragglers with access, probably the ones from the more well-funded outlets. And as they roll through the high, iron gates of Kerry’s villa, Johnny can't help but notice that Ker's upgraded the mansion's security - there's more cameras, more mechs, and probably other high-end shit that's too discrete to be detected.
And as V pulls the car to a stop in Kerry's driveway, they're greeted by the real muscle - two small dogs barreling towards them the moment they step out of the car.
"Romeo!" V croons, reaching down to pet the head of the gangly Whippet that makes it to them first, skidding to a halt at her feet, tongue lolling. And trudging along behind him, panting loudly, is his counterpart Juliet - a squat little tank of a French Bulldog. She lets out an unimpressed grunt when she reaches Johnny, then rolls onto her back for belly rubs.
“Get back in here, you little freaks,” Kerry shouts from the small door beside the garage, laughing as Johnny gets their guitars out of the backseat and follows V towards the house. “Aw, Johnny, think Juliet's taken a shine to you,” he adds as the potato-shaped hound trots along behind Johnny, beaming up at him with her bulging eyes.
Johnny snorts, stepping inside. “Thinkin’ maybe she’s just got bad taste.”
But he can't deny he's got a soft spot for the two little mutts that Kerry and Henry have adopted.
Henry’s sprawled on the couch in the sitting area inside, and raises his hand in greeting as they enter. Johnny still has trouble sometimes connecting the man in front of him now with the Henry he knew - he’s still got the same faded tattoos, still has as dumb a haircut as ever, and still wears the same lopsided grin, albeit with significantly more smile lines carved into his face than he had back in ‘23. His aged face still retains the same rugged, unexpected charm, and he's still got the same boyish, punk energy. But now, he’s… steadier. More measured. Johnny doesn’t know if that’s growth or just the weight of time pressing down.
He remembers how the bassist fried his brain testin’ out a prototype interface for Blazetech after the band broke up the first time - Henry was always a techie at heart. After that accident was when shit really started to spiral for him, Johnny remembers. He always went hard, but he was never quite the same after that incident.
He wonders if Kerry invited Violet and Denny to meet them here too, or if he knows better than to push his luck with Denny. It didn't exactly help matters when Kerry pointed out that Denny's hardly the only one of 'em with an ex in the current line-up - in fact, quite literally all six of them have at least one. But after months of the fledgling band existing in an odd, quantum state, with them havin’ separate jam sessions for each of the estranged former Samurai members, Kerry’s pestering finally got through. Or, more specifically, after Henry managed to get 60 days clean, their intimidating drummer had finally relented and agreed to come to one of their practice sessions with her ex there. And ultimately, it was the music itself that convinced her to stick around - when the six of them played together, their sound just clicked into place. Even Denny couldn’t deny it. And Johnny suspects that despite her initial shock, even she can see that Ker and Henry are good for each other. It’s not a match he ever would’ve bet on or seen coming back in the day, but it somehow strangely makes sense, now.
But then again, nothing about their lives now is anything any of them ever could have anticipated.
He suddenly notices a small, dark-haired woman leaning over the railing of the lofted second floor above them, and Kerry motions for her to come down and join them. V’s eyes widen, and then so does her smile, but Johnny isn’t sure what facial expression he’s wearing as the girl makes her way down the stairs. He’s never met her before, but he recognizes her immediately from the framed pictures that pepper this very house.
And now he understands why Kerry wanted ‘em to come over so badly, why this show’s been so important to him.
“This is Kim,” Kerry says, smiling nervously and gesturing to the woman as she reaches the bottom of the stairs. She’s young, in her early twenties, and has short dark hair that curls around her ears just like Kerry’s used to, and the same exact freckles dotting her round, open face. The resemblance is striking. “She flew in this morning from Tokyo,” Kerry explains. “Kim, meet Johnny and V.”
“Hi,” Kim says shyly. She blinks at Johnny, then her gaze shifts to V, eying the former merc with interest. Johnny wonders what Ker’s told her about them, how she feels about the fact that her dad was recently datin’ someone only a few years older than her.
“Nice to finally meet you,” V says, smiling warmly.
Johnny doesn’t think he’ll ever fully get used to meeting his friends’ adult children like this. He's happy for Ker, though - glad his daughter's flown out all this way just to see her old man play.
He swallows down the strange sense of vertigo as they settle on the couch, and watches as V laughs and talks easily with Kerry’s daughter, quizzing the girl about her life in Tokyo. Kim, as it turns out, is an artist, too. A painter. It sounds kinda like a nepo baby career to Johnny - he’s got nothin’ at all against the visual arts, but traditional oil painting ain’t exactly the kinda thing you can make a living on these days without a hefty trust fund to bolster it.
But it’s not her fuckin’ fault her dad’s a rockstar and her mom’s a famous actress. And if she’s got any of Kerry in her…
Johnny knows how important this must be to Kerry. Havin’ the chance to start over with his kids, reconnect with them as adults. He wonders how things are going with Ted, Kim’s older brother.
"Check it out, V,” Kerry says to V. She’s made herself comfortable on the couch now, too, with her legs draped over the armrest and both little dogs jostling for space on top of her chest while she pets one of them with each hand. “Got this email from a lifelong fan. It's serious,” Kerry continues, screwing his face up in a comical way that indicates precisely otherwise. “Gotta write her back.”
“More fanfiction?” V teases, and Kerry snorts in response.
“Ugh, worse,” he sighs. “Listen to this.” His eyes glow blue as he pulls up the email in question and begins to read it aloud. “‘Dear Mr. Eurodyne,’” he reads in a dramatic voice. “‘The day we both have been waiting for is finally upon us! I got rid of my husband, my house and all the other remnants of my former life. Now, I'm truly ready to give you my heart and all my other organs, should you desire them. You are the Sun and I am the Moon – I live to bask in your radiant brilliance. I love you, Mr. Eurodyne, and eagerly anticipate the time we'll finally be together. We will meet soon – I'm sure you know exactly where.’”
Johnny drapes his arm around V’s shoulders as she barks out a laugh. “Shit, gotta respect the commitment,” she says. “That’s a lifetime of delusion.”
“Yeah, well,” Kerry mutters, shaking his head. “Delusion’s a spectrum, and I’d like to know where exactly she lands.”
“She dangerous?” Johnny asks, frowning.
“She also sent a gift card to a junk shop in Providence,” Henry adds. “Wherever the fuck that is.”
Kerry nods. “It's clear she's nuts, just not sure if it's the murder-suicide variety.” He sighs exaggeratedly. “She writes me same day every year, like clockwork,” he explains. “What if she dissolved her man in a vat of acid, burned down her house and now she's sharpenin’ her sickle ‘cause I'm next?” he groans. “What are we gonna do?”
“You really worried about her?” V asks.
Kerry shrugs, rolling his shoulders with a sigh. “Kovachek used to deal with all this shit, handled all the real nutjobs. Signed some fake autographs, sent ‘em merch, whatever kept ‘em from showin’ up at my fuckin’ doorstep. But this one…” He waves a hand. “Always slipped through. Like she knew exactly how to be just insane enough to get noticed but not insane enough to get locked up.” He scowls. “Or maybe Kovachek was forwardin’ me all her shit on purpose. Probably got his rocks off fuckin’ with my blood pressure.”
“Seems like whatever it is, Scalinski plays by the same rulebook,” Henry grumbles, reaching for a cigarette.
But V just shakes her head, laughing incredulously. “What, your first psycho groupie?” she teases, flipping her legs off the armrest and sitting up. “Worried she’s got a shrine to you in her basement?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Kerry mutters, rubbing his temple.
Johnny lets out a dry chuckle. “Shit, at least your crazies send you love letters. My fans used to send me bullets.”
“Yeah, well, different kind of romance,” Kerry says, shaking his head.
“Maybe Satine’s got a boat or a chopper or something you can blow up, too,” Henry offers.
As far as corpo managers come, Satine Scalinski’s far from the worst of ‘em, but that doesn’t mean Johnny has to pretend to like her, and he chuckles at Henry’s comment.
“Eh, well, you guys better give me the most tearjerkin’ eulogies of all time when they find my body chopped into little pieces in the canals,” Kerry retorts with a laugh.
“Should just try to convince Nance to be our manager again,” Henry grumbles. “She don’t gotta play, just handle the business end of things. Like she used to.”
Kerry shakes his head. “Can’t,” he reminds them. “Still got one record left on my contract with MSM before I can cut ‘em loose completely. So we can’t go indie with our management, gotta use one of their suits. Don’t exactly love Satine either, but we all know it could be much, much fuckin’ worse.” He scowls, and Johnny guesses he’s thinkin’ about Kovachek again.
Nancy’s remained firm in her decision to leave her music career in the past, but Johnny suddenly remembers something she said to him once, decades ago. That she joined the band because she couldn't really see a future, not for herself, not for the world. Music was their way of pushing back. It was true for all of them, back then. He thinks the last part is still true, at least. For most of the band, this is the future that they once couldn’t begin to imagine.
And for Johnny and V, they’ve got the rest of their lives ahead of them, still - and for the first time in Johnny’s life, he wants more than anything to stick around and find out what happens next.
They all pile into the AV together shortly after, and Johnny lets his hand rest loosely on V’s knee as they glide over Charter Hill and across the canals, circling down into the jagged skyline of City Center before lowering onto the pad that sits on the lawn behind the concert hall. NC Symphony Hall is one of the oldest buildings in the city, and its gothic facade, illuminated in the orange glow of the setting sun, still stands out sharply among the otherwise sleek, brutalist structures of Westbrook.
Johnny remembers the old bandstand they used to have right near here in Lake Park, before they paved it over to build more office buildings and condos. He finds himself thinkin’ of the free benefit concert he played there after the riots, how he hoped it would do something to make everyone finally pay attention to how fuckin’ brutal the NCPD pigs were when they were roundin’ up and firing on the protestors. How the music felt bigger than just noise, and how, for a second, it felt like it could actually change something.
He wonders if tonight will feel anything like that.
Satine is waiting for them with their security detail at the yawning entrance to the backstage area, and Johnny can feel that familiar anticipation building inside him, coiling around his stomach like a live wire ready to spark.
Kerry and Henry head for their dressing room, but Kim trails after Johnny and V to the VIP lounge.
Karis and Avery are the first to greet them as they enter, crossing over from the small bar at the corner of the room to hug V enthusiastically. Johnny gives Avery an extra pat on the back as they embrace - he might still not have a full read on the kid, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop feelin’ like he owes him for bein’ the one to think of the ingenious solution for savin’ V. Karis tentatively hugs Kim as well, and from their brief exchange, Johnny intuits that it’s been at least a decade since they last saw each other.
It’s still beyond strange, thinkin’ about his friends’ brats all growin’ up together, about the fact that he somehow managed to leapfrog generations and now has no choice but to count these kids as his peers. It’s an odd, in-between sort of existence, and he often finds himself feeling both too old and too young. His new normal now, he supposes.
River and Misty are here, too, along with Claire, Tom, Roxie and Mateo. And, to Johnny’s mild surprise, so are Quinn and Aiko. He hadn’t realized V was still in touch with the ‘Saka heiress. And her old friend Marigold is sitting on one of the small couches in the corner beside a tall, lean man who Johnny doesn’t think he’s met.
“Marigold!” V squeals, rushing to embrace her friend as she gets to her feet, dragging her input up after her. “I’m so glad you came,” she breathes. “And you must be Clement,” she says, turning to the mysterious man. “Heard so much about you, can’t believe Mari’s kept you hidden away this long.”
Johnny sizes the man up as he stands. He’s tall - maybe even a little taller than Johnny - and improbably handsome, with full lips and a movie-star face framed by shoulder length blonde hair. Johnny can't shake the feeling that he's seen him on TV before, somewhere.
Marigold beams as V finally releases her from the tight hug. “Been so busy with the studio,” she admits. “It’s great to have Clement teaching the boys, and now we can finally have partnering classes.”
Clement smiles down at Marigold, clearly smitten. “Comin’ up on a year now,” he agrees. “Fuckin’ glad I took that Nutcracker gig last year,” he adds with a laugh. “Best Christmas gift I could ever ask for.” He’s got a slight southern drawl, and Johnny wonders where he’s from, originally.
“Vero, you’re a goddamn angel for that donation,” Marigold says, eyes shining with sincerity. “The kids are gonna have a real shot now. You have no idea what this means to us.”
V shrugs, trying to brush off the praise, but Johnny knows better, sees the way her mouth curves just slightly, how her cheeks flush. He knows she donated a staggering amount of eddies to Marigold’s dance school in Heywood, and he gets it, he really does. It’s how he feels about his own recent project - to revive Silverhand Studios.
He’s restarted the foundation, the live/work studio co-op space and arts collective he ran back in his former life. His attempt, back then and now, to build something better. A place where kids with nothing but a six-string and a dream can have a shot, to live and practice and record. A space Johnny wishes he'd had back when he was too young, too raw, too broken, when he was a terrified, furious, traumatized teenager watching that fan spin on the ceiling of the Pistis Sophia.
He and V went back there once together, in the thick heat of summer. They didn't stay long, and they didn't speak much - they didn't need to. The peeling walls of the decrepit room hold too many memories now, for both of them. He knows why they needed to go there one more time, and he also knows that they won't be going back.
Clement gives them both a once-over with sharp, appraising eyes. "So, how did you two meet?" he asks. It’s a casual, innocent question, but one that hasn’t gotten any easier to field, especially to relative strangers.
Johnny opens his mouth, but before he can shape a word, Karis lets out a snort. “Oh, you mean how V's dating my mom's dead ex?” He rolls his eyes, an impish smirk spreading across his face that reminds Johnny so much of his mother. “Still weird, by the way.”
V shoots him a dry look but only shakes her head, while Johnny just grins. “Yeah, yeah, kid, rub it in.” He leans in to press a kiss to the side of V’s head. “I’m gonna go see how the girls are doin’,” he tells her, and she nods as he pulls away, leavin’ her to field the Q&A from her chooms.
Violet and Denny are getting ready in their dressing room when Johnny ducks inside, having narrowly avoided Satine and her huscle in the hallway. As expected, the room is a controlled storm of energy - makeup artists, stylists, and assistants fluttering in and out like worker bees. But the real chaos seems to be Ziggy Q - the TV host is currently backed into a corner as Denny lays into him, his attempt at an interview clearly not goin’ as planned.
“I let your ass in here so your producer can stop blowing up my holo,” Denny is saying, her voice sharp as nails. “Nothing personal, sweetie, but you know what? The media's been dead a long time. People before you used to have a backbone to dig up shit on the megacorps. And now you only care about my shithead ex who dumped cement in my pool? Facts don't make you tick. Social responsibility of the media? Nope. You're just feedin’ stale vomit to your braindead audience and they fuckin' love it. What about important topics that really deserve public attention, like that our planet will soon become inhabitable? Or that the wealth gap keeps increasing? Nope. Let's talk about the epic drama of a former star!”
Ziggy, to his credit, stays put, his camera drone hovering undeterred near the drummer’s face now adorned with metallic gold lipstick and glittering, graphic eyeliner. Johnny smirks a little at the exchange, glad to see Denny still hasn’t lost her teeth.
“How’s the guitar half of the band feeling?” Violet asks with a laugh, sidling up beside him as the scene unfolds.
Johnny snorts. The three-guitar line-up was something Denny pushed back on initially, but the texture, layered harmonies, and complex sound they can get in their arrangements now eventually won her over.
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” he says, glancing down at her. He finds himself thinking again about Silverhand Studios, about the time he spent with Violet there during the final months of his former life. She’s been helpin’ him get it all back up and running, one more thing he’s gettin’ a second chance at that he never anticipated or deserved.
“I invited some of the kids from the studio,” Violet tells him, seeming to guess at his train of thought, and there’s a fondness in her voice that tugs at something deep in Johnny’s chest. “Including Steve,” she adds, referring to the kid from Pacifica who V met while she was hidin’ out there. He’s become a resident of their flagship loft in Santo after V tracked him down in his old hood, and once he got over his starstruck disbelief at his new benefactor, he eagerly agreed to be one the pioneers of Johnny’s little experiment.
He nods. “Good,” he says softly. “I’m glad you talked me into restartin’ it,” he tells her. “Trying to make it mean something again.”
“Me too,” Violet agrees. Her smile is soft, understanding. “And… things are good?” she asks. “With V, I mean?”
“Still feel like I don't fuckin’ deserve her, most of the time,” Johnny admits in a low voice.
“Not for you to decide,” Violet says, giving him a sharp look. “Love’s not something you gotta earn, it's something someone chooses to give to you.”
Johnny’s jaw tightens. “Did V really have a choice, though?”
Violet shakes her head. “Maybe not at first,” she says. “But she definitely fuckin’ chose to hurl herself into hard vacuum to bring you back. She put everything on the line for you. So you tell me, Johnny. If that's not choosin’ you, then I dunno what is.”
Johnny can’t argue with that. It’s just still hard to believe, sometimes. That after all of it, after everything that happened, he could be so fuckin’ lucky.
Denny is still layin’ into the poor media gonk, who has now turned his attention to Johnny with sudden interest, but luckily for them all, V pokes her head in the door then. “Ready, Johnny?” she asks, and he nods, stepping away from Violet and following V back into the long, fluorescent lit corridor that runs through the bowels of the backstage area.
There’s more photographers in the hall as they walk to their dressing room, and Johnny shoves bruskly past them, shielding V instinctively, ignoring the flurry of shutter clicks and barked questions.
But V holds her head high, a confident smile on her face. She moves down the hallway like she belongs here, like she owns this moment.
Maybe she does.
After all, none of this would be happening at all if not for her.
Johnny ushers V through the door to their dressing room and pulls it shut behind them, sealing them away from the camera flashes and the shouts.
“Sometimes I almost miss when you were just my imaginary friend,” V jokes, but there's an undercurrent of sincerity to her words that Johnny knows her too well to miss.
And he knows what she means. Not the worst parts, of course - but there was something nice about the inherent privacy of their connection, then. It existed only to them, only for them.
“Yeah,” he says, the corner of his mouth curling upwards. “When you had me all to yourself. On-call joytoy.”
She smacks him with the back of her hand.
“The privacy was nice,” he relents.
V shrugs, smiling up at him now. “Don't really mind it, though,” she admits. “Every time I see a pic of us together, I'm reminded you're real, now.”
“Well, the fans are sure eatin’ it up,” Johnny says, rolling his eyes.
But he knows part of her enjoys that aspect of it too - goin’ on stage with him, lettin’ the whole world see the way he looks at her, the way he sings like he's singin’ only for her, now. The fans fuckin’ love that shit.
And so does Johnny.
She lays out her makeup on the vanity table, then bends over to set down her Tenzor and flip open the case, her short dress barely concealing the curve of her ass, and fuck, Johnny can’t help himself this time.
She straightens and turns back towards him, but he’s already crossing the small room and scooping her by her waist onto the vanity, sending her makeup clattering to the floor. He swallows her startled laugh with his mouth as she gasps against his lips, already arching towards him.
She lets out a soft huff as she wraps her long legs around his waist, and Johnny grinds into her with a low, guttural sound. He can feel her pulsing against him even through the front of his leather pants.
Her eyes seek out his, darkened with lust, but there's a tenderness there too. He wants to take that expression on her face and burn it into his brain so he never forgets it.
Johnny kisses her until her lips are swollen and her dark lipstick is smeared all over her mouth, then pulls back slightly and remains there for a moment, both of them panting softly. He reaches his hand between them to brush his fingers against her, hissing a sharp intake of breath when he feels how fuckin’ soaked she is. And the soft gasp she breathes in response makes his cock throb almost painfully.
He pushes her panties aside and slides two fingers inside her, cupping her with his palm as he leans in to kiss her again. She grinds against his hand, whimpering into his mouth in that way he can’t get enough of, riding his fingers and his palm. He adjusts his hand so he can work her clit with his thumb - touching her is so easy, still, so intuitive - and she whines again, her eyes rolling back slightly. Fuck.
“I don’t deserve you,” he says, voicing the nagging thought that’s been plaguing him all day. All year.
“Shut the fuck up, Johnny,” she says.
She grinds and writhes against him, moaning and breathless. He loves her like this, eager and needy, desperate for something he knows only he can give her now. He pushes against her thigh, mindlessly seeking some friction of his own as she starts to come apart in his hands, her head now resting on his shoulder as she gasps and keens.
She’s close now - he can feel it by the way her body is starting to shudder and clench around his fingers, and he doesn’t relent, curling his fingers and rubbing her clit and letting her fuck herself on his hand until she comes with a ragged, pretty little moan as he tilts his head to bite at her ear.
She pants into his shoulder for another beat, her body trembling, then reaches down and starts fumbling with the zipper on his pants, meeting his eyes with an eagerness that draws a groan from low in his throat. He withdraws his hand from her, his fingers still damp and shaking slightly as he moves to help her. She shoves his pants artlessly down, dragging his cock out, then meets his eyes as she guides him to her dripping entrance.
They moan in unison when he enters her, and he holds himself still for a beat, feeling her clench around him, reveling in the warmth and headiness of the sensation. He winds his arms around her, cradling her head with his metal hand, and she clutches him tightly to her, her fingers digging into his back as he starts to move, slowly at first, then increasing in speed, unable to deny himself any longer.
She lets out a pathetic, desperate sound that makes Johnny have to slow down so he doesn't come immediately.
It is impossibly good, every time. Too good to be true. Part of Johnny doesn’t think he’ll ever stop waitin’ for the axe to fall, for all of this to be somehow yanked away from him, like everything else he’s ever cared about has been. It feels unfair. It doesn’t feel like it should be real.
But it is.
He surrenders to her completely, blindly rutting into her with urgent, aching, unrestrained need. She whines as his thrusts grow erratic, then lets out a frustrated, strangled moan as he forces himself into a slow, controlled rhythm again, dragging his cock in and out of her, panting through clenched teeth. And when he pushes in as deep as he can go and just rocks his hips into her once, twice, three times, she shatters.
Johnny was already hangin’ on by a fucking thread, and the raw sound that escapes her lips as she writhes helplessly against him while she comes on his cock is his undoing. He comes inside her with a rough shout, continuing to thrust feverishly as his cock jerks and twitches and spills in her, and he doesn’t give a fuck if Kerry and the rest of the band can hear them through the wall right now.
“Johnny,” V chokes.
All he can do is kiss her.
Her lipstick is smeared across her face when he pulls back, and she looks so fucking beautiful with her dress hiked up around her waist, her hair disheveled, and a slight sheen of sweat across her shoulders. They’re both still shaking slightly as he pulls up his pants and tucks himself away, zipping them as he leans in to capture her mouth again. He’s probably got lipstick smeared all over his face, too, and his suspicion is confirmed when he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind her, but he can’t bring himself to care right now.
They already ran a soundcheck here with the orchestra yesterday morning, so all that’s left to do now is grab their axes and head for the stage - it’s almost showtime. Johnny feels that familiar surge of adrenaline in his gut again, and he grins at V as she slides off the counter, adjusting her underwear and her dress before leaning back over the mirror to gather her fallen makeup and reapply her lipstick. She hands Johnny a makeup wipe for his face, and he does his best to clean up the dark red smeared across his mouth and cheeks, unable to resist giving V’s ass a final squeeze as he turns to free his DeLuze from its case.
There’s a sharp knock on the door, and Johnny opens it to Satine’s rouged face and sharp golden cyberware as she taps her wrist and points in the direction of the stage. Behind him, Johnny hears V hoist her guitar onto her shoulders, and the two of them follow Satine and the small gaggle of huscle out of the small dressing room.
As they make their way to the stage, the rest of The Legends fall into step beside them as they’re escorted through the backstage corridor and into the wings. Kerry adjusts the strap of his guitar, shooting them a smirk, while Denny gives a single approving nod. The roar of the crowd builds like a tidal wave, rolling through the massive concert hall, and the energy in the air feels like an electric current thrumming against Johnny’s skin. He feels it in his bones, in the pulse of his veins - this moment, right here, right now.
He never could get enough of this.
The lights dim, and the first low, humming chord of their intro vibrates through the speakers as Johnny steps onto the stage with V beside him. As she takes her place at the front of the stage, he lets himself take her in - not just how fuckin’ pretty she looks under the glow of the stage lights, but everything she is to him. A force of fuckin’ nature, a fighter, the one who saved him, the one who loves him. The fact that she’s here, alive, standing with him in front of thousands of screaming fans - it shakes him to his core.
V adjusts the strap on her guitar, fingers flexing at her sides. She meets his eyes with a quiet intensity in her expression as he comes to stand beside her, and her eyes are glowing with something Johnny still doesn’t know if he deserves, but fuck if he doesn’t want to hold onto it for as long as he can. She’s still here. Still alive. And even after everything, she still chooses him. He might be out of his depth, makin' it all up as he goes, but so is V. And she’s still here, walking through all of it at his side.
The moment stretches, his chest tightens, but he shoves it all down, keepin’ his cool - they’ve got a show to play. He takes a breath, lets it settle deep in his chest.
This is it.
V nudges him, a small smirk curving her lips. “You ready for this, old man?” she teases, her voice just loud enough over the sound of the crowd.
He huffs a laugh and shakes his head. “Always.”
Kerry steps past them, giving Johnny a look that’s hard to read, something between an old grudge and an unspoken understanding. But he’s grinning as Henry and Violet take their places, and the crowd’s cheers swell. The orchestra sits poised in the pit beneath them, the conductor still as a statue with his eyes trained on Johnny.
Johnny steps up to the mic, grasping it in his metal fist.
“Night City, you ready?” he growls.
The crowd erupts, and the first chords ring out from Kerry’s guitar - the unmistakable opening riff of Never Fade away. It’s a song that means something not just to them, but to every single person packed into this theater, to every gonk watching a stream from across the city. The lights explode into motion, a cascade of reds and blues bathing the stage as Johnny positions his hands over his guitar strings, his adrenaline surging as he leans back in towards the microphone.
And he can’t take his eyes off of V as she steps forward and takes her mic, drinking her in, memorizing her like a song he never wants to forget. He feels like an animal crawling home at last, curling up under her wings.
Yeah. This is it.
She catches his gaze, and her eyes darken and her lips part slightly, and Johnny is suddenly already fantasizing about what he’s gonna do to her backstage later.
But he likes this part almost as much.
Rogue once asked him if he would've done anything differently, if he could go back. And the truth is, now that it’s all said and done… he wouldn’t change a fuckin’ thing. Because he’s here, now, onstage with V and Kerry, gettin’ to do what they all do best together. And V is smiling at him, her hair haloed around her face in the blinding stage lights, and something raw and sweet and primal thrashes and then settles in his chest. He can’t tear his eyes away from her.
He feels like he’s been searching for home all his life, only to suddenly wake up from a long nightmare and realize he’s already there. It’s strange now, to think of all the years that he existed before her parents were even born, before he knew anything like this could ever be possible, before he ever could have imagined that this is where he’d be standing someday. He feels as though he is floating above the crowd, through the ornate ceiling of the concert hall, up and into the sky, but he also has never felt more grounded, more present, more alive, more real. And there’s V, still looking at him with that light in her eyes, smiling at him. For him.
She’s smiling, and that means it was all worth it.
The roar of the crowd envelopes them, and V opens her mouth and begins to sing.
Notes:
honestly I don't know what to say here except the deepest thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has supported, commented on, left kudos, recommended, bookmarked, otherwise engaged with, or even just read this fic!!!!!!!!! it truly means everything to me, I've poured so much work and care into this fucking thing over the last four years and it feels fucking crazy to be finally letting the curtain fall on Johnny and Vero and their story 😭😭😭😭 so, again, thank you ALL for coming along for the ride!!
I definitely plan to continue writing one-shots about these idiots, and have a couple WIPs in the pipeline, so expect to see those at some point.
I love you all so much!!!!!!!!!!
I wasn't planning to add OC credits to this epilogue but it's been a while since we've seen Mari so I'm gonna give 'em all one final shout out:
You can read more about Violet in this incredible fic by madelinek which is basically canon to The Rebel Path up through Chapter 16.
Karis, Alim/Trace, and Avery are a combination of TTRPG characters and my dear friend Ellen's OCs.
Marigold is the star of this absolutely wonderful fic by cherrykiss that is a MUST READ for any SilverV fans.
And last but not least, Quinn belongs to QuietOctober and is featured in this lovely story!!!!!
Clement, Aiko, Satine, and Romeo + Juliet the dogs are the collective creations of myself and everyone listed above, plus heartofsnark and emofthechoir.Extra special thank you to all of my aforementioned beloved friends for their input, support, and for trusting me to borrow and play with their dolls!!!! Please go check out their work, I promise you won't regret it!!! And you might even catch a glimpse of Vero in some of their stories. 😎
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