Chapter Text
one day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel / and the next, it’s rolling over me
Rush - Far Cry
Wake up in a landfill. Wake up on an operating table. Wake up sprawled out on your own floor after getting a beatdown from the ghost that lives in your head. As V lies there on her back, staring at the ceiling, she tries to decide which of these was the worst, and how many more mornings like this she could possibly endure.
The results are inconclusive.
It takes most of her energy to drag herself upright and over to the bathroom, but she feels so disgusting that it becomes a necessity rather than a choice. She can feel dried blood on her face, in her hair, on her hands. The clothes she slept in are soaked through with sweat. Shuffling out of them and into the shower stall uses up the last of her resolve, though, and she ends up folding gently back down to the tiled floor, bathing herself with the slow, sluggish movements of a sleepwalker. For a long time she just sits there, letting the hot water run over her, plastering her hair down and sending streams of rust-coloured water crawling toward the drain. She scrubs listlessly at the abrasions on her face. The sting of the water against her battered skin helps ground her, but it still takes her far longer to get clean than she’d like.
Even after she’s done, she just sits. The timer on the shower-head eventually runs out. She sits there a little longer.
She starts to shiver.
After some time she does finally get out, get dried, get dressed. Comfortable clothes, because anything else hurts to even think about putting on—shorts, an old t-shirt—and then she’s crawling back into bed.
It occurs to her, then, that the blockers must still be working. She can’t feel any sort of presence in her mind besides her own thoughts. Can’t hear or see anything that shouldn’t be there. Anyone who shouldn’t be there. If all she has to do to keep Silverhand quiet is remember to take these, maybe she can do this. A little bit of rest, first, and then one step at a time. Doable. Easy, even.
[incoming holocall from: Takemura Goro]
V squeezes her eyes shut. Sighs deeply, right up from her toes.
“Hello?”
“V. We need to talk. Meet me at the Tom’s Diner nearest to your building as soon as you can.”
Even if she didn’t already feel like hot microwaved garbage, his tone—commanding, assured of her obedience—would have rankled. As it was, she had no patience left to indulge him. “Not really in the mood to go out for brunch.”
“This is not a social call.”
No shit.
“There are things we must discuss. I need your help, V, perhaps just as much as you require mine. But these are not matters we can discuss over an unsecured line. Tom’s Diner. Can you get here in twenty minutes?”
Her sigh this time comes up from somewhere even deeper inside herself. A pain behind her eye makes itself known with a little throb. “Okay, fine. Be there in, like… fifteen.”
She disconnects but doesn’t move right away. The idea of just staying, of letting him hang out to dry, is briefly tempting—but he had saved her life, after all, and she had to admit she was curious what he was up to. It couldn’t hurt to find out.
Well, she corrects herself as she levers herself out of bed with a wince. It can’t hurt more than this.
It’s not much of a walk to the diner. Under normal circumstances, V wouldn’t have thought twice about hopping over there for a casual breakfast with a friend. With Jack—her mind skitters away from that thought, refuses to touch it.
Today, however, the journey feels like it’s both uphill and through quicksand. One more person shuffling half-dead through Night City doesn’t even register on anyone’s radar, though, so she makes it there in ten minutes un-accosted by anything other than her own pounding headache and spiralling thoughts.
Takemura is already there. Had probably already been there when he called, judging by the empty plate in front of him and the mostly-empty coffee mug cradled in his hands. He looks better than the last time she saw him—cleaner, at any rate, less bloody—but still much-reduced from the man she first saw in Yorinobu’s suite. There’s a tear at the cuff of one of his shirtsleeves. The combat implants in his knuckles and fingers must not be operational anymore; his hands tremble against the chipped ceramic mug.
V sits down without being invited and Takemura simply nods in acknowledgement.
“You look… better.”
This startles a soft puff of laughter out of her. “I don’t feel better. And I probably look about as good as you do.” She tips her chin up at him, indicating his hollow eyes, the messiness of his ponytail, the unevenness of his beard.
His expression is unamused. In other circumstances, she would find him intriguing; he seemed like the kind of guy it was fun to toy with, to see what exactly it would take to get his composure to crack. But in these circumstances, well. They have other business to attend and she has more pressing concerns.
“You look less close to death than before,” he amends, voice grave. “When I first found you I doubted, then, that you would survive.”
And he would have been right to think that, she notes. She is quite literally living on borrowed time. Does he know that? How much would Vik have told him? Instead of asking him those questions, however, another one bubbles up out of her instead. “Why did you do it?” It’s not what she meant to ask, but there it is: “Why bother saving me?”
His response is immediate. “I needed you alive. I still do.”
Ruthlessly pragmatic. It’s almost comforting to be on such familiar ground again. Conversations in the corporate sphere have rules, expectations, statements of intent—a shared understanding that nothing comes without a price. It’s a landscape she’s traversed before and she can do it again. V settles back further into the booth seat. “Need me to do what, exactly?”
“You witnessed the murder of Arasaka Saburo-sama. I need you to help me undo the damage that his son has caused.”
“Can’t really unring that bell. If you’re looking for justice in Night City, I’m afraid you’re looking in the wrong place.”
“Not justice. Revenge.”
“Oh.” V quiets, thinking. Her fingers find a chip in the scuffed Formica tabletop and trace over it. “That’s more attainable, yeah. But if you’re thinking that you can—I don’t know—have me testify or whatever—”
“Something to that effect, yes.”
“One problem with that. Or, well, two problems.” She looks up at him again, regarding him flatly. Taps one chipped-black fingernail against the table. “First, it wouldn’t matter if I had scrolled the whole thing and could play them a nice clean BD of Saburo’s death, they’re still not going to take the side of some street-level merc over fucking Arasaka Yorinobu.” Two taps. “Second, I don’t know if you know this, but I didn’t exactly end my term of employment at Arasaka in good stead. The best case scenario is that nobody knows who I am and I’m just some random merc to them. The more likely scenario is that they look up my file and toss my ass out before I can even say hello. And your ass too, to be honest.”
“I know who you are, yes. Who you were. In this instance, I think this may actually be more of an advantage than you might believe.”
V makes a soft sound of disbelief. “How so?”
“You are a known quantity. Despite your… precipitous departure from the company—”
Her snort draws a glare from him, but he continues.
“—you were known to be an intelligent, reliable asset. A woman of skill and integrity. This puts you in a position to be heard. Listened to. Perhaps even to be—”
“If you say anything even a little bit like ‘brought back into the fold,’ I will walk out right now.”
Takemura stops, but his expression grows even more troubled. His eyes narrow. “Is that not something you would welcome?”
“No.”
He tips his head, apparently waiting for her to elaborate. She does not. A part of her is actually surprised at herself for how strong her reflexive rejection of the idea is, but she’s not going to pull at that thread right now.
When she doesn’t continue, he rallies.
“… well. Nevertheless, I believe we have an opportunity here to be of help to one another. Even if you do not wish to return to the company, the fact remains that you have little hope of solving your current predicament without outside help—specifically, outside help with both knowledge of the Relic itself and with the financial means to do what must be done to restore your health.” He sighs, setting his coffee mug down with a gentle click. With both hands he makes a small gesture as if to symbolically slide his offer across the table. “It may help you to view this as a transactional matter. If you provide a useful service to Arasaka, they can provide one for you in turn.”
“They can.” She flattens her hand down on the table, examining the cuts and bruises on her knuckles. “Who’s to say they will?”
Takemura pauses. “How long were you with the company?”
“Just shy of eight years. Headhunted me straight out of university.”
His eyebrows raise by the barest amount. “So you were highly desired, then. An asset they were willing to fight for. And yet you have no faith that they will reward your service?”
“Nope.”
“Because of what happened with your superior?”
“Because if they had it their way I would be dead right now. I don’t think a shiny little ten-years-of-service plaque is in my immediate future, no.”
He sighs. “I would ask you to please reconsider. Your options are limited, to put it mildly. I can think of very few other avenues to pursue.”
“Very few isn’t zero. What else have you got?”
Takemura is quiet for a few moments. Then: “The engineer who designed the Relic. Anders Hellman. He would be an invaluable source of information on the functioning of the chip, and on possible solutions for its… malfunction. If he were not missing, I would say he was an option. However, I have been searching high and low for him and have returned with nothing.”
“What, he’s just… gone?”
“Just so.”
“Murdered?”
“It’s possible.” Takemura frowns, turning to look out the window, contemplative. “But I doubt it. I believe he is on the run. Perhaps he fears that he will be next if Yorinobu intends to purge the company of any who had loyalty to his father.”
“Or he could have jumped a sinking ship when he had the chance. Rats’ll do that.”
“Also possible. But if such is the case, it is being done in utmost secrecy. I have had no success in finding his trail, and I have done as much as I can with my current… lack of resources.”
“On your own? What about going through a fixer?”
“There are costs associated with this. I did, ah, make an attempt…” The look on his face transmutes into something close to chagrin. “There is a woman. A so-called ‘queen of fixers’ in this city. She calls herself Rogue.”
“I’m aware of her, yeah. How’d that go?”
“Poorly.”
V tries to suppress a smile. Judging by the downturn of Takemura’s expression, the attempt is only somewhat successful. “She kick you out?”
“Yes.”
“That tracks. She could probably smell the corp on you before you even got inside.”
He shakes his head. “Not so. Her reasoning, or so she said, was that she had no interest in working with someone so foolish as to murder Arasaka Saburo-sama.”
“She probably didn’t say it quite like that.”
“No. She used… other words.” His sigh is tinged with irritation, now. “I will say only this: it is possible that she knows something, or has the means to find out Hellman’s location, but she is a difficult woman. Her services will not be easy to obtain. Or affordable. Or pleasant.”
V shrugs. That was fixers in general, in her experience, and not necessarily a huge obstacle. “Noted,” she says finally. “What about Evelyn? The woman I got the job from in the first place? She obviously knew more about the chip than she was ever willing to let on.”
“Do you think she had inside information? A connection to another corporation, perhaps?”
V shakes her head slowly, turning that idea over in her mind. Although she had always felt that Evelyn had been hiding something, the idea of her being a suit didn’t sit right. “I don’t think so. She didn’t seem—I’ve worked with a lot of corporate espionage types in the past. There’s a certain air about them that you can’t miss. Similar but different from the regular corpo-smell. She didn’t have that, either.”
It takes her a moment to identify the look on Takemura’s face as one of mild amusement. His mouth quirks in the tiniest possible smile. It’s a good look on him. “Do I have this smell, also?”
V cocks her head, pretending to examine him. “You did, but it’s starting to fade. Or get covered up by, well.” She gives his state of general dishevelment an obvious once-over. “Soon enough you’ll be indistinguishable from the rest of us fallen angels.”
That tiny smile remains as he shakes his head at her, unwilling to continue to play along. “So. If she was not a corporate asset, what was she? What knowledge do you think she could have?”
“Dunno. Worth finding out, at least, I think.”
Takemura makes a quiet, thoughtful sound, noncommittal. “I see.” His expression turns sober once more. After a pause, he continues. “In terms of alternative options, it does not sound to me like you have very many at all. Hellman could perhaps be an asset, if it is possible to find him. I have fewer hopes for this Evelyn woman. I am perhaps biased in saying this, V, but I do still believe that helping me—and in turn, allowing me to help you—is the most rational decision you could make at this juncture.”
He pushes himself up from the table, standing a moment there as if lost in thought. “I have already stayed here too long. If I find out anything new, I will contact you; I would ask you to please do me the same courtesy. Hellman’s whereabouts are especially of interest to me. If you find any trace of him…”
V sighs. “Sure, sure. I’ll call you. But this isn’t me agreeing to your plan, by the way. Just so we’re clear.”
He inclines his head in acknowledgement. “Think on it. It is all I ask.”
She nods, gives him a small wave, and he leaves. Before his retreating form has even cleared the doorway, before she can even settle in and consider buying herself some lunch, her vision crackles and skips. V swears under her breath and rubs at her eyes. For fuck’s sake.
The blockers must have worn off because here he is again, slipping into the booth into the place Takemura just vacated, like it’s normal, like they’re going to sit here and share a plate of pancakes. The fucking nerve.
At least he seems calm. Calmer? Less homicidal, anyway.
When Silverhand drums his fingers in a restless little rhythm on the tabletop, V is briefly fixated on the fact that she can hear the chrome ones making a quiet tick-tick-tick sound against the surface. Awfully detailed, as far as hallucinations go. It would be impressive if it wasn’t making her life a waking nightmare.
He says something inane about their surroundings but she can barely focus on it. It’s all too much. It’s too stupid, too obnoxious, too impossible. Her head is already pounding. Before she can stop herself, the words start tumbling out.
“You really think you can just… slide in here like we’re friends now? Were you this insane when you were still alive or did your data get scrambled when they copied you over?”
The look he gives her over his sunglasses is somewhere between condescension and confusion, as though she’s said something inexplicably stupid and apropos of nothing. Like she’s the one out of line. “You still pissed about last night?”
“You tried to kill me!”
“Not tryin’ to now,” he says, as though it’s just that simple. “Changed my mind. Had some time to process things.”
“Changed your—Jesus, you’re out of your mind.”
The guy in the booth behind them looks up at her outburst and it prompts Silverhand to glance back at him over his shoulder. “Don’t gotta talk out loud to talk to me, y’know.”
The dryness of his tone makes it seem like this is all a fucking joke to him. It makes her jaw ache but she’s not about to give him the satisfaction of continuing to make a spectacle of herself, and so her next words to him are turned inward, thinking at him in as pointed a way as she can manage: “You’re a lunatic. A dead lunatic. I’m not going to sit here and have a chat with you over synthcoffee just because you’ve suddenly decided you don’t want to kill me right now.”
“Don’t want to kill you period, not just right now. Cut me some fucking slack here, would you? Wasn’t exactly fun for me either, waking up in your head. Just needed some time to cool down, figure out what the fuck was going on. And now I have.”
The slow, deliberate way he’s speaking to her now is equally as hackles-raising as when he was snarling at her last night, like two different sides of the same godawful coin. “I don’t have time for this—”
“Just… listen a minute, okay? Wanna get your facts straight.” He leans back in his seat like he’s getting comfortable, and then reaches up to take off his sunglasses. He does this with the air of someone trying to make a point about how sincere they’re being. It doesn’t work. It does, however, give her the chance to make actual eye-contact with him, which feels bizarre to do with someone who’s not real.
Very dark eyes; surprisingly earnest. Still not even a little bit believable.
“Been thinkin’ it over, tryin’ to see a way to get us out of this. Ditch the suit, for fuckin’ starters. Bad enough I had to sit through your memories of bein’ a corpo-cunt for the last however many years, not gonna sit here and watch you crawl back into Arasaka’s lap—”
V slaps her hands down onto the table. “That’s not—”
He doesn’t pause, just talks right over her. “—just ‘cause the world’s shittiest bodyguard batted his pretty eyes at you and asked you to help him. Nah, fuck that. Start with Rogue. We go way back, me n’ her. You tell her it’s me she’s helpin’ and she’ll jump without even askin’ how high.”
“You really are out of your mind. I’m supposed to just rock up to the Afterlife and tell her, what, her choom who’s been dead for a half-century is haunting my skull?”
“She’s heard stupider shit. I’m tellin’ you, she’ll dance to any tune I play her. Just need you to set up the meet.”
V watches as he slouches further into the booth, kicking booted feet up onto the table and crossing them, casual as you please. He puts his sunglasses back on like a punctuation mark at the end of his declaration, self-assured that she’ll see the wisdom of his plan and automatically agree. Even folds his arms behind his head in a posture of affected insouciance.
It gives her a hit of sick satisfaction to watch his mouth twist into a scowl when, after a few beats of silence, he realizes she’s not biting. She can’t quite resist leaning further into that impulse to needle his ego. “Can’t believe you think she’d still be carrying a torch for you fifty years after you flatlined.”
“Fuck.” He exhales, annoyed. “You’d really rather let that Arasaka dog talk down to you n’ boss you around than listen to me for even a second, huh?”
“He saved my life. You tried to bash my head in against my own window.”
“Still harpin’ on that. Didn’t kill you, did I?”
“Not for lack of trying!”
Silverhand scowls. Wiggles one boot back and forth, restless. “Drowning response,” he says, terse and cut-off. “Thought I was trapped, tried to claw my way out. That’s all.” With his sunglasses back on, she can’t read his expression, but she can read the tension in his body. When she doesn’t respond, he tips his face up to the ceiling, lets out a noise of irritation. “Fuckin’ get past it already and listen to what I’m trying to tell you. Get us to the Afterlife and I can fix this. We just gotta—”
“There is no ‘us,’ you unbelievable asshole.” She’s had enough. She can’t do this. V heaves herself up out of the booth with both hands braced on the table, wincing at the wave of lightheadedness that follows. “Ghost off. Leave me alone.”
Her back is already turned to him when he returns fire, his contemptuous drawl following her as she heads through the door. “Would if I could, sweetheart.”
After leaving Tom’s, V eventually winds up camped out at a food stall outside her building. She had missed a lot of calls in the days following her resurrection. While huddled over a two-eddie bowl of soup—the idea of eating anything more substantial made her stomach churn—she begins the laborious task of working through the backlog of messages.
Halfway through a stack of largely unimportant voicemails, she runs into a roadblock in the form of a few missed calls from Mamá. Her thumb hovers over the screen. The nausea that rolls through her is only partially nerves; the rest is disgust at her own cowardice.
V taps the call icon.
“¿Bueno?“
“Hola, Mamá—”
“¡Bendito sea Dios! V, ¡estás viva! ¿Por qué nunca atiendes tu teléfono?”
The sudden increase in volume has V scrambling to adjust. There is a tone of voice particular to worried mothers which seamlessly combines relief and anger; this is the voice that Guadalupe Welles is currently utilizing, and it sends little ripples of pain through V’s aching head.
“I’m sorry, Mamá, honest. I wasn’t well. Vik didn’t tell you?” It feels comfortingly familiar to be speaking Spanish again. Of her childhood friends from the old neighbourhood, Jackie and Misty were the only ones she had kept up with—and of those two, Jackie was the only one she spoke it with on an everyday basis.
Now that he was gone, V wondered if she would slowly forget how.
“He told me he sent you home yesterday, is what he told me, and yet I don’t hear from you until today! I was worried sick, dear one. I thought you might be—”
V exhales heavily, pushing her bowl of soup aside to lean her elbows against the countertop. “I’m sorry. I should have called sooner.”
“Yes. You should have. How are you feeling? It sounds like you’re outside, but that can’t be the case, because I know you’re too smart a girl to be out walking around when you should be recovering.”
“I’m just grabbing lunch, I promise. I’ll go back inside after. How are you holding up? Is there anything I can… do? For you? Anything I can help with?”
Fuck. What can you even offer a woman who just lost her only remaining son?
“You can rest, is what you can do. And make arrangements to get somebody to bring you down here when we put together Jaquito’s ofrenda tomorrow evening.”
V swallows hard. The hand of grief applies a sudden pressure to her throat and, for a time, the words don’t come. Then: “Yes, of course. What time? Should I bring anything?”
“Bringing yourself and your beautiful face will be enough. I miss you, little bird. We all do.” There is a pause on the other end of the call. “You never have dinner with us anymore. You could do that, too, if you wanted… we’re going to start at seven, but you can come early and I’ll fix you a plate.”
“No, I—” Dangerous, to deliberately turn down a home-cooked meal, but her guts flip over at the very idea. “Maybe next time? I’m not really feeling up to eating much yet. Where are you having it? Your house?”
“No, the bar. There won’t be enough space at the house for everyone… a lot of people are coming to say goodbye to him.”
“That’s good.” V’s voice is quiet as she says this. It’s easily the saddest sentence she’s ever been this happy to hear. “I’m glad, Mamá. That’s… how it should be.” She swallows. “I’ll be there, I promise.”
“Of course you will.” Another pause, longer this time. “You know our doors are always open to you, V. They never closed. You could even come stay with me for a little while, wouldn’t that be nice? Just like old times. Just like when you were a little girl.”
There is blatant, unhidden hope threaded through Mamá Welles’ voice now, and it threatens to break V’s composure. Her voice breaks first. “Quizá. Lo pensare,” she manages after a cough. “Hasta mañana, Mamá.”
“Cuídate mucho, V. Hasta mañana.”
The only clothes she has that are suitable for a funeral are leftovers from her corporate life. It seems apropos to wear them; a dead woman wearing a different dead woman’s clothes to grieve her dead friend. Staring blankly at her closet for several minutes leaves V no closer to a plan and she eventually has to go lie down again before the vertigo sends her to the floor.
She does feel better than she did this morning, though. Maybe by tomorrow she’ll feel at least half-human again. Her thoughts wander as she lays in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Where to start? How should she even begin to…
Well. There is one avenue that she can try right now.
[outgoing holocall to: Evelyn Parker]
[This call cannot be completed at this time. This user is currently outside the available network.]
Fuck.
She sends her a text, too, just in case. It bounces back instantly. A non-starter, then, at least for the time being. V’s eyes slip closed again.
Her thoughts eventually circle back to how Takemura had reacted to her distrust of Arasaka, her unwillingness to consider coming back onto his side of the company line. She had said ‘no’ as a reflex, but was it really the worst idea in the world? There was something to be said for the devil you knew, and she knew this particular devil very well.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
V covers her face with both hands as if to block out the sight and sound of Silverhand glitching into view, making himself at home in the little armchair by the foot of her bed. “Not looking for input, here.”
“Too bad, you’re gettin’ it anyway. You’re not seriously considering going back—”
“I could,” and if it comes out more defensive than she’d like, well. So it goes. “He has a point. There’s only so much I can do by myself. Without connections, without resources…”
“So, what, you’re gonna slink back in there with your tail between your legs? ‘I’m so sorry, please take me back, I’ll be a good girl this time’—” He sounds openly disgusted at the idea but his choice of words disgusts her too, so really, it’s even.
“Do you have to say it like that? Christ.”
She doesn’t have to be looking at him to tell he’s pleased to have goaded her into a reaction.
“Hey, I held back. Could’ve said somethin’ about how willing you seem to be to deepthroat the boot—”
The sigh that comes up out of her is muffled by her hands but still profound enough to make her whole frame rise and fall dramatically. “Look. It’s not like it’s something I’m excited about, it’s just… business. Like Takemura said, they have something they can offer me. I’d be a gonk to dismiss it out of hand.”
“Be a worse gonk to accept it,” he bites back. “You got free. Maybe not on purpose, but you did it. Can’t believe you’re considering—even for a second—the idea of crawlin’ back in there. Fucking pathetic.”
“How is it pathetic to want to survive?” V takes her hands away from her face to sit up and glare down at him. He’s sitting there so casually, legs crossed at the ankle, ashing his ghostly cigarette into her very real ashtray. For some reason his attitude of deliberate nonchalance is making her unreasonably angry but taking one breath, then two, allows her the distance to bring herself back down. Her voice remains flat as she watches him take another slow drag. “How is it pathetic to use them for what they can give me? It’s not like I’m buying what they’re selling. I’m not… signing back on because I want to be employee of the month someday. I just want to not die.”
“So you don’t care what you have to do to make that happen? Don’t care that you’d be bending over for corporate cock again?”
V can feel the way her whole face scrunches up at this. “You have to be doing this on purpose. No one can be this gross by accident.”
He shrugs. “It’s a gift.”
“I’m not even saying it’s something I’m going to pursue, it’s just an option I’m keeping open. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Hard disagree, princess. If you let yourself get fucked by Arasaka, both of us are gonna be walkin’ funny in the morning.”
V flops over backward again into the pillows, unwilling to continue to entertain this line of inquiry. Her eyes fall on the bottle of omega-blockers resting on her bedside shelf; as if sensing the implicit threat there, Silverhand flickers out of view again.
That’s another thought that keeps circling in her mind, actually. Something he’d said last night—something about being trapped. When Misty had initially given her the blockers, she had just described them as a way to keep the construct ‘quiet.’ But what if that wasn’t entirely accurate? What did they actually do?
She wasn’t sure how she felt about the idea of locking him away, if that indeed was what it was like for him when she took the pills. It would be fair to say she wasn’t enjoying his company—but on a basic, philosophical level, she also didn’t want to be responsible for putting him in some kind of brain jail. If she accepted the basic premise that he was a fully-realized AI and not just a very complicated virus, then the decision to shut him off became an unpleasant ethical quandary rather than just simple self-preservation.
Fuck. He could hear her, right? Like, hear her thoughts? Maybe if he picks up on the fact that she’s willing to consider forgoing the blockers, he’ll do her the courtesy of shutting the fuck up once in a while.
The thought almost makes her laugh. Yeah, right.