set upon a golden bough to sing

by Sorrel

Summary:

When most people talked about 'losing their better half,' they prolly didn't mean it fucking literally.

Notes:

• Translation into Русский available: и с древа золотого петь живущим by uneasy_flowers

Title from "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats, specifically the verse that Alt quotes if you take Johnny's path to Mikoshi.

Funny thing was, Kerry was the only one to actually ask about it, the whole fucking time. Rogue'd wanted to know the how's and the why's like the good little schemer she was, and everyone from the ripper to Anders fucking Hellman had been lining up to tell V how awful it must be to get stuck with the likes of Johnny Silverhand, but only Kerry ever bothered to ask like he didn't assume he already knew the answer.

It was during their little catch-up session in Kerry's ridiculous overwrought villa, after Johnny got him caught up on events to date but before they got nostalgic enough to boot up old tour videos, for fuck's sake. They were, what, maybe a couple hours in? About half a bottle down - tequila, 'cause if V was gonna get stuck with the hangover again it should at least be a familiar one - and he was noodling around on one of Kerry's excellent guitars and absently shook his head when Kerry went to top off his glass.

"What the fuck," Kerry said, and set the bottle down with a hollow thunk. "Fuck, man, are you sure it's really you in there?"

"Fuck off," Johnny said easily. "Not everyone has a synthetic liver."

"Well why the fuck not," Kerry said, and started laughing. "Jesus man, you some sort of teetotaler now?"

Johnny cast an ironic look at the half-empty tequila bottle. "Yeah, that must be it."

"Fuck off, for you this is practically abstinent. Don't fuckin' try to to tell me you're going in for that 'my body is a temple' crap at this late date."

"It's not my body," Johnny said, more vehemently than he'd really meant to. "It's on loan. A generous loan, so don't get used to it, Ker. I'm on thin ice here as it is."

Kerry hadn't stayed on top of the music scene for seventy goddamn years by being slow on the uptake, no matter how dumb he liked to play. "Alright, fucker, out with it. What the hell did you do?"

So Johnny told him the whole sordid story, because someone should probably get some amusement out of that clusterfuck. And Kerry laughed at him, just like Johnny'd known he would, and he laughed too, though it wasn't really funny anymore. Hadn't really been funny since the second he saw V's face in that shitty little motel room, not the storm of temper he'd been kinda looking forward to but betrayal, a sick sense of violation that had twisted at her guts so hard even he could feel the echo. He'd known then he'd gone too far.

And she'd forgiven him anyway, soft-hearted little gonk that she was. He still wasn't entirely sure why, since fuck knew he didn't deserve it. But damned if he'd let himself fuck that up again.

"Jesus, Johnny," Kerry said, when he was done. "I take it back, you haven't changed a bit."

Johnny paused to take a sip of his drink, less because his mouth was dry from all the talking than to hide the quick sting of hurt that rolled through him. "Yeah, well. I'm tryin'."

Kerry didn't say anything for a moment, and when Johnny looked up he was frowning, a little blurred around the edges from the drink but still sharp as a fucking tack when it came to seeing through Johnny's bullshit. Him and Rogue both, they'd always seen right through him. But where Rogue had given up and delta'd the fuck outta there like the practical bitch she was, Kerry'd always kept trying. Hoping for better, like maybe this time his old pal Johnny would manage not to let him down.

"That's not nothing," was all Kerry said, though, and gestured to his arm. "'zat the ink you got?"

Johnny didn't look down. He knew what it said. "Yeah. Got too weird seeing bare arms."

"Yeah, I'm sure it's the loss of your ink that's the problem there, for sure." Kerry flicked a bottle cap at him. "Fucksake, man. You got tits."

"Among other things," Johnny agreed, waggling his eyebrows because he knew Kerry wouldn't take it wrong. "Nah, it's not like that though." Didn't feel weird to sit in the driver's seat even though the only thing familiar was a set of clever fingers. Felt fuckin' natural, every breath and every movement. Felt like it belonged to him.

More than half the fucking problem, right there.

"Alright," Kerry said slowly. He poured himself another drink and then sat forward, elbows braced on his knees, tumbler dangling from his fingers and expression intent. "So tell me what it's like."

Johnny fingered idly through another set of chords, thinking on how to describe it. Kerry sat there and let him, always patient when you least expected it. Funny, 'cause he never fuckin' shut up most of the time, but he knew how to sink down in it when it mattered. Prolly why he'd always been the better musician, when it came right down to it. Johnny had to chase down the shit he was trying to say and cut it open for the world to see; Kerry knew how to sit still and let it come to him.

"You remember some of the early gigs," he said finally. "Back when we were still playing shithole bars and, I don't fuckin' know, industrial parks and shit. Wherever we could, basically. Whoever the fuck would listen to us."

"Yeah, man. 'course."

"And sometimes it was utter trash, right, the crowd was rough or our gear was busted or we couldn't get our shit together, and after we'd storm around and swear this was the last time, we were breaking up, who even needed this shit anyway. Right?"

"Right," Kerry said, laughing under his breath. "Nance would go out the window and Denny'd swear she was done with us, and I was gonna punch your lights out if you stepped on my cue one more time."

"'zactly." Johnny stilled his hands and looked up to where Kerry was watching him, those bright eyes fixed on him. "And then you know other nights, sometimes shit would just… line up? The energy from the crowd was great, our gear was singin' sweet, we all played with that extra snap, y'know?"

"Yeah," Kerry said softly. He was no longer laughing. "I remember."

"And when that happened, it was fuckin' magical, right? Like we couldn't go wrong. I'd improvise some bullshit right there on stage and you'd pick it up like it was nothing, like we'd practiced it a thousand times. Felt like I was just some cog in a bigger machine, all of us and the crowd all linked together to make some fuckin' music. To do something that mattered. You ever feel like that?"

"...yeah." Kerry blinked rapidly and cleared his throat, looking down at his drink. "Yeah, think I know what you mean."

"Well, then," Johnny said, and bent back to the guitar. "That's what it's like."

Johnny tended to wake up first, Her Highness not being what you'd call a morning person, and he hated it. For one thing, the dreams knocking him awake weren't usually of the pleasant variety, which was a convenient reminder of why he'd never bothered to get sober, and for another… Well, it was just wrong, was all. Being alone in there. He'd prolly spent somewhere around the GDP of a mid-size corp over the years making sure he didn't have to deal with the inside of his own head, and it turned out he didn't like it much better when getting high wasn't even an option anymore.

At least when he was awake, he couldn't inflict his nightmares on V. Silver fuckin' lining right there.

The morning after Kerry's she didn't leave him alone with his thoughts for too long, thank fuck, since he had a few too many of 'em. All told it couldn't have been more than five minutes before he felt the small familiar stirrings of her dreams collapsing back down into nothing. He could have woken her up - they'd tested it a few times, and so long as she wasn't in REM she could still hear him - but he could tell it wouldn't take long today, and it was sort of comforting to lie there with the mutterings of her synapses starting to engage. Like listening to Kerry tune a guitar, only inside his head.

After another few minutes she flopped over onto her back and stretched extravagantly. An equally outsized yawn, and then she rolled back over onto her side, this time towards the edge of the bed where he was sitting, and blinked sleepily up at him.

"Timezit?"

"Oh nine hundred, soldier," he told her, amused as always by the near-incoherent mumbling. Shit hit the fan and she'd be up as quick as you like with iron in hand, but the rest of the time it took a fuckin' act of congress to get her lazy ass out of bed. "Up and at 'em."

"Shove a cock in it."

The cat, alerted that his favorite victim was awake, took a running leap at the bed. V oof'd quietly as he landed on her ribs, then resignedly began to scratch under his chin. The urgent purr ratcheted up a couple notches.

Johnny didn't even bother to hide his smirk. "Someone wants breakfast."

"Talking about yourself in third person again? Cause I'm tellin' you right now, I'm not getting pancakes again."

"Aw, come on!"

"No means no, buddy. I am pancaked out. The pancake well has run dry. If I so much as look at a bottle of syrup I'm gonna ralph."

That was probably fair. "Speaking of which, how's the hangover?"

She scrunched up her nose, considering, but he could feel for himself that she wasn't too bad off. "Not bad, honestly. Way better than I would have figured after partying with a rockstar."

"Excuse you, two rockstars."

"Who're old and boring now, apparently, not that I'm complaining." She gave the cat one last conciliatory scritch and then summarily ejected him, hauling herself upright with a bleary look. "Ugh. When did Kerry say when he wanted to do this shindig, anyway?"

"Dunno. Prolly didn't get that far. Plannin' never was his strong suit."

"You know that's hilarious coming from you, right?"

"Ah, go eat a dick."

"Long as it's not on fuckin' pancakes, sure."

"Couple days, maybe," Johnny said, ignoring that since he couldn't think of a good enough comeback. "Can't play on a weekend, everyone's booked. And don't want to leave it too long or Henry'll just crawl back into a pill bottle again. Don't say it," he said preemptively, seeing the light in her eyes. "It's a whole 'nother order of thing, trust me."

"Fine, fine. Guess I gotta get a move on, then. Can't have some washed-up rockerboy showin' me up."

"Dare you to say that to his face," Johnny said, but he didn't move away to let her stand. "Hey. V."

"Mhm?"

"You know you don't gotta go through with this whole gig idea, right?"

She blinked at him. "Yeah, 'course."

"I mean it. Just 'cause I was runnin' off at the mouth doesn't mean you're... obligated, or some shit. That's not what I want."

"Johnny-"

"I'm just sayin'," he said, because it needed saying, and he was trying here, damn it. "I know what I'm asking here. I know what's at stake. Wouldn't blame you if it's too much."

"I get that," she said, but she was smiling now, not the reflexive smirk of the early days but a proper smile, one that softened the hard angles of her perpetual sneer. "It's fine. Wouldn't have said yes if I didn't mean it." She yawned and stretched, the hem of her tank top riding up to show a strip of tanned belly. "Oughta warn Kerry though, I can't sing."

That distracted him, right enough. "The fuck you mean you can't sing?"

"The fuck you think it means? Means I can't sing." She hauled herself out of bed and wandered off to the bathroom, humming… okay kind of tunelessly, but that didn't mean anything, right?

He followed her and stood in the bathroom doorway, scowling at her. "Everybody can sing."

"Not me. Can't do a note." She flicked on the shower and grabbed a brush as she waited for it to heat up, attacking last night's snarls with sleepy gusto. "I've been reliably informed my singing is, and I am quoting here, 'a hate crime.'"

She actually did the finger quotes, which he always found hilarious for some reason. "No shit?"

"No shit. And bet you can't either, you take the driver's seat. So we should give Kerry a head's up."

"'s fine, I'll just make him sing lead anyway. He'll love that. Finally get the chance to show me up." She was staring at him. "What?"

"I have literally not heard you say one nice thing about him. Don't take this the wrong way, but do you two actually like each other?"

Johnny shrugged. "We're chooms."

"That didn't actually answer my question," she told him, but she must not have expected one, because she was already turning to pull off her tank top. Johnny took the opportunity to subtly check out her latest implant scars - still an angry red around the edges, but healing nicely - and must not have been subtle enough, because when she looked back she narrowed her eyes and flicked water at him. It splashed harmlessly onto the mirror behind him and he held up his hands in a 'who, me?' gesture. She rolled her eyes and stepped under the spray.

Time to change the subject. "So what's the plan for today?"

"Well, first I gotta-" A yawn overtook her, a proper jaw-cracker that echoed all the way down her spine. "Gotta get some fuckin' coffee," she finished, shaking away the last of the shivers. "And then call… whatshername. Not Bes Isis, apparently."

"Nance. Nancy Hartley. She played keys."

V squinted at him through the fogged shower stall. "Wasn't she the one that went to jail for throwing her input outta an eighty-story window?"

"Husband, and eighty-third, but yeah." Restless, Johnny pulled out a cigarette and rolled it between his fingers. "Real piece of shit, too. Not that she let us know. Probably afraid we'd flatline the bastard."

"You tryin' to say you wouldn't've?"

"Course I fuckin' would've! I just wouldn't have gotten caught."

"What's the point of bein' chooms with an edger if they can't shoot a guy for you, right?"

"See, that's what I said! I've shot gonks for way worse reasons."

"Oh I one hundred percent believe that." She squirted out a dollop of shampoo and set to with vigor, working up a lather that foamed pinkish-red around her fingers. "Question is, you ever zero a guy for better."

Johnny thought about Arasaka Tower, Alt's life and freedom hanging by a thread and the whole fucking world teetering on the edge of collapse. Sure fucking felt like the right reasons, but he'd felt that every time, and to hear others tell it he'd usually been wrong. Maybe Rogue was right; maybe it really had always been about him and his goddamn ego. The ache in his chest told him different, but- he wasn't exactly himself anymore, was he?

"Dunno, really," he told V. "You?"

V blinked water out of her eyes and gave him a vaguely affectionate look that also managed to convey that she thought he was a fuckin' dumbass. "Johnny my man, you of all people know just how many people I've flatlined for a good cause."

Not for the first time, Johnny thought about how well she would've fit in back with the old Atlantis crowd, with her quick tongue and her rough-edged sense of justice. Mercs these days didn't give a shit about style as long as they got their eddies, at least as far as Johnny'd seen. Last of a dying breed, that was his V. Shit, he would've loved to meet her back then.

'course, he prolly would've hit on her and gotten his teeth smashed in for his trouble, but damn. What a way to go.

"Well, maybe this time you won't have to shoot anybody," he said, diplomatically but without much hope, and changed the subject. "Hey, don't forget to take your blockers. Don't want you putin' it off to the last minute this time and making me miss the meet with Nance."

"I know, I know. First thing after breakfast, I hate taking 'em on an empty stomach."

"Hey, any chance you'll-"

"No waffles either."

"Oh come on!"

Nobody was more surprised than Johnny when they walked away from the Maelstrom meet without so much as showing iron.

"It's because I'm so very charming," V told him, trailing Nancy through the crowd like a murderous duckling. "Who's the Queen of Diplomacy now, huh?"

"You saved the guy's life and just let him off the hook with about the smallest favor imaginable. Wouldn't pat yourself on the back too much."

"Yeah, but I saved it very diplomatically. Motherfucker had a five K bounty on his head and I still let him go. That's class right there." She sighed disconsolately. "Could've really used that scratch, too."

"Didn't you klep like ten K off the corpo bitch?"

"Yeah, but a girl's got needs." One of the borgs veered away from his little pack, vectoring purposefully towards Nancy. V dropped a hand to her holster, grinning with all of her teeth. The goon took one look at her face and decided he had other places to be. "Not everyone can make millions screamin' into a mic a few times a week. Some of us have to work for a livin'."

"Think you've got us confused, Kerry's the one who gives a shit about that," Johnny said, amused. Nancy hadn't even noticed. "Speaking of which, is he paying you for this gig? Technically you're a session player."

She shot him a smirk over Nancy's head. "Technically you're the session player here, choom. Maybe Kerry thinks you're not worth the scratch."

"Eat a dick."

"And anyway," she continued, grinning now, "aren't we pretending he's my input or something? Dunno how I feel about being a kept woman at this late date. My mama raised me better than that."

"Did she?" Johnny asked, interested. "Did she really?"

"No, but she could've, and then you'd feel bad. Oh hey, there's the elevator."

Nancy scrambled inside as soon as it opened, perhaps not as cool and collected about the near-miss as she was pretending to be. She eyed V as she hit the button for the ground floor, taking in everything from the expensive optics to the shitkicker boots, with special attention to the outline of the dog tags through her shirt.

"So you're V, huh." V obligingly threw up a peace sign, and Nancy tilted her head. "Not much of a talker, are you?"

Johnny choked on an ill-timed puff of his cigarette.

"I am the strong and silent type," V agreed, over his coughing fit. "So what brings you to the Totentanz, Mz. Hartley?"

They made awkward small talk about the 'Totentanz sound' on the ride down, while Johnny smoked and refrained from pointing out that there was no such thing, unless you thought running a cutlery drawer through an industrial waste disposal counted as music. He doubted Nance did. Whatever she was doing here, sure as sunrise she was scrolling something a lot juicier than some shitty noisecore band. Which also meant she was real goddamn lucky V had rolled in when she did.

Nancy fuckin' Hartley, he thought, shaking his head. Hadn't changed a bit, not really. Wasn't much of a surprise she went screen jockey, now that he thought about it. What was media but the biggest and shiniest way to push people around?

It wasn't until they were in Nancy's shitbox of a car and on the way back to her editing studio that they finally broached the reason V'd schlepped down here in the first place. "Alright, hit me. What's Kerry after that's so important he had to send a solo out to fetch me?"

"Wants to bring back Samurai. One gig, one night."

Nancy clicked her tongue. "There is no Samurai without Silverhand."

Johnny wasn't ashamed to admit he preened, just a little bit. V shot him an exasperated look that warned him to keep his yap shut. "Gig's gonna be in his honor."

Nancy rolled her eyes, which was less flattering. "What's got into Kerry all of a sudden? Thought he got over all of this ages ago."

"It's a real mystery," V said solemnly. "You'd have to ask him, I'm just the messenger."

"Uh-huh," Nancy said. "I suppose that means you don't know what's in it for me, either?"

"Beats me. Reunion with some old friends?"

"Oh, come on. Kerry and Johnny were friends, that's it. We just floated around, sometimes got in their way."

That stung, all the more because he knew it wasn't entirely wrong. V shot him a quick, commiserating look before refocusing on Nancy with an extra edge to the angle of her head that told him she'd just decided to go in for the kill.

"Well, then maybe you can consider it payback for gettin' you out of there with all that data you scrolled right under Brick's nose."

Nancy went entirely still for a moment, caught out. Johnny almost wanted to laugh. That's what she fuckin' got for assuming V was just some gonk kid with stars in her eyes.

"Fair enough, kid," Nancy said after a moment, a wry twist to her mouth. "Got yourself a bargain. Still leaves us one member short, though, unless Kerry's dug up a replacement already."

Now V was the one pausing, deciding how to play it, only before she got there Nancy cut her a swift sideways look. "Ah, let me guess. You?"

"Mhm, more or less."

"With those hands?" Nancy snorted. "Pull the other one, it's got bells on it."

"Callouses," Johnny said to V's questioning look, and wiggled the fingers of his bad hand in explanation. "Any player worth his salt has 'em."

"Ah," V said, and told Nancy, "It's Realskin, it doesn't scar. Not as flashy as a whole silver arm, maybe, but I am pretty much chrome from the elbows down."

Nancy slowed to a halt at a red light, and then peered down at the hand V presented for her inspection. "Shit, that a Mark IV launcher?"

"Yup." V rotated her wrist, the smooth line of her arm segmenting and opening just wide enough that Nancy could see the mechanism underneath. "It's no tactical nuclear warhead, but it'll do."

Nancy barked a laugh and straightened up, accelerating smoothly through the intersection. "Well, you got the attitude right, at least. And I assume you've got the skills to back it up, since I can't imagine Ker's thinking with his dick for a change."

"Is she calling me ugly?" V asked Johnny.

"Nah, I think she's callin' Kerry gay. Could even be true, who knows. He always liked cock better but time was he wasn't what you'd call overly discriminating."

"As opposed to you, whose type was 'has tits and a pulse?'"

"Now, don't be like that, darlin'." He leered at her over the tops of his shades. "Tits were optional."

Nancy cleared her throat, maybe taking V's silence as offense. "Say, where'd Kerry dig you up, anyway?"

"Around," V said vaguely, and then, when Nancy gave her another piercing look, admitted, "I broke into his house."

Her eyebrows flew up. "Superfan?"

"Thief. He's got lousy security."

"Well, you're not wrong there," Nancy sighed. "So how'd you go from that to setting up a damn reunion tour?"

"Just a gig, let's not get ahead of ourselves. And, uh. I thought the place was empty, couldn't resist giving one of his guitars a try." V rubbed a hand over the back of her neck, the picture of sheepishness. "It… wasn't empty."

Nancy snorted. "You two leadheads deserve each other." She hung a right, swerving skillfully past an arguing knot of pedestrians. "Man, Ker hasn't played with anyone in, fuck, gotta be at least twenty years now. And now he's letting you take Johnny's place? You must've knocked his socks clean off."

"Must have," V agreed mildly, gaze straying briefly to the back seat. Deadpan, Johnny threw up a pair of devil horns. "Honestly, figure it was a right place, right time sort of thing."

"Just in time for him to find yet another way to mope about Silverhand." She cast a swift, cutting look over V's frame. "At least he's not likely to fuck this one, for a change."

V coughed. "Yeah that's uh, that's not on the table from my end either," she said, carefully not looking in Johnny's direction. "Trust me when I say becoming Silverhand is not my goal."

That took the amusement out of the situation, right enough. Johnny rubbed fitfully at his chest, where the echo of an ache had been lingering ever since that fucking parade. It was getting worse, he knew it was. Fuck, maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.

"You want to call it off, just say the word. Kerry's goddamn ninety years old, he can find another way to get his groove back."

Nancy couldn't hear him, of course; she was laughing, like V was just making a goddamn joke. "Fuck, who would? The man was a disaster, and I'm not even talking about the nukes."

"Yeah, no doubt." V caught Johnny's gaze deliberately over the back of Nancy's seat and held it as she said, "But for one night at least, I can think of worse people to be."

The day of the gig dawned cold and clear, a late-winter crispness to the air that almost managed to wash away the worst of the city's smells. Not that Johnny got to enjoy it: V was sleeping off a late-night rumble with Sixth Street and didn't get up until well after noon, and she actually remembered to take her fucking blockers for a change so he missed the next few hours too. By the time he came back she was waist-deep in some haphazard attempt to clean up the clothes and half-disassembled weapons scattered over every surface of her apartment, and discretion seemed the better part of valor in that engagement. He spent the rest of the afternoon composing set lists and occasionally offering color commentary on her shit taste in music.

V finally mustered herself to face the day right around the time the sun was starting to set, wandering down to the diner to carb up for the big night. She held fast on the pancakes but compromised on hash browns and even dumped extra hot sauce on her eggs without complaining, a mark of affection if ever he'd seen one. Johnny propped his chin on his fist and watched her eat, his useless imaginary cigarette burning endlessly down to nowhere between his fingers.

V tolerated it for a while, but she wasn't much of one for being gawked at, even when it was just him. She pulled a face, trying to get him to laugh, and when that didn't work she just straight-up waved the fork in front of his nose.

"Helloooo, earth to Johnny, come in, Johnny."

He knocked it away with a grunt. "Get that thing out of my face."

"Alright, alright, no need to get grumpy." But she didn't return to eating, either, just studied him with her eyes tilted up in a quizzical smile. After a moment, she said, "Enny for 'em?"

"Well don't go breakin' the bank there," Johnny drawled, but he could tell she wouldn't let up. "Ah, it's nothin'. Just thinking we used to do this a lot, back in the early days. Play all night, crash at dawn, sleep all day and then grab breakfast for dinner. Work, or practice, or play another gig, and then get up and do it all over again."

"Sounds like a pretty good life."

"It had its moments." More than he'd realized at the time, probably. He'd been so fucking- so fucking angry, all the time, until he felt like he was drowning in an ocean of filth no one else could see. Music was the only thing that ever made it better, like lancing a wound that just wouldn't heal. Like he had to let it out into the mic or it would burn him up from the inside.

And then one day that had stopped working, too, and the anger was all he had.

"You miss it?"

Johnny rolled his eyes. "Sex, drugs, rock 'n roll? What's not to miss?"

"C'mon, be real with me for a minute. What is it that you miss the most?"

"About my life?" He stared at her over the tops of his shades. "You know that's a real fucked-up question to ask a dead man, right?"

"I mean I'm a dying woman and you ask me fucked-up questions all the time."

"Well," he said, and then stalled out because, shit, it wasn't like she was wrong. "I… dunno. Gimme a sec."

V shrugged and returned to her plate, but he knew that didn't mean the subject was dropped; she was just doing what he asked and waiting. Shit. What'd he miss? Fuckin' everything, that's what he missed. He'd had a whole fucking life before and he wanted it back with the same useless, hopeless yearning he'd felt when he lost his arm.

But everything carried a whole lot of baggage with it, too, a whole lot of shit he wished he could take back. Did he really miss banging one groupie after the next just for the momentary pleasure of feeling something? Fuck no, that shit was exhausting. Did he miss getting skezzed out of his gourd every damn night because he couldn't stand the inside of his own head? No thanks, not having his own brain chemistry try to kill him was proving pretty fuckin' great actually, who fucking knew. Did he miss getting into screaming matches with Ker and the others, lashing out over and over again because he couldn't understand why they were all so fucking blind, because that was the only reason he could think of why they weren't so fucking angry all the time? Did he miss the constant sickening waves of hate - for the corporations, for the slavish morons in the crowd, for his own fucking face in the mirror?

Fuck, no, of course he didn't. But if he'd been - as he was slowly beginning to realize - so fucking miserable all of the time, then what the hell did he miss?

"Music," he said abruptly, after who knows how long in silence. "I'm not saying I was god's gift to rock or whatever the fuck I told myself, but I made some pretty damn good music, back in the day. Maybe it didn't set off the goddamn revolution, maybe it didn't even come to anything in the end, but- Bein' up there, feeling the energy from the crowd, hitting that perfect solo? Shit, yeah. The best high in the world."

V finished chewing at leisure, her gaze fixed contemplatively just past his right ear. Then it came back to him with an almost audible click, and he could feel her focus, feel the attention fixed on him. Felt the snap, just like he'd told Kerry. Fuckin' synergy.

"Well then," she said, and he watched his own smile stretch across her face. "Let's see about getting you a fix."

He'd been right: being on stage again was fucking awesome.

He'd told himself he was doing it for Kerry. The man needed a win, anyone could see that; always had got locked up in his own head if you left him alone too long, which it seemed the world had been more than happy to do. And Kerry didn't ask for things, not really, so if he was asking it must be important. Damn near altruistic, if you looked at it like that. A last gift from a dead man.

But Johnny couldn't keep lying to himself once he hit the stage: he'd needed it, too. Funny, 'cause back in the day he'd told himself it wasn't about the crowds, wasn't about the performance, just the fucking message, that was all that mattered. Getting into people's little gonk heads and shaking things up, making them think. But the second the crowd started picking up what they were putting down - fuck yeah, he felt it. The best high in the world, like he'd told V, and fuck but he was flying tonight.

The only way it would've been better is if V had been there to see it too. But she didn't get to stick around when he took the wheel, not like he'd half-expected that first time at Afterlife. He'd waited and waited, gone through half a damn bottle of tequila figuring she'd show up any minute now, any second, that he'd hear the flicker of a holo and she'd slide onto the stool at his elbow. He'd been looking forward to it almost as much as having a body again: having her ride shotgun, makin' wisecracks and talking shit at his expense. But then she didn't show, and Rogue didn't show either, and he'd figured fuck it, I'll do it myself.

Which just went to show he might not get manic anymore but his impulse control was still for shit. Go fucking figure.

Anyway, he knew not to expect her by now. The time for fooling himself was long past: this wasn't a goddamn timeshare, some sitcom ghost story with a happy ending. This was a preview of the worst-case-scenario, what would happen if they didn't make it to Mikoshi in time. Johnny knew that better than anyone, but it didn't stop him from feeling off-balance the whole time, a maddening itch of something being missing like trying to relearn guitar after he first got his new arm. Like there was something waiting, just outside his field of vision, only when he looked she was never there.

After the show he grabbed a couple rounds and headed to a back corner, dodging congratulations and drunken well-wishes along the way. Nance had kept her word not to alert her fellow vultures but from the size of the crowd it looked like word had gotten out anyway. Not fast enough to hit the real music junkies, but there was a pretty solid crowd of mercs and hardcases packed in, which meant a fair number of 'em recognized V. Johnny lost count of the number of times he'd heard 'I didn't even know you could play guitar!' by the time he made it to where Kerry was waiting.

"I hate to say it, choom, but your plan to stay off the radar is officially fucked."

"Who the fuck cares," Kerry said, and threw back the first shot. "Goddamn. Goddamn! I am fucking wired. Feel like I could run a fucking marathon."

"Well, don't put your back out, old man," Johnny drawled, sliding onto the stool next to him. "Still put on a hell of a show, by the by."

"Damn right I do." Kerry took the second shot and then just stood there and jittered, crossing and uncrossing his arms. "Fuck. This is fucked up."

Johnny moved his drinks out of reach, just in case Kerry decided to get grabby. "What is?"

"Actually, uh, got pretty nervous for this thing. Felt like I had something to prove. To myself, to you, to whoever the fuck." He let out a little laugh, low and not really that funny. "But all I did was… have a good time. That's it."

Johnny couldn't think of anything to say. Thanks, I had fun too? No, that wasn't the point. You never had anything to prove to me? Kerry would think he'd swapped back already; just wasn't the kind of thing they said to each other. There were a lot of things they never said to each other, really. Prolly too late to change any of it now.

So instead he just said, "Wanna do it again?"

"Huh?" Kerry blinked at him, refocusing, then shook his head. A tiny smile curled the corner of his mouth. "No. That was enough."

Just as well, since Johnny's mouth was once again writing checks his dumb ass couldn't cash. Luckily, thanks to Nance he did have one last symbolic gesture to make. "In that case… here, take it." He gently slid his axe down the bar. "As a souvenir."

Kerry reached out a hand and then paused, darting Johnny an uncertain look. "You sure?"

"Won't play without you," Johnny said, which was true in more ways than one. "Just wouldn't be the same."

"See what you're doin' here," Kerry warned, but he was smiling as he picked up the guitar. "But I still plan on playin'."

"Didn't figure I could do much to stop you," Johnny said, smiling helplessly back. Fuck. Kerry. "Treat her nice, 's all I ask."

"Better'n you," Kerry said, already bent over the strings. "Mm, what if I…"

The sentence trailed off into nothing, already distracted by some tune no one else could hear. Johnny sat there and watched him for a minute, storing up the familiar slope of his shoulders, his faintly abstracted expression and the reverent stroke of his fingers on the strings. Then he took a deep breath, threw back the blocker clutched in his sweaty palm, and chased it down with a final shot of tequila.

As the world faded to black around him, he could just about make out Kerry saying, "Ya wanna hear a new-" and then he was gone, gone, gone.

He made it back just in time to see Kerry's sturdy shoulders parting the crowd. A quick glance at the clock said he hadn't missed more than a minute, two tops. Johnny frowned after him, wondering where he was going in such a hurry - and then caught sight of V, braced on her elbows with her head hanging down.

"Shit, you alright?"

Her head snapped up. His shades were dangling from her fingers, and without them he could see the pale, pinched look in the corners of her eyes. "Peachy keen, jellybean."

Yeah, she looked it alright. If she still had 'ganic eyeballs he'd wager anything you liked they'd be bloodshot like a junkie coming off a three-day bender. "Can't believe that asshole Kerry just up and left you like this."

"Johnny…" V was giving him that you dumbass look again. "It occur to you he might have wanted to say goodbye?"

"Gave him the damn guitar, didn't I?" Johnny said, ignoring the quick sting of guilt. Kerry would figure it out eventually. Always did. "What does he want, my fuckin' firstborn?"

"You're an idiot," she told him, but she shook her head and knocked back the shot he'd left for her, so he knew she was going to let it lie. "You don't have one of those, do you?"

"God, I hope not. Be tricky tryin' to explain the child support, given the givens."

"Gonk," she said affectionately. "Aside from that, you have a good time tonight?"

"I did, yeah. And it was good for Kerry, too." He took his time lighting a cigarette, putting his lighter back in his pocket and taking a deep illusory drag before he said, "But I shouldn't have done it."

She took just a little too long to settle on the right note of playful offense, and from the quick flicker of her eyes she knew it too. "Come on, Samurai, don't go soft on me now."

Yeah. Had her number, right enough. "Thought we agreed to try trustin' each other," he said mildly, and she winced, a flush burning up onto her cheeks. "I'm in there too, y'know. Think I can't tell it's getting worse?"

V didn't say anything, but she didn't have to. Hard to lie to the inside of your own head. Johnny'd learned that hard truth a long time ago.

"Christ, V," he sighed. "Shoulda just told Kerry to shove it."

"Yeah, well." She drummed her fingers restlessly on the bar top, not quite meeting his gaze. "Look at him, he was all sad and pathetic. Who could say no to that face?"

"Me, all the time! Just about all we did most days was tell each other to fuck off."

"Not turnin' into you just yet, choom. Still got some standards."

"And look where they got you, you dumb fuck. You look like death warmed over."

"You're no sight for sore eyes yourself." She grimaced and massaged the bridge of her nose, then let her hand drop limply to the bartop. "Fine, alright. This should probably be the last time we try one of these little conjugals of yours. Happy now?"

"Fuckin' ecstatic." He sighed and dropped down onto his elbows. Fuck, and here was mad at the wrong person, as fucking usual. "Nah, 's my fault, I get it. Hyped this thing up, didn't think it through. Fucking typical."

"It happens to the best of us," she said wryly. "And hey, look on the bright side - this thing doesn't work out, Kerry might still get his reunion tour."

And even now, she still didn't fucking get it. "Don't fucking say shit like that!" Johnny slammed his hands down on the bar and she recoiled slightly, her eyes going wide. "Is that supposed to make me feel better? Fuck, V, that's the last thing I want!"

"Whoa, hey, easy, I know. Johnny. Hey." She waited until he caught her gaze. "I know that, man. I do." She licked her lips. "I'm just… I'm just sayin', if that's the way the dice roll, it's not the worst way this could end."

I'd do the same for you, she'd said that morning in the Pistis Sophia, face pale and her eyes earnest. Huddled on the floor like it just plain hurt too much to move and looking up at him like she heard him, like she got it, like for the first fucking time in this whole goddamn mess she could see right through to the bottom of him like an empty lake. And then he'd gone and promptly fucked it up with that Rogue thing, naturally, because Johnny fucking Silverhand never found a situation he couldn't make worse by stickin' his dick in it, but still. He'd held onto that moment, that one singular shining proof that he didn't ruin everything. That maybe some things could work out after all.

He wasn't willing to have them work out like this.

"Oh fuck off with that fatalist bullshit," he told her, his imaginary heart pounding with very real fear. "We're getting to Mikoshi, we're getting you your body back, and you're gonna live for another hundred fucking years while I go off into the wild blue yonder. That's the only fucking way this ends. Do you hear me?"

"Yeah, Johnny." The smile that curved her lips was almost sad. "I hear you, choom. Loud and clear."

He should have known then what was going to happen. Hindsight always was a bitch and a half.

He didn't know where he was at first, when he managed to drag his eyes open. Wasn't sure what he was expecting - to wake up in the dataterm room? A 'saka lab? The fucking oil fields, again? - but it wasn't a scuffed-up metal ceiling, dirty from years of smoke, or the roughness of synwool upholstery scratching at his cheek. What was- Why did he feel so-

It was only when he turned to ask V what the hell was going on that he remembered.

"Hey there," a familiar voice said to his left. "Was starting to think you'd never wake up."

It took some effort, but Johnny managed to roll over to face the rest of the room. Rogue was sitting there, straddling a chair backwards, arms folded forbiddingly over the back.

"V?" she asked, very quietly, and Johnny shook his head.

"Guess again," he managed, past a throat that felt like it was full of razors, and Rogue's face went very still.

"Johnny Silverhand, what the fuck did you do."

"For once, this was not my fault." He hauled himself to a sitting position. The world swayed around him and every neuron of his body spiked with pain, but he breathed through it and after a minute it subsided to a manageable roar. "How the fuck did I get here?"

"Pulled your dumb ass out of the wreckage," Rogue said, after a hard look that said they'd be circling back to that. "That was some spree you two got up to, I'll tell you that much."

"How'd you-"

"Oh please, V goes to meet with the Queen Bitch herself and twelve hours later Arasaka Tower is full of corpses, and I'm not supposed to figure that was you two dumbasses pulling a suicide run? You've always been an asshole but don't insult my fucking intelligence, Johnny."

That was fair. He probably should have known she'd figure it out, if he'd put more than two seconds of thought into it. Or maybe he'd just figured she wouldn't give a shit without him to wheedle her into it.

Whole world don't revolve around your dick, Silverhand.

Shut up, you don't get to tell me what to do anymore.

"What happened down there," Rogue said after a minute, when it became clear Johnny wasn't going to say anything. "I thought the plan was-"

"I know the fucking plan!" he said, and then had to stop, and breathe past the lancing pain in his ribs as much as the wild surge of temper. "Sorry, I-"

"It's alright," she said, softer now. "Just- what happened to V?"

"V's gone," he said, and hated how easily it came to his lips. V's gone, like that was the kinda shit you could just say, like some simple, immutable truth. Like he hadn't been torn in half and left to bleed out alone. "She's beyond the Wall, she ain't coming back from there."

"Shit," Rogue breathed, and he could only nod in numb agreement. "I don't get it, why'd Alt take her instead of..."

"Instead of me?" Johnny said, when she fell silent. "It's fine, you can say it. I was the one who's supposed to die. Already dead, right? Just a fucking hitchhiker on someone else's life, dragging her down with me. Only decent thing I could do was fuck off and leave her to pick up the pieces. I know that. I fucking tried, Rogue. God help me but I tried!"

"Alright," she said, holding up her hand. "I get it, Johnny, fuck. Just- what happened? Where'd it go wrong?"

"Oh," he said, and laughed. It wasn't a very pleasant laugh. "Oh, you're going to love this. So, we make it into the Tower, right? Ram right through the fucking front door, you shoulda seen it. All the way down to the sublevel, took out every ratfucker that got in our way, it was a thing of fucking glory. And it fucking worked, we got Alt plugged it, made it down to the dataterm - Smasher's dead by the way, we killed the shit out of him and then set him on fire just to make sure-"

"Jesus, Johnny," Rogue said, but he was on a roll now.

"-and we got to Mikoshi, and Alt did her thing, it was all coming up roses, right? Except no, 'cause see, apparently when Alt was makin' her promises she forgot about the body, right, only the whole goddamn point of this, to get V her fucking body back! Except that's impossible, Alt says. Ratfucking chip went too far, trying to make room for my useless ass. Apparently she'd get six months, at the outside, if she went back."

"Ah, fuck," Rogue said softly, and Johnny laughed raggedly.

"Yeah. And then - fucking get this - and then she says: well, Johnny could still go back."

He waited for Rogue to curse him out, call him a selfish asshole, a double-crossing sonofabitch. All of the things he'd expected V to say, when Alt told her. But V hadn't gotten angry, not like she should've. Just... bewildered, which'd been a whole lot worse. Everything, all we did, it was pointless? Jesus Christ, might as well have torn his heart out with her bare fucking hands, it would've hurt less.

In the present, Rogue wasn't saying any of it either, just watching him with those dark eyes that always saw right through him. "What'd she do?"

She. Not, what did you do, which was better than he deserved, probably. Or maybe it wasn't him she thought better of, but V. Maybe she figured that anyone who could strap on her iron and storm Arasaka Tower while standing at the very gates of hell herself wouldn't back down for so much as a second, right down to the very end. And she'd be fucking right. Like Alt had said, down there in the dark: the right to make a choice you have earned, through will and endeavor.

Fucking hell, if Johnny had known what she'd do with her goddamn endeavor he would've knocked her out and fucking taken it, promises be damned. Better her alive and hating his guts than-

Rogue was still waiting for an answer.

"I tried to talk her out of it," he told her, willing her to believe him. She could think whatever she liked of him normally, he'd earned it and then some, but not this. He needed her to understand this. "You gotta believe me, I fuckin' tried. But-" It's my decision, let me make it! "But in the end, she-"

The clasp of her hand, the only real thing in the shifting world. Her bright eyes fixed on his. That patient little smile, the one she always got when she'd made up her mind and was just waiting for everyone else to catch up.

I'll see ya 'round, Johnny.

"She made her choice," he said finally. Maybe that was all that mattered, in the end. "Now I gotta live with it."

"Shit, Johnny." Rogue's exhale was so low as to be almost voiceless, the harsh planes of her face softened with unwelcome sympathy. "I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, well," he said, and then stalled out. What the fuck could he even say to that, right? It'd been like this after Alt, too, everyone just so fucking sorry like that meant a gnat's fart against the black hole where a whole brilliant person used to be. And Alt, she'd been close, yeah, he'd lost his shit when she died, but it hadn't- Fuck, he'd never felt like this.

How the fuck was he supposed to keep going when half his soul had been ripped out at the goddamn roots?

"Dunno why I'm surprised, really," he said, staring at the wall. He wondered how long it would take him before he stopped expecting to see her at the corner of his eye. He wondered if he ever would. "Always said she was too stubborn for her own good."

"Yeah," Rogue sighed. Her gaze was unfocused, fixed on the past. "Know a thing or two about what that's like."

There wasn't much he could say to that, even if he'd wanted to. The grief in her voice was for someone who hadn't existed in a long time, if he ever had. Johnny fuckin' Silverhand hadn't been the kind of man worth mourning.

After a minute Rogue stirred, pulling herself out of her own dark thoughts. "Is there anything I can do?"

Rote words, probably, just the shit you said when you didn't have anything else, but unlucky for her Johnny was asshole enough to take her up on it. Maybe a better person would have let it ride, but the better person had left the fuckin' building and Johnny was all that was left.

"Actually, yeah, there is. You can make sure word gets out that V died down there, ripping those 'saka bastards a new one."

"Johnny…"

No, fuck no he wasn't hearing this. "She wanted a blaze of glory, she gets a fuckin' blaze of glory, alright? It's the one goddamn thing she wanted from this shithole burg, and she-" He had to stop himself before he started yelling at Rogue, who hadn't actually done anything to deserve it. "You can't say she didn't fuckin' earn it."

"Guess I can't," Rogue sighed, looking about fifty years older all of a sudden. Fifty years tireder, at least. She almost looked her age. "Are you sure? Her friends will-"

"Her friends deserve to know she's gone. Don't worry, I won't stick around long enough to make a liar out of you." He scrubbed his hands over his face, missing the familiar prickle of beard. He was gonna have to get used to that, now. Fucking christ. "And Rogue?"

"Yeah?"

"Do it up proper, alright? Make sure she gets her goddamn drink at your bar."

"...yeah." She cleared her throat. "Yeah, Johnny, I can do that." She scrubbed the back of her hand over her mouth. If her eyes were a little overbright, neither of them were going to mention it. "What'd she drink?"

That stumped him for a minute, because as long as he'd been riding with her he'd never seen her order anything but a shot. But then he remembered, back in the dusty annals of her memories: that first meal with Welles, homemade chili in a sunny kitchen, jazz on the radio and her face aching as much from grinning as the broken nose. He could remember that first drink like it was yesterday, could almost taste it on his tongue. It had tasted like freedom.

"Double tequila, grenadine and lime." Nothin' better for settling the stomach, ey, chica? "And the tequila's gotta be Centzon, alright, it's the only stuff she-" He stopped. Swallowed. "Was the only stuff she'd drink."

"Alright, Johnny," Rogue said, much softer now. "I'll take care of it."

"Thanks, Rogue. I owe you."

"For this? No charge." She rose from the chair and gripped his shoulder. "I won't ask where you're going because it's better if I don't know, but take care of yourself, okay? I don't want to bury you again."

Again. Maybe just a turn of phrase, but he knew better. He'd seen the niche. 'A legend among legends' - and right next to Alt's, too. Oh, Rogue. Fucking christ, he really hadn't deserved her. Hadn't deserved any of the friends that had stuck with him along the way.

"I'll do my best," he told her, and put his hand over hers, gripping tight. "Look after the city for me?"

"Always," she told him, and gave his shoulder one last squeeze before letting go. "Good luck, Johnny. And whatever you do, for god's sake, don't fucking waste it."

ONE YEAR LATER

If you were looking to get lost, as the saying went, there were far worse places to go then Detroit. 'Course, if you wanted literally anything else pretty much anywhere would have been a better choice, but 'lost' suited Johnny just fine. Whole city was full of drifters and day laborers, desperate hopefuls that came to cash in on the repo craze sweeping the city's landfills. In another year or two the locusts would finish stripping the place and the bottom would crash out all over again, but for right now it suited him fine.

He'd even lucked into a decent gig at a garage just outside the city, stripping the junk the haulers brought in for salvage. He wasn't any kind of real mechanic but he knew his way around an engine, and what he didn't know V's top-shelf Kiroshis could usually figure out for him. It put him a cut above the kind of scop-slinger a little independent shop like this could usually expect to pull, so he figured he was good to hang here for a while. Could probably do better at one of the big reclamation gigs, but he wasn't so far gone he was willing to put himself on a corp's payroll.

Today he was wrestling with a dusty old clunker of a pickup, old enough to make him feel young and sprightly in comparison but with some half-decent wiring under the hood. Getting it out was proving to be a whole 'nother question altogether, and Johnny was cursing steadily under his breath when he heard footsteps approaching from the office. Natasha must've gotten back from lunch.

"Valerie? Hey Val, you back here?"

"Under," he grunted, straining against a rusted-over bolt. "Gimme a sec."

"Oh sure," and from the corner of his eye he saw the day-glo boots retreat to the nearest wall. "You need a hand?"

"Nah, 's almost- Fuck!" The bolt came loose with a groan, and Johnny just barely caught the plate before it could crash down on his face. "Got you, bitch."

He tossed it aside with a clunk and shoved himself back out from under the truck, blinking in the sudden bright light after so long underneath. A shadow resolved into a diminutive blonde wearing some kind of godawful strappy rainbow number and an expression of barely restrained pleading.

Johnny squinted up at her. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, god, you're so suspicious. Oh, do you-"

He shook away her offered hand, holding up his own grease-stained ones in explanation. "Best not," he said, and rolled to his feet. She handed him a rag without prompting, and his sense of suspicion grew. "So if nothing's wrong, what is it you want?"

"Wellll…" She fidgeted, twisting her fingers together. "You know how I listen to 101.5 in the mornings?"

"Hard to forget," Johnny sighed, because 101.5 was the lazrpop station and he tended to work the early shift.

"Well they had a contest - a trivia contest actually, about Us Cracks, most of the stuff was softball questions but then they had this really tricky one about their Australia tour-"

Johnny bit back a sigh. "Kid, is this goin' somewhere?"

"I won!" she blurted. "I won the contest. First prize is a pair of tickets to their concert tonight."

It didn't take long to connect the dots. "You've got to be joking."

"No I know what you're going to say but, it's not just them!" She waved her hands around in excitement. "Kerry Eurodyne is on tour with them!"

He blinked at her. Alright, this was news. "Since fucking when?"

"Since, like, three months ago? It's a huge deal, everyone's been talking about it. Did you seriously not know?"

"I'm a little out of the loop." And he'd been making a concerted effort to stay that way, pretty successfully obviously. "I knew he was producing their new album."

"Well, produced, it's been out for like six months," she told him, with a vaguely pitying look. "Anyway, he's on tour with them now, and they've got their big show tonight at the Newell Center. And I just thought- okay so like I know lazrpop isn't your thing, but you're always listening to that classic rock stuff on the radio so I thought maybe you'd be interested in the Eurodyne show. He's one of those old rockers, right?"

"Yep, that's him," Johnny said, enjoying the mental image of Kerry's face at that bit of description. Then he remembered that he was 'one of those old rockers' too, and his good mood evaporated. "But that doesn't explain why you're asking me, 'stead of one of your friends that actually likes that scop."

"Uh, well, the truth is that my car's in the shop, so I figured if I went with you we could take your truck instead of the metro, and…"

Johnny took in her too-fast speech, her sidelong look, her awkwardly twisting hands, and came to one simple conclusion. "Don't tell me you're tryin' to ask me on a date."

Her smile went brittle around the edges. "Uh. Not if you don't want it to be?"

Well, fuck me sideways.

Oh come on, even you had to see that one coming.

"I'm flattered, kid," he told her, and he even kind of was - though it made him uncomfortable too, in a way he couldn't quite pin down. Like he was lying to her, kinda, making her think he was just some pretty young woman with an undercut and a drawl instead of an aging rockerboy with a fucked-up past. It wasn't anything he could explain even if he wanted to, but- yeah. Not good. "But I wanna be clear here: even if I was lookin' for something, which I'm not, you're still way too young for me. It's not going to happen."

Might have been a little harsh, he thought, watching the corners of her eyes compress on a wince. His speech was tuned towards groupies with an overinflated sense of their own importance, not doe-eyed baby lesbians with a crush on a coworker. But better to be harsh but clear than fumble around trying to be nice and end up leading her on - or worse, make her think the no might be a yes if only she worked harder. He'd been a liar and a user for sure, but even he had lines he'd never fucking cross.

Luckily, Natasha was made of pretty stern stuff, and after a worrisome moment she rallied, her smile coming back brighter than ever. If it was a little false around the edges, well, that was more than fair. "It's cool! No worries! And if you really don't wanna go that's cool too, but I was serious about my car bein' busted, Dell said it'd be a week before he could get the part to fix it. So if you don't have anything better to do with your evening…"

'Better' was a relative term: Johnny didn't have anything to do period, but nothing might be an improvement on subjecting himself to fuckin' lazrpop. And worse, lazrpop fans. He didn't have much patience for that kind of thing when the fans were his; all that squealing and flailing over a coupla mass-produced pop stars just made the backs of his teeth itch.

But it would be good to see Kerry again, he admitted to himself. See what he'd made of his newfound maturity, the groove they'd gotten back for him. Johnny had heard a couple of his new songs on the radio and they were good, they were fucking good actually, so he knew that Kerry was doing alright but… it'd be good to see it, was all. Just to be sure. Kerry could lie to a lot of people about a lot of things, but he'd never been able to lie worth a damn to Johnny. If he was still fucked up about something, Johnny would know.

What the fuck he'd do about it if he was was another matter, since it wasn't like Johnny had any plans to come back from the dead, again. But fuck it, he'd cross that bridge if he came to it.

"Alright," he said, and then held up a finger when Natasha made a little eep noise of glee. "On one condition."

"Name it!"

Agreeing before hearing what it is? Man, Night City would have beat that out of her years ago.

Good thing you're not in Night City anymore, isn't it?

"You're driving," he told her. "Don't feel like dealin' with city traffic on my fucking night off, and I'm sure as shit not gonna deal with this crap sober."

The pickup ended up taking longer than expected, and by the time Natasha showed up at his apartment Johnny was still scrubbing off the engine grease. He answered the door grumpy and still dripping, and it took him longer than it should've to realize that her wide eyes and pink cheeks were probably because he'd wrapped the towel around his waist on autopilot.

Yeah, you're doin' a great job not leading the kid on.

Fuck off, didn't ask for your goddamn tits.

"Beer's in the fridge," he told Natasha gruffly, and disappeared into the back to throw on some clothes.

When he came back out a minute later she was still standing in the middle of the room, unopened beer held between her fingers like she wasn't quite sure what to do with it. He rolled his eyes and liberated it from her cautious grip, popped it, and drained it in three long swallows while she was still blinking at him in bemusement. He crumpled the can in one hand and patted himself down with the other, checking his pockets. Keys, keys, the fuck did he leave his keys-

"Hey, do you mind if I borrow your mirror for a minute?"

Johnny winced as he grabbed his jacket. See, this is why he didn't want people over. "Busted, sorry."

"Seriously?"

First thing when he'd moved in. "Dunno what to tell you, kid. Can't have shit in Detroit," he told her, and herded her out the door. "You look great, c'mon, don't worry about it. Traffic on the freeway's gonna be murder we don't get a move on."

Like all good Motor City kids Natasha'd been driving since she could see over the dash, so Johnny had no compunction about tossing her the keys and wedging himself into the passenger seat for a nap. Was prolly gonna be a long fucking night, so he might as well get some shuteye while he had the chance. Plus, at least that way he could head off the inevitable road trip heart-to-heart Natasha was almost certainly gearing up for.

"Hey, Val?"

Or not.

"Mhm?" he hummed, hoping she'd take the hint.

No such luck. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Just did," he pointed out. Silence answered him, and he sighed. "Sure, kid. Hit me."

"Who's Johnny?"

Johnny froze, then slowly pivoted to look at her. "Uh…"

"I'm not trying to be weird about it," Natasha hastened to add, at whatever she saw on his face. "It's just, you had your sleeves rolled up the other day and I happened to notice your ink? And you don't really mention people that often so I just wondered if maybe-"

"Kid," Johnny said, trying not to smile. "Are you trying to ask if he's my input?"

She squirmed in her seat. "Uh… not in so many words, but. Kinda?"

"Yeah, no," he said, biting back on the laugh for all he was worth. Poor girl would think he was laughing at her, and he wasn't, he really wasn't. But goddamn. "Just someone I knew once. A long time ago."

"You must have liked him an awful lot."

This time the laugh did slip free. "Fuck, no. Couldn't stand the bastard."

"Then why tattoo his name on your arm?" In a heart? her skeptical tone asked.

"It was… kind of a joke," he temporized, because the storm of bad decisions that led to that particular moment wasn't something he could explain without a couple of hours and a bottle of something strong. "Though prolly not a very funny one, lookin' back." V certainly hadn't laughed when she'd seen it. Then again, she never got rid of it either, and considering how often she'd swapped chrome she definitely could've. Maybe she'd left it as a monument to his fuck-ups, a reminder of what he risked if he betrayed her trust again. Or maybe it had meant something to her too, after all was said and done.

He wished he'd asked while he still had the chance. He'd give his left arm all over again just to know.

"I don't get it," Natasha confessed. "What's the joke?"

"Don't really remember, to be honest. Was skezzed out of my gourd at the time."

"...oh."

"Not the romantic story you were hopin' for, huh?" Johnny said, not without sympathy.

"I mean, I guess. I just figured… You're not from here, obviously, and Dell figures you're running away from something, and I thought maybe…"

"I'm tryin' to outrun a broken heart?"

"...sounds stupid when you say it like that."

"It's not stupid, kid. It's just not me." He stretched out his legs and folded his arms over his chest, longing for a cigarette. Fuck the nicotine, he missed having something to do with his hands. "Least, not the way you're thinkin'."

"Oh?"

"Lost a friend, a while back." He caught himself tracing his fingers over the outline of the dog tags and forced his hand back into his lap. "City was a little too full of memories after that."

"I'm sorry," she told him, automatic but horribly earnest. "You must have been very close."

Sometimes I can't tell where you end and I begin.

"Yeah," Johnny said, and looked out the window, watching the streets roll by. "That's one word for it."

They'd rehabbed the old stadium since he'd been here last, which shouldn't have been a surprise, given the givens, but still set him back a bit anyway. He'd had some damn good memories of that place; now it looked too clean, too shiny, like everything else in this godforsaken decade. Prolly a lot harder to find a line and a blowjob in the bathrooms these days, too.

Not that that was much of a worry for him anymore.

Natasha, at least, was excited enough for the both of them, and a few others besides. All Johnny had to do was put in the occasional "uh-huh" or "yeah?" whenever she paused and keep them moving along through the three, count 'em three layers of security on the place. Not that any of it was worth shit: the ICE on their subnet was pathetic, even for V's year-old daemons, and the guards were too busy hassling a group of kids in nomad jackets to notice the actual terrorist in their midst.

Johnny spent the time in line waiting for the hack to finish propagating and estimating the ratio of Kerry's fans to the teenybopper crowd. Pretty decent mix, actually. Better than he'd expected anyway, though he figured the odds of a decent pit were pretty low. Prolly for the best, to be honest. He wasn't sure he'd be able to resist, and that close stage was the last place he should be, no matter how shitty the lighting.

"ID," droned the bored-looking guard when they made it up to the last check, and Natasha squeaked in excitement as she stepped up. "Natasha Stevens, step into the scanner. Clear, move on. Next?" Johnny stepped up, and the guard gave him a disinterested once-over. "ID." Johnny tagged it over, and the guard's eyes shone briefly as he received. "Valerie Linder, step into the scanner."

Johnny tucked his extremely illegal hands in his pockets and tried not to jitter. If he'd fucked up the hack, he was about to answer some real tough questions, real soon.

"Clear," the guard said, and he let out a breath. "Move on, next?"

Natasha had no idea they'd been relying on Johnny's fifty-year-old nonexistent tech skills to stave off a full-blown security meltdown, and was damn near vibrating with excitement when Johnny caught up to her in the crowd. "Ohmygod, ohmygod, we're here, we're actually here!"

"Sure are, kid," Johnny said, and grabbed her elbow before she could wander off. "C'mon, bar first. Can't do a concert sober, 's practically a law."

The press of the crowd was a little more bearable after he got a couple of drinks in him, as were the strobing lights and the shitty lazrpop blaring through the speakers at full volume. He turned down his audio receptors, feeling like an old man even as he did so, but honestly the shit wasn't as bad as he remembered, especially the new stuff. Still scop-pop, sure, but he recognized a few of the riffs under the tinkling synth, and a driving beat that was all Kerry. Not anything Johnny would listen to voluntarily, but it was catchy enough in its way. And he knew just enough Japanese to pick up a few double-edged lyrics aimed at the record label. Nothing that would trip the censors in English, but clear enough if you paid attention - and their fans obviously did, judging from the cheers.

Goddamn, maybe the kids were alright after all. Prolly wouldn't accomplish anything in the long run, but shit, it wasn't like he'd done much either, when you got right down to it. Maybe all you could do was remind people there was another way. Maybe it was enough just to try.

Is that optimism I hear? From Johnny Silverhand?

Fuck off, 's your fault anyway.

Kerry didn't come out until halftime, by which point Johnny had managed to secure a spot along the wall where he was safely out of eyeline. Looked good up there, Kerry did, even adjusting for the pound of stage makeup they prolly had on him. Not too different from when Johnny saw him last; his hair was a little longer, maybe, his fussy little beard a little thicker. Little thicker around the middle too, so he still ate like crap on tour, but he'd always carried it well and now was no different. Better than the starveling look he got when he was too strung out or just plain distracted to remember to eat, that's for fuckin' sure. The leathers were new, Johnny could tell from the way he moved in them - he'd be bitching about chafing later, no doubt. Still allergic to sleeves, the vain bastard, but he'd packed on a bit of extra muscle so Johnny couldn't begrudge him showing it off.

And he still put on one hell of a show. He and the girls did a cutesy little comedy bit at the swap, him interrupting their cover of his song and them 'fighting' him off with a bunch of fake-karate dance moves that had the audience roaring in approval. The song ended in a kind of mashup of both versions that held together way better than it had any right to, and then the girls gracefully ceded ground when it was over, leaving the stage to him. Kerry kicked off with some old school hits that got the crowd on their feet, a few Samurai and a few of his solo stuff Johnny remembered from their joint tours, then moved into some that Johnny didn't know but recognized from the radio; post-Samurai classics from the last few decades. He rounded off with a couple of tracks off his new album, and then closed it down with his '22 version of Chippin' In with the girls singing backup, which was honestly cute as fuck.

It was a masterful arrangement, a commentary on the changing and increasingly commercialized nature of the music industry and a damn good show all at once, and it had Kerry's fingerprints all over it. He'd always had an eye for that shit, driven off more than a few stage managers over it too. Born for showbiz, he'd said when Johnny gave him shit about it, always with that little quirk to his mouth like a punchline to a joke nobody else got. But he was, was the thing. Johnny'd made some damn good music in his day, but he didn't think he'd ever been a musician in the way Kerry'd been from day fucking one.

It was good they gave that back to him, Johnny thought, as the crowd roared for an encore. He couldn't let himself wonder about when they'd hit the tipping point, if it had always been inevitable or if that had been the moment he'd signed V's death warrant. Maybe it didn't matter, in the end. They'd made their choices with what they had in front of them, and that was all you could ever do. And if that was the way the dice rolled, at least he could say he'd fucked it up trying to help a friend. There were worse regrets to have, he knew that for sure.

Johnny drank on the sight of him up there, flushed and grinning with one arm slung around the bassist's shoulders, happy and healthy and in his element. Yeah, he'd been right to come here, to give himself this. To let himself know it hadn't been all bad, that he hadn't fucked up everything he touched. Kerry was still alive, still making music, still making it up as he went along. Maybe in time, Johnny could figure out how to get there too.

Good luck, choom, he thought, and slipped off into the crowd.

He'd gotten what he came for.

Johnny had well and truly lost Natasha over the course of the show, but he'd expected that and made plans to meet in the parking lot. Johnny struck out towards the exit, figuring he'd just wait by the truck. Hopefully he wouldn't have to wait long, because the traffic jam heading out of here was gonna be a bitch and a half, and if they could beat the worst of the crowd-

"Excuse me, ma'am."

It took Johnny an embarrassingly long moment to realize that had been addressed to him. He turned and looked up - and up - at a towering wall of muscle with a security jacket and a forbidding expression.

Well, fuck.

"There a problem here?"

"No problem," the huscle said, with a look that said there better not be a problem if he knew what was good for him. "Step this way, please."

There wasn't really much point in arguing. "Lemme just text my ride," he said, and flicked a message to Natasha before he could argue. Change of plans, gonna find my own way home. The huscle glared, but Johnny only shrugged as he shoved his holo back in his pocket. "Lead the way, big man."

Best case scenario, he told himself as he followed the huscle backstage, they had a dweller who pinged his chrome and wanted to know what a Motor City mechanic with no record was doing with high-grade military implants. Worst case scenario, what was left of Arasaka had put out a bulletin with his face attached. But the most likely reason security could want to pull him aside had nothing to do with what he was, and everything to do with who he was.

The huscle drew to a stop next to what was very definitely not a security door. "Inside."

Johnny sighed to himself. Sometimes, he hated being right.

The door opened onto a green room indistinguishable from the hundreds of others he'd been in over the years, peeling off-white paint and shabby overstuffed couches and scuffed linoleum. Kerry was sitting at the dressing table, reapplying his eyeliner with a quick steady hand, his axe slung carelessly on the counter at his elbow. At the sound of the door his gaze snapped up to meet Johnny's in the mirror.

Johnny sighed. "Hey, Ker."

"Did you think I wouldn't find you, you son of a bitch!" Kerry yelled, and took a swing.

Luckily, Kerry didn't punch much better than be drove, and Johnny ducked it easily, coming up behind him. He swerved to avoid an elbow to the solar plexus - fucker had joints like steel picks - and wrapped his arms around him from behind, pinning Kerry's arms to his sides.

"Settle the fuck down, would you," he growled, not that he had much hope Kerry'd actually listen.

"Let me go you scopmunching dog-faced cunt-"

Yep, apparently not. "Not about to let you clock me this time," Johnny warned, but let go anyway. He stepped nimbly back as Kerry rounded on him, but Kerry only scowled at him and rubbed his upper arm.

"Jesus, you're strong," he grumbled. "How much chrome you even have under there, anyway?"

"Enough," Johnny said, because to be honest he wasn't a hundred percent sure himself. "Are you going to try and punch me again?"

"Prolly not."

Johnny eyed him askance. "Not gonna try and hug me either, are you?"

"Okay now I'm definitely gonna punch you."

He sort of looked like he was actually thinking about it, so Johnny held up his hands in a T. "Okay, time out. Dunno about you, but my days of brawling in dressing rooms are definitely behind me. How about we take this from the top, huh? I'll say, 'Hey, Ker,' and you'll say-"

"Fuck you, asshole," Kerry filled in, but there was the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth. "I'd say I'll see you in hell but it clearly can't hold you."

That was probably fair. "It's a long story," Johnny said diplomatically. "How'd you-"

"Find out? Rogue told me, how the fuck d'you think? At least she had the fucking courtesy to answer her goddamn holo. Didn't even make me pay for the privilege. You must've gotten to her."

"Nah, Rogue always did like you best. Said you made her laugh." Johnny shook his head and went to the sideboard. "Not what I was going to ask, anyway. Meant how'd you know I was here, tonight?"

"Oh, I had the name flagged. Pretty much every combination that I could think of. Check the upper cabinet, by the way."

Johnny reached up - having to go up onto his toes to do it, fuck but he missed his old body sometimes - and discovered a bottle of tequila. Centzon. He had to stand there a second, riding out the wave of grief, before he could force his fingers to close around the neck of the bottle.

"Could've knocked me over with a feather when that one popped," Kerry was saying behind him, oblivious. "Jesus, Johnny, you've gotten sentimental in your old age."

He'd figured it was safe enough; weren't many people left who even knew who Robert Linder was. He wasn't sure how he felt about Kerry knowing now, so he just said, "Can't exactly call myself Silverhand anymore, can I?"

"I mean you could, but it'd probably throw a wrench in your 'run away like a bitch and hide from your friends' plan. Gimme that."

Johnny let him yank the bottle out free of his unresisting hands, something that might have been guilt burning at the bottom of his chest. "Kerry…"

"No, fuck off, don't give me the sad puppy eyes. You're the one who took off! You know I had to find out about Arasaka on the evening fucking news? At least last time you bothered to-" He cut himself off abruptly, breathing hard, and took a swig off the bottle. "Jesus, man, all of that and you couldn't even say goodbye?"

Well fuck me, guess you were right after all.

Usually am, asshole.

"I should have," Johnny admitted, and Kerry's mouth closed with a snap. "I knew I should have. I'm sorry." V would have kicked his fucking ass if she'd been around to see it, but- that was the fucking problem right there, wasn't it? She wasn't fucking there anymore. He was on his own.

"I- okay," Kerry said, which wasn't the same as it's okay but was still better than Johnny deserved, probably. "Just- shit, man, why? You can't think I was gonna be an asshole about it."

"Nah, it's not that." Kerry had a lot of faults, but cruelty had never been one of them. "I just couldn't stand watchin' you pretend not to be grateful she was the one who died."

He'd seen Kerry take bullets better than he took that. But, credit where credit was due, he didn't take long to get himself under control either. It was only a minute later when he finally said, "Alright," his voice trembling and tattered around the edges. "Alright, that's fair, I can get that. But." He leaned forward, eyes overbright. "I hope you know I'm still sorry as hell she's gone. I didn't know her long, I get that, but I liked her an awful lot, Johnny. I really did. Not just because of you."

"Yeah, well," Johnny said, and stalled out, because fuck, what could he even say to that? Nothing sober, that's for goddamn sure. "You're only sayin' that 'cause she said you had the 'soul of a rocker.'"

"Didn't hurt," Kerry agreed, allowing the redirect because he was a better friend than Johnny deserved. "Did she say you had the soul of a rocker? No she did not."

"She coulda, the fuck you know about it?"

Kerry grinned. "Yeah, but she didn't, did she?"

"Fuck off," Johnny said gratefully, and swiped the bottle back out of his hands. "Least I didn't need moral support to rob a fuckin' delivery van."

"You fuck off, if you were around for that you saw it worked out fine in the end, didn't it?"

"Saw you get punk'd by a bunch of teenagers, sure," Johnny said, instead of pointing out that Kerry knew damn well he'd been around, Johnny had told him and V had told him and Kerry wasn't dumb, no matter what he liked to pretend. But if Kerry wanted to act like Johnny hadn't heard the things he said - like Kerry would've even said them in the first place if he didn't know Johnny was listening - then that was fine with Johnny. He'd heard them, and that was what mattered.

"Ah, they're not so bad," Kerry protested. "Smarter than we were at that age."

"Well, that's a low bar." Kids were, what, eighteen? Nineteen? Shit, he'd still been down south getting shot at. So had Kerry, for that matter. "Singin' for their supper 'stead of killin' for it? Yeah, I'd say they got the better end of the deal."

"Nah man, I'm telling you, they've got their heads on straight. That whole airhead routine is just an act, they're out there runnin' circles 'round these execs, it's a thing of beauty. I mean, there was this one time-" He cut himself off, shaking his head. "Ah, fuck, you don't give a shit about that."

"No, I do," Johnny said, and was surprised to find that he meant it. He'd never much liked that kind of petty power politics before, but… He wasn't in the middle of it anymore, and it obviously mattered to Kerry. "Enough about me and my bullshit, man, wanna hear about your tour. So there was this one time-"

Kerry gave him a last suspicious look, then jerked his chin towards the couch in cautious invitation. "Well, it was back before the tour, but we were hashing out some contract disputes over the single, and the label sent this absolute shark to handle the negotiations. Obviously thought he'd have an easy time steamrolling these gonk kids, but Red, she-"

"-and the worst thing, the absolute worst thing about the whole situation-"

Johnny wasn't sure what time it was, but the bottle was about two thirds gone so it was probably late. He'd been surprised to realize, when he'd gotten up to take a piss, than he was actually pretty fucking drunk. Which wasn't all that surprising since he wasn't six feet tall anymore, as Kerry had gleefully pointed out, but still fucking annoying. He'd made the executive decision to preemptively call in hungover for tomorrow then stumbled back to where Kerry was telling some convoluted story about a press junket, and that had been more than half an hour ago.

"-is that my manager is fuckin' thrilled." Kerry was staring into the depths of his glass like it had personally betrayed him. "When I brought up the tour idea I thought he was gonna jizz his pants, he was so goddamn happy. Almost called it off right then and there."

Johnny chuckled at his disconsolate expression. "Kerry Eurodyne, all grown up and stickin' it to the man."

"Oh fuck off, and what are you doing for the cause these days? Blown up any buildings lately?"

"Nah, I'm done with that."

Kerry eyed him skeptically. "No shit?"

"No shit. I'm out, man. For real."

"I'd say I'll believe it when I see it, except…" He waved a hand vaguely in Johnny's direction. "Well, shit, man, then what the fuck you doing in Detroit?"

"I'm a wrench jockey now, you can believe that."

"Fuck off!"

"I'm serious. Repo work. Town's got plenty of it."

"Holy shit I can't believe this," Kerry said, and started laughing. "Johnny Silverhand, all grown up and living the quiet life!"

"Johnny Silverhand's dead, Ker, or haven't you heard? I'm Valerie Linder now."

"Yeah, I uh. Noticed you kept the name." One heel bounced restlessly on the linoleum floor. "And the face."

"Well, not like anyone's gonna recognize it all the way out here."

"Not really what I was askin', choom."

He hadn't been asking anything at all, Johnny thought with faint irritation, just insinuating vaguely and waiting for someone else to pick up his slack, like fucking always. "Gonna ask me what I got down my pants, too?"

Kerry scoffed. "Like I'd need to, the way you dress."

"Don't slut-shame, Eurodyne." Johnny sprawled lower in his seat, passive-aggressively widening his stance. "Let's just say you ain't wrong and leave it at that."

"And you're good with that? Or…" Kerry held up his hands to ward off Johnny's glare. "C'mon, man, you gotta admit it's a fuckin' change. Uh, unless there's something you never-"

"Nah, nothing like that," Johnny said, because he could see that cliff coming up at a hundred miles an hour and wanted to head that shit off at the pass. "Not like it was for you, don't worry."

"Alright, cool," Kerry said, with barely-disguised relief. Yeah, Johnny just bet he hadn't been looking forward to that conversation. Kerry only seemed like an open book; there were some subjects that Johnny had always known not to touch, and the name on his tags was one of 'em. "So what is it like? 'cause with how proud you were of your pecker I would've figured it'd be first on your list."

"Heard plenty of your thoughts on my pecker already, thanks." But it was no more than reflexive sarcasm, and Johnny fell still after he said it, turning his glass around and around in his hands. "Guess I'm not a big fan of mirrors anymore," he admitted, after a moment. "Not- because of the tits or whatever," he clarified, before Kerry could get mixed up about that too. "Just-"

"Nah, I get it," Kerry said, mercifully rescuing him from the end of that sentence. "Shit, I didn't even think about that. Fucking rough, man."

"Is what it is," Johnny said, which had pretty much been his mantra for the last year. "Shit you can't change you just gotta live with, right?"

"I hear that, choom." But he had this odd, half-hesitant little smile, like he had more he wanted to say.

Johnny sighed. "Spit it out."

"Thing is… you can change it, can'tcha? Like, I assume you got scratch enough for a ripper, if you're not drinkin' it off every night. Could do the face, at least, if you're enjoying the tits so much."

"Dunno what to tell you, man," Johnny said with a shrug. "Just hasn't been high on my list of priorities."

"Yeah, too busy turnin' a wrench, apparently." Kerry studied him over the rim of his glass, his expression blurred a bit around the edges from the drink but still way too fucking sharp for Johnny's liking. "See, if I didn't know better, I'd think all this newfound zen is just an excuse to keep everything nice and shipshape for the previous owner."

It took a full three seconds before Johnny could draw breath to reply. "V's gone, Ker," he said, as calmly as he could around his rabbiting pulse. "She's gone and she's not coming back."

"Uh-huh, you said that, but I still don't get why. She's still out there somewhere, right? Like Alt."

"Alt," Johnny said, and laughed. It wasn't a very pleasant laugh. "Alt's how I know V ain't coming back."

"Why's that?"

"Well, let's see. Is it the part where Alt said everyone in Mikoshi would become a part of her, like some cannibal kiddie thriller from the nineties? Or because the Alt we knew doesn't fucking exist anymore? Has her form, her memories, but sure as shit doesn't have her soul, if it ever did."

Kerry looked blankly back at him, the gears turning almost audibly in his head. "Well, that's fucked up," he said finally.

Johnny almost laughed again, for real this time. Trust Kerry. "Yeah choom, that's one way of putting it."

"Okay but," Kerry said, leaning forward with renewed intensity. "You don't know how things turned out, do you? You're guessing just like the rest of us."

"Yeah, maybe. But it's a pretty good fuckin' guess, since she's not here to debate the goddamn point."

"Yeah but that's my point," Kerry said. "You're assuming it'd go one way because that was Alt's plan, but fuck, man, give your girl a little credit here, huh? That stubborn bitch didn't even change for your gonk ass, why'd some hunk of killer soft be any different?"

There were a lot of unkind things Johnny could say to that. That Kerry'd never even met the real V, back before Johnny had crept in on the edges of her, colored outside the lines. That the woman who woke up in that landfill wasn't the same as the one who strolled into Konpeki Plaza with a dream in her heart. That Kerry had no idea how much she'd changed along the way, and that if she hadn't been half Johnny already then Kerry never would've given her the time of day.

But while it was true it was only part of the story, and not a part that was worth revisiting now. So instead Johnny said, "Fuck, man, maybe you're right. Maybe she'll be too much for any of those assholes to swallow. Maybe Alt's out there choking on the biggest set of brass ones this side of the Atlantic."

"That's what I'm fucking talking about!"

"But," Johnny said, as merciless with Kerry as he'd been with himself, "that doesn't mean she's coming back."

"What? Why the fuck not?"

"Jesus, Ker, weren't you listening to me? She's past the Wall." Johnny thrust out a finger in a random direction, accuracy not being a major consideration at the moment. "Even if she could find a way back across - and that's a pretty big fucking if - why would she risk it? Netwatch would be on her ass in an instant, and Arasaka prolly not far behind. Life on the frontier's no picnic I'm sure, but it's gotta be better than anything she'd get over here."

"Oh, for-" Kerry threw up his hands, seemingly uncaring of the tequila that splashed over the edges of his glass. "Why? What d'you mean, why? For her friends, you fuckin' gonk. 'cause there's people who miss her. It's what you do when you give a shit about people, FYI, since you've apparently missed the memo."

"Why don't you choke on my cock," Johnny suggested, but Kerry just glared right back, lip curled in a familiar sneer.

"Yeah, there's the Johnny Silverhand I know, fuckin' knew you were in there somewhere. Wanna go a few rounds about me leavin' the band while we're at it, just for old time's sake? Fuck you, choom, and I mean that sincerely. All those times you ripped me a new one about givin' up, walking away, and this is where you choose to throw in the towel?"

"Fuck off!"

"Nah, that's more your style. Fucksake, man, you finally get treatment for that martyr streak of yours, or do you just figure getting someone to actually like you is the one battle too big for even Johnny Silverhand to fight?"

That slid right between his ribs, as well-aimed as only a friend knew how. "Fuck off," he repeated, weaker now. "Don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"You think?" Kerry studied him, that bright-eyed gaze always so observant at the worst possible moment. "Try this on for size. You don't really think V can't find a way back 'cross the Wall. She's smart, stubborn, resourceful, way too good for your gonk ass. So you just think she hasn't bothered. After all, who'd give that much of a shit about the likes of you?"

Johnny said nothing. Anything he could think to say turned to ashes in his mouth.

"Yeah, got your number, don't I?" Kerry shook his head wonderingly. "Jesus, Johnny. You are a fucking piece of work, you know that?"

"Yeah, so what's fucking new."

"Oh plenty, motherfucker, you are an endless fucking delight of new ways to fuck yourself up. No, shut up, Imma lay some wisdom down for your gonk ass. You ready for this?"

Johnny made a sarcastic 'after you' gesture with his glass, making a show of keeping his mouth shut. Kerry grinned at him, glittering sharp like broken glass.

"Alright. Listen, choom, it's not that I'm not happy you've decided maybe the world don't revolve around you after all, but can you even hear yourself? 'Oh poor me, nobody loves me, guess I'll go eat dirt.' Get the fuck over yourself, you narcissistc dickwipe."

"Oh yeah, I'm feelin' the wisdom alright." Johnny shook his head and finished off his drink in one long swallow. "Can't imagine why I wasn't in any hurry to catch up earlier."

"Shut the fuck up, man, I'm bein' serious here. Johnny. Look at me. Johnny." He waited until Johnny caught his gaze and then leaned forward, enunciating every word. "She let you borrow her body, man. So you could play a fucking concert. I've known you fifteen years and I wouldn't even trust you with a pack of cigarettes."

"You're the one who wanted-"

"Oh bullshit, she'd known me for like twenty minutes. It was all about you, just like it always fucking is. That dumbass kid put her life and dreams on the line because it mattered to you." Kerry laughed, a bitter little chuckle that seemed pulled from the depths of his soul, and threw back the rest of his drink. "Jesus, Johnny, what the fuck do you think love is?"

Johnny looked at him for a long, quiet moment. Wondered if maybe now was the time they were actually going to acknowledge that thing they didn't talk about, not once during more than a decade of friendship. To acknowledge that it had never been Kerry torn between fucking him and fucking him over, a tired old joke that sometimes almost managed to sound real. To admit that Johnny had always known and just been too much of a fucking coward to face it head-on, because then he would've had to figure out what the fuck to do.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Absolutely fucking not," Kerry said, looking almost as appalled as Johnny felt. "Besides, we're doing your bullshit now, don't try to change the subject."

Good old Kerry. He might've reworked everything from his ink right down to his fucking voice, but under the skin he was still exactly the same. "Oh yeah, and what was that exactly?"

"That you gotta find some fuckin' patience to go with that new humble streak of yours." Kerry leaned forward again, elbows braced on his knees and empty glass dangling forgotten from his fingers. "Fuck, Johnny, I spent five fucking decades wondering what the hell happened to you, if you went down with that Tower or if you were still out there somewhere and just didn't give a shit about the rest of us."

"Ker-"

"Yeah no, still not talking about me. My point is, you know exactly where V is, you know she's looking for a way back - no, shut up, she is and you know it - and you're mad because it's taking too long? Cut the girl some slack, for chrissake. I'm sure she's doing the best she can."

Johnny didn't say anything. He was thinking about- well, about a few things, but mostly about that night on the roof, when they'd decided to storm Arasaka Tower. They'd been arguing about how to get to Mikoshi, all the different options that boiled down to which of our friends are gonna die to save us, and she'd gone real quiet, her gaze fixed off in the middle distance. He'd been half afraid he'd lost her, again, but when he said her name she looked at him, like- Fuck, he didn't know what, but the corners of her eyes had been all creased up in a smile, a kind of wild glee blooming in the places where their edges had started to mix. She'd sat there looking like forty miles of bad road with blood still smeared at the corners of her mouth and his gun in her hand, and she'd grinned a grin he knew from the inside and said, hey, wanna do something stupid?

Johnny could, just barely, get his head around the idea that she'd been willing to die for him. But living with him was something else altogether. He couldn't even stand his own company, most days. Why the fuck would anyone sign on for that when they had literally any other option?

Then again, he thought, looking at Kerry's earnest, irritable face, maybe he should ask the resident expert.

"You think so?"

And maybe Kerry could hear the real question underneath, because his smile turned unexpectedly gentle around the edges as he leaned forward to splash more tequila in their glasses. "Yeah, choom, I really do. Might take her a while, but- you've got time, y'know? That's what the quiet life means. Means you've got time to wait."

Wait. Yet another thing Johnny had never been any good at; he'd always wanted things now, faster, fuckin' yesterday. But he'd also been living under a ticking clock, as far back as he could remember. He'd always known it would go south sooner or later, so he needed to do as much as he could while he still had the breath in his body to try. But if that wasn't true anymore-

If he had time-

"Well, shit," he said, and drew in what felt like the first clean breath he'd taken in almost a year. "Here's to the quiet life, then."

"To V," Kerry corrected, grinning. "And the biggest set of brass ones this side of the Atlantic."

"Shit yeah, I'll drink to that," Johnny said, and as he raised his glass he realized he was grinning back.

His truck was in the parking lot when Johnny slunk in the next afternoon, shades shoved firmly on over his nose and wincing at loud noises, but there was no sign of Natasha. Just as well; he wasn't up to answering a bunch of questions just now. He wished like all blazing fuckery he'd thought to klep a hangover tab off Kerry before he went home last night, 'cause no chance that motherfucker didn't still pop 'em like candy. And Johnny didn't keep any at his place, because he hadn't figured he'd need them anymore. Goddamn amateur hour.

The interior of the shop was blissfully dim and cool after the mercilessly sunny weather outside, which was such an improvement Johnny didn't even mind the reeking, rusted-out refrigerator some leadhead had left on the shop floor. Hard to see how he was supposed to get shit-all out of a hunk of junk like that, but wiring might be worth something if it wasn't too corroded, and hauling the rest down to recyc wasn't gonna be his fucking problem.

He was waist-deep in parts by the time Natasha came back from lunch, puttering around the front office humming User Friendly under her breath. She must not have realized he was back there, because when she wandered in a minute later she stopped dead in the doorway and let out a noise like an overboiled kettle.

Johnny winced. "Have mercy, kid, I can barely hear myself think."

"Oh my god where have you been!" she hissed, though thankfully at a lowered volume. "I looked all over for you last night-"

"Didn't get my message?"

"Not until I'd been looking for like thirty minutes!"

Fuckin' figured. "Well, you can see for yourself I'm fine."

"Which didn't help last night, since you apparently weren't checking your messages!" She waved her hands around in frustration. "And then I get in this morning and Dell said you'd called in hungover, which by the way he said to tell you points for honesty but, quote, do that shit again and you're fired, unquote."

"Don't worry," Johnny sighed, "really not planning on makin' a habit of it."

"So where were you? Partying with the roadies?"

"Uh, somethin' like that."

Her eyes went huge. "Were you with the band?"

Johnny could see this was going downhill fast and decided to surrender gracefully before it could turn into a full-blown farce. "Not the whole thing," he said. "Just Kerry. Uh, Eurodyne."

"Oh my god I know who Kerry is." Natasha looked at him like he was insane. "How did you manage that? Did you sneak backstage? Did he pick you up at the bar? Were there drugs involved? Did you-"

"Fucksake, Natasha," Johnny said, exasperated. "No, he didn't pick me up. And I'm sure as shit not dealing to him, Jesus Christ." Although his outrage was probably more than a little hypocritical, given the way he used to hand pills out like candy. Then again, he hadn't been selling them, either. "Just know the guy, is all."

"Oh is that all," Natasha mimicked, and threw her hands up. "You didn't think to mention it?!"

"It was a long time ago," Johnny said, which was true, and, "wasn't sure if he'd remember me," which wasn't.

Natasha wasn't having any of it. "Bullshit, no way you're that old."

"You'd prolly say the same about Kerry, and that fucker's geriatric."

"That's… true," she said doubtfully. "Though he has a lot more money than you."

"Wasn't always a mechanic, kid."

"Oh yeah? So how did you know each other then?"

"Played together some," Johnny said, starting to enjoy himself now. "Back when we were first starting out."

"Seriously? You just… played music. With Kerry Eurodyne."

"Lotsa people did back then. Man would jam with anyone who held still long enough."

"Oh my god you're serious," Natasha said blankly. "Oh holy shit, you actually jammed with Kerry Eurodyne. This is insane. I didn't even know you were a musician!"

"Used to be."

"Were you any good?"

"Prolly depends on who you ask," he said, amused. "I got by alright."

"This is so cool," Natasha said, and Johnny felt a chunk of his good mood shear off at her dreamy expression. The last thing he wanted was for her to look at him like something to admire.

"Don't go gettin' stars in your eyes now, kid."

She drew back a bit at the harshness in his voice. "I wasn't-"

"It wasn't as glamorous as you're thinking, I can promise you that. Scene was mostly a bunch of fucked-up people out to change the world who didn't give a shit about who they might step on in the process. The drugs, the sex, the violence, all of it was just grist for the goddamn mill. It wasn't a good place for anyone to be."

"Okay but it couldn't have been all bad," she protested. "Some of those rockerboys really changed things, y'know? People like Eurodyne and Silverhand, they were the real deal."

The laugh that slipped free didn't sound anything but bitter, even to his own ears. "Shows what you know."

But Natasha only hit back with a challenging eyebrow. "You think? My grandma got a job because of Johnny Silverhand, did you know that? She was living in the streets until SINS of Your Brothers came out, and then suddenly it was trendy to hire deserters. She met my granddad at that job, kept food on the table, a roof over their heads. None of that would have happened if some rockerboy 'out to change the world' hadn't stepped up and said something, in a way people couldn't ignore."

Johnny didn't say anything for a long minute, turning the wrench over in his hands. It was the one thing he'd thought he'd come to terms with, realizing that everything he'd done had come to nothing in the end. Arasaka was still around, corps still ruled the world, and people still swallowed their daily dose of propaganda like it was manna from heaven. He'd always told himself that the one thing that mattered most was going out a legend, but the only thing his goddamn legendary death had accomplished was to prove to everyone that the battle couldn't be won.

V hadn't thought that way. Oh, she'd mouthed all the right words - how you go out, yadda yadda, legendary yadda yadda - but he'd always known she hadn't really believed it. In her eyes death was just the final flourish; it was what you did with the time you had that really mattered. They'd argued it often enough, all that running around doing shit for other people when the crocodile was circling and the clock just kept ticking louder. He'd never seen the fucking point, and she'd never found the right words to explain.

I finally figured it out: dying's just how you make sure you'll be remembered. Everything in between is what you'll be remembered for.

Took you long enough, ya gonk.

"You might have a point there," he said finally, his throat aching like he'd sung a whole set. "You're pretty fuckin' smart, you know that?"

Natasha just grinned back at him, sunny and confident, her whole life ahead of her. "I do know that. But it's nice you're starting to catch up."

Johnny worked late that night, only partially to make up a few of his missed hours; mostly he just needed the distraction. Spent too much time thinking lately, too caught up in his own head. Not that that was such a bad thing - maybe if he'd spent a little more time on his own problems and less on the evils of society he wouldn't've been quite such an insufferable gaping asshole in his twenties - but thinking had a way of turning into brooding, and he wanted to head that shit off at the pass. The last thing he needed was more excuses to feel sorry for himself.

He took his time in the shower, scrubbing off the fucking liquor sweats as much as filth and engine grease, and then wandered into the kitchen in his sweats to throw a burrito in the microwave. As his delicious and nutritious meal rotated sadly on its plastic plate, Johnny sipped his beer and scrolled through the books he had loaded on his holo. No poetry tonight, he didn't think; what he needed was a good whodunit to take his mind off things. He was pretty sure he still had a few mysteries checked out, if he could just remember-

An incoming call notification popped up over the title list, causing him to lose his place. Cursing, Johnny almost flicked it to voicemail like the eleventy-thousand other times someone had tried to call him with stupid shit, but something made him pause. For one thing, the originating string had a Night City code, which wouldn't be weird except for the fact that he'd switched holochips six months ago and paid a runner to scrub it, specifically so he'd stop getting calls from NC. For another, it had an actual holotag attached, not just the generic 'user not found' image that came with a blocked ident. It was a cartoon cat, not like the hairless little gonk V'd given to the tarot chick to look after but sleek and black-furred, lean like the stray that used to hang around the alley of the building where Johnny grew up. It even had the scar over one golden eye and the white patch on its side from where it'd fended off a rival tom. And at the bottom of the frame, two crooked tails were curled around its neatly squared front paws.

Heart pounding, Johnny answered the call he'd been waiting for for eleven months, thirteen days, and nine hours.

"Hey," he said hoarsely.

"Hey," V said back, a smile in her voice. "How's life?"

Notes:

You know that one tweet that went viral on tumblr about Studio Ghibli romances, that was like "what if we didn't kiss... But instead both spiritually matured as people because we met each other..."? That's this entire pairing, and it makes me fucking feral. Sublimating desire into aggression is OUT, sublimating desire into self-improvement is IN. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

I'm sorrelchestnut on tumblr, come say hi!