Chapter Text
“Just like me, isn’t it?” Johnny’s drawl woke her with. “Getting trapped in the brain of Night City’s dumbest merc.”
V’s head pounded and her stomach roiled with nausea as the room swayed, like she’d sunk a few too many Centzons. Her eyes felt like knives had been stabbed into them over and over as they tried to stay open.
Where the fuck was she?
“What…what happened?” she asked Johnny, who was casually perched on top of a bog and staring her down, elbows on his thighs and hands hanging loosely. She wondered if he could feel the awful shit she was feeling, including the ice cold of the floor tiles seeping into her skin.
“Look around and connect the dots” he replied. V started to shuffle to sit up, indeed looking around her. It was filthy in there. Then the memories returned. Ugh, fucking hell. Stefan swaggering about, offering her a “preem” BD in exchange for a chunk of eddies, and then making her fork out even more eddies to play it on his own wreath because apparently it would only work that way. That should have definitely been a red flag, as not once had the wreath Judy given her not been able to play something. Another red flag would have been the dingy little shack that housed said wreath, tucked away from view. If she hadn’t been feeling reckless and probably on the verge of a breakdown, she would’ve been smarter and just told him to fuck off.
V then recognised where she was, and the penny dropped along with her stomach. She had been here before.
“Scavs…shit…can’t believe I got conned.” V slowly sat up, desperately willing the pounding in her skull away.
“So your brain isn’t completely fried to a crisp! That’s good,” Johnny’s mocking tone came. But she sure felt like her brain was fried to a crisp. “Time to wake up, ‘cause you’re about to be breakfast.”
V looked down and realised she was naked, except for her panties. Great. Sure, Johnny had likely seen her body through her own eyes when she was looking down in the shower or catching her reflection. Her apartment bathroom was off limits to him, and she always got changed in there so she didn’t have to waltz around with everything on display. But having him stare across at her, bare on the floor of a scav nest bathroom, instantly put her on edge and made her feel like a fucking idiot. He’d best not utter a word.
V frowned at Johnny who only smirked in response and covered her chest up with one arm, pushing up from the tile as slowly as she could. She wobbled slightly but managed to stay upright. She looked around her, and right there was the bath of ice she had been leaning against. The one she had hoisted Sandra Dorsett out of on a gig for Wakako a few months ago. Her and…Jackie…their last job before the heist at Konpeki where it had all gone wrong.
V breathed in deep through her nose. She started shuffling forward, testing her balance like a toddler learning to walk before feeling satisfied that she wasn’t gonna hit the deck immediately.
She crept out of the room, low to the ground like always, her thighs burning slightly. One scav was graffitiing some awful art piece on the wall to her left, and the sounds of Night City hummed through the open balcony door ahead where two more scavs were chatting shit about what was so obviously her and Jackie when they were here for Sandra. She didn’t give a shit that they called her a cunt, but her body flushed with rage at hearing them refer to Jackie as a “Valentino-looking psycho”. Well, she’d show them a real psycho.
V suppressed a growl and ghosted over to the wannabe street artist and grabbed him, snapping his neck with no hesitation. His body slumped to the floor in a twisted mess. Then she slunk back to the desk she had passed a minute ago, trying to ignore the recent message open on the computer screen referring to some “fresh meat”, and picked up the machete that was lying there. Not her usual style but it was better than nothing. And the scavs were dumb for leaving weapons out anyway.
Their grating laughter rang in her ears as she approached the balcony next. Her Kiroshis fizzed and warmed in her skull as she turned them to one of the fuckers, making him short-circ and drop dead, then darting to his little friend before he could turn around at the popping, crackling sound and giving the machete one hard sweep across his throat. V felt his warm blood rain on her skin as he fell, and she almost smiled at the sight of their stupid dead faces contorted in fear, their blank stares and their open mouths.
V didn’t usually like to kill unless she had good reason, or if they deserved it. And the scavengers definitely fucking deserved it. If she hadn’t been 100% sure before, she was damn sure now after what they did to Evelyn. Enough was enough. She shuddered at the grim memories and quickly turned back around. She probably should have klepped some clothing from her victims, already up to a body count of 3 in less than a minute, but she didn’t want their tainted threads touching her whatsoever.
*
V flew through the scav den, quickhacking and chopping and shooting her way through with stolen guns. She must have looked a right state running around in just her panties and spattered with blood. Not that she cared. The panic in their shouts thrilled her and the sight of their bodies hitting the floor satisfied her. Less of them to go around terrorising people, peeling their skin apart to either steal chrome or force more on them - or both - in their sick experiments.
V ripped open crates and lockers until she found her gear, hastily getting dressed and loading up her own pistol. She took life after life, the tinny radios dotted around the den forming an underwhelming soundtrack to it all.
“Shoulda asked if he had any used hypos for sale, too. What could go wrong?” Johnny had glitched to the scene and was leaning back against another bathroom wall, taunting her, looking oh-so-casual. He didn’t even flinch as she shot right past his form at the scavs flailing and running towards her. Towards death.
“Not now, Johnny” she dismissed him with annoyance. She was obviously busy. But the fucker just watched.
*
Leaving a trail of destruction behind her, V finally reached the elevator and he was already there, cig in hand.
“Well, well…Looks like fortune favours the stupid, too,” he teased her as he inhaled. “Now what?”
V punched the button to get them out of there and slicked her bangs back off her sweat-damp forehead, tucking her pistol into the back of her pants.
“I’m gonna ask for a refund” she explained, her tone a lethal calm. Johnny nodded at her with a small twitch of his lips and glitched away.
*
There he was, rooting around piles of wet garbage in that same alley like a rat, or a roach. V marched right over.
“I’d like a refund.” Stefan jolted at her voice, scrambled up and spun around. He was a smart enough asshole to put his hands up in surrender immediately.
“Heeeey, holy shit, choom…Y-you good?” The rat/roach was clearly scared, his trembling form betraying him. “A-after you booted up that virtu, you started glitchin’ out and—”
“Save your breath,” V interrupted with a jab of her finger at him. “You conned me. You knew what you were doing. You wanna know what I do though? Hm?”
“N-now hold up, yo - let’s all be chilled for a second!” The usual ‘transfer incoming’ box popped up across her vision as Stefan’s eyes glowed pale blue. She watched her virtual personal account fill back up with the eddies she had wasted on this whole experience.
V thought on what to do with him for a beat as she bared her teeth. Her first thought was to put the hazing motherfucker down for taking advantage and giving her, and God knew who else, to those scopsucking scavs. But as the adrenaline seeped out her system, she thought that just maybe he was doing what so many others did in this city, simply toeing many lines in a bid to survive. He definitely wasn’t the first person that had been paid to lead her on a merry quest towards the land of the flatlined somehow.
“I’ll let you go just this once.” V decided, but her slight growl made it clear that she wasn’t being nicey-nicey.
“Whaaaat? For real? Oh, God…thank you! I knew you’d have mercy on me!”
“Mercy?” she let out a sharp, humorless laugh, making Stefan flinch. “I just didn’t wanna get your blood on my threads.”
The rat/roach wasted no time hauling ass, tripping and slipping on the wet concrete as he put as much distance between himself and V as he could. She watched him go far, far away before turning her head up to the sky, feeling cold drops of water tickle her face as it started raining again.
She was goddamn exhausted. She didn’t feel like shit physically from the BD anymore, the weird anaesthetising effects having now worn off. The adrenaline from the scav massacre probably gave it a helpful boot out of her system, but she was now left with a comedown from that too as it dissipated. Instead she felt something else. Embarrassment. Dissatisfaction. That dark cloud of depression again.
V tensed her fists and closed her eyes against the rain, but mostly against the telltale sting she could feel at the back of them. Please, no.
She felt his presence more than heard it.
“Well I think it’s safe to say, that was fucking dumb,” Johnny’s unhelpful voice reached her. V filled her lungs deep with air, tensed her fists a little more. “What were you thinking?” It sounded like he was almost laughing.
She shook her head just once, using all the will in the world to stop her bottom lip from having the gall to tremble like it was threatening to. The raindrops grew heavier, like her heart, splashing against her closed eyelids and running down her face.
“V?”
She listened to the sounds of the weather mingled with the comforting always-present shouts from the market, crap as their wares always were. 1, 2, 3…she breathed and steeled herself.
She looked then to Johnny, who was standing next to her with hands on hips, waiting. She simply stared at him. He wasn’t getting wet like her, of course. His smile was crooked, all arrogance but perhaps hiding a layer of concern.
“What?” V muttered at him.
Johnny scoffed.
“Dunno what the fuck you were looking for. Some hardcore porn? Some fun little shootout game? Fuck knows what you thought a BD “preem” enough for 20 thou’ was gonna be,” She winced at her own stupidity whilst Johnny smirked at her. “The whole thing stank worse than a scorched netrunner’s apartment.”
V wasn’t weak. Everyone knew she wasn’t weak. She was hard edged, skilled, sarcastic…had a will of iron in a lot of ways. But she was overwhelmed as all hell right now and just couldn’t stop the single tear that escaped a sore eye and started tracking down. Maybe she could get away with it and it would simply look like rain...
Johnny’s brow furrowed and his smirk disappeared as he caught it with his gaze.
V turned her head sharply away from him and made to stalk off, but he simply glitched right in front of her, blocking her path.
“Hey…” His voice had softened slightly and he was half reaching out. V could have just walked right through his digital form but she stopped short, more damn water filling her vision. He wasn’t mocking her anymore.
V sniffed and looked down at the floor, not wanting to be the subject of Johnny’s always penetrating stare right now. Especially not as she felt her cheeks warming in shame. She crossed her arms and dug her fingernails hard into the sleeves of her jacket.
“Wanna…?” V could tell Johnny didn’t really know what to say. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing. She imagined he meant ‘wanna talk about it?’ Clearly there was more than enough obvious shit going on for V to be upset about, and he was aware of that. But it was all getting too much. The Relic, a timebomb ticking in her head and her days counting down with, so far, no solution. Her dead best friend. Then of course there was constant general tiredness and pain from always being on the go, which Johnny surely would have also felt. The tug of being at the constant beck and call of fixers, friends and fiends with more and more dirty work. Her personal account housing a ludicrous amount of eurodollars, but not much of it getting spent as she didn’t really see the point. The constant peaks and troughs of adrenaline and her fight or flight response must have counted towards her exhaustion too.
But V had also been chasing said adrenaline, and that fight response, in a pathetic attempt to feel something. She knew it wouldn’t make her lifespan any longer, but at least it may be a more useful way to pass the time. V could of course turn down the endless stream of gigs and favours, but she never did. A twisted part of her looked forward to the fights and occasional kills, and the brief high they gave her. There had even been times when she had tried to fuck the joytoys of Jig-Jig Street, male and female and even one where she couldn’t tell which, but their touch made her feel emptier still, and each time she had told them to keep her eddies as she left before anything had even started. Most of the time she just drank herself almost silly, even partaking in an occasional bump of synthcoke off strangers’ hands or the tops of disgusting toilets. She had also been smoking more and more, much to Johnny’s delight of course.
And regarding her dumb little scav adventure courtesy of Stefan, she should’ve known he was hazing her. Should’ve stopped to think a bit more. Deep down she probably did know, but the craving of just something new had turned her head and she temporarily hadn’t really given two shits what happened to her. Her insides burned with guilt nevertheless.
Johnny sighed as he felt everything flickering through V, all her thoughts and emotions and replays of the latest events. Of course he could feel how pent up she was, her very being teetering on the edge of sanity at times. He had even nearly gone mad himself on a few occasions at V’s frantic actions, an unwilling passenger dragged along for the ride, ironic as it was, begging her to just cool it and half threatening to take over if she did something too gonk-brained.
Johnny stepped closer through the rain. V glanced up at him and saw he was rubbing at the back of his neck with his chrome hand.
“Look, you don’t gotta carry it all alone”.
The words hit harder than any punch. His gravelly mumble was softer than V had ever heard it, but still held that edge from years of screaming into microphones and treating his body, in all honesty, like hell.
V’s stomach dared to flutter with a few things. She wished she wasn’t warming to the dude, who did have a nice side that only a few had probably ever seen. He was trying to be comforting to her, rather than the usual teasing and winding her up. For all the shit she put him through, he really could’ve reacted a lot worse than he had so far. The rain pattered around them as they looked at each other, and it calmed her.
“I’m sorry…” her voice finally came, albeit almost a whisper. But he heard. Of course he heard. “I just…I don’t know.”
V bit her lip and willed her tears to slow, extremely grateful that her nose wasn’t giving its own flowing performance.
Johnny reached to take his aviators off, fiddling with the ends in front of him. His dark brown eyes held hers as his mouth set in a grim line.
“It’s ok,” Was it, though? “Want...want a hug?” Johnny hesitantly started opening his arms out and the sight nearly made V burst out laughing, thinking to herself what if the legendary rockerboy and terrorist turned out to be a secret cuddle bug? She settled for a small twitch of her mouth instead.
“Nah, I’d look like I’m hugging the air to the whole market.” She wiped her stupid wet eyes with her sleeve as the bastard had the cheek to look somewhat relieved that she hadn't stepped into his embrace.
“Who the fuck cares? Night City citizens’ve been seen doing a lot weirder.”
“I know.” V replied, allowing herself a small smile at him, probably now done with her little emotional outburst.
“Shall we at least go home?”
Hearing Johnny always call her crappy little megabuilding apartment ‘home’ made her happy. It was a quiet place where she could talk to ‘the air’ all she liked, and they could chill out with Nibbles and the strange green iguana she had jokingly named Nobu whilst Johnny tinkered on his guitar. It was just the place she wanted to be right now. She might have a cig at the window and watch the city through the raindrops as she made Samurai requests.
V nodded at him, earning a small warm smile in response before he glitched away. Then she set off in the right direction.
She had carried a lot with her in silence. But she thought to herself that perhaps the silence wasn’t empty anymore.
Perhaps that silence was shared.