Chapter Text
5 years later
He doesn’t go by Johnny anymore. Doesn’t even go by John.
He’s changed his name back to Robert. Changed his name back a long time ago now.
He doesn’t even wear his aviator sunglasses anymore, he can’t even remember when those broke in half.
He stopped moving around about 2 years ago, ended up settling in a dusty gusty ass small town somewhere in Nevada. Perfect place to be forgotten about, perfect place to start over and lay low - if that’s what you wanted.
He works as a mechanic out of a gas station. V’s nomadic memories had made him a good one, he hasn’t come up against a vehicle he hadn’t been able to repair or fix.
He wondered if this was the life that V would have wanted. The quiet life, no blaze of glory.
Every now and then he will pick up a guitar, play a song. He’ll be complimented, told he should start a band. Ha. If only they knew.
But Johnny would accept the compliment, tell the person that he’ll think about it.
He didn’t drink anymore, had stopped 3 years ago. Stopped smoking even longer before that, before he left Night City.
Night City - a place he hadn’t stepped foot in since he left. Rogue told him to never come back. She too, just like Panam wasn’t ready to hear or believe that V sacrificed himself for Johnny.
That V only had 6 months to live. That Johnny tried his damn hardest for that kid to live the life he deserved. But it was too late.
Even after all this time, guilt still bubbled beneath the surface every time he thought about it.
He’ll never forget V, still misses him. Still talks out loud, expecting V to come up with a smart ass response back.
On one particular evening, the shop was quiet. In fact, they were preparing for closing it was that quiet.
Johnny had closed the garage, he was in the store now. Told the cashier to take an early mark, he can count the till. Johnny did nice things like that now, because that’s what V would have done.
He was behind the counter, counting creds, counting penny’s, counting tips. He had moved onto finishing up some paperwork when the bell above the shop door jingled, the sound slicing through the quiet.
He glanced up, expecting another routine customer. Somebody with a busted engine, maybe someone needing a tune-up.
But the moment he saw her, everything inside him froze.
Panam.
In her arms, she cradled a small child.
No more than one or two, with a mop of messy dark hair and sleepy eyes, clutching onto her. The little boy nestled against her, his face half hidden behind a tiny hand holding a toy car.
For a moment, the world felt like it stopped. Johnny had been expecting almost anything but this.
Panam caught his eyes across the room, and for a long second, neither of them moved. Her expression faltered briefly. It was a mix of surprise, confusion, maybe even a touch of discomfort..
Johnny noticed it. The way her chest tightened as though she’d just seen a ghost.
She gave a quick, tight smile, adjusting the child in her arms as she stepped further inside. Her tired eyes held his, a flicker of something unspoken. Maybe she was angry still, maybe she still resented him. Maybe it was the fact that it was actually V’s face staring back at her, and she never expected to see him again.
“Johnny…-” she said, her voice tight with something unresolved. “Thought you’d be… elsewhere by now.”
He figured she probably thought he would have drunk himself to death by now. Fair.
Johnny shrugged, trying to play it cool, but a lump formed in his throat.
She then looked at his mechanic overalls, noticing the name tag embroidered onto them. “Sorry, I mean… Robert?”
“You can call me Johnny.” He said, not wanting to make things more awkward than they already were. “What brings you to my little corner of the world?” Johnny asked more softly than he intended to.
The boy stirred, his eyes half-open, sleepily blinking at Johnny. He yawned, rubbing his face into Panam’s shoulder.
“Clan baby sitting duties huh?” Johnny asked, not trying to stir the pot or tip Panam over the edge.
“He’s mine.” Panam confessed, with a touch of pride in her tone. Johnny blinked, taken aback but Panam continued anyways.
“His name’s Vincent.” she said, her voice suddenly quiet.
Vincent. The name hit him like a punch to the gut. He knew why she chose it. And part of him wished she hadn’t.
“That so?” Johnny replied, his throat tight. “Vincent, huh?”
“Yeah,” she answered, her gaze falling to the child, who was now half-dozing in her arms. “His dad doesn’t know about... V. About the life I had before… any of it.”
Johnny stayed silent, not sure what to say. Not sure why she was telling him this.
This was her secret. Her way of keeping V alive, even if the world didn’t get it. Her son, who was, in some ways, a new beginning and in others, a living ghost of a future she would never get.
“And I always loved that name, Vincent.” Now she was just trying to stay casual, like it was no big deal when they both knew otherwise.
Johnny could feel the weight of her loss pressing against him, suffocating the air between them. Slowly, Johnny nodded, understanding more than he wanted to.
“Guess we both carry pieces of the past around with us.” he muttered.
“Yeah,” she said softly, fighting a tear back she almost shed. “I guess we do.”
He realised in that moment, that they had come to a neutral respect for one another. Something in common they would both fully never let go of, and that is V’s spirit.
“Anyway,” she continued, shifting Vincent again, “I need something fixed on my Thornton out back. Nothing major, but... I could use your help.”
Johnny didn’t answer right away. What she’d said hung in the air like a thundercloud. And in the silence, he finally understood.
She didn’t just name her son after V. She was trying to keep a piece of that lost future alive. A part of her still held on to what V had represented; someone who loved her, someone who was supposed to be here.
“I’ll take a look.” Johnny said after a long pause, the heaviness of the moment settling between them.
A few seconds passed before Panam spoke again.
“You know, Johnny... I never thought I’d see you again. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But here we are.”
Johnny cracked a small smile, his eyes meeting hers. “Yeah, here we are.”
And for the first time in years, Johnny didn’t feel like he was running from something. Maybe he wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be, but he was somewhere that felt... like everything was going to be okay.
“…You got time for a coffee?” he asks, surprising even himself. “Machine’s terrible. But it’s hot.”
Panam studies him like it might be a trap.
Vincent shifts in her arms, half-asleep, cheek pressed to her shoulder.
“…Five minutes.” she says.
They step into his garage, Johnny leading the way. The scent of oil and faint hum of fluorescent lights occupied the space.
Panam sits at the small metal table by the window, Vincent now drowsing in her lap.
Johnny pours two cups from the old drip machine, then slides one cup toward her.
She wraps her fingers around it, warming them. He takes the chair opposite to her, watching the steam rise from his beverage as his fingers drum against the table.
It’s painfully awkward, and he is second guessing his choices. For a moment, neither of them speaks.
It almost feels like there is nothing to talk about, whilst having a lot to talk about at the same time. He didn’t think there would ever be a version in this world where he and Panam would sit down and have coffee. Not without the guns and the rage at least.
To his surprise, Panam breaks the silence first.
“When you were in his head,” she asks quietly, one finger tracing the lip of her cup, “did you see everything?”
Johnny doesn’t pretend not to understand “Yeah,” he nodded.
Her cheeks gently flushed. “Everything?”
He nods again. “Not like watching a BD. It’s like I was living and feeling it too.”
She swallows, her cheeks growing redder.
“So you saw us.”
“Yes.”
A long pause. She looks embarrassed, but recovers.
“You saw us fight?”
“Yes.”
“The good parts?”
“Yes.”
Her voice drops. “When I told him to join the family...”
Johnny’s eyes soften. “I remember.”
She nods slowly, absorbing that.
She draws in a deep breath, a slight wince at a terrible memory that plagued her.
"When I found out about the raid on Arasaka Tower... I knew it was him." Her voice was almost distant, like the memory had pulled her back to that moment. "I... saw it on the news and I just knew. I didn’t need any confirmation."
Johnny didn’t speak, just let her find her words.
“He didn’t have to do that, alone.. you know? I would’ve.. the family would’ve..-“
She falters, shoulders sagging with what looked like defeat.
For a second, she looked like she was fighting tears that she refused to shed. But still, she was never one to wear her emotions on her sleeve so she pulled herself together.
But she couldn’t help but ask, possibly seeking some closure to an age old question she never had the opportunity to ask V himself.
“Did he…” She hesitates. “Did he ever doubt it? Us?”
Johnny doesn’t even need to think. “Never,” he says firmly. “He never doubted you for one second..”
Her eyes close briefly at that. Relief. Pain. Probably both.
She looks at him suddenly, the way her eyes move over his face tells Johnny everything. She’s looking at V’s face, probably trying to match his features to her memories. But Panam sees the difference between the real thing and this borrowed shell.
She exhales deeply in a sigh, before continuing to speak again.
“I always wondered if I was too much,” she admits. “Too loud. Too stubborn. Too impulsive. Too...”
Johnny cuts her off, smiling as he spoke his next sentence. “Nah, he always loved that about you.”
A faint, broken laugh escapes her. Another silence drips between them, but at least it’s not awkward this time.
“You quit?” she asks, gesturing vaguely. “The drinking? The cigarettes?”
“Three years sober,” he says. “Stopped smoking before I left Night City.” He shrugs. “Didn’t feel right. Living in his body. Killing it slow.”
That lands heavier than he intended.
Panam stares at him, and he wonders deeply if he said the wrong thing. Then she nods slowly. “Well, he didn’t smoke.. so.. yeah-.”
He didn’t think she would celebrate his sobriety or congratulate him for it, if anything it would have been an expectation from her. To respect V and the sacrifice he made. So he understands her logic.
Silence settles again, but it’s different now. Not hostile.
“I’m went back to leading the Aldecaldos,” she says after a moment. “I had to.. step away for some time, so the family didn’t fall apart.”
He feels a pang, but he nods. “I get that.”
“We expanded. Took in a group from the Jodes. Good people. Tough.” A flicker of something crosses her face. “One of them… stayed.”
Johnny doesn’t react outwardly, but looks down at the child sleeping in her lap. He knows enough without her having to say it out loud.
“He’s good to me,” she continues. “Steady. Has a good head on his shoulders.”
“That’s… good,” Johnny says honestly, sh deserved that.
She studies the rim of her cup.
“I love him,” she says carefully. “In a different way.”
Johnny waits.
Her voice thins. “Not like I loved V…”
There it is. The truth she had probably never admitted out loud til now. Who else in her world would understand other than him.
“And sometimes,” she adds quietly “I feel guilty about that.”
“For loving him?” Johnny asks.
“For loving someone else after him,” she clarifies. “Like I’m betraying both of them.”
Johnny leans back in his chair, considering the heaviness in her speech.
“He wouldn’t want that for you,” he says. “You know that.”
“I know,” she says quickly. “Doesn’t stop the feeling.”
“He loved you enough,” Johnny says, firm and somehow comforting. “He would want you to move on, to be happy. Not orbiting his grave.”
Her eyes flick to his face searching for mockery and ego.
There’s none.
“You really did see everything.” she murmurs.
“Yeah.”
She hesitates again, bringing her child closer to her.
“It still hurts sometimes, when I think about it.”
Johnny doesn’t say anything, he already knows what she means. He feels it at times too.
“He never told me he was dying, not until right before it happened” she whispers.
“He didn’t want your last months together to feel like a countdown.”
She nods slowly, absorbing that like it’s both comfort and cruelty.
Vincent lets out a small sigh in his sleep. Panam brushes hair off her son’s forehead.
“Sometimes,” she admits, “I.. I still.. I think about what could’ve been.”
Johnny’s chest tightens.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I think about that too.”
It should be V’s son sitting in her lap. They should be king and queen of the Aldecaldos. Or at least V, king of the Afterlife. Whatever destiny he chose. He deserved that choice, but the rug was ripped right out from under him.
She looks at him sharply, pulling him out of his thoughts.
“You do?”
“All the time.”
Silence again. Finally, Panam finishes her coffee and stands.
“That’s enough ghosts for one evening,” she says.
Johnny stands too.
At the door, she pauses.
“For what it’s worth,” she says without turning around, “I’m glad you didn’t waste it.”
He knows what she means.
The body. The chance. The life V handed over.
“Me too,” he says.
She nods once.
Then she steps out into the Nevada dusk, Vincent in her arms, and the screen door creaks shut behind her.
Johnny stands there for a long moment before following.
She sits in the driver seat of her Thorn while her son continues to sleep in a baby seat in the back, while he tinkers with the engine. Something about stalling while being idle.
He fixes it, no issues and within record timing.
Johnny slams the trunk of the Thornton shut, and something hits him; a brief flash of the past. He remembers the first time he’d seen Panam so pissed off, Wraiths having stolen her ride.
And V? He didn’t flinch or hesitate. He was in that tunnel with her, turning Wraiths into scop. That was when it all started. He chuckled remembering how Panam turned V down, later in the bar.
Looking at the Thornton now, old and worn, Johnny realises this car, this damn car, it’s the same one. The one that sparked it all.
He realises everything has come full circle.
He strolls up to her window. She asks him, how much. He tells her it’s on the house.
She doesn’t argue. She nods, gives him a tight smile.
Her eyes linger on his face again, taking in his features once more. A lover lost, a lover gone. One last look to store away in her memories.
He slaps the trunk of the car, as she pulls out onto the road.
This time, he knows he’ll never see her again.