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V sat in reflection on her couch after an exhaustive week of running ops and dodging the clock on the bomb in her head. Her head was throbbing, and she felt as though her body had fused with the couch it was so run down. It wasn’t out of the norm for how her weeks had been ending as of late, but that day had somehow left her even more browbeaten than the others.
She had finally gotten answers from the disappearing zen master she had trailed all over NC. He was outside city limits gazing from the foothills, waiting for her to locate him. He benevolently, if not frustratingly, offered to explain only one of the million questions that had been burning inside V’s brain since their first meditation.
“You know what’s happening to me, don’t you?”
The answer he had given was impossibly understanding of her situation but it had passed over her in wake of the meditation and concept of a vanishing monk being more interesting. His answer hadn’t fully sunk in until their final meditation passed. The BD faded from her vision and left her staring at a man. But not the one she started that particular journey with.
Johnny had been sitting there, staring out into the city, complaining about feeling like shit. He didn’t want to acknowledge the wisdoms of the monk and told her to pass the information on to Misty if she was so bothered by it. V hadn’t expected him to be supportive, but thought he would be more curious than anything. Instead he simply sat there in introspection, giving off waves of defensive energy.
It wasn’t until then that she fully understood what the lessons had been doing to him. Letting go of toxicity and connecting to the self had the implication of shoving Johnny out of the way. Because to him and the rest of the world, he was the poison in her that she needed to remove.
But that was impossible. He was stuck there with V for better or for worse. One of the souls that the zen master had sensed within her. And Johnny was afraid that she resented it.
She sat down next to him for a moment, watching him smoke a digital cigarette and refuse to meet her gaze. So she shifted her line of sight to match his, staring absently into the city.
The monk had said that she was both of the souls: the fight and the fear. She took that as fact in the moment, confused and wondering what that left Johnny to be. But looking at Johnny, defeated and walled-in at that moment, she realized that the monk would have made a distinction between the two had there actually been a difference.
The truth was that even without the biochip, the two of them were connected. Both enormously pissed off and terrified by what they couldn’t control.
V was worried Johnny would hear that thought and berate her for putting such vulnerability unto him, but when she looked back to his perch, he had disappeared. And she knew him well enough to know that when he didn’t have a smartass comment to make, he had shut down. Not listening, no one home, screening his own thoughts and too busy to pay attention to hers.
She tried to shrug it off, taking the long way home on Jackie’s Arch to clear out the reverie, and it had worked-- until she walked into her apartment and sat down on the couch. As she hugged her knees against her chest and thumbed the dog tags Johnny had given her, the thoughts became louder and louder.
It was obvious they both had fight in them. That had been their entire lives. They both screamed and raged and clawed their way to what they wanted. Hell, they had both gotten killed for their desires. But the fear? Sure v was afraid. She was afraid of not making a name for herself, of being forgotten, of being turned into something she didn’t recognize. But she had her friends to talk to when the fear got too loud. She had an entire network of people to help her, ground her.
And Johnny? He had— no one .
Alt was gone. Rogue had pushed him away when he tried to show how he had changed. Even Kerry was only interested in proving himself to Johnny when he realized he was the ghost inside V’s head.
Johnny only really had V, and sometimes even then, her own fear drowned out what his was asking for: to be truly understood.
She dropped the dog tags and shifted her attention to the tattoo he had gotten her on his wild night out. “Johnny + V.” A symbol of affection. She had thought it was a shitty joke at the time, one they could laugh about, but now— she thought it meant more. Maybe it was him reaching out, asking her to see that he cared, that he didn’t want to be alone anymore.
Suddenly, and much to her surprise, V’s eyes welled up. She hadn’t cried since Jackie, but thinking about what Johnny had been through, and was living in the wake of, 50 years later-- It was enough to draw silent, sorrowful tears from that hardened place within her.
It was also enough to draw Johnny from his hiding place.
He glitched onto the couch next to her, leaning back against the opposite armrest with an annoyed posture.
“Jesus V are you fucking crying right now?” He rubbed his own eyes, wiping away the moisture and waited for her to snap at him, but nothing came. He sat up and looked closer at her, seeing that she hadn’t hidden from him or moved to smack him away like she usually did. Instead she was still in the same position, eyes shifted to him, wet and vulnerable.
Johnny cleared his throat hesitantly and leaned forward to break the moment before something stopped him in his tracks.
He cocked his head to the side as if he was trying to listen to something, and his already shocked expression deepened into concern. “You’re crying... because of me?”
V opened her mouth but stopped as his eyes squinted, listening harder. Then realization dawned on his face. All the coy humor, anarchic malice, and bitter rebellion drained from Johnny’s face.
“You’re crying for me.”
V nodded, small and scared of what he would do next.
Johnny took his glasses from his face and pressed against his eyes with a soft inhale. After a moment of tense silence, he composed himself and turned back to her. “ Why? ”
V shifted uncomfortably. She knew they shared a deep intimacy at this point, barely any secrets between them. But this felt more personal than she expected. How do you explain to someone why they moved you to tears?
“I- was thinking about what the zen master said. And I know you don’t go for that kind of stuff, but—“ she released her knees with a steadying breath and turned towards Johnny. “The thing he said about the two souls? About the fighting and the fear? I had thought for so long that you could only be the fighter. That you had all this rage and pain that you wanted to wreak on the world, and that nothing could get in your way. But he said I was both- which means you’re both, cause you’re locked in here with me. ...I never thought hard about the fear and loneliness you’ve experienced. And I couldn’t help but feel sorrow and compassion for that scared part of you that no one ever tried to soothe.”
He exhaled the breath he took before she started her explanation. “ Fuck. ”
“You got any tequila?” he practically begged, swiveling his gaze uneasily.
She shook her head and he sighed again as if to say: guess we’re doing this sober, fuckin’ preem.
“V, I— the fight’s always been there. Still is. Still the same anger and drive that I had fifty years ago. I would blow Arasaka to hell a million times over if that’s what it took to get those fuckers out of the picture. The fear, though? It’s changed.” He took a drag on the cigarette that had glitched into his hand. “Used to be scared of that loneliness. The kind that hits you deep in the soul.” He pointed to his chest emphatically, “But fuck if I was going to let gonk feelings like that get the better of me. So I filled it with booze, drugs, any chicks that I could find. And some would stick around…” he looked up smiling absently at the ceiling.V caught glimpses of Alt and Rouge.
“You were wrong though— they did try to fix it. They just didn’t get it. They couldn’t see what I really needed. I... guess I wouldn’t let them. Part of that fear. But now...” he trailed off.
Johnny’s voice was uncharacteristically soft, and his breathing shook when he exhaled another drag. V balled her hand in a fist to keep from reaching out and interrupting his reverie.
Johnny noticed, looking down at his own clenched fingers. He relaxed them slowly, flexing them as he confessed. “V, I haven’t felt that loneliness since I woke up in your head. Now... I’m afraid of losing the side of me that ain’t so fuckin’ angry all the time. That isn’t killing and fighting and fucking just to feel something. I’m afraid of losing this ,” he gestured between them.
And then they both felt the sting of renewed tears.
It wasn’t clear which one they were coming from but Johnny screwed his eyes shut to stem the flow. “I’m afraid of losing you.”
This time V let herself reach towards him. Her hand brushed against his for a hesitant moment before gripping it in a steadying and reciprocal way.
She hadn’t expected it to feel like anything, but to both their surprise there was a tingling sensation. Like touching yourself with an arm that had fallen asleep.
Johnny stared down at it with a moment of surprise before his eyes snapped back to hers, searching him with an expression that was more loving than he had ever seen anyone direct towards him. And then he surged forward, pressing his lips hard against V’s.
There was a spark of electricity when they connected, and the kiss deepened. She expected him to tear her clothes off, and she wanted him to, but instead he kept a steadying grip on her jaw, fingers tangled in the hair behind her ear as he broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against hers.
He let out a small chuckle at her thought process. “Believe me I want to, and I will, but right now— this is what I need.”
Johnny’s thumb stroked the hair by her temple, and V slid her hand to the back of his head, rhythmically running her nails through the roots as they stayed locked in their embrace. “I want you to know—“
Johnny broke the silence once again, “I’ve never given a fuck about someone more than I do you. I know we’ve got a chance in hell of both surviving this. But if we do, I’m hitching my wagon to yours. No matter what.”
V grinned and kissed him, softer than their first kiss— in a confirmation that she would do the same. He returned the smile against her lips, and they remained locked in that embrace long after.
And in that moment all the fight and fear fell from them, leaving two people, connected at the soul, finally having found the calm and the understanding that they had been searching for their whole lives.