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V is asleep. Johnny knows it because he’s been looking at her for the past half hour and she hasn’t stirred at all. That, and the fact that her mind is in a lull, dreaming about something or another. Johnny knows not to take a peek. Her silver hair is fanned out underneath her, a few strands are left on her face while she breathes peacefully, calm on this rainy day. She wanted to sleep in, said she wasn’t feeling well. Johnny said he’d keep her company.
For once, he doesn’t even think about going back on his word. It’s new. Unknown territory. V does that to her. Makes him feel like he’s actually changing for the better. Even after she knew that he’d altered his memories, changed them so that he felt better about himself, she still manages to make him feel like he really is a better person.
Maybe if he never changed them, V wouldn’t be so lenient. Johnny looks down at his hands, silver and skin glitching, blue binary reminding him that he’s not a person, not really. A memory, a figment of what he once used to be. It makes him question a lot of things he never would’ve even thought about, before. In the moments where he’s “awake” and able to be out in the world with V. His mind wanders, and he wonders if it bothers her.
The rain pelts the windows, thunder rumbles in the distance. V still doesn’t move an inch. Somewhere, something in Johnny thinks cute, and he smiles without thinking much about it. While she’s sleeping, none of the tension from when she’s awake is visible. She doesn’t have to think about how anyone in Night City is out to kill her, how her brain is out to kill her and eradicate her from her own body.
A hard life she leads, but that’s just how it is in this hellhole. Somehow, V still loves the place, even though it’s taken everything and then some from her. The Night City merchandise scattered about her apartment. She hadn’t particularly enjoyed it at the beginning, after separating from the Bakkers. Johnny knows that from the memories he’s seen, and he’s seen a lot of them. From her first memory of her first love, to the first person she’d ever killed— still haunts her to this day, actually— to when she left the Bakkers.
And now, they’re together. Johnny’s seen everything. From when they first met to now, he’s seen her through all the shit she’s been through. The relic malfunctions and the mental malfunctions, the breakdowns and sobbing alone in her apartment when it’s all just too much and she can’t take it anymore. The coaxing her away from “just one more bottle won’t hurt, Johnny,” but he knows where that train of thought leads, and it’s not one that V needs to go down. He doesn’t try to ask her to smoke for him anymore, because he’s realized that it’s selfish of him.
It’s sappy, but just knowing that V is still alive, still in her body with him, is enough. No smoke or booze could ever replace that feeling of seeing V and knowing that he’s not in control, that she’s still present. Still existing in this world.
She’s so beautiful.
Johnny blinks, because that was a thought right out of left field.
V stirs, groaning and flipping onto her stomach. She relaxes and Johnny feels the cold pillow on her cheek, a delayed response but he doesn’t mind. V starts snoring softly and he chuckles, shakes his head because she’s such a gonk, but he couldn’t have asked for a better person to help him through this nightmare that he can’t wake up from.
He stands and waits to see if V will wake up. Once she doesn’t, he takes one step, then another, and another until he’s standing in front of her bed. A beautiful woman with many scars, physically and mentally. Johnny falters as he reaches for V’s hands— calloused fingertips, real flesh because her relationship with cybernetics is still rocky. It’s a mindset she shares with Panam— she doesn’t like getting her body altered, says feels like cutting your hair off after growing it out for years. A change, a weight that’s different and uncomfortable. Both of them have long hair, too.
He lifts a hand to mess with his own, twirls a couple brown strands around his finger, but quickly drops it when he glitches again.
The Kiroshi optics and ballistics coprocessor were a must, and sometimes Johnny watches as V looks at herself in the mirror, looking at her eyes focusing like a camera lens, and a sadness washes over her. It gets to Johnny, too, it just takes a moment. He doesn’t pretend to understand. He’s rode with nomads in the past, and a few had mixed feelings about cybernetics just like V. Even now, over fifty years later, there are still people who hate them.
Johnny doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with them, doesn’t care. He looks at his chrome arm, clenches and unclenches it. Sees that, out of the corner of his eye, V’s hand twitches, too. He doesn’t know if he should feel guilty, or find it endearing.
Usually, when Johnny gets like this, V senses it and finds a way to distract him. It’s in the moments where they’re stagnant, where V is resting or getting something to eat, maybe even talking to one of her friends over the holo. Then Johnny loses himself in his thoughts, in memories that aren’t right, that aren’t real. Figments, and V stands, says, “Somethin’s come up, take care of yourself, alright,” or just does anything to catch Johnny’s attention.
V gives him her full attention, asks him, “What’s wrong?” Knowing damn well that their minds are connected, but she wants to hear Johnny say it, so she has permission to say something about it in turn. She lets Johnny open up about what’s on his mind and she listens, always listens, and tries to console him. “Is there anything I can do to help,” or “Do you need space,” referring to the blockers in her pocket.
Johnny’s only had her take them three times. Other times, she’s taken them herself, because he knows that his presence hurts, makes the biochip travel faster. At first he got pissed, snapped at her and said things that he wish he could take back now, but V never got angry.
At the beginning, she didn’t care about Johnny at all.
When Viktor said that she didn’t have much time left, she was still thinking about Jackie in the Delamain, wondering if he’d gotten to Mama Welles safely. Praying that he’d magically revive and he was waiting for her at the Coyote Cojo, all smiles and What’re you so worried about, jaina? I’m invincible!
The funeral took a lot out of her. Nothing Johnny could do about it. Jackie was her anchor, her strongest pillar, and after he died, everything fell apart so quickly. She still calls him, leaves those voicemails that she calls stupid, but Johnny can feel the weight that lifts off of her chest after each one. She talks to him whenever she can— Jackie, that is. Ignores the automated message about how he’s unavailable, goes straight to voicemail and tells him about one story or another. Says “I love you, Jackie, talk to you soon,” and ends the call.
Johnny never mentions them to her, not even when he’s angry at her and wants to get under her skin, wants to see her hurt. Then he remembers how much he did that before he got tossed into a shard, how V can probably hear every single thought that he has, and guilt overtakes him, hits him hard like a truck.
A beast so frightening, guilt is. Truly, Johnny rarely ever felt guilty about a single choice he made before V.
When he left Kerry to hijack AHQ, that was one. When he couldn’t save Alt, that was another. Not being able to make Alt happy, he realized, was one of the bigger ones, too. Their love was volatile, unstable. Built off of sex and venom, because Johnny was egotistical and narcissistic and Alt wasn’t afraid to call him out on it. Maybe Johnny knew, deep down, that he was an asshole. But why would he ever want to admit such a thing?
He wouldn’t. Not after spending fifty years altering his own fucking memories, making himself seem like a hero, a martyr. Sacrificed to knock a megacorporation down a peg, but now he’s seen the truth of it all: No matter what he accomplished while he was alive, the corporations are too resilient. The strongest weeds with roots curled around the Earth’s core, how much would have to be destroyed in order for things to improve? The whole planet, perhaps. But humanity has already made a mark that nature cannot erase, something irreversible, indestructible.
Slowly, Johnny seats himself on the edge of V’s bed. He carefully lifts a hand, hates how it trembles, hates how he’s afraid of hurting her, and so he sighs and pulls away. Decides that being this close to her is enough, even though they’ve been closer before. He’s held V while she cried, weeping for a myriad of reasons. When Panam rejected her during the sandstorm, V was devastated, much more than Johnny anticipated.
At first he told her to stop being such a big baby, that rejections happen, to get over it because crying won’t change a thing. But then he understood. Panam was the first person that V’d gotten close to after Jackie passed away. She felt guilty for thinking of Panam as a replacement, something to fill the void in her soul, and so V felt like the lowest lowlife in Night City, wanting to use someone like Panam, advancing even though she’d hinted at her disinterest during their night at the Sunset Motel.
That was the breaking point. Before that, V hadn’t shed a single tear. After she’d cried, she stayed in her apartment for a week before Johnny finally managed to convince her to get up and looking for a road to a cure again. The relic malfunctions were happening more often, and he could tell that V was slowly but surely running out of time.
Time. An hourglass with a hole drilled into the bottom.
Johnny’s engram is eternal, growing stronger thanks to V’s sacrifice, and he’ll probably live far too long after V’s gone. If she sacrifices herself, that is. She said that she would, that when it came down to it, she would rather join Jackie in the afterlife than continue living.
That rubbed Johnny the wrong way. He’d snapped at V, told her that she wouldn’t be going so easily. That he was an intruder in V’s body, that she should live and ask Panam to help her find a cure because he was not about to live the rest of V’s life without her there to actually experience it.
Their relationship is something that they never discuss. A Pandora’s Box topic that they’ll never open, never think about mentioning to each other. He’s seen some of V’s dreams, of the two of them.
Sweet, precious little things.
Johnny wishes they could be reality.
V stirs again, eyes slowly opening and the first thing she sees is Johnny, sitting there and she smiles, groggy but it’s genuine and warm, so warm. She rolls onto her side, then opens her arms. “C’mere. ‘S’cold,” she mumbles, and Johnny tilts his head, can’t help but smile. “Johnny,” her voice tapers off into a whine, and that gets him to laugh.
“I ain’t exactly warm, princess,” he replies, but he kicks his legs up and lets V wrap her arms around him. V nuzzles into the crook of Johnny’s neck and he can feel her smile on his skin, and he’s happy. They’re happy, really. “Enjoyin’ yourself.” It’s soft, supposed to be a question but he knows the answer so he doesn’t care to change his tone.
“In bed with my favorite Rockerboy on a rainy day,” V replies, snuggling closer to Johnny. “‘S a good day, I think.” She adds, and Johnny wonders if she’s trying to listen to a heartbeat that isn’t there. Find the blood that isn’t pumping, the bones that don’t exist.
Back to these thoughts again. They’ve been on his mind more often than not recently. If he really is a human, even though he’s just zeroes and ones. He knows that it’s more complicated than that, that he is a person even though he’s not flesh and bone like V. That he’s a mixture, a complex creature just like everything else in this world. Just like the woman next to him. “Hey, V.”
“Hm?” She’s tired, been tired a lot more as of recently. He wants to ask if she’s alright, if she’s feeling okay. “Johnny?” She asks in the tone that means that she knows what Johnny’s thinking about, and he sighs.
“Nothin’, just go back to sleep. I’ll be here,” he murmurs, and V giggles, relaxes when Johnny starts to run a hand through her hair. “I’ll be here,” he says again, more to convince himself than V.
“... Promise?”
Oh. Something stab’s Johnny’s heart, and he knows she’s not saying that because she thinks Johnny’s going to leave. Oh, V. He holds her closer, so close that they fit together like puzzle pieces. “Neither of us are goin’ anywhere, V. Not you, not me. We’re stuck together, alright? I promise,” he mutters against her skin, and V exhales a shaky breath, grabs at Johnny’s shirt as if it’s her lifeline. As if he’s the anchor keeping her steady, grounded, instead of the one who’s tearing her life to shreds. “You know I’d never do that to you, V.”
She nods, breathes. Johnny’s eyes start to water and his throat starts to burn, and he realizes that V’s trying to hold back tears. It’s okay, I’m here, I’ve got you, he doesn’t say it aloud but he doesn’t have to because V starts crying, quietly and Johnny wishes that his body was actually his, as V’s tears fall through his eyes as well.
They cry together, though Johnny’s tears are more decorative than anything. Eventually, V falls asleep curled into Johnny, breathing stable and calm. It’s a relief. V tries so hard to bottle up her emotions, but that means coping through other, more dangerous means.
It’s ironic for Johnny to think this, but crying truly is one of the best medicines. He would never admit it, but sometimes he would cry writing songs for Samurai. His music was how he coped with the nightmares of the world, of everything he’d seen during his life.
He’d never let someone else see him like that, though. Now, he’d let V see him bawling all ugly. She probably has, now that Johnny thinks about it. Sharing memories, and all.
Johnny keeps running a hand through V’s hair as she sleeps, listens to the rain pelting the window. This is okay. This could be a moment he reminisces when he’s not with V anymore. He won’t let her disappear with Alt. She deserves more, deserves to find a cure, deserves every-good-fucking-thing this world has to offer. And maybe she’s not a perfect person. Maybe she’s a monster sometimes, but everyone is. Everyone’s a monster.
V’s killed before. She’ll probably continue to kill long after Johnny’s gone. She might get killed in a firefight. Could happen anytime, really. But she’s resilient. Died how many times already, but she’s always come back. Always.
He hears himself humming before he actually comprehends that it’s his voice. It’s gravelly, low, his voice rumbles and V only pulls Johnny in closer, and he didn’t even think that was possible. She melts while he sings, he can feel it through their connection. It’s lovely in some ways, what they have. Communication without having to really say a single word. So without opening his mouth, he can say anything he wants, and he knows that V’ll hear it.
I love you, he thinks it over and over, full of truth and warmth because he does, he loves V so much. Knows that it won’t end well, too, that it’ll end in heartbreak on both ends because he’s going to disappear while V lives on. He hopes that she finds a cure, that she goes to the Aldecaldos and rides with them, a family, one that V deserves.
I love you so much, V.
It’s a good day. A lazy day in this fucked up world, in this fucked up city, but it’s a good fucking day. She doesn’t ever have to say it back, because she’s already done so much for Johnny, so much that he’ll never be able to repay. So he’ll be her pillar, albeit a temporary one, for however long they have left.
Because while his existence might not last forever, his love for V will. And that’s all that matters.