Work Text:
Love is a foolish thing.
Maiko can see that now, through the brutally clear lens of hindsight. Love is why she’s here, sitting in a vile ramen shop in Japantown, waiting for a client to arrive and take her to whatever dump of a motel he thinks is suitable for a romantic evening of cheap wine and premature ejaculation.
For what else but love would make her agree to yet another of Judy’s inane plans? And what else but love would make that merc fuck it all up?
It was obvious the moment they walked into her office: the way V stood just a hair in front of Judy in a less-than-subtle attempt at intimidation, that sappy look in her eyes while Judy was ranting about Evelyn… And oh, did those eyes ever narrow when Maiko reached a hand toward Judy’s cheek—a risky move on Maiko’s part, admittedly, but it told her exactly what she wanted to know. This was Judy’s new output, or at the very least, someone who desperately wanted to be. Which meant V fell for Judy’s histrionics hook, line, and sinker.
Not that Maiko can blame her, even now; same damn thing happened to her. In a city where caring is a disease that often proves fatal, there was something terribly alluring in just how much of a shit Judy gave about absolutely everything. At first, anyway. When their relationship was still shiny and new, those red flags fluttering in the breeze were all conveniently located in Maiko’s blindspot.
Embarrassing. For both of them.
She sips her tea—so bland it’s practically offensive—and watches everyone else watch her. Too long swimming with the sharks at the top of the food chain; she forgot how to blend in with the fish. But let them look. Let them believe she has everything they lack, that she didn’t just have the entirety of what she worked so hard to achieve ripped out from under her.
Might be in a freefall now, but she’ll land on her feet. Always has. And if she has to claw her way back up from the bottom… so be it.
Wouldn’t be the first time. She spent countless hours in places like this before Clouds, when she was just another Kabuki joytoy hustling in the market for scraps. Once she started to make a name for herself out on the streets, she sweet-talked the owner of a shitty noodle joint into letting her operate out of his space—for a not-insignificant cut of the profits, true, but in a neighborhood where you can’t spit without hitting a whore, she needed to stand out, gain an edge any way she could. Sometimes she even got free noodles at the end of the night.
Not a bad arrangement for a seventeen year-old prostitute. Then the Tyger Claws stopped by for their protection money and the spineless shop owner ratted her out. The TCs dragged her into the back, next to the buckets of noodles and tubes of synthetic meat, and took what they felt she owed them for operating gratis in their turf... plus interest.
Maiko lights a cigarette and pulls smoke into her lungs until her breathing steadies and her hands stop trembling.
Those were... unpleasant times. Times Judy—and her new girl—would never and will never be able to understand, no matter how many XBDs they watch. But it didn’t stop them from thinking they knew what was best for Clouds, did it?
Judy was always like that. Like a rocket exploding on the launchpad, all heat and noise and zero locomotion. Brilliant mind like hers, you’d think she could use it to see more than one step ahead of herself, but no. She’d get her panties in a bunch over something and then it was someone else’s problem to deal with—usually Maiko; now V, probably. From the looks of things, V has as much appreciation for subtlety and judiciousness as Judy. Match made in heaven. Hopefully they won’t get each other killed.
The thought makes Maiko’s heart clench a little, but she stifles it with another drag and some more tea. It’s no longer her problem. She is no longer her problem.
Easy to say. That’s the thing about Judy: when the fire and smoke clears, she’s left an impact, a charred blast ring on everything and everyone she touched. Those singed wings on the moth circling too close to the flame? They don’t grow back. There’s no defense for that kind of passion.
There’s no directing it, either. Every attempt Maiko made to focus Judy’s furor, to slow her down enough to think logically and consider consequences, was inevitably met with backlash. What was a charming quirk at the start soured into something repulsive when Judy’s half-baked ideas for revolution failed to progress fast enough for her liking. And in the end, it was Judy who poured gasoline all over their relationship and tossed a match at it, leaving Maiko and her pragmatism standing in a pile of ash.
So who could blame her for keeping her cards closer to her chest this time around? Not like Judy would’ve ever agreed to Maiko’s plan of taking Hiromi’s place. She really thought the Claws would just let Clouds go if her merc lopped a few heads off the hydra. As if the deaths of three whole TCs would let the dolls have their own little dollhouse where everything is rainbows and sunshine and nobody takes advantage of them ever again. God. Must be nice, living in that kind of delusion.
Maiko’s never had the luxury; the world made sure she knew her place from birth. Every act of defiance against her station, every rung she climbed on Night City’s twisted ladder of social mobility was painstakingly planned—one wrong move and she’d slip right back to where fate says she belongs: selling her ass on Jig-Jig Street, dodging gangs, begging for leftover noodles. That is what it means to be devoured by this city. Not “selling out” or whatever self-righteous bullshit Judy's always tried to claim. How easy for her to rail against the game when she’s never had to play to survive.
Getting the doll-chip installed was Maiko’s strongest gambit, for the simple reason that being a doll allowed entrance into a dollhouse. Operative word: “house.” Despite the risks inherent in the chip, despite the dangerous proclivities of the clients, despite the neverending “favors” requested by Woodman and the TCs… it was still safer than the streets.
And safety is worth any price.
The tea is starting to get cold, which really isn’t adding to its appeal, but she chokes it down anyway. Funny how everyone seemed to forget she was a doll after her promotion. The other dolls treated her with suspicion bordering on disdain, blaming her for their every misfortune. Judy wasn’t much better—she seemed to be under the impression that Maiko had actual power, that she could just wave her fingers and give everyone a raise or protect the dolls from abusive clients. A sweet fantasy, but she couldn’t even protect Evelyn from Woodman.
Besides herself, the only ones who never forgot about the chip in her head were the Tyger Claws. When the timer on the bomb ticked to zero and they raided Clouds, she wasn’t “Maiko Maeda, Unofficial Manager." She was just another doll, another spoiled piece of meat in need of disposal.
She was in her office when she heard the gunshots downstairs. The security camera feed on her computer showed everything: a horde of neon jackets and menpō swarming through the lower levels, slaughtering dolls and clients alike, their muzzle flashes lighting up her screen. They had no idea which dolls had received combat tweaks, so better kill them all just to be safe. When she watched Tom take down four TCs before getting ventilated by a dozen more, his body jerking spasmodically as they filled it with lead, Maiko realized she was going to die.
With the shouting and screaming and pops of firearms growing louder by the second, she grabbed her purse and the gun she kept in her desk. Then she fled out the back entrance and—in a fit of desperation—fired a round into the security panel by the door. The panel hissed and sparked, and, by some miracle, the door behind her remained closed. Legs shaking and heart pounding, she half-walked, half-stumbled along the same clandestine route around the outside of H8 that Judy used to take to visit her, ditching her heels along the way when one got stuck in a chainlink fence.
Only when she was clear of Japantown did Maiko remember to check her phone. And there at the top of her messages was a text from an unknown number, sent ten minutes before the attack:
“TCs are coming to shut down Clouds. Get out now. Don’t come back.
—A Friend”
The next necessary steps solidified in her mind, made sharp and diamond-hard by fear: first, she needed shoes. Followed by a visit to her ripperdoc. Maiko dipped into her savings for a new faceplate, new hair, and a factory reset on her doll-chip, erasing every modification Judy had made to it over the years. Strangely, the process triggered a wave of grief, like those bits and bytes were the last vestiges of their relationship Maiko needed to let go. She turned away while the chip was rebooting to keep the ripper from seeing her tears.
Her cig finished, she butts it into the ashtray on the counter and immediately lights another. The man sitting next to her is staring at her so hard his optics might burst into flames. She ignores him. Unless he’s paying, looking is all he gets to do.
After the ripperdoc, Maiko went home, locked the door, and ran through each and every one of her contacts, determining who was still safe to trust. The list was a short one.
When she got to “Judy Alvarez,” she sat there for ten minutes, phone in hand, before she pressed Delete.
The ash on the end of her cigarette is becoming precariously long, and she taps it off into the tray. She hopes Judy knows what happened to Clouds. She hopes Roxanne or one of the other girls called her up and let her have it, told her exactly how stupid she was for shoving that fucking plan down their throats, revealed in excruciating detail how Tom died and how it was all because of her. She hopes someone says all the hateful things she wants to say but can’t.
But a smaller, softer part of her—a part she’s never been able to murder completely, no matter how hard she tries—hopes Judy is safe. She hopes Judy can leave this city she’s always despised, can find a place somewhere in this cruel world that won’t smother her fire.
And she hopes Judy won’t forget the woman who, in her own inadequate, fucked-up way, loved her, and will never love again.
The door to the ramen shop opens, and a man walks in. Her client. She waves and he approaches, fingering the gun at his waist until the idiot next to her stops his ogling and scurries away.
“Never expected to see you doin’ this kinda thing again,” he says, taking the vacated seat.
She watches the koi tattoo wriggle on his forearm as he rubs his thumb over his knuckles. He’s nervous; always has been when it comes to “this kind of thing.”
“It’s what I’m best at,” she replies, and that’s the truth.
He looks at the nearly empty cup of stone-cold tea in front of her and says, “You didn’t want anything to eat? Food here’s pretty good, y’know.”
“I hate noodles. Can we go?”
“Sure. No-Tell work for you?”
Why do they always pretend she has any say in the matter? “You’re buying, Kenji. Whatever works for you has to work for me.”
“Oh, right,” he mutters, blushing, like he forgot who—what—she is. “Well, my car’s out front. I, uh… bought some wine, too. If you want it, I mean.”
Maiko plasters on her prettiest fake smile. “That sounds great.”
They leave, and she slides into the passenger seat of his ancient, rusted-out car, nudging fast food wrappers out of the way with her foot. He apologizes for not cleaning up more; she shrugs and says it’s fine. His bottle of bodega wine rests heavy against her hip.
She tries not to think about how she got here, but the reality is too big, too damning to ignore. For all her cunning, all her ambition, all the effort spent honing every move, every emotion into only what was necessary for her advancement up that goddamn ladder… she allowed this to happen. She neglected to consider all the variables, and it cost her job. It cost her safety. It cost her everything.
Love is a foolish thing, and Maiko was a fool.