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V was being evicted from her own body to make room for the engram of a deceased rockstar/terrorist that was slowly taking over her mind. It sounded insane - quite frankly because it was - and that was precisely why she hadn’t told her girlfriend about it.
She wasn’t stupid, she knew that she would need to tell her eventually, but she stupidly kept hoping that the situation would resolve itself without Judy ever finding out.
After all, how exactly do you tell the person you’re dating that Johnny motherfucking Silverhand has been criticizing her pussy eating techniques? That he’s been watching as they fell in love and has been contributing his unwanted input every step of the way? Or that she’s slowly dying because of an engram stuck in her head?
Answer - You don’t.
The late night visits to Afterlife were starting to get suspicious, though. V knew that Judy trusted her implicitly, but even so, she knew how it looked when she visited a bar late at night and didn’t come home until the early hours of the morning. When asked what she was doing, V always responded with ‘merc shit’, and Judy had never once pressed further.
But there was no way she didn’t suspect something. V didn’t know which was worse - her girlfriend finding out that she had a mental tapeworm in her skull or her girlfriend thinking she was cheating on her.
“Cheating, obviously,” Johnny scoffed. “Chicks hate that shit. And the worst part is that they bottle it up so you have no idea that they’re stewing over it until they snap and deck you in the moneymaker.”
V arched an eyebrow. “Speaking from experience, Johnny?”
Johnny raised his hands. “Hey, back in the day half the people in Night City thought they were one o’ my damn outputs. Not my fault they assumed a fuck meant we were official. Anything said while I’m balls deep doesn’t fucking count.”
“Whatever, Johnny. You aren’t exactly the best person on the planet to go to for relationship advice,” V scoffed. Ironic, seeing as he was just about the only person she could talk to about this shit without people thinking she was crazy.
“See?” Johnny pointed out arrogantly. “My advice is the only advice you’re gonna get, sweetheart, so you may as well take it.”
“Fine,” V sighed, “what sage pieces of wisdom do you have for me, o ancient one?”
“Tell her the truth,” Johnny stated bluntly. “Lyin’ to someone you care about never turns out well, especially when it's about something as big as this. How d’ya think she’d feel if you turned up dead one day and they fished out my engram from your body and she had to find out from some bullshit cyberweb article instead of from you?”
As much as V hated to admit it, Johnny had a point. She didn’t exactly have a safe, 9-5 job, and the mortality rate, especially given the Relic in her skull, seemed to increase with every gig she took. V did not want Judy to remember her as a liar, she wanted her to remember her as a great fucking girlfriend who could eat pussy like a champ.
“Don’t flatter yourself too much, V,” Johnny said. “But go ahead and keep singing my praises. You know I’m right, and you know what the right thing to do is, so why don’t you fucking do it?”
Maybe because Judy is the only good thing that’s happened to her since this fucking Relic got stuck in her head and she acquired a mental tapeworm. Or maybe just because she’s a fucking coward.
Johnny’s eyes softened. “Oh, V..”
“Save it,” V sniffed, glaring at him. “I don’t want your pity.”
“Then don’t act like a kicked puppy,” Johnny shot back. “Go tell your output the truth. At the very least it’ll make you stop stressing about it. I swear to fuck, every other thought of yours is about your bitch.”
“Careful,” V growled.
“Sorry, sorry, your girl. Either way she’s yours, and either way you gotta tell her, not sure why you’re getting your panties in a twist about the phrasing.”
“I’ll tell her, just.. Not right now.”
“Then when, V? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month?” Johnny shook his head. “We don’t even know if we’ll be alive to see the sunrise. Gotta grab life by the balls while you still can. Procrastinating isn’t gonna make the Relic in your skull go away.”
“I know, I know, just..” V swallowed thickly. “I just wanna pretend for a little while longer, y’know? Have somewhere to go where I can just be loved without being seen as a ticking time bomb.”
“Listen, that chick is head over heels in love with you. No way she’s gonna stop just because you got a dead rockstar in your head.”
“Let me sleep on it at least?”
Johnny sighed. “Fine, fine, I’ll drop it for now. But if you don’t stop thinking about it so much, I’ll take the reins and tell her myself.”
-
V did not, in fact, tell her, nor did she stop stressing about it. She had done her best not to think about the situation, but, as Johnny often pointed out, her subconscious was running wild with what-ifs.
“For the last fucking time, she’s not gonna smash your car with a baseball bat,” Johnny said, exasperated.
“How do you know? Have you ever seen her pissed off?”
“Uh, yeah, I’ve seen her fight Evelyn’s killers.”
“Well, have you ever seen her pissed off at me?”
“No, I haven’t, and that should fucking say something about how much she cares about you. Hurry up, we gotta get to Rogue before she gets whisked away by some wannabe Night City legend.”
“You just wanna take the reins as soon as possible.”
Johnny grinned. “That too.”
V sighed. “We’re almost there. Maybe I’d be able to concentrate on driving more if you weren’t blabbing in my ear.”
“You never concentrate on driving.”
“Well - I - You -” V sputtered. Fuck she hated it when Johnny was right. She pulled over onto the side of the road close enough to Afterlife that she could walk there, but not so close that her car would get keyed in her absence.
“Ready to hand ‘em over?”
“I will once we get to Afterlife. The city’s changed a lot since your time, old man.”
Johnny laughed heartily. “Your mind must be going faster than I thought if you think I don’t know my way around this place.”
V glared at him as she stomped towards the bar. “Might wanna think twice about pissing me off, buddy boy. In case you haven’t forgotten, I’m the one deciding whether or not you take control.”
“Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” Johnny said, giving V a mock salute before fizzling into the air. V rolled her eyes, continuing to trudge towards Afterlife. She took her sweet ass time - mostly to spite Johnny - but the walk wasn’t long and they arrived there in just under five minutes.
“Ready?”
V hesitated. “Promise me you won’t do anything too crazy.”
Johnny slapped his hand across his chest. “Swear on my life.”
“That doesn’t mean much coming from a ghost,” V grumbled, but she dry-swallowed the pill anyway. She felt her limbs slowly turn numb as her vision blurred, static creeping into her peripheral vision. The tingling and the static spread until she couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing through her ears, and within moments, even that faded away.
-
Judy was editing a braindance when V returned home from fuck-knows-where, looking wasted as shit. Judy stood up and rushed towards her swaying girlfriend’s side, brow furrowed. “How much did you have?”
“Not nearly e-fucking-nough, babe,” she slurred. Judy noticed a pair of aviators covering her eyes. V never wore sunglasses - said she hated how they were always touching her nose.
“I think you’ve had more than enough, actually,” Judy corrected.
V groaned. “You’re no fun, no wonder V’s so fuckin’ in love with you,” she grumbled. “Birds of a feather or some shit.”
Ah. So she was ‘referring to herself in the third person’ drunk. Judy grinned. This would be interesting. “Really? And how else does V feel about me?”
“Fluttery, happy, all that sappy shit,” V slurred, flapping her hands. Judy placed her arm around her shoulders and helped her to the couch. V plopped down, sinking into the cushions. “Mmmmm, always wondered how these felt,” she mumbled. “Oh, yeah, V’s also been fucking stressed about you recently - doesn’t know how to tell you about the parasite living in her skull.”
Judy arched a brow. “The fucking what now?”
“Me. Silverhand, in the flesh, her very own mental tapeworm,” V drawled. “She really doesn’t want you to know about me - thinks you’ll bash her car in and beat the shit out of her or something.”
“Uh huh,” Judy said, crossing her arms.
“What, you don’t believe me?” V scoffed. “Ever wonder what she does every night? She’s trying to get me out of her head. Having the coolest person alive - or dead, I guess - in your head isn’t a good thing according to her.” She grinned. “If you want proof, I can give you proof. I know everything about myself because I am myself. Go ahead, pull up some Silverhand trivia. I know damn well V barely knew my name before I wormed my way into her skull, so there’s no way she knows about me.”
“Okay, babe, time to head to bed.” What she was saying made sense, sure, and Judy had heard rumors of Arasaka’s engrams and the human experiments they liked to run with them, but V used to be a nomad. Last Judy heard, the engrams were being injected into kids, and Arasaka considered anything outside of Night City or Tokyo ‘the margins of society’ and generally didn’t touch them. Unless something had changed in the past few years..
Even so, V deserved the chance to tell Judy herself instead of Johnny Silverhand doing it for her.
“She’s never gonna tell you on her own,” Johnny slurred. “Start talkin’ about me over breakfast or some shit. Pinky promise she’ll turn red.”
“We’re heading to bed,” Judy repeated firmly. “And you are not feeling me up until I’m sure you’re yourself again.”
“Aha, so you do believe me!” V shouted, making Judy wince.
“Volume, please, it’s 3AM,” Judy pleaded. “And I don’t know what I believe. I do know, however, that I most definitely don’t want to risk being groped by a dead terrorist.”
“A hot dead terrorist,” V corrected.
“I’m gay,” Judy deadpanned.
V grinned goofily. “Sounds like a challenge.” No fucking way that was Judy’s gentle, caring, feminist-as-fuck girlfriend. The Johnny Silverhand theory was becoming more plausible by the minute.
“Get to bed before I beat the shit out of you,” Judy almost snarled.
“Jesus Christ, fine, someone’s feisty,” V said, hands raised in surrender, as she stumbled towards the bed.
Judy waited until she heard snoring coming from the room to join her in bed. Snoring that, she notex, was distinctly un-V-like. She crept into bed as quietly as possible. She laid her head down on the pillow and pulled the covers up. V’s leg nudged against hers as the merc stirred in her sleep.
Judy closed her eyes. She and V would definitely need to talk tomorrow.
-
V woke up with sore muscles, a murderous headache, and a mouth that tasted like something died inside it. Johnny flickered into view. “What the fuck did you do,” she thought angrily as she blinked the sleep from her eyes.
“A better question would be ‘what didn’t I do,’” Johnny said with a grin. “Can’t believe you have this bad a hangover just from one night of drinking. Your tolerance is dogshit. Would take a whole ass week long bender to get me this fucked up.”
“Yeah, well, unlike you, I have a life. Can’t exactly afford a new liver, either,” V grumbled. As she made to get out of bed, the blanket brushed against a particularly tender patch of skin on her arm. She peeled the blanket off to find a tattoo - ‘Johnny x V’ in a heart with an arrow going through it.
“Oh yeah - your skin was looking a bit bare, so I took it upon myself to fix that.”
“You got me a fucking tattoo?” V snarled. “I thought you said you’d behave!”
“I said I wouldn’t do anything too crazy. Didn’t rush Arasaka Tower again, did I?” Johnny snarked. “This is just a Saturday afternoon to me.”
“Not rushing Arasaka Tower is the bare fucking minimum. You do realize that, right?” V groaned as she sat up straight, pain pulsing through her head. “What else did you take it upon yourself to fix, other than my lack of tattoos?”
“Your lack of guts and relationship sense, for one.”
V’s eyes shot open. “You talked to Judy?”
“Yeah. Did my best to convince her of my existence, too. I dunno if it took or not - she may have just thought you were really drunk,” Johnny shrugged.
“You better pray that’s the case, fuckwad, or I’m never letting you take control again,” V growled, throwing the blanket off her body and pulling on her pants. Johnny glitched away as she washed up, scrubbing her tongue in an attempt to get the awful taste out of her mouth.
She swiftly did her makeup, fucking up her eyeliner around 5 times before deciding that a lopsided cat-eye was good enough, and ran a brush through her hair a couple times. Her morning routine usually wasn’t this complex, but she wanted to put off confronting Judy. Even if her girlfriend didn’t believe Johnny, she probably had some questions as to why V seemed so off last night.
V steeled herself before entering the dining room. The smell of bacon and eggs wafted through the air, making her mouth water. “Morning, sleepyhead,” Judy said softly. “Bet you’re nursing one hell of a hangover.”
“Holy fuck you’re an angel,” V groaned, taking a seat at the table. Judy brought over two plates. She set one down in front of V and took a seat opposite of her.
“Eat first. Then we gotta talk,” Judy said forebodingly, sipping her orange juice.
Dread shot through V’s chest. Even though she was hungry as fuck, she ate the meal as slowly as possible to prolong the time she had before needing to rectify Johnny’s fuck up. That fucking rockerboy was lucky he wasn’t here, she thought pointedly. He better stay gone unless he wanted to be sent to parasite prison. She knew exactly where her emergency pills were.
V finished the last bite of her meal. Johnny - thankfully - stayed as she rose to wash the dishes. “Don’t bother,” Judy called, “I’ll run the dishwasher later. You feeling alright?”
“No, but I’ll manage.”
“Even with the, ah, rockerboy engram in your skull?” Judy crossed her arms, quirking an eyebrow.
V swallowed thickly. “Um. Yeah. Even with that.”
“So it’s true,” Judy remarked. “I thought so - You did seem like an entitled white boy last night. Especially with the, ah, ‘lesbians are just a challenge’ comment you made.”
“The fucking what?” V growled.
“Yeah, your little parasite isn’t exactly the most progressive.”
“Wait, you're not freaking out or anything,” V stated, confused. “Why? Thought you’d either not believe me or be pissed I didn’t tell you sooner.”
Judy shrugged. “We all have our secrets. I’m just glad you’re telling me now - even though you had to use the rockerboy in your head to do it.”
“I’m dying,” V blurted out.
Judy grabbed her hand and intertwined their fingers, giving her a gentle smile. “I figured. I’ve done research on the Arasaka engrams before, and most of the hosts don’t make it past six months. But you’re strong, babe, I know you are, and if anyone can get through this, it’s you. I’ll be there for you every step of the way.”
V teared up as she pulled her girlfriend into a tight embrace. “Thank you so much,” she murmured, tears welling in her eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you too. I’m here for you, V - no matter what.”