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The metro hums like a tired animal.
Kerry stops and sits halfway down the car, hood pulled up, old ripped up denim jacket creased and pulled up at the elbows, expensive shades hiding a face nobody's looking at anyway. Night City's often too busy pretending not to see the famous to recognize a celebrity when he's stripped of stage lights.
He told himself he was headed downtown—maybe pop in on his shrink for an impromptu therapy appointment, maybe. Something more productive than sitting at home and drinking himself to sleep for the second week in a row.
Truth is, he got on the train almost at random. Without a destination. Any line, any direction, so long as it kept him moving and his mind busy.
Across from him, the vinyl seat is empty. Has been since the Watson stop. The absence presses against his ribs and chest.
He hasn't been outside since the funeral.
Every time he tries, he's stopped in his tracks. Any steps he takes always leads him back to his villa, back to the silence—like an enny circling the drain.
Outside, the city smears by in bring pink and red neon, wet misted glass from the beginnings of light rain, the blur of other people's lives in motion. The reflection in the window stares back at him: an old man pretending to be invisible. Feeling small.
V hated the metro. 'Too high in the air, feels wrong under my feet', he used to say, scowling as if the thought of braving the altitude itself was agitating.
Kerry smiles faintly at the memory—then sees it mirrored in the glass. It slips away slowly between each building that passes by. A grin like that doesn't belong on his face anymore. It looks wrong, feels worse. Like a mask that doesn't fit right.
The train dives into another short tunnel. The lights flicker, swallowing his reflection whole for a moment. Reappearing on the other side unchanged, maybe a touch more sour and tired around the eyes.
Japantown station dings through the PA and halts with a hiss of brakes and stale city air. The doors slide open, dragging the crowded noise from the platform—the shuffle of boots, a vendor shouting outside, an ad for some new vegetable paste coughing tinny gunfire and yelling through broken speakers.
...And then he steps in. And the car suddenly feels like a vacuum.
He has the same build. Same easy and comfortable slouch that hides his exhaustion behind awkward swagger. Broad shoulders under a jacket that's too thin for the unreasonable chill. Medium-dark hair that curls in weird ways and catches the light in that familiar, fucked-up way—as if no amount of product in the world could tame it.
He's like a statue, pulled from Kerry's mind and rebuilt before his very eyes.
For a second, Kerry forgets how to breathe. His chest up locks tight and he feels his exhale stutter out.
The guy's tattoos catch his eye—a familiar Badlands pattern curling over his wrist. Not the exact same as V's, but close enough that Kerry's brain fills in the rest that's missing. The lines he knows flow up his arm and circle at his elbow, the ink that used to trail over warm skin and strong muscle. The way V's pulse used to flicker beneath them when Kerry traced the art.
The man glances up, he catches Kerry staring. And then—he smiles. A half smile that pulls whatever air is in the cabin out in a gust.
It's small, a bit shy, almost apologetic. But unmistakably V's smile.
The same one he'd flash when Kerry once caught him raiding the fridge at 3 a.m., or when their relationship was new and "baby" slipped between them. Like the many times Kerry had called him beautiful and turned him pink, like it was the first time all over again.
Kerry's stomach drops right onto the floor. His throat burns. The whole world tunnels down to that sweet smile, that lovable face, that beautiful trick of light and grief.
He can't look away. He can't stand to look at him either.
He wants to vomit.
The metro doors ding and close with a dull thud. The train lurches forward, and Kerry sits frozen—heart hammering against his ribcage, nails biting into cracked and dirty vinyl—as if the smallest movement might break the illusion and scatter V back into dust.
The car hums louder as it crawls around a corner, the sound deepening into a screeching mechanical growl. Kerry grips the edge of the seat harder, knuckles white around the bottom of his seat. He's trying to breathe slow, keep steady and ground himself in reality, but the rhythm of the tracks feels like a heartbeat gone wrong.
And he can't look away.
The man—the not-V—sits a few rows away, scrolling absently through his holo and looking at his phone. Every so often he adjusts in his seat and rubs his jaw, and Kerry's mind betrays him with the rest: he imagines being close enough to hear the rasp of stubble, the smell of lavender soap and gun oil, the sweet warmth of a palm resting lazy on his thigh through the ride.
Then he hears it. Or at least he thinks he does.
A laugh?
Light, rough, full of the same life that used to fill the villa. Followed by a voice.
'You starin' at me, Ker?'
It's inside his head, ringing clearly as if the voice were pressed against the shell of his ear. He jerks, eyes darting to the darkened window, half expecting to see V's smirk reflected there in the seat beside him. But it's only himself—hollow-eyed, mouth parted, haunted by his ghost.
The rush of recycled air through the tunnel swells, drowning out his clash of thought. But not enough.
Memories crash into his chest like a tide—V in the car next to him, humming terribly off-key to his favorite song on Kerry's demo; V's head on his chest at dawn, heartbeat synced to his; V's hand reaching across the sheets to intertwine their fingers as his breath heats his skin, anchoring him in words of love and promise.
Kerry's vision wavers. He half-rises for a moment, one hand reaching up with a tremble before he even knows what he's doing.
Say it. Call out his name. If you're wrong—so what?
The train shudders and its overhead lights flicker. For one impossible heartbeat, time holds completely still.
When the lights flicker once more—it moves again, and the illusion's gone. Broken.
The man's still there—but he's just a stranger now. Checking his messages, tapping a rhythm on his knee, unaware of the devastation sitting three seats away. Nothing like the man Kerry saw before.
Kerry sinks back into his seat, pulse slowing to a crawl, shame and sorrow creeping up his throat and settling at the base of his neck.
His throat closes. The air's too thin to breathe.
He presses his palms to his eyes until colors burst behind them—reds and violets and ugly yellows. Anything to block out the face, to stop the shaking in his body and the sob trapped in his throat.
"Fuck..." The word rips out of him in a raw exhale of breath, barely swallowed by the hum of the rails.
No one looks his way. The car's thankfully half-empty—passengers lit electric-blue in the dusk by their screens, worlds away.
"You're really gone... aren't you?" His voice cracks. The reflection mouths it back, cruel and quiet.
The stranger stands as the PA voices the next stop. Kerry doesn't look up at him—but he feels the air shift, the ripple of movement in the cabin as the doors open. He glances just in time to catch that silhouette stepping out, shoulders hunched again the weather, the gait still hauntingly—painfully familiar.
And then he's gone.
Again.
The train lurches forward, leaving nothing but empty space across from him. Kerry stares at the seat for too long, as if something invisible might still linger in the wake of the stranger—the ghost of V. His spirit in some form.
Overhead, the PA stutters a garbled stop and a faint melody filters through the static—an old song from decades ago. Something sad, maybe. It skips, glitches, and promptly dies.
Silence follows, drowned out by the wheels and the rails.
Kerry leans back and lets his head thunk against the enameled glass behind him. His sunglasses slip down his nose and his eyes flutter closed from exhaustion. He lets the train rock him gently to sleep.
——
The metro hisses to a stop again. Kerry blinks the sleep from his eyes, then realizes he has no idea what station this is.
Doesn't matter, he supposes. He never had a real destination in mind to begin with. He steps out into the cool breath of the platform and lets the cruel embrace of Night City envelope him.
The world below him hums through the asphalt cracks—dirty neon bleeding through grates, muffled bass from a dingy club nearby. The city smells like ozone, acid rain, and garbage. Comforting, in its ugliness.
He scales the stairs down slowly, one hand dragging along the wet rail. Rain meets him at the street level, drops catching in the white strands peaking out of his hood, clinging to his lashes, glimmering on cracked pavement.
A thousand lights reflected in the dark puddles—each one like a dropped star.
For a second, he thinks about calling someone to pick him up. His assistant, Chris. Vik, maybe. Hell, even Rogue crossed his mind. But what the fuck would he even say?
'Got lost taking the train, saw him on the metro. Think I've lost my mind again'?
He eventually just starts walking. Still no destination—instead listening to the rhythm of his boots and the faint buzz of background-ads whispering above as he weaves through the crowds.
He stops near a noodle stall watching the steam curling into the misty night sky. Soy, garlic and salt—memories swirl through the haze. It smells like the nights they used to steal alone together from the world—V laughing by his side as they walked in the dark near his shitty Watson apartment, leaning against him with a cup of cheap noodles in his hand, saying, "You ever think this city's almost beautiful at night, ya know, if you ignore the piles of garbage?"
Kerry's throat tightens again and his face screws up. He keeps walking.
Maybe he'll end up at his house again, eventually. Maybe at that old bar V took him to toast to his lost friend, all those nights ago.
One way or other he'd find himself somewhere. Maybe walking into the sea, letting the waves carry him somewhere else.
The city moves around him, uncaring as he walks. Cars drift past, laughter spills from somewhere unseen in an alley.
Under a broken shop sign flickering pink and blue, Kerry finally stops moving. He leans against a wall decorated in signage, hands shaking in his coat, breath fogging in the cold.
For the first time in a month, since losing the man he loved, he lets himself cry—ugly, unguarded—kept company by his memories and the gentle fall of rain.