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Six months. All of this. Everything. For six lousy months.
She rests her elbows on her knees and buries her face in her hands to try and think. Trying to block out Johnny yelling at Alt for long enough to do so. She needed to think. Just for five minutes.
She hadn't exactly been expecting some miracle cure but—Shit, only six months? What was the point in six more months of this? Slowly dying and for what? Wouldn't even be for anything. Johnny wouldn't even get her body after. They'd both be gone. She just—"You were supposed to fix this!" Johnny's voice cuts through her train of thought again, standing up on his feet now, gesturing at Alt.
"Johnny, knock it off! Trying to fucking think!" She snaps, jerking upright to look at him before dropping her head to pinch the bridge of her nose when he stops, turning his focus away from Alt and back to her.
Six months to do what? Slowly rot away, watching everyone try to scramble for a solution that was never going to come? Mikoshi, Alt was a last-ditch effort. If the best she could get from this was six months, then what was the point in going back to do what? Torture her friends? Make them all watch her waste away? Who benefitted from that? Who got a damn thing from that?
"V, 'm not taking your body."
Of course he fucking wasn't. Why would he do the only logical, viable option?
At least if Johnny got the body, it'd be worthwhile. No ticking clock. No six months of slowly wasting away for nothing. At least he could go out. Have a second shot. Do something. She had plenty of eddies. More places to live than she could count. Even more cars. Distantly, she thinks that she was doing all that, subconsciously, for this. So, he'd have everything he'd need to go and live an actual fucking life after this.
Deep down, she thinks she always knew she wasn't making it out of Mikoshi. That's why she put it off for so long. Why she did everything she could think of first. Why she stopped to say goodbye to Vik and Misty before they left to raid Arasaka Tower.
She wasn't giving him a fucking choice. It wasn't up to him. It was up to her. Right? V looks up at Alt to confirm, "My choice, right? I'm the one in control here?"
"Yes."
She exhales slowly with a nod as she stares ahead. Okay. Her choice. She didn't have to worry about Johnny making a gonk ass decision based on some promise he made when he thought there was still a choice to be made. She told him she'd take a bullet for him and she meant it. There wasn't another choice here. Six months for her or an entire life for him. She was twenty-seven. That was an entire new lease on life for him. As a chick, sure, but there was technology and—
No, thinking about Johnny erasing her after she's gone wasn't helping but she'd never begrudge that. He could do it, but it didn't mean she wanted to think about it.
Six months versus an entire life.
It wasn't even a choice. What was she supposed to do? She didn't want to die right here. But she didn't want to spend six months wasting away more. She'd been living on a clock since she put the Relic in her head. She didn't want another six months of it. It wasn't living. It barely counted as surviving.
"V. I am not taking your body."
She looks up at Johnny, standing directly in front of her now, and she exhales softly before shrugging, "You heard her. Not up to you. My decision. And I don't want to go back just to wait six months ‘til my time is up. I said my goodbyes. What's the point in rehashing them?"
"You spoke to four people! And I'm bein' generous includin' Ker in that 'cause you didn't tell him shit!" Johnny counters and she shrugs.
Yeah, Vincent, Vik, Misty, Kerry. Sure, maybe she'd have said somethin' to Mama Welles or hell, maybe Panam. But she didn't want to tell Mama Welles she was dyin' and Panam would have tried to help. Vincent, Vik, Misty, Kerry. They were the ones she would've regretted not saying goodbye to. Even if she never said it so clearly to Kerry, she got her closure from that call. "I'd be goin' back to die in six months. Why the hell would I ever choose that?"
She shoves herself up to her feet before slamming past him, closing her eyes when her shoulder collides with his because after months of wanting to touch him and not being able to, she hated that this was how she finally could. She hated that this was what it took for her to finally be able to get that. "You go back out there and you find a fucking fix, is what you do! You don't give up! We did this for you to live!" Johnny follows her, grabbing her arm.
And V whips around to face him, shoving his hand off because she really didn't want to touch him like this. "You did this for me to live! Your last fucking good deed. Sacrificing yourself for me. For what, Johnny? For six months of searching for somethin' that don't exist? Six months of what? Torturing the people I care about with maybes we know aren't fucking real? I don't want that. I don't want six months to slowly die. You take my body, you'll be fine! No clock, no dyin' in six months. I die; you live. No matter what we do. It may as well be fuckin' worthwhile." She shoves away his hand when he goes to grab her again.
He couldn't seem to let go and she couldn't hold on.
"I don't want your fucking body, V! Maybe I don't want to live if it means I have to see your face every time I look in a damn mirror. Reminding me of this! Reminding me I killed you!" He steps right into her personal space, the fight fucking raging inside him as it slowly dies in her.
"Well one of us has to and I'm dead either way, Johnny."
Her shoulders slump as she runs a tired hand over her face, moving away from him slightly. Too close and not close enough. Having him right there, outside of her, touchable, felt wrong. Felt wrong in a way that made having him in her head, somehow right there but out of reach feel right. She missed it. She couldn't do six months of wrong. Six months of him not in her head, in her ear, commenting on every gonk ass decision she makes.
"At least if I—If I go with Alt, I'm not dead, you know? But if I go back out there, it's a six-month march into a grave. This is—I don't wanna die and that's what's waitin' for me if I keep my body. I die. Six months, maybe. If Alt's right. No saying I don't flatline sooner. If there were a cure, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You know that. It's not six months to find a fix. It's six months to plan a funeral."
Silence sits heavy between them as she stares off into cyberspace. Not at him. Not at Johnny. If she didn't look at him, she could kind of pretend he was back in her head. It was easier, more familiar. She knew how to handle that. "Doesn't matter anyway. Not up to you. Up to me. Hate me for it all you want. But you have to be alive to hate me so, that's a win for me."
She exhales slowly, planting her hands on the top of the booth and leaning forwards onto them for a moment as she stares at the pixels that make her hands. This was it. This was her for good. Never gonna go back to looking like a person. Probably gonna lose what little she had left of herself when she followed Alt anyway. She was hoping she would, anyway. She really didn't want to be aware of everything she had and lost. "This wasn't the plan, Val."
She closes her eyes at Johnny's voice, tightening her grip on the booth before raising her head, "Plans change. Just take my body and fucking go. Just call Vik for me and tell him what happened. Don't go in person, he'll probably kill you. Then, I dunno, go to Ker. Tell him I said watch the face if he tries to pistol whip you again and then I dunno, do whatever you fucking want. Not really my body, is it? Hasn't been for a while now. We were just biding time. Fun while it lasted, I guess." V rocks her weight back as she pushes away from the booth before turning towards the path to join Alt.
"Why you doin' this? Plan was always to get you outta here. No matter how long for. Me for you." Johnny says and she frowns at the path ahead of her, still not looking back at him. She wasn't even sure she could at this point.
'Why' was a really good fucking question. She could tell him it was because it made more sense or because she didn't want to go back until she was blue in the face.
Truth of the matter was, she loved him. Her gonk ass had fallen in love with the engram in her head, slowly taking over and killing her. And she wanted him to go out there and have his second chance even if she wasn't there to see it. More importantly, she didn't want to go back out there without him. She didn't want to go back out there and be alone with her thoughts, without Johnny's stupid commentary for six months. She didn't know how to function without him anymore. How it worked. How she worked. Anything before the Relic is more of a blur, none of it makes sense and she just can't wrap her head around what she did before Johnny.
She didn't want to find out.
But she couldn't tell him that, not now. She couldn't tell him she was dyin' for him 'cause she loves him and then expect him to go out there and just get on with his life. Though, she'd wager he probably knows—he heard every damn thought she had. But if they ignored it, if they just let it lie, never talked about it, then maybe they could both just pretend it wasn't true and he could go and move on. Move past her. Because he didn't need her to survive, no, he'd be just fine on his own. And if he couldn't at first then it'd be okay because he'd have the time to figure it out.
But she wouldn't. She wouldn't have the time to figure out how to breathe without him and if it was six months, then she didn't want to spend that entire time learning only to never quite figure it out before she died. In truth, giving Johnny the body and joining Alt was selfish 'cause she knew what he wanted and she knew what they'd agreed on but she was choosing the easy option for her. She figured though that—at the very least—she deserved this one easy option. After all of the shit she'd put up with, she deserved one easy option.
"Told you. That was your plan. You never asked me mine."
He hadn't, in her defence, ever asked her what her plan was. It wasn't this, but her plan had been a pipe dream she knew was never going to come to fruition anyway. Her plan had been to find a way for them both to make it out alive, with bodies. Together. A plan that really was more of a dream than a plan. Wishful thinking at best. "Jus' do me a favour, asshole? Promise you won't forget about me."
She hates the way her voice breaks slightly over that request because she had been doing such a good job of keeping her shit together. "Gonna be wearing your face, Val. How am I supposed to forget you?" She closes her eyes, exhaling sharply before tilting her head up slightly.
"Alt, how do we do this?"