Chapter Text
Life in Night City was cruel and uncaring, it didn’t care if you were rich, poor, it would chew you up and spit you out all the same. But the opportunity held in the core of the city is what made so many people drawn to it, like a moth to a flame, the chance of something greater than themselves was intoxicating. After all, that’s why V had come here a little over a year ago, opportunity.
But opportunity was only for the very few, a luxury few could catch and even fewer could afford. So while she chased opportunities she worked and worked and worked. Merc work wasn’t pretty especially with her minimal street cred but it paid the bills, filled her stomach and left a little for reinvestment. Her chrome was minimal, the standard neutral port and chip wear, but also an old model cyber deck and a smart weapon link. It wasn’t much but as she slowly worked her way up the scene so did her chrome. It was a slow and grueling process, but also honest to God work, which is more than people can say for this city.
While she mostly did work in the inner parts of the city her home was in Pacifica in a little ‘on its last legs’ establishment called the Pista Sophia. Piece of shit it was, but it was right along the coast, you couldn’t beat that view for that price. It helped keep her sane when jobs got long and dark, helped remind her of why she came here in the first place, opportunity. The glittering ocean and crashing waves served to give her hope each night when she’d come home, often washing that day's blood off her hands in it. Feeling as the tides lapped away the grim and dirt and filth leaving her hands and soul clean, ready to start anew.
Today was one of those boring days, no biz to speak of, the closest thing to a break V was ever going to see living in Night City. She got up early out of habit and took the metro into the underbelly, hopped a few merc bars, got a few drinks and got even better connections. Turns out networking was the game of today. When she finally had enough of the city she stopped at her favorite burger place on her commute back to Pacifica. A little joint called Frank’s where she'd often get dinner after a gig, or a milkshake after a tough one, but tonight just dinner sufficed. The kid at the counter smiled when she saw her, tight buns on the side of her head bounced with excitement as she greeted the merc.
“Hello Miss V! The usual?”
“Yep, double cheeseburg, extra bacon, and a big thing of fries.”
“Comin’ right up!”
V waited by the window, picking some unsuspecting person outside to watch while she waited. This time it was a younger girl's hair spiked up and back into a Mohawk almost as tall as her (no where near). She was pissed at something on her phone as she paced just outside the bus stop booth at the corner. She was so pissed in fact that she didn’t notice the bus pull up, barely stop, and then leave without even coming to as much as a full stop at the stop itself. She only noticed when the bus began to pick up steam and roll back to the speed limit, she chased it for a minute before dropping her hands to her knees in an exasperated shot. Poor bastard, it will be another hour till a bus comes to this damn stop again.
“Miss V?”
She looked away from the window and back to the cashier who was holding up her food bag with maybe the last genuine smile in Night City. She smiled back, “thanks kid” , grabbed her bag and dropped a few eddies into the kids ‘college fund’ jar just by the register before taking her leave. The metro back home was uneventful and the walk to the Pista Sophia was quick, it was a refreshing distraction from the constant movement of life the city brings. And now, she couldn’t wait to continue this mundane relaxation at home, on the couch, with a new episode of her show, and maybe a little of that ice cream she had stashed in her freezer for a rainy day.
Climbing the stairs up to the top floor always sucked, but at least it gave her one last workout for the day before she crashed. Once at the door she reached for it only stopping to curse when she forgot to take out her keys. Shifting the food to sit on her hip she dug her keys from her pocket, but her fingers felt nothing but the fabric of her worn out jeans. Fuck, she must have left them home, which meant that the door to her apartment had been open all afternoon.
And the minimal resistance from the handle as she pushed open the door confirmed that suspicion. But as the light of the hall illuminated the room it was all the same as she left it, like no one was there. And in this part of Night City that was a god damn blessing. So she walked in, flicked on the lights by the door and grabbed the keys from where they sat abandoned on the counter to actually lock the door before she settled in for the night.
But as the lock of the door clicked another sound rang through the walls of the hotel room, the sound of a knife being unsheathed. Leaving the key in the lock she reached for the gun snug against her thigh. With a twitch of her finger the safety was off and her hand trailed down towards the handle, she had been wrong, someone had broken in. But from the state of the room and the fact the thief was still here meant it was no normal break in, this person was either inexperienced, or here for something else.
As she began to slip her iron from her holster the voice of the thief spoke out, and when it did a sense of dread filled her body. Not the kind that comes from the sound of someone bigger or stronger, but of someone substantially smaller and weaker.
“Who the fuck are you!”
“Could say the same thing choom-“
“I ain’t your choom!”
The boy's voice was shaky, and from the sound of it across the room as if he were hiding out in her bathroom. He was talking bigger than he actually was and for that she felt safe enough to turn to face him. As she did she finally revealed the intruder to herself, and it was just what she suspected. A kid, teen if she were being specific, about 14/15 years of age, ex military by the looks of him, and scared out of his goddamn mind.
She let her gun fall back into its holster, as his fingers tightened on his knife’s hilt.
“I’ll fucking kill you!”
“Mhm, sure kid.”
“I will!”
“Then do it.”
He didn’t, he stood, and he watched as she walked over to the busted up table in the middle of the ‘kitchen’ she was starving and an amateur break in wasn’t about to ruin her dinner. Sitting down V began fishing through the grease soaked paper bag that contained her food. Pulling out the contents she took out the burg boxes and fry box and set them in front of her. Finishing around in the bag she felt a third box hit her hand, her face twisted with confusion as she fished it all out. There on the table was her own burg a fry box, but on the table now sat a second burg box, what were the odds. Looking up at the kid she slid it haphazardly to the other side of the table, barely surviving falling off entirely.
Opening her own she started to eat as the intruder's face turned from one of fear to confusion, the army knife now shaking in his white knuckled flesh palm. His breathing was still heavy, and his gauze still fixated on the unbothered woman sitting in front of him. His eyes darted from her to the food seemingly offered to him and then back to her again. It was a trap, it had to be a trap, not a soul had been kind to him since he had stepped foot into Night City and yet, here she was, the mysterious woman whose apartment he had broken into offering him kindness.
“Want some?”
“Why.” His voice trembled more than he would have liked it to, but there was really no point trying to scare her off at this point.
“They gave me a second burg for free, though I’d pass on the good karma.” The room once again fell quiet as the kids grip on the knife loosened, and after watching her eat for a while and determining the meal wasn’t poisoned he slinked over to the free burger and chair.
Cautious ‘ganic fingers opened the burger box, inside was one just the woman in front of him. A standard double burger with thick melted yellow cheese and extra bacon layered on top. His mouth watered with the smell, it had been a few days since he ended up in Night City and this had been the first edible food item that had graced his hands since. Until now he had been surviving off scraps given to him pitifully by minimum wage employees at the Buck-a-Slice or stealing whatever people left on dinner tables before the waitresses had time to clear their sections. But this was intact, whole, and for him.
After convincing himself the food was not somehow poisoned he took the burger into his mouth and bit down. It was a bigger bite than he anticipated, clouded by his dissolution of hunger but he didn’t care instead opting to savor the taste of real food on his tongue. The woman across the table was fully staring now, leaving her half eaten dinner unattended in its own box at her fingertips. She wasted no time jumping right into the questions he knew were coming. He just wished she’d wait a second for him to at least tear through the chewiest part of the bacon first.
“What’s your name?”
He looked up, half a burger still stuck between his teeth, “uh..” was the muffled answer. To that V leaned back in her chair and smiled,
“You either know it or I ‘ought to bring you to a ripper chamaco.”
Lowering the food from his mouth he thought, he knew his name he was sure of that, he just hated it. He hated Robert for enlisting in that damn war, he hated him for being too weak to just survive long enough to leave the nomads in the least traumatic way possible. But, now Robert was dead, buried in the very pit his generals had found him in Nicaragua, Robert didn’t come back from the war no, his name wasn’t Robert anymore.
“John… John…” He hated his middle name a little less than his first and when he was deployed a lot of the men took a liking to calling him that as well. But when it came to his last name he’d rather be left for dead again than utter his old man’s name. He didn’t deserve to be connected to what he is now, he became more of a man than his old man ever could be, he survived without him. Looking down at his prosthetic that glittered in the overhead light of the kitchen he finished his name. “Silverhand. John Silverhand.”
“Mm, nice to meet you Johnny.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“No, the other wacked out merc who’s flat I broke into.” Johnny spit his words with precautionary venom, if V were anyone else she would have taken it personally.
“My name is V.”
Picking up a fry Johnny’s eyes narrowed at the woman almost disbelieving, “V? Just V?”
“Yep.”
“That’s stupid, your name can’t just be a letter.”
“Ah well it is.”
They sat in silence again as she watched the kid pick a few fries from the box and eat them, tentatively almost as if he were waiting for her to tell him ‘no more’ after every one. But she never did, and he ended up eating most of them before they spoke again. “You got a place to sleep Johnny?”
“Stop calling me that.” The kid huffed, lowering his head onto the table just on top of his forearms he huffed. Looking behind her at the closed door he responded, “nah, but I’ll leave if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Opposite actually. Pacifica at this hour is no place for a kid your age.”
He grumbled something or another, maybe about him not being a kid, maybe about him being fine on his own. Either way he was unimpressed by her sudden care in his surroundings and he was no stranger to vocalizing his discomfort. “Yeah? So? Why do you care?”
“Because, you and I aren't too different … Linder.”
Chrome instinctively went to the cool metal of his tags, but when he did V dug out hers with metal fingers. Tags of her own rattled against her chest as she sat back with a smile taking in the kids changing expressions. A silence fell over the room, all except for Johnny's heavy breathing as his fears of the war came back to light, they’d found him, they’d found him and they'd come to take him back. He had to run, he had to hide, but his legs were jello, and all he could do was ask, “Where.”
“Nicaragua, can safely say I’m not a jungle person after that, too humid.”
“…”
V went back to her burger like it was the most normal thing in the world, like she didn’t just uncover his biggest shame. Maybe it was his fault for keeping them out on his neck like that, but as heavy as the burden they caused him they gave him a melancholy comfort. A comfort in knowing that survived, he is real, grounding him in the present rather in the not so distant past. She ate as he kept a hand on his tags, hers pressed against her sternum. If he glared he could attempt to read them, they were set up in a similar fashion to his own. They read, “ValerieMaríaRojas” under it her numbers and her blood type, OPOS, the opposite of his.
“Valerie?”
“Robbie?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Don’t call me Valerie.”
The two sat in silence, a stillness only soldiers knew until Johnny only nodded, “fair enough.” Eventually the two of them finished their dinner, Johnny getting visibly disappointed when chrome fingers hit an empty fry box. A small smile crept across V’s face as she rose from her chair and collected the trash on the table to discard. For being your run of the mill medium sized mercenary in Night City she did keep her flat meticulously clean, it was just about the only clean thing about her life and she liked to keep it that way. She felt as Johnny watched her with an unshaking gaze as she moved around the incredibly small kitchen area, waiting for something to happen, for the other she to drop. Grabbing two bowls from the upper cupboard she dropped one spoon into each before speaking to hopefully defuse some of the tension once again building in the room. “You a chocolate fan Johnny?”
“What?”
Digging around in the freezer of her mini fridge she pulled out a tub of ice cream and held it up to wave at him. When she turned his eyes were no longer boring into the back of her skull but wide eyed and staring at the ice cream in her hand. “Well I’ll take that as a yes.” Making up two bowls for both of them she dropped one in front of the boy before taking a seat of her own. She watched as he tried to take a huge bite just like with the burger only to immediately get a gnarly looking brain freeze as he squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. After it subsided he went to licking his spoon slower, clearly the kid hadn’t had a taste of ice cream in a long… long time.
“Where’d you even get this?”
“Eh, having adult eddies has its benefits."
V dug her holo from her pocket and started poking around the messages while the two finished off their dessert in silence. A few of the messages had been friends asking if she wanted to go out again later that night (not any more she doesn't), one from her fixer about an upcoming client she wanted to toss her way (thank god), a few from Jackie asking on behalf of his mom when she would be coming over for dinner (that Thursday like always), and one from Milt about getting her cyberwear retuned since it had been just about a year since her last appointment. That last one particularly stood out to her as she looked up from the device back to the boy in front of her.
His left arm was hidden underneath his oversized hoodie but those silver fingers reminded her of a certain cyberwear being installed onto soldiers with particularly gruesome limb losses, and those cyberweare pieces were always adult models. (If they even made child models that would imply that the army acknowledged their child soldier problem which was even less likely.) His shoulders slumped down in the direction of the limb indicating its weight, he even moved the thing slower than his right hand despite him using it for just about everything from the moment she met him. Not to mention just the fact that a child his age had such advanced combat chrome meant he was definitely hiding more than just regret underneath the fabric, and if she was already heading over there she was sure Milt wouldn’t mind a few extra minutes to take a look at the boy.
Looking back down she clicked on his icon and began typing.
V | 6:35 PM
Hey Milt, I’ll swing by tomorrow around 1, would you also be able to take a walk in around the same time?
As V went to pick at her ice cream bowl the little bubble and dots appeared signaling the ripper had seen her message and began typing. He was usually slow to respond but it seemed today she caught him by his phone, that or her inquiry had piqued his interest, or both.
Milt Numan | 6:39 PM
1 sounds perfect V, it’ll be good to catch up. And what do you mean by a walk in?
V | 6:40 PM
TLDR a kid broke into my flat when I was out this morning, came to a mutual understanding but found out he’s a deserter from Nicaragua too, and packing some serious combat chrome because of it. I wanna get him checked out for the usual.
The little bubble and dots came and went about a dozen times as Milt took his time formulating out his response.
Milt Numan | 6:45 PM
Deserter huh? I can see why you have a soft spot for him. And shit, wouldn’t be the first time I tweaked combat chrome for a kid. They’re sending them out far too young these days, breaks
my heart every time I see it. I’ll make some room for him in my schedule, I’ll see you two tomorrow.
Closing out the messages she put the device face down on the table as she finished up her own bowl just a little after Johnny had finished his. Reaching over the table she grabbed his dish and stacked the two before standing up and making her way to the sink. “You tired Johnny?”
Between the dinner and desert and warm and general exhaustion the young boy nodded maybe a little quicker than he would have liked. “Yeah.”
“Good, get some rest ‘cuz tomorrow Ima take you to my ripper Milt, he’ll take a look at that arm for ya.”
“Don’t need a ripper.”
“With the way that things connected you’re lucky you haven’t torn your whole damn shoulder off. Damn bastards chroming up a teenager with a prosthetic too big for his own body.”
He was silent for a second, he really couldn’t argue that but still the idea of being back on the operating table with little to no agency shook him to his very core. That smell of disinfectant, the cold metal against his back, feeling like an animal on the slaughtering floor- he could only slump in his chair and nod. He watched as V cleaned up their dessert bowls, leaving them in the sink for later, before making her way to the bed tucked away in the corner. V’s room was what he could suspect as being one of the nicer places this dump had to offer, that and how nice she kept it. She fluffed up the two pillows on her bed and took out a fuzzy blanket from the basket right next to the headboard and laid it out. “Shoot. You need some pjs chamaco?”
He wanted to snap at her that he wasn’t staying, he didn’t deserve the kind of hospitality he was already getting especially because of his little break in a stunt hours ago. But the fullness of his belly and the warmness of the bed across the room lulled his angry mind anyway. V herself poked around in her dresser before pulling out a change of clothes and making her way to the bathroom. Once she locked the door Johnny finally got up, picking up the bag he had placed under the table he made his way to the bed. He dropped the bag by the basket at the headboard and toed off his busted up sneakers before curling himself up in the warm blanket V had offered him.
His mind was racing about a million and one things, that this was still a trap, that he had to run, hide, get away from here as soon as possible. That V was a freak or creep who was kidnapping him to sell him back to the nomads he ran from, that she was going to kill him in his sleep and steal his chrome for the black market.
But his legs were tired and his heart was heavy, and the blanket was warm and the bedding was soft. And for a moment, one gentle moment, he was far away from the war and violence that brought him here, for a moment he closed his eyes without flashes of horror resurfacing to remind him of what they had done to him. For a moment he was Johnny, snuggled up in a warm blanket with a warm dinner for the first time since he stepped foot in Night City. He knew in the morning he’d let V take him to a ripper, maybe buy him lunch, and then he’d leave when she finally turned her back to him. This peace couldn’t last forever, nor did he deserve for it to, so instead he’d soak up as much of it as he could now so at least the memory would keep him warm on the streets tomorrow. Even if his body ached at the very thought of tomorrow.
The soft clacking of beads signaled that V had come out of the bathroom. Johnny cracked open an eye to watch her as she dropped off her previous clothes into a small hamper by the bathroom door. Making her way over to the worn out old couch by the window she grabbed the blanket from the top and dragged it across her body as she laid down. He watched as she got comfortable cursing softly when the blanket wouldn't cover her feet when laid completely stretched out. When she was comfortable she turned her head over to face her bed, making eye contact with the boy curled up on himself in her bed. Her voice broke the silence of the room, soft and gentle,
“Goodnight Johnny.”
“…”
She spoke in a way that signaled that she believed he was asleep, and when he didn’t respond she shuffled around to face the couch as she herself began to sleep. The room fell still once again allowing the sounds of the city to take its place, the gentle and distant waves of Pacifica's shore line crashing onto the sand, the sounds of lone bullets flying and men yelling. Johnny fought sleep for a moment to take it all in, but when eyelids fell heavy and a week's worth of exhaustion finally took hold he let his eyes close and finally a belated response to fall from his lips.
“Goodnight V.”