Chapter Text
They are on a stakeout outside yet another Scavenger base, debating tactics, when Johnny gets so fed up he yells:
"I’m telling you, JUST GO IN THROUGH THE FUCKING WINDOW! Are you physically unable to trust me or something? Is it a fucking medical condition?"
But instead of yelling right back, V suddenly hits him with something entirely different.
"Actually," he says, "I think you are the only person I trust fully, without any caveats. But I also think you underestimate how harmless those poor fucks are to me."
And Johnny should pretend he didn't hear it. Or, better yet, he should tell V that the hostage is on the second floor—it’s clear as day—so going in through the front door, guns blazing, is super fun, yes, but also dumb as fuck.
However, there is something that has been brewing inside Johnny, and it just won’t let him. So instead he blurts out:
"Well, you’d better not. Trust me like that."
V’s sitting on the roof, dressed as a construction worker, reflective vest and all. His feet are dangling above the deserted street.
He puts down his half-empty bottle of beer.
"And why is that?"
Once again, Johnny really regrets being honest. The longer they are locked up together, the more honest he gets. He hates that.
"I thought about fucking you over, V. When you first let me take the wheel. That’s why."
They have been through a lot of shit since then, so now this idea feels as alien as a sudden urge to become an accountant.
But it did happen.
At some point, Johnny looked at the pills and imagined never hearing a second voice inside his head. And it wasn’t just a casual thought. It festered in him as Johnny dashed around Night City drunk, high, and untethered. Somewhat free.
"I could just keep taking those fucking pills and let you, well. Fade the fuck away. I really thought about it, V."
V snorts, but it doesn't sound half as arrogant as it did when they first met. Now that Johnny's ear is attuned to V's corpo bullshit, he knows what it means: "That's a cute little scheme you planned there, but I worked for Arasaka, choom."
"Yeah, that's what I thought," V says. "It was more likely you'd do that than that you wouldn't."
Johnny expected him to flip out or close up. He sure as hell didn’t expect this.
"Wait, that's what you thought? And you still took the damn pills?" he asks.
V turns to the nearest window, and in the reflection Johnny sees one of his serene, crisis-contained-no-worries-boss smiles. The most Jesuitical kind.
"You made the right call, though, didn't you?" V says. "And now I trust you like no one else. We're good. So please don't start."
"Start what?"
"The pep talk."
"I don't do pep talks."
"Great, then don't do one now."
"Okay, if you tell me why you wanted to kill yourself."
V looks away from the window at once.
"I didn't."
"You took fucking Pseudoendotrizine thinking you'd never wake up. How is that different from a depressed actress swallowing a bunch of pills and washing them down with vodka?"
"Well, for one thing, I didn't wash them down with anything. I just swallowed them dry."
The bastard has a facade as thick as the Chernobyl sarcophagus. This thought instantly starts squirming and begging to be turned into a lyric, but Johnny has more important shit to deal with.
V is silent for a long time.
He stares down at the street where three Scavs are laughing and getting high. They are supposed to be keeping watch, but that’s Scavs for you.
Finally, V says:
"When they terminate your employment, among other things, you lose access to the hormone tuners. That means your cortisol, noradrenaline, and ghrelin hit you all at once like a giant fly swatter."
"So? Sure you can afford to set your fucking hormones straight now."
V laces his fingers together.
"It's not that. I was just tired of living a life that manifests itself in copious amounts of those particular hormones."
That’s a needlessly complicated way of saying "I have a shitty life", but Johnny doesn't give him shit for it.
"You've already tried dying. That fat fuck Dexter DeShaun gave you a free sample. Did you really like it so much that you wanted to do it a second time?"
"Damn, you made me think of the moment when Takemura shot him in the face."
"Yeah, that was satisfying as fuck."
"Yup. Preem."
They sigh in unison with one set of lungs.
"Well," V says cheerfully. "I changed my mind, didn't I? And so did you. So it's water under the bridge. Now can I please go kill some Scavs so I can get paid? I have three missed calls from Regina, and you know how she gets."
"Yeah, sure. Just one more glance at that window, and we’re good to go."
For some reason, V actually obeys.
In the reflection, Johnny can see that he is nervous. Rattled, even.
It’s not that he looks too different from his normal smug self. But, like that gonk from a really old movie used to say, the eyes, chico. They never lie.
So Johnny goes in for the kill:
"You know why I didn't do it? Because then I would be trapped in your empty shell. Taking your body for a ride is one thing. Living in it with you gone… Just imagine it for a second: wearing your dead best friend’s meat suit. It would be a tomb with no way out."
V’s mouth twitches.
"I'm sorry, did you just call me your best friend?"
"Well, what if I did?"
"I hate to break it to you, Johnny, but I already have a best friend. His name is Goro Takemura."
"Takemura is your crush, not your friend."
V laughs.
"Oh, fuck you!"
"Hey, Goro, here is a list of Night City’s hidden gems! You should try these amazing fajitas!"
"Shut it."
"Oh, Goro, sure, of course I will risk my life and fight Arasaka special ops for you!"
"You sound jealous."
"I sure am. The fucking corpo samurai gets his ass saved for free, no questions asked, and I can't even get high without you crying me a river about it."
V chuckles softly.
"You're a dick."
"Yeah, yeah. Now be a sweetheart and light one up, will you? I don't know which hormones are going crazy in your blood right now, but that’ll show them."
V stares right ahead, over the roofs, as if searching for something far away. Johnny has nowhere to position his avatar in V’s field of vision, so he just has to stare with him.
"Nah," V says. "I’ve decided that we hate smoking. And now that we have established that nobody here is eager to die, I'd better take care of my lungs."
Johnny rolls his eyes.
"V, you're loaded. You can buy yourself new lungs. Now shut up and get that pack out. The lighter is in the back pocket, I can feel it."
"No. I'd rather you smoked your cigarettes on your own with your own lungs. I'll even buy you a spare set since I'm loaded and shit."
Johnny goes mute for several seconds.
"What?" he finally manages.
"You heard me."
"I did. And it didn’t make any sense. Hence the fucking question."
There are sounds of a brawl coming from the entrance to the Scav base, but V doesn't look down.
"I am not leaving you behind, Johnny. Or maybe I am. I haven't decided yet. My body has been adapting to your engram, so it might make more sense to use whatever other body we procure for me, not you, but…"
Very few people are able to leave Johnny Silverhand speechless. One person, to be precise.
"Procure a body?"
V smirks.
"Obtain. Uh, get. Sorry, I keep forgetting you are a high school dropout. I'll try to use smaller words in the future."
Johnny doesn't even bother to react to that.
"Either I blacked out for an hour or two, or you’ve just come up with an acid trip of a plan and skipped a few steps in fucking communicating it properly."
V just smiles, unbothered.
"What? It makes perfect sense. We don't want each other to die, right?"
Johnny doesn’t want to give suck-up answers to his stupid-ass questions, so he keeps his mouth shut. But that has never thrown V off:
"To save time, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that is correct. Now, we can't live in the same body. So we need to find a second one. Fuck, now that I think about it, it'll be me who'll have to pack my stuff and move out. Provided that it's still possible to make an engram of me, of course. Shit, it better be."
"What the actual fuck?"
"Hear me out. We abduct that Arasaka bioengineer again, right? We have him make a second chip. Then we create an engram of me and shove the chip into some suitable body. And in my body, my consciousness gets wiped out by your disgusting, toxic personality. And that’s fine, because I will live on in a body that wasn't originally mine. Just like you."
If Johnny wasn’t a fucking engram, he would be throwing hands right now.
"Is that all?" he growls.
"Nope! I think this op needs a name. How about ‘Soulless Best Friends Forever’?"
"This is still suicide, just with a few extra steps!"
"SBFF for short. See how good I am with names?"
"Your fucking soul will be gone, V. The version of you that I am talking to right now, the real one? It will be gone!"
The motherfucker just shrugs.
"So?"
"So you fucking lied when you said you don't want to die."
"No. I have assessed my options, and this is the closest thing to life I can get."
V sighs.
"Johnny. You are still you."
"Fuck no! The real Johnny is buried in the Badlands."
"And yet. Don't you feel real?"
"Oh, I do. But I'm still an engram of a rockerboy who's been dead for fifty years."
"So you’re saying this isn't life?"
This is not a conversation to have with words. It doesn't feel like one. But words are all Johnny has.
What a fucking joke.
"V," he says, "you want to die and leave me with a copy of you that isn't you."
"My brain is turning inside out to become your brain. I cough blood. I fucking faint. Do you really think this body will be happy to have me after we remove the Relic? That's just bullshit."
"You don't know that. How are you even planning to build a second fucking biochip?"
"Well, Arasaka has the labs and the scientist to do it. So we're gonna go ahead and use all that. And I'm pretty sure there is a way to make an engram of me. That’s a service Arasaka sells to civilians, after all."
"Okay, let’s say we manage to do all that. What sad fuck will you turn into your permanent residence, huh? Who do you think deserves such a fate? Some doll? A Scav? Who?"
V smiles like a maniac. Johnny calls this smile "a rabid dog eager to greet its owner". He doesn't even need to see it to recognize it.
"Oh," the son of a bitch says. "You're gonna love it."