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Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that the Relic malfunction had hit V so hard that he just dropped to the ground, and it wasn’t the fact that V called out to Johnny for help as if the engram could do anything about it. There was something else lodged in V’s subconscious that Johnny would rather ignore than face head on.
But he couldn’t ignore it. Not with V in this shape.
He knelt down beside V, who laid curled against a heap of trash bags he’d fallen into in a dark alley off Jig-Jig Street. V had gone down fast on his way to a gig – one moment, V was joking with Johnny, and the next, he was curled on the ground against some trash bags the restaurant they were behind had tossed near the dumpster. The flashing fluorescent lights highlighted everything that Johnny didn't want to see: blood running down V’s lips and staining the top of his shirt, the shaking of V's shoulders as he held his temples, the flash of white teeth bared in silent agony. More terrifying was how calm V seemed underneath it all, despite being in pain so bad that Johnny could immediately feel it. Resigned to the pain instead of fighting against it. He just laid there as his muscles spasmed and seized, not even trying to move.
Fear crawled into Johnny's throat. Something deeper was wrong. He reached out his 'ganic hand and placed it on V's shoulder. He could almost feel the merc's warmth through fingers that weren't really there.
"Hey, V, say something. You're scaring me over here." He meant for his tone to come across as joking, but sincerity crept in and he winced as he felt his heart drop.
No, not his heart. V's.
Or was it technically both of theirs?
Lately it was getting hard knowing who was feeling what emotion, whose thoughts were whose. Usually they could both tell the difference, but more often than they’d like to admit, it was getting harder to decipher the difference between them. They were bleeding into each other, and the Relic malfunctions just seemed to speed up the process.
“Something.”
"Fuck off," Johnny said gently, more so than he would have liked. He got off his knees and towered over V as his mood soured.
This wasn’t the first time that something within Johnny had picked up on V’s carelessness. The netrunner treated his own safety like it was a second thought and always tried to brush off other people’s concern about him. Typically, Johnny would just roll his eyes and simply give him a chastising quip, but he wasn’t having it now. Not when V seemed so beaten down.
Johnny’s lip curled. He couldn’t let this happen, not when they were so close to finding some way to fix V. He could practically smell the defeat wafting off their shared synapses and it was pathetic. V needed to get up and dust himself off now before his thoughts began spiraling too much like they were prone to do.
"You know, you have some real nerve getting smart with me when I'm the only one caring about whether you live or die."
V rubbed the bloody spit off his chin and scowled. "I'm not exactly collapsing in trash for fun, but okay. Whatever you say."
The sarcastic acid in V’s thoughts stung Johnny, and that only made his frustration crank up a notch. He sighed as he paced and took a drag from an already lit cigarette that appeared in his hand. He blew out his imaginary smoke with his words, clouding V's vision.
"It's not about that, and you know it! V, you're losing your will to fight and I can't just stand by and watch. Thought you had more in you than this."
V shifted his eyes away from Johnny's angry frown, deciding to gaze at the empty night sky instead with a strange longing. "I'm not done yet. I'm just tired. So tired."
It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't wholly the truth either, and they could both feel it. It clung to them, heavy and dark like tar.
Johnny sighed again, flicked his cigarette onto the sidewalk, and disappeared briefly only to reappear kneeled in front of V, his aviators hanging off his combat vest.
"I know. I know."
Whatever speech Johnny wanted to say left him completely. He could see how draining V’s life had been. Johnny hated it whenever V thought about his past, like he was doing right now. Johnny couldn’t stomach the sharp spike in anxiety that always came with thinking about V’s short-lived career in Arasaka counterintelligence, how it felt to constantly have his stomach tied in knots and how it tasted to puke frequently before and after meetings with his boss. How it ate at V’s soul to never know when his next day would be his last with all of the infighting inside Arasaka. Not to mention the constant loneliness that came from having a dead family and no time to socialize.
No goddamn wonder the kid chose to be a merc, a job where he had to disappear in a crowd, when he was so used to never being seen. No goddamn wonder he thinks he could just disappear into the void and believe no one would notice or care.
A pep talk simply wasn't going to fix any of that. Nothing that Johnny could do or say would change V's view in this moment. And it made his blood boil. So he focused on the one thing he was determined to be able to do.
"I know. But I made you a promise, and you can't keep me from honoring it." Anger dripped over Johnny's words and a cold rage burned in his deep brown eyes.
V scoffed and tried to look anywhere else. "What made you think I would?"
Johnny threw up his arms and cursed under his breath. "Have you forgotten we share the same brain? Shit, I can feel you giving up and it doesn't even bother you."
V's expression darkened. "You think you can dictate my thoughts? What I want to do with my life?"
"See, that's the fucking problem—" Johnny couldn't stop himself from jabbing a silver finger into V's chest, his anger overriding his worry, "you don't want to do anything with your short fucking life but hand it over to some asshole who's been dead for fifty years! You—"
"—Johnny, it's my decision to make, not yours! I'm the one in control here—"
"—Are you?" The question was both accusatory and genuine. "Because I think the biochip is the one who's been doing all the talking here."
V stared indignantly, his jaw taut and clenched. They both felt the nerve Johnny had touched and he wondered if the rage in V's eyes matched his own.
"Yeah, the biochip isn't the one dying here. Did you even see what Hellman's data said?! I have fatal brain damage. Even if I somehow survive getting the biochip removed, it'll probably only take weeks or months for me to flatline. Have you considered that maybe I don't want to wait around for death?"
"That's because you won't, you gonk. I don't care what that corpo rat said, there's got to be another way." Johnny's Hand balled into a fist against his bent leg. There had to be another way.
V managed to lift himself enough to sit on the sidewalk. "You heard Hellman. Even Arasaka can't fix me and they made the damn thing. Even if they could, who exactly would I be staying around for?" He stared pointedly at Johnny. "An asshole who's been dead for fifty years and won't even be here?"
Johnny felt V's chest tighten as his heart pounded with a realization neither one was prepared to deal with.
"Fuck."
It was too much, knowing how the kid was growing to like him more and more as time went by. It shouldn’t have happened. Johnny couldn’t bear to look at him, suddenly ashamed to have even brought any of this up. He was accustomed to feeling V’s emotions, sure, but this particular one he’d done his best to ignore. Having confirmation that V had developed a strong attachment…
Johnny couldn’t even bear to think about it too hard. It wasn’t right for V to be so devoted to him already, willing to throw everything away in his life just because he’d Stockholmed himself into liking the bits of code that was rewiring his brain. Johnny couldn’t let that happen, and the intensity of his fear for V’s life scared him more.
As if sensing his thoughts, V whispered Johnny’s name, and the sound made him reluctantly face the mercenary. He didn’t want to think too hard about how it made him feel to hear his name from V’s lips as if it deserved to be said with affection. An expression of exhaustion and longing rested uncomfortably on V’s face, and Johnny felt another pang in their shared chest.
"Everyone I've ever been close to is gone. You saw how it turned out with Angel. So desperate for someone to see through me, and—" V's already ragged voice cracked. The realization that he had been talking out loud and technically to himself hit them both. Johnny wasn’t sure if the embarrassment was his own or V's, but it crushed him nonetheless to see the helplessness in V's eyes.
V scoffed as he remembered how his heart had fluttered at the smallest touch from Angel's fingertips, how he'd unleashed vulnerable thoughts he couldn't tell anyone else to the doll, and it felt so private that Johnny wanted to escape the neurons they shared.
V glanced at Johnny guiltily, a wordless apology felt between them as he thought his words instead of speaking them. "I don't know if I could do this without you. Sometimes, I don't even know where I end and you begin. And I could never forgive myself if I--"
"Stop," Johnny almost pleaded, not wanting to hear it. Feeling it against his will was bad enough alone.
"--If I lost someone else I care about. Killed someone I care about."
A pregnant silence filled the space between them, allowing them to hear the distant music and chatter of people enjoying themselves. V breathed deeply, smelling the nauseating mix of trash and diner food cooking nearby now that blood wasn't clogging his nostrils. He couldn't seem to make eye contact with Johnny anymore. He tried to stand up only to collapse against the trash as his muscles seized. He didn't even try again; he just stared at the ground, letting the pain roll through him. Another cigarette appeared in Johnny's hand, smoke trailing off the end. He gripped it between his fingers tightly, unable to look away from V.
There you go again, Johnny. Another fly caught in the spider's web.
Johnny started pacing wildly as if he could outrun guilt.
"Shit!" He kicked a trash bag. It didn’t move, of course, but that didn’t matter. Johnny kicked it again. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!"
How could this be happening? Arasaka had turned Johnny into a weapon through this fucking Relic and now V wanted to just let the damn thing finish what it started? All because he was what, lonely? Depressed? Johnny knew those weren’t the real reasons, but he couldn’t confront the true one. The one that made him want to scream. Fuck, the way V looked at him was bad enough, but Johnny could feel it being directed towards him, this emotion that was totally undeserved, and he couldn’t escape from it. His emotions were becoming suffocating, and he could see through V's eyes his form glitching in and out rapidly as he smoked and cursed.
He didn't know if V heard his thought, but either way, V didn't seem too surprised at the outburst. Like always, V just sat unnaturally still, seemingly unfazed as he let Johnny get his emotions out of his system.
When V gathered his thoughts, they were unreasonably calm. "Look, I've been thinking about what Hellman showed us. I'm not going to make it long on my own, but I'm also going to die if I leave the biochip in place. But if I let Alt run Soulkiller—"
"No—"
"Just listen for once!" V yelled out loud, face scrunched in frustration.
Johnny stopped moving, frowning angrily. But he kept his mouth shut.
V sighed and directed the rest of his words in their shared head. "If I let her upload my engram, I want you to have my body. Chances are you'll get more mileage on it anyway. Relic or no Relic, I don't want to waste away and make everyone watch."
Johnny stared at V, puffing from his cigarette now hanging loosely from his lips. Sweat from the Relic malfunction glistened neon pink and blue under the flashing lights. For the first time, he noticed that V hadn't touched up his hair in a while—black roots clashed darkly against pink iridescent strands that fell in his face. V finally made eye contact with him again, and the look of hopelessness from those ghostly white cybernetic eyes shadowed with exhaustion made Johnny glide his eyes away from the younger man's face.
“You want to talk about promises?” V continued, and Johnny flinched at the words he could feel coming. “Don’t forget I made you a promise, too.”
V ignored the guilt-riddled expression on Johnny’s face, his eyebrows furrowed with determination as he spoke. “When I told you I would take a bullet for you, I meant it. I’ve never met someone who cared this much to change their mind on a decision this big. And if there truly is no other way for me…” His voice grew quiet and solemn. “…then I want you to have another chance.”
Johnny’s chest tightened and his heart ached.
No, not his. V's.
Theirs.
Isn't this what he wanted from the beginning? To be behind the wheel permanently? To have another chance to exact his revenge and do whatever the fuck else he hadn't been able to do his first time around? So why did the thought of this kid willingly handing him the thing he wanted most make him feel sick to a stomach he didn't possess?
He wanted to say the reason was that V reminded him of himself, but that wasn't entirely true. They were way too different. No matter how hopeless Johnny felt, he had always been able to bottle up his rage and hate and direct it to his music, his enemies, his loved ones. He'd never accept defeat like this, huddled against the trash whining about his life. He could wax poetic about how sorry his own life had been, but no matter how many he had alienated, Johnny always had someone along for the ride. He always had someone who had cared about him enough for one reason or another until he used them up and spat them out.
V had had no one for the majority of his miserable little corpo life, and even now that he had made friends, he didn’t confide in them. Whenever he mentioned the Relic to them, he made it sound like an annoyance rather than the thing that was killing him. They weren’t close friends like Jackie had been. The only person V told anything was Johnny himself.
Johnny understood, all too well, what it was like living day to day feeling beaten down, no outlet or person providing enough relief to drown it out. Arasaka Tower flashed before his mind's eye. He knew what he was doing when he decided to go back there in 2023. He knew he'd been tempting fate too many times with his reckless actions and he just didn't care.
He wanted desperately to hang on to his anger, but he couldn't. He just couldn't.
Out of all the people he’d met, why’d it have to be the most stubborn and self-sacrificing bastard to have slotted in the Relic?
Moments like this were his own personal hell. Being stripped of autonomy and only able to offer his words while watching someone he’d grown to care so much about slowly die was killing him, or it would if he were truly alive to begin with.
So Johnny did the only thing he could do. He took a few steps forward and grabbed V by the arm, pulling him up before his hands landed on V’s shoulders. He pretended for a moment that he was real and solid, and that he hadn’t simply taken over some of V’s muscles in order to keep him steady on his feet.
"Fuck your promise,” he said in a voice soft and teetering on the jagged edge of an emotion he couldn’t describe. “One way or another, V, we're finding a way for you and you alone. I refuse to let you flatline for me. I can’t do that to you."
V's breath hitched in his throat, and Johnny’s heart broke a little at the surprise V felt. Surprise, and was that relief?
“Johnny—”
“Don’t you dare argue with me on this. It’s your life, not mine. Already had one and I fucked that one up big time. Not about to fuck up your life, too.”
V just stared at Johnny’s form with an expression that was a cross between affection and sorrow. "And if there isn't another way?" V whispered. "If Alt can't even upload my engram back in my body and I'm just doomed?"
Johnny’s left hand cupped the side of V’s neck and they both could almost feel the cool metal hitting feverish skin. Johnny stayed rooted to the spot, staring deeply into those tired ghostly eyes. It wasn't said—maybe it wasn’t even thought—but it was felt loud and clear.
Then we die together.