Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ms. Yamazaki opens the door with a scowl.

V’s told Jackie time and time again that she isn’t actually scowling at him, that her face is just Like That, but it’s hard not to take it personally. Ms. Yamazaki is quite possibly the scariest woman he’s ever laid eyes on. Her eyes are so deep-set in her wrinkly old face that it looks like someone pushed them in with their thumbs, just like the contours of her cheeks looks like they’ve been scratched in deep. He feels like she knows exactly what he’s thinking, and he quickly switches his internal monologue to the alphabet song.

“Good morning, Ms. Yamazaki,” He says, nervously. “Is V- Yoshimi home?”

The last time he referred to V as V, she told him Ms. Yamazaki beat her black and blue and shouted for ages about how sad her mother would’ve been to see her only child become a Westernized street-punk, never mind the fact that it was V’s mom who brought them to America in the first place. Neither of them knew what the word caricature meant, but they both agreed it probably wasn’t flattering.

Ms. Yamazaki stares at him like he’s speaking another language. Which he is, actually. V says that she doesn’t speak a word of English- that, if not for the translator that she got at a street stall in Kabuki in 2069, and which she adamantly refuses to switch for a newer version-, she'd barely be able to communicate with Jackie at all. 

But unless her translator’s not working, there’s no reason for Ms. Yamazaki to be staring at him with such confusion. She looks like how Pepe’s grandma looked right before she died of a heart attack in the booth in Mama’s bar- dazed, as though she got out of bed this morning and thinks she’s still dreaming.

“Yoshimi?” She finally croaks, and Jackie can’t help but wince at the sound of her voice- all dry and raspy, the effect of several decades of nonstop chain-smoking. Her breath rattles in her reedy throat, sucking in a lungful of air before shouting, “Yoshimi!” as loud as her lungs will allow her. She adds some other words that don’t sound complimentary, and V suddenly darts into view, nearly skidding round the corner in her haste. She’s fiddling with the ends of her dark braids, crooked as always, and Jackie smiles at the sight.

But Ms. Yamazaki isn’t so easily charmed. She stares down at V like she’s a fly on the wall, before finally rasping out a question so heavily accented that Jackie’s translator- nearly as bad as hers- doesn’t pick up on it, the words spat from her withered mouth like something unsavory.

“We’re going to PieZ,” V says in response, finally wrestling the hair-tie into submission around her left braid. “Do you want us to bring you back a slice, Obasaan?”

Ms. Yamazaki snorts derisively before turning away, heading deeper into the apartment and out of sight. Jackie and V exchange a knowing grin as V slams the door behind her, and then they’re suddenly taking down the hallway and nearly cracking their heads open on the stairwell as they race towards the elevator.

Once inside, Jackie pants with laughter, placing one hand on the side of the television screens to steady himself. V’s left braid has come undone, but she’s laughing and breathing too hard to fix it properly; Jackie has to come over and tie her hair in on itself.

“Ooh, that’s smart,” V praises, and Jackie flashes a smile at her, before it suddenly falters.

“We’re not really going to PieZ, right?” He asks, taking a step back. V snorts in a good imitation of Ms. Yamazaki.

“With what money?” She asks. They look at each other for a moment before cracking up even harder than before, and Jackie swears his sides are sore by the time the elevator gets to the street level and they’re making their way onto the street.

“No,” V continues, walking down the street with her hands slung in the pockets of her overalls- exactly like the street-punk Ms. Yamazaki accuses her of being. “We’re sticking to the plan.”

“I hate going to the dump,” Jackie complains as he follows her. For such a short kid, she walks in long strides, and Jackie has to compensate by half-walking, half-jogging at her side. “Mama always knows where we’ve been. She says the smell sticks on my clothes.”

“But you always smell like the dump.”

They bicker all the way to the NCART station, but once they take their seats, V suddenly falls silent. Jackie looks to her in confusion, but she doesn’t look back at him, only elbows him in the ribs and jerks her head over to where a corporat’s sitting towards the end of the row, staring blearily as the lights outside the windows pass by in a blur. Aside from the drunken old guy slumped against the pole a few feet away, the corpo’s the only other person in the car. Jackie and V nod at each other once before slipping from their seats to approach the man, who doesn’t seem aware of them until V clears her throat.

His gaze suddenly focuses, and he looks down at them with confusion, and not a little mistrust.

“Excuse me, mister,” V says, trying to look as pitiful as she can- which honestly isn’t all that hard, with her crooked braids and too-big shirt and jeans- while Jackie contorts his face with pain. “I hate to come over and bug you, but my brother and I just came back from the hospital, and the doctor says he has cancer and has only a few weeks to live.”

The man says nothing, eyes flittering between V and Jackie. The lack of family resemblance is glaringly obvious.

“He’s in real bad pain,” V continues, giving him a pointed look, to which he barely resists a sigh before coughing weakly into his fist. “If you could maybe spare a few eddies for his pain meds…?”

“Don’t do it,” shouts the drunken old man down the car, voice slurred as he looks over. “I saw them kids do the exact same thing to some poor shmuck last week. Fakers, all of ‘em! You’re be’er off giving your eddies to me.”

V and Jackie exchange a panicked glance before looking back at the man.

“That guy’s senile,” V says quickly, and Jackie nods so rigorously it makes him dizzy. “We’ve never seen him before in our life.”

“Besides,” Jackie adds, “he’ll probably just spend whatever he has on booze.”

“While you two will spend it on ‘pain meds,’ right?” The corpo asks, voice dripping with incredulity, before he sighs and puts a hand in his pocket. “Here. Take it. Take all of it.”

And into V’s outstretched hand, he drops fifty eddies.

V and Jackie gasp in unison. The corpo almost smiles at that, lips twitching upwards, but his eyes are dull and lifeless as he looks down at them.

“But… why?” Jackie asks, unable to help himself. V gives him a Look, quickly stuffing the eddies in her pocket before inching away from the corpo slowly, like he might change his mind and wrestle her back for them.

“Why?” The man echoes, before shaking his head. “I don’t know. You kids’re probably gonna spend that on ice cream and roller-coaster BDs, but it’s better’en where I’d spend them. Not that I’ll have much to spend anytime soon.”

“What do you mean?” V asks, though she still remains at a distance.

“Got laid off, kid,” The man says, rubbing tiredly at his face. “Petrochem decided to close down our branch, so that’s that. I doubt you two’ll ever get the opportunity, but if someone offers you guys jobs at a corp- don’t take it. They’ll tell you in school that it’s cushy, that you’ll be giving back to Night City, but the truth is they’ll take and take and take from you until there’s nothing left, and you realize you’ve spent ten years giving away bits and pieces of your soul.”

V and Jackie don’t say anything. Behind them, the drunk guy bursts into laughter.

“Man,” he says. “You’re even crazier than I am.”

“What was with that guy?” Jackie asks as they emerge from the NCART station. The dump’s on the edge of the Badlands, which means they still have to walk another hour before they’ll get there. Jackie doesn’t see the point of going to the dump, now that they have eddies to spend for the rest of the month, if they’re careful, but V was adamant they go, because “what if we miss out on something really cool on the one Monday out of the week we don’t go?”

She’s still sore about the time that they didn’t go to the dump after a huge Lizzy Wizzy concert, where a bunch of defunct merch had been thrown out- and which the nomads claimed almost immediately. Jackie’s apologized a thousand times, but honestly, it wasn’t his fault Mama Welles saddled him up with chores that day!

Still, he knows better than to bring it up now. Even on a good day, they don’t find anything more valuable than a few broken toys or fridge magnets, but Jackie knows the real reason V’s so insistent about them going isn’t for some rich kid’s castaway action figures and BDs. They go to play Queen and King of the Afterlife, and to wreck shit, and, on the incredibly rare occasion they find something valuable, sell it all and use the money to go to PieZ or Capitan Caliente.

“Probably gonna go drown himself at your mom’s bar tonight,” V says, picking up a stick on the side of the road and dragging it in the dirt as they walk. “The old dude was funny, though.”

“He’s the one who threw up on his own shoes last week.”

“That’s the same guy? Huh.”

Just as Jackie expected, there’s nothing worthwhile by the time they arrive at the dump. Heaps of trash greet them at every corner, but beyond broken bottles and dolls with their plastic arms ripped off, there’s nothing to salvage. Jackie toes a teddy bear with the stuffing ripped out before growing bored and turning back around to suggest that they leave, but V’s gone.

Jackie blinks. She was just behind him, crawling atop a nearby heap to fiddle with an old microwave, but now she’s nowhere to be seen. Anxiously, he calls her name, but all he hears is his voice ricocheting off the trash heaps and flinging right back to him.  

And then-

“Jackie!” cries V, her voice sounding far-away and frightened in a way he’s never heard it sound  before. Jackie doesn’t realize he’s running until the sweat begins to bead at his forehead, his feet straining in their too-tight shoes as he skids around the corner of a trash heap.

V’s collapsed backwards, the palms of her hands propping her up on the concrete as she stares at something in the heap. When Jackie drops to his knees at her side, reaching out for her, she turns her gaze on him, and she is terrified. Jackie feels his own stomach drop as he finally makes contact, grabbing her shoulders.

“What is it?” he asks, voice trembling. In response, she points a shaking finger over to the pile, where there’s a small but distinct opening, amidst the broken household appliances and discarded BD headsets. Feeling not unlike a horror movie protagonist who’s heading down into the dark, unwelcome, and almost certainly haunted space of his basement, Jackie leans closer, peering into the darkness.

A face looks back at him.

He screams, startling so bad that he falls right down beside V. But even when the face is out of view, he can still see it in his mind’s eye- the sunken-in features, the wrinkles etched deeply onto the papery pallor of its skin, the heavy brows knitted together above eyes that are bruised so badly, they cast visible shadows even in the darkness surrounding the body.

Before Jackie can suggest leaving and never speaking of this again, V suddenly gets to her feet, brushing off the dirt on the back of her overalls as she steps closer to the pile. Jackie shouts out an incoherent warning, grabbing her leg so that she can’t move any further, and she looks down at him with a startled expression.

“What are you doing, V?” Jackie half-whispers, half-shouts, using his hold on her leg to hoist himself up.

“He could still be alive,” V says, in a voice that implies it’s obvious a man could survive being trapped in a trash pile for God-knows-how-long. She puts her hands on her hips as she watches him get to his feet, groaning as he rubs at his sore backside. “We’ve gotta help him.”

“Help him- Jesuscristo, are you outta your mind? We gotta leave, now!” Jackie retorts, crossing his arms over his chest as he straightens up to his full height. They glower at each other, but just as V opens her mouth, a cough coming from the trash heap interrupts whatever she’s about to say.

They both shriek, jumping backwards, but V recovers first.  

“He’s alive!” she exclaims, before turning to Jackie with huge eyes. “Start digging, Jack!”

Jackie doesn’t need to be told twice. They start digging as fast as they can through the pile, trying to widen the small opening which is barely giving the man inside some breathing air, but it’s hard when every movement they make causes a small helping of junk to rain down on them from above. Jackie narrowly avoids being brained by an old toaster oven before he finally manages to make another opening towards the man’s side, where he can see fingers twitching against the trash trapping the hand at the man’s hip. Jackie immediately grabs the hand, trying to pull it out, but the man’s arm is still blocked by a number of broken objects that have been welded together from bad weather and time.

“Help me out, V!” Jackie shouts, and V suddenly appears at his side, wrestling the objects out of the pile as forcefully as she can. She cries out abruptly, hand snatching back from the pile as she cradles it to her chest, but when Jackie looks over at her she just shakes her head.

“Try now,” she says, either ignoring or unaware of the rivets of blood starting to streak down her hand. Jackie bites his lip but complies, pulling the man’s hand as hard as he can, and for the first time in the ten minutes they’ve been struggling to pull him out, there’s a give. Jackie cries out as the man’s body suddenly collapses on top of him, sending them both down hard, and the trash heap collapses in on itself a couple of inches away.

Jackie wheezes, struggling to breathe under the man’s weight. His breath is coming more quickly, now, hitting Jackie’s shoulder in hot puffs of air, but before Jackie can suffocate entirely, he’s quickly rolled off, and V’s face emerges upside-down from Jackie’s.

“Here,” she says, offering her hand, and Jackie takes it with gratitude as she pulls him up. Still breathing hard, he follows her over to where she’s staring down at the man, whose eyes are beginning to flutter open.

Immediately Jackie can tell that he’s in a bad way. He thought at first that the man was so pale because of the juxtaposition of the darkness of the trash heap, but it’s fairly obvious now that he’s suffered intense blood loss, if the dark stains covering his starched button-up have anything to say. He looks like the guys that Padre Ibarra sometimes brings in to the El Coyote Cojo- specifically, the ones that don’t make it. Mama never says anything to Jackie; she always orders him from the room whenever she sees Padre Ibarra and whoever’s unlucky enough to be leaning against his shoulder, but he knows what the dark look on their faces mean when they finally emerge from the bar after a good, long hour inside.

“D’you got Trauma Team insurance?” V asks, stumbling over her words as she looks down at the man, and Jackie snaps back to the present. The man’s still breathing, albeit very shallowly, but he won’t for much longer- not if the answer to V’s question is no.

“Won’t help,” the man wheezes, just as Jackie feared. He vaguely registers that the man’s speaking in Japanese, his words so slurred with pain that Jackie’s translator is having trouble understanding him. “Not anymore. Listen- do either of you have implants?”

V and Jackie exchange bewildered looks.

“Just the ones they gave us for school,” Jackie says, voice lilting upwards like a question. With a grunt, the man attempts to sit up- and promptly falls backwards. Jackie barely manages to hold him upright before his head smacks against the hard, dirt-packed floor.  

“Don’t try to get up,” says V, crouching down beside the man. Jackie doesn’t know if she’s doing it subconsciously or not, but she’s switched to Japanese, even though they’ve all got translators. “You’ll only makes things worse.”

“You need to-“ the man pants with the exertion of speaking- “take the chip out of my head. Now. Before they come.”

“Before who comes?” Jackie asks, feeling the first frissons of anxiety beginning to form as he stares down at the man. He can’t tell why he didn’t realize it before, but the man’s a corpo- even past all the blood and gore matting his clothes and hair, he has the look of being well-groomed and well-fed, and his shoes have somehow been kept relatively pristine, the leather shining in the midday sun.

“You said you got implants for school?” The man asks, ignoring Jackie’s question. “Those implants can process wetware, yes?”

His voice has taken on an urgent quality that’s only serving to worsen the anxiety knotting Jackie’s stomach. He nods quietly, too afraid to speak out loud, and the man smiles with satisfaction, despite the fine sheen of sweat that’s covered his face.

“Take the chip out of my head,” he orders, “put it in yours, and then head over to the closest ripper you can find and tell them to get it out of you as fast as they can. They’ll have equipment designed to keep chipware safe- I would never- never- ask either of you to put the chip in if I could avoid it, but it won’t survive without a host for much longer. And above all, the chip must survive. Do you understand me? It must survive.”

He suddenly grabs the front of Jackie’s shirt, shaking him for emphasis, and though Jackie flinches backwards, the man’s grip is like steel. V grabs the man’s arm, trying to wrestle his hold off Jackie, but it’s like a fly swatting against a brick wall. He maintains steady eye contact, despite the blood beginning to trickle from the corners of his mouth.

“Above all,” says the man, “you must not tell anyone you have the chip. Do you understand? You must keep it safe until you can get to Anders Hellman. He’s the only one who can help you.”

“Who’s Anders Hellman?” Jackie asks, the words taut with frustration. “Who even are you?”

Tires are squealing in the distance. The man’s eyes widen with fear, looking somewhere over Jackie’s shoulder, and when Jackie turns around, he realizes why. The sound of car doors slamming shut and people talking in low, angry voices are beginning to grow louder and louder.

“Take it!” The man half-whispers, half-shouts. His tone borders on hysteria as he leans against Jackie, struggling to reach the back of his neck. “Take it now!”

With shaking hands, Jackie lifts the man’s head up as V’s fingers scramble across the back of his neck, searching for the slot, before her hand suddenly stills just above the base of his skull, right below his ear. The man howls with agony as V digs her fingertips into the slot, attempting to pull the chip out of the socket, and though both Jackie and V freeze at the howl- and the corresponding sound of footsteps beginning to head their way-, the man shakes his head frantically.

“Do it!” He screams through gritted teeth.

V does it.

The man collapses limply in Jackie’s arms, head lolling back against his chest. Jackie doesn’t have to be a doctor or a ripper to know that he’s stopped breathing, but as he gently lays him back to the ground, he realizes the man’s sudden death is the least of their worries. The footsteps and voices are just beyond the corner of the trash heap, now, and V’s still staring at the chip in her hands like she’s expecting it to slot inside her head by itself.

“V!” Jackie cries, and she stares up at him with huge, startled eyes, like she’s almost forgotten he’s there with her. “Put it in!”

Her face sets, and she nods jerkily before slotting the chip inside the socket that their teachers warned were only for lectures on the Third Corporate War. Jackie’s pretty sure that whatever’s in the chip doesn’t comprise of Ms. Van der Heide’s history lessons, but it’s too late for regrets- the footsteps and voices have become people in black suits, staring at him and V where they’re still hunched over the corpo’s body.

V freezes, but Jackie whirls into action. Without a word, he grabs V’s hand- the injured one, palm still sticky with blood-, and then they’re sprinting through the dump as voices start shouting after them to stop. Jackie runs faster than he’s ever ran in his entire life, dragging V along with him, but it’s clear they won’t make it- not when he hears the sound of engines revving in the distance, not when they’ve barely made their way out of the dump.

“We can’t go along the main road!” V gasps, braids flying as she looks back over her shoulder. “They’re gonna catch us!”

“I know!” Jackie cries with frustration, chest heaving. “But what do we do?”

V stops running, forcing Jackie to stop unless he wants to rip her arm out of its socket. Her face is so red, he’s worried that she’s going to combust, but when she speaks, her voice is surprisingly level.

“We’re gonna hide.”

“What?”

Instead of explaining, she grabs Jackie’s wrist and starts running back towards the dump. Jackie has no choice but to follow- another second’s hesitation might mean the corpo agents will find them, regardless of whether they’re in the dump or out of it, and he has to restrain himself to avoid bursting into hysterical laughter at that thought. What are they in, a B-list action BD?

“In here!” V whispers, gesturing towards a nearby trash pile. He stares at her blankly until he realizes what she wants to do, and then he’s barely resisting a groan as he follows her lead, burrowing into the trash pile and frantically pushing the heaps of garbage over himself. Past the sharp edges of the discarded electronics digging at his skin, he can feel the clammy warmth of V's hand gripping his tightly. They both hold their breath as the sound of footsteps dart past, and it’s another three, four, five minutes before their pursuers decide to check the surrounding area for them, their words coming muffled and barely audible past the garbage piling around Jackie’s ears.

Still, Jackie waits another minute before hesitantly shifting from his position underneath the heap.

“You think it’s safe?” He whispers to V. But though he can still feel her hand in his, she doesn’t respond. Worry gnaws at his stomach as he uncovers himself fully, the sunlight nearly blinding him as he digs himself- and then V- out of the heap.

She immediately collapses against him, and he gasps out in panic before he can stop himself. Her skin has taken on an unhealthy pallor in the five minutes they were hiding in the pile, and she’s practically dripping in sweat. Jackie sinks down to the floor, propping her against him, and it’s only when he ascertains that she’s still breathing that he allows himself to cry.

Chapter Text

When V comes to, she’s being dragged across the pavement in a makeshift sled, her head bumping against the metal sheet every time they pass a rock in the road.

“Ow,” she groans, lifting a hand to rub at her aching head, and the movement of the sled abruptly stops. When she blearily looks up, Jackie is staring at her with huge, puffy eyes, as though he’s just spent the past hour crying. But it’s been more than an hour- the sun’s just beginning to set, causing the Joshua trees around them to cast long shadows against the desert floor.

“Wha’ happened, Jackie?” V mumbles, rubbing at her eyes, before he drops the coarse string tied to the sled and collapses to her knees beside her, hugging her so tightly, she feels the wind sail right out of her lungs. The tears have begun in earnest, now, dripping against her shoulder and creating a wet patch on her shirt as Jackie cries into her neck.

“I thought you were dead,” he admits wetly, still clutching her tight enough to bruise. “Or close to it, anyway. I kept on having to stop because I couldn’t hear you breathing, and I had to get away from the main road in case we saw those ‘Saka agents again, and we’re not even close to the nearest NCART station, V!”

His voice breaks with hysteria on the last syllable, and something in V’s chest aches that she’s pretty sure isn’t the result of an hour spent dragged across the desert floor of the Badlands, but something more innate.

“It’s okay,” she says, automatically wrapping her arms around his neck. “It’s probably ‘cause you’ve been dragging me all this way. Did you make this yourself?”

“Not like it was hard,” Jackie says, still sniffling, but he lets her go. When she attempts to get to her feet, though, she almost falls over. Her head’s aching worse than she thought; it’s like someone’s trying to drill a hole in the back of her skull, and tears prick at her eyes from the pain.

“V?” Jackie asks, eyes wide with concern, but she grits her teeth and straightens up, trying to ignore the agony that ripples through her head at the sudden movement.

“We should probably find a ripper before my head explodes,” she says. Jackie looks at her doubtfully, before turning his gaze back to the makeshift sled.

“I don’t think you should walk, V,” He says, running an agitated hand over his close-cropped hair. “You can lay down. I’m still good for another hour, probably. Maybe even two.”

“Nah, the NCART station should be close. I mean, you’ve been walking for an hour, right?”

“Dragging you,” Jackie points out. “And half that time was spent getting as far away from the main road as I could. I could hear a bunch of cars passing maybe a half-hour ago- I think it was probably ‘Saka, but I wasn’t gonna check to make sure.”

V’s fingers automatically go up to the chipsocket underneath her ear. It shouldn’t feel tender to the touch- not when there’s hard silicon and metal in the place of skin-, but it aches like a bruise regardless of what it should feel like. She gnaws at her bottom lip.

“What d’you think was on the chip, Jackie?” She asks quietly. Jackie’s face darkens.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs, looking away from her. “I guess it must be something important- didn’t that guy say it couldn’t survive without a ‘host?’”

“Makes me feel like he put a parasite in me,” V says, with a shaky laugh. “Like in that old movie we saw, ‘cept instead of bursting outta my chest, it’s gonna burst outta my ear. And you’re gonna get totally doused in my brains.”

“You don’t have any,” Jackie retorts, but it’s dull, half-hearted. He scratches his ear before finally relenting with a sigh. “Alright. We better get going, if we want to make it back home before dark.”

“Home?” V echoes as they start walking. She notices that Jackie doesn’t let go of the sled, but instead lets it drag behind them, holding the string with a fist so tight, his knuckles are beginning to turn white. “What do you mean?”

“Uh, back to my house?” Jackie says, like it should be obvious. “Where else?”

“The ripperdoc, Jack,” V says slowly, and though they don’t exactly have time to waste, she stops again and puts her foot on the edge of the sled, forcing Jackie to stop with her. It’s important that he listens to her. “We can’t go back home.”

“We need to tell Mama Welles what happened,” Jackie says, just as slowly, but he’s not doing it like she is- not doing it to be condescending or anything. He genuinely doesn’t understand what she’s talking about, and that’s the part that worries her.

“Jackie,” V says, struggling to keep her tone even. “How do you think the Arasaka agents found us in the first place?”

“Well… they were tracking the guy with the chip, obviously,” says Jackie, staring down at her like she’s gone totally crazy.

“But don’t you think it’s weird that they only showed up once we tried interacting with the chip?” V asks, crossing her arms over her overalls. “I mean, if they were really tracking him down all this time, it’d be way too much of a coincidence that we just happened to find him at the exact same time they did.”

“What are you trying to say, V?”

“I’m saying,” she says, in as grave a tone as she can muster, “that the chip must have some sort of tracker on it. Maybe it deactivated when the guy got stuck in a trash heap, or maybe it was dormant because he was unconscious, but now that it’s in my head, we gotta do what he said and get rid of it as soon as possible.”

“But-“

“Do you want ‘Saka agents banging down Mama Welles’s door, huh?” V snaps, losing her temper and then immediately regretting it when Jackie’s face flushes and he stares down at his shoes, just like he does when Ms. Van der Heide asks him a question that he can’t answer. She takes a quick, calming breath before saying, “We don’t got a choice, Jack. If we go to Mama Welles, chances are that they’re gonna find us quicker than anything. And believe me, they’re not gonna ask for an extra helping of chilaquiles when they get there.”

Jackie stays silent as they begin walking again. V tries not to feel too guilty about it, and mostly fails. Jack was right- they should’ve just gone straight to PieZ with the money the corpo on the NCART gave them. If they had, they’d probably still be there right now, stomach full of the best cheesecake Night City has to offer, attempting to beat each other’s high scores on Quadracer and throwing up in the bathroom because of their exuberance.

Running away from Arasaka agents in the desert while the temperature steadily drops lower and lower doesn’t really match up, she thinks.

“Jackie,” she says, voice so muted she doesn’t think he’ll hear her, until a gruff “Yeah?” comes from her left. “Once we get to the NCART station, you don’t have to come with me, y’know.”

Jackie stays silent, and she presses on, words tripping clumsily over each other in their haste to get out of her mouth.

“You can go back to Mama Welles- you probably should, actually. I’m the one with the chip in my head, you don’t-“

“I’m not going to leave you,” says Jackie, in a tone that leaves no room for arguments. V can’t help the relief that immediately floods her system.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

Eventually, desert turns into the barest rudiments of civilization. It’s almost laughable- a shitty motel in the middle of nowhere, a few abandoned farmhouses scattered beyond that, and the motel parking lot, packed tightly with cheerful, loud drunks dressed in the rags of nomads.

Jackie and V exchange a look.

“This isn’t Night City,” says V.

“Nope,” Jackie says, popping the ‘p’.

“We went the wrong way, haven’t we?”

“Yep,” Jackie says, popping the ‘p’ again. And though it’s a wildly inappropriate time to laugh, one look from Jackie and V’s cracking up hysterically, almost tearing up with mirth as Jackie doubles over beside her.

“You- you really walked all that way-“ V tries to wheeze out, but she ends up spitting everywhere. Jackie’s eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets as he cackles, and it takes another minute before V calms down enough to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand.

“C’mon,” she says, still giggly. “Let’s go ask if there’s a ripperdoc in town.”

The adults barely notice as V and Jackie weave in through the crowd. She’s still not entirely sure what they’re celebrating, but she’s guessing it has something to do with the defeat of a rival gang. What else do nomads have to celebrate, anyway? Her guess is validated by a guy standing at the edge of the crowd, arms rippling with muscles as he places his hands on his hips.

“The defeat of the Wraiths could not have happened without the bravery and loyalty of every Aldecaldo I see before me!” He booms, and the crowd cheers and howls their approval. “For every last of us who died at the hands of our enemies, we reciprocated tenfold! We did not forget our fallen brothers and sisters, did we?”

Resounding shouts of “NO!” boom all around V and Jackie.

“We made sure to etch the pain they felt on every last Raffen Shiv we saw, didn’t we?”

“YES!”

V elbows Jackie in the ribs and mutters, “Makes you feel like you’re in a bad BD, huh?”

“You kids should show some respect to your elders,” says a voice from above them. Startled, V looks up into the face of a pretty nomad girl, brown hair strung up with beads and eyes glimmering with amusement as she looks down at them. “Don’t you know who that is?”

“Who?” V asks challengingly, and the girl tilts her head back and laughs in response.

“Saul,” she says, leaning closer to them, “the leader of the Aldecaldos. Whaddoya think of that?”

In response, V looks at Jackie with a quizzical expression.

“Never heard of the Aldecaldos before. Have you?”

“Aren’t they a band?” Jackie asks, quick to catch on.

“You’re thinking of Tinnitus.”

“Isn’t that a nomad gang?”

“Oh, I see I got a pair of funny kids,” says the nomad girl, but she’s grinning ear to ear. “What’re your names? Don’t think I’ve ever seen you two before.”

“I’m V,” V says, and then, acting on impulse, adds, “and this is my brother, Jackie.”

“Brother, huh?” The girl says, raising her eyebrows at she pointedly looks from V to Jackie.

“We’re twins,” Jackie says, face impassive as stone, and the girl tilts back her head and laughs even harder than the first time.

“Oh, you guys are adorable,” she says. “I’m Panam, by the way. What brings two street-punks like you to our neck of the woods?”

“We’re not in the woods,” V says, unable to resist. She likes the sound of the girl’s laugh, sweet and bright beyond the sound of Saul and the Aldecaldos’ call-and-response. Come to think of it, Saul and the Aldecaldos would actually make for a sick band name. “We’re in the desert.”

“We’re looking for a ripperdoc,” says Jackie, and V almost pouts at him for ruining their fun until she remembers why they’re there. She sobers up pretty quickly after that. “My sister here has something in her head that she’s got to take out.”

“Not another joke, huh?” Panam asks, eyes flitting between V’s face to Jackie’s. “Alright, c’mon. You’re in luck. It just so happens we brought along our ripperdoc with us for the celebrations.”

They follow Panam up the stairs to the motel and into the open door of the bar, where the bartender is arguing with a man slumped over the counter.

“What’s up, Noah?” Panam asks as she walks in, before her face falls. “Rob get shit-faced again?”

“’Fraid so,” Noah says, eyes flitting from Panam to V and Jackie trailing along after her. “You become a mother since I last see you?”

“Hardly,” Panam says, taking a seat beside Rob on the counter. “Just so happens these kids needed Rob for some ripperdoc work. Any chance you can resuscitate him?”

“I’m not a miracle worker, Panam,” Noah says, but he sighs and snaps his fingers underneath Rob’s nose anyway. “C’mon, Rob. Time to get up.”

Rob murmurs something unintelligible. Panam looks over his shoulder to wink at V and Jackie. Before V can react, Panam’s sticking her tongue in Rob’s ear. Immediately he sits up, almost toppling over the stool if not for Panam’s steadying hand on his shoulder.

“Whazzat?” He slurs, looking around wildly before his gaze lands on Panam. “Did you stick somethin’ in my ear, Pan’m?”

“Just how much did he have to drink, Noah?” Panam asks, looking back up at the bartender. He shrugs- a little guiltily, V thinks.

“I wasn’t really counting. He paid well.”

“’Course he paid well, we just raided the Wraiths, for cryin’ out loud,” Panam says, shaking her head in disbelief before waving V and Jackie over. Hesitantly, V walks forward, wrinkling her nose at the smell coming from Rob’s open mouth.

“Bourbon?” She guesses, and his glazed eyes light a little.

“Good nose,” he says, clumsily reaching a hand over to pat her head. She quickly evades it, turning to Panam with an incredulous expression.

“He’s the guy that’s gonna help us?” She asks, and Panam sighs.

“Not unless you want half of your skull to be taken off,” Panam says, giving Rob a half-hearted shake. “Damnit, Rob. You need to learn some self-restraint.”

“I’m perfectly good- hic- to go,” Rob says. Though V’s probably supposed to feel inconvenienced by the fact that the ripper that was supposed to help her is blasted beyond words, she can’t help the thrill that runs through her spine Panam glances at her with conspiratorial disbelief.

“You smell like the back of my mom’s bar,” Jackie says, coming to stand beside V.

“Your mom has a bar?” Rob asks, perking up a little, before adding, “Is she single?”

“Rob,” Panam snaps with exasperation. “Tell me what other ripper we can go to that won’t cock things up, huh? Make my day a little easier.”

Rob is obstinate, insisting that he can perform ripperdoc work on an eight-year-old with no problem, but he finally relents after Panam threatens to sic Saul on him. He gives up the name of Viktor Vektor, a ripperdoc down in Watson.

Panam kisses his cheek in thanks before herding V and Jackie out of the bar, ignoring the thump of Rob’s body crashing onto the floor as they head back downstairs, Panam wrapping her arms around their shoulders as they walk. They’re almost at her car when a voice calls Panam’s name from the distance.

She cringes but doesn’t turn around, as though the person calling her name won’t see her if she stays still. V tries to look over her shoulder to see who’s calling Panam’s name, but Panam’s grip on her shoulder has suddenly become hard as steel. When the voice calls Panam’s name again,  her shoulders abruptly relax and a bright, false smile stretches from ear to ear, turning herself, V, and Jackie around to face the voice.

It's Saul. He looks at her with marked disapproval, before his gaze falls down to V and Jackie on either side of her. If anything, his face becomes even darker, crossing his huge arms over his chest as he looks back at Panam.

“Got yourself a couple of kids, huh, Panam?” He asks with incredulity. “Where are the three of you running off to?”

V prepares herself for the “my brother has cancer” spiel, but Panam beats her to it.

“Kids got abandoned on the side of the road by their mom,” she says quickly. “I’m taking them back to their grandma’s place, see if she won’t kick ‘em out until they’re eighteen.”

“Their mom… abandoned them?” Saul repeats. Something in his face softens when he meets V’s eye, and she’s abruptly aware of how dirty and bruised she looks. “You know, the Aldecaldos are always looking for fresh-“

“No, Saul,” Panam says, rolling her eyes. “You are not gonna recruit grade-school kids into the family.”

“I’m just letting them know joining us is always an option,” Saul says, face stony. “It’s not a death sentence or life imprisonment, Panam. Not everyone reacts the same way you do at the mention of fami-“

“This has been preem,” Panam interrupts, “but we’re kinda in a rush, Saul. The kids don’t have coats, for Chrissake.”

It’s only when Panam mentions it that V realizes just how cold it is. The sun’s already set by now, and the temperature dropped maybe ten degrees from when she and Jackie found the guy in the trash heap. When she shivers, it’s not just to milk out her role- she’s genuinely freezing, and the headache’s begun again.

“Get ‘em inside the car,” Saul says, watching V with a furrowed brow. “And come back soon, Panam.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Inside the car, it’s only marginally warmer, though Panam puts the heater on full-blast. V sits in the passenger seat, watching the crowd outside the window as Panam slowly backs out of the parking lot. It’s silent for a minute, and she thinks- hopes- that Panam won’t ask anything after all, right as Panam draws in a breath.

“Okay,” she says. “What’s this thing in your head that you need to get rid of?”

V and Jackie make eye contact in the rearview mirror. Jackie shakes his head vigorously, and V nods in agreement. The corpo told them that they couldn’t tell anyone, and besides, V’s not about to repay Panam’s act of kindness with information that might sic Arasaka on her as well.  

“You guys know I can see you, right?” Panam asks, tone dry. Jackie immediately stops shaking his head. “Look. I don’t know what hot water you guys have found yourselves in, but I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think. Hell, I got into lots of trouble when I was your age-“

“Not worse than ours,” V mutters- too loudly. She can hear Jackie smacking his forehead in the backseat as Panam pauses.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She asks slowly, trying to make eye contact with V- which V refuses, fixing her gaze on her hands in her lap. The left one is still matted with blood, and though she wants to wipe it on the leg of her pants, Panam’s still watching her like a hawk.

Instead, she carefully balls her left hand into a fist and hides it beneath her right armpit. All very surreptitiously, of course.

“Nothing,” V says, turning back to the window- before almost immediately lurching against the seatbelt as Panam presses on the brakes.

“Hey!” Jackie cries out in indignation, but Panam ignores him as she turns to V, levelling an unimpressed look at her.

“I’m not moving this car until one of you tells me what’s going on,” she says. V immediately feels panic begin to set in. They’ve already wasted enough time between the dump and the Sunset Motel- there’s no telling whether Arasaka’s caught wind of their trail by now.

“We don’t have time,” V says, breathing carefully through her nose so she doesn’t immediately spill the beans out of sheer desperation. “Can we just go already? We’ll be out of your hair as soon as we get to Viktor’s, anyway.”

“And with what money are you two going to be paying Mr. Vektor with, exactly?” Panam asks sardonically. “No, V. You’re going to tell me why we’re going to a ripperdoc in the first place, or we’re not going at all.”

V reaches for the door handle at the same time Panam locks the car. Infuriated, she jiggles the handle, hard, but it doesn’t budge.

“Panam, please,” Jackie says, leaning over into the space between the front and passenger as much as his belt buckle will allow. “They might find us at any second, and we-“

He falls silent at V’s frantic look, but the damage is done- Panam’s nose is wrinkling in confusion as she eyes the two of them.

“Who’re ‘they?’” She asks. “Who’s possibly going to look for two kids this hard?”

“It’s not that they’re making the effort for us,” V says. “it’s the thing in my head.”

Panam says nothing, only makes the global gesture for please, continue. Jackie shakes his head again, but V sighs; it’s too late to keep secrets. If they want to make it back to Night City before the ‘Saka agents find them, they don’t have any more time to waste.

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got ti-“

“What I mean,” V says, emphasizing the last syllable, “is that I’ll explain while you’ll drive. It’s kind of life-or-death that you don’t stop driving, actually.”

Panam eyes her, but V holds her gaze this time. Finally, Panam shakes her head, muttering under her breath all the while, and takes her foot off the brakes; the car rolls forward, slowly but surely, and V breathes a quick sigh of relief. She explains as quickly as she can- from Jackie meeting her at the apartment, to them finding the corpo in the trash pile, to him pressing the chip into her hand and telling her to keep it safe-, and Panam’s good at not interrupting, but V can tell she’s practically burning with questions throughout it all, fingers drumming on the wheel with agitation.

“You know, normal third-graders don’t get into this much trouble,” Panam murmurs once V’s done. Her eyes have become wide as saucers, but they concentrate on the road instead of V’s face, which she’s thankful for; they’re on the very outskirts of the city by now, and she’d rather they didn’t get hit by a truck or anything before they get to Viktor’s.

“I’m in fourth grade,” says V.

“And I’m in fifth,” Jackie pipes up from the back seat.

“You guys know what I mean,” Panam says, before leaning back against her seat. “I can’t believe you just put that thing in your head, V, no questions asked. What if it had a virus? Actually, scratch that, we don’t even know if it isn’t a virus yet. Because it was given to you by a strange man. Jesus, V, what were you thinking?”

“You weren’t there, Panam,” Jackie says, leaping to V’s defense without prompting. “You didn’t see what bad shape that guy was in. It was like, life-and-death that we’d take the chip from him. And if V hadn’t put it in, I would’ve.”

“Really?” V asks, unable to help herself. Jackie nods somberly.

“Yeah. Even though I didn’t want to help him at first. See, Panam? That’s how much trouble the corpo was in. We had to help him.”

“You didn’t have to do anything,” Panam grumbles. V opens her mouth to retort, but before she can say anything, her head starts to ache worse than ever- no, ache isn’t the word for it; it burns, burns so bad she feels like a fire’s started in her head that can’t be put out. If this is anything like what Obasaan feels when she gets her migraines, V’s never going to complain about having to wash her forehead with a wet handcloth again. She’d kill for a wet handcloth right now. Or, better yet, to be knocked unconscious with a rubber mallet, like in those old cartoons on TV.

If she concentrates, she can almost see little birdies flying in a circle around her head. That's probably not a good sign. 

“V?" Panam asks in alarm, but V's too busy watching the birdies to answer her. One of them is wearing aviators, and she giggles when it comes near, brushing against her forehead. She can almost feel the feathers on her skin, the whoosh of air as the wings flap and the bird gives her a curious look. 

"Step on it, Panam," Jackie says from the backseat, voice tight with worry. V watches, mesmerized, as the bird's aviators glint from the reflection of the city lights, from neon blue and purple and green to blue again. Like her own personal light show. She wants to point it out to Jackie, but her entire body suddenly feels very heavy, and the exertion of lifting her hand- and then her index finger- at the bird simply not worth the Herculean effort it would take. 

Instead, she watches the light show for the rest of the car ride. She wonders what the bird sees as it looks back at her. 

Chapter Text

Johnny Silverhand is not having a good day.

He would’ve been hard-pressed waking up in any body that wasn’t his own, but an eight-year-old girl’s just feels like an insult. If he concentrates real hard, he can almost hear the echo of Rogue’s laughter in his ears. This is just the sort of shit she would’ve loved- karma, she would’ve called it.

Nah, he thinks. Karma would’ve been waking up in the body of a ‘Saka agent, or Adam Smasher, for that matter. This? This is just cruel. Especially since he has to watch through tear-filled eyes as one Mister Viktor Vektor explain to the kid that she’s going to eventually lose her mind to the construct of a decades-long gone rockerboy.

Her friend, Jack- or was it Jackie?- looks like he’s trying not to cry, though he’s clutching the girl’s hand so hard Johnny can feel the bones grinding under her skin. She only woke up a little while ago, which meant that Johnny only woke up a little while ago, but sifting through her memories, he feels as though he’s caught on fairly quickly- ‘specially since he’s apparently spent the last fifty years trapped inside Mikoshi.

 Before Johnny got unwillingly inserted in her head, V seems to have led a life typical of a fourth-grader from Heywood. Lots of trespassing and petty thievery with Jackie- there’s a lot of Jackie’s face stored inside her hippocampus-, an unbelievably old Asian woman brandishing a wooden spoon in the girl’s direction, clutching her wrist in one varicose, shaking hand, and past that, vague, almost blurry recollections of a lanky white guy with a scruffy brown beard holding her hand as they cross the street, heading straight for the Time Machine…

Johnny’s exploration is interrupted by a sudden flood of tears on the girl’s part, the surge of emotion thick and cloying. It figures. Being inside an eight-year-old’s body means that you get eight-year-old emotions, though to be fair to V, it’s mostly been existential dread she isn’t equipped to handle as a kid who can’t list all the Free States’ capitols yet.

“So I’m- I’m gonna die?” She asks now, shaking so hard it makes Jackie shake from where he’s still clutching her hand like it’s a lifeline. “Joh- Johnny Silverhand is gonna take over my body, and that’s just gonna be it? Just like that?”

“Oh, honey,” murmurs Viktor’s- what, nurse? She sure as hell doesn’t look like any nurse Johnny’s ever seen, with her black lipstick and shaggy hair, but hey, maybe Johnny’s just behind the times. She has the bedside manner down pat, whoever she is, running her long fingers comfortingly through the loose strands of black hair coming from V’s crooked braids. “We’ll figure something out, don’t you worry.”

Viktor and the Nomad girl, Panam, exchange a look. Johnny’d almost feel bad for them, if he didn’t have the worse end of the deal; if a second chance at life means going through puberty a second time, this time with the addition of a period… Mikoshi almost seems preferable. Almost.

“The dead guy said that Anders Hellman is the only one who can help us,” Jackie pipes up from beside V.

“Anyone know who the hell that is?” Viktor asks, looking around the room skeptically. The following silence rings in Johnny’s ears, but before pity for the girl and her short-lived life can run through him, Panam speaks.

“Rogue might know,” she says slowly, face contorted as though every syllable coming out of her mouth pains her. Which, knowing Rogue, is understandable, Johnny quips to himself, before the rest of his brain actually processes what she just said.

Rogue’s kicking, even after all these years? Huh. Somehow, he expected otherwise, though he honestly doesn’t know why. Rogue always was a survivor, after all. Still, it’s hard to imagine Rogue- Rogue and her ridiculous hair and acerbic comments and trashy Nomad input- kicking it in 2077.

Jackie’s eyes are wide as saucers as he stares up at Panam.

“Rogue?” He gasps, clutching V’s hand so hard she yelps. “The Rogue Amendiares? You know her?”

“Don’t look so awed, kid,” Panam murmurs, looking discomfited by the stars gleaming in Jackie’s eyes. “She’s really not all that and a bag of algae chips once you get to know her, trust me.”

Rogue would skin her alive if she knew she was being talked about so flippantly.

“Who’s Rogue?” V interrupts, scrunching her nose a little. Jackie lets out an almost theatrical gasp.

“Only the Queen of the Afterlife!” He exclaims, nearly jumping up and down in his excitement. “She’s a Night City legend, V, how have you never heard about her before?”

“Jackie, is now really the time?” Misty asks softly, and Jackie immediately quiets. It’s obvious he has a crush; he flushes every time Misty so much as glances his way. It would’ve been cute had it not been for literally everything that brought him and V there in the first place.

“Sorry, Misty.”

“And I take it you’re just going to walk right up to the Queen of the Afterlife and ask her to dig up dirt on Mr. Hellman?” Viktor asks incredulously, raising an eyebrow at Panam. She shifts her weight onto her other leg, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“I work for her. Sometimes. I mean, not so much recently, but-“

“Then we should go,” V says, cutting her off. “Right now. We already wasted a bunch of time just getting here.”

She’s lifting her legs over the side of the table when a wave of nausea crashes over her, and she cries out, clutching her head. Johnny’s nearly woozy from it- it’s been a long, long time since he was anything other than completely numb-, and V isn’t faring much better, either, if the green cast that begins to spread over her face is any indication.

“Whoa, there, kiddo,” Viktor says, putting his hand on her arm to steady her. Johnny can feel his callouses even through the thick fabric of her shirt. “You’re in no shape to go anywhere.”

“I’m fine,” V snaps through gritted teeth. It would be convincing, if not for the fact that her skin is still an unhealthy green. “’Sides, Jackie and me have a right to come.”

Before Johnny can do something unadvisable, like materialize and scare the shit out of an already scared-shitless kid, Panam says, “If Arasaka agents are looking for you right now, it’s probably not the best idea to go to one of the most heavily populated bars in Night City. And it’s not like Rogue’s bulldog is gonna allow two kids to walk into the place, easy-breezy.”

V and Jackie immediately begin to protest, but Misty holds her hand up, cutting them off.

“I’ll stay here with her and Jackie,” she says, giving V a worried glance that sends a strange frisson of resentment and warmth up V’s spine. “You and Vik go and do what you gotta do. Be safe.”

“Thanks, Misty,” Viktor says, the lines smoothing out a bit from his forehead. Panam gives her a nod, before turning to V and Jackie with a small, strained smile.

“You two’ll be good for the nice lady, won’t you?” she quips, though it’s half-hearted, tired. She looks like she hasn’t slept in a week. Hell, maybe she hadn’t. The nomads Johnny knew could run on fumes for days, but somehow, he doesn’t think that Panam’s like most nomads he knew.

“You mean us three,” Jackie corrects, quailing a little under the sudden weight of four pairs of eyes on him. “Johnny Silverhand’s here too, isn’t he?”

Viktor and Misty exchange a worried glance.

“Not for long,” Panam says decisively. “C’mon, Vik. Let’s get going.”

Though V and Jackie both insist to Misty that they’re not tired, the two are out like lights only a half hour after Viktor and Panam leave the building. V’s slumped against the cot, mouth hanging open and drool trickling down her chin, and Jackie’s not much better from where he’s curled up in a nearby chair, head lolling against a sleeping Misty’s shoulder as they let out soft snores in tandem. A hairless cat- Mr. Brightman, according to Misty- sits in his lap, and though the kids were initially extremely (and very, very loudly, much to Johnny’s chagrin) excited by the prospect of a cat, the novelty wore off about fifteen minutes in, right before the exhaustion began to seep in.

The cat stares right at Johnny when he dares to materialize, which freaks him out more than he’d like to admit. He forces himself to look away from it and crouch down beside V, who’s curled up into fetal position. He still doesn’t understand how the hell he’s able to simultaneously look at her and also see nothing but the pitch black of her closed eyelids, but he’s learned not to second-guess these things.

“Hey, kid,” he whispers. “Wake up.”

No response. He tries again.

“Kid,” he murmurs, a little louder this time. “You gotta wake up, okay? We need to talk.”

A small furrow appears between V’s eyebrows, and one hand sleepily raises from her side to rub at her left eye.

“Daddy?” she mumbles, her jaw cracking into a yawn in the middle of the word and cleaving it into half. Johnny winces, but before he can respond, her eyes are fluttering open, and a look of shock- and then horror- is flitting across her face.

“Don’t scream,” he says immediately, just as she opens her mouth to do just that. Quick as a flash, he presses his palm up to her mouth, and even though his hand transparent enough that he can see her parted lips beneath the back of it, it’s somehow still effective. V doesn’t say a word, only continues to stare at him with eyes wide as saucers.

“Johnny Silverhand?” she croaks out, propping herself up on her elbows and Johnny nods, eyeing her warily as he slowly lowers his hand.

“You don’t gotta talk out loud, y’know,” he tells her, giving a quick glance over to where Misty and Jackie are still curled beside one another in their chairs, Jackie’s head nestled in the crook of her neck. “Probably best that you don’t, matter of fact.”

“I was dreaming about you,” V says- inwards, this time-, and from that impossibly strange dual-perspective, he can see his face in her eyes, gone slack with shock- and is that fear? Shit. He can’t lose his shit in front of the fourth-grader.

“You were my age,” she continues, her eyes gone distant, “and your dad was- he was beating the shit outta you. For wrecking his guitar.”

“Bastard had it coming,” Johnny says automatically, though his hands are shaking. He hasn’t thought about that in years- in literal decades, considering that the majority of his time spent in Mikoshi was spent rehashing the same memories of Alt, of Rogue, of Kerry, over and over again like a broken record.

“He called you Robert, though,” V continues, and Johnny physically cringes at the name. Nobody’s called him that in- what, eighty years? Eighty-five? “Robert, not, um…”

“Tell you what,” Johnny says, flashing a tight smile at her. “I don’t call you Yoshimi, and you don’t call me Robert. S’not either of our names anymore, anyway.”

“Obasaan hits me sometimes, too,” V tells him, after an uncomfortable pause, and Johnny’s eyes flutter shut. “Not with a belt, though. With her cane. But it’s basically the same thing.”

Why, why couldn’t I have been slammed into the head of anyone else? Christ, even Saburo Arasaka would’ve been preferable to this.

“My condolences,” Johnny says, after yet another uncomfortable pause, and immediately regrets it. My condolences? Jesus, he’s worse with kids than he remembered.

V huffs out a humorless laugh.

“Mine too,” she says, meeting his eyes.

Unbidden, a smile twitches on Johnny’s lips. He chalks it up to the first human interaction he’s had in fifty years being with someone still in the single digits and tells her, “That was an incredibly stupid thing to do, y’know.”

“What was?” V asks, sitting up properly so her legs dangle off the side of the cot. Johnny sits beside her. The dual-perspective thing is getting less and less noticeable- it’s like having a second pair of eyes, seeing himself in his black aviators and too-tight leather pants through the eyes of the girl, and seeing her through his own eyes, strands of hair sticking out at awkward angles from her braids where she’d slept on her side.

“Slotting that chip in your head,” Johnny says, like it should be obvious. “It could’ve had any number of things on it. Viruses, data-extraction programs-“

“I wouldn’a done it if I’d known what would happen,” V says in protest, twisting her whole body around to face him, and Johnny holds out both of his palms to face her.

“Be that as it may,” he says, “you’re in a world of hurt now, kid. Didn’t anybody tell you the road to hell is paved with good intentions?”

V jerks her chin upwards, all defiant-like.

“Hell isn’t real.”

“Hell is real,” Johnny corrects, with a little scoff. “You’re just too young to know that you’re living in it.”

Before V can respond to this, there’s the distinct footsteps coming down the steps. Both Johnny and V freeze, and Johnny can feel the muscles tensing underneath V’s skin, tight as a coil, ready to spring forth at any given moment.

But then Panam comes into view, with Viktor and Rogue right behind her, and V abruptly relaxes as a wave of profound relief crashes over her- and Johnny’s- system. Johnny can’t take his eyes off Rogue. She’s aged- of course she has-, but gracefully, all sleek silver hair and carefully-applied black eyeliner and threads that probably costed more than a year of rent in her apartment back in the 2010s.

She doesn’t look like she’s eighty. She looks like fifty-something, and a very spry fifty-something at that.

Something tightens in Johnny’s chest (and he still doesn’t understand that, how he can feel what he feels as though he’s in his own body, when that body is probably rotting somewhere dark and dingy on the outskirts of Night City), but before he can decipher what that something is, Rogue speaks.

“You must be V,” she says, looking down at the girl.

“That’s Rogue,” Johnny murmurs quietly.

“You’re Rogue,” V says, not asks, and Rogue nods, after a quick beat. Her eyes zero in past V’s shoulder, over at Misty and Jackie, who are just beginning to stir.

“Who the fuck are they?” she asks, raising her eyebrows as she turns to Panam. “The less people who know about this, the better. God only knows what Arasaka could do if they got their hands on a kid with too much information…”

“Jackie stays with me,” V says immediately, voice fierce. “And Misty’s a friend. They’re not gonna say anything.”

“It’s okay, V,” Misty says, her voice still groggy with sleep as she comes into view. Jackie trails behind her like a lost duckling, rubbing at his eyes as he leans against her leg. “Rogue’s right. The less people who know about this, the better.”

Jackie’s back stiffens, abruptly, when he realizes who’s standing in front of him. Despite himself, Johnny smiles. Jackie’s face is lighting up like he got a mech-pup at Christmas.

“Do-don’t worry, Ms. Rogue, ma’am,” he says, voice painfully earnest. “I won’t spill anything to anyone. Promise.”

“I believe you,” Rogue tells him, a wry smile on her face. “Because if you did, your friend would probably end up in an Arasaka-manufactured glass coffin.”

“Does Arasaka even make coffins?” V asks, scrunching her nose in confusion. Rogue sighs, and Johnny is hit with an immediate wave of déjà vu. That’s the same sigh she’d make every time he made a social faux pas- which was, admittedly, often (she liked to remind him that his fabled charm was really just that, fabled).

“Not the point, kid,” Rogue tells her, half-sitting, half-leaning against the cot she’s on. “Look, I need you to tell me the truth, okay? Are you absolutely certain that it’s Johnny Silverhand’s engram on that chip of yours?”

“Well, yeah,” V says, obviously miffed. “He’s standing right next to you.”

Rogue jumps. Even though Johnny knows she can’t see him, he gives her a lazy wave anyways, and feels something like pride when V giggles at his antics.

“He just waved at you.”

“You could be bullshitting,” Rogue says, almost to herself. “Something tells me you’re a good bullshitter.”

“She’s a great one,” Jackie adds helpfully from beside her, and Misty squeezes his shoulder.

“Tell her that our first date was supposed to be a drive-in movie theater,” Johnny murmurs to V, and though she gives him a quizzical look, she complies anyway. Rogue’s eyes widen, and for a heart-stopping second, Johnny thinks she might faint.

“Well, shit,” she says, drier than the synthbeef at Westbrook. “Guess Panam was telling the truth after all.”

“Told you,” Panam murmurs, sounding smug.

“Good thing, too, ‘cause I would’ve killed Panam for making me do so much work based on the lie of an elementary schooler street punk,” Rogue says, causing Panam’s jaw to drop open in affront. Rogue doesn’t look away from V, her gaze more piercing than usual, and V immediately looks away, her cheeks warming up under the scrutinization. Johnny honestly can’t blame her. Rogue was intimidating enough back in the 2010s; he can’t imagine how scary she must be to an eight-year-old, now that she’s perfected her steel-eyed gaze that he always gave her shit for.

(Well, he wouldn’t be able to under different circumstances, anyway.)

“Are we gonna waste more time being suspicious about each other?” Viktor asks, breaking the silence. “Or are you gonna tell us what you got planned, Ms. Amendiares? You said you’d explain everything once we got to somewhere where the walls don’t got ears.”

“Hold your horses, Mister Vektor,” Rogue drawls, sounding distinctly unimpressed, before she turns to V. “Look, kid. The only reason why I agreed to do this- even though Panam screwed a job like a Jig-Jig street joytoy-“

“Rogue,” Panam and Viktor snap at the same time, and Johnny smirks.

“and she owes me one rather than the other way around,” Rogue continues, as though they hadn’t said anything at all, “is because I know for a fact that ‘Saka won’t hesitate in killing a kid if it means getting back company property.”

“We know,” Jackie says solemnly, and V nods quickly in agreement. The corners of Rogue’s lips tug upwards.

“But I want you two to understand- and appreciate,” Rogue stresses, “how rare it is for me not to ask payment on getting my hands on data this irritating to find.”

“We have fifty eddies,” V offers, albeit extremely reluctantly. Rogue’s smile becomes full-blown, and Johnny heaves a sigh.

“Wait for it,” he mutters at V’s curious, sideways glance.

Sure enough, the next words out of Rogue’s mouth are, “This kind of gig would cost you about 15,000 eddies to start.”

V actually blanches- Johnny can feel the blood draining out of her cheeks, which is quite possibly the weirdest thing he’s ever felt in his life, and he’s had some very weird things shoved in very weird places back in his Samurai days.

“I don’t think that’s gonna cover it, V,” Jackie mutters, and Rogue barks out a laugh before V can respond.

“That’s the understatement of the year,” she says, voice still loose with mirth. “Like I said, I’m not about to charge a couple’a underfed street kids fifteen thou’ when I have the resources at my disposal to help you. Especially now that I know Johnny fuckin’ Silverhand is in the mix.”

“Language,” Misty admonishes, her hand tightening its grip on Jackie’s shoulder. “Look, Ms. Rogue, we really appreciate you coming to help us, but could you please watch the language? Jackie and V are traumatized enough as is. Their auras are in absolute shreds.”

“Really?” Jackie asks, sounding worried, while Rogue just shakes her head.

“Trust me, girl,” she says, slow and drawn-out. “The last thing you should be concerned with is their auras. If you think it’s going to be easy to lay your hands on Anders Hellman, you’ve got another thing coming. That man is Arasaka’s leading bioengineer- and in my educated guess? He’s the same guy who made that chip that’s eating away at your brain.”

She raps her knuckles lightly on the side of V’s head for effect, and Johnny audibly snorts. She always liked to claim he was the drama queen, but it was always Rogue who had a flair for dramatics.

V doesn’t even flinch, only stares at Rogue with widening eyes.

“So… so if we find him, he’ll be able to take it out of my head?” she asks slowly, cautiously, so obviously trying to understand that it’s almost physically painful to watch.

Rogue’s smile becomes twisted.

“That depends on whether you’re going to be able to take down a Kang Tao AV as it’s passing through the Badlands.”

“Tracking that AV’ll be a bitch,” Johnny mutters, crossing his arms over his chest. “Saw legacy models flying around during the war. Can’t take potshots at it, not even with serious firepower. Just won’t work.”

“Johnny says it’ll be really difficult to track the AV down,” V says, anxiety hitching in her throat.

“The old bastard would be right,” Rogue says, causing Johnny to repeat, “Old?” in his most incredulous tone of voice. “Except for the fact that you got the aid of the Aldecaldos with you.”

All eyes turn to Panam, who cringes.

“Saul isn’t gonna be too happy about this,” she says in a low voice, and Rogue snorts.

“Since when have you ever given a shit about what made Saul happy?”

They have a silent staring contest for a beat, then two, before Johnny finally turns to V, thoroughly aggravated.

“C’mon, kid,” he says, nudging her with his shoulder, even though he knows full well that neither of them can feel it. “Gotta end their pissing contest now before it becomes an all-day event.”

V nods, still looking a little pale.

“Panam,” she says, and her voice comes out all little-girl vulnerable. Johnny’s got to hand it to her; she knows how to play her cards well. “Please.”

Panam bites her lip, but Johnny knows she’s going to cave. She’s wearing the same expression Alt did every time Johnny would beg her for just one more whiff of SynthCoke.

“Fine,” Panam exclaims, throwing her hands up in the air, and Johnny feels more than a little smug this time. “Fine. But when this all goes to shit, I’m gonna blame you, Rogue. I swear.”

“Blame me all you like,” Rogue says, eyes flashing. “Just know that you’re this kid’s one chance at living to double digits.”

Johnny’s pretty sure she’s saying it more to intimidate Panam into doing her bidding than to frighten V, but regardless of intention, her bowels have just loosened in a way that makes him fairly sure she’s close to pissing her pants.

“That isn’t very nice, Miss Rogue,” Jackie says in V’s defense, though his voice is mumbled, choked. Still, V shoots him a grateful look, which he returns with a queasy-looking smile. Johnny never had any role models when he was a kid- which seems pretty fucking obvious, if you ask him-, but he can only imagine what it’s like trying to stand up to someone you’ve been looking up to for all ten short years of your life.

“It’s the truth, kid,” Rogue says, but her voice has softened, like she’s realized that it’s probably not the best idea to bring up a dying child’s rapidly depleting life expectancy rate in front of her. “Which is why you gotta watch out for her, okay?”

Eyes huge in his face, Jackie nods, his half-hearted defiance immediately wiped away in the face of this direct command. Johnny can’t help but laugh out loud.

“We’re a team,” V says, obviously not a fan of this implied vulnerability. Johnny can feel the sudden tension in her shoulders as they rise up to her ears, hands balling into fists at her sides. “We watch out for each other.”

“Okay, then, team,” Panam says, parroting V’s word with a dry self-awareness. “We should probably haul a- butt before Arasaka finally tracks us down here.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Rogue says, holding her hands up. “What’s your ride out of here?”

Panam gives her a strange look.

“Uh, my car…?”

“You mean that ugly hunk of metal parked outside?” Rogue asks, her voice tinged with incredulous amusement. “No way in hell is that going to make it all the way out to the Badlands. And if Arasaka does end up tracking you down, one potshot at that shit will cause it to go up in flames.”

Panam crosses her arms over her chest defensively.

“And I bet you have a better idea then, huh?” she asks, voice taut with irritation. Rogue smiles, that infamous smile that’d emerge every time she knew something nobody else in the room did- which, to be fair, was fairly often. It's not much of a surprise that she's still more in-the-know than anybody else around here, Johnny thinks, though it is fairly irritating. 

“Have any of you heard of Delamain?”