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It started with little things. A lost jacket, making the wrong turn while driving, mistaking strangers on the street for friends. Things anyone a little sleep-deprived might endure. Between spending the afternoon and evening hours with Kerry and working the rest of the night, V only caught a few hours of sleep late in the morning before the whole routine started again. He could be forgiven for losing his keys for the better part of an hour before finding them in a pocket he was certain he'd checked.
But given V's luck, things were never going to stay easy.
Kerry stayed at V's place more often than not. "Less paparazzi," he insisted, though V suspected it had more to do with the fact that V actually knew how to work the coffee machine in his own apartment. They did normal couple things, like watching TV and fucking, and not so normal things, like pausing movies so that Kerry could test a new rift or cleaning the wounds on V's endorphin-wracked body post-coitus.
At present, Kerry was detailing the previous events of Watson Whore as reruns played in the background while V cleaned his favorite gun. Each piece of the rifle was spread and arranged on the floor before him while V carefully wiped the exterior of the barrel with a luster cloth. He'd followed the same pattern of disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling hundreds of times, and until that night, was certain he could do it in his sleep. But now, as he began to fit the pieces back together per his muscle memory, nothing fit.
As he stared down at where his hands cradled the butt of the gun and the barrel, had no idea how any of it came together. He was fairly certain these two pieces didn't even connect. Where did the magazine fit? How did the safety lever fit against the receiver? Or did it belong there at all? His hands didn't know what to do, and his eyes saw no solution. The gun he'd used almost daily for the past year and a half was now completely foreign to him.
Perhaps sensing V's confusion and distress, Kerry nudged his hip with his boot-covered toe from his position on the couch. "You alright there, kid?"
V blinked down at the mess of pieces laid out before him. "Yea. I think...maybe I'm too tired for this," he said, scrubbing a hand across his face. He turned to look up at Kerry. "I'll catch the new episode tomorrow."
Kerry seemed to hesitate, his eyes flickering away toward the holoscreen, and back to V. V followed his gaze. The screen was blank. His brows furrowed and he opened his mouth to wonder when he'd turned off the TV, but Kerry cut him off.
"Sure. Yea. Tomorrow." Kerry's eyes were intense, tracking across his face and down to the mess of gun parts. "You uh...you get some sleep. I'm gonna get some work done." He stood abruptly and rushed out of the room, leaving V to wonder if he'd said the wrong thing.
"He lost two whole fucking hours! I'm telling you, it's getting worse."
When he couldn't find Misty's Esoterica, V started to suspect that something wasn't right. He'd climbed the stairs out of Vic's clinic, turned to the left where Misty's shop had always been, only to find a blank wall. He had almost run straight into it. This area had been open once, he was sure of it. Had Misty moved? No, she would have said something, and besides, this wall looked old.
He turned and saw a familiar doorway, but it seemed so wrong. There was no way that was the back door to the esoterica. That was someone else's shop, and Misty's was gone. And yet...when he opened the door, there was Misty and her collection of oddities.
"You'd think he'd seen a ghost."
Things came to a head when V realized he wasn't actually sure he knew Kerry. He remembered breaking into Kerry's house (had he been alone?) and he remembered talking, and he remembered terrorizing a girl group, and he remembered falling in love...but he was starting to think that none of that had happened after all. It seemed too fuzzy to have been real. V was beginning to second guess every memory he had, and if he thought about it rationally, it made no sense that he would know Kerry Eurodyne. It made no sense that he would break into Kerry Eurodyne's house and not even klep a guitar, just like it made no sense that he was sitting in said house's driveway.
When he blinked, V found himself inside Kerry Eurodyne's living room, staring at a confused Kerry.
"Uhh," said Kerry. V thought he looked scared.
"How--" said V. "When--," said V. "Did I break into your house?"
Kerry held up his hands in placation. "I mean, yea. Once."
Cold ran down V's spine. He didn't know Kerry Eurodyne. All of those sweet memories, the ones he knew were too good to be true, his broken brain had made them up. He wasn't sure how his mind had gotten his way, but he knew that he'd been expecting it. He hadn't expected it to lead to invading celebrities' homes, but he had expected things to get worse.
"I--shit." V stumbled backward and tried to rub away the growing tension in his forehead, and in doing so almost clocked himself with the pistol dangling between his fingers. A gun? Had he been planning to shoot Kerry Eurodyne? "I gotta...I should go."
"Wait, V!"
V?
Kerry sprang toward him, hands outstretched to catch him by the shoulders. "Just sit down for a sec, will you?" His fingers were warm where they pressed against V's bare arms. Had he lost his jacket again?
"Why?" V croaked and dropped the gun. He didn't even have the wherewith-all to be relieved that the safety had still been on. "You don't know me. You don't...I think I was going to shoot you."
"Shit, V. You weren't gonna shoot me. You don't even have a gun on you."
What? V looked to where he dropped the gun, but there was nothing. What had he been holding?
"You're just," Kerry released a shoulder to wave a hand around vaguely. "You're kinda mixed up right now, alright? But I know you, and I know you're not gonna hurt me. We knew you were gonna get messed up for a bit, remember? And we talked to Vic, and he said we could get you fitted with the same kind of chip they use for dementia patients."
None of that sounded right. He didn't have dementia. He wasn't even thirty! V could feel himself growing agitated and he started to pull away from Kerry, only for Kerry to tighten his grip and pull him closer.
"No. You. That doesn't make sense. I don't know you!"
Kerry looked so unbearably sad that V almost wanted to cry himself. He had to go. He had to find Jackie. No, wait. Jackie's gone. Gone? Dead. He had to go. V was struggling now, trying to free himself from Kerry's grasp. Maybe he was crying after all; he couldn't tell.
"V, listen to me! I know you! You know me--we practically live together!" Kerry was looking him dead in the eye now, trying to keep his attention, trying to keep his melting brain from wandering away again. "You're going to be ok." He punctuated this with a squeeze to V's bicep and he lowered his voice. "Vic's on his way. He's going to put a new chip in you, and your memories will be all stabilized, alright? You don't have to be scared."
Scared. That's what V was. Absolutely fucking terrified. What had happened? None of it made sense. Why would someone like him be watching Watson Whore with Kerry Eurodyne? Why would someone like him dive off a flaming yacht with Kerry Eurodyne? Why would someone like him love Kerry Eurodyne? Why would--
"Johnny?" V asked.
Vic was there, gently tapping an autoinjector against his palm while murmuring something to Kerry Eurodyne.
"Still gone. Sorry, kid." Kerry patted his arm. Then Vic moved and everything went black.
"How much improvement can we expect from this?"
It was dark out. V was pretty sure it hadn't been before, but everything in his mind was so blurry. He also didn't remember feeling so warm and comfortable before. He was exhausted, mentally drained, and was only just fighting back the urge to give in to sleep once more. What kept him grounded was the figure sitting at the foot of the bed.
"Ker?" V rasped.
Yes, it was Kerry, looking like he hadn't slept in days. His hair was mussed and his usual scruff had grown into what V suspected was the fullest beard he'd ever had. Kerry jumped up from his spot on the bed and nearly fell onto V, stopped only by his arm braced up against the headboard.
"V," he breathed, pressing his lips against V's temple. It felt nice, familiar.
"Did I fall asleep during the show?"
Kerry let out a wet laugh. "Nah. Vic shot you with a sedative. You were getting kinda hostile. Didn't want you to hurt anyone while he installed that chip."
Chip...that's right, the chip. It wasn't going to fix him, but it did fill some of the neurolinks that had been damaged. They'd made a backup map at some point, for when things got bad.
"How bad was it?"
Kerry pursed his lips and shook his head. "Bad. You seemed pretty shaken up." He struggled with his words for a moment, then continued. "Vic said you vanished the first time you were supposed to get the chip installed. Misty couldn't get you to go back, said you thought she was an imposter or something."
"Shit."
"Yea, well." Callused fingers brushed along V's jawline and ran along the back of his skull to rest against his ports. "It's ok now."
V thought about it for a moment. He didn't know what day it was, or when he'd started losing track of these things. He didn't even have any clear memories of being disoriented and afraid, just the lingering feeling of emotional exhaustion. That might have been for the best, given the way it seemed to have taken everything out of Kerry. V wasn't sure he had the strength to wear himself out over what was missing.
After all, Kerry was still here.