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"Greetings, V. I do not intend to offend, but it appears that you are forming a behavioral pattern."
The dulcet robotic voice — so familiar — sends ripples across the sea of hissing, crackling, acidic turquoise stripes and squares that have been biting at V's eyes, until she felt like her burning, veiny eyeballs were dripping blood.
She blinks, once, twice. The blood turns out to have been tears. Just tears. Once a beast she thought she'd conquered triumphantly at the age of twelve; and now, a more annoying recurring guest than a celebrity on Stan's show.
She wipes them off, in a swift, almost violent motion. Gotta destroy those fuckers.
The ringing in her ears subsides, and the floating turquoise shapes shift and condense into a face. A very distinct, plasticky white face, speaking to her from an overhanging monitor. Her tear-damp fingers twitch, and she spreads them out, still half-blind, feeling the creaky leather. She is on the back seat of a taxi. The taxi, she should say.
"Hey, Del..." she croaks weakly. "How... How did you get here?"
Seriously, though. How?
Her thoughts and memories set in like a broken nose. The last thing she can recollect is the muted orange blur of the desert highway, beyond the Sunset Motel, and a biting-sharp stench as she slumped over the upper-floor railing, heaving her guts out.
"Mr. Takemura hailed me with instructions to take you home," Delamain explains, courteous as ever. "I made certain to send out a reliable cab, whose AI is completely in line with the Delamain Corporation standards."
Through the last dregs of her wooziness, V cannot help but snort (a mistake, as it makes her inhale the lingering aftertaste of her own vomit). Yeah, reliable cab. Unlike those rogue ones. Ugh, she still has to finish chasing them down.
"You were in poor condition — though thankfully, not as poor as when I previously did this for you. Still, this was already happened twice. Hence my remark about the pattern."
"Mhm. If you had an eddie for each time, you'd have two eddies, which is not much, yada yada..."
V sighs.
"Man. Sorry, Del, I... I had a shitty couple of days."
The words scarcely leave her flaky, terribly dry lips — which she just barely saved from splitting into bloody cracks by taking a huge swig from a branded water bottle, graciously provided in the cup holder by her seat — when all of these days' shittiness hits her. At once. Hard, fast. Like crashing your motorbike into a septic tank.
She's seen so much. Way too much for one lifetime,even if hers is supposed to be jam packed into a few weeks.
The dark green mire of the snuff film brain dances, contrasted against the explosion of the searing thermal orange — that fucking ripperdoc chair where some unlucky gonk was melted into a sticky, none-beef-all-soot carcass, for sickos to get off to his final agony.
Evelyn's limp body against her chest, so small, so bare, all that glitz and sass and mystique gone, like she was a little girl V was tucking lovingly into bed. And dark, dark smears everywhere: blood in the bath, smudged makeup on Judy's ashen, hardened face.
Then, the desert, just today. Blood-red through the lens of a drone, no signs of life among the dust and brittle grass. Just the scattered bodies of the nomads — Panam's people, good people, who had nothing to do with this mess, who only wanted to help, to rescue survivors from a downed AMV. The AMV *she* was hunting; the AMV *she* roped Panam into helping her with.
V presses her hand against her eyes. Johnny is quiet for now; she must have taken the Omega blockers back there, at the motel, without knowing. One small blessing, at least. His voice chiming in with her own is the last thing she needs right now.
Shit, shit, shit! She's supposed to be better than this. She was always the tough, competent one. The one to pull her chooms back from the brink, whether it's a younger street kid, years ago, wanting to swim in a canal supposedly infested with brain-eating amoeba (so this is what it feels like), or Judy staring into nothing, with a cigarette weeping ash in her shaking hand, or Panam clutching her wound, screaming the name of the man who offered her to run away together. She — V — was supposed to hold them, to tell them it's gonna be okay. We did preem, fellas, we lived to see another sunrise. Look sharp, look ahead, look at V.
...Who would look at her now and be inspired to push on?
When she lifts her hand again, her face is wet. A-fucking-gain.
And deep inside her — a quivering cable line pulled taut from her gut to the back of her throat — there is a strong, overpowering longing for... For something terribly stupid. And right now, with her legs still numb and sick still drying up on the front of her shirt, she is too weak to stop and make sense of it, much less resist. So she just goes with it, and says what it wants her to say.
"Del... Can you call Takemura for me?"
Delamain obliges, blue lips sculpted into an impeccably professional smile. The glowing white monitor turns bright orange, and another face emerges from the static. Making the sensation within V cut into her insides even deeper.
"V! I was just finished with Hellman."
V exhales a short laugh. She is still drenched in all that metaphorical shit, but there is no better distraction from it than her favorite pastime. Testing the limits of this old man's stoicism.
"Did not kill him, did you? Or is he still walking around like in those ancient samurai movies — you know, where a guy slices another guy up and he feels just fine, and then suddenly falls apart into neat chunks of meat?"
Takemura holds her gaze, very unimpressed. But she has come to recognize that little tug at the corners of his mouth. She won't go as far as to say that this is also his favorite pastime... But he is not *not* enjoying this.
"You certainly flatter my technique, but... No. Hellman is still alive. I simply obtained all the information I needed from him."
He pauses, and suddenly, his face softens even further. By about 0.01℅, but still.
"I am glad you are awake, V. I heard you screaming in pain on the balcony of that so-called... motel," his lips curl, and he spits the word out like moldy food. "But I could not attend to you for long. You understand."
"The interrogation, yeah."
The conversation lulls, and in the silence, the longing takes over once more.
"Listen, Goro..."
She catches a moment to savor the feel of his first name in her mouth. Since she's started doing stupid things, might as well go all in.
"Can we meet? I'll ask Del here to redirect the car to the marina. It should be deserted at this time of night; I wanna talk in person."
Takemura nods. Somehow, his lack of hesitation sends heat rushing up her windpipe.
"Once, I would have wondered if you were going to waste my time, but now I know better. No meeting with you is ever a waste of time, V."
"Even if we are just eating horrible street food?"
She can swear she's never seen the corners of his lips tilt up this much.
"Even then. Is that why you wish to seek me out on the marina?"
"No, not exactly..." for a fraction of a second, V feels rather sheepish, sobering up from the longing. But Takemura himself does not allow her to backpedal.
"Very well. I will see you there," he says — and disconnects.
By the time Delamain glides onto the marina — smooth as a drifting cloud compared to the mad race across unpaved rocky hillocks and through dingy Raffer tunnels with Panam — it starts to rain. Or, well, drizzle. The wet mist hangs in the air, scented with something fresh for once, and the city lights color it with a peculiar mix of emerald and purple. The palm trees sway quietly, slender silhouettes against the almost trippy watercolor swirls. Deep down, at the same hidden core of her heart that's being pierced by her stupid longing, V wishes she had her drawing tablet with her.
Useless gonk, that. Such a pointless thing to have bought with the eddies from one of her very first gigs. Only really good for designing bike decals for your chooms, and even those would probably have come off just fine if you'd asked one of Del's artist cousins to generate them for you. But sometimes, V cannot help but notice how blue the sky looks when the smog clears, or how vivid orange the rocks by the dam are when the sun hits them, or right now, how those palms look.
And hey, some drawing tutorials on the net are free, and you can't spend every single evening between heists knocking down shots or diddling joy toys. Sometimes you just wanna... meditate.
Jackie had his dumbbells, Misty has her crystals and shit, and V has her silly little tablet. Not enough to turn her into anything more than a Heywood thug, not enough to make her stand out here or in Atlanta... But just right to capture the little splashes of color she spots here and there, so that they leave her head and stop fucking bothering her.
"V. You have no umbrella."
She's been so lost in thought, staring up at the dancing palms, that Takemura's voice makes her jump. Yeah, she has no umbrella — she has no shirt underneath her trusty leather jacket either. Left it crumpled up in the back seat of the taxi, next to the empty bottle she'd gargled to clean her mouth. Kind of felt awkward wearing that vomit-soiled mess to meet Takemura. Especially with what she's about to do.
She freezes in front of him, filling her lungs with the damp seaside air, and filling her mind with the sight of him — a solid, dignified figure amid the rainy blur, worthy of an artwork of its very own... And next, without warning, she takes off: dashes forward and wraps herself around him in the tightest embrace she can muster.
This is the closest she's been to him since he hauled her unconscious mess of limbs to Vik's... Aside from a few brushes of her hand against his: over the condiment bottles on a stained diner table, arranged to represent whatever shit they were making plans about; over shared binoculars at a stakeout; or over a slice of quickly cooling pizza that she playfully shoved at him and he rejected, in utter disdain. All brief, all fleeting, all signifying nothing — as each of them insisted inside their own mind, even as she slanted her eyes covertly to watch him watching her, when they both were supposed to get the lay of the land.
Fuck, he smells so good. He has no right to smell so good for a man on the run, slumming it among cockroaches in some hidden basement. She thinks she can hear a crisp, starchy crunch when she presses against his shirt. Last time she felt something like this was when she and Jackie got dressed up in corpo fits for that fucking mess of a heist.
That reminder adds another droplet to the overpouring tank of shit, and she instinctively clings to Takemura even tighter, a noiseless sob, her third in what, an hour, racking through her.
Of course, it is at this moment that Johnny decides to blink into existence again.
"The fuck?!" he calls out, parting the streams of rain like a bead curtain as he struts up to her. "Did you shut me up so you could get high without me?"
Takemura, ironically, echoes the sentiment.
"V? What is this? Are you still delirious... or perhaps intoxicated? Once more?"
He is not aggressive when he pries her away from him; but still firm. V staggers back, wincing at this painful reminder of their very first rendezvous. She stumbled off to meet Takemura straight from Jackie's ofrenda, who knows how many shots in, head swimming with far too many feelings all at once, and straight up called him "heeey gorgeous". Which he was. Which he *is*. But like... Time and place.
"I am sorry," she blurts out. "I should have asked if you were okay with me getting into your space like that. No, I am sober, it's just... Goro. Listen."
She clenches her fists, chipped-up nails cutting deep into her callused palms. Here it comes. The talk she wanted to have with him.
"I'm no stranger to losing people. Comes with the territory. But ever since that chip mess, it's been happening at a breakneck speed. I meet someone, we choom up, I get them to see that I'm someone they can trust, depend on — that's my whole thing, always has been — and the next time they call me, someone has died. Brutally. Even by Night City standards. It just keeps piling up and up, till I can barely take it... But the one constant in all of this, has been you."
"No fucking way you are saying this to a Saka goon!" Johnny throws his arms up in anguish. "What did I tell you: he's not your friend! He can't be your friend! I don't think the word is in his fucking vocabulary!"
V knits her eyebrows as tightly as she can, as if that will keep him under lock and key, and forces her focus back onto Takemura. He, too, is frowning... But not in anger, she doesn't think. He is giving her his full attention.
"Whenever I call you, I trust that you will answer. Alive. Annoyed with me, but alive. Your texts, your weird parables, even that one time you like... confused the messenger with the search bar and sent me all that WHERE TO FIND GOOD RAMEN stuff in all caps... It's a wonderful pick-me-up when I'm wading through... whatever sludge the city dumps of me. I just wanted to.. I guess... Thank you for that. And to let you know that I'm... I'm still thinking about everything we said to each other on that roof. It meant a lot. You were right; we may butt heads, and argue our different philosophies, but... It makes each of us a bit less lonely."
"It does," Takemura says softly. His voice has dropped a few octaves, and flows more... freely, in a way? As he goes on speaking, the sentences sound less measured, less pre-calculated... It takes a couple of confused blinks for V to realize that what she still perceiving in her head as English is actually Japanese. He has switched to his native language, and her translator implant has kicked into gear.
She mentioned having that implant to him once, even back before Judy had updated it with the Haitian Creole language pack.
"You can speak to me in Japanese if you'd like," she said.
That offended him, as he assumed his English was not good enough for the ignorant American merc. And to be fair, compared to his near-fluency in a second language, and who knows, maybe a third and fourth, all she can boast parroting without a translator are a few curses in Spanish.
But what she meant — and what she hurried to explain to him — was, "You say sometimes that you are homesick. I figured... Using Japanese might ease that feeling."
At the time, he acknowledged her intentions with a polite nod, but insisted on English — perhaps as a sign of respect. And now, here he is. Stepping forward to close the gap that had formed between them. And also, stepping over the language barrier.
"At first, you were an asset to me. A thief that could be of use in avenging Arasaka-sama merely because she was at the right place and at the right time. But then you asked me, again and again, how I felt. Whether I was well. I told you before it was a question I am not accustomed to in my line of work; but it was far from unwelcome. This city is like a stone box filled from within with heavy black smoke, yet with your simple, genuine question, you gave me a lamp. And it lit up brighter and brighter with every new text message, every new call, even with every outrageous joke. You actually coaxed confessions about my childhood, my foolish visions of another life, out of me. These are secrets I grant to very few people. No-one in the past decade. Yet you..."
Slowly, rather clumsily, as if he were replicating the motion after observing other people do it — a silent guardian, a soldier of steel, not allowed such expressions of tenderness himself — he reaches forward and cups the side of V's face with his hand.
"You gave me an all new reason to be grateful that you did not die."
"Oh shit, are you gonna — " Johnny chokes somewhere out there, in the damp haze.
V is not sure if she intended to; she's been too lost in taking in Takemura's quietly sincere expression... But now, of course, she has to.
She tugs at the front of that pristine shirt to make him bend down slightly. She is pretty confident that this low cut collar is precisely where the cybernetics end and the soft, warm, human skin begins. His lips, too, are soft and warm when she meets them with her own. It almost feels too much, too far, tasting him like this — Arasaka's most fearsome enforcer, who is *supposed* to work with her on a very professional, very dangerous mission... But he is the first to slip in his tongue, and the moan that he makes sounds like a sigh of relief.
Now he is the one pulling her in, merging their personal spaces into a single whole. The hand that was resting on her cheek drops to her waist to keep her close. His fingers — a delicate masterwork, whether implants or not, so mesmerizingly beautiful compared to her clumsy, always bloody-knuckled mitts — travel over her jacket... and then pause, when he realizes that this is her only outer wear.
She breaks the kiss and opens her eyes just in time to spot the exact moment when his astonishment gives way to a wicked smirk. Much like the face of the fox from all his parables. He peels the jacket back a little, revealing the muscles and the scars on her abdomen...
"Oh, this corpo fucker thinks he can treat my host — my host! — like a fucking Jig Jig doll!"
If Johnny were corporeal, V would surely have felt angry spittle flying into her face.
"Stop it!" she hisses... Out loud.
Takemura's features instantly set into the mask he wore so beautifully when he was trying to detect the intruders inside his master's walls.
"Of course," he says, returning to English. "We should know our limits. Our partnership has already become all that more complicated."
"No!" V gasps, desperate to outrace the broken-elevator plummet of her own heart. "It's the engram acting up again! I... I can handle this kind of complicated. I *want* this kind of complicated."
The mask begins to crack.
"You are very open about what you want," Takemura muses, eyebrows half-raised. "I am not certain if I can... relate to that, as my wants are the wants of the Arasaka lineage, but it is oddly admirable. Still — "
His hand is on her waist again, but this time it's to steer her to the taxi.
"If you are unwell, it is best that you return home. I will remember this, V. Most warmly."
"Wait!"
She weaves their fingers together, the refined elegance of Tokyo and the rough edges of Heywood becoming one.
"Come with me. We still have so much time to while away before the parade. I have to meet this guy for deets on the Voodoo Boys, but that's not until the day after tomorrow. And at least I have running water at my place. And no cockroaches. That I know of."
He shakes his head, but does not let go of her hand.
"You know I am a marked man, V. Losing ourselves in crowds together is one thing, but..."
"Come on!"
She beams at him, and the wider the grin, the clearer the realization: her pain and guilt have subsided. For the time being.
"This is a Delamain cab. And I have, well, inherited the Excelsior package from Dex. Top notch security, isn't that right, Del?"
She pokes her head through the car door to ask the question, and the AI responds affirmatively.
"Indeed. Delamain guests are guaranteed full privacy aboard this premium vehicle. No security specialists, even those as formidable as the employees of Arasaka Corporation, will be able to breach inside throughout the entire route from here to your garage."
"And the building itself?" Takemura persists — even as the tip of his thumb begins to unconsciously run over V's cracked knuckles. She thinks he finds the motion soothing.
"The elevator cameras?"
She beams again.
"I have these neat little optics that turn my face into a blur in any security footage. I believe..."
She plants another kiss at the corner of his mouth, inciting a blissful little sigh.
"If our faces are pressed close enough, the effect might extend to you."
With that, she yanks at his arm, ever so slightly, teasing as always.
He follows readily, finally convinced.
They unlock their hands and duck through their respective passenger doors. V finds the back seat thoroughly cleaned of the dirty shirt and the water bottle. She would not be surprised if Delamain had a whole recycling station somewhere underneath. Great for corpse disposal too — no, better not think of it now.
Takemura leans back, rolling his tired shoulders.
"This thing is quite nice to ride in when you are not bleeding to death, isn't it?" V chuckles, and Takemura hums contentedly in agreement.
"Thank you for the feedback," says Delamain. "I shall now turn my attention strictly to traffic, to allow my guests the promised privacy."
"Much appreciated, choom."
The upholstered back of the front car seat carves itself into luridly textured blocks before V's eyes. Next thing she knows, Johnny is lounging next the non-existent driver — not buckled in, obviously.
"Don't do this," he warns her through his teeth. "You are getting your perspective skewed. And turning yourself into a loose end that this fucker and his big mommy Hanako will cut just like that..." He is crammed between seats now, right in front of her, snapping his fingers. "The moment you are no longer useful."
V remembers to keep her voice inside her skull, this time around.
"I am not taking relationship advice from a dead guy who keeps calling one of his closest associates a cold bitch every five seconds."
"You don't know fuck about my relationships!" Johnny seethes, but V is no longer humoring him. Takemura has pulled her into his lap and is kissing her again. And again. And again. On her lips, her jaw, along the side of her neck.
Now, there is a deep, ravenous force brewing behind every stroke of his tongue, every half-bite of his teeth. He locked eyes with her briefly when she straddled his leg, asking for permission ("Like the loyal dog that he is," Johnny would have sneered, but honestly, fuck Johnny). And when she granted that permission with a gleeful nod, the force was fully unleashed. How long has this been building up? How long ago did he let himself go last, if ever?
He answers at least one of her unsaid questions the next time he surfaces for air.
"I have a confession," he murmurs in Japanese, gazing at her half-lidded through a silky veil of salt and pepper.
V has, once or twice, seen his hair in a "shamefully disheveled" state (which is Takemura-speak for one strand being slightly loose because he had no time for a full morning routine in his hideout). Now, though, it is almost completely undone, a messy dark frame for his fine-cut face. V laces her fingers through it, nigh reverently, and it is with the same reverence that he kisses the inside of her wrist, before continuing.
"Do you remember how I asked you to hack a camera for me, and as you sneaked towards it, you forced a back door open with your bare hands?"
Just as it mysteriously vanished, V's shirt has been mysteriously returned by Delamain. It lies neatly folded next to her on the back seat, but she couldn't be further from trying to put it on. On the contrary, her leather jacket has now slid down her shoulders, and her torso is on full display, every marking, every groove of embedded cybernetics, every bump and curve of her musculature.
She is no Jackie, of course. She will never be Jackie, for all her attempts to clumsily rest her hand on top of Mama Welles' and do her duty of comfort and protection... No, not now, please not now!
She is no Jackie — but she could easily do pull-ups hanging off a metal beam at an abandoned construction site, twenty feet off the ground and with badges swarming underneath, sirens blaring. In fact, she just might. Especially if Takemura were watching.
"Suppose I do."
"You were in a short tank top; I could see your back move, your arms strain. Your strength was brute and raw, untrained... But so beautiful. At that moment, I wanted you so much that I almost forgot myself. A..."
His chest heaves. Through the loosened hair cascade, V watches the glaze of desire clear from his eyes. If it were not for the state of his hair, the flush on his face, the nanometers separating him from her, and the fact that she could slide her hand down his pants at any moment to check if he had an extra gun or... If it were not for all of that, he could almost have been the ruthless, efficient, unshakable Goro Takemura she first started working for.
"A lapse in sanity that I am repeating now."
Fuck. Forget the extra gun then.
She has not realized, until now, how cold it is without her jacket, despite Delamain best attempt at the most agreeable climate control. How the air prickles at her exposed skin.
"When you thought I was telling you to stop, it really was just the engram..." she says, her voice deliberately, carefully slow. "But if you are done now, then no problem."
"Thank fuck!" Johnny cheers, his voice muffled but full of what V believes is called schadenfreude.
"It would have been a good decision, but..." Takemura shakes his head. "But I still want you. I never stopped wanting you, from that moment since. Despite my obligations, despite the burdens we both carry. I just..."
"You are not used to having wants of your own. Outside of Arasaka."
V whispers her guess with a gentleness that almost makes her shudder — to herself, she sounds too much, *way* too much like that fucking doll in the Clouds.
"It's all right. I won't tell anyone. Honor among thieves, remember?"
She rests her forehead against his and smiles to mirror his own smile — which is quivering and uncertain; but still there. Still back on his lips.
"I am sure Hanako-sama will be too busy thanking you for bringing her brother's crimes to light, to notice that you've been going around getting horny for random mercs. Now come here. We're almost at my place."
Her next kiss is more of a breath, a fleeting promise than an actual touching of the lips. But Takemura's eyes darken again. Heavy. Ravenous.
She feels a bump against her thigh that is certainly not acting the way extra guns do.
"Anything for you, V."