Work Text:
NEW MESSAGE: RIVER WARD
oof, that’s the one night I can’t make it
Joss’s got a date, so im babysittin the kids
TO: RIVER WARD
no worries man
you can swing by whenever you like
tell em all I said hi
NEW MESSAGE: RIVER WARD
will do, V :)
“River’s a no-go,” V yells upstairs, sliding his phone into the pocket of his jacket.
Kerry’s disembodied voice floats from the villa’s second landing. “Fuck. What about the other one, Judy? She still in Seattle?”
“Yeah, at least ‘til the end of the year.”
“What the hell, when did everyone get so fuckin’ self-actualized?”
His hair is ruffled from pulling on his tank top when he comes into view at the top of the stairs, and V’s thinly-veiled amusement is instantly outclassed by his thinly-veiled fondness. “You barely even know ‘em,” he says as Kerry alights them two at a time. “And Vik and Misty already said they could come, remember?”
Kerry’s sigh is deeply belabored. “V, out of everyone who’s gonna be under this roof, I could count the people I can actually tolerate on two hands. I’m just trying to inflate that statistic.” When he reaches him, he lifts his hand to thumb at the point of V’s chin. “Plus, they’re your friends. I trust your judgment.”
“Appreciate the vote of confidence,” V replies, hauling him closer by the waist.
Not a day goes by that he doesn’t wish Jackie Welles was still around, but it’s especially pronounced at times like this; if he’d been alive to see V brushing elbows with a bunch of MSM execs at an album drop party begrudgingly hosted by Kerry Eurodyne, the same Kerry Eurodyne who V happens to be sleeping with, he would have gone ballistic. Even Vik, who’s drier than a desert highway most of the time, had been flattered by the invitation.
V catches Kerry’s mouth in a lingering kiss. “I gotta head out to the Badlands for a couple days,” he says. “Nothin’ dangerous.”
“Aldecaldos?”
“Mhm.”
With a wicked grin, Kerry says, “You should invite ‘em.”
V reels back a bit. “What, really? You know Panam won’t touch Night City with a ten-foot pole nowadays, right?”
“Why do you think I live in North Oak?” Kerry supplies with a pat to his cheek, evidently making the decision for him. “Just throw it out there, yeah? I’m sure you’ll find the time in between grilling possum steaks or whatever.”
“Y’know, if you want me to bring back a doggie bag, all you gotta do is say so.”
Kerry sucks air in through his teeth. “Thanks, but I’m watching my figure.”
“Thought that was my job,” V rumbles, and counts it as a victory when he can taste Kerry’s laughter in the next kiss, slower and just this side of too sultry for a guy who should have been on the freeway fifteen minutes ago.
Kerry indulges him, but only long enough for him to lose his breath. Then, he’s ducking away, no doubt to seek out some new mess in the house to poke at halfheartedly. “Alright, get the fuck outta here,” he throws over his shoulder, “you’re wastin’ daylight.”
V watches as he disappears down the hallway, fighting the dizzy grin that wants so badly to spread on his face. “Bye, Ker.”
“Seeya, kid,” Kerry calls back to him. “And for Christ’s sake, go slower around turns!”
The drive out to the Badlands is always a pain in the ass, to put it charitably.
The roads are wider and less crowded on the whole, which are about the only upsides V can think of before some kind of rogue insect flies into his eye. It’s a nice trip on paper, wind in his hair and open sky above him, but the reality involves a lot more sweat and sand between his teeth than he’s typically willing to endure.
He would have dragged his feet a lot longer if it’d been for anyone other than the Aldecaldos.
This time around, the trek is particularly brutal, a sandstorm whipping up almost as soon as he passes the city limits. There’s only so far he can get with just a bandana and a pair of goggles, so he veers off to a strip motel to wait out the worst of it, barely able to see the front of the Arch never mind the road below him. V wires the night rate to the auto-receptionist at the front door, swiping the access key it blithely spits out and huddling inside.
Nighttime is a short-lived respite, blue and cool, before the sun rises to bake the horizon again. There are errant belts of sand still wisping through the air once he gets back on the bike, but the last leg of the journey could certainly be worse, in the scheme of things. He could still be racing the clock against a computer algorithm intent on destroying his brain, or trading barbs with a terminally sarcastic terrorist.
It’s another few hours before he spies the perimeter of the Aldecaldo camp, civilization at long last shimmering in an ocean of tan waves. The elysian effect of it is tempered somewhat by the screaming cramp that’s been building in his calf for the past thirty miles, but the sight is sorely welcome nevertheless.
He swerves onto the road’s dusty shoulder as he approaches, and is in the middle of propping up the Arch’s kickstand when he hears someone shout, “Ain’t seen you ‘round these parts before, stranger!”
V slips the goggles into his hairline. “Don’t mind me, gentlemen, just passing through.”
Mitch’s laugh is a raucous, refreshing thing as he saunters out to meet him. “You look like half-baked shit, brother,” he says, yanking V in for a one-armed slap on the back. “You manage to dodge the storm?”
“Not quite,” V tells him. “Hunkered down for the worst of it, though. Hospitality industry out here leaves a little to be desired.”
“Ha, you’re just looking in the wrong places! C’mon, let’s get you a drink.”
They cut through the heart of the camp together, somehow an even slower pilgrimage than the two-day drive as they weave between trailers and stacks of cargo, stopping every half a foot as someone new catches wind of V’s arrival, Carol and Cassidy, Bob and Teddy. They’re gracious enough to keep the jokes about the dirt in his hair to a minimum, and one by one, they usher him along, promising to circle back after the business of the hour has been squared away.
He follows Mitch toward the camp’s central tent, noting the incensed simmer of an argument brewing from somewhere inside—a low, stubborn voice locking horns with a higher, more impatient one. It wouldn’t be a visit to the Aldecaldos without ringside seats to one of these brawls; Mitch seems to think so, too, and he winks as he draws the tent flap open.
“If we just go straight, we could shave at least a day off the—”
“Straight through what, Panam? Straight through Wraith territory?”
“Abandoned Wraith territory! What don’t you understand about that?”
“The Wraiths don’t just abandon territory—”
Mitch clears his throat (and rather loudly) to catch their attention. “Save it for pay-per-view, you two’ve got company.”
For a brief, terrifying moment, V can practically see how Saul and Panam lay down their arms against one another, staunchly united against whatever dumb bastard would have the audacity to interrupt their sparring. Luckily for him, it fizzles as soon as they spot him in the entrance.
“V!” Panam exclaims, a dazzling smile breaking out on her face. She bounds forward to gather him up into a hug. “You should have called, we could have sent an escort or something.”
“Nah, not worth the trouble,” V replies, squeezing her back. By contrast, the handshake he gets from Saul is as sober as a military funeral. “Besides, sounds like your hands are plenty full kickin’ a Raffen’s nest.”
“Quite the opposite, actually,” Saul deadpans, his eyes narrowed at Panam.
She jabs her index finger into his chest. “This discussion is not over,” she hisses, then turns on her heel, the stray locks from her bun swinging behind her. “Alright, c’mon then! No time like the present.”
She and Saul lead him further into the tent to their recon nexus, which is little more than a patchwork cluster of laptops and looted access points. It seems to get the job done well enough, though, and it’s there that V shares with them the intel they’d called him for—a veritable wealth of satellite imaging and topographical data for the Free States and western coast of the NUSA. It’s the sort of info he would have had to pay for in blood back during his solo days, but with Rogue’s bottomless font of resources and a bit of netrunning assistance from Nix, it had hardly taken him more than a day to assemble it all.
“So,” V throws out as they sift through the dossier, casual as he can manage, “you guys plannin’ some sort of job? Never took you for amateur prospectors.”
Something inscrutable passes across Panam’s face, and her eyes dart to Saul. “Well, you know,” she says, though V most definitely does not know, “can’t hurt to have a lay of the land, right?”
Saul doesn’t miss a beat in nodding his agreement, which does nothing to quell V’s suspicions. He won’t press them on it, though; his role at the Afterlife is to provide, not to pry.
He walks them through the majority of it, fielding their questions to the best of his burgeoning expertise, and afterward, Panam grabs him by the elbow to show him around the rest of the camp, regaling him with tales of the clan’s latest exploits, the deserted Arasaka caches they’ve sniffed out and the custom paint job they’ve slapped onto the Basilisk. V tells her about the Afterlife, and about his ill-advised stint up in the Crystal Palace; he updates her on his progress with the Relic, how its effects on his biochemistry are slowly but surely being reversed, and her relief for him is evident in how she beams the whole way through.
By the time they finish making the rounds, the sun has dipped low overhead, blazing furious and red across the arid plains of the Badlands. A bonfire roars to life somewhere in the middle of the camp, and with very little persuasion, V lets himself be cajoled into staying the night by Panam and the vets. They push a beer into his hands, clamoring over each other to hear about his escapades in orbit, his new gig at the Afterlife, his dauntless assault on Arasaka Tower.
“Heard you even run jobs for Kerry Eurodyne sometimes,” Cassidy says at one point, and Mitch snickers as he kicks his chair.
V shrugs one shoulder. “One way to put it,” he says. Beside him, Panam rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning, too.
The night wears on, and V watches as tendrils of smoke stretch up toward the navy blanket of the sky, long fingers that twist and warp before dissipating into nothing. The Aldecaldos, one by one, begin stumbling back to their tents, clasping V on the arm as they turn in for the night, and a tranquility falls over the camp, the kind of quiet that Night City likes to suffocate with car horns and blaring advertisements.
It’s in that companionable quiet that he makes his proposition to Panam, who furrows her brow in confusion.
“Really?” she asks. “Why would he want a bunch of crusty old Nomads kicking around his big mansion party?”
“He mostly wants people who won’t make him bust a capillary every time they speak,” V elaborates. He gestures vaguely with his drink. “Also wouldn’t hurt to offend a delicate sensibility or two.”
She clutches a hand to her chest, scandalized. “I thought you were above harmful stereotypes, V.”
“You were literally just telling me about a cool rattlesnake you saw the other day.”
He narrowly evades the smack Panam aims at his bicep. “Shut the fuck up,” she chuckles, not an ounce of real heat behind it. “But yeah, I can think about it. How fancy’s the booze situation?”
“Fancy as you want it to be. Pretty sure you could bring a bottle of lighter fluid and a couple good stories and Kerry would write you into the will.”
She laughs again, taking a swig of her own beer. “My kind of guy,” she says, and V has to tamp down the buoyant pride that it kindles in his chest.
When the hour grows too late for even them, she blearily herds him toward her tent, clearing a pile of cardboard boxes and assorted junk off of a cot-turned-makeshift table she has wedged in the corner. The mattress is thin and moth-bitten, but it’s infinitely preferable to the sour pillows and strangely oily wallpaper of the roadside motel, and he bids goodnight to Panam as she nestles into the bed parallel, her jacket shed and hair undone in an inky spill of black around her shoulders.
V collapses into the cot, his head bobbing in a sea of alcohol and bone-deep exhaustion, and it’s only by chance that he thinks to check his phone before unconsciousness can consume him.
NEW MESSAGE: KERRY EURODYNE
question
how much trouble do you think Id get in if i filled the pool with tequila
He huffs affectionately, wary of disturbing Panam not five feet away from him. It’s a struggle to keep his vision from swimming as he types out a reply, but he makes do.
TO: KERRY EURODYNE
aw don’t
some of us like your pool
and actaully use it
The text had been from hours ago, so the ping of a response a few moments later takes V by surprise. He wonders if Kerry can’t sleep, maybe, lying alone and awake in that oversoft bed of his, and the thought leaves V aching unexplainably.
NEW MESSAGE: KERRY EURODYNE
UGH
fine :/
but only cause youre hot with your shirt off
TO: KERRY EURODYNE
duly noted
headed back tomorrow
hopin to be home before sundown
NEW MESSAGE: KERRY EURODYNE
ill leave the kettle on then, weary traveler
(The next morning, he wakes up to find Panam already gone, surely off for round two of her earlier shouting match with Saul. If she’d caught him dead asleep with his hand still curled around his phone, she doesn’t mention it.)
Panam shows up to the party fashionably late with a tall, amber bottle of something that actually smells like lighter fluid.
“Brew it ourselves at the camp,” she explains as Kerry inspects it, his expression somewhere between intrigue and trepidation. “Secret family recipe, but I will say that an engine block is involved.”
Kerry whistles. “This the type of shit that burns off your eyebrows?”
“Depends on how well you can hold it,” Panam replies.
Predictably, they get on like a house on fire.
It’s really not that bad of a party, in V’s opinion, much as Kerry insists that it’s some sort of cosmic punishment for a lifetime of trespasses, jaywalking and pirating braindances and ripping the tags off of mattresses. Sure, the house is packed floor to ceiling with the industry elite, each one haughtier and more forgettable than the last, but the music is loud and the drinks are flowing freely and V, for his part, is having a grand old time.
He spies a few familiar faces amidst the masses—the girls from Us Cracks are a hot commodity, posing for pictures and giggling at lame jokes as they navigate the social intricacies that come with celebrity. That artful pretense falls away for just a moment when they see V across the room, waving to him with genuine enthusiasm before they’re flanked once again by a horde of fawning publicists.
Vik and Misty, meanwhile, are more adept at the mingling game than V could have ever imagined. He periodically finds Kerry locked in rapt conversation with Vik, who seems intrigued by the rack of axes and the older Samurai albums hanging on the wall, and Kerry drills him about his boxing days in turn, listening attentively as Vik recounts the most gruesome and dubiously legal of his matches. Misty’s the real sleeper hit, though, having planted herself at one of the coffee tables and laying out tarot readings for a swarm of tipsy bigwigs, enchanting in her mysticism and her ability to spin a good yarn.
Even Nancy Hartley chisels time out of her schedule to make an appearance, citing the whole affair as a good networking opportunity but mostly matching Kerry shot for shot as Panam goads them on from the sidelines. The speed at which the fucked up Aldecaldo moonshine disappears is frankly alarming, but when not one person bats an eye at the unmistakable sound of glass shattering from the second floor, V decides with categorical resolve that it’s really not his problem.
(A few hours in, Kerry takes him by the hand, dragging him to the bathroom before he has a chance to even think of an argument, let alone make one.
“Is everything—?” he tries, though he’s cut off as Kerry presses him up against the inside of the bathroom door, claiming his mouth in a hungry kiss.
A din of cheering erupts from outside, muffled by the walls and by V’s waning self-control. “Album’s out,” Kerry breathes, his hands deftly undoing V’s belt. “Take my mind off it?”
And yeah, V can help him with that.)
The rest of the night passes in a cacophonous blur, liquor mixed with head-splitting guitars mixed with just the peak of embarrassing dance moves. All the noise and all the commotion start to bleed together in a cyclone of color, and eventually, V finds himself slumped against one of the couches, blinking slowly at the death throes of the party with Panam’s equally-drunk presence beside him.
“So I slam on the breaks, right?” she’s saying to him, doing her best to keep the words from slurring together. “And this asshole, he just—wham, busts right into me from behind, goes flying through his own windshield. And you know what Saul has to say about it?” She drops her voice in a surprisingly serviceable impression of the man in question. “Great way to lose a bumper, Panam. Like what the fuck is that?”
V has no trouble imagining it, Saul’s crossed arms and his palpable disapproval. He pats her knee commiseratively. “He cares about you a lot.”
“Believe me, I know. It’s so annoying.” The smile on her face says otherwise, though.
The herd has thinned out, most of the guests having retired in taxis to find somewhere more private to puke their guts out. Vik and Misty thanked him for the invitation and stumbled on home together a while ago, and now all that remains is those who have mastered the craft of overstaying their welcome, smoking in the backyard or loitering on the expensive furniture as if they’re part of Kerry Eurodyne’s exclusive inner circle.
V’s in the middle of trying to figure out if one of them is wearing a toupee when Panam says, “Can I ask you something?”
V looks over at her. “Sure,” he replies. “Anything, Panam.”
She eyes him curiously. “How did Rogue die?”
All of V’s higher cognitive functions grind to a standstill. He’d completely forgotten that he only knows Panam by virtue of Rogue Amendiares; their friendship feels longer than that, oddly, but maybe it’s just how much they’ve been through together, the raid on the Raffen base, butting heads with Militech and Kang Tao. Last he checked, Panam had been bending over backwards to rebuild the bridge she’d burned with Rogue—or she had been, at least, until Mikoshi happened.
“You want the short version or the gory version?” he asks.
He can tell the attempt at levity falls flat by Panam’s frown. “Tell me the truth, V.”
The thing is, he doesn’t really… remember the truth. He remembers how he felt, the vicious thunderclap of guilt that struck him when it happened, how he cowered in the recesses of his subconscious as an older, more hardened pair of hands took the reins. It was terrible, that much he knows, but he only knows it empirically, the way all violent deaths are terrible.
He swallows hard around the tightness in his throat. “It’s all kinda fuzzy,” he tells her, “but I remember… I remember Smasher’s hand goin’ straight through her chest.”
Panam lets out a slow exhale. “Fuck.”
It’s one of the sole images that V can recall from the night they took Mikoshi, and Jesus Christ, if he could have been spared any of it, he wishes it would have been that. How Rogue’s arms had fallen limp, only to deliver one last, explosive blow to Smasher’s ugly, chrome-mutilated visage; how V’s own hands had cradled her pistol, drowning in the roiling whirlpool of someone else’s grief.
Panam scoots closer to him, her head coming to rest against his shoulder. “Felt like she fucked me over more times than I can count,” she says, a hint of a confession laced within it. “But when I was all alone here, she was the only person I could turn to. Never once left me out in the cold when it really mattered.”
It’s easier to talk about, somehow, without having to look at her. “I shouldn’t have let it happen,” V mutters, and almost rears back when Panam lifts her head again, squinting at him incisively.
“It wasn’t you, though, was it?” She brings her hand up, poking a fingertip to the center of his forehead. “It was him.”
A bolt of shame rockets through him, overpowering and wretched. “It wasn’t his fault,” V croaks, horrified that he’d even suggested as much.
Panam just nods, though. “I know,” she says, relenting. She shifts down once more, returning to the cushion of V’s shoulder. “But then it couldn’t have been yours, either, right?”
She sounds so sure. She’s so sure in that absolution, and here V is, the last survivor of a sickness that was meant to kill him and only him; but maybe that’s the trick to it, believing until it becomes true. He can try that much, he thinks. He can try, and maybe in the morning, maybe the following day, or the next week, it’ll feel like the truth.
He dozes off with her, lulled into a drowsy limbo by the idle conversation, the lights turned low, the alcohol still coursing through his bloodstream. It’s not until later that he stirs again, turning his face into the warm pressure of a palm against his cheek.
“House is cleared out.” Kerry looks tired, but his smile is soft and excruciatingly beautiful. He glances over at V’s side. “Was startin’ to think nothing short of blunt force trauma was gonna put her down.”
Ah, so that’s why he can’t move. Panam, to her credit, is dead to the world where V left her, snoring gently into his shirt collar and numbing his arm worse than a ripper-grade narcotic. He tries to sit up, gingerly as he can considering his skull feels like it’s been swapped out with a cinderblock, but all it does is make her snuffle indignantly.
Kerry’s no match for it, biting his lip to ward off a grin. “C’mon,” he says. “Help me bring her upstairs, she can take the bed.”
Miraculously, V’s able to hoist her up with minimal wobbling, and he trudges up the stairs with Kerry’s hand at his back for balance. He situates Panam in the bed on the second floor, distantly wondering if even nuclear warfare would be enough to rouse her at this point, and he shoots off a pair of texts to Saul and Mitch to let them know that she’s okay. Then, a roughened hand is slipping into his, decades of guitar playing and painstaking artistry spelled out against the whorls of his skin as Kerry tugs him toward yet another of the villa’s innumerable sofas.
He pulls Kerry down with him, an awkward tumble of limbs and boots and stifled laughter that ends with Kerry tucked on top of him, stretched out along his chest. A blanket is procured from… somewhere, though V can’t fathom from where, concentrated as he is on the lazy spinning of the ceiling high above. Kerry makes his best attempt at draping it over the both of them, but all V can focus on is how much he wants to hold him closer, wrap his arounds around him. So he does.
He buries his nose in Kerry’s hair. It’s getting a little rebellious for Kerry’s tastes, V can tell, in a sense that doesn’t scream punk rock so much as it screams rampant bedhead. “D’you have fun?”
Kerry snorts. “Fuck no, that was a nightmare. Suits owe me a favor now, though, so I guess it wasn’t a total waste.”
“Mm.” He slips his fingers under the hem of Kerry’s tank top, skating them up his spine and across his ribs. He chuckles when Kerry jerks, ticklish as he’s always been, and brushes a kiss to his hairline by way of an apology. “You’re so warm.”
“And you are trashed,” Kerry replies, though he’s wearing that same smile from before. He tilts his head to look at V, stunning in his smudged eyeliner and striking bone structure, stunning in the freckles that dot the bridge of his nose like scattered stars; he reaches up to frame V’s jaw, tracing the curve of his bottom lip with his thumb. “Get some rest, kid.”
And V doesn’t argue with him. He simply sighs, letting his eyes slide shut to the rhythm of Kerry’s heartbeat so near to his own. In the morning, maybe it’ll be true, or maybe he’ll at least still believe that it can be one day. In the morning, maybe he’ll deserve it, the body he lives in and the life he leads, the friends who look after him and the joys he lays claim to. But for now, it just is.
That’s enough for now.
In the morning, V’s got seven new messages from the Afterlife and a crick in his back that he thinks might warrant medical attention.
The sunlight that spills through the windows is oppressive, slanting across the floor in white-yellow beams. It crowds under V’s eyelids to lance his oversensitive optical nerves, and he groans, the inside of his mouth thick with dehydration. He blinks hard to wake himself the rest of the way up, wincing against the migraine that threatens to cave in his brain.
Kerry’s still asleep, burrowed into his torso like a cat curled up on a radiator, which would be much more endearing if V’s arm didn’t feel like it was moments away from succumbing to necrosis. He’s doing his best to coax his blood back into circulating when he catches sight of the bed on the far end of the second story, empty and neatly made for the first time since… well, since he started staying at the villa, if he had to guess.
Downstairs, the coffee machine chirps merrily.
He somehow manages to wriggle out from underneath Kerry without jostling him too much, muttering a hushed g’morning and dropping a kiss behind his ear when he grunts unhappily, before shuffling toward the staircase and down the steps. The house is quiet, devoid of all the chaos and unchecked revelry from the night before; V half expects to find some poor intern passed out on one of the deck chairs or in the shower, but thankfully, all that’s left is Panam, puttering about the first floor as she fiddles with the espresso maker that neither V nor Kerry has ever gotten to work.
The son of a bitch whirs to life while Panam dusts off her hands, turning to smile at V as if she hasn’t just performed a baffling feat of technological wizardry. “I was gonna make a joke about Sleeping Beauty,” she quips, “but you look like roadkill.”
“Fresh as a daisy, contrary to popular belief,” replies V, though most of it is mumbled as to not aggravate the headache throbbing between his temples. He rolls his arm socket again, grimacing at its answering twinge. “How the hell did you get that thing to cooperate with you?”
She laughs, sweeping behind him. “It’s a kitchen appliance, V, not a fusion reactor. Hold still.” She braces one hand against his rotator cuff, laying her palm flat against his shoulder blade and giving it a good old-fashioned shove.
The ensuing pop almost knocks V out cold. “Agh—fuck,” he wheezes, the pain immediately muting into a dull afterthought. Panam steps to the side, arms crossed smugly, as he shakes out the offending limb. “Thank you.”
“Least I could do for putting me up for the night. Hope I didn’t impose.”
“Nah, Ker didn’t want you on the road ‘til you got some shuteye,” V tells her. “Y’know, he keeps real close tabs on the brunch circuit around town. We could grab somethin’ to eat, if you don’t got anywhere to be.”
Her face falters, and V is abruptly reminded of the rendezvous with her and Saul at the Aldecaldo camp, how she’d seemed jumpy and evasive back then, too. “Thanks, V,” she says, the line of her arms tight and protective across her chest, “but… I’ve gotta tell you something.”
Suddenly, the peaceful silence of the villa is so much louder, ringing at V’s eardrums with every moment she spends considering her words. Her eyes cast downward, the toe of her shoe tapping restlessly against the polished hardwood. “Okay,” V says, watching her carefully. “I’m listening.”
Her brows pinch. “We—the Aldecaldos, I mean—we’re heading out. I don’t wanna say for good, but… for a good while, at least.”
So that’s what she and Saul had been looking for. All the maps and meteorology, all that data spanning from the northwestern corner of Washington all the way out to the Texan Republic—the portrait it paints is obvious, too obvious for V to have missed it. “No shit,” he says, trying and failing to keep it light. “Where to?”
“Arizona,” Panam replies, then huffs wryly. “Out into the great unknown.”
“The sights and sounds of glamorous Tucson.”
It summons a smile back to her face, if nothing else, and she bumps her hip against V’s. “I know this is kind of selfish of me to say,” Panam starts, the flicker of hope there a little too telling, “but you’re more than welcome to come with us, you know. Both of you.”
He’s considered it in the past. In the fallout of Konpeki Plaza, V had spent hours staring out beyond the callous trappings of Night City, beyond its corporate bottlenecks, its overcrowded megabuildings; the jobs he ran with Panam and the Aldecaldos, unbridled by the claustrophobic streets and soaring towers, were some of the only moments that the noose tightening around his neck would slip his mind.
But that freedom had never been about leaving. It had always been about Panam, and Mitch and Saul and the vets, his own little ecosystem of camaraderie out in the barren wastes; the same camaraderie that he shares with Judy, and River, with Vik and Misty, with the crew at the Afterlife.
Night City has never been a cage to him. It was never a cage to Rogue, and it’s no different for V.
He owes this to Panam, the earnest reasoning behind his refusal. V’s indebted to a lot of people, but very few of them are actually still around for him to pay back. “I ain’t got much love for NC,” he says, “which I think is why I gotta stay. Some braindead street punk is gonna end up in the same shit I did, or worse.” He shrugs. “Who’s gonna help ‘em, the way Rogue helped me?”
There’s a raw sort of sorrow in Panam’s expression, sweet and somber at the same time. “V…”
Maybe it’s vain of him, self-important to think he might someday hold that kind of sway over another person’s life, but it’s the closest thing to the truth V has to offer her. “I can imagine bein’ happy out on the road, I really can. It’s just…”
His gaze drifts toward the staircase, toward the villa’s second story. Freedom has never once been about leaving. It’s always been about the lattice of paths interwoven with his own, those who have cared for him and who he’s cared for in return. When V was at his lowest, vomiting blood more nights than not, there was always a sharp wit to make him laugh through the nausea, always a shrewd wisdom to remind him of his worth; always, always, always, there were hands in his hair, lips against his cheek, strains of half-finished songs sung softly into his ear. Not Mikoshi, nor the Afterlife, nor the Crystal Palace could keep him from North Oak for very long.
“You’re happy here, too.” Panam’s sadness has frayed at the edges, escorted out by a bittersweet contentment. Two friends saying goodbye, though only for now.
“It’s hard everywhere, Panam,” V tells her, and gladly returns the hug she scoops him into, “but it can happen.”
Panam Palmer will always be a fixture in his life, V thinks. Much like Judy, finally thriving in Seattle and looking forward to the future, Panam will never be far from him, not in any way that truly matters. They’re all invaluable to him, Judy in her stubbornness, River in his duty, Panam in her tireless pursuit of something better; it’ll take much more than misanthropic Night City to rip them from his grasp.
Panam grips his arms when she pulls away, her smile watery but undeniably resolute. “Well,” she remarks lightly, a bounce having reawakened in her step, “consider it a standing invitation. You ever need anything, either of you, you just call, okay? You’re family.”
V’s never said as much to her, and he’s not sure how he could possibly express it, but there are very few things as unfathomably reassuring as having the Aldecaldos in his corner all this time. “Same to you,” he says instead, and she squeezes his arms in wordless gratitude.
The calm of the moment is shattered, then, by a shrill ringing from Panam’s phone, and she pats her pockets as she scrambles to fish it out. “Ugh, guess who,” she groans, holding it up for V to see. Saul’s picture on the screen is out of focus, like Panam only managed to snap it unbeknownst to him, and it makes V laugh.
“Adventure calls.”
“He’s gonna give me an ulcer, I swear,” she mutters, and silences it with a definitive swipe.
V sees her out to her truck, thumping its chassis with the heel of his hand as she pulls out of Kerry’s driveway. He watches her go, the Thorton meandering its way down the slopes of North Oak until the hills obscure her completely, and then she’s gone.
The air is mild today. V enjoys it for a short while, hands tucked into his pockets, before heading back inside.
He finds Kerry marveling at a mug of espresso in his hands like its depths contain the secrets of the universe. “Since when does this thing make coffee?” he asks, gesturing bemusedly at the machine behind him.
“News to me, too.” V leans against the counter opposite Kerry, nudging at his foot with his own. “Must be some kinda miracle hangover cure if Panam’s able to walk straight, though.”
“Gimme a couple minutes and I’ll let you know,” Kerry responds, though it’s mostly into the cup.
V lets himself settle there, basking in the stillness of the morning, in Kerry’s proximity as he slowly drains his drink. The paths that led him to where he is were grueling and unkind, reeking to high hell of death and corruption at every turn, but he can’t come up with much that he would have changed. There’ll always be regrets he carries with him, holes in his soul where once stood Jackie, and T-Bug, and Rogue, but it’s all a part of a larger fabric of choices he’s made, choices he’s still making. He thinks, all things considered, he’s done his best with what he has.
Kerry tilts his head eventually, eyes canny and crystalline. “Sure you don’t wanna go with them?”
V’s brow knits. “You heard all that?”
“Bits and pieces,” Kerry says, waving his hand vaguely.
V breathes out through his nose. “Mortality put a lot of things into perspective,” he says. “Night City’s done its fair share of bad shit to me, but… when I had nothing, it gave me people.” He nudges Kerry’s foot again, can’t help but mirror the smile that’s slipping onto his face. “Location don’t much matter so long as the company’s right.”
Kerry’s eyes flit down, his ankle warm where it rests against V’s. Then, with a dreamy sigh, he says, “I can’t fuckin’ stand it when people have stronger conviction than I do.”
It surprises a laugh out of V, and he pushes off his end of the countertop. “If you ask nicely,” he murmurs, crowding into Kerry’s space to hear him purr, “I could give you a few pointers.”
“When do you think I have ever asked nicely for anything in my life?” Kerry replies, sliding his free hand up the breadth of V’s chest.
“Point taken,” V whispers against his lips, and then he’s pressing forward, ducking to capture Kerry’s mouth.
Kerry hums as he lets V inside, the taste of coffee still smooth and strong on his tongue, and V is barely a heartbeat from carrying him back upstairs when a dull thunk resounds from behind them, tearing both his and Kerry’s attention to the center of the living room where a… knife has just lodged itself into the floor.
Neither of them moves for what feels like an eternity, staring at it like it’s a rabid animal that just broke into the house. V glances up, and there, way above them, are about two dozen other knives and assorted knickknacks affixed to the villa’s lofty ceiling, the precarious aftermath of some sort of drunken throwing contest. Glitter, wet wads of paper, one garishly colored sex toy, a bra—honestly, V’s kind of impressed that it’s taken this long for any of it to surrender to gravity.
“How fucking long have those been up there?” Kerry mutters, awed and annoyed in equal measure.
It’s not just the ceiling, either. The villa’s a fucking disaster (not that it’s the pinnacle of order and tidiness on a good day), the evidence of the night’s festivities all too apparent now that they’re bothering to look, broken glass and spilled booze and a stench that’s growing more pungent by the minute.
V turns back to Kerry, who’s still watching the ceiling suspiciously. “Wanna come to my place?” he offers. “Finish that docuseries?”
Kerry squints. “Yeah,” he says, then knocks back the last of his coffee. “Yeah, I’ll drive.”
NEW MESSAGE: PANAM PALMER
convoy’s had the album on nonstop
your output sure can write a tune
TO: PANAM PALMER
I’ll pass your compliments along to the chef
NEW MEESAGE: PANAM PALMER
;)
TO: PANAM PALMER
…what?
NEW MESSAGE: PANAM PALMER
you said ONE of these songs was about you
MAYBE two
TO: PANAM PALMER
Music’s interpretive, they can be about whatever you want
NEW MESSAGE: PANAM PALMER
oh so now you’re all about the subjectivity of art
TO: PANAM PALMER
Panam
listen
I’m aware
NEW MESSAGE: PANAM PALMER
what I wouldn’t GIVE to have been a fly on the wall the first time you heard it
TO: PANAM PALMER
don’t you have a cactus to fistfight or something?
NEW MESSAGE: PANAM PALMER
Ohhhhh V
sweet, sweet V
The Thorton’s got cruise control
I can do this all DAY