David woke with Lucy clinging to him and his agent blaring an unknown number so loud and sudden that he worried it might wake her up.
Of course, that wasn't how anything worked. Then again, she had been the one to install all of his ICE, muttering about seiðr as she did it. He wouldn't have held a backdoor against her. Not after Maine.
Like she could feel his thoughts turning morose, his output squeezed herself a little tighter against him. As affectionate in her sleep as she was distant when awake. He liked to tell himself that meant something.
Something other than her getting cold in her sleep.
The call rang out and he waited for the message to follow. Answering an unknown call was stupid, but if they knew what they were doing then-
MESSAGE RECEIVED: UNKNOWN SENDER
-they'd send him the deets he needed to vet the job.
In the past that would have meant throwing the info to a fixer and letting them figure it out, but ever since that mess with Faraday…
The memory of Lucy, bloodstained and weeping with the force of her anger, flashed in his optics. Another glitch, or just the scar of a bad memory? He didn't know how to live with one, or without the other. Didn't know if there was even a difference between the two.
His vision was going again. Cascading errors ate whole chunks of his visual feed and left behind a blank landscape of starless black and stony white. Though his hands didn't shake as he extracted himself from Lucy's grip and heaved himself upright, so that was some good to go with the bad. A nice bright spot to guide him quietly down the stairs and into the bathroom.
Luxury beyond anything his mom had ever gotten to have, and he could barely see it. Groping blindly got him to the cabinet where he kept his immuno-supressants. Except his hands had starting shaking while his mind was away, and he couldn't make them move like he needed to get the locks open.
The hopeless rage made him want to smash his way through, but Lucy was sleeping and angry didn't play well with quiet.
So he bent down and twisted his neck until he could use his mouth to work the mechanism.
It took ten minutes to get the cabinet open and by the time he managed it he couldn't see what was inside. Could only feel it a little when he reached in and knocked over half the vials before he got ahold of the hypo. Then he lost feeling too.
He was on a battlefield. Careful not to react to the monsters and soldiers who fought and died all around him. Four men ran towards him, shouting with silent mouths, and something inside him longed to reach out to them. David crushed it down and tried to figure out where his hand was instead.
More than a year of experience had finally driven home that none of what he saw was real. Or rather, the time he came out of it to find Lucy hiding a bruise had done that, and the months since had given him time to practice holding as still as he could. Even when he looked up at a sun turned black and it looked back at him.
The phantom of hatred washed over him, horribly real, and then it was gone.
He was in a happy memory this time. Lucy's precious BD, even distorted by his optical glitches, could never be anything else.
Moving slowly, in case someone needed to get out of the way of his bulk, David sat down. He even felt the tiles beneath him. Cool with the promise that he was coming back to his senses. He'd just have to wait for a bit.
Staring up at the Earth, he couldn't say he minded much.
When he woke up, he was looking up at Lucy, the hypo hissing empty in her hand.
Excuses bubbled to his lips, and emotions danced in her eyes. Both remained mysteries as she turned away and blew out a sigh.
Instead of talking about it, again, Lucy bounced him a copy of the same message he'd gotten and - damnit - ignored for six hours. Long enough for someone to try reaching him through her instead. She gave him time to skim it before she said, "Are you taking this one? Seems sketchy."
He agreed, it had just the wrong combination of vague statements and overeager promises. It also came with a hefty retainer fee up front though, and a glance at the med-vault still hanging open was all it took to remind him of just how much he was having to spend to keep riding the edge of the abyss.
The truth was, it was getting hard to save as much as he knew he needed to. Enough to know that she…well, there was no point dwelling on what came after his inevitable fall. He'd made that decision a long time ago.
The lie was his smile as he nodded, clambering to his feet and looking down at the mess sleep had made of her hair. He absently reached out to put the moonlight strands back to rights, and resisted the urge to cry when she stiffened at his touch.
Still, he kept his smile wide even as she refused to look at him.
"Sure we'll take it." He was already knocking his cut of the retainer fee off the running tally in his head.
Staring at the wall she said, "You'll need a Netrunner for this kind of work."
"We have a Netrunner." He tried not to sigh, but it was his third least favourite discussion for them to repeat.
"You have a rat."
He lost the battle and let out the sigh, regretting it even before he saw her flinch. "Lucy… You're the one who left her alive."
"Maybe that was a mistake."
"You don't believe that."
"..."
"Kiwi is one of the best, and this isn't a line of work for holding grudges."
Her silence continued and he knew he'd lost the argument, again.
But he also knew that nothing would actually come of it. Nothing ever changed. No matter how many times they ran through the same handful of conversations.
Some small part of him wondered why she hadn't just left him yet. The rest wanted to howl with misery at the thought of it.
Again though, he plastered a smile across his face and kept going. His fingers caught her chin before she could slink away, and he turned her to face him, as amazed as he'd been since the very first time she'd let him hold her.
In the dawn light his skin looked almost golden against the alabaster pallor of hers. Beneath his gaze, her eyes flickered everywhere else before they transfixed him. The lights of her optics unable to hide the worry in her eyes.
She still cared. Still loved his gonkbrained ass, at least enough to stick with him a while longer.
And so long as he had even those sparse drops of her love. David could keep fighting. Keep smiling. Keep his voice gentle and cheerful as he told her.
"Come on Lucy. We'll be fine. How hard could it be to find one missing prototype?"
