Tits, Johnny had decided, were some of the greatest things the planet Earth had to offer. He loved Alt's ample bosom, and he loved Rogue's slightly smaller, but no less stunning pair, his favourite things to caress and fondle during his many, many sexcapades.
He fucking hated tits with every fibre of his being right now, as he struggled with the bra in front of the mirror.
"Come on, you-" He swore to himself, trying to hook the loops on the bra, his arms tangled in the mess of straps and cups. With an exuberant exclamation, he finally found success in his fruitless attempts, turning to the mirror for a look at his efforts.
His mood plummeted.
He leaned in, one slender hand feeling the smooth curve of his jaw, piercing red eyes staring back through a curtain of wavy, white hair, framing a strikingly beautiful face. Tits that erred on the larger side, now clasped within a plain white t-shirt bra, leading down to a toned stomach and a pair of grey boxers sitting on flared hips, down and down to a long pair of lithe legs. By all accounts, an undeniably beautiful body, one that drew eyes wherever it went, and had, and did. Sometimes multiple times a night.
"Fuck," He said, speaking with lips once coated in a ruby red gloss, in a soft, sultry voice with a lifetime of regrets.
"I'll never get used to this."
Johnny Silverhand looked at himself in the mirror and saw V, finest solo in the city, bombshell babe, and his best friend staring back at him. It was all he could do to not punch the mirror. Again.
It was supposed to have been him that day.
Break into Arasaka Tower. Find Mikoshi. Save V. It was the mantra he had been repeating to himself, day in and day out, watching Night City pass by through the eyes of a fallen corpo rat.
He had hated her out of principle, of course. A corpo, an Arasaka corpo to boot. He had been this close to smashing her head into the mirror of their apartment in Megabuilding H10 on the day he had finally woken up, his mind filled with memories not his own, wracked with guilt and loathing, as he always had and always would. She had fought him, of course, always a fighter was V, trying her best to be rid of him. A virus. A cancer. Eating her up from the inside through the insidious Arasaka biochip.
It was nothing new to him, of course. It wasn't the first time he had been a cancer to those closest. Hell, he could have said the same for his whole life, fighting against the corporations without a care for the lives of anyone around him. It was easier to use people when you weren't attached. In the end, it landed him exactly where he had expected to end up, deep in the heart of Arasaka, at the mercy of his most hated enemy - Saburo Arasaka, though some part of him hoped that the effort of nuking Arasaka Tower would have changed something at least. He had raged against the ever growing threat to humanity's individual freedoms, to humanity's very identity, and he had lost.
But V? She had struck an undeniable blow to Arasaka, one woman accomplishing what so many could not, the aftermath of the whole fiasco absolutely crippling Arasaka's presence in Night City.
Break into Arasaka Tower. Find Mikoshi. Save V.
Asking anyone else for help had never been on the cards, really. Johnny had admired that about her, always so staunchly independent in the face of adversity.
V could never have asked the Aldecaldos for help anyway, not now that they had finally gotten themselves into a position where they didn't have to worry about as much. Supplies were good, the family was growing. And the Basilisk tank. That really helped. It was a shining bastion of honesty against the artificial lives of those who lived in Night City proper. Just… people who really, truly believed that the best way forward was working together. It would have brought a tear to Johnny's eye, if he had been capable of it at the time.
And Rogue, well, he had certainly pushed for V to use her services for the final assault. One last hurrah before the inevitable. Rogue had the connections, the expertise, and the experience not to fuck this up. She was Queen of the Afterlife, the number one bitch in Night City. It was perfect.
It was selfish.
If there was ever a doubt that Johnny Silverhand could change, this would be it.
As for Hanako Arasaka and her 'offer'... It had never really crossed either of their minds to think about it, really.
So in the end, there really was only one option that was best for everyone involved.
Break into Arasaka Tower. Find Mikoshi. Save V.
And they did. God, he was so proud of her, like a goddess of war unleashed upon Arasaka Tower, dancing between blade and barrel in a whirlwind dervish that always took his breath away to see it. They never stood a chance. And in they went, down the elevator, deep into the belly of the beast, fighting through tougher and tougher security until eventually there was hardly anyone left to stop them but Adam Smasher.
Oh, he was a tough bastard, sure. Barely any meat left on that body of his, all wrapped up in twisted metal and tech and hate hate hate. Almost eighty years acting as Arasaka's top enforcer in one way or another - murdering and maiming anyone and everyone he was ordered to, and plenty more besides, including Johnny himself. But he had fallen to V, in the end, as so many others had, his clock finally stopped, his shattered body a monument to all their goals in that moment. One more nightmare gone from this world. It felt like the final step on his journey, the payback he had been denied for fifty years, earned vicariously through V's hand.
"Good riddance," Johnny had said to her offhand, before she entered the vaulted Mikoshi core. It was the last thing he had said to her, prompting a wry, tired grin from her before she had immersed herself in the frigid coolant of the core, plugging herself into Mikoshi, where Alt would separate them and set them free. He wished he had said something else. Anything else, to express in some way the admiration he felt, the respect and appreciation for everything she had gone through to get to this point.
Because everything had been a god damn WASTE and oh, how he hated Alt in that moment, for not doing her job properly, and oh, how he hated Arasaka for having caused this in the first place. And most of all, he hated himself, for giving V false hope, for raising her spirits only to have them crushed in a way so unimaginably brutal, because he had fucked up, again.
Because his mantra of madness had got them so close, only to fall at the last hurdle and he had never seen it coming because it was Alt and she never fucked up, only it wasn't Alt, not really, and he had just been too willfully blind to accept it.
Because Johnny motherfucking Silverhand had done nothing but cause chaos and destruction in his wake for the last seventy fucking years and by fuck was that record going to continue, apparently.
Because in the end, it just wasn't fucking enough.
Break into Arasaka Tower. Find Mikoshi. Save V.
But she had chosen Johnny instead.
And nothing he ever said could possibly reflect the amount of 'not worth it' and 'this is a terrible idea' and 'please stop' he had felt in that moment, because finding out that they had been too fucking late, that V only had six months left to live, that all their work in the last couple of months - rising like Icarus towards the sun to become to finest merc in all of Night City - had been for nothing, had been enough to break her, had been enough to shatter the spirit of the strongest woman he had ever known and make her choose death beyond the Blackwall.
There hadn't really been anything to say after that. He had said things he hadn't meant. He had said things he had meant. But in the end, V had gone with Alt to the great code in the sky, and he had been left behind again, burdened with new life - in V's body. And he didn't even fucking deserve it.
In the end, it had been Rogue who had dragged him out, following the wake of death and destruction V had left behind after their assault on the tower. It was hard to miss when the centerpiece of Corpo Plaza went up in flames, after all. In his delirious state after V had left, he had somehow managed to drag himself all the way to the lobby of Arasaka Tower, only to be dragged the rest of the way to Afterlife by Rogue and her merry band of mercs. Well, he supposed she had always known him best, and he was nothing if not predictable.
He had woken up in one of Afterlife's back rooms, with an IV and other medical machines hooked up to him, beeping their mind numbing beeps to break the silent air. And Rogue sitting on a chair backwards, watching him sleep, apparently. Creepy, but he could work with that. He tried to push himself up to get a better look at her, only for his arms to give out and slip, sending him right back down.
"Easy there, V. You're pretty fucked up right now, so don't push yourself too hard," She cautioned. Caring words, but they were for the wrong person. Johnny forced himself upright on shaky arms.
"H-how long was I out?" He said, cringing at the sound of his voice. V's voice.
"A couple of days. Not surprising, when someone single handedly assaults Arasaka Tower," She commented mildly, inspecting her fingernails. Johnny coughed viciously, trying to clear his throat, chuckling weakly.
"Yeah, pretty good trip, right?," He replied nonchalantly. Rogue leaned in over the chair.
"What the fuck were you thinking, V?" She hissed, all pretences of calm gone, "Why would you try to take on Arasaka on your own?! What the hell was the point of all that? Or has Johnny tweaked your mind enough for you to go 'what a thrill, let's fucking do it!'?!"
Johnny coughed again, raising his hand. He frowned at the thin lines carved into the flesh, hiding the lethally sharp mantis blades beneath. The hand curled, leaving one finger up.
"First of all, we didn't try to take on Arasaka on our own, we did take on Arasaka on our own, so that's a merit point on its own," He said. Another finger went up.
"Second of all…" He paused, dropping his hand, thinking of a way to phrase it. "Rogue…"
Rogue frowned immediately. She got off her chair so fast it scraped across the floor, as she leaned in to take a closer look at him. She grabbed his face, twisting it left and right, as though doing so would reveal his secrets, would garner some sort of unknowable knowledge. He wrenched his face out of her hand with much effort, and she took a step back for a second, arms crossed as she stared at his face. A question sprung to her lips. He didn't really know how he was going to answer.
"Johnny?..."
"No, I'm Saburo fucking Arasaka risen from the dead," He snarked. That got a snort out of her. He paused, licking his lips, all too conscious of the different way his tongue ran across unfamiliar ground.
"Yeah. It's me," He said quietly.
There was a finality in his voice he hadn't wanted to express, as though sealing the words behind his lips would make it less real, as though his best friend hadn't just given him the world she deserved instead. Rogue's nose scrunched up in the way it always did when she didn't understand something and she really really wanted to know right this instant, thank you.
"Johnny… what happened?" She asked.
So he told her. And he talked and talked until his throat was drier than a nun's cunt (which was an odd saying, because he had known some nuns), while Rogue listened. He didn't really know how to feel about saying so much. He supposed dying and coming back to life in his best friend's body had loosened his lips. A lot. New perspective in life, he supposed. But Rogue just listened, asking questions when he faltered, and when he finally shut up after what felt like hours, she sat there and said nothing.
She leaned in and put her hand on his shoulder. She left it there for a few minutes, in silence, for which Johnny was grateful because now that he suddenly had to deal with things like feelings and hormones without the filter of an experimental biochip and a dubious psychological connection, he really felt like he was one step away from losing his shit and if she had come out with some kind of inane, meaningless bullshit like 'I'm sorry for your loss', he probably would have. But she knew him better than that, and he knew her better than that. And that was really all that needed to be left unsaid.
He coughed, and the hand withdrew, leaving a cool absence behind.
"Now, Rogue, we gotta talk about something important," He drawled, watching Rogue visibly stiffen up. Couldn't blame her, he supposed. Last time he had talked about something important, he basically told her her protogé was dead.
"I need some fucking tequila. Where is it?"
Rogue relaxed and rolled her eyes.
"You'll get a glass of water and that's it."
"Bitch."
"That's Queen Bitch to you, Johnny."
But she got up and left through the door, and for a few moments Johnny felt like things were going to be ok.
