V wasn't used to the artificial gravity. She wasn't sure it was something she'd ever get accustomed to. Despite a misstep not sending her flying several yards, like it would outdoors, it still made her feel queasy and unbalanced.

All and all, it had been a successful day. She was on the moon on a rich client's eddies, an expensive trip. A celebrity running for public office had wanted a neutral party to track down his wayward daughter and V had come recommended. In the end, there was nothing more sinister at play than a spoiled teenager's rebellion, and V had been able to see the girl on VIP shuttle back to earth before she'd gotten herself in serious trouble or even drank one too many lunar mimosas. V hadn't even had to shoot anybody. Thrown a couple punches, but that was fine. Kept her sharp.

There was so much from Night City she tried to forget, but that was the one thing she had to remember. Live anywhere else after Night City and it would make you soft.

V's transport down to earth was economy class, and left the day after tomorrow. That was fine. She had some unfinished business, and it was likely she wouldn't be back to Tycho, the largest city on the moon, anytime soon. If ever.

V had reached the seedier, grimier end of Tycho's business district, though the moon's version of grimy was practically pristine compared to the grunge that usually surrounded her on Earth. She shivered. It felt weird.

In between a closed noodle shop and an open ripperdoc, V found an unmarked suite. She walked up to the door and buzzed the intercom. The voice from the other end was faint and feminine. "Maine Security Consultations."

"I'm looking for somebody," V said. "A Miss Lucyna Kushinada?"

"You have an appointment, rockerboy?"

"Rockerboy…" V glanced down at herself. She supposed the shoe fit, with her tight black clothing and leather jacket with the Samurai logo on the back. Johnny's jacket. Or at least a replication of it. V was also toting a black backpack. Her aquamarine hair went down to her shoulders. She wore sunglasses, the bright lights of the moon hurt her eyes, implants regardless, they'd been sensitive since that fateful night beneath Arasaka tower, which felt like so long ago. "Look, I don't have an appointment, but I just want to talk to Lucyna for a minute. And give her something. It's about a friend of hers, somebody named David Martinez."

There was silence from the other end of the intercom, and for a moment V thought she'd said something wrong and whoever the woman was had walked away. Then the door slid open. A scowling, slender young woman with white hair stood on the other side, arms crossed. "How the fuck do you know David?"

"I learned his story," said V. "And it's a hell of a story. He and I had a couple things in common. My name is V. May I come in? It might be better to talk inside."

The woman bit her lip for a moment, then finally nodded. "Come in." She turned away, and the door shut after V entered.

"Are you Lucyna?" V followed the woman into a dimly lit office area. It was tidy, yet lived in. It seemed as though the woman was here alone.

"Lucy is fine," said the woman. She wore a modified netrunner's suit, one that showed a lot of skin. "You want something to drink?"

"I'm good, actually," said V.

Lucy nodded again. She sat in a plush swivel chair and put her black boots up on a desk. Her purple eyes glowed red for an instant and the dim lights in the office brightened. V slid the backpack off her back and sat in the chair opposite Lucy. Lucy produced a cigarette from a pocket of her cropped jacket and lit it. She took a long drag. She did not offer V a smoke.

"I know who you are," she told V. "That's why we're talking. There's a lot about you on the net, if you know where to look. And I always know where to look."

"Really," V raised an eyebrow. "What have you heard?"

"You're the chick who zeroed Adam Smasher." Lucy took another drag. The smoke lingered in the air for a second before it was sucked away by the ventilation system. "Please tell me, how did he die?"

"He…he died burning," said V. "Until I put a bullet through what was left of his brain."

"Was he afraid? Did he feel any pain? Finally?"

"He did."

"Good," Lucy tapped out the end of her cigarette in her ashtray. "So, what do you know about David?"

"Just the basics," said V. "I watched some braindances. Violent stuff mostly. Storming Arasaka tower is liable to make you a legend, but somebody covered his tracks pretty well. I'm guessing you had something to do with that?"

"David deserves to be a legend," said Lucy. "But he also deserves some privacy. So do those that knew him. It wasn't all me. Arasaka too, they don't like being played a fool. You know that. You stormed them too."

"Ah, you do know my history."

"I try and keep up with events in the Night City Edgerunning community," said Lucy. "Even if it's harder from here. For old times' sake."

"Well, I owe David some thanks," said V. "For showing me the way. Showed you don't have to be Johnny Silverhand to stick it to the man."

"Johnny had shit on my David," said Lucy.

V was suddenly very glad her brain was free of passengers. She didn't fancy the kind of argument Johnny might have started. "I'm not just here to say hi. Here, I think this belongs to you." V put the backpack on the table. "Open it."

Lucy unzipped the pack and she drew out and unfolded a yellow jacket. It was a modified trauma team jacket, with an edgerunner insignia spray painted on the back.

"It's his, isn't it?" said V. "I found it when I was looking into his business. And when I learned about you, learned what you meant to him, I thought you ought to have it."

Lucy stared at the jacket in silence for a moment, holding it in front of her. V realized she was crying, silent tears tracing down her cheeks. V looked away and said nothing, giving Lucy her privacy.

"Thank you," said Lucy, once she had composed herself. "Thank you so much. How can I repay you?"

"Don't mention it. Consider it a gift. One cyberpunk to another."

"That's kind. Still, it's a long trip."

"I was in the area," said V.

Lucy sat for a moment with the jacket in her lap, looking down at it, shoulders hunched. She suddenly looked very small. Very young. Too young to have loved and lost as V knew she had.

"I think I'd like to be alone," Lucy said finally.

"I understand," V stood up, taking back her backpack. "I'm sorry for your loss, and I'll get out of your hair. I really should be going anyway; my output is waiting. Oh, and here's my number. I'm in Tycho until the day after tomorrow. If you need anything, or just want to talk. Go for a drink or something. I'll be there."

Lucy sounded like she might cry again. "Thank you, V."

V made sure the door was shut on her way out.

…

"I'm home." V entered the rental suite her client had put her up in on Tycho. It was comfortable, bigger than some apartments she'd lived in herself.

"One minute, mi calabacita," Judy Álvarez called. "Maybe five."

V took off her Samurai jacket and draped it over a chair as she watched Judy work. The woman with green/pink dyed hair sat on the floor in the middle of the living area wearing a headset that covered her dark eyes, her hands in the air in front of her kneading the air, touching and massaging imagery V couldn't see. Judy was surrounded by candy wrappers, half empty energy drinks, and half empty bowls of noodles. V knew it was best not to bother Judy while she worked. She hyperfocused as much making a braindance as some netjunkie would watching it. V went to the kitchenette to get herself a beer.

When V returned, Judy was removing her gear. She wore her usual work clothes, dark sleeveless overalls that showed off her tattoos, flowers, symbols, and spiderwebs tracing up her neck and arms. "Have a good day at the office?" Judy asked, finding one of the least empty cans of caffeinated fluid to drink from.

"Good enough," V sat on the floor across from Judy, her back to the wall. "Job was easy. How about you? This is a vacation, remember? Isn't there a pool you should be lying out next to around here somewhere?"

"You know me, I like to work while you're working," said Judy. "Keeps me from worrying. I booked us a moon tour tomorrow though."

"Moon tour?"

"Yeah! Where they take you outside, give you a spacesuit, let you walk around. Touristy as fuck."

"Preem," said V. "That'll be fun." She held out her beer to clink it against Judy's can and they both drank.

"Did you find that woman?" Judy asked. "Lucyna?"

"I did, actually," said V. "Surprisingly. Hunch paid off."

"What was she like?"

V thought about this for a second. "Sad," she said. "She seemed sad. A little cold, but I think she's lonely. I gave her the jacket. She was glad to have it."

"Good," said Judy. "Did her a good turn. You got a good heart, calabacita, no matter how much leather you try and hide it under."

V snorted. "She called me a rockerboy. Do I really dress like a rockerboy?"

Judy made a face. "A bit. I think it's cute, but you do a bit. It's a rare day I see you wearing a shirt without a band name old enough my grandma would recognize them."

V sighed. "It's the Johnny Silverhand in me. Little bit of his taste rubbed off. There's not a time I pass a guitar and I don't want to try and pluck out one of his old songs."

Judy raised her energy drink can. "To Johnny."

"To Johnny Silverhand," V raised her bottle and drank until it was empty. "If there's a heaven, I know he's there raising hell."

They sat in silence for a moment. "You want a shower?" Judy asked. "I want one. We could take turns. Or we could share. You pick."

"You really have to ask which one I pick?" V took the hem of her shirt and pulled it off over her head. Judy drank her in for a moment, biting her lip. In her bra and jeans, V's lean strong frame was accentuated by bits of metal and lines where her skin hid cyberware. She had her own ink, a viper curling around her torso.

Judy crawled over to V and kissed her, tracing her fingers along V's neck. "On second thought, maybe the shower can wait."

…

Lucy did something she promised herself she would not do. But her strange visitor, David's jacket, it brought back too many memories, too much for her to process. So she let herself sink into a sea of recordings and visual accounts and simulations and security footage, drinking it all in, drowning in data, drowning in memories, until for a moment she could almost convince herself they were all still together, still alive. Maine and the crew and David.

But the thing about memories was that they weren't always good, and the rest of the story came back too: Faraday and Adam Smasher and Arasaka tower, and she was left a poor little girl hugging herself in a digital storm of pain and blood remembering just how badly she'd fucked things up, until she eventually unplugged.

"Fuck," Lucy mumbled.

She was in the backroom of her combination office and living space, up to her neck in an ice bath as the cable once affixed to the back of her skull retracted from her.

Lucy didn't like netrunning chairs or suits. She didn't even like meeting and people and going places anymore, not so much, not after Night City. It was a cruel irony, considering her history, that the only place she felt remotely comfortable now was plugged into the local net, such as it was, living in the past in her own files while she sat in a bath with her tits out. Netrunning without running the net.

Eventually, Lucy mustered up the will to get out of the tub. The cold made her toes feel funny eventually, if she wasn't plugged in. She stood beside the tub, hair plastered to her scalp, naked and dripping and staring down at the water as if it held answers she'd never found.

The payout from David's last job had cleared, set her and Falco up with good money for a while. Lucy had come to the moon, like she'd wanted, like David had wanted for her, and she'd never left. She'd had more than enough to rent this office, start looking for jobs. She helped smalltime gonks with their cybersecurity now, protecting them from netrunners like the cyberpunk she'd used to be. It was a living. And it was easy, didn't take much brainpower to solve their problems, not when she had so much experience on the other end of ripping people off. Most days she felt like she was coasting. Sometimes she could almost forget the old days. V's present had broken her streak, not that she'd trade. Hard as it was to think of David again, hold something of his in her hands, she wouldn't take it back.

When she was a little less damp, but not quite dry, Lucy found the yellow jacket and pulled it on. She sat in the corner of the room beside the tub, wrapped it around herself, like a blanket, knees tucked up tight under her chin. The material felt cool against her skin. Comforting.

She felt like shit. She'd felt like shit for a while. But what was it that David had always said? He was built different? He must have felt like shit too, losing his mom the way he did. But he still found ways to keep smiling, keep fighting.

She took the sleeve of the jacket, rubbed the synthetic fabric between finger and thumb. "How the fuck did you do it?"

It was what had attracted her to him in the first place. His sense of hope, his faith, his sheer stubbornness. The belief that no matter what bad things happened, he was untouchable and could rise above it. And for a while, he did.

"Maybe I can hope a little too."

…

V slept like a rock. Until she couldn't. It was dark and quiet, before the ending of the city's night cycle judging by the wall clock. Judy murmured something and shifted in her sleep, tangled in the sheets beside V.

V watched her for a moment. Judy's mouth was open, one arm thrown up over her head. Her bare chest rose and fell gently with her breath, a pale spiderweb of ink across her breast, spreading out from a dark nipple.

V could have watched over Judy all night, but she didn't want to wake the other woman by tossing or turning, as she was prone to do when she couldn't sleep. Instead, V slipped out of bed and threw on the loose white tank top she sometimes slept in. She rummaged in her suitcase just long enough to find a clean pair of panties (purple) which she pulled on before padding out of the bedroom.

Taking care to make as little noise as she could, V went to the kitchenette and began to brew an herbal tea. She didn't take pills to sleep, didn't want to become dependent on them, she took too many stims as a cyberpunk already, but the tea was a special blend River had recommended when they'd been hanging out once back in Night City. Or had it been Kerry? Some of it was a blur, back when Johnny's chip had her bleeding her brain out of her nose.

There was a nook in the wall with a couch that could be converted into a rollaway bed if the room's occupants were so inclined. V sat there to nurse her mug of tea, tucking her long legs beneath her. She was still sitting there fifteen minutes later when Judy emerged from the bedroom, yawning.

"You haven't seen my sleep shorts anywhere, have you?" Judy was still naked, her various tattoos and lithe body on full display. "The blue ones?"

"Nah," said V. "You're looking preem right now though."

"Ha fucking ha," Judy folded her arms, standing in front of V, her weight on one hip. "If I lost them under the couch or something and don't find it before we leave, I'm making you buy me another pair."

"Fair enough," said V. "Do you want any tea?"

"I'm good." Judy found a half empty back of chips and leaned back against the counter to munch on them. In the dim light, V could scan her whole profile, from her mussed green hair, soft chin, to the curve of her hips and her narrow legs, crossed at the ankles.

"I'm lucky to have you with me," V said quietly.

"You're lucky?" said Judy. "I was just thinking how lucky I am. All the running and gunning you do? I feel like I'm fucking a goddamned sports car when we go to bed." She raised a finger. "In a good way. I mean that as a good thing. Don't make it weird."

"I was tempted to," V smiled.

"What are you thinking about, Val?" Judy asked. Only Judy called her Valerie. And even then, only rarely. "You always get this serious face when you're thinking."

"I've been wondering how much longer I can do this," said V. "My job. I love it. I love the thrill of the hunt. But…cyberpunks don't get old, Judes. Not the good ones. They go out in a blaze of glory, and for a long time I was okay with that. Now I'm not so sure."

"Calabacita," Judy tossed the chip bag aside and walked over to join V on the couch. "This early in the morning is shit time for decision making, but you know I'll support you. Whatever you want to do."

V looked down at her hands. "Meeting Lucy today, it got me thinking. Edgerunning ate David Martinez alive, and it left her behind. Seeing how broken up she seemed, I don't want to do that to you, you know?" V looked up at Judy. "I don't want to leave you alone. Not if I can help it. This life killed David and Jackie and it even killed me a couple times. I keep getting better because I'm a resilient motherfucker, but that's not going to last. Folks gave me six months to live when we left Night City. Panam's contacts gave me a lot of help and I've made it twice that now. Future's not as bleak for me as it's been at times, but I still don't know when exactly I'm going to kick it. I want to spend the time I've got left with you, and not just making you worried while I'm on a job. How does that sound?"

"Sounds damn good." Judy put her arms around V's shoulders, cradling her, letting V rest her head against her shoulder, as she stroked V's hair. "I know you. You're strong and resourceful and you can do, or not do, whatever you want to, if you put your mind to it. You're a stubborn bitch."

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said," V leaned up to kiss her. She tasted salt from the chips on Judy's lips.

"You've also got a smart mouth, Calabacita," Judy squirmed, pulling V around, onto her lap.

V kissed her again. "We can talk about it more tomorrow. Or the day after that. I'm thinking now I just show you how much I love you and how smart my mouth is."

"That sounds real…" And Judy couldn't didn't say more than that as V's hand's stroked her back, as V kissed her neck, her shoulders, down her chest, lower.

When they'd finished, they lay together on the couch, wrapped in an embrace, V feeling Judy's warm breath on her cheek as she whispered in her ear, "I love you, Valerie." And V felt, for the first time in a long time, that everything was going to be alright.

…

Two weeks later.

Lucy had become an accomplished spacewalker in her time on the moon. All those braindance practices had paid off, she was effective at moving in zero-g. But she still wasn't used to looking up and seeing the Earth in all its blue-green glory. It was so beautiful. She felt like she could look at it forever.

But she had another objective beyond sightseeing. She had come to a secluded spot on the moon's surface in her spacesuit, where she knew no one would bother her. Technically, she wasn't supposed to be here, but she had friends in Tycho who owed her favors and hadn't objected when she'd laid out what she had in mind, not after she'd greased a few palms with eddies. Lucy didn't break the rules anymore, but she would still bend them all to hell when the time was right.

Lucy hadn't seen V again since the cyberpunk left her the jacker. But V had called her office the next day, and Lucy had answered, recognizing the number.

"I hope you're doing okay," V had said, after an awkward greeting. "You seemed like…"

"Like I might not be?"

"Yeah."

"I've been up and down," Lucy said. "I appreciate the check in though. I think I'll find a way to manage. I have so far."

"It's hard losing somebody," V continued. "I just try and think about how they would feel if they could see me, what sorts of trouble they'd want me to get up to. And then I try and do that."

"Yeah," Lucy had nodded. "That's what I'm trying to remember. It's a process. But I guess you know that too."

"I did have one other thing I wanted to talk to you about," V said, sheepishly. "I forgot on the way out yesterday. But I've got another item for you that I found. A shotgun. Painted pink and green. It's in a storage locker on earth, I tried to take it up with me, but they didn't want it on the shuttle. Too much of a liability. But it's got a hell of a kick. It was supposed to belong to somebody else on your crew, a woman named Rebecca. Does that ring a bell?"

Lucy had to smile. "It certainly does."

"Would you like it? I could try and get it to you."

Lucy considered this. "No. Thank you. I mean, why don't you keep it? I'm trying to stay out of firefights these days, whereas you're heading back to earth where you might need a gun with a hell of a kick. And besides, I think Becca would want you to have it. You killed the bastard who killed her."

"Smasher, again?"

"Yeah, Smasher."

"May he burn in hell. And thanks. I'll take good care of the weapon."

"You remind me a little bit of her, V," said Lucy. "Of Rebecca."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should. You're much taller, but she was a fighter like you. Perky like you too."

It hadn't seemed like there was much to say after that, so they had said their goodbyes. Wherever V was now, Lucy hoped she was doing alright. And the shotgun was treating her well.

Lucy had been dragging her feet too long, she returned to her task. She activated a laser drill she had brought with her. A piece of mining equipment, it made short work of her objective, cutting a small hole in the rocky surface of the moon before her.

Lucy put away her tool and took out a folded package of clear plastic. Sealed within was David's yellow jacket. She held it in her hands again for a moment, the Earth above reflected in the shine of the plastic. "We're here, David. We're here because of you."

She lay the jacket in the hole and replaced the rock, sealing it away with another setting of the mining tool. Finally, she bent down and drew on David's makeshift grave, no easy feat in her spacesuit. She drew two letters. The letter he had worn on his back. E and R. For Edgerunner.

With her helmet on, Lucy had no way to wipe away her tears. So she hummed a few bars to try and keep the tears at bay, an old song she'd used to listen to, one that had always made her happy, made her think of David, of her earliest days with him. Lucy was not a singer. She didn't sing. But she sang a few lines for him.

"I couldn't wait for you to come clear the cupboards.

"But now you're going to leave with nothing but a sign.

"Another evening I'll be sitting reading in between your lines.

"Because I miss you all the time.

"Because I miss you all the time," she added one last time. She brought a gloved hand to her lips, clunkily through the space suit, and kissed it, before pointing at the grave. "Goodbye, David. I'm never going to stop fighting. Just like you showed me."