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mail-me-a-snail · 4 months

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pls i hope you give us your Vance related PL thoughts one day <3 I’m sure he has a normal time of it

oh man. i could gush for hours about phantom liberty. dlcs dont usually engage me--the most "recent" exception having been destiny 2's last dlc with activision, forsaken--but phantom liberty gripped me by the membrane and throttled me within an inch of my life.

i mean, if it did that to me, imagine what it did to vance.

(spoilers follow)

it isn't 't the first time vance has gotten a holo from an unknown number.

that's the biz; most clients want secrecy. the private type don't trust fixers--they don't do middlemen. they cut straight to the point. vance has dealt with these kinds of clients before. they don't know the streets like he does; they don't give a shit to, either.

they give him the gist of what they want done; the finer details don't matter. job's a job--as long as he takes care of the gonk who needs flatlining, or klep whatever needs klepping, the scratch'll come through, no problem.

that's how it's supposed to go.

but songbird opens with this: she knows what's happening to him. she knows about the relic's slow poison; she knows about vance, who he was, is, and pretends to be; and she knows how to help.

the promise of a cure colors her tone, but she knows better than to make it here and now on the holo. so she asks vance to meet her at the gate to dogtown.

vance is fresh off a gig. he's maybe a kilometer from dogtown proper, can see the open, rounded top of the stadium peeking out from behind the buildings in the distance. black smoke rises over the skyline. seems there's always a fire in dogtown.

he had been nursing a cigarette on his bike--jackie's arch--when songbird had called him. he flicks what remains of the cigarette onto the pavement. grinds it out under his heel. he mounts the arch.

private-types always end up asking to meet at a secondary location.

this--this part of the routine that's been ingrained in him for the past year or so--he knows how to follow.

the malfunction tears through his parts with the precision of a ripper's scalpel.

it knows where to curl its long, electric-blue fingers in his internal wires. it knows how hard to tug; it doesn't stop, either. the force of it sours, taut, in the back of vance's throat.

the silver prongs connected to his spine rattle. they shake until they buzz--then that buzz sharpens into ringing. one constant note, ringing into eternity, rising without changing pitch.

it aches from within vance's very teeth. sits heavy on his useless tongue--the same tongue he fears that he'll end up biting during one of these seizures.

there was a time when the relic thought him still human. it's only recently that it's learned the true nature of its host. it's only recently that it's found out how much more it can feed on.

it's only recently that it's started affecting johnny, too.

he doesn't know how it happens--doesn't know if johnny's starting to share his pain, or if they're feeling each other's in a tenuous feedback loop.

either way, the relic is decaying, and it's taking them with it.

vance curls up against the nearest solid mass he can find; remembers he has to breathe; forgets, exactly, how to do that; reaches for johnny, who's seizing right in front of him--

and songbird reaches back.

she touches his shoulder. her hand carries no weight other than that of buzzing static. the sound bleeds into the malfunction's miasma of noise. she speaks, carefully, calmly, but whatever she says, the relic swallows.

her words seem to please it, however--because a few moments later, the malfunction trickles away. it leaves nothing in its wake but a bone-deep soreness and a few blue tessellations crackling across johnny's non-corporeal form.

the large lapels of songbird's jacket curl around her throat. beneath that and a number of colorful pins, she wears a rather nondescript netrunning suit in contrast. vance doesn't miss the cyberdeck attached to her hip.

she looks like any other runner. in fact, vance had traipsed around night city in something similar an eternity ago--only difference being the absence of his team colors of hexagonal red-and-black.

but she's got no symbols of her own. no iconography denoting her allegiance to any one patron. he would've taken her for one of the afterlife's enny-a-dozen netrunners, then--had it not been for the fact that she could see johnny.

she touches him, too. she grasps the ghost's shoulder as easily as if--as if...she were a ghost herself.

data crackles in vance's ear; it's not the relic's tell-tale, almost musical blue purr. he usually welcomes the sound because it means johnny's somewhere around him, some lame-ass quip ready to fall from his lips.

but this data is red and black and angry and alive.

it writhes; spits; it takes johnny with it.

for the first time in the past few months, vance's head falls quiet.

it's so quiet that the absence feels more like a cavity.

it aches like one, too.

she's not like any other runner, if she can do that.

the realization leaves him reeling with more than just the after-effects of a relic malfunction: it's got him dizzy with the idea that she's like him.

songbird doesn't win vance over by taking johnny away from him. he can feel her confusion with that underlying her every instruction, but she's got bigger things to worry about.

ask any of the techies from his arasaka days and they'd tell you this: vance is the last person to give a shit about the president of the NUSA.

he's not an NUSA citizen; he's especially not about to lick her heels just 'cause she used to run militech, either. his parents had fought in the war she had started all those years ago--it's in his corpo blood to hate her, or, at least, what she stands for.

but a job's a job, and song's not gonna give johnny up until vance swallows his pride.

he'll do as she says. he's got too much to lose not to.

that same red data plays with vance's surroundings as songbird talks to him. she props open doors; gets rusted old elevators groaning back to life; all from the relative safety of--wherever she is.

that takes skill. splitting himself in two like that--he could never pull that trick off, not for lack of trying.

granted, arasaka hadn't built him to be stationary. they had made sure he'd always be on the move. they had grafted an entire torso's worth of realskinn onto him so his machine parts could breathe in the cool, polluted air of night city as he ran through its gutter-like streets.

and that living data--it's as bright as copper and just as conducive; it carries with it that same, rotting taste. it's not just any fancy code. it's not even something that could be called a runner's signature; calling it that would imply it's likely to allow someone ownership.

that code isn't just black with ICE--it is ICE. it's several layers of thick, hostile ICE.

vance had only seen such a thing in cyberspace. way out there, lurking on the horizon, ever-present and closely guarded.

(because of the highly personalized nature of cyberspace, perhaps vance had invited it to stay).

even with his pull in arasaka's ranks, neither the techies or netwatch would've ever let him touch the blackwall.

but song's got it eating out of the palm of her hand.

...which means rosalind myer's been keeping what she doesn't understand on a leash for the past decade, and no one's been the wiser.

not even arasaka.

later, when he looks rosalind in the eye as he digs the tracker out of her neck--his touch comes too soft for someone like her, he realizes, though he doesn't do so on purpose--he wonders if she knows who, or what, he is.

if, if she does, then she must know what arasaka had intended him to be--why wouldn't she, after all, when song had been the one to order him after her?

johnny fills their first night in dogtown with doubt.

"this a normal tuesday for ya, v?" he asks vance. the ghost sits backwards on a rusted old folding chair in front of him. "savin' the skin of the fuckin' president of the NUSA?"

"sure," vance answers. he can't sleep. hasn't tried.

they both listen to myers breathing on the next mattress over for few moments.

then, he continues, quieter this time. "way things'll be goin', seems we're punchin' hansen's ticket same time next week."

johnny rests his chin on his crossed arms. his chrome arm gleams in the low, blue light coming from what could generously be called a window.

"think you're gonna be outta here that fast?" johnny shakes his head. "ain't how quick myers and her ilk operate."

"bureaucracy, that it? gotta wait for the paperwork to zero hansen?"

(he's not a stranger to the concept, but he had figured he had left that sort of thing behind.)

the ghost hums as the thought passes through their shared subconscious.

"'s not the NUSA tellin' ya to zero 'im. that's how they do biz: they get an idea in your head, and--'fore ya know it--they're washing their hands of you."

vance sighs; one long, full body sigh, broad shoulders rising and falling with it. this scop again.

he eases backwards into the mattress that he sits on. a spring digs against his back. he runs his hands down his face; the monowire pads pressed into his palms are marble smooth on his cheeks. he sets his hands on his chest.

data purrs--relic blue, this time--as johnny manifests beside him.

the latter turns his head to the former. johnny's eyes remain on the ceiling; his features are hard to discern from the stark shadows falling across his face. his long hair fans out around him. it's easy to forget, sometimes, especially in quiet moments like this, that johnny isn't even really there.

vance takes the illusion as it is, without question, and follows johnny's eyes to the popcorned ceiling.

"don't doubt you know what you're talkin' about," vance offers.

"but you're still gonna help 'er," johnny counters, quickly.

"mmhmm."

he makes a show of sighing. "why am i not surprised?"

"'cause you'd do the same."

"bullshit."

"so, yer sayin'--" vance props himself up on one elbow, dog tags coming to dangle around his neck-- "that even if there's a pretty damn real possibility of gettin' you off the relic--

"--big fuckin' if, don't ya think--"

"--you ain't even gonna stick around to find out if it's true?"

"there it is again--if, v, if."

"but what if it is true?" vance tips his head. "what if song really could help us?"

johnny finally looks at him. his lips are pressed into a thin line; he's not pleased. "what the hell was it that i just said, v? they get an idea in yer head--"

"--then they wash their hands of ya. i know." he lies back down, the motion a concession in and of itself. "heard ya the first time."

"ya got too much hope than what's good for ya, v." johnny turns on his side to face him. "'s how they get their claws in you. promise you one thing, quid-pro-quo, and they'll lead you down a shithole of your own makin'. just can't see how far you've dug yourself 'til you're lookin' up from rock bottom."

"fuck," vance breathes, amused. he meets johnny's eyes with a grin. "run that last line by me one more time, johnny--gotta make sure i got it down for the silverhand doctrine."

"oh--" johnny laughs, dry but warm-- "fuck off, v."

vance meets reed in the following days; he had almost missed the pressure of a gun nestling between his ribs. then, alex, if that really is her name this time.

he sees how the years between them have soured--both the time they had spent on the field together, and the time they had spent apart afterwards.

he learns how song had betrayed reed--on rosalind's orders.

just how far does the shithole go?

can't answer that without stopping to look up.

and they can't stop, not yet; hansen's playing diplomat with night city's brightest and boldest, songbird's in her cage, and the black sapphire's looking like the place to be.

vance doesn't miss johnny's glance over--doesn't miss how quickly johnny looks away when he catches the ghost staring, either.

the shell of johnny's ear and the red piercings clipped into the cartilage face vance. the latter pale in comparison to the blush dusting johnny's scruffy cheek.

vance sidles up to him--away from reed's eyes--and leans into his space. the black mesh stretching across his stomach and chest whispers with the motion. it's soft against his exposed skin. he tucks his hands behind his back.

"like what you see?" vance teases, in a murmur.

johnny finds the sea of other brightly colored guests very interesting all of a sudden. he's so intrigued by them that he doesn't dignify vance's question with a response.

it's at the black sapphire that vance sees so mi for what she really is: little of flesh, all machine. myers had not done for song what arasaka had done for vance; she hadn't deigned to hide the true nature of her prize netrunner.

white, block letters run up song's spine and spell MILITECH. myers hadn't bothered hide the mark of her allegiance, either.

or, perhaps, the mark of her owner.

embossed letters spell ARASAKA on vance's innermost machine parts. when he sees song's back for the first time, he swears he can almost feel those letters start to itch.

even after vance learned what song had done to reed; had learned how far she was willing to go; how much she was willing to give; he would have never turned her in.

it's not because reed and alex had needlessly killed the two netrunners they had stolen the identities of. it's not because reed makes his skin crawl, reminding him too much of white, sterile clinics and martyr-like vows of loyalty and the absence of a worthwhile life outside of bureaucratic routine. it's not because of so mi's promise to help him, either.

he doesn't turn her in because if it had been him in her shoes--and it could've very easily turned out that way for him, had arasaka pushed him a little farther--he would've done anything to be free, too.

she is not like him--that implies they're on equal footing.

no, she is exactly what arasaka had wanted. she is what they had spent ten years trying to (unknowingly) replicate. she is the perfection of red and black and angry and alive data.

she had existed this whole time--and vance had had no idea.

he and johnny have a bond that goes beyond flesh and bone and chrome. if there's ever a day where they're finally separated, vance will think that separation only superficial.

but vance and songbird...

songbird is the netrunner vance would've been had arasaka kept going. if they hadn't resigned to throwing him out when they deemed him "obsolete".

if song hadn't chipped through the blackwall of her own volition--would rosalind myers, former ceo of arasaka's rival company militech, still have kept her around?

if vance had gone against arasaka's wishes and interacted with the blackwall--would they have called him obsolete?

would he have even met johnny? so mi?

how deep would they have been willing to dig themselves if it meant having a chance at survival?

it's like johnny had said--can't answer that without looking up from rock bottom.

but all vance sees is song leaving him behind; all he sees is the promise she had never truly made; all he sees are stars.

#asks #vance #OH MAN THIS GOT SO LONG. IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR THANK YOU FOR READING #BUT ALSO JESUS CHRIST SORRY I GOT REALLY AUTISTIC.#WHOOOWEEE #my writing #im so fuckign eeped up man #phantom liberty #phantom liberty spoilers

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