Chapter Text

When Vee wakes up again, she’s tense and sore all over. The room is no longer pitch-dark, or maybe her meat optics are getting a grip on their shit: a few discreet lamps spill soft golden light.
With low light amplification, this would be perfect. Just that she doesn’t have any, and so the room is just blocks of shadow.

“Fuckin’ finally,” Johnny says. The rockerboy is standing a few feet away, his cigarette the only pinprick of light in the featureless void by the wall. “Thought you’d never wake up. Get up, corpo bitch. We need to break outta Mikoshi.”

Relief would’ve knocked her off her legs, but she’s already prone on her back in a warm and cozy bed. “Johnny?!” she whispers, the world suddenly hazy behind a ‘ganic blur.

“He is gone,” the samurai tells her. He’s the source of warmth behind her, spooning her, his arm around her holding her safe. “You are free of him now.”

He says that as if it’s good news, and Vee draws a shaky breath.
“Yeah.”
Her voice comes out a hoarse whisper, because what if that’s not true? While that’d be great news in one regard, it would also mean that she’s in Mikoshi.
And she can still smell the nicotine.

“How are you, my thief?”

“Terrified,” she chokes out.

Goro pulls her around like she weighs nothing, and she somehow gets both arms around his neck without elbowing anything but the endoskeleton. His lips come to rest against her forehead, and usually, she’d be relaxing right now.

But what if he’s not real?
The mere idea makes her cry like a baby again.

“You are safe, Vee-chan,” he tells her quietly. “I swear it.”

He’d say just the same if he was a construct; if ‘Saka had reverse-engineered her mind and seen that she loved him, they’d have made him hug and kiss her and tell her that everything was all right.
Vik, too: he’s just here ‘cause he’s the only person where she’d not object to their gonk-ass tests.

“Nothing bad can happen to you here. I will not allow it.”

Slowly, the tension drains from her body under his gentle caress. His palm smoothes over her back, along her spine, even under her shirt. Vee arches into his hand like a cat, feeling goosebumps all over her body.

Real or not, this is convincing...

Her samurai tilts his head, and she lets out a little gasp when his lips meet hers. At least the electric shocks are still working, and the butterflies in her stomach.

If she fucks Construct Goro, would she be cheating on the real one?

“Do you still want…” he asks, his fingers stopping directly above her ass.

Vee looks at him through yet more tears. “I dunno,” she whispers, shivering under the loss when his hand reverses its course. “Are you… you?”

“Who else would I be, my thief?” he asks, leaning forward to kiss the tears away.

“I— I dunno,” she repeats when he’s pulled back once more.

“The fuck?” Johnny’s cigarette lights up again, reflecting in his aviators. “You can’t tell him! They can’t know we’re on to ‘em!”

“I am Takemura Goro, forever your fool. Or have you forgotten?”
His smile could break her heart, because maybe some asshole ‘runner is making him say that.
Can they read memories? Can they see the shit in her head like she’s seen the shit in Johnny’s?

“No, but—” she stalls, a furtive glance towards the fiery dot in the shadow. “Are you sure that you’re real?”

“Hmm,” he makes. “Yes. Of that, I am certain — and you, too, are real.”

Vee hates herself for begging: all she wants to hear is something that convinces her Johnny is wrong, even if it means buying into a ‘Saka illusion.
“How’d you know?” she sobs.

“Let me think.” The samurai turns on his side, facing her. The circles around his pupils catch what little light there is, his profile a golden dividing line between two kinds of darkness. “I breathe,” he finally tells her. “I bleed, and I love. For the first time in eighteen months, I feel truly alive.”

He’s told her before, but she’d forgotten. “Eighteen months?” she whispers, a lump in her throat. “That how long I’ve been gone?”

“The longest time of my life,” he replies, kissing her forehead once more, so gently that she cries even harder. “What is it that you fear, my thief?”

And he just asks that — doesn’t judge her for even a second.

“That you’re not really Goro,” she whispers, “that I’m not really Vee or Johnny. That nothing of this…” She can’t speak for a moment, strangled by tears. “Perhaps I didn’t make it. Perhaps I’m dead, or worse. Maybe all this is only in my head…”

“I can’t fuckin’ believe you’re so stupid,” Johnny snarls. The cigarette becomes a shooting star as he flings it across the room. “Fuck!”

“It is in my head, too,” her mainline quietly replies, and even in the darkness she can tell that his eyes have changed shape. He rests his forehead against hers, doesn’t have morning breath, hasn’t been sleeping? “I do not know how I can reassure you about this, Vee-chan, other than telling you that you are the woman I love.”

“I dunno either, samurai,” she whispers. “What if I’m making all this up?”

“Perhaps…” He hesitates. “Perhaps there is something I can tell you, to convince you that you are not. Something about me that you do not know? That you could not have imagined.”

“What, you secretly into chrome rock?” She has to laugh now despite her despair, remembering Johnny’s face when he picked the vinyl from the rubble of Goro’s safehouse.
She can’t see it now, 'cause he’s mad at her — has glitched away to sulk.

The joke is lost, the samurai is still serious. “Most of my life, I have… dreamed of something impossible,” he tells her. “I… this is not a request, my thief. It is not something that I expect to happen. You are already so much more than I ever could have hoped.”

More than honour? she doesn’t ask. More than… ‘Saka?
“What’s it?” she rather asks, half-expecting him to confess some absurd kink now, eyes spilling over again.

“A family,” he whispers. “A wife who loves me, and one day, perhaps, children…”

His voice trails away, and now it is her time to shower his face with kisses. It’s scary, what he’s just told her. Children are scary, and far too big for her to think about.
But a wife who loves him?
She can do that.

Nothing but ‘Saka in the way.

“So much has changed, more than I ever thought possible.” His fingers brush over her cheek, thumb caressing her lips. “Vee, this is not— I have a ring, but— no, I must kneel for this.”

“Kneel for what?” she asks, heart in her throat: she’s never seen him stutter before, ever. Before he can get out of bed for whatever gonk reason, she adds: “Just spill, maybe? Can’t be any worse than babies.”

Goro clears his throat and props himself up on an elbow. “Will you marry me?” he asks.

For a moment, she’s just dumbfounded, because he said he couldn’t — had been clear about that, not that she’d gotten her hopes up. It was never gonna fly, he said as much; but here he is, proposing.
“You… sure?” she asks, buying time, because of course he’s sure, he’d not be asking if he weren’t.

“I have never been more sure of anything in my life,” he answers. “I want you to be my family, Vee.”

“Jesus Christ on a stick, you’re such a gonk,” she sobs, the stupid grin threatening to split her face in half. “Sure want, Goro. But it’s a shit deal.”

“Stop insulting my wife,” he growls, and shuts her up with a kiss.