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❝ my ' deal ' is none of your business. ❞ nami leans in and hisses, but the tremble of her eyes shows fear. there's something perpetually glossed to her gaze, like she is always just a little bit lost. stuck. as if she forces herself to be removed, she won't have to think about where she is.

nami scoffs, leaning back into her own personal space. ❝ you have no idea what you're dealing with. you've been kidnapped before ? not by arlong. ❞ there was no one, and nothing, like him. nothing could instill fear in her heart the way he could. nami has spent most of her life at this point under his chain and ball, and she knows there's no way out. not until he gets everything he wants. she commends v's courage, however. it's hard not to. everything she says is everything nami wants to say.

❝ sorta feels like my biz, since you're all up in mine. ❞ v's never seen a deer before, most had gone completely extinct and the ones that had survived the time of red certainly didn't hang around the city, but she can't help but think that nami looks like every photo she's ever seen of one : beautifully haunted, ethereal, and fearful of the gusts of wind that pushed them along.

her stomach twists, memories come to her in flashes : a pitch black room, cold steel against her cheek, the weightlessness of a body trapped in data, the pain of someone sifting through her memories. a familiar voice of disappointment cuts through the distorted images : oh, v... you keep going down this depressing ass memory lane and i'm gonna throw us both off a bridge.

without thinking, v glances to the left, and sure enough, crouched in the corner of the room sits johnny silverhand. not now, johnny, v spits silently. she can't handle his chastising, she needs to think straight. find a way out. ❝ you got no idea what i've dealt with, but alright, i'll bite. arlong. what makes him different ? ❞

the conditions are rotten. nami shouldn't care, it's only she was chained up just like v is now. she'd lived that life for years as a child, used for her skills, abused. neglected. she shouldn't care, but nami kicks the plate of molding slop out between the bars and replaces it with some of her own dinner. ❝ here. eat, and quick, before someone else walks by. ❞

as if on cue, she hears arlong's voice and is unable to conceal the full body flinch, her visceral reaction. he doesn't come down this way, because no one bothers nami when she's assigned a role, but fuck if it didn't spook her.

❝ you tell me. ❞ she takes a small bite of bread, gnawing on the rough texture, unbothered by the quality. ❝ saw the way you jumped when you heard his voice. ❞ it'd been impossible to miss, even in the dark. ❝ not the first time i've been locked up. not even the first time i've been kidnapped. ❞ v sighs, seemingly annoyed by this, ❝ doubt it'll be the last. ❞

outwardly, she sits unbothered, but inside, fear eats away at her piece by piece. the damp darkness infects her mind, threatening to pull her deeper and deeper into desperate anguish. v silently reminds herself of the arsenal she holds in her mind. they haven't gouged her cyberdeck out yet, which means even if they'd stolen her weapons ( which she has every intention of getting back ), she is far from defenseless. she could still fry their brains with a blink of her eyes, or fracture their mental state, or short circuit all the tech in a room. v doesn't advertise herself as a netrunner, never had, but that doesn't change the fact that she is one.

Thankfully, he had old pictures of some of them, but they'd been buried away for years at this point. Had to have been in some sort of box around his place somewhere. God, he'd really need to gather up the courage to look at them, though.

"He... heh," Kerry didn't know if it was a good idea to bring this one up. If just for the fact that it hurt for he himself to remember. To remember two people from his life that were just gone.

"My ol-- My first daughter," Kerry's gaze again, staring at his hands this time. "She was born when we were both about 22. Johnny avoided her like the plague when she was tiny. But when she got bigger, he'd actually hold her when she was visiting our place." It was always an image of Johnny he'd treasure forever. Him being calm, almost sweet. Holding his little niece in his lap and trying to entertain her.

it's odd to imagine them that young, fresh-faced and hating the world. it's odder to imagine a child in the middle of that. v can't quite see it, kerry having a child at that age or johnny even being willing to hold one, speak to one. she thinks back to what she had been doing when she was 22 — it comes with flashes of blood, desperation, an ex she'd long tried to forget — v'd been a mess. she was a bit under the impression that most people were at that age.

❝ bet he was tryin' to educate her on the dangers of the mass commoditization of the pacifier industry, wasn't he ? ❞ v jokes lightheartedly. the johnny she'd met, known, was a culmination of every person he'd ever spoken to, he was the arrangement of every mistake he'd inflicted upon others, and perhaps, most importantly, he was made up of the few glimpses of peace and joy he never had enough of.

nami is trying, truly, to keep herself invested in the conversation. the biggest concerns are as follows : she doesn't want to be philosophical right now, and she's plastered. it makes it impossible to follow along. v tips her glass as the slight remnants of the tequila dribbles onto the table, clinging to the lip of the shot glass for dear life. ❝ soooooo drunk. ❞ nami agrees dutifully.

she drags her finger through the droplets of tequila, pressing it into the wood of the table. it's not cold against her finger ; in fact, everything is so pleasantly hazy, fuzzy and numb to the edges, that she can't even be philosophical right now. the only thing she feels is good. when v starts laughing, so does nami.

her mouth splits wide and sweet like a tangerine, peals of laughter bouncing off the walls in the room. ❝ we should what ? ❞ she gasps, tequila - wet fingers coming to clutch her belly with all that laughter. by the time v gets it out, nami's almost forgotten what they were laughing about.

she reaches up and sandwiches nami's face between her palms, squishing her cheeks forward and back, forward and back, puckering up nami's lips and giggling to herself. v's eyes glow a light orange and she flicks the bartender the eddies for the bill, too drunk to think about the exorbitant cost. irses glimmer out to her usual violet and she shifts her position, wrapping an arm around nami's shoulders and jerking both of them forward.

❝ to takoyaki !! ❞ v nearly topples over at the sudden movement, a bellyaching laugh escaping her as the edges of her vision warp and spin, her head growing dizzy. she trips over her own feet, catching herself before she can fall face first into the floor.

she wobbles forward, incapable of walking in a straight line, but this is her city, and she could navigate it even on the brink of death. as soon as the stand comes into view, she grabs nami's hand and breaks out into a run, skidding to a stop in front of it and holding tightly to her friend so she doesn't fall. ❝ toshi ! ❞ she drags out his name and he brightens up at the sight of her. ❝ this is nami. we need takoyaki or else we're going to die. ❞

the alcohol is sharp and smooth at the same time, something nami is intensely grateful for. in hindsight, she's drunk enough that nothing really registers anymore, not the burn from the tequilla, or the one that lives inside her chest. v's words mostly stick, though a piece of her knows that they won't last. by morning, this will be a forgotten memory, but for tonight ?

for tonight, nami takes the extra shot. she lifts it in salute, and throws it back. the little shot glass is brought back to the table a little too harshly. ❝ if no one's meant for anything, what's the point ? ❞ she doesn't know how to say that it's nami who is the problem. how to articulate that she is the one who hurts everyone she loves, she is the one with the lies and the cheating and the running. she can't keep a good thing. sometimes she thinks she's afraid to.

she flicks the glass, lightly tipping it over onto its side and purses her lips. v's no philosopher and even if she'd had a self-identified one in her head, he'd mostly spouted bullshit. ❝ there's no point, we're all gonna die, life has no meaning. but we got the power to find our own meanin', our own path. everyone's gonna have somethin' different, and isn't that more fun ? ❞ okay, so maybe johnny had left her with a few nuggets of wisdom after all. sometimes life sucked and then you died. other times, life sucked, then you died, but god, if you didn't live first.

v laughs harder at nami's drunken tone, resting her forehead on the cool bar top, trying to erase the flush of her cheeks. ❝ got no fuckin' clue, all i know is ... ❞ she belches loudly, ❝ we're so fuckin' drunk. ❞

an idea strikes her and she brightens, ❝ we should fuck— ❞ a hiccup interrupts her and v giggles, slipping into complete hysterics, shaking her head back and forth, and animatedly motioning with her arms that her words have come out totally wrong. ❝ not what i meant, not what i, ❞ more laughter falls out, ❝ what i meant was : we should fuck up this food truck around the corner. ❞ her words briefly slur, ❝ they have takoyaki mmmm ... ❞ she hums with content, her eyes closed, dreaming of the food.