#and god knows us ace folk are a little weary when it comes to how some people in fandom treat A

[cassandra-pentughasst]

It's 2023? Am I really seeing people say an asexual character can be 'fixed' with sex on my dashboard? Do you hear yourselves? Do better on the aphobia, please.

[heartofsnark]

Can You Feel The Sun? (Chapter One): I'll let you in if you say it's okay

Notes: So, I’m taking inspiration from more than one lifepath start for my V and overall, I’m not sure how I feel about this first chapter. I’m not as confident in it as I have been in some of my other works and it’s undergone some heavy rewrites. But I’m officially sick of looking at it, so lets go. Still getting a feel for writing the cyberpunk characters too, tbh.

Word Count:  13083

Warnings: Canon Typical Violence, Internal Feels and struggles, (Aidan/V is very conflicted and struggling), Morning after sex

If you haven’t yet, please read the prologue: link here

Four years, a million miles, and a new alias later, not Aidan but V is standing in a motel bathroom, fresh from the shower. There’s a bruise forming on her chin from what she can’t remember. She touches up the two shaved slits in her left eyebrow, a pointless aesthetic choice given she wears a mask, she knows. But, she likes it and that’s what matters most. She pulls her bleached blonde hair back into a little ponytail, before brushing her teeth and changing. 

She fastens her mask, a repurposed scav mask that she uses, not only to hide from her former family but to help her function in this world. No longer the green with red and pink faces the scavs use, it’s now black with white x-d out eyes and a wicked toothy grin. Vaguely cartoony and ominous, not her choice, but she’s far too nostalgic to ever change it. 

Data and logistics flash across her vision, optic tech coming to life now that the mask is on. Finally, she puts in her hearing aids,  the noise of the world coming back to her, the hum of a broken AC, the beat of a song coming from the radio, and a woman’s snoring drifting through the paper-thin walls. V pulls up her hood before she leaves the bathroom, ready to begin, her throat tight as she thinks of what the day holds. 

I saw in you what life was missing

You lit a flame that consumed my hate

I'm not one for reminiscing but

I'd trade it all for your sweet embrace

The radio plays an old song from Ava’s favorite band, V knows the heavy drone of them anywhere, though she never can quite recall their name or song titles, only reminded of the days she pretended to give a shit about them in hopes it’d earn her at least a pity kiss. Why the hell the radio still plays music that old is beyond her.  She turns her hearing aids volume down a little lower. 

Music brought down to a hum, V’s attention turns to the bed, a woman who’s name she can’t remember is tangled in the sheets. Sun streaming through the window to shine on a bare freckled shoulder, the woman is around V’s age, maybe a year or two older with a pixie cut of dyed lilac hair. She fits in well with V’s track record of bedmates; unable or unwilling to give even half of what she got, leaving the nomad to take care of herself. But, as much as she’d appreciate an orgasm from something other than her own hand, she gets what she wants from them in the end; a glorified body pillow that helps her sleep. 

“Mmm,  you up?” The woman asks, stirring from under the blankets, she pushes a hand into her hair. She blinks her eyes a few times, before taking in V’s outfit, “you’re leaving already?”

V’s mask optics quickly reads lips, giving the world subtitles, essential when she wants to forgo hearing aids. The tech is far more advanced than the human eye when it comes to lip reading. The only downside is the mask requires someone to be facing her as they speak. So, the hearing aids are still necessary unless people are kind enough to accommodate her; which they never are. 

“Gotta get back on the road,” V signs, a modulator translator in her mask speaks it in a monotone AI voice. 

“You don’t wanna get breakfast or…?” 

“No time,” V crouches down beside the bed, so she can properly meet the woman’s eyes and, “you remember what I told you, don’t you?” 

“About not telling anyone what you look like or whatever…?” 

“No whatever’s to it, if anyone comes around asking about me, you keep your mouth shut. Got it?” 

“Yeah yeah, crystal clear, asshole.” The woman groans, not liking the aggressive tone V’s picked up, but it’s a serious matter. Most people get it, everyone nowadays seems to have enemies, but apparently not everyone understands. More flies with honey as they say. 

“I’m sorry,” she signs, “it’s just important to me, life or death. I’ll order some room service for you before I go, sound good?” 

“Hmm…I like pancakes.” 

“Alright, I’ll put the order in then head out.” 

“Okay…I won’t tell anyone, about you, promise.” 

“I appreciate that,” V signs, putting in the room service order on the tablet provided. 

Thankfully, pancakes are enough to earn the woman’s silence on the matter. The less people who have a bone to pick with her, the better. Though, she still hopes The Herd can’t follow her where she’s going anyway. Dufflebag thrown over her shoulder, V leaves the motel, stepping out into the dry heat of California. Even in the early months of 2077, the desert is burning hot, though it will be freezing by nightfall. The joys of the Badlands. 

Yucca is a little nothing town south of Night City, surrounded by long agonizing stretches of desert. Not a place she’d give another thought to if not for her vehicle breaking down. The cargo in the trunk, locked up so the mechanic can’t get nosy, is meant for a client in Night City. The job came with forms and docs that’ll get her past the border. 

She rolls up the metal garage door to the shop, seeing the older man in a trucker hat and flannel working over her car. The old Thorton Galena “Rattler”, bought off a Bakker nomad, who thankfully had no idea who her birth family is. It’s put together with rust, duct tape, and luck, bought for fifty eddies because it’s a walking tetanus trap; but it’s hers.  

“Hey…drifter…” He greets her with a weary expression. 

There’s two kinds of folks in these small towns that are scattered across  the country like stars. Those who are weary of outsiders, know the dangers that lurk across the Badlands and have their guard up the moment someone they don’t know shows up. And for them, her refusal to show her face or speak with her own voice only adds to the suspicion. 

And then there’s the other ones, the ones like that lilac haired girl still curled up in dusty sheets, eating shitty motel pancakes. The ones who see her, the people like her, the nomads, the drifters who travel the country and they see someone who can bring a moment of excitement to their dull little lives. The ones bored to tears with watching tumbleweeds all day and will climb in bed with V and their own preconceived notions of who she is just to have a night of excitement. 

Each sees danger when they look at her, chaos in human form, someone who may just disrupt the status quo of their piss-pot of a town. An idea that terrifies or excites them. Then the realization hits that she’s just breezing through, a ghost without a trace. And for a moment they’ll be relieved or disappointed, then they’ll forget she was ever there. 

“You got my car fixed?” she signs before she rolls the garage door down a foot or two shy of the ground. 

“Not quite, electric coupling module is shot to shit.” 

“You said it was an easy fix.” 

“Guess I was wrong,” he turns to face her, arm crossed over his chest, “you could always find a new shop, find someone else who won’t question some scav lookin’ nomad why she’s hugging the border.” 

“I’m not a fuckin’ scav, move,” she signs before shoving him away from her car engine, if he can’t get this thing up and running, she’ll do it her god damn self. She needs to get to Night City, yesterday, she’s already frustrated and him acting like he’s doing her a favor by staring at her engine for an hour isn’t helping. 

“Got any idea what you’re doing?” Condescension drips from the mechanic’s words. 

“Gonna, rig a hotwire, bypass the coupling.” She switches out some plugs, trying to find something, anything that will save her heap. 

“Compressor will run on and on, could seize up.” 

“Better than standing around scratching my head.” 

She walks around her Rattler, pulling open the driver side door and climbing in. Please, any god listening right now, don’t fuck this up for her. V presses down the ignition and tries to rev the engine; sputters but doesn’t start. 

“It’s like I was telling you,” the mechanic grumbles, so she tries again and another sputter. 

“Fuck off,” she signs, wishing the tone of the AI voice would better convey her frustration as she begs her car, her baby, to start. 

Come on baby, she thinks and her hands twitch to sign, her voice catching. Her desperation nearly making her verbal. Her rattler, her baby, her beautiful heap of rust and luck has carried her through three years in the Badlands. Just a little further, into the city, and V will find her a decent mechanic to give her vehicular child the treatment she deserves. She presses the ignition and revs the gas. 

And that engine roars to life and it’s the sweetest sound she’s ever heard, her baby lives, she fucking lives! V can’t contain her smile, thankfully hidden behind the cover of her mask, she could scream. She’s starting the next chapter of her life with her baby by her side. 

“Not too shabby, question is how long will it last you,” the mechanic rains on her parade as he shuts the hood. 

“Better than whatever you were trying.” 

V rolls her eyes and gets her walkie talkie radio out, hooking it to a jack in her car to try to boost a signal; she needs to let her client know she’s coming into the city, so they can prepare to pick up the cargo. 

“Antennae on this heap don’t look like it packs much of a punch, doubt you’ll hear much.” 

There was a broadcasting comms tower outside of the town, she saw it as she made her way in, she’ll get in and boost her signal with it. Should be fairly easy. She just wants to make it into the city, her chance at a new life. Seventeen years with The Herd, under her father’s thumb. Three years running, never able to settle down, never knowing when her family would find her when she’d be put down. Years wasted, she’s ready to live, to really live on her own fucking terms. 

A flash of khaki fabric, visible through the opened gap in the garage door catches her eye and a chill runs down her spine. Trouble. Black cybernetic hands catch the bottom of the metal door and roll it up; an older man in a sheriff’s uniform with a cowboy hat comes strolling in. 

“Hey, Mike, didn’t know you had a customer…” He draws out, looking over V as if she was carrying the plague. 

“Just rolled in a few hours ago, I, uh, thought she would have told you.”

“Now, don’t you worry, we’re gonna hash this out,” the sheriff says, strolling over to her, he puts an arm up on her car roof, leaning against her open car door  and looming over her, “Don'tcha know you owe the sheriff a word when you pay his town a visit? To tell him what brought you here, maybe even over a cup of coffee.”

“You that hard up for dates?” She signs in return, catching a muscle twitch of annoyance, and she smirks behind her mask. Five seconds in and she’s getting under his skin. 

“Names Andrew Jones, you probably heard of me.” 

“Can’t say that I have.” 

“Served in special ops in the last war, silver shoguns, ring any bells?” 

“Can’t say that it does.” 

“Hmm,” he grumbles, “don’t like to get along, do you?” 

“Can’t say that I do.” 

He scowls at her as he shifts his weight off her door and moves to walk in front of her vehicle, looking it over. His foot raises up, dirty boot now on the grill of her car and she wishes nothing more than to just drive forward and run his dumbass over. She doesn’t have fucking time for this; her client is waiting. She doesn’t even want to be in his dumbass little town; she already fucked the only good thing here and found nothing but disappointment. 

“That a nomad vehicle? I might have figured. Scav mask, nomad car; what that make you?” 

“You got a problem?”

“I’ll tell you what my problem is, nothing boils my blood like a fuckin’ stray. Where your clan pitch camp?” 

“No camp, no clan, just little ole me, aren’t you lucky?” 

 “Don’t buy it, nomads always stick with their pack.” 

“Got no pack, they don’t suit me much.”

“Makes you an outcast among outcasts.” He sneers at her, looking down his nose at her, like he’s something special and she’s gum stuck on his shoe. 

“Let me guess, you’re the type of guy who believes every line of shit the corps feed you, that nomads are the world’s greatest evil.” 

“No, I’m a man who respects order, corps brought us that order-”

“The corps pay you and have you on a leash like a dog, you know that?” 

“And you don’t wanna see me bare my fangs.” 

“Try and I’ll put you down,” V’s fingers move before she can give another though, no interest in making peace with this asshole. 

“You threatening me, girl?” 

“No more than you are me, stay out of my way and I’ll get out of yours.” 

“Big talk coming from a misfit.”

She lets out a short laugh, the sound layered with her modulator, making it louder and doubled.  

“Look, I’m not scared of some shithole town’s sheriff who thinks a badge is a crown,” she signs, hands moving so quick and hurried that the sound of skin hitting skin rings out, “I want to leave your town, you want me gone, move your ass and I’ll make us both happy.” 

“Get going,” he moves out from in front of her car, “I got no mind to see you drifting around these parts.” 

“What part of this conversation made you think I want to?” She finishes signing before slamming her car door shut. 

“What was that drifter?” His voice fades away as she guns it out of the repair shop, rolling her eyes behind her mask. 

Though, maybe breaking into the communications tower is technically drifting, but she needs to radio her client. Sinclaire will need to know she’s coming into the city, so they can meet up, exchange eddies for cargo, and she can figure life out from there. She takes a road that goes north and cuts through the desert, her Rattler practically born for off roading as she takes the heavy bumps of the sand dunes and drives through cacti, pulling up to graffiti covered bumpers just outside the fenced in tower. 

It's an amalgamation of latticed rusted metal with satellites on top, graffiti decorating the buildings and chunks of the tower itself. It clearly hasn’t been used or maintained in years, but it should still boost her signal. V climbs out of her vehicle, trying to open the door to the fencing. It doesn’t budge at all and she pouts, then kicks it as hard as she can. Her steel toed boot works as well as a key, making it swing open. 

It’s a quick little journey, two little flights of stairs she jogs up with ease. Then it’s a ladder, the peeling yellow paint sticking to her palms. And then she’s as high as she can reach, transmitter box in view. But with the view around her, wind whipping through, she takes a moment to peel off her mask and breathe. Sun beating down and warming her face, the breeze cools her skin under it’s rays, wicking away sweat that sticks to her brow. 

A deep inhale of air before she forces herself to move again, the rusted front of the transmitter box breaks at the hinges when she opens it, she pays no mind and throws it aside then jacks in her walkie-talkie radio. V leans against the tower railing, radio in hand, but not ready to let go of the quiet. 

The smell of rust and paint surrounds her as she takes everything in. She’ll miss this, she realizes, the open road and the Badlands have always been her home. But it’s not safe, not really. The Herd has shown no signs of letting this go. For four years, she’s dodged her sister and Ava; the two tasked with being her trackers, repeated close calls over all this time. They’ve interrogated and demanded answers from the folks in these sleepy little towns she breezes through. The mask has helped, but every day the feeling of them nipping at her heels gets worse. Her stomach churns at the lengths they’ve gone to. V’s father wasted no time in turning her sister against her, turning Eira into a weapon to do his bidding, to put down the defected child who never should have made it past nine. 

He’ll kill her for not falling in that same line, for refusing to be his soldier. Forced to choose between death or conformity, practically one in the same, she tries to seek a third option.

Night City has its own rules, laws, restrictions; a city completely controlled by corps. It’s disgusting in its own right. But The Herd isn’t allowed in the city, border control of Night City has strict orders to keep all known or identifiable members of the Raffen Shiv clan out. Corps hate Nomads, as a general rule, but they really hate The Herd. A Nomad family with no respect for anyone else’s laws, a strong anti-consumerism, anti-cyberware, and anti-corp attitude; The Herd might as well send a personal fuck you to Night City.  Its not perfect, not even good,  a crime infested corp run cesspool, but it’s the safest option. More security, more boundaries, more faces so V can blend in.  Even if Eira and Ava make it into Night City, which she’s not naïve enough to believe impossible, they’ll have six million folks to work their way through. Nomads stay in pack because groups provide safety; a sea of city faces is just an extension of that. 

But that safety comes at a cost. It means no more open spaces, no more serenity, no more campfires with burnt marshmallows, or driving down dirt roads as fast as she can with her windows down, and screaming out in excitement as she takes on every bump and turn with reckless abandon. 

There’s no perfect choice, every decision carries a sacrifice, but if the cost of staying in the Badlands could mean her life, her freedom, her identity… the city is the better option… she thinks…

A pessimistic or perhaps realistic part of her can’t help but feel like he’ll get his way, her father will have her head on a pike, will slaughter his own daughter like cattle. And his power over The Herd will only grow. After all, if he’d go this far to put down his own child for an act of betrayal, how could anyone else ever think to be spared his wrath. The already loyal army of followers will be further forced into submission by fear. 

Maybe this is all a waste of time, she wonders, often does. Maybe it’s just dragging out the inevitable. Hell, a part of her wonders if she’d be better off begging for mercy, if he’d offer it just to maintain control. Would she be safer if she just gave in? Is she really the kind of person who needs to be half of a whole to function, to feel safe?

But, is it wrong to want something more? To be able to look back at her life, no matter how long or short it may be, and know she lived, that she gave it all she had. That she stayed true to herself, whoever that is. To prove that she doesn’t need them, that she isn’t a burden depending on others to carry her weight. She can make something of herself in Night City, can live on her own terms, even if only until the inevitable comes knocking at her door. It will be a bit of breathing room, a chance to just be, instead of constantly looking over her shoulder.

Family was meant to be her security, her safety, but were they ever really? V shakes her head, if she goes down every thought pattern, every reason, every doubt, every feeling; she’ll be here forever. 

She pulls her mask back down and radios her client after another moment of soaking in the breeze, it's odd they didn’t go through a fixer, but frankly she doesn’t care. A middleman who takes part of the cut isn’t ideal for her either. She’s looking for the past possible new start and the more eddies in her pocket, the better that’ll be. 

“V?” Sinclaire speaks her alias once she gets through. 

“Speaking,” she signs, as always thankful her mask spares her voice in moments like this. 

“Where the hell are you?” 

“Hit a snag, but I’m on my way into the city now.”

“That’s what I like to hear, once you’re through the border radio me and we’ll talk meet up.” 

“The docs you sent,” she signs, thinking to the falsified passport docs he had sent out her way, “they should get me through border check.” 

“Absolutely, border control barely checks ID on customs, but that little pamphlet will breeze you through.” 

“Okay, just checking.” 

“Don’t worry V, this is a piece of cake. You’re gonna love Night City, I’m telling you.” 

“Yeah? That so?” 

“Mmhmm, once we finish the trade off, I’ll show you around. There’s a place in Wellsprings with synth steak to die for, I’ll treat you.” 

“Sounds like a plan, I’m heading out now.” She agrees easily, it’ll be better to have more connections in the city, people she gets along with well enough and know the place better than her. 

“See ya soon.” 

Her client doesn’t know her exact clan, just knows she needs papers to get into the city. There’s more than one group of Raffen Shiv that aren’t allowed in city limits; hell she’s pretty sure Wraith’s aren’t.  Though, corps make special deals to let them in when they need work done. As shitty as they are, The Herd has yet to whore themselves out to that degree, one thing she can still respect about her father. She fiddles with the leather cuff bracelet around her wrist, that hides the small crown shaped brand that he placed on her skin as a child, his way of marking his blood family. She’s considered taking a knife to it, but some part of her isn’t ready to.  

V’s steps are hurried as she leaves the comms tower, heavy boots stomping over metal as she makes the quick journey back to her Rattler, the red beast of a car waiting where she left it. She climbs into the vehicle and twists the vehicle around. She follows the dirt road back out to the highway, headed out to the city. 

She races back through the little town, picking up as much speed as she can, wind whipping through the open windows. Yucca is a blink and its gone, V having cruises right through the nothing town and continuing down the highway. Empty stretches of desert decorated with cacti as she races down the expanse of roadway. 

Then the signs warn her of border crossing, nearing the city, her heart rate picking up as she grows closer to changing her life. A border checkpoint, enclosures and offices with an overpass above the divided lanes of the highway. Each lane leads to a border control officer with holograms labeling what each lane is for based on why someone is coming into the city; whether or not they have cargo to check. She slows down, so she can pull off her mask, the less suspicious she looks the better. Border guards aren’t going to stand for being questioned by The Herd, so its minimal risk. 

She switches over to the lane for customs check, pulling up to the raised blockade, beyond it another car coming through is scanned. An armed border guard not far away and she waits as the vehicle is giving the go ahead to leave; blockade coming down and guard ushering her to drive forward. V drives that little bit forward; cement yellow blockades raise before and behind her vehicle. Locking her into place makes her uncomfortable, like she can’t escape. 

“Stay in the security check area,” a guard tells her over the intercom, like she would have tried to drive through the blockade without his warning. A beat i silence, a minute or two passes as the scanners run along her car. 

“Would the owner of the vehicle please report for further questioning.”

V grabs the falsified passport, manifest marked LOA, and the bribe chip for good measure. She keeps her head down as she gets out of the vehicle, makes her body language small as she walks into the office building. Maintaining a non-threatening demeanor in order to ease any friction that may come her way. The door automatically opens, a waiting room of people and a desk behind bulletproof glass where a worker stands. A map of the New United States across one of the walls. 

“If  you’re armed, leave your weapon here.” The worker behind the desk calls out and V unholsters her revolver, allowing him to check it and put it in a drawer, “report to room two.”

She nods, feeling naked without a weapon on her hip, but she knows this is the way of things. V turns the corner, finding the door with a two marked next to it. She opens the door and a lump forms in her throat. It's a small cramped little excuse of a room, a guard already at the rinky dink desk and a chair in front of it. She takes small timid steps to the chair, discolored with either dried blood or rust, she can’t be certain. The man is dressed in a neon vest; some sort of either goggles or optic implants over his eyes that scan her over as she sits down. He wastes not a second in lighting a cigarette and her nose wrinkles as smoke billows to fill the small room. She can already feel the stench of it clinging to her clothes and wishes she could snatch it from his hand. 

“Papers?” he asks. 

She hands over the manifest, her falsified passport, and the credit chip without a word. Metallic implant augmented fingers put the cred chip aside to look over the little blue document, then he places the paper over the cred chip, hiding it from prying eyes that may peek into the office. Meanwhile, V tries to maintain her most innocent of expression, puppy dog eyes primed if any issue arrives. Small and adorable has few benefits in this world; but she plans to take advantage where she can. Being underestimated, assumed to be weak or docile, as much as it hurts does have perks. 

“What are you transporting?” 

“It’s all in there,” she signs in response, because frankly she has no idea what she’s transporting. Some corp crap. 

“Hmmm, tell me, who do you ride with?” 

“Bakkers,” she lies through her teeth, her car was bought off one, so it seems like an easy enough excuse. 

“They stop installing personal links?” He asks, puffing out a plume of smoke, his gaze on her linkless palm. 

“Religious reasons, most of the clan has them, but my mom raised us to stay ‘ganic, god given, ya know?”  She signs, a practiced excuse for when she’s asked about her lack of implants. Same as the excuse laid out in the passport. 

“Is that so…” he takes a deep drag off his cigarette and V bites her lip not to say anything she’s hit with another face full of smoke, “you know, times like this I’m so glad not to be on the other side of that table.” 

“Feelings mutual,” she signs before she can even consider stopping, aggravated by this man’s entire existence at this point. She gave him all the documents, this should be done with by now. 

“Go on now.” 

She jumps at the chance to be excused, taking in a deep fresher breath of air when she’s released from the smoke box of an interrogation room. V runs a hand through her hair as she turns the corner. There’s another armored guard standing beside the desk now, his eyes doing a lazy look down of V’s frame.

“Don’t forget to collect your personal items.” The worker behind the desk tells her and she stops there, giving him a raised eyebrow before he goes to collect her gun, “be careful with that toy and welcome to Night City.”

As much as she’d like to gripe about the toy comment; as if she’s a child, she can’t help but find herself smiling at the greeting. She’s finally here, finally getting into the city. A life on her terms; a little breathing room between her and the clan. V holsters her gun, grin playing on her lips.

“Those little shits all imagine Night City to be some sort of paradise,” the armored guard comments about her, but not to her, looking over her to the worker behind the desk.

“What are you gonna do they’re all young, naïve, which is just another word for ignorant.” The worker replies and V’s grin has died, maybe that’s the case for others, but Night City is exactly what she needs. Her situation isn’t the same. She doubts those young ignorant kids they’re talking about were running from their own death.

She shakes her head, not worth the effort it’d take to respond, V leaves the building. Her Rattler a short distance away, she’s nearly bouncing as she rushes towards it, climbing into the driver’s seat. Even the overpass above her has words welcoming her to the city, she’s sure she won’t find paradise, but there...she’ll make this life her own.

There’s barely a blip of distance between her and the border check when she sees them. Black corporate vans coming towards her, her heart jolts into her throat and sweat edges along her skin. 

“Fuck!” V curses out loud, border fucker tipped off the corp.

“Stop the vehicle! You are transporting corporate property!” A voice rings out from the vans and V takes a sharp turn off the road, her baby is meant for off roading after all. 

“I repeat, stop the vehicle!” The corporate voice yells out again. 

“Stop the vehicle,” she murmurs in a whiny voice to herself, mocking the corpo, “give us back our stuff, stop committing crimes, wah, wah, wah.” 

 She rolls her eyes, amused by her own bullshit as she punches in the keypad of her Rattler, starting up the automated turret attached to the roof. It’s not the most high tech system, but it has a lock on function and should get the job done.  The sounds of bullets pinging off metal creates a cacophony around her as she careens through an abandoned rural area, taking sharp turns to try to shake them. V takes out her hearing aids to stop her forming headache and focus on what she’s doing. The rumble of her turret shakes the car as it fires, letting her know its still working fine. Glass break out of the back of her car, a bullet piercing through, her back sprayed with the shards. She’ll be digging a bullet out of her dashboard later, she’s sure. 

A bright flash of orange, flames enveloping a van as her turret hits a gas tank the right way. One down, two to go. She keeps the pedal to the floor, speed topping out as she races away from the approaching vans. Another sharp turn and she watches as a van crashes into a wall, one last stubborn fucker. 

There’s a slight tense to the vibration of her turret overhead, bullets hitting the top of it, aiming to disarm it, as she goes through another turn. A shot bursts through her side mirror, assholes, do they have any idea how much it’s going to cost her to repair this heap. More than it’s probably worth.  

The vibration that shakes her car settles down over her head, turret no longer firing, but the van is still chasing her. It fucking jammed, her turret fucking jammed again, of course it did. V hauls off and punches the roof of her Rattler, right beneath where the turret is, used to this issue at this point. As always, the hard punch manages to spur it back on and it fires up again, blasting at the last van at full speed. 

A bullet hits the corpo van’s front tire, knocking it off path; final one down. 

“Suck my dick, Arasaka!” She screams out for no one else to hear.

She’s grinning as she finds a collection of abandoned trailers and garages, pulling into one, she’ll need to call her client, figure out a meeting place. They may want her to lay low for a bit until Arasaka calms their tits about this. But she’s in Night City, finally, what could go wrong from here. Cut out a nice living for herself, solo work or maybe something else, who knows. Get herself a place and do whatever the fuck she wants from there. She slides on her mask, puts her hearing aids back in, and rings her client. 

“Sinclaire?” 

“V, you make it over the border yet?” 

“Yep, out just south of Pacifica according to the GPS, little run in with the corps but I shook them. When and where you wanna meet?” 

“Little China, you know where the old Club Atlantis is?” 

“Not remotely, but ping me the coordinates and I’ll find it.” 

“Sending it to you now, think you can get there by three am?” 

“Yeah, no problem, prefer to do this under cover of darkness?” 

“Much prefer, see you soon, V.” 

V hangs up the call and punches in the coordinates he sent, GPS map firing up to tell her where to go. She pulls out of the abandoned garage and gets herself back out on the road, driving further into the city. 

She doesn’t like driving in the city. V determines about a minute into being into the actual bulk of the city. There’s neon signs and adverts everywhere she looks; most displaying someones ass or tits.  She wouldn’t consider herself a prude, far from it given just how many people she’s spread her own legs for, but she does appreciate some decorum… These are sleazy, dirty… 

And there’s traffic. Even at the late hour, people are on the roads, and they’re slow. So, fucking slow. Move, your asses. A motorcycle might be a good investment, she’d be able to just ride between traffic or weave through the other cars.

She manages to reach the spot before three am, though she wants to scream by the time she arrives. The building blends in easily, just another large shuttered up structure with graffiti covering its outside; symbols for the Tyger Claws, because correct spelling is a bad look for a gang, apparently. 

V lets out a huff of air as she gets out of her car to wait;  examining the little bloody scratches on her shoulders and arms where the glass hit her. Nothing serious, a splash of rubbing alcohol to disinfect and she’ll be fine. But there is a slight sting to the injuries that make moving her arms and shoulders uncomfortable. Corpo fucks. V leans against her car, taking in her new city. 

And she shouldn’t be amazed, she knows that. The traffic drove her nuts and she’s been in landfills that smelled nicer. But despite it all, she finds herself impressed at the buildings that stretch on into the heavens. The bright lights and neon against a dark sky is gorgeous; a high vantage point and she’s sure it’d look like something out of a movie. She finds herself in awe as hope nestles its way into her chest. 

Not perfect, nothing ever is, but she can work with it. She can build something here. 

A sharp honk gets her attention, disrupting her moment of reverie. The street and road have been abandoned mostly; only her and the limousine coming to a stop next to her. She gives a slight wave to the driver, then forms a V with her fingers, as if they needed any more indication of who she is. 

The driver is not her client, instead a big bulk of a man with gorilla arms implants, black metal for fingers, he gets out of the driver’s seat and a similarly sized man steps out of the back seat. Her client’s got muscle around him it seems, maybe he just wants to make sure she doesn’t get squirrely and try to pull something. 

Both guards out, they open the backseat door close to the street and her client finally emerges. He’s not a particularly tall man, though as with most adults, he is taller than her. Sandy slicked back hair and unnaturally bright green eyes; likely optics. 

“V, darling, nice to see you in the flesh, you got the goods?” 

“Right here,” she signs before moving behind her car, opening the trunk so he can see the Arasaka cargo crate.

“Fantastic, load it up, boys.” 

“Woah, woah,” V signs and sits on the crate before the two bodyguards can grab it, “eddies first, then you take the cargo.” 

“Oh, V, honey…” His voice drips with condescension and a chill reverberates down her spine, “you did good work, only a shame you’re so naive.” 

“The fuck do-” 

Pain cracks through her skull, knocking V off the cargo crate and onto the ground. Another sharp thwack of pain across her head and back; something blunt striking her before she can get up. She groans out as she rolls over onto her back, looking up at the bodyguard who’s holding a baseball bat, what looks like blood staining it. Her head and back hurt; her head spinning and she’s unable to get her bearings.

“Load the cargo into the car.” 

“What do you want us to do with her?” One of the guards asks Sinclaire and he looks down at her, like a cockroach. 

“Eh, no one will come looking for her. Might as well throw her away with the trash,” he kicks her side, sneering when she grunts in pain, “give her another hit for good measure.” 

“Got it,” the guard nods and starts to raise the baseball again, high above his head for a hard swing and she instinctively twists to give him the back of her head again. 

“We’ll scrap the car, ge-” 

And then the bat comes down on her, a rush of pain before consciousness slips from her grasp. 

Time loses all meaning when the world is blacked out, but eventually the light filters back in and her senses return. She can feel her hearing aids still in and its reaffirmed by the sounds she hears, the faint murmur of people. The smell around her is awful, disgusting, and she can feel stuff around her. Plastic bags scratching at her skin, something wet touching her arm. Her mask shifted and she forces herself to move, she pulls it back in place, blinking. 

Garbage bags, some intact and others shredded. He actually had her thrown into the trash, that son of a bitch. V pushes the trash bags off of her, city lights starting to glimmer through, neon against a black sky. She finds a metal edge of the dumpster and pulls herself up, body still aching in protest as she emerges from her would be grave. Cold air hits her bare arms, the city far colder in the early months than the Badlands. She’s in an alleyway dumpster and she hears gasps of shocks, turning to see civilians shocked to see someone climbing out of the trash. She’s be ashamed if she weren’t so furious.

V punches the side of the dumper, feeling it reverberate with the force, this was supposed to be her shot at a new life and now she’s in a god damn dumpster. 

She’s going to kill Sinclaire, she’s going to fucking kill him, son of a bitchfucked her over and he’s going to pay with blood. But how the hell does she even reach him? He never gave her details of where he spends his time or let alone where he lives. Hell, she doesn’t even know where she is. She needs her car back and her luggage from it, she doesn’t even have a change of fucking clothes as it stands right now. 

“What time is it? Where am I?” she signs at the civilians, still straddling the edge of the dumpster, maybe they can be some help. 

“Uhhh, like 10pm? And Heywood…?”

So, he dragged her away quite a bit, so...maybe he frequents the area. Still doesn’t tell her much, she needs to find him. And she needs to find her car, but how the fuck does she accomplish that?

“Don’t suppose you have any idea where I could find Luke Sinclaire, do you?” 

“Uh, no,” the stranger kind of raises an eyebrow, clearly taken aback by the whole situation, “but uh, you could always talk to Padre. He’s the local fixer.” 

Of course, she’d have to get a fixer involved, not using one is probably what got her in this mess in the first place. Sinclaire knew she had no ties to her Nomad family, new to the city, and no fixer involved. He basically had license to do whatever he wanted without fearing someone would come for him or come looking for her. V touches the back of her head, fingers coming back red, dried blood matting her hair. He meant for her to die, she’s sure, but the blunt trauma wasn’t enough to do her in. 

“Where’s Padre?” she signs, she doesn’t have money to pay a fixer but maybe they can work something out. She doesn’t want to lone wolf it and end up in a dumpster again. 

“He has his own parish, but he’s usually at the El Coyote Cojo right about now, might be able to catch him if you hurry.” 

“El Coyote Cojo, which would be…where?” 

“Bar a little north of here, you really aren’t from around here, are you?” 

“Thanks for your help and stunning observational skills; I’m off.” 

She pulls her hood back up over her head, hiding her bloody matted hair as she leaves the alley way and goes vaguely north. New chapter of her life, she’s injured, alone, broke, and smells like garbage. 

Honestly, sounds about right for her luck. But, she’s far from given up. She navigates the Night City streets, stopping to ask a stranger where the bar is again before she finally finds it. She keeps expecting to get weird looks, like the ones that were usually sent her way in the small towns she’d visit on the road. But even with her mask, no one pays her much mind. And why would they?

V passes at least four more outrageous looking strangers along her way to the bar. People’s who’s entire body is made of gold cyberware, a woman with skin that looks like plastic, a cowboy with cybernetic arms and legs, and a girl with what looks like cat ear implants on top of her head. Things that make her stop and give a second glance, but no one here even minds. Night City has its own weirdness limit and her mask doesn’t even come close to hitting it. There's an anonymity she’s never known before and its kind of nice. Even bloody, mask on, trash covered; she’s just one face in a sea of millions. 

El Coyote Cujo is a lowlit bar with traditional Mexican decorations across it and as expected in the evening, it has a fair number of patrons bustling around. People shooting pool, downing tequila, and chatting amongst themselves. And for the first time, she finds eyes landing on her. Not necessarily weirded out by her masked appearance, but more so wary of a stranger. She pays them no mind, employees here should know where Padre frequents or if he’s still here. There’s two she’s able to find right away; the bartender and a busboy. She starts with the bartender, walking herself over to a stool, he’s an older man with dark hair and a golden arm. He walks over to her once she’s sat, a smile bringing out the crows feet at the corners of his eyes. 

“A new face, what can I get for you?” 

“I’m actually trying to find someone,” she signs, “someone told me the local fixer, Padre, is a regular here.”

“Ah, he’s probably at his usual table upstairs, not sure he’s interested in taking on any new clients though.” 

“I’ll see if we can figure something out.” She steps away from the bar and heads upstairs, its mostly vacant, making her task just a little bit easier. 

Her gaze is drawn to an older man with sparsely any hair and age spots along his skin, a gold cross around his neck. A few men in tacky gold jewelry around him.

“Padre?” The AI modulator voice calls out and she sees the older man’s eyes land on her. His guards around him seem to tense, prepared for if she sends up being a threat. 

“I’m not sure, I know you,” Padre comments, looking over her disheveled appearance. Being beaten and thrown in a dumpster doesn’t do much for your looks. 

“You don’t, but I’m looking for a fixer, need help if you’re interested in hearing me out.”

“Come, sit.” 

“Thank you, sir,” she signs before sliding into the booth seat across the table from him. 

“How can I assist you, child?” 

“So, a guy named Luke Sinclaire contracted me to smuggle corp cargo into the city, I go to meet up with him and he tricks me. Stole the cargo, sent my car to be scrapped, and had his gangoons drop me.  I need help finding him so I can get the cargo, my car, and my dignity back. Maybe kill him too, depending on how I feel, but we’ll see.” 

“You didn’t use a fixer, I take it?” He raises an eyebrow with the energy of a dad chiding a child for making a stupid mistake. 

“No, I was desperate and it bit me in the ass, so I’m doing what I should have done in the first place.” 

“And I’m to assume, you have no money with which to do this either?” He says, having read her like a book. 

“I’m sorry to be asking favors the first time we meet and I don’t expect you to do this for nothing, of course, but I was wondering if we could work out an arrangement instead.”

“And what sort of arrangement would that be?” 

“I’ll do a merc job for you, your choosing, I’ll take no cut of the profit; a completely free job in exchange for you helping me with this.”

“And how can I trust you to do this job well, I do not know you or your work.” 

“Well, I’d do the job for you first, so if its crap you could not help me. I fully expect to get back what I put in, if I do quality work, you do it in return, I’m desperate here.”

“Come with me, Marcus, get the car,” he tells one of the bulky men who walks off. 

Padre stands and follows behind Marcus, V follows suit as they leave down the stairs and out of the bar towards a dark little alleyway. Marcus pulls up a car and parks it for them. Once parked Marcus gets out and comes back to one of the backseat doors, Padre gets into the back on his own, Marcus opens the door for her. He silently beckons her in and she does what she’s asked, sliding onto the leather seat. Marcus shuts her door before going back around to the driver’s seat, 

“Embers, pull up to the back where the ramp is,” Padre instructs Marcus of where to go. 

And then the car pulls out onto the road. V fiddles with a curl of hair, fidgety and unsure of what to do, why they’re driving out away from the bar. Padre has a far away look in his eye. 

“You’re new to Night City, aren’t you?” 

“Yeah…” 

“And what is your name, I’m afraid I didn’t catch it earlier.” 

“V.” 

“V, I’ve lived in Heywood all my life, it’s roots are strong and watered by blood. Family is what pulls us through, no one is purely independent. The city is ecosystem, each individual playing a vital role that impacts those around them. The relationship between fixers and our mercenaries is an important one, not only is it mutual beneficial, but we keep each other safe. A lesson you’ve had to learn the hard way.” 

“Can’t really argue with that…” 

“People who-“ 

Padre pauses in his words looking out of the window and through it, V can see a car coming up alongside them. The car begins honking furiously at them. Nerves alight and chills slinking up her spine; she has a bad feeling about this. It has to be someone with a bone to pick with Padre. 

“Shit!” Marcus curses, the first word she’s heard him say. 

“Stop the car,” Padre says, with a calming hand on Marcus’s shoulder. 

“What’s this?” V signs, worrying speeding up her hands. 

“Business, you carrying?” 

“Yeah….” V checks her waistband and her revolver is gone because why did she think Sinclaire wouldn’t take her gun, “No.” 

Padre blinks, surprised she’s sure, because who the fuck would be unarmed in Night City. Marcus pulls to a stop, the car once beside them pulls around to park in front of them and a man comes out. He’s dressed in what appear to be green fatigues with a bullet proof vest. As he comes close to V’s window, she sees his gold implants catching the neon lights. 

“Sebastian Ibarra,” the man says in a low voice, as V’s window is rolled down by Marcus, “looks like it’s my lucky day.”

The stranger leans into the window, his left hand is carrying a gun and he casually puts it into the window. Both arms are metal in nature, but they look far from top shelf, at least from her glance. 

“What do you want?” Padre asks him. 

“To settle our biz, once and for all. Got an offer for you, Paddy, so listen up. Get the fuck out of Vista, pull your boys off the street! I’ll give you the Glenn, done deal. No more restless nights, see how generous I can be?” 

A beat of silence and V gives a glance at Padre, he seems far from amused with the man’s bullshit. 

“Well, Paddy?!” 

V lurches at his impatient yell, she doesn’t need this wannabe soldier turned gangbanger fucking up her deal. Her right hand grabs the back of his neck, below the base of his skull and her left grabs the gun. She slams his head against the car roof, his forehead gushing blood at the impact, the shock and pain makes his grip loosen and allows her to steal his pistol before letting him go. 

“Fuck, fuck,” he curses as he stumbles back, seeing stars and touching at his forehead. She aimed for the soft flesh just before his golden mohawked implant began, blood now steadily streaming from the wound, “you’ll fucking pay for that.” 

She points his own pistol at him, cocking the gun, asking the silent question of if he intends to be shot today. 

“It seems our conversation has come to a close,” Padre speaks calmly, but when she turns she can see the hint of a smile on his lips. 

“Careful Padre, never know who’s got a barrel at your six,” he threatens with blood coating his face like paint, “you neither shitbucket!” 

“Now, I’m armed,” V signs to Padre, as she watches the man climb back into his car, defeated for the moemnt. 

“Marcus, please.” 

The driver pulls out and away, getting them back on the road, as if the exchange had never happened. There’s a moment or two of silence, as V tucks her new gun into her waistband. If Padre takes her up on her offer, she may need it, plus you can generally never have enough firepower. 

“Many people come through the city,” Padre speaks after a beat of silence, “little shits who’s spines go soft the moment they’re looking down the barrel of a gun. And sometimes you get the odd soul, one who can truly hold their own.” 

“Who was that?” She asks, unable to help but smirk behind her mask at the compliment. That she’s one of the odd souls, different from those little shits, that she can hold her own.  V is far from incompetent, even if some shitbird got the jump on her. 

“No one important, he’ll be gone in a week’s time. Another will take his place.”

“The ecosystem will take him out?” 

“People who don’t know their place, soon find themselves without one. He’ll pay for what he’s done. You… paid for your misdeeds, for your misstep, but you’re finding your place now and within it you may thrive.” 

“You got my place in the ecosystem all figured out?” 

“Here,” he hands her a screamsheet, a magazine with an animated ad for a car, high-end The Legend of Aerondight, “only four in Night City.” 

“That so?” It looks slick, she guesses, though certainly not her aesthetic. Its that weird rich person sort of design where it’s oddly shaped and proportioned, perhaps to be aerodynamic. All sleek silver and black, no character to it. She’d take her Rattler over it any day. 

“First belongs to the Rayfield regional direction, second belongs to mayor Rhyne, third to a rental service. And my client aims to be the fourth.” 

“Klep the car and you’ll help me?” 

“Yes, I have a contact who works inside the parking structure near Embers, a club the current owner likes to frequent. He’s there tonight as well. My contact will cut the security camera feed and open the security gate for you.” 

“Current owner, anyone I need to worry about?” 

“An Arasaka corpo,” Padre informs her, because apparently, she hasn’t fucked with Arasaka enough in the past day or so. 

“So, just hotwire it or?” It wouldn’t be the first time she’s hotwired a car, but fancy ones like this usually have a more complicated security system. Usually takes more than a knife and luck, which is her usual method. 

“Not quite,” Padre pulls a little gadget, a silver and black device that he hands to her, “this should work like a key for the car, matches the ones used by Rayfield tech. Should open the lock and bypass identity authorization.” 

“That sounds convenient…”  Too fucking convenient, she resists adding. 

“Kabuki has some excellent tech workers, but I won’t lie, it is a risk. I assume one you’re willing to take?” 

“Got it, I’ll get the car.” 

“Marcus, pull up here,” Padre tells the driver and they come to a stop, “you can jump down below, and before you go, take this V.” 

He hands her a card, marked with his name and phone number, golden in color with a sword surrounded by roses.  She rubs her thumb over the embossment, glad for her first contact within the city. Connections help. 

“Your number?” She points out the obvious, not sure what else to say. 

“Bring the car back to El Coyote Cujo and call me when you arrive, if all goes well, I’ll have your intel by then. And, I may just call on you for work down the line.” 

“Understood, I’m off then.” 

“Go with God, V.”  

The guardrail drags along the side of the highway but there’s a breakage where it allows her enough space to easily jump over. Peering over it leads to an alley way, a closed dumpster just below. She hops over, dropping down onto the dumpster, she intends on last night being her last trash nap, so she’s more than a little thankful for it being closed. She hears a civilian let out a little exclamation but pays no mind as she jumps down onto the pavement. A quick walk down a graffitied alleway leads her to yellow road signs cutting across an open structure. Glowing vending machines beckon her to spend ennies she doesn’t have on energy drinks and burritos, a turn past them brings her to an elevator. 

Slick glinting silver encompasses her as she steps into the alleyway; impressively clean compared to the absolute grime of the city.  Likely to impress any corpos who come this way to get their cars. A quick tap of a button and the doors shut, elevator rattling as it descends down to the garage. 

A beat of silence and the elevator opens up to a hallway; black, gunmetal gray, and teal accents. The wall declares which sector she’s in and an arrow on the far wall tells her where to turn, as if there were anywhere else to go. The turn around the corner puts her directly in front of two large black double doors; PARKING over them in clear bold lettering. 

They slide open when she gets close and open up to the large parking garage, lights coming on as she sees all the slick fancy corpo cars. Sleek blacks and eye popping reds, none with any taste for design if you ask her. But nomads and corpos have...different aesthetics. 

“Eh, something I can help you with?” A male voice rings out, bringing her attention to the little station next to the blocked off exit for cars. The contact, she presumes. She comes over to his open window, the man dressed in uniform. 

“Padre sent me…” she signs, keeping things vague just in case this person has no idea why she’s here. 

“Gotcha,” he hits a button, “cameras are blind, you got twenty minutes.” 

She nods and goes looking through the cars, it’s the glow of neon that brings her to it. A parking spot marked off in the vivid blue glowing lights, they frame the Rayfield, and spell VIP on the wall behind it. 

Time to test the tech, she holds the device next to the door and presses its button, a blue light flashing. And then the Rayfield’s door opens, sliding back and up in one fluid motion, exposing the deep burgundy leather seats. Shit may actually be going right for once. 

She climbs into the driver’s seat, feeling wholly out of place in the plush designed car. The seat automatically adjusts to accommodate her, no doubt shorter than the owner, and the blacked-out windshield and window turn to crystalline clear glass. All that’s left is bringing the baby back to the bar and then she can get her intel on Sinclaire. 

A red caution symbol flashes in the windshield and her body tenses; a bad feeling creeping in. No, her luck can’t be running out already. 

Then the door opens and there’s a gun in her face. 

“Get the fuck out!” A Mexican accented voice yells out. 

If there is a god, he personally hates her, there is no other explanation, and she will fist fight him for his shenanigans. She looks up at the man standing before her, barrel at her forehead. He’s leaning down against the car, not unlike how the sheriff did to intimidate her back in Yucca. However, unlike the sheriff, this guy has the build to pull it off. He’s easily over a foot taller than her and wider than most doorway, all pure muscle with dark hair in a top knot, gold cybernetics adoring his face. She puts her hands up in mock surrender for a moment. 

“Nothing personal, jaina, just biz.” 

V goes to gun it, to stomp her foot down on the gas, but before she can the man has the back of her hoodie and is unceremoniously ripping her out of the vehicle. 

“You fuckin’ deaf, chica, fuck out of the car, now!” He’s able to manhandle and pack her around like it’s nothing, like carrying a housecat. 

She grabs the hand on her hood and digs her fingernails in, swinging her foot out to kick him while her other hand goes for her gun. 

Then there’s a steady rev of engines, tires squealing and growing ever closer. Confusion coloring her assailant’s face and he drops her, looking around. 

“The fuck…” 

He starts to say and then there’s two police cars rushing into the parking lot, skidding to stops in front of them. And its fucking overkill, if she rang 911 because she was shot, they’d maybe send an officer out in three weeks. One fucking corpo has someone break into his car and it’s the end of the universe, need a full brigade. 

The headlights of the cruises are blindingly bright and she struggles to adjust; putting her hands up as police officers come out with guns at the ready. It’s a car for fucks sake. 

“Don’t move!” 

Her attacker carefully slides his gun across the cement, to show he’s not a threat and maybe she’d consider doing the same if she cared; but she doesn’t. 

“You’re under arrest!” 

“Stay where you are!” 

The police continue barking orders, as if the two hadn’t piece together what was happening or what was being asked of them. They’re not stupid. 

“Hands where I can see them, nice and slow!” 

He can already see them, why must they go through the rigamarole. She doesn’t have time for this shit. 

“On the ground motherfuckers, right now!” 

V is able to watch for a second, as a female cop cuffs and pushes the big guy onto the ground. Then in the next second she’s down there too, but they don’t cuff her like they do him. The officer only holds her hands down to the pavement, maybe they think because she’s smaller they don’t need the cuffs, at least not yet. 

“Jackie Welles, my old pal from the hood,” a voice rings out, “See you haven’t grown an ounce wiser.” 

“Hey,” big guy, apparently Jackie, responds and she shifts her head against the pavement to see him being held down in addition to the cuffs, “argh, Detective Stints, been a while, huh?”

“Inspector Stints,” the man responds now stepping out where he can be seen in front of the bright lights, he picks up the gun Jackie put down. 

“Same shit,” Jackie says with a laugh. 

“But you, you’re new,” Stints comments as he walks over and crouches down in front of her, looking over her face.

He waits, anticipating her to say something, but she talks with her hands and they’re currently pinned behind her back. And sure she possesses the technical ability to speak, her vocal chords do function. But she doesn’t, unless she’s alone or highly emotional. She used to talk to her mom, sister, and Ava…but those days are gone. 

“Spit it out? Cat got your tongue?” Stints taunts and she still remains silent. 

“Think her voicebox might be broken, Stints,” Jackie comments, a smirk playing on his lips.

“Pfft, probably just another piece of Heywood trash, another termite who’ll live and die here. Just like you Welles.” 

“Fuck off, just tell us what you got planned,” Jackie grumbles. 

“Gonna be booked, gonna do a stint, heh, get it?” He says with a grin. 

“C’mon Stints, cut us a break, huh? You lock us up, we’ll just jerk off till trial and then what?”

She has no intention on jerking off anywhere, but alright.

 “Worst case,” Jackie continues, “we get a few months, standing room only nowadays. In el bote. Hell, we’ll probably be out early.” 

“These the thieves? Ordinary street trash,” a heavily accented voice comments, a Japanese man in a shimmery golden colored vest comes walking over. 

“Shit, he’s here,” Inspector Stints groans before standing, “got them in custody Mr. Fujioka. We’ll be taking them, now.” 

“It’s a waste of effort, I have no time to testify or play at an investigation.” 

“Suggesting we let ‘em go, sir?” 

“I’m suggesting you throw them in the sea; cuffed, legs broken, so this trash doesn’t float.” 

And with that the man starts to walk away, making his way back to the club, she’s sure, continuing his night of debauchery as if he hadn’t ordered the murder of two strangers just because he could, because he didn’t have time for a trial. And god, she knows she probably has no room to judge anyone else’s morals, but just fuck corpos. 

“You heard him,” the inspector says, because corpo cash pays his salary, she’s sure. 

“Fuuuuck….” Jackie curses as they start to drag him up on his feet by the cuffed hands and she her own arms are wrenched back and cuffed. 

V gets her feet back under her, moving with the pull as they manhandle her off the ground, she kicks back at the officer behind her. Her foot connects with their calf, causing them grunt out in pain as they’re knocked off balance loosing their grip on her wrists. She jumps as high as she can and brings her cuffed hands under her feet to her front. 

Jackie follows suit, kicking the officer off of him, but with his size it knocks them flat on their ass. He shoulder checks another pig as V makes a dive for the Rayfield, it’s door still open amongst this chaos. She lands herself in the drivers seat and hits the ignition. 

“Stop resisting!” Officers yell, fingers on the trigger, and no, that’s not happening. 

“Wait up, chica!” Jackie yells out and she hits the button to open the passenger side door; he’s an asshole, but she’s not leaving him to be thrown in the fucking ocean. 

He throws himself down in the passenger side and she guns it, doors shutting on each side as she takes the turn out the parking exit. She watches from the corner of her eye as Jackie, who’s barely able to fit in the bougie car, brings his cuffed hands down as low as he can. He grunts and curses, not quite as flexible as she is. With effort and twisting, he’s able to get the chain of the cuffs under his foot and then he stomps down while yanking his hands up. The little chain doesn’t stand a chance, breaking into pieces and pinging about the interior as it does so. 

“Much better,” Jackie comments, looking at his wrists which now just have the manacles of the cuffs. 

She rolls her eyes, bringing her attention back on the road and she expects to see sirens chasing after them, but it never happens. Are the cops not chasing them? They should be chasing them? Is she not getting in her second high speed chase since coming here?

“Honestly,” Jackie starts to talk again, he talks a lot, “I was just gonna let Stints free us, but I like the way you think, this way we get the Rayfield too.” 

“What?” She takes a hand off the wheel to sign. 

“Oh shit, you’re actually….my bad…” He awkwardly apologizes for asking if she was deaf earlier because, yes, yes she is. 

“What do you mean, free us?” 

“Stints is a softie as far as pigs go, got Heywood in his blood, would never throw us in the fuckin’ ocean cause some corpo said. And, you can slow down, he won’t chase us, chica.”

“Oh…okay,” she signs, pulling up to a curb, something else to take care of. 

“We stopping here?” 

“You are,” she signs before pulling her gun out and pointing it at him, signing with her other hand, “get out of the car.” 

“Really, chica?” He rolls his eyes, like he didn’t pull this shit on her five minutes ago. 

“Wouldn’t have let you in if I knew Stints was a softie, I got a job to finish, get out.” 

“A fixer line this up for you?” 

“Yeah…” 

“Padre?” 

“Yeah…are you gonna get out of the car or…?” 

“Listen, I was gonna klep the car and then find a fixer to sell it for me, but if you already got Padre involved, we’ll go halfsies.” 

“You pointed a gun at me!” 

“You’re pointing a gun at me, right now!” 

“You did it first!” 

And he laughs and she does too, because they sound like children bickering over who pushed who on the playground. Its dumb and ridiculous and why does she like him? His smile is warm and kind, something about him, welcoming. She drops the gun, tucking it back in her waistband. She press her hand under her mask, trying to suppress her giggles. The tension that’s been clinging to her has snapped. Her body feels lighter, like she can breathe a bit better. She closes the passenger side door, he may be chill, or she’s just easily charmed. But, she’s still going to fuck with him, just a little. 

“Okay, fine, we’ll go halfsies.” 

“See, now you’re making sense,” he grins as they pull out back onto the road, “Jackie Welles.”  

“V…it’s…nice to meet you? I think?” 

“Heh, not from around here, right?” 

“Nah, but, from the sounds of it you’re a local.” 

“Heywood in my veins, chica,  where we meeting Padre?” 

“El Coyote Cujo.” 

“Of course.” 

“You  know the place?” 

“I’ve heard of it,” he says, grinning wide, a joke she’s clearly not in on, “Ah, I got a good feeling about this.” 

“About what?” 

“Us, you and me got chemistry.” 

“Do we now?” 

“Oh, don’t give me that, you feel it too, heard that laugh.” 

“Sure, whatever you say,” she teases as she pulls into the El Coyote Cujo parking lot, pulling the slick corpo car into a spot, “got a phone on you?” 

“You don’t?” 

“I literally have lost everything I own,  alright? Call Padre and put it on speaker.” 

“Fine, fine,” Jackie gets out his phone and calls Padre, phone in one hand and the other stretched across the back of the seats. 

“Jackie? To what do I owe the pleasure.” 

“Here with your newest find, V, we got the Rayfield.” 

“You helped her out?” 

“Well…” 

“He pointed a gun at me and nearly had me thrown in the ocean.” 

“Seems like I have a car and a story waiting on me, I’ll be there shortly.” 

A pain aches in V’s head, migraine spreading across her temple as Jackie hangs up. She rolls the car window down, allowing the chill of the winter night seep in, hoping the fresh air will ease her pain.  V wants a shower, there’s still blood in her hair and she’s sure she still smells like trash. Though, no one’s been cruel enough to point it out. But, she has no idea where she could grab a shower. Why the fuck does her head hurt so much? The pain a steady throb across her entire head. She pinches the bridge of her nose, it didn’t even ache this much when she first came too in the dumpster. 

“You alright V?” 

“Head hurts,” she signs, before turning off her hearing aids, hoping that shutting out the city sounds will help. 

“When’s the last time you ate, chica?” Jackie says, making sure to stay in her eye line as he leans over the middle console, though his biceps nearly touch her even when he isn’t.  Her mask reading his lips to give him subtitles. . 

When was the last time she ate? She didn’t eat all day because she was in a dumpster passed out. The day before was the smuggle run and she didn’t eat before she left Yucca.

“Two days ago.” 

“Fuckin’ for real, no wonder your head’s wonky, once we finish the deal we’ll get some grub.” 

“What made you think that was why?” 

“Ah, my mama gets those migraines when she stops eating from stress, Vik and me keep telling her to take care of herself, but she’s too busy taking care of everyone else.” 

“You and your mom close?” V can’t help but ask, thinking about her own mother for a moment. 

“Oh yeah, family’s important, gotta have people you can turn to out here.” 

“Yeah…” 

“What-”

Headlights shine in through the back glass of the Rayfield, bring their attention to Padre pulling into the parking lot.  His arrival ending whatever question Jackie was about to ask, which may be for the best. She’s not ready to answer questions about family. Not when her head is throbbing, she’s filthy, and her stomach is empty. Padre’s driver comes to a stop and they see Padre gets out of the back. V turns her hearing aids back on, knowing it will make the conversation flow easier as her and Jackie get out of the Rayfield. Her arms collecting goosebumps from the air. 

“Jackie, it’s nice to see you again, how have you been?” He greets Jackie warmly

“Ehhh, can’t complain, same old same old, making new friends,” he says with a grin, nodding his head towards V.

“Never can have too many of those. It’s always nice to chat once business is done.” 

One of Padre’s bodyguards has already climbed into the driver’s seat of the Rayfield. Enging revving up and then fading off into the night as he leaves. Officially finishing up their business. 

“Uh,” Jackie raises an eyebrow, “you getting senile on me, Padre, this is usually the part where eddies change hands.” 

V’s smirking and trying not to laugh behind her mask. Padre gives a look at V’s direction and she looks down at the ground, pursing her lips so she doesn’t laugh. 

“I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what you mean.” 

“Ah,” Jackie nods, like he gets it, “no worries, V agreed to go halfsie with me on the Rayfield gig.” 

“Halfsies?” Padre raises an eyebrow, smiling at V, he seems to find her joke at least a little funny. V can’t help the giggle that spills out.

“Am I missing the joke here?” 

“Well, I’m afraid, this was an unpaid job for V here.” 

“What?” Jackie shoots her a sharp look, disbelief coloring his expression. 

“Don’t spend it all in one place,” she taunts. 

“Fuck you!” 

She bursts out laughing, holding her stomach as she cackles behind her mask, the sound echoing strangely through it. But, she can’t stop. 

“You stole a million eddie car for free!? The fuck is wrong with you!?” 

“No, no,” she furiously signs, “I needed info.” 

“Speaking of which, I have your intel here,” Padre says, handing her a shard.

“Give me a moment, my lungs hurt.” 

“I’m glad you're entertained, that info better make you a billionaire.” 

“Nah, personal shit,” she collects herself, “thanks, Padre, it means a lot.” 

“You’re a good kid, make him pay, V.”

“Oh, I will,” V confirms, slotting the shard into a little opening on her mask, info displaying across it. 

The name of a chopshop that rumors say had a nomad vehicle come in, her Rattler no doubt. Sinclaire’s address and regular hang outs, exactly what she needs. Hopefully, he hasn’t had time to sell the cargo yet. If so, she’ll axe him and klep all his shit. 

“What happened?” Jackie asks. 

“Well,” she signs, before taking the shard out, “Sinclaire contracted me to transport some cargo, no fixer, so he fucked me over the second he got a chance. Bashed me over the head, threw me in a dumpster, scrapped all my shit, and took off with the cargo.” 

“So, that’s what that smell is?” 

“I will throw you,” she threatens, but she’s rolling her eyes and smiling. 

“I’d love to see you try, chica.” 

“The chop shop won’t be open until morning and it’s late. It’s up to you, but I’d recommend resting for the night.” 

“Yeah…” She signs, but she can’t help the slight pout. She has no money, no clothes, no food, no shelter. She’ll be sleeping on a bench or something tonight, not much rest. 

“You did good work V,” Padre pats her shoulder as he leaves,” I’m sure I’ll have more jobs for you in the future, paying ones, of course.” 

“Thanks again, Padre.”  

She rubs a hand down her face, migraine still thumping around in her head. Between not eating and having her hearing aids in all day, her head feels on the verge of exploding. 

“So, what’s the plan, jaina?” 

“My plan, why do you wanna know my plan?” 

“Because, you and I both know you’re up shit creek without a paddle here, V. No home, no family, no one to turn to. Night City ain’t a place that will let you get by on your own. Need people you can turn to, if you wanna survive.” 

“And what, you wanna be my friend?” She raises an eyebrow, taken aback by just how kind and friendly he’s really been. 

“Told you already, we got chemistry,” he grins again and it makes her smile, “be a crying shame to waste it.” 

“Okay, friend, what do we do now?” 

“You like chili?

“As a concept, sure.”  

“Settled then, get you a hot meal, change of clothes, a shower ‘cause you fuckin’ need it, and crash with me tonight.”

“And tomorrow?” 

“And tomorrow, we teach that pendejo a lesson, sound good?”  

“Sounds good to me.”

They’re all grins and smiles as they leave the parking lot, knocking shoulders together as they go, walking side by side down the neon lit streets. And she can feel it returning, that little buzz of hope she had in her chest when she first came here, the one she thought was beaten out of her by Sinclaire’s goons, it’s back and brighter than ever. Though not half as bright as Jackie’s smile as they turn a corner towards his mother’s house. 

[lo-55]

Tangles Webs of Fate Ch.1

Everyone always said that you shouldn't go into the forest at night. No one but the foolish or the desperate would willingly venture between the trees when the moon rose, high and full above the port.

Marco was both.

If asked, Ace could tell you exactly what made him want to live in a cabin at the edge of the woods. That answer was, quite simply, he was broke.

                 Notes:    

Major AU! None of this takes place in the One Piece world, includes magic spiders and time travel.

Into the Woods                     

Everyone always said that you shouldn't go into the forest at night. That those who did came back strange and different, if they ever returned at all. Mothers whispered to their children, children whispered it to each other and all but the huntsmen, who were strange and aloof already, skirted the edge of forest whenever the sun began to sink.

No one but the foolish or the desperate would willingly venture between the trees when the moon rose, high and full above the port.

Marco was both.

He ran, bare feet digging into sharp roots and snagging on stray roots until they broke his skin and left a trail of blood in his wake. Shouts echoed behind him, too far for him to hear, as though he didn’t already know the words being hurled at his back.

Normally, Marco avoided this place as much as anyone else, but he couldn’t afford to. Not tonight, not with blades chasing his back and death dogging his heels. He clutched his bag tight to his chest, the small jingling a meager comfort. Was it worth the trouble? The danger?

Was a sack of gold worth throwing himself into the dark space between the trees?

He prayed so.

Between the branches over his head only the smallest flashes of silver light filtered through, glancing off of shiny rocks and a tiny brook that snaked its way through. Marco hissed against the cold when his feet sunk in, stirring up mud and crawfish.

He stumbled only once, smacked his face on a branch, and stopped dead. The air in front of him shivered with heat he couldn’t feel. A spider hung from its web an inch from his face, looking at him with its dozens of eyes.

Marco scrambled to remember what he’d been told, the snippets of warnings wind had carried to his ears. Advice he could use now.

The howl of a hound cut through the night and Marco bowed his head, gripping the treasure he coveted closer to his chest. He pulled out a piece, then two, then three, until he had eight in his hand. With blind fingers he groped for a nook in the trees that walled up on either side of him. The spider was clever, he had built his web a hanging net between a arch of two trees in a close cropping of a dozen. Marco shoved the coins, one for each leg and one for each eye, into a gap in the bark.

“Please,” he begged, “give me safe passage.”

The spider turned its eyes from him. The shimmering air vanished, a cloud passed over the moon and the forest was plummeted into darkness.

Marco ducked under the web and ran through the trees. The hounds voices cut off as soon as he was through. The air felt different, heavier. A light flashed across the horizon, but it was too early to be dawn. Stars fell through the inky blankness of the sky. The moon was gone.

Marco slammed face first into something hard and metal. He bounced back, landing on his butt. The earth had vanished, packed down into what Marco’s fingers told him was a single slab of stone. A massive one.

The boy pushed himself up, his legs starting to shake as the reality of what he had done sunk in. He had broken all of the rules and obeyed them at once. Don’t go in the forest at night, humans said. Pay for your safety, the fae demanded.

Marco touched the metal, his fingers brushing over the smoothest surface he had felt in his life. He ran his hand across it, tracing over a strange indentation and a handle stuck in. Carefully, Marco bent to retrieve his bag from where he’d dropped it. The coins rattled against eachother, a reminder of his crime. A reminder of his escape.

In the blackess he could see the hulking shape of a house. Slowly, so slowly, he walked towards it, calling out into the darkness.

“If I am unwelcome, please tell me,” he asked the Fair Folk that lived here. The only response was the soft chirping of a lone cicada. Where in Gods name was he that there was one cicada and not several hundred?  

Two bright eyes erupted out of the darkness, blinding him with a brilliance he had never experienced. Trapped suns flew towards him, stopping short. Marc o threw his hand over his eyes, stumbling back.

A voice shouted at him in a tongue he did not know. Angry, offended. Marco cursed himself for taking the cicada as the wrong sign and bowed low to the two suns that had flown to him in the night.

When the voice, still speaking words he could not understand, turned to one of concern he rose and fled, back into the trees. When dawn broke, he would pick his way back to the spiders tree and thank it for it’s help, and perhaps it would send him back to whence he came.

~ ~ ~

If asked, Ace could tell you exactly what made him want to live in a cabin at the edge of the woods. That answer was, quite simply, he was broke as fuck.

To be fair, trying to feed Luffy took up almost his entire paycheck, and what little Sabo brought in went almost exclusively to their seemingly never ending medical bills. Between the fights the three got into and the fact that they were still paying off the debt from Sabo’s ‘accident’ ten years ago there was never enough money, they were always stretched thin, and consequently they lived in a rickety old house that predated the automobile.

The water didn’t always run, so they kept a supply in barrels around the back, and the electricity liked to go out, if it was on at all, so they took turns working on a dilapidated generator to keeps the lights on and the fridge working.

It was nothing special. It was nothing good, not the way Luffy and Sabo deserved their lives to be. Not the way Ace wanted their lives to be.

It had never impressed anyone before, unless it was sheer amazement that the house was still standing.

Which begged the question, why the man in his living room was looking around him in wonder.

For that matter, how had he managed to get in in the first place?

And what was he wearing?

Ace leaned on the banister, urging a creak out of the old wood that made his ‘guest’ jump about twenty feet in the air. The blond spun around, hair flying about wildly. Ace froze where he stood, caught by bright, golden eyes. They were wide, the man’s shoulders were tense. He took a half a step away from Ace, shifting onto the balls of his feet. Ace would know a fighting stance anywhere.

“Um,” Ace said. He cleared his throat and added, “Hello? I’m Ace. Who are you?”

The man just stared at him, a furrow forming between his brows. He opened his mouth and released a string of gibberish that Ace assumed were words to other people. He looked around, said something else, and looked to Ace expectantly.

Ace, not sure what else to do, pointed at his face.

“Ace,” he said slowly. “Portgas D. Ace.”

“D!” the man repeated, a light erupting in him. It flashed behind a hint of a smile. Now that Ace was looking closer, scrutinizing him openly, he could see that whoever this man was he was not dressed for the thirty degrees outside.

His grey shirt was only halfway buttoned up, his black pants stopped long before his sandals, and the closest thing he had to a coat was the sash that jingled around his hips, gold flashing along its heavy folds.

He looked familiar...

“Uh, yeah,” Ace agreed. There was something about the clothes that looked wrong. Something not quite right, a sort of… nonconformity that department stores just did not sell. He pointed at himself again and repeated his first name. The man nodded, slowly. Some of the tension drained out of his shoulders.

“Ace,” he repeated, pointing to the young man. “Marco,” he added, pointing to himself.

        It was surprisingly common of a name. There was something about Marco that was entirely uncommon. Something different, like the subtle variation between a King and a Coral Snake. What was that rhyme again?

         Red on yellow, you’re a dead fellow. Yellow on black you’re okay Jack? Or  was it black on yellow you’re a dead fellow, Red on black you’re okay-

                                Not the time.

                                “Why are you in my house?” Ace tried, hoping to be understood. His hopes were quickly dashed by the blank stare Marco levelled him with.

                                “Fuck,” he said flatly. Manners did him no good when someone couldn’t hear what he was saying.

                                “Fuck,” Marco repeated, which was of course the second word he learn, after Ace’s name. Ace and Fuck. What a vocabulary.

                                                                        “Okay Marco,” Ace ran a hand through his dark hair, watching Marco perk up at the mention of a familiar sound. “What am I going to do with you?”

                                                                        The answer did not come. Marco just watched him, weariness ebbing away into curiosity. Had he never seen the inside of a house before or something?

                                                                        Ace shook his head and reached over to snap the living room light on. Marco jumped, shouted more gibberish at him and pointed at the lamp. Ace frowned at him and snapped the switch off, then back on. Marco looked at his hand, then at Ace, and eased himself closer.

                                                                        The younger boy stepped back, letting him come to inspect the light switch. This was… weird.

                                                                        Ace couldn’t figure out what was going on, but he let Marco tentatively run his fingers over the switch before he pushed. The lights when out. Again, the light’s came back on. His fascination was endearing, if bewildering.

                                                                        Not sure what else to do, Ace went to the kitchen and got a box of Cheez-Its. While he was at it he hunted down a couple of soda’s to split between him and his visitor, but by the time he got back to the living room Marco had disappeared.

                                                                        Ace was left staring at the space he had occupied, hands full and brain muddled. What the actual fuck was going on around here?

                                                                        ~ ~ ~

                                                                        Marco sat on the ground, watching the Fair House from a distance. He had left his bag outside when he had gone up to see it, hoping to find someone who might take pity on a traveler. What he had found was perhaps the most beautiful man he had ever seen in his life, who did not speak his language at all.

                                                                        He had taught Marco the magic of his home, and in return Marco had run before he could be offered anything from what was obviously the kitchen. He knew better than to accept Their food or refuse Their hospitality, so he did the only thing he could think of that would satisfy both of those rules.

                                                                        He scurried out the door, where he had left his bag, and ran off.

                                                                        At some point in the night he had stumbled across a pair of sandals that fit him miraculously, made out of strips of black leather and something soft that Marco had never encountered before. A gift, perhaps. He hoped at least. If he had stolen from Them…

                                                                        His stomach growling broke him out of those thoughts. His body wished he had accepted the food but his mind knew it was for the best that he hadn’t. Even if he hadn’t eaten since yesterday it was better not to eat the food of Faerie than to risk never being able to eat his own food again. Assuming he managed to find his way back to the spider tree he had come through in the beginning.

                                                                        He’d been trying to retrace his steps all night but it wasn’t working. He had no bearings in this world. He had no one to help him, nowhere to go.

                                                                        Then again, when did he ever have those things?

                                                                        Marco sighed. He had been alone for God knew how long, and he would stay that way until he could book passage on a ship and get to the larger port than the tiny indentation on his home island. Somewhere where he could disappear from the miniscule world of his birth and find a true place in the sea.

                                                                        Marco allowed a dreamy sigh to flit past his lips. He had been so close. So close to being there and now-

                                                                        Now he was a world away.

                                                                        The door to the house opened, slamming against the wall and a whirwind of a boy came sprinting outside, his smile the sun his eyes warm and brilliant. Marco tensed and slid back against the tree, into the brush he’d taken shelter in in the wee hours of the morning.

                                                                        The Fair Child secured the hat on his head and spun to walk backwards towards a massive metal cart sitting in front of the building, hollering behind him. Minutes later a blond boy in blue emerged at a brisk jog, dragging his overcoat on he went. On his heels was the beautiful being Marco had met before.

                                                                        He looked even better in day time, sunlight spilling across his tanned skin, tracing over the freckles on his cheeks and waving over his dark hair. He shook his head at the antics of what had to be the youngest of them and ushered him to the cart.

                                                                        With a laugh the smallest of the trio showed Marco that it wasn’t a cart at all, but a carriage.

                                                                        Either way, did they expect to pull it themselves? Marco hadn’t seen a barn, or a stable, or a single horse since he’d arrived. If horses existed here.

                                                                        Abruptly the carriage released a roar that sent Marco skuttering back, his heart pounding in his chest. The beast growled and moved on black wheels that crunched the stoned under its wake, tearing asunder the earth. Two eyes, like the twin suns that had almost struck him down the night before, swivelled towards him.

                                                                        Marco drew back in fear, sliding as far into the foliage as he could. The boy did not fancy himself a cowards, but the working of the Fair Folk were far beyond him.

                                                                        He waited until it was long gone before he crept out of the greenery.

                                                                        Marco realized his hands were shaking. Was he excited? Was he terrified?

                                                                        He turned and wandered into the forest, looking for the spider.

                                                                        ~ ~ ~

                                                                        Ace was exhausted by the time he got back to the treeline. His arms felt like noodles and if he heard one more request to speak to the manager he was going to cut his own ears off. He longed for the day the pits of hell would open beneath his feet and swallow him whole.

                                                                        Ace waved to the bus driver and dragged his sorry ass onto the path that would get him to the house. Sabo had the car today, so he could get home after the buses were finished running, and Luffy was staying over at Vivi’s house with the rest of his friends for weekend party. Ace would be the only one home for quite some time.

                                                                        That was probably for the best. He shivered when a cold wind blew, pulling his jacket tighter around him. A few snowflakes drifted in front of him.

                                                                        Ace’s mind drifted back to the boy he’d seen in his house a few nights ago, the one with the soft blond hair and the wide, wonderous gaze. He’d been thinking of him ever since he disappeared, trying to puzzle out who he was and what he’d wanted. And, where he’d gone.

                                                                        Ace paused at a break in the path. From here he could continue down the well worn dirt until he was back at his house, start a fire and see what he could scrounge up for dinner. Or, he could go right and make his way into the forest, along the deer trails and into the shadows. He could disappear into the night and never have to go back to the call center again.

                                                                        He could do it. He knew how to hunt, how to fish, how to build a fire. He could walk away and never look back again.

                                                                        Then he thought of his brothers. Of Sabo and Luffy, who depended on him, who he depended on. He couldn’t leave them. He couldn't.

                                                                        But he could pretend, for just a minute, that he might be able to walk away from the pressure, the responsibility, the fear that no matter what he did he would never get out of this cycle of bills, being broke, and never going anywhere.

                                                                        He walked into the trees.

                                                                        There was no fear for the boy here, he knew these trees like he knew his own hands. He could find his way home blindfolded here. Here, where the lights of the city only brushed the clouds of the horizon. Here, where the air was fresh and crisp and the water ran clear.

                                                                        Ace walked the familiar lines between the wood, trailing his fingers lightly across the gnarled bark as he passed. He always felt better out here, where no other people were around to bother him. It was a small escape, but one he found himself relying on more and more these days.

                                                                        From inside the shuttering branches of the aspen he could see steam lifting off of the pond where snow tried to settle on water not ready to freeze just yet. Standing on the shore was the same blond man.

                                                                        A frown drew his brows together. Ace could see him shaking from where he was. Had he been outside this whole time?

                                                                        “Hey!” Ace hollered at him, emerging from the trees. It was the second time he’d gotten Marco to jump out of his skin. He was holding something to his chest, a rucksack, like his life depended on it.

                                                                        “Hey,” Ace repeated, walking out. The wind blew again, tousling his hair and lifting his hat. Ace shoved it back on his head quickly. He walked towards Marco, who stood very still, clutching the back close to him.

                                                                        Marco watched him wearily. He said something, paused, and told Ace, “Hello.” which Ace hoped was a greeting and not something he was supposed to respond to.

                                                                        “Hey,” he said for the third time. “Are you okay? You’re going to freeze out here. Do you even have a jacket?”

                                                                        Marco stared at him for a long time. He didn’t loosen his grip on the bag at all. Ace sighed and shed his heavy coat, walked towards Marco and offered it to him. The blond stared at him wide eyed.

                                                                        “What? What do you want for this? You can’t have the bag!”

                                                                                                                                Ace frowned. He had no idea what was being said, but Marco was turning an unhealthy color. He pushed the coat at him again, insistently.

                                                                                                                                “Seriously man, just take it. I have more. You’re gonna freeze,” forget what he was saying had no effect on the boy. He pushed the jacket into his hands, jostling the bag.

                                                                                                                                Marco jerked back, his foot caught a stray stick and he fell. Right into the water.

                                                                                                                                “Fuck,” Ace said, looking down at him. Marco looked back up at him, frowning deeply. He didn’t accept when Ace offered him a hand up.

                                                                                                                                ~ ~ ~

                                                                                                                                Marco clutched the fleece blanket tightly around his shoulders, shivering as he sat right on top of a small slat in the floor that blew in warm summer winds, so contrary to the flurries of white that floated outside.

                                                                                                                                Marco didn’t let his sack out of his sight, even when he reluctantly allowed the beautiful boy to take his clothes and replace them with some of his own. They were softer than anything Marco had ever felt, in colors that only those with money could afford. A violet shirt and pants a dark color of blue, finery that Marco had barely ever dreamed of.

                                                                                                                                He watched Ace move around the cabin, cleaning up and setting things straight. The smell of cooking meat tried to entice Marco into the kitchen but he didn’t dare go in. Didn’t dare look at the kitchen. If he did, he might never go back.

                                                                                                                                The slithering thought that asked what he had to go back to was violently crushed.

                                                                                                                                No, no. He had the sea to go back to. He had the gold to spend and places to go. Somewhere. Somewhere.

                                                                                                                                Ace knelt next to him then, offering him a glass of water. Marco swallowed thickly. He hadn’t drank anything in days.

                                                                                                                                Slowly, he shook his head. He couldn’t accept the offering. He had already taken too much.

                                                                                                                                Ace frowned at him. “Are you sure?”  

                                                                                                                                                                                                        “I may not understand you, but I’m not foolish enough to accept anything to eat or drink,” Marco tried not to sound too irritated. His kind were well known for tempting humans. For testing their will and their intellect.

                                                                                                                                                                                                        Ace sighed at him, shook his head, and wandered off.

                                                                                                                                                                                                        Marco was left alone to lean on the wall. The warmth and the comfort lulled him until he had to drag his eyes open to look up at the door when it swung open to let in the blond Marco had seen leave a few days previously. He dragged his had off and draped his long overcoat across the banister.

                                                                                                                                                                                                        For just an instant Marco met his eyes before he looked away again, slumping on the wall. He couldn’t remember ever being this comfortable. He felt like he was being dragged down into the warmth with no way out.

                                                                                                                                                                                                        The two fair creatures were talking in the kitchen. Marco could hear there, even if he didn’t know the language.

                                                                                                                                                                                                        The blond one appeared in front of him with a plate of food that Marco was quick to shake his head at. He couldn't, no matter how much his stomach hurt.

                                                                                                                                                                                                        The blond frowned at him.

                                                                                                                                                                                                        “You really should eat something,” he said.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “Why are you so adamant about me staying trapped here?” Marco asked. The mans pale brows drew together.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “Ace? Do you know what he’s saying?”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        “Honestly, you could just chain me to the wall. You’re probably stronger. Or do you need permission for that?” Marco was just talking for lack of anything better to do.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        “Uh. No. If I did, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                The blond looked at him again, frowning deeper. “I’m worried about him.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Finally, Marco looked straight at him and said, “Fuck Ace.” Whatever that meant.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                The blond stared at him for a long moment before a grin broke out across his face and he started laughing, doubling over on himself until his butt hit the ground. A spatula covered in green sauce came flying out and smacked him clean in the temple, but that didn’t stop the peels of laughter that shook his shoulder.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Some of the green splattered against Marco’s face and arm. He swallowed thickly, looking down at the droplets. The plate of food still smelled so good. Surely, just a taste…

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ~ ~ ~

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “I’m glad he finally started eating,” Ace said once the sun had gone down and the moon come up. Their little house guest was curled up tightly on the folded out couch, covered in as many blankets as the pair could spare. His bag was still clutched tightly to his chest.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Sabo nodded along, watching the boys shoulders rise and fall. He sat on the stair two down from Ace’s head leaned on the poles that held up the handrail. Ace had stretched himself across the landing halfway up and was methodically flicking a lighter open and closed. The firelight danced across his freckle dusted cheeks before going out again, leaving him in darkness until he struck the fire back into existence.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Normally, Luffy would be stretched out across their backs, taking up the rest of the stairs, snoring like a chainsaw or laughing at half told jokes.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “You like him, huh?” Sabo guessed.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Ace sort of shrugged. It more the sound of his shirt moving than anything else.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “He looks like he needs help. Did you see the bruises on his arms?”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “Someone’s been hurting him for a while,” Sabo confirmed. “Wanna bet whatever’s in that bag is everything he’s got?”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Ace grimaced before the fire went out. “I wish I thought you were wrong… We have to help him.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “Yeah.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                They both knew they could barely feed the three of them, but neither was willing to turn the strange, wild eyed boy away. He needed them.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “Ace… What are we getting ourselves into?”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                The oldest of the trio shook his head. He had absolutely no idea.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                None of them did.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ~ ~ ~

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Marco woke up to more food being set down beside him.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                He forgot his fears and inhibition and promptly inhaled the thick cut ham and the golden eggs, eating like the starving man he was. A glass of the finest fruit juice he had ever touched followed it and Ace, beautiful, smiling Ace added more to his plate.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Marco watched his face now, from closer that before. He counted the freckles on his cheeks, watched the light in his dark eyes and the soft waves of his hair. There wasn’t a malicious shadow that fell across his smile, no teeth baring grin that spoke of dark intentions.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Just Ace, kind Ace who pushed the full plate back towards him and offered him more juice.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “Apple Juice,” Marco pronounced carefully. Ace beamed at him with pride. Marco’s chest warmed and, feeling less skittish and less fearful than he had in years, he pointed to what was on his plate. “Home, eggs, taste.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Ace snickered and shook his head. “Home,” he gestured to the cottage around them, “taste,” he pointed to his tongue. “Ham and toast,” he pointed to the plate.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Frowning, Marco repeated the words slowly, pointing as he did so. Ace clapped his shoulder when he got it right and spoke what Marco hoped were words of praise. He couldn’t understand any of them save his own name.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        It was enough, he supposed, that he could understand that Ace was proud of such a meager accomplishment. Sabo had already left in their car, to go… wherever they went in the day. To town, if such creatures had a town.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          ��                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             If ever Marco had doubted that he had fallen in with the fae, that was banished from his mind the second he ate their food, slept in their house, wore their clothes. There was no possible way such things were made by mortal means.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        It was luxury, but there was something about Ace and Sabo that made Marco wonder if it was a luxury for them, or just for him. Were they fae of the royal courts, like Ace’s beauty and Sabo’s clothes made them out to be? Or were they common folk, living in the woods away from others?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Did the Fair Folk even have such a system as his own?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Marco shook himself free of the cobwebs of curiosities that clouded his brain.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        He looked up and froze when he realized Ace was inches away from him. Oh. Up close he was even prettier. The dusting of freckles framed his wide, concerned black eyes. His lips, full and poised, were parted with a question Marco couldn’t understand.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Fae were beautiful, and they were supposed to be tempting and Ace was certainly all of those things.Marco hesitated. Perhaps…

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        He leaned forwards on impulse and kissed him.

[whirlybirdwhat]

Compass Left Behind

Ao3 - One Piece, Gen, Modern AU, Look for Warnings! (See Ao3), Focus on Straw Hats.

Word Count: 2,847

-

When Ace dies in a flurry of fast motions and undeniable death (gun fight – a gang fight, Akainu fire arson why were you born- oh god it burns) Luffy screams at the pain of being alone. His brothers are dead, Shanks spirited away into the wind, Garp, military (abusive) and untrustworthy, and Makino and Dadan’s gang, underserving of this mess.

Luffy is 14 when he becomes completely abandoned, and he is 14 when the thought whispers into his mind

Why? Why am I alone? It shouldn’t be this way - Never should be this way. Where are they?

And so he starts to search.

-

Monkey D. Luffy first whispered into their lives with the soft smile on Zoro’s sunlit face as he wandered home from school. This smile last for the week, a week of Koushirou’s adopted son seeming more complete and alive than he has ever before - and then he is gone, katanas packed away with sturdy clothes and tracking chip pulled out of his phone

Koushirou wonders about the boy who Zoro mentioned only once (I met someone today – his name is (and the way he said the name sounded like a king)) but accepts it. Zoro always had the spirit of a wanderer in him - but it never seemed to belong just to him.

He reports Zoro’s disappearance to the authorities but it gets buried. Somethings were not meant to be - somethings were meant to be lost to the world (Zoro had always been lost – always had an internal compass that only pointed at one person.)

Koushirou hopes the boy he raised (in place of a daughter who died) is happy now.

-

They meet Nami in the mall, her life safe at last and her family and their tangerine farm whole and unharmed. There is nothing stopping her from saying no when Luffy stretches out hand, to stay with her family who have no recognition of the name Arlong.

But she takes the hand anyway, the weight she never knew was there lifting off of her. She was supposed to be a navigator for a big company in the fall, with big rewards, perfect for a girl who had no interest of spending big bucks at college

But she drops it all and takes the hand offered.

And well -

That is that.

(They, piled into Luffy’s (Ace’s) old custom flame-detailed Camaro, make for an odd bunch with Luffy’s scars and Zoro’s swords and Nami’s maps and money bags (and three shriveled tangerine tree seeds kept in a golden locket) but they could not care less.)

-

Usopp joins them three states over and for once does not lie - he speaks truthfully about the pull he feels, like waves to the moon’s commands, like a compass to the north and laments that maybe he’ll meet his dad on the road - out in the big wide radiant west.

He brings along a ride and tall tales, a reminder that there’s joy in the smallest of things.

(Kaya, they learn, is a name not to be spoken for she died a year ago, officially due to an illness. Unofficially, Usopp tells them of a butler who had a history in poison and botany, and how his claws quickly sunk into the family riches once the orphan girl passed away suddenly.

This is not a tale of heroes or interference in carefully laid plans- this is a tale of people finding home and family.

And Kaya, while she had a place in Usopp’s heart, never had a place aboard the sunny, beloved ship (home) in their dreams of before.)

-

Sanji kicks them from his restaurant, freshly inherited from Zeff who died three months previous, four times until he finally caves and agrees to go with them.

The chefs and waiters are happy to see him go, even if his boyfriend, Gin, isn’t (he’ll miss him, can’t he see that?).

The restaurant was never the twenty-two-year old’s dream, only a prison made of a debt and a soured paternal love and the staff knew that.

They do not understand what makes these strangers so important to him, but they do not stop him from leaving, from kissing his mafia boyfriend one last passionate time, from signing restaurant over to his most trusted workers and hopping in the car with two teens and a young adult.

It was never their place to know what made him so weary of food being stolen.

(Besides. His cigarettes were clogging up the air.)

-

They never meet Vivi. They only ever hear of her in newspapers clippings, proclaiming that the last princess of Alabasta perished during an uprising in her kingdom.

(It’s not a world of heroes and happiness, in this life)

The story is sad in general, but they are even more so because more than it being a tragic tale, they never got to meet her again.

(But they knew she would never, ever stay, no matter how hard they begged. Her heart belonged to the desert sun and the sand beneath feet, and the people hailing her name. Some things are constant like that.)

-

Chopper, prodigy and fully-fledged doctor at the age of twenty-six, takes one look at them and quits his job at his adopted father’s old clinic.

No one comments on how though he is the eldest, everyone ruffles his hair like he is the youngest.

No one talks about the little cherry blossoms and antlers embroidered on his sweater, or the way he despisesmushrooms.

No one mentions the way he gapes at Zoro and Luffy, one with too little scars (though they are thankful for that) and one with far, far too many.

(He’ll pass creams to both of them, helping smooth it over Luffy’s back and arms and chest and face and just anywhere really (so many scars - skin didn’t scar this easily before) and letting Zoro do his own, spreading the cool substance over his chest and ankles and face (but never his back - would be a shame if he did), places that had always ached mysteriously previously, and always during storms like Luffy’s did now)

-

Robin comes into their lives silently, appearing in the back of the Merry (Usopp’s mothers old Volkswagen van that he inherited, that he and Kaya had painted with pictures of seas and sheep and dreaming words before ... everything) one day and never leaving after that.

There are no doubts that she belongs with them - not this time, and not ever again. She brings a multitude of books with her and helps finishes Zoro’s and Luffy’s spotty education, filling in gaps of knowledge with care and love.

She never speaks of genocide, never speaks of the circling brand on her left shoulder blade, and the haunted look in here eye but she doesn’t have to.

Like before, the past does not matter here, with them.

(Unlike before, the only thing that does matter is them - there are no dreams in this concrete world, only slowly filling in the ache of where were you and I was alone.)

-

The blue haired man who tried to steal their car is Franky, and this time only his arm and nose are metal - it doesn’t make him any less strong or big though. Once he sees the little keychain of a straw hatted jolly roger, custom made, hanging on the mirror, however, he stops, sitting there in the front seat, the wires already hotwired, and smiles. That’s where they find him, and after only the briefest of introductions (for they all know each other already, really, in some inescapable way) and goodbyes (the Franky family are still family but the world is crueler now then then, and bonds like that aren’t meant to stay (but bonds like theirs are)) they leave after a small pitstop.

Merry cannot hold him (cannot hold three more people, they need more) and so it is a near blessing in disguise when Merry is forced to be ripped away from them by a bad car accident - a cop careening down the road after a clown with a sword (an odd sight but not the oddest. They were all more worried about clinging together and making sure they were all alive). No fights happen between them (they do not know how they would take it if one of them walked away - they don’t know if they even can now that they’ve found each other).

Instead, they watch as Franky commandeers his brother’s company for one week, and creates a home on the road for them. Simple and deceiving on the outside yet extravagantly homey within, the extremely luxurious and custom RV is familiar enough with a small shielded garden on the top, a library within and couches and bunks soft and plush to rest their weary head.

Sunny, they decide to call the RV, now detailed on the side in bold, dreamful lettering with a painted lion face, for all the sunny days they will have together.

(They’re almost complete.)

-

Brook sees them in the crowd and steps off his stage, disappearing into the night. His fans are disappointed and the rest of the world confused - where had the man gone?

The man himself is gaunt, brittle and bone like, which is only accented by his skeletal make up, but he laughs and cracks jokes with them all, one more puzzle piece, one more weapon to defeat the battle that is loneliness.

His music soothes them to bed with the sweetest tunes, and the songs he releases to the public are more popular than ever - for they have something the old Brook used to have but thought he never would again.

The love of family.

(He does not speak of years spent by the coast, playing songs with other folk and whales, as they danced happily to the breeze. He does not speak of tsunamis and death and wondering why he above all others survived because he knows why - so the loneliness would end when he was with them.)

-

Jinbe is last and when they break him free from the prison on the coast, it is all they can do not to cry with relief. They are whole again, never mind the mafia and government after them thanks to Jinbe’s escape, they can breathe again.

When they collapse inside Sunny, far away from the lights that searched for them, bandages applied to broken boys (why did he have so many scars?) and smiles given, they do cry, and Jinbe envelopes them all with a hug until they fall backward into a giant, happy dog pile.

He is warm and big and steers them in the right direction, just as he always did. The last part of the puzzle is complete and now they can be free with each other instead of trapped alone.

(Jinbe is the first to know about the beginning, what happened to their captain in this life, (for he knew Ace as well) and he does not forgive himself for not being there like he was before. But he does pray to and thank every god he knows that Luffy was able to get up alone - and find them all.

It’s a miracle, really. (It’s what he was known for))

-

Together they travel, making money in dubious ways (street performance and thievery among them – stealth is a skill that Luffy has somehow acquired now but they do not like to think about how) and having as much adventure and life as they can before their time inevitably runs out.

They travel and learn about each other what makes them different from before (they learn what before was.)

They learn of new ages (Luffy 14, Zoro 16, Nami 18, Usopp 20, Sanji 22, (Vivi would be 24) Chopper 26, Robin, like before 28, Franky 30, Brook 32, and Jinbe, 34 - two years apart for the two years they spent apart. They wished their youngest weren’t so young,) new habits (video game design was what Usopp was going to go to college for, once he had saved enough) and the things that stayed the same (Nami can still haggle prices down to a quarter of the original price, and Zoro still uses three katanas.)

It’s a good life, a happy life. They found each other again - how could it not be?

-

Of course - not everything’s perfect. It comes back to them in the little moments

It’s In the way Zoro will sit himself beside the door on rainy days, ready to catch anyone who slips; in the way Nami hoards money like she’ll die without it and what she’ll be willing to sacrifice for it (herself and others but never her family), in the way that Usopp, though understanding, will lurch whenever someone seems just a tad too sad and frantically tell a tale as if everyone’s life depended on it, and the way he’s wary of every trusting, loyal servant they come across.

It’s in the way Sanji won’t eat if someone else wont (all too common, none of them are okay with food sometimes, even Luffy, who will sometimes stop eating randomly, or Zoro, who occasionally forgets he can keep eating) or in the way Chopper will quadruple check every medical thing he does when not in an emergency.

It’s in the way Robins mind goes blank at certain books and the way her fingers tremble even when doing something she loves; in the way Franky will ghost his hand over his nose and arm and belly and scars and remember the day everything was lost; in the way that Brook can’t stand foggy nights that become like his mind occasionally, clouded and alone.

And especially it’s in the way the Luffy, Luffy who used to never be afraid (because rubber couldn’t hurt, at least not easily), will flinch and snag fingers in Zoro’s or Jinbe’s clothing, arms taut and eyes wide, trembling and so abruptly quiet and push whatever food on his plate away whenever voices raise or fists fly in the kitchen (only ever the kitchen), and will shriek and go silent, crouched in a ball if its directed at him - (The kitchen area is a no fight zone now, if they have to do it they do it beyond the divider and in the other areas while the rest distract Luffy.) It’s in the way Luffy has far too many scars (from punches and kicks and being thrown off balconies and cliffs from supposedly loving hands, from fights in back alleys and scrambling to survive – he’s only 14 and before it wouldn’t faze them but this world is so much more real in the way the other wasn’t) and in the way one used to be able to count each individual rib on his side.

No.

It’s the little moments that hurt the worse.

-

But there are also happy moments, happiness found in places one wouldn’t think to look.

Like being chased by cars flashing red and blue lights, in a flame detailed beat up Camaro, like seeing how high cola rockets could blast, like finally hearing the end to Robin’s memorized bed time story that spoke of pirates of old and new, and sunny days always looking toward the horizon.

Like being there to see Zoro and Luffy, always on the same page, experience something for the first time, like the high school dance they snuck into or the stars on the unlit coast (well that was a first for most actually). Like seeing Brook’s guitar strum a special song just for each of them, or having Chopper give special band aids for each of them (Luffy’s had pirates, Zoro’s tigers, Nami’s tangerines, Usopp’s birds, Sanji’s hearts and Franky’s gears. Robin and Brook were more careful so everyone was still vying to see what design they would get)

It was the joys that built them up again

-

And it was the experiences that reminded them of who they were

Because no matter the world, no matter the life now or the life before, Luffy would always have the soul of a conqueror, of a king- and the rest of them would always be his most loyal crew.

These experiences included back alley fights and dealings and tussles with gangs, included hunting down Ace’s killer and killing him in return (because none of them are perfect, even now) in breaking out of prison as a family (whoever thought of imprisoning them all together made a mistake) to shielding Luffy from his grandfather when the mere mention let alone actually meeting with the man made him tremble and near cry.

It was falling from the mountain Skypeia, miraculously making it out alive and visiting Fishman Island off the coast of the southern continent. It was visiting Venice and Antarctica and the pyramids and breaking into historical places (but being respectful because robin loved history) and everything amazing in-between.

And it was being together that made it all worth it - because in this life they didn’t have dreams to reach for, to strive for, to devout their lives towards. They just had each other.

And that was enough

[aceparadoxica]

Heya, this is OP (I recently started up an ace-centric podcast blog, so I figured it would make sense to reply from that one). I thought I’d address some of your points, because I’m always happy to talk about canonically ace characters!

David K. Barnes, the head writer of Wooden Overcoats, has said on Twitter multiple times that he “tend[s] to write Rudyard with a view to him being asexual” (1, 2). It’s not necessarily the ideal form of confirmation (word of god confirmation rarely is), but it’s enough that I would consider it to be canon. (Hurrah~)

Sarah Rhea Werner, the creator of Girl in Space (and voice of X), liked a Twitter comment about confirming X as ace after putting out the “Ace Pilot” shirt design for the Girl in Space store. That was the first hint towards confirmation I’m aware of. Another Twitter user commented on the shirt, saying they had just realized X was ace, and Werner said “Not a lot of listeners have caught on!” in response. (Again, I...have some qualms about expecting listeners to “catch on” when it comes to asexuality instead of stating it explicitly, because modern media is saturated with stories containing ace-coded characters who are later revealed to have just Not Met The One Yet or some other weary narrative, so in my experience even a lot of ace folks—including me—have learned not to trust ace-coding of characters, but I digress. The Penny Stirling piece on the importance of writers using labels that I linked in the initial post is really good, though, just to promote that again.) She finally came right out and said it in this Twitter response: “The main focus is on platonic friendships but the main character is ace.” (This is in response to the inquiry “is [the podcast] queer?” and she says  “in a way” before giving the ace statement which is. Mm. The implications of her wording there [the “in a way” part] rub me the wrong way just a tiny bit but I don’t think it was intended and that’s not the point here.) Finally, she states it as plainly as possible (in response to a call for podcasts with ace rep):  “ X from Girl In Space is ace.” (A little further down in that comment thread she says “I decided I would let listeners figure it out for themselves but maybe I've been a little too subtle with it.”)

So yes, both Rudyard and X have been stated by their creators to be ace, which is totally awesome! And I’m with you—it means a lot to me, too. (Sorry for the long response here, I’m a big fan of citing sources on things like this so that people can see it firsthand for themselves. But also...it’s about to get even longer, because I’ve got lots to say. The rest is under the cut.)

Okay, so as far as Arkady goes, unless I’ve missed something (which, as the recent nature of my Girl in Space discovery proves, it definitely possible), she’s not technically confirmed to be on the ace spectrum. But...things do get a little bit fuzzy and complicated here, which means I’m about to source a bunch of other posts, so stick with me. Most relevant here is Ishani Kanetkar’s commentary on the matter, I think. (She’s the VA for Arkady.) Here’s her post; I’ll hit the highlights, but it’s worth reading the whole thing, I think. The first thing she says is important to keep in mind: “i’m not word of god on this! i’m not a part of the writers’ room, and we actually know very little about arkady’s canon sexual orientation other than ‘has an embarrassing Thing for short, anxious scientists named violet liu’.” Following that, she says “until we are told otherwise, there is no reason arkady can’t be ace.” Ishani is ace herself (shout-out to acespec podcast VAs, creators, and writers, y’all are an inspiration!), and talks a little bit about how a) you should interpret Arkady in a way that makes you happy, and b) interpreting Arkady as ace makes her happy. (It makes me happy, too.) She ends with this comment: “is she ace? who knows. but if that’s the version of her that you want to write or draw or imagine…well, you’re not the only one.” On the official TSCoSI tumblr, questions about ace characters have come up a few times as well. The first post to bring up here is this one (sexual content warning; nothing really explicit, just a discussion), where whoever on the creative team runs the tumblr account raised the possibility of Jeeter or Krejjh being asexual (not as a canonical confirmation, just as a possibility). In response to that post, someone sent in an ask saying they were excited by that possibility. Whoever responded to the message mentioned being on the ace spectrum. They also say the following: “And honestly I feel like, the way I write characters, it’s possible to interpret pretty much everybody as being at least, like, gray ace or demi. And next project, whatever it may be, I’m gonna work harder at incorporating canonical aces.” (As an ace writer myself, this is a whole mood.) In the tags, they say: “#tbh my personal headcanon is that arkady is demisexual #and part of why she is so wrongfooted by violet is arkady is just NOT ACCUSTOMED TO HAVING THESE FEELINGS.” Given that they specify this is a headcanon, and the context of other statements, I don’t consider this any sort of confirmation. (Although it is still super cool to hear, and also a very sweet interpretation of Arkady and Violet’s relationship, in my opinion.) To move onto another character (the number of ace headcanons I’ve seen for TSCoSI is truly lovely), after this piece of artwork by the talented @marina-does-things (who makes a lot of wonderful ace art, including the icon for this blog!) went around, the blog got an ask about Violet being ace. The response was as follows: “I didn’t set out to write Violet as explicitly ace, but I’m on the ace spectrum myself, so I guess it’s possible that some of my aceness bled through into her characterization? I can’t really call it canon ace representation, but if it’s a meaningful headcanon for you, it’s certainly as valid as any other headcanon on the topic!” So, in short, none of the TSCoSI characters seem to be canonically acespec as of this moment, but the team behind it is VERY friendly and enthusiastic when it comes to acespec headcanons, which is wonderful! And moving forward, it seems, will be another story—as I was thrilled to read in this post, the team has plans to introduce an asexual and/or aromantic character in season two! Maybe it will be Arkady. Maybe it will be Violet, or Krejjh, or Jeeter. Maybe it will be a completely new character. Regardless, I’m excited and definitely looking forward to the next season.

Jonathan Sims (The Magnus Archives) and Sir Talfryn (The Penumbra Podcast) are both canonically asexual (and Talfryn is also aromantic), like you said. They’re both amazing characters and I appreciate them deeply. Unfortunately, you’re right, the word “asexual” isn’t actually used in either show itself (at least, not yet). However, if you’re in the market for podcasts with ace characters where the term ace/asexual IS used in the script, I can recommend a few!

ars PARADOXICA is the first to come to mind. The protagonist, Dr. Sally Grissom, is asexual and says so directly. (She’s also aro, which is implied in the show and confirmed by word of god but never directly stated.) The Bright Sessions is another example; Chloe Turner is asexual and, again, the word is used “on-screen.” Charlie Wackaon from Jim Robbie and the Wanderers is asexual, which is directly stated (and aromantic, which is not, although as with Sally it’s both implied in the script and confirmed by word of god). Robert Montague from Tides is explicitly stated to be demi in a mini episode (and Melissa Wang is arospec and ace, although this is only confirmed through word of god and implied in the script as of yet and hasn’t been directly said by any of the characters). These are all some of my favorite podcasts, and I’d highly recommend them. 

I’ve started keeping up a list of canonical ace audio drama characters, if you’re interested in finding even more ace representation in podcasts! I haven’t listened to all of the ones on the list, so I’m not fully sure which ones are explicitly stated and which aren’t (although I know of at least a few more that are, besides the ones I mentioned), but hopefully I’ll gather more information on that over time. 

This was a wildly long response—thanks to anyone who took the time to read it, and I hope you found it insightful! I love discovering canon ace representation, and it’s a pleasure to help others do the same. 

(Because it feels a little odd to quote people extensively without letting them know, especially the ones I’m quoting right from this website, I’m gonna @ a few creators here. Podcast-making folks, you don’t have to respond or anything, I just thought I should make sure you had the chance to read this if you so desire: @girlinspacepodcast @woodenovercoats @iriscasefiles @thevoicefromthestars)

!!!

HEY okay was anyone going to tell me that the protagonist of one of my favorite podcasts (Girl in Space) was confirmed to be ace instead of just Frequently Headcanoned As Ace or was I just supposed to figure that out myself??

(From one of Werner’s comments that I tracked down on Twitter presumably yes, I was supposed to figure this out myself, but I’m so used to characters who are coded as aspec Never Actually Being Aspec [and especially with aro characters, having those characteristics completely erased in favor of a romantic subplot] that I’ve basically given up on anyone being ace/aro unless it’s explicitly stated. Don’t get me wrong, I had my hopes after the ace pilot merch went up, but I didn’t want to get too excited, especially since the last comment I’d seen from Werner on the subject was that X was still questioning her identity [which is, y’know, totally understandable and also cool]. Moral of this story is that I should apparently use Twitter, because this is the second time I’ve learned a podcast protag is ace after the creator has specifically confirmed it over there and nowhere else [Rudyard Funn of Wooden Overcoats, another excellent podcast, being the other case]. Alternative moral is to please use the word “asexual” [or, while I’m on that note, “aromantic”] in your story’s canon if you’re able to do so because if you try to write asexuality [or aromanticism] subtly it’s very easy for people to erase it—I might write up a longer post on this later, but Penny Stirling explains the reasoning pretty well over here.)

Anyways, ¾ of my favorite audio dramas have canonically asexual characters and 2/4 also have canonically aro characters, which is a) utterly fantastic, and b) a sign that my aspec spidey senses are on point, because I started listening to each of them before any aro or ace characters had been confirmed. 

@girlinspacepodcast Hey—thank you. X is one of my favorite podcast protags and this means a lot to me. <3

[captainignatiuspigheart]

Wow, the last couple of weeks alternating surging heat and grim weather has thorough melted every bit of my desire to do anything, including remembering the time before the heat haze. Still – we shall prevail! It was a quietish couple of weeks in any case, though did have a couple of cool things in it. Not least that I’ve been able to live outside in my gazebo office, and keep a close eye on our ridiculous cats and their shade seeking antics. We were all sad when the thunder and hailstorms drove us inside… Taking keen note of the foul weather I finally picked up some serious LEGO storage towers and did some reorganising. They don’t take up less space, which is unfortunate, but I can access key bricks sets much more easily!

Big fella in a hedge

Little lady in her rooftop fort

Last week turned out to be a mini podcast week, so I’ve spent more time talking than usual (taking up precious drinking time, alas). More We Are What We Overcoming, which has become a cornerstone of my fortnightly routine, and really does help me think about how I feel and how I’m behaving in this quarantini time. That’s not the same as actually changing my behaviour, but being aware that I’m doing little but drinking and sighing at the sun is a start… My other half and I were also interviewed for the Knot Ready podcast: a look at marriage from a modern, feminist perspective, since we’re nearly twenty-two years into a non-marriage we have some insight into why folks may not get married, or at least, possibly, why we haven’t. It was a lot of fun to chat about how we got together (half a lifetime ago!) and other stuff. I’ll definitely remember to share when our episode is out, but you should subscribe to the podcast anyway because Lucy is pretty ace and it’s a genuinely interesting subject.

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I am KNOT READY 💍😘 . I am ready to tie the knot! I am lucky enough to have found an amazing person who makes my life better and who I want to commit to fully 💕 . So when I say I'm freaked out by marriage – it's not a commitment thing! . I'm freaked out that this institution, this human invention, controlled by religion and the state and shaped through time by patriarchal narratives, has become synonymous with romantic love, and not just culturally but for me personally! Something has got it into my head that our relationship is incomplete without marriage, despite suspecting on an intellectual level that nothing much will change afterwards. . Why am I spending a silly amount of money on one day? Why did it make me sad to not be engaged to my person? Why is marriage so important to me? . Freaky questions! For some answers, turn to Knot Ready 💍😘 Episode one comes out this Friday! Link in bio to subscribe or learn more 💖

A post shared by Knot Ready (@knotreadypodcast) on Jun 23, 2020 at 12:13am PDT

We’ve also seen a few more genuine humans in the meatspace, a thing which makes me feel ever so odd. I suspect that I have been at home for too long… But we had a lovely slow wander around the University Park lake and a bit of the radically altered campus up the back of the Portland Building. Lots of baby birds, and our friends’ new baby of their own.

Building: LEGO Hidden Side’s Newbury Haunted High School #70425

OK, so I built this ages ago, but it’s really pretty. Thing is, in its standard configuration it sprawls a little wide, and is distressingly not quite a modular building. So I fixed it! My goal was for it to fit in with the other modular buildings, but of course it’s four studs wider than a baseplate, so something had to go. In my first attempt I tried to compact the bay windows but made a horrible mess, so dismantled the whole thing and rebuilt it using the instructions and deviating where necessary. Where necessary was a bit of a pain – to keep the play functions I needed to keep the bay windows and the full width of the clock tower. My only viable option was removing the four silver unicorn spires with their supporting arches, and that hasn’t really hurt the build much. I’m not super-happy that the decorative ground floor arches are now somewhat obscured, but I’m chuffed with the overall result. That it gave me a chance to go nuts on a swirly tiling pattern in coral pink was a massive bonus. I’ve kept all the play features, but lost some of the details inside. I may remove all the worn detailing too and just have a lovely school in between the detective’s office and the bank. As was noted in the Brickgeekz Facebook group, its colours do rather resemble the now-exceedingly rare Town Hall which I could never quite afford. Win!

Four studs too wide…

It fits!

Beautiful flooring

Play features intact

Watching: Space Force

This is certainly quite fun. A show about Trump’s cretinous “space force” which supposedly satirises the idea, but instead gets caught up doing a sort-of sincere NASA knock-off to get Americans back on the Moon. It doesn’t seem to be sure what it’s taking the mickey out of, leaving the comedy unfocused and swaying madly in each episode. The characters are pretty stock fodder: uptight air force general played by Steve Carell, who looks rather lost, desperate to make it funny by crashing in and out of character while relying heavily on clearing his throat to cover all forms of emotion; very smart scientist guy who isn’t that great with people in the remarkable form of John Malkovich, who shows off his comedy chops nicely (largely by staying in character); total arsehole PR guy Ben Schwartz, who is utterly hateable (in a good way) but of course redeems himself, sort of; space force pilot/astronaut Tawny Newsome, desperate to get on the moon and be somebody; the air force general’s neglected daughter who just wants to have some fun / get any attention at all from her dad. The supporting cast do a great job too, but the tone constantly swinging from idiots messing up the mission to “hurray USA” sentiment leaves them all out in the cold. It’s just odd. I did enjoy the show, and it certainly has some splendid moments, mostly as they get towards the moon landing itself, but I’m not going to be racing back for season two. The Chinese are the main rivals in this new space race, and it’s a bit… broad… for 2020.

Doing: We Are What We Overcome

The next of our “lockdown specials”, lovingly recorded by Zoom and broadcast live in Facebook. Didn’t quite work last week, for no clear reason, so we popped it up on Tuesday instead. We talked about the thorny subject of change, which we seem to have to deal with all the damned time! It’s an interesting issue, covering not just what change is and how it feels, but how we learn (or don’t learn) to deal with it. All terribly pertinent and that. We came back yesterday Monday 19th to discuss how we feel about the easing of lockdown (or whatever the fuck this shower of wank called a Tory government are doing): check that one our here: Facebook Live.

Kickstarter Reward: Munchkin Bricks 2

With all the global lunacy I’d quite forgotten these were on the way! The last-but-one project of Guy Himber, aka CrazyBricks. These are pretty silly accessories and things to accompany the equally silly Munchkin card/boardgame. I just thought they were really cute, god knows what I’m going to do with them. Particular favourites for me are the chibi cthulus (some may become gifts for others…) and the splendid octobricks!

Swag

Swagger

You should definitely check out his current project, which is already very well funded and heading for far-reaching stretch goals: Dino Dudes! Yep, it’s just what it sounds like. Go get em! Nicely covered here by the excellent Beyond the Brick channel:

Reading: Provenance by Ann Leckie

My first Leckie, having not yet gotten around to reading the acclaimed Ancillary Justice series, though this one is set in the same universe. It’s perfectly fine small-scope space opera, focusing on a young woman’s attempts to secure her future (by being named as heir to a senior politician – her adopted mother in a society with interesting communal creche arrangements) by breaking a thief out of prison and lording her victory over her brother. The thief has apparently nicked some precious vestiges, Leckie’s intriguing concept of highly-prized mementoes of the past, which might be anything from an actual artifact, eg a bell used in the first summoning of parliament, to a signed bus ticket on a special day. The Hwaean people are obsessed with the things, and it would be a terrible shame if they turned out to be fake… There’s lots of running around with aliens and robots and occasional murder of diplomats and so on, all risking the failure of a super-important peace accord between humans and some potentially terrifying aliens. Provenance is neatly written, though it loses something in having the plot summary on the back cover take only the first chapter or so to resolve, leaving me unsure where it was going after the exciting sounding heist was dealt with so quickly. It never quite recovered for me, which definitely confirms that I should not read the back cover of books I’m about to read. The author’s interest in diversity and multiple genders, modes of address and interesting social set ups are fun and satisfying to read about, so I suspect I’ll enjoy getting properly into the Ancillary Justice vibe; I just shouldn’t have started here.

More LEGO. SCUM: A Star Wars Story

I’ve now built the main cast of our Star Wars RPG! Clockwise from top-left: my Tusken raider with savaged translator droid strapped to my back, Jon’s Twi’lek bounty hunter, Ben’s Nautolan hacker, Diarmuid’s hapless and much abused Imperial officer, Joe’s GH7 medical droid (a real delight to assemble) his Mandalorian bodyguard (played by Charlie). It’s fun! Now I wanna build some of our missions…

Watching: Agents of SHIELD season 4

I’m sure you’re growing weary of this, but Agents of SHIELD is a goddamned delight. Best show on TV? Maybe. (Warning: many spoilers ahead.) This was the last of the seasons that I’d seen before, so was by far the most familiar. And yet, in the style of all their seasons, a MILLION things happen, overwhelming any sense I had of how long any of the events took. To give you some idea of just how wild this season is, we go from introducing Ghost Rider, in a surprisingly coherent way, to another Avengers nightmare of AI coming to life and taking over various characters with robot duplicates (in this case, Ada, built by splendid returning cast member John Hannah), followed by an incredible immersion of the main cast in a vast virtual reality “The Framework” (built by Ada, John Hannah, and Fitz) a terrifying alternate reality where Hydra has won and rules the world, busily oppressing and annihilating inhumans so that Ada can build herself a real body. Jesus Christ, it’s a lot. Add to that a new director of SHIELD, the ongoing friction between SHIELD and the inhumans vs the rest of the world, plus god knows what else that I’ve forgotten, and I’m happily mindblown. Of course, it’s also the doomed FitzSimmons romance show too, as those two get yet another absolute kicking when we see that Fitz is the chief Hydra scientist, experimenting and murdering all sorts of folk, like Simmons… How will they put themselves back together? Who the hell knows because at the end of this season most of the team is abducted and wake up in SPACE! In truth I’m already a good way into season 5 and I could not be happier.

Doing: MissImp’s virtual improv comedy drop-in

I’ll admit, I’m as behind on these as I am on everything else… First up, The Tiny Glass Person with Feña Ortalli:

Followed by the marvellous David Escobedo in Discovering Your Dynamics:

Last Week: LEGO, Knot Ready, Space Force, Provenance, MissImp, CrazyBricks, Agents of SHIELD, We Are What We Overcome… many things! I’ve gotta get back to doing this weekly… TV, books, much LEGO, some improv and podcasts. https://wp.me/pbprdx-8Gx Wow, the last couple of weeks alternating surging heat and grim weather has thorough melted every bit of my desire to do…

[pardontheglueman]

Glen Campbell - Rhinestone Cowboy

It was the great F. Scott Fitzgerald who, probably after one gin rickey too many at his favourite watering hole, The Willard, famously declared that ‘there are no second acts in American lives’. Fitzgerald, as it turns out, wasn’t much of a fortune teller and his half-baked theory has since been disproved many times over, but for Glen Travis Campbell, pummeling yet another bottle of rum into submission in the backseat of his tour-bus as it snaked through the Australian moonlight, those ominous words must have seemed like his own personal prophesy. Campbell was down on his luck, he hadn’t had a top forty hit since “Dream Baby” in ‘71, his syndicated T.V show with CBS had been pulled from the airwaves in ‘72 and his latest marriage was suddenly on the rocks. He was starting to look like a three-time loser. After all, this was only 1974 and his improbable re-incarnation as the “Rhinestone Cowboy” was still more than a year away.

The first act in Campbell’s remarkable life story, began when he made a name for himself as an ace guitarist with the now legendary Los Angeles musical collective, The Wrecking Crew; a bunch of peerless session musicians who played on scores of landmark recordings throughout the early sixties. Amongst the many milestones were the Righteous Brothers maudlin masterpiece, “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”, the Monkees teen-trauma “I’m a Believer” and Sinatra’s semi- swansong, “Strangers in the Night”. Campbell also cemented together more than a few bricks in Phil Spector’s palatial ‘Wall of Sound’ before the rise of the Beatles brought it tumbling down. Undeterred, he clambered onto the Beach Boys pop bandwagon, as the touring stand-in for a world-weary Brian Wilson. In the Kingdom of Pop, that’s tantamount to understudying the Son of God. Campbell remained in the fold when the Messiah returned and stuck around long enough to play bass on the historic Pet Sounds.

Although he’d charted in 1965, with an unlikely cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s pacifist melodrama “Universal Soldier” (Campbell supported the war in Vietnam), it wasn’t until he recorded John Hartford’s Grammy Award-winning “Gentle on my Mind” in 1967 that he truly crashed Pop’s party. He soon forged an improbable relationship with self-avowed hippie Jimmy Webb, who was in the process of penning a succession of magnificent country-pop ballads that would ultimately launch Campbell on the road to international Stardom. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, “Galveston” and, of course, “Wichita Lineman” remain pure examples of pop’s incommensurable faculty for loosening the tear ducts.

For a while Campbell was on easy street – a succession of Grammy’s and gold records, T.V shows and Oscar-winning films, followed in his footsteps, but as the Seventies slipped by, the troubadour began to lose his Midas touch. Even Jimmy Webb’s personal goldmine of heart-breaking ballads had panned out – their 1974 collaboration, “Reunion: The Songs of Jimmy Webb”, came up empty in the desperate search for a hit single.

Campbell needed a break and he got one. Jimmy Webb had often remarked on Campbell’s uncanny knack for identifying a sure-fire hit on first hearing and on that three-week tour of Australia he’d kept playing a song over and over again. “Rhinestone Cowboy” had been written and recorded by Larry Weiss, a songwriter trying to pitch his way out of the minor leagues and was brought to Campbell’s attention by producer Dennis Lambert after both Elvis and Neil Diamond had turned it down. The song reached No1 on the Billboard chart in September of 1975 and also topped the Country chart the same week, becoming the first single to achieve the ultimate crossover since 1961, when Jimmy Dean did the double with “Big Bad John”. The album went to the top of the Country chart too, another first for Campbell.

“Rhinestone Cowboy” opens, as the first unwritten law of song sequencing demands, with its second best track. Written especially to reflect Campbell’s parlous state of mind, by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, “Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in LA)” may be an over-familiar tale of a farm boy seduced by the big city, but Campbell infuses it with a real sense of self and his ‘on the money’ vocal confirms an unshakeable faith in the songs deeply personal lyric. “Comeback”, another tailor-made ballad by Lambert and Potter allows Campbell to be more philosophical as he stands at the crossroads of life, “I wrote the book on self- preservation / I’m a firm believer in my peace of mind” he sings with a newfound determination to conquer his demons and resurrect his career.

“Count On Me” finds Lambert and Potter and, by extension, Campbell himself in a forgiving frame of mind, as he pledges undying love to the girl who’s broken his heart. Encouraged by Sid Sharp’s gentle strings, and a catchy, full-throated chorus, Campbell somehow summons up an air of genuine nobility in defeat.

Lambert and Potter’s fourth and final contribution, “I Miss You Tonight” is a rather solemn ballad that doesn’t quite get off the runway. The nostalgia feels a little forced here, and even Campbell’s steadfast delivery can’t dispel the air of sluggish melancholia that pervades the song.

Nevertheless, if the album had continued in this soul-searching vein Campbell might have delivered one of pop’s great concept albums, a countrified Astral Weeks, or a star-spangled Blood on The Tracks. The reflective mood, however, is undermined fatally by the inclusion of Smokey Robinson and Ronald White’s soul-standard, ‘My Girl’. Campbell, as one would expect, handles the number in an entirely professional way, but after hearing the irrepressible Otis Redding knock this song clean out of the ballpark I wouldn’t have volunteered to be next up to bat! Despite the accomplished vocal, the end result is no more than a pale imitation of Redding’s classic version. It sounds like someone put a little too much water in the whiskey!

Suit courtesy of Manuel Cuevas AKA the Rhinestone Rembrandt

“Rhinestone Cowboy” is, without doubt, the emotional lodestone of the album. Whilst it might fall short of the unimpeachable ‘Wichita Lineman’, there’s no denying that, under the right circumstances, it can bring a self-pitying tear to the eye and a lump to the throat as you sing along with Campbell on that super-sized chorus –

“Like a rhinestone cowboy / riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo / like a rhinestone cowboy/getting cards and letters from people I don’t even know"..

On paper “Rhinestone Cowboy” seems a hackneyed tale - the travails of a country boy drawn to the bright lights and the big city - however, Campbell has plenty to work within the shape of an insightful, evocative lyric –

“I’ve been walking these streets so long / Singing the same old song / I know every crack in these dirty sidewalks of Broadway / Where hustles the name of the game / And nice guys get washed away like the snow and the rain”.

Campbell plays it dead straight and he delivers the ‘western’ lyric with all the poise and purpose of a Shakespearean actor.

Time can be unkind to a certain kind of song, just this kind of song, as a matter of fact. The kind of song sung by a man sporting an ultra-white rhinestone suit, the kind of suit that not even Jay Gatsby in his Cotton Club pomp would ever have dreamed of wearing. “Rhinestone Cowboy”, though, transcends time and place, transcends our sickly obsession with image, transcends its source material, transcends even the supposed wisdom of F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s a starry-eyed song and my guess is that it will continue to orbit rock ‘n’ roll heaven forever.

No sooner have we reached the album’s highpoint than we’re brought back down to earth with a bump, courtesy of a pair of mundane ballads. “I’d Build a Bridge” is a clichéd love song that left me more than a little queasy before its sorry end, while “Pencils For Sale” is laboured from the word go and not even an outbreak of whistling at the songs close (usually a sign of desperation) can salvage this schmaltzy, underwhelming ballad.

Thankfully, Randy Newman rides like the cavalry to Glen’s rescue. Campbell’s interpretation of “Marie” not only reminds us of what a truly wonderful composer Newman is, but it also serves to remind us just how good a singer Campbell could be when he put his heart and soul into it. Recalling the making of the album for the Guardian in 2013, Dennis Lambert summed it up this way “If we could bring something special to the table, he had the artistry and a name to make it really great”. “Marie” is a testament to that, as is the album’s closer, a cover of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s “We’re Over” a scathingly realistic break–up song. Tom Sellers’ arrangement is just the right side of grand and this allows Campbell to give a measured, understated interpretation of a very fine lyric.

As this is the 40th Anniversary Edition, the folks at Capitol have thrown in five bonus tracks for good measure. These include remixes of “Country Boy” and “Rhinestone Cowboy” and more interestingly the quirky “Record Collectors Dream” and, best of all, “Coming Home” a rather likable track that I hadn’t come across before. Released as a single in Japan back in 1975, it has a naively infectious, “Shiny Happy People” feel to it that Campbell wrings every last drop out of –

“Coming home to meet my brother / we’re coming home to one another / we gotta get to know each other now”.

Forty years on, it’s difficult not to see “Rhinestone Cowboy” as something of a missed opportunity. The album’s producers, Lambert and Potter, had a keen sense of the aesthetic environment that would inspire Campbell, that would strike a chord with him and force him to buckle down. However, their quartet of custom-built songs served only to set a standard that the rest of the album failed to live up to. Although the record finishes strongly, with a pair of perfectly realised covers, it’s in the middle section, despite the gigantic presence of “Rhinestone Cowboy” itself, that the album loses its way. With a Mickey Newbury cover here or there, say the heart-rending “ San Francisco Mabel Joy“ or the wistful “Frisco Depot”, “Rhinestone Cowboy” could have been an imaginatively thought through Urban Cowboy concept album (and there aren’t too many of those in anyone’s record collection!) Ultimately, though, Lambert and Potter didn’t quite have the courage of their convictions.