Can You Feel The Sun? (Cyberpunk 2077)

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.

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

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...?"