Dear Diary
Maybe running was a bad idea
On any usual occasion Sirius would have beaten both Remus and Peter. He was more physically fit due to Quidditch not to mention he had a head start. However, this was not a usual occasion. Halfway to the classroom Remus' hip locked up. Pain and tense muscles were not a rare occurrence for Remus. What was rare was the total lack of mobility that came with this particular pain. One moment he was running nearly catching up to Sirius and the next was on the ground. He wasn't quite sure how it had happened. Sirius was at his side in an instant.
"Moony what happened? Are you okay?"
Peter had stopped as well. He was clearly anxious, though Remus wasn't sure if it was because he was hurt, they were going to be late, or a mixture of both.
"You guys go on ahead. I'll be okay. We don't need all of us being late to class now do we?"
Sirius shook his head, "No we're staying. 'All for one and one for all' and all that."
Remus rolled his eyes, "Really. I'm fine."
Sirius plopped on the ground next to Remus crossing his arms.
"Fine if you must," Remus shook his head secretly pleased, then turned to Peter, "you can go to class Pete. I'm fine. Really."
"Okay," Peter briefly looked at Sirius, who rolled his eyes, "Sirius?"
"Go on Wormy. I can take care of Mr Stubborn myself."
"Thank you!" Peter shot Remus one more concerned look then started sprinting down the hall again. Once they could no longer see Peter Sirius stood up.
"What happened?"
"I'm fine."
"Yeah I know. You told me that already. Now the truth." Sirius was staring at Remus like his health was the most important thing in the world. He could feel butterflies forming in his stomach and the rouging in his cheeks once again.
"I… um…" he couldn't concentrate on articulating a sentence, "My hip locked up. It hurts to move it out of this position." Remus gestured to his right leg.
"Is there anything I can do?" Sirius was beginning to look as anxious as Peter. The worry lines marred his face but somehow made him even more beautiful. "Rem?"
Remus snapped back to reality. He was late for class and he couldn't move. He really hated his lycanthropy. It wouldn't be so bad if he only had to think about it on full moons but there were constant reminders. The scars that marked his whole body, the chronic pain, and the sudden uncontrollable bursts of anger (although Remus worried that maybe those weren't due to the lycanthropy but more of a problem with him).
"I just need to stretch out," he said finally.
"Okay, how do I help?"
"I don't need help stretching," Remus knew this wasn't strictly true. Poppy had taught him a few that felt a million times better with help but he had never had anyone but her help him. He was embarrassed enough as it was.
"Okay. I'll be right here if you need me."
It didn't take Remus as long as he thought to feel well enough to walk. He noticed a slight limp as he took his first few steps. If this kept up he was going to need a cane before he was twenty but that was a thought for another day. Right now he needed to focus on getting to class. He was definitely late. Not looking forward to another detention Remus pushed all thoughts of canes from his head.
Sirius was staring at him again out of, concern? Remus couldn't be sure but it's what made the most sense to him. Why else would he be staring?
"I'm not going to fall again."
"I didn't think you were."
"Then why? Nevermind, let's get to class."
Remus wanted to run to class but Sirius had forbidden it upon Remus' first stumbling. He had tried to protest it but given up relatively quickly when Sirius wrapped his hand around his waist to brace him.
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The Most Unreliable Narrator I Have Ever Seen
soooooo I had a Cyberpunk-obsessed phase pass recently, and this time Johhny Silverhand's character caught my eye. His story, more specifically, and how... inconsistent he seems, depending on each source.
In the game, Johhny acts like a bastard for most of the game. He panic-rages on his first meeting with V, throws many threats around, but is later beaten into the background with the blocker pills Misty gave to V. Even Johnny's friends' are well, they react Loudly to his return. Y'know, make it known his presence alone provokes a lot of anger from them.
Even during his first appearance, when V gets thrown into Silverhand's memories of his SAMURAI concert, the only real thing V recalls is the all-consuming rage that he felt, which he tried to shout out through the microphone, but it never felt like enough.
And doesn't this sound weird then, that the only thing Johnny does throughout the game after that first meeting is help V out? He learns about the Smasher guy hideout at the docks (he does that through dubious means but that's Johnny for you), he helps V out when the seizures become worse, he calmly agrees to Any decision V makes, despite V clearly Not being in any real state to oppose him in the finale of the game, he plans the whole thing with "Alt" so V can get his body back at Johnny's own expense, from the beginning, and he doubles down on that claim at the end of the game.
Do you see the dissonance? The egoist rockerboy that admitted to using his friends to getting what he wants, and the downright self-sacrificing hero and a friend that is Johnny at the end of the game? People change, sure, but this divide is very massive and too sudden, so I wanted to dig into that. And what I've stumbled upon, with the help of canon Cyberpunk materials like the Red sourcebook (or, more specifically, LayedBackGamers' reading of the canon books and his lore videos on different topics), is that
Johhny Silverhand from Cyberpunk 2077 is the Most Unreliable Narrator I've Ever Seen.
Count with me here:
Johhny's personality in general. No matter what your interpretation of him his, it's impossible to ignore that Johhny is very much a people person and he exploits that knowledge and charisma to suit his own goals. If you choose to trust him, then you might have already been played.
2) Johhny has been alone, only his lovely self for 50+ years inside the Arasaka chip. Don't ask me how he is still even remotely sane, I haven't got a clue (hopefully the time as a construct without outside stimulation flies differently and he hasn't felt those 50 years in real time). The thing to mention here, however, is that, being alone with your thoughts and emotions for a long time, having nothing else for entertainment, is a great opportunity to rewrite your own memory of events or emotions you've felt.
3) Lack of a body. The aforementioned constant rage, that was the dominant emotion is Johnny's life (before Alt, at least, if Never Fade Away is anything to go by, and I mean, that's literally a love ballad), is a symptom of his PTSD from his too-young years serving in the corpo war, same as his signature silver hand. I'm not a specialist here, but I do know PTSD, especially for war veterans, is a physiological illness just as much as it is a mental one. Johnny's body literally had trouble living normally after that experience, and knowing this bastard - he never managed to treat that. Existing as a personality construct frees him from the many bonuses of being corporeal, but it also free him from the physiological side of PTSD. His day-to-day existence is fundamentally different from that of the Johnny Silverhand that the world knew 50 years ago, so yes, as a 'time traveler' or a source of information and comparison about the 70's and 20's of cyberpunk world Johhny is not a good source.
4) The chip with Johnny is literary inside the head of another person. The characters in game question, multiple times, just which decisions is V making on his own, and which of them might be Johnny's doing. Not consciously, no, but V and Johnny are clearly not your simple neighbours. They are not your 'close friends that start subconsciously copying each other' too. It is quite possible that the chip with Johhny is adapting to the 'hardware' it is running on, so it is specifically implementing parts of V's personality into Johnny, to minimize the 'friction' between the personality and the body it is supposed to inhabit. Everyone say hi to existential horror)
5) How does Soulkiller ever work? Is there data on how much the resulting engram actually resembles the person it tried to copy? How did the process of copying Johnny go? I can answer the last one - very badly.
Death of Johnny is told in excruciating detail in the Cyberpunk sourcebooks. Johnny died on the floor of Arasaka tower, torn in two by a shotgun blast from Smasher. There is no information on how much time it takes Soulkiller to create the engram from the brain, but it better have finished doing that before Johnny's brain started dying from a lack of blood and oxygen, and he clearly didn't have much time either, considering bisection is not the best for bodily fluid preservation, so it's a wonder the engram even works properly. Plus, during the initial heist to steal the chip with Johnny, the chip was damaged further before the idiots decided to stick an unknown harddrive into their heads to preserve it. Basically, it's nothing short of a miracle, that engram-Johnny is actually a whole damn person, that he can function, think and feel properly (well, as much as Johnny can do those things)
It is very sad that V can't talk to Johnny about this, as the man does blame himself over things he hasn't even done, and he had done enough emotional damage to himself and people around him without that kind of burden on top of it.
6) Johnny's memories are literally false. The attentive reader had to pick this up in my previous point - didn't Johnny die in the hands of Arasaka after they interrogated him? Nope. Nope, and I can say that confidently because,
(drumroll please)
Cyberpunk tabletop sourcebooks! Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the Cyberpunk universe and the TTRP series of games, has worked closely with CDPR writers during the production of the 2077. He oversaw everything, and he says that 2077 is in the same cyberpunk universe too, it's not an 'alternate reality' or anything.
Johnny Silverhand died while trying to buy time for his friends to escape, from a shotgun shot from Adam Smasher. That's it, he died on that floor, there was noone to interrogate, no rooftop helicopter he ran for.
The sequence of 'memories' we see from Johnny's POV in the game is a mishmash of two different assaults on the Arasaka towers, yes towers there were two of them. There is a great video explaining all the small and Major details Johnny's version of events got wrong, because we have the sourcebooks and the text inside. You may accuse me of holding a 'holy canon' argument ... and well, yeah, this is kind of holy knowledge, as it was written for gamemasters.
Still, some of the things in Johnny's version are Major, and while the media certainly covered the whole story extensively with corpo propaganda (oh, btw, Johnny didn't bomb anything, he probably didn't even know there was a nuke involved, he is literally just a scapegoat), there are some holes that a citizen of this world might know and wish to poke. The aforementioned Two Arasaka towers, or the absence of the legendary solo Morgan Blackhand from Johnny's story. Interestingly enough, there is a radiostation of Maximum Mike in-game, who is actually just pretty much Mike Pondsmith, and he does propose a couple of questions the 'official' version of the attack doesn't cover (like, where would a rockerboy even get a nuke, he might have been popular, but that's not just something you find without military contracts, and that means corporations). Another thing is that since Arasaka owns Soulkiller and has had the engram for a couple of decades, it is quite possible they are the ones responsible for messing with Johnny's memories.
So uh, yeah, Johnny is the Most Unrealible Narrator I have ever seen. Johnny of 2077 is most certainly not the Johnny of 2020's, but this might be a good thing. Maybe the 'real' 2020's Silverhand could never have made the progress the engram did, or become such a good friend and companion for V, or maybe he could have done those things too. We'll never know. I really love this story anyway.
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Eddie's dad drags him along to steal his first car at age 13. Eddie's excited, nervous, but eager to please his father. He knows his mother wouldn't approve but she's passed out drunk again, so her opinion hadn't been relevant when his father had barged in and swooped him up.
His father takes him to a nice end of town, filled with mansions that are strung up with extravagant Christmas lights to display their wealth and holiday cheer. Eddie doesn't go to these neighborhoods, never has occasion to. They breeze by the residential area and wind up near shopping centers, boutiques with fancy polos and knick knacks.
When they pull into a packed parking lot, filled with last minute holiday shoppers, Eddie can feel nervous sweat dripping down his skin.
"We're gonna have a damn good Christmas this year." His father mumbles, greed in his eyes and breath sour with the stench of alcohol as he scans across the lot for fancy cars. He spots his mark. "There. That one Ed. Do you see it? No cameras pointed towards it. Snow still melting on the hood so engines still warm. Good solid Beemer, real nice car. Will sell for a pretty penny."
Eddie just nods, his fingers shaking as his eyes flit around the lot. There are people going to a from their cars. Its dark, with a gentle flurry of snow but anyone could see them in the well lit lot.
They get out of their own car, the doors sqeaky and rust blooming across the old metal. Eddie cringes at the sound. Its so loud. It feels like eyes are watching all around him. The air feels cold and thin, like its not reaching his lungs right even though he's practically panting.
His dad sidles up to the car, his tools in his pocket and it takes him less than 30 seconds to jimmy the driver side door open and he hits the unlock button so Eddie can scramble into the passenger side.
"Now look here son." His dad takes his tools out, lays them across his lap and gestures to the console. "You see these new fancy cars, there's a little latch right here. You gotta tug it till that snaps and it'll pop right out." He pops the plastic off, revealing the mess of wires beneath. "See easy as that." And then he hands the pliers to Eddie, who fumbles and almost drops them to the fancy floor mats.
"Now you cut this one here and we are gonna cut this other one here. Then we just need to spark em" Eddie follows the instructions, slow and unsteady because all he can register right now is his heartbeat slamming against his ribs.
He strips the wires back and his father takes over, grabs them and clicks the exposed metal together until the car roars to life. He gives a woop and Eddie can't help but give a shakey smile.
"That's it?" Eddie asks, because it feels too easy.
"That's it son." His fathers crooked teeth shine yellow in the streetlight as he grins.
His father puts the car in reverse, backing out and driving nice and easy. He gets them onto the main road and Eddie can finally feel his nerves start to calm.
"Now we are just gonna get this beauty over to Johnny's. Then-" his dad is interrupted by a sound, a small sleepy groan from the backseat and they both freeze.
"Dad? Are you done shopping alread-" The voice cuts off and Eddie swings around and his gaze finds a boy roughly his age, sitting up and looking like a deer in the headlights as he realizes it's not his father driving the car, but Eddie's. Fuck. Shit.
Eddie can feel the tension, flits his eyes to his father who is looking in the rear view mirror, his face shuddering into panic and then swiftly schooling his face into blankness.
"Who are you?" The boy asks wearily.
His father plasters on a fake smile. "Hey kiddo. Ran into your dad in the store with my boy here. He was saying how he was buying you Christmas gifts and didn't want you to see em before the big day. So he asked if I would run you home real quick."
The boys eyes narrow suspiciously and Eddie knows before he opens his mouth that he isn't buying the bullshit his dad is trying to sell him one bit. This has gone sideways and Eddie knows that his dad can't get caught again or he will go away for a long time and then it's just going to be Eddie and his mom who barely was a person these days, drowning herself in booze and pills and powder.
The boy lunges quickly to the door and Eddie hears the click of the locks as his dad beats the kid to it. The car swerves precariously as his dad is distracted.
"Let me out!" The boy yells, a tremor in his voice and the sound makes Eddie want to curl up and hide. This is so fucked. They are kidnapping him. This is a kidnapping.
"Dad-" Eddie begins to plead, to try to reason that this is too far, that he wants no part in this. Fuck the money. Fuck Christmas. He wants to go home and let this kid go home too.
His dad doesn't let him finish, just whirls around with like a cornered viper and lashes out. His fist hits the other kid right in the face and the sound is stark and violent. The boy cries out, immediately gushing blood from his nose. He's letting out terrified whimpers. Eddie is terrified too.
"Shut the fuck up!" His father screams at the boy, the car swerving dangerously and someone honks at them. Hot tears track down Eddie's face and he hiccups out a sob. His father rounds on him next, "Shut the fuck up!" He repeats, this time lashing out towards his own son.
The boy is cowering against the backseat, blood and tears on his face as Eddie shrinks into his own seat. What thw fuck is happening?
"Jesus fucking Christ. Shut up shut up shut up." His father is losing control, panicking. Eddie knows to keep himself scarce when his dad gets like this, violent and unpredictable, but he can't run while trapped in a moving car.
Eddie can't run away. His throat feels like its closing, like there's no oxygen in this stolen little car. Maybe the other kid sucked it up for himself. He can't run away. The doors are locked and they are kidnapping someone and he can't get away.
His father is shouting, rage in his tone but the words become jumbled and lost in the ringing thats taken over Eddie's ears. The other boy is crying, the sound of alarm like battery acid along his nerves, tingling and burning and awful.
Eddie doesn't register what he's doing until he has his hands on the wheel, trying to wrench it from his father's hold. There's screaming, and the blair of car horns, but Eddie just wants to make this night stop, wants to make the boy stop crying because it's making something primal in Eddie terrified, wants his father to just pull the car over because this is too fucking much.
The world goes sideways, crunching metal and glass and then Eddie feels the cold gentle snowfall against his face. There's warmth dripping from his hairline, and lights blur in and out of focus. Sound is muffled, and his brain sluggish when he turns to look around.
His father is there, head pushed against the shattered windshield at an awkward angle, red stark against his pale skin. His eyes are closed, his body still. Pain laces through Eddie and he cries out as he shifts away from the sight. The world is sluggish and slow. He smells pine and salty tangy blood.
He hears another whimper and turns and behind him the boy is still there, still huddled down and trembling with wide brown eyes in the backseat. Glass glitters in his hair. It looks kind of magical Eddie thinks in a daze.
A siren cuts through the fog he's in, snapping the world back into focus and it's like a dip into fridge waters. There's so much at once. Eddie can see the flash of red and blue, drawing closer.
Cops. Oh God cops. He can't be here. He looks to his dad, still unmoving and slumped against the steering wheel. He will never be able to drag him out in time. He won't be able to stop the cops from finding them like this.
He hears the boy shifting in the back and then the crunch of metal as he shoves the door open. Eddie scrambles out of the car right after, adrenaline punching through his veins.
The boy stands, legs trembling and puts his arms around himself to stave off the cold. The lights draw close, bathing him in the colors and once again Eddie's brain fizzles just a bit, caught off guard at the sight.
He doesn't have time to think, can't come up with a plan or a story to get his dad out of this. But he can run now. He can get away. The forest looms dark ahead of them where they've wrecked the car up against a row of pines.
Eddie stumbles up, worn out shoes sliding in the snow and he heads for the tree line. He stops just at the edge when he hears the boy again, a soft scared sound warbling out of his throat.
Fuck his father for getting them into this mess. Fuck his father for hitting the poor kid. Fuck his father for making another little boy cry. Eddie's used to it. Eddie can handle it. His heart bleeds to hear it come from someone else.
Even still, there's something inside him that knows he can't let his dad get caught kidnapping some kid.
Eddie whirls around and sprints to the boy, grabbing his hand tightly in his own. "Come on." He hisses to him. "We have to run now." And then he tugs him along into the dark safety of the forest as the lights pulls up, the cop car skidding to a stop.
"Wait, but-" the boy protests, but doesn't stop keeping pace behind Eddie.
"Please." Eddie pleads, because he doesn't know what they are doing, but he knows cops are bad news and he knows his dad will go to jail again but maybe it won't be so long if he doesn't have a fucking kidnapping charge to add to the car theft. "Please just trust me."
They lock eyes, brown mirrors of terror, and there's no reason to trust him at all, but he feels it, the chance that maybe he will.
And he does. The boy nods and goes quiet and picks up the pace, his chilled fingers squeezing onto Eddie's like a lifeline as they stumble through the woods.
They can't see the lights or hear the sirens anymore when they finally slow down. Their breath visible in the cold night air, both panting and shivering from the temperature and the nerves. Eddie can't find it in him to drop the warm point of contact between them.
Eddie doesn't know what he's going to do. He could go home to his mother, probly still numb to the world around her, but the cops would be there soon enough. He can probly stay at a friend's but then there's the problem of the kid he's dragging around that has a bloodied face and a quickly darkening bruise on his eye.
"Where are we going?" The boy asks him, loud in the quiet of the night.
"I-" Eddie stumbles over his words, grasping for an answer. "I dont know." He hears the resignation in his own voice, the lost quality.
The boy squeezes his fingers and its grounding. His tears have all dried. "It's okay. I dont know where to go either." He runs his other hand through his hair and some glass tumbles out and he giggles. Eddie smiles at him. Its an adorable sound. He knows its probly just the high from the adrenaline making they giddy but. Its nice. "Your dad is kinda scary. Is your mom nicer?"
"No." Eddie says automatically. "Well yeah, but not really. She doesnt say much"
"My parents don't say much either. To me. I mean they say alot, just not like. To me. " The boy trails off. "I'm Steve by the way."
"I'm Eddie." This is weird. Small talk with a boy he and his dad had unknowingly kidnapped. Really weird.
"My dad will be pissed about his car. He just bought it." Steve says and Eddie cringes.
"I'm sorry." That doesn't feel like enough. "I'm so fucking sorry. He, my dad, we just wanted to have a good Christmas. We didn't know you were there."
"Its okay." Steve says easily, like he wasn't just a sobbing mess. "I mean it sucks and my face hurts but. Well my dad probly didn't even remember I was in the car either. So. " He shrugs. "Is your head okay?"
Eddie had forgotten about his head, but he reaches up and feels the blood, sticky and congealed and clumping itchy. It hurts when he presses in tentatively, but not the worst he's ever had.
"I think its okay. It doesn't hurt much. Is your face okay?"
"Does it not look okay?" Steve looks a little panicked again, reaches up and touches his nose gingerly.
"No! No it looks good" Eddie tries to reassure. "Pretty as a peach Stevie. Just a little bruised. " and then he cringes because did he just say that?
"Oh." Eddie can't tell what kind of tone that is. Waits for the other boy to get angry, but he doesn't. Just keeps pace as they walk along.
"So should I just take you home?" Eddie asks, because they kinda need to make a plan. They can't keep wandering the woods all night.
But Steve's face kind of scrunches, then winces when there's pain at the movement. "Where are you gonna go?"
Eddie isn't sure. His mind scrambles to think of a place to go. Uncle Wayne lives in the next state over. He could probly stay there until things cool off a bit. His mother will come out of her daze to come get him eventually.
"I think im gonna go to my Uncles? He lives in Indiana."
"How are you gonna get all the way to Indiana?" Steve asks, eyes wide and brown and curious.
"Hitchhike? Or there might be a train that goes that way i could hop on." Its winter and cold, so maybe the train isn't the best idea. But well, he doesn't have much of a choice.
"That's so far away though." Steve's got concern glittering in his eyes. "Is that safe?"
"Safer than going home. The cops will see our footprints in the snow. They'll probly go to my house soon as they lock up my dad."
"Can I come?"
Eddie stops walking, sways in place. What? Steve stops beside him and turns to him.
"Why would you wanna come with me to Indiana? We just kidnapped you!"
"Well your dad kidnapped me technically, which apparently was an accident. You tried to stop him. You tried to protect me." Steve looks so earnest. He looks pretty in the moonlight, soft snowflakes falling around them. "And I can return the favor if I go with you. Protect you till you get to your uncles. Then I can call my parents to come get me."
And thats such a crazy leap of logic. Steve isn't any bigger than Eddie is, all gangly teenage limbs and hadn't really put up any fight while they were in the car. Its such a stupid idea.
But there's warmth blooming in Eddie's chest because yeah, it might be kinda nice to have some company. Safer for sure, and if they did take the train they could huddle together to keep warm instead of risking getting the wrong kind of trucker pulling over to give them a ride. Maybe they could even be friends.
Thats stupid. A rich boy being friends with trailer trash who tried to steal his car and then wrecked it with him in it. But no matter how stupid, it's a nice thought. Maybe they could just play pretend for a few days. They weren't too old for that yet.
"Okay. Yeah okay." A laugh bubbles out of him because its rediculous, but Steve laughs too. "You can be my knight in shining armor, escorting the runaway rogue after a heist gone sideways."
"You're weird." Steve says, but there's no malice in it. Just mirth tinged with confusion.
Eddie tightens his fingers around Steve's and turns them south, towards the rail yards where they can hop on a train.
(I just started typing and then this happened. Feel free to use this, expand on it, whatever. I just loved the idea of the boys being young runaways together, hopping trains and getting into rough situations and becoming codependent and ending up with Wayne taking them both in and them growing up together and pining since they were kids. I might continue this. I might not. We will see.)
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