Addiction (v, pg-13, Lisa/Joshua)

[always_a_queen]

Title: Addiction

Author: Always_A_Queen / Small-Wonders on Fanfiction.net

Word Count: Around 3,500

Characters/Pairings: Joshua/Lisa, slightly Lisa/Tyler. Anna. Erica. Jack. Hobbes. Ryan. Maybe a little Jack / Erica if you squint…and maybe use a microscope.

Rating: Well, I thought it was at very most going to be K+, but then I wrote the darn thing and decided that it probably deserves a T for sexual content. Tiny bit of language (the world h-ll), but nothing graphic. Basically, if you've seen the show, this is probably fine.

Warnings/Spoilers: Takes place (and probably goes drastically and irrevocably AU) after 1x8, "We Can't Win." Also features a (slightly) non-canon pairing.

Fandom: V (2009)

Summary: Human emotions, Lisa learns, are like drugs or Anna's bliss: addicting. V Fanfic. One-shot.

Disclaimer: I own nothing and am merely borrowing characters and scenarios for my own amusement.

Author's Notes: First V fanfic. Semi-Crack pairing. I sort of got hooked on the idea during 1x08 and plot bunnies are funny, fickle things. 
Read. Enjoy. Review!

Addiction
By Always_A_Queen

It's a bizarre dance, the one they find themselves engaged in.

Lisa avoids him for weeks after their conversation. Thanks to Joshua and his lies, her mother is pleased with her. Thanks to Joshua and his lies, she no longer knows if she can trust her childhood friend. He has proven his loyalty to her, perhaps…but simultaneously he has proven himself disloyal to her mother.

Lisa doesn't know what to make of that.

Additionally, it becomes increasingly hard to not be around Tyler. Lisa doesn't understand human emotions, not fully, but sometimes she thinks that if she did, she might recognize the ache in her heart whenever she looks at Tyler as love.

Similarly, she feels like the searing pain that burns through her chest at the sight of Joshua must be hatred…or the sting of betrayal.

Time trickles on. Days go by. She spends every moment that she can with Tyler. She doesn't have to worry about guarding herself with him. If any of her fellow V's asks her about it, all she needs to say is that it is an act, noting more. Would the daughter of Anna really be so easily swayed?

And yet, the more she is around Tyler, the more she revels in the feelings that swell in her chest.

She tries to stop it; she really does.

But human emotions, Lisa learns, are like drugs or Anna's bliss.

Addicting.

The second round of empathy tests start.

Joshua finds her a few days later, and without a word escorts her to what Lisa is now sure will be her death. Her friend may have been willing to hide a small discrepancy, but he most likely shrugged it off as a margin of error. A mistake in the program.

But Lisa knows the truth now.

She's feeling.

And this time, she knows, as she lies back in the cool chair and focuses her human eyes on the screens above her, she will fail this test. It will be her fault.

And then Joshua will have no choice.

"You passed." He tells her simply.

It takes a great amount of effort not to let any surprise register on her face. "I passed?"

"With flying colors," he does not smile. "Come with me."

She follows him, her arms locked behind her back.

They walk down a series of hallways and down into a cargo area of the ship. Now Lisa is almost frightened. Did he lie? Did she fail, and now he is taking her away to kill her?

But no, he stops, turns towards her and extends his hand.

"John May Lives."

And now Lisa is sure she knows what betrayal feels like.

It takes a long time, to understand that Joshua has been Fifth Column all along.

He doesn't tell her why; perhaps because he suspects she knows, given her failure of the two empathy tests and her relationship with Tyler.

"I hold no loyalty toward Anna," he tells her once, when they know they are alone and away from dangerous ears, "My loyalty is for you. Your mother's reign will end someday, and you will be our High Commander. I believe you will be a better leader than she. You are the best hope the resistance has had in years."

"And I will protect you with my life," he swears softly.

Weeks drag on into months.

Lisa only knows bits and pieces of her mother's plans, but she does know that Anna is growing more and more frustrated. Her daughter's involvement in the resistance is something that, while unbeknownst to anyone outside of the organization, has helped keep the spirits of the Fifth Column members hopeful. They have a leader who can rise to fill Anna's shoes. They still have a trump card in this fight.

Which is why, Joshua reminds her over and over again, they can and will sacrifice practically anything and anyone to ensure that Lisa and Joshua are never discovered as Fifth Column.

Lisa, for her part, hates sitting around and doing nothing.

Joshua seems to hate it more, but he reminds her, over and over again, that if she dies now, the remaining resistance may just up and die with her.

"You are our best hope," he whispers one night, skimming his fingers lightly down her cheek and fingering a few strands of her hair. Lisa knows not what to make of the gesture, so she simply bids him goodnight and slips off to her quarters.

Emotions are wonderful, yet horribly confusing things.

A plot to assassinate Anna is concocted.

The Fifth Column cell on the ground wants to use Lisa to carry it out. It is one of those rare occasions when Anna is off on another ship, and all Lisa needs to do to successfully leave the dangerous safety of the V shuttle is insinuate that she wishes to see the mainland. She brings protection now, of course, since the numbers of humans who are now distrustful of her species have doubled and tripled over the last few weeks.

Joshua accompanies her.

He says nothing as the Fifth Column's leaders debate and discuss the repercussions of Lisa poisoning her mother.

"I don't like it." A tall, thin man with blond hair, who Lisa believes has the name of Jack, shakes his head sadly. "It could backfire easily."

"And it could work just as easily," the man who speaks now sets Lisa's teeth on edge. He reminds her of a general who doesn't care how many soldiers he has to loose to win this battle. With a sneer, the man turns to the only woman in the group and Tyler's mother, Erica. "Help me out here!"

"Jack's right, Kyle," she placates softly. "This has as much of a shot as coming back and biting us as it does of actually working."

Lisa looks at Joshua, trying to gauge his reaction to everything. His face is expressionless, a side-affect, perhaps, of always being so guarded on-ship.

Ryan, a V and one of the more level headed of the bunch, looks like he agrees with Erica. Killing Anna is a good idea, but… "Lisa cannot be the one to do it and still be an effective leader. If any of the V's who are loyal to Anna find out that she staged this régime change, there is no way that she can continue to help the resistance. She'll become a puppet for those loyal to her mother."

"I'll do it," Joshua says finally. "You need someone aboard the ships with access to Anna who is not Lisa. I'm the best you've got."

"No!" Lisa's sudden outburst surprises even herself. "If this is going to work, I need Joshua. And if it doesn't work, I need Joshua. He is too valuable. I will not condone this." As she specks, she steps between everyone else and Joshua, who looks more than a little flattered at her praise.

"Way I see it, it isn't exactly your place to say who does what," Kyle grumbles. "You're not queen yet."

Lisa raises herself up to her full height. "But you want me to be, so shut up and start working on another solution besides leaving me in charge of the V's with no Fifth Column council readily available."

"I agree with Lisa," Erica cuts in. "Joshua is too valuable, particularly if this plan works."

Jack nods. "We can't do it this way. And really, we shouldn't have involved either Lisa or Joshua at all. Plausible deniability and all that."

Kyle looks peeved, but says nothing. Ryan says nothing as well, but seems to be in agreement with Erica and Jack.

Lisa breathes a sigh of relief.

"You did not have to say those things," Joshua says, biting into his slice of cheese-pizza as they walk together, looking like just another couple strolling down the pier with their human clothes and expressions.

"They're true," Lisa defends softly, enjoying the bubbly taste of the human's soda as it tickles her tongue. "I need you."

They stop and lean over the wood railing, gazing out at the ocean. Lisa threads her arm through Joshua's and drops her head onto his shoulder, enjoying the brief physical contact and the sensations that flood her body.

He says nothing and merely takes her hand in his.

Anna has Tyler killed.

Erica, understandably, flips out. Lisa wonders if the woman would be volunteering to kill Anna herself if Jack wasn't around to keep her sane. As for Lisa, Joshua is the only one with the presence of mind to get and keep her away from her mother. He takes her off of the ship the moment he hears the news, before Lisa herself knows.

He gives her the gift of being allowed to cry. They find a hotel room and stay there for a weekend. Lisa cries and Joshua rubs her back and brushes her hair. They hide away as long as they can and Lisa wishes with everything inside her that they could just run away and escape all this. Anna. The Fifth Column. War. Death. Suffering. And Lisa learns a hard truth.

Human emotion - as wonderful as it is - hurts.

The world falls to chaos.

Erica finds proof that Anna murdered her son, and people start rising up in extremely high numbers to kill the Vs. The war is fought with blood and weapons now, instead politics and diplomacy. The humans confiscate almost all their shuttles and Anna, Lisa, Joshua and a handful of the other Vs are trapped aboard the ship while the humans bombard them with weapons that Lisa doesn't even know the names of.

Anna requests that Lisa begin birthing soldiers. It is, in reality, a demand.

If Lisa had her way, she would never have spoken to her mother again after Tyler's death, but certain things, Joshua reminds her, cannot be helped. Anna would question Lisa's loyalties and perhaps kill her herself, if she did not treat her mother in the exact same matter as she had before.

So Lisa agrees.

There is no time for pomp and circumstance. Lisa is merely pointed in the direction of her mother's closet and directed to change into something appropriate. She takes little time in the selection, choosing simply a dark navy robe that matches her current under-things. There is no thought as to who her mate will be, only that Anna has likely chosen someone strong and capable of doing what needs to be done.

Lisa shudders at that thought. She's done this with Tyler. Quite a few times, actually.

But she feels so much more now.

Mating is simply no longer a ritual to her. The anxiety that settles in the pit of her stomach nearly makes her ill for a few minutes as she dresses and follows her mother down a series of hallways.

"I must apologize, Lisa," Anna tells her when they arrive at their destination. "It was my hope not to ask you to take on this burden until much later in life. But this is a necessity now. I will also ask that you leave your mate alive pending this encounter. He will most likely be needed again." She sets a cool hand on Lisa's shoulder, but Lisa feels no connection or warmth from the contact. "Take as much time as you need. But do what needs to be done."

With that, Anna leaves.

Lisa swallows tightly when she finally draws in a deep breath and steps into the cool, sanitary room.

Joshua stands before her, his jacket removed and his hands behind his back.

Lisa's eyes widen. "I didn't know it was you," fear edges into her voice, but he smiles slightly at her.

"I know." He steps towards her and strokes her hair tenderly. "It's alright, Lisa."

"I'm scared," she whispers softly and he nods.

"I know that too," he tells her, one hand finding the ties on the robe and skillfully unbinding them. Lisa does nothing to stop the garment from falling to the floor. "You can do this, Lisa. You need to. I'll help you."

He kisses her.

She understands the biology of it all.

Words and sentences play out in her mind, all worded and described as if written down in what Tyler would have called a textbook. Lisa understands biology, anatomy. She understands what needs to be done. She's seen diagrams, heard lectures.

The fact that she's done this before with Tyler has little to no impact on how she does it now, with Joshua. It's like comparing night and day. Darkness and light. Tyler and Joshua are such polar opposites that it is nigh impossible to give an accurate description of the differences between the two.

Joshua is gentle. Tender. And, she notes, either more experienced at this sort of thing than Tyler, or more mature in dealing with the situation than Tyler was. When he promises to help her get through this, he means it. There comes a point where Lisa is so involved in the sensations his fingers and lips are creating against her skin that she fails to think through every action of her own. She simply forgets everything she thinks she knows and allows him to take the lead, the initiative.

It makes things easier.

V's do not make love.

They mate.

It's a duty, much like cleaning and following orders.

Tyler made love to her, and that is what started Lisa on this whole adventure of love and emotions in the first place.

But she feels so much more now.

And what she feels with Joshua scares her more than anything else in the world. Its almost like bliss, but not quite. It's a bliss unlike anything Anna has ever created or manufactured.

Neither her nor Joshua ever says a word, but every action, ever touch, says more than mere words ever could.

Her pregnancy is quick and brief.

She's confined to her chambers for most of it. Locked away like a fragile porcelain doll, while her mother screams and rants and vents her frustration with the humans by giving up diplomacy altogether and beginning to bomb cities.

When she inevitably gives birth, Anna gives her a few days to rest before shoving her back into that cold room.

"Get it done," she tells her daughter coolly. "And do it quickly."

It's the little bit of defiance left in Lisa that causes her to allow Joshua to take his sweet, sweet time.

Her mother will have to wait.

It happens over five more times, each time filled with something infinitely more pleasurable and intimate than the last.

Lisa almost, almost looks forward to those fleeting moments where there is nothing but her and him and she feels almost, almost human. Outside of that room, neither she nor Joshua speaks of the intimacy they now share routinely, and Lisa does her best to forget that it ever happens. Not because she wishes that it didn't.

But because she's scared to admit that those are some of the best moments of her life.

Anna finds out.

Lisa learns this when she is called to her mother's chambers during one of the brief interim periods between mating sessions and pregnancies. Her mother says nothing, just lunges towards her with a glistening dagger in one hand and murder in her eyes.

Lisa is sure that Anna would never even look back at her if she managed to go through with the deed.

Joshua, who Lisa was unaware was even in the room, stops Anna by knocking her unconscious with a blunt object, severing her human skin around the base of her neck, and suddenly he and Lisa both are on the run from both the human's government and Anna's wrath.

The Fifth Column hides them for three months.

During that time, Lisa and Joshua live in a series of seedy motels, blending in with the humans by finally and fully embracing their humanity and the emotions it entails.

It's wonderful to finally be allowed to both feel and let it show.

It happens one night, late, when Lisa is tired of everything and everyone.

Tired of her mother, tired of running, and tired of letting every emotion show except the ones that directly relate to Joshua.

So she screams, she yells, and she throws a lamp at her friend's head.

Thankfully, he has the presence of mind to duck. He then to dashes across the room, takes her by the shoulders and kisses her senseless.

Her legs snap firmly around his waist as he lifts her up and together they stumble towards the bed. It's the first time they've been together like this since the ship and it's infinitely better now than it ever was before.

Being with him is an addiction. A drug.

She doesn't know what she would do without him.

Anna dies.

Lisa wishes sometimes that she could claim direct responsibility for her mother's demise, but it is actually the fault of the renegade band of Fifth Column members who manage to finagle their way onto their ship and drive a dagger though Anna's heart.

And so Lisa is left with the complicated task of assuring the humans that she is not her mother, and she truly means them no harm.

It doesn't work as well as she wishes it did.

She sends the majority of the ships back home several months later.

Joshua stays by her side through it all. Ever silent, ever watchful. Against the advise of many Non-Fifth Column V's, Lisa officially takes him as her mate.

The secret smile he gives her at the small ceremony makes her sure that he wants this as much as she.

She feels happy for the first time since Tyler.

Maybe that means she is in love.

The rest of the ships leave slowly, one at a time.

They'll go back home. Immediately upon their arrival, Lisa will most likely be dethroned, and someone else will step up to lead their race. Lisa secretly hopes that they will decide that this planet isn't worth the effort, but she still knows that the chances that the V's may come back years later are still high.

She finds that she doesn't care.

She's done what she can, and if that isn't good enough, well, she doesn't know what is.

Las Vegas is an interesting town.

Joshua takes her there with the fake ID's Erica has found for them. They 'elope' in a slightly absurd ceremony that Lisa is sure isn't very professional, but she finds herself crying in a rush of unprecedented human emotion.

Unlike the way she cried after Tyler died, this crying feels wonderful.

Lisa doesn't understand human emotions.

But she thinks that love is by far the best of the bunch.

After their bizarre marriage ceremony, Joshua and Lisa Bradley slip off into the sunset in a white convertible, the wind rushing through their hair and the promise of tomorrow surging through the air.

His fingers wrap around hers. Lisa squeezes his hand.

Joshua is her drug. Her addiction.

And...oh hell, is she an addict.

Fin.