Chapter Text
APRIL 8, 2039
The room is dark and quiet, but it isn’t the right sort of quiet.
It’s… empty, with an almost tangible lack of something. It’s heavy, stifling, almost oppressive, and the quiet just feels… wrong.
Because a second floor apartment tends to catch street noises. There are also typically background sounds of the building itself… water rushing through pipes… air circulating… walls and windows and doors creaking slightly with the wind.
Never mind the fact that there’s usually two cats and an android in his apartment these days.
Nines frowns and blinks up at the ceiling. He’s not at home, that’s an easy conclusion. He just… can’t quite think of why he wouldn’t be home. His mind feels fuzzy when he tries to remember, and he’s had enough head injuries over the years to recognize that trying to force it right now won’t get him anything but a worse headache and a roil of nausea.
He rolls his head to the side, stares for a bit at the blue and green patterned chair in dim light that he’s never seen before- but he has seen similar. And where? At Beaumont Dearborn, that’s where.
Ok. Hospital. That seems… reasonable, even though he hasn’t actually had to be admitted to a hospital as a patient since the February raid with Gavin and the disruptor thingy.
But unlike February, Gavin isn’t sitting in the chair beside his bed.
He just kinda. Blinks, at the blue and green chair. And then something clicks, and he scrambles to push his deadweight body up on his bed with a sense of rising urgency. “Gavin,” he says, but his voice comes out rough and barely a whisper, and he thinks suddenly that if he didn’t have a machine feeding him medication through a line in his arm then his throat would be very, very sore. Nines swallows, coughs a pathetic little cough. “Gavin?”
Yeah, his throat hurts now, and his chest aches faintly, but he’d rather not think too closely about that cause otherwise he’ll start thinking about grey eyes widening and a solid red LED and- and there he goes. Whoops.
He shakes his head and finally reaches something resembling a normal sitting position on the bed just as he catches a glimpse of a coolly glowing armband.
His android is here after all, though he’s standing in the corner, facing the room - but mostly the door, as if... on guard - and his LED is a soft white. Nines sighs and settles back, gaze firmly on Gavin. Alright. They’re both okay, Nines hooked up to god knows how many machines and he really doesn’t feel like trying to count this time, and Gavin in light stasis.
In the corner.
Nines frowns. That’s no good, they shouldn’t be so far apart. “Gavin, Gav, c’mere babe. Gaaavin.” His voice is still rough but maybe a little stronger now, the faint headache has become even fainter, and his throat- yeah, his throat is royally fucked, but hey, his android’s here and should be complying with his request for physical touch anytime now. Aaanytime…
Gavin’s LED fires up, cycles blue instead of pulsing white, and Nines relaxes a bit more. His android opens his eyes and glances over the room, then Nines himself, then his LED flicks yellow. All without moving an inch.
“Hey, Gavin?” Something isn’t quite right. He opens his mouth again, but the door to his room is thrown wide, a broad figure striding in. “Hank?” God, he kind of wants to know what exactly happened, because his voice has shrunk to barely a whisper now.
“Detective Anderson. Good to see you awake and-” Hank is at his bedside, his blue eyes almost glowy in the shadowy room but.
But Nines’ attention is drawn back to the other android in the room. His android, who still hasn’t moved, and actually doesn’t blink as Nines watches him for a solid five or six seconds. Hank is trying to talk to him, ask him questions, but his mouth moves and he speaks above the android. “What’s wrong with Gavin?”
Hank stills, though he does a very good job of masking it by tilting his shoulders and clasping his hands behind his back. Nines levels his gaze up, daring him to try to lie because he suspects the answer to his question is not something he wants to hear. “I think that he-”
“Nines!” Connor skids into the room, hurries to the end of the bed and grips the bar. “Oh my god Nines, I was- As soon as Hank got me access to the case file, I thought about-”
“Stop,” Nines says quietly, and he knows he’s wearing a sharp expression that he tries not to turn on Con too often, but the rambling has got to stop. He needs an answer. “What. Happened. To Gavin?”
His brother pales and shrinks back a little, releasing the bar at the end of his bed to shuffle closer to Hank, reaching out to grab at his sleeve. “He- It seems- We suspect that he shut away his emotions upon seeing- I can’t… I don’t know for sure, but…”
Nines can’t let himself think about that broken explanation too much. He can’t, because it sounds like… He can’t. He turns his expression on Hank. “Why don’t you interface and find out?!”
Hank- The android fucking shudders, and his shoulders tighten, and his LED is flicking yellow with flashes of red at the question. That - that’s not good.
“He did already,” Connor says, braving Nines’ glare, “and he dropped into emergency stasis for fifteen minutes.”
Hank visibly collects himself. “Tried to order him to go to the android ward, but…”
“He wouldn’t leave you.”
Fuck.
Nines wants to cry for at least three different reasons, and he’s not sure which is most important to focus on. But he thinks about what Hank just said, and his fingers curl into the blanket because- because- “‘Order?’” He can’t- No, it’s just the word Hank had used, likely doesn’t mean what he thinks it would mean, cause that’s just. That’s unthinkable.
Bearer of worst news ever tonight, thy name is Hank. “He’s like he was back when we first found him, just worse somehow. Back then he seemed to care, now... he’s just blank.”
The three of them all shift to stare at Gavin. Still immobile, still in the corner, still staring towards the door while his eyes glint dead silver in the light.
This can’t be real.
Would you like to register a name for this unit?