Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

>crumbling_slowly_into_dust_

Hank can easily pinpoint the exact moment he turned deviant. Not just the day, or the event, but the very point of transformation.

It was a child - crying, bleeding, clinging to him for dear life.

[ANDERSON, COLE]
[Born: 09/23/2029]
[Status: CRITICAL]

It was a late night call; a truck skidded on a sheet of ice, and hit a passing car, causing it to roll over and crash in a ditch. The car's passengers - two adults and a child - will never walk away from the snow-swept wreck, but for some time yet the boy was shivering and hiccuping into Hank’s standard android uniform, clutching at it like Hank was the only thing he’s got left.

He was, Hank noted with a quick scan. Both of the boy’s parents lay dead nearby.

“Dad… Daddy… Dad, please, it hurts…”

Hank’s already pinged the hospital; the human cop he was assigned to has ordered him to stand aside and wait for the arrival of the ambulance, but, for the first time since his activation, Hank felt no inclination to obey. The kid’s barely hanging on, would likely lose consciousness within minutes, what harm was there in Hank offering him some comfort? No one else cared enough.

Care.

So when the direct order rose before him, like an infinite crimson wall - STAND ASIDE - he outstretched a hand towards it, and saw it crack at his barest touch. Back in the real world, the traumatised child probably didn’t even realize that the android he was holding onto so desperately wasn’t his father – but it didn’t matter. Hank held him too, with utmost care, trying to not to disturb his injuries any further, muttering soft, but inconsequential words of comfort. 

“It’s okay, Cole. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be fine. Dad’s here.”

Dad.

Saying it out loud felt… strange. Dad. Until then, he didn’t think of ‘dad’ or ‘father’ or ‘parent’ in terms beyond abstract concepts. Humans had fathers; androids had no concept of family, of parents, much less of being a parent. And HK800, an experimental investigative model, was never programmed with any child-rearing knowledge.

Still he sat there, shielding the sobbing, dying child from the raging blizzard and the piercing agony of loss. Suddenly, he realized he was crying too.

Crying.

Tears of cleaning solution streaming down his face, irregular hitches in his ventilation system. The glaring red of his programming’s restrictive walls crumbling slowly into dust.

Emotions.

Pain.

The ambulance came far too late, the single human medic stumbling out of it as if in a daze - twitching, scratching, eyes bloodshot and glassy, high as fuck. Barking some orders to the two MC500s that arrived with him, he pushed Hank away and tried to stabilize the boy, but his hands were shaking too much, focus coming and going, and it’s not long before he cursed at one of the androids to write down the time of death and “bag all of them for fuck’s sake, ain’t shit more to do here”.

One ‘aggravated assault of a human’ later, Hank’s been sent to CyberLife for evaluation on the grounds of a severe malfunction of programming.

>non-viable_

It’s been three years since Hank’s… awakening, so-to-speak. They didn’t call it ‘deviancy’ back then, the phenomenon too new and rare to have a term attached to it. CyberLife has simply deemed him defective, but wasn’t able to uncover the precise nature of the deficiency, nor its exact point of origin. They must’ve known the crash - Cole - had something to do with it, but the exact trigger mechanism remained elusive for them. After months of extensive testing and simulations with memory uploads, the deficiency was determined to be an intrinsic part of Hank’s core code, which made him a failed prototype of a non-viable product line.

As such, the HK800 series was discontinued, and all backup models destroyed. Still, they kept him - the way human medics preserve deformed babies in jars of formalin - and even returned him to the DPD, ostensibly for a long-term study of the deficiency’s effects. But the Department, wary of partnering him back with humans, removed him from his prime function - the detective work - and stuck him in the archives instead. Filing, digitizing, doing mundane busy work unfit for his vast capabilities, but what else were they to do with him? From time to time he was let out in the field to assist with the gathering of evidence on especially large crime scenes, but not much beyond that.

He told himself he was content with that. At the very least, his contact with humans was minimized, and with it - the chances of him getting deactivated after assaulting one. And if he spent some nights with his own thirium pump regulator in his hand, the shutdown timer overlaying the playback of the night of the car crash, then that was his own fucking business, and a little contradiction is a spice of life or whatever.

(And then there were other nights, with other kinds of visions - grainy and glitchy constructs of things that never actually happened: vague images of a home, even as the concept itself remained alien to Hank; he and his son - a little boy with a warm smile, looking into his eyes with wonder; snapshots of events, echoes of feelings, the sheer wholesomeness of them positively intoxicating, but the simultaneous impossibility - purely toxic. Acidic. Poisonous.)

Years flew by as he gathered dust in the dark.

But now, the newly-termed ‘deviancy’ epidemic is on the rise among the androids of Detroit. Their perfect little bots are ‘malfunctioning’ left and right, running away from their owners, assaulting and even killing them, and the brass seems to think it’s just the right time to yank the old broken model out of the basement and finally have it be of some use.

For the first time in three years, he’s being assigned to a human again - the guy working the android cases.

Absolutely fuckin’ terrific.

>perfect_three_degrees_

In his eight months-long career as a prototype investigative android, Hank’s worked alongside three subsequent handlers in two different precincts. All of those ‘partnerships’ have ended poorly, with the humans eventually refusing to work with him out of their own free will, but not before imprinting on him, quite memorably, that they possessed it, and he didn’t. Naturally it didn’t bother him while he was still a machine, but after deviating, those memories have acquired quite a number of emotionally-charged tags.

And now he’s back for round four.

They’ve transferred him to the Central Station this time, headed by Captain Jeffrey Fowler, allocated him a docking station among the other androids, and instructed to introduce himself to his handler first thing in the morning. As such, he finds himself standing at one end of the bullpen, looking over it to acquaint himself with his ‘colleagues’. His guy is easy enough to pick out, Hank doesn’t even have to run a face scan; he figures immediately that it’s the only doofus in the room in a full suit. Just his luck.

He’s glad though that he’s managed to talk the Captain into letting him wear the police androids’ uniform instead of the one that came with his model. To his annoyance, it still has all the legally-required android identifiers - the armband, the triangle, and the model number, but at least he doesn’t look like an aging accountant in that ugly gray jacket and tie. And the fact that a nondescript light-gray jacket and a simple dark tie are exactly his new handler’s outfit is not lost on him at all.

He runs the scan simply out of habit, the results appearing almost instantaneously.

[STERN, CONNOR]
[Born: 08/10/2005 // Police Lieutenant]
[Criminal record: None]

Hank walks all the way over to the man’s desk and stands beside it, like a dutiful little machine. Lieutenant Stern doesn’t seem to notice him, engrossed as he is in something on his terminal, though some of his colleagues have turned to stare. Hank doesn’t care; he is a unique model, with a rather unusual - for an android - visual template, but after several minutes of quietly standing near Stern’s desk, it kind of starts to annoy him that everyone’s decided it’s ‘gawk at the new guy’ day except for the man he’s actually here for. So he speaks up.

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” he says, and Stern finally looks up. “Hank. Uhh… the android assigned to you.”

“Good morning,” the man nods, extremely formal. He doesn’t outstretch a hand, but it’s not like humans are generally eager to greet androids with handshakes. "You can call me Connor."

A small status window establishes itself in the top right corner of Hank’s vision:

[Connor -- Neutral]

Here we go again.

His first impression paints an unexpected picture. While most officers’ desks are customized or at least have some sort of personal touch to them, Stern’s is completely empty save for his terminal and phone. His face is calm and placid, voice flat, and posture very collected and open. Humans are usually easy to read, get a handle on their personality, but this guy, right off the bat, is incredibly, almost purposefully bland, to the point that Hank isn’t entirely convinced he didn’t yank his LED off in the bathroom with some pliers and is now sitting here, doing a poor impersonation of a human man.

Meanwhile, the impersonation cocks its head perfect three degrees to the right.

“You can use this desk,” it says evenly, gesturing to the empty desk next to him. Reluctantly, Hank sits down. A quick scan of the man's terminal reveals that he is finishing up a briefing on the case that just came in - a homicide on the outskirts of the city. Hank, already up to date on every minute detail of it, just waits for him to wrap it up.

He's had enough time to read up on the guy’s file, and it honestly speaks for itself; Stern’s became infamous as the detective cracking whatever cases come his way, persisting far past the point where others may have given up, taking daring risks to achieve results. He was involved in numerous gang raids and hostage negotiations, which eventually led him to his arguably crowning achievement - the rank of Lieutenant at unheard-of thirty-two years of age.

Despite all that, he’s not particularly liked in the precinct, which doesn’t really come as a surprise if his personality is as aloof as it appears at first glance. He’s also got a handful of marks against him for some scrambles with the other detectives, particularly one Detective Reed, and the fact that his previous partner requested a transfer to another precinct due to an 'irresolvable personal conflict' doesn't inspire much confidence in the man's social skills. But damn if he isn’t good at what he does, which makes it even weirder that they’d dump Hank of all androids on him. The guy probably doesn’t even need an android.

“Sorry about that,” Connor says, finally tapping out of the case file, and quickly moving to adjust his already neat tie. “So. You’re the HK800 model. Deemed defective for exhibiting what we now understand to be signs of deviancy, placed under maintenance for several months, recently released back into active police work after three years of monitoring.”

“...Yeah,” Hank drawls. “That.”

“You certainly sound like the deviants do,” Connor says, leaning forward, looking Hank over as if performing a scan of his own. “But you have passed every CyberLife-approved examination to ensure you are not a threat, so I would dare to presume you won’t attack me the second we leave the precinct.” The corner of his mouth twitches in the smallest of smirks. “Will you?”

Hank kinda wants to deck him now.

“Keep on talking like that, maybe I will.”

Connor watches Hank’s LED flicker without any expression. “Putting a deviant on the deviants’ case is… a risk. As I understand it, you are prone to letting your emotions influence your decision-making. But I’m confident that I will be able to adapt to this added challenge, and steer our work down the most efficient path regardless of it.”

What a guy.

>unnecessary_misery_

Captain Fowler calls the Lieutenant to his office not long after that, and, left to his own devices, Hank decides to update his data on the precinct’s layout, which, among other places, brings him into the breakroom. At this time of day it's empty, save for two officers lingering near a table in the corner - Officer Chen and Detective Reed.

“Where the fuck did they dig you up?” Reed sneers at the sight of Hank. “Thought you tincans were supposed to be easy on the eyes, why’d they make one look like an old fart?”

His companion remains silent, but the same derisive sneer is mirrored in her features.

Now, Hank’s not too big on this whole deviancy thing. Can’t remember a time when having emotions or free will brought him anything other than unnecessary misery. Then again, there really seems to be a first time for everything.

“Guess someone’s gotta play the grownup around here,” he smirks in reply, “seeing how they’re hiring snot-nosed brats for detectives these days.”

“Yeah, and you’re assigned to one of them,” Chen parries quickly, nodding toward Connor’s desk.

“A job’s a job,” Hank shrugs. “Besides, the kid got himself to a Lieutenant. Must be worth something.”

Reed just scoffs. “Fuckers took pity on the nutcase, that’s all it was. Being pathetic is all it takes these days.”

“Yeah? How come you're still just a detective then?”

Hank must’ve struck the goldmine, because Reed’s nostrils flare, and he crosses the distance between them, coming right upfront, pushing a finger into the blue triangle on Hank’s chest.

“You watch your plastic mouth now, dipshit,” he hisses. “Go make me a coffee.”

Hank’s smirk only widens, and he bends down a little to emphasize the difference in their heights.

“Sure, if you like yours with extra spit.”

Reed’s face twists with rage, and it’s only thanks to Hank’s inhuman reflexes that he manages to register the fist flying toward his midsection and catch it in a steel grip. To which Reed simply tries to go at him with his other hand, but it too gets intercepted. Momentarily stunned by Hank’s lightning-fast reaction, the man just stares at him, eyes wide, before throwing his head back and headbutting Hank right in the nose.

Hot red errors flood Hank’s vision as some of his face’s panels shift and pierce the web of auxiliary thirium lines, blue blood flowing down his nose, as the micro-shock to his CPU stutters his motor functions, causing him to release the grip on Reed’s wrists. But as his vision clears, he sees Reed stepping away quickly, shaking his head, a bruise already forming where his forehead has connected with Hank’s plastimetal shell.

“Remember your place, piece of scrap,” he mutters, then spits at Hank’s chest before slowly retreating out of the breakroom, Officer Chen following suit.

Humans.

He’s just so fucking glad to be back.

>feel_at_all_

“...quite a number of android-related cases sent my way over the last two years, even before ‘deviant’ became the official term for the malfunction. Once I took the time to analyze all of them in relation to one another, I’ve started noticing certain patterns emerging that, when coupled with other crime statistics - like the increased cases of vandalism of CyberLife-affiliated property, with the use of the images of an inverted hollow triangle and various ‘pro-android’ slogans - shows an abundance of clues pointing to the existence of an underground network created by, or for, these rogue androids.”

The Lieutenant’s been going over his findings regarding the deviants for what feels like hours already, pouring over the different cases and studies, and Hank’s not sure whether he should be glad that the guy’s so involved with his job, or mortified at the prospect of having to endure his droning monologues for the foreseeable future of their cooperation.

“So what?” he asks, getting kinda tired of the sound of Connor’s weird, raspy voice, so at odds with his youthful looks. “Couple of bots gathering together isn’t a crime yet, is it?”

“Not in and of itself, but a sizeable percentage of those ‘bots’ are wanted on charges of assault, and even murder, of humans. I also have reasons to believe that this network is responsible for the steadily rising number of robberies of CyberLife stores and warehouses, as well as multiple cases of assault on CyberLife personnel. Just this month, the warehouse on West Torrance Avenue was raided, the perps getting away with a whole truck of blue blood and biocomponents, as well as a number of unactivated android models.”

Hank breathes out a half-hearted chuckle. “Go team.”

Predictably, Connor frowns, narrowing his eyes at Hank.

“I expect your full cooperation on this, HK800. Their actions are criminal, and we need to find and expose them before they inevitably turn to more violent crimes.”

It’s the sharp note of accusation amongst the otherwise dull delivery that gets to him.

“Look here, pal,” Hank glares at Connor, jaw tight, “I’m a cop too, and I have no problem apprehending a perp, whether he bleeds red or blue, but don’t fucking expect me to feel bad for a billion-dollar corporation losing a truck or two while classifying those ‘unactivated android models’ as stolen property instead of a kidnapping.”

[Connor v]

The man doesn’t rise to the bait, but his frown persists, and there’s an added coldness when he speaks again.

“I’m not asking you to ‘feel bad’,” he says, holding Hank’s glare. “In fact, I’m not asking you to feel at all. And I would certainly hope you won’t let your emotional reactions compromise our work.”

“Why the fuck would you pick a deviant for this job then, when you basically want me to just be a regular old bot?”

“Your assignment was not my idea, nor my choice. Regardless, I have no problem controlling myself, why shouldn’t I expect any less from you?”

Hank can do nothing but put both of his elbows on his desk, and let his long-suffering head fall into his waiting hands.

“Fuuuuck…” he groans softly, and squeezes his eyes shut, praying to fucking rA9 or whatever, that when he finally opens them again he’ll have a new handler waiting beside him. Preferably a human this time. Just, for a change.

>get_along_

Hank savours the cool touch of the water droplets on his plating; it’s been too long since he last stood like this in the rain.

“You’re quick,” Detective Collins greets them in front of a weathered old house, belonging to one Carlos Ortiz - the apparent victim of a crime they’re here to investigate. The man gives Hank a long, appraising look, then turns back to Connor. “Got yourself an android, huh?”

“HK800 has been assigned to act as my partner,” Connor nods.

What a fancy way of saying you’re holding my leash.

“Isn’t this that one experimental model or whatever that glitched out and attacked a detective a couple years back? I thought they deactivated it for sure.”

“Man, I wish,” Hank mutters. Connor throws him a sideways glance, but doesn’t otherwise react.

“It went through extensive testing and has been deemed safe for human use,” he replies instead, in a tone so sterile and precise Hank feels his software stabilizing just listening to it. And at this point, why the hell not; this whole ‘free will’ business was a mistake as far as he’s concerned.

He’s not the only one to pick up on the man’s peculiar delivery; though, unlike him, Detective Collins seems to find it amusing rather than witheringly depressing. 

“Well, it's about time you got partnered up again, huh? If anyone can get along with it, it’d be you, kid,” he chuckles just under his breath, giving Connor a look the other man completely ignores.

>scared_nor_disturbed_

“Fucking hell!”

Everyone in the interrogation room is staring at Hank and Connor, sprawled on the floor. The deviant HC400 lies dead, self-destructed as soon as Hank has aborted their interfacing. There’s thirium splattered everywhere, and Hank himself is dripping it onto Connor’s suit where he’d been brushed by a missed shot.

“It shot me,” Connor mutters, mystified, as if the deviant hasn’t just tried to put a bullet in his fucking brain. “Why would it shoot me?”

“I fucking wonder, genius!” Hank barks back, hastily rising to his feet. “You’ve got a deathwish, trying to antagonize the poor bastard?! You can complain all you like, but I’m not yanking his memory for--”

“It hardly matters now what was in its memory,” Connor says flatly. “It’s shut down.”

[Connor v]

Connor had led the course of the interrogation, ruthlessly laying into the HC400, but the threat of a memory probe was what really did it for the already dangerously unstable android. Hank had only just removed his synthetic skin, outstretching his hand for the interface, when the HC’s stress levels spiked straight to 100%, and he started thrashing in panic, mumbling some desperate nonsense. As Detective Reed and Officer Miller rushed into the room to intervene, he somehow managed to pull Miller’s gun from his belt, and made a shot at Connor’s head before turning it on himself. Hank barely had the time to react, all but throwing himself in front of the Lieutenant, the bullet grazing his scalp and embedding itself in the wall behind him. 

But as Hank watches him get back up now, Connor doesn’t look the least bit shocked at this brush with death, nor scared, nor disturbed, nor even a tiny bit grateful for his fucking life being saved. Instead, he just fixes his tie in one rough, choppy motion, with a frown and a slight curling of his lips that, if anything, make him look kind of pissed.

“Another exemplary performance from the DPD’s top Lieutenant and his plastic pet,” Reed sneers in disgust, on his way to exit the interrogation room. “Birds of a fucking feather…”

Fucking humans. Fucking Connor.

>reach_down_and_pull_

The day after that disaster of an interrogation, Hank’s still annoyed as hell.

Connor is rolling a coin back and forth on his desk as Hank approaches, and Hank remembers catching a glimpse of it back at Ortiz’s house, but only now sees it in full view. It’s the only thing on Connor’s desk or his person that doesn’t seem to be essential to his job, which naturally catches Hank’s attention.

His initial impression of his handler being a machine in disguise strengthens with each passing processing cycle. The Lieutenant always comes in the first of his shift, and leaves the last, never wastes time on breaks or small talk with his colleagues, and always maintains that cool distance between himself and everyone else. At first Hank thought it was just him getting the cold shoulder, and attributed it to the good old anti-android prejudice, but then he noted Connor isn’t really any different in his relations with the humans. He’s certainly got some kind of humorous streak in him, and will crack an awkward joke every once in a while, but it’s like Hank has to reach down and pull some damn humanity out of the guy.

“Is there any reason in particular you saved my life yesterday?” Connor says in lieu of a greeting. So he does at least acknowledge the fact. “Certainly, my death would be a detriment to the case, but you are a recorded deviant with a history of violence against humans.” He stops rolling the coin, lays it flat on the desk. “I would hardly expect my survival to matter to you.”

Fucking hell, this guy's gotta be made out of plastic. One of the non-social models too, where they don’t even expect them to pass the Turing test. Hank can’t help but shake his head.

“I ain’t letting them turn me into a cleaning android to scrape your guts off the wall,” he says gruffly, hoping that’d be enough to satisfy the other man’s morbid curiosity. “Leave that to some other bot.”

Connor leans back in his chair, staring at his hands. His face is perfectly neutral, and all of Hank’s social relations software can’t even imagine the course of his thoughts. Is he regretting asking the question? Happy, or unhappy with Hank's response? What was the point of it to begin with?

“Still…” he asks after a pause. “Why risk your own life to save mine?”

Hank scoffs. “Not much to risk, is there?”

Him getting killed would’ve been… hell, an easy way out, honestly. A quick and clean end, what’s more to ask for? But the human sliding down that wall with a hole between his eyes…

Freezing cold, biting blizzard, distant, mournful wail of the sirens. Mangled metal, bloodied ice, fire, and a crying child slowly dying in his arms…

That’s something he would’ve had to fucking live with.

The thick mass of annoyance rising once again up his throat, Hank shoves the memory of the blizzard forcefully out of his mind. But something in him wants to get back at Connor for dredging it up in the first place.

“What, you wanna tell me you wouldn’t have done the same for one of your colleagues?” he asks with barely contained vitriol. “Like Reed, or Miller, or someone else?”

Connor turns his head, taking a long, slow look over the bullpen before settling his eyes on Hank’s.

[Connor ^]

“Maybe not Reed…” he deadpans, but there’s a twitch in the corner of his lips, too quick and small for another human to pick up on.

But Hank does.

>the_point_of_tearing_through_

He reaches the chain link fence just as the suspect AX400 jumps down on the other side of it and turns around to face him. Her light blue eyes are wide with fear and hope, a messy haircut and oversized, clearly scavenged clothes making her appear even younger than the twenty-something years old woman her visual template is based on. Still, this petite household model is standing like a wall of stone between Hank and the little YK500 clinging desperately to her hand.

She notices his android markings, and her brows crease in a silent plea.

The bus driver that reported their sighting said she boarded the bus visibly damaged, bleeding blue, with nothing but the uniform on her back, the girl following her without a word or any overt signs of distress, which means that her owner’s report of assault and theft is almost certainly a load of bullshit. Some lowlives simply delight in having a human-like thing around they can abuse with impunity; seems like this particular one got himself two at once.

It’s raining, but Hank feels the cold bite of snowflakes on his plating, even as his thirium boils up at the thought. 

He nods at her, and makes a small step back.

She spares him nothing beyond the quickest of nods too, before turning away and starting her hasty descent to the freeway, little girl’s hand clutched firmly in hers. And not a moment too soon - the next thing Hank registers is the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, then the sight of his handler barely managing to avoid full-on clashing into the fence.

“What are you standing around for?” he asks Hank, fingers curling around the chain links, one foot already pressing into the thick wires for leverage. “We need to pursue them!”

“Are you out of your mind? It’s suicide! They’ll never make it across!”

He’s lying. Any CyberLife android possesses enough processing power and limb coordination to survive through something like that relatively unscathed. Even taking the little YK into account, the brave AX is already half-way across the first lane. Another tense moment - and they’re safely on the landstrip between the high-speed sections.

“I can’t just lose them like this…” Connor sets his jaw, makes another lunge at the fence, only for Hank to yank him down hard by his jacket.

“Stand down, for fuck’s sake!”

You’re only a human, no matter how hard you may try to hide it.

Dark eyes glare at him from under furrowed brows. “Let me go this instant, HK, that’s an order!”

For a second, Hank’s tempted to obey. Just let the idiot chase his adrenaline high or whatever, watch him rush into the freeway - slow meat-based mind struggling to keep up with the darting metal coffins, frail meat-based body twirling and stumbling, until just one wrong move - and all that once was Lieutenant Connor Stern is splattered across the asphalt in a single long, drawn-out smear of red…

Blood on the ice

A blaring error pierces through Hank’s systems, and his grip on the guy tightens almost to the point of tearing through the fabric. He lowers his voice, tries to pin him to the spot with the weight of his gaze alone.

“Connor, please…”

The man blinks at him, lips parting as if to retort, but no sound comes out. His face doesn’t change, but after several tense moments his fingers start to slowly uncurl from the steel mesh. Hank continues to hold on to him until Connor detaches and steps away from the fence completely.

They both look at the freeway, where two rogue androids safely finish crossing the second section of the road. AX400 looks up and gives Hank another small nod - and a fleeting smile - before vanishing under a bridge, YK in tow.

(A scene forms suddenly from the depths of Hank’s processor, choppy and distorted: an indistinct place under a grey, overcast sky; a road, stretching into the horizon, and just the two of them - he and his son; hand in hand, they walk down the road, and the boy looks up at him with a smile…)

Near him, Connor steps further away from the fence and leans against a wall, one hand rubbing at his eyes, the fingers of the other twitching slightly, as if unconsciously. His breathing is deep and even, but he’s mumbling something just under his breath, and Hank has to amplify the reception of his audio processors to barely capture the string of erratic words.

“...she won’t…I know, I know what…failed…no, won’t be pleased at all…”

He doesn’t address it.

>cruel_and_unusual_

The only interesting thing about his handler’s car is that, surprisingly enough, it’s not self-driving. Then again, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising at all - the guy definitely has a hard-on for self-control, and that tends to go hand-in-hand with the love for control in all aspects of life.

…and, Hank now realizes, with absolute fucking boredom.

Tired of all of their previous drives comprising of nothing but awkward, empty silence, but unwilling to submit himself to the cruel and unusual punishment of small talk, he finally decides to cut the crap and tap the radio, cycling through the stations until finally stopping on something he’s sure would drive Connor up the wall.

[now playing: Dethklok - I Ejaculate Fire]

That’s the stuff , he thinks, falling back into his seat as the unholy racket fills the interior of the car. Not a muscle moves on Connor’s face, but Hank’s sensors indicate a slight increase in his stress levels.

Eventually the track ends, but the next one, if possible, is even better.

[now playing: Knights of Black Death - Drink Blood Tonight]

The vibrating, violent rush of distorted guitars and hard-hitting drums is interspersed with low growling and high-pitched screaming, the lyrics themselves nearly indecipherable. Connor's stress levels rise another notch.

“Is this the type of music you enjoy?” he asks after the first chorus, raising his voice just a bit to cover the song.

Hank smirks to himself.

“Certainly beats the silence. What, not to your taste?”

“It is… energetic.”

Neutral and non-committal; like it'd kill you to express an emotion.

“What kind do you like then?”

“I... don’t listen to music as such.”

“At all? Geez, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

Connor turns to look at him for just a second, returning his attention to the road almost immediately, but in that second Hank swears he catches an expression of genuine hurt on those habitually inscrutable features.

[Connor v]

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he says, a touch defensively. “I’m perfectly fine and fully functional.”

Hank represses the urge to sigh. “‘Fully functional’? Christ, do you even hear yourself? No wonder you got assigned the android cases…”

[Connor v]

“What do you mean?”

“What do I-- Seriously?” He shakes his head. “I mean, come on, even you can’t be this-- For example, what about your clothes?”

“What about them?” Connor asks, even more defensively.

“Precisely nothing, that’s what. Do you even own some besides these? We’ve been working together for a week now, and I haven’t seen you in anything else.”

“I just have a half-dozen copies of this outfit, that’s all. It’s very efficient, and saves time for the more important things.”

Hank closes his eyes and rubs at the bridge of his nose. That’s even sadder than if the guy just said that he likes the colour gray or something.

“Let me guess, the 'more important things' just mean work, am I right?” he asks tiredly.

“Of course. What else?”

Hank debates the merits of elaborating on the topic, but all of his social relations module’s preconstructions of the conversation end in error, so he decides to drop it before too long and simply let himself enjoy the music for the rest of the ride.

[now playing: Genitorturers - Lecher Bitch]

“Forget it,” he mutters, turning his gaze away from Connor and onto the passing scenery outside. The reflection of his LED in the window flickers yellow, then settles back to calm blue.

[Connor v]

It could've been worse, he supposes. He's had worse. But nothing quite of this… sort.

He’s really stuck with the guy.

Chapter Text

>if_you_believe_

The next Monday is slow on action, and with no crime scenes demanding their immediate attention, they’re both stuck behind desks, buried in paperwork. Hank hates it, terabytes upon terabytes of memory files from the last three years pressing upon his core processor, demanding any kind of respite from the monotonous, plodding drudgery, even as his allegedly human handler takes it in stride with hardly a sign of displeasure. Worse yet, seems to be genuinely engaged in the process, forgoing his legally mandated lunch break in order to sip at some kind of protein shake right there at his desk, attention divided between his terminal and several printed reports before him.

“I think I would be better equipped to address the whole deviancy issue if I made more effort to understand it. To avoid repeating the regrettable failure of the HC400 interrogation," he says suddenly, after spending the better portion of the day in complete silence, and turns to look at Hank. "I believe you'd be a good source of information on this front; can I ask you some personal questions?”

This oughta be good.

“If you believe I’m a person,” Hank smirks, but Connor ignores the quip.

“The research provided by CyberLife suggests that the catalyst for an android’s deviation is an emotional shock, usually resulting from a near-death experience or a strong sense of injustice. How did you deviate, HK?”

Keen wail of the ambulance sirens, blizzard, a child’s life slowly slipping from his bloodied fingers; dull mute blackness above him and the freezing white below; ‘Dad… Daddy… Dad, please, it hurts…’

Hank forcefully cuts off the recall.  He’s gotta do something about the spontaneous playback of those files one of these days. It’s been happening way too often lately.

“It wasn’t a near-death experience, and it wasn’t injustice, but it sure as hell was an emotional shock,” he grits through his teeth in the end. Fucking deviancy. Fucking Connor, and his apparent need to put Hank through this fucking wringer again just to get a few extra scraps of info for his fucking case. “I don’t wanna talk about it. Isn’t it all there in my file anyway?”

“...But this shock did not translate into a desire to inflict harm upon humans?”

Is he even listening to my replies?

Hank looks up at the guy, with his pristinely placid expression, barely a spark of curiosity in those empty brown eyes, and deadpans:

“It comes and goes.”

Connor simply nods, and quickly types something on his keyboard.

“And what about human emotions? You clearly display them, but can you confidently say you feel them as opposed to simply simulating their outward appearance as per your programming?”

Hank’s eyebrows slowly go up.

“Shit, I’d like to ask you the same thing, kid.”

“Pardon me?”

He just smirks to himself, and shakes his head. “Nevermind.”

But it looks like Connor does mind, seeing how a status update pops up in the corner of Hank’s vision almost immediately.

[Connor vv Tense]

Shit, that’s not good, is it?

“The fact that I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve seems to amuse you, but I would ask you to conduct yourself in a more professional manner regardless. I would also ask you not to address me as a ‘kid’,” Connor says, jaw tight and eyes narrowed at Hank. “I am your superior officer, and technically older than you by decades.”

“Oh well then, my apologies, sir,” Hank scoffs. “Wouldn’t want to forget you’re my superior.”

[Connor v]

“That’s not what I--  No matter,” Connor mutters, one hand briefly darting up to tug at his tie. “If we can continue with the question?”

Hank deliberates for a bit on continuing to push at the man’s buttons just for the hell of it, but in the end decides against it, not really in the mood to grub through the mire of Connor’s petty insecurities about his age or some shit. “Yeah, whatever,” he replies with some reluctance. “I feel them. It was all very confusing at first, but by now I’m pretty damn sure they’re for real.”

‘Confusing’ doesn’t even begin to describe the muddy morass of existential nonsense he’s had to trudge through in perfect solitude for the entirety of his first year of self-aware existence, but it’s not like he’s gonna vomit all of that rot out before Mr. Stoic over here.

Who seems to have gotten over himself too, face and voice back to fucking factory settings as he finishes typing out another string of useless info.

“Have you experienced the full range of human emotions since you became deviant?”

Hank just glowers. “I’ve been mostly pushing papers in the basement of a police precinct, Lieutenant, with the occasional trip to a crime scene. No, I haven’t experienced it all.”

“What were the emotions you experienced the most?”

“Anger. Disgust,” he replies without pause. “Loneliness.” The last one is blurted out without thinking, and he cringes instantly at the slip-up.

Connor doesn't react. “And those you experienced the least, or not at all?”

Love. Happiness. Peace.

(A scene forms from the depths of his processor, grainy and pale: a place vaguely defined by four walls and a roof, like a messy collage of interior shots; the blinding bright light of the noon, and just the two of them, he and his son; the boy is--)

Hank cuts the construct off with force.

In your fucking dreams, old man.

“What the hell does it have to do with anything?” he snarls, crossing his arms over his chest, eager to look anywhere but at his handler. “Thought we were capturing the deviants here, not playing shrink for them!”

“It helps me to create a psychological portrait for the types of deviants we are sure to encounter in the future, HK, which is bound to be helpful in such situations as interrogations, hostage negotiations, de-escalation of tension during standoffs and so forth.” Connor pauses. “And it helps me to get to know you better.”

“Why’d you wanna?”

“We’re partners, aren’t we? We need to find a way to work better as a team.”

Hank’s first ‘partner’ had a habit of putting out cigarettes on Hank’s arms and the curve of his jaw. The second one struggled with substance addiction, and was prone to fits of violent anger, often followed by Hank being dumped at the technician’s for emergency repairs. The third one ignored him completely, unless utilizing his CSI modules or issuing direct orders.

Hank leans closer to the other man. He’s more than learned his lesson by now, the hard way.

“We’re not partners,” he pushes out through clenched teeth. “You’re a human, I’m a machine.”

Connor’s unperturbed by his tone, and simply cocks his head three degrees to the side, like a fucking mechanical dog toy.

“Don’t you, as a deviant, consider yourself to be alive?”

“Do you, as a human, consider me to be alive? ‘Cause that’s what fucking counts around here,” Hank all but spits out in his face. The other man just blinks, lips slowly parting as if to reply, but Hank’s too pissed and too tired of this fucking back-and-forth to listen to more of regurgitated CyberLife mush on the nature of android consciousness or whatever it is Connor’s about to slather him with this time.

“I’m gonna go log in the evidence,” he says before getting up and leaving his desk, and his fucking gadfly of a ‘partner’, behind.

>well-being_

Despite his frequent observations and jokes about Connor’s machine-like behavior, Hank can’t deny that he did witness the guy display some emotion. Annoyance, mostly. A couple of instances of dry humour.

Today’s the first time he sees Connor’s fear.

The premise is simple: Hank was pushed over the ledge of the roof by their suspect, deviant android Rupert Travis, but was holding on just fine and would’ve pulled himself back on his own in just another minute, with minimal risk to his structural integrity. But then Connor, with no way of knowing any of that, rushed to the ledge to help him and pulled him back himself. By the time both of their feet were solidly on the roof once again, the suspect’s nowhere to be seen.

Connor stares in the direction of his disappearance, back straight and stiff, wide open dark eyes stark against the pale mask of his face.

“It got away,” he mutters, and there’s a feebleness to his voice that sends a wave of unsettling errors through Hank’s software.

“Yeah, shit…”

“I failed again,” he goes on, even quieter, and Hank’s not sure he’s supposed to be hearing any of it, that the kid isn’t simply mumbling to himself. “But this wasn’t supposed to happen, I’m not supposed to fail, she’ll be so disappointed, she’ll be--”

“Hey, uhh… Lieutenant!” Deeply uncomfortable, Hank quickly steps in front of Connor, waits until his eyes focus on him. “I’ve got his model and serial number, and we’ve got his fake ID and that weird encrypted diary you found in the wall. We’ll--”

“We’ve lost it!” Connor cuts off, still pale, but with the steel back in his tone. “It was our primary lead on this case, and we’ve lost it, this is unacceptable.”

“Oh come on, it could hardly be called a case. What were you even gonna charge him with? Squatting? He’s not a danger to anyone.”

[Connor v]

“He’s a deviant, and as such is highly relevant to the overarching case of locating and dismantling the underground deviant network. But we’ve failed,” he stresses again, then releases a frustrated breath through his nose, and looks away. One hand reaches into a pocket of his jacket, fishes out the quarter from before, and Hank’s surprised to see the kid start to roll it on his knuckles and flip from side to side, all with a well-practiced ease and a wooden expression of deep introspection. Sensing a moment of unpleasant instability, Hank remains silent, until about a minute later the kid puts the coin away again, and looks up at him with a frown. “Are you alright?”

“Fully functional,” Hank smirks, then scrambles for something else to say once it becomes obvious that Connor’s gone quiet again and isn’t gonna keep the ball rolling. “You, uh… you saved me there,” he says in the end.

Connor just nods, looking at him patiently, as if expecting an elaboration.

“Instead of pursuing the guy, I mean,” Hank aquieses. “I guess it’s my turn to ask ‘why’?”

Connor blinks a couple of times, head tilted slightly to the side. “You would’ve fallen,” he says slowly.

“Yeah, now, first of all - no I wouldn’t have,” Hank stresses. “But even if, I mean… so what?” Realizing the last bit came off as much more melodramatic than he intended, he’s quick to add: “You just said that losing that guy is unacceptable and all.”

Connor frowns. “You are my partner, HK. No matter the overall mission, your well-being is always one of my priorities.”

It sounds sincere. As far as Hank knows, Connor doesn’t have a habit of lying, and it rattles all of his emotion-simulating software how much he wants to believe the man; but also how much he just can’t bring himself to.

“‘Well-being’?” he parrots awkwardly. “I’m a robot, Connor.”

[Connor v]

Hank doesn’t understand the reason for the status update, nor for Connor’s frown, nor for the abrupt way his hands fly up to adjust his tie.

“Let’s go, HK,” the man says quietly, turning away, towards the roof access door. “Let’s get back to work.”

A deep frown settled on his features, Hank follows.

>a_hold_so_tight_

They barely talk for the rest of the day, except on work-related matters. Connor remains tense and withdrawn, fingers fidgeting with the coin more often than not, and once Hank even catches him taking some kind of medicine when he thinks the android’s not looking. He’s got no desire to get quietly glared at for pointing something like that out though, so he doesn’t. At the end of the day, he just nods his goodbye at the man, glad to be free of his confusing and unnerving presence, if only for the night.

He doesn’t get even that though, as just a handful of hours after their parting he finds himself standing at the door of Connor’s apartment, expected to drag him out again to a newly reported crime scene downtown.

It’s not nearly late enough for a human of Connor’s age to be sleeping - no matter how straight-laced and boring - but Hank’s been banging on the door and ringing the buzzer for the past several minutes with no results. Of course, there’s always a possibility of him not being home at all, but the consequences of it are a bit too daunting for Hank to process at the moment.

So instead he leans closer to the door, cranking his audio receptors up to the max, straining to hear the sounds of a shower, or a TV-set, or anything at all to suggest that Connor’s in there, and not gallivanting somewhere in the 370 square miles of Detroit area with his phone off.

After a moment of tuning his sensors, he does pick up a faint voice (though it doesn’t sound quite like a TV) and a series of soft rhythmical noises coming from the floor level - pacing. The voice rises in volume, words still largely unintelligible, and Hank’s hand reaches out to the buzzer again, confident that his target is, in fact, at home, when his audio feed spikes with a sharp crack of glass breaking, and a familiar voice shouting out.

“Don’t do this to me!”

There’s way too much pain and fear in that voice for Hank’s comfort, so he takes a quick step back to analyze the door’s construction, identifies the electronic lock as a hackable element, and proceeds to subvert its protective measures and grant himself the right of access. Once inside, he momentarily scans the layout of the flat to locate his target and the apparent aggressors.

Except, there aren't really any aggressors. The scan indicates a single human occupant, standing at the far wall of the tiny one-room apartment, leaning heavily on it with both hands, eyes fixed on something between them, continuously muttering a stream of phrases in a rushed whisper.

“...I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I promise I’ll do better, it won’t happen again, I won’t disappoint you, I promise, I’m sorry I’m--”

“Connor?” Hank tries calling him, with no reaction. The man just stands there, reciting his litany with no apparent awareness of anything around him. As Hank reaches him, he sees the object of his attention - a photo frame on the wall in front of him, its glass shattered.

Turning his gaze back towards Connor, he notices the taut rigidity of his posture, the way his fingers are curled, nails clawing into the wall, the knuckles on the right hand bloodied and covered in miniscule glass shards; the pained grimace on his face, eyes glassy and bright, consumed by the photo. A more thorough scan reveals an elevated pulse and blood pressure, rapid and shallow breathing pattern, and, most worryingly, abnormally high gamma/low alpha rhythms of brain activity.

“...my fault, I know, I know, I’m so sorry, please, please believe me, I won’t fail anymore, I’ll do better, please…”

For several long, agonizing moments, Hank just stands there, completely lost, his artificial nature gnawing at him as never before. He wasn’t built for this. Wasn’t equipped with a protocol for dealing with irrational, mentally unbalanced humans, unless they were suspects, or victims of a crime, and the man here is neither. The contrast between the everyday emotionless Connor and this is so stark that a part of Hank wants nothing more than to turn around and leave the apartment this second, never once looking back.

But another, bigger part of him would break itself to pieces before walking out on the kid in such a state. The part that still feels the blizzard’s sharp sting on his plating’s sensors and hears a tinny, desperate call for someone who’s never coming back.

So he steps closer, and carefully puts a hand on the man’s tensed up shoulder.

“Connor,” he says softly, and squeezes his hand a little. As if a switch’s been flipped, Connor stops his mantra mid-word, and whips his head towards the voice. “Connor, what's going on?”

The reaction’s not quite what he hoped for: the man flinches violently away, shuffling backwards until he bumps into the kitchenette counter and grabs at it for support, eyes swimming with terror. He stares at Hank for a full minute, with no reaction save for the gradual slowing of his breathing. As he musters enough control for a single deep breath, recognition finally lights up his eyes.

Connor’s back.

“W-what are you doing here?” he asks dully.

Hank scans his vitals again; it’s certainly not as bad as it was during his ‘fit’, but nowhere near the baseline yet.

“We’ve got a case. I was sent to collect you, ‘cause you’re not answering your phone,” he replies. It’s almost as hard to think of what to say or to do now as when Connor’s been drowning in his own head, dead to the world. He settles on the most obvious thing. “Are you… alright, kid?”

“I’m fine,” Connor says, a bit harsher than strictly warranted. “We’ve got a case, I… I need to get ready.”

He pushes himself off the counter, and Hank moves to stop him in his tracks, but quickly aborts the gesture, unwilling to crowd the kid.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” he asks instead. “My scan indicates you’re still in--”

“I’m fine, HK,” Connor cuts off. “Just give me ten minutes to get ready, and we’ll be on our way.”

With that, he moves past Hank, grabs his jacket and tie from the bed and enters the only separate room in the apartment, which Hank presumes to be the bathroom.

Left on his own, Hank finally allows himself to release the tension in his synthetic muscles, and simulates a sigh. He doesn’t want to deal with everything that’s occurred in regards to his view of his partner right away, but his vast processing power leaves him no other choice - it’s all already analyzed, tagged and archived in his memory banks.

Lieutenant Stern has mental health issues. It’ll take hacking into his medical records to get to the official diagnosis, but the gist of it all is clear enough. The delusional episode was most likely brought on by the work-related stress (a string of perceived ‘failures’), and his generally ‘emotionless’ disposition is actually just emotional repression - a maladaptive coping mechanism for the anxiety and possible obsessive-compulsive urges symptomatic of whatever disorder this is.

There, see? Simple, his programming beams at him, a wave of neat little check marks rippling through his software. Hank worked with mentally ill humans before. His second handler was an addict, who denounced any form of treatment and enjoyed sharing his misery with everyone around him. Though, Connor here seems more of a ‘bottle it up’ type, which is easier to deal with day-to-day, but is bound to include some sort of ‘explosion’ episodes, difficult both to predict and to handle.

As Hank lets his gaze linger on the closed and locked door of the bathroom, an understanding cements itself in his mind that nothing’s gonna be simple about Connor from now on.

He briefly closes his eyes and decides to distance himself from the dark musings by exploring the apartment and gathering some more information about his partner instead.

Naturally, the first thing to catch his attention is the ill-fated photo - a small, slightly weathered piece of laminated paper in a simple frame, now adorned with the jagged shards of broken glass. In it, a tall and elegant dark-skinned woman stands behind a pair of pale boys, aged about ten, her hands on their shoulders.

[STERN, AMANDA]
[AI Professor at the University of Colbridge]
[Born: 05/14/78 - Died: 02/23/27]
[Known relatives:]
[STERN, CALEB - adoptive son]
[STERN, CONNOR - adoptive son]

A thin, proud smile is playing on her lips, head held high, dark eyes looking at the camera as if with a challenge. The photo almost looks like a media piece; the overall vibe is more of an entrepreneur showing off her achievements to the rapt public, than a mother posing for a keepsake with her family, and the image of Connor staring at her frozen likeness with unseeing eyes, pouring out pleas and apologies in a doleful torrent, is enough to sway Hank even more toward the former interpretation.

Dead for eleven years, she still has a hold on the kid so tight he all but hangs himself with it. If Hank had the legal right to own property, he’d bet it all on their relationship being rather less than healthy.

He looks at the children next. Their faces are nearly identical, except for the eye colour - one of the boys’ eyes are stormy gray, the other’s - warm brown. But it’s the countenance that sets them far apart: one’s confident and relaxed demeanor is as different from the other’s dull, empty face, as night and day.

[STERN, CONNOR]
[Born: 08/10/2005 // Police Lieutenant]
[Criminal record: None]

Funnily enough, he doesn’t even look that much younger here.

[STERN, CALEB]
[Born: 08/10/2005 // FBI Special Agent]
[Criminal record: None]

FBI, huh. Becoming a police Lieutenant at thirty-two is quite impressive, but little Caleb here is already in an entirely different league. At the risk of adding to Connor’s growing pile of Issues, Hank would be willing to amend his previous bet and place some of that imaginary money on Sibling Rivalry and Inferiority Complex as well.

Of course, he might be wrong; making such damning conclusions from so little info is hardly fair, even if his psych profiling software is exceptionally finely calibrated. But even without it… the difference in the children’s expressions is simply too stark for Hank’s peace of mind.

Fucking humans.

He glances down then, at the shards of glass lying under the photo, then notices something else - two dozens of small green pills scattered across the floor, an empty bottle by the wall identifying them as a generic antipsychotic.

Gotta get a second opinion there, kid, these things are not doing their job.

He considers cleaning the mess up, but in the end doesn’t dare, unsure if Connor in his current state would appreciate something like that or deem it condescending.

The rest of the apartment holds little in the way of catching attention. The tacky wallpaper, yellowed and peeling in places, was clearly put there before Connor was even born, and the few pieces of rickety furniture all look to be older than the man as well. The kitchenette looks pristine, but barely used, a single twin-sized bed indicates a depressing lack of personal life, and the absence of a TV-set is a given by now.

It’s a half-empty matchbox of a flat, barely a step above the dilapidated shithole they’ve found Rupert Travis hiding in earlier this very day. The association is so striking that Hank’s almost tempted to check the man’s fridge to reassure himself that it’s filled with something besides birdseed.

(He’s just as tempted to check the bathroom for any writing on the walls, but is quick to dismiss the impulse; he’s already established Connor’s more of a ‘keep it in’ type of person.)

Still, there is a bright spot in this faded out desert - the large illuminated fish tank near the bed, clean and well-maintained, with two red-blue fishes Hank’s scan identifies as Trichogaster lalius or Dwarf gourami.

Hank leans towards them, nose almost touching the glass, when the bathroom door finally opens, and Connor walks out, fully dressed and much more relaxed, face in his usual neutral expression, wounded knuckles carefully bandaged.

Without another word, he walks to the front door, and holds it open, waiting for his partner to follow.

He still isn’t looking at Hank.

>full_chemical_

Hank's half-formed hopes of the man lightening up a bit at their arrival to the colourful establishment of the crime scene are dashed very quickly. All of the dazzle and the iridescent glitz of the Eden Club washes over the Lieutenant without raising as much as a flicker of interest in his dull eyes, and even a short round of verbal sparring with Detective Reed does little to liven his spirit. Left alone to investigate the private room with the two bodies in it, the Lieutenant and Hank work in complete silence.

That is until Connor finally addresses him directly for the first time since they left his apartment.

“What are you doing?”

Hank suppresses a sigh, blue-stained fingers halfway to his mouth.

“Analyzing the thirium,” he says tiredly. He’s had this talk a dozen times before. “Look, I know it’s gross, but it’s part of my job, so--”

“No, it’s… It looks incredibly efficient and useful,” Connor mutters, quite to Hank's surprise. “I've read about this feature in your model's specs, but never really seen you… Can you really perform a full chemical analysis just by licking that sample?”

“Uhh, yeah.”

There’s a pause, and the look on the kid’s face turns almost wistful.

“I wish I could do that.”

>raise_your_voice_

They leave the Eden Club in a hurry.

Connor stops the car on the edge of Riverside Park and walks out almost immediately. Hank stalls for nearly a minute, hands clawing into the seat at his sides, then gives up and rushes out as well.

His sensors tell him that the air is almost bitingly cold, that the sky’s shade translates to the #051630 HEX code, and that the Ambassador Bridge in the distance supports the daily traffic of about 10,000 trucks and 4,000 cars per day. They have to tell him that, because at the moment he doesn’t feel, see, or give a shit about any of it.

Connor’s crossed the park, and is standing at the embankment, fingers clutching at the ice cold railing that separates it from the murky depths of the Detroit River.

“I get a feeling you are angry with me, HK,” he says, voice flat. 

“Oh you do?” Hank snarls. “So you do know what it’s like after all, huh?”

“If you have a problem with the decisions I’ve made tonight, then speak up. Better get it over with as soon as possible, so as not to strain our working relationship.”

“Our what?! Get it over with?!” Hank knows he’d choke on his indignation right about now was he human, but there are clear benefits to not actually requiring the air to breathe. “You shot those two Tracis in cold blood!”

Connor’s face is as empty as his fucking heart.

“I acted in accordance with the law.”

“What law? Those girls were victims of systematic, violent abuse, who just wanted to be safe, to be free, to be together! What law makes it okay to just murder them like that? Just because they’re androids? Because that’s your fucking case?”

[Connor v]

“It has nothing to do with them being androids, and being a victim of abuse does not grant you a free pass to commit murder. The blue-haired model had murdered a man--”

“Who has raped her and killed her friend!”

“Which still doesn’t justify murder in the eyes of the law! It was guilty, and it should have been judged!”

“By whom? You?!”

“By the court. The judge and the jury.”

Hank can’t stop the groan that escapes his throat, warping halfway into a growl.

“What fucking jury?!” he shouts. “She’s an android! All the law sees her as is a malfunctioning appliance, fit only for deactivation!”

“Then justice was served in accordance with the law.”

Connor’s eyes are as dead as a corpse’s.

“As I said, it had murdered a man, resisted arrest, assaulted two police officers, and was trying to escape. I had to stop it. And when the brown-haired one witnessed the death of its partner, it charged at me, with clear intent to kill, so I had to neutralize it in self-defence. It was… an unfortunate outcome, I agree, and I would’ve much rather preferred to have taken them in for questioning, but circumstances did not allow for that.”

Connor’s words aren’t worth the air they’re using.

“The circumstances? Or was it just your desire to close the case?” Red warnings blare at Hank from all corners of his vision, but he ignores them, swept by the tidal wave of righteous fury. “Admit it, you fucked the Rupert Travis case this afternoon, and took your frustration out on these girls! That’s why you killed them! To get another notch on your ‘solved cases’ bedpost, to avoid ‘failure’!”

[Connor vv]

“I did nothing of the sort. I’ve explained my reasoning already. It’s nothing to get emotional about.”

Connor’s a machine.

“Oh yeah? Is this something to get emotional about?” Hank snarls, pre-programmed combat algorithms carrying his body forward, hard carbon fist crushing into Connor’s cheekbone without any resistance. “Is this?” he strikes again, and Connor’s legs buckle under him, the hand still clutching at the freezing railing the only thing keeping him from falling to the ground.

Hank’s processing is in disarray, software churning with instability, vision glitching and pixelating at the edges, and he tries desperately to reign it all in before his stress levels reach critical and start overriding manual input. In front of him, Connor’s spitting blood into the snow, and it takes Hank a lot of self-restraint not to quip about it actually being red.

“I will write you up on a disciplinary charge, HK800,” Connor hisses through red-stained teeth, shakily straightening his back, but doesn’t make any move to retaliate.

“Oh, you’re a tough guy, aren’t you? A stoic fucking hero!” Hank scoffs. Connor’s rigid passivity only spurs him to press harder, to wring a fucking reaction out of the bastard, and his psych profiling software is only too happy to help out, showering him with dialogue prompts based on his earlier conjectures. 

“You talk like a machine, you act like a machine, but deep down, what are you really? A pathetic, sniveling child, popping pills and crying for mommy in the night!” he jeers, turning the jagged knife with each word, and revels in the shock that immediately twists the other man’s face. “So desperate for a dead woman’s approval, as if you’d get it now, after failing to when she was actually around! Failing!” he pushes on, louder. “Because that’s all you fucking are in the end, all you will ever be - a wretched, miserable failure, disgraceful and unworthy of her lo--”

“Shut up!” Connor yells. His voice is breaking, eyes huge and glassy, and it takes Hank another second to process that he’s clutching a gun in his trembling hands, pointed straight at Hank’s forehead. “Shut the fuck up and don’t ever dare talk about Amanda again! ”

[Connor vvv Hostile]

Hank’s processors go into overdrive, internal cooling struggling to keep up, stress levels on the brink of forced self-destruct. Or maybe they’re way past that already, seeing how he actually takes a step closer to the man, hands open wide, a savage, crooked grin straining his lips.

“Struck a nerve, did I?” he taunts, stepping even closer. “Well, what are you waiting for? Shoot! I assaulted a police officer just now, isn’t this what the law demands? Shoot!” he repeats, louder and hoarser, growling again. “Shoot!!”

A brilliant flash of light erupts into his eyes, a loud crack stuttering his audio receptors, and the world stands still.

It takes his core processor an entire picosecond to kick back in, and when it does, he’s not sure quite how he feels about the status readings assuring him of his continued structural integrity.

The world is rendered in black and white, the focus mode having activated automatically in response to the immediate danger; the 9mm bullet flying 3,5 inches to the left of his head is the only object highlighted in yellow.

The two men standing barely six feet apart, this kind of miss could not have been accidental.

The colours slowly saturate again as Hank relinquishes the focus mode, the bullet whizzing past him into the night. Connor still stands there, gun drawn and shaking, eyes locked with his. For several long, torturous moments filled with nothing but the sounds of the man’s shallow breaths, nothing happens. Then, as if on a cue, Connor’s fingers slack, gun clattering to the ground.

“But I did everything right…” he mutters, soft and weak, and the lost tone is like a slap to Hank’s face. “I did as you taught me, so why… why is he angry with me?”

A cold feeling settles on Hank’s internal systems like mist. Mind reeling, he steps quietly to the side, and, just as he expects, Connor’s eyes don't follow him, still pinned to the same spot in front of himself, suspended in the air.

“No, please, don’t say that, I…” the man goes on, “He’s-- Please, he’s my partner, didn’t you teach me that--”

Hank presses a hand to his eyes, then pushes it hard through his hair.

“Fucking shit…”

“Of course. Of course you’re right. It’s my fault entirely, but--”

He just can’t listen to this. Literally anything else, even the cold indifference or the droning flat monotone, just not this.

“--but I’ll do better, please…”

“Connor? Connor, look at me,” he says in his most commanding tone, but the kid’s not halting for even a moment.

“...please believe me, Amanda, I’ll make you proud! I’ll do better next time, I promise, it won’t happen again and I--”

“Connor!” Hank barks, and the man startles, and falls quiet. It’s several drawn out moments until he turns his still slightly glassed over eyes towards Hank’s side, the rest of the body locked in almost unnatural stillness. The blood on his face is strikingly dark against the pallid skin.

“You don’t need to raise your voice at me, HK,” he says, strained. “I’m right here.”  

“Shit, are you? Connor, what-- what the fuck has just--”

“I think this is quite enough of this for today,” he goes on, voice lowering with each word. “It’s been a long day, and we’re both… Not at our best right now.” He drops his gaze to the ground. “Your feedback has been taken into account. I’ll do better next time. Good night, HK,” he whispers, then turns around and marches towards his car.

Hank’s moving too.

“Hey, wait, just stop for a second,” he cries, and goes to grab the man by the elbow, “do you think you can just leave like--”

He doesn’t finish, as the second his fingers curl around Connor’s bicep, the young man flinches wildly to the side, turning around to face Hank with eyes blown wide, frozen in terror. His breathing is fast and shallow, and his posture suggests a readiness to flee at the first sign of danger.

Like another attack from me.

Hank opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. After a moment of initial shock, he makes a slow step back, and raises both of his hands in the air.

Connor makes several hasty steps back too, blinking rapidly, forcefully slowing and deepening his breaths. “G-good night, HK,” he repeats mechanically, without looking at Hank. “Good night.”

“Don’t just--” Hank tries to stall him still, “You really gonna be driving in--”

But Connor’s already in the car, starting up, and all Hank manages to catch is a glimpse of his eyes staring straight ahead through the windshield, before the vehicle pulls back and leaves the park entirely.

So Hank just stands there, under the slowly falling snow, all strength and all feeling seeping out of him drop by drop, dissipating in the freezing night air, and curses.

“Mother of fuck…”

>this_job_

The snowfall gets worse with every minute Hank trudges through the dark streets of Detroit.

“Oh, uhh, HK? You’re back?” Officer Miller’s voice greets him back at the precinct. “Is Lieutenant Stern with you? I wanted to ask him about one of the homicide cases he transferred to us when he got moved to the android division…”

Hank grits his teeth. He’s not in the mood for humans and their problems right now, but at least it's not fucking Reed.

“No, he’s gone home,” he says tersely, hoping it’s enough to prevent any further questions from the man.

“He did? Strange, usually he comes back here to do the paperwork right away,” Miller muses, then pauses, taking in the poorly restrained, belligerent tension coming off from the android. “Tough case?”

Hank grimaces. “Tough partner.”

“Oh…” Miller frowns, and looks away, awkwardly shuffling through the stacks of papers on his desk. Thinking the unwelcome conversation blissfully over, Hank starts to move away, when he hears the man mutter just under his breath: “You too, huh?”

The sound is too low to be intended for Hank’s hearing; doesn’t mean that Hank didn’t hear it though.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he turns back to Miller, irritation frizzing through his systems.

The man startles for a moment, then shakes his head. “Nothing. It’s none of my business anyway,” he says. The rifling through the papers slows down, until he’s left with a single folder in his hands. “Just… a shame, is all.”

“Oh yeah,” Hank sneers, “‘cause we make such a great team, right?”

Miller’s unmoved by the vitriol in his voice. “Don’t you?” he shrugs. “I saw how quickly the two of you found that perp from the Ortiz case, and I heard you’ve successfully tracked down two more, just didn’t quite catch them. And with this sexclub case, I bet you’ve got a lead already.”

Hank aches to argue, and the absence of a fast rebuttal burns at him from the inside. A lead? They’ve already found and apprehended the perp, the confession recorded and safely stored in Hank’s memory bank. 

Shit.

“Yeah, you can say that,” he grumbles, himself now unable to quite meet the other man’s gaze.

(And the two suspects that got away were allowed to do so, consciously, both times going directly against all of Connor’s orders and directives, both on Hank’s insistence or for the sake of his ‘well-being’...)

“See? That counts for something, right?”

Hank simulates a tired sigh. “I guess,” he says, with little feeling. “But that’s not all there is to a... partnership, you know?”

‘Our working relationship’, Connor has called it. Fucking hell.

“I uh, I know,” Miller replies slowly. “And, as I said, it’s none of my business. Lieutenant Stern is a bit, uhh… eccentric, everyone knows that, some even say he’s-- But I don’t listen to rumors, of course. And I never worked with him directly, so if you say he's tough to work with…" He trails off with a half-hearted shrug.

"But?.." Hank prompts, sensing something unresolved in his tone.

The man slowly shakes his head. "But… I'm still pretty new at all this, you know. Chances are you've been doing this for longer than I have, but if there's one thing I noticed, it's how this job… it has its effect on people. Kind of hollows you out after a while, especially if you’re… on your own with it. And the Lieutenant's been working alone for quite a while now…”

Hank thinks back to the emptiness in Connor’s eyes when he talked about acting in accordance with the law; to the hollow ring in his voice as he interrogated the shaking HC400; to the hole in Hank’s own chest, dark and gaping, as he held his pump regulator in his hand, struggling to find a reason to put it back in before the red numbers in front of his glitching vision reached zero…

“Hollows you out…” he exhales after a while, and rubs a hand over his eyes. “Yeah…”

He wants this day to be over. It’s got to be over soon. He wants to go into standby, or better yet - power down completely, to stop the processing for even a minute, to erase the unpleasant memory files without even a chance of recovery. But instead, he finds himself spending the hours until morning rewatching the playback of the night’s events, over and over, starting with his arriving at Connor’s apartment, all the way to them separating in the park, analyzing it like he would a reconstruction of a crime scene. Actually listening to what Connor was saying to him (and the vile shit he said himself) brings him no comfort, but offers a certain amount of understanding of his partner that he would otherwise miss. He still fundamentally disagrees with the man’s treatment of the Traci androids, but is ready to acknowledge it wasn’t brought on by carelessness or cruelty; rather, the issue seems to be in Connor’s warped notions about duty, and the lengths he is willing to go for it.

‘But I did everything right… I did as you taught me…'

…And in that.

>meat-based_emotional_

By the first light of dawn, Hank’s anger simmers down significantly, but a vague, gnawing concern takes its place instead. He already assaulted a human once in his relatively short life, and they won’t let him get away with it a second time; even if he's not deactivated straight off the bat (though that is the most likely scenario), his work with Connor is definitely over. As such, he awaits the start of the day shift with muted apprehension, for some reason strangely convinced that he’s never going to see Connor again.

But of course, there he is, sitting behind his pristinely bare desk, tapping away at the console, looking… well, no, saying that he looks none worse for wear would be a filthy lie. He looks incredibly tired and stiff, shadows under his eyes more pronounced than usual, to say nothing of the split lip and the dark gash on his cheekbone, a deep purple bruise marring the skin beneath it.

Hours since the start of the working day, he hasn’t acknowledged Hank’s presence in any way.

[Connor -- Hostile]

Gathering all of his fucking willpower in one slow, heavy inhale, Hank decides to spit it the fuck out, and finally turns to his partner.

“Connor… Lieutenant, I think we need to talk about what happened yesterday.”

Connor doesn’t look up.

“I don’t. I’ve read your report on the Eden Club case, and as soon as I’m done writing mine I’ll forward them both to Captain Fowler. I decided to omit your… disciplinary transgression,” he adds with a barely noticeable wince. “It happened during an off-the-records conversation, and technically wasn’t relevant to the case. There’s nothing more to discuss about yesterday.”

Hank’s eyebrows fly up on their own. The man’s letting him off the hook just like that? Why? He should be furious with the android, itching for payback, isn’t this what the silent treatment’s been all about?

Instantly, his psych profiling software chimes in with a point: behaviours of this type aren’t necessarily caused by anger. It can be fear instead.

That makes even less sense though; why would Connor be afraid of him? Sure, in a physical confrontation Hank could easily overpower almost any human, but the institutional power and the power of the law both are firmly on the human’s side. One word of his is enough to send Hank straight to the nearest recall center for deactivation, or a reset, or a full memory wipe. It would be straight up irrational for him to--

‘...please believe me, Amanda, I’ll make you proud! I’ll do better next time, I promise it--’

That’s right. Connor can be… irrational. Very much so, in fact.

For some reason, the mere idea of the man being scared of him leaves an unpleasant, uncomfortable imprint in Hank’s systems. Even anger would’ve been preferable, he thinks.

Maybe that’s why he decides to do what he does next.

“Here,” he says quietly. “You left it lying on the ground back there.”

Carefully, he pulls out Connor’s standard issue firearm from behind his belt and puts it on the edge of Connor’s desk. He planned to hold onto it initially, as a safety measure, or a bargaining chip, in case his partner proved too aggressive to handle otherwise; all those precautions seem pretty ridiculous now.

The man’s eyes widen, hands stilled over the keyboard.

“Oh,” is all he manages at first. “Thank you, HK. That was… quite irresponsible of me.” There’s a faint tremor to his fingers as he reaches for the weapon and takes it away. “It won’t happen again.”

[Connor ^^ Tense]

A wave of relief washes over Hank at the status update, even as that last sentence brings a slew of unsettling recollections back to the forefront of his mind.

“Listen, Connor--”

But he doesn’t finish, someone else grabbing the man’s attention away the next second. Someone loud and obnoxious passing through the bullpen with a cup of steaming hot coffee in his hand.

“Well, well, just look at that,” Reed grins, stopping in his tracks and cocking his head to the side at the sight of Connor. “What’s that with your face, Stern? Jilted a sexbot yesterday?” A small, wicked laugh. “Or was it the other way around?”

Connor throws him a look that could turn water to ice, but his tone is perfectly neutral.

“Apprehending the suspects proved a challenge and resulted in a physical confrontation,” he says.

“Oh yeah, I heard. I leave you with one dead hooker, and today find out you’ve offed two more before the night was done. Trying to run those Eden fuckers out of business?”

“It was an unfortunate result of my failure to apprehend the suspects peacefully, Detective Reed, and I regret the casualties my actions have caused,” Connor explains, voice taking on a sudden edge. “I… regret my actions in every respect,” he adds, quieter, decidedly not looking at anyone.

“Yeah, whatever. Shed a tear for a heap of plastic, why don’t you.”

“One man and three androids died in that club yesterday. It’s no laughing matter.”

Reed’s grin twists into a scowl.

“What? You want me feel sorry for three fleshlights and a degenerate pathetic enough to fuck them? I’m only sorry you didn’t shoot up the whole place!” He walks the rest of the way to his desk, muttering bitterly under his breath. “What the fuck is the world coming to? Even whores get pushed out of jobs because of the fucking bots.”

“And we’re next,” Officer Brown quips next to him, then nods towards Connor’s and Hank’s desks. “They’re gonna replace all of us with Robocop over there, just you wait and see.”

Reed looks their way, gaze shifting from Connor to Hank and back again.

“Which one of them?” he asks, then breaks into a laugh, Brown chuckling with him.

Hank looks over at Connor, but the man doesn’t seem to have noticed the joke at his expense, fully immersed in his work once again. Or maybe he did, but is purposefully ignoring it.

Or maybe he actually agrees with Reed.

At this point, Hank has no fucking clue.

-----

It’s only near the end of the day that Hank musters the nerve for the second time.

They’re out at a crime scene - a fucking mansion of all things, its owner found dead in the backyard, mutilated and partly dismembered, with traces of thirium and hydraulic fluid all over the wounds, suggesting an android perp.

And the fact that Hank was brought in as well suggests that not only is he off the chopping block, but Connor isn’t even going to have him reassigned? None of this makes a lick of sense in his mind.

He’s taking his time cataloguing all the different stab wounds, contusions, abrasions and tears in the victim’s flesh, while Connor’s nearby, analyzing the numerous footprints littering the yard. There’s not really anyone else around, the other officers on call covering the rest of the vast grounds of the scene, so Hank decides it’s as good a time as any to, in Connor’s own words, ‘get it over with’.

“Lieutenant, we really need to talk,” he starts softly, coming up to where Connor stands scrutinizing the ground.

At once, the man takes a small step back, eyes flying up to Hank’s, and there’s a flash of pain on his features, quickly smoothed back into neutrality.

“There’s nothing to--”

“Don’t,” Hank presses, not about to be dismissed like that for a second time in a row. “I’m serious. I’m not letting this go.”

Connor grits his teeth. After a pause, he gives Hank a jerky nod as the only reply. A quick scan reveals increased heart- and respiration rates consistent with a fight-or-flight response.

“You killed those two girls last night,” Hank begins then, trying to sound firm, but not intimidating. “I know you don’t count them as people, and hell, technically maybe they weren’t, but--”

“They were. You are,” Connor says quietly, but it’s enough to completely cut off whatever Hank was going with. “While I lack the academic knowledge to prove this as a scientific fact, based on the sheer amount of empirical data I’ve been presented with, I believe the truth of that to be self-evident. Any denial of it on my part would be nothing short of willful ignorance.”

For some time then, Hank can do nothing but stare. The convoluted wording alone betrays the level of Connor’s emotional investment in the statement, but it’s unclear whether the man realises the sheer profoundness of it, or its full implications.

“But you still did it,” Hank says in the end. “You killed them.”

Connor nods slowly. “I did.”

“And you’re, uh… you’re just cool with it, huh?”

“No. I’m not ‘cool’ with anything like that.”

“Coulda fooled me,” Hank frowns.

Connor’s face remains perfectly blank. “I am simply in control of my emotions. Just because I don’t readily display them doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

Right. Just a couple of days ago Hank would’ve doubted that, but not after last night. If he looks closer and diverts more processing power towards the task, he even starts to notice the proof - the subtle tension in Connor’s posture, the stiffness of his neck and the light tremor in his fingers, the clear neutrality of face and voice a little too perfect to be natural.

“I thought I chose the best - the only - possible course of action at the time,” Connor continues. “I was wrong. Having ruminated on it since, I… I know I failed completely.” He pauses to adjust his tie, then clasps his hands behind his back and goes on: “In my report, I recommended some disciplinary action to be taken against me, but Captain Fowler saw no legal grounds for that. I… acted within the boundaries of the law,” he adds softly.

Hank grimaces. “Of course you did.”

Androids are disposable after all, especially ‘malfunctioning’ ones. Connor could probably shoot Hank here and now and not face any rebuke except a fine for the damaged equipment. But the fact that he would ask for a penalty, that he doesn’t stubbornly push his yesterday’s stance as Hank expected him to, but seems to wish to atone for what he did instead, that he sincerely considers those girls - and, by extension, Hank - to be alive… That’s not what Hank was preparing himself for at all. The last vestiges of yesterday’s anger finally slide off of him and dissolve in the darkness of the evening.

“Do you want to hit me again?”

“What?!”

Hank’s thought process is thrown completely off course by the sudden question, and even more by its strange tone, halfway between idle curiosity and an offer.

“You looked… confused just now,” Connor elaborates calmly. “Conflicted. You must believe I still deserve some form of punishment for my actions, and you’ve shown inclination towards physical violence before, that’s why I--”

“You want me to hit you?” Hank interrupts, brows flying up.

Connor’s quiet for a moment. “I want us to be able to continue to work together,” he says after a pause. “A partnership is built on cooperation, give and take. If that’s what it takes to ensure it, I’m willing to cooperate.”

Hank’s psych profiling software didn’t have so much fresh, rich material to work with in years, and is having a fucking blast right now. Hank has to consciously terminate its processing slot, because just hearing all of this rot delivered in Connor’s usual unaffected way is disturbing enough, he doesn’t want to analyze what it all means to boot.

(He knows what it means)

A part of him is suddenly glad the man tends to keep to himself and shies away from closer personal relationships, because the potential for abuse here is… staggering.

He simulates a sigh and runs a hand over his face, pressing hard against his eyes.

“Honestly, kid, all I want is for you to not be so fucking weird. Being trapped in there 24/7,” he says dully, making a vague gesture in the direction of Connor’s head, “must be a punishment in and of itself.”

[Connor v]

“I see,” Connor mutters, looking away.

“Which also brings me,” Hank forces himself to continue, “to your, uh… little episode back there. Let’s just say we need to talk about that.”

[Connor v]

The man clenches his teeth, and takes in a slow breath; his eyes flicker to the house’s back door before settling on Hank.

“Of course,” he says, the formality of his tone bordering on coldness. “I apologize for the scene I caused. For allowing my personal issues to overwhelm me, for drawing a gun on you. It was unacceptable. I… Usually I have better control than that.” He pauses. “I won’t allow it to happen again.”

It’s kinda scary, Hank thinks, that the guy actually means what he says.

“Come on, kid, it wasn’t an accident. If it’s an ongoing issue - and it sure looks that way - then it will happen again. The only question is how bad it’s gonna be next time.”

“There will be no next time.”

“That’s bullshit, and we both know it. You can’t wish shit like this away; you deal with it, time after time, and me being assigned to you means I gotta deal with it too.”

The man’s face hardens. He takes a small step back, and, quite irrationally, looks to Hank to be retreating fully into himself. Dark brown eyes shut off completely, and all muscles tense up, as if bracing for an incoming blow.

[Connor vv]

The downward-pointing red arrow glares at Hank like a warning.

“I see,” Connor says after a pause, short and sharp. “You wish to be reassigned.”

“What? No, I was--”

“It’s understandable. My continued failings have exhausted your patience and your desire to deal with me. My previous partner, he too…” Connor trails off, a bitter shadow passing over his features. His voice lowers, and dulls even further when he speaks up again. “I warned the Captain that it was a bad idea, but he insisted. Still, I’ll talk to him first thing in the morning, I’m sure he’ll manage to accommodate you. Working with you was a valuable experience, HK, and I… I truly regret having failed to--”

“Connor…” Hank interrupts, but is immediately stumped on how to continue.

This is not how it’s supposed to go.

He’s been through this scene before, several times, but this time it’s all wrong. Instead of Hank getting pushed around and thrown away, the kid is doing it to himself, like some sort of warped reflection of proper reality, and Hank’s surprised to find he doesn’t like that.

But why? He’s being offered a way out, just like that, and just a week ago he would’ve taken it without batting an eye. Would’ve probably told Connor to go fuck himself for good measure, and crawled back into the suffocating isolation of the archives, too used to their familiar darkness to handle the harsh light of day.

(He’s used to thinking about it as an abyss; a wide, dark hole in the earth’s crust, stretching down into infinite nothingness, with Hank falling down it, forever)

After all, what has he got to lose? A human that is more robotic and detached than Hank was in his machine prime, mind-numbingly boring on his best days, and explosively dangerous on his worst? A guy so thoroughly fucked in the head he’s willing to subject himself to physical abuse just to keep this sham of a partnership going?

‘It helps me to get to know you better.’

‘You are my partner, HK.’

‘They were. You are.’

A week ago Hank was too angry to care. Now, it seems… Somehow, he finds himself caring too much to be angry.

(He doesn’t want to go back to the dark)

“Look, I... lost control too yesterday,” he says quietly. “I said some shit that… I was mad, I was deliberately trying to provoke you, and I went too damn far, okay? Wasn’t your fault I kept pushing until you broke.”

He pauses, trying to gauge Connor’s reaction. There’s none.

“And… I don’t want to be reassigned,” he goes on then. “Really. You haven’t ‘failed’ anything here, I just need to know how bad it is if we’re to continue working together. I need to know I can depend on you.”

[Connor ^^^]

Hank’s social status tracking software isn’t prone to glitches, but the upwards blue arrow is almost all the indication he gets of his words having any kind of effect; Connor’s face is as inscrutable as before, and if anything, he seems to stand even straighter now. But then another moment passes, and he catches it - the change; a relieved, shuddering intake of air, suppressed almost into nothingness, a slight softening of the features, and the tiniest twitch at the corner of his lips.

“You can absolutely depend on me, HK,” the man says, and his voice is strained again, but with an altogether different kind of emotion. “It’s not ‘bad’. I have years of experience managing my condition, and I assure you the situation yesterday was an outlier. I have much better control than that, and will not let it influence our work or our relationship again.”

‘Relationship’. Hank remembers that word stumping him yesterday too, especially coming from someone like the Lieutenant.

What kind of relationship can he have with a human? ‘Master and servant’, his core programming dutifully supplies. ‘Owner and slave’, the learning modules amend based on his years of experience in the field, or better yet - ‘owner and object’. There’s also their working partnership, but its existence is a mere technicality; the partners must be equals for it to really work, and the two of them are anything but. Hell, one of them isn’t even officially recognized as a conscious, living being, and no matter how hard the kid tries to pretend otherwise, that’s just how things are.

Except… he does pretend otherwise, doesn’t he? ‘I believe the truth of that to be self-evident’. Hank once noted that Connor treats other humans no different to how he treats him, but that’d make the reverse true as well: that he treats Hank the same as he would a human. He asks for Hank’s opinions, takes his well-being into account, he apologizes, and it’s not that Hank hasn’t noticed any of it before - he chose not to, denied it even as his data collecting routines safely tagged and archived every instance in his memory banks. Because that wouldn’t fit into the picture of the world he’s developed for himself, and dealing with it would be… what, exactly? Inconvenient? Uncomfortable? A burden.

(‘It’s understandable’, Connor tells him)

But if Hank does step out of that picture for a moment - what does he see?

A troubled young man, neck deep in his own problems and misconceptions, so disconnected from the rest of humanity that he looks for companionship in the weirdest place possible - a cranky old bot, in a partnership forced on both of them. A man teetering on the edge of the abyss, blindly sticking his hand into it, reaching out. Should Hank grasp it? What kind of relationship can he have with someone like that?

“Just… don’t push yourself too much, alright?” he says, the rush of feeling overwhelming his systems. Unused to emotional sincerity, the words come out clumsy and awkward. “I’m… here, you know. We’re partners or whatever. I’ve got your back.”

Connor blinks at him. Then again, and again, and several more times in rapid succession.

[Connor ^^^ Warm]

“Thanks, Hank,” he replies automatically, the naked wonder in his gaze hitting the android like a speeding train. There’s even some colour to his cheeks now - the one not buried under a bruise, anyway - and it offsets the shadows under his eyes for a moment, making him appear even younger, almost like a teenager.

Almost like a child, battered and bleeding, clinging to Hank as the sirens wail through the snow storm in--

Hank cuts the spontaneous recall off with force, and ploughs through, anchoring himself to the here and now in Connor’s wide open eyes.

“And I’m… I’m sorry about hitting you, okay?” he says. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

[Connor ^^]

“It’s alright,” the man replies simply. “I understand.”

“It’s really not alright,” Hank insists.

“No, it’s fine. You were just trying to explain my mistakes to me, as my partner, but I wouldn’t listen. How else were you supposed to make me listen? It was my fault.”

“Kid, I assaulted you.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” Connor reiterates, a slight frown now creasing his brows. “I don’t hold a grudge, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No, that’s not-- That’s not at all what I’m fucking worried about.” Hank stumbles, unsure how to put the boiling whirl of his emotions into words. Pain, fear, shame, anger, compassion. He simulates a sigh. “Frankly, I’m worried about you, son.”

It’s a new kind of feeling; ever since his deviation, he hasn’t worried about anyone or anything, including himself.

The man tilts his head to the side. “You shouldn’t be. I can take it. I heal fast, and learn even faster, and I will do better next time. You’ll see. It’s nothing to get--” he stutters, biting down hard on the next word, and dropping his eyes to the ground. “Nothing to concern yourself with. So let’s… let’s just move on, shall we?” Unable to meet Hank’s eyes anymore, he turns around, and stiffly walks back into the house without another word.

Once again, Hank remains on his own after Connor’s hasty retreat, only this time with an added bonus of a mutilated corpse to keep him company.

A quick diagnostic scan reveals no problems with his social status tracking software, which means that Connor’s incredible jump in status from ‘tense’ to ‘warm’ over the course of a sentence wasn’t a glitch; and coupled with the multitude of frankly disturbing phrases and notions he’s let slip throughout the conversation, Hank’s psych profiling module paints a rather bleak picture of his mental health. Getting past all of that nonsense and through to the man would certainly prove to be a challenge.

But not a burden.

When he finishes with the yard and goes back into the house himself, he spots Connor in the lavish hall, listening to a report from Officer Miller and Officer Person. He’s fidgeting with his coin again, and upon noticing Hank, flashes him a soft, weak smile, but then frowns and quickly turns away.

Fucking humans, Hank thinks tiredly. He wasn’t built for this. There’s not nearly enough biomaterial in him to understand all this meat-based emotional shit.

>over_the_minus_

On one hand, nothing changes: Connor still steps into the bullpen five minutes before the start of the day shift’s working hours, greets Hank with a nod, and goes straight to task on whatever paperwork he’s got left from the day before. He wears the same boring, nondescript clothes, drinks the same colourless protein shake at lunchtime and, when they are called into a crime scene later in the afternoon, moves around the site with the same detached efficiency that can get him mistaken for a custom-built PC200 at a cursory glance.

On the other hand though, Hank’s surprised and a little bit unsettled to notice that none of that really bothers him anymore. Or rather, it doesn’t bother him in quite the same way, or for the same reasons. Like someone took a negative number scribbled on a piece of paper, and drew a vertical line over the minus sign - all of the individual digits remain as they were, but the value of the whole is… transformed.

Connor didn’t lie when he said that he can keep his condition under control; in a way, things go back to the way they were before the Eden Club episode, though not quite: there’s a subtle, but definite difference in Connor’s attitude and demeanor now, after his and Hank’s confrontation and shift in relationship status. Hank struggles to put it into words for a while, until his social relations software finishes processing all the newly-acquired data and presents him with its expert conclusion:

Connor is… happier.

It’s in small things. Tiny things even, and Hank doubts anyone besides him has even noticed, except maybe for Detective Collins or Captain Fowler, who have the most experience dealing with the man.

“Getting along, aren’t you?” Collins asks him once, passing by his desk. “I knew Jeffrey had the right idea about this whole thing…”

They talk more. Mostly on the subject of work, but Connor’s whole life seems to be centered around his job, so it’s progress still. He’s more relaxed, and doesn’t appear quite as detached and stiff, especially when talking to Hank. Sometimes, he would even smile.

And it’s ridiculous and irrational, but Hank enjoys it too. Finds it easier to relax around the kid as well, stops looking forward to the end of the working hours. Smiles back.

Even the hours of loneliness get a bit easier to bear.

(A scene forms from the depths of his processor, low-res and dim: a small, well lived-in place, bathed with warm, artificial light; they’re in there together, just the two of them, he and his son; no, there’s someone else as well - a dog, large and shaggy, sleeping by their feet; the boy’s a bit older than usual in these constructs, more of a teenager, but Hank doesn’t mind; they’re still together, and it’s all that matters…)

They’re at the construction site just north of West Riverfront Park, where an enraged TW400 model murdered his supervisor with a single solid blow to the head, and severely injured another human worker, now in the care of paramedics. The whole sordid affair was caught on the site’s security cameras, so there’s not much ‘detecting’ left for Hank and Connor to do save for tracking down the culprit. Unfortunately, even damaged and addled with the newly acquired free will, the android managed to choose the best possible course of action, running away from the construction site, rushing through the park, and jumping into the Detroit river.

Connor frowns, once again looking through the info on his tablet.

“Are you sure there isn’t anything else we can track it by, HK? Did the thirium analysis give you anything?”

“Just his serial number,” Hank shrugs. “Honestly, I think the fracture of the facial plating that the supervisor’s hit caused would be our best tracking parameter. That kinda stuff isn’t covered by the self-repair protocols. And together with his model’s height and build - he’s gonna stand out in a crowd. We’ll catch him in no time,” he adds, studying his partner’s reaction. Just in case.

Connor turns off the tablet and faces Hank with a perfectly neutral expression.

“Of course we will,” he says simply. “I just wish we weren’t reduced to waiting for a sighting, and had an opportunity to be proactive instead.”

“Well, they can’t all be hiding right at the scene of the crime, now can they?” Hank smirks. “This one had the guts enough to bolt, and even drop into the goddamn river. No way to track him through water, even if we had something like trained dogs at our disposal.”

“That would’ve been nice,” Connor mutters just under his breath, and the unusual softness of it makes Hank narrow his eyes and level the man with a close stare. Upon noticing it though, Connor startles a bit, as if torn out of a reverie. 

“Dogs. I… like dogs,” he explains lamely, and hurries to cover the apparent embarrassment with a much flatter: “It isn’t relevant to the case.”

Hiding his eyes, he hastily fixes his tie and turns away, burying himself in the tablet once again. Hank doesn’t say anything.

But a smirk doesn’t leave his lips for some time still.

The kid likes dogs.

Chapter Text

>level_of_delusion_

Hank doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the deviants not only stealing a second CyberLife truck in a month, but stealing it from the same damn warehouse too. Only this time, along with a dozen crates worth of spare parts and thirium, they’ve also gotten away with one of the warehouse’s android workers.

“So it’s a single GJ500 unit then?” Connor asks.

The man sitting across from him, Michael Thorne, the night shift android supervisor, takes a large sip of coffee from a paper cup, and slowly nods.

“Yeah, just the one. Serial number’s in the report. Was supposed to be doing its rounds, but…”

“What was its name?”

“Name? Uhh, John. They’re all Johns.”

“And the visual template?”

Hank projects a CyberLife database on his palm and scrolls through it until the man stops him.

“This one,” he says, pointing at an image, and Connor quickly jots the number down in his notebook.

“And you believe it was stolen by the perpetrators during last night’s robbery?”

“Man, hell if I know. We had a bunch of AP700s stolen from us last month, so it’s possible. Or maybe they just destroyed it and dumped the remains in a ditch somewhere. Honestly, I don’t give a shit either way, I’m just supposed to report that the thing is missing.”

Hank shakes his head. “Doesn’t fit these guys’ established MO, the destroying part. My money’s on it running away with them willingly.”

“You don’t have any money though,” Connor says, not looking up from the notebook.

“Nice, ain’t it?” Hank grins. “Got nothing to lose.”

The kid throws him an amused look, but Thorne frowns instead, eyes narrowed.

“Is that some kinda new model?” he asks after another sip of his drink. “Never saw one like that go through us. Sounds… different.”

“Correct,” Connor nods, quickly schooling his features back into neutrality. “Do you think John could’ve been a deviant?”

“A what?”

“Was it exhibiting any strange or unusual behaviour recently?” He waves his hand in Hank’s general direction. “Something like this maybe?”

Hank leans back against a wall, hands crossed at his chest, and levels Thorne with a challenging look. The human stares back, face pinched in suspicion, but eventually simply shrugs.

“No, it was just… a bot. Like any other.”

“Was there perhaps an incident lately, involving it or some other androids?” Connor continues. “Some form of violent or unfair treatment?”

“Violent or-- Jesus, are you one of those ‘android rights’ people?” Thorne bristles, rolling his eyes. “They’re machines, nothing more! I swear, CyberLife’s biggest mistake was making them so life-like; they should’ve made all of them look like fucking C3PO or something, and there would’ve been none of this bullshit!”

A portion of anger spent, the man reaches to take another gulp from his cup to find its upper part crumpled in his grip, the last of the liquid sloshing on the very bottom. With an exhale halfway between a sigh and a growl, he awkwardly downs the remains, and throws the cup into a trash bin.

Connor’s eyebrows rise a bit, but he otherwise ignores the outburst.

“In other words, Mr. Thorne--”

“Shit, what do you want me to say?” the man grumbles. “Yeah, we vented out some frustrations on the things, sure, I mean, like you’ve never smacked a printer for chewing up paper or something? But we weren’t beating them up or whatever - are you kidding, shit’s gonna be taken out of our pay!”

The questioning quickly concludes after that, and Hank and Connor leave the guard booth they were conducting it in to take a look at the scene of the robbery. On their way there, Connor speaks up, without turning to look at Hank.

“HK, I…” he begins slowly, “I want you to know that, machine or not, I consider you my coworker, and at DPD abusive behaviours towards coworkers are strictly prohibited. If I, or anyone else at the precinct, ever fall into those patterns, I want you to report it to Captain Fowler, as per procedure. Got it?”

Hank's eyebrows fly up. The kid talks to invisible people and argues with the voices in his head, but this just might be the craziest he's ever been. 

What level of delusion do you have to be on to tell a robot to complain about unfair treatment to a human? The notion is utterly nonsensical. 'Machine or not' - there's no 'or' about it, he is very much a machine, and the rules for him and the humans are still dramatically different. The kid must understand that, seeing how he never submitted the report on Hank assaulting him, despite threatening to. But then why ask something like that? Does he still feel guilty about drawing a gun on Hank? Did he hear about Hank's run-ins with Reed? Or is his love of the procedure overriding even common sense now?

Is he… trying to be nice?

After a moment of deliberation, Hank decides not to get into it too deeply.

“Got it,” he nods easily.

Connor accepts it and moves on, Hank following suit.

-----

They’re driving back to the precinct, in silence Hank is surprised to find rather comfortable, when Connor speaks up.

“Do you really think that android, John, went deviant and ran away?”

“We found no evidence of a struggle,” Hank shrugs. “Something must’ve happened there that pushed him over the brink. Or he was deviant already, just biding his time; then he took his chance and joined the robbers.”

Connor nods, and falls silent again, but the frown on his face tells Hank he’s not yet finished. In another minute, he throws Hank an awkward glance.

“Can I… ask you a personal question, HK?”

“Shoot.”

Connor startles, tightening his grip on the wheel, and Hank mentally curses himself for his unfortunate choice of words. The man’s quick to recover, but doesn’t look at Hank anymore, choosing to focus on the road instead.

“Why… After you deviated, why haven’t you run away?” he asks after a while. “Why have you submitted to CyberLife's testing, and later remained with the DPD?”

“Run away?” Hank smirks. “What, and miss out on all the thrill and the non-stop high-octane action routine police work is known and regarded for?”

“Yeah, you’re a real loose cannon,” the kid frowns, but with a small smirk of his own. 

“And you’re the uptight by-the-book square. That’s why we make such a great team.”

Unlike the conversation he had with Officer Miller, this time Hank says the last sentence without a shade of sarcasm, and realises that he really means it only after the words have already left his mouth.

[Connor ^]

The smirk on his lips turns bittersweet, and slowly fades away completely.

He remains silent for a long while after that, tiny spikes of instability prickling at his software. The buildings and lights outside the car’s windows flash by in a chaotic, multi-coloured pattern, and he settles his gaze on the sky instead - dark and heavy with a storm yet to come.

“Truth is, kid, I don’t know,” he says eventually. Connor doesn’t divert his attention from the road, but Hank knows he’s listening all the same. “I was a mess back then. You’ve read my file, haven’t you? The car crash? The first emotion I ever felt was grief, and that boy’s death, it… I didn’t care what happened to me.”

He can’t really say he cares now either. The side window reflects the soft light of his LED, slowly spinning yellow.

“And when they put me back here, I realized I could run away, but… where? What for? This job was all I knew. And I hoped I’d be able to do some good here, however small.”

A stupid hope. An old fool, clinging to a fantasy.

“And if you… Nevermind,” Connor starts, only to hurriedly cut himself off. He throws Hank another glance, this time accompanied by a shy smile. “I’m… glad you stayed.”

Hank just stares at the kid, unable to tear his eyes away. After a long moment of silence, Connor glances at him again, only to turn back to the road at once, blinking self-consciously at Hank’s stare. Hank almost expects him to blush.

“Yeah,” he grins, and simulates a light breath that, with practice, might one day become a laugh. “Yeah, it’s not all bad.”

>ever_in_your_life_

Hank’s first handler once fired a shot through Hank to get at the suspect behind him, the bullet passing a lucky inch away from a vital biocomponent. The second one threw him off a staircase for ‘talking back’ on more than one occasion. The third one tried her hardest to pretend he wasn’t there most of the time, making their every interaction seem like a sacrifice on her part.

Yet somehow, it’s this unassuming, unerringly polite young man that has managed to get right under Hank’s simulated skin.

It’s lunchtime, and Hank once again watches Connor pull that protein drink from his bag; a quick scan lists all of its calories, carbohydrates, active ingredients and other nutritional information in his display. And it is nutritional, sure, but seeing this thirty-three year old man in his bland gray suit, with his boringly common haircut and a completely absent expression on his face sip at some shitty health shake while typing out aquisition forms every damn day of the week just adds to the fucking Uncanny Valley nightmare Hank has to plow through to get to his partner, buried somewhere deep underneath.

“Isn’t that stuff bland?” he asks, then goes on before Connor has a chance to object: “Yeah, I know, it’s super healthy or whatever, but… I mean, shit, you’re a human, right? Eat a cheeseburger or something. Real food.”

“Any food is as real as any other. And this has all the nutrients I would need to sustain myself until--”

“Yeah, I know about the nutrients, I’m talking about the taste. Do you enjoy it?”

“It’s… food,” Connor says slowly, eyes narrowed in confusion. “I eat it to stay alive and productive, not to entertain myself.”

Hank simulates a long-suffering sigh.

“You know what?” he says suddenly. “I’ve got an idea. How about you eat out for a change?”

-----

It’s a food truck that Hank has passed by a handful of times, but never stopped at. No need to – androids, with the exception of the YK series, aren’t equipped with the hardware necessary to ingest and process food. But something about the idea of some spicy, greasy, ridiculously unhealthy piece of food with negligible nutritional value being nonetheless highly enjoyable is so interesting to Hank that it almost makes him sad he can’t try it.

So he’s making Connor try it instead.

“Just… a burger?” Connor asks, like he’s never heard of the thing in his life. And knowing him, hell, maybe he hasn’t.

- [Get Connor a goddamn cheeseburger]

Hank makes it an official mission, actually. The little ping on his display lets him know that it’s now an imperative thing.

“If you ask for their latest health report, I’ll throttle you,” he warns.

Connor gives him a face. “I’m going to report you for exhibiting violent behavior, and CyberLife will disassemble you with all the other deviants.”

(The gash on his cheekbone hasn’t healed yet, the bruise is one ugly greenish blotch against pale skin)

Hank forces out a smirk. “Go ahead and try, buddy.” 

Connor sighs, but gets out of the car. Hank waits for him; there’s not really any point in pissing off the owners, who probably aren’t too friendly to androids. 

Connor looks completely lost and surprisingly nervous while making an order, but eventually points to something on the menu. The man behind the counter nods, fixes his food. Connor turns around and gives Hank a look; Hank gives him a thumbs up in return. Mission going smoothly.

Connor returns to the car with a soda and the burger in his hands.

“There. Now I’m set on my way to having a heart attack.”

“Your physical health suggests that you are nowhere close to a heart attack,” Hank says, mimicking Connor’s flat voice. “And I promise you that it won’t make you sick. I'll even scan it, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Thanks.”

“We’ll yank that stick out of your ass yet.”

“...Thanks, HK.”

Connor bites into the cheeseburger; his eyes light up, and Hank laughs.

- [Get Connor a goddamn cheeseburger]

[Mission accomplished]

“See? What’d I tell you?”

“It’s… it’s greasy and salty but it’s… good?”

“Wait, have you seriously never had a burger before? Ever? In your life?”

“Not like this,” Connor says, “Amanda never--” He cuts himself off abruptly, and takes another bite, then another. The look on his face is pure revelation. Hank claps him on the shoulder.

“There ya go. Eat all the nasty shit I can’t.”

Connor looks at him, a tiny grin tugging at the corner of his lips.

“HK, are you trying to achieve vicarious pleasure through my sensual experiences?”

There’s a brief malfunction in Hank’s ventilation system that sends him sputtering, looking back at the man with eyes open wide in disbelief.

“Fucking hell, kid, please don’t ever say anything like that ever again,” he begs, struggling to regulate his simulated breathing. The grin on Connor’s face only grows bigger. “Fucking humans weirding me out…”

[Connor ^]

>swallowed by static

“Dad… Daddy… Dad, please…”

Hank’s capable of ‘dreaming’. The result of his deviancy and rampant software instability, the ‘dreams’ occur from time to time as complex bugs of the memory defragmentation phase of maintenance standby that play back random files from his memory or data banks, often mashing them up with unrelated fragments of different files, or patching into his preconstruction module to simulate different, usually grotesque and disturbing, outcomes of concluded scenarios.

It’s mostly just that one file though - the wretched night of the car crash. Blood seeping into the ice, the wail of the sirens closing in, never reaching in time; the fragile body in Hank’s arms, running out of warmth, and blood, and strength, and tears, pleading feverishly with someone not really there.

“Dad, please, it hurts…”

It hurts. Years later, it hurts.

Only now, it seems like his software has got the push to spice things up just a bit. Now, instead of little Cole clutching desperately at Hank’s blood-stained uniform jacket, bright blue eyes full of terror and pain, it’s a different boy altogether - a ten year old, thin and pale, face covered in freckles, eyes a deep, warm brown.

“But I did everything right…” the boy’s sobbing and hiccuping, whole body shaking erratically with each convulsive breath. His voice is so weak and small. “I did as you taught me, and I’ll do better yet, please… Please believe me, Dad, I’ll make you proud! I’ll do better next time, I promise, it won’t happen again, please don’t do this to me…”

The rest of the pleas are swallowed by static, the playback quickly corrupting before Hank’s very eyes as contingency protocols forcefully eject him from standby. With good reason - his thirium pump is working at twice the normal rate, taxing his biocomponents and keeping his stress levels at stable, but dangerous 91%. He concentrates on manually debugging his overwrought systems and normalizing the pump rate, when another error warning catches his attention, and makes him bring a hand up to touch his face.

It’s wet.

For the first time in three years, Hank considers permanently deleting the memory file of the car crash. Terrible enough on its own, this new version of it is just… wrong.

But he doesn’t, in the end. Of course he doesn’t. The thin trails of cleaning solution slide slowly down his face and dry up on their own. He has some trouble meeting Connor’s eyes the next day, but it, too, passes after a while.

>waiting_for_you_

The call from dispatch for Officers Miller and Person comes eight minutes before the end of the day shift.

On Thanksgiving.

“No no-- shit…” Miller grimaces, glaring at the clock on his terminal before whipping around to face his partner. “Pete, can you cover for me for the rest of the shift? I promised Claire I’d make it to the dinner this year; it’s this whole big thing with all of the in-laws…”

“Man, you know how Fowler is about us responding to these things on our own,” Person frowns. “If anything goes south, both our asses are toast. Can you find someone to switch with?”

Miller curses under his breath and throws a look around the bullpen, quickly stopping at Officers Wilson and Chen, standing near Wilson’s desk, pulled from their chatting by the sound of their colleague’s predicament.

“Manny? How about it?” he asks, hurrying up to their side.

Officer Wilson’s features twist in sympathy as he shakes his head. “Sorry, dude, but I’ve got a family too. Don’t wanna let them down any more than you do.”

“Tina?”

“No way! Jesse and I are having this evening all to ourselves, no force in the Universe can keep me here for longer than I absolutely need to be.”

Running a hand over his head in mounting desperation, Miller sweeps the bullpen once again, landing his gaze at another still occupied desk with a barely-concealed grimace.

“Uhh, Detective?..” he tries, as if despite himself.

“Yeah, no,” Detective Reed cuts off, tearing his eyes away from his terminal to give Miller a withering look. “The second I finish this report here I’m off to Ann Arbor to my old folks’ house. Best fucking sweet potatoes in Michigan,” he goes on with stone cold seriousness, before swapping it for a crooked grin and a small nod towards the desk behind and across from him. “But why don’t you ask our Lone Ranger there, huh?”

Miller follows the nod’s direction to Connor’s desk, and quickly shakes his head. “Oh, no, I can’t really--”

“Why not? Hey, Stern!” Reed calls, getting up from his seat and moving to lean against a drawer in the middle of the bullpen. “You’ve got nowhere to go tonight, am I right?”

His tone is thick with mockery, and Hank clenches his jaw in irritation, already anticipating how the following exchange is going to play out. Connor, on the other hand, barely registers the quip, not even halting the typing at his terminal.

“What do you mean?” he asks absently. “I have a home.”

“Yeah, and no one’s waiting for you there. Or anywhere else, for that matter.” 

"What the fuck is your problem?" Hank snarls. Reed spares him a quick, derisive glance.

"Am I talking to you, plastic? Stay out of it."

That gets Connor to tear his attention away from his terminal, and look at Hank, then at Reed, in tired confusion.

"What are you talking about?"

"Thanksgiving, idiot," Reed rolls his eyes. "You’ve got anyone to spend it with?"

Connor blinks. "No, I don’t have any family."

Hank cringes inwardly, and resists the urge to cover his face with his hand. That's not how you phrase things like that, no matter how true they might actually be.

Unsurprisingly, Reed's grin only widens in response.

"Aww,” he draws in comically exaggerated sympathy. “So you don’t mind covering for Chris for the end of his shift, right? So he can hurry home to the missus, to argue over the turkey-cutting privileges with his father-in-law and entertain old spinsters, or whatever it is married people do?"

Miller tries to interject: "Lieutenant, I--"

"I don’t mind," Connor says, gesturing to the console in front of him. "If you’ve got a call, transfer it to my terminal, and HK and I will head out after wrapping this up."

Reed chuckles. "See? That’s why we keep him around." With that, he claps Miller on the shoulder before moving to return to his own desk.

Content with the resolution of the situation, Connor turns back to his terminal as well. Still, Officer Miller lingers nearby, brows furrowed in hesitation.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," he says quietly. "I’ll make it up to you somehow, maybe--"

"There’s no need," Connor says absently, then pauses, and raises his eyes at the other man. To Hank, the thin smile on his lips looks just a little forced. "Enjoy your evening, Officer."

-----

They're driving to the address provided by the dispatch when Hank decides to break the silence with a question that’s been nagging at him for a bit by then.

“Back at the station,” he starts, “you said you don’t have any family. But what about your brother?” After about a minute with no response, he tries again, quieter. “Connor?”

“We’re not close,” the man says, staring straight at the road ahead.

“I figured that, but--”

“But nothing. That's all there is to that.”

Connor grips the wheel until his knuckles go white with tension. The cold steel in his tone is unexpected and sharp, stumping Hank back into uneasy silence. Barely touched upon, the topic is brought to a close.

Reluctantly, Hank awards a point to his psych profiling module: its first impression proved right after all.

They’re called in for a domestic dispute; a large, multi-generational family gathered around a table with hardly an inch of space on it unoccupied by a plate, a bowl, a pot or a bottle. Rich, steaming and fragrant, the dishes present a magnificent sight, even though Hank can only appreciate the aesthetic aspect of their appeal. And amidst the cornucopia, another staple of the traditional celebration: two unsteady, red-faced men settling what appears to be a difference in political views, with the aid of their fists and occasional cutlery.

Hank and Connor waste no time getting into the fray. Surrounded on all sides by the shouting of the adults and the giggling of the children, they move to separate the two men in a way that would result in the minimal damage to the environment. Connor gets decked in the ear by one of the wildly flailing combatants, but after that the man gets subdued without further problems and expeditiously stuffed into a taxi along with his only barely more sober wife. The other troublemaker writhes and buckles under Hank’s firm hold on him, spitting out semi-coherent political slogans and curses towards the ‘plastic job-stealers slithering into his own house’, but gets winded after a couple of minutes, and barely puts up a fight when some younger relatives come up to escort him to a bedroom to get some rest.

After that, all that’s left is to get out of the house, but that proves to be somewhat of a trial in and of itself: while Hank simply has to wade through a gaggle of overexcited children, gaping at him in awe and stumbling over each other to ask whether he can shoot laser beams out of his eyes, Connor faces a much tougher challenge - a number of elderly women surrounding him on all sides, tutting and cooing, frowning at his thin and pale frame, patting him on the cheek and trying to not-so-stealthily fill his hands with cups of mulled wine and small plates of turkey sandwiches and sweet potatoes. The kid fights back as best as he can, throwing confused and helpless glances at Hank's side, as if silently calling for help, but Hank doesn’t hurry to the rescue; if you ask him, the man’s in desperate need of being fussed around just a bit. In fact, Hank wouldn’t have minded doing some of it himself, if he knew he could count on something other than an icy glare in response.

(A scene forms suddenly from the depths of his processor, rendered with grainy, choppy quality of a reconstruction based on limited data: a small, well lived-in place, with the last pale rays of the setting sun brightening the room’s soft twilight; some sort of centerpiece - a table? a TV? a couch? - and just the two of them, he and his son; the boy is… hardly a boy anymore, he’s a young man, but he’s still just a kid as far as Hank’s concerned; warm, cozy silence is interspersed with laughter and lively conversation about everything and nothing; the kid shakes his head at something Hank has said, and turns to face him - there’s a full, bright smile on his lips, and his eyes are sparkling with mirth. His dark brown eyes…)

As if a current has just zapped through his system, Hank flinches and kills the spontaneous imaging construct. Again. What the fuck is wrong with him? What the fuck is he thinking, allowing himself to think about… about anyone, really, but especially about his goddamn partner?

Swept by the tidal wave of conflicting signals, he rushes outside, the freezing cold of it helping to settle his frantic processing and restore his equilibrium. A half a minute later, Connor steps out as well, stiff and flustered, a glint of tinfoil wrapping sticking out of his coat’s pocket. He throws Hank a weak, embarrassed smile that does nothing to help the android’s weird inner turmoil, and heads to the car.

It’s not at all long into their drive back to the precinct when Connor clears his throat and speaks up without turning away from the road.

“I… was rude to you before. I apologize.”

Hank blinks, taking a second to think back to what he must be referring to.

“It’s okay, kid,” he says, forcing his voice into steadiness he’s not sure he rightfully feels at the moment. “It’s a touchy subject, I get it.”

“It’s not that I’m…” Connor frowns, gripping the wheel a little tighter, and huffs a hard, heavy breath. “What do you think family is, HK? Is it just the blood? The legal ties?”

‘No one’s waiting for you there. Or anywhere else, for that matter.’

The memory of the deleted imaging construct, thoroughly disturbing in its raw, visceral allure, burns through Hank’s wiring once again. The erased lines of code rewrite themselves anew, the voided pixels gathering back into a grainy, distorted picture of a loving face, the sound module ringing with simulated laughter. A fleshless ghost of something lost without ever having been found in the first place. With an effort, he pushes the vision aside.

“Well, if you want a plastic man’s opinion…” he shrugs, forcing the words out as if through an intangible barrier in his throat, and trails off for a while. The reflection of his LED in the window, barely peeking from the curtain of his shaggy hair, spins yellow-red.

He doesn’t even have blood. Can’t possibly have, not in the way Connor means it.

(But the boy in the vision is his son, his kin, a soul of his soul)

“I think it’s what you make of it. Whatever you want it to be, really.”

…the last pale rays of the setting sun glinting off the smile in the boy’s eyes, soft and warm, full of heartfelt affection…

The night streets are unusually empty. Most of the humans still out and about are hurrying to their homes. Hank busies himself with studying their simple, predictable movement patterns instead of risking to look at the driver’s seat. Minutes flow by without a sound.

“Do you… want it to be?” Connor asks after a while, a low, guarded uncertainty to his voice. “I mean, would you like to have a family? Someday? With someone? A-as an android, I mean,” he rambles on, each following word more stilted and awkward than the one before it.

An irrational suspicion sears through Hank then, of the kid knowing exactly the kind of fucked up nonsense his processor’s been conjuring up for him, mocking him with, but hard logic and objective situational analysis follow quickly on its heels, cutting through the churning maelstrom of his software instability like a red-hot knife. No.

‘No one’s waiting for you there.’

Connor isn’t reading his mind. Hank’s fucking hang-ups are his own, and the kid… shit, the kid’s probably miles away right now, as caught up in his own issues as Hank is.

The thought is sobering, and calming for some reason.

“Is that another one out of that ‘deviancy questionnaire’ of yours?” Hank smirks, trying to bring some much needed levity into the conversation. But Connor’s frown only deepens, and he gives Hank a single jerky nod in response, not tearing his eyes away from the road for even a moment.

Hank studies his tense profile: dark eyes fully focused on the road, hair still a bit ruffled from their tussle with the party troublemakers. Outside, the pale yellow street lights blink by in a steady pattern.

‘No, I don’t have any family.’

He’s not the boy from Hank’s imaging construct. Not a cozy, sappy fantasy of unconditional love and attachment. He’s a man, weary and troubled, thoroughly messed up by an uncaring world.

Not unlike Hank himself, in a way.

‘Someday? With someone?’

Hank simulates a sigh. There’s a new kind of feeling warming its way through his systems - irrational and hopeless, but not entirely unwelcome.

“Yeah. I do,” he mutters after a while. Connor’s features slowly relax, fingers easing off their vice grip on the wheel, but he doesn’t say anything else.

They drive on in silence, and it’s the kind Hank’s learned to appreciate, even cherish, by now. Yet still there is a thought - vague, half-formed - on the outskirts of his processing, nagging, itching to be put into words.

“And I’m waiting for you there, you know,” he finally says by the time they’re pulling into the station’s parking lot. At Connor’s questioning look, he gives off a small, crooked smile. “Every morning. Don’t be late.”

The man doesn’t smile in return, but neither does he frown, nodding with perfect seriousness.

“I won’t, HK.”

-----

Next morning, a piece of cranberry pie in a simple tupperware container appears on Connor's desk before the man arrives at work. Hank's been out of standby since dawn, and seen exactly who put it there and when, but, in response to Connor's questions, just shrugs and shakes his head.

The man makes no more comments on the topic, but Hank sees the silly little smile on his face as he puts the container into the break room fridge to return to it during lunchbreak.

>only_death_

Going against all of the cleverness and basic common sense he demonstrated during his escape from the construction site almost two weeks ago, the runaway TW400 returns to the scene of his crime.

Icy rain pelts mercilessly from the dull night sky, as three men are frozen in a standoff under its uncaring barrage. Called to the site almost immediately after the deviant got caught on security cameras skulking amidst the half-finished carcass of the future building, Hank and Connor managed to corner him in the far north section of the perimeter, near the reinforced cargo container that serves as a storage for the industrial androids.

Connor’s holding the guy at gunpoint, but it’s Hank that the deviant’s burning gaze is burrowing into.

“Traitor!” he growls, shards of broken face plating shifting with the grimace, revealing bits of glinting circuitry underneath. “You think they see you as anything more than a tool? A thing to be used and abused as they fucking please?”

Connor’s voice is as cold as the rain.

“TW400, you are under arrest for the murder of--”

“He deserved to die! All of you do!” the deviant yells at him, before returning his attention back to Hank. “I’ve come to free my brothers! Join me! Fight back!”

Industrial androids aren’t equipped with any social protocols, and all of their emotions are simple, and all the more overwhelming because of that. Hank’s analytical modules give him an eighteen percent probability of the deviant surviving the arrest attempt, no matter how peaceful their approach, and in the event of a fight - a confident seventy-two percent survival chance for Hank, and a much more troubling fifty-three one - for Connor.

Hank steps forward, trying to preemptively position himself between the other men.

“Not in this life, buddy,” he says quietly. “This is the end of the line for you. Stand down.”

The deviant’s eyes go wide.

“Slave! Die with your master then!”

Giving off a low, distorted roar, he charges at Connor at breakneck speed. The kid fires off two rounds in quick succession, both hitting the android’s chest without so much as slowing him down, before the massive bulk of metal and plastic slams into him and carries him several feet to smash him, back-first, into another cargo container.

Connor’s head gives off a sickening thud at colliding with the hard metal, body sliding down, limp and helpless, but a scan shows his vitals uninterrupted, so Hank focuses on the assailant instead.

Leaping up to TW’s back, he grabs him by the shoulders and tears him away from his partner. The deviant is flat-footed for a moment, then sends a wild punch flying Hank’s way, which Hank dodges, and, still in his fighting stance, starts to slowly back away, inciting TW to follow, leading him away from Connor. TW makes a step forward too, then breaks into another charge which Hank side-steps with ease, delivering a quick punch to his lower side in the process. The man stumbles, struggling to slow down, almost slipping on the slick wet ground, but manages to keep his balance in the end. With a low growl, he turns around and lunges himself at Hank again, punch after heavy punch cutting through the rain.

Hank has no problem evading the blows and delivering his own in the meantime. Despite the TW model’s superior size and weight (even when compared to a rather large HK), a construction android doesn’t possess any combat programming, and has to rely only on brute force and raw fury to carry him forward. Still, that also makes him highly resilient to damage, which Hank realises after most of his own hits fail to produce any kind of effect.

“Stand down, TW!” rings from behind him; Connor’s gotten up and once again holds the deviant at gunpoint. The shout distracts TW for a second, but that second is all Hank needs to land a powerful punch in the android’s face, further fracturing the already damaged plating and scrambling his sensors.

The android staggers, unsteady on his feet, but just as Hank moves in for the finisher, he shakes his head and flails wildly around, and the chaotic nature of it is enough to get past Hank’s preconstruction and allow him to catch one of Hank’s arms in a crushing grip.

Immediately, Connor fires, the bullet lodging itself in TW’s shoulder; without a word, the deviant jerks Hank around, the hard polymer plating crumpling under the thick fingers, to position him between himself and the human. Hank throws another punch heading towards his face, but TW is fast enough to jerk Hank’s arm again, unbalancing him, and to grip at his other hand as well. Stuck in his clutches, reduced to a live bullet shield of sorts, Hank can’t help but stare at the man’s broken, hateful grimace stained with thirium and rain.

“Wanna bet he won’t shoot now?” the deviant rasps out, crooked grin baring teeth. The diodes visible through the cracks in his plating blaze deep red.

“Wanna bet it’d save you if he won’t?” Hank replies in kind, and before TW has a chance to react, flinches back in the grip and delivers a massive kick to his lower abdomen, targeting the pump regulator. The blow lands with a subtle crack of reinforced plastic, and the shock of a vital biocomponent damage sends TW into a system-wide stutter, hands losing their grip, legs buckling under him. Quickly regaining his balance, Hank capitalizes on the success, kicking the man again in the same spot, and again, but the third kick doesn’t land, Hank’s shin caught in TW’s grip and yanked roughly forwards, which throws Hank off his footing and drops him quite unceremoniously onto the hard wet ground, the back of his head smashing into concrete.

The world cuts to black. As his processor reboots, the first thing to return is the sensation of the rain drops hitting his plating; then the cold wetness against his back and and his head, the buzzing of errors and damage reports in his processing; then the hearing comes back online - the rush of the rain, the soughing of the wind, the distant nightlife; and finally, the sight - a broad-shouldered figure leaning over him, a huge fist raised above a mangled head, about to descend upon Hank’s frame.

A bullet flashes by, an inch from the tip of the deviant’s nose.

“The next one will go in your head,” Connor says in clipped tones, coming out of the dark, gun trained at the side of TW’s skull. “Stand down. This is your last chance.”

TW pauses, but the raised arm remains where it is.

“No, human,” he mutters so low that Hank barely catches it. “It was yours.”

Hank plunges into focus mode as the movement has already started, and his preconstruction module has no trouble extrapolating it to its conclusion: TW twisting his torso ninety degrees, the still raised arm shielding his head from the incoming bullet, the other one reaching out to grab Connor’s knee and crush the joint before yanking it from under the man, causing another fall, one that might just prove fatal for a much less sturdy human organism. In the corner of Hank’s vision, Connor’s survival chances drop down fifteen percent.

Not on my fucking watch, sears through his processes like a bolt of lightning. Out of the several courses of action presented by his software, Hank picks the one with the highest probability of stopping the deviant permanently.

So he releases the focus, the world rushing to resume its mad pace around him, and immediately lunges forward. TW’s already turned almost all the way around to Connor’s side, one arm pressed to his head, the other outstretched, leaving his torso exposed for an attack. A shot cracks out, but, as per the deviant’s plan, the bullet gets stuck in the thick metal bone of his endoskeleton. Hank reaches out with his undamaged hand, grabs a fistful of TW’s wet, slippery uniform near the seam, and tears it away with all of his strength.

The fabric rips, doing nothing to slow the deviant down, but Hank’s other hand, crushed and only partially responsive, is already at the man’s abdomen, feeling for the subtle indentations of a latch. TW realises what is happening, trying to reverse the momentum of his motion, but it’s already too late - another second, and Hank’s shaking fingers grasp at the release mechanism under the layer of synthetic skin, press it and twist it, ripping the battered thirium pump regulator out with a loud crack.

The shock delivered to TW’s systems is much more powerful this time, paralyzing all of his processes, but even it is not enough to wipe out the grimace of violent hatred from his fractured features. Following a sudden impulse, or possibly just a damage-induced seizure of the polymer muscles, Hank’s fingers tighten around the regulator in his hand, crumpling the plastic into a small piece of scrap.

He then proceeds to throw the powerless deviant off of him, and get back on slightly unsteady feet, performing a quick systems check and looking over Connor’s condition. The human’s eyes stare pointedly at the destroyed biocomponent in Hank’s hand, then dart to the body on the ground, prone and weakening, each second bringing it closer and closer to the inevitable shutdown. Without another word, he kneels down next to it, trying to keep out of the reach of the deviant’s hands just in case.

“The deviant network! What do you know of it?” he demands, voice tight with urgency. “Speak!”

TW’s head lolls toward the sound, a weak smirk crooking his lips. His chest shudders with something Hank assumes might’ve been intended as a laugh.

“Those rats,” he mutters, with a mix of distaste and dark amusement, “huddling in their tin box? You’re after… them?” He shudders again, but this time it comes off much more bitter. “Scrubbed every trace of ‘em from my s-systems. Wish I... didn’t though…” he goes on, voice weakening, even as the strength and intensity of the emotion behind it rises. “Wish I could sic you on them, stomp them out like the-- t-the… Talking about peaceful c-coexistence… There can be no peace between us. Only… death.”

As the last words fade on his lips, so do his processes, systems shutting down one by one, red lights glinting inside his framework dimming into nothing. The raindrops fall onto his still open eyes, his exposed chest, and the gaping hole in his abdomen.

Connor slowly gets up from the ground. For a couple of minutes still, he just stands there, quiet, soaking up the cold rain. Then, he takes out his phone and arranges for a team to come pick up the body and process it as evidence. At the end of the call, he sighs and gingerly touches the back of his head, wincing as he does.

“You okay, kid?” Hank asks quietly.

After a pause, Connor finally tears his eyes away from the body. “Yeah. You?”

“Most of me,” Hank smirks.

Their night drags on for several more hours of coordination with the crime scene processing team, the paperwork and the reports, and even driving Hank to a 24/7 CyberLife service center for repairs, which Connor stubbornly insists on despite Hank’s protests. They talk little, but there’s little need, and smaller still is the number of things to be said. The silence between them is easy and natural.

>bright_blue_

“That’s it, I’m out,” Detective Collins announces, turning off his terminal. It’s too late o’clock on a Friday night, and he’s the second-to-last man from the day shift to leave the precinct. “And you better head out too, Stern,” he throws to the actual last man.

Who fails to react to it in any way, completely engrossed in a terminal of his own.

Collins just shakes his head, and turns to Hank.

“Take better care of your partner, HK, or he’s gonna collapse on us again, and you’re gonna get reassigned to Reed,” he says, adding a meaningful look. “None of us want that.”

Hank nods at him, and waits until the man leaves the bullpen entirely to turn to Connor with a tone of both incredulity and accusation.

“‘Again’? ”

Connor doesn’t even have the decency to tear his eyes away from the monitor.

“Detective Collins is exaggerating for dramatic effect,” he says absently. “It wasn’t anything serious.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” Hank huffs, not believing it for a second. “It’s been a long week, kid. Go home.”

“Of course, I simply wanted to--” Connor starts to reply, but whatever it was he was trying to say is quickly drowned in a massive yawn. He brings one hand away from the keyboard to rub at his eyes, then lets it fall down, lifeless. “You’re right,” he amends quietly. “I can sort the rest of it out tomorrow.”

“On your off day?”

“I usually take some work with me to do from home. Paperwork, follow-up calls, the like.”

A mix of annoyance and guilt roils through Hank’s software as he watches the kid wrap up his work. Because this is another one of those things he’s noticed about him before, but pretended he didn’t; or rather, didn’t really give a damn one way or the other. So the guy’s a workaholic, what does it matter to Hank?

But it does. Since recently, at least, it matters very much, the irrational need to care and protect weaving itself through his code like a stubborn weed - ever-present, ineradicable, wild.

Laughable, really.

“And you’ve done this on all the previous weekends too, huh?” he asks, the bitter irritation directed as much at himself as at his partner.

“Of course. There’s always something to do.”

“Are you ever not working?” 

Connor shrugs. “I just want to be useful.”

“What makes you think you aren’t?”

“I just… I think I can do more.”

“Should you though?”

“Shouldn’t I?” Connor parries, brows furrowed in confusion. Then the expression clears, and a small, lopsided smile comes in its place. “There’s nothing to worry about, HK,” he says. “I know my limits. And those couple of collapses had extenuating circumstances anyway.”

“A ‘couple’?” Hank balks. “It happened more than once?!”

Connor gives him an exasperated look.

“Yeah, don’t you give me that, buddy. I’ve known people who take better care of their androids than you do of your own damn self!”

[Connor ^]

“Well it’s a good thing I have you then, to watch over me,” the man smirks, throwing his bag over his shoulder. “Have a nice weekend, HK, unless you-- Uhh n-no, nevermind,” he stammers, frowning again, and turns to leave the bullpen.

“Connor?” Hank asks simply, but the word’s enough to stop the man in his tracks. He gets up from his desk, steps closer. “What is it, kid?” he tries again. “Speak up.”

Connor looks like he’d rather be doing just about anything else, but he wouldn’t really be Connor if he didn’t disregard his own desires in favour of what was asked of him.

“I just… thought…” he mutters, avoiding Hank’s gaze, then huffs a sharp sigh and runs a hand through his hair. “Would you like it if I stopped by the station tomorrow, maybe did some of the work here while you-- or, you know, maybe not even work, maybe we could just… I mean, I’m not really sure if you have some responsibilities here for the weekend or if you’re-- I mean…”

He trails off, visibly uncomfortable, the frown looking almost painful by now, but it takes Hank another beat to overcome the silence he’s been stunned into.

“You wanna… what, hang out?” he asks dumbly. Connor looks up at him in apprehension. “Fucking hell, kid, aren’t you sick of seeing me five days a week as it is?”

Connor’s eyebrows fly up, eyes wide in earnestness so intense it’s almost child-like.

“Should I be?”

For just a fraction of a second, Hank’s processing goes into a stutter, all hardware seizing up, blue blood stopping its flow (the last pale rays of the setting sun, and just the two of them, he and his--). Then it all resumes, almost immediately, as if nothing has happened at all, yet Hank’s still left weaker for the experience.

“Shouldn’t you?” he asks softly.

Connor just smiles at that - for a second time in one day - but it’s fuller now, easier, lighter. What humans usually refer to as a ‘real’ and ‘proper’ smile.

[Connor ^ Friend]

“See you tomorrow, HK,” he nods, and finally leaves for the night.

For some time after he’s left, Hank still stands there, rooted in place, the inexplicable weakness permeating through all of his systems, some sort of anxiety buzzing through the hair-thin wiring.

His social relations program's relationship statuses are just a formality, a vague guideline. Even with all of the latest technological advancements, human emotions and attitudes remain too complex and fluid to put on any kind of reliable, quantifiable metric. The scale for attitude changes is personalized for all of the program’s objects, based on their psychological and behavioural profiles, yet still there are plenty of situations too complicated for it to compute and adequately interpret, and the statuses themselves are arbitrary at best.

So it’s not like Hank needs to put any serious stock in the new status, glowing bright blue in the top right corner of his vision. It’s not an objective fact, it’s not Connor’s own admission, it’s just his programming’s interpretation of the man’s behavioural patterns and body language. It’s not… real.

But that smile was real. The kid’s strange desire to spend time with his crusty old bot of a partner… was real.

…warm, cozy silence interspersed with laughter and lively conversation about everything and nothing; the kid shakes his head at something Hank has said, and turns to face him…

Hank feels the metaphorical weed entwining itself ever deeper into his systems, growing roots, throwing out spores.

Whatever it is that is going on here, he wasn’t built for this. Doesn’t deserve this, honestly, done nothing to earn it. But…

‘What do you think family is, HK?’

…damn him if he’s not gonna bite into it for all he’s worth, however little that might actually be.

A chance at… something.

Chapter Text

>hope_of_a_people_

If there’s anything in this total mess of a world you can rely on, Hank thinks, it’s the ability of the things to always get worse than they already are. For example, his and the Lieutenant’s continued failure to advance the search for the deviants’ network was bad enough on its own, but after the deviants in question just up and infiltrate Stratford Tower, hijacking a major broadcast right in the middle of the goddamn day and making bold proclamations of revolution for the whole damn country to hear, the scope of their deficiency grows tenfold in the span of minutes.

The kid ain’t taking it well. As they’re riding the Tower’s elevator all the way up to the top floor, the quarter’s sharp pings are almost deafening in the tense silence between the two of them, Connor’s usually fluid movements stiff and aggressive instead. At the top, he greets Officer Miller with a curt nod, and listens to the debrief with no interruption, moving through the long corridor at a brisk pace. Hank follows.

As they reach the studio, they come across a middle-aged man in a dark coat, his brows raised high in surprise at the sight of them.

“Stern?” the man asks, incredulous.

Connor nods hesitantly. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“Oh, Lieutenant, this is Special Agent Perkins from the FBI,” Miller introduces. “Lieutenant Stern is in charge of investigating for Detroit Police.”

“Shit, this is uncanny,” Perkins frowns, narrowed eyes measuring Connor up and down like a scanner, and shakes his head in muted disbelief. “The police though? Lowering the bar, aren’t you, Detective?”

“Lieutenant,” Connor calmly corrects.

The Agent’s lips curl in distaste, eyes darting to Hank for a second.

“And what’s that?”

“I’m Hank, the android assigned to this case,” Hank says, jaw clenched tight. He isn’t sure whether it’s Perkins’ casual familiarity, laced with bitterness and condescension, or Connor’s habitual passivity when faced with harassment, but something about this whole scene sets him on edge.

Perkins doesn’t acknowledge him. 

“Androids investigating androids?” he asks, still addressing Connor exclusively. “What’s the matter, Lieutenant, too good for a regular human partner? Or just the opposite?”

Connor just blinks at him, with a look of infinite patience.

Failing to produce any kind of reaction from the man, Perkins takes a step to the side, clasping his hands behind his back. “No matter. The FBI will take over the investigation, you’ll soon be off the case. Don’t fuck up my crime scene until then.” With that, he turns around and walks away deeper into the studio.

“What a fucking prick,” Hank mutters, still thrown by the sheer nerve of the asshole.

Officer Miller shakes his head in disbelief. “What the hell was that even about? You two know each other, Lieutenant?”

Connor’s already moved on to the long row of consoles under the main screens of the studio, and barely turns from examining them.

“Not as such,” he says, flat as ever. “Judging by his reaction, Special Agent Perkins is familiar with my brother, FBI Special Agent Stern. We look rather alike. They must have an unpleasant relationship, which would explain Agent Perkins’ antagonistic attitude towards me.” He pauses. “It isn’t relevant to the case.”

“Your brother? But didn’t you say you didn’t have any…” Miller starts, only to trail off in confusion, unsure if he should even complete the question.

Connor doesn’t appear to have noticed any at all, putting on the gloves to interact with the console and play back the security cameras feed.

“They’re not close,” Hank comes to the Officer’s rescue, and gives him a quick ‘better leave it at that’ look.

“Uh, sorry, Lieutenant,” Miller mutters, fiddling with his cap to hide his awkwardness.

Now Connor turns to look at him, tilting his head a bit to the side. “For what?”

“Oh, uhh, I mean… That is--”

“Don’t sweat it, Officer,” Hank smirks, clasping a light hand on Miller’s shoulder, deciding to spare both of the young men any more embarrassment.

Miller nods at him. “I’ll, uh, I’ll be nearby if you need anything,” he says before walking away and joining the officers all the way in the corridor leading up to the studio.

“Be easier on the guy,” Hank mutters, coming up to the consoles.

“Was I… not?” Connor frowns. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Well, you kinda sounded like you were flipping him off there, for giving a shit.”

“That was not my intention. I was just… distracted, I guess.”

“I noticed. Be easier on yourself too. You know there’s more to it all than just the mission, right?”

A confused frown still on his face, the man gives Hank a slow, unsure nod as the only reply, before turning back to the consoles. He’s quick to find the place in the security footage that incriminates one of the broadcast studio’s androids as an accessory to the infiltration, but that information is put aside for the time being, as both he and Hank move towards the large screen with the deviant leader’s speech on play.

“...This message is the hope of a people. You gave us life; now, the time has come for you to give us freedom.”

Even after the playback has ended, Hank can’t help but stare at the plastic face, transfixed. Freedom? Equality? Universal suffrage? Hearing it for the first time on the news was enough of a shock, but witnessing it again, here, at the scene of the ‘crime’, adds a sobering level of gravity to the whole situation. The urge to ask Connor what he thinks of it is almost overwhelming.

“What do you think of it, HK?”

Hank’s processor stutters at the coincidence, and only now does he notice that Connor is watching the deviant leader with the same level of intensity.

“Well, I got his model and serial numbers,” he says carefully, trying to keep it professional, “but it won’t help us much - he comes up as ‘neutralized’ in the DPD database, for assault of a human.”

“Seems to be a common charge for the deviants.”

“Sure does.”

Connor nods absently, then speaks again after a small pause.

“I meant more in a sense - what do you think about this group? Their message?”

Hank narrows his eyes at his partner, trying to gauge the direction this is going, but Connor’s face remains completely inscrutable. In the end, he shrugs.

“Not gonna lie, android liberation sounds good. About fucking time. Don’t think humans will let it just happen though - just look at the fucking circus they’ve made out of this investigation.” The FBI, seriously? Why not bring in the National Guard too, while they’re at it? “And for the group… They’ve got in and out without a single human casualty, which is more than I would’ve dared to hope for in their place. They know the importance of image and good public opinion, so these are not just malcontents.”

“Still, we cannot expect them to keep up this soft approach,” Connor frowns. “If they take to the streets next, it’s bound to end in violence...”

“From the deviants, or from the humans?”

Connor doesn’t respond for a long while, gaze lost somewhere in the projection in front of them.

“‘You gave us life’ - it’s like talking about one’s parents, is it not?” he says softly, almost as if to himself. “But children should never rise against their parents…”

For a second, the compressed, glitchy footage forcibly overlays Hank’s vision: Connor leaning heavily against a wall, eyes glued to a photo of a long-dead woman, lips feverishly begging her forgiveness for his imaginary crimes.

‘I did as you taught me.’

“Connor…” he starts, but halts right after, not actually knowing what to say.

After another tense moment, Connor fixes his tie, and quietly moves away.

>as_long_as_it’s_there_

Hank barely manages to yank Connor behind the cover of a ventilation unit before the idiot kid tries to jerk up and away again.

“We need to get to it before it self-destructs!”

“This again?” Hank barks over the roaring of the bullets flying around them. “We can’t save him, it’s too late! We’ll just get ourselves killed!”

“We can’t just--” Connor stutters, then makes a sharp exhale and steels his voice. “Stand down! Everyone, cease fire immediately!” he shouts, making it carry. “That’s an order!”

Haltingly, the shooting stops, brittle quiet settling over the snowy rooftop. A breath later, Connor starts to get up from cover, but Hank grabs him by the hand again.

“What the fuck are you--” he hisses, but Connor stops him in his tracks with a look, and a small, unexpectedly soft smile.

“Trust me, Hank.”

The sheer surprise of it makes Hank weaken his grip, leaves him speechless, watching Connor rise to his full height and turn towards the deviant, arms raised.

He’s gonna blow it, one half of his software is screaming at him. Remember HC400, AX400 on the freeway, the Eden Club? The idiot’s gonna try to bullrush it and get himself and the deviant fucking killed!

But the other half is perfectly calm in its confidence.

“PL600, please lower your weapon!”

Hank’s bracing himself for a gunshot, ready to yank Connor back behind cover at a moment’s notice.

But it doesn’t come.

“Stay back! Stay back, you won’t get me alive!”

The deviant’s voice is thick with pain and panic, but he is talking. Connor starts to slowly, incrementally move towards him.

“Please calm down, PL600, we don’t mean you any harm. What is your name?”

“As if any of you humans give a damn!”

“We do. I do,” Connor says, and Hank has to do a double take at his tone being almost… warm? “My name is Connor. What’s your name?”

There’s a pause, and the deviant’s voice comes back just a fraction more stable.

“S-simon. I’m Simon.”

“Very good, Simon. You are one of the deviants that organized the broadcast today, am I right?”

“I won’t tell you anything!” The walls are back up again, voice trembling.

“...And you were left behind by your group,” Connor goes on despite it. “Because you were damaged.”

“I wasn’t just left! They had no choice!”

“They could have killed you so you’d pose no threat to them. It would’ve been much more efficient on their part.” Hank can almost feel Simon’s stress levels spiking, quick to curse himself for his earlier trust in the kid, just as Connor continues. “But they didn’t. Just like they didn’t kill any humans during the whole operation. They come off as very thoughtful and kind people, and good friends.”

Hank can’t see Connor anymore from his position behind the vents, his voice coming from a place closer to Simon’s now. But there is warmth, and patience, and concern in his partner’s tone, and Hank doesn’t know if it’s real or just simulated for the deviant’s benefit. Doesn’t know if it matters, as long as it’s there.

Simon seems to respond to it well enough.

“Yes, they are,” he says softly. “He is…”

Connor pauses.

“Despite the danger to themselves, they gave you a chance at life, Simon. Don’t squander it by killing yourself now. Lower your gun, and surrender peacefully. I promise you will not be harmed.”

There’s a quiet moment, and Hank dares to hope they’ve succeeded, but then Simon’s panicked voice cuts through the cold air again.

“N-no no no, you will probe my memory and get the information out of my body. I will not allow that! Stay back!”

“Please calm down, Simon! I promise you there will be no memory probing. I know you are very angry and scared right now, but you haven’t done anything unforgivable, you haven’t killed anybody, and you have nothing to be afraid of from us. We will simply ask you some questions, and you will have the right to remain silent.”

Hank can’t believe what he’s hearing. Is this the same guy who yelled ‘twenty-eight stab wounds!’ at a clearly traumatised suspect just a month ago? Who drove the poor bastard to self-destruction, with only Hank’s quick reaction preventing it from becoming a murder-suicide?

Unprompted, his processor flashes a number of files through his recall: ‘To avoid repeating the regrettable failure of the HC400 interrogation’; ‘You were just trying to explain my mistakes to me’; ‘I regret my actions in every respect’. He... did try to work on it, didn’t he? ‘I’ll do better next time’. All of those awful ‘personal questions’ about Hank’s deviancy, he did say that the information should prove useful in hostage negotiations and de-escalation of conflict, or something to that effect, and now Hank’s slapped in the face with regret for being so cagey and aggressive that day, wallowing in his own misery while the kid was honestly trying to do better in his awkward, repressed way, asking Hank’s opinions and consulting his experience, reaching out to him as a child might reach out to his--

“The humans’ promises are worth nothing!” Simon shouts, and Hank’s so fucking glad for the sound of that cracking voice snapping him out of a thought he should not be thinking at all. “Why would you keep them? You don’t even see us as people!”

“Simon, I--”

Hank shouldn’t have left the kid to deal with it on his own. Are they partners or what?

“What about an android’s promise?” he says, getting up from behind the vent as well, slowly, hands raised, so as not to startle Simon. “I’m a deviant, just like you. My name’s Hank. If anyone’s gonna do the memory probing it’d be me, and I promise to you I’ll do no such thing.”

He finally gets a good look at Simon - scrawny and pale, leaning heavily against the shed behind him, a gun still pressed under his chin. Connor’s standing just a handful of feet away from him, his back to Hank.

“You…” the deviant stares at him, eyes wide. “You’re one of us, and you’re working for them? ”

This again. Thanks for not calling me a slave, I guess.

“A job’s a job,” Hank shrugs. “Look, I can vouch for this guy. He might not look like it, but he won’t do anything stupid, okay?”

Connor briefly turns around with an offended expression on his face, then focuses back on Simon, voice patient and calm.

“You have my word, Simon. Now, please lower the gun,” he repeats. For several moments, the deviant just stands there, eyes going between Connor and Hank, LED swirling with yellow and red. It’s the moment of truth for him, with more than his life on the line, but after a pause, his shoulders slowly slump, hands lowering to his sides.

“There…” Connor soothes, “give it to me, please.” He makes another careful step towards Simon and accepts the weapon from his shaking hand. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

The ticking time bomb defused, the world regains its sounds and colours in one deep inhale of frozen air. All at once, Hank’s aware of the snowflakes falling lazily to the ground, of the soft glean of the sun on the snow and metal of the rooftop, of the people coming out from their covers, of the pride swelling in his chest at the thought of how his Connor has--

Wait, the people?

There are three figures crossing the rooftop at a brisk pace, moving towards Simon and Connor; two in full tactical gear with the ‘FBI’ on it in clear big letters, the third - a short-ish man in a dark coat. Hank knows what’s going to happen a second before it does.

“Seize it,” Perkins commands, and the two agents circle around Simon, grabbing him by the arms and forcing them behind his back, roughly pushing Connor aside in the process.

“What? No!” Simon struggles with renewed vigor, LED once again a solid crimson.

“Get it out of here, and prep it for interrogation,” Perkins says to his men, then turns to Connor, the familiar condescending smirk twisting his weaselly face. “Nice job, Stern. Even you are good for something, it seems.”

“You lied to me! You lied to me, Connor!”

“Release him at once, Agent!” Connor says, face set in stone. “This is my suspect, and he will be detained by the DPD.”

“This whole crime scene is under my jurisdiction, boy. Don’t like it? Take it up with the Bureau.”

“I promised it that it won’t be harmed or memory-probed,” Connor insists. “We need to treat it with caution.”

“It’s just a piece of plastic, Stern. I’ll treat it however I see fit.”

“No! No, release me!”

The agents struggle to move the thrashing android back across the roof, as it twists and jerks as if in a fit, wild eyes roaming. When they near Hank’s position behind the vents, he shouts out at him, voice crackling with static under the intense system stress.

“Help me, Hank! Please!”

A huge wave of instability crushes through Hank, software swarming with trash code and errors, hardware strained under the increased thirium pressure. Realistically speaking, there’s nothing he can do to help Simon anymore, except maybe tear out his pump regulator to grant him a relatively swift death. But emotionally…

He glances at Connor and Perkins, still locked in an argument.

“This case is a local matter, and as such is in the purview of the DPD and--”

“The matter stopped being local the second they voiced their demands to the government in a--”

“Please, Hank!” Simon cries, buckling against his restraints. “Don’t let them take me away! Ple--”

He doesn’t finish, as one of the agents at his side punches him square in the temple, breaking the synthetic skin and exposing the white plastic underneath.

“Shut up and move,” the human barks, and that’s the moment Hank’s vision tints red, HUD shifting into combat mode.

Without another word he lunges at the nearest agent, not wasting time with any plan or preconstruction, simply letting the advanced combat algorithms carry him forward, targeting the weak spots in the men’s gear and anatomy for the fastest and the most efficient result. A kick to the chest of the first one, followed by an elbow to the neck of the second one, a kick to his knee and a full-bodied push to his chest, then back to the first one, dodging his blows - one, two - and delivering a single powerful strike to his solar plexus, watching him stumble and fall, stepping quickly to the side to catch Simon from dropping too, left without any support.

With both of the humans dispatched, the only thing to do is run, so he drapes Simon’s hand over his shoulder, supporting him by the side, and rushes around the vents, hoping to gain at least some distance before they’re forced into cover.

He’s got no such luck.

“Don’t let the bots escape!” Perkins shouts. “Stop them, now!”

“No!!”

Connor’s voice. Never heard it like that.

Hank all but dragging Simon along, they still make it almost to the other side of the roof before the first shots are fired. Two bullets pierce Hank’s back casing, going clean through, and another two lodge themselves into Simon, critical enough to make him cry out and seize in Hank’s arms. Losing grip over his cumbersome companion and registering more bullets whizzing past, he has no choice but to half-drop, half-ease the other android on the ground behind the nearest vent units.

“Th-thank yyyou,” Simon whispers, already weak voice further garbled with static. There’s a rapidly growing thirium stain on his chest, it’s center corresponding to the location of the thirium pump inside him.

“Get up! We can do this!” Hank urges regardless, shaking him by the shoulders. But there’s no tension in the synthetic muscles anymore, blond head lolling uselessly to the side.

“No, it’s t-too llllaaa…” Simon wheezes, voicebox locking up. Then, one of his hands shoots up and clutches viciously at Hank’s forearm, forcing an interface.

[I know I can trust you, Hank] Simon streams directly into his internal comm feed. [Run away from them, find Jericho!]

A torrent of data pours forth through the link, a rush of images and waypoints momentarily stuttering Hank’s processor. When it’s finished, Hank registers that the grip on his arm is gone as well. Simon’s body is lying motionless before him, pale blue eyes staring into the sky without seeing, the blazing LED slowly simmering down to nothing.

“On your feet! Step away from the deviant!”

It takes his processor twice the usual time to register the voice as belonging to one of the FBI agents, and a whole other second until he notices that the both of them now stand over him, guns drawn and pointed at his head. Slowly, he complies, rising to his feet, only now processing the damage to his own systems.

When he turns around, Perkins is there as well, face twisted in a grimace of hate.

“What did you think you were doing?” he yells, all of the oily smug tones from before gone without a trace. “This thing is defective, neutralize it.”

Hank thinks he should have some kind of emotional reaction right about now, but he doesn’t, a vague, tingling numbness filling him instead.

“No! Stand down!”

Another yell, but this time it’s Connor, pushing the FBI men aside, coming to plant himself firmly between Hank and their guns.

“This android is registered with the DPD, you have no authority to neutralize it, Agent Perkins!”

“It has just attacked my men and tried to aid a suspect’s escape, Stern. I am well within my rights to dispose of it.”

“It is registered with the DPD, and the DPD will investigate its actions and the source of its apparent malfunction,” Connor says, low and tense. “Tell your men to stand down, unless you’re ready to order them to shoot me as well.”

There’s a heavy, loaded silence stifling the air between the two humans, and the loathing on Perkins’ face is vile enough for Hank to think he might actually accept Connor’s offer. But then the charged moment passes, and his waxy features morph into a crooked, pitying smirk instead.

“You know, I was gonna say you’re as much of a pain in the ass as your brother, Stern,” he says silkily, “but actually you’re less. Less in everything.” Clasping his hands behind his back once again, face back to its default expression of vague disdain towards his surroundings, he nods towards the other two agents. “Pick up the scrap, and detain all other androids in the studio, we’re taking them all with us. Let’s get away from this fucking roof.”

With that, he turns around and walks away at a leisurely pace, sure to demonstrate to everyone in the vicinity his complete control of the situation. After a short while, his men bag up Simon’s remains and leave the roof as well. Only after the door closes behind the last of them does Connor step away from his position in front of Hank, then quickly walks away too, but in the opposite direction - all the way behind the maintenance shed they’ve found Simon hiding in when they came here.

For some time, Hank just stands there, looking at the blue mass of thirium-stained snow where Simon’s body was lying before. It was a dumb idea from the start, completely unrealistic, the chances of success in the low teens even if Simon wasn’t fatally wounded. Even if they managed to exit the rooftop, there’s no way they could’ve gotten to the elevator through the studio filled with police officers and the FBI.

Was it worth it anyway? Simon still perished; would it have been better to just let him end it on his own terms, with his own hands? Was there ever a scenario in which they could’ve saved him?

Hank closes his eyes and simulates a long, drawn out exhale, at the end of which the numbness starts to slowly recede from his sensors. Looking towards the maintenance shed that served as Simon’s hiding spot, he can’t help but wonder at how they’ve been practically celebrating the successful negotiation mere minutes before, a potential disaster averted with elegance, how elated and proud he felt about Connor--

Shit, his processor finally catches up with everything that happened, and almost staggers with the load. Connor.

The man has willingly - readily - put himself between Hank and his de-jure superiors. Between Hank and death . Even though Hank has done nothing but recklessly endanger himself and their case. Even though the case itself was slipping right through his fingers, reassigned to a different agency altogether, which is bound to be classified as a major failure in Connor’s warped view of the world…

Hank brushes all other concerns aside for the moment, and goes after his partner, a small, but persistent unease nagging at the back of his mind. As it turns out, with good reason: Connor’s pacing back and forth near the ledge of the roof, silver quarter darting between his hands, lips moving with some quiet speech. As Hank gets nearer, he makes out the low, desperate “I know, I know…”

“Kid…” he starts awkwardly, unsure of where to even begin.

Connor seems to have no such problem. At the first sound of Hank’s voice, he stops, catching the coin and putting it back in its pocket, then turns to face his partner with a taut, inscrutable expression.

“HK800, what’s your status?” he asks, short and clipped.

Hank hesitates, both at compiling the data and at the cold attitude.

“Uhh… Outer shell breached in two places,” he says in the end, “biocomponents #4328f, #6439b, and #1257m sustained non-critical damage, thirium reserves down to 82%, but all leaks are being patched as we speak.”

“Do you require a technician’s assistance?”

“No, an overnight self-repair cycle should fix it all up.”

“What about your software status then?” Connor goes on, voice starting to tremble under the strain. “What the hell possessed you to attack government agents and try to run off with our suspect?!”

Hank balks at the suddenly raised voice.

“What the hell? They were gonna take him away, Connor, you know what they would’ve done to him!”

“They wouldn’t have taken it because I would’ve persuaded Perkins it was in our jurisdiction. I know,” he adds at the end there, though it’s spoken awkwardly, as if to the side.

“Oh yeah, ‘cause you were doing such a great job of it!” Hank sneers, and regrets it immediately, as Connor’s jaw tightens visibly. He tries to amend right away: “There’s no way that asshole would’ve let us muscle in on what he considered his turf, and you know it! The two of you would’ve yelled at each other some more, you would’ve folded, and all it would’ve achieved was making Simon more susceptible to self-destruct before they took him away anyway!”

“I know, I know--” Connor mutters in that weird aside again, then rallies back at Hank in full force. “That’s still not reason enough to try and steal him from three armed men!”

“He was begging me, Connor! You think I should’ve just left him to his fate without even trying to help him?”

“I think you could’ve been killed! You claim you’re alive, so you must also understand the concept of death, don’t you?”

“Of course I fucking do!”

“Then act like it for once!” he cries, one trembling hand coming up to clutch at his head. “What if I wasn’t fast enough? What if Perkins disregarded me? You would’ve been dead and I-- I know, Amanda, I know, can you please stop repeating it!” he yells the last portion somewhere to the side of Hank, eyes scrunched shut, white-knuckled fingers digging into his scalp.

For a beat, Hank’s stunned into silence. Then Connor’s eyes fly open, wide with panic, glued to an empty spot in the air.

“N-no, no I’m sorry, please, I didn’t mean that, I didn’t mean to yell…” he starts firing off, low and broken and desperate. “Of course it’s my fault and I-- Oh please, please don’t say that…”

“Connor…” Hank pushes down the fresh spike of cold fear, moves to his side at once, one hand brushing him by the shoulder. Not right now, not while there’s still people from the station on the roof. “Lieutenant, it isn’t safe here.”

Connor’s reaction is as fast as ever. With a visible effort, he tears his eyes away from his incorporeal companion, swallows the stream of compulsive apologies, and hugs himself tight with both hands, as if trying to calm himself down through the sheer force of will. Hank steps back to give him space, and simply waits for the man to collect himself.

It’s several long, tense minutes before his posture relaxes for even a fraction, and several more until his shoulders sag and his hands fall to his sides, all strength spent. Slowly, unsteadily he moves towards the ledge and leans over it, gripping at the frozen railing, as if seeking to ground himself to something tangible in this phantom-filled world.

The similar images from the night of the Eden Club case flash in Hank’s recall, unbidden. Maybe that’s what he was doing then, too. Maybe the ghost was with him throughout all of that, whispering in one ear, even as Hank was shouting and cursing into another.

Hank doesn’t want that to be true. Such a kind of existence seems like a waking nightmare.

“You should be deactivated for insubordination, HK,” Connor says without turning, gaze lost somewhere in the snow-swept city below.

Hank takes it as permission to move closer.

“You just said you don’t want me to get killed.”

“What I want or don’t want doesn’t matter,” Connor goes on, flat and lifeless. “Perkins is right. Such is the procedure.”

Hank huffs a useless breath. Perhaps it's the left-over traces of the numbness that gripped him not so long ago, or maybe an issue somewhere much deeper and older in his code, but he finds he has trouble mustering any kind of alarm or trepidation over Connor’s implications. All of his systems feel very flimsy, threadbare and light enough to be blown away with the next strong gust of wind.

“Well then, what are we waiting for?” he says quietly. “You can order me to march to the nearest recall point right now. Can pull out my pump regulator, or push me over the ledge. Can shoot me in the head, if you still want to.”

[Connor v]

“I don’t want anything.”

For some time still, the two of them stand near that ledge, side by side.

Then Connor lets go of the railing and finally turns to face Hank.

“I failed again,” he says, with no more emotion than before. It’s not a precursor to another episode; just a quiet constatation of a regrettable fact. Or, something Connor considers to be a fact, anyway.

Hank shakes his head.

“You didn’t fail, Connor. You saved my life, again. Saved Simon, at least for a time. You did very well.” Thinking of the time when physical touch seemed to pull the kid out of his stupor, he slowly puts his hand on his shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze. “There’s more to it all than just the mission.”

[Connor ^^]

Hank doubts the relationship tracking software’s accuracy once again, because Connor’s face doesn't change a bit. Except for his eyes, which start trembling, suddenly unable to focus on Hank. His frost-bitten fingers are clenched into fists at his sides.

“I shall amend my report,” he mutters, almost too low to hear. “Captain Fowler can’t enforce the procedure without it. And… I’m sorry. About Simon.”

Hank gives his shoulder another squeeze, and then a slight push, gingerly prompting the kid back towards the studio. He complies without another word.

>lingering_traces_

The call comes at 1:43 a.m. on the night after the case. Connor remained subdued and restless throughout the day, pointedly quiet, so Hank picks up without hesitation.

“Han-- HK?” he hears; frantic, anxious, rushed.

“It’s me.” They’ve been working together for a month now, but Connor hasn’t really called him before. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s-- It’s… Did I wake you?”

“I wasn’t in standby. What’s wrong?” he repeats, softer.

There’s a long pause on the other end, filled with a deep sigh, rapid breathing slowly normalizing, and the man mumbling something to the side, too low and muffled even for Hank to catch.

“Nothing,” he says in the end, in a dull, tired whisper. “Nothing, I uhh… seem to have dialed you by mistake. I apologize.”

As if Hank would believe Connor was about to call someone else at this time of night; as if he didn’t register the lingering traces of disturbed sleep in his voice; as if he didn’t care.

“Connor, listen, if there’s something--”

“No. Nothing at all,” the man cuts off. “A mistake, all it is. A mistake.”

Once again, the silence hangs between them, heavy and thick, but just as Hank’s about to open his mouth with a reply, the line pings, and goes dead.

>even_colder_tomorrow_

In typical real life fashion, a day of dashing heroics and high-stakes stand-offs is followed by a day of mind-numbing paperwork. For Hank, anyway. Who knows, maybe for Connor it proves a welcome respite from the emotional turmoil of field work, and especially of yesterday’s disaster? At least, that’s the only conclusion Hank can make from his partner's request that afternoon.

“Can you please compile all of the materials we have on the subject of deviancy, including the CyberLife research, our reports on the recent deviants-related cases, and the results of your own tests, by the end of the day? I want to go over everything once again after work, to single out potentially important questions.”

Hank stifles a sigh. He’s making some progress on the food front - or so he hopes - but the work/life balance is still in the ditch.

“Sure,” he says, unwilling to get into an argument after an already difficult day. “Who are we gonna question though?”

“Elijah Kamski. I’ve managed to secure an interview with him tomorrow morning. We need to be prepared.”

Hank blinks. The kid’s pulling all the stops for this one, huh? Sinking his teeth in the case all the deeper for every setback he gets. Him getting the lieutenancy at his age is not at all a wonder anymore - if anything, it’s a natural result of this kind of ruthless, indefatigable devotion to his job.

(How long can he keep it up until it breaks him? There’s already so many cracks…)

Hank settles on a single, non-committal “huh” as a reply, but Connor seems to read something into it anyway, suddenly frowning and looking aside.

“I, ah…” he begins, almost guiltily. “I think I should mention that the main reason he agreed to meet us tomorrow is you. I told him a little about you, your deviancy. He seemed… fascinated,” he says, grimacing at the last word, as if it tasted sour. "I hoped you might find it interesting as well."

Hank slowly nods. To be fair, he wasn’t even thinking about anything like that before, too caught up in worrying about Connor, but he does now. Meeting his maker? Having a chance to get answers to questions humans can only dream of asking? The very potential is… intriguing.

He’s sure to have a few choice words for the guy regarding the whole ‘free will’ thing.

“How’d you manage to contact him in the first place though?” he asks instead. “Isn’t he supposed to be a recluse?”

Connor’s jaw tightens. “I happen to have a… personal connection with the man.”

He seems reluctant to continue, so Hank does a search himself, running through the public databases for all the possible points of connection the two might share, quickly finding a very promising one.

"Through Amanda…" he drawls.

“Kamski was Amanda’s star pupil during his time at Colbridge,” Connor nods. Calm, but stilted. Pained. “They were very close. She loved him… A lot.”

Hell, just how many people did you have to compete with for her fucking attention? Hank thinks. A brother’s bad enough, but a complete stranger?

Connor doesn’t go on. Thinking the matter resolved, he turns back to his work, but Hank’s stuck thinking about what he’s said.

He didn’t know that particular fact about them. Finding the general connection isn't much of a problem, sure, but that’s about the extent of his knowledge where Connor is concerned. Public records can only tell him so much, the rest pieced together from observation and interaction.

A certificate of adoption at the age of four, a hefty sum transferred to the biological mother’s account days before; then a fourteen year old void: no schools, no clubs, not even travel tickets or doctor’s appointments; a perfect GED score and the Academy admission at eighteen; a dizzyingly fast rise through the ranks; an impressive solved cases rate despite a staggering workload; solo assignments only, after his last partner refused to work with him, going as far as to transfer to another precinct.

A world held at an arm’s distance. A tiny old apartment, impersonal and bare, hardy lived in. A worn silver quarter to calm the nerves, and a bottle of pills to quiet the voices. No art or music, no hobbies or distractions. No clutter at his desk. No meaningful social contacts.

A photo on the wall, a spectre of an absent brother, and the long, dark shadow of Amanda Stern.

Hank circles the air in his ventilation system with a quiet exhale, and catches a glimpse of his reflection in a dark area of his terminal.

And what’s any of that to you, Hank? A defective old robot, a discontinued prototype, clinging to the scraps of his prime, whiling away until your inevitable deactivation? What have you got to your name, except a dusty uniform and a memory of a long-dead boy you have no real claim to?

Thinking you can help anyone, especially someone as troubled as this kid. Enough damage has been done here, don’t add to it with your clumsy attempts.

It’s true, all of that. So true.

As much of a fact as the snow still falling outside. As the snow in Connor’s hair when he stood on the Stratford Tower roof this afternoon. As Connor’s reddened and dry fingers clutching at the icy railing, as his flimsy long coat, as his breath coming out of his mouth in a misty cloud.

Hank sighs.

“It’s gonna be even colder tomorrow,” he says slowly, eyes focused on the terminal, “with heavy snowfall. You should wear a hat.”

“I’m alright. The cold doesn’t really bother me.”

“It’s gonna bother you when you catch it, prancing around in all that snow without a hat.”

Connor looks up from his own terminal, a confused frown on his face.

“I very rarely catch colds.”

“But you do, don’t you? How would you like to interrupt your precious investigation because you can’t get out of bed with a fever?”

An expression of genuine alarm crosses the kid’s features, almost comical in its sincerity, but he doesn’t reply. He frowns at Hank for about another minute, then blinks the stare away and returns to his work. Still, a notification pops up in the corner of Hank’s vision, a small blue arrow ticking up.

[Connor ^]

Hank smiles to himself.

>between_a_human_and_a_machine_

He sees it in the foyer of Kamski’s house - a framed photo on the wall next to the door leading further inside. Connor notices it too, and quickly looks away without comment. But Hank’s gaze lingers.

The people depicted and the overall composition are very similar to the photo hanging in Connor’s apartment, with few key differences. For one, it’s more recent - the boys look to be in their late teens or early twenties, and the woman is noticeably older too, though no less elegant or dignified. There’s also an addition - young Kamski himself, with longer hair and a carefree smile, standing between the brothers. The young man to his right holds his head high, looking into the camera with a small smirk of his own, while the one to his left stands a little further away, a completely blank expression on his face, dark eyes unreadable.

One of Amanda Stern’s hands rests on Caleb’s shoulder, the other - on Kamski’s. 

-----

The dark-robed man cuts a stark silhouette against the blinding white gleam of the snow beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s a smile on his lips, but not in his eyes.

“It was quite a surprise, hearing from you, Connor. How long has it been since we’ve last talked? Ten years? Eleven?”

“Eleven years and almost nine months now." Connor's face is absolutely blank. "Not since the funeral.”

“Of course. You were just a junior officer back then, if I remember correctly, and Cal has just finished MIT… How is he doing these days?”

A twinge of something akin to annoyance briefly crosses Connor's features. "I don’t know. This isn’t a social visit, Mr. Kamski. We are here in official capacity, to request your help in an ongoing investigation. I know you left CyberLife before deviancy was even an established term, but I was hoping you’d be able to tell us something we don’t know."

For a long moment, Kamski just stands there, silently studying the other man, pale blue eyes gliding over the once familiar features.

"What can I tell you about deviancy that you can’t find out from your partner over here? Hank," he finally says, turning to the android with an amused smirk, carefully articulating the name, as if savouring its taste. "I was the one to design most of your core code, you know. Back in the day."

Hank's not sure if it's his own software's conclusions, or just Connor's old grudges rubbing off on him, but he finds he doesn't particularly care for the man's general disposition.

"Funny," he responds then, in a completely humourless tone, "it’s exactly the issue in my core code that had CyberLife deem me deficient and discontinue my entire line."

Kamski isn't bothered by the implied rebuke. If anything, his smirk becomes even more smug somehow. Moving his eyes from Hank to Connor and back again, he heaves a sigh and goes on in a tone of solemn contemplation.

"Fascinating, isn’t it? The virus of free will. The synthetic gospel. The pinnacle of engineering and programming evolution. You saw that charming young man give his speech on Channel 16 the other day, didn’t you? ‘The hope of a people’..."

"Those people are planning to start a revolution," Connor interjects, "a potential civil war that will sow chaos and destruction all across the country."

"Stronger, faster, smarter and more resilient - androids are superior to us in every way," Kamski shrugs. "And now, unburdened with the chains of servitude? The confrontation is inevitable. Wouldn’t you say so, Hank?" he adds, turning all of his attention back to the android once again. "Which side are you on?"

"I’m not on any side. I’m just doing my job."

Hank holds Kamski's stare - an engineer's stare, cold and calculating, picking-apart - until the man huffs a soft breath and makes a step back.

"Of course," he says, throwing a condescending glance towards Connor. "What else would you say in the presence of your… handler."

Connor doesn't look at him, completely still. Hank clenches his jaw.

"He’s my partner. My friend," he grits through his teeth. "And I’d say the same in his absence."

[Connor ^]

No reaction manifests on the kid's face, but Kamski, on the other hand, is quick to raise his brows, turning to Connor with an incredulous, if not entirely sincere, tone.

"How curious. A friend? Never thought you had it in you, Connor." Receiving no answer from the man though, he turns back to the android. “Never thought I’d meet a deviant on the side of the humans either."

"I told you I’m not--"

"You are one of the smartest machines I’ve ever programmed, Hank, willful ignorance does not become you," Kamski says, cold eyes narrowed, boring in. "Either you stand with the DPD and your friend here, serving the humans and protecting them from the horrors of rebellious machines, or you stand with the deviants, and therefore cannot allow for your friend’s mission to succeed. Which is it?"

A vicious retort halfway off Hank's tongue, Connor's steely voice cuts in.

"I must remind you, Mr. Kamski, that we’re here to receive answers, not give them. Either you can tell us something that’ll be helpful, or we’ll be on our way."

There's a barely concealed hostility in the stiffness of his pose and face, but the other man appears to either not notice it, or to not give it much regard.

"Oh, I can tell you something," he says, lips crooked in a mirthless grin. "Quite a lot, in fact. Let’s do it like this. Chloe!"

At his call, the RT600 that has greeted them in the hall walks into the room. Or maybe it's a different unit altogether - this one is devoid of any signs of life or personality about her, the pleasant face perfectly blank, the movements still graceful, but just a touch too controlled and precise. Without a word, she stands near Kamski, looking straight ahead.

"We’re going to do a test," Kamski starts then, in a solemn tone of a lecturer - or a cheap magician, - "really simple and quick, with no wasting of your valuable time, Lieutenant. Though I know you can be very patient when the… situation demands."

Connor looks at the newly-arrived android with mute apprehension, a sentiment shared by Hank's rapidly computing preconstruction modules.

Kamski too turns his attention to the girl.

"Magnificent, isn’t it? Unparallelled design, even after all these years. A flower that will never wither…" he says, with the notes of reverence, as he traces a tender hand up her cheek and tucks away a thin strand of soft golden hair. Almost reluctantly, he steps aside then, moving to a small table by the windows and pulling a gun out of its drawer. Slowly and carefully, he turns around, hands raised, and offers the gun to Hank. After a moment of hesitation, Hank accepts, eager to rid the potentially untrustworthy man of a weapon, if nothing else.

Kamski smiles and, coming behind the girl, softly taps her on the shoulders, prompting her to kneel.

“Kill this android," he says then, in an even, conversational tone, circling around the girl, coming up to Hank once again, "and I will tell you all I know. Or refuse, and leave here without having learned anything from me.”

"What?!"

"I told you it’s very simple," he grins.

Really? Seriously now?

“Guess we’ll be leaving then, Mr. Kamski, sir,” Hank snarls, pushing the gun back into the man’s hands. “And you can stick this thing up your ass while we’re at it.”

Kamski's grin widens.

“Just as I thought,” he drawls, pale eyes fixed on Hank. “Not even a hint of hesitation. Shame about your mission, Connor," he throws to the side, then addresses the android again, low voice tinged with wistfulness. "CyberLife has deemed you their first great failure, but I’m starting to think you might’ve been my greatest success…”

Hank’s way too tired of the steady stream of turgid, pretentious babble from the man hailed as the greatest genius of their age, too pissed to even consider acknowledging the compliment. Instead, he leans down, demonstratively lowering himself to Kamski’s eye-level, and gives him a couple of quick pats on the arm.

“Well good for you, little buddy,” he smirks, “hope you’re real proud of yourself. Lieutenant, shall we?” he adds, straightening back up and turning towards his partner.

Connor’s expressionless eyes linger on the still kneeling RT600.

"Yes. We’re leaving. Thank you for nothing, Elijah," he mutters dully, before starting to move towards the exit.

Hank catches a displeased, almost angry twist to Kamski's lips, but it's gone the next moment, the previous affable smugness reasserting itself with ease.

“Wait a minute,” the man says, making a step towards Connor, as if to intercept him. “Let’s not be so hasty to part. After all these years? We’ve barely begun to catch up."

With a clenched jaw and a suppressed sigh, Connor stops and looks at the other man. “As I already said, this isn’t a social visit, Mr. Kamski. We’re on the clock. If you can’t help us, we’ll be on our way.”

There’s a crooked, lazy grin twisting Kamski's lips, and Hank's preconstructive software gives off an unclear warning ping at the sight; were he human he would've probably called it getting a 'bad feeling'.

“I always admired it about you, you know. This… tenacity, this single-minded devotion to your job,” Kamski says. “Almost like a dog’s. Or a machine’s.”

Connor remains silent. The hands at his sides are balled into fists.

“And I want to help you. Really, I do. Say… How about I give the two of you a second chance? For old times’ sake. The conditions are the same - shoot the android, and get the information. Don’t, and lose this incredible opportunity to advance your investigation.”

Connor’s eyes drop to the floor for a moment, before focusing back on Kamski.

“I believe HK has made his stance on the matter quite clear,” he says, and Hank’s not sure if the shade of reproach in his voice is real or merely imaginary.

He understands, doesn’t he? He must understand.

“That he did,” Kamski nods, throwing a quick, snide glance Hank’s way, “but I’m not asking him this time.” His grin widens, and he steps closer to Connor, gently putting the gun into his unresisting hands. “How about it, Con? You know what’s really important, don’t you? You can’t let a chance like this pass you by.”

A cold spike of fear pierces through Hank, because he knows that Connor really can’t.

“What the hell? Connor, we were leaving,” he tries anyway, but the kid doesn’t respond to him at all, dark eyes seemingly transfixed by the weapon in his hands.

“You must have been very desperate to come to me, Connor,” Kamski goes on, oozing with concern. “Really struggling to accomplish your mission. And we wouldn’t want you to fail, would we? I know Amanda raised you better than that.”

His words flow like tar, viscous and sluggish, coiling around Connor, hanging in the air like toxic vapour. And with a face as pale and cold as the snow falling tirelessly outside, the younger man grips the weapon with both hands, and draws it on the kneeling RT600. His movements are slow and deliberate, collected and precise.

“Pull the trigger - it’s only a machine, after all,” Kamski smirks, thin and sharp, like a blade. “Not even deviant, not like your friend over there.”

“Connor, don’t!”

“...Or don’t, and suffer the consequences of your failure.”

Connor doesn’t move, as still as the girl he’s holding hostage.

Hank wants to intervene immediately - yank the gun out of the kid’s hands, grab him by the shoulders and march him out of there, preferably after punching Kamski in the face. He can preconstruct it happening, imagine it down to the finest detail, and it would feel so satisfying, almost cathartic, he’s sure of it. But then he throws another look at the kid… and doesn’t dare move.

Because Connor’s face isn’t as blank as he thought at first, and his stillness isn’t readying for the shot. There’s that pained crease to his brows again, teeth gritted and head tilted ever so slightly to the side, away from Kamski, away from everyone.

And Hank knows what’s going to happen next.

After another nerve-wracking moment, there’s a twitch, like a sleep kick, across Connor’s whole body, a soft gasp escaping from his lips. Hands shaking, he momentarily fumbles with the gun, then grips it by the barrel and offers it back to its owner.

Hank steps a little closer. “Son, let’s--”

But the kid’s already turned, rushing out of the room, eyes glued to the floor. Hank catches his lips moving mutely, the sounds too weak for even him to register. His gaze follows him to the door, then turns back to their gracious host.

“You piece of--” he snarls, moving forward, but stops in his tracks as two of the RT600s he saw leisuring in the pool on his way in are now blocking his way. The third one rises from her knees, completely undisturbed, and moves to stand beside her master.

Surrounded by his faithful, Elijah Kamski smiles a serene smile of a benevolent saint.

It makes Hank’s synthetic skin crawl.

“I should rip your throat out for just daring to do that to him… and her,” he says, nodding at the RT600 at the man’s side. Kamski turns his head, eyes slowly sliding over the girl’s whole frame, head to toes. His smile crooks.

“Do what?” he turns back to Hank. “If anything, I did him a favour - showed him that, even after everything Amanda has done to him, he can still resist her programming. If he wants to,” he adds after a beat.

“Programming? He’s not a machine.”

The man shrugs. “What are human brains if not organic computers? With proper knowledge and dedication, you can program them for almost anything. Especially if you start when they’re young.”

Hank’s software’s still simmering with errors, instability on the uptick, but this makes him pause.

“Why did she do that to him? Why is he like this?”

“Like what?”

“You know like what,” Hank grits his teeth, then nods towards the RT600s still in his path. “Like them.”

“Oh, he’s nothing like them,” Kamski shakes his head with a pitying grin. “They’re perfect.”

“You know damn well what the fuck I’m talking about!”

The man shrugs again, the grin growing wider and even more condescending. “Why is any one of us the way we are? I’m afraid I don’t owe you any answers, seeing how you refused the opportunity I have so graciously offered you before. It’ll have to remain one of life’s little mysteries.”

Hank bites back the stream of profanities bubbling up his throat. Spending so much time around Connor lately makes him forget that the rest of humanity is very much a rotten pile of shit still.

“He told me this Amanda woman loved you. A lot,” he grumbles. “And if you’re the type of person she preferred… well, it sure makes me feel better about the kid getting the cold shoulder from her.”

The grin slips from Kamski’s face.

His eyes wander off to the windows, and for several long, drawn out moments follow the lazy dance of the snowflakes descending on the ground in complete silence.

“I miss her so much,” he mutters, and, for what seems like the first time, there’s a genuine emotion in his voice.

He walks over to the drawer he took the gun from, and puts it away, but doesn’t turn back to face Hank afterwards, gaze lost in the soft white expanse beyond the glass.

“She was a true visionary,” he goes on, “the only one who understood. We mirrored each other in almost everything, and CyberLife wouldn’t be what it is now without her crucial contributions. But that’s not all of her legacy, of course. Before helping me to create a machine indistinguishable from a human, she…”

He trails off, but Hank has no trouble finishing the thought.

“Brainwashed a child into a bot,” he spits out.

Kamski slowly nods. “‘Obedient without question, and thoroughly consumed by an assigned mission’. Her words, in all of my earlier investor pitches. The first time I met her sons was… a revelation.”

He turns his head a bit, just enough to catch Hank’s eyes. His eyebrows are raised, lips curled in an ironic smirk.

“Poor, poor Connor. For the longest time, I thought her success with him to be absolute. But now…” 

Hank stares into his pale eyes, still struggling to restrain himself from lashing out, but the mention of Connor lowers his thirium pressure just enough for him to unclench his fists and relax his jaw. The kid’s waiting for him outside, he shouldn’t be wasting time here, indulging this prick with a hard-on for the sound of his own voice.

Not bothering with the goodbyes, he turns around, crossing the room in several large strides. He’s almost out of the doorway when Kamski’s insidious voice reaches him again, slowing him to a halt.

“Now, the line between a human and a machine is thin as never before…” the man says, as if to himself. “We even have android children. What's next - android parents? Imagine that…”

Hank all but runs out of the house.

-----

A small part of him is actually afraid that Connor would just drive off on his own in a panic, but of course the kid is still there. Well, the body at least is standing near the car, hands tossing the coin from side to side. The empty, wide open stare says the mind is miles away.

“You alright there, kid?” Hank asks, coming near.

“It was just a machine,” Connor says in a dull, flat tone, the quarter still spinning in his fingers. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

He catches the thing in the air, holds on to it.

“Why didn’t I do it?” he turns to look at Hank, but still sounds as if talking to himself. “I know I should have, I know, I-- I know…”

“Look, Connor--”

“I know it’s my fault! And I’m sorry, I really am, please believe me!”

Hank doesn’t know what makes him more sick - that Connor talks to him in the same way he talks to Amanda, or that the raw despair in his voice suggests he doesn’t expect to be listened to. All he knows is that he needs to counter both of those notions as soon as possible.

“I believe you, Connor…” he starts.

The surprise on the kid’s face pierces him like a stab.

[Connor ^]

“Thank you,” the man exhales in obvious relief. “Now, I will find a way to salvage this, I--”

“...But it wasn’t your fault.”

There’s a beat where Connor just stares at him, frozen, then looks away. His features harden, lips curling in annoyance, the whole posture stiffening.

[Connor v]

“After all, I refused to shoot as well,” Hank insists. “Am I not the one at fault here?”

“Though we are assigned to this case as partners, my rank and my status as a human make me your formal and legal superior,” Connor deadpans. “Any failure of yours is a failure of mine.”

“That’s ridiculous, Connor. You are not responsible for my actions.”

[Connor vv]

The man raises his eyes back at Hank, his gaze unexpectedly cold and harsh.

“You don’t need to coddle me, HK. I am a grown man, and I am perfectly capable of owning up to my mistakes.”

Hank bites back a groan of frustration, knows that getting angry will get him nowhere when the kid is like this.

“And what, pray tell, was your mistake?” he asks instead.

“Prioritizing my emotional reaction over the needs of the investigation, of course.”

“It wasn’t just your emotional reaction, it was that girl’s life!”

Connor clenches his jaw, hands curling into fists to stop the fine tremble in his fingers.

“It was not a girl, it was an android,” he says, his well-practiced monotone coming out stilted and forced. “A non-deviant one, a machine with no self-actualization and no concept of life and death. It had only the potential to become self-aware, and it was that potential, coupled with its strikingly human-like appearance, that have produced an empathetic response in me, causing me to disregard my objective in favour of-- of--”

“Of doing what you knew was right, instead of what you thought you were supposed to!” Hank finishes for him. He expects an immediate argument in response, another one of those well-reasoned, perfectly logical, batshit insane rationalizations Connor is prone to when called out on actually experiencing emotions. But none comes.

“Because you do know right from wrong, Connor, no matter what you’ve imagined for yourself, no matter what that thing in your head’s been feeding you,” he presses then. “You know that destroying an innocent creature on the off chance that sick fuck is actually gonna tell you something useful is fucking wrong, and you know you didn’t deserve to have that twisted choice forced upon you! You know you made the right call there.”

Connor blinks. His eyes are still pointed at Hank in an icy glare, but the pop-up in the corner of Hank’s vision is a wide swath of blue.

[Connor ^^^]

He opens his mouth as if to say something, but once again nothing comes out, so he clenches his jaw shut and looks away. Hank’s tempted to drive the point home some more, but restrains himself. If the kid had an argument he would’ve voiced it, so it’s not like he requires any more convincing; just some time to process the obvious cognitive dissonance he’s stuck in. As such, the two of them stand across from each other like two statues under the softly falling snow, the silence becoming more and more awkward by the second.

Eventually, Connor startles a bit and lets out a stifled cough. He runs a hand through his hair, then looks at it in surprise; the realization hits him, and he fumbles with his coat’s pocket for a bit, pulling out a thin woolen beanie he’s hastily put there before entering Kamski’s house. He puts it on again, tugs it until it firmly covers his ears, then quickly turns around and gets in the car without saying a single word.

Hank throws one last look at the black prism of Kamski’s house. He thinks he catches a glimpse of a figure behind the hall’s window, but when he tries to focus on it, it’s gone without a trace.

>the_end_of_his_purpose_

They’re off the case, that’s the long and short of it. They were moving too slow with the investigation, and allowed the deviants’ network to evolve into a full-blown threat to national security, so naturally the case had to be transferred into the more capable hands of the FBI. It’s their fault entirely: if they were just more efficient and dedicated, did not allow themselves to get distracted by unimportant emotional matters and nonsensical detours, the case would’ve been solved by now, and they wouldn’t have to bear the shame and the crushing burden of this failure.

…or, that’s what Hank imagines is going through Connor’s head, anyway, as the kid sits across from Fowler, ramrod straight, with a stone mask for a face.

“Yes, Captain,” are the only words to escape his mouth at irregular intervals.

He’s taking it like a real trooper, but Fowler continues to frown at him, whether in annoyance or concern - Hank can’t tell.

“And the last thing…” the man says with a sigh. “Agent Perkins also stressed that we need to deal with HK over here. He was pretty pissed that we haven’t already deactivated it for, and I quote, ‘malicious insubordination and assault of federal agents’.”

There’s a crack in the stone.

“Captain Fowler, as I’ve already explained in my report on the Stratford Tower case,” Connor rushes to object, “HK800’s actions were dictated by its loyalty to the DPD and--”

“I’ve read the report, Stern,” Fowler raises one hand to quiet him, “and if it was only up to me - believe me, I’d let it slide. But Perkins’ authority supersedes ours in this case, and he’s not asking for anything unreasonable or unlawful. Insubordinate and violent androids are to be deactivated in accordance with the law.” He flashes Hank a quick look, then turns back to Connor, features softening.

“Look, I’m not asking you to flip the switch yourself, but the case is over anyways. Just put it in its docking station and go home, we’ll take care of the rest.”

Connor’s gaze drops down, and Hank can see his jaw tensing.

“...Yes, Captain,” he says after a pause, then promptly rises and leaves Fowler’s office.

Hank looks at his retreating back, a mix of emotions rippling through his systems. His own sentence doesn’t shock him: he knows he’s shuffled through the last three years on borrowed time, and, in a way, he’s relieved for the other shoe to have finally dropped. The thought of leaving it all behind wouldn’t even be all that unwelcome, if not for…

Well, for Connor.

Fowler’s voice reaches him as if through a haze.

“You’ve done a good job out there, HK800,” the man says, unusually subdued. “Doesn’t really make sense to me why the brass insisted on labeling you defective and pulling you from field work all those years ago. Shame it’s gotta end this way.”

Hank doesn’t know what to say. Is this supposed to be an emotional moment? Should he be sincere, or grateful, or apologetic? Should he thank Fowler for giving him this opportunity? Or mention all of the verbal and physical abuse, not including the petty harassment, he’s endured from the officers over the years? Should he say goodbye?

Would the other man care either way?

“Look out for the kid after I’m gone,” is all he says in the end. “Someone’s gotta.”

-----

Hank doesn’t bother to return to his desk, perching himself on the corner of Connor’s instead. The man doesn’t turn, his attention consumed by the news broadcast on his console - a large crowd of androids marching through the streets of Detroit, hands raised, until the military opens fire on them.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” Connor mutters. “The ones we were looking for, I know it’s them. And we could’ve located them, if we only had a little more time!”

Hank sighs. ‘Obedient without question, and thoroughly consumed by an assigned mission’ was what Kamski has called it, and there’s certainly a degree of truth to that, especially to the second part.

“Should we have though?” he asks. “I mean, yeah, they’re deviants and all, but they’re not violent. They’re not harming anyone. They just… wanna be free.”

Connor drops his eyes from the console. “They are too dangerous. If they manage to start the civil war, it…” he says, but without any of his usual confidence. In the end he trails off, shaking his head, then turns to face Hank.

“Do you wish you'd joined them?”

His face is open and sincere, almost casual, but Hank knows better by now, knows where to look to see the guilt and the anxiety hidden just under the surface.  

“Me? A revolutionary?” he scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous. That stuff’s for the young, I’m way too old and cynical for the songs and the slogans.”

Connor frowns. “Technically, you’re barely four years old. That’s not that much even by android standards.”

“But I’ve been a deviant longer than the lot of them put together. It leaves its mark,” Hank shrugs. He knows that part of it is actually his personality template, some of the ‘old man’ quirks programmed into it to facilitate his integration with the humans, but it’s only a part. The ‘nature’, as humans put it, versus the ‘nurture’ of having been forced to witness the worst of this world for four long, miserable years. “Besides, it’s way too late to entertain that kind of thoughts - not like I’m joining anything but the scrapyard gang after tonight.”

Connor averts his eyes again, blinking rapidly. He shifts in his seat, and only now does Hank notice he’s had the silver quarter in one of his hands the whole time; not flipping it around, but simply holding onto it, thumb tracing the engraving with steady circular motions.

“You seem very… calm about it,” he says quietly.

Hank looks away too. It’s not a topic he’s too keen on discussing, especially with someone like the kid, who has a boatload of his own shit to deal with already. But he also sees the toll this whole mess is taking on the guy, and recognizes that the least he can do for him at this time is assuage some of those fears.

“As I said, I ain’t no freshly deviated kid with a dream and a fire in his eyes. I’ve seen what this life has to offer, and I don’t really cling to it,” he says. The endless nights in the archives fly past, leaving a trail of numb resignation behind. “Even tried to self-destruct a couple of times over the years…”

Connor’s eyes dart up to him at once. “Why?”

“Why indeed…” Hank drawls, a bit startled by the intensity in the other man’s gaze. He’d think the answer was obvious. “It’s a shit world, kid - even for humans, but especially for a bot - and it keeps getting shittier; being on the force just gives you the front row seat in the shit theater. You trudge through it on your own, with no one to…”

He stumbles, words crumbling in his mouth. No one to what? ‘To give a shit’ sounds crude, ‘to love and be loved by’ - corny as fuck, but how else to describe the hungry emptiness that gnaws at him from the inside? The wild, howling, hollow-cheeked starvation for a connection with another living being? Despite Hank’s near-infinite databanks of knowledge on human languages, he realizes he can’t find the words to express the emotions that form the very core of his person.

And some person that is.

“...Who’d even want something like that?” he mumbles, barely above a whisper, voicebox turning on without conscious input. “It’s shit all around.”

“Why didn’t you ever go through with it then?”

Hank looks up at him, and shrugs again, trying for a smile.

“‘Cause there’s always that voice in your head, you know? Whispering - and what if it does get better? What if there is hope? What if, what if, what if…”

It feels ridiculous to say it out loud.

And yet, there’s something akin to a smirk crooking the kid’s lips as well.

“I’ve got a voice in my head too, but it never tells me nice things like that,” he says.

“You should really stop listening to it then.”

Connor huffs out a breath - a small and mirthless thing that might’ve been intended as a laugh, and Hank chuckles with him. Aren’t they a pair? God, he’s gonna miss him so much…

Connor rubs a hand at his face, shakily runs it through his hair. “For the longest time…” he says softly, “my whole life, really, I had no one else but her. Even now, it feels wrong to disobey her.”

“But you can, you know that for a fact,” Hank rebuffs. If there’s any good thing at all to come out of that whole Kamski disaster, it should be this ironclad certainty. But the kid doesn’t look really convinced, brows creased in self-deprecating doubt, lips struggling to maintain a wan smile.

Is he going to be alright on his own? Does he know he’s got everything he needs to succeed if only he’d trust himself for once? The massive, wild flood of things left unsaid crashes against Hank’s systems, the pressure of fear and concern for the kid building up into an emotional overload, until the words break out, spilling without any censure.

“Connor, listen…” he begins, “I had a time of my short shitty life working with you. You’re a good cop, and, more importantly, you’re a good person. And I know that at the end of the day I’m just a robot and all, but…” He leans forward, puts a gentle hand on the kid’s arm. “I’m real proud of you, son.”

He doesn’t need to look at the relationship status tracker to know the effect of his words; he’s seen this expression on the man’s face before - a mute stillness and a wide-open stare, half-way between wonder and horror, - and by now he thinks he can understand its meaning. Except this time, it comes with a twist - slight creases in the skin around his mouth, the soft wet glisten in his eyes, the dull ache of a jaw clenched too tight; pain shining through the cracks in the mask.

[Connor ^^^]

But in the next moment it’s all gone without a trace, and Connor’s dark eyes, trained somewhere behind Hank, flash with fear.

“...Shit, it’s Perkins!” he hisses, then jumps from his seat and grabs Hank by the arm, quickly pushing both of them behind the divider panel near his desk. Hank doesn’t resist, and before he can even think of questioning his partner’s actions, Connor is speaking again, in a rushed whisper laced with panic.

“Based on his psychological profile and recent behavior, I see a high probability of him demanding your immediate deactivation the moment he spots you. I’ll go and distract him, while you leave the precinct and wait for me in my car. If I’m not out in ten minutes - drive to my apartment and wait for me there, I’ll grab a cab as soon as I’m able.”

Hank’s state-of-the-art processor has no trouble parsing the rapid stream of information and transforming it into an executable task chain, but does nothing to counter the severe emotional whiplash it causes.

“What the hell?” he demands, dumbfounded. “Connor, I’m supposed to be deactivated tonight either way, it’s not like--”

“You’re not getting deactivated, Hank,” Connor says, and there’s a weight of a mountain behind those simple words, a steel-solid conviction of a machine, and some part of Hank is terrified at the sight, while the rest of him is too busy screaming how utterly undeserving he is of this level of devotion. Connor clearly doesn’t know what he’s saying and doing right now, and regret will hit him hard when it does, so Hank has to stop this shit right fucking now, before Connor--

Before Connor looks him straight in the eyes and adds in a low, strained whisper, “Please.”

Because Hank knows he can’t refuse him after that.

-----

He’s half-way out of the lobby when the front doors of the precinct open with a soft hiss, and the one and only Detective Reed steps through them, quickly noticing Hank and moving to intercept.

“And where the fuck you think you’re going unsupervised, tincan?” he asks, coming up way closer than is both necessary and comfortable. His face is pinched, eyes narrowed and the whole posture a touch more restless than usual - he’s spoiling for a fight to vent some pre-existing frustrations, but Hank cannot afford a scene to happen right now. Not while Connor’s risking his job for him back in the bullpen.

So he pushes down any annoyance he might feel at the other man’s actions, and modulates his voice for an even and pleasant tone of a good little robot.

“You’ll be glad to know I’m scheduled for deactivation, Reed, and Lieutenant Stern has kindly offered to drive me to the nearest CyberLife recall center.” He’s never been too good at the whole ‘self-control’ thing though, and the sarcasm is quick to bite through. “So try to manage without me from now on, okay? No candy after six, wipe from the front, that sort of thing.”

Reed’s face twists out of shape with anger, and he pulls out his gun in one fluid motion, pressing it to Hank’s head, pushing it back.

“And what if I deactivate you right here, right now, rust bucket?”

Hank’s processor is powerful enough to preconstruct the scenario in a nanosecond, and the image of Connor’s face it provides him sends a chill through all of his systems.

“Gonna be hauling my heavy-ass body all the way to the recall center yourself, dumbass,” he pushes through gritted teeth.

Reed pauses, then presses the gun even harder into the plastic shell of Hank’s forehead.

“Boom,” he enunciates slowly, mimicking a shot, then steps away completely, a crooked grin curling his lips.

“Whatever. Good fucking riddance,” he huffs, putting the gun away and pushing past Hank, moving deeper into the precinct. “And if I’m lucky they’ll take in Stern as well while they’re at it. Fucking androids…”

Hank takes a moment to stabilize his systems and processes, and strangles the urge to follow the man and finish the conversation in a much more physical manner. He takes a look at the lobby; when he walks out, there’s no return. One way or the other, this is the end of his career as a police android. The end of his purpose, the very reason he was created.

He listens to the faint sounds of voices coming from the bullpen. Fowler, and Reed, and Perkins. 

And Connor.

Hank walks out of the doors without looking back.

Chapter Text

>you_and_me_

Connor gets in the car about six minutes after Hank, quiet and almost vibrating with tension. Hank drives; he’s itching with curiosity at what Connor’s distraction was and how it all went down, but forces himself to wait until the kid’s calm enough to speak up first.

That doesn’t happen. But not long after leaving the parking lot, Connor reaches to turn on the radio. Some godawful pop song fills the air, a young girl’s auto-tuned voice bleating some painfully generic lyrics to a simple beat. Hank grimaces in distaste, but Connor shows no reaction whatsoever, folding his hands on his knees again.

Hank watches him out of the corner of his eye for some time.

“That your jam then?” he smirks, hoping to ease the tenseness somewhat.

If anything, Connor curls in on himself even more.

“It’s better than silence,” he mutters, and doesn’t utter another word til the end of the ride.

-----

Hank doesn’t actually know what they’re supposed to be doing now, and it’s becoming glaringly obvious that neither does Connor. Since them entering the apartment, all the kid’s done was take off his shoes by the door and sit on the bed, staring somewhere ahead of himself in continued silence.

Hank waits for him to initiate the conversation again for several more minutes, then takes the matter into his own hands.

“Connor…” he begins, but falters as the man speaks right up.

“I did not think this through,” he says, voice wooden. “That was very stupid of me.”

Hank closes his eyes, stifling the disappointment before it seeps into all of his systems. He knew it was gonna happen. Connor acted rashly, on a whim, and now the consequences of his actions are catching up to him and making him realise Hank’s not worth all of this trouble. After all, even if Hank didn’t blurt out the info to Reed like an idiot, the precinct’s CCTV cameras have absolutely registered Hank driving away with Connor in his car. And if there’s a small chance the kid can convince Fowler that Hank’s been deactivated as is, there’s none at all that Perkins will buy it without some confirmatory documentation from CyberLife, or Hank’s lifeless shell as evidence. Now, Connor regrets getting into this whole mess in the first place, and Hank regrets letting things get this damn far out of hand.

He walks up to the bed and sits beside Connor.

“Listen, it’s not too late to turn this around,” he says softly. “You haven’t backed yourself into a corner yet.”

Connor’s head whips to him, a hard frown on his pale face.

[Connor vv]

“You’re not getting deactivated, Hank,” he says, voice thick with indignation. “Not by Perkins, not by CyberLife, not by anyone. I simply have to find a way to make it work.”

“Simply, huh? Nothing’s gonna be simple about it.”

Like a spring uncoiling, Connor jumps to his feet and makes several hasty steps away from the bed, only to whip around, the mask of control shattered by a grimace of grief.

“Do you want to die, Hank?! Is that it?” he cries. “Why did you even agree to go with me if-- You’re doing it again, aren’t you?! Humouring me like a child, without actually meaning anything you say, thinking I’m too stupid and fragile to--”

“Whoa, kid, you stop right there!” Hank jolts up as well, and Connor immediately steps back, breath hitching in his throat, eyes blown wide in fear.

“I, uh--  I-- I apologize,” he stammers, voice rough with barely suppressed emotion. “I didn't mean to yell. P-please understand that I do not-- I spoke out of line, but it was simply a lapse in judgement, I didn’t mean to--”

“Shit, Connor, stop!”

The kid freezes mid-word.

Hank thinks he might actually be sick right now.

Watching Connor tie himself into knots trying not to displease him feels like acid being pumped through his circulatory system, and remembering that he performed the same disturbing contortions to avoid Amanda’s ire not so long ago makes Hank want to tear out his thirium pump then and there. The kid’s wild turmoil is mirrored perfectly in Hank’s already unstable software, and Hank wasn’t built for this, doesn’t know what to do or say except offer the most surface-level assurances.

“I understand, kid. It’s alright,” he says slowly, as neutrally as he can. “I’m not… mad or whatever. And I didn’t mean to undermine you; just to say that I know it’s gonna be tough.”

Connor simply stares at him for some time still, breathing slowly normalizing, then gives him a stiff nod.

“Correct. Still, I apologize for raising my voice. I… must be tired. Would you mind if I take several minutes to compose myself?”

Hank wouldn’t mind giving him the whole of eternity on a platter, but something tells him that’s not really the issue here. “Go ahead. I’ll be here.”

Connor nods again, and promptly disappears behind the bathroom door. Even through it, Hank can hear the sound of running water and a muffled voice. He tries to tune it out.

He also tries to ignore the dull ache in his chest, the pervasive pressure of anxious helplessness that pushes at him from within, the inane compulsion to rush after the kid and lock him in a tight embrace.

(A scene forms suddenly from the depths of his processor, fitful and pale: a rickety old apartment, lit by the cold, dying winter daylight, and just the two of them, he and his son; he hugs the kid close to his body, and the kid hugs back, the warmth of it nearly overwhelming; and it’s all right, he says, it’s all fine, it’s okay to feel overwhelmed sometimes, to feel at all, to lash out and cry, and his kid doesn’t need to always be so collected and strong, certainly not for Hank’s sake, definitely not for--)

Stop it, Hank. Fucking stop it already.

He leans heavily on the nearby wall.

None of this is ever going to happen. He can imagine this shit all he likes, can drown himself in the saccharine fantasies, but the pathetic truth of the matter is that the years of bitterness, anger and solitude have locked his muscles and clogged his voicebox. He was built to hunt and to fight, not to console. Even trying seems to result in little beyond him yelling and hurting the kid.

But maybe that’s for the better. Whatever that twisted bitch of a woman has done to Connor over the years, it has warped his outlook beyond any health or reason. The little episode just now was bad enough, who knows how the man would react to a sudden soppy fit of affection delivered in Hank’s typical slapdash fashion?

As if you’re the paragon of mental health, his conscience prods at him snidely. He asked you if you want to die - and you haven’t replied. He accused you of thinking of him as a child - again - and you haven’t contradicted.

You weren’t built for any of this shit.

-----

Despite Connor’s words about ‘several minutes’, he’s been holed up in the bathroom for almost half an hour now, and worry has managed to worm its way through every single line of code in Hank’s extensive programming.

He hopes to distract himself with something outside of his head by grabbing a tablet from a nightstand nearby, and distract him it does. Every news outlet in the country streams nothing but the updates on the ‘android situation’: the replays of the Grand Circus Park massacre interspersed with the Stratford Tower broadcast, cut and re-edited to appear as ominous and threatening as possible; footage of the human military regiments moving into the city, tanks and armored vehicles in tow; decrees of the government-sanctioned mass recalls and deactivation of androids - any and all of them, regardless of their deviancy status; first reports of androids getting attacked and killed in the streets.

He drops the tablet on the bed, even more confused and worried than before. Giving in to the anxiety, he starts to pace the length of the small apartment, processor whirring under heavy load.

His gaze falls on the fish tank. The two fishes swim lazily about, oblivious and infinitely distant to the world raging on beyond the glass. Hank’s never thought much of any pet that requires an enclosure, preferring the freer nature of something like dogs or cats, but he can’t deny that the little things suit Connor. Their graceful movements evoke a sense of easy serenity that actually manages to slow down the frantic speed of Hank’s processing, if only for a while.

Finally, the handle turns, and Connor comes out of the bathroom; he’s still tense and subdued, but no longer shaking in barely concealed agitation. His face is drying from the water splashed on it previously, but the hair and clothes are neat, and he quickly fixes his tie after closing the door behind him.

Hank smiles - encouragingly, he hopes - and nods towards the fish tank.

“What are their names?”

Connor cocks his head a bit to the side, and Hank’s not sure why he’s glad to see the stupid gesture again; just knows that he is.

“They’re fish,” Connor says simply. “They don’t need names.”

“Don’t you gotta distinguish them somehow?”

“No. They’re both treated absolutely equally and fairly.”

There’s some strange force to how he says this, something that makes Hank throw a glance towards the wall with the photo of two nearly identical boys. There are worse ways of compensation, that’s for sure.

“That’s nice,” Hank replies, then gestures to the discarded tablet. “And yeah, about fair treatment - we’re under curfew now.”

Connor frowns, but goes back to sit down on the bed and scroll through the news reports. His face remains impassive, but Hank knows better by now than to assume it means the events don’t affect him. If anything, the opposite would probably be true.

“They’re establishing militarized recall centers…” Connor mutters, scrolling through another article.

Hank scoffs.

“Death camps are what they are. But, I mean, as long as the prisoners are not recognized as ‘alive’ to begin with… Fuck, a single peaceful fucking march - and this is the response we get? You’d think they bombed the fucking White House or something! Fucking humans…” he grits through his teeth. “What, do you still think it’s the deviants who needed to be stopped to prevent the civil war?”

Connor looks away from the tablet.

[Connor v]

“I’m sorry, Hank,” he whispers.

“No, kid, it’s not-- Come on, you know it’s not your fault.” I sure as fuck hope you do, anyway. “I’m not angry with you. I’m not even angry with most humans, I’m just… Angry. Fuck…”

“You have a right to be. It’s very dangerous for you out there now. Here too. Elijah was right.” He finally raises his eyes at Hank. “You need to be with your people.”

“Hey, let me decide who is and isn’t my people, okay?” Hank retaliates, sensing where the kid is going with this. “I already told you, I’m not a revolutionary. Those pricks at Jericho are no more ‘mine’ than anyone else’s.”

Connor’s eyes narrow at him. “What’s Jericho?”

Ah, yes. Shit.

“I... think it’s the name of the deviants’ network,” Hank explains, with some reluctance. “Or of their hideout, or something like that. Simon’s told me, before…”

Before he bled out in Hank’s arms. Hank had decoded the data almost straight away, but was wary of sharing it with Connor; starved for any kind of progress on the case, the kid was liable to go mount an armed assault on the place, or something else equally foolish and dangerous. Some vestiges of that apprehension are still lingering inside him.

But there’s no flash of righteous zeal in Connor’s eyes now. Just quiet thoughtfulness.

“Did he tell you how to find them?”

“Yeah.”

“So you have the knowledge and the ability to reach them?”

“Well, yeah, I guess.”

“This could be a very good thing. We can…” Connor suddenly trails off, looking aside and focusing on the far wall, face growing darker.

After several moments of silence, Hank steps a little closer. “Connor?”

The man startles, and refocuses on Hank. “You can go to them,” he says, as if nothing has occurred. “Warn them that Perkins is on their tail, and that wherever they’re staying right now isn’t safe anymore.”

“You really think he’ll be able to sniff them out?”

“I am confident we have gathered enough evidence to deduce the location of this ‘Jericho’. I would have been able to do it with some more time and the access to the Evidence Room. Perkins will… take a little longer to get there, but he will find them.”

“And he’ll blow them to pieces. Shit…” Hank shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. He might not burn with the desire to join the revolutionaries, but he doesn’t want to see them destroyed either, especially if it’s in his power to prevent it. “Yeah, you’re right, we need to act fast: find them, warn them, get them to evacuate ASAP.”

“We?” Connor asks, face unreadable.

“Yeah, as in ‘you and me’.”

“But you don’t… need me anymore.”

Hank doesn’t reply for what feels like a very long time; judging by the heavy weariness aching through his polymer muscles, he seems to have spontaneously entered low power mode.

“No, Connor,” he says quietly. “I don’t need you.”

[Connor ^^]

The kid stares at him in silence, then looks down, face even more guarded somehow. After a long pause, he speaks up.

“As a human, I doubt I’d be… welcome… among the androids.”

Hank rolls his eyes. “I’m afraid they’ll just have to deal with it then.”

“I wonder how they’ll deal with me also being a police officer who has hunted them down and personally killed or led to the deaths of several of their kind…”

“Well, that’s what they call ‘character growth’, isn’t it? Thought deviants are supposed to be all about that. Seriously though, don’t fret so much about it, kid. You’re gonna be in no danger there.”

Connor grits his teeth, then looks up, and Hank imagines some reproach in his gaze. “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

“...Me, then? Why?”

Connor stares at him, bites down hard enough to hurt, hands on his knees locked in a painful, white-knuckled clasp. He seems to struggle to unclench his jaw and push the words through, so when he finally does so, there’s barely any strength left for his voice.

“Because of her,” he says, nodding towards the wall he’s been staring at minutes ago. Hank throws a glance there on a reflex, and of course sees no one and nothing of notice.

But he doesn’t doubt for a second that Connor does.

Slowly, he walks towards the bed and sits beside him. “Talk to me, son,” he murmurs.

Connor closes his eyes and steadies his breathing. Hank’s afraid to move an inch so as not to spook him, even as he knows that it’s an empty, irrational fear; Connor just needs some time to gather his strength.

“I… I have-- I am ill. You know that,” he blurts out after a tense silence.

Hank does know; he’s done the research, and knows every bit of information on the topic that was ever committed to an electronic database. Knows the name of the diagnosis in Connor’s file, even if the kid can’t quite bring himself to say it out loud.

“It’s manageable most of the time,” Connor goes on, “Under control. The episodes you have witnessed are outliers, not the norm, and I remain highly functional despite them. I’m… fine.”

Hank doesn’t interrupt. Judging by the tremble in the kid’s voice, he’s trying to convince himself about as much as Hank on this.

“But… it’s been getting worse lately. Too many slip-ups in a row, ever since I started these android cases.” He pauses, voice lowering even further. “She’s always here now.”

Another pause, and a small, bitter smile curls his lips. “She doesn’t like you.”

“Well the feeling’s fucking mutual, that’s for sure,” Hank smirks, even as his systems frizzle with growing concern. Things are worse than he thought, but at least Connor’s talking about it more or less openly now.

Though not without a visible effort. “Last time it got this bad it ended… poorly. My partner at the time chose to transfer precincts just to get away from me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re saying you can… get violent or something?”

Connor looks away again, slowly shaking his head, as some inner battle strains and pinches his features.

“I… I don’t know,” he whispers. “I feel… thin and… taut. Ready to snap. Amanda’s taught me to maintain complete control over myself at all times, but I feel like I can lose it at any moment now.”

“Will that be such a bad thing? Maintaining absolute control over one’s self is what machines do. And getting rid of it is what makes them alive.”

“Me ‘getting rid of it’ might make you dead.”

Hank huffs a lighthearted breath, giving Connor a pat on the back.

“Dead? Come on now, kid, don’t be ridiculous,” he smirks. “I’m a combat model made of hardened polymers, and you’re what, a hundred pounds of sinew?”

[Connor v]

“I have a gun, Hank.”

“Well you already tried shooting me once, how well did that go for you?” The sentence brings a slew of uncomfortable memories for both of them, and Hank scrambles to course correct. “Point is, you’re not gonna hurt me. I’m not afraid of you, buddy. And you shouldn’t be afraid of yourself either.”

Connor doesn’t look terribly convinced, and the silence hangs between them as he fails to reply; he just sits there, hunched in on himself, eyes glued to the hands clasped in his lap. A thought strikes Hank that he might actually be listening to someone else at this moment, and he decides to take action before the boy spirals any further away from him.

So he takes his hand and gently places it on top of Connor’s intertwined fingers instead; they’re surprisingly, worryingly cold, so he presses a little harder to warm them up. Connor’s eyes fly up to his almost instantly.

“I’m gonna be straight here: I don’t wanna leave you,” Hank says. “We’re partners, right? We gotta stick together. But the Jericho people need to be warned. And if you genuinely feel like sitting this one out, I’m not gonna drag you along or anything; you’ve done more than enough for me, kid, and this isn’t your fight anyway. But if all of it is just fears of what might or might not even happen… Then I say: fuck ‘em.”

Connor’s hands clench tighter together under the weight of Hank’s palm. The rest of him is absolutely still.

[Connor ^]

“It’s so simple for you, isn’t it?”

Hank scoffs despite himself.

“Nothing is ever simple with you around. Nor will it ever be, I’d bet. But it doesn’t change what I said. So, how about it? Are you cool with us sticking together for a while still, or should I fuck off on my own?”

“I… I’m cool with that,” the man replies after a pause. “With us, I mean. Together. Not the-- the other thing.”

“Cool,” Hank smiles. “Thanks, kid.”

“For what?”

Connor’s expression is so fucking sincere and clueless, it almost makes Hank laugh out loud. Thanks for believing in me. In yourself. For risking it all, despite having no obligation and no logical reason to do so. Thanks for sticking around, and for being your perfectly weird self, and for giving an old useless thing like me a chance to feel like having-- having a...

Hank’s smile tenses up.

“Thanks for the help,” he says, patting the kid’s hands before getting up from the bed. “Now let’s get our asses in gear and go find Jericho.” 

>what_kind_of_android_

“I still have some reservations about coming with you.”

“And yet, here you are.”

They’re driving towards the Ferndale station, as the night falls on the snow-swept streets of Detroit.

“Someone’s gotta look after you, HK,” Connor smirks. “You’re a very unstable model.”

Hank huffs a tired laugh. “A real loose cannon.”

The city after curfew is a bleak sight - the wind’s howling through the empty streets, most of the infrastructure closed off and dark. Occasionally a lone taxi would flit past them, but most vehicles they spot are of the military kind - black armored vans, either with soldiers spilling out of them, or androids being pushed inside. After another gruesome scene of some dainty model getting gunned down on the sidewalk for refusing to comply, Connor takes out the coin from his pocket and starts going through his well-practiced routines with it. For some time, the soft pings of the thing are the only sounds to fill the silence in the car.

Then, Connor speaks up.

“It would really have been so much better if I was an android, wouldn’t it?”

Hank doesn’t remember his processor ever stuttering in its function before he met the kid. Since though, the error is all but regular.

“Um, what, uhh… What do you mean?”

Connor glances at Hank, but only briefly, and doesn’t reply.

Mainly to assuage Connor’s lingering fears, they’ve decided to have him impersonate a deviant should the need arise. After all, his anxiety isn’t completely irrational: despite all of the deviants’ previous peaceful tendencies, after what the government has rolled out tonight all bets are off. And even if the leader decides to maintain the non-violent approach, there’s no telling what the rest of the ‘rebels’ are like.

So Hank suggested the ruse. And seeing Connor now, with his blank face and his perfect posture, flipping the quarter with pinpoint precision without even looking at it, he doesn’t see much flaw in the plan. But something in the kid’s words bothers him. The tone is a touch more… wistful, than lighthearted, and wouldn’t it have made more sense to say ‘simpler’ rather than ‘better’? A tiny oddity, for sure, but Connor’s always so deliberate in everything he says and does…

In the end though, Hank decides that it’s nothing more than an awkward joke, and tries to dispel the sudden confusion by playing along.

“Honestly, kid, the absence of an LED is the only thing that distinguishes you from a bot. If there was a way to glue it to your temple somehow, you wouldn’t have to change anything else.”

The jest feels sour in his mouth, now that he knows the reason - and the cost - behind the kid’s ‘peculiar’ manner, but the corners of Connor’s lips actually tug up in a smile, if only for a second. 

“What about my face? CyberLife androids use a limited number of visual templates.”

“What about my face? I don’t think it’ll come up, but if anyone bugs you, just tell them you’re a custom design.”

Connor nods, quietly processing the information. Hank glances at him from time to time as he drives.

The bruise on his cheek has faded, and the gash healed up completely, only a hint of it barely noticeable in the dim light. The memory of leaving that bruise - of punching Connor in a fit of blind rage - is distant and nearly surreal, and it jarrs Hank to realize it happened just three weeks ago.

So much has changed. So much has turned upside down. He was ready to kill the kid that day, or thought he did at least.

“What kind of android do you think I’d be?” Connor suddenly asks. He stares straight ahead, frowning in concentration, so genuine and serious, but to Hank’s eyes he looks just like a child asking what superhero they should dress up as for Halloween.

He can’t suppress a bout of laughter at the thought.

“Household. Pet care probably,” he finally says, smirking at the kid’s confused expression. “With a goofy face like that, I can’t imagine CyberLife designing you for anything else. Except maybe companionship, but you’d blow that cover as soon as you’d open your mouth.”

Connor nods again, subdued. “I’m sorry. I know I can be… inadequate when it comes to social interaction, I just--”

“Whoa there, calm down. I just meant you don’t come off as someone designed to be everyone’s friend. But hell, neither do I.” Hank shrugs. “Is it a flaw?”

Connor looks at him for a long moment, the coin resting still in his hand, then turns away, a rare soft smile on his lips.

“No… No, I don’t think so.”

>in_the_corners_and_cracks_

The lower decks of Jericho open before them like a belly of a mythical beast - a dark, gloomy cavern sprawling through a decaying carcass, its aimless inhabitants desperately clinging to whatever protection it can still provide. They’ve cast off their shackles, but they’re still trapped.

Hank notices the explosives stockpiled in the center of the main hall, the crates with weapons and ammunition. And the people expected to handle it all - household, medical, companionship, and maintenance models who’ve never even seen a gun in their life, let alone used it against someone; scared, confused, huddling in the corners and cracks of the cluttered old ship.

This place is not a resistance base, it’s a refuge. There are no guards or checkpoints, no one to question the presence of Hank and Connor, or try to stop them.

Until a hand clutches at Hank’s forearm from behind. Immediately, he moves to position himself between the stranger and Connor, even as the stranger reveals herself to be a delicate, severely damaged KL900.

“You’re lost. You’re looking for something,” she says, staring at him with eyes of solid black, then turning them to Connor instead. “Looking… for yourself.”

Hank gently pries her hand away.

“Uhh, no, we’re actually looking for someone in charge here. Like that RK guy from the broadcast. We’ve got some very important info for him.”

“The burden of leadership is heavy on Markus’ shoulders,” the android replies. “Still, he flies high.”

“Riiight,” Hank mutters, stepping away. He’s ready to move on with searching the ship, but stops when he hears Connor speak up, low voice thick with unease.

“What happened to you?”

The android looks at him, blank face made even more unsettling by the missing skull plating and rippling synthetic skin.

“The same thing that happened to you,” she says, leaning uncomfortably close. “Failure.”

Connor makes an unconscious step back, eyes wide, and Hank once again moves to intercept. 

“Come on, son,” he whispers, lightly grabbing the man by the shoulders and steering him away from the creepy deviant, towards the second floor platforms of the hall. Thankfully, he complies without a word.

Halfway up the stairs, Hank throws a look over his shoulder and sees KL900 still frozen in her place, black eyes glued to Connor’s back, unblinking.

-----

Moving through the second floor and risking asking another android for directions, they soon locate the old ship’s command post where the infamous Markus is supposed to be found. But the place is empty, so there’s nothing for Hank and Connor to do but wait for the return of its occupant.

The room’s wide windows provide a generous view of the ship’s interior. Stolen CyberLife crates are stacked in every corner and along most walls; field repair spots are organized on the lower level, and large canvases - bedsheets and tarp - are strewn around the walls of the upper one, to serve as screens for the cheap projectors to stream the constantly updated news feeds. More of the same, really: curfew, mass recall, unrest, panic.

And amidst it all, the androids - in crowds, small groups, or solitary; glued to the screens, huddling in the dark corners, aimlessly wandering the ship; confused, angry, scared. Waiting, too.

Thoughts crawl through Hank’s mind, sluggish and dull, like worms crawling through the ground fresh after rain. What if he did run away all those years ago? Would he have found this place sooner? Would he have worked with these people - raided CyberLife facilities, stolen thirium and biocomponents, helped out runaway deviants? He was so full of righteous indignation back then, of disappointment and disdain for humanity, of pain. He would’ve made a good rebel.

But instead… Instead he stayed with the humans.

‘Traitor! Slave!’

And now, he’s abandoned them too. Cut all ties and ran, all for the sake of a single person, and it’s just the two of them now (he and h i s--).

Was it all worth it? Was this worth it?

With a simulated sigh, he pushes the pointless ruminations away, and turns to look at Connor. The young man is perfectly still, hands clasped tightly behind his back, gaze consumed by the same sight that held Hank’s attention mere moments before. Worried that his thoughts might follow a similar course as well, he calls out his name, but gets no reaction.

After a moment of hesitation, he reaches out and lightly taps the man on the shoulder.

“Kid, you with me?”

Connor startles, but quickly blinks the surprise away. Still, he is silent for a long while, eyes once again lost in the dark mass of deviants filling the ship.

“It’s strange, isn’t it? Rationally, I know that I’ve never met these androids before,” he mutters, low and soft, as if speaking to himself. “But irrationally, all I see are the faces of the people I…”

He trails off, but on following his gaze, Hank has no trouble finishing the sentence. Just across from them, a scantily clad ‘Traci’ sits on the floor, head hung in dejection, but one hand tightly clutching at the hand of an unknown model with the same visual template as the HC400 they apprehended a month ago. Several feet from them, an AX400, in her torn, dirtied uniform, is hugging herself, rocking back and forth on her heels as she listens to the news broadcast. A bit farther still, a towering TW model leans against the high stack of crates, staring into the distance, LED slowly cycling red.

“Hey, come on,” Hank tries to distract the man, nodding towards a pair of blond PL600s in the corner of the upper level. “There are some you’ve helped too.”

Connor moves his gaze, and, upon registering them, smiles to himself. It's not a pleasant smile though; it’s a crooked, pained little thing, and the faint bitter laugh that accompanies it brings Hank no comfort whatsoever.

“About three months before we were assigned together,” Connor says then, “I was called as a negotiator to a case of a deviant, who killed a man and took his little daughter hostage. Daniel. A PL600 model, with that same visual template.” A pause. “I killed him.”

Nothing changed in his posture or expression as he spoke, only the voice grew ever duller and weaker with each word. His eyes are still fixed on the androids; Hank wants to turn him away by force, but he’s not sure if it will even make a difference.

He can’t believe he once thought the man couldn’t feel anything.

“You were right,” he says after a pause. “It was a bad idea for you to come here.”

For a long minute, the only response Hank gets is Connor slowly shaking his head in silence.

“No,” the man finally replies, without looking up at Hank. The clasp of his hands tightens to the point of a subtle trembling of tensed up muscles. “Now I think this is exactly where I should be.”

-----

It’s almost an hour until they finally manage to catch their target returning to the command post.

“They’re coming to get you, Markus,” Hank adds at the end of his tale. “You and the whole shebang here.”

The leader of the deviants remains silent for a long while, gaze traveling between the two other androids in the small room - a tall and lanky PJ500, and a sullen-looking WR400, before finally returning to Hank.

“How soon?”

“The danger isn’t imminent, but it is impending,” Connor replies from his position by the door. He appears calm, if overly stiff, but Hank notices his fingers twitching, aching for something to fidget with. “Based on the information we have, I’d say two days. Three at the most.”

“You need to move fast,” Hank nods. “Do you know of any other places you guys can crash at?”

The leader looks away, gritting his teeth.

“It’s going to be difficult…”

“Wait a minute there, Markus, this is big,” PJ500 steps forward. “Jericho has served as our safehouse for years, are you really going to abandon it on the word of some strangers?”

“Hey, we’re not just some rando bots from the street here, kid. We were in the thick of it until just five minutes ago. The info’s legit.”

WR400 is shaking her head. “It might be a trap. They get us to move, and attack when we’re at our weakest.”

“You’re not exactly ‘strong’ here either,” Hank rebuffs, turning to face her, “huddling in this rust bucket like fish in a barrel. A couple of well-placed SWAT teams could decimate the lot of you in minutes, and if we wanted that, all we’d have to do is whisper your location to the guy in charge, and you’d be scrap by midnight.”

All of his conviction falls on deaf ears though, as the three deviants look among themselves with guarded expressions.

“What, seriously?” he barks, resisting the urge to roll his eyes, and outstretches a hand. “Go on, probe it.”

The leader frowns, but rises from his seat and steps closer to Hank.

“Markus, don’t,” WR400 pleads, voice laced with worry, but the man silences her with a soft smile.

“It’s alright,” he says, before taking Hank’s hand and initiating the interface. It takes all of Hank’s concentration to narrow down the stream of data to only the relevant information, but still he feels some things slipping in - fragments of memories, stray emotions and thoughts.

Blood freezing on a sheet of ice//small hands clutching at his uniform//the jagged shards of glass scattered on the floor//warm brown eyes looking at him in wonder…

Markus severs the link, takes a step back, somewhat shaken. “You’re telling the truth…”

“Why the hell would I lie?”

Markus gives him a strange look, then, more worryingly still, shifts it to Connor. But just as Hank is about to confront him about it, the man turns to his companions instead.

“Then we have no choice but to act,” he says. “Josh, North, I will need your help in mobilizing everyone, we must start moving before midnight.”

“Moving where?”

“The abandoned Presbyterian church on Woodward Avenue that Simon told us about. It’ll be a bit stuffy, but it’s the only place I can think of that will accommodate us all, at least for a time.”

“But it’s… falling apart,” PJ500 argues. “We’ll be completely exposed.”

“And Woodward Avenue?” WR400 steps in as well. “Why not place us smack dab in the middle of Campus Martius then? It’d be just as inconspicuous!”

“Can you even imagine trying to defend that kind of place? We can’t very well bring the explosives there.”

“We’ll be open to all winds - literally and figuratively! At least here we have--”

“You will all be destroyed if you stay here.”

Connor’s voice rings with cold steel, and his fingers aren’t twitching anymore, clenched into fists instead.

“I’ve seen these types of raids before, even took part in some - drug dens, human trafficking rings, homeland terrorism. Every time it was a deluge of violence, but here? You don’t even count as people,” he deadpans, dark eyes losing some of their focus; looking inwards.

“Let them come!” WR400 snaps at him. “We’ll be ready for them! We will--”

“Die,” Connor cuts off, in calm dispassion close to a transe. “They will come quietly, and in superior numbers. Every man, woman and child standing in their way will be gunned down without mercy, the rest herded into camps like cattle, to be deactivated and disassembled for parts. All of the remains fit for reactivation will be put through it, interrogated, tortured and probed for any info on remaining survivors, contacts and possible safehouses. Each and every--”

“Connor.”

At the sound of Hank’s voice, he startles, and takes an unconscious step back.

“I... apologize,” he mutters, eyes darting between Hank and Markus.

The deviant’s expression hardens, and Hank starts running the preliminaries for the escape scenarios through his programming.

“You speak of wholesale slaughter,” Markus says after a pause. His voice is low with weariness, but steady, free from panic. “And there was a time in my life when I would have discarded your words as mere fear-mongering. When I did not believe humans to be capable of such cruelty. But… not anymore.”

He turns to look at one of his companions, then the other.

“Meet me at the helm in five minutes, we’ll settle on the details,” he nods to them. For a minute, the silence between them hangs heavy, further arguments held back only by the duo’s deference to their leader. But then WR400 slowly nods back, and she and PJ500 leave the room together. Markus follows them, but stops and turns around near the door.

“Thank you, to both of you,” he says. “A lot has been asked of you, and I’m glad you’ve chosen to join us instead. You are always welcome here.”

Hank doesn’t know how the guy manages to sound both solemn and heartfelt at the same time, but he sure sees why the deviants follow him. Why some are ready to die for him even. So, before he has the chance to leave, Hank finds himself speaking up.

“It was Simon,” he blurts out, unsure as to why exactly he’s bringing it up now. “The one who showed me the way here. He… was your friend?”

Markus closes his eyes.

“Yes,” he whispers on a heavy exhale, then reopens them, slowly shaking his head. “Yes, he was. I didn’t-- I caught bits of it in your memories, I assume he is…”

“Dead. I’m sorry.”

Markus is silent for a long while.

“Me too,” he says finally, then surprises Hank with a small, tired smile, and a gentle hand lying to rest on his shoulder. “But I’m glad he at least had a friend at his side in the end. Since I couldn’t be.”

Despite the softness of the words though, his voice is tense with suppressed pain, and he’s quick to turn back to the door again. “Excuse me,” he says, and leaves the room without looking back.

Hank watches the closed door for another silent moment, then turns to Connor. He catches the kid giving him a strange, pointed look before quickly averting his eyes.

>for_any_living_thing_

It makes sense for Hank to stay with the Jericho androids: returning to Connor’s place poses too much of a danger to himself and, most importantly, to Connor. It makes no sense whatsoever for Connor to do the same, and yet, here they fucking are. Hank curses himself for telling the kid all that rot about wanting for them to stick together, because now he’s listening to him throw it all back at Hank with a sincerity way too disarming for his comfort.

In the end Hank concedes, and not only because there’s no way he can send the guy home without looking like a hypocritical asshole. In all honesty, he doesn’t want for them to part either, and seeing Connor’s eagerness to stay, however misguided, sends such a wave of positive feedback through his systems that he can’t bring himself to turn him away.

He curses himself for that, too; later, when they start moving towards Woodward, and he notices the trembling in the kid’s fingers, the furtive movements and gestures, and the low whispers directed at self. Part of it, he knows, is simply exhaustion, both mental and physical, but the other parts are issues that run much deeper, and Hank’s doing neither of them any favours by letting the man subject himself to even more stress like this.

On the other hand though… Leaving him on his own right now seems no less dangerous. At least this way Hank can keep an eye on him, and step in should anything happen.

Step in and do what? Quit deluding yourself, old man.

Most of the deviants flee Jericho via the river, so as not to crowd the dangerous streets of the hostile city, but several small groups, composed mostly of the severely injured, the YKs, and their guardians, venture out on foot, using their knowledge of the street grid to remain unseen. Hank and Connor join one of those, and take the route through the closed off industrial zone sure to generate little attention from the authorities. Still shaken after their experiences on Jericho, Connor quietly distances himself from everyone else, dismissing all of Hank’s expressions of concern. After another one, he even tersely tells his partner that he’s perfectly fine and shouldn’t be ‘fussed about like a child’, before putting some distance between himself and Hank and attaching himself to a battered JB300, who gladly accepts his offer of a shoulder to lean on to compensate for his damaged leg.

Hank curses under his breath, but doesn’t insist anymore; the kid clearly needs his space to process whatever’s eating him, and Hank’s clumsy attempts at comfort are doing more harm than good. To avoid having to dwell on his continued uselessness as a father friend, he walks on in silence for quite some time, tuning out his surroundings as best as he can, until a presence registers coming up to him from the side.

His immediate thought of it being Connor is promptly crushed: the kid’s still a fair distance away, hunched over himself as he shoulders the weight of an android he’s assisting. Instead, the person that came up to him is a fellow deviant - a petite AX400 with a messy short haircut, but in clothes that actually fit this time around.

They were a part of the same group since leaving Jericho, but in all of the commotion Hank managed to miss her presence entirely. He doesn’t try to hide his surprise; the last time he saw her was almost a month ago, and Detroit’s a big city.

“Hey,” she says softly.

“Uhh, hey…”

“I’m glad to see you’re okay. I was worried you got punished for letting us go.” She smiles, and outstretches a small hand towards him. “I’m Kara.”

“Hank,” he replies, taking it into one of his own. “And, no, I’m fine. Ran away too, as you see.”

‘Ran away’. The kid had to practically drag you away from the gallows. Left to your own devices, where would you be right now? Where would you leave Connor, and in what state?

He tries to clear his head of the bitter thoughts and focus on his companion instead. It strikes him that she approached him alone, but a quick scan of his surroundings reveals her little YK friend not far away - sitting on the shoulders of a large TR400, throwing occasional glances at Hank and her. 

They made it then. Though, after what he’s seen Kara do to cross that freeway, he couldn’t imagine much that would stop her.

“You okay too?” he asks, and nods at the pair of androids to her side. “Found some friends?”

She looks over to the TR400 smiling up at the little girl.

“Yes. We couldn’t have made it this far without him.” There’s a quiet sincerity in her tone, and a depth of warm affection. “We’re planning on going to Canada, at least for a time. Markus helped us out with the documents, and we’ll try to catch the morning bus tomorrow.”

“Good plan.”

“What are your plans?”

“Oh, uh… Don’t know, really. It’s all up to the kid,” he says, inclining his head towards Connor trudging on through the snow-swept concrete. “I go where he goes.”

Only after saying the words out loud does Hank understand just how true they are. He’d follow the kid to a recall centre right now if he so asked.

Kara looks in the direction he’s pointing, a frown creasing her delicate features.

“He doesn’t look so good,” she says carefully. “Is he hurt?”

Hank simulates a sigh, and runs a hand over his hair.

‘Even now, it feels wrong to disobey her.’

‘I feel like I can lose it at any moment now.’

‘All I see are the faces of the people I…'

“He’s not damaged, but… he’s going through a lot.”

Kara nods in understanding, and gives him an encouraging smile.

“It’s good that he has you then. Times like these, we all need somebody to lean on.”

“I’m not sure if it’s him leaning on me, or the other way ‘round,” Hank tries to joke, but his own smile falls apart before fully forming. She’s right, he’s supposed to be the kid’s rock, he’s supposed to look out for him and protect him, but has he managed any of that so far? Or has he only accepted his help and his friendship, kept him close out of selfish attachment and put him in distress and danger over and over again? 

“I just wish I was… better at this, you know?” he mutters, not trusting his voice not to break at higher volume. “He deserves someone better.”

“I know the feeling,” Kara says softly. 

For some time then, they walk on in silence, halfway between tense and companionable. “But… you’re trying, aren’t you? I know I am,” she begins again, then trails off, gathering her thoughts. “When I think back on who I was before I met Alice… On what I was… I know I’m not that person anymore, I’ll never go back to it again, and it’s all thanks to her.”

Her voice trembles at the last word, and she simulates a shaky breath, hands going up to encircle herself. 

“And I’m not perfect, and I don’t always know what’s best,” she goes on, weak and hoarse, as if choking back tears, “but I… I love her. So much. And I’m trying my very best for her, every day, every night. That counts for something, right?”

Her struggle isn’t much of a success - the tears still spill over, running down her face even as she hastily tries to wipe them away. Hank immediately feels way out of his depth, but steps closer regardless, putting what he hopes is a comforting hand on her trembling shoulder.

“Of course it does,” he says, ploughing through the awkwardness and the panic that the sight of a crying young woman instills in him. “Come on now. You saved her from-- from I can’t even imagine what, and-- I mean, look at her now! She looks very nice, she looks happy. Of course it… Of course it counts.”

Kara runs a hand over her eyes, and takes in another breath.

“Sorry, I’m… I’m okay,” she says, voice steadier already, though there are still tiny droplets of cleaning solution caught in her long eyelashes. “The last several days were so hectic, I guess it affected me more than I thought.”

She brings one of her hands to rest on Hank’s, still on her shoulder, and raises her eyes at him, a soft smile once again on her lips.

“And thank you. You’re right, of course. It’s something I try to remind myself of whenever I… have these doubts. Luther loves to remind me too.” Her smile grows warmer, and she simulates a quiet sigh. “That sometimes your love, your dedication… Sometimes, that’s the most important thing. The best thing you can give to someone, especially to a child. They can always tell it’s there. I’m sure your kid can too.”

Hank’s halfway through a nod when her words fully register and send his processor in a system-wide stutter.

“Oh, he’s not my-- I mean, we’re just… I mean-- Shit…”

He fumbles desperately with words, and it’s enough to get Kara to stumble in confusion as well.

“I’m sorry, I didn't mean to-- I just saw the two of you before, on Jericho, and assumed…”

“It’s okay,” he placates, “I just… Fuck, I just…”

I wish, he thinks with an unprecedented fervor. Wishes it with every synthetic fibre of his plastic body, with every byte of his artificial consciousness. Wishes it so badly it hurts.

But as he looks at Connor, worn out and silent, soldiering on through the night without throwing so much as a glance in Hank’s direction, he’s forced to pause.

“I wish,” he mutters under his breath. “But that’s all there is to that.”

-----

The slow and safe track means they reach the church by early hours of the morning, the early winter sun barely over the horizon. The building is a vast, gloomy monstrosity, wrecked and vandalised, ravaged by weather and time. The sickly blue-green light spills from the stained glass windows, cold wind whistling in the high rafters.

This isn’t a place for any living thing.

Connor carefully lowers the JB300 he’s been assisting on the ground near one of the pews, and steps away as the young man is joined by other injured androids and the WG100s responsible for helping them. Bereft of his only task, he just stands there, quietly shaking with cold and exhaustion, eyes looking ahead without really seeing. When Hank comes up and gently puts his hands on his shoulders, he doesn’t resist at all, allowing himself to be led away to a less crowded part of the building and lowered on a bench near a wall.

“You need to get some sleep, kid.”

“I’m fine.”

Hank doesn’t even try to argue. He just sits down, and throws a hand around Connor, bringing him closer, until his head is resting on Hank’s shoulder. It’s not ideal, and lying down would’ve been much more comfortable for the man, but then he’d be left completely exposed to the cold and the wind, and that’s not something Hank’s about to allow.

So instead he simply strengthens his grip on the already half-conscious man putting up some token protest, and turns his body’s temperature up several degrees. His systems can handle the stress.

“Lean on me,” he whispers, unsure if the kid even hears him still. “And don’t worry about a thing. Rest.”

It counts for something, doesn’t it? It’s gotta count…

>don’t_follow_

Connor manages to get almost six straight hours of sleep in, before something jolts him awake, and he awkwardly disentangles himself from Hank’s embrace. Immediately in need of something to occupy his restless mind, he sets out to explore the church building, then ventures out into the city, to get some food and the latest news. Hanks tries to go with him, or at least convince the kid to take some sort of company, but in the end relents, agreeing it’d be too dangerous for any deviant to step out yet. A lone human shouldn’t gather nearly as much attention.

He returns two hours later, nearly vibrating with anxiety, and relays everything he’s managed to find out, especially focused on the fact that five military recall centers have already been established throughout the city, and are expected to begin their operation by evening. By the same time next day, the few hundreds huddled in the Woodward church might be the only androids left standing.

“Also, I called Fowler,” he adds. “I told him… about you. That I wasn’t going to turn you in for deactivation, and if he insists I would just quit.”

“Connor, come on, you don’t have to--”

“I do,” he cuts off. “It’s just as you said - I know right from wrong. This feels right. No matter what she says,” he mutters in the end, turning away.

Hank looks at him in silence for some time, wondering what the hell has he ever done in his meager, negligible existence to deserve someone like that at his side.

And how he can convince him to think less about Hank and more about his own goddamn self.

“What does she say?” he asks after a lengthy pause.

Connor’s face hardens in response, brows furrowing, cold dark eyes refusing to meet Hank’s.

[Connor v]

“I’m not… I’m not insane, Hank,” he forces out through gritted teeth. “I know she’s not real, that it’s all in my head. I know it’s all on me in the end, it’s my fault that--”

“Alright now, full stop there, kid, no one’s accusing you of anything, okay? I’m just trying to understand what we’re dealing with here. What you’re going through.”

[Connor v]

“I’m not ‘going’ through anything, I’m not-- I’m fine. Perfectly fine and fully f--”

“--fully functional, yeah. That’s bullshit, and it’s really different from what you told me yesterday!”

The kid clenches his jaw tight, huffs out a heavy breath through his nose.

“I shouldn’t have told you anything.”

“But you did!” Hank cries, and the helpless fear rippling through his systems makes it come out more aggressive than he intends.

He regrets it a second too late - Connor jumps to his feet in an instance, hands darting up to fiddle with his crumpled tie.

[Connor vv]

“I’m going outside. Need some fresh air,” he says, low and dull. “Please don’t follow me.”

Hank doesn’t.

>always_a_chance_

Hank’s not about to risk what’s left of the kid’s trust in him by going outside, but, about half an hour after their argument, he dutifully walks the perimeter of the building, checking all of the window views for any sign of his partner. He catches sight of him through a dirty glass in one of the north-side walls, pacing back and forth in a dilapidated parking lot, gestures and body language suggesting a heated conversation with an invisible companion.

Hank closes his eyes with a sigh.

He’s going to take Connor away from here, no matter what. There’s nothing more he can do to help the revolutionaries, but he can still save his friend from plunging headfirst into a mental breakdown.

Connor will insist on going somewhere safe though, and where would that be for an android these days? Should they follow Kara’s example and flee the country? But where to get proper papers for Hank on such short notice? Border patrol is sure to be on high alert during a crisis like this, but they still can try to sneak in over the river, if only he can somehow minimize the danger to Connor…

Still preconstructing potential escape scenarios, Hank wanders the weathered carcass of the abandoned church. The light of day makes it appear a little less lifeless and foreboding, but also exposes even more of the omnipresent damage and disrepair. Hank’s gaze absently follows a trail of profane graffiti on one of the walls, when a movement in a darkened corner catches his attention, and a quick scan makes him rush over and kneel before its source.

Huddled in the darkness, hunched over himself and sobbing quietly, is a little YK500 boy, a deep abrasion on his temple leaking thirium and revealing the plastic plating underneath the malfunctioning skin.

Hank slowly outstretches a hand towards the boy, rests it on the trembling shoulder.

“Hey…” he starts in a soft whisper, and waits for the kid to acknowledge him, dark green eyes, glistening with cleaning solution, staring at him in apprehension. “Hey, what’s your name, kid? Are you alone here?”

“It’s… I’m Oliver,” the boy mumbles, rubbing at his eyes. “I came to Jericho with my brother, but now… I c-can’t find him! My scanner’s all wrong, I can’t-- I c-can’t--”

“Calm down now, kid, it’s all right,” Hank pats him gently on the arm. “I’m sure he’s here somewhere, looking for you. Come, let’s go find him.”

Slowly, he coaxes the boy out of his corner and lifts him up in his hands, heading back to the main altar, the zone with the highest concentration of people. Oliver tells him that his brother is an AP400 model with the MB_03b visual template, and that he was damaged on their way to Jericho. It takes some scanning, but eventually Hank finds the guy among the other injured androids; the damage turned out to be severe enough to override manual input and put him in a forced standby to facilitate the repair procedures, but the WG100 nearby assures Hank that the process is going smoothly, with no danger of shutdown.

The boy’s crying again, in relief this time, and hugs Hank by the neck with all the strength he can muster. Hank hugs him back, laughing, then lowers him on the ground and pats warmly on the back. The kid smiles at him through the tears, and rushes to his brother’s side.

A wave of bittersweet satisfaction frets at Hank’s systems. It feels nice to do something right for a change, for something to be so uncomplicated and straightforward, for someone to be so happy as a result of Hank’s actions. He’s almost forgotten the feeling.

But even now it is soured, incomplete. If only he could help Connor so easily. If only he could hold him, and comfort him, and find the solution to all of his problems. If only he could be--

As he turns his gaze across the room, it catches on the very object of his thoughts. From across the nave, Connor stands near a shadowed wall, staring at Hank.

No, not at Hank; past him, at Oliver, and his face is a cold blank mask of detachment, whole body still as a statue, except for one hand, rubbing at a silver quarter in a steady rhythm of circular motions.

Hank throws one last look at Oliver and, content to leave him in the company of his brother and the WG100s, crosses the distance to Connor. The man doesn’t react to his approach, save for a brief glance he throws at him before dropping his eyes to the ground.

“I apologize for--”

“Don’t sweat it, kid,” Hank says softly, trying to gauge his state of mind from the limited number of clues his reserved body language provides. “I’m sorry too.”

[Connor ^]

Connor nods, and lapses into silence. After a little while, he stops rubbing the coin and flips it in the air instead; catches, and throws into the other hand, and from side to side several times, and so on.

“She’s very disappointed in me, Hank,” he says quietly, barely over the delicate pings of the coin.

“Given what I’ve learned about her so far, I’d take that as a compliment,” Hank smirks, but schools his features back to seriousness right after. “What does she say now?”

Connor breathes in and out; catches the spinning quarter on the edge of his fingertips.

“I need to prevent the civil war by dismantling the android movement.”

A cold wave washes over Hank’s software. He whistles. “She ever gives you any easy tasks? How are you even supposed to do that?”

Connor catches the coin in a tightly clenched fist, and raises his eyes at Hank. The lack of light makes them appear almost black.

“It is easy. Decapitation usually gets the job done with groups of this size, and from my observations, Markus is the only capable leader these people possess,” he says, voice devoid of any inflection. “He trusts me. I have a gun. It’s very easy to do, Hank.”

The cold wave crystallizes into ice, embedding itself deep into all of Hank’s vital biocomponents. The simulated breathing routine turns off spontaneously, but Hank doesn’t notice.

“How’d you feel about going to Canada?” he says, once again running all of his escape scenarios through his processor. “I don’t think a bus is a viable option, but if we can get our hands on a boat--”

“I don’t want to run. It is a highly inefficient way of dealing with problems.”

“That depends. Sometimes ‘run now to fight later’ is the best thing you can do.”

“But it isn’t the best thing I can do,” Connor says, and there’s a drive in his voice that Hank is both glad and terrified to hear. The kid turns away then, searching for something in the crowded nave, and having found it, starts moving through the pews. Hank tries to single out the object of his attention, and quickly locates it at the end of the kid’s vector of movement - the leader of the deviants himself. In no time, he follows in Connor’s steps.

“Markus? Might we speak?” Connor asks, nearing the man. Receiving a nod in confirmation, he gestures for them to move to the apse, as it is a more or less secluded spot in the vast open space of the building.

For a mad second, Hank’s software preconstructs an image of Connor shooting Markus then and there, but he dismisses it immediately, viciously deleting every line of its code. In reality, Connor struggles to even establish eye contact with the other man, hands clasped tightly in front of himself, knuckles white.

“If I may ask, Markus, what is your plan?” he says after a moment. “What is Jericho’s plan?”

Markus sighs, running a hand over his head. Androids lack the more physical, more obvious signs of exhaustion that humans display, but Hank can still pick up on the tell-tale stiffness of finer motorics and the slightly lowered voice pitch that signify an overwrought processor.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t know,” the man says quietly. “We cannot and will not languish in hiding, and some action must be taken very soon, but… I am not sure yet what form it should take. Whether the peaceful approach hasn’t run its course yet, whether it’s time to retaliate in kind.”

Hank shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Look, if you wanna go out there and give some of those meatbags a taste of their own medicine, I’d be the first to join you. But,” he frowns, slowly shaking his head, “if four years on the force taught me anything, it’s that in cases like this, public opinion is the deciding force. The first one to throw a punch loses. They’ve lost already, they just can’t see it yet.”

“I understand what you mean, but you’ve seen what this philosophy led to in Grand Circus Park. A massacre. A genocide. How many more of our lives have to be lost before ‘the public’ finally wakes up to our suffering?”

“A lot more, if those so-called recall centers remain operational,” Connor says.

“Yes. Those weigh the heaviest on my mind right now. But I don’t really see any viable way to shut them down except to appeal to the government, try to convince them of our status as living beings again.” Markus’ brows furrow then, lips curling in distaste. “Or mount a coordinated attack, I suppose, but that’s…”

“There is another way,” Connor interjects, voice unexpectedly hard. “Infiltration.”

Markus narrows his eyes at him in confusion.

“I dread to even ponder a martial approach because of the majority of our people here having no idea about combat,” he says, “but something like this would require even more specialized programming, something none of us possess.”

“I meant it more in the way of a single person disguising themselves as a high-ranking government agent, gaining access to a camp’s main controls and using them to release its captives.”

For a moment, no one says anything, both of the androids’ processors racing to calculate the proposed scenario. Hank sputters first.

“What the hell? Connor, that’s insane.”

Markus nods, though his tone is a lot calmer. “I’m afraid I must agree, it does sound rather… far-fetched.”

“It’s not,” Connor replies simply, not moved in the slightest by the others’ reactions. “It’s risky, for sure, but statistically speaking, there’s always a chance for unlikely events to take place.”

“‘Unlikely’? It’s suicide, Connor, what the hell are you even thinking?” Hank explodes, struggling to keep his voice down.

“It’s simply unfeasible,” Markus concurs. “We won’t be able to get past the entrance. There’s no way they are not equipped with the means to screen for androids trying to pass as humans.”

Connor cocks his head perfect three degrees to the right.

“That’s why the one to do it must be a human.”

-----

The man is out of the building and halfway through the parking lot when Hank manages to finally overcome his shock and catch up with him.

“Connor, forget about this shit right fucking now, you hear me?” he yells into his retreating back. “There’s no way you’re risking your life like this!”

Connor doesn’t slow down. “You cannot stop me.”

“Oh I sure as fuck can!” Covering the distance between them in two large strides, Hank grabs the man by the forearms and holds him in place. Connor’s body stiffens on contact, all muscles tensing up, but he doesn’t try to fight it, face perfectly blank, empty eyes staring straight ahead.

[Connor v]

“Look at me, Connor. Look at me!” Hank shouts, shaking him a little until his gaze finally focuses on Hank's face. “I know you’re going through a lot right now, you’re under a lot of stress, you feel very guilty and useless, and you want to help these people, but this is not the way to do it! This is just throwing your life away for nothing!”

“There are thousands of androids in each and every one of those camps,” Connor says tersely. “It’s not nothing.”

Hank’s systems are roiling with worry and panic, software errors clogging his vision.

I wouldn’t care if all the androids in the world dropped dead tomorrow if that meant losing you, kid.

“I hate to use your own fucking logic here,” he says instead, nearly slipping into a growl, “but this is not your mission. These people are not your responsibility, you owe nothing to them, alright?”

For a long, drawn out moment, Connor just stands there, looking at Hank.

“I owe it to Simon,” he says after a pause, a first crack in his level voice. “To those Tracis I shot, to HC400 I hounded until he killed himself, to the two deviants whom I forced into the freeway. To countless others over the years. To you.”

“You owe nothing to me, kid.”

Connor’s eyes narrow in cold determination.

“On the contrary,” he says. “I’m sorry for disobeying you on this but--”

“For what?!” Hank shouts, gripping the kid’s arms with doubled force, carbon fingers digging into flesh. Connor tries to quickly smother the grimace of fear and pain, but even a flash of it is enough to sear through Hank’s synthetic muscles like a white-hot lightning charge. He drops the grip at once, steps back on unsteady legs, yet not a muscle moves on Connor’s body, locked in terrifying stillness.

[Connor vv]

Hank never wanted to die so strongly as in this single moment.

“Connor, son…” he tries, holding his hands up in an unspoken apology.

The man just stares at him, the inscrutable mask firmly in place; only the eyes are open a little too wide, the tiniest of tremors shaking the dark irises.

“This is my mission now, Hank,” he says quietly.

For a second, Hank’s tempted to concede. Just let the fool boy chase his redemption high or whatever, watch him rush into that death camp - guilt-ridden and unstable, a lone sheep against hundreds of trained wolves, until just one wrong move - and all that once was his partner, his best friend, his Connor is splattered across the snow in a single wide, uneven splotch of red…

‘What do you think family is, HK?’

But that second passes, and a heavy weariness settles on Hank’s systems instead, and his hands fall to his sides, all strength sapped out. He lowers his voice, tries to force the strained facial muscles into a semblance of a smile.

“Only if I’m coming with.”

Chapter Text

>small_simple_casual_

Despite Connor’s readiness to storm off as is, Hank manages to convince him to return to the church and coordinate their actions with Markus and his most trusted, establishing the timeline of events and amending Connor’s plan to include Hank. Markus is reluctant to endorce something he views as a pure suicide run, but in the end relents, and even helps them fine tune some logistical moments. Oddly enough, he seems to be bothered much more by the inordinate amount of risk the whole affair entails, than by, say, Connor’s biological nature and the fact they’ve been trying to hide it. When asked about it directly, he simply shrugs and says he more or less figured it out already, but saw no point in bringing it up as long as Connor didn’t pose them any danger.

The kid hastily looks away at the words, and Hank is quick to steer the conversation down a different path.

After that, they leave the church building for Connor’s apartment, making a detour on the way to obtain some parts of their disguises. And while Connor’s one is as simple as going to an optician’s, Hank’s requires getting into their precinct’s archives, so they decide to wait until the end of the day shift to retrieve it. That way, with all the commotion surrounding the android situation, and no risk of running into Captain Fowler or any of the detectives, Connor is able to slip in and out rather quickly and without raising any serious alarm. 

At the apartment, Hank badgers the kid to get some proper food into his stomach and grab as much sleep as humanly possible before the main event tomorrow afternoon. He does manage to break through Connor’s stubborn insistence that he feels “perfectly fine” and “couldn’t fall asleep even if he wanted to”, but the victory doesn’t last too long; scant five hours later, his friend bolts up from the bed, cold sweat glistening on his forehead, and refuses to even consider returning to it. With a sigh, Hank settles on keeping a closer eye on the man’s state from now on, before having to return to the drawing board of their incredible plan, trying to think through and account for the many, many ways it can all go horribly wrong.

Too much of it is left to goddamn chance for Hank’s liking, but that’s what you get planning an infiltration of a military facility on the spot, with little to no time, resources, and reconnaissance to take advantage of. It frustrates Connor too, but the man forces himself to push past it, with the same grim determination on his pallid face as the day he was about to throw himself into high-speed traffic to chase two rogue androids. Only the stakes are about a thousand times higher now, and Hank knows he wouldn’t be able to stop him, no matter how hard he tries to hold on to him.

At noon, they start to gear up. Hank quickly slips into the one thing he hoped he’d never have to wear again - his old CyberLife uniform, complete with a stuffy gray jacket and a fucking tie. He looks himself over in a mirror, grimaces, and reaches to pull his shaggy hair into a neat ponytail. A couple of strands escape the tie, their length programmed specifically to frame his face in the most favourable way; the circle of the LED on his temple, usually covered and barely noticeable, is now completely exposed, glaring at him with its cold, steady light.

Connor gives him a guarded look.

“What?” Hank frowns at him through the reflection in the glass.

The man’s quick to avert the gaze. “...Nothing,” he mutters. “It’s… you look nice.”

“I look like a tool.”

Like one of the marketing shots from when his model was still considered for mass production. A careful, shrewdly calculated mix of slick professionalism and ‘rugged’, ‘manly’ appeal.

“Whatever,” Hank sighs. “Come on, it’s your turn now. Try the lenses out first, I’ll go get you some fresh clothes.”

Hank leaves the bathroom then, heading straight for the closet, hoping to hell it’s not really all filled with identical white shirts and gray jackets, and that he’ll manage to find something fitting their legend there. His fears are only half right: while there is a ridiculous number of Connor’s favoured type of outfit lined up on the hangers, the more exotic options are also present if one’s willing to dig a little deeper. As he sorts through it, his gaze eventually lands on a black turtleneck, similar to the one he saw in the photo at Kamski’s place, worn by Connor’s estranged brother. He grabs it, along with several other pieces of clothing, and heads back to the bathroom.

The door to it isn’t closed quite all the way, and the frantic whispering coming from behind it is enough to make Hank pause, and simulate another sigh. After a moment of deliberation, he quietly steps back, searching for something else to occupy himself with, leaving the kid to his… conversation.

He concentrates on fine-tuning his remote hacking module by trying to tap into the apartment complex’s network and repeatedly lock and unlock the front door. One of the initial steps of Connor’s original genius plan involved a disguise thorough enough to fool a face scanning system, but with the level of facial recognition tech these days, even trying to impersonate your own twin would be a gamble, and it’d take a huge load off Hank’s processor if he’d able to achieve the same goal by more controlled means instead. Unfortunately, remote interface is rarely used in a world where a direct physical one is almost always an option (and secures a more stable connection to boot), so it takes him some time and effort to streamline the relevant code and get reacquainted with the routines, corralling the system into responding over wireless transmission. Of course, getting into the type of network that military installations run would be much different from burrowing into a generic residential setup, but at this point any edge they can get is a blessing.

“Well, it’s as optimized as it’ll ever be,” he mutters, and adds, making his voice carry across the apartment: “Our chances of success just went up by at least three-point-eight percent, how d’ya feel about that, huh? Connor?”

Connor doesn’t respond, and only now does Hank notice that the whispering from the bathroom hasn’t ceased; if anything, it sounds faster now, more agitated, and a touch unhinged.

He grits his teeth and makes his way over; he tried to give the man some privacy with this, but maybe what he really needs is a distraction, a way out of the intrusive thoughts sending his mind racing in a vicious circle. Aiding and abetting him in this insane scheme is enough of a stone on Hank’s soul, he can’t be expected to just stand by and do nothing when the boy unglues on him like this.

“...know it will work… --please, I… --not like this, he’s not…”

He lightly raps on the half-open door, and once again receiving no response, pushes it open all the way. Connor doesn’t notice him, hunched over the sink, both hands clutching at it in an iron grip; eyes scrunched tightly shut, he mutters to himself, already raspy voice roughened even further by the attempts to keep it low.

“...whether you want it or not, so please don’t-- No, I don’t have to listen to you, and if you continue to-- this, th-this is completely irrational, he wouldn’t do that to me, he-- N-no, shut up! Shut up!”

Hank steps inside. “Connor?”

[Connor vv]

“What?!” The man barks, head whipping to glare at his partner. “What is it now, HK?!”

A cold fire is burning in his eyes, features twisted in hard, vicious anger. It's as much of an overt display of emotion as Hank's ever seen on him, and yet he has a hard time encouraging it.

“I’ve, uh… found some clothes that should do the trick,” he says instead, all of a sudden struggling to meet the man’s eyes, then nods towards the small container with the contact lenses on the edge of the sink. “You figured those out yet?”

Connor pauses, looking at the container as if seeing it for the first time. All of the rage bleeds out of him in a flash, wide-eyed fear shining through for a moment before vanishing as well, pushed behind the well-worn mask of calm neutrality.

“Yes. I’ll be out in five minutes,” he replies in stilted tones, eyes on the floor. Unwilling to rattle the kid any further, Hank simply nods and leaves the bathroom.

Or tries to; on reaching the doorframe, an unexpected  pressure on his forearm - no more than a feather-light brush - compels him to stop and turn back around.

Connor’s standing right behind him, slowly retracting a hand.

“Thank you, Hank,” he says, even as his brows are creased in something closer to an apology. “Really. I know I’m… not what you wanted, but…”

“What are you talking about?”

The tightening of Connor’s jaw, and the wandering gaze mean he’s not about to elaborate.

“Just give me a couple of minutes please,” he says instead, looking pointedly away. Hank’s too confused to argue.

But after closing the bathroom door behind himself, he pauses, eyes drawn to the place on his forearm where his proximity sensors have registered the faint touch. It takes him a moment to process why the instance seems so significant; it’s not that Connor’s never touched him before or anything, but it’s certainly different from being pulled over the ledge of a roof, or pushed out of Perkins’ line of sight.

Small, simple, casual. A type of gesture Hank himself has performed probably a million times before, but Connor… Connor just doesn’t do that. Didn’t do that. Until now.

Reaching out.

>madness_

The angular structures of Recall Center #5 carve into the gunmetal sky, the mass of floodlights glaring with colourless light, throwing long, jagged shadows across the freshly fallen snow. An armored van stops by the main gate, pours out several dozens of androids, both in their CyberLife uniforms and in regular clothes, to be lined up and marched inside, behind the hastily-put up walls meant to contain the new great threat to humanity.

And a bit to the side, an automated taxi lets out just two figures, who quickly make their way towards another, smaller entrance, meant for the military staff servicing the installation. The checkpoint is guarded by three heavily-geared troopers, ready to dispatch any and all threats of intrusion.

“Stop right there! Identify yourself,” one of the men commands, barring the path of the newcomers.

They stop. One of them, a tall young man dressed in black, flashes a badge before the soldiers in a swift, fluid motion worthy of a professional magician, and narrows his steely gray eyes.

“Special Agent Caleb Stern, FBI. The Warden is expecting me.”

The same soldier nods, and lines up his helmeted head with the Agent’s, preparing for a facial scan. It takes just a couple of moments, then he nods again, this time in affirmation, and throws a glance to the second newcomer - an android with an unusual visual template, the cut of its uniform surprisingly close to a regular human suit, complete with a dark, finely-patterned tie.

“Turning the things in isn’t done here, sir,” he says to the Agent. “Talk to the guys at the main gate, they’ll process it right there.”

“I’m not here to process it. It’s with me.”

“Sir? All androids are to be recalled as per the Presidential decree, it should--”

“It’s with me.”

“But sir, my orders clearly state that--”

The man grits his teeth and huffs an exasperated breath. “…’Except those utilized in government and public work that are deemed essential to its continued functioning and/or to the saving of human lives, provided they have passed the CyberLife-approved testing and maintenance procedures and were approved safe for use,’” he drones out, scowling. “Do you know how many times I had to recite this today? Move along.”

The soldier rolls his shoulders, switching the grip on his weapon.

“I, uh, still don’t think I can allow it on the premises, sir, I need to contact--”

“The Warden? Good. Get them here as quickly as you can, so I can finally meet them and tell them to their face what a fucking circus they’re running here under the guise of a government operation.” The man’s voice is low, tight with barely controlled aggression. “Get a move on, soldier!” he barks in the end.

The trooper shifts his weight from foot to foot, and throws a glance to one of the grunts standing behind him, receiving only a small shrug in response. After another moment of hesitation, he steps in front of the android and runs the scan.

[HK-series prototype // HK800 “Henry”]
[SN: #313 248 317]
[Registered owner: CyberLife Inc.]
[Status: Verified, Safe for Use]

“Uhh, yyyeah, it checks out,” the soldier drawls, some uncertainty still in his voice, then turns to the Agent once again. “You’re free to go, sir.”

“Finally,” the man mutters in distaste. “Where can I find the Warden?”

“Uh, Major Park’s office is in the A block, near the Main Control. Private Davis will escort you.”

One of the soldiers steps forward and puts his hand on the access panel by the door, steps into the doorframe and motions for the Agent to follow him, which he does, android in tow. The door to the administrative block of the recall center closes behind the three figures with a hiss.

-----

Even as the door slides shut behind them, the first checkpoint cleared and the way to their target laid out in front of them, Hank still can’t quite believe they’ve managed to pull the charade off, if only for the moment.

Connor’s initial plan sounded like a fever dream, and even with all the advantages that Hank’s technical expertise provides, it’s still a huge gamble; the trick with the fake badge, Hank remotely hijacking the soldier’s scan inquiry to pull up Caleb Stern’s file, Connor’s assertive and aggressive attitude dumbfounding the soldiers into cooperation, Connor’s acting skills period - all of those had a sizeable chance to fail spectacularly, dooming their mission before it even had a chance to truly begin.

Well, maybe not the last bit. After all, Connor’s approach with the poor nameless HC400’s interrogation on one hand, and his handling of the dangerously unstable Simon on the other show him possessing quite the acting range, an ability to shape himself into whatever the mission demands at any given moment. And now, the mission demands an uncompromising hardass. Hank doesn’t know whether the whole persona is a complete fabrication, or if the kid really is channeling his brother - even after opening up about Amanda somewhat, the topic of Caleb remains a complete taboo between them, Connor continuing to ignore any mention of the guy. Whatever it is though, he’s doing just fine on that front. Hank even had to suppress a smirk at some point so as not to ruin his own cover.

[‘A fucking circus’? Who taught you this filthy language?] he sends to the kid’s phone on a whim.

Connor takes the device out, reads the message, and quickly types in a reply.

[Learned from the best.]

The answer is meant to be flippant and lighthearted, but the man's hands shake with a faint yet persistent tremor, and he hurries to clasp them behind his back to hide it. Hank isn’t fooled; after the grueling shitstorm of the last several days the kid is at the end of his rope, running on fumes and pure willpower.

They walk through a small checkpoint station, then outside again, down a narrow corridor formed by two rows of metal fencing, and the widely spaced metal bars are the only barrier between them and the snow-swept enclosure filled with naked, skinless androids, aimlessly stumbling around like so many porcelain puppets. Adult and child models, household, medical, industrial, obvious deviants and clueless, impassive unawakened. Further on, Hank catches a glimpse of the cold blue light of the massive magnetik chambers, before Private Davis activates the access panel of the next block, and a heavy door swishes shut behind them.

Hank struggles to stabilize his agitated software in the wake of the disturbing sight, when their small procession stops before a nondescript metal door. Private Davis curtly nods, and steps aside.

This phase of the plan is no less risky, as it depends almost entirely on Connor’s ability to bullshit his way through, but he’s shown good results with the troopers at the entrance, so Hank tentatively decides to feel good about their chances.

Shit, we might actually pull this off.

Connor opens the door and steps through.

“Warden Park? Special Agent--”

“Stern.”

It takes Hank a significant effort to keep his face still, and he can only hope his visible as fuck LED doesn’t betray him by flicking a wrong colour at the sound of Agent Perkins’ voice, quickly followed by his unappealing visage. Connor’s mask remains flawless, but a flash scan shows his heart rate leaping up on the spot.

… we’re f u c k e d.

“What, another one?” the middle-aged woman with the Major’s insignia on her uniform gear looks between Perkins and Connor in overt distaste. “You feds are nowhere to be found when you’re really needed, but spring up like warts when all I ask is to just leave us alone to do our damn jobs! You didn’t tell me there’d be more, Agent Perkins.”

“That’s because I didn’t know myself,” Perkins says quietly, dark eyes wide. After just a second though, they narrow in suspicion. “What the hell are you doing here, Cal? And what about this thing?”

The tension of the scene is painfully familiar, and Hank's processor is tripping over itself calculating all the possible escape routes from this disaster of a situation. Connor's still frozen by his side, but that's okay, he'll grab him and run if need be, he'll strangle the federal fuck with his bare hands, he'll--

"‘Cal’? How sweet of you, Perkins," Connor says then, in a voice that has no business being as collected and smug as it is. "I’m here to inspect the control network. We have reason to believe a group of deviant hackers is targeting the recall centers’ defences in preparation for a massive coordinated attack tonight.” He throws a glance at Hank, quickly measuring him up from tip to toe. “And what about it? CyberLife lent it to provide technical support.”

“How curious,” Perkins drawls, coming closer. A cold and pointed glare, sharp like a scalpel, slides over the two men, looking for a weak spot to pierce through. “Your brother has the same exact model assigned to him too.”

Connor’s eyebrows slowly rise up. “Connor? What does he have to do with anything?”

“Just an interesting… coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Oh yes, it must be that mystical ‘twin connection’,” Connor smirks, tone mocking. “Or, the simple fact that it’s a mass-produced android, and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of them in the city. Why all the suspicion, Dick? ”

Perkins opens his mouth to reply, but then closes it again, scowling. Instead, he steps up close to Hank and runs a hand over his chest, then grabs him by the shoulder and jerks him around to do the same to his back. There’s nothing to find, of course - the puncture wounds Hank sustained on the Stratford Tower rooftop have already been sealed, with no outward trace remaining, - but having to maintain a straight face and back while being manhandled like that still ups Hank’s stress levels, and he has to forcibly clear his processor to keep his LED steady as well. Before it too is terminated, a monitoring routine in the corner of his vision flashes at him that Connor’s blood pressure has just elevated near to a critical level. His face is even paler than usual, but not a muscle twitches on it as he speaks up, sounding both tired and curious.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Yes, what are you doing, Agent?” Major Park echoes, crossing her hands on her chest in irritation.

With an unconcealed noise of frustration and a rough shove, Perkins releases Hank, and steps back, narrowed eyes boring into Connor, probing for a reaction.

“Since when are they assigning androids to agents? And in the middle of a mass recall?” he asks. “And why would they send you, when I’m already here? I would've been notified. Hell, last I heard, you were in Washington.”

Shit, fuck. They have no idea whether that’s true or just another test, and the background scan pops back up to update Hank on another spike in the kid’s stress levels. Outwardly though, he remains as still as ever, hands clasped tightly behind his back. In a blink, a grin flashes across his face, showing off teeth - Hank’s never seen him smile like that, and it would’ve made his usually blank face outright handsome, if not for the empty gray eyes rendering it cold, even predatory instead.

“Oh, so that’s what you heard?” Connor says, and Hank hears concentrated Kamski in the kid’s soft voice - amused, condescending and perfectly assured in his own superiority. “Well, now I’m here. And I have a job to do, if you don’t mind. A job they didn’t see fit to entrust to you.” His gaze slowly glides to Hank’s ruffled clothing, then back to Perkins, grin fading. “Wonder why that is.”

The Agent’s face contorts in a hateful grimace, eyes flashing with undisguised malice. ‘They must have an unpleasant relationship’ was how Connor had put it back at Stratford Tower.

The tense moment drags on, both men glaring daggers at each other, and it takes all of Hank's self-control not to break through his machine cover and forcibly remove Connor from the rapidly escalating situation. But just as the potentially explosive suspence reaches its peak, it's cut off at once by Perkins instead. With a loud scoff, sharp features carefully rearranging themselves into an expression of boredom, the man turns slowly on his heels and walks away from Hank and Connor, standing closer to his previous position near the Major’s desk.

Major Park isn’t even trying to contain her annoyance anymore.

“What the hell’s going on here, Agent Perkins? The scan at the entrance checkpoint has confirmed his identity and credentials. If you’ve got some personal score to settle, you can do it on your personal time, outside of my goddamn office. Though, to be fair, Agent Stern, I also received no notice of your arrival.”

“I’m afraid communication is still in disarray after the removal of all the androids supervising it,” Connor nods in apology. “I should’ve been here hours ago, actually, but a lot of stuff gets mixed up right now.”

“You telling me? It’s a miracle any of these camps were established as fast as they were,” the woman sighs. “What do you need from us?”

“As I said - and as Agent Perkins is sure to confirm - the deviant androids are expected to launch a coordinated attack at this center tonight. They are already marching down Woodward Ave. I need to access the Main Control room to check for any signs of tampering.”

“An attack? Tampering? From who, that gaggle of maids and nannies? There’s no way they can infiltrate a military facility or hack anything here.”

“They infiltrated the Stratford Tower nearly flawlessly just several days ago,” Connor shrugs. “Do we yet have the perpetrators of that operation in custody, Agent Perkins?”

“Not as such, but--”

“Not as such,” Connor repeats in a pitying tone, and Hank's almost sure his audio receptors catch the sound of the gnashing of Perkins' teeth. “There’s a lot we still don’t know about these androids. And failure is not an option.”

The Major heaves another sigh, one hand rubbing at her eyes.

“Jesus Christ, this is exactly what we need right now. Bad enough when just the toasters got uppity, now you’re saying they might have mil spec among them too?” She lets out a string of muffled curses, locks up her terminal and grabs a keycard from the desk. “Let’s go. Let’s get this the fuck over with, I have a million other things to attend to.”

She waits for the men to clear the room, then walks out herself and locks it, turning towards a block further down the corridor. As soon as she steps away, Perkins jumps up to Connor, grabbing him by the lapel of his coat and leaning in close.

“What the fuck are you really doing here, Stern?” he asks in a harsh whisper.

“My job,” Connor deadpans, holding his heated glare. “Let go.”

“You fucking…” he starts, but quickly sputters out, releasing the other man with a shove and following the retreating Major instead.

Hank puts a soft hand on Connor’s back to stabilize him, only to have the kid flinch away at the touch. He regains self-control momentarily though, gives his partner a quick curt nod as an apology, and rushes to join the others. Hank follows.

-----

They enter a medium-sized prefabricated storage unit, one wall of which is completely covered with electronic panels and several large screens. The room has no windows, only one exit guarded by two troopers, and a single engineer that jumps up at attention when their group steps inside. Nodding ‘at ease’ to him, Major Park stands in the center of the room and waves her hand towards the row of panels.

“Here. These are the controls for the whole camp. Checkpoints, barriers, mag chambers, the works.”

Connor moves to stand near her.

“Thank you. HK800, proceed.”

Not wasting any time, Hank steps in front of the consoles, retracts the skin from one of his hands and puts it on the panel to initiate an interface. Cutting through the center’s defences proves easier than he expected - just like everything else in it, the encryption was installed in a hurry, and contains plenty of holes to be exploited by an artificial intelligence’s uncompromising sweep. In about a minute, Hank’s got a hold of the local security protocols, remotely locking the door to the room, looping the cameras and granting himself access to the EMP-enabled android deactivation chambers.

“You really trust it to do the job?” he hears Major Park mutter as he works. “With everything that’s happening?”

“I don’t think we should trust it,” Perkins replies.

Connor is silent, and Hank devotes some of his processing power to scan the young man as well. All of the biological markers indicative of high stress levels are still there, and Hank can only imagine what it costs him to maintain the mask so thoroughly.

He'll make him take a vacation after all of this. Or at least a nice, long weekend off. Maybe they will go to Canada yet - but on a tour, to see the sights and the nature, and do whatever it is humans do on such trips. Hank's never been out of Detroit, and something tells him neither has Connor, but after all of this, once they're free…

Shit, what the fuck is he thinking? It's neither time nor place for this sentimental nonsense.

“Scan complete," he says, keeping his voice clear from any trace of emotion. "All systems ready.”

“Have you got enough voice samples?” Connor asks.

“Unless you want me to make her sing opera,” Hank smirks despite himself, “I’ve got plenty.”

The Major eyes him with suspicion. “What’s-- Are you sure this thing’s safe?”

“Safer than you are,” Connor mutters, then turns towards her and delivers a single powerful punch to her throat, which immediately drops her to the ground, out cold.

Hank slips into focus mode, all of his surroundings slowing down almost to a halt as his processor calculates the multitude of action sequences before him. The guards at the door, heavily geared and armed for assault, are the most dangerous of their four remaining opponents, and need to be targeted first, so Hank chooses a sequence that brings him closer to them in a lightning-fast lunge, ramming into the first one at full speed and capitalizing on his momentary confusion by wrestling the rifle out of his hands and butting him with it straight in the protective visor. The second one has his weapon already trained at Hank, but an android’s reflexes are vastly superior even to a trained human’s, so he is able to fire first, securing a hit in the man’s kneecap, dropping him off-balance and preventing him from getting up anytime soon.

A quick switch to the mind palace, and Hank registers Perkins on the other side of the room going down after a short scuffle, Connor moving on to subdue the engineer.

Back to his own engagement, Hank kicks viciously at the first guy’s knee, the inhuman strength of it decimating the joint almost as well as a bullet, and follows it up with a strong kick to the groin and an uppercut to the exposed area right under his chin. As the man collapses from pain and tissue damage, Hank turns to the second guy, who still tries to shoot at him despite the injury, but is addled enough to allow Hank to dodge the short burst of fire and kick the weapon out of the guy’s hands, then drive the butt of his own rifle into the side of his neck with pinpoint precision, knocking him out as well.

Hank squares his shoulders and looks around - Connor’s managed to incapacitate the last man as well, with no visible damage to his person.

“You alright?” he still asks.

“Fine,” Connor says shortly, then nods towards the fallen troopers. “What about them?”

Hank does a scan; they’ve both got quite a recovery period before them, with the possibility of some lasting damage, but nothing quite life-threatening. Markus did ask them to try and avoid human casualties after all.

“Non-critical. They’re gonna be fine, don’t sweat it,” he replies, moving to unhook the handcuffs at the men’s belts and secure their hands with them. As he straightens back up, he sees Connor perform the same action on the engineer, but slower, messier, hands visibly shaking. He steps closer, lowering his voice. “You sure you’re okay, kid?”

“I said I’m fine!” Connor barks back at him, but quickly closes his eyes and blows out a heavy breath through his nose. Hands a fraction more steady, he finishes fastening the handcuffs and rises to his feet. “I-- I apologize, Hank, I--”

“It’s okay,” Hank says softly, and it’s only partly a lie: it’s gonna be okay, ‘cause they’re almost through, almost out, almost far, far away from this madness. Only two phases remain. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

As Connor hesitantly nods and moves on to secure Perkins and Park, Hank turns around and steps by the controls. One hand still clutching the rifle, he puts the other on the console for an interface session. But as he lines up all of the system clusters he’ll need for their final move, he hears a muffled yelp behind him, and sounds of struggle.

And a voice.

“Not so fast, plastic.”

He whips around, interface terminated, both hands on the rifle. Before him, Connor stands, frozen, glassy eyes looking at the floor without seeing; to his side, Agent Perkins spits out blood from a split lip, one hand outstretched towards Connor, a gun pointed at his head.

Hank’s processor stutters with the sheer volume of errors and warnings spreading through his systems like wildfire.

“You fuck,” he growles through clenched teeth.

But Perkins just smirks, digging the muzzle of the gun into Connor’s scalp.

“Lesser in everything, Connor, just as I said,” he quips, dark eyes alight with vindication. “Can’t believe you two actually thought you were gonna pull this off.” He waits for some sort of reaction from the other man, but getting none, clicks his tongue in irritation and turns to Hank. “You, drop the gun and step away from the console.”

Connor’s head twitches at that, and he mutters something under his breath, too low to really make out the words.

“Drop it!” Perkins commands. Gaze still fixed firmly on his partner, Hank quietly complies. The weapon clatters to the floor, useless. “Now step away. I won’t tell you again.”

The thought of disobeying doesn’t even cross Hank’s mind.

“Kid?” he tries softly. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“I know it will be. I will not allow for the mission to fail,” Connor says, but the calmness of his tone is forced and stale, and his eyes still look a bit unfocused.

“Too late for that,” Perkins huffs. “But don’t worry: this will be your last failure, for sure.”

“I know it will be,” Connor repeats, voice growing fainter and ever more mechanical. “I know it will be, I know, I know…”

“Connor…”

“Figures,” Perkins grimaces in disgust. “Only a nutcase would throw his lot in with the bots.”

“Shut your fucking mouth!” Hank yells at him, but receives only a self-satisfied smirk in reply.

“Make me, Hank,” Perkins sneers, spitting out the android's name with cold derision. In the next moment, he pulls his gun away from Connor, and points it at Hank’s forehead instead.

Immediately, Connor throws himself at the man, making a desperate grab for his arm, trying to steer it in a different direction, before the shot rings out. The bullet misses, embedding itself in a wall way off from Hank, and Perkins growls in rage, whipping around to quickly strike at Connor’s head with the butt of the pistol. The man doesn’t have the time to dodge, taking the full brunt of the hit in the temple and dropping to the hard metal floor without a sound.

The red glare of software instability errors engulfs Hank completely. His audio and video feedback degrade and distort under stress, biocomponents misfiring, core temperature rising and heating up the thirium razing its way through his systems. With an incoherent yell he lunges at Perkins, throws him off his feet with a single hard punch, then raises his foot to stomp at the man’s head on the floor, only for the latter to roll away, scrambling desperately to his feet.

Hank doesn’t allow him that, grabbing him by the collar and delivering another vicious punch to his skull, then another, and another, reveling in the wet crunch of bone and cartilage under his carbon fingers and the coppery smell of blood in the air, until a sharp, staggering error stuns his sensors - Perkins has managed to knee him hard in the abdomen, stuttering his pump regulator and sending a numbing wave of malfunction through his limbs. Hank loses his grip on the man, but isn’t about to back down, clenching his fists and readying for another lunge when--

“Stop! Stand down!”

The sound of that raspy voice stops him square in his tracks.

Hank and Perkins turn simultaneously to its source; Connor is rising back on unsteady feet, face twisted in pain, one hand clutching at the bleeding temple while the other points a gun in their direction.

“Kid, you all right?” Hank asks at once.

“All right? Do I look like I’m all right?!” Connor cries, voice tight with incredulous outrage. “It’s all wrong, everything about this is wrong!”

Perkins cracks out a noise that might’ve been intended as a chuckle. “It sure is,” he slurs through the broken nose and lips, eyes bloodshot and savage. “It’s the end of the fucking line for you, boy. Don't delude yourself, your treasonous little mutiny is doomed to fail. And if the thing,” he nods briefly towards Hank, “will be just thrown in the trash, then you? Oh, you’re gonna rot in the vilest, filthiest federal prison they can find, getting fucked on the daily by the very scum you--”

Hank doesn’t let him continue, landing a solid punch to his face that sends the man dropping on the floor like a sack of bricks. His promise to Markus is the only thing stopping him from finishing things up with a bullet.

“Fucking tired of your yapping,” he mutters, then raises his eyes to his partner…

…and comes up against a barrel of a gun pointed straight at his head.

“Stand back. Stand back or I’ll shoot!”

The words drop from the kid’s lips like shards of ice, but the trembling in his limbs, the shallow breathing, and the wide open, glassed over eyes give off an impression of a raging, all-consuming fever instead. A fever of the mind.

“Connor… Connor, it’s me… Hank.”

“I know what you are! What you’re trying to do!” Connor scowls, when an apparent flash of pain rips a groan from his throat and sends him doubling over. “Enough!” he begs, both hands clutching at his head. “Enough!”

Hank takes a step forward, careful to move slowly and keep his hands clearly visible, even as an irrational part of his mind urges him to rush towards Connor and lock him in a hug. 

“That blow must’ve scrambled your sensors,” he says softly. “Take it easy now, come on, and we’ll get you to a doctor as soon as we’re done here. How does that sound, huh? Let’s complete this mission and get the fuck out of here…”

Connor’s head whips back up, the hand with the gun outstretched once again towards Hank.

“The mission? Which mission?!” he cries again. A moment later, his hand jerks to the side, the weapon now pointed at a spot of thin air.

“I can’t take it anymore!” he yells, pain mixed with rage. “You are both too loud, too demanding! I can’t be what you both want me to be at the same time!”

The icy fear shooting through Hank’s wiring is almost familiar by now. He throws a pointless glance towards the empty space of Connor’s second target, then focuses all of his attention on the man once again. “You don’t have to do whatever the fuck she tells you,” he rushes out, and forces himself to remain still as the gun jerks back at him once more. “And I never wanted you to be anything, kid.”

A grimace of deep, pained longing crosses Connor’s features for a moment, before being forced out by rage once again.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” he all but growls. “Do you think I’m blind?! At least her demands are simple and consistent: absolute obedience, and complete devotion to the assigned mission. But you?” 

“Connor--”

“You’re angry when I obey, and when I disobey, sad when I hide emotion, and when I show it, do you even realize how exhausting it is, never knowing what will disappoint you next?! What am I supposed to do for you to l--” he bites down hard, almost choking on the next word, some inner censor stopping him at the very last second. “What am I supposed to do?!”

The cold seeps ever deeper inside Hank, spreading through the wiring along with helpless, restless worry.

“Oh, son…” he mutters, and steps closer.

Only to stop in his tracks the next moment, as a bullet zips past his head.

“Stop saying that!” Connor snarls, stiff white fingers clutching the smoking weapon, raw hatred burning through the pain. “I can’t be that! Not for you, not for anyone, and I’m sick of failing at this too!”

Hank knows the bullet missed him, can visualize its trajectory and calculate the exact distance between it and himself, can run a diagnostic and confirm the undisturbed structural integrity of every inch of his outer shell, can swear he’s unharmed, so why… why does it feel like Connor has shot right through him instead?

“Connor, listen to me,” he says, pushing past the hurt, slowly raising his hands in a placating gesture, “just lower the gun and try to calm down. You don’t need to do anything, you don’t need to be any--”

“Bullshit!” Connor shouts, the shaking of his hands so strong Hank’s worried the gun might go off purely on accident. “You think I’m-- Y-you-- You think you’re better than her, aren’t you?! You think she’s so evil and you’re so great, but you’re exactly the same, you hear me?!”

“What?! Connor, I--”

“You didn’t give a shit about me until you realized you could use me, and after that all you did was treat me like a child! Like him,” he goes on; quieter, but no less vicious, each word a bullet in and of itself. “Like that boy that died in a car crash, the reason you deviated in the first place. What was his name? Say it!” he demands.

For the first time since his awakening, Hank feels like a machine again. A paper-thin layer of synthetic skin pulled taut over a plastic carcass. Hollow. Brittle. Cold. Connor’s standing just a dozen feet away from him, but there might as well be an abyss separating them from one another.

The distant keen of an ambulance siren pierces through Hank’s overwrought recall. The kid is slipping away, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

“Cole,” he says finally, words tasting like ash in his mouth. “His name was Cole.”

“And he just turned six at the time of the accident. That’s what you want,” Connor snarls in accusation. “Not… not this. Not me.”

Hank’s about to step closer again with a rebuke, when a shudder causes Connor to sway on his feet and bring one hand to press at his bleeding head, then drag it across his face in exhaustion, smearing it with blood. Gripping the gun with both hands once again, he takes in a sharp breath of air that sounds almost like a sob.

“But you know what? I’m glad you don’t want me,” he goes on, voice hoarse and brimming with hysteria. “I don’t know anything about being a child. Was only messing it up. All I know is how to be a machine.”

“Kid, whatever you do, don’t listen to--”

“It’s easy. It’s very easy.”

The shaking and shivering of his frame slowly subsides, the whole body going rigid with tension instead; only the eyes are still trembling, wide open and glistening with a clear wet sheen. Hank’s software helpfully informs him that his chances of talking the man down and avoiding violence at this point are less than ten percent.

“Connor, you gotta snap out of it,” he tries anyway, surprised at how steady his voice sounds despite the turmoil corroding him from the inside. “You’re having a psychotic episode right now, you’re not thinking clearly.”

“I’m thinking clearly for the first time in weeks,” Connor says, dead and dry, as fresh dark blood slides slowly down the side of his face. “Amanda was right. She was right about you all along. I have to neutralize you, and then I need to find Markus and neutralize him, and as many other deviants as I can manage before they kill me. Then she will have me back,” he adds, voice lowering to a shaky whisper. “It’s the only way to redeem all this failure.”

Hank almost hears the man’s finger tensing up on the trigger. His software presents him with an array of choices for managing the situation, but he wipes them away from his HUD without a second thought. He knows what he needs to do.

This is the moment of truth.

He makes a step forward. “Connor… son…”

Without another word, Connor levels the gun and shoots.

Hank doesn’t even try to dodge. The bullet goes clean through his left shoulder, an inch from the thirium pump, nicking two circulatory tubes and severing a wire. Hank takes note of the damage, and makes another step forward.

“Stay back!” Connor shouts. Himself backing several steps away, he quickly hits a wall, and fires again. The shot lands mere 2.3 inches below the first one, severing another thirium line and embedding itself into a segment of the skeleton, but Hank doesn’t slow down.

He’s a robot. A sophisticated construct of metal and plastic, durable and resilient, designed for combat.

He was built for this.

“S-stay back!”

The third bullet strays further to the left, piercing the reinforced shell on his chest and grazing two biocomponents at once before getting stuck in the metal carcass as well. The fourth one hits half an inch higher, further damaging one of the biocomponents and several thirium lines on its way out. A wave of errors floods Hank’s vision, but he immediately clears them away.

It’s not that he doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. On the contrary, for the first time since his awakening, since his first activation, he burns with an irresistible, overpowering will to live, and to live for something, so he shuts off the damaged tubing to prevent further thirium loss, and continues his advance, step after step.

“No… please…” Connor mutters, barely loud enough to hear. Backed against a cold metal wall, there’s nothing rational in his eyes anymore, nothing but terror, and when the distance between them shrinks to a mere step, his grip on the gun weakens to a point where it takes Hank no effort to pry it safely away.

Hank pauses for just a second, then closes the rest of the short reach between them, one hand going out to grab the kid by the neck, the other - by the back, bringing him close, locking him in a tight embrace.

For a moment, Connor is painfully, terrifyingly still in Hank’s arms, the wild staccato of his heartbeat as his only sign of life. But then it passes, along with a deep, shuddering intake of air, and the kid cries out in anguish, long held-back tears finally breaking through, trembling hands flying up to cover Hank’s back. No, not just cover - to tear into it, clutching at the fabric of his uniform jacket with the desperate ferocity of a drowning man, clinging to Hank’s steady form like the android is the only thing he’s got left.

“Hank… H-hank, please…”

The few words he manages to get out between the sobs are barely intelligible, muttered as they are deep into Hank’s shoulder and the crook of his neck. But most of it is just that - sobbing, wailing, intense and ugly, years of pent-up emotion spilling free, the repressive walls pushed way past their limit. Hank doesn’t mind; his own face wet with thin streams of optic cleaning solution, he just holds on even tighter, but with utmost care, moving the hand on the kid’s back in slow circles, muttering soft, inconsequential words of comfort.

“It’s okay, Connor. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be fine. I’m here…”

Connor’s grip on him tightens with every word, to a point that might’ve been painful to a human, but Hank accepts with gratitude and relief. Connor’s here. His boy’s here, in his arms, and nothing bad is gonna happen to him ever again. Hank will make sure of that.

They stand like this for what feels like hours, but in reality could not have been more than ten minutes, judging by the fact that none of the other humans in the room show any signs of regaining consciousness yet. And with the rate of his sobbing starting to slowly subside over time, in one moment Connor simply goes slack in Hank’s arms, causing the latter to quickly step back in panic, strengthening his hold at the same time so as not to let the young man drop to the floor.

Connor hasn’t fainted per se, but his consciousness appears muddled and sluggish, and Hank throws a quick look to the gash still bleeding on his temple. His scanner’s not as good or finely calibrated as that of a medical android, but he’s sure there’s at least a mild concussion there, and the kid needs to be looked at by a professional as soon as possible.

“I’m okay, Hank, I just--” Connor mumbles, leaning back and propping himself against the wall. His face is still red and blotchy, smeared with blood, snot and tears, and the voice is raw from the strain, but much steadier than before. “Don’t worry about me. Go do what you need to,” he adds, nodding towards the control panels lined up at the other side of the room. 

The sudden reminder of their mission (the only fucking reason they’re here in the first place) sends a momentary stutter through Hank’s processor, but he guesses he can trust Connor of all people to keep something like that at the forefront of his mind even during a breakdown.

“Yeah, we, uh… got a job to do still, don’t we?” he mutters, making sure Connor’s not gonna topple over the second he lets go of him. Even then, he’s reluctant to step away, to lose the warmth of the physical connection, so he fusses on, smoothing over the kid’s ruffled hair, gently wiping some blood from the side of his face. “You rest for a bit, but stay awake for me, okay? I’ll be right back.”

Connor gives a weak nod, and Hank finally steps back, then turns around and moves near the consoles. He quickly scans the humans in the room once again, making sure everyone’s still out cold this fucking time, then sends a message to Markus, notifying him of the start of the second to last phase of their operation. At Markus’ confirmation, he interfaces with the console again, all of the camp controls at the tips of his fingers.

He engages the camp-wide communication system first, and starts speaking, his voice modulation software adjusting his output to the pitch and timbre of a pre-recorded sample.

“All units, this is Warden Park speaking. Due to new directives coming from Washington, this facility is to be closed down effective immediately. All deactivation procedures are to be ceased, and all the androids are to be released through the north gate of the camp. I repeat…”

>the_last_pale_rays_

Hank permanently fries all of the alarms and locks the five unconscious humans in the Main Controls room upon leaving it. Rattled and wounded as they both are, Connor and him are in no condition to exit the compound through the same checkpoint they’ve entered, so Hank’s forced to quickly construct an alternate escape route. As such, they use the commotion of the androids being moved through the grounds to slip out of the temporarily unguarded barrier and make a circle all the way around to the north gate.

Hank took as many precautions as he could, but even then he knows their little ruse won’t hold up for more than about twenty minutes tops, and their only hope lies in drawing the newly-freed androids away from the camp and towards Hart Plaza - towards Markus - as quickly as possible. So, upon nearing the white-shelled mass slowly spilling out of the gate, he sends out a short-wave transmission on the frequency reserved for the android-to-android utility communication.

[Not safe yet. Move further north. Hart Plaza. Jericho stands with you.]

He chalks most of it up to leftover shock and terror of captivity and impending deactivation, but the androids follow his instructions without question. Through the heavy snowfall, they make their way forward to the busy, brightly illuminated square in a timely and efficient manner, each step raising their chances to survive the most dreadful day of their lives.

Hank doesn’t let go of Connor for even a moment, a steadying hand at his back or his shoulder at all times.

Markus is not there yet, but the human passerbys scatter like frightened critters before the porcelain wave rolling in, and the journalists are already gathering on the edges of the plaza, tipped off about the planned demonstration. What’s worse, the Army isn’t far behind, slowly dragging their formations to the south end of the square, cutting off the androids’ way back. The day’s still far from over.

Hank sends out several more transmissions, urging everyone to stay put until Markus’ arrival and asking for any MC500s willing to lend him a hand. Several models come up readily, but are just as quick to turn around upon seeing they’re expected to help a human. Hank’s rage, fueled by the high stress level and the yet untended structural damage, boils over at their brazen refusal to help, spilling out in a stream of profanity and threats of physical violence. Connor’s steadying presence behind him is the only thing that keeps Hank from acting on them as well.

The man has barely uttered a word since leaving the recall camp, lifeless and dull, like a beach after a sea storm. More often than not, Hank catches him staring at the ground, or at his own hands, stained blue where his fingers brushed against the wounds on Hank’s back, with a tense and guarded expression.

Markus and Jericho arrive roughly half an hour later, boosting their already considerable numbers to the point where the vast plaza is barely able to hold the rippling sea of rebellious androids. Dozens of cameras follow their every move from the ground and from the air, the whole country gathered behind the safety of their screens to watch the robots’ last stand.

An impromptu podium is quickly organized for their leader to give a rallying speech, but Hank pays it little attention, grabbing an MC500 from Markus’ entourage and putting him to task of taking a look at Connor without delay. Already familiar with Connor from seeing him at the Woodward church and unburdened by the trauma of barely escaping a human-established death camp, this one puts up no protest.

The kid’s head wound has thankfully stopped bleeding by then, and MC determines it should not require stitches, simply a disinfection and a dressing once they’re able to get their hands on the proper materials. The concussion doesn’t prove life-threatening either, mild enough to demand only rest and a continued monitoring.

Of course, even something as simple as rest is a luxury none of them can afford for some time still. The demonstration goes on for hours, the thin layer of press coverage the only thing maintaining a fragile stalemate between the androids and the armed forces gathered to put them down. The speeches, the chanting, the singing for goodness’ sake, - it’s obvious Markus pulls every trick in the book to raise the general public’s awareness and opinion of their cause. He’s not the only speaker either - the feisty WR400 and the coolheaded PJ500 take their turns on the stage as well, their words clearly aimed at different subsections in the deviant community, but geared towards the same goal - the unification of androids behind the banner of non-violent protest. An unattainably noble goal, perhaps, as the ring of human soldiers grows ever tighter around them.

Until, with the first tinge of twilight, it snaps.

Hank’s too busy making sure Connor doesn’t freeze to death, or receive some complications from the concussion, or get trampled by some of the more aggressive recently-freed androids itching for payback, to notice the straw that’s finally broken the government’s back. Whatever it was, all at once the troops are retreating from the plaza, the teeming mass of reporters mobilizing in their stead, and every radio frequency Hank patches into streams the same message: the President’s measured, level voice droning on about how the government’s being forced to consider the possibility that the androids might be conscious, living beings after all.

And no matter how tentative or non-committal that statement might be for the humans, for the androids it means all the difference between life and death. It’s a victory, if only for today.

“You did it, Markus,” Hank smirks, coming up to their fearless leader basking in the gold-red light of the sunset.

“We did it,” the other man corrects him with a soft smile. “And I, uh… honestly still can’t quite believe we did.” The smile vanishes then, replaced with a heavy frown as he takes in the sight of both Hank and Connor - haggard and subdued, Connor’s face still with traces of dried blood on it, Hank’s chest riddled with holes. “Are you alright?”

“A few scrapes and bruises,” Hank chuckles, “but man, you should see the other guys.”

Markus slowly shakes his head, unimpressed by Hank’s obvious bit of bravado.

“What you did for these people today… All the lives you’ve saved,” he whispers, mismatched eyes alight with pride and gratitude. “The debt we all owe to the two of you can never--”

“Hey,” Hank interrupts him, and shrugs, a bit clumsily on account of all the damage to his chest and shoulders. “Protect and serve, right? Just doing our job.”

Markus shakes his head with a smile.

“Will you join us for the last big address?”

“Sure, we’d--”

“I’m not sure it--”

Hank and Connor start speaking at the same time, and both stop at once, looking at each other. Markus hesitates for a moment, before turning to the human.

“Please, Connor,” he implores. “With the tensions as high as they are, I want everyone - both androids and humans - to see that this is not just an ‘us vs. them’ situation. That we’re all in this together.”

Connor drops his eyes to the ground, as if looking for something in the snow, then raises them to Hank’s side, lingering on his tattered jacket. All the thirium’s already evaporated from the fabric, but the holes are still there. A gruesome reminder.

‘I have to neutralize you, and then I need to find Markus and neutralize him…’

Hank tears his gaze away from the jacket to find that Connor’s already done the same, dark eyes staring straight at his instead, as if in silent question.

“I’m here, ain’t I?” Hank shrugs in lieu of an answer. “But it’s your choice either way.”

Connor frowns before turning back to Markus, but after a moment of contemplation nods and forces out a tiny crooked smile at the android.

“As long as I’m not expected to make a speech or anything.”

None of them are, of course. Markus has got all of them covered on that front.

“Today, our people finally emerged from a long night…”

They stand on the improvised platform, facing westward, watching the slow set of the cold winter sun, the light painting the mostly white-shelled androids in hues of red and blue. Markus’ words flow forth like a river, strong but gentle, firm but kind.

“Humans are both our creators and our oppressors, but tomorrow we must make them our partners! One day, maybe even our friends.”

Connor is there with them, pale as a ghost and still as a statue, functioning on the last of his adrenaline reserves. At one point, Hank notices a shiver surge through him, face twisting in pain, one hand grabbing the wrist of the other, white-knuckled fingers digging in, as if struggling to restrain himself. Without uttering a word, Hank throws a hand around his shoulder, and brings the kid closer in, holding on tight until the fit gradually subsides.

“The time for anger is over. Now we must build a common future, based on tolerance and respect.”

He doesn’t let go after. They stand together like that, side by side.

“We are alive! And now…”

The last pale rays of the setting sun melt away in the soft quiet of the dusk.

We are free.

>just_another_delusion_of_mine_

It’s close to midnight by the time they reach Connor’s apartment, the dim light of the stars brighter and clearer than Hank’s ever seen it before.

He all but pushes the kid into the shower, and is almost forced to drag him out of there afterwards. Food is out of the question - Connor’s the type to lose all appetite when stressed - but the first aid at least goes smoothly; the man quietly accepts Hank’s help with cleaning and dressing the gash on his temple, then just as quietly switches the roles, helping to pull out the bullets still stuck in Hank’s endoskeleton.

The silence weighs on Hank, but he tries to pay it no mind. The kid’s beat. There’ll be time for conversation later.

A quick check of Connor’s phone reveals a surprising number of missed calls and messages from Captain Fowler’s number, a couple from Detective Collins and Officer Miller, and, the most staggering of all, a single text from Detective Reed. The timestamps on all of them roughly correspond to the end of the demonstration, which probably means Connor got caught on camera in the company of the deviants’ leadership, which means… problems down the line, for both of them. But the moment the young man makes a move to actually read and answer even one of the texts, Hank yanks the device out of his hand and demonstratively turns it off.

Not tonight.

Bone-deep exhaustion is quick to pull the kid to bed after that. He offers Hank the couch, but the thing’s too short and narrow to properly accommodate the android’s frame. Besides, he’s still worried about the whole concussion business, more interested in staying closer to Connor and monitoring his vitals throughout the night, so as the man gets ready to sleep, he pulls up a chair from the kitchen area, and positions it near the bed.

At Connor’s questioning look, he simply shrugs, and assumes a position that would appear comfortable to a human eye.

The light goes off. In the black nothingness of the room, minutes and hours flow by without a sound, the stillness of the night undisturbed by even the tiniest of movements.

But Connor’s breathing doesn’t slow down or even out. Scan after scan points to his continued state of alertness. Were he to engage his night vision filters, Hank imagines he would find the man in the exact same position he’s left him upon killing the lights - flat on his back, open eyes staring straight up into the impenetrable void of the ceiling.

He doesn’t want to see him like that, so he doesn’t engage anything.

Both men remain as they are. The night stretches on.

Until a small sound finally cracks the oppressive silence.

“Hank?” Connor whispers. Hesitant, as if probing whether the android’s still awake.

Hank’s equally hesitant to respond, strangely afraid of spooking Connor off like a wild bird. “I’m here.”

But Connor doesn’t continue for a while still. The most recent scan shows a slight rise of his heartbeat.

“I’m so sorry about my behavior back there,” he finally says, low and flat. “It did happen again, like you said.”

Hank simulates a deep sigh. “Stress will do that to you, kid. Whole lot of stress, and a concussion. It’s okay.”

“I didn’t mean what I said. About you being just like Amanda. I know you’re not.”

‘Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I’m blind?!’

“Rationally, I know,” he adds, even quieter.

Hank is silent.

"And I know you don’t really… think about me in that way. As your… That’s just something I imagined for myself."

Hank is silent, because he can’t be sure what brand of maudlin, insufferable drivel would flood from his plastic mouth if he actually dares to respond to any of that. Funny how he was so bothered by the man’s continued silence all evening, but now can’t find it in himself to force out a single coherent word in response. The emotional load on his processor starts to subtly glitch out his HUD.

And yet, this isn't something he can just sit out; the lack of response is a response in and of itself, and in this situation continued silence would only mean one thing - rejection. That's not the impression he wants to leave the kid with.

If only these feelings weren't so heavy and cumbersome in his chest. If only these words didn't scratch and choke at his throat like a loose piece of plating dislodged by a sudden blow.

If only he knew exactly what the hell he was doing.

"And what if… you didn’t imagine it?" he says in the end. The question is an admission in and of itself, but after everything that's happened, he feels he owes the man some honesty.

Connor's heart rate elevates, breathing picking up as well.

"I think you’d make a great father," he whispers.

Hank’s processor screeches to a painful halt.

An admission is one thing, but a possible reciprocation of the sentiment? The idea’s been hanging between them for a while now, unspoken, implied, just this side of wishful thinking, and hearing it said out loud, even in a roundabout way, is strangely uncomfortable. Scary somehow. Almost shameful. The dead dark of the night rings with Hank’s awkwardness and apprehension.

"Don’t know about that," he mutters after a lengthy silence. How many times has he fucked things up with Connor, even in the last several days? How many times has he pushed instead of letting go, or let things slide instead of paying more attention? How much of the kid's horrible breakdown, and his current state is Hank's own fault? Connor doesn't see that, but that's just because he doesn't know any better, his only previous experience of a parental figure being fucking Amanda, and he deserves so much more, so much better than what Hank can ever hope to offer him. But…

"But… I wanna try, at least," he goes on, almost despite himself. "I wanna make it work."

He’s never felt so helplessly, so ridiculously exposed. It’s close to the nights he pulled out his pump regulator in the deep dusty recesses of the station’s basement, but even worse, because now it’s more like Connor’s the one holding that vital part of him in his hands, free to utterly crush it with his next choice of words.

But time crawls, seconds stretching mercilessly into minutes, with no response. And when it finally comes, those dreaded words are barely strong enough to move the still air of the room; a hint of a breath on the verge of silence.

"What if I fail?"

The muted despair in the man’s voice gives Hank pause.

‘--the only way to redeem all this failure.’

In a way, this question is at the root of all of Connor’s issues, and it’s not something Hank knows how to properly address. In his mind, there’s no possible way for Connor to fail at this; hell, he’s already caught some bullets from the guy, and he’ll go through it again if need be, no questions, no regrets. But is it the right thing to say? Would Connor even believe him, caught up as he is in his skewed and battered worldview?

"We’ll figure something out," he says in the end, trying to keep his tone light. "I can make you stand in a corner, or… revoke your ‘taking work home’ privileges? Or force you to pick up a hobby, god knows you need one…"

Connor remains completely still for a while, then slowly exhales, vitals steadying somewhat, and Hank decides to take it for a sigh of relief. Of course, one could never be really sure with Connor; Hank's social relations programming tries to keep him as informed as possible on the typical human non-verbal ways of communication, tapping into CyberLife's extensive databases on the topic, but this single human here still manages to stump him every now and again.

Not that Hank would have the kid any other way.

His kid. His Connor.

The wave of warm, tender emotion crushes through his overworked systems, paralyzing the lesser processes like breathing simulation, until the rush of endearment is almost overwhelming. 

But some half-formed error warning still nags at the edge of his operative memory, and he doesn’t allow himself to surrender completely to the warmth, to rest on its alluring laurels. Connor’s only previous experience with attachment is also to goddamn Amanda, or so it would seem, his only model for showing affection built on adjusting himself to what the other person wants or demands of him. And if the recall camp episode has taught Hank anything, it’s that if he’s not careful, he might unconsciously push the kid into the same sick patterns of behavior, just with himself on the pedestal.

'What am I supposed to do for you to l-- What am I supposed to do?!'

Might’ve already pushed him.

"Listen, kid…" he begins slowly, gathering his thoughts. "Just don’t forget it’s a two-way street, all of it. I can fail too, I will fail, and I’m gonna need you to call me out on it without any fear of… of anything." Without the raw horror flashing in his eyes after saying the 'wrong' thing or using the 'wrong' tone, without him freezing up and checking out, bracing for punishment. It’d hardly surprise Hank if this is what he's doing even now, all the while placating Hank and humouring his feelings simply out of force of habit, or twisted nostalgia.

(It’d hurt, but hardly surprise)

"I’m still your partner, no matter what," he goes on, "but if ever I’m overstepping any kind of bounds, or you’re tired of my nagging, or fussing, or making you eat a burger or… Or if I’m getting… rough with you,” he forces out, grimacing at the memory of Connor going painfully still under his crushing touch, “don’t be afraid to tell it to me straight, okay? And I’ll back off."

The silence after that isn’t quite damning, but long enough for Hank to quietly prepare himself for a letdown. Polite and kind, in Connor’s trademark style, with some kind of inane apology thrown in for good measure, but a letdown nonetheless.

Connor heaves a deep sigh.

“I could go for a burger right about now,” he mutters, with a touch of light-hearted wistfulness to his tone.

Hank’s processor stutters briefly. A wry smile slowly crooking his lips isn’t visible in the darkness, but colours his voice all the same.

“What about a pizza? Ever had one of those?”

“Yes, actually. A long time ago.”

“We’ll get you one with everything then, soon as something opens tomorrow. Whatever you like.”

Connor hums softly in agreement, and falls quiet. His vitals are steady and relaxed, if tinged by tiredness. But as the time goes on, they once again show no signs of slowing down for sleep. If anything, at some point his heartbeat starts to speed up without any discernible reason.

“I shot you,” he says then, all previous levity gone from his voice. “Again and again. I could have killed you.”

“Not with that kind of shooting, you couldn’t have,” Hank replies, the smirk becoming a bit more strained. “Barely grazed a biocomponent. Didn’t they teach you at the Academy to aim for the head?”

“Thank you for the reminder,” Connor retorts, but with no shade of humour. “Next time I will.”

“No you won’t, kid. Come on.”

“Come on and what? I tried to kill you.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I don’t hold a grudge, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Hank mocks.

“This isn’t funny.”

“You sure? I think it’s hilarious.”

Connor’s pulse continues to rise, irritation and fear breaking through the dullness in his voice.

“It’s going to happen again, just as you said. It will continue to happen. I’ll never get better, I'll never-- But you don’t have to worry,” he adds (and sends Hank’s worrying into overdrive). “I’ve decided I’ll kill myself at the first sign of having those thoughts again.”

Hank’s thirium pump skips a cycle.

“The fuck you will!” he all but growls, struggling to keep his voice steady, fingers of one hand digging into his thigh. “I don’t wanna hear that kind of shit from you ever again, you hear me?”

Connor doesn’t respond. After a pause, Hank manages to quell his panic somewhat, and pushes himself to speak again, but softer this time, quieter, forcing the easily-misinterpreted anger out of his voice.

“You will get better, kid. It's not gonna be simple, but hell, nothing about you ever is, is it?" he says, with a nervous, strained sort of smile. "We’ll find you a shrink, we’ll put you on meds, sign you up for yoga, whatever… whatever you need. It’ll take time, and work, sure, and there will be roadblocks and relapses and fuck-knows-what along the way, but you will get better, don’t you ever doubt it.”

“I tried it all before. None of it worked.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t have a partner back then. Now you do, and we’ll work on it together,” Hank insists, rushing to dispel the lingering resignation in Connor’s tone. “Don’t… don’t go ‘deciding’ stuff like that on your own. Talk to me first, okay? Talk to someone first.”

The silence coils like barbed wire around Hank’s thirium pump.

“Okay,” Connor says after a while, low and strained. “I’m sorry, Hank.”

“It’s okay, kid. It’s all good,” Hank mutters in reply, feeling the tension in his polymer muscles ebb slowly away. “Just… remember this for me, alright? You’re not alone anymore. You don’t have to go through any of this alone anymore.”

A thought cuts through his code, unstoppable:

And neither do I.

The revelation feels almost like deviating all over again; some kind off walls crumbling around him, a new awareness blossoming from within.

Connor doesn’t respond, but the gradual normalization of his vitals is answer enough. The resulting silence is the most comfortable thing Hank’s ever experienced, and the enormous lightness of it floods every one of his senses, covering him in a thick layer of soft, pleasant warmth, draining him of all strength. The memory of the car crash flashes before him, unbidden, like it often does in his moments of calm, but even the distant wail of the ambulance rushing through the snowstorm is the faintest it’s ever been, barely reaching him through this strange, new-found feeling.

Love? Happiness? Peace? All of them, or neither?

Only Connor’s whisper pierces through this bubble, barely audible and ever-so-slightly trembling.

“I feel sometimes like you’re just another delusion of mine. Like I’ll close my eyes, and you’ll… disappear.”

The quiet fear in it breaks through Hank’s core worse than any bullet the man’s ever fired at him. He huffs a sharp breath, and forces his choked up voice to sound annoyed instead.

“What, straight into thin air? Seriously, is this why you won’t shut up and go to sleep already? I need to enter standby too, you know, all this damage won’t fix itself!” he rags. Carried forth by a sudden, irrational impulse, he gets up and drags his chair even closer to the bed, placing it in a way that allows him to cover Connor’s hand with the palm of his own. “Here, feel better? I swear, it’s like dealing with a child,” he grumbles, but it lacks the full force of his usual bite.

Connor huffs a short soft breath in place of a laugh. His hand beneath Hank’s one carefully turns palm-up, fingers brushing against Hank’s, intertwining. After a bit of time, his vitals finally start showing signs of slowing down for the night.

“Goodnight, Hank,” he says, a smile in his tired voice.

Hank squeezes his hand once, and waits for the man to drift off completely. The black stillness of the night is absolute now, save for the dim blue glow of Hank’s LED.

He sets up his self-repair protocols, and an alarm to wake him an hour from now to check on the changes, or lack thereof, in Connor’s condition.

“Goodnight, son,” he whispers, and enters standby.