Work Text:
***
Golden, shimmering light reflected off the snow outside the Chicken Feed. Each individual unique snowflake was highlighted in Connor’s vision, spinning wheels of immaculate patterns flooding his receptors as he let himself get distracted. It was cold.
And Connor hated the cold.
Connor had never liked the cold, even before deviating. It made him feel like the tin-man from that Wizard of Oz movie Hank had forced him to watch a few weeks after the revolution; like his joints needed oiling; like the Thirium in his artificial veins would reach freezing point, and he’d turn into a broken statue right then and there. His limbs tended to shake when he was cold too; the gun would shoot off kilter or - on an even more domestic level - the dog-food would tumble haphazardly onto the floor rather than land neatly in Sumo’s feeding bowl.
He couldn’t be precise in the cold.
He couldn’t complete his mission.
He was made to be above failure, and despite his deviancy, he still hated the feeling of it – failure that is. It made him feel useless: if he couldn’t even do what he was made for - what he’d been painstakingly programmed and manufactured for - then how could he do anything else?
Hank called it being human. Connor called it an inconvenience.
Connor also knew Hank hated the cold.
It was clear from his behaviour - sub-conscious most of it. The way Hank’s sarcastic jibes became more telling of true feelings than humorous, and the way he grumble all his way through a case, eyes easily glazing over obvious clues that Hank would have certainly noticed had it not been cold enough to stop his heart.
But for Hank, his active dislike of the cold, had nothing to do with the feeling of it - Hank had once said he’d prefer it to be winter all year round than have to deal with another skin-melting summer – but the fact that when it was cold, the storms would start; the roads would become icy and the cars would skid.
Lunatics crashed all the time, but in the cold, the rates were even higher.
Connor kicked his shoe into the snow; a mannerism he instantly registered as painfully human, and he felt a sick twist in the stomach he didn’t have at the realisation.
“You’re free now,” Hank had said.
Hank had stood right here when he’d said those words. He’d sounded confused, bewildered, like his whole world had been turned upside down and common sense had been disposed of, but they’d hugged, and everything was and would be forevermore, good. Great, even. Androids had rights now. Connor had rights whether he believed himself to deserve them or not. He had the whole world to explore – or at least America - North America? Connor sighed and watched as the small breath materialised as a faint cloud. Markus was struggling to get US laws passed; it would be a while before Connor was ever getting on a plane or a train or a boat to Europe or Asia.
But at the very least, he had Detroit.
Right?
Connor took a step forward, standing now where he had stood that day, in front of an empty Chicken Feed after the revolution as they’d spoken of the future of all androids and humans, of Hank, and of Connor.
He shifted on the spot, snow crunching beneath his boots in the exact place where he’d stood and smiled and lied directly to Hank’s face.
“You got somewhere to stay?”
“Of course. I’ll be fine, Hank.”
Connor tugged on his beanie, covering his eyebrows. The material was thick enough to hide the wild flickering of the LED he’d been too - too afraid to take out. He slipped two fingers beneath the hat, lightly touching the LED at his temple. He imagined pressing the tip of a blade there, stood at a sink, staring back at himself and letting the little disc clatter down into the porcelain.
But something about it felt wrong - like, he’d be losing an arm or an eye.
Though, Connor supposed, it was one and the same, really. He was just a machine.
I’ll be fine.
> …
> Calculating chances of success…
> …
> …
> …
> Unable to complete calculation.
> Please try again later
***
The world was empty and dark, and the bench was cold.
Connor’s jacket was bulky, and it still smelt of old leather and thrift stores despite how much it had been soaked and scrubbed - and it, too, was cold.
An icy chill seemed to seep through him no matter how tightly he held himself; no matter whether he was sitting or standing, unconscious or awake. Frost coated his lips and stiffened his limbs. His joints creaked and his jaw chattered.
He’d done this for weeks now, and yet, he still wasn’t used to it.
Androids didn’t need sleep. Not really. They slipped into stasis every now and then to re-charge, and it emulated sleep to a degree - depending on the model. YK models came with the desire for sleep programmed within them. They were programmed with the ability to dream and suffer nightmares, like any human child, where PL models, let’s say, tended to go longer without rest.
New android add-ons allowed PL models and such, to dream (dubbed IRL DLC by the teenage and young-adult population) but not all androids took to the new programming so well. Simon, from what Connor had heard from his few visits to New Jericho, had experienced memory loss and seizures at the new lines of code.
His body had treated the new programming as a virus and began to self-destruct in the only way it understood.
Really, it made sense that he wouldn’t take to it well; the humans built the PL models as eager slaves - being able to rest would be counter-intuitive, wouldn’t it?
Connor had not been built to wish for sleep, either, or to wish for rest and comfort. He had been built to negotiate. Available and present. Always. He needed to recharge more often; that was something he remembered. It had been highlighted in the RK800 prototype notes in Cyberlife tower; he’d seen them after being awakened from induced stasis, after memory transfers and general machinery fixes. It had been circled in red pen. Multiple times.
Fix, was scrawled next to it. The person who had written the notes had been angry, he’d deduced from the deep imprint on the pages beneath.
Correction: Connor was not intended to wish for sleep.
And yet – instead - he yearned for it.
After too many long hours at the DPD, his eyes became heavy; he found himself slipping up, making mistakes, mixing up names, and unable to calculate percentage outcome accurately. He found himself tired and wishing for a blanket and a pillow despite never having slept in a bed in his entire creation. The sensation only worsened after deviancy.
Connor sometimes wondered, curled up on that bench in that park he’d never thought to catch the name of, whether the RK800-60 model that had held Hank at gun point would have desired sleep had he walked out of Cyberlife alive.
Had that desire been meticulously pressed out of him in creation? Like a kink in a piece of metal? Like a crease in a blanket? A piece of clay being moulded for perfection?
Had the RK800-60 been fixed, or would he have felt just as human as Connor?
Connor pushed himself up, suddenly feeling the urge to move. He pulled his jacket tighter around him as he leant forward, staring at the ground: at nothing. He repressed the urge to blink as a glaring notification filtered through his vision
> …
> Urgent Warning: Regulate Temperature
> Stasis Immanent
The flashing red was followed by another notification. A phone number flickered beneath: incoming call.
It was Hank. They’d been called for a homicide. Nothing major, just another job, but it needed to be dealt with as soon as possible. Hank was driving to the scene. Hank was asking where he was. You at home?
Home, Connor thought, looking down at the bench that had become his place of rest ever since the revolution. Did this place constitute as a home? A tattered old piece of moulded metal in the middle of a snowy park?
I’m at home, Connor lied. Send me the address, I’ll meet you there.
***
The address led them to a small thrift store linked with a charity raising money for the care of abandoned and injured androids, not too far from Hank’s home. Connor had taken the bus much to Hanks’ dismay, and had used the short half an hour it had taken to arrive at his destination to catch up on the stasis he had missed. He may have over-rested and woken up one stop too far, forcing him to finish the journey on foot, but nobody else had to know that.
It wasn’t like the body was going anywhere.
Connor pressed his fingers deeper into to the bullet wound of the corpse’s chest, sticky red blood staining his fingers. The body was cold, dead for at least… half a day? Or maybe it was a little longer. He couldn’t quite pinpoint an exact time-frame and an uncomfortable throbbing had settled in his temples. Connor blinked fiercely, shutting down red warnings before he was completely blinded by them.
“Anything?” Hank asked. He was stood behind Connor, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket because the store was cold and outside was cold and everything was cold cold cold-
Once glance at the clock on the wall told Connor it was nearing four o’clock in the morning. He frowned. His internal clock was stuck on twelve thirty-five.
“No. No. Nothing,” Connor said, standing up. He stumbled backwards a little, leg seizing up as he tried to bend the joint, but Hank didn’t seem to notice – or if he did, he ignored it. “I think I should-” He gestured a little wildly to the backroom. There was no indication anything in relation to the murder had occurred within the backroom - the door was shut and there was no blood trail – but Connor needed a breath. Maybe if he just took a moment, he could concentrate.
I’ll be fine, Hank.
Hank must have realised this, because he looked at Connor, then down at the body than back up at Connor. His expression read blank and unimpressed but he shrugged, scratching his beard “Alright. Go ahead,” he said. “Do your freaky android shit and get this over with. I want to go home.”
Sumo sat curled on the sofa, warmth and blankets, a cup of coffee that Connor couldn’t drink, and a photo of a little boy that cried family.
Connor nodded, and an objective appeared in his vision.
> …
> Finish investigating so Hank can go home.
Can I come home?
The backroom was also cold, though Connor had expected nothing less. Boxes of donated items were stacked up to the ceiling, dusty and disorganised. A few little brown-winged moths, desperate for light and warmth, bounced against the single lightbulb that hung from the ceiling, and Connor could hear the light thumping of their wings, battering against the glass.
He forced out a breath and quickly scanned for any issues outstanding within his software. He was met with an endless list of issues: near-failing bio components, low internal heat, low thirium, low charge-
He shut off the scan before it could reveal anything too concerning, something he hadn’t seen pop up in the past few weeks. If he didn’t know it was there then he couldn’t feel… guilty at keeping it from Hank.
There was a broken hand-mirror sat on top of one of the donation boxes, buried beneath an old woollen scarf, and unable to resist, Connor reached out. He didn’t know if It were possible for an android to look tired, but he did, staring back at his reflection with such an empty look.
He’d always found mirrors strange; the ability to see himself as others did. What was it he was looking at? He was looking at a thinking, conscious being, wasn’t he? He controlled this body – he blinked to prove it – and yet he was just a machine.
He looked away, feeling strange, and just as he was about to turn away and return to Hank, he noticed something gleaming from that same box. He placed the mirror down and pulled the shiny object out from the pile of clothing.
It was Sumo.
Oh well, of course it wasn’t, really. It was a messily painted glass ornament of a St Bernard with a thin, golden string attached to its head in a long loop as if it were designed to hang from somewhere: A Christmas tree ornament.
He felt a sense of yearning, overwhelmed by system alerts and emotions he’d yet to experience. He wanted to see Sumo, wanted to hang the ornament on a tree and drape lights across the room and listen to overly festive music that Hank was certain to complain overtly about. That’s what families did, right?
He thought back to the cold bench in the cold park, the fiery glares from androids who recognised him as Traitor, and humans who averted their eyes, faces fully of pity as they passed him, Connor nothing else but a spare part left to the streets.
Connor clutched the glass ornament and his vision faintly blurred.
He wanted to go home.
“Find anything?” Hank asked, and Connor flinched, almost dropping the little glass dog. He blinked away the warnings (and tears?) and held the figurine to his chest. He shook his head, looking awkwardly down at the floor. Hank frowned and placed a hand on Connor’s shoulder, forcefully turning him around. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said as he glanced down at Connor’s hands, at the little familiar dog engaged within his fingers. “Come on,” Hank said. “Trail’s cold. Let’s go home, Connor.”
On the way out of the shop, Hank dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, stepping out the door before the shopkeeper could call him back.
Connor found himself unable to release the tight grasp on the ornament, and he made no move to tell Hank his ‘home’ was in the other direction, on a park bench in the middle of nowhere.
***
Hank’s house was warm, the rough December chill shut out by the thick wooden door, and the air felt like it was wrapping itself around him in a large, stuffy hug. The broken window in the kitchen had been fixed, Connor didn’t know when, but even when it had been shattered and broken, Connor had always found the house warm.
There was a Christmas tree at the back of the room, leaves more green than brown, but it was swathed in golden lights that were hung about the room.
Sumo launched up at Connor as soon as he stepped inside, barking and snuffling despite Hanks’ half-hearted grumbles of ‘down boy, down’.
“It’s okay, Hank,” Connor said, smiling, and he kneeled to embrace the slobbering St Bernard. Warmth: the sensation of warm fur against his face and - for a moment - warning signs didn’t flood his vision. “Good boy, Sumo.”
Connor could feel Hank watching him from the couch, arms crossed, legs kicked up on the coffee table.
“Come sit, son,” Hank said when Sumo finally retreated, and though Connor recognised the name as a casual endearment, it still sent a spike of emotion through him; yet another he couldn’t quite unpick.
Connor did as he was told, sitting gingerly on the edge of the soft couch without argument. A warning flickered in the corner of his right eye, but he dismissed it before he could register what it was alerting him of.
“So, when were you going to tell me you were sleeping rough?” Hank asked bluntly, and Connor looked up, alarmed.
“Who told you?” Connor asked.
“Reed,” Hank said, standing. He walked into the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of something blue from the fridge - a quick, tiresome scan told Connor it was one of those new thirium drinks – and he poured it into a glass, placing it on the coffee table “He lives around where you were staying. Saw you curled up on some bench like some discarded piece of junk. You’re lucky he’s not a complete piece of shit.”
> …
> Stress Levels Rising… 55%
“I asked you if you had anywhere to go, Connor, and you said you’d be fine.”
“I… I didn’t want to intrude.”
“Fucks sake.” Hank reached behind the couch, pulling out a handful of blankets and dropping them on Connor’s lap. They were warm and - for a moment - Connor didn’t know what to do. “Go on,” Hank said. “Get comfortable because you’re staying here.“
The TV was turned on then, an episode of a children’s show dubbed Spongebob’s Christmas Special, blasted out of the screen to Hank’s clear dismay. He scrambled for the controller and began flicking through the channels in search of something other than ‘this Christmas shit that comes on every year.
Sumo settled at Connor’s feet, soft and warm, resting his head on his paws, looking up every now and then for a scratch behind the ears.
“Thank you, Hank,” Connor said later that evening, when the moon was high and the sky was dark, when the final flakes of snow had fallen softly against gravel and road.
Hank grunted in acknowledgement.
“Yeah, whatever,” he said, but he was smiling - and for the first time in a long time, Connor’s world felt warm.