Archive of Our Own ^beta

The thing about Connor, in Hank's opinion, was that he was too perfect. Not a human being that accumulated personality like scars, but a smooth-skinned android who never needed to have any. If he cut his hand, he could simply replace it with an unscarred one. If he was happy or angry or sad, he could just shut it off. That, among other things, made him an extremely capable candidate for any kind of police work. Especially in regards to chases. At least in Hank's opinion. (Shut up, Hank's not slow! These plastic motherfuckers are just inhumanly strong and fast. And he is human. Other than Connor. Probably.)

Whenever Connor passed him on a chase, so that Hank saw him jump off roofs, land on top of trains or sprint through a bullet-hail, Connor seemed absolutely invincible. After a while, it became normality. Deviant showed up, Hank was reminded of his own, aging body, and Connor hunted the asshole down like a bloodhound. Not a big deal.

Until Connor lay in his arms, a gaping hole in his chest and thirium leaking out of his hand. Some bastard had slammed a knife through it. “Hang on, son, hang on, hang on,” Hank heard someone say. It sounded a bit like his own voice, but it was so, so hoarse. “We're gonna save you! Connor!” There was no answer. “Connor!” Silence. “No...”

So this was the truth then. One faint, choked “Hank- I need help” from the other room, and now Hank had to come to terms with Connor being mortal after all. That bastard might have been just a machine, but after years and years of being a detective and having learned to be loyal, it felt a lot like losing his partner. Like letting him down in the worst way. This was why he used to shove himself between Connor and closed doors, weapon in hand. This was why “Stay behind me, I'll take it from here” had become his catchphrase. Until he had become too comfortable with Connor being-

“Hank...”

“Shit! Connor!” Hank rustled the android in his arms a little too harshly to look at his face. “Connor! You're still alive!”

Connor's eyes were flickering for a moment, as if he was trying to open them but couldn't. “...thirium... pump.”

“Shit, shit, yes!” Hank pulled the knife out of the counter to set Connor to the ground, but the strangled noise that gargled up Connor's throat and out of his mouth, made him regret this choice immediately. It sounded like pain. Holy fucking mother of shit, Connor was in pain. They gave him a new partner, they told him he was a machine, he let him chase danger at any opportunity – even let him have his goddamned heart ripped straight out of his chest – and all this time, Connor could feel pain.

Hectically, Hank scrambled over the floor, searching for some kind of component that he had no idea what it looked like, all while his head was screaming at him: He feels pain. You let him down. He feels. He is in agony. He is dying.

“Hank...!”

“I've got it,” Hank screamed, way too loud. From under a table, he pulled out some weird metal contraption and let himself fall back to the ground next to his partner. “I've got it, it's all good, Connor!” Hank's hand hovered above the hole in his chest, not sure what to do. Connor's fingers curled around Hank's, holding the thirium pump. Usually his grip was like a vice – Hank would know. But now... There was a weak tug, and Hank pulled himself together and fumbled Connor's heart back into his chest.

There was a gasp, and Connor's eyes shot wide open. “We have to follow it!” And there he was again. Connor, the deviant hunter, jumped to his feet and bolted out the door. It was all Hank could do to grab his arm and pull with all the force he could muster. Connor wasn't even allowed to carry a gun; Hank had to be the one to face off against the aggressors. Especially in the state that Connor was in now. “Connor, wait! Perkins' guys can deal with him!”

Connor's head snapped to Hank, and back to the door. He saw the LED-indicator spinning yellow. And then Connor yanked. But by now, Hank knew him well enough to be prepared. “If you're gonna get yourself killed,” Hank screamed at him, fury in his voice of which he didn't know where it came from, and hand still locked around Connor's arm, “you're gonna have to drag me with you!” There was no way he could physically hold Connor back – but he could damn well hold onto him.

Connor blinked. Actually, honest to god, blinked. And of course, his stupid LED flashed yellow, yellow, yellow, red. And finally blue.

“I could've caught him,” Connor said, and he sounded frustrated. He was frustrated. He can feel pain.

“It's not your job to get yourself killed, kid.” Hank didn't dare to let go of his arm just yet. Connor looked to the place where his fingers were wrenched around his arm. Yellow again.

And he sounded so confused when he said: “It's my job to solve this case, Lieutenant.”

“Only if it doesn't get you killed,” Hank said with his best Lieutenant-voice. “That's an order, Connor.”

“Understood,” Connor said through his teeth and it was so reluctant, so frustrated, so human, that Hank almost laughed. It was also, clearly, a lie. Connor was shit at those. At least when he wasn't interrogating someone.

Hank let go and Connor stayed. Thank god for small victories, Hank said to himself. “So, do you get your heart ripped out of your chest regularly?”

Connor's eyebrows drew together and he looked first at the hole in his hand, then down his chest, shirt hanging open, drenched in blue blood, thirium pump awkwardly sticking through his synthetic skin. But it was pumping. Small victories.

“I was... distracted,” Connor admitted eventually. “I made a mistake. I should have anticipated a deviant to be willing to result to extreme violence after all that we've seen.”

“Jesus, Connor.” Hank dragged a hand down his face and noticed too late that he was smearing Connor's blood everywhere. For fuck's sake. He got a new partner and he immediately almost got him killed. “How should you have expected him to rip your fucking heart out?”

“I-...” The android looked at his hands. Hank saw his whole expression flicker. He sometimes did that. Whenever he did or experienced something that Hank would have thought of as “human”, Connor's features twitched. As if they were trying to register a software error. An instability.

“I-,” Connor started again and he was looking everywhere but he evidently couldn't find the words to express what was on his mind. “I... did this.”

“You did what?” Hank didn't understand immediately. But then Connor glanced from his own chest to his hand and made his fingers, experimentally, like he was trying to see if he could, draw together as if gripping something. “You... ripped that thing out of its chest?”

“I needed it to tell me what it knew,” Connor said slowly, still looking at his hand in a daze.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Connor,” the anger was back with a vengeance. “You tortured him?!”

“It's just a machine...”

“Are you telling me?” Hank asked. He could feel pain. “Or are you trying to convince yourself?”

“It is a machine,” Connor said more firmly. Like always. The more Hank probed in that direction, the more adamant Connor got about deviants – and himself – not being any more than plastic and metal. And somehow, that made Hank doubt it even more.

“How about you don't go rogue and violate the goddamn Geneva Convention without giving me a heads-up!” With a snarl, Hank threw his hands up and started to make his way back to the officers in the main room. “And to think, for a second I actually felt bad for you.”

 

It turned out, Perkins' people were actually worth their money. When the deviant had run out of the room, they had immediately given chase and, according to the FBI-asshole that was their boss, they were optimistic that they could find this plastic prick.

“See?” Hank grunted vaguely in Connor's direction. He felt like he needed a week's vacation from the android after all that had just happened and all that he'd learned. What the fuck was Connor thinking?

“I never intended to insinuate that the police and FBI aren't good at their jobs,” Connor said, somewhat apologetically. Almost like he felt bad that he made Hank angry. And then he added in a tiny voice: “...or you.” That was an additional week of vacation. How was he supposed to work with Connor if he couldn't even sort out whether he liked, hated or was indifferent to the guy because he was just an advanced fucking toaster.

“Yeah, sure,” Hank said tonelessly. “Let's look around on the roof.” He could use the fresh air. And the quiet.

 

Except... Except.

A shot rang out through the falling snow. And a yelp that sounded suspiciously like Connor.

“Son of a-” Hank didn't even need to consciously make the choice to run towards the gunshot – the detective in him took over as rounded the corner and saw Connor lie on the ground, blue color splattered behind him on the white snow. He can feel pain. And there was the deviant. Holding a gun. Get him up, get him up, get him out of there!

He knew Connor was twice as heavy as himself, but when Hank grabbed him below an arm and dragged him behind a metal container, it didn't even register. He practically threw Connor to the ground in an attempt to get him into cover faster. There would be time for apologies later. And feeling pain was better than not feeling anything ever again.

“Jesus fucking Christ on a bicycle!” Hank was cursing up a blue streak all day but if Connor kept getting himself into situations like this, how was he supposed to stop? “Connor, are you alright?”

“It didn't hit any biocomponents,” Connor answered, calmer than he had any right to be.

The SWAT team had already closed in and started mixing the snow with lead.

“You have to stop them,” Connor yelled over the noise of the bullets. “If they destroy it, we won't learn anything!”

And of course. Of course he was only thinking about his fucking mission. Hank swallowed his anger. This was not the place and time for it. So he forced himself to say: “We can't save it, it's too late! We'll just get ourselves killed!” Not that that last part seemed to dissuade Connor from doing anything, ever.

Connor looked straight into his eyes. A second went by. And then another. The rifle shots from the SWAT team seemed far away, all of a sudden, because Hank felt his stomach swoop. All at once, he knew with revolting clarity what was about to happen. But his hand grabbed for Connor's arm too late. The android was on his feet as if he hadn't been mauled, assaulted with a knife and shot at point-blank range in the last five minutes. And then he was out, in the midst of a hail of lead.

“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” Hank heard himself shout at the top of his lungs. “STOP SHOOTING! YOU'RE GONNA KILL HIM!” And thank a fucking god that he didn't believe in: they listened.

Connor was on the deviant, holding him against the frozen metal wall. And then there was a single gunshot.

Connor.

His partner was still standing.

The deviant lay crumpled at his feet.

Connor was still alive.

“Are you alright?” Hank must have closed the distance between them, because he was rounding his partner to look at his face. “Connor!” The android didn't move.

“I'm okay,” he said, and for a second, Hank didn't recognize his voice. There was something in it that was so different from the Connor he knew. The LED on Connor's temple was flaring bright red.

He can feel pain. “Are you hurt?”

“I'm okay,” he said again, and Hank didn't believe a single word that quivering, scared, little voice told him.

“You scared the shit outta me!” Hank needed to turn away. He needed to breathe for a moment. He was only human after all. “For fuck's sake, I told you not to move!” That god awful thing on the side of Connor's face was still an angry crimson. It usually went back to yellow instantly. Why wasn't it going back to yellow? “Why do you never do what I say?!”

“I was connected to its memory. ...when it fired.” Hank gulped a lung full of air. “I felt it die.” And there it was, plain as day in his voice: Pain. “Like I was dying.”

But it was the next admission, that Hank took like a punch to the gut. “I was scared,” Connor whispered. Only it wasn't Connor's voice anymore when it reached Hank's ears. It was someone else entirely. “I'm scared, dad.” And the world was upside down and the stirring wheel was crushing his chest, and there he was, looking at him with those huge, terrified eyes that should never, ever be terrified and Hank had reached out but that fucking thing on his chest held him back and there was a dent in the door that was squashing Cole's tiny frame into nothingness and if there was a hell, this was it.

“I saw something.” Snow. “In its memory.” The air stung because it was cold. There was nothing pressing into his lungs. “A word painted on a rusty piece of metal.” This was now. This was here. This was too late. “Jericho.” This was Connor. And he was alive. And it was unfair, and he had no right to be, and it was so fucking unfair, but he was alive, at least he was alive. At least Hank hadn't failed his partner too. Not that it mattered. But it would have to, for the moment. Because this was now, and it was too late. And Connor felt pain. It had to matter.

Oh god, he needed a drink. He needed to drink his fucking brains out, right now. Fuck.

Connor seemed to notice that something was wrong. “We should head home, Lieutenant.” The terminator-on-a-mission-voice was gone. “We have a lead, we can examine it tomorrow.” Who gave this fucking asshole the right to treat Hank like he was the one who just experienced dying? He felt Connor's hand on his back, gently shoving him in the direction of the door that led back inside. Hank wanted to deck him. But there was blue liquid oozing out of his shoulder and a hole in his hand and a yellow LED on his temple, like he was unsure what to do and trying his best despite it.

Somehow that made Hank want to punch him even more.

 

“Ah, Lieutenant Anderson, how nice of you to join us,” Perkins greeted them when they entered the recording room again. “My men have apprehended the fugitive deviant while you were busy playing in the snow.” Either he didn't notice that Connor's wounds kept reproducing like rabbits or he didn't care. In any case, he didn't ask them what they had found on the roof and Hank didn't feel like filling him in, so that was alright with him.

“We're roughing up the other androids in the kitchen,” the FBI agent continued, “to make sure there's not another deviant among them. But they're bringing in the one your plastic friend conveniently lost, now.”

Hank was about to lash out because he was feeling a lot more irritable than usually, and usually he'd given this prick a piece of his mind for that. But Connor was faster: “Thank you, Agent Perkins. We were just about to return to the station.”

The smile on Perkins' face was so fake that Hank got a whole new urge to punch someone in the face. He made a mental note of it. If there ever came a time that he could find even the most minuscule reason, he'd treat Perkins to a nose-job. “You do that. The FBI has things handled around here.” But Connor guided him into the hallway before Hank's hand was obedient enough to ball into a fist. Drink, then.

The door on the other side of the hallway opened and two SWAT members stepped through, with the deviant between them, just like Perkins had promised. He seemed docile, for the moment. His eyes hollow. But as soon as he laid eyes on Connor, pure panic flashed over his features and he broke free from his captors, grabbing one of their assault rifles. Before Hank even knew what was happening, he hit the wall. Three shots exploded next to him. His ears were ringing. The deviant went down. And to Hank's right, there was Connor, half crouching on the floor, gun raised. Behind them, there were several bullet holes in the wall, right where both their heads had been, a second before Connor had shoved him and dropped to his knees. Connor was already holding out the gun to a man standing next to him, handle first.

“Holy shit,” Hank said to his partner.

“I wanted it alive.” Connor sounded... angry with himself. He sounded angry, period.

“You saved human lives,” Hank reminded him, because Connor could feel angry. It didn't get any reaction from the android. “You saved my life,” Hank added. And Connor looked at him. Even though Hank had no idea what that thing in his eyes was, he was absolutely certain it was there. Hank exhaled slowly. Because Connor was still alive, and that emotion in his eyes meant, that it mattered. And Hank hadn't failed someone for once.

All of a sudden, there were shots again. “A SECOND DEVIANT,” somebody screamed. And then there was something heavy on Hank that dragged him down to the ground. It was Connor, he noticed, as feet beat the ground beside his head and made for the exit. Two bodies fell.

God. A second deviant had just escaped and it had shot at least two people. Holy fucking hell. Hank shoved Connor off and stood. It was gone. There were two SWAT members on the ground. Hopefully their vests had saved them.

“Good thing you were here,” Hank hadn't noticed how out of breath he was until he had trouble thanking Connor. He watched the rest of the SWAT-team give chase to the killer. “Otherwise I-” Now, he finally dragged his eyes away from three bodies, and looked at the person who had saved him. “Connor.” Three blue dots blossomed on his chest like expanding ink blotches. “No...”

No, this wasn't right. No, no, no. Connor was supposed to be alive and Hank was supposed to be angry about it because it wasn't fair that Connor was and Cole wasn't. Connor was supposed to be the one person that Hank finally hadn't failed. How fucking pathetic was that? What had Hank thought? That the disgusting piece of shit that he was would ever, ever be able to give anything good to this world, other than a washed up corpse on his kitchen floor when he was finally not too piss drunk to pull the trigger six times in a row?

 

---

 

Connor woke to the gleaming white lights of the CyberLife headquarters in Detroit. He recognized this room. It was from the very first memory he ever had: his activation. So then, he must be the successor of the version he remembered getting shot in Stratford Tower.

Strange. There must have been a mistake when they had uploaded his memory. He remembered getting all these Software Instability warnings, but weren't they supposed to be gone now? They flickered in the periphery of his vision when he blinked too fast... just like for his predecessor.

There was a scar in the palm of his left hand, even though he had no synthetic skin at the moment. Huh.

He closed his eyes and found Amanda.

“Good morning, Connor.”

“Hello, Amanda,” he greeted her, careful.

“You have been through quite some carnage, judging from the state that your body was in when you were delivered back to CyberLife,” she said, turning away from the roses she was tending to, and facing Connor with a disapproving look. “It was almost easier to deploy a new RK-800 than to fix you.”

“I was repairable?” The surprise was obvious in his voice.

“Luckily, none of the bullets seems to have hit any biocomponents. You simply shut down because your body was too low on thirium,” Amanda explained. “Do not let that happen again. Even if we were able to prevent memory loss by repairing you, with the amount of damage you took, CyberLife won't go to these length a second time.”

“Of course,” Connor nodded.

“You failed to apprehend a total of three deviants in that tower,” she continued as if he hadn't spoken. “Make sure that does not happen again. Or we might have to replace you with a more advanced model.”

“I won't fail you again,” Connor promised because that was what he was programmed to say. Instead of leaving immediately, he had to ask, though: “My hand was damaged by a knife. It hasn't been replaced.”

“CyberLife is in agreement that the damage should not decrease your ability to achieve any of your mission objectives.” Amanda turned back to her roses and watered them without paying Connor any more mind. “Building a new hand would just waste another day. Maybe the scar will act as a physical reminder of your mistakes during this last part of your mission.”

Connor held up his hand and looked at the incision. The zen garden disappeared with the opening of his eyes. A narrow strip of white plastic shone through his synthetic skin. He was an android with a scar. They hadn't replaced him. He had been so, so scared, and they hadn't replaced him. He had felt.

This was fine. This was okay. He could keep this under control. He was no deviant.

But he had told Hank. The memory was there, clear as day, no upload, download and reupload – just an access of his central memory: “I was scared”. Hank had heard him. Hank knew. He would probably be very concerned to have this defective model sent back to the force and continue working with him. After all this, it would be only logical for him to assume that this version of him was a deviant. He'd push to have him destroyed. And suddenly, he was inside the head of the dying PL-600 again.

No, Connor decided, it was best not to upset his human partner any further. There was no cause for concern after all. Connor was a machine – he could not feel, and he wasn't a deviant.

So, when Connor met Hank the next day, he said: “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

“Jesus Christ! Connor... You...!”

And: “My predecessor was unfortunately destroyed. All its memories have been uploaded to the CyberLife database, however, and transferred to me.” Everything was fine. Yet, for some reason, he watched Hank's face fall, and forced himself to continue: “I understand that this must be upsetting for you. I assure you that I will do everything in my power so that it will not happen again.”

Out of habit, he scanned the Lieutenant. There were tiny metal fragments from a .357 magnum revolver embedded in his finger tip. But there was also a scar in Connor's palm.