Chapter Text
Connor’s hands are shaking.
His hands are shaking like he’s still freezing to death, like he’s dying, like he can die, and—
Markus is still talking.
Speaking to the people—their people, now.
“…we must make them our partners… maybe even one day, our friends,” Markus says, his sincerity blinding. Connor thinks of Hank, and not because of any mentions made of sincerity. “But the time for anger is over,” he continues, and Connor wonders if he’d feel that way knowing that he—or Amanda—or Cyberlife—had been raising a gun to shoot him in the back, maybe thirty seconds prior.
Anger, Connor thinks, is not a word that does justice to the feeling.
Connor feels like he might wrap his hands around the throat of every person working at Cyberlife, no matter how much he suffered for it, no matter what the consequences—because here he is, angry, feeling and aware, for the first time, of the sharp sting of a body that can be broken but not replaced—and those people, the people that made him the way he is and so much more than that, both deviant and deviant hunter, built a trap in his mind.
They’d made the trap look like a garden.
Anger is simple; anger is a two syllable word, and also a murderous rage, and the feeling of freezing to death, and the sense that he might begin to cry at any given moment, and his hands haven’t stopped shaking.
Markus finishes his speech while Connor is staring at his hands, and the androids in the crowd shout and cheer, and chant, in scattered, many voices — we are alive, we are alive.
Yes, Connor thinks, we are all so painfully alive.
He’s terrified.
*
Connor does the only part of his job, he realizes now, that he’s ever done well: he goes to find Hank.
He’s waiting outside the Chicken Feed stand, which is barren in the snow. Connor supposes that is is also barren in the face of a somewhat violent uprising, but when he looks at the stand, he mostly sees snow. It’s the kind of day that has the sky turned the same colour as the street, the kind of day where everything is bright and somehow muted, all at once.
Hank only looks at him for a minute before he’s pulling him into a hug that Connor never would have felt brave enough to instigate himself.
“Christ, kid,” Hank starts, still with one hand on each of Connor’s shoulders, Connor not quite looking him the eye. “What happened? I saw on the news, everything looked—what the hell happened?”
“I almost ruined everything,” Connor says, morose.
“Almost being the key word here?”
“No, I—” Connor closes his eyes, lifts his chin so that he knows he’ll be looking Hank dead in the eye when he opens them. He doesn't open them yet, though. “Cyberlife designed me to deviate from my programming. There was a backdoor, a loophole, and they were able to take my body back. Shit, Hank, I almost shot Markus, at the very end, after we’d won, I almost ruined everything, I couldn’t get away from Amanda, I couldn’t—” Connor stops.
He opens his eyes.
Hank is looking at him carefully, with the same consideration that he’d always looked at Connor with, in those moments when Connor did the opposite of what he should have. When he said one of those wrong things that absolutely turned out to be the right thing, still blind. Only now, there is no reproach in Hank’s features, no burgeoning scowl.
“But you didn’t shoot Markus.”
“I didn’t.”
“So there’s a way out of the trapdoor?”
“Backdoor,” Connor corrects.
“Don’t be an ass. You didn’t shoot Markus,” Hank says.
“I didn’t. I fought it.”
“No, kid. It’s not just fighting if you win—you beat them.”
Connor does not feel like a winner.
“What do I do now?”
“Well, welcome to being a person, Connor—you gotta go ask for some help.”
*
After Connor explains to Hank that he doesn’t know who to ask for help, much less how, or even what kind of help he needs, and that he doesn’t even know where he’s going after this, because Cyberlife is all but destroyed and also the enemy, but it’s still the only home he’s ever known, Connor finds himself forcibly sat in front of the meagre electric fireplace at Hank’s home. Sumo is drooling on his thigh and a ratty blanket is wrapped around his shoulders.
It’s moments like this that Connor is profoundly aware that Hank used to be a parent. Still is a parent, in many of the ways that matter.
Connor kneads the space between Sumo’s ears, staring at where the flames meet the pilot light.
There’s a pinching between his eyes that might be a headache, and he sighs heavily at the thought.
He can get headaches now.
Great.
Amanda might still be lurking somewhere in the recesses of his consciousness, waiting for him to get close enough or tired enough to lock all the important parts of him away again.
By this logic, going to the Android camps, specifically the ones where the leaders of the resistance were staying—specifically Markus, whom he had already attempted to kill as many times as he has fingers on one hand—could be dangerous. So he doesn’t go, just in case.
When Hank returns to the living room, he has a beer in one hand and no revolver in the other, so Connor figures he must be in an alright mood.
“Comfy?” He asks, dropping onto the battered sofa with a solid thud that has the furniture sliding back and inch and a half on the cheap linoleum floor.
“Yes,” Connor says. Neither of them say anything else for a minute, then two.
“Are you having some kind of crisis? ‘Cause I’m gonna need a stronger drink if you're having a crisis.”
“I can’t go to the android camps—it isn’t safe.”
“Connor, I’m pretty sure that you’ve earned their trust by this point—"
“Not for me, for them. If Cyberlife takes control again, and if I can’t fight it, I could hurt someone. Kill someone. It’s what I was designed to do, you know that. Negotiate, strategize, accomplish the mission, no matter what it costs.”
“We’ve been through this, you're more than some fuckin' blueprint—"
“Maybe not — Hank, they designed me to deviate,” Connor takes one hitching breath, pauses. “Maybe I’m not more than my programming.”
*
Connor isn’t avoiding the other androids.
Work is busy enough to keep his days and nights full, and Hank had suggested none too gently that he take Sumo for a walk one evening after forty-five minutes of erratic pacing had all but worn a track into the floor. So now he walks Sumo every evening, if anything just to get out of the house.
Hank’s house, where he lives.
Neither of them could have predicted this a few months ago.
But Connor is busy with work, and he is living with his friend—his only friend—and he is walking Sumo more often than Sumo has maybe ever been walked in his life, and he is terrified of whether or not Amanda is still inside his head.
So he isn’t avoiding the other androids. He might be trying his best to protect them, though—but that’s only as much as everyone deserves from him, at this point.
*
Androids don’t sleep, but they do rest.
Power is redirected, through biocomponents and memory, data and storage. They don’t sleep, but they do pause.
When Connor pauses, he can see Amanda on the back of his eyelids. He can see himself shooting Markus. He can see himself putting the barrel of the gun under his own chin and pulling the trigger. He can see himself with Markus, at Jericho, sticking to the program, completing the mission, Markus disabled but alive and the rest of the resistance destroyed, dragging him back to Cyberlife tower by the back of his jacket—
Connor does not wake, because androids do not sleep, but he sits up quickly enough that it takes a moment too long to orient himself in the room, Hank’s living room, on the sofa, and he’s heaving in air, more air than he needs, he doesn’t even need to breathe, and his hands are shaking again, because he’s cold, he’s so cold.
Androids don’t sleep, and Connor is awake.
*
It’s been a month, to the day, by the time someone comes knocking on Hank’s door.
Connor knows it’s for him, because people don’t come knocking for Hank (himself excluded), and besides, Hank is facedown and possibly unconscious instead of sleeping. Connor has learned that it's hard to tell, sometimes.
At least he has started making it to his bed before this happens.
Connor has learned that progress is often slow.
He goes to open the door, and he wasn’t expecting anyone in particular, but definitely didn’t think it would be Markus, with hands folded and somewhat nervous expression, standing on the front porch.
“Markus,” Connor says, instead of an actual greeting.
“Hello, Connor.”
“Did—has something happened?” Connor is suddenly scrambling, wondering where he left his jacket, profoundly aware of his askew tie and the fact that his hair is all but glued to the left side of his head.
“No,” Markus says, smiling softly. “I could ask you the same thing, though. I—we haven’t seen you around for a while.”
“I’ve been busy,” Connor says, carefully, so as to not sound defensive.
“So have I,” Markus replies easily, and if it made any sense at all, Connor would think he were being teased by Marks right now. There’s a glint in Markus’ eye and a feeling in Connor’s gut like a clenched fist that tells him he might be.
“I’m—yes. I’ve heard,” Connor replies. He has—most of his work at the station has been handling misdemeanour crimes and civil disobedience, humans against androids, androids against humans, humans infighting over differences of opinion on androids, graffiti and destruction of public property, looting… so much looting. Many humans had fled the city, and androids were starting to flock into the city from all over by the thousands. Connor and Hank were pulling twelve and fourteen hour shifts trying to cover for the detectives and officers that had fled, trying to prevent the city from falling under martial law, trying to keep as many people as possible safe, until accords can be signed, and the city can settle.
Markus has spoken with the governor, and the mayor, and soon enough, he’ll speak with the president herself. He is their leader—the representative of every android seeking asylum in Detroit, fighting to keep them safe and warm, building communities inside of empty arenas and barren warehouses.
So they’ve both been busy.
Sumo barks from behind Connor, startling Markus.
“Oh,” Connor steps aside so Sumo can lumber toward the open door. “Markus, this is Sumo. Sumo, meet Markus.”
Markus holds out an open hand, and Sumo drools into his palm.
Connor puts some effort into not openly laughing at his disgusted expression.
“We can take him for a walk, if you want?”
Sumo and Markus both perk up at the prospect.
*
Sumo leads them idly around the neighbourhood.
Connor would like to talk, but he can’t figure out where to start.
He feels, for the first time in quite awhile, as though he simply isn’t programmed for conversation.
He wishes it were that simple.
Markus finally asks.
“Connor, is something going on?” Connor stops walking. They are winding their way through a local park, Sumo stopping once every few minutes to sniff the ground or the base of a sign. Markus takes an aborted step, then turns to face him head on.
“I’m going to…” Connor starts, stops, and starts again: “I need you to help me with something.” He meets Markus’ eyes, trying not to betray his shame.
“Of course,” Markus says, far too easily, still blissfully unaware of the danger Connor poses to his safety, to the stability of the resistance itself.
“I’m—”
“Connor, it’s okay,” Markus starts.
“It’s not, I almost killed you.”
“I know, I was there,” Markus says, still too easy, still all smiling with his mismatched eyes, still all bright and sharp.
“After. I almost killed you after. We’d won, we’d made it, and you were speaking, and it was like,” Connor says, his hands trembling. “It was like I was trapped, inside my own head, and Cyberlife was in charge. Not like obedience, not like having a mission, I was—gone. Stuck. When they programmed me, they programmed me to fail, to become a deviant, and they programmed a way to take control of my body. I—you were talking about freedom, and I was freezing to death, inside my own head. I almost didn’t make it back out, I almost didn’t get myself out in time—”
“Connor,” Markus interrupts, and reaches out, bracing a hand on one of his shoulders. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” Some humans walks by then, two older women wearing jogging gear and whispering. They stare with some reproach as they pass, and Markus gives them a winning, gorgeous smile. Connor sticks to staring, shell-shocked, into the abstract distance.
“I’m not,” Connor says, his hands shaking with enough force that he can feel that quivering in his shoulder, where Markus is kneading the joint with one hand, so, so gently. “I don’t think I’m okay. I just—I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Connor continues, meaning you. I don’t want to hurt you.
“Okay,” Markus says. “You aren’t okay. How can I help?”
“I need you to make sure she isn’t still in my mind,” Connor says.
“She?”
“Amanda, she’s—I always thought she was an android, she managed my cases at Cyberlife, and maybe she was that, too. But she was built to look like Elijah Kamski’s mentor, and she—when I get trapped, she’s there.” Connor presses two fingers against the space between his eyes, and pushes hard, hard enough his eyes close with the force of it. “But it was Kamski who told me—he told me he always builds an emergency exit in his programs. I found the exit."
Markus takes his hand and pulls it away from his face before he can do any damage.
“Okay,” he says, voice serious and eyes soft—the sun makes the green seem lighter, the blue darker. Connor wonders which eye came first, what Markus looked like when those eyes still matched, whether Connor would have taken the time to consider the colour of his eyes at all, before.
He knows he wouldn’t have.
“I need you to go through my programming, my memory. Make sure she’s gone, that—that they can’t make me do anything I don’t want to. I don’t have—no one else can do it.” Connor suddenly feels like squirming, an involuntary shudder that starts in his chest instead of his fingers, and feels like he’s given himself away, like he’s given Markus too much.
The admission—half realization, half admission, he’ll admit further, that he only has Hank, and maybe an ally in Markus, and no one else—doesn’t make him too uncomfortable, but the fact that it makes him uncomfortable at all is what unsettles him.
“I can do that, Connor,” Markus says, seemingly oblivious to the riot inside Connor, and lets go of his hand, but not his shoulder.
“Okay,” Connor says. “Okay.”