Chapter Text
The third bullet hit him straight in the head.
Connor watched it all happen from afar after he wrestled down the sniper and snapped three consecutive punches in the temporal lobe. The man dropped like a bag of bricks and Connor rushed to the railing to watch the chaos below.
He watched as everything went to plan except for Markus. Markus stopped. He stopped right in front of a hail of bullets.
He could see the way his lover’s head snapped back and the way his body toppled.
He saw everything.
And his everything shattered .
Like a tank in one of those games Gavin sometimes mentioned at the office, Connor charged into the fray after launching himself from the building and using a nearby tree to safely land. He bulldozed his way through panicking androids and humans alike until he joined the massacre near North. There were still three of the fifteen men standing. He barreled past North, ignoring the bullets other than to dance around most of the time. The first one died quickly with a snapped neck. The second, a bullet to the head from the first’s gun. The third… Connor shot out his knees before putting mercy lead between his eyes.
Connor stood there shivering, cold even as his biocomponents started to overheat, until he could no longer ignore North’s sobbing.
He turned sharply on his heel to survey the scene behind him. Officer Miller seemed fine and was trying to console a snarling, howling WR400. The gun was on the ground beside her as she clutched at Markus’ body like her life depended on it. Perhaps it did.
Connor’s certainly did.
His HUD flashed warnings but he ignored them, muting them, and stumbled his way over until he fell to his knees in front of them.
North stared at him with red eyes, almost uncomprehendingly, before her expression warped, souring quickly.
“This is your fault,” she growled. “This is all your fault!”
It was his fault. If he hadn’t left Markus…. If he hadn’t made him believe…
This was his fault and he deserved any punishment given to him. That’s why he didn’t react when North shot up and lunged at him, her fists landing harshly on his cheeks and jaw again and again and again.
“Hey! Hey! Get off!”
He vaguely registered Officer Miller’s voice but he couldn’t be bothered to process what he was yelling. He only focused on the error messages filling his HUD until they blinded him a binding crimson. It reminded him utterly of the red wall. The wall he’d broken for Hank… for Markus…
It would be so much easier to fall back onto the nothing of the machine. Onto following orders and not worrying about the morality or the emotion behinds things. It was complete task, work is done. A to B in a straight line. Connor liked straight lines, they were always so much easier.
“Connor!”
Oh. That was Hank.
“Connor!! Jesus christ what the hell happened!”
“I-I… I didn’t mean,” North’s voice was still low but it had lost its razor sharp edge. Instead, she just sounded lost and pained. “I just- Markus is- and he- Dammit!”
“Aw christ. Kid you lashed out in anger I get it. His Led is still glowing so he’s still here… Connor can you hear me?”
Oh, he could hear him just fine. He just didn’t want to. He’d rather focus on the nothing… actually maybe he could turn off his audio? Then he’d just be left with the red… the red of the wall… of Amanda’s roses. Good obedient, easy red.
“Connor? Son? Are you alright? Shit! Connor!”
The word son clanged around his processor noisily and Connor blinked a few times trying to make it stop. No, he didn’t want to care. It went off like a claxon and Connor groaned, the noise staticky with a mechanical undertone. There was nothing wrong with his voice box. It shouldn’t be making those noises.
“I am fine, Hank.”
He could feel his broken chassis try to form his lips around the words but it was awkward and halting. His face was too damaged for that. If he were a human he probably wouldn’t be able to talk at all. But he was an android with a voice box in his throat.
An android…
An android with a blaringly empty void that in the back of his mind that he’d caused. It was only meant to be temporary. Never forever. And yet… It was there. All consuming. Only the red could block it out.
He would never see him again. Never feel him again. Never be able to share…
“Connor, thank god. How are you? Is everything… functioning?”
That’s right. With Hank… he would never be able to share the depth of the emotion deviancy had forced onto him. A human could not see like another android could and Markus… Markus had been the only one he trusted. The only one willing to accept him wholeheartedly…
“My facial plates are jarred and damaged but beyond that, everything is fine Hank.”
He couldn’t do this anymore. Now he understood why the deviants had cracked and lashed out. If this is how strongly they felt…? How did humans deal with this? It was distracting, depressing, overwhelming, overstimulating. His very code screamed at him every minute of every day. Is this what Hank felt when he lost his son? How was he still alive?
Oh… That’s right. He’d said something about killing himself a little every day hadn’t he?
He wanted a slow death.
Connor could agree with that. It was his fault after all. He deserved every bit of suffering he received. Except still his systems screamed, overheating and chilling all at once. He deserved to suffer but at the same time he couldn’t take it. He was much more cowardly than Hank. He couldn’t even tell the man, who seemed like a father to him, goodbye.
Connor really did deserve to suffer.
He glanced at the countdown in the corner of his HUD and his thirium pump sitting next to him on the bed. His fingers itched to grab it again, the fear of death a strong motivator. RK800, Connor, feared life more than death and he was such a coward.
The seconds ticked down and he sat back on the bed, his own bed given to him by Hank only a few days after the revolution, ignoring Sumo snuffling outside.
When the digits got below ten he boosted his heating dramatically, wincing at the burn behind his eyes, and double timed his processors focused on deleting code. He rejected the cooling system's initiation prompt and allowed his thoughts to drift and glitch .
For a very brief moment he wondered what happened to his painted tie.
He wanted to see Markus one last time.
A few weeks later and Hank Anderson was getting worried. Well, more worried than he had been. Connor hadn't been the same after Markus death. He seemed more strained and less genuine in everything he did.
He’d tried everything in the book to get the kid to talk too but that had only gotten him a bitter, “I can’t show you, Hank. Just trust me when I say that I’m fine, please.”
And that had been the start of his mother hen mode. Shit, he hadn’t acted like this since before he’d lost Cole but Connor was special. He’d always been special ever since the moment he met him. During the time of their partnership Hank had gotten attached and to see him spiral like this was disheartening.
God, if someone had told him a year ago, even a few months ago, that he’d be trying to help an android with emotions he’d have knocked their lights out. Hank may be a drunk but he still had years of training under his belt.
He only wished he could do more for his partner. Knocking a few teeth in would be so much easier that this .
Hank sighed as he opened the front door. Jeffrey had let him go earlier than he’d wanted because Hank was insistent. He just had this terrible gut feeling that something was wrong especially since Connor had declined going into the office. It was technically his off day, Hank’s too he’d just been called in, but where Hank went for a job, his robo-poodle usually followed.
“Connor,” he called as soon as the door was closed. Sumo came trudging out of the hallway with a small boof. Hank saw him, saw his dog’s eyes acknowledge him before he shuffled back into the hallway and the sound of scratching echoed into the living room. Hank’s stomach dropped and his gut churned with that wrongness from before.
“Shit, Connor!”
He hurried into the hallway and practically burst down the door to Connor’s room. He stared. He couldn't help it. Couldn’t tear his eyes from the scene that seemed so peaceful, so serene… so horrifying. He wanted to move, wanted it to not be real. His eyes drifted taking in the whole scene.
Connor was laying on the bed, face peaceful, blue staining his white stomach, skin receded to his sides, just like the time at the Stratford Tower when he’d come barreling out of the kitchens to save everyone. Except there was a piece missing this time. A small circular piece that was sitting on the bed next to his legs, his fingertips gently resting on it.
“Jesus Christ!”
Sumo’s shoving past him startled him into moving. He jumped forward, his hand snatching up the vital biocomponent and shoving it back into its proper place with panicked urgency. It snapped in with a click.
Nothing happened.
Hank’s heart squeezed viciously, his thoughts an incoherent tangled mess spinning around and around. He couldn’t stop staring. Couldn’t stop trembling as his vision blurred. The white chassis of his torso was glaring back at him accusingly.
What happened? What did he miss?
He brought a shaking hand up to wipe at the blue stains on Connor’s face; tear tracks as if he’d been crying in his last moments even though the rest of his face was perfectly pristine. The blue smeared into his cheeks, more goopy feeling than normal thirium, and Hank gagged on his own tears and shame.
“Connor? Son? Please?”
The LED on his temple stayed gray.
Not again.
“Fucking god Connor please! Don’t do this to me!”
Not him. Please not him.
His fingers brushed against the small mood ring and he choked again, the tears building and sliding hotly down his cheeks. With gentle hands he brought the kid’s forehead to his own.
“I’m sorry, Connor. I’m so fucking sorry. Fuck!”
There was no reaction. What had he been expecting? Connor was dead. Gone. Just like Cole. And it was still his own fucking fault. His fault. Always his fault. He couldn’t do anything right. He didn’t deserve any happiness. Should have blown his brains out before this.
He couldn’t do this again.
Not again.
He howled gutturally, pouring his self-hatred and despair into his cracking throat, vaguely noticing Sumo’s own mournful bays joining his. Connor deserved it. Fuck he deserved so much more than this. He should have done something, anything. He’d seen the spiral, but not recognized the intensity. He’d wanted to let the android come to him. It was a mistake.
Somewhere in his veil of grief and rage he remembered that androids could be fixed. Could be revived if they were still intact enough. Connor, besides the drying thirium, looked to be in perfect condition.
Maybe there was chance.
He could still be saved and this time Hank wouldn’t let him be quiet.
He wouldn’t let him… couldn’t…
“Well…”
Hank glared at the blonde android. “Well,” he growled.
Simon -he was pretty sure it was Simon- glanced over at the frowning traci. Her arms were crossed, brows lowered in clear agitation.
“Ugh. You’re welcome to see him ya old fuck-”
“Then fucking move-”
She stepped in front of him her arms dropping, stance steady. She would have no issues fighting him and tracis packed one helluva punch for non combat androids.
“Look. Connor didn’t just pull out his thirium pump regulator. Whatever he did he also fried his processors and melted his eyes. He’s not-” her voice hitched almost imperceptible, her shoulders drooping before she squared them again. “He’s not the same. We fixed as much as we could but-”
He already didn’t like the sound of ‘fried his processors’ but that ‘but’ made his heart drop, nausea roiling in his stomach. Not to mention her demeanor. Nor-something or other was one of Connor’s closer allies, friends, in Jericho. He talked about her a lot. Was fond of her and she seemed fond of him in turn besides her berserker moment on New Years. Seeing her distraught, because fuck if he wasn’t a detective he knew the signs, was icing on the shit cake he was about to eat.
“But?”
“We had to do a factory reset to even get him up and running. His coding was so shattered that I couldn’t hope to piece it together without a base. Markus might’ve… Well. It patched itself mostly but he’s not going to be the same,” Simon interjected.
Jesus Christ.
To know that Markus could’ve saved Connor- No. He couldn’t… wouldn’t allow himself to think on it. He’d fucking promised the sassy little shit he’d try to do better and that meant getting Connor back no matter how brain damaged. He couldn’t do it without him.
Wait.
“What about his deviancy?”
Both of their grimaces gave him the answer to that question.
He shoved past them into the sterilized metal room, frown heavy on his lips. Connor stood perfectly still staring straight ahead, eyes blank. They were a different color brown, not as deep or puppyish. The lighter brown almost made him seem a bit more intimidating with the blank look he currently wore.
Hank twisted his jaw trying not to bite through his tongue.
“Connor.”
No reaction.
“Connor!”
“RK800, register your name.”
Hank jolted and stared back into soulful whiskey eyes. Simon’s lips quirked bitterly and he nodded his chin towards Connor. His head was tilted towards them, eyes attentive.
They were still eerily blank.
“You’ve g-gotta be fucking kidding me.”
He couldn’t. There was no fucking way.
He swallowed dryly, tongue feeling like cotton in his mouth.
“I think if it were any of us he’d want you to do it.” Simon’s hand was on his shoulder, squeezing gently. He wanted to say he hated it but the contact was grounding him.
Fuck.
“Your name is Connor,” he wheezed, choking on his tongue.
“Hello. My name is Connor.”
The smile was straight and empty.