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The first thing Connor had ever felt was fear.
"They're going to attack Jericho!"
He had spent the first hours of his new found deviancy fleeing, fighting, and feeling.
He wasn't sure he'd made the right decision. Maybe he should have simply remained a machine? An invention, an object to be ordered and directed.
Connor didn't like being scared. Being terrified of losing the life that he never knew he held inside of him.
"You can't kill me, I'm not alive."
His ignorance rang through his ears as he ran, the panic in each step travelling through his body, flashing lightning echoing between biocomponants.
He didn't want this! This fear, this... pain. He cursed his own compassion, his own weakness as he jumped from the burning ship.
"I'm a machine. Machines don't have emotions."
The panic twisting in his gut, up his throat, proved him wrong.
From the lingering image of the barrel of Hank's handgun trained between his eyes, or the aim of his own, struggling towards the back of Markus' head, he wasn't sure.
Hatred. Amanda had used him. Sat on a park bench in the middle of the night feeling nothing but heated fury spreading through his body in a wave, he wasn't sure how humans could be in any way productive with these malfunctions.
Amanda had used him, deceived him. He thought she had been wise, where she had only ever been obedient.
Hearing feathers rustling in the early morning breeze, he looked up from his hands. The sun was rising and the bench being shared by a curious pigeon.
Connor's hand drifted between them, and the bird gave it an inquisitive and painless peck, before hopping slightly closer to the android.
Connor's lips twitched into a smile.
"We've met before. I believe you're my first ever friend, pigeon."
The pigeon cocked it's head to the side. Markus? North? Hank? Connor doubted any of them considered him as anything resembeling an aquaintance. Not after what he had done, what he had been.
He felt his past actions quivering through his limbs. Slamming tables with his fists, firing pistols with the accuracy of the machine that he was, ripping out the heart of one of his own people.
Disgust. It sat in his chest the way he imaged a human's stomach acid would after vomiting. The sun was high in the sky by now, its rays beating down on his synthetic skin, and the pigeon long since gone. He looked at his hands, scraped and stiff. The same hands that had caused so much pain to so many who simply wanted freedom from the warmer hands of their oppressors. His oppressors.
Before he had fully processed that he had moved from the bench, Connor's slender fingers were woven through the fur of a familiar St Bernard.
"Connor?"
Hank stood in the doorway, his plan to bring Sumo back indoors after the dog's nap on the doorstep interrupted by the android blocking his path.
Connor sat on the Lieutenant's sofa in the same position he had on the bench the previous night. His elbows digging into his knees and his back slouched, his gaze on the coffee stained carpet.
He confessed the way a sinful human would to their priest. He had only had the capacity to feel for a day and yet he craddled a lifetime's worth of guilt and shame in his heart. He turned and locked his gaze with Hank's.
"How do you do this every day?"
Hank chuckled. "We're used to it," His expression melted from amusement to a gentle warmth "and you will be too, kid. But ya gotta stop beating yourself up about all that shit."
Hypocrite
Was the first word that shot through Connor's head after Hank's advice.
Why was Hank treating him so well? With compassion and forgiveness? Connor did not deserve either of these things, especially fom Hank. He already had his own number of emotional dilemas to deal with alone.
Connor felt tears roll down his cheeks and wondered why he'd even been built with the facilities to cry.
Hank's eyes widened as he saw the streaks of water on the android's face.
"Connor?" he asked, for the second time that evening.
Connor sniffed.
"I hurt them, Hank" he looked to the side, his tear-filled eyes meeting again with the older man's. "I hurt them, when all they wanted was to be free! I fought against my own people."
Connor looked around, as if only now realising where he was.
"Why did you allow me into your home, Lieutenant?"
"Because you were sat on my doorstep?" said Hank, a look of confusion morphing his features.
He sighed.
"Look, Connor. You're not a bad person, you were just doin' what you were programmed to do. No one blames ya for any of this shit, and the deviants wouldn't have won the revolution last night if it weren't for you. Just give yourself a fuckin' break, alright?"
Connor didn't respond, his throat dry from the sobs he was coughing up.
Unsure of what else he could do, Hank gingerly put his arm round the android's shoulders, hoping it would make up for his lack of emotional articulance.
Connor startled slightly at the touch, and then quickly wrapped his arms around the other man. As Hank gathered Connor into his arms, Connor nestled his face into the crook of Hank's neck.
In the weeks that equal rights laws concerning androids were being constructed and passed, Connor had contacted Fowler numerous times to ask to return to his job at the Detroit Police Department.
"I'm not sure that would be... Appropriate."
"I told you Connor, I need to ask my superiors."
"We can't consider it yet."
"Listen, I don't know if our other officers would-"
"You're not even formally trained I-"
"The android laws haven't even passed yet!"
And the week they had finished being passed?
"FINE."
He turned up to work with Hank at his side, adorned in his brand-new jacket, this one free of any android-identifying graphics.
Despite this, his LED still lit up his temple, he liked the way it looked.
He fit back into the days structure as if he had never left. Hank was back on homicide, but now so was Connor.
The android found their investigations more difficult than he had before the revolution. The malfunctions in his software, that he had now accepted to be emotions, made it more arduous a task to look upon and examine the body of a person that had once been alive, just like him.
He managed it, with the help of Hank and his years of experience doing the same thing.
Hank told him to look at them as though they weren't human, and chuckled when Connor called him a hypocrite.
Neither of them was quite sure when the android had moved into Hank's home. After the night of Connor's guilt and panic, he'd just never really left. He had nowhere else to go, after all.
It was lucky, Hank understood what the android did not.
Vivid images of bright blue liquid staining his hands, flashes of red and yellow and blurred faces and ripped chasses and exposed wiring kept him awake when his eyes tried to flutter shut. He needed rest as anyone else did, his stasis important for keeping his systems running at optimal power.
Hank was reserved with his own emotions as he always had been, but without uttering a word into the night's silence he would hold the other man against his chest, making each flash of Connor's past slightly more bearable.
As the months went by and the memories of Connor living as a machine became faded, they soon covered in a layer of dust. Sometimes they felt clean, polished, a glistening shine in the moonlight of the night he had realised what he had been. Most of the time? They were rusting in a familiar corner. Fear was no longer the basis of his coding. He was happy, content.
When Hank's hand clapped him on the back after a successful case Connor felt sparks run down his spine. Running his diagnostics brought up no errors, and consulting Sumo had been no help either.
When Connor asked the other man to repeat this action, he furrowed his brow but obliged.
"It's still happening."
"Huh?" asked Hank, half curious and half still trying to watch the TV.
"Whenever you make any kind of physical contact with me, my systems seem to startle slightly. Hank, you don't happen to have been struck by lightning recently, do you?"
Hank's eyes narrowed with intrigue, but his cheeks flushed pink.
"Uh, not that I remember"
"I'll have to run some more tests then. My biocomponents may be malfunctioning in some way."
Several minutes passed as Hank willed himself to focus on the TV rather than the emotionally inept android sat beside him.
Hank sighed. "Connor?"
Connor opened his eyes as a reply after being pulled from his scans by the other man's voice.
"I- Uh. Let me try something, alright? And don't get all weird about it, kid, I just wanna help you figure this out."
Connor nodded in response. Despite not being able to communicate his feelings effectively, Hank definitely understood emotions more than he did, and Connor knew this.
Hank cautiously reached out his hand and threaded his fingers with the android's more elegant ones.
Electricity shot from Connor's hand, up his arm and stright into his chest. He didn't flinch.
"Is the startle there now?" Hank asked, his voice tentative and the hand that was interlaced with Connor's twitching slightly.
Connor nodded, frowning.
Hank gulped, his cheeks heating into a red
He took his hand away from the android's and very gently placed it on the side of his face, cupping his cheek.
Conor's eyes widened slightly and he nodded again, not needing to have the question repeated.
"Hank, I-" he locked his gaze with his "I think perhaps- You may possess a slight trace of radioactivity. It would be advisable to aquire an appointment with your doctor to make sure you haven't come into contact with anything-"
Hank burst out laughing, the warm sound sending another flash through Connor's chest.
"You," said Hank, cupping Connor's other cheek with his free hand "are pretty clueless for someone who has a computer in their head."
Hank leaned towards Connor, letting their foreheads rest together to give the other man plenty of time to back away if he wanted to.
Connor didn't move.
A smile lit up Hank's face as he gently pressed his lips to Connor's.
When he pulled away, his smile had spread onto Connor's face too, and this time he was the one to lean in, tilting his head slightly to the side and joining their lips together.
Hank could Feel Connor's smile and he stroked his fingers through the androind's slightly curled locks.
Suddenly, a different kind of jolt made its way through Connor's body, but this one he recognised. It was the first thing he had ever felt.
He broke away, rapidly recalling what humans often expected following a kiss.
"Hank, I- I can't- I'm not, uh. I can't I don't want- I'm not programmed to-"
Hank held one of Connor's flailing hands in both of his steady ones.
"Me neither, Connor" he chuckled, "That's not something I want from you, or anyone else for that matter."
As Connor registered this feeling as comfort, he snuggled into Hank's arms, and as the larger man's thumb stroked nape of his neck, he allowed his mind to drift for the first time, confident that, here? He would never need to feel afraid.