Chapter Text
After Markus made his speech to the crowd of newly-freed androids, Connor slipped away into a corner where he could hide until night fell.
It wasn’t the final straw, what Amanda had done. In some ways it had felt like karma, or catharsis, like a horror he had earned and deserved even as he fought it so desperately – so it didn’t hurt as much as Connor felt it should have (though it hurt quite a lot.) Actually, Connor would be hard-pressed to say what had been the final straw, the event that pushed him past the point of tolerance into a keening void of black emotion.
Was it when Lieutenant Anderson had held a gun to his head and asked him if he was afraid to die, and Connor had said no because that was the answer Amanda would have wanted?
Was it the third death, when the task of crawling across the floor had seemed insurmountable and he just closed his eyes to wait?
Was it when Elijah Kamski had pushed a gun into his hands and whispered for him to destroy the machine in front of him, and he had obeyed despite the ringing emptiness of death that echoed behind his eyes?
Was it when he looked Markus in the eyes and finally allowed himself to understand that everything he’d worked so hard for was wrong?
The answer was out of Connor’s reach, and in the end it didn’t matter at all – by the time he opened his eyes on the stage again and put the gun in his pocket, he was drowning and he knew he couldn’t stay. The few hours left of the day passed in a blur, and people passed his hiding place by without a second glance. It wasn’t until long after darkness fell that Connor dared come out, wandering the abandoned streets in numb search of a place to go.
He couldn’t stay here.
Connor walked, and it wasn’t fast enough so he jogged, and then he was running, taking turns at random as if to lose himself in the streets despite the GPS in his HUD that kept careful track of every step he took.
It was close to one edge of the city that he slowed from a run to a jog to a slow, listless walk, feeling no better than when he’d started. His mood got darker with every step, a tired and raw anxiety wrapping around his shoulders. He didn’t trip only because the motion protocols were mindless, calculated in a distant part of his mind, but his walk got slower and slower until he stopped, overwhelmed by the prospect of going a single step further.
He looked down. A few feet in front of him, there was a little doll, clearly old and used – rain-soaked, stained, worn from the years. One of the printed-on eyes had had most of the color rubbed away. A little bottle patterned with flowers sat about six inches away.
It was stained with thirium, like much of the street nearby. If there was a body – a YK model, maybe – that the doll had belonged to, it had been cleared away. Connor let his legs fold to kneel down beside it, hands pressing flat to the ground, and his choking misery threatened to swallow him up again. His body heaved and shivered, his shoulders bent under a nonexistent weight, and for a while he stared silently at the doll. There were brown stains peeking out from the back of it – blood, more likely than not, and very old blood at that.
[2005 Kinder Garden Babies doll, violet]
What was he going to do? Where could he go? Lieutenant Anderson, who looked at him with such disgust, wouldn’t think twice of him – the police department, eying him warily, certainly wouldn’t either. Jericho, which he’d harmed so horribly, would be quite right to cast him out, and the names just piled up – the Tracis, the Chloe, Ralph and Rupert and the HK400 who hadn’t had a name at all-
And now Amanda among them, and Connor was alone.
Before he could think twice about it, his hands scooped up the doll, smaller than a true infant and just big enough to comfortably hold in two hands, and he squeezed it to his chest. His next breath came in a gasp, and he choked on the one after. The third came close to a wheeze.
The fourth wrenched itself up in a sob, and tears, saline cleaning solution, started to spill down his cheeks, with no rain to mask them, only the soft dark of a city night. He clung to the abandoned doll like he’d forgotten how to let go, like if he did he’d lose himself and fall, and it didn’t matter if it was true because he wasn’t letting go. He stayed in place and rocked himself and cried, wept and sobbed and surrendered to the tempest that had dragged at him for days.
Connor stayed there until the light of dawn started to lighten the sky above, and while the tears had stopped by then the shaking hadn’t, nor had he loosened from his tightly curled posture, wrapped around the doll in search of comfort he didn’t deserve and no one else would provide.
But with the dawn would come the first stirrings of civilization, calmed down for only a night by the terror of the revolution, and Connor couldn’t stay.
He took the doll with him. Tucked her bottle into his pocket and her body against his chest, and walked away, hurried but not frantic, not desperate. The one to whom she had previously belonged had no need of her anymore (YK500 #548 901 257, designation: Sadie) and he couldn’t bring himself to put her down. It was silly, it was irrational, but he felt so lost and having something to hold, to stroke and neaten, helped ground him.
Connor held on only long enough to make his way into a condemned parking garage, to find an alcove to tuck himself into and set the doll in his lap, and he pushed himself into stasis because he suddenly found he couldn’t stand to be awake for one moment longer.
He dreamed of falling, not from a fifty story building but into an abyss that never ended, knowing that he wouldn’t be alive to feel himself hit the ground.
“I know that my memory ends before I truly die,” Connor murmured to the doll, to Venus in her little stained purple outfit emblazoned with a brand name that had long become too worn to read. “But I cannot help but feel like the silence between upload and reactivation is too… dense. There is no life after death, Venus, at least not for androids. There’s nothing but emptiness waiting for us.”
He had shifted locations three times in the last week, not wanting to stay in one place more than a few days. No one would look for him, except perhaps to kill him in vengeance, but he did not want to invoke curiosity by becoming a staple anywhere either. He had taken Venus with him every time, her bottle in the crook of her arm or in his pocket, and her face tucked against his chest.
She appeared to have no mechanical parts, but despite this hindrance she often moved in the night and sometimes when he simply turned around for a few moments. Connor found he didn’t mind. That was, apparently, just Venus’ nature.
Connor exhaled, letting his forehead fall against that of the little doll and his eyes close. “Is that what I sentenced Chloe to, Venus? Did I sentence her to a null eternity?” He huffed softly. “I suppose that’s a contradiction, of sorts, but I can’t bring myself to abandon the thought. Or did Kamski reupload her? Perhaps she dreams of the emptiness too.”
The blood staining her clothing had been rubbed and worn beyond crunching under his touch like a near-fresh stain, and testing had not revealed any known DNA profile. Likely she was too old for that. Her ‘model’ was, after all, thirty-three years old. The bloodstains probably predated androids as a people, let alone Connor himself.
There are no dreams, Connor. There is only… the imprint of your own memories.
Venus’ voice came in a whisper, barely on the edge of even Connor’s exceptional hearing, and he found that this didn’t bother him either. Not only was it not the first time he’d heard a voice attributable to Venus, but he simply… didn’t have the energy to mind.
Venus was the only one he’d spoken to in the last week, and the only one he planned to speak to for a very long time yet.
“I know,” he whispered against her forehead. “I know.”
Shh. It’s okay to cry. I won’t tell.
Connor did, not the wracking sobs of the first night but silent and trailing tears.
“Lieutenant Anderson wanted to send me there,” he breathed through the static rasp of his vocal module. “I can’t help but think that he knew. I deserve it now, and I deserved it even more then, but it still feels… Lieutenant Anderson and I are not friends, but I still can’t bring myself to reconcile that night with his behavior at large.” Pause. “Perhaps he thinks of it as a relief. He wants so badly to go there himself.”
A few moments of silence, and Connor breathed, deep and shuddering, leaning on the concrete wall blocking off the roof’s edge, under the cover of the witching hour.
Eventually, he lifted his head, and released Venus with one hand to wipe the tears away from his face. His Cyberlife jacket was long gone, replaced by a hoodie he’d scrounged up from somewhere, too big and unmarked. His LED blinked miserable yellow, in plain sight.
Some people do, Venus whispered. Coleen did. Now I make other people want to, like her family made her.
“I suppose I couldn’t hurt anybody there,” Connor murmured, unfocused eyes gazing down at Venus’, which stared back up at him, blank and worn pale, lips pursed in the faintest of innocent smiles. “That would be a relief all on its own. I would never hurt anybody ever again.” He hesitated, but this was Venus, and if he didn’t speak the thought would swallow him. “And nobody could hurt me.”
Not you, Venus said, breathy and soft. You’re not like them. You’re a cursed doll, like me.
“Oh,” Connor breathed, and he pulled Venus to his chest, cradled careful and kind. “That’s alright then.”
His tired gaze stared out over the city from the parking garage rooftop where he stood. He found he wasn’t as frightened of heights as he had been once.
Connor washed Venus eventually, as gentle as his well-calibrated hands could manage, soap and water in a public bathroom. The very oldest stains, the old blood soaked into her back, didn’t wash away, but years of dirt and dust turned the water grey and swirled down the drain. It didn’t brighten her outfit to a new color, but it was a faded pastel lavender that Connor had learned to find more comforting than almost anything else in the world.
He patted her dry with the paper towels, ignored the humans that edged around him, and sighed softly when not all of the moisture came up so easily.
“I could set you in the sun for a while,” Connor murmured, lifting her and setting her in the crook of his elbow, body half turned in to his. He set the bottle against her wrist and it did not fall, and then straightened her crooked cap. “That would likely dry away the last of the moisture before you mildewed; the sun is bright today.”
Venus did not reply, but Connor nodded anyway, stepping outside and slipping away from the slight crowds and into darker, more remote alleyways with all the haste he could manage.
He’d been on his own for months now; spring was in full swing, and much of the rain had petered off, along with almost all of the snow. That was much of why he had chosen to wash Venus today – the weather was near-optimal for helping her dry.
“I could have waited until summer, and this part would have been easier,” he said to her, quiet, “but then you would have been dirty for much longer, and I’m certain that can’t be pleasant.”
He’d found a decommissioned ship to stay in for that week, not too terribly far from where Jericho had been, but not so close that it seemed disrespectful either. Finding places to stay had become easier as the habit developed, and soon he would be able to reuse old locations without arousing fresh suspicion.
Connor still avoided people as much as he could – androids more than humans, but humans still as much as he feasibly could. He felt- anxious, unwelcome, wary around others.
Fortunately, others felt wary around him as well. Or more specifically, around Venus.
He found a sunny spot within the rusty ship and Venus down carefully. “There. That should do.”
Thank you, Venus breathed. I haven’t been clean in so long.
Connor smiled faintly, reaching out to brush his fingers over the violet cap. “Of course. It’s the very least I could do.” He tilted his head back, looking at the sky. “I’ve never seen a spring before. It’s… nice, to see the flowers bloom.” He swallowed. “Except the roses. I don’t know why, but the roses make me feel ill.” He glanced at Venus. “I’m an android. I don’t get ill.”
I have seen many springs, Venus whispered to him. They always bring a new year.
“I don’t need a new year,” Connor said before he could think better of it. “All I need is… is this. I’m okay if it stays like this forever.” The thought of before made his breath catch, and the thought of what may lay ahead made him shiver.
You’ll get one anyway, Venus said. But you can make it the same if you want.
“I do,” Connor said fervently. “I’d mess up anything else I tried. I always have.”
Venus did not reply, and Connor fell silent, hunched down on himself again, and watched the progress of evaporating moisture instead. He already wanted to pick up and hold Venus again, but he wanted to make sure she dried properly first.
He didn’t want her to wear down any more than he could prevent. He didn’t know what he’d do if she fell apart.
Between his own capabilities and Venus’ own, Connor made it clear from November to June before encountering anyone he knew. But Markus, it turned out, was made of stronger stuff than that.
Connor woke up to a rabbit heartbeat pounding in his chest, eyes already wide before he understood what was happening; a stranger had entered the condemned apartment complex where he’d spent the last week, and as he sat up, he met their eyes.
Markus stared back, rigid and understandably wary, but standing steady in his place with his hand clenched tight around the doorframe.
Connor pushed himself carefully back, just half a foot, without pausing to think about it. He couldn’t bring himself to speak. His hand found Venus, always within easy reach, and he pulled her tight against himself, internal ventilation kicking up a notch as if already threatening to overheat. He didn’t stand.
Markus’ eyes flicked briefly to the doll, and then settled on Connor again, noticeably dimmer, as if sad despite the tension that still wracked his frame.
“Connor,” Markus said, soft and gentle, the way one spoke to an injured animal. And then, impossibly, he smiled, more reassuring than happy but a surprise either way. Connor stared at him. “You’re a hard man to find.”
He slid in, slow and easy to follow with no sudden movements, but Connor scooted a little farther away anyway, eyes wide. Markus lowered himself to the ground, crouching but not sitting, and didn’t let his smile fall.
“Lieutenant Anderson has been asking after you,” Markus continued, quiet. “He seems to think you’ll show up in Jericho sooner or later. Whether or not you do is up to you, of course.”
Connor took a breath, short and sharp. The hand still on the ground came up to cradle the back of Venus’ head, holding her tighter against himself, and he knew it made him look a little deranged but he felt slightly deranged, so it was fine.
Markus’ voice became, impossibly, softer. “Your absence has been noted, I should say. Those you brought from Cyberlife Tower, in particular, have missed you. I’m sure they would welcome your company, and perhaps your guidance, should you offer.”
Perhaps involuntarily, Markus’ gaze flickered around the room – the worn walls, the recently rearranged furniture. It was a temporary dwelling, for Connor, and it showed. Markus frowned, and Connor’s rusty social routines said, worry.
“And I have been curious as well,” Markus added. “I know you weren’t yourself as a machine, Connor – no one is. It isn’t fair that you’re being blamed for the sins you couldn’t help.”
Connor shuddered quietly, and spoke for the first time. “It was never about what was fair.”
Markus paused, visibly surprised, and met Connor’s eyes.
“I suppose not,” Markus agreed after a moment. “Still, I’m sorry you had to suffer for it.”
Connor shrugged. Markus hardly knew the whole of it, anyway.
Markus smiled at him, small and strained. “Will you at least consider coming by, Connor? I’d consider it a personal favor – I’ve been worried, I must admit.”
His dual-toned eyes were too intense. He seemed sincere.
Connor hesitated, and then slowly moved to sit cross-legged, set Venus in his lap and looked at her because he couldn’t bear to look at Markus for a moment longer.
“I don’t know if I should,” he murmured to Venus, knowing Markus could hear him but unable to keep himself from speaking anyway. “I’m not welcome in Jericho, nor should I be – my sins as a machine can’t be wiped away by simple time, and they’ll be afraid and they won’t be wrong.” He paused. “But perhaps I can help, if I really try. If they want me to. Don’t I owe them that?”
Venus did not reply; she never did around others. Regardless, Connor knew what her response would be. This was Connor’s choice alone – Venus went where she was taken.
He picked Venus up again, tucked her against his chest behind crossed arms, and looked at Markus, who watched him expectantly, a faint furrow in his brow.
“Did Lieutenant Anderson really ask after me?”