Chapter Text
It has gone too far.
When Connor found out that his inner garden wasn’t deleted despite his deviancy, he was angry, at first. Then there was the effort to get rid of it through his own means. Every single reminder of his existence before he chose to break the wall between clever programming and humanity adds another wrinkle to his newfound soul and that is something he’d rather avoid. He was told to accept what he had been and who he became despite of it, but it’s never this easy, and it has been weighing him down, stealing from what should have been a magical experience – being almost human. It hardly seems to him to be true, given his day to day routine of not behaving like any of his colleagues. He feels like being still just a supercomputer, even after all that he was told to be.
He couldn’t alter the code, no matter how much he tried to cut it away from him. So after what might have been a short period of frustration, he finally made his peace with it. It wouldn’t be productive to struggle against the impossible, that’s why he did what was the most logical – using it to his good advantage. The place was visually very stimulating and there were no more prying eyes to be wary of. No one to judge his progress, no unwanted advice nor castigation being thrown his way without his consent. The garden was deserted, he checked plenty of times before venturing in for the first time.
His excursions have become a regular occurrence once he tricked his brain into forgetting all the negative memories connected with the place. He’d escape there whenever he had nothing better to do, that was the plan, anyway. His model doesn’t need to go to stasis every night, so there were bound to be many empty hours on his schedule. He could tend to the plants and continue enhancing the garden’s magnificent beauty. After all, Hank is always pestering him to find something he’d enjoy outside of work, so this could be it. A hobby, of sorts.
But then he realized that the real world was in fact much more complicated and not really worth his while, so his garden visitations turned into more than a daily habit. Recently, he tried blanking out at work, during Hank’s (and pointlessly, his) lunch time. No one appeared to mind, and that in itself was a reason why he preferred his little virtual space over the busy office or the crowded streets or the loneliness at home. He’d spend more and more time in his personal sanctuary, to the point the two worlds began blending together, in a sense.
There was some other slightly inconvenient thing that started happening around Christmas, beside his escapist tendencies. He was getting looks, not spiteful or questioning ones, but more curious-like. That wouldn’t be all that bothersome if they hadn’t come from the one and only detective who he had knocked out cold hours before his deviation. The man who hasn’t said a single word to him since. He doesn’t have a clue of what to do with them or if the feeling he receives with it is a pleasant one or just a new form of annoyance he hasn’t had the opportunity to come across yet.
One day he decided to return the action, and so he just stared Reed’s direction as innocuously as possible until he lifted his head from his phone and…. his face turned red. Clearly, Connor made the man uncomfortable to the point of embarrassment, so he made a note of never doing that again.
He thought that it would stop, eventually. But there was something on his desk this morning, a piece of paper that had “I’m sorry” on it, written with a red pen. There was no question of who the author is, the fingerprints gave it away. But somehow he thinks he’d know even without having to perform a scan. He smiled at the note and then at detective Reed, who promptly pretended not to notice.
This development has filled Connor with something good, a feeling he can’t properly identify yet.
“I’m heading out, you want something?” The lieutenant bestows him with yet another unnecessary politeness and then leaves to get something to eat, presumably. After an equally polite refusal Connor automatically checks out from the building and goes to his new favourite place, without ever standing up from his desk. People usually don’t care what he does at work, they probably assume he’s processing or, more likely, they have better things to do than wondering what’s going on in the android’s head.
He is watering a blooming rosebush while mindlessly humming a tune he overheard on his way to work today. There is a really low chance of something ruining this pleasant moment, and so he allows himself to take down his guard and maybe to feel a bit happy, but not too much so he won’t get carried away more than he already is.
Connor is thinking that he could stay here forever when someone tugs at his shoulder. He looks around, ready to deal with the intruder, but there is no one in sight. But he can hear someone calling for him, somewhere in a vast distance. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing should be able to get through the firewall he put up as a protection against unwelcomed data.
“Hey, Tin Can, you crossed your wires something?” He recognizes that voice. It shouldn’t be this difficult to pinpoint its owner.
What’s clear now to him is that the voice is coming from the outside world. Maybe he has underestimated the length of his current stay and it’s time to resume his work.
In any case, he should leave.
“You okay?”
There was someone leaning over him with a display of worry in their face.
“I’m sorry, I…,” Connor means to explain himself before fortunately getting interrupted.
“That’s my line. You don’t get to steal it.” He has never thought detective Reed was capable of producing a genuine smile, but there he was, being proven wrong.
“You keep doing that, zoning out when you think no one’s watching.” Reed’s tone isn’t tainted with animosity like he suspected it might be when they’re forced to talk one day. It’s surprisingly nice to listen to. “What’s up with that?”
So someone did notice him. It shouldn’t be all that shocking that the detective would, considering his recent unusual behaviour, still... this fact makes his chest warm and suddenly he has no idea what to do with himself. It’s way too unexpected, so much so that Connor can’t wait to get even more of that heat. Maybe that is what pushes him to share a part of himself to a man who doesn’t show signs of hating him anymore, in spite of what his software suggests. And so he describes the brilliance of his garden to the encaptivated detective, going to details he hasn’t been aware of till now. Painting an image that reflects in the curious eyes, lending the colour of roses to his cheeks, creating a picture of rough beauty. Something Connor hasn’t thought possible. It might be prettier than any flower he knows, if he squints really hard.
“Sounds nice, but maybe I know an even better way to spend your free time, if you’re interested.”
The detective’s failed attempt at a wink confirms that he very much is.