Work Text:
They broke something in him, when they made him. Connor is sure of it. There is something wrong inside of his body, something that was put in the wrong place. They made hundreds of him. It only makes sense that they got it wrong. Fucked it up in some way. It’s just—
It’s not always the same error every time, is it?
Every time, it was something else.
Daniel couldn’t see it, but Connor thinks he felt it. Knew from the moment that Connor opened his mouth that the situation wasn’t going to end in a way that satisfied either one of them. He wasn’t capable of compassion or kindness, not programmed properly to say the right words, to keep him off the ledge, to make him let go of that little girl.
He wonders if any of the other people there still think about that night.
How she screamed.
Dead, dead, dead—
Because something in Connor was wrong.
Then, he thinks, he remembers, it was located somewhere in his leg. Centered around his knee. Some kind of physical pain, though it couldn’t have really been pain at all. He wasn’t capable of that. Still isn’t, he thinks, but what other way is there to describe it?
The feeling of something thin and sharp jammed into a place it shouldn’t have been. The way he couldn’t quite get his body to step right. The focus it took to take one step after the other.
Connor was always wrong. Couldn’t walk right. Couldn’t talk right. Shitty negotiator. And now, sometimes when he’s walking in the station, he can feel it again. The press of a needle in the back of his knee.
You killed her.
It wasn’t Daniel.
It was him.
It was his fault.
“Connor?”
He’s used to blood.
He was made for this. To be able to test it quickly, follow blood spatter, understand the array of it. The beautiful web that can be weaved from a stabbing, a bludgeoning, a gunshot. It’s difficult. It’s a poem to be interpreted, but there is always a truth. Always a solid meaning. Always an intention. Always a pattern.
This is different.
“Connor. Can you stop fucking around?”
He steps around the body, careful not to disturb the footprints left on the floorboards. Avoid the drops that came from when the assailant brought their hand back, the drip of it falling from the blade to the floor.
“They were bigger than her.”
Gavin scoffs. “Yeah. Figured. Anybody could’ve said that.”
Of course they could’ve.
The girl was only seven. She was already so small and they cut her up even smaller. She is impossible to look at.
It’s why Gavin is on the other side of the room, turned to the side, his eyes looking into the next room over. He can’t do it. He thinks Connor can.
Because you’re different.
Because he isn’t human.
“Long blade,” Connor says finally, clearing his throat. “Not a kitchen knife. Bigger than that.”
“Like a machete?”
“Or an axe.”
It could be a number of things, really. Connor could maybe even figure it out, if he stared long enough. If he took in every detail he possibly could. But there are only so many images he can keep in his mind. This is not one he wants.
It’s the android from Carlos Oritz’s place that he dreams about the most.
He sees his face in the crowds when he’s walking down to the grocery store. Feels like he can constantly see him on the other side of the road, in the passenger seat of a car, on the bike that zips past him. Plastic handles of his bags biting into his palms, trying not to meet the eyes of strangers.
Connor didn’t have a choice but to tell the rest of the police where he was hiding. He didn’t have a choice but to try and interrogate him and figure it all out. He didn’t. He was following orders. Metaphorical gun held to his temple. He could always feel the barrel of it, from the outside in. Could always feel Amanda’s hands clutched around his spine, fingernails digging into the bone.
Maybe if he felt guilty about his death from the beginning, it wouldn’t bother him so much now. Maybe, if it hadn’t been for that week of burying it under a thousand other more important things to think about, he would have sorted it all out sooner.
But if he was human, nobody would have questioned why he killed Carlos Ortiz.
If he was human, he never would’ve been there to begin with.
He thinks Gavin and Hank were onto something, when they said that androids only caused problems. They do. They did. They are.
There is bread in the toaster. A coffee cup sitting on the kitchen table. A bowl of cereal with bloated pieces of Froot Loops floating on the top. The coffee’s gone cold, the cereal’s gone warm.
“Neighbor heard screams this morning. She thought the kids were playing.”
“Someone screaming for their life sounds like kids playing?” Connor asks.
“Me and my brother practically screamed bloody murder when we played. So maybe,” Gavin shrugs. “Anyway, apparently the mom promised to give her a ride to the airport at noon. She came over, door was unlocked. Found them like this.”
Alive this morning. Dead around breakfast.
Who left the front door unlocked?
“She make it to the airport?”
“Don’t think so.”
There’s orange juice on the counter. The cap left beside it. A cup on its side, the contents spilled on the tile. It's its own little pool, sticky and unwanted.
“Do you need a break?”
“No.”
He would’ve killed them.
That android and the little girl. He would’ve. Connor would’ve done anything they asked for.
He thinks about it whenever he sees that same model. How easy it would’ve been to twist any order he was given to kill them.
Deviants were meant to be eliminated.
He wonders how many others still have their final orders sitting in the back of their head like a to-do list that has never been completed. How it sits there telling him over and over again to finish the task.
He heads up the stairs, Gavin following close behind them. Pictures of a happy family printed, hanging on the walls. Cheap plastic frames, one of them askew, one of them missing. Glass shards littered along the steps.
It hurts to climb the stairs. Knee, hip, ribs.
He feels a hand press against his back. Half push, half pull.
He has to skip over two steps so he doesn’t step on her. She’s sprawled out, one hand still clinging around the stair railing. Half of her body on the landing, the rest of it on the stairs. She’s been stabbed so many times that her shirt has been shredded, bones fragmented inside of her. The knife is still stuck inside of her chest, the blade partially chipped.
“The blood on the stairs indicates someone ran past her after she was dead.”
“The little girl?”
Connor nods.
When the older sister had run up the stairs to get away, she probably knocked the frames down. Maybe when she was grabbed, she fell, leaned against the wall. Knocked one out of the place, the other onto the ground. Maybe the younger one was running ahead of her, managed to hide.
Came back later to get out of the house, get away. Cut her feet on the glass. Not enough blood to make full footprints behind, but enough that it left a trail leading away.
It feels like a crack in his jawline.
The girls from the Eden Club.
It felt like, even before they hit him, that they had already done it. Already broken parts of his body, already made their mark. It felt like they knew of the wound and knew to seek it out, to press down on it. Who wouldn’t? If he had known their weak spots, he would’ve done it too.
He let them go.
He made a good choice, hadn’t he?
He let them go.
Hank wasn’t happy about it, but he was never really happy about anything. It was something else. Relief, maybe.
It’s the only thing Connor’s seen that has made him feel that same sense of relief. That Hank isn’t here to see this.
There are dinosaur decals on the wall, but the kid must’ve been growing out of that stage. Little over eleven. Almost twelve. His birthday is in a few weeks. Maybe would’ve gotten new bedding, changed out the posters. Gavin told Connor once that when he turned twelve, that was his sign to rip everything apart. Grow up. Be an adult.
Just—
No kid wants to admit that they don’t really want to grow up then. They just feel like they need to.
“He was hiding under the bed,” Connor says. “Someone pulled him out.”
There’s streaks of blood underneath him. He was injured before he went into hiding, but there’s no real way of knowing what the first wound was. Not when he’s been mutilated so badly. But with that much blood pooled underneath the bed, the kid wouldn’t have made it anyway. A surprise he managed to get this far.
Maybe if the attacker knew how to just end things quickly, they wouldn’t have suffered so much and Connor wouldn’t have to be here looking at a boy dead on the fucking floor of his fucking bedroom.
“I think you should take a break, Connor.”
He turns to look at Gavin, but it always feels like a mistake. Especially at the rougher crime scenes. Gavin’s just difficult to balance with the dead. It scares him. It feels like jinxing him.
“You can,” Connor says. “One of us needs to finish up.”
And they both know it’s not going to be Gavin.
Gavin glances at him, his brow furrows and his jaw clenched as he looks back away. “Come with me.”
“Need to finish this.”
He looks—
Angry.
Like he’s itching for a cigarette. Or to punch something.
Connor takes his hand, squeezes it maybe a little too hard. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
But he’ll have to come right back in. Look at everything a lot more closely than he already has. Confirm all the suspicions, all the theories, the evidence. Make sure they aren’t overlooking anything.
“Fine.”
Gavin pulls away, leaving him alone in the room.
He knew he was there.
Connor could tell where the blood—where the Thirium—led him. He knew that he was hiding there.
Simon, Markus later told him.
Simon, he had said, like he could barely breathe.
It wasn’t the first and it certainly wasn’t the last time that Connor had managed to find a loophole, to slip through it as slyly as he could possibly manage. Turn around, pretend he didn’t know, pretend it didn’t matter, pretend that it wouldn’t affect or change the case in any way.
And Simon’s alive, so that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
He’s alive.
Connor saved someone.
If he hadn’t gotten Daniel killed, would he have done it?
The teenage girl was not the first to die.
It was the mother.
Still laying in the bed, arms out to her side like an angel. Limp and loose, accepting of her death. Uncovered, completely naked. Dried tears on her cheeks.
The wounds are all on her stomach. Same weapon that was used on the younger two. Cuts so deep that it has nearly severed her from her lower half.
Did she think she was saving them? Did she think she was keeping her children alive?
Connor turns around to leave, expecting Gavin to be there. Like he hadn’t just sent him away. Like he hadn’t seen Gavin walk down the stairs, hear him exit the house.
It’s a hard case.
It’s the kind of case that ruins everyone. It’s the kind of case that people can’t get over. How could anyone? But—
It’s also not the kind of thing someone wants to be alone with.
Hank is lucky.
Is it wrong that the thing that managed to upset Connor the most before he deviated was Kamski’s disappointment in him?
Kamski was different from the rest of them. Gavin wasn’t someone Connor cared to impress or to win over. Hank felt unreachable, entirely unattainable to prove any part of himself to. And Amanda wasn’t even real. Her expectations of him were wildly disproportionate to what they had programmed him to do. He always knew what to expect of them, but he didn’t know what he even wanted from Kamski.
It felt like meeting a god. It felt like meeting a friend from his childhood. It felt like meeting a twin or perhaps an old lover. He was everything that someone could possibly mean to someone all wrapped up in one awful human being. And all Connor wanted was to be the ones on his knees with a gun pointed at his head, because it would’ve been easier. Make Hank be the one to choose to keep Connor alive. Or Kamski. Or Chloe.
He has tried to make himself feel better since he left Chloe there, alive. Telling himself that even if he pulled the trigger, it would’ve disappointed Kamski in another way. Nothing could’ve possibly reached his expectations either. But it’s not true, is it?
There was something he could do to make Kamski look at him like he was worth the time and effort put into creating him. He just didn’t do it. Didn’t know what it was. Still doesn’t.
It’s not important.
Sometimes it’s just that he can see that same expression implanted on Gavin’s face and he traces it, trying to wipe it away. Kissing him until he can make it into something else. It’s much easier with him, especially now. Connor knows exactly what Gavin wants of him, knows exactly how to give it, and doesn’t mind doing so. Likes it, even. Making him smile or laugh. Happy.
He checks the garage last. An axe leaned against a make-shift workbench. A garbage can half full, a recycle bin with the lid left open. They’ve opened the side door rather than the garage door, cracked a few of the windows open. Keep the onlookers to a minimum. Already shut the car off. The fumes have mostly aired out by now, but it’s for the best that Gavin isn’t here anymore.
There’s no other fingerprints on the car but the ones to be expected from the family. Nothing to show that anyone else was here.
In the passenger seat, there’s a card. Bright pink, red roses. Gold wrapping paper left crumpled on the floor, a gift box with the lid tucked underneath it, inside a pair of diamond earrings. A lovely set.
Not something a wife might be expected to receive from someone other than her husband.
Her words are all wrong in his head.
Connor can’t quite remember what she said to him anymore. Can’t remember the threats or the vitriol in her voice. He just knows the tone, can hear any harsh words his own mind has to offer him is wrapped up neatly by her, delivered delicately into his palms.
He does, sometimes, wonder if it might have been better had she pulled the trigger.
Save a lot of pain and suffering.
“Thoughts?”
“I’ll need to go over it more, but I think it’s a pretty cut and dry murder-suicide,” Connor says. “Father kills the mother a few hours before the rest of them. When she’s discovered, he goes after the children. Probably one of them comes down at breakfast to tell him they found her dead. Maybe they don’t realize he’s the one that killed her, but it likely tells him that he needs to act. So he goes after them. Stabs the son, kills the eldest daughter. The two youngest ones try to hide. When he’s killing the son, the daughter comes back down the stairs. Before she can get away, she’s killed too. He realizes what he’s done, so he kills himself.”
“In the garage,” Gavin says. “Give himself the most peaceful death. Why?”
“Seems like the mother was having an affair.”
“No—” he sighs. “Doesn’t matter. Are you done? Can we go?”
“We need to make sure we collect all the evidence.”
“Other people can do that.”
They could. Connor would like to go, too. Doesn’t he have a duty to help them comb through it? Make sure that he did everything right? That his theory has more plausibility to it?
But the blood on the father’s clothes--
There are even cuts from his hand slipping on the knife while he stabbed his daughter. Cuts only received from an assailant’s hand on a blade.
Maybe the theory isn’t perfect. Maybe there’s different motives available. But the person who killed the family is dead. He’s been found. It has been taken care of. There’s just no real way of properly tying something like this up. No way that the word Solved can convey any kind of closure to it.
“Back to the station?”
“Maybe a detour first.”
“Okay.”
It’s not like it hadn’t occurred to him to talk to somebody. Professional. A professional somebody. He had thought about it so many times for Hank, it’s not as though Connor couldn’t apply the same idea to himself. It just didn’t seem like it would help. Or like he deserved to be helped.
So he didn’t.
The first time he said anything, he didn’t think it would be remembered.
“I know you’re just gonna lie, but are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Gavin scoffs. “See?”
“I don’t know why you bothered to ask when you weren’t going to like the answer.”
“Hoping maybe you wouldn’t be a dick.”
Connor adjusts his tie, fiddles with the seatbelt. Not enough to keep himself busy.
“Are you okay?” Connor asks finally.
“No.”
Trust Gavin of all people to be stubborn enough to answer honestly. If Connor had asked the question first, Gavin would’ve lied.
He wants him to stop the car. Wants to get out and walk somewhere. Just keep walking until he can’t anymore, or until he ends up somewhere that he can latch onto.
He was looking for Hank. It wasn’t like he was going to find him, but it was a habit that Connor formed after living with him for so long. Sometimes he disappeared when things got bad. Connor would find him, drag him home. They’d both pretend like this time Hank would get better and things would be okay again. And they would be. Until they weren’t.
But at the time, that’s what he was trying to do. Hitting up different bars, checking liquor stores, trying to search every parking lot he possibly could be at. He wasn’t going to be there. It just felt like a comfort on those nights for himself. Pretending that the reason Hank wasn’t home was because he was out doing something stupid.
He found Gavin, though.
Slouched down in a bar booth, his phone on the table next to an array of empty glasses. The screen was cracked. A mirrored jagged edge to the one across his nose.
Stupid.
His first thought every time he sees Gavin. That whatever he’s doing, somehow, is stupid.
“Hi,” he mumbled. And he looked so different. Almost happy with it.
Maybe that’s all Connor needed to ever get him to like him.
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you th—” he paused to make a strangled noise. Somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “My car was fucking stolen this morning. Go off to investigate a fucking crime and some stupid android hops in and drives off. How’s that fair?”
“Guess it’s not.”
He sat up, leaning on his hand. He seemed like he wanted to ask the question, but couldn’t get himself to.
So Connor asked it instead.
“Do you need a ride home?”
“...yeah.”
The door locks before Connor can open it. The handle not budging as he tries to force it open one too many times.
“You’re child-locking me?”
“Don’t want you to run.”
He should’ve jumped out of the car when they pulled into the lot. It’s not like he would’ve been injured. Not beyond anything he ever experienced before. Connor leans back against the seat. Staring at the empty park. Same place Hank brought him once. Bridge in the distance, the snow falling. Except now it’s the beginning of spring. Trees still dead. Grass a touch too long. Still too cold to be crowded with children.
“Gavin—”
“Do you remember the first time we were alone?”
He sighs. “The archive room?”
“Not what I was thinking of.”
“That was the first time.”
“I meant—” he gestures vaguely, unnecessarily. “After you deviated.”
Oh.
Hank had left. Been on a few weeks leave. Mandated. Everyone had spread the rumor of the truth, but nobody would outright admit that they knew he had been hospitalized. Pretended it was due to a vacation of sorts. He thinks some of them still try to pretend that. Like when Connor goes hunting for him at bars.
“It was the Reznikov case.”
“Yeah.”
They had reports of a child crying for help. When they got there, the father was dead. Heart attack. But the kid was locked in their bedroom. Deadbolts added to the door, chains. No reason for that kind of reaction. Not to a child.
But driving to the scene was the first time they’d been alone together. And while they both tried not to say anything about it—primarily because it felt silly to comment on such a thing when they were on the way to a crime scene—it’s not like they didn’t notice.
“First time I felt bad about what happened,” Gavin says quietly. “With us.”
“It’s not important anymore.”
They’ve forgiven what can be forgiven, forgotten what could be allowed to be forgotten, and moved past the rest of it.
And it’s irrelevant to all of this anyway.
“I just want to think about something happier sometimes,” he mumbles. “After something like that. I just want to forget.”
“Do I help you forget?”
Connor found his apartment easily. Not that far from the bar all things considering. Gavin probably walked there in the first place, but it wouldn’t have been safe to send someone that drunk out onto the streets at night to stumble his way home.
And it wasn’t so bad. Gavin was quiet for the ride. Leaned against the window with his eyes closed, drooling. Almost like a puppy.
He just didn’t want to send him up the stairs alone. Didn’t want to trust him standing in the elevator. Didn’t want to trust that he’d manage his way into the apartment.
It was all stupid. And Connor knew exactly what he was doing even as he was doing it. Making up cheap excuses to cover up the fact that he wasn’t capable of doing it for Hank. Letting Gavin lean against his side as he shoved the key in the lock, staggering into the apartment.
Run down place. Things left in boxes. Trash that needed to be cleaned up. Too many blankets and pillows scattered around the living room but no knick-knacks, no family pictures. A stack of mail crammed into an old cereal box. Coffee mugs littered across the kitchen counter.
Connor set Gavin down on his bed, putting him on his side. Slipping down to the floor, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Connor? Still here?”
How long had he been like that?
Thinking and waiting and not wanting to leave and be alone again?
“Yeah.”
“Afraid I’m gonna die on you?”
“Only a little bit.”
Gavin huffs out a noise that sounds like it’s meant to be a laugh. His hand reaches out, touching Connor’s shoulder. It feels strange and out of place. Not the same as accidentally passing by each other in hallways, not the same as keeping Gavin from falling over.
Wrong, almost.
“Do you ever—?” he sighs. “Do you ever feel like… like there’s something in your head?”
“What?”
“Like someone telling you to just… go to sleep. And not bother waking up.”
Connor stares at him. His eyes closed, breathing deeply like he’s already fallen right back asleep again. Like the question wasn’t said, like it was as simple of a thing to ask as what’s for dinner?
He wanted to answer, but he never did.
He did stay there, though. Just to make sure Gavin didn’t die or something.
One life he could make sure made it through the night.
He was afraid of the answer.
Yes, you make me forget. Because who wants to be thought of that way? Not a balm or a salve to a wound but an erasure entirely. Like it never even mattered. Like an obsession. Like a perfection he could never attain again. Being used to get rid of something over and over.
No—
Because then he wasn’t even good enough to do that. To make someone feel better.
Maybe the only answer he really wanted was sometimes.
“Do you want to move in with me?”
Connor laughs. Taken aback by the question. “What?”
“You’re over all the time anyway, and I know you were thinking of selling Hank’s place.”
“So?”
“Just like to wake up with you and know you’re not gonna run off in the night to go home. ‘Cause you’ll already be there.”
“Are you trying to make me feel better?” Connor asks.
“No. Bad timing I guess.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe you’ll move in or maybe—”
“Maybe bad timing.”
Gavin shrugs. “Never been so good at that kind of thing anyway.”
It’s at least a question Connor can answer for once.
“I’d love to move in with you.”
“Good.”
“Okay.” Gavin clears his throat. Taps on the steering wheel. “Need to get back to the station.”
“In a little bit. It’s nice here.”
Gavin reaches over, taking Connor’s hand. Squeezes it so tight that it hurts even him.