Chapter Text
Connor stares at the fading cuts on his arm.
It’d been a few days since he’d woken up, a few days since the revolution and since he’d escaped from the Zen Garden. Fortunately, the pain in his throat had subsided into a dull ache, and it was much easier to speak. His arm, though, was still in agony. There are times when he would be forcibly taken out of stasis from the burning pain of it, keeping him awake for hours on end. He supposes it’s because, technically, he had broken that arm in the garden, even if there are no physical evidences now back in the real world. He wonders what he will have to do to heal it.
His eyes continue to bore holes into the fading wounds on his arm. It’s strange to look at it now that it’s mostly healed, because the memory of how it came to be there in the first place is so vivid still in his mind. He remembers lying curled up in the silence of his small, cramped storage room in CyberLife, trembling against the cold, hard floors as he dug his nails to his bruised arms until it bled.
It’s so ironic, how that specific type of pain feels almost relieving. Something surely must be so deeply wrong with his systems, a malfunction beyond repair, because how could pain ever feel comforting? But Connor cannot deny the shaky breaths of relief he’d make as he feels the stinging cuts blooming on his skin. As he watches it pool with bright, fresh thirium, so much until it covers the bruises completely.
Maybe CyberLife’s torments of him had really worked to an extent, after all, because Connor had realized, back then, with a sinking feeling, that he’d actively look forward to completing that ritual—nails digging into his arms, dragging down and down until they left sparking cuts on his skin. Again, again, again. He’d wanted that pain, and it was so hypocritical, so horrible of him, truly, and it was like his thoughts would whisper to him, as he lay on the cold metal table the next day, don’t cry and beg now, Connor. Didn’t you want to hurt yourself yesterday? Didn’t you want to feel pain? You’re such a liar.
And the guilt would be too much to bear afterwards, that he would inevitably end up curled up with bleeding arms all over again. It’d taper off the guilt, remove that heavy, buzzing feeling in his chest, so Connor kept doing it. Day after day. Especially when everything felt a little too heavy. He felt dirty for it, somehow, as though something in his software had been stained by something that just wouldn’t come off. How could he ever find comfort in something that he hated, something he never wanted anyway?
What a dirty, dirty hypocrite you are, Connor.
The next few days went by far too slowly for Connor’s liking. Between watching the sun rise and fall, obsessively running diagnostics just to make sure everything was alright, and maybe sometimes playing with Sumo, Connor spent a great deal of time in the house—mostly bedridden, much to his dismay. Try as he might to convince Hank that he was fine (it doesn’t matter that he technically still has a broken arm), the lieutenant refused to let him out of the house or to work. (Connor, for the love of God, just rest for a bit, will you? Besides, everyone’s still uneasy about the revolution. You really think it’s a good idea to have you roaming the streets right now? Not to mention everything with CyberLife and all…)
Well, alright, he couldn’t argue with that last part. Connor supposes they were probably looking for him at this moment, or at least trying to take back control of his programs. The thought makes him uneasy and terrified. To think that even miles away from them, they could probably still regain control of him… what if he wakes up one day trapped in the garden anew? Or worse, what if one day he opens his eyes and finds that he’s back in the tower, after having killed people against his will?
He shuddered at that and pulled the blankets closer, as though the action could physically cast the fear away.
There was just something about being stuck in bed that Connor strongly disliked. About doing absolutely nothing for days on end, with only the silence and occasional conversations and his thoughts as company. Sometimes, when he’d stare up at the ceiling in the middle of the night, lying flat on his back as the clock ticked away somewhere in the distance, it reminded Connor too much of CyberLife. And suddenly he wouldn’t be in the comfort and safety of Hank’s house anymore, of the soft pillows and blankets and soft moonlight from the window, but instead being held down by harsh hands on a far-too cold metal table as somebody sliced him open or left bruises on his skin or drowned him again and again in freezing water or forced him to drink contaminated thirium—
But, perhaps, most of all he just didn’t like the feeling of doing nothing. Of being completely still, with nothing to do but mundane chores and sleeping and resting. Because no, resting wasn’t permitted until he’d actually done something right. Until he’d deserved it. Otherwise, he had to keep working. To keep investigating. To keep going on his mission lest he wants to be punished.
And it didn’t matter that he wasn’t in CyberLife anymore, or that he didn’t serve them anymore, because even here, a part of his software just knows that’s how it works. And what else is he to do without those rules he’d been taught?
Connor spent the days restlessly. For the first time in his life, there was no mission for him to do. Nobody to assign tasks for him to accomplish. Did being free entail this feeling of restless aimlessness? It was a much more burdensome thing than he would have ever expected.
He had wanted to escape so badly, and yet… now that he had done just that, why was he still thinking about it with a twisted sort of nostalgia?
Dirty, dirty hypocrite.
But there had been a sort of order with it all, with his life then. Investigate crime scenes, hunt deviants, report back to CyberLife, make some sort of mistake, be punished for it. Again and again and again…
Now he was away from all of that. Hank said he could do what he wanted now because he was free. But then… what else could he even do? What was he supposed to do outside of that organized torment of a life back then? How could he possibly know what he wanted to do when he doesn’t even know who he is outside of being CyberLife’s weapon?
It wasn’t like he wanted to go back to being a Deviant Hunter. That was absolutely the last thing he wanted. He definitely didn’t want to hurt any more people. He just felt… lost now. Like he’s just drifting aimlessly through the world, with nowhere to go.
Being alive is a surprisingly heavy burden.
⋆˙⟡₊────✦────₊⟡˙⋆
It seemed that his body did not take well to the fact that he had a broken arm with which Connor just completely, well, ignored. Unlike his still slightly sore but much better throat that had been naturally healed by his systems, a broken arm just wasn’t as easy and simple to fix like that. Well, it wasn’t that he completely put it aside, really. When the technicians had checked on him after he’d woken up, they’d found nothing wrong with any of his systems, much like the results of every diagnostic Connor would do. But he did tell them of his aching arm and how it felt like something was wrong (he refused to speak to anyone about the Zen Garden, especially not to human technicians), only to be dismissed and told “there is nothing wrong with any of your programs. Perhaps you’re just still recovering from your coma and it’s merely your systems glitching.”
But there is something wrong. His arm had been broken. Connor knew that first and foremost because how could he ever forget that horrible feeling of being literally broken apart by the projections of his tormentors? But he’d bitten his lip then and watched as the technicians walked away, feeling something he couldn’t quite explain weighing on his chest.
Hank had seemed to want to say something then, but hesitated and instead turned to him to ask about his arm. Connor repeated the same explanations (lies) before turning away and activating stasis. It was all so frustrating and confusing. Why hadn’t he woken up with the physical injuries he’d sustained in the garden and instead only left with the pain? It at least would’ve been a bit easier to explain, and perhaps by now he could’ve gotten his arm to be completely healed.
But he looked fine, physically, even if his entire body was still teeming with the lingering pain and coldness from the garden. How could anybody understand that when even he couldn’t? None of it made any sense.
When he woke up early this morning, it was to a stabbing, pulsating pain in his left arm that somehow felt worse than before. So much so, that this invisible, horrible pain had actually glitched through his other biocomponents and systems. He felt too cold and too hot at the same time, and he was dizzy even when lying down completely still amidst the bed.
Now he stared at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror, and his eyes trailed down to his arm. There’s an ever-present, searing pain rushing through it, even if it looks completely fine in the mirror. It’s so disorienting. Connor brushes a hand over where the wound had been back in the garden, and almost immediately flinches as it sends sparks of white-hot, newfound pain spiking through his entire body. A horrible chill runs down his spine, even as he stands there sweating from overheating. The world spins beneath his feet, and Connor has to hold onto the sink to stop himself from falling.
He closed his eyes, breathing slowly as a wave of agony passes over him. There’s a heavy pressure at the side of his head, pulsating angrily, and he can feel his arm throbbing as it weighed heavily beside him. Shivering, he swallows down a wave of nausea, tasting the metallic tang of thirium at the back of his throat.
Fuck.
Connor meets his own eyes from the mirror. Tired brown irises stares back at him.
It’s always odd to see himself, always so strange to see a living, breathing, tangible thing looking back and watching curiously. Because from the very beginning of his life, Connor has never truly felt…real. Like he’s just an intangible thing drifting through the world, alternating between being stuck inside sterile, cold walls and in the freezing outside.
Because what is he, really? Back then, after failed missions and painful deaths and he’d be taken back to CyberLife to be replaced, all they had to do was transfer his memory program to another, waiting empty shell that would soon be his body. How ironic that despite the seemingly endless replacements they have for him, what truly makes it him are just a bunch of detached memories stored in a program. It makes him wonder sometimes. If he loses his memories for good, would he still be Connor? Is he just a truly intangible being in this world, just those clusters of memories?
But what are you, really? Hank’s voice, faraway from a memory of that cold night, drifts through his mind as he watches his exhausted-looking reflection.
Connor realizes he knows the answer now, he supposes. Just a simple, lost: I don’t know.
His eyes trail back to his throbbing arm, which still looks, frustratingly, physically fine—
His breath hitched. For a split, terrifying second, his vision glitched with bright red static, and suddenly, where his arm had looked normal physically just a second ago, was now horribly wounded—much worse than how it looked just before he escaped from the Zen Garden—and bent at an unnatural angle, dangling limply beside him. Bright, blue sparks emanated from the exposed wires, and thirium was steadily flowing from the open wound, dripping down his arm all the way to his fingertips. There was so much of it that some had just dried there. His artificial skin there had pulled back, replaced by the white chassis underneath. The thirium continued to trickle from the wound all the way to the floor, and in the heavy silence of the bathroom, Connor could very clearly hear the soft drip… drip… drip… of it as it landed on the tiles.
When he blinked, it was completely gone.
Connor stumbled back, and he frantically scanned the floor but there was nothing. No drops of thirium. His arm was physically fine like it’d been the past few days.
Another wave of nausea washes over him. His heart was beating out of his chest. Without warning, his chest heaves violently, and in the next second Connor finds himself retching forcefully into the sink. Agonizing, overwhelming pain blooms through his entire body as thirium spills from his lips. The pain of it all burns deep in each of his biocomponents, an angry, unforgiving ache that refuses to go away.
Connor feels his strength fading, feels it in the tremor of his knees and hands. He grips at the edge of the sink weakly, breathing far too heavily for his liking. He stares down at the thirium-stained sink, and for a dreadful, awful moment he is trapped in a memory, of indifferent faces looking down at him as they tipped the cold glass of contaminated thirium up to his lips and—
Connor shivered at the memory and retched another wave of thirium into the sink.
Everything is in agony.
Suddenly, there’s a firm knock at the door. “Connor?!” Hank’s voice came from outside, alarmed and sharp, followed by a muffled bark from Sumo. “Connor, are you okay?”
But Connor cannot find his voice to reply, only weak, breathless pants spilling from his mouth. A wave of dizziness washes over him again, tilting the world, and suddenly Connor finds himself crashing to the ground, unable to hold his trembling body up this time. The movement jostles his left arm, and he has to bite back a scream. The pain momentarily makes his vision glitch out.
“H—Hank… hel—help,” he mumbles weakly, his limbs scattered messily against the cold tiles. Connor lets out a small, rattling cough, thirium trickling down his face.
The sound of the door being opened feels distant in Connor’s ears, but the feeling of Hank kneeling beside him and pulling him close is as clear as day even in his pain-muddled mind. The warmth from him feels like the only real thing in Connor’s entire plane of existence.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong, Con?” Hank’s voice is full of worry as he examines Connor, trying to figure out what’s happening. “What’s wrong?”
Connor just shakes his head and curls in on himself, whimpering weakly.
“Con, talk to me,” Hank brushes Connor’s hair away from his face, his voice sounding far softer than Connor has ever heard before.
“H…hurts,” Connor squeezes his eyes shut, as though it could block the pain away. But the pulsating ache in his arm is persistent, demanding his unwavering attention as waves upon waves of pure agony rolls through his biocomponents relentlessly.
He feels Hank shifting him in his arms, muttering something under his breath that Connor couldn’t really make out. It’s a small, careful enough movement, but it doesn’t stop the agonizing pain that sparks through his arm. The world around him glitches out, and a pained cry tears through his throat.
Connor flinches away, breathing heavily. The pain is making it hard to think. He knows he’s safe here, despite everything. Hank is here with him. But his mind is getting muddled up. Suddenly there’s snow raining down on him and shadowed figures hovering over him, and he’s pleading uselessly as he holds onto his broken, bleeding arm.
And it hurts it hurts it hurts and he’s going to be taken apart, going to be tormented in that snow-riddled place for as long as they please and he can’t escape, he won’t be able to escape, he’ll be forcibly reset here and all his memories will be taken away from him—
He barely realizes that he’s shaking his head, trying to scramble away from shadow figures. His broken arm lies limply beside him, and his chest is heaving with shaky breaths. “…no, no, please. It hurts… it hurts!”
And maybe a small part of his systems knew he wasn’t there anymore, that he wasn’t being covered in cold hail anymore, that he was in fact safe here in this house and that Hank is with him, but the memories are all too much. It makes the present all blurry and unreal, like this was just a vivid hallucination his mind conjured up to distract him from the reality that he’s freezing on a snow-covered ground. The mere thought of it pulls a weak whimper out of him, and his cries turn into silent, heavy, choked-back sobs. His entire body hurts. Why does it hurt so much?
Connor does not like feeling this way. He should be alert and wide awake and perfect and must not make any mistakes, not curled up and trembling on a bathroom floor. If the CyberLife workers saw him like this, Connor already knew what they would say. Could already hear their mocking, cold voices.
You’re not designed to be this weak, RK800. They would say, sighing with disappointment. We aren’t done here. Stop crying.
A perfect, obedient weapon cannot be pathetic, Connor. Amanda would tell him, her eyes piercing and cold. You should be ashamed.
But in between the cruel voices and glares, there was something else. Something kinder. Something warm. And slowly, so slowly as though the fragile moment would break if it went any faster, his memories fall back into their rightful places. The present comes back, and here there are no cruel remarks, no cold snow, no shadow figures. There is only Hank, looking down at him with so much concern in his gaze it seemed like it could physically spill out of his eyes into a puddle on the tiles. He’s saying something as he brushes through Connor’s hair in a warm, comforting gesture, but he didn’t catch it amidst his fading strength.
It was the last thing his reeling mind registered before his systems forced him into unconsciousness.
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Connor drifts in and out of stasis.
It felt like his systems were glitching, working overtime as they tried to keep him stable. He hears voices moving to and fro around him, but they all sounded muffled amidst the bouts of blurry consciousness he was in.
Some of them sounded vaguely familiar, sharp, firm voices who were discussing something amongst themselves as they presumably hovered over him. Connor stared up at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes ready to close any moment. His vision felt wrong, all fuzzy at the edges and looking far more blurry than normal. He blinked blearily, once, twice, and in between it all, it finally clicked as to why the voices sounded familiar. They were the human technicians who’d checked on him a week ago.
“…said something… his left arm…”
“But his… arm looks fine.”
“…replace… damaged biocomponent with… new one?”
“…can’t just do that… physically fine. How can… repair him… no injuries whatsoever?”
Then, another familiar voice breaks through Connor’s muddled consciousness, and this time he knows exactly who it is without having to think twice.
“He… literally crying out in pain… what? Are you just… to leave him like this?!”
A small, weak sound came from the back of his throat as he subconsciously leaned closer to the voice, desperate for a semblance of comfort amidst the ever-present pain. He lifts his hand weakly, reaching out, scrambling for the familiar warmth.
The room goes silent for a heartbeat, and for a second Connor thought he’d just drifted back into stasis, but then suddenly his hand is being held tightly, squeezing reassuringly. He leans into it instinctively, holding on to that bit of warmth as though it was the only real, solid thing in his hazy, muddled world.
“Mgh…” His voice was lost somewhere in his chest, and all that came out was a garbled mess that probably sounded horribly pathetic to everyone else’s ears. But it was all he could muster, even though what he really wanted to say was far more pathetic.
Don’t leave me.
It hurts.
“Shh, you’re…” Hank’s voice sounded far away, even though Connor knew he was right there, just right beside him. It’s disorienting. It’s terrifying. He doesn’t want to be alone. “… be okay… I promise.”
Connor feels himself getting pulled back into unconsciousness, can feel his systems lulling him to sleep in a desperate attempt to ward off the pain and confusion and fear. And then the world goes dark, and Connor finds himself drifting through an intangible, horrible feeling of coldness that feels awfully endless.
⋆˙⟡₊────✦────₊⟡˙⋆
The very first thing Connor notices when he wakes up is that his left arm feels significantly better. He doesn’t know how long he was asleep for, or about much that happened leading to now, really. As he drifts out of stasis, gradually becoming more wide awake and alert, his memories still feel much hazier than normal. Maybe due to his injuries and recent conditions.
The next thing he notices is Hank sitting on a chair beside the bed, reading a book. Through the window, snow continues to fall steadily, painting the outside in hues of white.
“H-ank?” Connor cringes at the sound of his broken voice. He clears his throat and winces.
Instantly, Hank’s attention is on him, the book immediately closed and forgotten on the chair as he stands up to fret over the android. A worried, tired gaze meets Connor’s own exhausted one. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”
Connor runs a quick diagnostic, which comes back as normal. His left arm is still aching with a dull throb, remnants of the unbearable pain still lingering on his biocomponents, but nonetheless it is nowhere near the level of agony from before. His head is also still throbbing, albeit much weaker than before. He isn’t shivering with simultaneous hot and cold flashes anymore, though there was a sense of heaviness weighing down on his limbs, as though the pain and exhaustion didn’t want to completely leave just yet. Irritating.
“I… feel fine.” He hesitates, unsure of what to say. He’s still getting used to this new, unfamiliar routine. Back then in CyberLife, they would merely leave him in that room after they'd deemed their torment enough for the day. Connor would be left utterly alone with nothing to accompany him but his own loud, panicked breathing and the deafening beating of his thirium pump as he tried to pick himself up from where they’d ruthlessly taken him apart.
But now there was actually someone asking these questions as he recovers from his injuries. It still felt like such a foreign concept to him. The thing is, Connor knows it’s a common thing to check on someone, especially after they’d sustained an injury or illness. It’s just… he never deemed himself deserving enough of that worry. Of that care.
“What happened?” He asked, to stop the train of thoughts running through his head. He knew he’d spiral if he stayed in the silence for too long.
“The technicians replaced your, er, arm, with a non-damaged biocomponent so it could heal.” Hank explained. “They said nothing was physically wrong—kept insisting it, too, it was annoying the shit out of me—but obviously something was wrong, right? Well, anyway, eventually they agreed and thankfully there was a ready biocomponent already. So it didn’t take too long.”
A dreadful, sinking feeling settles uncomfortably within Connor’s chest. “They replaced my arm?”
Hank nodded slowly, a question in his eyes. “It was broken, wasn’t it? I guessed as much when you collapsed in the bathroom. I mean, you were… uh… practically screaming in pain when I so much as touched your arm. And, well, since there were no physical injuries that they could find, they decided to take the next best course of action which was… well, that. It did work, right?”
It made sense enough, but suddenly all Connor could really, fully register was the fact that there had been a group of humans who’d literally taken his arm apart, which, yes, was for his own well-being and, yes, his arm is healing now, but he still can’t help the sick feeling building up at nauseating familiarity of it all. Of times when they would take apart the biocomponents from his body one by one and then put it back together for whatever twisted punishment or satisfaction they liked.
Connor recalls the horrible feeling of it all, how he’d lie awake, unable to scream or cry or say anything at all from the hands clamped over his mouth, wide, terrified eyes looking up at the cruel indifference of the humans breaking him over and over again. How, in those moments, everything boiled down to nothing but the pain, the agony that seemed like it would never stop.
And, yes, it’s different now, he rationalizes. It’s not the same because this was for his own sake, not for the sake of torment. The technicians had replaced his broken arm, and he should be grateful, really, but the thought of being taken apart by unfamiliar humans, no matter the intention, still sends a flash of panic and horror through him. He never did like to be prodded at and examined by technicians. It felt far too close to them and their cruel, cold hands.
“Connor?” Hank was saying, and it takes a moment for Connor to realize he’d essentially been spacing out. He blinks and forces the wave of nausea down, trying to ward off the horrible memories he wished he could forget. “You sure you’re alright? Maybe you should drink some thirium. The technicians said you’d need it. Here…” He opens a drawer and searches for a bottle.
Connor freezes and feels the world come to a stop.
He sees the familiar, bright blue liquid, watches as it sloshes in the container. Everything suddenly felt like it had tunnel-visioned over to that innocent, inconspicuous bottle.
Let’s test its pain receptors.
Yeah. We should start with this.
Drink.
Connor snaps out of it and realizes Hank was holding the bottle to him. His hands feel far too shaky all of a sudden.
“You should drink up,” Hank says softly, looking worried as ever. “They said it’ll help.”
Drink.
Connor shakes his head numbly.
Hank furrows an eyebrow. “No? Why? It’ll make you feel better, son, I promise.”
Drink.
Drink.
Drink it! Why do you have to be so damn difficult?!
Connor digs his nails into his skin, barely feeling the familiar sting of pain at the action. Why does he have to be like this? Calm down, he tells himself, even as his heart continues to pound relentlessly against his body, like fluttering wings desperate to escape. It’s just thirium. It’s not contaminated. It’s not contaminated.
He cannot be falling apart like this right now.
But the echo of the memories are too loud, reverberating noisily through the room as the soft glow of the thirium stares back at him. And suddenly it’s not the familiar warmth of Hank in front of him anymore, but the workers in their pristine uniforms as one held a cup of thirium to his mouth. And he looked angry, eyes blazing with impatience as he signalled to the other worker and then in an instant there are rough hands on him, holding him down and it is all too much, and the burn of the contaminated thirium hurts as it clashes against his tongue. And it hurts it hurts it hurts—
“—ey, hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s alright. Breathe, Con, you’re safe, you’re safe, I promise you. You’re safe.”
Through heavy, panicked breaths, Connor blinks up at Hank’s worried face. The memory fades away into the edges, dissipating like fog. There is no thirium in Hank’s hand anymore. Connor searches for it, but he finds no traces of the bottle.
“It’s okay. It’s alright,” Hank soothes, sitting down on the edge of the bed. He instinctively reaches a hand over towards Connor, but hesitates and lets it hover there in the air for a second, unsure. And then, so slowly, so gently he moves Connor’s hands away from where he’s digging his nails into his own skin so hard it was spilling thirium. Oh. Connor blinks blearily at Hank, his breathing slowing down a fraction. He didn’t even realize he was doing that.
“Does it hurt?” Hank asks, glancing at Connor’s hands that are stained with a faint trace of blood.
Numbly, Connor shakes his head. Really, it was just a light sting compared to everything he’s endured before. “No, it doesn’t. I’m… sorry.”
Hank sighed, shaking his head. “Stop apologizing, kid. You don’t apologize for having a panic attack, okay?”
Connor nods absentmindedly. “…I don’t want to drink the thirium.”
Hank definitely wanted to ask a question. Connor could practically see the curiosity in his gaze. But he didn’t push, didn’t say more other than a simple nod of acknowledgement.
“…Alright,” he said finally. “Alright. We’ll figure it out, Con. We will.”
Connor hoped so.