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WHO: Hank Anderson | Connor
WHAT: Hank discovers he has a new roommate
WHERE: The Noobie Chicken Coop
WHEN: Connor's arrival
WARNINGS: 🎜🎝 General warnings for Hank's possible suicidal ideation. Will come back and add anything else.

Hank's shift goes on per usual. Today's grind isn't any different from the usual. He's occupied at the intersection next to a school during a science fair type of event, constantly directing the flow of traffic and both entitled parents and sweet old ladies bearing baked goods for the kids braving the sidewalk. By the end of it he's gained three muffins, a large chocolate chip cookie, two cupcakes, and lost four points of sanity.

He fuels himself up with two cups of coffee for a round of ticketing in downtown. He's relatively sure that, at some point, he sees someone that looks just like him buying fruit from a stand. Besides the bizarreness of Hank Anderson buying fresh fruit very well it being a doppelganger, a double-take proves it a false alarm. Though he's so busy staring and trying to fathom what he wasn't actually seeing (he thinks?) that the man who's car he was about to ticket is able to run out of the store and jump into his vehicle and rush away before Hank can scan in his plate number.

Figures.

As he's back at the station clocking out he passes by detectives discussing their cases and is surprised by how much he misses it, considering his willingness to throw it away back home. He really wanted to help people, but he also didn't want to play the games associated with the job.

When he gets home he nearly falls over when he comes through the door. The entire room's changed. Two beds. More drawers. More closets. Still a shower, though, that's good.

He reaches up and pulls the tie out of his hair that keeps about half of it up at work, letting it fall loose and into its usual aesthetic of crimped sheepdog shaggy. He's just standing there, in his uniform, staring in a state of confusion at changes he just fuckin' doesn't understand. That whole "matrix bullshit" theory is gaining ground in his head again.

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Hank starts making his bed, and the motions are so familiar Connor finds himself looking down at the dog tag he's still rubbing with his thumb. There's a moment where he's not sure Hank's going to answer, and it'll be fair if he doesn't, but it would be sad all the same - but then he speaks.

Connor doesn't know anything about children - if he did, he definitely wouldn't have asked that exact question, and he's already making note that human children are even messier than adults before Hank really starts talking about Cole. And talk he does - longer than he thinks Hank might have talked about Cole in a very long time, and there's an odd, fragile sort of privilege in realising that as Connor sits quietly and listens to it. He huffs softly in laughter himself hearing about Hank's tools, and doesn't even realise he's still smiling through hearing about Sumo chewing everything and teaching Cole a valuable lesson.

But he stops smiling soon enough.

It's hard to hear even for him - this little boy who was a full-fledged living being of his own, snuffed out before getting to really live his life. Memories of Cole still live in Hank's memory - and Connor's now by extension, which he's suddenly profoundly grateful for - but that shouldn't be all Cole.

"I'm..." He frowns more deeply. Sorry doesn't mean anything, why should it? Instead, he tells the truth. "Thanks - for telling me about him. I'm glad you did.

"And you're lucky Sumo stopped chewing everything eventually," he adds evenly. "Or you wouldn't have anything left."

"Yeah. Yeah..." Hank agrees softly. "Rocky was worse, though. Sumo's just a big dog that needed to clean his teeth every once in a while."

Hank needs to change out of his work uniform but he's not in any rush to. He's realized he can't just walk naked around his room before changing. Well, he could. But it would be, you know...

Awkward.

So he just backs up until his back is against the wall and lazily drums on his stomach, patting it lightly. Now that the euphoria of realizing Connor's okay has worn off. "Nobody really asked me how I was doing, you know? After it happened? It was easy to strike up a normal conversation but not to talk to me about anything personal. I know I got a problem with dwelling on it, but nobody asked.

"So I figured it was just mine to keep. All this..."

He motions around his own head.

"Shit."

He can feel the letter R under his thumb, and nods slowly.

Connor doesn't consider himself to have trauma. He has bad memories - the things he did as a machine. To Daniel, to Carlos Ortiz's android, who never even had a name. But he doesn't get to centre himself in what happened to those two androids, who did nothing wrong except defend themselves the only way they knew how. All he gets to do is be better.

What Hank went through is different. Real. And maybe he needs help that he never got. Someone to pull him over the edge of a roof once in a while. If he wants it.

"It doesn't have to be," he says, watching Hank closely. "Just yours to keep, I mean.

"I'm here if you need."

"I know... You're that type of man. Not many of you in the world. Enough to restore my faith you still exist, but it's really fuckin' hard to be that kind of caring, you know? Wears you thin, eventually.

"Then sometimes when you find yourself there, you end up in my place. So just keep in mind that if somethin' ever hits you hard, I'm there for you, too."

The expression that he gives Connor is about as soft as a face like Hank's can muster. Grisly, bearded, with a deep brow and sharp cheekbones. But there's something definitely tender in those blue eyes, a real appreciation he'd failed at before.

There's now, instead of the weight of getting back, the weight of making sure he can get them both home and make their family whole again.

...Connor's not used to being called a man. He hears the rest of what Hank's saying, of course he does, but he's never been described with that simple word before, and he has to take a second to adapt to it. When he does, though, he finds he's already satisfied with it, with this new sign of personhood.

Another sign of personhood - relying on others. Androids as machines kept their own counsel - if they even had personal issues, which the vast majority of them weren't capable of. Even Connor wouldn't have dreamed of talking to someone about the things he was going through with his software destabilising. Mostly because it would have meant his immediate deactivation. But humans can talk to one another (so can androids, now). He doesn't really understand why they don't do it more, it would fix a lot of problems.

He finds himself wondering a little too just what Hank's been through in the two months he's been here - what it is that made him miss Connor so much. What Hank knew of Connor was mostly him as a machine, albeit an increasingly unstable one. But the look on Hank's face now, reserved for him, it's...a lot. In a good way.

"I've never..." He doesn't know how to explain it, so he settles with, "Thanks, Hank."

He looks at Hank's uniform - black, LED lighting only it's orange, not like his blue lighting - and looks thoughtful.

"I should try to find a job as well, right?"

Not that rent's an issue, but...people work. Hank's working. That's seems to be the logical next step for him here.

The sad, miserable fact is that Hank just didn't have any friends left. He'd had casual friends, sure, but close ones? Ones that cared whether or not Hank was making it to work on time or even not spending his nights at a table playing Russian Roulette. Connor didn't necessarily care, but he was at the very base level interested in his welfare.

And Hank had just rediscovered how to be a good man himself. A good man would never have abandoned someone who needed him. Not when he knew his partner could end up as content waiting on a bench as he could be in a nice warm house or on a car ride to certain freedom.

But he leaves the sentiment there, because he doesn't know his own expression and also he's still of a manly stereotype that sharing emotions is difficult.

"You don't have to. They give you a base allowance here. You want anything special, though, you gotta get a job. I just... I didn't need anything special, I just didn't like fuckin' sitting around all the time."

That's a lie. He did want something special. But he won't admit to the revolver in the bottom of one of his clothing drawers, buried under slacks. He's got a feeling Connor wouldn't be happy knowing it was there.

He shakes his head. Sitting around waiting to do something is definitely what he would do as a machine. Being what he is now, a living being who actually makes his own choices? No, if other people are getting jobs, then he's going to get one as well. It's a start.

"I'll get a job. I want one. And besides," he says, shrugging, "I might need the money for something. You never know."

Maybe he'll decide at some point there's something incredibly expensive that he needs right now in that very second.

... No, he can't picture what. But you never know.

"You said you were a traffic cop?"

"I want to be a cop so I have to start at fuckin' patrol level again. It's shit. But since I have experience I might be able to work my way up."

Hank honestly can't think of another life that he'd like to live. This is what he trained for, believed in, and even if he has to start by issuing tickets and helping little old ladies cross the street? He'll take it

He's doing his own side investigations, sure, but he's being sure not to throttle any other investigators in the process.

"People aren't too bad there, but I'd feel better with you around."

Right this moment, Connor can't imagine another life either - but not because of a lifetime of work and sacrifice. He was programmed for it, and activated for what turned out to be a specific task, and that task is largely done.

It seems obvious what he should do next: "I'll go to the station tomorrow. Hopefully they've got another opening. Everything that isn't detective work's going to be pretty new to me, but I'll pick it up."

Belatedly, he realises something else - a very human problem.

"You're sure you won't get tired of seeing me all day at work and at home at night?"

He's...half serious. He doesn't like very much that his first thought is that humans have replaced androids after much less. And what is it they say? Familiarity breeds contempt?

"Well I was gonna be with you all the time anyway, at least until we got to safety and settled. So it doesn't really fuckin' matter. I'll fuckin' deal with it. Besides, I want you around after you read my fuckin' calories to me, after you broke my window, and after you slapped me. And I assume you want to even be around me after I pulled a gun on you."

And the worst I ever got with my ex-wife was an argument over her inlaws."

It's an extremely low bar they've set for themselves. He's sure they can be better to each other.

"Hopefully it won't remind you too much of being an android. Starting out, it's mostly helping people and getting yelled at for being in the way or not being good enough. So, that's the crappy part. The good part is helping people. I don't care high up the chain you get, every time you help a lost kid find its family, you're a little better off."

Right. In Canada. He'd been thinking about that, vaguely in the back of his mind, some of his processing energy dedicated constantly to worrying about what it would be like in a country that didn't prohibit androids from doing anything that could make someone mistake them for human. It had scared him...but oddly excited him at the same time, and the reason he could feel that way was knowing Hank would be there to help him discover that freedom.

"It won't," he says with an easy certainty. Androids fit into human lives perfectly, they were made to. So the difference, the one thing that could remind him of being an android... "Because no matter what happens, I can defend myself now."

He won't take abuse from anybody. He's not equipment. He can get fired, sure. But disposed of? Never again.

"Yeah, you can. And I am going to guess they programmed you with a bunch of non-lethal ways of detaining or discouraging humans- Always, always try to do something that won't even break skin first. I know you're good at talking people down. Hang onto that."

He advises his wise old sagely bullshit advice, as a wise old bullshitter must. But it comes from very real concerns he learned back in the teens, when kids in Detroit were dying for being in the wrong neighborhood, or the mentally ill were dying because most cops didn't know a damn thing about it.

All that criticism aside, he wants to see Connor be the best kind of person out there.

"I got a question. How hard were you bullshitting me when you said you'd like to listen to music?"

"Don't worry," he says. "I won't use any more force than I have to."

Humans are pretty fragile. Especially when you know how to take guns off them. Before, Connor had no problem with killing humans who were trying to destroy him; unlike most androids, he didn't have a duty of care programmed into him because his mission was more important than human life. Now, as someone who can make that decision himself? He wants to be someone who values life more than he was created to.

He blinks, not expecting the question.

"A little," he admits. But he goes on, "I was still interested in the whole concept of it."

He hesitates, because Hank didn't ask...but he offers it anyway, a little tentatively at first. Because in a way, it wasn't bullshit at all. "You have to understand, if I needed to know something, I downloaded it. I know everything there is to know about basketball because I noticed you were interested in it. If you'd mentioned a movie or a book you liked I could just look up every line, every word."

He's gesturing a little as he gets more engaged with what he's saying, that coin between his fingers.

"I couldn't do that with music. I could download the music and examine the wavelengths in the sound file, but that's not what listening is. I would have to take it in the same way that you do. Just like a human."

And that was something he found intriguing even as a machine. Something he couldn't learn just by connecting to a network and putting the information directly into his brain.

"So I was mostly telling the truth. Actually," he says as he thinks of something else, "The real bullshit was when I told you I liked dogs. I'd never even seen one before. But actually, it turns out I do."

As Connor explains, he can probably see the thought processes that dance over Hank's expression. When he starts talking about downloading and analyzing, there's a sort of vacant confusion. Then he mentions having learned everything necessary about basketball scores and Hank looks somewhere between annoyed at the overly obvious effort to manipulate him (he'd known at the time too) and entertaining the passing thought that he should get Connor to help him bet on stuff.

But the rest makes sense. Even the part with the dog. There'd been something bizarrely innocent in the words, though, that he'd been unable to find fault with. This artificial person proclaiming interest in Hank's very real dog.

"I was asking because I found some." Hank grunts the grunt of a man that hates getting up once he's down, and stands to his full height to find the CD player he'd scrounged up in his research.

"The media here is pretty sterile. You're not gonna find a lot questioning authority. But that's half of good metal and jazz right there." Says a cop, which seems inappropriate. But to Hank, the people that feel this way are exactly the type of people he wanted to give words to. "It cuts out a lot of the casual stuff, too."

Then almost like it's a joke, he waves a CD at Connor. "You're gettin' pretty desperate when you're usin' these again." He puts on the song and sits back down. Part of it's so Connor can listen. Part of it's because he's been paranoid about people, or the AI itself, eavesdropping still.

He can watch the expressions flitting over Hank's face with every word he says - and the irritation is an immediate rebuke. It wasn't him - or rather... It was him, but removed from concepts like compassion and decency, anything that would keep him from completing his mission. And in that moment he had thought Hank tolerating him would make his mission more easy.

But he doesn't say anything about it. And maybe Connor will delete those NBA stats.

He's never seen a CD player before - and didn't know they existed at all, for that matter: what people did before data was fully digitised has never had any reason to enter his mind. But now he stands easily and stoops a little to look at the player, then at the CD as Hank puts it in.

The music that plays is grainier than he expects. But that's not what he's supposed to be taking in about it. It's the percussion, the way it creates movement with the other instruments, threads of sound that the woman's full voice weaves into something bigger.

"Is this jazz?" He'd recognise metal thanks to Hank, and this isn't it. Besides, that's not the important question - he shakes his head, waving a hand: never mind that. "Tell me about the media."

It's a good way to start looking into how censorship works here - and therefore how authoritarian the regime is. What exactly they're working with. And Hank is clearly worried about eavesdropping.

"Well, this one guy started to complain about his job? They editted the name of the company out of his posts. Also after the bombing the only thing that was said is that the mayor was stable. You know. For a fuckin' bomb being under her feet and everyone close to the stage being peppered with shrapnel."

Which still sounds fishy, but he's not found evidence to the contrary. "They had their robots walking around threatening anyone that was askin' too many questions. I think that might be why your search results are gettin' fuckin' cluttered up with jokes. It was kinda strange to me. With most 'terrorist' or 'local violence' threats the media we're used to goes hog wild in making people scared. But in this case they don't want people to feel anything but safe. Or displeased in the corporate status quo, which makes me think that most really successful businesses might be collaborators in something. But I've not had much of a chance to dig into that."

He had been hunting the Heart for a while, trying to find the very particular people behind the bombing. He wasn't happy they were actually endangering or near killing people, especially in a setting where children would be in attendance. He's still not. He'd still bring the person responsible in.

Hank just can't figure out what this 'wake up' means? And he still swears to god if this is some matrix bullshit he's gonna be so pissed off.

Then, at the end, he adds a- "Yeah, she does some soul, some blues, some jazz. All of it along the same lines."

Edited 2019-08-26 03:30 (UTC)

Connor gives the obvious expression of deep scepticism when Hank mentions the mayor is 'stable'. An android probably wouldn't survive being at ground zero of a dirty bomb. And his expression only deepens into an outright grimace the more Hank talks.

"So we're all androids here." Kept in ignorance. Their opinions stifled. "'Wake up' sounds pretty fitting."

It's exactly what he said to that army of androids in the CyberLife basement. What Markus said to the androids he turned deviant. And Hank mentioned it's the exact message the perps have been spreading.

He can't name most of the instruments playing, or the singer, but, "I like it."

Not that he knows the words to describe why, but his fingers are tapping his leg along with the rhythm anyway.

"Yeah, if you do a search on here you might find a couple of articles on her 'strength against adversity'. Some fluff piece bullshit. But yeah, that's about the way it is."

And Hank's had the same thought. Many times as he's looked at 'wake up' messages, he can remember the touches that brought that entire room of people to reality. Them saying the words 'wake up' to each other.

Something warms his chest when Connor says that, though. He's glad for their differences and the insight it gives him. They're both alike enough in inherent nature, capable of thinking along the same lines of investigation, that their partnership worked out for the best. But to have a true commonality is kind of nice.

He notices Connor's able to keep a beat with tapping his leg.

"Remind me to teach you to dance sometime."

Since he doesn't trust his internal network connection to check, he uses his phone instead to search the mayor. And he does find what Hank's talking about that way: articles about how she's in a stable condition, the mayor's own writing, all of it using a lot of words to say very little that means anything... When he sets the phone down, he looks troubled. This is nothing like what he was expecting - all he has for reference is the android crisis, and this isn't how the media operated. Not how the president or anyone else from top down reacted.

"To dance?" he asks, face suddenly blank, before he looks down at his own legs...then back up to Hank like he's not sure he's being made fun of. "You're joking, right."

Androids. A detective model android, no less. Dancing. It's one of those times where an idea gets introduced to him so suddenly he's not sure how to respond, and defaults back to old thinking.

Hank can recognize it as being *wrong*, and as someone who grew up in the shadow of the cold war and survived the harrowing late teens, early twenties he can remember how things seemed to be veering. But this sort of atmosphere is new.

It's growing up in that age, though, that causes his resolve to buckle. The You're joking, right? provoking a mental recoil, causing his neck to prickle up with embarrassment as if he'd just somehow compromised his manhood in front of this android that really has very little concept of gender as a useful mechanism of any sort.

"No I was-"

He just trails off and makes a dismissive gesture. "Whatever." Whatever is such a useful word to hide behind when one doesn't know what to do with their thoughts.

Connor physically recoils a little at Hank's reaction, LED going yellow for a moment as he stares, utterly wrong-footed.

"Wait, I thought--" he leans forward, hands out in a placating sort of gesture. "I thought you were making fun of me."

But apparently now Hank thinks Connor's making fun of him, and all his programming on integrating with humans didn't cover anything like this.

"If you weren't joking, I'm sorry - it just surprised me, that's all." Trying desperately to defuse the situation. "Androids don't...do things like that. That's the first thing I thought."

(If Markus had ever shared memories with him, he'd know that even without deviating, androids are capable of all sorts of things humans wouldn't expect of them.)

"Come on, androids do whatever they're fuckin' programmed with and you can make your own fuckin' programming. You learn. You're an AI. You were just tapping your fingers with the music. You know there's a beat."

But, he's still a little embarrassed.

"I won't bother you about it until you're settled in. It was just a thought." He might not even bring it up again. He doesn't want to admit how embarrassed he just was. But to add some humor, he says-

"If I were making fun of you I'd say you looked goofy again."

"Yeah, I should know that…" He knows he should. He spent days slowly destabilising, chose to deviate, chose to help a revolution for the right to do whatever he wants.

But as soon as he stops thinking about it, his default is still to go back to thinking about himself as he was before: a machine. Machines don't do anything they're not programmed for. Androids decide their own programming.

"I'm not used to it yet," he says, almost to himself. "To not being a machine, I mean," he adds for Hank's benefit.

"You'll get there." He promises, and pats Connor's knee before getting up. It seems like lip service, but he thinks of all the people that have to get over harrowing experiences. Connor's is just being an android, no specific form of abuse other than inherently programmed indoctrination.

It's not a lot. But it's meant as a lot.

Hank goes to the bathroom then, just because he needs a moment to pass over the euphoria of knowing his partner is alive, unharmed, and potentially someone who can help him get out of here, to the actual concerns of him being here. What could an AI do with an android like him?

As he's considering that, the song changes.

As soon as Hank's left, Connor zones out into thought. There's so much to unpack here he's not sure where to begin to go about it. So start with the most immediate things: Hank was missing, but now Connor's missing as well, so it doesn't much matter anymore. Whatever this place might be, they can leave it in a year. He's a deviant - and that by itself is something he hasn't even had time to put together yet. Back in Detroit it barely looked certain what his life as a deviant was going to look like after the revolution, but he'd wanted to know.

Here, his life could be just like anybody else's.

He looks down at himself. Maybe to everybody here, he's just a normal person. A normal person, sitting in his room listening to music.

A new song starts - and if the last one was despair, this one feels like a sad resignation, and it surprises him to realise he can feel anything, or recognise feelings, just listening to music. This is all one surprise after another, from the world-shattering to the painfully mundane.

When Hank emerges, Connor hasn't moved from his seat, but he's sitting with his eyes closed, a finger tracing the edges of the dog tag, just...listening.

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