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[He does just that, stepping aside to give Arenvald enough room to get on this giant lily pad. He politely waits until his friend is settled, before sinking the branch into the ground and pushing them off and away.

It’s a slow mode of transportation, but that’s fine. Better to remain in control like this — Connor doesn’t hope to venture into the deeper parts of the lake, because then they’d be stuck with their very laughable attempts to row back with only a branch and their own limbs.]

I’m glad to see that you’re feeling better. The difference is like night and day.

[ Arenvald settles himself on the lily pad, sitting cross-legged since that seems to afford him the most balance. He doesn’t terribly mind the lack of speed – it gives them more time to appreciate their surroundings. ]

I’m glad to be feeling better. Sorry to have worried you, by the way.

Don't apologize. I wouldn't be much of a friend if I wasn't at least a little concerned.

[They move a little farther away from shore, but remain coasting along the line of the lake's edge. From here, there's the view is rather nice, surrounded by glittering water and a clear sky above.]

And now, instead of a sickness, we have a lake. This is easily more preferable, even if there's still the mystery of where it came from.

[ "Concern" sounds an awful lot like an emotion, Connor. The mention of it prompts a slight quick of Arenvald's brows, but he chooses not to comment on it for now. Why ruin the moment? ]

I feel like a lake for a plague is a pretty good trade. I'd been missing the lake at the Reach.

[Oh, don't you worry, Arenvald. Connor can rationalize his way around words as safe as "concern" all day; it's a talent of his. But regardless, why ruin the moment, indeed?]

Really? I've never visited a lake. This is a first for me.

[The whole experience of being a member of the Circle has been full of firsts.]

Though I have steered a watercraft once or twice before.

[IN HIS MIND]

Yeah? Then I’m happy to let you be the captain of this little voyage.

[ Even if it was all in Connor’s mind – Arenvald doesn’t need to know that. He trusts his friend. ]

Can you swim at all?

I can. But preferably I don’t find myself in circumstances in which I need to.

[A glance out towards the water, another push, along with the undulating current.]

My appearance suffers for it. I’ve already had to clean my uniform once, due to being dragged in by an agitated mermaid.

[ He really needs to talk to Rion about getting clothes for Connor once they’re able to leave the Temple again. His friend needs more than just the one uniform.

But that aside… ]

A mermaid got you? What happened?

[His brow grows tight, just barely, remembering.]

Ah, the Lieutenant-- Hank, he was grabbed by a mermaid who tried to drag him into the lake. I intervened to help, but in the end, we both ended up falling into the water.

I don't think her intention was to drown him, but she didn't make it easy to return to shore.

I’m glad to see you made it out of there in one piece. Is Hank alright?

[ He kind of doubts Connor would be out here paddling around the lake if he wasn’t alright, but it seems polite to ask. ]

Yes. He didn't drown.

[For clarification's sake, that's worth pointing out. But Connor pauses again, lets the water carry them closer to shore once more. He directs them outwards.]

Due to the sickness, he's temporarily lost a majority of his sense of touch. I have no doubt this is bothering him, unsurprisingly. We’ve also discovered what his power is, though he refuses to let me help him with it.

[So maybe “all right” is relative.]

I saw him earlier and he was acting a bit funny. Got a big scrape and it didn’t seem to bother him at all. That explains that much, at least.

[ “All right” when it comes to Hank is always going to be relative to Hank and nothing else, honestly. ]

What’s his power?

[ Call him curious. He can see someone like the Lieutenant, who scoffed at the very idea of chocobos, outright rejecting whatever it may be since it didn’t align with his idea of normalcy. ]

[He remembers seeing all manner of bruises on Hank's ankle, after the mermaid tussle. It's not surprising that the man has a few smaller injuries thanks to his lack of feeling.

Connor adjusts his grip on the branch, his hold tight. His gaze remains out towards the water.]

From what I understand, he’s able to share his emotions with others.

[ There is a long pause from Arenvald, a frown tugging at his features, before he finally ventures, ]

… And how did you figure that one out?

[ Because it seems to him there is really only one way to do that. ]

[Another pause, before Connor seems to stand up a little straighter, and finally looks at Arenvald.]

In the second week of the sickness, he accidentally activated it when he touched me. The following experience was… jarring, to say the least. I hadn’t known what to make of it at the time. But later, with a clearer head, it became obvious what it truly was. Androids can do something similar, sharing thought and memories and experiences with interfacing.

[Not emotion, though— unless a deviant allows its errors to course through his own programming.]

Later, after the incident with the mermaid, I suggested that we test it. He was incredulous at first, but that was to be expected; eventually, he did, and my reaction was apparently… unsatisfactory, and he refuses to let me help him any longer. I think he hopes to deal with this revelation all by himself.

[ “Jarring” seems like an understatement. Arenvald knows what it’s like when the Echo rears up and slaps a vision in his head. It’s like he’s being plucked from his own skin and thrust somewhere totally alien, even if the setting and the people are familiar, he’s forced to play the part of observer to events he was not party to in the first place. It disorients him every time.

To have alien emotions thrust upon oneself it probably similar, but abundantly more confusing. Emotions are messy things. Adding someone else’s to the mix probably makes it worse. ]

I’m sorry. I… Are you all right? What do you mean your reaction wasn’t “satisfactory”? What did you feel?

It's hard to describe.

[And that isn't necessarily Connor stepping around the issue at hand. It really is hard to articulate, no matter how blindingly clear and poignant it was at the time.]

It felt like... constant white noise. And the inability to feel, of not being anchored to something. Lacking something. And he's very confused about this place. The people here, the expectation of what we're all supposed to do as members of the Circle. And...

[Something else. His pauses, words sticking.]

[ Outside of the confusion, which is extremely understandable, he's not sure what to make of all that. Obviously, that's not the whole of it, and he watches as Connor tries to search for the words, prompting gently, ]

And what?

[It’s still very hard to describe, very hard for his processing — only months old, experiences not formative enough to really grasp fully what that was — to apply words to it. He can only work in simile, which in his mind isn’t ideal, but he tries. Lets them float for a moment, his hold steady on the branch.]

It felt like a grip on my insides, trying to take the pieces out. And then I would be left hollow, and… anguished, still. Sorrowful.

[Even that’s unsatisfactory. Emotions are slippery things, too complex; this is why an android is not meant to house them, why they only manifest themselves as errors that would throw a synthetic mind into a spiral of disorder.]

I think it was a lingering sense of… loss.

[Does that sound correct to you? he almost says, but cuts the question off at the root. Only lets this explanation hang between them for now.]

[ All that sounds achingly familiar, old wounds made raw again by fever dreams that forced him to relive his many losses over and over and over again. ]

Mm.

[ An affirmative murmur to Connor’s unspoken question, accompanied by a slow, understanding nod. That gives him a bit of an insight into Hank’s general… Hank-ness. He knows too well how that sort of emptiness and heartache can manifest. Not for the first time, he thinks of Fordola, and how the loss of her father spurred her into becoming the Butcher, the hated kinslayer and lapdog of the Garlean Empire. ]

I’m sorry, Connor. That’s not something anyone should ever have to experience, even secondhand. Are you alright?

[Well. Yes.

And no.]

Emotion isn’t something that androids are able to process. Especially not emotions like Hank’s.

[No offense to the Lieutenant, of course.]

They make errors — instabilities — compile in my programming if I focus on them too long, and— [Well. Arenvald knows. They’ve had this conversation before.] I suppose I just need some time to defragment them. Otherwise, I’m fine. Functioning properly, as you can see.

Connor… whether you wanted to or not, you still felt it. It was probably shocking, to say the very least. Are you certain you’re okay?

[ That’s what Hank’s powers do, as far as either of them know. Make other people feel feelings, and while he’s still convinced that Connor is not completely devoid of emotion, to have something so heavy thrust upon him probably took its toll. ]

I’m fine.

[An automatic repeat, might as well be a knee-jerk reaction at this point.]

As I said, I merely prefer not to think about it. I suppose that’s the opposite of what Hank told me, where he said you just… get used to it, in a way. How it’s always with you.

[He doesn’t comprehend how. A long silence follows, and he pushes the lily-raft again.]

That would be debilitating. And it’s made me remember, I think, the deviants I’ve confronted back in Detroit. If something that poignant is always with them, too.

[(For someone who doesn’t want to think about it, he’s thought about it a lot.)]

[ Of all the people in the world, he’s not sure he would have ever found himself agreeing with Hank Anderson, but his expression softens. ]

He’s right, you know. Something like that… it never goes away.

[ His gaze slides away from Connor, focusing on nothing in particular out over the surface of the lake. While he was sick, he thought he saw A’aba, alive and well in the Temple. He would have given anything for that to be real, to have that terrible tragedy reversed, and thinking about it even now makes his heart ache. ]

But the way I see it, that sort of thing can destroy you only if you let it. I’ve a hole in my chest too. It’s shaped like A’aba and Aulie and Commander Kemp and all the others I’ve lost along the way, but I know letting it consume me would do all of them a disservice.

I would wager it’s the same with the deviants from your world, as well. You said it’s mostly fear or self defense that causes them to lash out, right? That kind of moment is visceral and raw. It’s bound to stay with a person, to say nothing of what they might experience afterwards.

[A hole in the chest. Apt terms, since it did feel like someone reaching into him, clenching their fingers around his Thirium pump.

Connor looks at Arenvald, sees the strength that he carries despite his own losses. The optimism and energy that is part and parcel of his personality, something magnetic that Connor can’t quite explain in plain terms. Then he thinks of Hank and the way the man’s fingers clasp tight around a bottle of moonshine, remembers that night in his kitchen, seeing the gun on the floor with one bullet in the chamber. Knows with certainty the void in his chest is not something that’s healed.

His LED spins yellow, and he has to cast his gaze away. It blinks intermittently when his friend talks of deviants.]

I wonder if they even realize what it is. Errors being misconstrued in that way, data they don’t know what to do with, telling them it’s emotion to a degree they were never programmed to experience.

Maybe knowing this will aid in understanding better the case the Lieutenant and I were working, if and when we return home.

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