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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.

[ Arenvald looks over at last, only to see his friend looking away, yellow light stark against his temple. He still hasn’t managed to suss out just what the yellow means, whether it’s good or bad, but he can’t imagine it being anything good, given the current subject matter. ]

I’m still not so convinced it’s not emotion.

[ He’d heard it from Connor’s own lips, the frightful admission that he is afraid to die. Things like that can’t be programmed. ]

I really think you ought to re—

[ —reevaluate the way you look at deviants, is meant to be the end of that sentence, but he’s cut short by the sudden spark of pain behind his eyes. It’s not a headache of the normal sort – it’s a sensation that’s familiar and altogether surprising since he never once expected to be able to experience it since being brought here. The Echo stirs to life, its effect like to slipping him out of his own body. On the outside, Arenvald remains hunched over, fingers pressed to his temple, a grimace on his face and eyes squeezed shut. He is unresponsive, deaf and blind to his surroundings, while his gift bears him away— ]

[Connor’s reaction is immediate to Arenvald’s sudden change. The branch is dropped and left to lay across the lily pad as the android steps forward, concern shifting in his features, dropping to a knee in front of his friend.]

Arenvald-? Arenvald! What is it?

[(Hi, Daniel. My name is Connor.

It’s late, the rooftop is a platform high above the rest of the writhing city below, pulsating with paroxysms of light and life. A helicopter above, keeling plastic furniture over on its side. The pool shimmers with blue, leaks red, a body gone limp and face-down within. Another officer wounded to his left, idly noted, but his focus needs to remain forward — a deviant, its processing compiling itself with something reminiscent of fear, a gun in its hand, and a little girl at his mercy. One step backwards and they’ll tumble down, down, down, to the pavement below. Parameters for a mission failure.

He needs to avoid that.

Daniel was going to be replaced. Show empathy and understanding, try to keep him calm, even stepping forward to aid the fallen officer — you can’t kill me, I’m not alive. — and reduce its stress levels. Watch, keenly, as success rates and percentages rise in realtime. Promising. Instill trust, running subroutines that make him sound concerned, sound confident that nothing bad will happen to him. That everything will be all right, Daniel just needs to reevaluate what he’s doing, nothing good will come from this.

The comforting wheedling of words. He can see the shift in the deviant’s eyes, the way it crosses that vital threshold — trust. The little girl is set down, and she stumbles away, dropping to the ground.

High caliber bullets tear through Daniel only seconds later. Thirium splatters across its uniform, on the ground, mixing with the scent of chlorine from wayward pool water. Enough damage for a shut-down, an inevitability before he’s gone offline. Something drains from his eyes — cognizance? life? no. — and the threat is neutralized.

I trusted you, Connor.

—

The scene shifts. There’s still a pool.

But Kamski is there, an observer, the devil on his shoulder, shoot her. Chloe is doe-eyed and at his mercy, knees pressed to the ground, looking up at him. Waiting for his decision. The gun has been slotted into his hand, the barrel pointed at her head. It’s cold — humid, but cold, just like outside, a field of white stretching out forever just beyond glass panes. The exterior world is nothing more than set dressing to this one moment in time, something defining, decide who you are.

A bullet to the head means information, it promises progression, a case that’s been stalled out that it might as well lay dead at their feet. He’s going to fail his mission if he can’t make headway, Amanda will frown at him from the Zen Garden, pruning those frustratingly perfect roses. Her claws of disappointment raking through him with each motherly syllable.

Pull the trigger. He needs to pull the trigger.

But he can’t.

He breathes out no, and Kamski, with that serpentine smile and that knowing look, calls him a deviant. Fear slides itself across his insides, a ghost of a thing, defensiveness flaring. No. No, he’s not.

A hand on his shoulder. Hank guides him out. Connor feels like he’s leaving a lion’s cage when he turns his back, but Kamski leaves him with only words and scarring across his programming that he isn’t sure will heal.)]

Arenvald!

[A hand goes to his shoulder, gripping tight.]

Can you hear me?

[ His first thought is that this place reminds him of Struxta, in its way, with tall, shining buildings of glass and steel, bright lights and flashing screens. The Echo always disorients him when it shoves someone’s past in front of his eyes, but if not for his experience on that world, he’d be more confused than he is now.

My name is Connor.

He watches the scene play out, for there’s nothing else he can do. Watches as Connor says just the right things at the right time, watches as his fellow android begins to trust him, watches as that trust is ultimately betrayed, holes blown through the deviant – through Daniel – with a sudden and startling spray of fluid.

Connor told him of this moment, explained how he had been programmed to do just this – to do or say whatever was needed in the name of the success of the mission. And as this Connor turns away from the lifeless husk of the android on the rooftop, uncaring, Arenvald can only be stunned. To hear it is one thing but to bear witness to it firsthand? It’s like watching someone completely different.

But the Echo is not done yet, it seems. The scene jumps, the surroundings change, and though not much seems different about Connor himself, Arenvald gets the very real sense of the passage of time. How much, he’s not sure, but it’s probably not terribly long, given Connor’s relatively short life so far.

A life for information, is the gamble here. Hank’s not having it – and that’s a side of the man Arenvald hasn’t seen yet – but that’s not the real focus here. Arenvald knows without a doubt that the Connor of the first memory would have shot without hesitation, would have rationalized that the girl in front of him is only a machine. Unfeeling, unliving. An easy sacrifice to make.

Connor refuses, and has the word deviant flung at him for his trouble. Mayhap Arenvald was not so far off when he thought that the Connor on the rooftop was a different Connor than the one he knows. Things change. People change, even people who were built instead of born.

A life sacrificed in the name of the mission. The mission sacrificed to save a life.

Hank guides Connor out, and as the man by the poolside utters one last cryptic phrase, the memory dissolves away. The real world reasserts itself, and Connor – the real Connor – is kneeling in front of him, hand on his shoulder, concern on his face.

It’s not more than a few minutes that the Echo has him in its grasp. His gift has a funny way of bending time, of showing him several moments in the space of a breath. Arenvald blinks, shakes his head a little to clear away the fog, and reaches up to rest a hand on his friend’s arm. He tries for a reassuring smile, but he still looks a little dazed. ]

I’m alright, promise.

[Unresponsive for harrowing minutes, Connor curses under his breath. His scans are offline, flickering between working and not, and of course at this moment — when he would use them in a flash, to diagnose what might be happening — they don’t blossom to the forefront of the vision when he wills it.

He’s half-prepared to bring them back to shore, to get help from someone who might know what’s happened, and Connor's already reaching for the branch to hurry them back. But Arenvald returns to reality at that exact moment in time, and his attention snaps back to the man’s face.]

What happened? You were unresponsive.

[Being “all right” or otherwise, Arenvald still looks dazed, his mind elsewhere. Relief would be premature.]

[ Connor looks well and truly distressed, and Arenvald feels a bit bad. He’d told Connor about the Echo, but not how it appeared when he has a vision. He never expected to actually have one since Astoria stole him away from home.

What happened, indeed. ]

I was on the rooftop.

[ A pause. Context, Arenvald. ]

It was a vision. I saw the roof with you and Daniel. I saw you talk him down. I watched him die.

[He can’t stop the confusion instilling itself in his eyes, a rooftop not enough context for anything. But then Arenvald says Daniel, and Connor leans back a little, as if the name was a shade of the past reaching out to grab him. He drops his hand from the man’s shoulder, and the dots are connected lightning-quick. Arenvald’s Echo, the state of the Temple and its allowance of their original abilities, and a memory of Connor’s, still burning brightly in his processing.]

Your… your Echo.

[Connor queues up the first response in his head, sounding almost like an explanation for a question unasked. Somehow, he feels as if his insides are all opened and exposed, and he needs to seal himself back up again-]

He was going to kill that little girl.

Edited 2018-09-27 17:27 (UTC)

[ There’s nothing accusatory in Arenvald’s gaze. The past can’t be changed, he knows that better than anyone, and he knows now better than ever that Connor did what he was made to do. He knows that, if he had to do it over again, it would have played out differently. ]

Ssh, Connor. I know. I saw.

[ He keeps his hand on Connor’s arm – loosely, but he doesn’t want Connor to completely draw back. The last thing he wants to do is scare him off with this.

The next words out of his mouth are laced with caution. ]

There's more.

[What comfort he would’ve received by Arenvald’s reassurance is thoroughly tossed into the lake at the mention of more. Connor doesn’t pull away, doesn’t try to detach himself further, but his jaw coils with tension, and his tone is just as cautious.]

What else did you see, then?

A pool… a different one. A girl.

[ He hates this. He hates that he’s stumbled onto something so very raw for Connor, something that has him tensing, ready for the worst. Without really thinking, his fingers curl into the fabric of Connor’s sleeve.

Please. Please don’t run from this. ]

You could have gotten what you wanted if you shot her, but you didn’t.

[Connor freezes as the memory sluices through him. Kamski’s voice, ingratiating and patronizing all at once, asking him to shoot another android for more information regarding deviants. Chloe just… waiting for him to make a decision, her existence in his hands, like it would be nothing at all if he pulled the trigger. Just a machine, and Kamski could obtain another — he already had several.

But the very idea stilled him, knowing that the man could just sacrifice his own android without thought, all for the sake of an experiment. And his words, cutting through him like the blade of a knife, when Connor refused: Fascinating… CyberLife’s last chance to save humanity… is itself a deviant.

He registers fingers curling into his sleeve. Looks down at Arenvald’s hand, then back up at his friend. Doesn’t pull away, but he’s barely moved as it is.]

I couldn’t do it. [His voice is low, almost breathless.] I should have, but the way she was looking at me, I just—

[He couldn’t.]

Kamski's terms were unreasonable. Even the Lieutenant thought so.

[ Connor goes still, a perfect kind of still that only he would be capable of, and Arenvald waits, insides twisting with worry. He didn’t choose to see what he saw, and he could have kept it to himself if he’d really wanted, but that would be unfair to Connor. By pure happenstance, Hydaelyn’s gift stirred to life after having been dormant in the Temple for so long and showed him two pieces of his friend’s past. He understands much more than he had before, but at what cost? ]

You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Connor.

[ His fingers flex, tighter still, into his friend’s sleeve. ]

It’s okay. I think… I think you did the right thing.

[Maybe it’s less justification to his friend. Perhaps Connor is trying to justify it to himself.

There are thresholds he can’t cross. Errors he can’t house; how much longer does he have to carry them inside his head, jostling around like loose pieces? How long until he could complete his mission and be done with it? In the Temple, on Struxta, here on Lake Dona with his friend, all of these experiences have just made them worse. Intrinsically, he knows this is true.

Connor wants to return home to Detroit; he wants that set path of clear expectation. And yet, at the same time, he doesn’t.]

I haven’t told anyone about that memory. Hank doesn’t know; it’s too… recent.

[And finally, he moves. But it’s to pull his sleeve away, and if he manages it, he'll stand and look out over the water, crossing his arms across his chest, shoulders angled taut.]

You know enough of my situation to realize why that day was problematic. CyberLife will want to correct the issue whenever I return.

[ Arenvald maintains his grip for only a second more, ultimately relenting to let Connor move away. His heart aches to watch it, though, to see that tension in his frame. Slowly, gingerly, Arenvald gets to his feet. The lily pad sways with the movement, but it’s broad and balanced enough not to send them both tipping into the water. ]

Connor…

[ He reaches for his friend, hesitant at first. He has no idea what comfort he can give here, if any, but he very desperately wants to. Connor is so afraid of what he might be, of the things he might feel, and Arenvald has no idea how to help him embrace that – because running from it will surely help nothing. At last, he rests a gentle hand on his friend’s shoulder. ]

Mayhap… the issue is not with you, or that moment or any of the choices you made. Mayhap the issue is with the people who see valuing life as a problem.

[He doesn’t flinch when he feels the pressure of Arenvald’s touch on his shoulder, but tension doesn’t drain. His friend would be able to feel it, nestled in there, across the line of his back, the faux muscles along his profile. The visible parts of his fingers fidgeting with the fabric of his sleeve.

He doesn’t look at him.]

Androids aren’t alive, Arenvald. Not deviants, not the ones that remain compliant, not even myself. We’re meant to give the impression that we are; maybe it works too well, even with each other. A cycle that perpetuates itself, an idea that spreads like a virus.

[Kamski had said that. Connor reflects the words back purposefully.]

But it doesn’t change the truth.

It’s never that simple.

[ The deliberate repetition of that man – of Kamski’s words does not escape him. There had been something about that fellow that Arenvald had disliked immensely. He found him too like a serpent for his liking, slimy and sly and far too content to play with others. ]

There is a girl, back home. Her name is Fordola. A pureblood Ala Mhigan, born during the Garlean occupation. Her parents bent a knee to the Empire, told her that it was the only way to live, that it was Ala Mhigo’s best chance of a future. There was no freedom to be won, only respect.

That was her truth. A truth that drove her to slay her own people, to become the hated enemy of Ala Mhigo.

[ His fingers flex against Connor’s shoulder. He wishes he would look at him. ]

It’s your truth against their truth.

[Difficult to grasp that concept without it slipping away like sand through clumsy fingers. Connor, made to think analytically, made to view the world as a procession of zeroes and ones, of what is true and what is false. A multitude of reason and consequence, of if/then scenarios.

More than one truth — whose would override the other, then? His? Markus’? Hank’s? CyberLife’s? Kamski’s? No, the world couldn’t spin on more than one axis. Connor can’t tread more than one path.

What would Amanda say to all of this?]

You’re wrong. It’s not that complicated.

[He does turn his head to look at his friend this time, and the brightness of the overhead sun seems to drown out his LED.]

I am either functional or I am not. I am either useful, or I am not. Why can’t you understand this?

[Everyone here, they treated him so differently. Considered things for him Connor never bothered to do. Didn’t realize what that was doing to him.]

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