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[ 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.]

[ Arenvald is not Minfilia. He’s not Alphinaud. He’s not terribly smart or especially skilled, he has no way with words like they do. He can’t summon up inspiring speeches or keep pace with diplomats. He’s a broken boy with a sword and a gift he’s not so sure he deserves.

But he is free. Free to write his own story. Free to move forward despite the many ghosts of his past, the scars carved deeply into his heart as sure as the ones that he hides beneath his warpaint. It pains him to see Connor fettered so, stuck on a notion of what he is when he has long ceased to even be that person.

What he would give for Connor to be able to see himself as Arenvald sees him, kind and funny and warm, a bright presence in his time here. Someone he cares about so very deeply, and only wishes the best for. ]

You keep trying to put yourself in a box you don’t fit in, Connor. You have worth far beyond what those people who made you tell you, I know it. I've seen it.

You chose to spare that girl, just the same way you chose to put your life on the line to save Struxta. Is that uselessness to you?

I put myself in danger because it doesn’t matter if I die.

[The word slips out before he can stop it, caught on the sharp hook of Arenvald’s counter-argument.]

It doesn’t matter if I shut down, because I am made to serve a purpose — if I can help, then I should. Do you know what it’s like—

[Something is stirring in his chest, he’s not sure what, but he knows it’s uneasy.]

—to be built like I am, to inherently want to make sense of everything, and am able to make sense of none of it? That all I can do is accept my new mission parameters as a helpful member of the Circle, because I can’t hunt deviants here?

[He’s wheeling on the wind. He needs an anchor. If it means shutting himself down over and over again for the sake of applying himself to this new scenario in an effective way, then what did it matter?

He’d just push fear away.]

Of course I threw myself into the Storm. That’s not worthy of a compliment; that’s not a show of humanity. It is simply an android looking for ways to perform a task well.

[ It doesn't matter if I die.

He would call it a dichotomy, that that phrase should fly out of the same mouth that told him he was afraid to die, if he hadn't thought the same of himself. A wretched halfbreed, neither Ala Mhigan nor Garlean, left to scratch out a living like the vermin he is. It doesn't matter if I die.

And yet...

I don't want to die.

Arenvald's expression sharpens, a strange mix of desperation and concern and the fiery spark of anger. He's not mad at Connor so much as the situation, the walls that have been built around him by people who think they know what he is, when in reality they have no idea. ]

Yes! Yes, I know exactly what it's like. You're looking for purpose, and that is the most human thing in the entire universe! There's not a person alive who's born knowing exactly who they are or what they want, or who understands what they feel. We just try our best, because that's all we can do.

I was already given a purpose!

[His voice raises along with Arenvald's, a reflection of what he can read as irritation in the other -- not knowing what to do with it, his programming dictates that he tries to mollify the flow of conversation; but something else, that lingering feeling in his chest, running through pulses of energy carried by his Thirium, stray lines of code not arranged properly, simply doesn't follow that directive.]

And I... I want to adhere to it.

[He wants to, because what choice does he have?]

Why are you so eager to willfully misconstrue my point? Why do you want to argue this into the ground?

[ There is a part of him that doesn't want this, these raised voices and tense feelings, but a part of him that also hopes that Connor will realize that irritation is just as human as anything. He knows, as much as he hates it, he knows that his own feelings can't come first in this. Connor has to figure himself out, and Arenvald has no room here to be selfish. ]

Because I watched you change! I saw you on that rooftop and you let that man die. You earned his trust and then they killed him, but when the gun was in your own hand, you couldn't do it! You chose, and you chose mercy over the mission.

You're not just some machine, Connor. Your purpose can be whatever you want it to be. You can write your own story.

[Connor hates this feeling, knowing what it is. Knowing that it doesn’t belong in him, that an android shouldn’t experience it, but he’s felt it before — emotion, the kind Hank shared with him. The kind the deviant on the rooftop forced into his processing. The kind that even he registers time and again, without any outside influence, like right now, and right now he feels twisted up and frustrated and lost—

He’ll return to Detroit when this mission is over, once they’ve felled some unyielding dark, and CyberLife will know everything that’s wrong with him. Amanda will see it, will frown at him, tsk and tell him that she’s disappointed. And then each piece will be removed by a careful engineer’s hand, and they’ll turn every part of him over and over and ask themselves where they went wrong. Where’s the design flaw? Where’s the imperfection? Why couldn’t the machine just do as it was told and not question its directives? Start over from scratch, we’ll try again.

Start over.

Connor doesn’t reply, only presses his crossed arms closer against his body, defiantly looking back out over the water. As if trying to hold himself together, keep himself whole, the very thought of it making him feel like parts of him have gone hollow already.

And then, finally, quietly—]

Are you calling me a deviant, too?

[ The hot ember of anger that’s been burning in Arenvald’s chest goes out almost instantly, extinguished by the frost that creeps over the inside of his ribcage at that quiet accusation, the way that Connor seems to close in on himself.

“Deviant”, he decides, is a dirty word, and he doesn’t like it. A phrase coined to make it sound like being true to oneself, to fully embrace who and what you are, something worthy of punishment. That’s not something he wants to enforce, but he can’t help but feel like he’s royally screwed up here, by putting the idea in Connor’s head in the first place.

His reply comes, just as quiet, ]

I’m calling you Connor. My friend. Someone I… someone I care about. No more and no less.

You’re already your own person, I just wish I knew how to make you see that person like I do – you’re not defective. Not useless. You’re… you’re wonderful.

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