Offering
By: SilverKnight
Cole liked dinosaurs.
It was one of the thousands of things Connor had learned since the Android Revolution. It wasn't an important piece of information, by itself. Ranked for pure computational need, it hovered somewhere in the same bracket as flavors of ice cream that looked most aesthetically appealing, or what specific shade of yellow a book's page turned after it had been exposed to sunlight for seven weeks, absently left on a windowsill. Taken in context, especially of the current moment, it felt like the most vital piece of intelligence he had ever extracted.
Today was Cole's birthday. He would have been ten.
Connor's brows creased in worry, scanning his surroundings again. He had began this search in the early hours of the morning. His arrival at the rundown stoop of Hank's doorstep was nothing short of routine, nor was his insistent blaring of the buzzer as he glanced at smoke-stained living room windows Hank still hadn't cleaned. The Lieutenant often left the door locked when he returned home in a drunken stupor—for some reason, hoping that the simple locking mechanism would somehow deter Connor from gaining access to his home. He'd reminded Hank in such times that the door being locked was why he spent two months with a clear garbage bag duct taped to the shattered remains of his kitchen window. From there, the conversation usually derailed into Hank muttering whatever obscenity of the week he was infatuated with, before blearily plodding into the small kitchen for coffee.
Today, there had been no response. Given the circumstance, Connor understood the reluctance. The well-worn Buick Hank drove was absent from the parking lot, but this wouldn't have been the first time the Lieutenant had called a cab home and left his vehicle at the mercy of the colorful band of locals dotting some of the places he frequented. He'd briefly scanned the house exterior to make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary, before he'd turned back around and planted a shoe of far too-high quality into the crevices of the white metal beam holding the plastic awning aloft, lifting himself off the ground. With a quick, feline movement, Connor had scored his quarry—a set of door keys, slipped between the discolored plastic roof and the cheaply-designed tin support bar; hidden in a place only an android would ever look.
Or, perhaps, a man who was laying in a drunken stupor right outside of his front door. Connor wouldn't have put it past Hank to have done just that.
He'd flicked the keys in his hands in a motion reminiscent to his calibration coin and let himself in. The house itself was in its usual state, unkempt and dusty. To be fair, it wasn't nearly as unkempt and dusty as it had been when he'd first stepped foot—rolled?—into the building, and the conspicuous absence of one unconscious (deceased?) Lieutenant Hank Anderson on the kitchen floor probably spoke volumes about Connor's state of mind more than anything else. Like many things that caused him self-reflection since his deviance, he often chose to ignore it until there was proper time for such thoughts. One of the deviated androids he casually spoke with in New Jericho called it 'avoidance'. Connor called it pragmatism. He had admitted to himself, however, that his particular method of coping could be healthier.
Luckily enough for him, Cyberlife didn't give him the capability of getting drunk. He was quite certain that the peer pressure of Hank, coupled with his own sometimes overwhelming emotions, would have ended with him face down in some seedy dive somewhere months ago, otherwise. Somehow, he almost felt a pang of regret.
A quick survey of the interior proved what he had already suspected: Hank was not here, and had not been for at least an hour, after analyzing the cold coffee that sat untouched on the kitchen table.
He'd also noted the absence of the Lieutenant's Magnum. That definitely spoke volumes about Connor's state of mind, as well as Hank's.
Sumo had seemed amiable, but once Connor had tensed at this realization, the dog lumbered up from his prone position by the television and whined softly against his side, sniffing at his slightly trembling hand. Without thought, he'd buried his fingers into the St. Bernard's fur, letting the pliable tufts of hair skim across the sensors in a soothing rhythm. Whether it was more soothing for Sumo or himself, he couldn't say, and didn't care.
"Be a good dog, Sumo," he'd found himself saying absently, quietly exiting the small homestead and preconstructing the fastest route to each key area Hank was likely to be today. Before entering the Anderson residence, he'd simply come by to offer solidarity (for something he couldn't possibly begin to understand) and live up to the, "Buddy to drink with," portion of his pledge. After seeing the missing firearm, he calculated his route with a sense of urgency that couldn't merely be explained away by due diligence.
Connor was worried. He'd become accustomed to it, even before his deviance, but back then, he didn't have a word for the heaviness that settled in his biocomponents—the slithering electrical crawling sensation that wriggled between all of his corded nanofiber tendons. The irregularity of his thirium pump forced it to work harder, forced more information into his systems, forced more garbage data to be churned through everything and nothing all at once, and –
He'd inhaled, deeply. His lungs were artificial, meant to provide a tertiary cooling mechanism, should his systems absolutely require it. In 93.7% of occasions, he didn't. In that moment, the stretching of his synthetic muscles around his chest had felt like a release of a pressure gauge he hadn't known existed, and it calmed him. Deviancy was a strange beast; strange, inhumane, and costly.
Today was not about him.
From his initial stop at Hank's home, he'd made rounds to both the precinct—"Are you kidding, man? Ain't no way Hank's gonna come in today"—and to the local bars that the Lieutenant often frequented during his darker moments. None had seen hide nor hair of him. When he had questioned the owners of their respective establishments as to where Hank may have gone instead, they all universally shrugged with a dismissive comment about Hank's, "Stubborn, lone wolf bullshit." Not all had said it so eloquently, but their points remained the same: Hank always kept to himself, especially in moods such as these.
Connor grimaced. He didn't have to.
Stubborn, lone wolf bullshit, indeed.
His next stop was the park by Ambassador Bridge, a place of particular sentimental value to Hank. He would take his son here to play while he worked on cases. In recent months, he would take Connor here to work on cases with him. Occasionally—rarely—Hank would be lulled into a momentary sense of comfort, and he would begin telling Connor stories without prompting. They were often brought up to the surface by cursory similarities to either the case, or the weather, or a scene that was playing out in front of them. The stories varied wildly in topic and tone. Some were benign tales about his childhood—how his mother once chased a woman through a parking lot because she called him chubby, or how he had once accidentally cracked his father in the elbow with a mini-bat as he dozed on a lumpy plaid couch during a lazy Sunday afternoon. Others were bits of details about a life Hank refused to share with anyone, anymore: about his ex-wife. About their son. About how much he missed them both.
About how much he failed them both.
This was where Connor learned that Cole loved dinosaurs. He'd loved everything about them; their history, their lifespans, all the different kinds of dinosaurs archaeologists had found. His favorite dinosaur was the Brachiosaurus, simply because of the name—Cole could barely pronounce it, but that's what made him love it so much. Cole had told Hank on his sixth birthday that he wanted to be, "A dinosaur person," when he grew up, and he'd said it with such conviction that Hank never doubted for a split second that his boy wouldn't make that a reality.
Three weeks later, he was dead. Just like the dinosaurs.
Something in the Lieutenants's voice struck him, like Hank's vocal chords had a become physical manifestation of life's unwavering cruelty and it was Connor's sole purpose to absorb the blow, or risk Hank's annihilation. He certainly didn't want Hank's annihilation, quite the contrary, in fact. Connor took the hit, letting the confession sink into his endoskeleton, and he suddenly felt all 197 pounds of his manufactured body being dragged down by gravity. He'd never experienced anything like it.
Did Hank feel like that everyday? If so, where did he find the physical endurance to maneuver the way that he did on missions? Where did this apparently unlimited resolve come from? Was it simply the human condition?
Was that why humans committed suicide? Why Hank played Russian Roulette and tried, sometimes desperately, to destroy himself?
Hank and Connor didn't return to this place for three months after that conversation. Neither of them objected.
Connor had been searching for Hank, by this point, for almost eight full hours. The worry he had been denying himself had blossomed into something more potent and fast-acting—dread, he believed it to be. Detroit was a large city, with a great deal of bars, and crime, and places to hide in—places to die in. That word was beginning to percolate through his mind palace with more regularity as the sun strolled across the sky. At this juncture, the only place left he could think of that held any measure of logic was, if he was being truly honest with himself, the very last place he wanted Hank to be.
Woodmere Cemetery.
Connor currently stood at the top of a small slope, letting his scanners do the heavy lifting as his mind calculated approximately eight-thousand variables. (8,372, to be precise.) He had already began making his way in the direction to Cole's plot—belonged to section A5, plot to the far left, small, unassuming tombstone—when his scanners caught a familiar speck in the distance of the largely empty parking lot. In a space, parked underneath the shade of a molting tree, sat a 1988 brown Buick, owned by one Lieutenant Hank Anderson of the Detroit Police Department.
Connor's shoulders relaxed slightly, chiseled expression softening at the edges. Hank, at the very least, was here. That was good.
His ocular cameras zoomed in of their own accord as he began the trek to the beat-up—"Vintage, Connor, it's vintage!"—vintage vehicle. From his angle on the slope of the hill, he could just barely make out a figure in the front seat.
It was slumped. A glint of something metallic flashed against the window.
Time stopped. Everything stopped.
* OBJECTIVE UPDATED: SAVE HANK
Connor broke into a sprint before he could even remember giving the command to, his wifi connecting to 911 on auto-pilot as he careened down the grassy knoll, blazer and tie trailing behind him in a flurry of movement. They didn't matter. The world around him didn't matter. All he knew, in this fragment of time, was the sound of Thirium 310 crashing against his audio sensors, the ineffective gasping of his own ragged—unnecessary—breathing, and the true, iron-clad certainty that he was not strong enough to endure this loss. He couldn't. How could anyone? How could Hank—?
He broke out of his gait into a clumsy, graceless hop to keep himself from slamming full force into the driver's side of the car. He wouldn't want to dent the paneling. As it was, he did slam into the driver's side of the car, hands pressed flat against the cold metal surface to try and diffuse some of the impact. The Buick rocked on its suspension, creaking as angrily as Hank would, if Hank had been reincarnated into a car. The figure in the seat flailed limply as Connor frantically slapped his open palm against the closed window in staccato fashion, brown eyes frenzied. "Hank! Hank!"
Such was Connor's state of panic that he did not immediately notice that the Magnum was resting untouched on the dashboard, away from Hank's hands. Nor did he notice the twisting of a haggard face as he jerked behind the wheel. His analytical sensors were all but forgotten, their voices of reason drowned out by a mantra of no no no no no—
"Agh, Jesus Christ, Connor," Hank's muffled voice grumbled as he was jolted back to consciousness, glaring up at him through unruly gray strands. "What the fuck is—"
Connor's synapses, or the synthetic equivalent of them, fired all at once at the sound of Hank's voice. They didn't note the agitation or the words themselves, that was all meaningless background noise to be filtered out. Hank was alive. He reached for the door handle. "Hank—"
Hank, himself still groggy and cantankerous, fiddled with the lock on his door, as much to calm the babbling fucking android as anything else. "Connor, what the fuck is wrong with—"
The door flung open.
Hank was engulfed by Connor, nimble fingers curled into his muscles with a strength that belied his superhuman capabilities. His spluttering only increased—in volume, if not also frequency. "Connor, what the fuck—Jesus Chri—get the fuck off—gah, what is wrong with you?!"
Connor only breathed shakily as the all-consuming panic released its deathgrip on his psyche, and all of his functions rebooted, one by one. This process took him 5.7 seconds, enough time for Hank's heartrate to spike against the side of his chin, pressed into broken in warmth of Hank's leather raincoat. Enough time for Connor's rational, if deviant, mind to reassert itself, his analytical processes replaying the background noise he had recently missed in his...compromised state.
Connor pulled back, feeling a bit more himself. He couldn't bring himself to remove his hands from Hank's shoulders. "Hank, are you alright?"
Hank's face twitched at that, bright blue eyes narrowing. "Am I alright, are you alright?" He huffed out a breath of anxiety, blinking as he briefly scanned the parking lot around them. "I mean, shit—you slam into my car like you were shot from a cannon, and then start yanking on my door like the world's about to end—did I miss something?"
Connor opened his mouth, wanting to answer, needing to answer.
And then, very suddenly, all the words he had at his disposal—from all three-hundred languages—simply dried up in his head. An ocean of information, vaporized, by one questioning glare from Lieutenant Anderson.
Was this what embarrassment felt like?
Connor closed his mouth, lips tight as he drew back his hands. He cleared his throat quietly. The sound served no functional purpose. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant, I believe I...misunderstood what I saw."
Hank blinked, scrutinizing him from the driver's seat. Ordinarily, it would be difficult to pull off intimidating body language while seated lower to the target. Hank, evidently, mastered this ability. "And what, exactly, did you see, Connor?"
Yes. This was definitely what embarrassment felt like. It was irrational, but a part of him hoped the ground would tear open a hole just large enough for Connor to slip into and never be heard from again. "I saw..." His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, as Hank's brow rose in a silent request for more information. "I've spent all day looking for you, Lieutenant."
"You know I have a phone, right?"
"Yes, and they're at peak usefulness when you answer them."
"Jesus," Hank breathed, shaking his head and turning back into the car, resting his right forearm lazily on the driver's wheel. He glanced at Connor out of the corner of his eye. "How the hell did you even find me here?"
"I tried all of the usual places first," Connor explained matter-of-factly, the harrowing moment behind them, it seemed. "When I couldn't find you, I tried checking the cemetery where Cole was buried. I—" He stumbled over his own voicebox, brows pinching together. "I wanted to...pay my respects."
Hank angled his head further to the right. Now his mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, sharp blue eyes searching him for any form of insincerity. It was a common tactic for him; he was extremely good at reading people. Every bit as capable as Connor was, and didn't have any of his advanced modules to assist. The Lieutenant was a marvel of human exceptionalism, in that regard. "...You don't have to do that, Connor. You didn't know him."
"But you did." The statement was as simple as the pavement was solid beneath his leather soles. "It would have been in poor taste to at least not offer my support, should it be needed."
Hank stared at him. Blinked slowly. "Any particular reason you didn't offer this support yesterday, instead of running all over the city in a wild goose chase?"
Connor's posture stooped, imperceptibly. "I thought you'd say no."
"Since when has that ever stopped you?" Hank's gaze was even; neither angry nor judgmental. Tired.
Connor remained silent for a moment, collecting his thoughts, before realizing that they were too scattered to truly reign in. His dark eyes flickered to the revolver on the dashboard, words spilling out of his mouth, "You took your gun with you, Lieutenant."
Hank's lip curled in dismissal. "Yeah, so?" His eyes followed Connor's to the weapon, shined to a mirror finish, and Connor swore that he could see the cogs click into place. Hank's body language shifted drastically; shoulders slumping down with an exaggerated drop, back making hard contact with the driver's seat as a large, calloused hand clamped down over his eyes. His mouth was twisted in pain. He groaned. "I am an asshole..."
Connor opened his mouth again, before immediately closing it. The Lieutenant seemed to be mulling over something very important. He didn't want to make things any worse than they already were.
Hank leaned forward, resting his forehead on his knuckles, hand weakly wrapped around the wheel. He stayed like that for several seconds. "It's not loaded, Connor," he eventually stated, voice thick with what he thought sounded like nausea. Was he nauseous about what Connor did? "Hasn't been for six months."
He tilted his head to the side. "Then, why did you take it with you?"
Hank inhaled, deeply. Exhaled. Blinked into his knuckles. "I don't know."
Connor braced himself for the reaction he knew this question was going to net him. "So, you won't be attempting suicide?"
Hank propelled himself backwards, halfway leaning out of the door with explosive anger. There it was. "Jesus fucking Christ, Connor—no, I'm not planning on attempting suicide! Why the fuck would I kill myself here instead of at home, except to save someone a fuckin' trip?! God!" He grit his teeth, lips a thin line as he shifted in his seat. He seemed to be fighting internally with himself, shaking his head and scanning his dashboard for words that neither knew existed. "Look, Connor, do you really wanna be here for this?"
"Yes." There was no hesitation in his response. There never would be.
Hank regarded him for two cycles of his thirium pump, before his posture slumped again. That was bad for his lower lumbar. "Alright," Hank sighed, hesitating for another two beats before he swung a leg out of the door. "Let's get going, then."
Hank stood to his full height, an inch taller than him, a quiet grunt of pain rumbling from the depths of his throat as he winced. "Goddamn," he whispered, "shouldn't have sat down for so long."
Connor took his normal place at Hank's left side as he lead slowly back up to the knoll, keeping approximately ten inches behind him. It was initially to stay in Hank's blind spot, in case he needed to neutralize him for the mission; it morphed into protecting Hank's blind spot to prevent him from being neutralized. Anyone who dared attempt would know the full wrath of the RK800 series. Few humans on Earth truly knew the full scope of his skillset—the ruthlessness he was built from the ground up with. With luck, few would ever have to know. He doubted Hank would like learning the ins-and-outs of his programming suite. "How long have you been here, Lieutenant?"
"It's been...what time is it?" Hank glanced over his shoulder, blue eye barely visible behind a swaying mop of gray hair.
"Currently 4:18 PM, Central Standard Time."
"Eh." He shrugged. "'Bout six-and-a-half hours. Going on seven." Connor nearly did a double-take. The only time he'd ever seen the Lieutenant that still was with copious amount of liquor in his bloodstream. Hank didn't miss the pointed silence. He wrinkled his nose in disapproval. "Hey, I've done stakeouts before, I know how to keep still."
"You just..." Connor fumbled for the right words. "Seem like a man of action."
The nose wrinkle extended to a full grimace of disgust. "Oh, shut the fuck up."
They walked through the cemetery in silence that was neutral, if not companionable. Connor didn't want to bring up the swell of harrowing, cloying terror that had gripped him mere minutes ago, and Hank didn't seem terribly enthusiastic exploring the horror that comes with your partner and closest friend believing that you were making an attempt on your own life. This, he believed, was going to be one of those emotional response moments that he would carefully store away for a later date—hopefully never.
Hank shifted position and changed directions several times, weaving between and around a city skyline of tombstones, always careful not to step directly in front of any of them. Connor supposed it was a sort of reverence for the dead, that they didn't disturb their sleep. He couldn't say he fully understood the superstition, but it held great value to most humans, so he would honor their traditions as best as he was able. This included not telling Hank where the location of Cole's grave was; if he knew the Lieutenant, it was vital for him to find his way back to his son again. Hank needed to be sure in that ability. Given the cacophony that rang inside of Connor recently, he could, in some way, understand that sentiment, even if it was completely irrational.
He mused if that was deviancy defined: understanding irrationality for its deeper, stronger meaning. Accepting that the world, and all of its inhabitants, were more than the sum of their parts; greater than their reasoning, stronger than their physical limitations. It would have been a profound moment for him, had this not become apparent at such a tender, personal moment for Hank. Perhaps, later, when all of this settled down, would he talk about what he learned.
Later.
Hank lurched to a halt so abruptly that Connor very nearly bowled into him. He sidestepped at the last moment, swiveling past a broad, if rounded, shoulder and planting his feet solidly at shoulder width. He very nearly clasped his hands behind his back, as he was effectively standing at parade rest. It felt natural to him. He ignored it.
Hank remained unmoving for nearly two and a half minutes, arms limp at his sides, facial features inscruitable. Only through scanning could Connor begin to patchwork together the inner machinations of the Lieutenant; increased heart-rate, arrhythmia more pronounced than usual, pupils constricted more than the shade from the nearby oak tree should require of them. Hank swallowed. The first movement in nearly three minutes.
Connor stiffened. He remembered a detail that had gotten lost in all the chaos. "Oh!" He turned to face Hank, who only barely regarded his existence, let alone the noise. "Lieutenant, may I..." He hesitated, suddenly unsure of himself. "May I place an offering?"
Hank's brows dipped in confusion. "An offering?"
Connor nodded, almost excitedly, as he reached into the silk inner lining of his blazer. He pulled out a small plastic toy that he'd kept in his breast pocket all day and held it out in his palm, as if to pass Hank's inspection. It was small; six inches long at most, and made of a cheap, green plastic.
Hank gaped at the 'offering', lips parted in silent shock. Eyes simultaneously whirring with a thousand thoughts, yet completely dull.
Connor felt compelled to explain. "It's a Brachiosaurus. You said it was Cole's favorite dinosaur." Sluggishly, Hank's eyes rose from the tiny plastic toy to his. There were so many questions in the older man's foggy blue stare. Connor schooled his features, but tried to keep his gaze genuine. "It is his birthday. I thought a gift would be fitting."
Hank reached out, hand slowly closing around the small, long-necked dinosaur as he pulled it back to him. "That's..." His fist around the toy tightened, the Lieutenant's upper body spasming once, as though he'd been shocked by something. "Connor..." Hank's voice was soft, non-threatening. "Could you...give me a few minutes alone? With my boy?"
Connor felt a soft sting of rejection, before he willfully buried it behind an understanding smile. "Of course, Lieutenant. I'll be by the car, when you're ready."
"Thanks." His baritone was equal parts heavy and breathless.
Connor strode through the winding walkways of the cemetery, doing his best to take in the odd beauty of nature that surrounded him, while pointedly turning down his audio sensors so as to not eavesdrop on the Lieutenant's very private, very palpable grief. He'd seen deviants grieve like Hank had; he'd heard their anguish, watched their tears stream from plastic eyes that weren't designed to shed tears in excess like that. An exceedingly vast majority of those deviants shut down almost immediately after their loss, either from stress overloading their systems, or from stress causing them to take their own newly-found lives in despair. Most were dead within minutes.
Hank survived four years. Connor hadn't even been alive four years.
He felt a surge of what could only be described as protectiveness, those ruthless lines of code rustling somewhere in the dark of his mind to be utilized at a time of Connor's choosing, and no one else's. There was so much left he had to learn from Lieutenant Anderson, there was so much he still had to offer to the world, even if he didn't see it for himself. He'd struggled with the concept of deviancy in the infancy of the rebellion; without a directive, he felt like a piece of driftwood in the middle of a turbulent ocean. Hank gave him that direction, that guidance. If Connor could repay his debt, in any way, he would gladly do so.
For the first time in over eight hours, Connor's hand dipped into his left pocket to run his fingers over his calibration coin. Unbidden, he thought of the dinosaur he'd carried in his blazer the entire day, wondering if maybe Cole would have liked it. He wanted to believe the boy would have. Connor thought the toy was rather...neat, himself. He let his mind wander to a realm of impossible what-if scenarios, teasing something that he knew could never happen, but even the fantasy of it was worth entertaining.
"He would've liked you, y'know." Connor spun on a heel, coming face to face with a rather disheveled and all-together miserable looking Hank. He didn't spare him the time to respond. "I thought you said you were gonna wait by the car." His voice was rough; hoarse and flat.
Connor blinked at his surroundings, taking another half second to watch the leaves tug with a gentle breeze. "I got distracted."
Hank huffed a tiny laugh through his nose. "That sounds familiar." Connor's brow furrowed momentarily; it didn't sound familiar to him, he was always laser-focused on the task at hand. "C'mon, let's get you home."
Home to Connor was still a ragged green couch with 170 pounds of scruffy dog flopped haphazardly over his legs. He shook his head. "I can take a taxi back to my apartment."
"Nah, fuck that," Hank muttered. "You're coming home, son. You don't have to stay there, but..." His eyes darted from Connor, to the ground, and back again. "I'd like you to come over for dinner tonight. Sumo could use the company."
Everything inside of Connor lit up. Home. "Sumo could always use company." He nodded happily and took a step forward—
And felt a strong, surprisingly sure hand latch onto the back of his neck, bodily yanking him into a hug. His cheekbone pressed against the thrum of Hank's pulse, an arm looped tightly around his shoulders as though it was the only thing keeping Connor's body together. It took him a moment to recognize that he had, without thought, reciprocated the gesture, holding onto the Lieutenant with a ferocity and depth of emotion he couldn't express in words. He knew it wouldn't last, so he settled in for what precious few seconds he would be allowed this rare indulgence of affection.
"He'd have loved you, y'know," Hank laughed thickly, Connor feeling the reverberation of the baritone through his cheekbone, through his arms. "Yeah. I think he would've."
Yeah, Connor agreed silently. He would have loved them both, too.
A/N: This is the first DBH fic I've written, and the first thing I've sat down to write in...six years or so? DBH's story is kind of a trainwreck, to be truthful, but Connor's arc is goddamn amazing, and Hank is climbing the ranks as one of my favorite characters of all time. He's such a perfect mix of crass, brash, heartbroken, and calculated: a rottweiler meets a teddy bear meets John McClaine. This man deserves to be happy forever. :3