February 12th, 2039 - 4:10 P.M.
It's been a week since he was last here. A day that Connor and Gavin had spent talking about the smallest things in the world. Nothing of interest really passing back and forth between them.
How are you liking it here? It's fine, but I hate it. It's fine but you hate it? Yeah.
It's too hard to get into. It makes him feel ungrateful sometimes. He is on the constant back and forth of hating himself for wanting to leave here and hating himself for being trapped here. Gavin should be thankful that Tina gave him a place to stay in such a remote location. He should be grateful that she comes by and helps repair the little parts of him. He can see in color, thanks to her. He hadn't known Connor's eyes were brown before. His own, now, are a strange in-between of gray and blue, the smallest smudge of green. They're designed to be unique, to be an interesting color combination. They are designed to have layers to look the most human, because it's pleasing to them to see imperfections and depth in their belongings.
Gavin fucking hates them, and he's angry with the deviants for not winning their war. And he's pissed off that he hates both sides and that the only thing he hates more than them is himself. He didn't help. He wouldn't have even if he was free. He's too much of a coward.
But he lets Connor come back. A once-a-week trip into his little cabin in the woods. The second time, bringing things that Gavin might like. Books and board games to fill his empty time. For the cat-treats, toys and a bed and things that Tina often brings, too. But it helps fill the space. It helps give him something new to look at.
He doesn't trust Connor. He has barely forgiven him. But it's nice. It's nice having someone here, to talk to. It's nice to have a change of pace. Not to have the empty hours continue to be empty, empty, empty.
No lies. That's what they decided on. It is the barebones foundation of nothing.
"You said you were going to Seattle," Gavin says, watching Connor toss the cat's ball across the floor. She's like a dog, dutifully picking it up and bringing it back to him, bounding after it once more as the bell inside jangles against the plastic shell.
That's how Gavin feels sometimes.
A bell just jangling away, being tossed around. No care in the world.
"I did."
"What did you do there?"
"Nothing related to CyberLife or you," Connor says, looking back to him. "I don't want to talk about it."
"We said no lies."
"It's not a lie."
"Connor—"
"It's not important," he whispers, in the kind of tone that seemed like it was meant to come out as flat and final, but instead it's weak, buckling under emotions. "I don't want to talk about it."
"But it wasn't about me?"
"No. I wouldn't risk your safety."
"And it wasn't about deviants at all?"
"I wish it was," Connor says. He pushes the ball more lazily across the floor. The cat follows it, glancing back confused to the two of them before deciding she's done playing if Connor is done playing. "I wish—"
"What?"
"I wish I could do more."
"More?"
"Yes," Connor says. "I wish I could help androids more. But CyberLife is watching me pretty closely, so even if I could—"
"You still work for CyberLife?"
"No. I quit. But they don't exactly trust that easily. I was in on some fairly confidential stuff. They want to make sure their NDA is being enforced. I know what they do for people like me that quit or get fired. They send people like secret shoppers to feel out whether or not they're going to slip up and say something. Or sell their story to a paper. I've seen people—" he cuts himself off, presses his lips together. "Whatever. It's not important."
"No lies," Gavin repeats. "Who the fuck am I going to tell anyway, Connor? Just talk to me."
His curiosity is itching at him. He wants to know. He wants something to think about other than what is already in his head. I wish I could do more. What is Connor even doing now? Talking to a lonely broken thing in a cabin in the woods?
"CyberLife is very good at finding people that use each other. It's a blessing and a curse."
"Have you used anyone?"
Connor smiles, half annoyed, completely forced, "No. Well—Yes. I used the androids. When I was sent to survey them and talk to them, I used them. But nobody in the company."
"So you were the one being used?"
"You could say that. I'm not going to tell you everything, Gavin. It's not that easy."
"Right. But you wanted me to tell you everything."
Connor's face softens as he looks up to meet his gaze, "I'm sorry. I really am. I have a hundred excuses, you know, but none of them are really good."
"Shitty family, shitty upbringing?"
"Yeah," Connor laughs. "That's them. I wish I could say that I didn't know what I was doing was wrong, but I did."
"And you did it anyway."
Connor brings up a hand, wipes away at his eyes and his cheeks like he's crying, but he isn't. Gavin has been watching him closely. His eyes are watering though. He's close to it. The guilt and the grief he suffers from is such a physical thing that he can't even hide it anymore.
"I'm sorry," he whispers again. "I'm trying to make up for it. I don't know how to. But I'm trying. I'm really sorry, Gavin. I'm so sorry."
.
.
February 13th, 2039 - 8:19 P.M.
Connor passes wreckage from the fight every day on his way home from work. Little things. The damage from the battle isn't completely erased. There will always be echoes of it left behind. Quite a few people fled Detroit after it. There is always the fear of something happening again, even when the threat has seemingly been taken care of.
He didn't lie to Gavin when he said that CyberLife would likely send people to check up on him. He thinks there is someone following him today. There is a regular that comes by the farm and always looks over at Connor when he's loading up his truck. For a moment, he thought it was a coincidence, and then he thought it was maybe a crush. And then he thought it was too risky to get close to anyone, even if the feelings were reciprocated, even if it was to see if his suspicions were correct.
And he doesn't want to see El's face ever again. He doesn't think the anger he harbors toward him would prevent him from loving someone. He just doesn't want to even try. It feels useless to bother. And he's scared that he'll be with someone and the comparisons will never stop. Whether they are soft like him or their anger is the same kind of simmering quiet rage that takes delicacy to figure out.
There's a fear—
That the threat will come back.
That he will be used, that he'll be lied to, that somebody will hurt him and leave him vulnerable and broken again just when he has learned to take care of himself.
But he hasn't learned to take care of himself. He's thinking of the morgue, the image of a dead body printed in the back of his skull. Again and again, coming back.
The threat is never really gone. Not El. Not his family. Not CyberLife.
And certainly, he hopes, not the deviants.
.
.
February 14th, 2039 - 2:01 P.M.
It's Valentine's Day.
Gavin doesn't know what to do with the information. He decides enough people use it to celebrate a platonic love between friends or family that he presses a kiss to the top of the cats head when he can finally catch her, but she takes off shortly after and he's left alone in the space, flipping through the pages of the book that Connor left for him.
An old science fiction story. Artificial intelligence and love and space and fighting and death.
Not so different from his own story, maybe. If he takes the pieces and turns them into abstract art. He can slot them together, make something speak to him that didn't before. Gavin is, after all, just a culmination of different pieces not meant for him.
.
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February 19th, 2039 - 5:45 P.M.
Connor brings three packages of cards, though he only needs two. He teaches Gavin the rules of canasta, but he suspects Gavin might have the knowledge hidden somewhere within him. He doesn't assume out loud, though. Instead, he teaches. He outlines points and rules. The pros and cons of freezing a deck, of paying attention to discards, of how to pick things up. He has a vague memory of playing this game with his birth mother before she died. He's clung to it ever since.
He taught El how to play once, but there was something about the match between them that made him cry. Something about winning that made his heart ache. Maybe it was because it was the first time he played with a person versus a computer. He doesn't really know. He just remembers crying in the bathroom afterwards and refusing to tell El what was wrong, because he couldn't figure out what was wrong until now.
Emotions are stupid.
What Connor wouldn't give to be rid of them, sometimes.
"I proposed a trade before," Gavin says, discarding a black three. "Do you remember?"
"We ask each other questions about our lives? Yes, I remember that."
"Can you agree to it this time?"
Connor looks at the cards laid down in front of him, refusing to look at his face. The red three set aside, the canasta of eights stacked on top of it neatly. He considers.
He considers all he has to lose.
And then he considers all he has to gain.
"On one condition."
"Sure."
"I can reject questions if I want to."
"How about a maximum of five rejects?"
Connor smiles, setting down a four in the discard pile, "Sure."
.
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February 19th, 2039 - 7:03 P.M.
"I've decided on my first question."
"Oh?" Connor asks, carefully organizing the cards. Fours all together. Hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades. Again and again. It helps busy his hands, his mind, it helps create an excuse to stay a little longer. He doesn't know if it's because he wants to be around Gavin more, or if it's because he just doesn't want to go back to the empty apartment. "What is it?"
"How did you end up working at CyberLife?"
Connor chews on his bottom lip, "My adoptive mother worked there. She found a place for me."
"Did you want to work there?"
"I wanted to… belong somewhere."
"And did you belong at CyberLife?"
"I was good at my job," Connor says evenly.
"That wasn't what I asked."
"People didn't like me," he says quietly. "So, no, I didn't belong there. I probably wouldn't have gotten the job without my mother. I never properly graduated university. I was just good enough to be allowed in."
"So it's your mom's fault?"
Connor shakes his head. Not a no to his question, because technically it is his mother's fault. Both birth and adoptive. If his mother didn't die, he wouldn't have been taken in by someone else. He wouldn't have been set down this path. He likely would've traveled. He always wanted to see the world.
He still could, probably, if CyberLife didn't make him agree to stay in the U.S. and surrender his passport to ensure they could keep an eye on him. It's a miracle he can even make it here and be sure that nobody followed him. But these are backroads, bad weather. And he is a very careful person.
"Is that a real question, or do I have to use a veto on it?" Connor asks, looking up to him.
As much as he knows it's his mother's fault he's here—he can't blame her. Not outright. He still agreed to work at CyberLife. It's a messy situation. He doesn't want to hate the person that rescued him from foster care.
"It's not a real question."
"Good," Connor says, drawing in a breath. "I should go. It's late."
"You didn't ask me anything."
"I already asked you plenty, Gavin. I think you can interrogate me from now on."
"And you'll be a better subject than me, huh?"
Connor looks to his face before he lets himself react. It's hard to gauge how serious Gavin is sometimes. The words come out like they're meant to be cruel, but he has a smile on his lips. Lopsided, like someone either spent too much time making sure it looked real or too little time when they created him. Or, maybe, Gavin has spent too much time trying to make it not look like the one that CyberLife programmed him with.
Or—
His broken features mutilate it.
Either way, it's a smile.
And Connor gives one in return.
"With how cruel I was to you, I think the least I can do is answer your questions."
"And I'm not even keeping you prisoner."
Connor's smile stays, but the authenticity fades. He doesn't have anything to say. He doesn't know how to make light of the situation. He already feels like if he spends the rest of his life apologizing it isn't going to be enough.
"Connor, you know I forgave you, right?"
"Forgiveness doesn't always wash away the guilt."
"Then it's not me you're looking for forgiveness from, yeah?" Gavin asks.
"What do you mean?"
"You need to forgive yourself."
"I'm not quite sure I can do that," he says quietly, tucking the cards away. "I'll see you next week, Gavin."
"Yeah. See you then."
.
.
February 26th, 2039 - 7:03 P.M.
They sit side by side on the porch, both of them huddled up underneath coats and scarves. Connor has a pair of gloves on, two pairs of socks, a hat pulled down over his ears. Even though he rewrapped the fabric of his scarf to cover his face, he's still freezing. But it's kind of nice, being out here. Looking out at the trees.
He always liked the winter when he was a kid. He liked trying to make forts when him and his brother had snowball fights. He liked the sound of his feet crunching the snow. He doesn't remember being cold when he was a kid, and it almost ruins it now, but he's still holding onto memories.
Always holding onto memories.
But the two of them gaze up at the stars, talking quietly, passing words back and forth like they're afraid to spook the animals out in the forests. Gavin tells Connor that he runs, every morning. The same loop around the cabin. Sometimes three times, sometimes ten, sometimes only once. Just something to force him to move.
Back at Connor's house, he had a treadmill. He wasn't always home often, but he used to run when he was. Just in place, looking at the piece of art he hung up on the wall that El had picked out. The music in his ears a constant shift of running for anger, running from grief. Different things fuel his need to run.
And for someone who always wants to run, he really does cling onto the past.
"You asked me once," Connor says quietly. "About my romantic relationships."
"I was just trying to piss you off."
"I know. And you succeeded."
"Do you want me to apologize?"
"No," Connor says with a small laugh, shaking his head. "Not at all. It's just—I've only been in love once. It ended a little bit before I met you. It lasted a long time."
"Con—"
"You asked me about CyberLife," he continues. "Why I stayed. Why I worked there. It wasn't just my mom that took me there. I fell in love with a guy that worked there. And I didn't want to leave him, even after we broke up. I was afraid of losing the only person that I ever loved. And I kept waiting for him to say that he was sorry and take it all back and want to be with me again, and he didn't. Well, that's a lie," Connor pauses for a laugh. "He did apologize. I just didn't believe he meant it."
"Do you still love him?"
He shrugs, "I don't know. I'm over him. You know? I could be in relationships again. But I think about him a lot. Just not in the same context. It's complicated. Messy."
"He was your first love," Gavin says, as though that explains everything.
And maybe it does. El was part of his life for almost ten years. They loved each other for most of that. He was the first person that ever made Connor feel like he was more than just his grief and trauma. He was the only person that made Connor feel like he wasn't an adopted orphan or half a set of twins. He was the only person that helped quiet the nightmares.
"You're allowed to still care about him, you know that, right? There was a reason you loved him, wasn't there? That isn't just gonna disappear."
Connor nods, trying to force back the tears, "Yeah. I guess."
El was kind. Thoughtful. Charming. So intelligent it made Connor feel small sometimes. So talented it made Connor feel like he paled so much in comparison that there was little point to try. But when it was good it was like the best thing in the entire world. Like he could do anything, be anything. Like he was flying high above the world. But when it was bad, when he was aware of who he was, where they would go, he felt like breaking. It was never El's fault. It was his own. He knows he isn't good enough. He knows he wasn't the brother that should've been left behind. He shouldn't be the one alive right now, sitting beside Gavin.
"What happened between you two?"
"He sent me here," Connor says quietly. "On the job to go out and travel to see deviants. Work with police departments to talk to them. It was after I told him I never wanted to go. He put me up for the job and I felt like I couldn't reject it."
It sounds stupid when he says it out loud. Something so small. So unimportant. Just a job that he could've said no to. But it wasn't really like that. It was nights of Connor telling El that he wasn't sure how he felt about this, how much it hurt to see androids in pain, even though the pain wasn't real. The act of anyone being upset triggers an empathetic response for him. He can't watch people cry in movies. He can't watch them be in so much pain that they scream from it. He can't watch people die. At the time it was the same thing—actors aren't in those situations for real, but the emotions they showcase stem from something.
It was a betrayal. He doesn't know how to get that across properly. Because it's easy to reduce it down to this. That El wanted to give him a prestigious job that would earn him so much money, would give him so much more. But it was the worst possible thing Connor could ever think of, and he couldn't say no. It was Elijah Kamski, founder of CyberLife, putting him in that position. It was his mother, Amanda Stern, her status in the company, the next in charge. If he said no, it would call for all kinds of questions they weren't prepared to answer.
"Connor?"
"I didn't believe he wanted me there sometimes, and he sort of confirmed that," Connor tries to pretend to smile, but he fails, "I think I'm always going to remember how it felt to be unwanted in that way. Like… in the end, we weren't around each other often. Or he wouldn't talk to me. I felt like a ghost that couldn't be heard. That feeling is going to stay. So I'm over him in some ways, like I couldn't… I couldn't take him back now. But I do care about him still. As a person. Just not romantically. I don't think I'm ever going to be capable of that again. It's complicated."
For everyone in the after El stage of his life. They will always have remnants of that feeling, Connor thinks. That feeling of not being good enough to equally match him. That feeling of not being wanted. That feeling of being turned away, pushed aside, shoved into a place he never wanted to go. He is always going to hold onto that fear.
And he is always going to care about El. It's just more difficult to cut him off. The anger he has only stretched as far as their romantic relationship. Connor still cares for him as a person. He just doesn't know how to rescue the good and quarantine it from the bad. He can't toss El away from his thoughts and his life entirely. El was one of the most important people to him he's ever met. It's not that easy to excise a first love, a last loved. But it is easy to say that Connor doesn't love him that way anymore.
It hurts, in the sense that he knows it's the end, but it feels good, too. To figure out more and more pieces of the puzzle behind their lives. El was never a bad person. He did a bad thing, and it destroyed them. But he's still El. The person that got him to laugh and feel like himself after fifteen years of not knowing how to be anything other than an orphan and half a set. He was the only one that taught Connor that he was allowed to be himself, to breathe between the shame and the mourning.
There was a reason you loved him.
Yes. There was. And that's the problem. Connor didn't lose just a relationship. He lost his best friend. He lost the only person he could be with. He hasn't spent the last six months grieving over his lost boyfriend, he's spent the last six months grieving the loss of his best friend.
But here, beside Gavin, he knows that there are other people. Not to replace El, but to forge a new bond with. To be able to speak, to be something other than a businessman or a son. He hates how long it has taken him to realize this.
.
.
February 26th, 2039 - 10:22 P.M.
Connor is sitting on the couch, a blanket drawn around his shoulders, a mug of hot chocolate in his hands, steaming in front of his face. His cheeks are flushed from the cold outside, a small tremor passing through him as the cold lingers on his skin. Gavin is watching him too closely. He should stop.
But it's strange.
He saw emotion on Connor before. He saw sadness and mourning and anger, he saw him smile and he's heard him laugh. But it was different. Even when there was a glass wall between them, Connor never felt real. He was just a villain. An enemy sitting there, trying to scrape clean the answers from him. Trying to expose all that trauma.
Gavin wasn't dumb enough to believe that Connor might not have any bad memories in his life, but he had built him to be a different type of person. He had flattened out all the little things he said and alluded to in an effort to keep his hate for him there. If he thought of Connor as just a horrible person doing horrible things, it was easier.
But these last few weeks have shown him something different.
Connor is a person, with a past, with a vulnerability there on the surface, like he can't bring himself to hide it away anymore. Gavin saw him almost cry outside. He heard the trembling in his voice when he spoke. He saw the look on his face when he talked about his ex.
Over him, but not over him.
Gavin doesn't really know what that means. He thinks it's a bit like how he's over what happened to him, in the Archive Room, but can't let it go. He was still held captive. He still remembers how exposed he was to the world. How the only thing that kept him safe and covered were the clothes and blankets that Tina brought for him. He's forgiven Connor, but he hasn't forgiven the system of laws and rules that out him there to begin with. Gavin said things he wasn't ready to say. He admitted to things he didn't want to have to admit to.
It's complicated.
Messy.
He comes to the couch, sitting down beside Connor, pulling a second blanket over his shoulders.
It's a rough night. He can tell by the way Connor is still staring into the distance, always thinking. But he still has so many questions. He thinks he will always have questions.
"Why did you come back to Detroit? I know it wasn't just for me."
"No, you were a bonus," Connor says quietly, with a small hint of a smile, a tiny bit of humor in his words. "There was an opportunity for me to try and make up for what I did to you and the other deviants."
"Yeah? What kind?"
"There's a farm, on the outskirts of Detroit. It's run by a woman that helps androids cross the border over to Canada, to keep them safe. She knows people that will help repair them when they're damaged, that have access to biocomponents and Thirium," Connor says, looking over to him. "I'm helping her."
"You are?" he asks, knowing how surprised he looks, because it makes the smile on Connor's face a little bigger.
Or maybe that's just the smile that comes from knowing he's doing some kind of good.
"It's not going to fix everything or change anything. I know it won't ever make up for killing them, but…" he trails off. "It's something."
"It's something," Gavin echos. He doesn't correct Connor on the latter part of his words. The way he made it seem like he killed the androids. He didn't. Gavin knows that. CyberLife did, and not in the sense that they brainwashed Connor-he's already made it clear that he didn't have any part in the actual destruction of their bodies. Just some small part in their minds. "You didn't have to come all the way to Detroit to help androids escape from their owners."
"No," he says, leaning a little closer to him. "But there are people here that I like."
"Tina?"
"And you."
"And me," Gavin repeats. "You like me?"
He shrugs, "I do. I'd like to be your friend, Gavin."
"I'd like to be your friend, too, Connor," he says quietly.
Get to know him. That's what this is about. Knowing him. His captor, his savior.
"Are you coming next week, then?" Gavin asks.
"I'd like to," Connor says, with a smile.
Gavin thinks he'd like that, too.
