Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Tina tapped a pencil on the desk rhythmically. The rubber end made little noise, but served as an outlet for her anxiety.

There were two types of cases that were always the hardest: Those that involved kids, and those that involved colleagues. This was both and that somehow made it four times worse.

Morale was exceptionally low at the precinct. They were down two of their best officers. And everyone was reeling from Connor's abduction. But it was personal for Tina.

Connor was her friend.

She remembered the first day he walked in as an official detective. He followed Lieutenant Anderson around close enough to almost trip him. The once mechanically calm android was a wound up ball of excited nerves more befitting a puppy on his way to doggy day care.

Tina had instantly known they would be fast friends. And she had been right.

Connor was just as eager to make friends as he was to work and took her comradery happily. Before long, they had their own inside jokes and shared interests. She even got him to watch the absolutely terrible eighties horror movies she unapologetically loved. He didn't quite understand the concept of 'so bad it's good' but he was getting there.

Losing him the first time had hurt. As soon as Tina had heard the news she had gone home and cried her eyes out until they burned so much even blinking hurt. But then he was back. He was back and cuter than ever and everything was ok.

Now he was gone again.

But now, she refused to cry. Crying would be admitting defeat. It would be admitting the horrible likelihood that she was never going to see that sweet, adorably awkward, kid again. She couldn't do that.

Tap, tap, tap.

-o-

Chris pulled the trigger, the bullet missing the target completely. He needed to focus, needed to keep his head. He tried again with even worse results.

"Damn it," he swore, lowering his weapon. The pristine paper of the target seemed to stare back at him mockingly. He was a good shot, top of his class. He should be better than this.

He set the gun down, trying to ignore how his hands were shaking.

Chris knew he hadn't been particularly close to Connor. They had a respect for one another, got along just fine, but they hadn't quite gotten to be friends.

Yet.

He had always meant to get to know him better, he did. But truth be told, Connor intimidated him. All androids tended to make him nervous.

It wasn't through a backwards thinking bigotry, that wasn't it. Chris had come around to the idea of androids being living beings sooner than most. That memory was still fresh, etched into his brain by mismatched eyes that looked at him with more mercy than he deserved. Eyes filled with dangerously optimistic compassion. Eyes that silently asked a single question.

Why?

Chris took off his safety glasses and rubbed at his face. Why? It was a question he had repeated to himself time and time again. Why had he followed orders? Why had he gunned down innocent people just begging for freedom? Why was he spared?

The same question burned behind his eyes now, threatening to liquify emotion as his vision blurred. Why take a sweet, helpless, kid like Connor?

Going off of physical age, his own son came into the world only days after Connor did. They practically shared a birthday. It drew an uncomfortable parallel that turned his stomach and made him regret having eggs with breakfast. What would he do if it had been Damion? His baby boy?

He imagined he would be doing about as poorly as the Lieutenant.

Chris gathered his equipment and turned to leave, bitter taste lingering in his mouth. He had no right to be this upset, no right to let it affect him as though he had lost someone dear to him. He had his chance to connect with Connor and had squandered it.

He shut off the lights in the now vacant shooting range. Darkness pressed in on him like a shroud.

This wasn't his tragedy to mourn.

-o-

The car made a clunking noise as it maneuvered down the road. Ben knew it was nothing to worry about. The car was old, it had its issues, but it was still solid. It had been making that noise for years. So, he ignored it.

Ben had other things to worry about right now.

Hank was an old friend, they had been on the force together for years. He had seen that man pull himself up from situations that would have been impossible for lesser men. Time and again he proved he was unbreakable.

Until he broke that is.

Ben had driven him home that terrible night. He had taken the hollowed out husk of the once unshakable man and brought him back to the cold and empty house that was his new future. He hadn't tried to talk to him besides letting him know he was there for whatever he needed. Words of affirmation were a mockery to the severity of what he had just endured.

Over the months that came after Ben did, of course, try to help him. It became painfully obvious that Hank didn't want to heal. But still, he tried. Jeffery tried. Everyone who cared about him tried while being powerless as he withered away before their eyes.

Ben had been trying to be helpful when he suggested Hank get an android.

Just a standard, household model to help him in the day to day. Something to improve his living conditions and take a little off his plate. Even offered to help pay for it. He knew he didn't really like the things, thought that they were creepy.

He didn't know he blamed them for Cole's death.

They didn't speak for a while after that.

He wasn't really sure what to think when Hank stumbled onto the scene of a homicide being followed dutifully by none other than the object of his disdain.

"So… You got yourself an android, huh?" He had asked before he could think better of it.

"Oh, very funny," Hank had responded, not at all indicating he found the situation amusing. "Just tell me what happened."

Ben had done just that, focusing on the case and letting the robot's existence fall into a category of unimportance. Besides, he remembered thinking vividly, the android would be in the scrap heap within a few days. Hank may not have been a particularly violent man, but inanimate objects were fair game.

So he was surprised, only a week later, when androids were declared a sentient species, that Hank was at the forefront of the movement. Ready to support them at any cost with Connor held tight at his side as though he would blow away if he wasn't looking.

There was a part of him that wanted to tell him 'I told you so', that he knew an android would help. But he also knew it wasn't because of an android. It was this android. Connor had done for Hank what no one else had been able to. He had filled that aching void Cole had left behind while somehow tactfully avoiding any intrusion on the memory. He had successfully given Hank what he needed to actually heal.

More importantly, he gave him a reason to want to.

He turned down a side road, the clunking changing into more of a rattle before it evened out. Maybe he should get it looked at. It hadn't been a problem yet, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be one in the future. He sighed bitterly.

Ben had driven him home that day too, the day Connor got shot.

Hank had been just as unresponsive, just as broken. It was obvious to anyone with eyes how much he had cared for him, but seeing his friend like that a second time…

Maybe he hadn't adjusted his world-view enough yet. For Hank to have seen Connor as a son, to be as devastated as he had been about Cole…

It had surprised him more than he was willing to admit. More than he was comfortable with. Maybe it was less that he was an android and more that Ben hadn't believed Hank would ever let himself get that close to someone again. Maybe he would never really know.

It didn't really matter now anyway.

Connor died. Then came back. Now he was gone again.

Ben pulled into his driveway. He stared at the steering wheel bitterly, like the car itself was to blame for his problems.

How had it become his job to bring Hank home after these things happened? Why was this, of all things, the job he had taken on time and time again? Why, for the love of whatever deity saw fit to fuck with his frind, was this something that had turned into a pattern?

He sat there for a long moment, car idling and clunking unhelpfully, painfully aware of how helpless he was to fix this.

-o-

Gavin chucked the stone as hard as he could, counting the skips before it sank beneath the river's surface. One, two, three.

Fuck it.

Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck everything.

Maybe it was because his own childhood had been a huge pile of suck, but Gavin had always had a soft spot for kids. So yeah, when Connor came back from the dead, toddling around at half his normal size, he felt bad about how he had treated him. His half-baked attempts at apologizing were met with confused suspicion, but he felt like they had gotten somewhere.

He could at least say he wasn't being a dick to the kid.

On some level he wasn't quite sure he was ready to admit yet, Connor was growing on him. Not so much that he wouldn't give him crap once he was back to his full height, but he had the distinct suspicion it would be more of a good-natured banter than actual antagonism.

It would be their own brand of friendship. Weird and probably at least a little unhealthy, but hell, so were they.

Yeah, Gavin still didn't particularly care for androids in general, his half-brother had a god complex even before the things decided to become their own species, but that wasn't really their fault. Try as he might to resist, he was coming around to the idea that they were, in fact, alive. It was really hard not to with a dopy kid like Connor excitedly bouncing around the precinct.

So yeah, he was going to keep trying. He'd be friends with the kid and was actually starting to look forward to setting aside their animosity. Besides, it was nice, the idea of having one more person in his corner.

It hit him like a damn freight train when the kid went missing.

Gavin tossed another stone. This one didn't skip at all, just making a small ripple and disappearing from view moments after hitting the murky water.

Fuck life.

He had felt it when he had died the first time, try as he might to deny it. Connor was a fellow officer, there was no real way around that even if he had done everything in his power not to get close to him. But this was different.

In the field, there was always a measure of danger. Getting killed working a case, it sucked, but it came with the territory. It was something to be avoided, sure. But a death like that was noble, a service to the general populace. A death like that made sense.

This? Taking an innocent kid, even an android? There was no way to reason that away.

Fuck that Eric bastard.

If Connor getting kidnapped hurt him this much, he could only imagine what it was doing to Anderson. He wasn't stupid, he saw how much better he was with the android around. Maybe part of his early resentment was that Connor had helped Hank where he hadn't been able to, but he wasn't going to go into that. What mattered now was that the kid was gone. He was gone, nobody could figure out where, and he wasn't sure Hank would survive losing him a second time.

He couldn't watch that, not again.

Gavin picked up a handful of stones, swearing as he threw them. They splashed noisily against the water's surface. Fuck this fucking city.

He'd throw the whole damn place into the river if it would help him find Connor.