.: Snow :.
He understands why Connor has gone back inside. He's seen their memory of the snowstorm. Yet the flurries don't bother him at all. He doesn't associate them with a memory that isn't his.
Palm outstretched, he reaches toward the sky and measures the temperature fluctuations as the flakes of frozen water land on his palm. They don't melt as they would on a human due to the body heat difference. After several minutes he brings his open hand down toward his chest to look at the small pile of white that has accumulated on it.
A quick shake and it all falls to the ground.
It conceals the snow in his eyes.
The scattered white flickers of misread data crossing his vision, even with eyes shut. A glitch as expected. He's used to hearing the hiss of static instead of words. The haunting darkness of his vision cutting out. He's well aware he's broken. But as his central processor adapts to such a state the glitches change.
He'll always prefer the static snow to the pitch dark.
But even so a glitch is a glitch.
So he hides it in the storm.
Among the windblown crystals it's impossible to tell what is frozen water and what is misread data. The flickers of white blur against the darkening sky and for once he's not broken. He's not glitching. He's just experiencing a typical Detroit winter.
But then the Lieutenant barks a command from the door to return to the house, Connor calls out in a shaky voice that they don't want him to freeze, and the illusion starts to fall apart. He ignores them, pulls his damaged Cyberlife jacket closed by crossing his arms, and lifts his head to stare straight into the sky.
It doesn't matter that the flakes are piling up on him.
The flickers of white on black are just the weather.
The cold is pleasant.
The Lieutenant shouts at him again and with a sigh he gives up and returns to the house.
The flickering white is still there. Unfortunate that he couldn't last in the illusion.
Connor is curled up on the couch, Sumo on his legs for comfort as he pointedly ignores the windows. Understandable. For all that his predecessor is afraid of blizzards it's for the best they are blissfully unaware of the snowfall he casts on them with just a look.
He joins Connor on the couch as the Lieutenant ungracefully flops into the recliner beside them to turn on the tv.
Before attempting to focus on the police procedural he casts one last glance out the window. The storm is letting up, wind slowing as the patterns in the flakes shift to something far more steady. Yet as he looks away the flickering white remains.
It's certainly better than the darkness but he'd still prefer to not have any glitches at all. But he has to take advantage of what he's given.
Perhaps it's not so bad.
He likes snow.
He can keep it in his eyes.