"Michael, of all the things you've done… Do you know how far you're setting us back? Kitt's not-"

"Bonnie, shut the hell up and let me talk for five seconds." Michael snapped, causing Bonnie to give a brief start, an absolutely lethal look crossing her face. Still, she was quiet for a moment. Michael was fairly sure it was because she was trying to decide just how she could murder him without getting caught, but still she was quiet.

"Every time Kitt's hurt, you act like you're the only one who cares about him. If he gets the least bit of a nick on his finish, I'm abusing him. I'm pushing him too hard. Bonnie, we're in law enforcement. I don't know if you've noticed, but people are shooting at us!" Michael snapped and for a moment both of them fell silent, lethal stare locked on each other as if daring each other to make the first move to break it.

"Are you done?" Bonnie asked flatly. "Because I don't know what the hell you want from me. I'm running on two hours of sleep in two days and a damn coffee pot that quit working this morning. I've got Vorman bitching about the conditions of the lab and the fact that we've let a killer out on the loose which doesn't help with the fact that Karr keeps getting under foot and wants to be in the middle of every damn, little thing. I'm trying to keep him out of sight of the other scientists because they remember him and frankly I'm worried about what they'll say to him. And then there's Kitt. Kitt who went into an acid pit and probably felt every second of it. Kitt who was essentially dead for an hour while we tried to fix his CPU and couldn't get an answer from Karr. Kitt who is barely holding it together, barely functioning and we still don't know if he'll survive this… And you want what? You're upset because he's not cracking jokes?"

"Bonnie, I'm with him all the time," Michael pointed out, raising his voice a bit to cut her off. "I am with him twenty four seven. He's more of a home to me than this mansion is, I live primarily in Kitt. We argue over the radio station, we play road games, place stupid little bets about stupid little things… The Kitt I spoke to was barely there and if that turned out to be really something wrong and I never said anything? Karr explained to me that Kitt is essentially moving into a new CPU. That everything is different and he's multi-tasking to an extreme level which makes him a little sluggish. That I get! If you had just told me that instead of blowing up at me we wouldn't be having this discussion!"

"A discussion that you pulled me away from very delicate work on a hurt AI to have!" Bonnie shot back.

"You're not the only one here who cares about him Bonnie!" Michael snapped.

"I know that! But I'm the one here who has to fix him!" Bonnie snapped right back. "I'm the one he comes to when he's hurt, I'm the one he comes to when he's upset, I'm the one who sees him in pain, Michael! When you two were fighting during your first mission, who do you think he called to ask what he had done wrong? When he was afraid to go back out against Goliath, who do you think he called for a pep talk? Do you know how hard it was not to leave the University right then and fly back? He was held together by duct tape and you were sending him out against a monster!"

"Because that's our job Bonnie!" Michael yelled, a frustrated huff let out. "It's what Kitt was created for, it's what he was programmed to do, it's what he was designed to do. It's what I was given a new face for, it's what I gave up my entire life for! Who was going to go knock Goliath out of commission? You?" Michael asked, then gestured wildly towards the door. "Or how about Karr? He can throw up those little pincher hands of his. Or maybe Devon? Who else was going to go out there but me and Kitt?"

Bonnie fell silent, her lips forming a thin line as she stared at Michael, clearly working her best to contain her temper.

"I know, he contacts you when he's upset. I told him to." Michael pointed out. "Everybody needs an outlet, someone who will listen. It can't always be your partner. You only see… Part of what Kitt is at any given time. I see the version of Kitt who likes to turbo boost for no, damn good reason. Who once scared some poor bastard in a station wagon so bad… I don't know what he was doing on that road in the middle of the night all alone but I can promise he'll never do it again. I'm the one who sees the goofball he can be. You and I both know you would have never forgiven me if I saw something wrong and just never mentioned it."

Bonnie let out a deep sigh, bringing up both hands and scrubbing at her face.

"Alright, yes." She admitted softly.

"Did you know, I'm not the only one who sees those sides?" Michael pointed out, gaining Bonnie's attention.

"I'll bet you didn't know this. I'll bet you didn't know that Kitt's been teaching Karr to understand sarcasm. He's also been teaching Karr how to read human expressions. Did you know that not too long ago… Kitt and Karr sat in the garage and Karr shared memories about Wilton. Because Kitt never got to know Wilton. He was already sick by the time he was being created." Michael pointed out.

"I… Didn't know he ever wondered about Wilton. We uploaded a file about him…" Bonnie mused and Michael shrugged.

"That file wouldn't have said what Wilton was like. He was bound to be curious. That file would have said things like the dates of his birth and death, where he was born, who his associates were, where he vacationed in the summer… They wouldn't have mentioned what his face looked like when he was concentrating. They wouldn't have mentioned the kind of jokes he found funny or what his favorite song was. They wouldn't have mentioned the little things. Things that Kitt would be curious about. So they talked about it." Michael reasoned. "Talking about it upset Karr."

"I remember that night…" Bonnie muttered softly, her expression turning guilty and reached over to a drawer, pulling a few photographs out of it. She handed them over to Michael who took them and smiled softly.

The top one was from that day. In trying to ease Karr's mind a little and distract him, they explored the entire back property. Karr found a rock and decided he was keeping it forever. Kitt found a frog. However, the frog was not nearly as interested in Kitt as Kitt was interested in it and hopped away. Good times…

"Have you ever heard them laugh?" Michael asked out of the blue and Bonnie gave him a startled look. "It's sort of like… It sounds like R2D2."

"Don't say that around Vorman…" Bonnie warned. "You know, the reason I didn't want Karr in that lab was because I didn't want Vorman poking at him."

"I appreciate that, but he misses his brother too, Bon." Michael pointed out. "And he's hurting. You know, you were barking orders at him the whole time he was with Kitt, right?"

Bonnie blinked a few times and Michael shrugged.

"You do that when you're upset," Michael went on.

"Jesus…" Bonnie muttered, running her hands up over her face and Michael nodded a bit.

"Yeah…"

Bonnie pulled in a deep sigh, about to go on when there was a sharp rap on the door and Joel poked his head in, looking just a bit nervous. "Is it safe to come in?"

"It's fine, Joel," Bonnie assured as Joel nodded and came forward with a print out.

"I need you to take a look at these readings we're getting from Kitt…" Joel urged, dropping the sheets on Bonnie's desk.

She looked surprised, then worried, then back to surprised again as she read over the readouts.

"Is everything ok?" Michael asked, concern edging into his voice but Bonnie smiled and nodded slowly.

"More than ok… We've been having trouble with Kitt's CPU overtaxing. This is the most stable he's been in days…"

Michael smirked a bit, a clear 'I told ya so' look crossing his features. "Now see? Maybe Kitt missed his brother too." He pointed out and Bonnie shot him a look.

"Don't push it, Knight."

xXx

Karr's internal clock told him it was approximately one thirty in the morning when he was pulled out of his CPU with the sensory warning that someone was in his immediate space. He toned the warning down earlier in the night with so many people walking around him, but this time it told him that someone was actually touching him. He had no sensory grid to decipher touch, but he could tell that someone was actually moving him.

Kitt was still resting against the barrier, powered down and stable enough that Karr could pull his attention away and onto outside stimuli.

He powered his camera up, the momentary panic of the darkness instantly brought down by the fact that someone had placed a worklight under the bench, casting the entire area into a glow.

Bonnie was kneeling down infront of him, lifting up those pincher arms of his and moving them about as one might a puppet on strings. Which confused the hell out of him until she smiled as his camera focused on her.

"Finally. I've been doing this for almost fifteen minutes. Usually you're a light sleeper," she mused softly as she let go of Karr's arms and let the AI refocus on the outside world.

"I was focusing on Kitt." Karr explained and Bonnie nodded.

"I know. I won't keep you long. Michael said I had some repairs to make and we have a moment. I didn't want to just tap into your CPU without letting you know," she explained, reaching up above her to grab a few cables and a small tool she used to pop open the protective casing of the Rover.

Karr tipped his camera downward in some morbid fascination. He always thought it was strange to be able to see his own CPU so easily when she did this. Once he was hooked up, she pulled up a seat, moving his camera from the Rover, to instead rest on the workbench she was working at, which gave him a higher view of the rest of the lab. Kitt's body was almost complete. It was a stark white color and didn't have the MBS in place yet.

Kitt's CPU still wasn't in it. The CPU was bolted to the table in a protective casing that would keep it from harm and from being possibly knocked off of the workbench. Bonnie immediately got to work and he could feel the odd sensation of her connecting directly to his CPU and his world was internalized as coding was slowly put back into sorts and corrected.

"I owe you an apology," Bonnie said softly, breaking through the silence between them.

/You don't/ Karr responded, his words popping up on the monitor at her side. When she was as deep into coding as she was, it was easier and safer to use the monitor and minimize output.

"I do, owe you an apology. We would have lost Kitt without you and I didn't make it any easier. I panicked. I shouldn't have done that." Bonnie said firmly.

Karr considered that as he sorted through new parameters and the occasional formula he was given by Bonnie to test his computing abilities and distract him from some of the deeper coding she dove into. The damage ran a little deep into his data.

Of course she thought that. She only had half of the story. Karr hesitated, then went back into his files. He wasn't entirely sure if he could do what he intended to do, but he pulled the memory file up. Of that day. It was difficult to find the data because it was just a single line of thought. But he still displayed the small snippet for her to read. So that she would understand that he was completely undeserving of any apology. His damaged CPU was self earned. It didn't set well with his programming, but the guilt weighed more heavily in that moment than the nudging from his programming.

That moment of wondering if Kitt understood now… How horrible the water had been. If he understood now, what it was like to have parts of you eaten away. To be forgotten to a watery grave.

Bonnie stopped typing as her eyes darted across that single line of data. That single line of thought, her gaze then cutting over to the camera that was focused just on her, watching intently.

Karr always had trouble reading faces… Right then though, he wasn't sure if even Kitt or Michael would have been able to read Bonnie's face.

"Well if we're confessing bad thoughts, I should probably confess that my first thought when I found out what Michael and Kitt had done, the day they brought you here was to put your CPU in the trash compactor." Bonnie admitted softly.

/That does not sound pleasant./ Karr commented and Bonnie chuckled softly.

"I imagine not…" Bonnie mused softly. She looked as if she wanted to say more though after a time she went back to typing. "The point being we all have those thoughts sometimes. You can't help them. It's a very human trait."

/I am not human/ Karr pointed out.

"You're getting close." Bonnie mused softly. "I've had to listen to some of your original techs go on for days about how unnatural it is that our AIs have opinions of their own."

/As if an AI is anything but unnatural./ Karr mused, causing Bonnie to quirk a smile.

"Your pal Vorman nearly hit the roof when Eddie told him why there was a TV in the lab." Bonnie commented with a soft chuckle.

/Have I mentioned how much I despise that man? Never mind having to obey him…/ Karr groused.

Bonnie smirked at that, a soft chuckle let out. "Karr he's not a FLAG employee. He's a contracted scientist. You don't have to obey him."

Karr paused at that. /Interesting…/ Karr mused and Bonnie let out a laugh.

"Karr try to sound less like a super villain when you say that," She commented with a giggle. She couldn't help but picture the AI with a wicked grin on his face with steepled fingers when he said that.

/I didn't say a word,/ Karr pointed out and Bonnie smirked, by now able to pick up when the vehicle was feigning innocence, even through text.

"Oh sure you didn't," Bonnie mused, going back to her work. The pair remained in a comfortable silence, listening to the steady blip of Kitt's readouts that showed he was still resting and for the most part powered down.

/Bonnie?/ Karr pressed after a time, causing Bonnie to give her full attention to the monitor that Karr was able to speak through, rather than the rows and rows of code she was looking at. The cursor blipped there for a few minutes as if Karr were looking for the right words before it went on. /The first time I was activated… By Tony and Rev. Was there anything that I could have said or done that would have changed the course of action?/

"You mean to avoid going off the cliff?" Bonnie asked curiously.

A few seconds dragged by as Karr tried to decide how to answer, the words then flashing up onto the screen. /No, not just the cliff. There was a time that all I wanted was to come home. I thought that if I could just talk to Wilton, it would all be some horrible mistake. That it would be alright…/

Bonnie considered the question, fas she went on with her coding. Karr had the good sense not to press for information. He let the quiet fall between them as Bonnie put together an answer of her own.

"To be honest Karr? Probably not. We made just as many mistakes as Wilton did. That's something that we have to live with." Bonnie mused. "That night… You asked Kitt a question. You asked him what would become of you if you came back. He felt that being honest with you was the best way to go and at that time… It was the only way."

/Wilton said I had a temper./ Karr commented, causing Bonnie to smirk.

"You do… Don't think I don't know you're pissed when my tools start going missing." Bonnie commented, a soft laugh then given out. "And remember the time you scared the hell out of the mailman? You have a temper my friend. But… We didn't do anything to help curb it either."

/I lost my temper with John./ Karr reasoned and Bonnie nodded.

"You took hostages." Bonnie pointed out. "That was wrong."

/I was afraid…/ Karr responded. Bonnie had the good sense to be quiet, allowing the AI to go on, on his own. /I know, I said I was one of a kind but neither I nor Kitt were ever programmed to be alone for long. We need our drivers… I did not have a driver. I was afraid when John left. I regret, making him afraid too…/

"You know, some self help books say that the first step in self help and making yourself a better program is making amends for the things you regret." Bonnie supplied.

/Amends? What kind of amends?/ Karr asked and Bonnie shrugged.

"Well… That depends. What do you regret?" Bonnie asked.

Karr thought about it. What did he regret? Everything maybe?

/I regret… Everything I have done to make my life, what it is./ Karr reasoned after a time, causing Bonnie to blink in surprise.

"You don't like your life?" Bonnie asked slowly, concern edging into her voice. "Don't you like it here?"

/I do… It is the best that it could have possibly become given the circumstances. I regret that I never had a chance to prove that I am something of worth./ Karr admitted.

"None of us were ready to give you a chance," Bonnie said softly. "That was our fault… But don't think for a moment that doesn't mean that you're not worth something to us. I wouldn't have been fighting Dr. Vorman the past few days for someone I didn't think was worth it, Karr… We were the ones who didn't give you that chance."

/Kitt did,/ Karr reasoned, drawing a smile from Bonnie.

"Yes I suppose he did. You two saved each other." Bonnie mused softly.

Karr gave a thoughtful, electronic whine as Bonnie finished her coding and got up with a slow stretch. "Alright, you need to stay there for a couple hours. I'm gonna get some work done around the lab until I can secure your CPU again, then I'm gonna leave both of you alone to rest, alright?"

/Of course, Dr. Barstow./ Karr offered, drawing a smile from Bonnie.

xXx

It was nearly three in the morning by the time Bonnie drug herself out of the garage. She could have stepped away hours before to allow Karr's repairs to run their course and allow both AIs to rest but she felt uneasy about leaving both of them just out on display in the lab as they were.

The cold hard truth was that Kitt was perfectly safe. Not a single person in the estate had any wish to hurt him.

Karr, not so much.

She felt a little as if they invited the viper, right in through the front door when Vorman looked at the Rover…

She shook her head, a tired sigh let out as she made her way up the stairs, towards her room. Her goal had been to grab something a little more sustaining than break room coffee before she went up but by the time she hit the side access door, exhaustion set in so much that she bypassed the kitchen and turned instead for heading up to get a couple hours of sleep at least.

She had a laundry list of things to do the next day… The other scientists would start filing in at seven in the morning and she needed to be there for it.

She groaned softly to herself, as she started down the hall, then stopped, a frown crossing her expression. The light was on in Devon's office. He was still supposed to be on bed rest!

If that man had drug himself up to work, she was going to kick his British ass… She would too because 3 a.m. Bonnie had three times the temper and zero shits to give.

She turned, making her way down the hall to the closed office doors, pulling them open without so much as a pause. As the door flew open, Michael snatched awake from where his head had been resting on the desk.

One of the pictures that the young woman, who's name escaped Bonnie, had taken of the dumpsight sticking to his forehead like a post-it note.

The operative blinked owlishly causing the photograph to fall to the desk. Bonnie gave a truly undignified squeak as she jumped back, having absolutely not expected to see Michael sitting there.

"Bon? What's up?" He asked sleepily, eyes then going wide as he jumped to his feet. "Is there something wrong with Kitt? What happened?" He asked, panic edging into his voice and it was so damn endearing Bonnie quickly put her hands up in a calming gesture.

"Kitt's fine, everyone is fine." Bonnie assured, letting out a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I thought Devon was here sneaking in some work…"

Michael smirked and nodded as he slowly sat back down at the desk. "He tried. He's been calling up here non stop but he's under very strict orders not to get out of bed. I assured him that we have this… I'm hoping if we keep coasting by, he'll never know how bad it is…"

"Oh he will, he'll see the bill we're running up. That's alright though… I just don't want him to worry while he's recovering." Bonnie offered, a deep sigh given out as she dropped into the seat across the desk from Michael.

"Find anything?" She asked, glancing across the desk and flinching at the contents.

Pictures of desolation and obvious pollution.

Added to that were full color pictures of the day they pulled Kitt out of the pit…

"Yes and no…" Michael offered with a deep sigh. "This bastard is slick. He has a pattern that he follows. He goes until someone pushes too much and then a man with a briefcase shows up. The entire place burns to the ground, he packs up, moves to another town and starts again."

"So if you push to hard, that will happen and you'll lose him…" Bonnie theorized and Michael nodded.

"Exactly… I don't want to push until I'm able to keep up with him." Michael explained and Bonnie nodded.

"You mean until you have Kitt."

To that, Michael gave a soft smile. "Well, Roy Rodgers wasn't anything without Trigger."

"Kitt is not a horse, Michael." Bonnie said flatly and Michael chuckled softly.

"Well, Butch and Sundance. Cheech and Chong. Batman and Robin…. They all needed their partners." Michael pointed out and Bonnie nodded.

Bonnie nodded thoughtfully and Michael smirked. "Bonnie and Karr. Forgot one."

Soft snort of amusement was let out as Bonnie gave the made a side eye.

"Don't give me that look, you came up with a perfectly functioning Trans-Am pretty damn fast." Michael pointed out and Bonnie shrugged.

"It was always in the plans to eventually put Karr back in a vehicle."

"This quickly though," Michael pointed out.

Bonnie sighed and lifted a shoulder in a non committal shrug. "What do you want me to say Michael? I didn't lie to him when I told him we would eventually put him back in a vehicle. We both know that the Rover is just a stepping block to that."

Michael nodded slowly, a thoughtful look crossing his expression. "Did Devon know?"

Bonnie's guilty expression said it all. Michael nodded and didn't say another word on it as he brought up his hands and scrubbed at his face to try and wake himself up.

"Michael, you need some sleep." Bonnie scolded and Michael smirked at her.

"So do you," he pointed out.

"I wasn't the one with a photograph stuck to my face," Bonnie pointed out with a smirk, causing Michael to chuckle.

"Alright, alright… I'll go if you'll go," Michael relented, causing Bonnie to smile and nod.

"Deal."