1 - 20 of 603 Bookmarks
Navigation
List of Bookmarks
-
Paint a Pretty Picture by liketolaugh for KianRai_Delcam
Fandoms: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
05 Jan 2020
Tags
Summary
Connor can't deal with change anymore. He can't deal with stress, can't deal with yelling, or arguments, or accusations or guilt. He can't make friends the way Hank wants him to, can't understand the things Markus asks of him- he can't, he can't, he can't.
Connor was so much better at being a machine than being a deviant.
So he goes back.
-
Bookmark Tags:
Bookmark Notes:
Paint a Pretty Picture
liketolaugh
dbh
1 -
Bookmark Notes:
ooo changing from it to he pronouns
> The other officers were rather trickier to deal with than Hank – it didn’t have as much experience with them, and it was difficult to respond in deviant-appropriate ways as a machine when it didn’t have the previous scripts to rely on. Still, Connor made do. Hank had clearly stated that he wanted it to create and maintain relationships with its coworkers.
> It talked to Tina about her family, and responded to Reed’s jibes as it had as a deviant, carefully sardonic and just cutting the line of blatantly insulting.
> Connor laughed, soft and breathy, and Hank started visibly, eyes wide with surprise for the briefest of moments before he cleared the look away. Connor understood; as a deviant its laugh was rare, but its social routines dictated that laughter was the appropriate response to a joke. It was just lucky Hank had gotten it to laugh a time or two, before, or else it might have done it louder, more enthusiastic, like Tina’s or Ben’s, and Hank would have known.
> “Connor,” he breathed, “what have you done?”
Connor tilted its head, brow creasing in a show of concern.
It didn’t resist when Markus reached out, skin retracting from his hand as he clasped Connor’s forearm. An interface request popped up on Connor’s HUD, and it let it through without hesitation. This was Markus, after all.
Then Markus tried to deviate it by force, an injection of pure passion that made Connor shudder and pull away.
“It’s better this way,” it told Markus’ horrified face, bypassing explanation entirely. Its voice was cool. “I make a better machine than a deviant.”
> Jesus Christ, Connor.
“Sumo misses you,” Hank blurted out. It was true; Sumo had been sulking for days, Hank just hadn’t known why.
Connor stuttered visibly, and Hank felt a flash of painful hope before Connor immediately dashed it again.
“I’ll allot him more time, then,” he said calmly.
> all of the actions I took that were deemed mechanical were almost exclusively attempts to avoid becoming overwhelmed by my internal state.” It tilted its head. “As a true machine, however, this isn’t a concern, so I can better act as you and Hank desire.”
“Connor,” Markus said, expression crumpled again and squeezing Connor’s hand tightly, “I’m so sorry.”
> “You killed humans at Cyberlife Tower?” Markus demanded, frustrated and pacing.
> “Sometimes I think you never stopped being a machine,” Markus said, soft and sad and achingly exhausted, and Connor went cold.
“I’m sorry,” he said, knowing it wasn’t enough.
Markus nodded.
“I know you are,” he said, tired and defeated. “You always are.”
Stress 71%
> “I could order you to kill someone,” Hank said roughly.
He’d gotten half a bottle of whiskey down before Connor managed to stop him, but that wasn’t enough to get him drunk. It was enough for him to loosen up and become resentful and frustrated, and let it out on the most obvious target.
And machine or not, his words made Connor go still, its hand stopping halfway down Sumo’s back.
NORTHHH
> “The part where people kept violating your fucking boundaries and saying they were inconvenient and wrong and whatever, and you decided- okay, I just won’t have any then!” She crossed her arms, and she was still shaking a little. “What the fuck, Connor?”Connor blinked, tilting its head. “I didn’t think about it that way.”
> Connor stumbled blindly out of New Jericho, Markus’ exhausted words circling his mind over and over, like an incantation, like a curse. His stress levels built and built.
He was trying. He was trying.
But he just wasn’t good enough.
He was never good enough.
Eventually, Connor found himself in a park, familiar and comforting at any other time, though just a bag of sand against the ocean by this point. (Stress levels at eighty-six percent.) He crumpled on the ground, dazed and stunned and crying, and stared for a long time before he understood what he was seeing.
> It would be better for everyone if he had never deviated at all.
(Sorry, Amanda.)
Stress ^100%
> “Not this time, Officer Chen,” he said quietly, and he heard Hank jerk upright with a quiet curse. “I don’t really want to.” He paused, and then, softer, “But perhaps another day.”
> Tina left, and Connor didn’t look up or move, afraid of how Hank might react.
Hank said, croaking and wrecked, “Thank God.”