(Not) Alive - Machine | Detroit Become Human [finished]

10110 - Calm

Connor was feeling good.
For the first time in months he felt safe. His memories hadn't returned yet but he felt like he was back home.  Which was absurd, because at the time he certainly didn't have a home, he was just a machine that you put away in a corner like a tool.

He didn't get any resentment because it was true, he had only been a tool, a machine without feelings.  And yet ... with each recollection that came back was associated an emotion;  certainly buried, unconscious and unexpressed, but still present and which seemed particularly linked to the two humans present in this room with him rather than to a specific place.

He wanted so much to remember.  Everything seemed so close and at the same time so far.  He was pretty sure his memory had been deliberately erased several times.  How to explain if not that he only remembered the events of the last two months?

All that was left of the past year was fear, a visceral fear that he never wanted to feel again.  He deduced that the mental and physical tortures he had undergone before managing to escape were not the first and that the man had to reset him several times to be able to continue his creepy experiments.  Perhaps it would have been better if he was definitely dead that night of November 11.

Something moved on his legs, causing him to jump and open his eyes.  He sighed, it was only the lieutenant's dog that had shifted in his lap.  He looked around.  He was of course still in Hank Anderson's living room, now lit only by the television left on, plunging the rest of the room into darkness. His thirium pump picked up its pace, where had the humans gone?  Was he alone again?

A shape on the couch show him no.  It was Angie, sleeping, curled up in a checkered blanket.  Had she preferred to fall asleep there rather than disturb him or even just leave without him?

He quickly calmed down watching her sleep, his pump resuming a calmer pace.  He began to hope.  Hope to have found in her someone he could trust, who would understand him and help him in difficult times ... a friend.

She was becoming a landmark in the black hole that was his life. With this comforting idea, he plunged back into his sleeping mode.

__________

When she awoke, Angie wondered for a moment where she was.  The pain in her shoulder reminded her that she had slept on a couch, Hank's in this case.

The day before, they had chatted for a while and then he went to bed offering to stay there since Connor didn't seem to want to leave. Connor! She opened her eyes and sat up suddenly.  He was still there.  He wandered around the room, lingering over Hank's vinyl collection.  He turned to her when he heard her move and their eyes locked for several seconds.  Angie smiled at him, he seemed a little more serene, less agitated and worried all the time.

She was happy that their relationship had improved so quickly, it might not be as long as she thought for him to trust her again. She stretched, her stiff body appreciated and she sighed with pleasure.

- Well, let's see if Hank has anything to make tea, she said, passing into the kitchen.

She found an electric kettle and a box of tea bags in a cupboard.  She put the water on to heat while she went to wash a little in the bathroom. When she returned, Connor, seated at the kitchen table, had poured the water into a mug and put a tea bag.

- Thank you, she said, coming to sit in front of him.

She added a sugar to the steaming water, mixing it all together with a teaspoon under the android's quiet gaze.  Then she ended the silence interrupted only by the tinkling of the spoon in the cup by asking: