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

11110 - Rendez-vous

He should never have talked about it.

He couldn't help it though, as if he had to free himself from all those dark thoughts that plagued him and he knew Angie would listen to him.  He was well aware that from the start she and Lieutenant Anderson had been anxiously waiting for him to explain what had happened to him, but he had put off that moment.  Now they knew.

However, he regretted having made this confession to them.  Sometimes he caught a look of pity turned towards him, at least he imagined it was pity.  Perhaps it was disgust as well. He had noticed a change in Angie's voice since the incident, as if she had a hard time behaving naturally around him now.  It hurt, not physically of course since he didn't feel the pain, but in his feelings.

The memory of the kiss at the police station had acted like an eye opener and now he didn't think of Angie just as a friend, he wanted more.  Where did this desires to touch her come from, desir to kiss her, to know everything about her?

However, he didn't believe himself capable of feeling these kinds of emotions and physical attraction, he who usually avoided contact.  He now knew precisely why;  for a year his body hadn't belonged to him, it had been modified, replaced, had served as a weapon, had been slashed, crushed, broken ... It had been a prison for his mind.  He could never forget that, it was etched in his circuits as a survival instinct, which is why he never let himself be touched.

But he had felt ready to try to heal, to be with Angie.  And in the end, that's where it had led him: outright rejection.  It was clear that she couldn't consider more than a friendship with a robot.  While he didn't care whether she was human or android, she was only Angie, the gentle and strong woman at the same time who brought the stability that was lacking in his life, who had helped him to return to the light, the one  who made his program react in an anarchic and delicious way ... and who didn't want him.

He would have done better to listen to his survival instinct.

__________

"We need to talk."

The message Angie got from Bryan just after her lunch break didn't bode well.

They had only seen each other once or twice since Connor's assault.  And since the latter had tried to kiss her.  She wouldn't have thought it would upset her so much. In the meantime, she had explained to Connor why she had reject him, she had told him about Bryan.  He had understood, had even apologized for his reaction to her, when it wasn't necessary, he couldn't know since she hadn't said anything to him.

Since then, their relationship was not quite the same, she felt a reserve in him now, and it pained her.  Likewise with Bryan, this time it was she who was standing a little on the reserve, slightly uncomfortable.

Several days had passed since the attack.  Connor had finally regained the calm he had felt just before these events, he hadn't brought up the subject either of the incident or of the past, as if they had never talked about it.  Hank and Angie didn't dare come back to the topic for fear of bringing up other memories, perhaps even worse.  Connor had suffered enough and they felt helpless in the face of his torment.

They had returned to work, Hank no longer made inappropriate allusions, and Gavin Reed had made no further comments on the lieutenant's former partner returning to life.  Routine had resumed its place.  Until that rather disturbing message from Bryan.

"We need to talk."

"About what?"  She asked him.

"Important things. See you at the park downstairs at 4pm?"