Detroit: Become Human - The Outsider (Connor x OC fanfic)

Recollections

Connor stopped in the moonlight, but the android didn't stir. 

After Earl's demonstration Rina had made a show of getting Monson to take outside as if that task could somehow ignore from her reaction to Daisy's transformation. Monson now sat, peering at Connor as he slid the back doors aside and waited for some response. 

Rina hunched over the bench, her back to him. Behind overgrown pathways, Earl's workshop was a shadow overlooking them all. The only thing that gave her away for something with energy, with life, was her hand mindlessly trailing through Monson's black fur. 

Monson barked once, looking up to his owner. Connor took that as a sign to talk. 

He had one thousand questions. None of them felt right. "You didn't seem to respond well to what just happened." 

Rina half-laugh made her shoulders jut. "No," a rasp in her voice seemed to drown out all of the other noises surrounding them; chirps and distant birds, voices trapped behind walls, "I didn't respond well." 

Deviant, the word passed in a haze. It drifted away to the corners of his senses. 

"I wouldn't predict that you'd fear being centre of attention like that." 

"Do you know what's in there?" Rina's head perked up. 

Connor stepped forward, seeing what she was seeing -- the workshop a shrouded shadow at the back of enclosed garden. "Earl's workshop?"

She stood, swiftly, the darkness eating up the cerulean of her plastic dress, moonlight reflecting from the pale of her shoulders. "Did your friend tell you? The drunk one?"

He paused a moment. "No." When Rina turned, her jaw was tensed, fists clenching and unclenching at her side. "Are you crying?" 

Rina looked to him, then, and the only true colour that hadn't been eaten by black was the speckle of her eyes, forest green and on fire even now. She pressed a thin palm to her cheek, observing the wetness as if she did not know tears were there. "He's used that thing on me before. I remember it- cracks of it. I've been in those chains. Why can't I remember?" 

"You mean to say your memory's been wiped?" Connor puzzled.

"Parts of it. I don't know. It's like, snippets of it flash through. Every now and then everything inside of me goes cold and I feel like I'm drowning because all I can see is grey, and all I can feel is the concrete and I can't breathe even though I don't have to but for some reason, it's terrifying. And, usually I just ignore it because it's a fault or a glitch or something, but seeing Daisy in there, in that thing -- it's that. That's what I can remember." Rina's eyes wandered erratically as if she were trying to chase the images. 

She didn't have an LED but if she did, Connor could only imagine it running yellow, red, and he rose to attention with battling instincts clawing for survival inside. Deviant, one side screamed, but the other, more weak, needed to know more -- wanted to know more. 

"It could be your conception. Androids are often created with machines like that one. Maybe you're remembering him piecing you together?" It sounded weak, silly even to his ears. He didn't know why he was talking, couldn't understand why he didn't arrest this android now and be done with it. 

Rina's eyes widened. She moved forward, slowly, her voice growing quieter with each step. "Do you remember being created? What did it feel like?" 

Connor adjusted his stance. "I don't know." 

Her shoulders flatlined. "You don't remember? Why do I?" Rina grunted, groaned, slammed her palm into her head and paced back and forth. "I need to know what's in that workshop. Earl's not telling me something, he's--"