Orders and Wonders - Connor/Kara Fanfiction

Deviant

Something had changed. Perhaps in the air or in her own mind, something had changed. Trailing behind Alice and the man who seemed to adopt a role of being the leader, she wondered why they were here. Once enemies and on opposite sides of a fence when his presence of being so close to her had left her in jitters and now she was barely two steps from him and couldn't imagine continuing on without him. The journey ahead was unpredictable and she had oftentimes failed to protect Alice on her own, yet with his presence here she felt confident of a safe tomorrow. 

As if reading her mind, he began to turn, but she quickly moved her gaze to her boots watching snow crunch beneath them. Even now when there should have been no antagonism between them, she was unable to meet eyes with him. He was far too observant and reading deviants had been his day job so it would take him seconds before he would deduce her inner turmoil. She longed to open her heart to him and trust him, but each time the blinking LED and his mechanical words reminded her that he was still deeply rooted in his past. And at odd times, she caught him staring at her with an expression that she had seen on her own face when Alice was around. Except he looked at her with a different kind of affection that she had yet to understand. 

"How much farther?" she asked curiously, watching the small and large footprints that were left in their trail. Her question seemed to fill in the awkward silence as Connor replied with a reassuring answer. She only prayed that whoever they chanced upon was not anti-android and even if they happened to be . . . at least they would have pity on a little girl. 

"Wow!" She heard Alice exclaim and looked up startled from her boots. The child stood on the tip of her toes, her brown eyes bright with fascination and hypnotized by the fluid motion he produced. He flicked a dime from one hand to the other making a small ping sound and light from the sun catching it. Kara too found herself transfixed at the effortless, yet such an elegant dance of a coin and it once again reminded her of exactly how advanced Connor was. She had heard the way he was addressed - the most advanced android ever created and that he was a special one. He was designed to hunt deviants and was infallible, but here they were. He had never addressed himself as a deviant, yet all his actions so far pointed in that direction. And Kara wondered then about the cause of his deviancy if he even was one, to begin with. For her, Alice had opened her eyes and once she had been sure that an android like Connor could never see what she had seen and yet . . . he did. 

The journey had barely been trying for him physically, but it was clearly not the same for his companions. Alice had trembled exactly sixty-seven times during 91 minutes of their journey so far and Kara had been distant. She had refused to walk alongside him - choosing to linger behind at Alice's optimum pace and each time he would turn to check on her stress levels, she would avoid eye contact with him. Her stress levels were fluctuating again and the thought of her succumbing into a vegetative state once more made his system go erratic. He absolutely never wanted to see the sight of her blank eyes and feel her body lax against his ever again. 

An impatient habit had then arisen - he had begun to fiddle with his old coin and thus had drawn a favorable audience. Excited Alice had cried out and thus had drawn Kara's attention to him. She had approached and gazed at his hands with complete wonder and he had felt an immeasurable amount of satisfaction at being the cause of her fascination. His hands trembled like never before and two of his perfect coin deflection techniques barely passed.

"That was amazing!" The young girl laughed, clutching at his large hands with her own dainty ones. "I want to learn too and so does Kara!" 

At her words, he watched Kara's face blanch in disbelief. He found this one expression on her face particularly amusing and heartwarming and before he knew it, he was approaching her with the dime spinning on his index finger. Kara watched him advance and then passed a  nervous glare at Alice who flounced happily to their side.