Orders and Wonders - Connor/Kara Fanfiction

Last Chance, Connor

Connor had known something had changed within him when he had met eyes with a blue-eyed deviant across the fence. It had been purely a chase - a chase to catch the deviant and to find a lead in the arising deviant problem. She had been his prey and he had been the predator and that was all it should have been. Yet, that brief moment where they had met eyes had left him feeling chilled. He had seen what she had wanted - simply to be free. And he was sure that she had seen what he had wanted - to fulfil his mission. In that split second, they had seen each other's truth, but hers had left a permanent impact on him. He could no longer turn around and pretend to have never felt that. The compassionate blue eyes faded into a worried pair of grey as life entered his system again. He was alive.

"Easy! You're okay now, Connor. Relax!" The old man ordered from above him; a wisp of his breath touching his face. If Connor had a sense of smell, he was sure Hank's breath would smell like alcohol. Not that he was aware of what alcohol smelt like anyway.

He shifted his head and realised how disorderly his biocomponents were: his heart was pounding at a pulse of 120, the thirium in his system raged and he could clearly hear it slam against the tubes that connected his heart to the other biocomponents. And then suddenly the memory of dead brown eyes and and blue blood had him gasping up in a sitting position. He touched his temples with trembling fingers as if to find the wound that had destroyed his impostor. "I am not dead?"

"Nah. You passed out after acting like an asshole. Guess it goes against your programming, huh Connor?" Hank smiled genially, hoping to lighten up the situation and to rid that haunting expression off the machine's face, but quickly he realised how wasteful his efforts were. The machine shrunk in on itself convulsing erratically, his long legs folding towards his chest and his pale face disappearing into his knees. "Hey . . . seriously, what is going on with you?"

Connor wished he knew himself.

In the silence where no one spoke, the wind howled angrily outside. It reminded Hank of the night he had lost his son - there had been no words to be spoken and he swore he would never speak of it again, but he could no longer stand the defeated expression on his partner's face.

"Listen to me, asshole and listen clearly. I am only going to tell you this once and never again so don't make me repeat myself . . ." He paused dramatically and exhaled loudly. He hated doing story times for Cole and never did he think he would do it for a fucking machine. "That look on your face - fuck! That was the same look I had on my face a few years ago when . . . I lost my boy. His name was Cole. Cole Anderson."

The machine did not respond and gave no indication of having heard him. But Hank noticed that he trembled less and was no longer breathing like a dying dog. That was enough for him. " . . . I thought it was all over. That I could no longer fucking go on. I - wanted to die . . . I was so fucking desperate! But I was and still am a fucking coward. It takes a real man to put a gun on his head and pull the fucking trigger and I am no real man. I am just a coward."

He scratched at his beard awkwardly as the android lifted his head out of his knees. Before their eyes could meet, Hank turned away towards the window overlooking a greenhouse. Jesus, he absolutely despised cheesy and emotional moments and with an android, it was absolutely unbearable.

"Lieutenant?"

The man in question blew a raspberry still keeping his eyes on the window adamantly. He decided it was time to cut to the chase. "Now, I don't know what the deal is with you and that deviant, but you can't be here moping around like a loser. You were always goin' on about how the mission is priority and blah blah blah, so why are you still sitting here on your ass?"

"This is no longer about the mission." Connor replied, despondently, his own eyes looking far off in the distance towards happier times. A time where he had touched the beauty of freedom, but it had been ripped away quicker than he had ever anticipated. The thought of returning back to a machine now daunted him more than ever.