Survivor - Connor x OC

Work Song

Hozier – Work Song

Taylor sat on the bed, watching Connor take his jacket off. He was poking through the closet for a hanger to put it on, so she had the rare opportunity to observe him when he wasn't looking at her. Oddly enough, they had ended up back in the same room she had locked the two of them in earlier that day.

She glanced down at her own clothing, still the short and nondescript android uniform she had woken up in. It didn't really matter, but she had meant to ask Chloe for a change of clothes. Connor had come along and distracted her from all of that. Not that she minded.

She stared at her hands, folded in her lap. Turning them over, palms facing upward, she flexed her fingers. The touch felt mostly the same as her human hands. Her brain, or, her processor still had the same thoughts and memories as before. When Connor had kissed her, just now, she'd felt the same weightless longing that she'd always felt.

Something was different, though. She was still working it out. It felt like more than wires, displays, and the inability to get tired or feel pain. She had changed somehow, and she thought she knew what it was, she just didn't want to believe it. Not yet.

"What is it?" Connor sat in front of her on the bed. She glanced up at him, but he was looking down at her hands. They were sitting, unmoving in her lap, but he must have noticed her spreading them a moment before.

"I feel different." She told him. She was past the point of lying or keeping things from him. He tilted his head just slightly.

"You are different." He said carefully, as though he could sense there was a different meaning behind her words.

"I know, but," she looked down at her hands again, flexing her fingers. "I've had anxiety since I was very small. It didn't start with Anthony. It just got worse. I developed tics. I became afraid and started having panic attacks."

The edges of her lips turned down. "Fear has been with me constantly, since I was a child. In flux, large and small, but always there. Now I can't feel it. It's gone."

Her eyes came back up to his face, her lips still pinched into a frown. Connor blinked. Then he said, slowly, "Isn't that a good thing?"

"I don't know," she said, sounding slightly miserable. "It feels like a trap. When something is intrinsically a part of you for all of your life, how are you supposed to react when it just disappears?"

"You're still the same person," Connor said quietly, placing his hands into hers. "You feel your emotions through the processor in your head rather than a human brain. It compartmentalizes, it knows there is no reason for you to be afraid right now." He gave her a small smile. "The fact that you're worrying about this shows your capacity to still feel anxiety."

"I guess that's true," she said, laughing. She looked at him for a moment, still smiling before she said, "I want to tell you something."

"Okay." He said. He tightened his fingers around hers, sliding his thumb across her knuckles.

"The morning we came back to Detroit," she began, swallowing. Nervous. His hands stopped moving for half a second, almost too small to notice. "I didn't tell you. I thought I would have time."

"Time for what?" She didn't realize that she had zoned out, her eyes drifting down to their entwined hands. For maybe half a minute, the silence stretching, making him uneasy.

"I was going to stay." She said it in a rush. So that she wouldn't hesitate again. So that she didn't overthink it and fumble over her words. He just blinked, tilting his head slightly. "With you. In Detroit. I wanted to stay with—"