dualismail | (no subject)

Nick's found a replacement for the rest of her bar shift, so she's off for the rest of the night from the customer-facing part of her job. There's still some paperwork to be done, however, which makes for a good excuse to move to the manager's office until she sees Connor arrive via the surveillance camera and re-emerges, approaching him at the bar with a friendly smile.

"Hey. Glad you could make it." She slides into the empty bar stool next to him, lightly folded hands placed on her lap. "I was thinkin' we could go talk in the office, it's quieter in there. Did you want a drink first?" Wait ... "Can you drink?" That ... sounded weird and maybe a little insensitive. She shakes her head. "Sorry, I guess I don't know a lot about how androids work, where you're from."

He doesn't see Nick at first, so he keeps entirely to himself looking down at his hands folded together on the bar after waving away the bartender with an apologetic smile, right up until she approaches him herself.

"Hey. I should thank you for offering this." He's not sure what this is, but she thought of him, and that deserves something in itself even if Connor doesn't agree to what she's offering or it doesn't work out.

"Don't worry about it," he says, waving off the apology. "Most of us don't drink, but I got some modifications made here so I can. I don't get drunk, though." So sometimes it feels a little pointless, but mostly it's nice. He feels included, and some of the drinks he's tried actually taste good.

"I don't suppose a bar would have any hot drinks, would it?"

Spoken like someone who's done nothing but follow Hank to bars and drunk spirits.

“Well, don’t thank me yet,” she says with a wry half-smile. “Wait and see if it’s actually gonna work.” Because she doesn’t know for sure that she can help him, only that she wants to try. She wants to do better with her life than she has up until now - certainly better than assisting a group of would-be revolutionaries with good intentions but problematic methods. She wants to do good.

“We do actually have hot drinks here,” and she counts them out on her fingers: “We can do a hot toddy, spiced hot chocolate, spiked coffee ... regular coffee. Pretty sure I’ve got everything to make a hot buttered rum, too. Any of those sound good? It’s on me.”

"Still," he says seriously. "You thought of it and you offered. That's important to me."

Maybe the day will come when people showing him kindness is just something he's used to and accepts without any special thanks or questions. But still, even now, kindness is special. He hopes it always will be.

"A hot...toddy," he repeats uncertainly, then, "Wait, buttered rum? I hope that doesn't involve melting butter into rum."

He was made in America, that wouldn't totally surprise him.

Nick is still getting used to kindness herself; she never saw much of it in childhood, after her father died and she was left alone with an abusive mother, and she didn’t begin to cultivate it as an adult until a few years ago, when her journeys through the multiverse began. Her change from an openly hostile girl, convinced of her monstrousness and full of hate for the entire world to who she is now hasn’t been easy, but she decided years ago that she was done hurting people and wanted to use her time and effort on doing good instead.

“You’re an important person, Connor. There ain’t anyone else exactly like you, y’know? That makes you special. And you’re pretty important to Hank.” Nick sees a lot of herself in Hank, trusts him more than anyone else in the city, even considers him a friend. He’d been badly shaken by what happened to Connor. “And the other thing is - I know I fucked up some with things I’ve done.” Things with the Heart. “I’m tryin’ to do better. I got into some really dumb shit because I wanted to help, and I still wanna help - I’m just tryin’ to find a different way to do it now. So if I can do somethin’ to make a difference even for one guy, I’d say that’s worth doing.”

She finishes her explanation with a warm smile and nods to his question about the drinks on offer. “That’s pretty much exactly what hot buttered rum is - rum, spices, melted butter, all mixed together. Bit rich for me, but some people really love it, ‘specially when it’s cold out. Hot toddy’s whiskey, honey, lemon, cinnamon - that’s a little more my speed, but I’m a whiskey girl anyway.” She shrugs. “Totally up to you.”

"I'd prefer the hot toddy," he says with an expression that's half a grin, half a grimace. Not that he's ever drank melted butter mixed with anything, but it sounds unpleasant. He doesn't have arteries or any reason to worry about his health, but he still can't help but recoil, just a little.

He knew already Nick was someone Hank trusted and liked, and it means a lot to him to hear it's reciprocated. Hank needs people like that, and when he's not buried in despair, finding such people comes to him easily. It makes Connor happy in turn to witness it, even though it's not a skill Connor shares. He's manipulative, not necessarily truly good at connecting.

"I don't mean to be blunt," he says, though he can't see anything for it but to be blunt, "but if the Heart doesn't change any of its methods and you keep following it as it is, it doesn't matter how much you try to make up for it elsewhere.

"I appreciate this, don't get me wrong." But he doesn't want to be Nick's way of feeling better about herself without at least saying something. He wants the Heart to succeed. But without support and with people like Mello in charge? It can't. Nick seems sensible enough to know that.

Blunt doesn't bother Nick at all, but she's not trying to make herself feel better by helping Connor. She's the type to hold onto guilt forever, hold her past mistakes against herself. Forgiveness has never been easy for her, and it's extra difficult when she's the one who needs forgiving. No number of good deeds will erase the missteps she's made and the people she's hurt. This truly is more for the benefit of Connor and Hank than anyone else.

She doesn't flinch at mention of the Heart, though she does place a finger against her lips, a silent signal for shh, then taps her ear and motions out to the room. There's background noise in the bar, of course, but it's still not especially safe to talk openly about secrets. "I know," she says, and she's already expressed her doubts and fears about the Heart's methods and her involvement with the Heart to Hank, but it's a complex equation with many variables, and math was never her strength. "We can talk more in the office."

Nick slips behind the bar and quickly prepares the drink, and insists on carrying it for Connor as she leads the way down the hall and into the office. Her palm pressed to the lock plate grants access, and she holds the door open until Connor's through, then deadbolts the door behind them and sets the drink on the desk, motioning for Connor to take the accompanying chair. The room isn't especially large, and shelves filled with bottles of the more high-end liquor and boxes of paperwork line the walls. Nick presses a button hidden on the corner of the desk's underside, which shorts out the overhead lights and leaves only a few battery-operated lamps to scatter dim light across the room.

"I shouldn't leave the EMP on for too long," she says, dragging another chair closer to Connor and taking a seat, "so we've probably got ten, fifteen minutes to talk." She clasps her hands together and spends a silent moment gathering her thoughts. "I know the Heart's not doin' shit the right way. And believe me, I'm tryin' to talk to them about changing the way they do things. But M-and-M are both real bullheaded, and they don't like being questioned on this authority that they've decided they have, so." She sighs tiredly; this issue has weighed heavily on her mind for months. "If I was smart, I would've never joined up in the first place. Guess I just ain't that smart," she says, mouth twisted in a wry half-smile, and laughs quietly. "But now that I'm in, I can't just leave, either. I don't know everything, they make sure none of us do, but I still know too much. They'd turn me over in a heartbeat - no pun intended."

Edited (deadBOLT not deadlock, how do words) 2020-01-12 05:32 (UTC)

The instant Nick presses a finger over her mouth Connor nearly swears out loud. He doesn't, but his face twists in immediate anger at himself for the slip up. He can make excuses - more of his processes are taken up lately with his injury, he's been stressed with the case and the reality of what they're living under - but what does it matter? If anyone heard that, they're dead no matter what justification Connor cal pluck from thin air.

"I'm sorry," he says as soon as he feels the EM pulse thrum over his skin like static. It's entirely possible less high-end android models would short out as well as the lights, but Connor's made of much stronger stuff. "Shit, I'll be more careful."

But then he's listening, frowning more and more deeply as Nick talks.

"I don't think you weren't smart for joining up," he says, nowhere close to the blunt tone of his words before. "There wasn't much of a choice but them if you wanted to fight against what the Head's doing."

He looks down for a moment, then up at the ceiling. Doesn't quite know where to look. "That's what I'm having trouble with right now. I told you all I went through a revolution already, but it had good leadership. What if it didn't? What would I have done then? Helped them anyway, or kept quiet and keep being a slave?"

Connor's lucky enough to at least get to think about this. It sounds like Nick never really knew what the choice was before she made it - and even if she had, is it so invalid a choice?

“It’s OK, don’t worry about it.” She smiles gently, an offer of reassurance. “We try to keep the bugs outta the bar, but it’s not a hundred percent, y’know? Can’t be too careful.” Plus there’s the fact that some of the bar patrons are replacements, and there’s no telling if any of them might be spies for the Head.

Nick takes a deep breath and slowly exhales before continuing with her explanation. “When Marie came to me to recruit me, she’d read the file on me, and she knew what I could do. And I was just so pissed off - this ain’t the first time I’ve ended up somewhere like this, and the last time, I was supposed to go home with - with this kid I met.” Her expression pinches, pained at the memory. “Tim. He was like a brother to me, y’know? And when I woke up here instead of with him, I just - I wanted out. And then I found out the thing that brought me here was gonna kill me instead of letting me go. Choosin’ to join up seemed real obvious at the time.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “You’re right, though. You’re all right - I said this to Hank, too. We don’t got good leadership. I sure as hell don’t know how to be a leader, but I know what we’ve got right now isn’t working. That’s why we need your help - especially you, Connor. You’ve been through this kinda thing before, so you have a better idea than any of us how to make this work.”

"I should know better." He's been worrying about this as much as anybody else for months. Acting as normal as possible so that when he does talk about sensitive matters the slightest odd tics or quirks, him hiding what he's doing or saying from any surveillance. Feeling like even the normal act is something anybody can see right through. And maybe they couldn't - until he went and mentioned the Heart right in the open.

"I'm sorry," he says, and it's soft and a little awkward - the surest possible indicator that he truly means it. It's not what his programming tells him is best to say. "If...I ended up somewhere else and Hank wasn't there, I honestly don't know what I'd do."

In fact, he grimaces and quickly changes tack, not even lingering on the thought for too long.

"I can't help unless they listen." It's quite the statement of the obvious. "When we met, we were talking in circles. They need to sit down and really talk to people, not just stand around in masks talking at us.

"We need to talk in a different setting." He leans on his crutch, frowning down at his busted leg without really seeing it. "Like equals. Or we won't get anywhere."

He looks up at Nick. "Do you know anything about them? Marie. Mello."

"It's OK." She forces a small, sad smile. "I've been doin' this world-hopping thing for a while now. I've seen people come and go - I should've expected something like this to happen. I guess ... it just felt like I was finally done, y'know?"

She shrugs. There's nothing she can do about it at this point. Better to focus on what she can do something about - keeping people alive.

"I know a little bit," she answers, with a nod. "They're both pretty tight-lipped about almost everything, but I can tell you what I know. You know about World War Two, right? Marie's from a place where the Nazis won that, and they continued taking over parts of the entire world, killing everyone they didn't like, all that horrible shit. She's from what used to be Canada, her whole family's a bunch of freedom fighters, so she grew up fighting Nazi shitheads, smuggling people out to Russia, which is apparently one of the only places that's still not under Nazi control. She wasn't a leader, but she's got some experience."

As for the other half of the pair: "Mello is ... kind of a huge asshole, as I'm sure you noticed. Funny thing is, he was actually on the same ship as me before we ended up here. Ship as in space ship, running from the ship's fascist Creators that wanted the ship back to use for slave labor - it was a ship that was alive, by the way. But we didn't talk much, he kept to himself most of the time. I know where he's from, he used to work with the Mafia, but I have a feeling it was more bossing them around than anything. Apparently there's some mass-murdering dictator type tracking down and killing anyone who's a criminal of any kind, or just someone he doesn't like. So I get where they're both coming from, but they're both not very good at this, and they don't like anyone challenging their so-called 'authority'."

Nick's information doesn't give him anything he didn't already expect - that Marie and Mello have been through this before, that they know how to fight an oppressive regine. In fact-

"Sounds like they've been doing this for so long they have no idea how to do anything else. Or how to do it any other way."

And that's a problem.

"It gives them both the perfect experience, but they can't disconnect from it for long enough to listen to anybody else. Or see how this regime is different from the ones they've been in."

Connor wonders if this is how he'll end up someday as well if he can't get out of this - if he can't get out of the cycle of one totalitarian state after another.

"A living space ship," he echoes, shaking his head. "I want to be fascinated by all of the different dimensions and people I hear about, but it's a little difficult when so many of them have nothing but stories of dictatorships and slavery."

He thinks if he got the chance, he'd be excited to learn something about living space ships.

“Makes sense,” she says, nodding agreement with Connor’s assessment. “It’s easy to get stuck with only what you know. But they still need some kinda wakeup call, ‘cause what they’ve been doin’ ain’t gonna cut it.”

Nick presses a finger to her lips, signaling to Connor the need for caution again as she flips the EMP switch off. She then reaches for the tool kit she’d borrowed for possible use in repairing Connor’s knee.

“Navi was OK - that’s what we called the ship. Those bastards didn’t even bother giving the ships a proper name, just called ‘em ‘Navigator.’ So we shortened it to Navi. Lotta people spent a lot of time yelling at Navi, but shit wasn’t their fault. Navi was as lost as the rest of us. Just trying to find their way home.”

Not unlike the people here, like Connor and herself, who’ve been snatched here against their will. Nick selects a few tools to start with and sighs.

“Well, you ready to let me take a stab at makin’ your knee all better?”

He feels the odd sensation coming over him from the EMP, and nods. It's a feeling he might liken to the hair standing up on the back of his neck, were he human.

"Right." He stands, fluidly despite it being one-legged, and quickly pulls his pants down and off with zero shame. He could have pulled his pant leg up, but that's more awkward. Easier to just get the fabric completely out of the way.

"I know that as an AI, I could be put into an advanced enough ship like that. And Navi could probably be put into my body, and it shouldn't make any difference to us." He flexes his knee, or tries to, but it's a jerky movement that feels like it's scraping along shards of broken components. The two wounds gape, dark and grotesque. "But I guess it really affects how organics treat us all the same. I look human. I'm much easier to treat with respect for some people.

"Would you rather my skin stay on or come off?" he asks, glancing up from the knee. "I can switch it on and off, I mean. I don't have to peel it or anything."

...He's not helping.

Nick's seen enough weird shit in the past few years that Connor's sudden de-pantsing and offer to switch his skin off just earns him a light laugh of amusement. It also helps that he's not a creep, so it all comes across as genuinely helpful.

"Let's go with off for now," she says, and sits down on the floor so she can work on his knee at a better view. She frowns faintly as she gives the damage a thorough visual inspection.

"Navi wasn't AI - they were grown, like test tube babies? Except they're space ships. But you'd kinda get into the ship if you were on it, I guess - everyone got these weird symbols on their hands, mine faded when I ended up here, and Navi had one too." She taps at the center of her forehead to indicate where that symbol was located. "Navi didn't really talk, but we had this - mental link? I think that's what you'd call it, basically Navi talked to us all telepathically. Everyone on the ship also had a partner, and you could talk to your partner that way, too. Navi said they were powered by the energy made by good partnerships - which I guess ain't the weirdest thing. The assholes in Hadriel were powered by emotions. At least Navi didn't do shit like bury us alive to scare us."

He nods, and the skin on his leg seems to flicker before it vanishes entirely. The affect of skin was already a little shaky in that area - cutting out in the area of the bullet holes before reactivating in sporadic bursts - but it did a passable job of hiding the damage. Now, it's very visible - the bullet had gone through what would be the kneecap of a human, but on Connor is much more complex machinery. Then it had burst out the back of his leg with a much larger exit wound.

The leg feels exposed - more so than he feels with his pants off - and it feels odd looking at the dark hole in the front of his leg, feeling the shards of polymer and occasional bit of wiring hanging out of the back, so he's grateful for Nick talking while she sits next to it.

"Huh." He leans back in the chair, tries not to stair at Nick so intently while she examines the leg. "I'm used to people being able to talk into my mind, but I can imagine it must be difficult when you're not used to it."

He decides not to ask about the buried alive part, or the general torment. It's probably not easy to talk about. But he can't help his face twisting at the mention of it all the same.

"Could you read each other's minds, or just send and receive messages?"