GLITCH [CONNOR]

Alive

It was late at night, around one, and Faye was still not home. After the Eden Club Hank had driven them to a park, where he now sat on a bench looking out over the water and the bridge. He had been sitting out there all alone for a while, with only his beer and snow as company. Faye and Connor had remained in the car, none of them were talkative at this point. Faye had too much to think about, the deviants back at the club and the fact that Connor lowered his gun and spared them. The more time she spent with the android, the less she understood it. "He's been out there for a while. Let's go check on him." Faye said before getting out of the car, the android followed suit.

They walked through the tiny park up to where Hank sat on the bench's backrest, "mind if I take one?" Faye asked and nodded towards his pack of beer.

"Help yourself," Hank muttered. The Detective walked towards the empty place on the bench and sat down as she grabbed a beer from the bunch. It made a fizzing sound as she removed its cap. The beer was cold and not really what you wanted a cold night like this, but it did its job. Connor had stopped next to Hank and was staring out at the water. "nice view, huh?" Hank said. "I used to come here a lot before..." He trailed off.

"You should go home, Lieutenant," Faye said as she rested her elbows on her knees.

"I'm not tired," Hank answered, "neither's him."  He looked towards the android.

"Before what?" Connor spoke up.

"Hm?"

"You said," Connor started, "'I used to come here a lot before'. Before what?"

"Before," Hank wanted to tell them, but he couldn't if he opened that Pandora's box then everything would spill out, "before nothin'."

"Can I ask you a personal question, Lieutenant?" Connor seemed to be filled with questions, Faye took another sip of her beer as she listened in.

"Do all androids ask so many personal questions or is it just you?" Hank answered the question with a question.

"I think that's just him," Faye commented as she remembered how Connor had asked about her being a dancer, he was rather snoopy that android. 

"Why are you so determined to kill yourself?" The question made Hank look towards Faye, who shrugged.

"It's okay, I know. I asked Connor to tell me why you were in such bad state earlier." Faye explained, the android had told her that he found Hank unconscious and very drunk and that Hank had been playing Russian roulette, "he's not the best at keeping secrets." Hank sighed, his suicidalness was not really something he wanted Faye to know about.

"Some things, I just can't forget," Hank started, "whatever I do, they're always there, eating away at me." He looked down at his empty bottle, "I don't have the guts to pull the trigger, So, I kill myself a little every day. That's probably a little difficult for you to understand, huh, Connor? Nothing very rational about it."

"I get it," Faye thought that if Hank had opened up like that, she should too, "I was in a pretty bad relationship before. There was this guy, I thought the world of him. He was cool, badass, your typical bad boy. And I fell hard. But he started taking Red Ice, and it changed him completely. One day I told him that he should stop. That I didn't like the person he was turning into. And he said," her voice cracked, "' you don't decide over me. I'll teach you your place'. And then he hit me, several times. He used his belt. It left some pretty bad scars on my back." Connor remembered the bruising he had seen through the gap.

"How did you get out?" Hank asked, Connor remained silent but he was listening intensely.

"I never did, not really," Faye took another sip, "he threatened to beat me even more if I ever told someone at the station about his using. He beat me to silence. I got lucky, an undercover cop caught him buying and he went to jail for five years. He made his mark on me..." She trailed off, not wanting to tell the two that she had never really let someone into her life after that.