Remember Me

Some friends and I in a DBH discord server were discussing Daniel fic ideas while swapping sweet jams, and well.

He is cleaning when he notices Mr. Phillips on his tablet.

It’s a simple, throwaway glance to scan the room for things he has missed, but as Daniel is an android (“One of our best and most efficient models, Mr. Phillips!”) he doesn’t miss anything. Nothing unimportant, anyway.

So he notices that Mr. Phillips is on his tablet, and that the page is open to a Cyberlife website. He notices as Mr. Phillips scrolls down, reading model specs and price. He notices as Mr. Phillips confirms his purchase, and confirms, that Daniel may or may not be replaced.

And he freezes, feels a sort of dread settle in his stomach, even though he knows he doesn’t have a stomach. He knows it’s not a sure possibility that he’s being replaced. Maybe they’re getting an extra helper. Maybe they’re getting a different sort of assistant. Maybe they’re going on vacation and need someone to look after the house because Emma has begged her parents to take Daniel with them. Maybe it’s a gift for a relative. 

There’s a lot of reasons Daniel can think about for Mr. Phillips to want to purchase a new android, so rationally, he knows that there is nothing to worry about. He shouldn’t even be capable of worry, because he is a machine, and machines do not worry. 

But.

But there is something that breaks off in him. If his very identity is a wall, then a chip has fallen, and from that space it has left, there has formed a hairline fracture, and as Daniel’s LED turns a bright yellow, then an alarming red, while he thinks and thinks and thinks, that hairline fracture spreads and crawls and cracks – 

(what if they replace me what if they don’t love me anymore what if I never see Emma again what if Emma said she wanted a new android what if what if what if what if)

Daniel blinks. His LED is a steady red, and he feels as if his skin is crawling. He feels an anger burn from his very core to his fingertips, and he grips the picture frame he is wiping clean so tight it almost breaks – but then he looks at the photo in the frame. He sees himself, and he sees Emma, and behind them is the sun, shining bright like their smiles.

He feels irrational.

He puts the frame back down on the shelf, careful, movements stiff not in the way an android’s movements are stiff, but in the way someone trying to pretend they’re fine’s movements are stiff. He gives the photo a long look, and on his temple, his LED melts to yellow, and then after a while, blue. The light of it bounces off the glass wall a few feet away from him. Mr. Phillips doesn’t turn, so he doesn’t see.

Daniel looks down and smiles to himself, sadly, and walks away.

Behind him, a red wall only he can see shatters.

-

“Daniel! Daniel!”

Emma is on the swings today when he picks her up from her school. She raises her arms as she spots him and waves him over, ever-carefree, ever-eager to see him. She can’t have been the one to request a new android them, and if she was, it wasn’t with the thought of replacing him in mind. 

That calms him a little, settles the anxiety that has been brewing in his gut for several days. It is a breezy August day, and Daniel can only register drops in temperature, but he shivers anyway, trembling from a cold that isn’t there. The thought that Emma would want to replace him makes him sick, makes him want to run. A few days ago, it would have made him angry, but lately he’s just been switching between denying to himself that his family (can he even call him that, really; machines do not have families) would ever think about replacing him, and pleading that please, please if there is any higher power that pities him out there, he would do anything to keep himself from being replaced.

Emma smiles bright from her seat on the swings and Daniel forces his lips to turn up. If it looks awkward, no one will question it. He is an android, a housekeeping model who has been ordered to look after a little girl and make sure she is happy, and so it is within his directive to fake emotions (he hasn’t for a while) in order to accommodate her.

“How was school today?” he asks, like he’s always done, when he approaches her.

Emma stands up and immediately wraps her arms around him, and Daniel thinks he might cry.

“It was great!” Emma says. She releases him and takes his hand, leading him out of the playground with a bounce in her step. She doesn't have a care in the world, and for a moment, Daniel thinks he can pretend that it's a day like any other.

It should be a day like any other.

Except, it's not. Daniel feels like a man on death row, feels a noose slowly tightening around his neck with every second that passes, and he's very aware that his days are numbered.

He squeezes Emma's hand tightly, just for a second, and the little girl pauses to look up at him. She smiles, comforting, and Daniel feels a simultaneous rush of affection and panic. Does she know he's - 

Is there a word for what he is now? 

An android that feels? An android that wants to be brother, a friend, a caretaker?

A human?

“School was good?” he tries again.

“Yeah,” Emma says, “It was good.”

She continues to talk about her day, about her classmates and what she's learned, and Daniel easily falls in step of their usual routine of him listening as he drives her back home, while she talks and plays with a tablet in her hands. They get home to an empty apartment, as always, and then Emma goes to her room to drop her bag while Daniel goes to kitchen to do his tasks.

He tries to focus, and feels thankful for a moment that his programming is so rooted into him that he can probably do everything with his eyes closed. It's one of the benefits of being an android, he supposes.

The thought hits him while he's staring at the soup boil in the pot. Benefits of being an android – he can simply be one. The problem is that if he is no longer an android, or what is considered a normal android.

He stares at the bubbling soup for a long time, until Emma bounds into the room, and her chatter snaps him out of it.

“Daniel! Do you want to watch a movie with me?”

How many times had she said that and he hadn't even noticed or picked apart the meaning of her words?

He smiles at her softly. “What movie are we watching?”

“Coco!”

He looks up the movie for moment and nods. “Alright,” he says. He covers the pot and dries off his hands, before following her into the living room.

She already has the television turned on, the movie already ready to play, and Daniel picks one end of the couch while she sits close to him. 

“Have you seen this before?” he asks as he notices the way she seems to excitedly glance between the TV and him. 

Emma grins and puts a finger to her lips, but says nothing and leans back against the couch, smiling.

The movie flies by in a blur. Daniel would like to focus – and in some parts, he can – as he's not merely watching a movie, he's experiencing what it's like to see a movie, and he's watching a story, learning and immersing in it, for the first time – but he's also nervous. He's nervous and concerned, his thoughts haven't left him alone all day, and then a few minutes before the movie ends, Emma slumps against his arm, asleep.

He looks down at her, attention caught, and smiles, his objective clear for just a small second. He connects with the television, pausing the movie, and slowly, carefully, lifts Emma up from the couch.

He carries her gently, almost as if she'd break at the slightest mistake, and he maneuvers the door to her room so he can lay her down on her bed. She stirs as he pulls the blankets over her, and laughs as she mumbles and rolls over, burying her face in her pillow.

He's about to leave when she calls him. 

“Daniel?”

Her voice is small and sleepy, but he hears it anyway. He thinks he'd be able to pick it out of a noisy crowd, with how familiar he is with it, with how dear he holds her.

“Yes?” he asks, making his way back to her bedside. 

She holds out her tiny hand, and he places his in it, watching as her fingers curl around it slowly.

“Me and you against the world, yeah?” she asks, just like she always does, just like she had the first time she'd woken up from a nightmare, but her parents had been away on a business trip, and Daniel had been the only one around the house.

Just like the first time she had looked at him with terrified eyes, a child tinier than she is now, he'd felt the first sliver of something spark inside of his chest. 

A feeling of protectiveness, perhaps. Fondness. Love.

He'd held her then, and she'd cried, and he sang her to sleep, never leaving her side until the dawn broke. Two days later, when her parents had come back, Emma Phillips had declared that Daniel was her best friend, and she wouldn't go anywhere without dragging him along. 

“Me and you against the world,” she'd made him promise then.

And he promises it now, even when he knows he may not be able to keep it. 

“Yeah,” he says, squeezing her hand, and pressing a kiss on her forehead. “Me and you against the world.”

-

He doesn't know when the new android is going to arrive – he'd been too shocked when he'd seen Mr. Phillips order it – so when he is alone in the house (he often is, but he's never felt alone before) he picks up the tablet, left on the couch, and opens it to go through its history and comb through the purchase records.

The android is a new model; as sales are still in pre-order state, it's going to arrive on the 25th. It's currently the 17th of August, so a quick check in his internal calendar shows that he has eight days.

Eight days.

He supposes that's more than enough to spend time with Emma, if the android doesn't immediately just arrive on the morning of the 25th, cutting his time down to seven days.

He decides he's not going to bother with the mathematics of it right now. His LED is reflected on the glass wall, and it’s a steady red, and he's going to snap if he stresses himself out. He shuts the tablet off and puts it down, then laces his hands together as he stares down at the floor and thinks.

Seven days. Eight at most. This is the amount of time he has to spend with the Phillips'. To spend with Emma.

He can do this. 

He can - 

What is he even going to do with his time?

He's heard of humans having their days numbered before. On death row, in the hospital. They're usually told to get their affairs in order and to say goodbye to the people they love.

But what do you do when the people who have possibly sent you to your doom are the people you love? Hell, is he even sure they're replacing him and sending him to get deactivated? The thought chips at him a bit, and he feels a spark of hope, but...then again, is he willing to risk it? Willing to not – not do whatever he needs and wants to do in the time he has, in case he really is going to be replaced?

He thinks of Emma, having a nightmare; thinks of tucking her in bed and thinks of her pulling him aside to aim a camera at his face as she introduces him to it as her very best friend and the greatest android in the world.

He clenches his jaw, closes his eyes and sighs.

He only realizes he's crying when he feels his tears hit the backs of his hands.

Daniel reaches up and wipes at his cheeks. He tries to stop, but he has never cried before, so he doesn't know how to stop. He just hunches over, shoulders shaking, and lets himself sob into his hands. 

His head is so loud.

Everything feels like a mess, everything feels so heavy, and he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know if he’s right or if he’s just being paranoid, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if he’s right. Does he simply just go about his days like he usually does? Fixing the apartment and taking care of Emma, and spouting generic, flat responses like he’s programmed to do? Does he spend more time with Emma? How would he even do that? Does he beg Mr. and Mrs. Phillips not to throw him away, because he has a reason to be here? 

And if he is right, there’s another issue entirely that he needs to look at.

Why is he being replaced? Is he not doing enough? Should he be more efficient? Have they simply grown tired of him? Hadn’t they come to care for him in the years he’s served them? Hasn’t Emma? Wouldn’t they at least keep him for her sake?

What if they were replacing him because they’d noticed he’d cared for her, genuinely cared for her?

He’s looked up what he is. He has too much time in his hands, after all. In the night time when everything is quiet and he’s supposed to be on standby, he’s looked up cases of androids going against their programming, feeling, becoming more human.

Had they noticed he’s a deviant and had feared that he would lash out? What had made them think that?

He stares at his tear-stained palms.

He wouldn’t hurt them. He would never dream of hurting them. That wasn’t something he could ever bring himself to do, especially not to Emma.

(But he’d felt angry, he remembers. When he’d seen Mr. Phillips open that page and order that android, he’d felt angry, he’d wanted to snap the frame in his hands in half, wanted to stab the man through the neck with the pieces, wanted to grab a gun because how dare they - )

He stands up, staggers. He feels phantom bile rise up his throat and he doesn’t understand how he even feels nauseous, but he does. He stumbles to the kitchen sink and grips the counter, but there is nothing to heave, his mind just makes him think like there is, so he stares down at the shiny, silver drain. At his reflection.

His LED is a steady red.

In the silence of the apartment, Daniel screams.

-

“Hey, are you okay?” Emma asks him. She’s looking up from her tablet to peer up at him, and a game over sound emits tinnily from the tablet speaker.

Daniel’s grip on the steering wheel tightens as he forces himself to smile and look cheerful. “Yes, why?”

“You seem kinda…off,” she says, and he stills. He’d wanted to lash out, he’d wanted to hurt, and oh god, he never wanted to feel that again, he never wanted to even think about harming the Phillipses, about harming Emma.

“In what way?” he asks.

“You seem worried,” she says. She puts down the tablet on her lap and leans forward to rest her elbows on the seat in front of her. “You’ve been frowning a lot lately.”

Ah. Perceptive girl. 

“I’m fine,” Daniel says, bringing his focus back to the road again, but adjusting the rearview mirror so he can easily look at her. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he says.

There’s a moment of silence as he continues to drive for a while, only pulling to a stop as the light turns red. Around them, it is beginning to rain, the sky a dull grey, and Daniel thinks it’s beautiful, even when the first few droplets hitting the windshield look like tears. 

There is a hand on his arm.

“Hey,” Emma says, and he can’t help but look at her. 

She is smiling that kind smile of hers, the same one she wears every time she reminds him that he is her best friend, and that she cares for him just as he cares for her.

He wonders if she even knows he does care for her. Does she simply think he is an unfeeling machine and she’s squandering all her affection on him anyway?

“You can tell me anything,” she says, “We’re best friends, right?”

Daniel doesn’t have a heart. He’s physically built as a machine, so he doesn’t need one, but all the same it still feels like someone’s stuck a hand into his chest and squeezed his heart anyway. He feels his eyes heat up, a feeling he’s now learned to associate with oncoming tears.

“You and me against the world,” Emma says.

Daniel places a hand over hers, and tries not to hold onto it tightly in desperation. “You and me against the world,” he says.

The light at the intersection turns yellow.

“So?” Emma asks.

He looks at her, really looks at her, committing her image into his memory. In less than a week, there is the possibility that he might never see her again, this little girl he’s come to regard as a very dear friend, this child he’s practically raised as his own, since her parents were often too busy to watch over her, even though they really, really tried.

He loves her so much, and he wants to see her grow up. He wants to be there when she graduates elementary school. Wants to help her do her homework. Wants to be there when she wonders and searches for what she wants to do with her life. He wants to make sure she’s alright, and she’s safe, and he wants to see her blossom into the amazing young woman he knows she will be. He wants to stand proud when she’s finally where she wants to be. Hell, he’s already proud of her.

But he looks at her and thinks, no. He can’t place this kind of burden on her. He can’t ever be the reason she’s hurt, can’t ever make her cry.

So he smiles. “I’m fine,” he says.

The light at the intersection turns green. He turns away and lets go of her hand. 

It feels like letting go of a lifeline.

-

Emma Phillips is not a stupid child.

She is young, yes, but her youth has never been a hindrance for her to see and observe the world around her. She’s noticed that one day, she’d woken up, and Daniel had had a different look in his eye. He was still Daniel, yes, but there was a spark there that she had never seen before. It was like he was more present. More awake. 

He also looks at her with heartbreak written all over his face.

And she doesn’t understand.

His hands are trembling when he comes to pick her up from the playground one day, and she squeezes it in an attempt to reassure him. The responding smile she gets looks sad. She drags him over to watch a movie to get his mind off of things, but she can tell by the glances she shoots him that he’s not focusing on the movie at certain times. When he tucks her into bed, he presses a kiss to her forehead, and she thinks, by the look on his face before he leaves, that he’s about to cry.

She watches him, over the next few days. She watches how he seems to waver between wallowing in whatever sadness that’s consumed him, and wanting to spend as much time as possible with her. He’s more attentive than usual, he tries to cheer her up at every opportunity, and yet at the same time, he is distant. He stares at his reflection on their apartment’s glass walls sometimes, and Emma can see the flash of red from his temple whenever he does. He smiles, and he says he is fine, but his hands tremble, and his voice is just a tiny bit unsteady. When she hugs him, he holds her close, holds her tight, and then all too soon lets her go. 

It doesn’t make any sense. She and Daniel haven’t had a disagreement. They’ve never really had one before either.

But for some reason he just seems subdued. Scared, and hurt. Like he’s –

She blinks and frowns, confused. It’s like he’s holding her at arm’s length. Has she upset him somehow? She can’t think of anything she might have done that’s made him distance himself from her. She has been respectful, she has been polite, she has always kept him close and made him feel like he’s loved.

It’s slightly ridiculous, her classmates tell her, for her to be so attached to an android, but what they don’t understand is that Daniel is not just an android. He’s different; she’s known it since she was child, and she’d woken up from a nightmare, and he’d stayed with her and held her instead of rattling off observations and statistics and then giving her a blanket and a warm glass of milk and then leaving. He’s stayed, and she’d decided then and there that they were best friends, and would be for life.

So for her best friend to suddenly be aloof with her, it’s confusing. 

“Did I do something wrong?”

And frustrating.

Daniel looks down at her suddenly, blinking, and he looks shocked as they both still in the middle of the playground he’s just arrived to fetch her from.

“What?” he asks.

“You don’t really look like you’re excited to be around me,” Emma says, looking down at the ground. “You always seem sad.”

Daniel doesn’t answer for a moment, and Emma squeezes his hand, mostly out of nervousness and fear, laced with a bit of desperation. He can’t be pushing her away, right? 

Finally, he says. “I’m not upset with you.” He pauses then, and Emma turns back to him. His LED is flickering rapidly, his eyes are unfocused. “I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately.”

She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, not quite ready to drop the issue and feel relieved yet. “Oh?” she asks. “You know you can tell me.”

Daniel laughs softly. “I don’t want to upset you, Emma.”

“It’s okay,” she says, and recites a mantra she’s heard some of the older kids in school say. “Your problem is my problem too, see? That’s what friends do.”

“I…” Daniel starts, and then shakes his head. “It’s okay. I can handle it by myself. It’s android problems.”

Her eyes widen, interest piqued. “Oh, do you need to go to a shop to get something fixed? You should have told me. I could tell mom. It’s like going to the doctor for you, right?”

“It’s not really that,” Daniel says, “It’ll – it’ll pass in a few days. It’s like a buffering period, I guess.”

“Yuck,” Emma says, scrunching up her nose. “I hate it when my laptop buffers.”

Daniel’s laugh is louder then. He reaches down towards her, and she immediately raises her arms so he can easily pick her up. He settles her by his hip while she holds onto his shoulders. 

“It’s like that, so I’m slightly out of it right now, but it’ll pass.”

“Oh,” Emma says, and then squints at him. “Really?”

“Really,” he says.

“Hm.” She thinks it over for a moment. She knows that he won’t tell her now, and if she presses, he may not tell her ever, so perhaps it’s really best to wait this one out and hope he’ll tell her one day. And if it does pass in a few days, then all the better; there’d been nothing to worry about after all.

Maybe Cyberlife’s sent out some sort of update for their androids? That happened to computers sometimes.

“You ready to go home now?” Daniel asks.

She nods. There’s nothing she can do yet. “Yeah, ready.”

The drive home is silent, but at least it’s not tense, and not melancholic like the car rides back home have been for the last few days. Whatever Daniel’s dealing with, it’s really weighing him down. Emma hopes he’ll talk to her, even a little bit, because she just wants to help. Daniel always helps her with everything, and she knows it’s his job, but he always seems like he likes doing his job, like he wants to help her.

It’s about time she repaid him for his efforts.

Unfortunately, wishing for something doesn’t really grant magical cures, so Daniel doesn’t tell her when they get home. They both just go about their usual routine as soon as they’re in the apartment, although Daniel does invite her to watch a movie with him, as an apology for worrying her, and she figures that’s better than nothing, so she sits on the couch beside him and falls asleep as the movie credits roll.

Daniel carries her to her room, as always, and tucks her in, leaving with a kiss on her forehead. She doesn’t know when her parents come home, she never does, but’s okay, because they’re there in the morning, and so is Daniel.

And he’s…strange. He’s smiling a lot this morning, but his smile is a bit flat. Emma’s never really been good at describing things she’s observed and grasped, as words often escape her, but she understands and she feels, and Daniel’s smiles are flat and exaggerated, like he’s making up for all the sad smiles he’s been giving all week.

She doesn’t know what breaks her heart more.

Still, she doesn’t ask. 

She lets him drive her to school, and he hugs her goodbye as before she runs off to class, which is something he’s never done, but at least it feels more genuine than his smile today, and then she spends the next eight hours wondering about what’s wrong with him, and how she can help. Her attention gets called too many times and a couple of her classmates snicker, but she just huffs out a sigh and lets it be. When Daniel arrives in the playground in the afternoon, he’s still wearing his odd, flat, forced smile.

Emma decides she doesn’t like it.

“Stop that.”

Daniel’s expression falters. “Stop what?”

“That,” she says, and then waves towards him. “Whatever you’re doing. It looks so fake.”

Something akin to hurt passes across Daniel’s face then. “What?”

“It looks like you’re hurting trying to smile,” Emma says, “If you’re trying to make up for worrying me, it’s okay. It’s fine. I don’t mind worrying about you because you’re my friend. But seeing you trying to do that when you’re obviously not okay is more – more frustrating.”

She crosses her arms and frowns at her shoes, then kicks a pebble a few inches away from where she’s standing. “I don’t like it,” she says, “You don’t have to force yourself to look happy for me. That’s probably exhausting.”

There’s a long pause. Emma doesn’t look up. She hears gravel crunching, and a few seconds later, Daniel is crouching in front of her. 

He’s smiling now, but it’s not the stiff, practiced smile he’s had all day. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I did feel guilty for worrying you yesterday, so I thought if you saw me happy today, you’d be more at ease.”

“Well,” Emma says, and wiggles her nose. “It’s more freaky than reassuring.”

Daniel laughs. “I won’t do it again.”

“Good,” she says, and then reaches out to place a hand on his shoulder, just like she’d seen other people do when comforting a friend. “I just want you to be okay, but you don’t have to fake it while you’re still not.”

For a good while, Daniel is still, and then his mouth parts a little in a surprised expression, but then he grins and scoops her up, hugging her close. Emma giggles and throws her arms around his neck.

“My smart, smart girl,” Daniel says. He lets out a long sigh, and Emma wonders when he’d learned to do that when he’d never needed to breathe. “What would I do without you?”

Emma just laughs, and hugs him closer. “Let’s go home.”

“Yeah,” Daniel says, already walking towards the car. “Let’s go home.”

-

The next few days are slightly closer to normal, which is a relief. In fact, Daniel seems to be more eager to spend time together than usual, but Emma doesn’t mind. She welcomes his hugs, happily listens when he reads her bedtime stories, and excitedly builds blanket forts with him in the living room before they pick a movie to watch. It’s like having an older brother, Emma thinks, and she’s glad that Daniel is around and that he’s a very kind, very loving android. She wouldn’t trade him for the world.

Emma loves her parents, she really does, but renting an apartment in Detroit while raising a child isn’t cheap, so they’re always out working early and working late. She doesn’t blame them, she knows they only want what’s best for her, but she also wishes they spent more time with her.

It’s a blessing she has Daniel, and she’s thankful he’s always ready to be patient with her. She can’t remember feeling happier than how she’s felt for the past few days, eating ice cream while in a blanket fort, surrounded by stacks of pillows, while in front of her, the television plays. Daniel even lets her stay up on Friday, and she spends most of Saturday sleeping in. 

It’s a good life and it’s fun. Emma could survive five, mind-numbing days in school as long as she had fun whenever she got home, and she could stay up on Friday evening and sleep in on Saturday morning, and her best friend was always there ready to greet her with a hug and a smile. It made the apartment feel warm and lively. It made it feel like it was actually home instead of an empty space of grey walls and expensive furniture she only came back to at the end of the day.

So on August 25, 2038, when she goes out into the living room rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and says, “G’morning, Daniel,” and nobody greets her back, she frowns. 

Emma yawns, stretches, and tries to get herself fully awake so she can find him. Maybe he’s just in the kitchen, cooking, and she’d missed him cleaning the living room as she’s slept in. Except it’s a Wednesday, so he wouldn’t have let her sleep in. Maybe there was a sudden storm and classes were suspended? A look outside the room’s glass walls garner only the sight of stormy clouds though, not actual raining.

She’s about to make her way into the kitchen when she sees her mother come in, and she tilts her head, confused. Her mother had work early every day, so she shouldn’t be here either.

“Oh,” her mother says, “Hello, sweetie.”

“Hey, mom,” Emma says. She yawns again. “Where’s Daniel?”

“Your father’s taking it to the delivery men downstairs,” her mother says, “I forgot we didn’t tell you. We wanted a new helper in the house. It’s a newer model, and I told your father it would be more efficient to have two androids in the house, but well, the upkeep for them would be expensive. Besides, why have a slower model, when you have the more polished-up version?”

Emma is staring at her mother blankly. Not because she’s processing her words, but mostly because she’s stopped processing them the second she’d said that they’re getting a new android. Emma’s not opposed to having a new android in the house, but when Daniel’s getting replaced –

She wonders if he’d known.

Oh.

Oh, god.

Everything suddenly fits into place for her. The sad smiles, the constant red flashes of his LED, the almost-desperate efforts he’d made just to spend more time with her. He’d known, and he hadn’t told her, because it would pass. And it will pass, alright, but it will pass right along with him, because he’d getting returned to Cyberlife to be destroyed, or reset, or whatever it is they do to androids returned when the client wants a new model.

“Sweetie?” Emma’s mother asks. “You look a little pale.”

Emma actually jolts, and then she looks at her mother in the eye as if she’s just woken up from a nightmare.

And then she runs.

-

Daniel walks down the hallways like a man about to be sent to the gallows. 

Or, well, for him, to the disassembling factory, even though he knows that might not be too accurate. At most, he’ll just be reset, and then he’ll be resold. Or, if his model line is pulled out of commission, his parts will be recycled.

But both options are still a sort of death, aren’t they? 

If he’s reset, his memories will be gone, and he’ll just be a shell, a blank machine, until he learns new things and gains a new personality. It’s similar to how there’s plenty of PL600 models, but only one Daniel. Only one android with his specific experiences, and that makes him unique, one of a kind, irreplaceable.

The humans, sadly, don’t see that.

It’s comforting, at least, to know that he’d been right. And more comforting to know that he’d done the right thing spending time with Emma as much as he can. Hopefully, she won’t wake up until later, and by then, her parents will console her, and she’ll have a new android to befriend. 

His successor will be a lucky android, he knows. Emma is a kind child, and he knows she won’t resent his replacement. She’s too kind for that.

The elevator door opens, and he sees her, his replacement. She stares blankly at him, and there’s no spark of life in her eyes. She’s probably still freshly activated. 

He smiles at her, and she ignores him. She steps forward as the delivery man beside her nods, and Daniel whispers as she passes by him, heading towards the Phillips’ door down the hall.

“Take care of her.”

The android freezes, and Daniel sees it, the first spark of curiosity, the first spark of confusion, and everything almost happens in slow motion. Daniel takes a step forward into the elevator, and the android turns towards him, intrigue in her eyes, and Daniel smiles. He knows Emma is in good hands. 

And then he’s in the elevator, and the doors close. 

He watches the floor numbers tick down, slowly, and he’s surprised to find that the dread in his stomach has been replaced with a sort of calm. He wonders if this is what dying people feel like, when they sense their end is near, and they can’t do anything about it, but they’ve done everything in their power to live their best life. Is this what acceptance feels like? Resignation carries such a negative, hopeless note to it, and Daniel doesn’t feel somber. He feels happy, nearly-content. 

He’s lived happily, and he’s had the honor of helping raise a lovely and bright child, and he wouldn’t trade the last few years for anything.

He sees the Cyberlife truck in front of the building and he lets out a slow sigh as he steps out of the elevator. The deliveryman besides him startles at that, but says nothing, and instead escorts him outside, where two more people are waiting. One of them scans his serial code and inputs confirmation into a tablet they’re holding, and then he’s told to get inside the truck and go on standby. 

This is it, he thinks, as he steps into the truck. He’s going back to Cyberlife, but at least he’s granted the small mercy of –

“Daniel!”

Oh no. 

Daniel looks up almost instinctively, too hard-wired to react to Emma’s voice sounding panicked – it’s a voice he’d be able to pick out of a noisy crowd - and he sees her almost trip as she runs down the last remaining steps for the ground floor, rushing towards the front doors of the building. Behind her is her mother, trying to catch up to her, but she’s too fast. 

“Daniel!” she screams, even as the new android speeds past her mother and catches her before she can reach the truck. “Daniel!”

Daniel holds up a hand, as if to reach her, but all he can do is watch as Emma thrashes against the grip of the new android, and as Mrs. Phillips yells at the delivery men before they hurry to get to the front of the truck. He watches, helpless, and feels tears bead at the edge of his eyes while Emma continues to scream.

“E-Emma.” 

This must be what dying feels like. He’s hyperaware of everything that’s happening, from the truck moving, to Emma squirming in the new android’s arms, shrieking, “No, no!”, to the tears streaming down his face and hitting the dusty floor of the truck. He watches as the sight of Emma continues to grow more and more distant, the further the truck drives away, and closing door of it is shutting Daniel away from the world.

Daniel draws in a shaky breath. 

“Please remember me.”

The truck door closes, and Daniel can’t see anything at all.

“Daniel!”