For Both You And Me

snippets in the life of RK800-60, post-The World Was Wide Enough

The first time he gets to the house, Hank gives him a shifty look, and he thinks maybe this was a bad idea. 

But there’s a storm rolling in, and he’ll get soaked soon, and while he doesn’t mind, Connor does, and Hank’s a decent human being, so he gets pulled inside and gets told to take a shower because he’s filthy and he needs a change of clothes.

He tries to protest, tries say that it’s fine and he’ll only be staying for a night, at most, but Hank scoffs and says it might only be for a night, but he’s not getting dirt all over the house, which strikes him as funny because while the house isn’t a pigsty (and he supposes that’s Connor’s influence, because from his memories, Hank’s place had been a mess) it’s not exactly showroom material either.

But he takes that shower and he borrows Connor’s clothes (being in clean, new clothes is nice, something he wasn’t even aware of until he’s out of his tattered and muddy uniform), and he crashes on the couch with Sumo sleeping by him, after the dog had recognized that he’s a friendly stranger.

He doesn’t sleep. He just thinks the entire night. It’s good that he doesn’t need the sleep so there are no remarks of dark lines under his eyes in the morning. He tries to help Connor around the house, and there’s a tense half hour of them trying to do chores (or Connor teaching him how to do simple chores), and then after that they cross the street to pick up Molly because it’s Connor’s turn to walk her with Sumo, and the reason why he’d been so confident in declaring RK800-60 can still meet her and Hank’s dog.

RK800-60 has Sumo’s leash in hand while Connor rings the doorbell of their neighbor, and he watches the door opens, and the human girl gives them both a wide-eyed look of surprise.

“I’m not even old enough to drink, wow,” she says, and then sticks a hand out to poke RK800-60 in the chest. He leans back a little, but her hand still finds him, and she seems to recoil in shock when she finds he’s real.

That’s basically how RK800-60’s first day on living with the Anderson’s goes. The neighbors think they’re seeing double, but Connor patiently explains that he’s just another RK800 model – possibly the only other one active – and that he’s been staying in the Jericho the whole time because he’d wanted to help, but it’s about time he’d moved out of there. The story isn’t wrong, but Connor leaves out too many of the more tragic details.

RK800-60 says nothing, and he just lets the Andersons do all the talking. He lets himself be taught chores, he walks the dogs when it’s his turn to, and he entertains himself by taking walks around the city when he’s not busy. And he’s not busy most days. Compared to Jericho, staying with the Andersons is…quiet. Quiet and slow and calm, more than he’d expected it to be.

Then again, he hadn’t expected to stay more than one night with them either, but he’d forgotten to leave, after the first dog walk, and the next morning, Connor had pulled him aside to try and teach him how to cook and his interest had been piqued. 

It really is a quiet neighborhood, though, and he can see why Connor had had no problems adjusting here. Everyone greets him with sincere smiles while he just nods and looks down, uncomfortable with too much eye contact as they try to strike up friendly conversation with him whenever they see him.

The only thing that makes it awkward is that he doesn’t have a name. 

But that’s fine, they always say. You’ll figure it out later.

He doesn’t really have any plan to. Doesn’t have any desire to, either. It’s enough that he gets up for the day, does whatever chore is assigned to him, and walks the dogs. 

But that’s fine too.

-

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

RK800-60 remembers Detective Reed. He’s never actually met the man, but he knows that his predecessor’s memory of him is accurate, so he knows Reed is an ass. In the amount of time that’s passed from the Uprising to the current moment, the man doesn’t appear to have changed, and he sneers at RK800-60 as he sees him hover by the reception desk.

RK800-60 blinks as Reed marches up to him, frowning as he studies his face, eyes flickering to the LED on his temple.

“There’s two of you?”

He says nothing, instead putting the bag of clothes he’s holding on the desk, just in case Reed tries to pick a fight with him and he drops them and makes a mess. The action catches the detective’s attention and he scoffs.

“Oh, you’re a version who actually knows what he’s made for, huh,” he says, but backs off, apparently satisfied, but still says the next sentence with a hint of malice, “Guess you’re one of the better-made ones then.”

He knows he’s called Connor a failure before, and he knows how much that stings, because he’s spent nights thinking about that too – that in some capacity, he too is a failure, especially since while Connor has been able to move on and adapt to life, he hasn’t. And while he holds no fondness for Connor, he does have a bit of gratitude, because outside of rotting in Jericho, he hadn’t had any objective at all.

So he frowns, and says, “No. I just have no interest in being a detective.”

It doesn’t taste like a lie, but it doesn’t taste like the truth either. RK800-60 was built for detective work, but his first deed upon activation had been taking someone hostage, and then after that, he’d spent some time wallowing in confusion before he put all that nervous energy into construction work. 

He doesn’t know what he’s interested in.

“Yeah, because you know you’re supposed to cook and make coffee,” Reed says.

“No, I’m not,” he says, more firmly this time, “And neither is Connor.”

Reed frowns at him, incensed. “You listen here, tin can,” he says, jabbing a finger harshly at RK800-60’s chest. “You fancy toasters might have been able to convince Warren because you scared everyone with your numbers, but one thing you should know about humanity is that we are stubborn, and we never back down from a threat.”

“And in another context, that would have been very moving, Detective,” he says, swatting Reed’s hand away, feeling some of his old wit come back to him. “But you have to ask yourself if humanity sees us as a threat, or if there’s just a special sort of people who do, and if you’re in that number of people.”

That seems to make the detective snap, and RK800-60 can see the fury building in his eyes.

“Gavin, sit the hell down!” someone from the bullpen yells out, but he doesn’t listen.

Instead he begins to pull his fist back, and as soon as RK800-60 sees him do that, he takes a step back, defensive programming kicking in. He sees everything move slowly, processors whirring too fast for a human’s senses to catch up, and he prepares to catch Reed’s fist and wrench his arm back – but just as Reed swings, someone reaches out and pulls him back, making him stumble, and the punch never reaches RK800-60.

“Gavin, go back to your desk,” Hank says, shoving the younger man away as he lets go of his arm.

Connor looks at Reed, and then RK800-60, frowning, but as he scans the other android and finds no damage, he relaxes. 

Reed glances at him, and then at Hank, and back to RK800-60, before he decides that he’s outnumbered and walks back to his desk, muttering bitterly under his breath. 

The tension leaves RK800-60’s shoulders, and he takes the bag he’s placed on the reception desk. He notices there’s a slight tremor in his hands, but he says nothing, and instead hands the bag over to Hank.

“Change of clothes,” he says, “Connor called.”

Hank snorts but takes the bag with a grateful nod. “Thanks. Reed give you trouble?”

“He didn’t land a punch, no,” he says.

“Kid’s gonna have a hell of a time getting his badge back if he keeps up the attitude,” Hank says. 

“I don’t know how he got it to begin with,” Connor says.

“He’s a good cop,” Hank says, “Most days, anyway. Good cop. Just not a very good person.”

RK800-60 listens as the conversation tapers off to the case, Hank and Connor reviewing details while Connor interrupts with reminders for Hank to take a break for a minute because he needs it, even wheedling RK800-60 to say the same thing, and he just shrugs because he doesn’t really know what to say. About half an hour later, he’s told he can go home, and he spends the next few hours wandering the city to see the lights as the sun goes down.

He walks back to the house instead of taking a taxi, and sits down on the couch staring at nothing once he’s inside. He doesn’t know what to do. Nothing on the TV is appealing to him. He doesn’t feel like playing with a Rubik’s cube right now. He’s already fed Sumo and the dog is sleeping in his bed already.

He realizes then, two hours into staring blankly at the wall, that he needs interests. He needs hobbies. He needs something to occupy his time, if not his wandering mind, because the less he has to do, the more time he has to think about troubling things, and he doesn’t mind that, not really, but he also knows thinking about these isn’t going to help anyone. So just on that note alone, he tries to avoid it.

But he has no interests, and he has no desire to find new ones either.

He likes dogs, he likes high places because how nice the wind feels, and he likes solving puzzles, but that’s it.

He knows only three things about himself.

He tries to spend the rest of the night trying to think of what might be good to spend his energy on, but he keeps coming back to that one thought. He’s just a blank shell, a poor copy of something that doesn’t need replacing, and so essentially, he’s useless.

-

It’s a small mercy that he forms habits.

It keeps him going. When he has none of his own desires to operate on, he at least has a list of what to do and a schedule of when to do them. In the mornings, he cleans the yard and alternates cooking and dishwork with Connor, depending on what day of the week it is. He has dog walking duty on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and fills in for Connor in case the android is busy with a case, and most days he usually is. He makes dinner when Hank is home, because sometimes works drags on late into the evening and the old man is too tired to make stops at diners. When they’re working overtime, he brings them new sets of clothes, a thermos of coffee, and maybe a couple of coats if it’s so cold that Connor’s joints are in danger of freezing.

Some days he realizes that he’s acting as though he’s programmed to do these things, following a set of instructions without any personal wants of his own at all, and he thinks, this isn’t that different to being a machine at all. He carries the title deviant, but in the end, he’s not doing anything with his freedom and is simply submitting himself to tasks that are assigned to him, doing them blindly.

He wonders if he’s even really free.

Sure he has all these emotions, but they’ve never done him any good and he’d rather they go away. He has all the free time in the world but he doesn’t know what to spend it on and he doesn’t want to spend it on anything. He doesn’t want anything, in fact, save for the chance to stop feeling so awful, and to have something to want in the first place.

“Hey, you okay?”

He blinks, realizing he’s in front of his neighbor’s house because he’s returning Molly to her. The girl looks up at him, concern creasing her young face, and he hands the leash to her.

“I’m fine,” he says.

She takes the leash with a thoughtful look on her face. “You spaced out there for a moment, bub.”

“I was just thinking.”

“You do that a lot.”

“Heaven forbid I don’t, because that would lead to a lot of stupid decisions.”

The girl snickers, and tries to hide her amusement by coughing into her fist. “Yeah, you’re alright,” she says, “Kinda, anyway.”

“I’m fine,” he says. He looks down at Molly for a moment and reaches down to pet her head, before giving the girl a nod. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, Ms. Hamilton.”

He gets three quick steps away from her before she speaks, not letting him escape that easily. 

“You know, you’re welcome to come over anytime you’re bored.”

He stills, and then turns to her, confused. “O…kay?”

The girl shrugs, hands jammed in her pockets. “You probably get bored in that empty house a lot.”

Empty. That’s a word he’s never thought to associate with the Andersons’ house. It’s warm and lively when Connor and Hank are around, exactly as Connor had described it to him that night on the Jericho church bell tower, but it’s not warm towards him. 

For all of Connor’s efforts to help him, he’s still busy, and that’s not his fault. He has a job, and he can’t neglect that just because RK800-60 can’t find it in himself to wake up in the morning not feeling like crap. Hank’s at least treating him like a person instead of glaring at him every time they meet, which was what he had expected when this arrangement had started, and that’s already more than he can ask for. 

But the house doesn’t feel warm. It just feels like a house, a living space that RK800-60 has taken shelter under, but it doesn’t feel like a home. It feels – 

Empty.

“Hey.” There’s a light touch on his arm, and he turns to realize that the girl has gotten close to him, Molly already having gone in the house via dog door. She has a smile on her face, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, although it doesn’t seem to be because of any animosity she holds towards him.

Instead she just looks sad. RK800-60 doesn’t know why.

“I know how that feels,” she says, and gives his arm a gentle squeeze, before taking her hand back.

“What does?”

“How it feels like to have this sort of gaping hole in your chest,” she says, “And you don’t want to do anything at all.”

“Humans feel that?”

“Yeah,” she says, “You can look it up.”

“Ah,” he says, “I – I didn’t think of that.”

She just smiles again, and laughs softly. “That’s okay, you can work on clearing your head slowly. Take your time.”

He runs a quick self-diagnostic at that. “There is nothing impairing my mental faculties.”

It earns him a laugh. 

“I meant,” the human says, “That you can let yourself slow down and think about things more clearly.”

“Ah,” he says.

“You’re funny when you’re confused.”

He only hums.

“Really, though,” the human says, “If you’re ever bored, you can come over. Bring Sumo. I get out of school around four anyway. We can bingewatch Netflix or something.”

“Watch movies?”

“Yeah,” she says, shrugging again, “We might find something you like.”

He has two choices here. They’re not necessarily life-changing choices, but he finds himself thinking about them either way. He can say no, and he knows the girl will understand and let him go back to the house and sit for another few hours doing nothing. She will extend him the offer again in the future, of course, but he could always just avoid that by immediately giving her Molly after their walk, and then leaving.

Or, he could accept the offer, and try, just a little bit, to at least let something catch his interest.

He has this freedom, he has all these emotions, and yet he’s not really doing anything much with them. There’s nothing wrong with following his schedules and his instructions because they’re actually necessary in helping the Andersons, and there’s nothing wrong with not feeling like he wants to do anything.

But he does recognize that he has a modicum of power in curbing that empty feeling sitting in the core of his chest. He knows what it is, he recognizes what it is, and while he knows it might never go away, he also knows he can move forward, even just a little bit. Take an active step in trying to fight it.

Even if it’s just finding movies to shift his focus on.

“You’re okay with that?” he asks.

The girl grins. “Anything to help a friend.”

He looks back to Hank’s house, and then to the human girl, and to Molly, and the idea of having something to do instead of wallowing in his own thoughts again. He nods.

“Okay.”

His friend’s grin grows wider. “Go get Sumo,” she says, “You’re going to love Stranger Things.”

-

He finds that the dog park is a good place to think. There are humans here, yes, but most of them are often preoccupied with their pets, and so RK800-60 has plenty of time to sit and observe, and well, clear his head as he watches the dogs play and enjoy themselves. He always sits in one particular bench, under the shade of a tree, trusting Molly and Sumo to not get too carried away with their roughhousing with the other dogs, not that Sumo really roughhouses much. While Molly is a golden blur darting across a green landscape, Sumo seems to prefer slowly trotting and waiting for her to come back with either a stick she’s found interesting, or an intercepted Frisbee.

She always steals Frisbees other dogs are supposed to catch, and though it probably annoys other dog owners, RK800-60 only feels a small bloom of pride in his chest, and he thinks, that even though he should really tell Molly to stop that, that small bloom is better than feeling nothing at all.

It amuses him. That’s a positive feeling, kind of. That’s good. That’s a step forward.

Baby steps.

He feels happy when he’s watching Molly run off with a Frisbee while other dogs chase her, content when he observes all the animals around him have a good time, and near tranquil when he takes time to walk by the pond and just take the moment to breathe as he watches the clouds mirrored on the water.

He feels. And yes, deviancy has given him emotions, but he’s overwhelmed. It’s not a good sort of feeling, and he sometimes wishes he doesn’t have these emotions. He constantly veers between feeling nothing at all and everything at once, and it makes him want to claw into his chest cavity – even though he knows there is nothing there – just to get that simultaneous emptiness and heaviness out. 

But this is a peaceful place. This is a place where he doesn’t fear that his own thoughts will eat him alive. This is a place of safety.

“Sanctuary,” he mutters, one day, as he’s sitting by the pond, Sumo sleeping with his head on the android’s lap, while Molly lays down resting beside his leg. 

It’s a lovely day. Not too hot, and not too cold. There’s a slight breeze, and overhead, the sky is turning pink and blue and orange. Parkgoers are starting to leave, so RK800-60 is left staring at what is almost an abandoned, silent park. 

He imagines he is alone, for a moment, on top of somewhere no one else can reach him. Somewhere nothing else can reach him. Not his thoughts, not his guilt, not his memories. There is only him, and all the time in the world to be at peace and to heal.

He smiles.

-

The Hamiltons have a garden, so whenever RK800-60 stops by, he goes there. He gets introduced to the plants, and he looks up what they are and how to take care of them, and slowly, he develops a habit of coming over to check up on them and tend to them. It helps clear his head, and it’s gratifying to see something bloom and grow healthy under his care.

Connor notices, of course. It makes him a little self-conscious at first that Connor notices. After all, he’s a detective android. He’s built for noticing and deducing and catching criminals and deviants, not for gardening, and Connor might have a few thoughts about that. So they don’t talk, and he doesn’t say anything about it whenever he comes home a little late with mud on his shoes, and he’s thankful they don’t ask questions about it either. 

It’s like a dirty little secret, somehow, even when it shouldn’t be, and thinking about it makes his LED flash a worrying red.

“Anxious,” Hamilton tells him one day when they’re both tending to the roses. “You’re anxious. And nervous, but the point is, you’re majorly stressed out about them finding out.”

“I know,” he says.

“Do you know why?”

“I – ” He pauses in his work, examining the rose and its soft, soft petals. A few months ago it had just been a bud. “I guess I think they’ll make fun of me for it?”

“Mm.” The girl nods. “Because you’re incredibly smart and should put all that brainpower somewhere else?”

“Because I was built for something else and am doing…well, this.” He motions towards the garden and his attire, boots and gloves and all. His clothes are cleaner and less unkempt than they usually are, at least. He’s been dressing up better ever since he’s decided he want to help out with the gardening and maybe occasionally have a movie marathon with his neighbor.

“Is this something to be ashamed about?”

He thinks about it for a second. “Well, no,” he says, “For everyone else, I mean.”

“Okay, let’s put it this way,” the girl says, “If another android, one that had been built for completely different purpose, like say military work, takes up an interest in gardening and decides to pursue that, is that something to be ashamed about?”

“Of course not,” he says. He barely understands freedom and deviancy, but he knows at least, that there’s nothing wrong with choosing something to do outside of one’s original directive.

Which is.

Well.

He looks down at his muddy boots.

“See?” He gets a soft jab in his side as the human laughs. “It’s fine. If Connor’s really a good friend and brother, he’s not going to give you flack about this.”

“He’s not my brother.”

“Clone?”

RK800-60 scrunches up his nose in disgust. “Okay, that’s weirder. Brother’s slightly better.”

“Something.” Hamilton waves a hand idly. “But whatever. He’ll understand. So will Hank. In fact, they’ll probably be happy you’ve found something you want to do with your life.”

He snorts at that. “I’m not so sure they will be.”

“RK,” she says, and he buffers at the weird nickname. “They’ve been worried.”

He frowns. “Have they?”

“Yeah,” she says, “You might not have noticed, but they have.”

He spends the rest of the gardening session thinking about it. He hasn’t noticed, he really hasn’t, but then again, he’s been spending most of his time around them avoiding them, or avoiding situations that require him to actively interact with them. When they’re in the same room, he stays in the corner, or he looks down and he only answers when he’s spoken to. When Connor asks how he’s doing, he gives the generic response garnered from a self-diagnosis, even when he knows that’s not what Connor means.

He’s still thinking about it when he gets back to the house.

“Hey, welcome home,” Hank says as he’s carefully taking the bag that has his boots and gloves to the bathroom to wash the mud off of them.

He stills in the hallway for a second and turns, slowly. Hank’s watching television, Connor’s in the kitchen.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m – I’m sorry I’m late, I was, uh…”

“Out gardening with Hamilton, we know,” Hank says.

“Yeah,” he says, awkward. He shifts on his feet for a moment. 

Hank turns his attention to him, concerned. “Everything okay, kid?”

RK800-60’s LED flashes red before it settles on yellow, and he hears Connor’s footsteps before he rounds the corner and joins Hank, looking at RK800-60 worryingly. 

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” RK800-60 says. “It’s just that – you don’t mind?”

“Mind what?” Hank asks.

“The gardening,” RK800-60 says, “And the movie nights. The staying over for tabletop campaigns.”

Hank lets out a laugh, and RK800-60 flinches at the loudness of it, but then tilts his head, confused.

“You’re just being a kid. Nothing wrong with that,” he says, and waves a hand to shoo him into the bathroom. “It’s fine. Now go clean your stuff. If you hurry, you might be able to catch this movie with us.”

He nods and starts to turn, and then pauses again. “What’s on?”

“It’s an old one. It’s IT.”

RK800-60 runs a quick scan of his memories, and looks up the title of the movie online. He finds himself grinning. “Okay.”