Chapter Text
LOOP #251
November 9, 2038
Gavin used his arms to drag himself along the floor. His right leg was dead weight, and was leaving a line of red trailing behind him.
His hand found Connor’s elbow. He grabbed a fistful of jacket and pulled until the android was hauled into his arms. Gavin grit his teeth and groaned, rolling until he was half sitting against the wall and Connor’s head was properly in his lap. Gavin took a moment to breathe through the pain before returning his attention to Connor.
Blood covered them both. Bright splashes of blue and red.
“Connor,” Gavin tapped his face. Cupped his cheek when those brown eyes turned to him. “C’mon, talk to me.”
“I have five minutes and twenty three seconds until deactivation, and you-”
“I’m fine,” he lied. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Gavin was running fingers through hair now, blatantly ignoring the purple smudges where their blood mixed together. His eyes found his own wrist, to the two lines there peeking out in perfect, blue, CyberLife Sans. A name and a serial number.
In a little more than five minutes those bright blue letters would become cracked and gray.
The sign of a passing soulmate.
Gavin knew this. Expected it, even.
His eyes burned, but still he swallowed it down and painted on a grin. “Tell me something else. Just keep talking, yeah?”
Connor looked confused, but Gavin expected that too. Everyone at the precinct would agree that he’s been acting out of character the last few days.
But he hasn’t, not really.
None of them knew. No one understood that it’s been so much more than days.
It’s been so many weeks. Months .
Years?
Honestly, Gavin’s lost count.
It always ends the same anyway.
“What-what do you want to know?” Connor asked him, voice going staticy.
Everything, Gavin wanted to say.
But they never had time for everything. Hell, most times they didn’t have time for anything.
He pets Connor’s hair again, thinking. “Tell me . . . tell me about your first mission. Something that wouldn’t be written in any stupid report. You saved two lives, right? Wilson and the kid. Tell me about it.”
“Three.”
“What?”
Connor gave him a thirium stained smile. A closed mouth and a small twist of lips. “When I arrived, there was a broken aquarium. It was still mostly intact, but one of the fish was on the floor, distressed. I returned it to the water.”
“No shit?” Gavin huffed a laugh, tipping his head back to thunk against the wall. He could just picture it in his mind. Fresh from the factory Connor, putting his mission on hold to save a fucking fish. “What kinda fish was it?”
“Dwarf gourami.”
Gavin knew jack shit about fish, but that was beside the point. “Describe it.”
And he did. He talked, and Gavin listened and, fuck, this was the closest thing they’d ever had to a casual conversation.
Maybe this was the closest I’ll ever get, a traitorous part of his brain hissed.
“Detective Reed, I have one minute and fifteen seconds left.”
God, he sounded scared, and Gavin had no way to tell him everything he wanted to. Everything he needed to. To tell him that it would be alright. Not now, maybe, not this time, but in the end it would be. Eventually.
Possibly.
Gavin was working on it.
Fuck, he was so sick and tired of watching Connor die. Hundreds of times, in a hundred different ways, and it never got any easier.
The worst part of watching Connor die is the waiting that comes after. There had been a few times where there had been no real wait at all. A matter of minutes, maybe, before the grief had time to properly set in. From one blink to the next he’d be back in his bed, waking to his asshole of a cat pawing at his face and meowing in a demand for breakfast.
That moment would always come eventually, but it didn’t always come quick. Hours would pass, sometimes days, but that moment would always come.
It never gets any easier.
And today Gavin didn’t want to wait.
As Connor’s timer ticked down Gavin pulled his pistol from its holster, his thumb flicking off the safety.
His face was wet and his vision was blurry, but he looked down at Connor and smiled, ignoring the bright red glare of his LED. His thumb brushed over it soothingly. “Don’t worry, Connor. I’m gonna get it right. I promise. I’ll do better next time and I’m gonna get it right.”
Connor’s time ran out, the android falling quiet and still.
Gavin put the gun to his own temple and fired.
LOOP #252
November 6, 2038
Gavin woke at 4:30am to a swat to the face. He blinked at the gray tabby sitting on his chest. Seeing that his human was awake, the little bastard spun and launched off of Gavin’s stomach to go scream bloody murder by his bedroom door. If he actually rolled out of bed, the fur ball would lead him right to his empty food dish.
Fucking cat.
Gavin laid there for a moment longer, taking in the reset. The lack of pain and blood, and the realization that the skin on his left wrist was bare. No name, no serial number, just empty space where his soul mark should be. Will be.
He threw his other arm over his face and breathed harshly as he fought back the sting of tears.
In a few minutes he’d get up and take a shower to wash away the memory of something that hasn’t happened yet. That would hopefully never happen again.
This time will be better.
Eventually Gavin was gonna get it right.
There had to be a way.
LOOP #1
November 11, 2038
The whole situation was fucked. Beyond fucked, even.
Insane. Impossible.
Gavin felt like the punchline to some cosmic joke, only nobody was laughing.
His body still throbbed from the beating that plastic piece of shit gave him in the evidence locker. He resisted the urge to scratch at the stitches on his cheek, courtesy of his face meeting the floor. He rummaged through his cupboards until he found a bottle of rum stashed behind boxes of breakfast bars.
He twisted off the cap and took a swig straight from the bottle.
His eyes caught a flash of blue on his wrist and he scowled.
Gavin turned and stalked into the living room, nearly tripping over Briggs as the fuzzy bastard zipped between his legs on his way to his food bowl.
Fucking cat, he thought, taking another swig.
Maybe if he became drunk enough, today would disappear. Hell, maybe the last few days would disappear.
Because, seriously. What the fuck.
Bad enough that he had to suffer the embarrassment of being found by the FBI. No one likes the Feds, not even Gavin, and the prick that they had sent down to Detroit threw his weight around like he owned the place. As far as Perkins was concerned, all of the DPD were incompetent assholes.
Being found knocked out by CyberLife’s shiny new toy certainly hadn’t helped with that impression.
Then Fowler went and benched him as soon as the paramedics made their assessment of Gavin’s injuries. One hospital trip and six stitches later and Gavin was under strict orders to rest for a few days before returning to work.
Probably for the best, in the long run.
Better to discover this mockery of a soul mark in the privacy of his own home than to become a sideshow attraction in public.
When he first saw it, he thought it had been some disgusting prank. Something left to humiliate him with, one last jab given to him while he was knocked out.
It wasn’t until he tried to scrub it off did the cruel reality of it set in.
The crisp blue letters remained stamped on the inside of his left wrist, mocking him.
CONNOR RK800
#313 248 317 -51
A soul mark.
A fucking soul mark!
Gavin’s whole existence, upended in two little lines.
Because androids were machines! They were walking lumps of alloy and plastic, they weren’t alive, they couldn’t be soulmates, because they didn’t have souls.
They didn’t.
Right?
Gavin had left the TV on, and now the news was broadcasting the latest on the whole android fiasco, information banners scrolling along the bottom of the screen as live footage rolled. Gavin sat on his coffee table, rum burning a path down his throat as he watched events unfold in Hart Plaza.
Disgust, anger and doubt twisted in his gut like a nest of writhing snakes. The conflict was wreaking havoc on his thought process, because what he knew was now at war with what he was seeing and he didn’t know how to reconcile the two.
He watched the FBI attack with guns and grenades as the androids held their ground, individuals scrambling to protect one another even as they fell one by one. He watched as the remaining survivors faced a firing squad and sang , their voices lifting up and chilling Gavin right down to his core.
Maybe . . . Gavin’s mind whispered, traitorously. Just maybe . . .
He refused to let the thought consolidate, but it was already there, like a virus finding a foothold. The more it spread, the more twisted up he became.
Maybe if he drank the whole bottle he could drown out that whole line of thinking.
After all, Gavin didn’t know how to be wrong about something so big.
He just didn’t know.
What he did know is that it was enough for President Warren to order a cease fire.
The news switched to another location, a birds eye view from a helicopter showing a literal swarm of freshly minted androids pouring out of Cyberlife tower. And as the camera zoomed in Gavin saw a familiar face leading the march, the only one wearing black and grey in a sea of white.
Connor.
Gavin lowered the bottle from his lips.
It could be someone else. After all, whole lines of androids share the same face.
But then a memory floated up, an offered coffee cup and a harsh dismissal. Prototype, the android had said.
Didn’t prove anything though.
A close up the android’s serial number could confirm it, but Gavin didn’t care.
He didn’t.
The events moved on, helicopters and security drones streaming the events across the nation.
Gavin watched with millions of others as the android leader announced their freedom to its people and the world.
Watched as the android abruptly fell, gunned down by one of their own, the guilty party standing there with a literal smoking gun.
Connor stood behind the fallen leader, gun in hand, and placed the barrel to his own chin. A second gunshot.
The bottle of rum slipped from Gavin’s fingers to spill all over the floor.
The roiling emotions in his gut froze over, numb.
Might not be Connor, some part of Gavin whispered. It might not . . .
His eyes drifted down to his wrist. His whole body trembling as he watched the vibrant blue letters fade to a dull, cracked grey.
The last bit of proof Gavin would ever need.
Connor really was his soulmate.
And now Connor was dead.