That doesn't mean it's real, Connor. It doesn't mean you're real. You can't just say 'we're in this together' like it makes you fine, like it answers the fuckin question.
[Hank tries to pull away just far enough to face Connor, chin tilted up, jaw set, frustrated. The hand that reaches for Connor isn't reaching out of dizziness, though Hank is that. He reaches out of frustration, wanting Connor to answer the question right, wanting him - impossible as it is for something like him, impossible for code and circuits - to just understand.
Hank's hand is reaching out and some other part of him is, too. Whether through whatever grip Connor's using to lead Hank or through Hank's own reaching hand, out it comes: a desperate need for connection, a search for emotion - true and human emotion, a need to reach out and feel real blood and bone and heart reaching back, affection in its infancy with fear slipping sharp fingers around its neck and heavy self-disgust trying to drag it down into some dark and oily pit where something else once used to live.
Hank's thinking of the night he woke up in this stupid, trippy place, thinking of Connor meeting him and saying it so plainly: 'A gun on the ground,' he'd said, 'and your son’s photo on the table,' and while those specifics aren't a part of what Hank's sending, the associated emotions are: betrayal, injustice, a need to turn unnatural calculation to something organic and warm and real.
That's what he needs. He needs this damn machine to feel that, to just feel something, anything, to know even half of what his dumb, dogged refusal to give up the act is doing to Hank.
He feels almost clearheaded for a second, all the bullshit the various parts of his body's throwing at him almost not mattering half so much as the need for Connor to just get it.
He won't, of course. It won't. It can't. Hank realizes that as he stares, angry and nauseous and heavy and weak, into Connor's eyes. But hell, maybe that moment of mental clarity - rare, with as shitty as he's been feeling, and so pretty damn nice all on its own - is enough. Just knowing exactly what he wants to say and feeling like he has, even if it was all in his head, maybe that's enough.]
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[Hank tries to pull away just far enough to face Connor, chin tilted up, jaw set, frustrated. The hand that reaches for Connor isn't reaching out of dizziness, though Hank is that. He reaches out of frustration, wanting Connor to answer the question right, wanting him - impossible as it is for something like him, impossible for code and circuits - to just understand.
Hank's hand is reaching out and some other part of him is, too. Whether through whatever grip Connor's using to lead Hank or through Hank's own reaching hand, out it comes: a desperate need for connection, a search for emotion - true and human emotion, a need to reach out and feel real blood and bone and heart reaching back, affection in its infancy with fear slipping sharp fingers around its neck and heavy self-disgust trying to drag it down into some dark and oily pit where something else once used to live.
Hank's thinking of the night he woke up in this stupid, trippy place, thinking of Connor meeting him and saying it so plainly: 'A gun on the ground,' he'd said, 'and your son’s photo on the table,' and while those specifics aren't a part of what Hank's sending, the associated emotions are: betrayal, injustice, a need to turn unnatural calculation to something organic and warm and real.
That's what he needs. He needs this damn machine to feel that, to just feel something, anything, to know even half of what his dumb, dogged refusal to give up the act is doing to Hank.
He feels almost clearheaded for a second, all the bullshit the various parts of his body's throwing at him almost not mattering half so much as the need for Connor to just get it.
He won't, of course. It won't. It can't. Hank realizes that as he stares, angry and nauseous and heavy and weak, into Connor's eyes. But hell, maybe that moment of mental clarity - rare, with as shitty as he's been feeling, and so pretty damn nice all on its own - is enough. Just knowing exactly what he wants to say and feeling like he has, even if it was all in his head, maybe that's enough.]