[ Because Lucina texting willingly is just punishing for everyone involved - ]
Hello, Connor?
[ She's been putting this off for a few days with surprising success. Having known Connor a little while now, the fact that he wasn't nipping at her heels to nourish his indomitable curiosity is a bit of a surprise. He must be distracted, she assumes, or perhaps her preconceived notions about him aren't as correct as she thinks they are. (Lucina pretty much accepts she'll be wrong a good 50% of the time these days, and tiredly so.)
By this point, she figures she's quickly encroaching his deadline for Truth Talk Time, and - and maybe it will do her some good to say something - anything - aloud. As it is, her chest feels as a blocked chimney, wrapped around secrets that don't need to be and little intricacies she isn't sure she knows how to explain, and it all tastes like smoke in her mouth.
I swear, in its early conception, this was going to be a brief tag. It was! ]
If you have a moment, I thought we could continue our conversation from the caverns.
[ A pause - ]
If it's alright with you, I would prefer to do so in person.
And it was admittedly difficult to not follow up on his curiosities regarding Lucina and her Falchion sooner rather than later. But Connor, in a moment that was definitely entrenched in better judgment, decided to wait. There were other matters that could keep his attentions occupied up until now -- certain friends who he could speak to, or those he needed to visit for reasons better left unspoken.
He's glad to hear from her. And quietly, he judges the weight in her voice before he replies, which only reaffirms his original suspicion -- this is a somber topic, likely kept close to the heart.]
Hello, Lucina, it's good to hear from you. And off course; I'd be more than happy to speak with you face-to-face. Where would you like for me to find you?
[ Somewhere reasonably private suits her better, but she balks at inviting him to her quarters - it just - it's not happening. With that in mind, she elects a spot she likes, and can draw strength from, but recognises that the conversation may not be as sequestered as she likes. ]
There is a bench on the far side of the fighting ring's mezzanine.
[ There are several. She has a favourite. Why? Because! ]
I will be there.
[ True to her word, whenever he wanders over, she'll be seated, facing inward, idly watching whatever exercise may be occuring below. ]
[He agrees to the meeting spot easily enough, and when the connection’s ended, Connor is quick about meeting her there.
He approaches as he often does — amicably, easily noted from a distance. He’s been up here once before, of course, in his explorations. Beyond that, there was never a reason for him to observe the others below from such a height. Maybe that was an interest delegated to those who more combat-oriented, in various forms of weaponry and melee. Connor realizes now, going over to sit with Lucina, that maybe he should observe just to garner information about others here.
A thought for later. Right now, he gives Lucina a grin and a hello.]
Lucina. Hello.
[He shall sit! The sounds of activity murmur below them.]
[ She smiles a little bit - trying to relax herself, perhaps, or just appreciating the pleasant moment for what it is, the sunny day and the company of someone she counts a friend. There are far worse situations she can find herself in. ]
Have you been well following the excursion to the caverns?
[Well, why not? Niceties are a large part of what Connor thrives on; they're often required before conversations like these, to ease tension, and to give time for individuals to mentally prepare and quietly think about how they wish to begin.
So, yes. Niceties.]
I have been. Though I still wish we would've come away with more answers, an investigation with no incident isn't something to be ungrateful for. [He returns the question, naturally-] And what about you?
I feel similarly to you. This world may have opened itself up to us a bit more but it still seems like quite a mystery.
[ Without incident... Yes, it was that, wasn't it? It's quite a relief to know that everyone made it back in one piece. The worst Lucina suffered was some slight waterlog. And yet, she wonders at her own words, if they're in any way asinine or unrealistic to someone who's been here longer.
Well, it's unlikely she'd find that answer on Connor's face. She divides her attention between him and watching the combatants below, however many or how few there are. ]
[The reply comes easy, because he knows why such a thing bothers him. Why he lists it as a problem unresolved in his mind, lingering there for who-knows-how-long.]
Leaving one still... without conclusion goes against what I was designed to do. Even if I was never intended to investigate underwater caverns specifically.
[ She might be getting it? Maybe? At the very least, Lucina is beginning to understand that he's a servant to his own compulsions, and that there's really no reprieve from it. It's very different from her safety in secrets.
She doesn't bring up the caverns again, nor does she follow the thread of conversation he's dangling by mentioning them. It's best left behind. ]
Very well.
[ A faint smile. ]
Ask your questions. I will answer whatever you like.
["Prod". The connotation isn't a positive one, and it doesn't go unnoticed, but when he looks at her, she's smiling -- so it can't be all that bad. (There's only so much an RK800 can tamp down what's been so ingrained in him, after all.)
He places his hands neatly on his lap, straight-backed.]
Can you tell me about the history of your sword? Falchion, correct?
[Right to it. Give a detective an in, and he takes it.]
[ As Lucina uses it, prod is a neutral term. It's also fairly inarguable. From her perspective, the blunt questions - the questions he's not bothered to ease her into - have been consistent to the point of lacking any self-awareness. It's... it's just a quirk. She's known people with quirks.
So, she begins to speak. To answer, really. The words are slow and measured at first but the more she says, the easier it comes, like a blockage clearing - like a wound bleeding fresh so it can heal. ]
It was my father's, and his father's before him... [ fuck that guy though ] - and many generations back. Our matriarch, the divine dragon Naga, enchanted the blade and our line twofold. As long as we thrive, so will Falchion, and it will never rust or become dull.
[ Not that it stops her from taking freakish care of it. Girl needs a hobby. ]
I inherited it before I was even strong enough to properly lift it.
[ When the Exalt's line was fodder for the Grimleal, in the scant years of her childhood when titles and politics still mattered - before it was nothing but scorched earth and survival. ]
There was a dreadful war, [ she clarifies. ] Our westerly neighbours were ruled by malevolence and worshipped something very dark. They amassed enough power to spread their horror. My father passed away when I was just a girl. My mother survived a few years more. [ In truth, she has more memories of a childhood with Lady Lissa as a solemn guardian, her childish impetuousness tempered by grief - an unending, unflinching stream of grief, the sort that put lines on her face when she was barely out of girlhood... although Lucina doesn't say that. It has nothing to do with Falchion, after all. ] Learning to fight was imperative and I would have no weapon but my father's.
[So it’s a tale wrapped up in tragedy and loss. The Falchion being more than just memento, but a symbol — the promise of a bloodline kept alive, the weapon itself kept keen as long as it did. It doesn’t take logic or rationale to understand why Lucina would keep it safe and close. Why she would let it rest on the lake’s edge while they both tumbled into the water on that day. Sentimentality, emotion, duty all dictated it.
His expression has gone solemn, suited for the conversation at hand. Smile faded into something that tugs his lips downwards instead.]
…Thank you for telling me all of this, Lucina. I know it can’t possibly be easy.
[She’s given him a lot of information, plenty for him to parse and pick at. His LED spins at his temple, and while the inconsistency of is versus was still exists in his head, the memory of their conversation after they had been pulled from the lake still clear in his mind...
One thing at a time, however.]
You said this other nation worshipped something dark. Does this have anything to do with the undead?
[ Well, there certainly isn't any point in being coy now, is there? He's like a wyvern with a bone. Lucina breathes in, steeling herself, and then answers, eyes open - ]
Not at first.
At the beginning, it was merely war. I - I could understand Plegia's anger, despite how much it cost me. My grandfather had not been a gentle ruler. Perhaps if he had been, things may have turned out differently.
[ Instead, Chrom's father - Emmeryn's father - her own grandfather - had conquered through bloodshed and smiled, toothy, like a skull, through it all. It's no wonder that Chrom strove to make friends with everyone he met, to the point of jeopardising his own safety with (what Lucina considered, and still somewhat considers) undeserved loyalty. ]
Turning their army as they did... I don't understand that at all. For every soldier of theirs we had to put down, they rose two more. They weren't alive. I knew that by looking at them. Their eyes, the smell - [ Well. Least said, soonest mended. ] When you told me you weren't alive, it brought back memories of that time.
[That explains quite a bit, actually. Connor remembers her reaction to him quite clearly when they first met; how she had gone tense, how her hand leapt to the hilt of her blade. Falchion, the legacy of her family line, made to fell their enemies.]
I don't blame you, Lucina. Maybe the fault was mine, for not having gone into specifics at the time.
[Connor had been starting to label himself in broad strokes, because he had found that when going into detail, he often loses people somewhere along the way -- Lucina seemed to especially qualify for simplified explanations, given her unfamiliarity with technology. He was wrong in that.]
Was this war still ongoing when you were summoned to the Circle?
[ In the past, hard earned peace. Her own tremulous future burned off the pages of history, scorched clean out of time, scrubbed - and her life, all their lives, her comrades from that same future, preserved by some benevolent quirk of fate. By a snap of Naga’s fingers.
That doesn’t mean Lucina will ever leave it behind, though. The world they won would never be for her, but if she can’t crawl her way back on her finger tips to her future and die with her people, then she can at least be of use here. ]
We turned the tide of it, eventually - but there are days when I have to remind myself that it’s over, that no further catastrophe awaits me.
[ Seeking an anchor against her own words, something strong, her gaze skims the fighters training below, and holds on a particular figure unrealising. (Shut up, Connor.) ]
Then I'm glad for the war having ended. If that's any consolation at all.
[He pauses, following her gaze down to the figures in the arena below. Weapons clack and clash, voices at a distance sound so small. Funny, how the intensity of what an individual might feel, down in that ring, seems so diluted up here.
An idle observation, while he processes what to say next.]
Though I understand that memories of a hard-fought war are not so easily written off as 'finished'. Experiences that linger with a human mind long after it's done. And being brought here, in a place full of unknowns, sent off to worlds where there might yet be fighting still, I can't imagine you really feel at peace with any of it.
Though please correct me if I'm assuming too much.
[ Indeed, calling it a war seems too small a word. Connor will never know about those last few months. The depletion of crops, grain, livestock - consuming roasted insects just to stay alive. Sleeping in the dirt, when they could sleep at all. Spending more time digging graves than picking up weapons. The slow, disquieting fall of the population beyond salvageable levels. And, all that, while she was supposed to lead, supposed to protect.
She knows she'll need to set all that aside. Someday, hopefully soon, she will. It's a remarkably heavy burden, and her own shoulders so slight. ]
You've described yourself as a... detective? As in, you solve crimes. [ It's still an odd concept to her, as evidenced by the somewhat stilting, contemplative way she puzzles out the words. ] You must have seen some things you found unconscionable.
[You must have seen some things you found unconscionable.
Connor doesn’t detach his gaze from the figures below, their small movements hard to discern in a satisfyingly analytical way from this high. The sound of laughter buoys up, just a whisper of a thing once it reaches his audio processing.
Unconscionable. A wide, far-reaching term that could be applied in a manner of ways, and yet it stirs something in him. Makes him frown more deeply, seen clearly as it changes the curves of his profile.]
I was created to focus on very specific cases, admittedly, but yes. Murder is often considered unconscionable by anyone’s standards.
[ As usual, Lucina hangs sharply onto every word he utters, letting no turn of phrase go unexamined. Perhaps it's a holdover from her time in the Shepherds, desperately trying to uncover the identity of her father's killer, ears pricked for anything - any sound, the coarse note of the match lighting before it could burn them all down.
She wonders, again, for the gods-know-how-many time, why Connor removes himself from every sentence. Why he picks out every last bit of himself from his own contemplation. ]
I wasn't asking about anyone, [ she says, a bit sharper than she might have intended. ] And there is no need to condescend to me like that.
[ That said, she continues on without missing a beat, marshalling the conversation like someone practiced in pulling rank. ]
For someone who asks as many questions as you do, you rarely offer the courtesy of answering them in turn.
[ True and not true. Easy questions, guiding questions - yes. He'll fall all over himself to provide assistance. Dig a little deeper, though, and he sidesteps in magnificent fashion. Over her shoulder, just so, Lucina's expression is a touch quarrelsome. (Really, though, her face is just like that.) ]
[At her tone, the mention of condescension, he turns his head to look at her — almost immediately, his face has shifted into something apologetic, something imploring.]
I’m not trying to sound condescending, Lucina. I apologize if that’s how it came out. And I don’t mean to be unclear, either; ask any question of me, and I’ll answer to the best of my abilities.
[He sits a little straighter, his attentions no longer on the arena below. Looks directly at her, his attentions honed. Distraction, letting his tone go unchecked — not something he should allow, and when he speaks, there’s an automatic-sounding delivery to his speech. A loss of that spark of... something else, hard to pin down.]
The set of morals that I abide by are more like... tenets of my programming. Free movement within a certain set of boundaries, but never overstepping limitations clearly implemented.
[He supposes if he must point out a difference between himself and other androids, that would be it. That the RK800 was CyberLife’s hound, free to hunt as it pleased, yet choked with a leash around its neck if straying too far.]
When I mentioned murder, it’s simply because it was one of the more unconscionable acts I had seen the consequences of, as an investigator working with the DPD. Humans, attacked or even killed by their own androids.
[ Again, there are little pitfalls, things that not even Lucina's perceptiveness can really uncover. Subtle changes in his voices go unnoticed. His words don't make much sense to her again, as if he forgot to translate them for her benefit. Seeing the look on his face, though - that's there, realised, perceptible in her mind - she's messed up, she was too condemning, too brusque. Her own expression loses some of its tightness as she listens, patiently, to his words. All of them.
It galls at her sensibilities, certainly, to hear about these tragedies he speaks of. In hindsight, her moments-ago snappishness is almost embarrassing. ]
That sounds awful. [ A pause, her breath marking it with a touch of uncertainty - ] I don't mean to imply you are so removed from what you've witnessed...
[ Except... that's exactly the problem, isn't it? Waiting for him to display a single shred of empathy that he hasn't calculated out or framed in such technical terms. ]
Do you think about the, ah - [ how does she word this ] - crimes you've investigated? [ nailed it. ]
[It's easier to deal with memories from home when the explanation is delivered in a mechanical way. It's a little harder for him to escape the rhetoric that comes with explaining who he is, what he is, especially in relation to something as human as morality.
He should be removed from what he's witnessed. He should only care about a successful mission, a successful end to the deviant uprising, finding them, hunting them down and returning them to CyberLife. His directives are clear, straightforward. They're the walls on all four sides, declaring that he can move around freely in the space provided to him -- but only in the space provided to him. Thought of whether what he's doing is right or wrong shouldn't matter. Doesn't matter.
Errors at the back of his mind dancing, cajoling, laughing. Self-diagnostic testing and results always coming back less than satisfactory.
No, he's getting distracted again.]
I do. They're the backbone of a current on-going investigation into the growing appearance of deviants. Androids that no longer adhere to their core programming and base objectives. I obviously haven't been able to further this investigation while I'm here, but it's difficult to not reflect on it during our considerable downtime.
[ It's a very precise, exacting answer. That, in itself, isn't a problem. Laurent speaks in much the same manner. The difference is knowing someone - knowing there is warmth underneath - as opposed to being told, consistently, that the individual is not a person, not alive, not - ]
And the victims?
[ It's softly asked. She's going somewhere with this, honestly. She isn't just pivoting in order for him to talk about himself so she doesn't have to talk about herself.
[His mind flashes back to the victims she refers to. A police officer shot, a man with multiple stab wounds, another strangled. All of them at the hands of androids newly "awakened", newly turned deviant, their programming translating compounding errors into fear, panic, and anger.
If there's somewhere she's going with this, Connor is allowing himself to be led. He meant it when he said he would answer her questions dutifully enough.]
I do think about them, yes. [How to expound upon that?] My mission exists to protect humans. Of course my thoughts will circle back to how and why such a thing happened to them.
How and why... I asked myself those same questions near daily, once.
[ Keeping her eyes on the interior of the ring, as before, but no longer directed at any singular individual. At a safe spot in the ground, rather - a place to bury her words once she's said them. ]
I try to think about everyone, every day. All our dead, all those innocent lives. It gets harder to remember the names I had learned, of magistrates from the villages, or clerics who blessed me. I should think of them. I -
[ crumbled, a thoroughly unworthy descendant of the Hero-King -
- fled for safety backwards through time -
- failed them and didn't have the courage to die with them -
But that's wrong, isn't it? Lucina has never thought that her small wish of happiness is so selfish. She's done everything she could. Now, she's here. Daring to be content isn't dishonouring anyone. Refusing to let despair cling to her heels may be her one singular act of rebellion against her fraught childhood.
Her voice changes somewhat as she finishes her sentence. ] I'm not so far removed to be comfortable, but sometimes I am focusing on something menial, or speaking to someone here, and I forget that my life didn't begin here. Like everything else was merely a nightmare, slipping away in the daylight. The sense of guilt that follows is... uncomfortable.
Edited (gives you some hipster edits) 2018-11-04 17:17 (UTC)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
voice.
Hello, Connor?
[ She's been putting this off for a few days with surprising success. Having known Connor a little while now, the fact that he wasn't nipping at her heels to nourish his indomitable curiosity is a bit of a surprise. He must be distracted, she assumes, or perhaps her preconceived notions about him aren't as correct as she thinks they are. (Lucina pretty much accepts she'll be wrong a good 50% of the time these days, and tiredly so.)
By this point, she figures she's quickly encroaching his deadline for Truth Talk Time, and - and maybe it will do her some good to say something - anything - aloud. As it is, her chest feels as a blocked chimney, wrapped around secrets that don't need to be and little intricacies she isn't sure she knows how to explain, and it all tastes like smoke in her mouth.
I swear, in its early conception, this was going to be a brief tag. It was! ]
If you have a moment, I thought we could continue our conversation from the caverns.
[ A pause - ]
If it's alright with you, I would prefer to do so in person.
no subject
And it was admittedly difficult to not follow up on his curiosities regarding Lucina and her Falchion sooner rather than later. But Connor, in a moment that was definitely entrenched in better judgment, decided to wait. There were other matters that could keep his attentions occupied up until now -- certain friends who he could speak to, or those he needed to visit for reasons better left unspoken.
He's glad to hear from her. And quietly, he judges the weight in her voice before he replies, which only reaffirms his original suspicion -- this is a somber topic, likely kept close to the heart.]
Hello, Lucina, it's good to hear from you. And off course; I'd be more than happy to speak with you face-to-face. Where would you like for me to find you?
no subject
There is a bench on the far side of the fighting ring's mezzanine.
[ There are several. She has a favourite. Why? Because! ]
I will be there.
[ True to her word, whenever he wanders over, she'll be seated, facing inward, idly watching whatever exercise may be occuring below. ]
no subject
He approaches as he often does — amicably, easily noted from a distance. He’s been up here once before, of course, in his explorations. Beyond that, there was never a reason for him to observe the others below from such a height. Maybe that was an interest delegated to those who more combat-oriented, in various forms of weaponry and melee. Connor realizes now, going over to sit with Lucina, that maybe he should observe just to garner information about others here.
A thought for later. Right now, he gives Lucina a grin and a hello.]
Lucina. Hello.
[He shall sit! The sounds of activity murmur below them.]
no subject
[ She smiles a little bit - trying to relax herself, perhaps, or just appreciating the pleasant moment for what it is, the sunny day and the company of someone she counts a friend. There are far worse situations she can find herself in. ]
Have you been well following the excursion to the caverns?
[ Let's get the niceties out of the way, sure. ]
no subject
So, yes. Niceties.]
I have been. Though I still wish we would've come away with more answers, an investigation with no incident isn't something to be ungrateful for. [He returns the question, naturally-] And what about you?
no subject
[ Without incident... Yes, it was that, wasn't it? It's quite a relief to know that everyone made it back in one piece. The worst Lucina suffered was some slight waterlog. And yet, she wonders at her own words, if they're in any way asinine or unrealistic to someone who's been here longer.
Well, it's unlikely she'd find that answer on Connor's face. She divides her attention between him and watching the combatants below, however many or how few there are. ]
...You are not one for mysteries, are you?
no subject
[The reply comes easy, because he knows why such a thing bothers him. Why he lists it as a problem unresolved in his mind, lingering there for who-knows-how-long.]
Leaving one still... without conclusion goes against what I was designed to do. Even if I was never intended to investigate underwater caverns specifically.
no subject
[ She might be getting it? Maybe? At the very least, Lucina is beginning to understand that he's a servant to his own compulsions, and that there's really no reprieve from it. It's very different from her safety in secrets.
She doesn't bring up the caverns again, nor does she follow the thread of conversation he's dangling by mentioning them. It's best left behind. ]
Very well.
[ A faint smile. ]
Ask your questions. I will answer whatever you like.
[ Probably. ]
no subject
He places his hands neatly on his lap, straight-backed.]
Can you tell me about the history of your sword? Falchion, correct?
[Right to it. Give a detective an in, and he takes it.]
no subject
So, she begins to speak. To answer, really. The words are slow and measured at first but the more she says, the easier it comes, like a blockage clearing - like a wound bleeding fresh so it can heal. ]
It was my father's, and his father's before him... [ fuck that guy though ] - and many generations back. Our matriarch, the divine dragon Naga, enchanted the blade and our line twofold. As long as we thrive, so will Falchion, and it will never rust or become dull.
[ Not that it stops her from taking freakish care of it. Girl needs a hobby. ]
I inherited it before I was even strong enough to properly lift it.
[ When the Exalt's line was fodder for the Grimleal, in the scant years of her childhood when titles and politics still mattered - before it was nothing but scorched earth and survival. ]
There was a dreadful war, [ she clarifies. ] Our westerly neighbours were ruled by malevolence and worshipped something very dark. They amassed enough power to spread their horror. My father passed away when I was just a girl. My mother survived a few years more. [ In truth, she has more memories of a childhood with Lady Lissa as a solemn guardian, her childish impetuousness tempered by grief - an unending, unflinching stream of grief, the sort that put lines on her face when she was barely out of girlhood... although Lucina doesn't say that. It has nothing to do with Falchion, after all. ] Learning to fight was imperative and I would have no weapon but my father's.
no subject
His expression has gone solemn, suited for the conversation at hand. Smile faded into something that tugs his lips downwards instead.]
…Thank you for telling me all of this, Lucina. I know it can’t possibly be easy.
[She’s given him a lot of information, plenty for him to parse and pick at. His LED spins at his temple, and while the inconsistency of is versus was still exists in his head, the memory of their conversation after they had been pulled from the lake still clear in his mind...
One thing at a time, however.]
You said this other nation worshipped something dark. Does this have anything to do with the undead?
no subject
Not at first.
At the beginning, it was merely war. I - I could understand Plegia's anger, despite how much it cost me. My grandfather had not been a gentle ruler. Perhaps if he had been, things may have turned out differently.
[ Instead, Chrom's father - Emmeryn's father - her own grandfather - had conquered through bloodshed and smiled, toothy, like a skull, through it all. It's no wonder that Chrom strove to make friends with everyone he met, to the point of jeopardising his own safety with (what Lucina considered, and still somewhat considers) undeserved loyalty. ]
Turning their army as they did... I don't understand that at all. For every soldier of theirs we had to put down, they rose two more. They weren't alive. I knew that by looking at them. Their eyes, the smell - [ Well. Least said, soonest mended. ] When you told me you weren't alive, it brought back memories of that time.
no subject
I don't blame you, Lucina. Maybe the fault was mine, for not having gone into specifics at the time.
[Connor had been starting to label himself in broad strokes, because he had found that when going into detail, he often loses people somewhere along the way -- Lucina seemed to especially qualify for simplified explanations, given her unfamiliarity with technology. He was wrong in that.]
Was this war still ongoing when you were summoned to the Circle?
no subject
[ In the past, hard earned peace. Her own tremulous future burned off the pages of history, scorched clean out of time, scrubbed - and her life, all their lives, her comrades from that same future, preserved by some benevolent quirk of fate. By a snap of Naga’s fingers.
That doesn’t mean Lucina will ever leave it behind, though. The world they won would never be for her, but if she can’t crawl her way back on her finger tips to her future and die with her people, then she can at least be of use here. ]
We turned the tide of it, eventually - but there are days when I have to remind myself that it’s over, that no further catastrophe awaits me.
[ Seeking an anchor against her own words, something strong, her gaze skims the fighters training below, and holds on a particular figure unrealising. (Shut up, Connor.) ]
no subject
[He pauses, following her gaze down to the figures in the arena below. Weapons clack and clash, voices at a distance sound so small. Funny, how the intensity of what an individual might feel, down in that ring, seems so diluted up here.
An idle observation, while he processes what to say next.]
Though I understand that memories of a hard-fought war are not so easily written off as 'finished'. Experiences that linger with a human mind long after it's done. And being brought here, in a place full of unknowns, sent off to worlds where there might yet be fighting still, I can't imagine you really feel at peace with any of it.
Though please correct me if I'm assuming too much.
no subject
She knows she'll need to set all that aside. Someday, hopefully soon, she will. It's a remarkably heavy burden, and her own shoulders so slight. ]
You've described yourself as a... detective? As in, you solve crimes. [ It's still an odd concept to her, as evidenced by the somewhat stilting, contemplative way she puzzles out the words. ] You must have seen some things you found unconscionable.
[ #still not getting the robot thing ]
no subject
Connor doesn’t detach his gaze from the figures below, their small movements hard to discern in a satisfyingly analytical way from this high. The sound of laughter buoys up, just a whisper of a thing once it reaches his audio processing.
Unconscionable. A wide, far-reaching term that could be applied in a manner of ways, and yet it stirs something in him. Makes him frown more deeply, seen clearly as it changes the curves of his profile.]
I was created to focus on very specific cases, admittedly, but yes. Murder is often considered unconscionable by anyone’s standards.
no subject
She wonders, again, for the gods-know-how-many time, why Connor removes himself from every sentence. Why he picks out every last bit of himself from his own contemplation. ]
I wasn't asking about anyone, [ she says, a bit sharper than she might have intended. ] And there is no need to condescend to me like that.
[ That said, she continues on without missing a beat, marshalling the conversation like someone practiced in pulling rank. ]
For someone who asks as many questions as you do, you rarely offer the courtesy of answering them in turn.
[ True and not true. Easy questions, guiding questions - yes. He'll fall all over himself to provide assistance. Dig a little deeper, though, and he sidesteps in magnificent fashion. Over her shoulder, just so, Lucina's expression is a touch quarrelsome. (Really, though, her face is just like that.) ]
no subject
I’m not trying to sound condescending, Lucina. I apologize if that’s how it came out. And I don’t mean to be unclear, either; ask any question of me, and I’ll answer to the best of my abilities.
[He sits a little straighter, his attentions no longer on the arena below. Looks directly at her, his attentions honed. Distraction, letting his tone go unchecked — not something he should allow, and when he speaks, there’s an automatic-sounding delivery to his speech. A loss of that spark of... something else, hard to pin down.]
The set of morals that I abide by are more like... tenets of my programming. Free movement within a certain set of boundaries, but never overstepping limitations clearly implemented.
[He supposes if he must point out a difference between himself and other androids, that would be it. That the RK800 was CyberLife’s hound, free to hunt as it pleased, yet choked with a leash around its neck if straying too far.]
When I mentioned murder, it’s simply because it was one of the more unconscionable acts I had seen the consequences of, as an investigator working with the DPD. Humans, attacked or even killed by their own androids.
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It galls at her sensibilities, certainly, to hear about these tragedies he speaks of. In hindsight, her moments-ago snappishness is almost embarrassing. ]
That sounds awful. [ A pause, her breath marking it with a touch of uncertainty - ] I don't mean to imply you are so removed from what you've witnessed...
[ Except... that's exactly the problem, isn't it? Waiting for him to display a single shred of empathy that he hasn't calculated out or framed in such technical terms. ]
Do you think about the, ah - [ how does she word this ] - crimes you've investigated? [ nailed it. ]
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He should be removed from what he's witnessed. He should only care about a successful mission, a successful end to the deviant uprising, finding them, hunting them down and returning them to CyberLife. His directives are clear, straightforward. They're the walls on all four sides, declaring that he can move around freely in the space provided to him -- but only in the space provided to him. Thought of whether what he's doing is right or wrong shouldn't matter. Doesn't matter.
Errors at the back of his mind dancing, cajoling, laughing. Self-diagnostic testing and results always coming back less than satisfactory.
No, he's getting distracted again.]
I do. They're the backbone of a current on-going investigation into the growing appearance of deviants. Androids that no longer adhere to their core programming and base objectives. I obviously haven't been able to further this investigation while I'm here, but it's difficult to not reflect on it during our considerable downtime.
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And the victims?
[ It's softly asked. She's going somewhere with this, honestly. She isn't just pivoting in order for him to talk about himself so she doesn't have to talk about herself.
(That's only part of it.) ]
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If there's somewhere she's going with this, Connor is allowing himself to be led. He meant it when he said he would answer her questions dutifully enough.]
I do think about them, yes. [How to expound upon that?] My mission exists to protect humans. Of course my thoughts will circle back to how and why such a thing happened to them.
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[ Keeping her eyes on the interior of the ring, as before, but no longer directed at any singular individual. At a safe spot in the ground, rather - a place to bury her words once she's said them. ]
I try to think about everyone, every day. All our dead, all those innocent lives. It gets harder to remember the names I had learned, of magistrates from the villages, or clerics who blessed me. I should think of them. I -
[ crumbled, a thoroughly unworthy descendant of the Hero-King -
- fled for safety backwards through time -
- failed them and didn't have the courage to die with them -
But that's wrong, isn't it? Lucina has never thought that her small wish of happiness is so selfish. She's done everything she could. Now, she's here. Daring to be content isn't dishonouring anyone. Refusing to let despair cling to her heels may be her one singular act of rebellion against her fraught childhood.
Her voice changes somewhat as she finishes her sentence. ]
I'm not so far removed to be comfortable, but sometimes I am focusing on something menial, or speaking to someone here, and I forget that my life didn't begin here. Like everything else was merely a nightmare, slipping away in the daylight. The sense of guilt that follows is... uncomfortable.
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