#A refined man but terminally offline | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fandom-necromancer · 3 years

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Past, Present, Future

This was prompted by the amazing @skyewillows! I know you likely intended this to be the other way around, but this is the idea that first came to me XD Also sorry for the delay! Hope you enjoy some angst!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Reed900 (Warnings: near death experience, slight body horror?, anti-android sentiment)

It had been supposed to be easy. It had been supposed to be a simple mission: infiltrate the warehouse in the early morning and gather intel on the operations inside. They had known the warehouse was used to store and refine Red Ice. They had known they were the newest dealership in Detroit and therefore would soon get trouble with the other people in the business or get integrated in their doing. That was what should have made it easy: Inexperienced humans afraid or at least worried about what was to come. It shouldn’t have ended like this, Nines thought as he laid in the trunk of a car, motor control deactivated and helpless in the hands of the competing drug den.

All had happened far too fast: Gavin and Nines had infiltrated the warehouse and hid in close proximity to the people milling about. They had learned most of what they had wanted to by the early afternoon, from how they synthesized the drug to where they planned on dealing it to the people. Gavin and Nines were both pretty confident all they would have to do now was wait for the night to leave in silence. Instead, a package arrived in the afternoon that the idiots promptly opened, setting off the bomb inside that ripped through the many shelves as well as one supporting pillar. The explosive chain reaction of instable intermediates in the refinement process from Thirium to Red Ice as the first explosion reached a tank did the rest. Nines could only shield Gavin from the falling debris as the roof and walls were coming down. His human had been his only priority at that moment and even now, when he should worry about his own fate, it filled him with relief to know Gavin had been alive up to that point. His memory had become a bit hazy afterwards as a steel rod from the concrete wall had pierced through his chest while protecting his human, pinning him in between two pieces of debris.

He remembered Gavin’s shocked face, his Thirium-coated hands on his face and… he had been speaking then… what had Gavin said to him? Nines only knew how he had interrupted him with the plea to flee as his sensors picked up on distant voices ordering others to search for survivors. He remembered how Gavin had ran. And then he had found himself in this trunk, immobilized and patched up where the steel rod had pushed through his body. He didn’t want to know what would happen next. Patching up an android to take with them was nothing they did from the goodness of their heart. And knowing that they knew their way around an android’s system well enough to immobilise one made Nines bad feeling even worse.

He tried to reconstruct the path his capturers had taken from the pattern of turns and times spent at red lights. Unfortunately, his GPS was offline too, so all he could do was look for overlaps in his maps. He had found several matches by the time the car stopped, and the engine was killed, but it helped little in forming an escape plan. He was still immobile and as he was lifted out of the car, he couldn’t make out enough to determine which one of his preconstructions had been accurate. A dark bag was put over his head, then he could hear someone giving orders again: ‘Get it inside and hook it up. At least this pig can be of use for us.’

Nines wished he could have struggled. He wished he could have seen where he was dragged or that he could have contacted someone. Even if it was ultimately hopeless, he wouldn’t feel so damn hopeless. His stress levels were dangerously high, and he knew he did the android equivalent of panicking as he was dropped on the floor and could hear computer fans as well as the very familiar sound of a maintenance rig being initialised. Not much later he was hoisted up and connected to the rig. Only then he felt his motor control being returned to him and with the strength of the soldier unit he had been designed to be, he pulled at the arms holding him captive. But however hard he struggled, all he managed was flinging the bag off his head as the arms compensated his thrashing and ultimately restrained him fully. ‘Let me go!’, he hollered even before he could see the lone man that stood leaned over the terminal. ‘Let me go and maybe I’ll grant you a quick death!’

Fury was the only reaction he could manage in his situation, unwilling to let his desperation and fear overwhelm him. He couldn’t give up yet. Even if his pre-constructions showed him no possible way out of here if there wasn’t external help. No, he had to ignore that. Humans made mistakes. Maybe this one had made an error when attaching him to the rig. Maybe he- ‘Shut up, tin-can!’

It could have as well been a punch to the Thirium pump. With how much affection these words could be uttered in the right moment, the right place and time and person, it hurt almost physically to hear it in the context it had long lost. Gavin had said it so many times, these exact words. In the precinct, meaning it. On a case, when Nines thought it was a good idea to remind him of proper police conduct. At a bar night when Nines had been a “phcking know-it-all”. On the backseat of their car when he had reminded him this position wouldn’t be comfortable at all. In the early morning when Nines tried to coax him out of bed when Gavin would have liked to cuddle a little longer.

But no, this time it was uncaring. Condescending. A simple disregard to his feelings, thoughts and person. The words of someone who considered him a mere thing. Switching to his soldier protocols he tried again to push and pull against the arms keeping him immobile with no regards to his component’s integrity. He only managed to pull some of his pseudomuscles apart, the rig didn’t move one bit. ‘Stop that, can’t have you losing any more Thirium!’

Nine looked up to the man that pulled a thick flexible tube over and lost his composure. He couldn’t keep up the façade of that fearless predator when he got the feeling he knew exactly what would happen next. And that recognition filled him with pure terror. ‘No. No, stop!’ The human ignored him, stepping closer and onto the platform. ‘Please, don’t!’, Nines begged, trying to keep the end of the tube in his vision, but the man had already stepped behind him. ‘No, please, I’ll do whatever you want. Just please, don’t-‘ ‘Shut up!’, the man interrupted him, his fingers roughly prodding his neck until he had found the right place to press to open the hatch to his neck port. ‘You are just a machine, don’t pretend you feel anything. This is just a fancy program Cyberlife installed to keep their property intact. Playing with human minds, that’s all you plastics ever did.’ Nines wanted to protest, to plead, but the man had already pushed the tube into the port used to refill or replace an android’s Thirium. The RK900 blinked at the sudden intrusion, but the man was already stepping back, attention back on the terminal.

‘Please’, Nines tried once again, knowing it was utterly futile. ‘Please, don’t do this. I have family. We have a cat. Please, I just want to get back to my life!’ ‘You have nothing, bot. Your family has you and can buy another one – sorry – adopt another one now that these idiots were fooled by Cyberlife’s plan.’ ‘That doesn’t make any sen-‘, Nines had begun to protest but choked on his words as he felt the rig accessing his Thirium pump and redirecting the flow without him being able to intervene. ‘No!’, he screamed, static mixing with his voice. ‘No, you can’t do this! Please. Stop!’ The man just stepped back and smirked at him. ‘Sweet dreams’, he teased, then turned and left.

Nines was completely alone in the small room, being notified of his Thirium levels dropping rapidly while he could see the blue liquid flow through the tube on the ground to who knows where. He couldn’t believe he was harvested for the very drug he and Gavin had tried to fight since it had popped up on the market. Gavin… Gavin was safe now, wasn’t he? He tried to remember what had happened exactly as Gavin had disappeared, but nothing came up. Whatever the steel rod had damaged, it must have caused some sort of short circuit causing his systems to shut down to protect themselves until he was removed. He must have made it. He must have made it to safety. Nines just couldn’t bear the thought of him being shot while running away or being caught by the gang to be interrogated or worse. No, Gavin had to be safe. Likely furious and wanting to safe him somehow. How would he react to learning he died? They had been together for quite a while now. He would either be angry and in denial about the fact or struck by grief so hard Nines couldn’t possibly imagine what would happen to him. Gavin was a ride-or-die kind of person and they had found mutual unconditional trust in the other. Hell, they had planned to marry eventually, Nines knowing he would have to be the one to propose to the surprisingly shy man. It would have been perfect.

They could have had so much, Nines regretfully realised. Not a great ceremony, but one of few guests. Tina would have been there. Nines would have convinced Gavin to invite Hank and Connor and maybe Sixty with Allen. Gavin in turn would have convinced Nines to allow Elijah and Chloe there. And besides that there would have been a full life ahead of them. Maybe they would have gone on vacation. Left Detroit for the first time or maybe even America. There would have been Christmases that weren’t coined by revolutions and New Years that wouldn’t traumatise half the population when androids first dared to insert themselves into society. Birthdays and the struggle to find the perfect present. Weekends spent on roadtrips, movie nights with friends, new cases keeping their minds busy. And then the little things. Playing with their cat and laughing at it. Watching a movie only for Gavin to halfway through fall asleep leaned against Nines. Days spent in bed because it was just to comfy. Moments when the sun just fell right through the window on Gavin’s face. Seeing him smile one more time. Hearing his voice whisper sweet nothings. Hearing him call him with another silly nickname. The smell of coffee in the morning. The curses when having overslept. The slow beat of a heart. The way he sighed in content and caressed Nines face when he thought he was already in stasis. The colour of his eyes…

Nines’ systems were shutting down one after the other. His countdown was ticking down. His thoughts were running slow and sluggish. He was long hanging weakly in the arms of the rig. Warning messages popped up, informing him of imminent terminal overheating. Nines ignored it all. He didn’t want to die in fear. He didn’t even want to know he was dying. He tried to remember his short life with Gavin and to imagine how it could have been. It was no surprise to him his mind soon began to fray as his systems switched to critical condition and he saw Gavin before him. Heard his voice: ‘Nines. Stay with me.’ ‘I will’, Nines hummed with a content smile, his tinny voice almost unrecognisable as one. ‘I will fix this, don’t worry’, Gavin’s voice told him and Nines thanked whatever sick twist of fate gave an android the possibility to lose logic in it’s last moments. ‘I know you will’, Nines spoke, not understanding his own words as his voicebox was running on less and less power. ‘I’ve always been safe with you.’ ‘Phck, Nines. Phck, phck, phck!’ ‘I love you, Gavin.’

And then he fell.

He fell on a surprisingly real floor. ‘Phck, Nines, sorry! Nines? Nines? Phck can you hear me? Say something!’ Nine could barely understand the words uttered as his sensors glitched and switched on and off repeatedly. ‘Okay, your LED is still on, please let that mean you’re still alive! Alright, I will get you out of here, just hold on! We will fix you, we will fix you!’

He… wasn’t dead yet? Nines tried to access his internal sensors and saw that he had been disconnected at a Thirium Level of twelve percent. He was still about to die, but the countdown was trickling down a lot slower now that the blue blood wasn’t forcibly extracted. Unable to move he was once again dragged over the floor for what felt like an eternity when Nines watched every millisecond pass by. If this wasn’t an impressive illusion of a dying operating system, then that had to mean Gavin was really here. And that he was about to save him. That there was indeed a future to look forward to.

The sun outside caused his optics to white out, so it was a little sudden as a bottle opening was pressed to his lips. Havin a hunch, Nines allowed the liquid to be poured down his throat. It took a while until his levels rose and several bottles were emptied, but as they sat at stable 60%, Nines could run a quick diagnose and regained access to all systems that remained intact. It weren’t many, but he could jerkily move, he could talk through heavy static, he could hear, see and feel. And he used all of these abilities to jump up, hug Gavin and kiss him clumsily on the lips. ‘Gavin!’, he gave vent to his relief and promptly kissed him again as if he could loose all this again the next second. ‘Hey, buddy, tone that down a bit’, Gavin laughed embarrassedly. ‘Everyone is watching.’

Nines couldn’t care less. ‘Gavin, I want to marry you’, he burst out instead and as Gavin looked at him in surprise and wanted to respond, Nines just interrupted: ‘Elijah can come if Connor is invited too.’ ‘Alright, not what I wanted to say’, Gavin chuckled, trying to free himself of Nines embrace that was more of a vice by now. ‘We should take time off. Drive somewhere. I want to hold you.’ Gavin pushed him away fully now, holding onto his arms. ‘Nines, what’s wrong?’, he asked with worry. ‘I will get you to a repair shop, don’t worry.’

Nines closed his eyes and vented his internal systems that had heated up yet again. ‘I almost lost this’, he whispered. ‘All of this. You. Our future. I don’t want to wait anymore should this happen ever again.’ Gavin looked at him and sighed. ‘Nines, this won’t happen again. I promise. We are partners, remember? We look out for each other. I know, I was quite… I was almost too late this time. But I will always be there.’ Nines looked to the ground, unsure if his legs would support him much longer. ‘Hey’, Gavin said softly, lifting his head up. ‘You know what? Vacation doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll see what I can do, okay? But let’s get you fixed up first, okay?’

The android rested his head against Gavin’s, noses touching. ‘Okay’, he nodded and let himself be guided towards a car by his human.

#detroit become human #dbh #Reed900 #RK900 #Gavin Reed #angst #angst with happy ending #desperate Nines is my favourite #why do I like to torture my favourite character so much?#how many stories in warehouses used for thirium harvesting will I write in the future?#I don't know and I don't care it's a fun trope #Gavin: Babe there are people watching #Nines: Let them #Tina - taking pictures for blackmail reasons and totally not to embarrass them on their wedding

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