"And staying put you in danger," he points out in return, folding his hands into his lap. It's not particularly forceful. It's just a fact.
So is this: "Staying put everyone else in danger while it looked for me. I couldn't do that. I know I'm not worth much now but I still wanted to protect people if I could."
Her eyes narrow at him, her blue gaze sharp even in the low light. "Staying would've kept you safe. It would've kept me safe. We could've protected ourselves together, and instead you - you, what, you choose to go out there alone? Sacrifice yourself because that thing, that fucking monster convinced you you weren't worth it?"
Her voice is wavering again, tight with the fury of it, the ache of knowing he actually believes it. She swallows, sucking in a breath.
"It killed you, didn't it? That's where you've been, right?"
"I've never been alive." Even K, in his precarious role as a replicant blade runner, had been allowed in casual conversation to refer to himself as alive, as having a life, but he is newly reminded that he is a replicant. He is a replicant, made, not born. Built, not loved. Synthetic to his core, every particle and every emotion and every thought manufactured.
"But yes, I'm sure it retired me. I expect that's where I've been." He doesn't let himself think about it too hard but he does force himself to look up, forces himself to meet her eyes.
"Oh, fuck off with that," she snaps, her arms crossing tightly over her chest. She's itching for a cigarette, her eyes scanning the room for a pack, because of course it's the one thing she'd forgotten in her haste to get down here.
"You're breathing, right? You have a heart, you have a brain. You think for yourself, you make shit fucking decisions for yourself, so yes. You are alive, K. Despite any attempts to the contrary."
She curses under her breath, pacing despite herself when he actually admits it. That he'd gone and done it. Gotten himself killed after she'd fought so goddamn hard to get him back. She can feel the emotion stinging at her eyes, and she can't bring herself to meet his gaze. It takes her a moment to reply, her voice tight in her throat.
The room reeks of smoke; there's a mostly empty pack on the nightstand next to the remnants of the rest of it in an ashtray, a lighter beside that.
He lets her run herself out, sitting quietly, sitting still, watching. He has no idea what to say to any of it, no one has ever felt responsible for him, has been hurt by the fact that he was hurt instead of them.
The scent goads the craving on, and the moment she sets eyes on the pack and the lighter she beelines to it. Plucks a cigarette from inside, lights it and sucks in a long, slow breath, closing her eyes a moment to allow the blissful effect of nicotine wash over her.
She's quiet when he asks his question, flicking ash into the tray at his bedside, gaze focused on the ground a moment. The next breath she takes is still shaky, jaw clenched, still unable to rein in the flurry of emotions that seem to so easily overwhelm her.
"You're a detective," she says finally, sucking in another pull of smoke, letting her words curl around the breath. "Work it out for yourself."
When Sara's emotions overwhelm her they flash outward, weaponized and powerful. When K's emotions overwhelm him he shuts down, turns inwards, hides them.
He doesn't know what's best here. He can lay out the pieces of data as he understands them but it doesn't mean he knows what to do about it. How best to comfort a friend or if it's better to just let her take her anger, her hurt out on him. How to have a friend at all.
He rubs the corners of his eyes, trying to think, trying to focus. She can have every cigarette in the pack if she wants it and he won't say word one. It's the very least he can do.
"If I try," he says slowly, "Are you going to actually talk to me, or just keep insisting the world is only one way no matter what I say?"
There’s not much power in anger that’s got nowhere to go. He doesn’t argue, doesn’t defend himself, doesn’t offer much in the way of explanation. It’d be easier if he did. If he gave her something, anything to latch onto, but instead all she can do is seek comfort in the end of a cigarette, in the tiny sense of ease it can offer.
She thinks on his words a moment, brow furrowing, exhaling the smoke out of her nose as she thinks.
“Are you?” she counters, lifting her gaze to finally meet his.
He feels a bit like he's being asked to stand on hamstrung legs at this point, but he is trying. He has so much ground to make up, his life has been so different from so many of the people here, and it's not anyone's fault but now he has no idea what's expected of him. It had gotten easier for a while, as what he was made to be became more distant from him, but it's all right back at the fore now.
"I didn't lie. I didn't sacrifice myself. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I don't know what else to tell you."
She lets out a dry laugh, wisps of smoke heavy in the air around her. She waves them away, shifting to lean back against his dresser, studying him quietly a moment.
"You promised me you'd stay. After I fought like hell to get back from that fucking thing, after we both nearly died trying to get back here. You waltzed right back out on the streets and got yourself killed, and you don't understand why that might piss me off?" She takes another deep drag, her fingers twitching as the anger starts to seize through her again. "Jesus, K, did you think I wouldn't care?"
"You weren't the only one fighting." She had hated too, he remembers now, how he had tried to handle her doppelganger. He's not sure what else he was supposed to do when he had no idea what was going on, but he hadn't just stood there and taken it.
He had left her behind even when she wanted him to.
"I stayed until someone else was with you. And you're going to tell me that if you had the option to go back out and make sure that a woman wearing your face wasn't hurting your friends, you wouldn't have taken it? You would have let them suffer while you hid?"
He's aware of how guilty answering a question with a question makes him seem. The truth is though that he is surprised that she seems to care as much as she does.
"Is that what you call standing there and letting my nightmare try and beat the hell out of you?"
It's too sharp, too fast, and she regrets it even as it's spilling from her lips. The heat in it, the want to land in a place that stings.
Her nose wrinkles, and she stares down at the ground again.
"Oh, so you were trying to protect me? Is that it? Well guess what, K, I was trying to protect you, too, and you threw that shit right back in my face the first chance you got, didn't you?" She shakes her head, arms crossing tightly over her chest. "You're not in your fucked up version of home anymore. There are people here who give a shit whether you live or die."
It was fucked up, but it was home, and he knew his place in it. Los Angeles was his city, even if it didn't want him. Its people were his people to protect even if they didn't want anything to do with him.
He is - was - a protector, custom made. He tried to do that here and in the end he was successful: the faceless blade runner coming for him hadn't hurt anyone else he's aware of, not in the way he'd gone out to prevent. But it has, after all, hurt Sara.
He has. I'm not alive, I can't die, the rote protest is there but he doesn't say it this time. He rubs at his eyes again, harder, until he sees the afterimages behind his eyelids and doesn't say anything then either.
"I've never had that," is what he finally offers. The rest hurts, the rest is a mix of emotion and logic, but he leaves it where she throws it between them and chooses the one solid fact he has.
It's a low blow, to go after his home. To rip and tear at him because she's the one that's hurt. She's the one who wasn't good enough, wasn't there when he needed her. She'll never understand where he comes from, all the baggage that the place has dumped on him, leaving him to soldier on without complaint. Without realizing how much more he deserves.
If he tells her he's not alive again, so help her. She is so goddamn close to blowing a gasket, if she hasn't already, and just a fraction of an excuse would be enough to set her off.
But instead, he has to show her how hard it is for him. How sad and alone and fucking tragic he is, and she snuffs her cigarette out in the ash tray, her resolve crumbling quickly with those stupid puppy dog eyes.
She considers him a moment, sighing and pushing herself onto her feet. Hobbling the few steps over to him, she perches next to him at the edge of the bed, brow furrowed down at her hands.
"Believe whatever you want. But you're alive to me. You are worth something to me. And if you ever pull that shit on me again, I swear to God, K, I will stab you in the hand myself."
He doesn't flinch when she moves closer but that's because he never really learned how. It would never have stopped anyone that wanted to hurt him. It would only ever have invited more attention. So he has no idea what to expect when she starts moving towards him but it's not like it matters: whatever she wants to do, whatever anyone has ever wanted to do with or to him, they are going to do regardless of him. He doesn't flinch.
He watches the carpet instead, her movement from the periphery of his vision, and he nods.
She sits there quietly a moment, and as hard to read as he usually is, she knows that he's struggling. That whatever the hell his nightmare had done to him, it's cut him down deep. And in all her anger, she hadn't found any way to help. Didn't know how.
So she just... sits. Doesn't reach for him, doesn't have any other words to offer for a long, long moment. But finally, she manages.
"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "I can go, if you want."
He knows she wouldn't actually stab him in the hand, probably. He knows what hyperbole is. Knows, too, that threats of violence are one of the myriad ways people say they care about another person. It's a love language, perhaps one of the very few Sara in particular feels comfortable with. He understands all of this.
But it rings just now against raw nerve and all he can do is brace under it. He thinks about the lines of his baseline script - a blood black nothingness began to spin, blood black, blood - and wonders what it means that he has a point of reference for so much of it now.
For all of that, he answers promptly: "I don't want you to go." His voice is still low, still rough, but clear for all of that. He has no idea why she'd want to be here if everything he chooses to do confuses and hurts her, if it feels like throwing her efforts back in her face to her, but he doesn't want her to go if the choice is really his.
"You don't have anything to apologize for," he adds, but hesitantly, not because he doesn't mean it but because he has no idea if it will make her angry again.
Not the hand, no. But piss her off just enough, and she'd go for just a few centimeters away from the hand, just to prove a point. Sara's never been good at finding the right outlet for her own emotions. Spent too much time burying them deep down, covering them up with violence and rage.
The fact that she's here at all, trying - really trying - to put it all into words means more than even she probably realizes. And despite herself, there's relief when he answers her quickly, when he doesn't come back with indifference or kick her out entirely.
She moves, but only to reach over to the nightstand and grab the rest of the pack and the lighter, flipping it open and offering it to him. She doesn't want to go, either. Not just yet.
"Oh, I have plenty," she chuckles dryly, pulling her legs up to cross underneath herself. "I just... you scared the shit out of me, you know. Wasn't sure if you were coming back."
He doesn't hesitate, either, to accept one of the cigarettes out of the pack. They don't have as much of a calming effect on him as they seem to do her but it's still not nothing and he wants the gesture more than anything. He still speaks mostly in action and even though they're his cigarettes, he accepts that she's offering them.
His eyes tick up at the admission, studying her face in a darkness he can see through just fine. He feels a pang of tightness in his chest and wonders what it means that she bothered to worry and that he has a reaction to her doing so.
"No, I didn't know," he says honestly, holding the cigarette out to light. "I'm sorry."
He's not quite as clammed up anymore, at least. And Sara's anger seems to diminish just as quickly as it overcomes her, a slow breath releasing from her lungs. There are still remnants of emotion in her features, concealed under the swell of the bruising. But he's alright. He's back and in one piece. And that's the most important part.
She reaches out to offer him the lighter, flicking on the flame and holding it to the end of his cigarette. It's harder for her to make out his features in the low light, but the fire illuminates his features for a brief moment, and she scans him quietly before she flips the lighter closed.
"You okay?" It's a loaded question. One she probably knows the answer to, considering he's just died and come back. But she's curious to what his answer is.
He flinches back from the flame even though he was expecting it, his eyes watering almost immediately; his hand stays steady though, and he doesn't pull back from more than the brightest, most immediate ring of light. He wonders, briefly, if this is his life now and how he's going to function if it is. It's out of his control to change, though, so he doesn't bother complaining about it.
It's comforting just to hold the cigarette, to watch the smoke trail up from the glowing ember tip, and he does so for several moments even after she asks. He's not, though. They both know he's not. He's trying, but he's not.
He shakes his head, and takes a draw off the cigarette.
He’d squinted, recoiled from the light when he’s opened the door. She realizes it now, belatedly, after the anger’s finally started to subside.
She sits quietly, unsure of how to help. Unsure of what he needs. As she watches him, her gaze lingers on his hand - the one that three days ago had been shredded by jagged metal by her own doppelgänger. Her brow furrows, fingertips reaching out to brush against the smooth skin on the back of his hand.
K sits with her in that silence, working on the cigarette slowly; at first, he's waiting for her to pick up where she left off, to keep asking him questions that less need answers than they need to be asked, to vent whatever anger is left. He stays still at first when she reaches out but, when he realizes what she's doing, he offers his hand out to her for inspection - and, if he's honest, for connection at all.
She's not sure what he needs or how to help, but those few minutes of quiet, of sitting with him and expecting nothing even if it's just the short term, helps immensely.
"I... woke up here. In the bathtub," he starts, quiet. "All the injuries were gone. I only remembered that much this morning, and the rest is still - fuzzy." Which, for a replicant with acute memory and RAM modifications and no repair facilities he's aware of for what he is, is distressing.
He has a way of depleting that rage in her more quickly than most. It's... unsatisfying, trying to stay angry with him. Like yelling at a brick wall painted with a cartoon puppy.
She can't pinpoint what it is about him. Why it seizes through her, the need to keep him safe. It's the same way with anyone she cares about, she supposes. Laurel, Barry, Donna. But it'd happened so fast with him. She doesn't even know his birthday. His favorite color. Does he have one?
He starts to speak again, without her own prompting. Without a demand from her, and she doesn't know him well, but she knows that it means something. That he's trying. Her brow furrows, attention focused on running her fingertips over his knuckles, down to the curve of his wrist bone.
"Fuzzy? Does that... happen often, for you?" She can't imagine it would, but she also doesn't have a clue how his brain works.
There's something special about hands, K has always thought; always from a distance though, at least until landing in Duplicity, where there are people willing to allow him to touch them, people he's willing to in turn. There's something about the delicate, complex assembly of tendon and ligament and bone and muscle and the skin with its web of prints, its creases, its calluses. Any marks from the confrontation with their nightmares are gone but the oldest scars, the splits in his knuckles from altercations throughout his life, are still there. The new one where Luv stabbed him through the palm, the one Sara herself inspected when they first met, is still there where it healed closed a few weeks ago.
He holds his hand out steady for her, trusting in his way, while he shakes his head.
"No. Anything even close to this has happened only once before, and it was -" He tips his head, considering. "I think the closest human equivalent would have been a traumatic brain injury. I had to go back to Wallace for repair to be cleared for duty again."
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So is this: "Staying put everyone else in danger while it looked for me. I couldn't do that. I know I'm not worth much now but I still wanted to protect people if I could."
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Her voice is wavering again, tight with the fury of it, the ache of knowing he actually believes it. She swallows, sucking in a breath.
"It killed you, didn't it? That's where you've been, right?"
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"But yes, I'm sure it retired me. I expect that's where I've been." He doesn't let himself think about it too hard but he does force himself to look up, forces himself to meet her eyes.
"I'm sorry you were hurt."
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"You're breathing, right? You have a heart, you have a brain. You think for yourself, you make shit fucking decisions for yourself, so yes. You are alive, K. Despite any attempts to the contrary."
She curses under her breath, pacing despite herself when he actually admits it. That he'd gone and done it. Gotten himself killed after she'd fought so goddamn hard to get him back. She can feel the emotion stinging at her eyes, and she can't bring herself to meet his gaze. It takes her a moment to reply, her voice tight in her throat.
"I should've been there."
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He lets her run herself out, sitting quietly, sitting still, watching. He has no idea what to say to any of it, no one has ever felt responsible for him, has been hurt by the fact that he was hurt instead of them.
"Why?" he asks finally.
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She's quiet when he asks his question, flicking ash into the tray at his bedside, gaze focused on the ground a moment. The next breath she takes is still shaky, jaw clenched, still unable to rein in the flurry of emotions that seem to so easily overwhelm her.
"You're a detective," she says finally, sucking in another pull of smoke, letting her words curl around the breath. "Work it out for yourself."
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He doesn't know what's best here. He can lay out the pieces of data as he understands them but it doesn't mean he knows what to do about it. How best to comfort a friend or if it's better to just let her take her anger, her hurt out on him. How to have a friend at all.
He rubs the corners of his eyes, trying to think, trying to focus. She can have every cigarette in the pack if she wants it and he won't say word one. It's the very least he can do.
"If I try," he says slowly, "Are you going to actually talk to me, or just keep insisting the world is only one way no matter what I say?"
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She thinks on his words a moment, brow furrowing, exhaling the smoke out of her nose as she thinks.
“Are you?” she counters, lifting her gaze to finally meet his.
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He feels a bit like he's being asked to stand on hamstrung legs at this point, but he is trying. He has so much ground to make up, his life has been so different from so many of the people here, and it's not anyone's fault but now he has no idea what's expected of him. It had gotten easier for a while, as what he was made to be became more distant from him, but it's all right back at the fore now.
"I didn't lie. I didn't sacrifice myself. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I don't know what else to tell you."
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"You promised me you'd stay. After I fought like hell to get back from that fucking thing, after we both nearly died trying to get back here. You waltzed right back out on the streets and got yourself killed, and you don't understand why that might piss me off?" She takes another deep drag, her fingers twitching as the anger starts to seize through her again. "Jesus, K, did you think I wouldn't care?"
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He had left her behind even when she wanted him to.
"I stayed until someone else was with you. And you're going to tell me that if you had the option to go back out and make sure that a woman wearing your face wasn't hurting your friends, you wouldn't have taken it? You would have let them suffer while you hid?"
He's aware of how guilty answering a question with a question makes him seem. The truth is though that he is surprised that she seems to care as much as she does.
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It's too sharp, too fast, and she regrets it even as it's spilling from her lips. The heat in it, the want to land in a place that stings.
Her nose wrinkles, and she stares down at the ground again.
"Oh, so you were trying to protect me? Is that it? Well guess what, K, I was trying to protect you, too, and you threw that shit right back in my face the first chance you got, didn't you?" She shakes her head, arms crossing tightly over her chest. "You're not in your fucked up version of home anymore. There are people here who give a shit whether you live or die."
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It was fucked up, but it was home, and he knew his place in it. Los Angeles was his city, even if it didn't want him. Its people were his people to protect even if they didn't want anything to do with him.
He is - was - a protector, custom made. He tried to do that here and in the end he was successful: the faceless blade runner coming for him hadn't hurt anyone else he's aware of, not in the way he'd gone out to prevent. But it has, after all, hurt Sara.
He has. I'm not alive, I can't die, the rote protest is there but he doesn't say it this time. He rubs at his eyes again, harder, until he sees the afterimages behind his eyelids and doesn't say anything then either.
"I've never had that," is what he finally offers. The rest hurts, the rest is a mix of emotion and logic, but he leaves it where she throws it between them and chooses the one solid fact he has.
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If he tells her he's not alive again, so help her. She is so goddamn close to blowing a gasket, if she hasn't already, and just a fraction of an excuse would be enough to set her off.
But instead, he has to show her how hard it is for him. How sad and alone and fucking tragic he is, and she snuffs her cigarette out in the ash tray, her resolve crumbling quickly with those stupid puppy dog eyes.
She considers him a moment, sighing and pushing herself onto her feet. Hobbling the few steps over to him, she perches next to him at the edge of the bed, brow furrowed down at her hands.
"Believe whatever you want. But you're alive to me. You are worth something to me. And if you ever pull that shit on me again, I swear to God, K, I will stab you in the hand myself."
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He watches the carpet instead, her movement from the periphery of his vision, and he nods.
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So she just... sits. Doesn't reach for him, doesn't have any other words to offer for a long, long moment. But finally, she manages.
"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "I can go, if you want."
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But it rings just now against raw nerve and all he can do is brace under it. He thinks about the lines of his baseline script - a blood black nothingness began to spin, blood black, blood - and wonders what it means that he has a point of reference for so much of it now.
For all of that, he answers promptly: "I don't want you to go." His voice is still low, still rough, but clear for all of that. He has no idea why she'd want to be here if everything he chooses to do confuses and hurts her, if it feels like throwing her efforts back in her face to her, but he doesn't want her to go if the choice is really his.
"You don't have anything to apologize for," he adds, but hesitantly, not because he doesn't mean it but because he has no idea if it will make her angry again.
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The fact that she's here at all, trying - really trying - to put it all into words means more than even she probably realizes. And despite herself, there's relief when he answers her quickly, when he doesn't come back with indifference or kick her out entirely.
She moves, but only to reach over to the nightstand and grab the rest of the pack and the lighter, flipping it open and offering it to him. She doesn't want to go, either. Not just yet.
"Oh, I have plenty," she chuckles dryly, pulling her legs up to cross underneath herself. "I just... you scared the shit out of me, you know. Wasn't sure if you were coming back."
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His eyes tick up at the admission, studying her face in a darkness he can see through just fine. He feels a pang of tightness in his chest and wonders what it means that she bothered to worry and that he has a reaction to her doing so.
"No, I didn't know," he says honestly, holding the cigarette out to light. "I'm sorry."
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She reaches out to offer him the lighter, flicking on the flame and holding it to the end of his cigarette. It's harder for her to make out his features in the low light, but the fire illuminates his features for a brief moment, and she scans him quietly before she flips the lighter closed.
"You okay?" It's a loaded question. One she probably knows the answer to, considering he's just died and come back. But she's curious to what his answer is.
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It's comforting just to hold the cigarette, to watch the smoke trail up from the glowing ember tip, and he does so for several moments even after she asks. He's not, though. They both know he's not. He's trying, but he's not.
He shakes his head, and takes a draw off the cigarette.
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She sits quietly, unsure of how to help. Unsure of what he needs. As she watches him, her gaze lingers on his hand - the one that three days ago had been shredded by jagged metal by her own doppelgänger. Her brow furrows, fingertips reaching out to brush against the smooth skin on the back of his hand.
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She's not sure what he needs or how to help, but those few minutes of quiet, of sitting with him and expecting nothing even if it's just the short term, helps immensely.
"I... woke up here. In the bathtub," he starts, quiet. "All the injuries were gone. I only remembered that much this morning, and the rest is still - fuzzy." Which, for a replicant with acute memory and RAM modifications and no repair facilities he's aware of for what he is, is distressing.
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She can't pinpoint what it is about him. Why it seizes through her, the need to keep him safe. It's the same way with anyone she cares about, she supposes. Laurel, Barry, Donna. But it'd happened so fast with him. She doesn't even know his birthday. His favorite color. Does he have one?
He starts to speak again, without her own prompting. Without a demand from her, and she doesn't know him well, but she knows that it means something. That he's trying. Her brow furrows, attention focused on running her fingertips over his knuckles, down to the curve of his wrist bone.
"Fuzzy? Does that... happen often, for you?" She can't imagine it would, but she also doesn't have a clue how his brain works.
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He holds his hand out steady for her, trusting in his way, while he shakes his head.
"No. Anything even close to this has happened only once before, and it was -" He tips his head, considering. "I think the closest human equivalent would have been a traumatic brain injury. I had to go back to Wallace for repair to be cleared for duty again."
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