#I know this godforsaken program inside out but goddamn it have I never felt so dumb before lmao

[shadows-echoes]

Of Blood and Biocomponents - Pt. 3

(This beautiful gif isn’t mine! Gif source here!!)

Pairing: Ruthless!Connor x reader

Summary: A soulmate AU where injuries from one person appear on the body of the other.

Warnings: Canon-typical violence and injuries, swearing, the usual.

Word Count: 4.4k

Masterlist // Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 4 // Part 5 // Part 6 // Part 7 // Part 8 (epilogue)

Working the late shift at your job wasn’t something you minded much. Obviously, it wasn’t your favorite shift but, then again, your job wasn’t exactly your dream job either. It was work; it paid the bills. In this precise moment, however, you find yourself cursing the late-night hours you were assigned and the dark, almost empty streets you were thusly left to walk down.

“Listen,” you calmly address, “all I’ve got on me is a used textbook and a broken phone.”

The lie leaves your lips easily- or as easily as it could considering the circumstances. In truth, you also have twenty bucks and a few bus tickets on you. And while the textbook is used, it still costs half a month’s worth of rent for some godforsaken reason. 

But the man standing a measly few feet away pointing a gun at you doesn’t need to know that little detail.

His face is shadowed by the distinct lack of light filtering into the grungy alley and obscured by a low hood. Even so, you’re careful to keep your eyes on him and not on the dark, semi-reflective gun he held. He looks about your age if not a bit older, from what you can tell, and his clothes don’t exactly fit the definition of clean. He looks… Well, he looks rough to put it one way, and the gun he clutches doesn’t look to be fairing much better.

“Shut up,” he barks, “just hand over your bag!”

The nerves standing on edge throughout every inch of your body and your racing, jumping mind don’t help you in the slightest, you know. So, grinding your teeth, you force down the fear. You bury the alarm- channel it into something useful, something more productive than anxiety, a flying heartrate, and shaking limbs: anger. An anger that brewed just below the surface, roused by inequity.

Did you really want to risk the possibility of being shot over some cash and a scribbled-in textbook? Yes. Yes, you absolutely do. Is it worth it- worth more than your life? No. Well, maybe in today’s economy but that wasn’t the point. You should’ve been halfway home by now, safe, and blocking out the memories of the shift you just finished.

With careful movements, you slowly slide the old backpack from your shoulders as you eye the man before you, biding your time, thinking.

You hear it just as you’re extending the bag towards him.

Sirens.

Police sirens, to be exact. And they sounded awfully close by.

It was almost comical, the way the two of you freeze, eyes darting towards the opening of the alley before darting back to each other. Watching. Waiting.

For one long breath you don’t dare to breathe, that’s all there is: sirens. Sirens, you observing him, and him observing you.

Police.

Witnesses.

Help.

Opportunity.

Internally, you smirk.

His fingers shake as he readjusts his hold, grip tightening around the handle of the gun. He jerks his head sharply in warning, no doubt guessing the thoughts running through your mind. “Don’t-”

The rest of the threat is silenced.

Holding tightly to your bag, you swing it with as much force as you can muster at his hand- at the gun. The weapon clatters to the ground and skids across the rough concrete, but just as it does your mind registers the burning sensation ripping across your chest and the gunshot ringing in your ears.

You ignore it.

The piercing sound, the searing feeling, the undoubtedly bloody consequences- you ignore all of it. You don’t freak out or lose your mind- you might not have time for that. So you swallow down the simmering anger you’d channeled, the half-foreign surge of rage urging you to deck the guy and drag him out of this alleyway and right up to the police, and instead do the smart thing. 

You use what’s left of his surprise to your advantage, and you run.

-

Your reception at the hospital went about as well as you could’ve imagined. Nurses smiled at the return of your familiar face before quickly scowling once they caught sight of blood that soaked your shirt.

The wound was not that bad, at least in regard to the others you’d received on previous occasions. It was more of a deep graze above your ribs than a bullet wound. You were even able to make your statement to the police while you were getting stitched up; it wasn’t a big deal.

At least… to you.

Within five minutes of finally, finally, making it back to your apartment at some god-awful hour in the early morning, there was a knock on the door. You had half a mind to ignore it in favor of collapsing into bed and sleeping, and half a mind to answer only so you could tell whoever it was to get lost.

You were not sure what you were expecting when you did end up opening the door, you were hardly awake enough to imagine much at all by this point, but it certainly wasn’t Connor.

Connor stands on your doorstep.

He looks identical to when you first met him two weeks ago. The staple Cyberlife jacket, the white dress shirt and charcoal tie, the dark jeans, even the stray piece of hair that fell to the side of his forehead, it was all the same. Eerily so. But… not quite as eerie as him knowing where you lived and... dropping by.

His expression is void of pleasantries. It was blank, analyzing, but his eyes… As you gape up at him, your breath lodged in your throat, you find yourself suddenly acutely pleased that looks alone could not kill.

There had been absolute radio-silence between you and Connor over the last two weeks, not a single word had passed your teeth or was transferred through your skin. It was what you expected considering what he is. What you hadn’t quite dared to expect, however, was fewer soul-wounds. Or rather, less brutal ones.

Whether you had actually gotten through to him -doubtful- or he simply desired to avoid you -far more likely-, didn’t particularly matter to you. In the end, the result was the same: two full weeks without any relatively vital injuries. It had been… nice. A relief you didn’t want to question.

Your first and only encounter proved what you had already gathered through your research when originally trying to track him down: that Connor had no limits when it came to his missions. That he has a body count and is not programmed to feel remorse. Or guilt. Or regret. That he detests, if such an emotion were possible for him, anything relating to sentimentality.

Despite this, and much to your dismay, he still intrigued you as much as he appalled you. But knowing what you did of him, any thought, any fleeting inclination to reach out, to understand, was nevertheless burned. The mere idea of it was shoved down into the dark recesses of your mind, barricaded, and dutifully ignored. It was better that way. Soulmates you may be, but acquaintances you were not. You were content so long as you were no longer forced to frequent the hospital.

“Did you know that if the trajectory of the bullet that hit you had been eleven degrees to the left it would have vitally damaged one of my main biocomponents?” he asks, the edge to his voice sharper than any knife.

The greeting -or lack thereof- immediately erases your surprise, replacing it with an incredulousness that reaches your bones.

What, so he was allowed to get shot and burned and broken and bruised until it was probably cheaper to be uploaded into a new body than be repaired, until you were littered with wounds and buried in debt, but you get grazed by one bullet and suddenly you’re the problem?

Perhaps you should’ve seen something like this coming, you idly realize, considering how well he handled you falling down a goddamn flight of stairs. Perhaps you should learn to associate that warm, instantaneous surge of frustration with him alone, considering the feeling overwhelmed you whenever he opened that mouth of his.

“No, actually,” you retort, “I was a bit too busy getting shot.” Obviously, you’d known implicitly that he was okay since you weren’t dead, but the thought of how the bullet may have affected Connor hadn’t exactly crossed your mind. A graze had never stopped him in the past. “Why are you here?”  

“As I’ve already said, your injuries are highly inconveniencing and they have now disrupted my missions on multiple occasions,” he answers flatly. “That needs to change.”

The finality of his last few words sends a shiver of unease up your spine and your eyes narrow. However daunting the words may be, however, they failed to explain his presence. Sentimentality wasn’t an option and he wasn’t here to permanently end you for being a hindrance otherwise he would have done so already. If it was a hypocritical reproach he was seeking, it could be done far more easily, more quickly, through your skin.

“You will learn how to fight in order to prevent such instances in the future.”

It’s a simple statement that leaves no room for debate and it is said with a deadly serious expression, but that does little to wither the amusement suddenly working through your system.

Something between a scoff and a laugh pulls itself from your throat in disbelief. “You’re going to teach me how to fight?”

“At this rate, it will take even longer than I anticipated but yes,” he informs. Not waiting for an answer, for an affirmation, for anything or anyone, Connor pushes past you and marches directly inside your apartment.

You whirl around, already shouting, “what are you- I haven’t even agreed yet!”

Out in the world, in neutral territory, you had no problem confronting him. But here? In your own apartment? He looked so entirely out of place in the domestic environment, in anything, you guessed, that wasn’t a battlefield. It felt like an invasion, like a crossover between the sanctity of your home and- and whatever he is. What little you really know about him all boils down to the fact that he is a deadly weapon by design. Common sense is the sole thing keeping you from attempting to force him out, you valued your life after all, but that does little to settle your rightful hostility.

“If you were opposed to the idea-” he begins, examining your apartment with a single, sweeping glance before turning towards you curtly, “-you would have tried to stop me from entering. You also do not have a choice in the matter. You will learn.”

For the second time in the last minute and a half, you are left agape. Only this time it isn’t from surprise, but from indignance and the slightest bit of trepidation which you would never admit to in a million years. But mostly from irritation because... Because he wasn’t entirely wrong.

While you still didn’t particularly want him here, the idea itself wasn’t bad. You were willing to do quite a bit to avoid needing as much medical assistance as you have since Connor was first created. So if learning appeased him, kept you from becoming gun fodder, then you weren’t exactly unwilling. You’d learned the basics of self-defense when you were younger and you still knew a couple of tricks, but tonight was evidence enough that a refresher wasn’t the absolute worst idea in the world.

Knocking Connor on his ass was also the very first thing you wanted to do upon learning of his existence so there was that too.

But it didn’t make any sense.

“Why?” you ask, meeting his predatory gaze with a calculating stare of your own. “Why would you teach me? If I’m that much of a problem for you why not just kill either one of us? You’d get a new body, right? It’s not like-”

“Your death,” he interrupts crisply, something awfully close to irritation gracing his sharp features, “would hinder my mission.”

The words make you freeze- freeze more rapidly and deeply than when you had a gun shoved in your face. More than when you stared down at your first gaping, bloody mess of a soul-wound in a stupor. More than when the idea of not having a soulmate had first seized you.

Because this was Connor, and somehow you were related to his mission.

A sickening silence ensues as your head spins trying to make sense of it, to connect the dots you couldn’t see, ones you didn’t even know existed until now.

“What’s your mission?” you ask, suddenly wary, suddenly unsure of your own footing.

Connor doesn’t deign to give you an answer.

-

“This is hardly fair, you can’t even feel pain.”

“How unfortunate. Now, attempt to punch me.”

“I really don’t want a black eye. They’re kind of a bitch to deal with in case you didn’t know.”

“You won’t get one.”

Connor only stands an arm’s length in front of you and yet you have to tilt your head up to hold his eyes- the eyes that are currently staring condescendingly down at you. He raises his dark eyebrows tauntingly at your hesitancy, and the request for further elaboration dies on your lips.

It would definitely be worth it, you decide, receiving any self-imposed soul-wounds so long as you got to punch that stupid, perfect face of his, to create some kind of change in his expression and across his skin.

Shifting your stance to align with the one he’d instructed you to stand in, the one he drilled into your brain, you form a fist with your hand and aim for the spot between his eye and nose.  

Your knuckles never connect.

Before your fist comes remotely close to making contact, Connor’s already blocked the move, taken a step towards you, and slammed the palm of his hand against your non-leading shoulder.

The hard flooring does nothing to soften your landing and only serves to knock the air from your lungs. Pain radiates through your shoulder, the one you landed on, and a wheezing cough escapes you before you’re able to regain enough breath to properly groan.

“It’s bold, unlikely, and entirely premature of you to assume your hits will land,” he intones.

Connor towers above where you lie, and, glaring up at him, the inside of your cheek stings from the force your teeth exert in an effort to prevent yourself from saying anything you would regret.

In this precise moment you decide to stop caring altogether about what wounds, soul or otherwise, you might receive through training with him. The cold expression which seemed to be a staple of his, a fixed permanent of all that is Connor, was possibly the most irritating thing you’d ever encountered in your entire life, and you decide that you would wipe it off his face if it was the last thing you do.

-

Connor catches your leg, abruptly stopping the roundhouse kick by wrapping an arm around your calf and securing it against his side, locking you in place.

“You are still leading with your leg. There needs to-”

“Be a straight line from shoulder to knee, I know,” you drone, rolling your eyes at him.

You wished you were performing the steps “incorrectly” only to pester him, to ire him for your own amusement, but that constant feeling in your chest, that need to one-up him, remained as strong as ever. Though, his opinion of human ability was already so incredibly low that you doubted there was much you could do to lower it further -not that the thought hadn’t crossed your mind a couple dozen times-. 

He’d gone over the procedure again and again by this point, and you could recite the clipped lecture word for word, perform the steps exactly as dictated, entirely certain you were doing so correctly. But, unsurprisingly, it never seemed to quite meet his standards.

You attempt to pull back your leg so you could try the move again, or maybe stand on two feet while he lectures you, but Connor holds on, his fingers digging into your skin.

“If you know then why aren’t you doing it?”

Wrestling back a scoff, you use your shin to push off against his side before yanking your leg out of his grip. It was, you learned, the best way to get out of the hold he had on you… Except Connor lets go just as you push off.

The unexpected lack of resistance sends you flying, but his hand wraps around your brachium just before you hit the ground.

But he doesn’t pull you up.

He keeps you there, hanging awkwardly above the floor as his gaze digs into your own as if to hollow you from the inside out.

“Keep a straight line. From your shoulder. To your knee.”

-

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“I’m not here to answer your questions, however vague.”

“So..?” you prod, throwing another few punches at Connor in quick succession. His words had been a dismissal, sure, but they were also all the confirmation you needed. Lines were easy to read between after all, and the things he doesn’t say are becoming more apparent the more time you spend with him.

You followed up with the police to see if they had had any luck catching the guy who shot you, who tried to mug you, but they had lost him entirely. The police said he must’ve gone underground “or something” because there wasn’t any trace of him after that night. 

Connor wasn’t the police, but if anyone knew or could find information about some random mugger it would be him.

He blocks your strikes with ease while answering blankly, “he’s no longer a concern.”

You pause mid-motion, brows scrunching up in confusion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Taking advantage of the opportunity you inadvertently provided, Connor seizes your still wrists and leans down, towards you, so that his words are impossible to miss. “Through you, he damaged me. He is no longer a concern.”

Something dark flashes across his eyes, something that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on edge, something that makes your hackles rise and a voice appear in the quiet recesses of your mind ordering you to run. It is only visible for half a second before it vanishes from his dark brown eyes, but it was long enough for you to realize that you had been wrong before. Looks most certainly could kill.

The words -because it had to be the words, and not his sudden unexpected proximity or the intensity he seemed to emit in waves- sends a sliver of ice down your spine and a critical awareness of your surroundings, of yourself, of every inch of him, racing through your brain.

You do not flinch under Connor’s scrutiny, instead remembering the man who shot you and the lengths he was willing to go to, the stitches you were forced to receive.

“Good.”

-

Grabbing your outstretched arm, Connor pulls and spins in one swift motion until he has you in a headlock. Not wasting a single precious moment of time, you shift to the side, behind him, and place your foot behind his. Then you simply grab onto the hard plains that are his torso and tug. Gravity does the rest.

Connor’s arm leaves your throat to brace for the impact and you twist to the side the second you’re free. You keep twisting as you fall, and rolling once you hit the ground, until all your limbs are successfully untangled from his and you come to a stop a few feet away.

It was a perfect recreation of the maneuver and a smug, satisfied smirk lines your face as you shift onto your knees. But the self-indulgent reverie is incredibly short-lived. A second later, before you’re able to congratulate yourself, throw a jibe at Connor, or even stand up, he’s on you again.

He knocks you off balance, onto your back, and follows your descent until he’s hovering above you with a leg on either side. Too surprised to do much of anything, you end up doing nothing at all in the split second it takes for him to catch your arms and pin them to the ground beside your head.

His expression is a blank mask which borders on sharp -and it’s suddenly all too close- but Connor remains silent, his arched brow saying what his mouth currently isn’t. A wordless reminder of the rules he instilled in your mind.  

Never allow yourself to be distracted.

Do not presume your opponents to be incapacitated.

Never let your guard down.

Do not stop fighting until your opponents are wholly incapacitated or dead.

You know the words. You know what he wants you to remember, but the actual thoughts which race through your brain just slightly too fast to be caught and cast out are of a completely different sort. They’re of that awareness which seemed to pop up, out of nowhere, at the most inopportune times. Of the thin layer of perspiration that covers you. Of Connor looming above, practically straddling you. Of the low electrical current running through your body and the places where your skin seemed to burn under his touch. Of the vicious whirlwind of a storm that is always -or did it just appear?- raging in his eyes.

You’re pinned down by a brutal, relentless machine, rejecting every single thought and feeling coursing through you, and all you allow yourself to do- all you can do, is laugh.

“You couldn’t even let me have that, could you?”

-

“What?”

“You are sleep-deprived.”

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. I told you I had to pull an all-nighter.”

“You are too inefficient while in this state. Go.”

-

“Do your employers know about these little side-trips of yours?”

From the other side of the room, Connor shoots you a narrow-eyed look. “You know I do not have employers. I have owners and I have missions.”

As terrible as they were, it wasn’t his words that struck you the most. It was the way Connor said them- like it was an indisputable fact, something not worth thinking twice about, something that should’ve been obvious. It threw you, created a feeling of dread in your stomach and resentment behind your ribs. Maybe it was because you hadn’t thought about the question in such terms before this point, but his answer, and the truth in it, appalled you with a striking intensity you weren’t prepared for.

“Dude, that’s fucked up,” you state, planting the water bottle in your hand none-too-gently back on the table.

To your surprise, Connor, for once, doesn’t comment. His gaze is calculating but whether he’s analyzing your words or their meaning you don’t particularly care to decipher. He wasn’t affronted by his own statement and its truth and that vexes you half as much as the injustice did.

You scoff. “Look, if you’re alive enough to have a soulmate, you’re alive enough be considered a person.”

The dry comment half spoken under your breath passes your lips without thought, without consent, and you know, immediately, that it was the wrong thing to say. That it was probably the worst thing you could say.

The moment the words are vocalized, Connor’s entire frame stiffens and locks into place. The predatory glint was all at once back in his eyes, the one that hunted, the one that saw everything- that saw too much. The change is not drastic considering Connor was methodical in his every action but… But it is.

You hadn’t realized his shoulders were not as uncomfortably and unnervingly straight as physically possible until they suddenly were. You hadn’t realized that the tension in the air was no longer one of irritation or distaste until it was once again picking at your skin, that the atmosphere was begrudgingly passable as pleasant until it was once again hostile.

Just as there existed the unspoken deal that both of you would restrict the number of vital injuries obtained, so that Connor could complete his missions uninterrupted and you stood a chance at not randomly bleeding out at school, a second deal also existed. Except it wasn’t quite a deal but rather a law. A law that stipulated the s-word was never to be uttered, the topic of soulmates never to be mentioned, and the fact that you two were soulmates entirely, thoroughly, and wholly dismissed and disregarded without exception.

“We might be… connected-” he snarls, practically spitting the word “-in some meaningless way but if you are clinging on to some foolish human illusion then I suggest you dispose of it immediately.”

Once, the dark look he was giving you, the one he wore so well, and the cutting sharpness of his voice, both tells and promises of a lack of mercy, would have stilled you. Once, his detachment that was so entirely and unavoidably inhuman, a reminder of the machine that he is, would have given you pause, made your muscles falter and your resolve waver.

But Connor had since bled before your eyes. You had since made him bleed, bruise for but a fraction of a second before his cooled, synthetic skin repaired itself. You had experienced his every injury for yourself. Connor was ruthless, preeminent, that much was a given. He was calculating and methodical and shrewd and without one single line of pity written into his code. He didn’t have a heart, literally and figuratively. He was the perfect machine. But that’s all he was. After all, those all-powerful beings couldn’t bleed.

And you’re angry now. So instantaneously and extraordinarily angry that you refuse to look at the feeling too closely, preferring the simmering blood in your veins over- over whatever else lurked there. Over what you don’t want to admit, let alone acknowledge the existence of. 

No, anger was far better; rage was safer.

“Believe me,” you snarl right back, baring your teeth at the living weapon that he is. “I disposed of that before I even met you.”

It was true.

The words are true.

You know they are, there was no other option. They have to be true.

But they leave a bitter taste on your tongue regardless.

-

A/N: I took some liberties with this one and I’m a mix of ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) and ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ because Idk how it turned out but it was surprisingly fun to write so… hope you liked it! 

Let me know what you think!

This was also supposed to be a quick little montage squished between two other scenes but it turned into its own part. At the inception of this story, I promised myself it wouldn’t become as long as The Logic of Emotion because ain't nobody got time for that but… the way things are going I might end up breaking that deal *insert ugly sobbing here*

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