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[hippie_ninja]

This is Jesus. Leave a message.

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[konstant]

If they were back in Los Angeles, K wouldn't talk about this at all. If he'd ended up in Duplicity, somehow, without ever knowing anything about Ana Stelline other than she's the best memory maker Wallace has, maybe he wouldn't either.

But the loneliness of not having anyone to confide any of it in, no one to even talk it through with except an unfairly biased AI who may or may not have been passively spying on him for Wallace or the department or both, means that he hesitates now to dismiss the opportunity. Maybe, if he can just admit to some of it, he'll feel better.

And he desperately needs to feel better about it if he can, so he takes a deeper breath.

"The blade runner hunted me down, but it didn't just retire me like I would have another replicant. It... I remember being locked in somewhere. It seemed like days and hours at the same time. And I could feel... things."

[hippie_ninja]

It's the fact that Jesus has spent twelve years around the worst parts of humankind that allows him to listen. Jesus being Jesus he is still horrified, but there's a mute acceptance to it. Horrible things happen. He wants to know what they were so he knows how K is coping with them now.

"What things?"

[konstant]

K himself is resigned; he is a Nexus-9 replicant, and a blade runner as well. He is capable of knowing with equal certainty two opposing, mutually exclusive things to be true. He knows he deserved to be retired for his actions in Los Angeles. He also knows they were the only thing he could have done. He knows the former is the conditioning, programming, coding, whatever one wants to call it; he knows how it feels like his own personality regardless.

He knows it's not, and yet here they are.

"One was my baseline script, over and over." A constant mantra, almost like it was playing on a speaker somewhere nearby, but also inside his head, in his own voice. "Another was... shame. For dereliction of duty. Guilt went with that one. Failure, because more than any other replicant anywhere it was a betrayal for me to go rogue. For daring to think I could be... special."

[hippie_ninja]

Felt things. Jesus, who has been tied up and left for dead on more than one occasion, had expected K to talk about physical things, torturous things. What he describes instead is a more persistent, perhaps more dangerous kind of pain.

"Was that what made you go rogue?" Feeling special?

[konstant]

"No," he can say with certainty. He felt angry, when he lied to Joshi that first time; terrified, maybe. A myriad of things, but not special.

"I went rogue because it was the only thing I could see to do. The only thing that was right. I know it was right, but I also know - I knew at the time - it was against everything I'd ever done up to then. Everything I was."

But not, in the end, because he was special. "I just got confused for a while in the middle. It was stupid, and I suppose I knew that too."

[hippie_ninja]

He listens, but there is so much left out, he doesn't even know what 'the middle' would look like. K hasn't really given him a beginning or an ending to go from, except for the part where he is here and he is not the person they created him to be any longer.

"Do you regret it?"

[konstant]

He knows he's being vague, but he has less than no interest in getting into all of it when he's still answering the most basic questions about his Los Angeles, about replicants. It all still hurts so much, and the blade runner nightmare hadn't helped even a little.

But he still shakes his head. "No," he offers, quiet but sure. "I can feel disgraced about it at the same time, and I do. But I don't regret it."

[hippie_ninja]

He's quiet a moment. "I've never felt special, either."

And being here, among people who have saved their worlds instead of merely survived them, around people with literal supernatural powers, has only driven home how small his own life was.

"But I like who I decided to become and what I decided to do with the things I could influence. And I hope that's true for you, too." He doesn't press for details. K will give them when and if he wants. "And anyway, you are special--to me, anyway. As small as that is. And part of that is because you decided not to be what they made you to be."

[konstant]

"Small?" K echoes, the word that not only sticks out of what Jesus is saying but stings enough to get a reaction.

There's the rest of it too but that feels too big, too complicated to get an easy read on right away. This, though, he can say immediately: "Most replicants go their entire activation knowing absolutely no one cares about them. That they don't matter to anyone." And K is no exception. "It's not small to me to know that someone thinks... anything about me."

[hippie_ninja]

The sort of special people seem to crave amount to Messianic levels. And Jesus, in particular, is not used to his opinion of people changing much in the grand scheme of things.

"I think a lot of you. I want that to matter." Because K never had that before. Because he can see it matters.

[konstant]

"It does."

Maybe it doesn't change much in that grand scheme, maybe it can't, but it's precious to K.

"I don't really know what to do now that I don't have a baseline to meet, and I don't know how to decide, but it matters to me."

[hippie_ninja]

It's a strange feeling, to know his opinion of a person matters this way.

"Don't know how to decide what?"

[konstant]

"How to feel," he says simply, offering out the chocolate again.

"What's okay to feel. Where the limits are."

[hippie_ninja]

"Do you want someone else to decide that for you?" He takes a chocolate, lets it melt in his mouth as he listens.

[konstant]

"I don't - no?" No, probably the right answer is no, even though he would generally like to know the expectations of anything.

"But it's what I'm used to, and I don't know - are there combinations that could short circuit my programming? How do humans decide these things for themselves, and should I try to do the same?"

He understands this probably seems very trivial from outside of it, but for him it feels a bit like trying to navigate a cliff without a safety rail all of a sudden.

[hippie_ninja]

"I don't decide." For what it's worth. "I feel whatever I feel; the only part I control is what I do about it."

[konstant]

"But you're human. Whatever you feel is... yours."

K is not, but he shakes his head in the next moment.

"It's okay. I'll work it out or I won't."

[hippie_ninja]

That's not a comforting answer, K. He gives him a little, worried smile.

"What are you feeling right now?"

[konstant]

"A lot." It doesn't look like it, probably, because nothing K does is emphatic.

But he's feeling more than he's ever felt before. "A mixture. I'm glad you're here. I'm worried about you. I'm confused, and tired, and I love this chocolate, and a dozen other things I don't have a name for."

[hippie_ninja]

It happens. Emotions are complicated and overwhelming, even for someone who was always allowed to have them.

"Focus on the ones you know," he suggests, because it's what he has had to do many, many times in the past. "Enjoy the chocolate. Tell me why you're worried?"

[konstant]

"Because I can see that things are difficult for you."

The concern for strangers is familiar, is normal. The new part is saying anything about it, is expecting someone might actually want to hear it - someone might believe he means it.

"Not - what those things are. It doesn't work that way. But it still worries me."

[hippie_ninja]

He's quiet for a moment. He has another piece of chocolate.

"I'm used to having things to do. Important things. I've been hurt before, I've been imprisoned before." The details are locked up under the scars. They don't matter for what he's trying to explain. "And when I got out or escaped, all I had to focus on was making it through the next day. Finding food, a place to sleep, making sure my people made it through. I don't have that here."

Another piece of chocolate. Another long silence. "I get confused sometimes. I wake up and I don't know where I am--but that makes sense. It just lingers sometimes."

[konstant]

"You're used to not having time to process, to cope," he says, quietly. He doesn't rush Jesus, he listens, he watches.

He has a piece of chocolate too, and he considers what he's being told, remembers the question Jesus asked him: he's not alive. What is he now?

"And there's a lot to process here. More than usual for you, but also the same things."

[hippie_ninja]

"I think a lot of it is not knowing why I'm still here. I died." He can say it out loud and accept it now. "I didn't want to die, I had things I still wanted to do, but I did. And now I still can't do any of those things--I can't help my friends. I can't help shape the new world. I can't teach anything useful to new survivors because none of us are in any real danger."

He rubs a hand over his eyes, as if trying to clear some other vision from them. "But I still have myself. And I still know myself. I just don't know how to fit into a real society anymore."

[konstant]

There it is again, that word: real. It gets thrown around so readily, and it means so many different things.

"I'm sorry," he says, low, quiet. He didn't leave any friends behind, but he knows how it feels to have lost a deeply felt sense of purpose. "It's hard to focus on the good, new things when you're still mourning the old."