Character insights will not be chronological and will fall between R:1 and R:2. It'll be fairly obvious which is which, however.

-Emotions Done-
057: Hopeful
062: Indifference
071: Melancholy
087: Sick
096: Moving On

****NOTE: Due to recent circumstances, most of these can be considered 'alternate reality' fiction. 'S what I get when I plan too far in the future.

Title: Existing
Emotion: (O62) Indifferent
Rating/Warning: Alcohol consumption and a reference to las tetas.
Author's Notes: The first of many looks into Conner after the fire at CyberConnect.

Another day of work. Another day of life. Another day of existing.

Conner had never been very good at grieving those he had lost in his life and the damages wrought by CyberConnect's fire were no different. It wasn't like being numb, he felt plenty, but it was like he stopped caring. Stopped giving a shit. The period of indifference never lasted and never inflicted too much damage as a kid, but now that he was an adult with his own business, it was making getting cash increasingly difficult. Surprise surprise, little old ladies didn't like to hear, "It's just a dog," when they came in asking for you to find their pet and guys generally didn't appreciate asking you to track their potentially-unfaithful wives and girlfriends only to hand you a picture of said individual, have you stare between them and the photo, and remark, "Oh, she's definitely cheating on you."

After leaning back in his shabby desk chair and enduring a maelstrom of shouts from a particularly unhappy client, Conner had found himself locking up the shack of an office on one of California's many sidestreet strip malls with an eye on the refurbished Harley Davidson parked in its lot. Usually the idea of hopping on the hog, one he and his father had begun working on together after he first awoke from his coma, had his heart pumping...but today there was nothing but the steady coursing of blood that had that muscle moving.

With a few steps, a swing of his legs, the quick pull of a helmet and the turn of a key, he was off, merging with a hearty roar of the engine into the busy traffic of Los Angeles.

Sitting most of the day in the blaring light of the sun made the leather of the seat burn into his ass and the metal of the bars sizzle uncomfortably into the flesh of his palms, but he couldn't bring himself to be annoyed. Shit happened. The jet-black motorcycle was a pain in the ass to ride this time of year, so why be pissed at something you had come to expect? The only thing that moved his otherwise dulled mind was emerald-green outlined, flaming words 'Lupus Nulus' on the left side of the beast's belly and 'Lowen' on the right. Conner was still waiting for Cara to complain about the latter.

What should have been a brief ride to the local bar was made cumbersome and lagged due to traffic and still, still Conner felt his face move not a muscle. He'd get there when he got there. The parking lot was packed when he pulled in, but the private investigator liked it that way. Less eyes on him. Nobody would notice when he walked through the door. Old Freedom Fighter instincts disliked crowds, but he selectively chose to ignore them whenever he stopped by the place for a beer. Kicking the stand out and sliding the helmet off his head and onto the handlebars, Conner killed the engine and slipped the keys into his pocket, footsteps aiming him inside.

Only a brief look was offered to the neon glow of an animal's eyes inside of what he guessed was supposed to be a cave with the words 'The Den' blazing in a similar fashion below it. A quick run of his hand fixed most of the damage the helmet had done to his hair. Clad in black boots, dark charcoal jeans and a green shirt with some random Japanese symbol on the front of it (something he had purchased on a whim during one of his trips to Japan to see Sekai), nothing stood out about the man as he slipped towards an unoccupied, upraised table in the corner of the bar. Though it was no restaurant, you could get some grub at the Den just the same and, because of it, Conner never had to worry about heading up to the bar to get a drink. As always, a woman found him within moments of his arrival, gum smacking rudely as she asked him what he wanted to the point that it even distracted him from the tight pull of her black uniform over one of Cali's finest surgical successes. Or some would think, anyway. Conner found them gaudy.

Moments later and the dark larger was in his hands, the cold condensation of the glass and the waft of yeast and wheat doing nothing to stir him. Why had he thought this would help again?

Better yet, why was he here at all?

Title: The Other Woman
Emotion: (O57) Hopeful
Rating/Warning: If half-naked women offend you, read not further ye wee ones.
Author's Notes: Post R:1, but before Conner has started R:2. A glimpse at Cara.

It wasn't her stirring that woke him, nor the sudden blast of light from the open bathroom door leaking into the bedroom and across his eyes. The absence itself, the void of warmth at his side served to wake Conner from dreams of dying wolves and bloodstained girls that he was never able to save.

Hazel eyes, narrowed with fatigue, peeled themselves open to stare at the wrinkle of sheets next to him, an idle hand smoothing them out as his gaze shifted to the open curtains and the full moon that smiled softly down. Such a thing still called to part of his mind, a part that had been freed and subsequently killed because of the server fires, and made him want to run outside, to breathe it all in. The altered neural chemistry that had given him access to broadened senses even when he had left the game was already beginning to wane back to normality. In a few weeks, there'd be little left but his own memories to remind him of the past. Of them. Of Nulus and his wolf.

Though most of the time, as of late that that was, Conner found himself in a stoic fixture, whenever he woke up in the middle of the night - despite the dreams - there was a feeling of hope kindled within his chest. It was like a dying ember fighting the winds of a hurricane, one that was always snuffed when he woke, but it was cherished just the same. Some might say it was the sound of the beach and the roll of the waves just outside of their apartment (Conner was barely able to afford the place, but working as a private anything in the Los Angeles area earned a decent check), but the P.I. knew better than that. As the bathroom light flicked off, Conner looked to the explanation of the weak, but present hope. With the only item of clothing on coming in the form of a covering, oversized white t-shirt, it was hard to think of the approaching Cara as anything but sexy.

Only standing at an inch shorter than him with short, currently messy raven tresses and eyes a green that would make the late Nulus stare, she couldn't be more perfect. Something in his face showed this apparently because as she slipped beside him, arm sliding across his chest to hold him and legs intertwining with his own, the grin on her face looked almost painful. Though no words came with such a smile, the kiss and pulling bite at his bottom lip that followed was more than enough.

Conner knew that because he was there, because the woman pulled up next to him with her face buried contently into the side of his neck was real, things couldn't be so bad. Things wouldn't stay so bad. All it took was Cara's slow, hot breathing curling over the hollow of his throat to tell him one thing, to tell him there would always be something definite in his dark age of uncertainty and loss...

Hope.

Title: The Guilty Are Never Guilty Enough
Emotion: (O87) Sick
Rating/Warning: A little dark.
Author's Notes: A look into Leo's...'future.'

Conner's hand shook in front of his mouth as he read the old news article, dated back a few months after Lowen's funeral, about Leo. The disbelieving youth's father had clipped the story when it first came out, knowing the day his son woke that he'd want to know what happened, want to know why he would never see his best friend again. Conner didn't have the will to cry, to hardly breathe, shock and despair too overwhelming as his eyes scanned line after line of what lay on the table before him. Rather than leave the kitchen, Darren Sunderland hung back and rested against the counter as his son's heart sank, as printed letters gutted him. He had been tempted to wait until the now-adult had been awake from his coma a little longer, a little more, but Conner would have yelled at him for not saying anything. From the little he knew Conner, he was sure of that much.

COLLEGE STUDENT COMMITS SUICIDE IN DORM ROOM

Twenty-one year old Leonardo Oliver killed himself in his dorm room today. According to his fellow students, the on-and-off coma of his best friend, Conner Sunderland, had him in a sinking state of depression. It supposedly began a few months back, when Conner fell again into a coma after his second false waking in a few months. Since that point, he had been noted talking to himself, having violent night-terrors that would even leave him hospitalized for a few days on end, and rarely ever leaving his room.

"All he ever did was study. One night, when he was sleeping, he kept calling himself a murderer. I asked to transfer roommates after that." Said culinary sophomore, Travis Denmore and former roommate of 'Leo', as he was called at the school.

Teachers reported a notable decline in his work ethic. Though we were unable to reach Mr. Oliver for comment on his son's death, Mrs. Oliver answered our phone call and blamed the event on the sleeping Conner. When asked why it was his fault, she hung up.

Leo was found in the showers with the water still running, a 9mm handgun and a bullet in his head. Investigators found a note taped to his computer that read simply, 'Don't hate me, Conner. I'm just sick of the dreams. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

With murmurs of murders-past and the dreams that haunted the youth, investigators have been looking into deaths in the past twenty years in New York City, but have yet to report any findings.

SUICIDE continues on C4.

Conner couldn't read the rest of the article, couldn't bring himself to flip through it anymore. What he felt was sick, wrong. Horror occupied him too much for tears to fall, prevented him from expressing the sudden churn of his heart in that manner. When his father put a hand on his shoulder, however, he launched himself out of the seat and bolted into the bathroom to empty his stomach and, God help him, vomit the guilt away.

But he never could.

Title: Lover Boy
Emotion: (O96) Moving On
Rating/Warning: None that come into mind.
Author's Notes: A fairly big spoiler on what comes to be of Conner and Cara, for those who follow his storyline.

The night was calm and ubiquitous above him, winking down thousands of diamond eyes in something startlingly similar to a memory that still seemed fresh. He was unmoved by the frightful reminder of a creature long dead. On these occasions, when Conner pulled himself out the condominium to sink wiggling toes into the damp, tide-kissed edge of the beach with little more than blackness and silver light above, all that tended to curtain the Private Investigator's thoughts were...her. He suspected Cara knew of the light affairs with his own mind under the watchful iris of the full moon and, in turn, suspected that's why she never came out with him during those three days. The closest thing the man had heard from her regarding it, he mused with a tossed glance to the ocean beyond, was a joking quip about his 'time of the month.' And that was that. Maybe it was the look he had given in response, or her own natural intuition when it came to him, but there hadn't been anything since. The raven-haired, snarky beauty had never, in the few years they had been together, demanded an explanation or cried out in rage at his behavior.

But…wasn't it cheating, in a way?

Conner considered her a better person than he for it. No matter how heated their arguments, she would never bring up Lowen; never insulted the deceased queen of a digital land, never cursed her, never so much as did a thing but speak kindly of her boyfriend's long-gone love. She was better than him for it because, with every big blow out they had, he never neglected to bring up her murder of Gemini, of her psychopathic hysterics in "The World"...of everything.

So it was with thoughtful hazels closed in lieu of a brief, fleeting beach breeze, that Conner found himself without the usual guilt that came with Lowen's consideration. Instead, recollections of Cara's indifference with how he spent the full moon nights came because she was all he could think about. Like the dark above and around, he was calm because of it. Or rather, he was content because he knew that he had finally shed the last of his engrossed love for Lowen in favor of a more natural one of those that were gone.

Strong hands were comfortably snugged into his black jean pockets, tight-fitting white shirt lazily getting a ripple or two from the second ruffle of wind to catch him thus far. Conner's thoughts drifted then between the cool air and what he now knew was to come with Cara. A woman who, had he not been so immersed in his own skull, wouldn't have been able to catch him off guard with a sudden 'Boo!' behind him. When the P.I. turned to her, he found his girl smiling ear to ear, proud that she had actually - for the first time in months - been able to surprise him. Though the 'superman senses', as she called them, had been faded for ages, his time with the Freedom Fighters was never lost. All of that, every word and every syllable, was condensed in a grin that was as wry as it was mirthful. This was the first time, ever, that she had interrupted his sanctuary and Conner knew, through a simple glance, that it had been for the sheer sake of startling him. Clad in an ankle-length, white-cloth skirt that flowed in random bursts on the wings of the ocean air currents (her hair, unusually long for her and an obsidian that fell a little past her shoulders in sensual waves, matching that flow) and a white shirt of the same material that stated a few inches above her naval, Conner's green-eyed goddess was everything.

So he shoved her a little.

Her smile, the split of lips that could bring the world to its quaking knees, began to fade. "Conner? What the...hell..."

Timed after the 'the', his own smile began to twitch. With it, she shoved him back - harder, of course, it was always like that with her - and her own smirk blossomed a second time. When Conner was upon her again, it was to hoist her up by the waist and into the air, ignoring that giggled and womanly squealing, and fall with her to the sands. The rolling and laugh-riddled wrestling that followed ended with Conner hovering just inches above her and the chortles slipping slowly to an end. Though she smiled still, the ensuing silence seemed to confuse her. So Conner broke it.

"Marry me."

There was only a heartbeat in-between the wrap of her arms around the back of his head, laying as she was, and her response.

"It's about time, lover boy."

They kissed softly, tender, and lived lifetimes in instants of lips gliding along lips. Never again would Conner spend the full moons without Cara. Never again, on any given day, would she come second.

Title: All Too Human
Emotion: (O71) Melancholy
Rating/Warning: PG-13/R, depending on your point of view.
Author's Notes: Takes place after the (087) Sick emotion.

It had been a few weeks since his father had shown him the article, but to Conner it felt like only seconds. The nauseating guilt was fresh and raw, gnawing at his psyche like a cancerous rat. It drove him out of the house where he grew up and into apartments as shady and shabby as they could get in New York City. The sight of squatting crackheads and huddling, beaten whores that so often greeted him on the way up was enough to sooth his pain...for a little. Pitying others only helped for so long, of course, and desperation - or genetics, some may say - drove him to the gut-churning burn of alcohol. When he wasn't wallowing drunk in the hole in the wall he occupied, Conner was at the center of shitfaced brawls at local bars that usually left those around him broken and bleeding in piles on the ground. In his booze-addled brain, the fractured individual found solace in using his fists to slug back the darkness of his own thoughts that constantly threatened to swallow him whole. The emotional obligations of what he had caused were stacked higher by the depression that came with his refusal to return calls from Sekai, Raquar and the rest that his father would occasionally stop by to relay. Be it the stench of an old addiction or the troubling vision of what his son had become, Darren Sunderland never stayed long.

Back in 'The World', Conner had been Zan, had been a formidable warrior with a cause and a werewolf that could decimate the enemy ranks. Now? Now he was human and now he was weak. Where he lived and his precarious lifestyle earned him questionable acquaintances that would bring him to the next stage of his wretched mourning. In time, the liquor couldn't stop him from feeling his sorrow for Leo, for Lowen and Nulus, and pathetic as he was...Conner decided not to feel anything. Too much a coward to end his own life, the sickly man used his new "friends" to score bottle after bottle of ups and downs. A mouthful would keep him up, would keep him floating away like a balloon on the beach and bring with it a chemical bliss until he decided sleep was a good idea and popped another palm of the opposites. The downers, names all sounding the same, effectively turned off the ability to feel anything (which, really, was just peachy with Conner) and put him down for twenty-four, sometimes forty-eight hours of slumber. Eventually, he learned how to mix the pill cocktails in a way that killed the nightmares and made those sleeping marathons blank and empty. Instead of causing trouble at the dives, the junkie spent most of his times sprawled on sticky carpet staring at the TV with a zombified expression on his face and drool on his cheek. Conner had become the one who needed saving.

All too human indeed.