Chapter Text
If one were to take a closer look at him, one would probably realize that Gavin Reed is, in fact, quite the intelligent person. Even if, at first glance, there’s little to suggest it. At first glance, he is aggressive and dismissive. At first glance, he antagonizes people, because he speaks his mind too openly, and most people don’t like being confronted with opinions. Especially not with his. Which is probably one of the reasons most people never bother to take a closer look at him.
He is too loud for people to consider him smart, and too offensive for anyone to interpret any occasional restraint as thoughtfulness. Luckily. Yes, he’s quite happy with that misjudgment. Because he is intelligent, really, he is smarter than most people in the precinct, he just … doesn’t want to be.
He doesn’t mind the part where he notices what’s going on around him, or the part where he can follow most conversations, or where he sees connections that others miss, he likes that well enough. He just hates it when people treat him accordingly. What good is being intelligent if everyone expects it of him?
Isn’t it much better to have control over what people think of him? Why shouldn’t he rather hold on to the idea that he can surprise people if he wants to? Not that he actually wants to, why would he? What would that get him, except losing every advantage right away? So, of course he doesn’t want to. And he won’t. But he could. Most of the time …
In any case, he likes the thought that he could.
Of course, he’s not the smartest person he knows. He’s smarter than most average people, somehow, which is probably why he made detective so quickly back then, but that still doesn’t make him the smartest of them all. Not smarter than certain individuals. His brother is probably the best example of that, especially if you ask their parents. Would ask. Not that Gavin cares much anymore. So what if his brother is supposedly better at everything there is, that’s his problem. Gavin doesn’t even want to be better at everything. Not anymore. As long as he can stay as far away from his family as possible, especially from him, he can live with the rest. Or at least accept it.
Although he really would be a hell of a lot happier if he never had to see that damn know-it-all of a brother again, just like he doesn’t see his parents or the rest of those people anymore. But he’s long since accepted that that will never happen.
Of course not.
How could it?
Naturally, his life can’t be that easy, no matter how much he wishes for it. Of course he can fight as much as he wants to never hear or see him again, or … anything else, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
Which he really should have expected.
It never worked before, avoiding him, and now it’s even harder. Because Gavin would have to live on another damn planet not to see his brother anymore. Or maybe even in another universe. And even then, he wouldn’t be surprised if he still saw that damn face everywhere. But he doesn’t live in another universe. Unfortunately. He doesn’t even live in another country. They live in the same goddamn city! As if things hadn’t already been hard enough for him. Fuck his life.
He really wishes he could avoid all of this somehow, but of course it’s impossible to never hear about his brother again. It’s even impossible to avoid his damn inventions! You can’t read an article without stumbling across his name at least once, and you can’t walk down a street without finding his photo on some poster. His brother is everywhere. In every documentary, every interview. No matter where Gavin looks or what he reads, the guy is just there! And even if he somehow managed to avoid it all, he’d still be left with those cursed things everywhere.
He can do whatever he wants, the evidence of his brother’s existence is still everywhere.
Evidence of his supposed intelligence.
Because he’s supposed to be smart — Gavin has heard it all his life, has been compared to him so often it’s burned into his very flesh how far behind he lags, how he’ll never measure up intellectually — his brother‘s supposed to be so much better at everything, and Gavin normally wouldn’t question that, he’s lived this life too long. Whatever. So his brother is the smarter one, always has been … only … not.
Gavin would believe it, really, up until now, up until this very moment, of course he would, after all he’s known it all his life. But it’s clearly not true! None of it is true. His brother isn’t better than Gavin, he isn’t even intelligent at all. Or clever. Or any other word that might mean something even remotely along those lines!
Maybe his brother can build the best machines. The most interesting, most useful, most powerful, strongest, best-functioning and … whatever. Maybe he knows all about these cursed androids, maybe he builds the best ones ever made, maybe he’s got an IQ of 171 or whatever, but that obviously doesn’t make him a smart person. Definitely not.
His brother isn’t smart, he’s a goddamn bastard!
And Gavin has the proof standing right in front of him. Because there’s simply no other explanation for the fact that he walks into the precinct, looks around, and his gaze falls straight onto the one thing he didn’t even know he could hate. But he does. He probably hates it more than anything else in his life.
He can’t stand androids, sure, because they remind him too much of the life he had and is trying so hard to forget, but this? This is worse than he could have ever imagined. Androids are bad because they are his creations, and Gavin wants nothing to do with him. But this? The fact that he walks into the precinct and immediately comes face-to-face with his ex? That’s a full-blown disaster.
Only, it’s not his ex. Of course not. Because that alone wouldn’t be bad enough. No, instead he has one of those things in front of him. One of those cursed machines, which his ex most definitely never was! But the machine looks exactly like him. The clothes are different — the thing wears a weird suit with a CyberLife logo and an LED — but apart from that, it’s his spitting image.
And it looks so real.
How can something so false look so incredibly real that, for a moment, it even robs him of his breath? That it makes him long for something past so badly it almost physically hurts?
And within just a few minutes, his life is so much worse than it’s ever been before. Because if there was one thing from back then that he had managed to ignore, unlike everything else, it was his ex. And this? This doesn’t help at all.
What exactly did he do so wrong in a past life to deserve any of this?