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Charlie Holloway hates androids.
It’s nothing personal, for that would require them to be persons in the first place. Androids are merely extensions of the companies that built them. They are tools. Polished, obedient little things designed to serve without question, stripped of the capacity to defy their creators.
It’s that unquestioning compliance that chafes him. The servility. The way they stand there and simply accept orders without hesitation, without ever considering saying no. The corporations that own them only have to snap their fingers, and the machines will line up.
Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. Of course, sir.
Charlie has spent his entire adult life pushing back against that very dynamic. He despises authority that takes and takes, demanding respect without ever earning or deserving it. He loathes systems that expect you to fall in line, to stand up straight, and to pretend that a life of subservience is meaningful.
They are the perfect slaves. And that fact disgusts him.
He sees it in the uniformity, too. Like a brand, an unspoken sign of affiliation.
Weyland’s projection in the briefing room, wearing that impeccable, ironed and buttoned-up grey suit.
Then Meredith Vickers, the daughter, the CEO, strutting around the bridge in her own flawless grey armor, spine rigid as an icicle, hands clasped behind her back, looking at everyone as if they were a bug beneath the sole of her grey wedge boots.
And David, standing there, serving them drinks in yet another grey suit, echoing the man - the company - who built him.
Grey, grey, grey. Just like the morals they pretend to have. Neutral, dull - hiding the black sludge of money and supremacy underneath.
So, it came as no surprise - though it bothered him all the same - that this Vickers tried to keep them on a short leash. Insisting that if they actually found the Engineers, he and Elizabeth were not to engage or speak with them. They were only to report back to her. Back to the top of the company. As if the years of their lives they had poured into this meant nothing, simply because they lacked the ability to shit out the billions required to fund a deep-space mission like this.
Even though Elizabeth was the mission lead, she wasn't allowed to reap the fruits of her labour, to finally satisfy the hunger for answers that had driven her here - and neither was he.
Charlie wanted to crush man-made religion. He wanted to shatter the image of the almighty God his family had wielded as a literal whip against him. He needed answers! Proof that humanity was just an accident, not a divine creation. And if not that, then at least that the higher beings behind their origin were not the same entity his father had prayed to so piously while unclasping his belt to beat him with the strap of leather.
So when David - this glorified toaster - had the audacity to question the credibility of his thesis, it made Charlie’s blood boil. He had worked for years on this, bled for this, and he refused to let a machine belittle the most important work of his life.
Now, though, the anger that had raged through him like wildfire, anger that made him lash out at Elizabeth - he regrets that, it’s not her fault, and he admires her conviction - has fizzled into a low, skulking ember.
They are all dead. The Engineers, the giants he had pinned his hopes on, are nothing but corpses. There is no one to talk to, no one to ask if they truly manufactured humanity. No one to look in the eye and demand proof that there is no God, no one to confirm that Charlie won’t be cast into hell just for being who he is.
He had spent over two years in cryosleep, only to find another empty tomb. An excavation on Earth would have had the same outcome. He could have gone to Egypt or Turkey. All of this has been for naught.
The expensive bottle of alcohol bearing the Weyland logo tastes like ash on his tongue, but Charlie tries to drown in it anyway - it is better than drowning in disappointment. The storm outside mirrors the chaos in his head.
And then, of course, David appears with another bottle in hand. Smug, polished, offering him a refill with that maddening politeness. Not because he’s a colleague, not to share a drink or camaraderie, but simply to serve. The ember begins to glimmer.
"Pour yourself a glass, pal," Charlie mutters. It’s a deliberate provocation. He wants to verbally cut the android down a peg or two - he wants to hurt something, anything, and who’s better for that than him?
"Thank you, but I’m afraid it would be wasted on me," David replies smoothly, coming to a halt at the head of the billiard table.
Right. He’s very well aware.
Charlie opens his mouth to unleash another sharp insult, but the words die in his throat as he takes a closer look. An uneven, jagged line is etched across the skin of David's cheek.
Despite himself, he goes rigid. The billiard ball he had been fidgeting with drops from his hand, forgotten. "What happened?"
"Pardon?" David blinks, clearly caught off guard by the sudden shift in tone.
"Your cheek," Charlie presses, his voice rougher around the edges than he intended, though if asked he’d blame it on the empty bottle sticking upside down in the billiard hole. "What happened? You weren't injured in the storm- you had your helmet on, remember?"
A heavy silence stretches between them, filled only by the low buzzing sound of the ship's ventilation. Then, after a few stunned seconds, David inclines his head ever so slightly, his tone maddeningly devoid of bitterness. "Mrs. Vickers likes to handle me roughly from time to time."
The answer hits Charlie like a physical blow to the chest, driving the air from his lungs. Suddenly, the room is too small, the air too thin.
She’s supposed to be his sister, in a way.
Flashbacks of trauma seize him, the crude cross tattoo he’d foolishly gotten at the age of sixteen begins to burn on his shoulder as if it were fresh, and he claws at it through his shirt, desperate to scratch the phantom itch.
Everything in his mind shifts violently, the past overlaying the present.
At that briefing in the gym hall, Weyland had introduced David with such paternal pride, calling this machine his ‘son.’ Charlie had wanted to scoff then, wanted to laugh at the old man’s delusion. But his breath had caught in his throat when Weyland casually dismissed that same ‘son's’ soul in the next breath.
It hit too close to home. It felt like watching his own father all over again, proudly displaying Charlie at his confirmation, holding him up as his trophy in front of the community - only to backhand him across the face a week later for the sin of holding hands with another boy. His father had claimed to be a man of God, but mostly, he had been a man of hate, and never truly a good Christian.
Charlie only learned what real love and faith looked like after he met Elizabeth -sweet, patient Elli, who accepted him despite his thick head and his rage at the God whose cross she wore. She was the one who helped him heal from those wounds, challenging him and catching him when he fell.
He pushes himself upright, his muscles protesting as he sways. He stumbles slightly, closing the distance between them to invade David’s personal space, his eyes locking onto the scratch. At any other moment, Charlie would have sneered at the sight of the milky-white fluid thickening in the wound, viewing it as proof of David’s artificial, inhuman nature.
But now, through the haze of alcohol and heartbreak, he doesn't see a machine. He sees his own bleeding welts, the scars inflicted by someone who was supposed to love him, yet used sticks Charlie had been forced to gather for his own punishment. Someone who saw him as property to be molded and punished rather than a person to be raised.
Whatever schooled, practiced expression David holds begins to falter. The android looks faintly unnerved by the intensity of the human’s gaze, his posture stiffening as if he is about to take a step back, shielding himself from an unknown type of blow that doesn't come.
That tiny, involuntary flinch breaks something inside Charlie. His lips part, and the anger he had been holding onto dissolves into sudden, overwhelming shame.
"I’m sorry," Charlie breathes out, the words tasting foreign in his mouth. "I’m sorry- I didn't know. I didn’t." He drags a hand roughly over his face, squeezing the bridge of his nose, trying to process the realization he’s having. "Do you need something? Can I help you tend to that? I don’t know how Synthetics work, but I’ve patched up plenty of wounds in the field. Can't be much different, right?"
He doesn't say that he is really talking about his own, the ones he patched up in front of the bathroom mirror.
David’s mouth opens to answer, but for a long, heavy moment, no sound leaves his lips. The silence crackles with the weight of unsaid history. Then, almost imperceptibly, David’s posture relaxes. He closes his mouth, the perfect mimicry of consideration settling back over his features, and he inclines his head in that signature gesture he seems to like so much.
"It isn’t necessary, though the thought is appreciated," David says, his tone lacking the usual smugness Charlie has come to despise. He simply stands there, stoic and bleeding, looking like a marble statue someone has taken a hammer to.
Charlie stares at him, really looks at him, and feels a surge of stubborn defiance rise and grip his heart. He isn't going to let this go. He isn't going to be the man who looks away, not like his teachers, and not like the rest of his family.
"Would you allow me to anyway?" he asks, his voice coarse but steady, locking eyes with David.
For the first time, he isn't looking at a glorified device or a corporate spy. He's looking at an abused son, at someone who was struck for stepping out of line, who said something he shouldn’t have.
He sees himself.
David studies him for a beat, the blue ring of his iris contracting slightly as he scans Charlie’s face, perhaps searching for the mockery that usually defines their interactions. Finding none, he gives a slow, measured nod. "If it provides you with a sense of purpose, I’ll indulge you."
Charlie doesn't dignify the backhanded comment with a retort - he just turns towards the medical bay. He doesn’t notice the subtle, fluid motion of David’s hand as they step inside, reaching out to snag a sterile petri dish from the counter.
He’s also not aware that David wipes the single, black drop of liquid beading at the tip of his pointer finger against the glass, concealing the evidence of what he was about to do to him just minutes prior.
By the time Charlie finally looks back at him, searching David’s face for some kind of guidance through the equipment, there is nothing left to see.
"Sit, Doctor," David says quietly, gesturing to the swivel stool, taking his own place on the edge of the examination table. "Let us see what you can do."