[9S sits up straighter, lips pressed into a thin line as he considers for the first time how he would quantify something of this nature. How would he? It's a simple answer when it comes to 2B, because he knows what it was like to be without her. He's lived and died with her so many times over, so he knows the word for her is family. No matter what, she's a part of his life, a part of him, and always will be. And he would have it no other way. Without her, there existed only a profound emptiness he couldn't overcome.

But what about somebody like Jude? A human he'd met not so long ago, has spent time talking and helping and occasionally being at odds with. Someone with a kind smile and warm hands and confusing behavior he hasn't learned how to read. How important is all of that?

Androids were created to love and serve the race that gave them life. It goes without saying that he and 2B would be prepared to die for them, but that doesn't speak to something personal and individual, does it?]

You're the human I think of first. When it's dangerous, or when I'm wondering what people are doing, or just when I'm scouting terrain and my thoughts sort of drift, because I'm a Scanner and they do.

[He cares about the others, of course he does. He's friends with so many more than he expected he ever could be, and he understands them all differently. Appreciates them. Some of them are soldiers like him, some of them can relate to him in ways he never anticipated. But none, he thinks, have spent so much time with him as Jude, nor tried so stubbornly to understand him. To simply be close. He knows that's just how he is, with everyone, and that's fine.

But it still means a lot to him]

Something like how much... [He looks out at the water then, not quite sure] How would you define that?