Through the Looking Glass (Daniel Wilson, James Wilson, gen, PG-13)
I thought earlier this year that maybe I was done with House fic. Turns out I was wrong. Concrit gratefully accepted, particularly stuff that I can, you know, fix *g*
Title: Through the Looking Glass
By: daasgrrl
Rating: Gen, PG-13
Characters: Daniel Wilson, James Wilson
Word count: 1,900
Beta: Thanks as always to evila_elf for looking it over.
Summary: “Well, it's no use your talking about waking him,” said Tweedledum, “when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real.” - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Notes: Essentially a missing scene from “The Social Contract”. Bizarrely inspired by the discovery of Daniel H. Wilson’s book, How to Survive a Robot Uprising, but not nearly as cracktastic as that might seem to imply *g*
Through the Looking Glass
It’s too bright.
Everything is all harsh fluorescents and gleaming tiles, because that’s the way they like it. Bright, so that there are no shadows, nowhere to hide. So everything in their grasp can be seen and weighed and measured. It’s night-time again, he can see that through the steel-barred, shatter-resistant window, the thin curtains pulled wide, and he wishes vainly that he were back out there, in the soothing darkness. He never minded the chill winds in winter, or the way the sidewalks steamed in summer. It was the way of nature, of things that lived and knew that they were living.
He sits cross-legged on the bed, the pink-beige sheets puckering outwards in ripples from his slight weight. There is a tissue between his fingers, one of the few things he is allowed to have around him here, and he concentrates on tearing it very slowly into a single long strip, starting from one corner and continuing all the way around, ever inwards. If he’s good, the nurse promised him, maybe he can have other things, in time. He doesn’t want to be good, because that’s how it starts. But he must pretend, for now, if he is ever to leave this place again. He knows he shouldn’t have fallen asleep in that lobby; should have gone to Central Park the way he usually did. And he shouldn’t have fought back; he’d always known that they were far stronger than he could ever hope to be. But he had been angry. And tired. So very tired.
They’re making him take their tablets again, ones like he’s never seen before; they’re a bright, artificial green, a parody of life, of hope. He tried to resist, at first, but they threatened him with injections, and he hates those even worse. The nurse watches him swallow them, morning and evening, checks his mouth after each dose to check that they’ve gone all the way down his throat. They make him foggy, limp, easy prey for whatever they want to do to him. Or, as the nurse likes to put it, calm. They make him calm. Calmly, he finishes the tissue he’s working on, sets it aside carefully in a circular pile on the night stand. He draws a fresh one out smoothly from the box, and starts again.
He looks up when the door opens, and it enters the room. Even though he’s been warned about the visit, the sight of Jimmy’s Construct is a shock to him all the same. He’d half-expected it to look exactly the same as it had in the window of that diner, all those years ago, an exact match for the image indelibly printed on his memory. But it’s noticeably different. Shorter hair; its face heavier around the jawline; fine lines around its mouth and eyes. It looks older. He hadn’t really expected it to age, somehow. But then, even living on the streets he had not failed to notice the swift pace of technology. If flat-screen TVs and thumb-sized music players, why not aging Constructs? Still, it disturbs him in a way he can‘t name.
They stare at each other for what feels like a long time. “Danny,” it says, finally.
The hell of it is, it still sounds just like him. That isn’t right. It isn’t fair. That the Jimmy he loved is gone, and that this thing should be allowed to walk around in his place, sounding just like him. He knows that some of his resentment comes from the fact that even he had been fooled, at first. Because he’d thought Jimmy was special, that he could hold out against them forever.
Brilliant, shining David had always been one of them, for pretty much as far back as Daniel could remember. His mother and father had been spared, at least for the early years of Daniel's life, but as he grew into his teens they’d begun to change, backing away from him, shouldering him like a burden from doctor to doctor. Treating him like a child again, insisting he take this pill or that one. Slowly, he’d come to the realization that they had disappeared a long time ago, leaving only their Constructs behind. But he’d done his best to pretend he hadn’t noticed. Because he’d still had Jimmy to talk to; Jimmy who was real, who understood.
But then Jimmy had gone away to med school, and Daniel had begun to worry, because that just made it easier for them. So he’d had to call Jimmy every day, sometimes more than once, just to check on him, just to reassure himself that nothing had changed, that he was still okay. And then they had taken him too, and Daniel hadn’t even suspected until the phone had been slammed down in his ear, so heavily it had made his head ache for minutes afterwards. Only then did he realize. He’d called back anyway, over and over, but in his heart he already knew. Jimmy was gone.
The memory rushes back to him now, and his head hurts all over again, but he’s taken the pills like a good boy, and so he doesn’t yell or scream. He just looks.
“It’s… good to see you,” the Construct continues, blind to his distress. “How are you feeling?”
There is a single white lawn chair near the door, all lightweight curves and plastic, but the Construct comes directly over to him instead. It sits down on the bed beside him. Despite his sudden alarm, for a moment Daniel desperately wishes he could pretend it was real, the way he’d done with his parents all those years ago. Because if this really were Jimmy, then everything would be all right. Jimmy would protect him from them. From everything. But he couldn’t afford to think like that. That was how they got you.
“I’m okay,” he mumbles instead, concentrating on the brief, repetitive movements of his hands.
The Construct reaches out, then, and takes him gently by the left wrist, disengaging him from the tissue he is endlessly tearing. It runs its thumb gently over some of his scars, the tiny nicks all over his forearm that range from angry red to faded white. Not because he actually wants to harm himself - those two teenage incidents aside - but because every now and then he has to check that he is still who he’s always been, still human, and it’s the only way he knows how.
“I’m so sorry,” the Construct says, quietly. “That I hung up on you that night.”
Daniel looks up, surprised that it even remembers. The Construct stares back at him, as though willing him to respond. It even bites its lip, the same way Jimmy always did when he was trying not to cry. Daniel reaches his free hand up slowly, touches the inside corner of one of its eyes. His finger comes away damp, and he puts it to his lips, the salt-tang sharp on his tongue.
“So real,” he says, amazed.
The Construct just shakes its head and looks away, releasing Daniel to swipe at its eyes.
“It’s me, Danny. Maybe you can’t see that right now, but… I’m here, okay? I’ll be here. This time.”
The moment of wonder quickly passes. Now it’s back to the things Daniel is familiar with - the false concern, the hollow assurances, the promises not to be kept.
“You shouldn’t lie to me,” Daniel says. “Jimmy never lied to me. You’re going home now.”
“I meant… I’ll come back and see you very soon. How about next week?”
It’s making him angry now, the fury like a blinding white spark within him, but he knows he’s not allowed to be angry. It’s… what did they always say? It’s inappropriate. Anger means more pills, more people endlessly lecturing him in white-washed rooms. Or worse, burly uniformed men shouting in his face, spit flying, being forced face-down on the lobby floor, blood streaming from his nose. Because his anger at being wakened from sleep is inappropriate.
“You don’t have to pretend to care about me,” he says, remembering the way his blood had stained the pale blue carpet. “I know what you are. Just like David - perfect, the way they always wanted you to be. Passing all your exams, like a good boy. You’re a doctor now, aren’t you?”
The Construct hesitates before answering. “Yes.”
“With a perfect wife and two perfect children.”
“I’m divorced,” it says slowly, unwillingly. “No kids.”
And for a second there is a flicker in its eyes that reminds Daniel of the brother who disappeared long ago. Unbidden, it bubbles up to the surface again, that sense of loss that never really leaves him.
“I miss Jimmy,” he says, turning away. “I miss him so much.”
He doesn’t mean to reveal so much of himself, but he can’t bear it any longer, being stuck here with this bad impersonation of his brother. In an effort to calm himself, he goes back to the tissue, but his hands are shaking, and the long strip comes to an abrupt end. He screws the entire tissue up into a tight ball, clutching it in his fist.
The Construct unexpectedly wraps its own hand around Daniel’s. Its grip is warm, but unrelenting.
“I know,” it says, in that soothing, placating tone that Daniel has always hated. How could it possibly understand anything of what his brother had really been like?
Then it stands up, automatically letting him go as it rises. It takes a couple of steps away, and then turns back. Daniel can see the coat it holds swirling at the edge of his vision.
“Danny? I… there’s someone I’d like you to meet. A friend. I think you’d like him.”
Daniel shrugs, his hand still clenched, the skin burning where the Construct had touched it. “You’re all the same.”
He looks up then, and sees the Construct smile, although it looks sad at the same time. Just another deception to add to all the others.
“He… isn’t quite like the rest of us. He’s very bad at sympathy, for a start.”
For the first time, Daniel is genuinely interested. “You mean he’s real?”
“I… guess you could say that. In fact, he might be the only one left of us who is. Will you see him? Sometime?”
To be honest, Daniel can’t see the point of it. Maybe it’s a subtle trick, something to lull him into mute co-operation by holding out a promise of survival in their world. But for all intents and purposes they have him anyway. He knows that all that really matters at this instant is that he is good, that he is calm. He nods graciously, and the Construct nods back in silent acknowledgment, and then it walks away.
The room seems to be very quiet after it leaves. Soon afterward, the nurse comes back and switches off the glaring overhead fluorescents. However, the light manages to seep in anyway, from the grounds outside his window, from the corridor past the edges of the heavy door. It’s relentless, much like them. And maybe this time he won’t be able to escape, but he promises himself that he’s not going to go easily. He rubs his right hand uneasily against the surface of his left wrist.
Eventually he curls up on the bed, in the half-dark, and the blankets are soft and comforting around his face. While he was out there, he never felt alone. There were his small group of friends and acquaintances, mostly wanderers like himself, and always the sun and the wind and the changing seasons. Here, he is truly adrift, amidst the blank walls and the equally blank Constructs.
The memories come creeping back to him then, one by one, and he remembers the way his brother once was, and weeps softly for what he has become.