"Romeo's A Girl" (PG-13; Topher, Adelle, Oliver Queen (SV) Davis Bloome (SV) Chloe Sullivan (SV)
Title: Romeo's A Girl
Author: oonaseckar
Pairing/Characters: Topher Brink, Chloe Sullivan, Davis Bloome, Oliver Queen, Adelle Dewitt
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Swearing and profanity, adult concepts.
Spoilers: None. Post-season 8 Smallville, mid-Season 1 Dollhouse. Chloe Sullivan can't
recover from her double bereavement, and takes drastic action that leads her to the Dollhouse. Topher is intrigued: and then complicit and compromised.
Disclaimer: I do not own nor make any claim in any respect regarding the TV shows Dollhouse or Smallville any aspect or character thereof.
Word Count: Total wordcount approximately 6,800.
Author's Notes: Dollhouse/Smallville crossover, chapters 1-2/∞, orginally posted at my LJ.
Beware Robert Frost references. Or maybe not, my erudition is slipping.
Chapter 1
O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven,
Keep me in temper: I would not be mad.
'King Lear', Act I Scene V, William Shakespeare.
She didn’t know what to do. She was frantic all the time with an unexplained urgency, an indefinable need, like horrible pain or insane itching. But it was neither of these things nor anything else she could identify, and she couldn’t take an antihistamine or analgesic and fix it. Or scratch till she bled, or kill herself.
They told her it was grief, which seemed ridiculous. Lois sat her down again and again, stopping her frantic pacing, cleaning, midnight walking, making her drink tea and sit at the kitchen table. This was apparently supposed to make her feel better.
Her husband was dead. So was Davis. She was only supposed to be grieving for one of them, and had to remember the fact when anyone was around. It’s hard to remember anything when your brain is either stopped like a clock or screeching like someone’s left a spoon in the dish and turned the microwave on. Just waiting for the door to blow.
Her doctor dosed her up and it didn’t do a damned thing. Pills weren’t going to bring anyone she loved back. They weren’t going to change hard facts, like partial responsibility for Jimmy’s absence and the hole he’d left in his family’s life, as well as hers. Like Davis being willing to kill her for an error of judgment, a selfish leap for safety, when she would have sworn her life away that she knew him better than that.
She didn’t suddenly see a saintly Jimmy without flaws and weaknesses, didn’t try to reinstate a romantic devotion that hadn’t existed in the first place. She didn’t forgive Davis for being willing to crush her skull, even after a lifetime starved for love, in however much pain. These facts didn’t help. Jimmy had been her friend, as well as an asshole sometimes. Davis she’d loved, saved, trusted too much, given too little. Their fallibility did nothing to diminish the pain.
At least she didn’t have to deal with Clark. The relief when he left was so great, it was worth any rubbish she’d had to spout to satisfy him she was in no need of re-education, to get him out the door and out of Smallville. He needed to be right, to know that his version of events was the official one. So much so, he fed her provocative counter-assertions, to get the exculpation he needed to hear, without being responsible for it. Fortunately he couldn’t prevent her mental revision of his version as he continued to spout. Just as long as it was never verbalized and he was never openly crossed.
Because they all said it would get better, she waited. Putting a deadline on it she thought reasonable, she saw the date come and go. After four deadlines had passed and she still woke up, wishing anyone who wasn't Jimmy or Davis dead for daring to be alive, she knew she was going crazy. Properly, truly crazy, the kind that would land her with the same fate as her mother. Obsessional routines that promised safety were taking over her life. It was all she could do not to scream at or hit anyone who stepped in the way when she waited in a line. Pleasure was dead: in fact she was so utterly anhedonic she was barely distinguishable from a corpse. She thought herself about on the verge of visual and auditory hallucination: then that line was crossed, and she drew a fresh line in the sand.
It was a long way past the time for measured, careful, moderate treatments. She retrieved the file on her laptop that wasn't marked as secret or remarkable in any way, and dialed a number from it.
********************
'So, Miss... Sullivan. So nice to meet you. I'm just wondering, what can we do for you?'
She sat across from the woman with the power to switch off her pain, wondered why the fate of so many always rested in the hands of the deluded and the affected. Maybe only they would want such power.
'I arranged a meeting with your assistant.' So dry and cold, her voice, like someone very old, or very very tired.
'You did indeed.' Adele DeWitt consulted papers on her desk. 'In which you made it utterly, utterly clear that you know... let's see... well, rather a lot more than we thought anyone could possibly know about our organisation. Rather more, in fact,' she said, looking up, a threat so mild as to be almost missable in her green eyes, 'than we care for anyone to know. So I ask you again, Miss Sullivan... what can we do for you?'
Chloe felt the dryness of her own smile. 'First, you can disabuse yourself of any notion of the utility of threats, violence, blackmail... any of that. To begin with, I have some useful friends. You may have heard of Oliver Queen. Also Lex Luthor. If I should come to any unfortunate end and certain things are not done - randomly generated things not accessible via duress - and some preconditions not fulfilled, they'll acquire knowledge that would be inconvenient to you.'
'Queen. Yes. We're quite familiar with him.' Not especially surprising, that. Oh, Oliver. 'But when you mention Mr Luthor... I rather understand him to be someone likely to rejoice at any mishap you might encounter, rather than otherwise. Or am I wrong?' Adele DeWitt clearly wasn't used to being wrong.
Chloe nodded. 'Oh, Lex can't abide me: much like many siblings and former friends. But if I'm to get my comeuppance, it's highly likely he might take personal offence should it be at any hands but his. We were close, once, and the memory lingers. I don't like to think what he might do if anyone else harmed me.'
They stared at each other a moment, game on, assessing their hands. Miss DeWitt nodded. 'Very well. I understand your point. But I repeat myself for a third time: Miss Sullivan, what can we do for you?'
Chloe crossed her legs, leant forward a little, spoke with utter sincerity. 'Miss DeWitt, make me a doll.'
******************
They had been arguing for an hour now. You might call it discussion, debate: but there was an irritability, an incomprehension in the older woman's responses that gave them an edge. She had been assessed, rejected as weak: Adele had no patience with her.
'Your chosen course of action is quite unnecessarily drastic. And, if you'll forgive me, dramatic. There are many routes to navigate and survive pain and heartbreak.'
'You seem a little bit moralistic,' Chloe responded, a touch snappy. Her patience was shot lately, along with everything else. 'Aren't you supposed to be the sinister Fagin luring me in, not piously urging me to a life of honest rectitude and virtuous endeavour?'
Adele smiled patronisingly. 'Miss Sullivan, not just anyone can be a doll. And it may surprise you to know that you're not the first person to actively seek it out.'
'Not just anyone... So you have an admissions process?' Chloe eyed her sceptically. 'My SATs were off the chart. Does that help any? You've taken drug addicts, criminals and psychopaths: what exactly do I have to do to get arrested and mindwiped around here? Does watching the two halves of my heart slaughter each other and die not qualify me? You're very quick to judge: wait till it happens to you, then get back to me about it. Seriously, what does it take?''
They paused at the balcony and stared down at the milling throng of beautiful bodies and mindless faces. Adele turned and smiled at her. 'Perhaps you need to need us? Miss Sullivan, you've been very polite: but everything in your face and voice tells me what you think of this set-up. You think us amoral, corrupted, corrupting. But you're not looking deeply enough. You seek us out because it serves your purpose: but many other means could do so. You want what we can offer: but you don't need it. You have innumerable options, family and friends, resources, a brilliant mind. Every one of those lost children down there: they need the shelter we can give.'
Chloe had barely a suggestible bone in her body: but she could see that Adele DeWitt at least wanted to believe what she was saying. It made the protection of half-truths harder to maintain, if she was to achieve her objective.
Unwillingly she conceded a little truth. 'I'm not just here because my heart is broken, Miss DeWitt. That I could - or would have to - live with. There's something else. I have a familial history of - mental instability. My heart hurts: but a broken mind is something I might never come back from.'
Adele nodded, hands drawn behind her back, a more sympathetic look on her face. 'Let's walk together, Miss Sullivan.' They weaved down riserless steps, around dolls and handlers with preoccupied faces, assignments imminent or underway. Past haphazard groups of off-duty operatives, blank smiles not chilling Chloe in the least as they might have once. She wanted that expression, that exact smile, plastered on her own face. That invulnerable, inviolate indifference.
Dewitt stopped at a water fountain, offered her a crystal glass. 'Of course, when you contacted us, we investigated a little way into your history. May I express my regrets for your mother's sad experiences. They were related, I believe, to the Smallville meteor phenomenon?'
Chloe drank greedily. The doctor's pills dehydrated her severely, with no apparent beneficial effects in recompense whatsoever. 'Partly, quite probably. That might have sparked it off. But the family history goes back further than that, further than I knew myself until I started investigating. Great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents have died in asylums. Adolescents in my family tree have taken the usual adolescent route out of their troubles. First and second cousins with money or health troubles, dead under train tracks or at the end of a rope... You have a general idea, I'm sure.'
'Of course, if you look deep enough, far back enough in any genealogical record, all families have some psychological problems,' Adele suggested.
'Of course. But the strain is more virulent and prevalent in my own than I like. There are some amazing individuals in there: inventors, engineers, writers, painters, poets. A number of unarguable geniuses. And at the other end of the spectrum, insanity and criminality and perversion, many many incidences. Miss DeWitt, I don't intend to be a casualty of my genetic tendencies. I'm not functional right now, I'm effectively broken: but my life is waiting for me.'
Adele turned and leaned against the fountain, girlish and womanly, mother, mistress. 'I can understand your fears. May I call you Chloe? I feel I know you better now: I understand better. But Chloe, a statistical risk, however real, isn't the same thing as an imminent threat.' She raised an eyebrow, let the challenge hang in the air.
Their eyes met like a stream flowing between them, thought and information, back and forth. This woman knew, full well, but would accept nothing implicitly. Everything had to be stated outright: she covered her ass well. 'I'm experiencing symptoms,' Chloe conceded flatly. 'More than just bereavement, grief, depression. Let us just say, if I went into too much detail with my doctor, I'd be in Belle Reve already.'
Adele didn't let her off the hook, only raised an eyebrow. Chloe folded.
'I'm getting the full spectrum and it's getting worse. Hallucinatory, obsessional, delusional, compulsive, time compression and elongation, blank periods and blackouts, loss of logic and continuity in conversation... it's periodic at present, and fleeting. I've been able to cover up. But it's only deteriorating. I can read AMA lists of symptoms, understand a peer-reviewed journal article. I'm a layperson but sufficiently educated to recognise an imminent psychotic break. That's the kind of episode that can do damage you don't come back from. Conventional treatments - the ones my friends and family would urge me to - will only contain, ameliorate at best, and won't prevent episodic recurrence. The stats are not good: given my family history, for me they're worse. In familial terms, the historic pattern is a rapid spiral down from the first incident. Few recoveries.'
Her breath was gone. It was out, now, mostly. Let the woman take it or leave it.
Adele took her arm. 'We must discuss it further. But first, come and meet Mr Brink, our chief technician. A delightful young man.'
*************
That was the unspoken agreement. Beyond that were the formalities, and they took up an intolerable period. Meetings, scans, medical histories, contracts and revised contracts and reviews of her psychological competence to consent. Detailed explanation of the process, the agreement, the conditions of her servitude and her release. Many warnings of the seriousness of the step she was taking, of exactly what she was agreeing to in explicit and unattractive terminology. Finally, days later, she was back in Adele's office, drinking excellent coffee, utterly fatigued, hanging on through sheer determination.
'So.' Adele rested hands on her elegantly crossed legs, examined Chloe with alert approval. 'You have two hours left to change your mind.'
Chloe's head sank back. She knocked back the last of her coffee. 'Do you want me to?'
Adele shook her head. 'I only want you to know that the option is still available: right up until the last minute. Your signature means nothing: it's explicitly stated in the terms of the contract that it only comes into effect on completion of your first scan and treatment.'
Chloe thought about that for a moment, and shook her head. 'My mind is made up.'
'Well,' Adele said briskly, 'I confidently expect you to be a marvellous asset to Rossum. And after five years of analgesia and forgetfulness, you'll have your original personality restored, as well as being a relatively wealthy and still young woman. Perhaps you're not as foolish as I thought you when you first arrived in my office.'
'Not quite my old personality,' Chloe reminded her.
'Oh, in all essential respects I think it's fair to say so,' Adele countered. 'Of course, we'll add the pre-agreed tweaks regarding your mental stability, and bump your emotional set-point down a notch or two to enhance your general tranquillity. No point setting you free out into the world in the same condition as you arrived here. But in essence, the things that make you Chloe Sullivan will remain unchanged.
She was still. Pain that was like a hated friend tugged at her, and she tried to shut her mind to memory. 'We all get changed. One way or another. I just want to control those changes - a little. Finally.'
'Of course,' Adele agreed smoothly. 'Your requests will be carried out to the letter. We're expecting great things from your contribution: you're certainly owed the fullest recompense at its end. There's some excitement already about the new Romeo in the Dollhouse.'
Here finally, something that hadn't been discussed. 'Romeo. That'll be my active codename?' She tried it out in her mind, on her tongue. Not that it mattered. 'Shouldn't I be a guy for that?'
'Previous Romeos have been,' Adele agreed. 'But change is delightful. A female Romeo will be so refreshing. Bear in mind the common habit of playing against gender within Shakespeare's plays. At my all-girl private school, a female Romeo in productions was very much the rule. Although the one time we poached a male housemaster from the local boys' dayschool, it caused positively Titanic excitement.'
Chloe carefully eyed the woman up and down, and wondered if Adele DeWitt deliberately spoofed and satirized her own persona to see if any American could identify and call her on it. Good on her if so: it had actually afforded Chloe a moment of amusement, if only that. Jolly hockeysticks, and how.
'I think I'll go and bathe, if that's okay,' she said. 'Get myself relaxed ready for the procedure.'
Adele leaned forward. 'Don't go quite yet.' There was a note of sincerity in her voice. Though if anyone could fake that, then... 'I know that your determination to go forward with your plan means that your feelings remain unchanged. As well as from your multiple interviews and assessments. But, Chloe, I do still feel a measure of concern. While you are a member of the Dollhouse, the utmost care will be taken of you. You will be delivered up to your life in five years time in the peak of physical and mental health. But emotional health is another thing: and much more delicate than our tools can fully deal with, subject to philosophy and ratiocinative processes as much as to biochemical ones. You've chosen to retain all your memories of the two men you've lost, even once you're no longer an inmate. Is that really wise?'
Chloe examined her hands. She felt surges of pain like an actual physical wound. 'I want... the sting taken out of the memories. You can do that for me. You can do that?' She knew the answer, but still lifted her head questingly for confirmation.
Adele nodded. 'We can. We will. We can ward off your inbuilt predisposition to psychosis, rebuild you stronger. We can take the pain, the... burn.... out of your recollections. But is that what you want?'
Chloe blinked back water. She'd held on this far. She could hold on a little longer. 'I don't want to forget. I want to go back to my old life, my old friends. To be able to reminisce, to talk about them... I just, yes, I want the burn out of it. Because it's burning me down right now. Soon there'll only be ashes left. I want to be a doll. Then I want you to fix me.'
Adele's hand came over hers, as she rounded the desk. 'My dear. We will. We'll fix you.'
*************
The little blonde woman lay on the treatment table, her nudity pointlessly covered for modesty's sake by the bonds that held her there, unconscious. The prudishness combined with prurience of Rossum made Topher laugh, or it used to.
He knew this one, had been present at meetings, met her himself in her full outer-worldly form. Even subject to mental deterioration and in the midst of desperate measures, she had been quite a presence. Her intellectual powers were formidable, and her physical charms considerable. It had been enough for him to slightly regret not taking up that fellowship at Metropolis U when he could have done, having had considerably more dazzling offers. Might have been worth it...
Still. That was an irrelevance now. With the mindwipe only waiting on Adele's presence, he wouldn't be having any stimulating discussions with Chloe Sullivan about neuroscience and the feminine advantage in gaming any time soon.
Adele was late. Of course: Adele was always late, for him at least. She insisted on being present for the induction of this very special new doll, she was bringing the newbie hotshot handler from the Japanese branch who was the only guy they were going to entrust her to, she gave him all kinds of shit about how delicate this operation was and all the fancy friends Miss Sullivan had and the bottomless pit of lava they'd all be in if anything went wrong... and she was late. And now here she was, atypically breathless and hurried, rushing through the door. Hair slightly disordered. Handlerless.
Her rage poured through the lab like lava itself. A botched job, an assassinated handler, an impersonation and a narrow escape from asphyxiation by a malevolently turned active... Oh dear God, the fun at Rossum never started. Especially since... 'Alpha?'
Adele turned to vent at him, since he was handy. 'Of course it was Alpha, you utter ratwit! When is it ever anyone else! Can someone please explain to me why it is that we have still to put that mad dog down and release ourselves from perpetual psychological strain and the threat of imminent death?'
He was the only other member of staff there, so she was probably addressing him. It was unlikely Miss Sullivan would be able to help her. He judged that distraction might be the safest tactic. 'Are we doubling up with another active's handler, or delaying the wipe until you identify a suitable replacement?'
It at least warded off the savage ferocity of the beast. He could see her stop and think about it. Her mouth straightened into a decisive line. 'Neither.'
Oh, what a woman, what a piece of work, what a... 'And in that case, your plan is...?'
'Mr Brink, you have a new job description. A new and expanded job description. Congratulations. You're Romeo's new handler.'
****
Protest availed him nothing. 'But I've got no relevant experience or training!'
'Oh,' she said, waving his objection away, 'we can fix you up with all of that. Martial arts, firearms, intensive one-on-one training, you'll be a ninja before you know it. Don't worry, my fair-headed boy.'
'I'm a nerd with a neuroscience Phd and a Caltech education. I can't catch a ball. The only sports I'm involved in require a Wii. I hyperventilate if required to engage in too much direct eye contact. And I already happen to be holding down a full-time job, in case you hadn't noticed, as the head technician in this Rossum base! For god's sake, there have to be more appropriate candidates-'
She interrupted him, brusque, casual, uninterested. 'We can make of you what we will. By any means necessary, let me remind you... Ivy can take over many of your mundane duties on the technical side, though you will maintain overall authority. There is no problem. This is happening. In any case, stop whining. You're a big strong lad.'
'A big strong lad with dyspraxia,' he muttered, turning away. 'And a severe anxiety-related aversion to firearms. And cowardice.'
************
This time was the last time she'd feel this pain (such pain). She lay quietly, and willed for Jimmy's easy smiling face to be the last thing she remembered. Of course the willing was what made it impossible, and even here and even now his face intruded. (Just like always, at the worst possible moment, with Jimmy.)
But this was the last time.
*************
Twenty minutes later Topher removed the restraints, and Adele bent over the blond girl, an unaccustomedly gentle expression on her face. She beckoned him, and he said what must be said. He asked her to trust him, and she promised him her life. He'd never really thought about this experience from the handler's point of view. He'd never written the lines, only conditioned the responses. Her eyes were so alive as they locked onto him. Could an active feel with such ferocity, such raw verve? Her eyes were lime fruit on fire and feet in an intolerably cold stream, fishes brushing past, all the sensation and volume and ferocity he'd spent twenty-six years living solely in his brain avoiding, shutting out with quiet determination.
He was in trouble. He was falling.
******************
Davis Bloome woke up in a comfortable bed, bandaged only lightly, curtains fully open, no whispers in the back of his head for the first time in how long? It wasn't quite like the last time. But it was the same room.
Chapter 2
'Whatever may befall you, it was preordained for you from everlasting. '
Marcus Aurelius, 'The Meditations.'
He dealt with tubes and paraphernalia, switched off electronic alerts, his training still useful. Then got up and explored with some caution. If crazy Tess Mercer was still around, she might consider herself possessed of a few scores to settle before he got the hell out of there.
Although he hadn't been bound. Why hadn't he been bound?
There were clothes in the chest of drawers, generic, neutral, new, his size. He dressed and tried the door. Open. Some sort of trap? Surely too obvious if so. He shrugged and sauntered down the hallway.
She came out to meet him, from an office with sunshine pouring out of the doorway. Cautiously he stopped, eyed her, examined the exits, unobtrusively stretched and tested his maybe debilitated arms and legs, wondered what speed and agility he could still count on and what back-up she had immediately on hand.
'You're looking well!' he greeted her pleasantly. It was true. She looked rather wonderful. Her hair was like a bronze chrysanthemum, a point of colour and life. But herself, she looked... softer, prettier, gentler than he'd ever seen her. Not that that meant she was any saner than a bag of rabid kittens. When she smiled at him it was admittedly beautiful, though.
She laughed, too, clear and true like a song. It was positively affectionate. Time to be very careful: the woman was probably certifiable. 'That's sweet. And it's wonderful to see you up: you've been on the verge for about thirty-six hours now, just barely hovering at the edge of consciousness.' She stepped nearer, hands out. He could feel the raise of his eyebrows but he let her take his hands. It was alarming, and just slightly funny too. Her arms coming around his back in a light hug were more so.
She stepped back at his tense non-response. 'I'm sorry, this must be strange for you.' Still that local high-society hostess smile. 'I was so excited when I picked up your awakening on surveillance... You must be confused. Why don't we sit down in my office and have tea, talk it over?'
As she turned her back he debated. Either she was sincere, or she had a phalanx of guards ready to club him to the ground for her amusement should he resist or run. And he had no Doomsday to get him the hell out via mass slaughter, any more.
He followed her.
************
So. China tea in china cups. Wasn't this nice. Her eyes were uncomfortably hot and bright and unflinching, and it wasn't helped when she pulled her chair out from behind the desk to sit close to him. And then put her hand on his knee. He didn't choke on the delicate brew: but it was a close thing.
'You've been in a coma for a long time, Davis,' she told him. 'A lot has happened, since you were freed from your... monstrous aspect. What do you remember?'
She asked him that, and it was sufficient to flood him with memory. Suddenly it didn't matter how damn crazy or dangerous she was. Really only one thing mattered and he didn't have time for this shit. He stood up.
'Well, it's been interesting, but I'm afraid I'll have to put off the departure interview to another time,' he told her. 'I have places to be. Someone to see.'
He was halfway out the door when she called after him. 'You're not going to find Chloe in Smallville, you know.'
That froze him in place. Of course she had known it would. He didn't bother to pretend to um and ah over a response, just caved and sat back down again. Tilting his head to one side was all the question he needed to ask.
'After you were freed from Doomsday you were sick.' That wasn't what he'd asked, even wordlessly: but he knew now that it was either her own pace or interminable delay. 'You were in a coma for six months: I had you cared for in a Luthorcorp private medical facility, and when you had significantly recovered, but were still in a comatose state, here in the Luthor mansion.'
'I'm much obliged. Any reason for that?' he asked, raising a brow. 'I'm pretty sure even Metropolis county employee health insurance wouldn't begin to cover it.'
Tess tilted her face down, looked up at him through blackened lashes. It was unsettling. Her expression would have been better suited to a supplicant kneeling in church on a Sunday. 'The last time I saw you, I explained a few things. About Clark Kent, and his origins, and his dark mirror image.'
He knew. He'd been there. At the impatience on his face she closed her hand over his. 'But now I believe I was crucially wrong in one respect. Kent has proven to be...' She paused delicately. 'A disappointment in some respects. With all the power, the inheritance, the ability to save and re-shape the world and improve the lot of humanity... yet he's still caught up in pettifogging ego issues, performing the equivalent of rescuing cats stuck up trees while stroking his angst. And expecting pats on the back for it.' The bitterness of distaste on her face was like someone snorting ammonia-laden cleaning products.
'He's not the big damn hero after all, then?' Davis enquired, attempting to sound more than tepidly interested. He'd been jealous of Clark, once, strange to remember. Foolish: Chloe was too smart to spend her whole life loving someone more infatuated with his own reflection, literally and figuratively. The thought set an engine running inside him: Chloe was somewhere out there, and if this woman wasted another minute with her pointless mystifications...
'He's the illusion.' Tess set her cup down on the desk with a careless little snap, her face excited, even flushed. 'The decoy.' Really her gaze was uncomfortable. 'You know your origins. Maybe you know the Kawatche interpretation too.'
'Yeah. The dark side. The killer. Or I was.' He remembered the pain, the resolve and panic on Chloe's face as she broke his chest wall with that burning damn black rock. Worth it. Oh how much it had been absolutely worth it, though he'd never felt pain and shock and fear like it, the bodily transformation, the monster ripping out of him. Not obscured by blackout, unconscious bliss and lack of responsibility. Seeing the dark half of what he'd been, and what he'd done.
The trauma for her must have been horrible too. Maybe she wasn't over it yet. Surely she would have visited him otherwise? That would have woken him sooner.
'No,' Tess said tensely. 'That's not what you are. It's not all you are. You've seen the Kawatche depiction of Sageeth and Namath: the two-headed beast, good and evil, the saviour and destroyer.'
'Me and Clark.'
'No. You yourself were created as a mosaic, not one creature but two forced into a single body. Doomsday was never you: you were room-mates sharing housing, that's all.'
He rolled the idea around his mind experimentally. It would be nice to believe... Even so... 'Well, what then? Your point being?'
'Clark is pointless: a puffed-up irrelevance.' She put a hand on his arm, and her face was flushed like she was burning up. 'You are the two-headed one: you were. Now you are separated, not half of a single creature. Free, and whole. Almost whole. You are Namath. The one foretold: the one awaited.'
He considered it. It definitely beat being the Cornfield Killer. 'Okay. Now tell me where Chloe is.'
*************
He had to threaten to leave to get any information out of her. She called security: she just didn't let them actually do anything, so her goons stood around impotently and looked embarrassed as he searched for the exits in her damn Luthor rabbit warren, as she tripped after him in stupidly high heels and clutched his arm.
Her face was bitter and her eyes brimming as she caught up with him at the grand front entrance. 'All right, all right! I'll tell you what you want to know. It's just not what you need to know: you need to stay to hear the rest.' She must have been used to being abandoned: she caved easy.
He stopped, turned to her and folded his arms. Her breath was a heavy outgoing gasp, like she'd been running. Might as well have been in that outfit. And her eyes were wary. 'I said you were almost whole.'
She had. He'd barely picked up on it in the moment, but it had snagged subliminally on his awareness. 'And what does that mean exactly?'
Sulky face, unwillingly dragged out words. 'It's not natural, what was done to you, to Sageeth... Doomsday. It weakened you. Comparatively: you're still many times stronger than a human. But the effect of the black Kryptonite was changed: the break wasn't clean.'
Shit. He thought he knew what she was hinting. 'I still have some Doomsday in me?' The outbreak of panicked sweat was immediate. So stupid, to think he could ever be free...
'No! No, not that.' Her smile is vivid, pleasure showing from having at least some good news for him. 'The dark half is gone: forever, if the League's plans hold. But... the darkness in you is gone too.'
'Yes, Doomsday...'
'No. Not just that. Your normal, human darkness... there's a killer inside all of us. Hate, rage, selfishness... it's in all of us. Cain and Abel. The break wasn't clean: it should have been Doomsday, and your normal Kryptonian self. Two halves.' Her hands are on his arms, now, closer than he wants her. Her eyes like blue glass marbles, wet, shiny, popping, awed. 'But the split went three ways. Doomsday. Your better nature, with all your virtues: you, here, now. And your worse nature: every violent impulse, every moment of hate and rage you've ever felt. It split off too. Three bodies from one, matter created.' She mused, led off her own path with sudden fascination. He remembered she'd been a scientist. 'Interesting with regard to thermodynamics... however.'
He pulled away from her and her hands dropped, face a little bereft. 'My dark half. What happened to it?'
'The natural one, not Doomsday? Not half, I don't think: a fraction of you. But physically your twin: a whole body, capable of impersonating a whole you. You were broken, sickened by the black kryptonite, thrown far away. But it was conscious, undamaged: maybe the evil in it let it withstand the shock better.'
He has never taken well to foreboding. 'It did something. You're building up to something.'
She turned great gleaming eyes on his face. The calm was affected: every word was measured for effect. 'It killed Jimmy. And it tried to kill Chloe.'
************
He was at the outskirts of Metropolis before he realised he was going there with no reason, no objective. And no memory of how he got there. Wasn't it just moments ago that Tess Mercer had squeezed all the new freedom and joy out of his existence? He looked at the watch he'd picked up from the bedside cabinet in the mansion, had a vague feeling he should have been exhausted, panting for breath as he saw, yes, it was just moments.
So it was true, he was a Kryptonian, all the bullshit he'd tried to pass off as such to himself that Faora had spouted... Spawned from the same freakish alien gene pool as Clark Kent, for his sins. Inhuman speed might be useful, other times, other situations. Now it just reminded him that he wasn't human, wasn't any more a part of the human life all around him than he'd ever felt as the skinny silent kid shuttled around from bolthole to hellhole. Not even a whole, intact alien like Kent. A fraction, a fragment. And that other section of his self had killed Jimmy.
There was no way he was coming back from that with Chloe. Small wonder she hadn't visited. If she knew... Well. She wouldn't have anyway.
He carried on walking, mood dreary, hating the sunshine. No way he was heading back to the Luthor mansion, despite Tess's increasingly desperate offers and suggestions. But where the hell could he go?
In Metropolis he was officially a killer. As well as officially dead, as Tess had kindly outlined for him. That brutal, worthless fraction of himself, staked good by a dying Jimmy, six feet under. No loss there.
His feet slowed as his mind got lost in a maze. He was wanted... but he was dead. So he was free. Whatever he looked like could be explained away as a bizarre resemblance to a defunct serial murderer. Of course, to be free, you have to be free to do something. He couldn't think of anything he wanted to do, now.
Maybe he should go save the world. It seemed to be rather expected in some quarters. He stood and scuffed his feet in the dust for a few moments, shrugged and began to walk again, slowly. No rush, any more.
The TVR that drew up beside him was out of place on the dusty back road, or maybe it fit perfectly. A silly, pretty rich boy's car, never out of the specialist garage or running smoothly more than a couple of days at a time, a deserted road, idleness, looking for trouble, a foreign world. He didn't change his mind about his verdict when Oliver Queen leaned out.
Of course if you give a damn about what someone thinks you offer explanations when they look at you with disbelief too profound for actual emotion. So he just stood and waited while Queen came up with something coherent.
Queen pointed at him. (Was he supposed to need information on his own current location?) Still a further pause. 'You're not Davis Bloome.'
Davis fingered the cloth of his shirt, felt the solid flesh and muscle beneath. He felt real. He wondered if it was an observation worth the trouble of a detailed and accurate answer. 'It's more complicated that that,' was the most he could offer. 'I'm tired of walking.' Not physically tired: not any more, maybe never any more. But tired just the same. 'Give me a ride into Metropolis if you want to hear the story.'
*********
Queen's office was about what he would have expected: a level of luxury sufficiently opulent to be hilarious, over-the-top. He'd had no intention of inviting himself, but with nowhere else to be hadn't cared about Queen's assumption that they had more to discuss and plans to make.
He wandered restlessly, sat in a window seat with the coffee Queen's PA had brought, stared out at the city below. He was aware of Queen's disbelieving eyes still on him, but it was untroubling until the guy came closer and continued staring. 'I guess your mother wasn't around long enough to tell you about what was polite and what wasn't,' he observed without heat, levelly meeting the other guy's eyes. 'Me too. Actually she wasn't much for manners anyway.' There was no challenge or pissing contest going on: Queen was clearly just having a little trouble adjusting to a new reality.
'Yeah. Okay. Okay.' Queen ran a hand through his hair, paced around in a circle, stopped and stared again. 'As far as I can tell, you believe what you're telling me.'
The coffee was good, the reiterations were getting tiresome. 'Depends. I believe a couple of hours ago Tess Mercer was spinning me the tale I've just told you. As to whether it's true or not, that's a different issue. Certainly there's some suggestive corroborating evidence.'
Why was he here? He'd never liked Queen: entirely too rich and attractive to be a suitable friend for Chloe. Oh yes. Chloe. He had nowhere else to be.
Oliver Queen nodded. 'Your powers. Speed. Strength?'
Davis nodded. 'Something weird going on with my eyes, too. Just... like they're adapting, something's developing. Can't describe it better than that.'
Queen passed a hand over his face again. 'Yeah, that one'll take some getting used to. Don't worry, I hang out with Kryptonians all the time. We'll run through what you can expect later on. Thing is, I don't want to suggest that Tess Mercer is a raging nutbag and you can't trust or believe a word she says... but...'
Davis nodded. 'I hear what you're saying. I've had a run-in with her in the past.'
Queen met his eye, a little warily, weighing up his next words. 'You could have powers without her story being true. You could be a clone.'
He digested the thought. It wasn't especially pleasant, which put it on a par with most of the rest of his life.
Queen hesitated a moment more. 'If you're willing, we could check it out, along with a few other things. I've been working with Emil Hamilton lately: when it comes to Kryp-science -when it comes to the sci-nerd area in general - he's the best of the best. If anyone can give you solid information and reliable answers, he's the guy.'
Davis wrinkled his brow. The name was familiar. 'Hamilton... no.' Yeah, he knew the name. 'A friend of Chloe's.' Everything seemed designed to make the melancholy worse, however he tried to shake it off.
Queen sat on the edge of the desk opposite him, face losing, finally, the last trace of troubled incredulity. He looked like a businessman. Like they were sealing a business deal, like they had work to do. 'Yeah. Chloe. That's the other reason I'd like you to stick around for a while.'
Author: oonaseckar
Pairing/Characters: Topher Brink, Chloe Sullivan, Davis Bloome, Oliver Queen, Adelle Dewitt
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Swearing and profanity, adult concepts.
Spoilers: None. Post-season 8 Smallville, mid-Season 1 Dollhouse. Chloe Sullivan can't
recover from her double bereavement, and takes drastic action that leads her to the Dollhouse. Topher is intrigued: and then complicit and compromised.
Disclaimer: I do not own nor make any claim in any respect regarding the TV shows Dollhouse or Smallville any aspect or character thereof.
Word Count: Total wordcount approximately 6,800.
Author's Notes: Dollhouse/Smallville crossover, chapters 1-2/∞, orginally posted at my LJ.
Beware Robert Frost references. Or maybe not, my erudition is slipping.
Chapter 1
O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven,
Keep me in temper: I would not be mad.
'King Lear', Act I Scene V, William Shakespeare.
She didn’t know what to do. She was frantic all the time with an unexplained urgency, an indefinable need, like horrible pain or insane itching. But it was neither of these things nor anything else she could identify, and she couldn’t take an antihistamine or analgesic and fix it. Or scratch till she bled, or kill herself.
They told her it was grief, which seemed ridiculous. Lois sat her down again and again, stopping her frantic pacing, cleaning, midnight walking, making her drink tea and sit at the kitchen table. This was apparently supposed to make her feel better.
Her husband was dead. So was Davis. She was only supposed to be grieving for one of them, and had to remember the fact when anyone was around. It’s hard to remember anything when your brain is either stopped like a clock or screeching like someone’s left a spoon in the dish and turned the microwave on. Just waiting for the door to blow.
Her doctor dosed her up and it didn’t do a damned thing. Pills weren’t going to bring anyone she loved back. They weren’t going to change hard facts, like partial responsibility for Jimmy’s absence and the hole he’d left in his family’s life, as well as hers. Like Davis being willing to kill her for an error of judgment, a selfish leap for safety, when she would have sworn her life away that she knew him better than that.
She didn’t suddenly see a saintly Jimmy without flaws and weaknesses, didn’t try to reinstate a romantic devotion that hadn’t existed in the first place. She didn’t forgive Davis for being willing to crush her skull, even after a lifetime starved for love, in however much pain. These facts didn’t help. Jimmy had been her friend, as well as an asshole sometimes. Davis she’d loved, saved, trusted too much, given too little. Their fallibility did nothing to diminish the pain.
At least she didn’t have to deal with Clark. The relief when he left was so great, it was worth any rubbish she’d had to spout to satisfy him she was in no need of re-education, to get him out the door and out of Smallville. He needed to be right, to know that his version of events was the official one. So much so, he fed her provocative counter-assertions, to get the exculpation he needed to hear, without being responsible for it. Fortunately he couldn’t prevent her mental revision of his version as he continued to spout. Just as long as it was never verbalized and he was never openly crossed.
Because they all said it would get better, she waited. Putting a deadline on it she thought reasonable, she saw the date come and go. After four deadlines had passed and she still woke up, wishing anyone who wasn't Jimmy or Davis dead for daring to be alive, she knew she was going crazy. Properly, truly crazy, the kind that would land her with the same fate as her mother. Obsessional routines that promised safety were taking over her life. It was all she could do not to scream at or hit anyone who stepped in the way when she waited in a line. Pleasure was dead: in fact she was so utterly anhedonic she was barely distinguishable from a corpse. She thought herself about on the verge of visual and auditory hallucination: then that line was crossed, and she drew a fresh line in the sand.
It was a long way past the time for measured, careful, moderate treatments. She retrieved the file on her laptop that wasn't marked as secret or remarkable in any way, and dialed a number from it.
********************
'So, Miss... Sullivan. So nice to meet you. I'm just wondering, what can we do for you?'
She sat across from the woman with the power to switch off her pain, wondered why the fate of so many always rested in the hands of the deluded and the affected. Maybe only they would want such power.
'I arranged a meeting with your assistant.' So dry and cold, her voice, like someone very old, or very very tired.
'You did indeed.' Adele DeWitt consulted papers on her desk. 'In which you made it utterly, utterly clear that you know... let's see... well, rather a lot more than we thought anyone could possibly know about our organisation. Rather more, in fact,' she said, looking up, a threat so mild as to be almost missable in her green eyes, 'than we care for anyone to know. So I ask you again, Miss Sullivan... what can we do for you?'
Chloe felt the dryness of her own smile. 'First, you can disabuse yourself of any notion of the utility of threats, violence, blackmail... any of that. To begin with, I have some useful friends. You may have heard of Oliver Queen. Also Lex Luthor. If I should come to any unfortunate end and certain things are not done - randomly generated things not accessible via duress - and some preconditions not fulfilled, they'll acquire knowledge that would be inconvenient to you.'
'Queen. Yes. We're quite familiar with him.' Not especially surprising, that. Oh, Oliver. 'But when you mention Mr Luthor... I rather understand him to be someone likely to rejoice at any mishap you might encounter, rather than otherwise. Or am I wrong?' Adele DeWitt clearly wasn't used to being wrong.
Chloe nodded. 'Oh, Lex can't abide me: much like many siblings and former friends. But if I'm to get my comeuppance, it's highly likely he might take personal offence should it be at any hands but his. We were close, once, and the memory lingers. I don't like to think what he might do if anyone else harmed me.'
They stared at each other a moment, game on, assessing their hands. Miss DeWitt nodded. 'Very well. I understand your point. But I repeat myself for a third time: Miss Sullivan, what can we do for you?'
Chloe crossed her legs, leant forward a little, spoke with utter sincerity. 'Miss DeWitt, make me a doll.'
******************
They had been arguing for an hour now. You might call it discussion, debate: but there was an irritability, an incomprehension in the older woman's responses that gave them an edge. She had been assessed, rejected as weak: Adele had no patience with her.
'Your chosen course of action is quite unnecessarily drastic. And, if you'll forgive me, dramatic. There are many routes to navigate and survive pain and heartbreak.'
'You seem a little bit moralistic,' Chloe responded, a touch snappy. Her patience was shot lately, along with everything else. 'Aren't you supposed to be the sinister Fagin luring me in, not piously urging me to a life of honest rectitude and virtuous endeavour?'
Adele smiled patronisingly. 'Miss Sullivan, not just anyone can be a doll. And it may surprise you to know that you're not the first person to actively seek it out.'
'Not just anyone... So you have an admissions process?' Chloe eyed her sceptically. 'My SATs were off the chart. Does that help any? You've taken drug addicts, criminals and psychopaths: what exactly do I have to do to get arrested and mindwiped around here? Does watching the two halves of my heart slaughter each other and die not qualify me? You're very quick to judge: wait till it happens to you, then get back to me about it. Seriously, what does it take?''
They paused at the balcony and stared down at the milling throng of beautiful bodies and mindless faces. Adele turned and smiled at her. 'Perhaps you need to need us? Miss Sullivan, you've been very polite: but everything in your face and voice tells me what you think of this set-up. You think us amoral, corrupted, corrupting. But you're not looking deeply enough. You seek us out because it serves your purpose: but many other means could do so. You want what we can offer: but you don't need it. You have innumerable options, family and friends, resources, a brilliant mind. Every one of those lost children down there: they need the shelter we can give.'
Chloe had barely a suggestible bone in her body: but she could see that Adele DeWitt at least wanted to believe what she was saying. It made the protection of half-truths harder to maintain, if she was to achieve her objective.
Unwillingly she conceded a little truth. 'I'm not just here because my heart is broken, Miss DeWitt. That I could - or would have to - live with. There's something else. I have a familial history of - mental instability. My heart hurts: but a broken mind is something I might never come back from.'
Adele nodded, hands drawn behind her back, a more sympathetic look on her face. 'Let's walk together, Miss Sullivan.' They weaved down riserless steps, around dolls and handlers with preoccupied faces, assignments imminent or underway. Past haphazard groups of off-duty operatives, blank smiles not chilling Chloe in the least as they might have once. She wanted that expression, that exact smile, plastered on her own face. That invulnerable, inviolate indifference.
Dewitt stopped at a water fountain, offered her a crystal glass. 'Of course, when you contacted us, we investigated a little way into your history. May I express my regrets for your mother's sad experiences. They were related, I believe, to the Smallville meteor phenomenon?'
Chloe drank greedily. The doctor's pills dehydrated her severely, with no apparent beneficial effects in recompense whatsoever. 'Partly, quite probably. That might have sparked it off. But the family history goes back further than that, further than I knew myself until I started investigating. Great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents have died in asylums. Adolescents in my family tree have taken the usual adolescent route out of their troubles. First and second cousins with money or health troubles, dead under train tracks or at the end of a rope... You have a general idea, I'm sure.'
'Of course, if you look deep enough, far back enough in any genealogical record, all families have some psychological problems,' Adele suggested.
'Of course. But the strain is more virulent and prevalent in my own than I like. There are some amazing individuals in there: inventors, engineers, writers, painters, poets. A number of unarguable geniuses. And at the other end of the spectrum, insanity and criminality and perversion, many many incidences. Miss DeWitt, I don't intend to be a casualty of my genetic tendencies. I'm not functional right now, I'm effectively broken: but my life is waiting for me.'
Adele turned and leaned against the fountain, girlish and womanly, mother, mistress. 'I can understand your fears. May I call you Chloe? I feel I know you better now: I understand better. But Chloe, a statistical risk, however real, isn't the same thing as an imminent threat.' She raised an eyebrow, let the challenge hang in the air.
Their eyes met like a stream flowing between them, thought and information, back and forth. This woman knew, full well, but would accept nothing implicitly. Everything had to be stated outright: she covered her ass well. 'I'm experiencing symptoms,' Chloe conceded flatly. 'More than just bereavement, grief, depression. Let us just say, if I went into too much detail with my doctor, I'd be in Belle Reve already.'
Adele didn't let her off the hook, only raised an eyebrow. Chloe folded.
'I'm getting the full spectrum and it's getting worse. Hallucinatory, obsessional, delusional, compulsive, time compression and elongation, blank periods and blackouts, loss of logic and continuity in conversation... it's periodic at present, and fleeting. I've been able to cover up. But it's only deteriorating. I can read AMA lists of symptoms, understand a peer-reviewed journal article. I'm a layperson but sufficiently educated to recognise an imminent psychotic break. That's the kind of episode that can do damage you don't come back from. Conventional treatments - the ones my friends and family would urge me to - will only contain, ameliorate at best, and won't prevent episodic recurrence. The stats are not good: given my family history, for me they're worse. In familial terms, the historic pattern is a rapid spiral down from the first incident. Few recoveries.'
Her breath was gone. It was out, now, mostly. Let the woman take it or leave it.
Adele took her arm. 'We must discuss it further. But first, come and meet Mr Brink, our chief technician. A delightful young man.'
*************
That was the unspoken agreement. Beyond that were the formalities, and they took up an intolerable period. Meetings, scans, medical histories, contracts and revised contracts and reviews of her psychological competence to consent. Detailed explanation of the process, the agreement, the conditions of her servitude and her release. Many warnings of the seriousness of the step she was taking, of exactly what she was agreeing to in explicit and unattractive terminology. Finally, days later, she was back in Adele's office, drinking excellent coffee, utterly fatigued, hanging on through sheer determination.
'So.' Adele rested hands on her elegantly crossed legs, examined Chloe with alert approval. 'You have two hours left to change your mind.'
Chloe's head sank back. She knocked back the last of her coffee. 'Do you want me to?'
Adele shook her head. 'I only want you to know that the option is still available: right up until the last minute. Your signature means nothing: it's explicitly stated in the terms of the contract that it only comes into effect on completion of your first scan and treatment.'
Chloe thought about that for a moment, and shook her head. 'My mind is made up.'
'Well,' Adele said briskly, 'I confidently expect you to be a marvellous asset to Rossum. And after five years of analgesia and forgetfulness, you'll have your original personality restored, as well as being a relatively wealthy and still young woman. Perhaps you're not as foolish as I thought you when you first arrived in my office.'
'Not quite my old personality,' Chloe reminded her.
'Oh, in all essential respects I think it's fair to say so,' Adele countered. 'Of course, we'll add the pre-agreed tweaks regarding your mental stability, and bump your emotional set-point down a notch or two to enhance your general tranquillity. No point setting you free out into the world in the same condition as you arrived here. But in essence, the things that make you Chloe Sullivan will remain unchanged.
She was still. Pain that was like a hated friend tugged at her, and she tried to shut her mind to memory. 'We all get changed. One way or another. I just want to control those changes - a little. Finally.'
'Of course,' Adele agreed smoothly. 'Your requests will be carried out to the letter. We're expecting great things from your contribution: you're certainly owed the fullest recompense at its end. There's some excitement already about the new Romeo in the Dollhouse.'
Here finally, something that hadn't been discussed. 'Romeo. That'll be my active codename?' She tried it out in her mind, on her tongue. Not that it mattered. 'Shouldn't I be a guy for that?'
'Previous Romeos have been,' Adele agreed. 'But change is delightful. A female Romeo will be so refreshing. Bear in mind the common habit of playing against gender within Shakespeare's plays. At my all-girl private school, a female Romeo in productions was very much the rule. Although the one time we poached a male housemaster from the local boys' dayschool, it caused positively Titanic excitement.'
Chloe carefully eyed the woman up and down, and wondered if Adele DeWitt deliberately spoofed and satirized her own persona to see if any American could identify and call her on it. Good on her if so: it had actually afforded Chloe a moment of amusement, if only that. Jolly hockeysticks, and how.
'I think I'll go and bathe, if that's okay,' she said. 'Get myself relaxed ready for the procedure.'
Adele leaned forward. 'Don't go quite yet.' There was a note of sincerity in her voice. Though if anyone could fake that, then... 'I know that your determination to go forward with your plan means that your feelings remain unchanged. As well as from your multiple interviews and assessments. But, Chloe, I do still feel a measure of concern. While you are a member of the Dollhouse, the utmost care will be taken of you. You will be delivered up to your life in five years time in the peak of physical and mental health. But emotional health is another thing: and much more delicate than our tools can fully deal with, subject to philosophy and ratiocinative processes as much as to biochemical ones. You've chosen to retain all your memories of the two men you've lost, even once you're no longer an inmate. Is that really wise?'
Chloe examined her hands. She felt surges of pain like an actual physical wound. 'I want... the sting taken out of the memories. You can do that for me. You can do that?' She knew the answer, but still lifted her head questingly for confirmation.
Adele nodded. 'We can. We will. We can ward off your inbuilt predisposition to psychosis, rebuild you stronger. We can take the pain, the... burn.... out of your recollections. But is that what you want?'
Chloe blinked back water. She'd held on this far. She could hold on a little longer. 'I don't want to forget. I want to go back to my old life, my old friends. To be able to reminisce, to talk about them... I just, yes, I want the burn out of it. Because it's burning me down right now. Soon there'll only be ashes left. I want to be a doll. Then I want you to fix me.'
Adele's hand came over hers, as she rounded the desk. 'My dear. We will. We'll fix you.'
*************
The little blonde woman lay on the treatment table, her nudity pointlessly covered for modesty's sake by the bonds that held her there, unconscious. The prudishness combined with prurience of Rossum made Topher laugh, or it used to.
He knew this one, had been present at meetings, met her himself in her full outer-worldly form. Even subject to mental deterioration and in the midst of desperate measures, she had been quite a presence. Her intellectual powers were formidable, and her physical charms considerable. It had been enough for him to slightly regret not taking up that fellowship at Metropolis U when he could have done, having had considerably more dazzling offers. Might have been worth it...
Still. That was an irrelevance now. With the mindwipe only waiting on Adele's presence, he wouldn't be having any stimulating discussions with Chloe Sullivan about neuroscience and the feminine advantage in gaming any time soon.
Adele was late. Of course: Adele was always late, for him at least. She insisted on being present for the induction of this very special new doll, she was bringing the newbie hotshot handler from the Japanese branch who was the only guy they were going to entrust her to, she gave him all kinds of shit about how delicate this operation was and all the fancy friends Miss Sullivan had and the bottomless pit of lava they'd all be in if anything went wrong... and she was late. And now here she was, atypically breathless and hurried, rushing through the door. Hair slightly disordered. Handlerless.
Her rage poured through the lab like lava itself. A botched job, an assassinated handler, an impersonation and a narrow escape from asphyxiation by a malevolently turned active... Oh dear God, the fun at Rossum never started. Especially since... 'Alpha?'
Adele turned to vent at him, since he was handy. 'Of course it was Alpha, you utter ratwit! When is it ever anyone else! Can someone please explain to me why it is that we have still to put that mad dog down and release ourselves from perpetual psychological strain and the threat of imminent death?'
He was the only other member of staff there, so she was probably addressing him. It was unlikely Miss Sullivan would be able to help her. He judged that distraction might be the safest tactic. 'Are we doubling up with another active's handler, or delaying the wipe until you identify a suitable replacement?'
It at least warded off the savage ferocity of the beast. He could see her stop and think about it. Her mouth straightened into a decisive line. 'Neither.'
Oh, what a woman, what a piece of work, what a... 'And in that case, your plan is...?'
'Mr Brink, you have a new job description. A new and expanded job description. Congratulations. You're Romeo's new handler.'
****
Protest availed him nothing. 'But I've got no relevant experience or training!'
'Oh,' she said, waving his objection away, 'we can fix you up with all of that. Martial arts, firearms, intensive one-on-one training, you'll be a ninja before you know it. Don't worry, my fair-headed boy.'
'I'm a nerd with a neuroscience Phd and a Caltech education. I can't catch a ball. The only sports I'm involved in require a Wii. I hyperventilate if required to engage in too much direct eye contact. And I already happen to be holding down a full-time job, in case you hadn't noticed, as the head technician in this Rossum base! For god's sake, there have to be more appropriate candidates-'
She interrupted him, brusque, casual, uninterested. 'We can make of you what we will. By any means necessary, let me remind you... Ivy can take over many of your mundane duties on the technical side, though you will maintain overall authority. There is no problem. This is happening. In any case, stop whining. You're a big strong lad.'
'A big strong lad with dyspraxia,' he muttered, turning away. 'And a severe anxiety-related aversion to firearms. And cowardice.'
************
This time was the last time she'd feel this pain (such pain). She lay quietly, and willed for Jimmy's easy smiling face to be the last thing she remembered. Of course the willing was what made it impossible, and even here and even now his face intruded. (Just like always, at the worst possible moment, with Jimmy.)
But this was the last time.
*************
Twenty minutes later Topher removed the restraints, and Adele bent over the blond girl, an unaccustomedly gentle expression on her face. She beckoned him, and he said what must be said. He asked her to trust him, and she promised him her life. He'd never really thought about this experience from the handler's point of view. He'd never written the lines, only conditioned the responses. Her eyes were so alive as they locked onto him. Could an active feel with such ferocity, such raw verve? Her eyes were lime fruit on fire and feet in an intolerably cold stream, fishes brushing past, all the sensation and volume and ferocity he'd spent twenty-six years living solely in his brain avoiding, shutting out with quiet determination.
He was in trouble. He was falling.
******************
Davis Bloome woke up in a comfortable bed, bandaged only lightly, curtains fully open, no whispers in the back of his head for the first time in how long? It wasn't quite like the last time. But it was the same room.
Chapter 2
'Whatever may befall you, it was preordained for you from everlasting. '
Marcus Aurelius, 'The Meditations.'
He dealt with tubes and paraphernalia, switched off electronic alerts, his training still useful. Then got up and explored with some caution. If crazy Tess Mercer was still around, she might consider herself possessed of a few scores to settle before he got the hell out of there.
Although he hadn't been bound. Why hadn't he been bound?
There were clothes in the chest of drawers, generic, neutral, new, his size. He dressed and tried the door. Open. Some sort of trap? Surely too obvious if so. He shrugged and sauntered down the hallway.
She came out to meet him, from an office with sunshine pouring out of the doorway. Cautiously he stopped, eyed her, examined the exits, unobtrusively stretched and tested his maybe debilitated arms and legs, wondered what speed and agility he could still count on and what back-up she had immediately on hand.
'You're looking well!' he greeted her pleasantly. It was true. She looked rather wonderful. Her hair was like a bronze chrysanthemum, a point of colour and life. But herself, she looked... softer, prettier, gentler than he'd ever seen her. Not that that meant she was any saner than a bag of rabid kittens. When she smiled at him it was admittedly beautiful, though.
She laughed, too, clear and true like a song. It was positively affectionate. Time to be very careful: the woman was probably certifiable. 'That's sweet. And it's wonderful to see you up: you've been on the verge for about thirty-six hours now, just barely hovering at the edge of consciousness.' She stepped nearer, hands out. He could feel the raise of his eyebrows but he let her take his hands. It was alarming, and just slightly funny too. Her arms coming around his back in a light hug were more so.
She stepped back at his tense non-response. 'I'm sorry, this must be strange for you.' Still that local high-society hostess smile. 'I was so excited when I picked up your awakening on surveillance... You must be confused. Why don't we sit down in my office and have tea, talk it over?'
As she turned her back he debated. Either she was sincere, or she had a phalanx of guards ready to club him to the ground for her amusement should he resist or run. And he had no Doomsday to get him the hell out via mass slaughter, any more.
He followed her.
************
So. China tea in china cups. Wasn't this nice. Her eyes were uncomfortably hot and bright and unflinching, and it wasn't helped when she pulled her chair out from behind the desk to sit close to him. And then put her hand on his knee. He didn't choke on the delicate brew: but it was a close thing.
'You've been in a coma for a long time, Davis,' she told him. 'A lot has happened, since you were freed from your... monstrous aspect. What do you remember?'
She asked him that, and it was sufficient to flood him with memory. Suddenly it didn't matter how damn crazy or dangerous she was. Really only one thing mattered and he didn't have time for this shit. He stood up.
'Well, it's been interesting, but I'm afraid I'll have to put off the departure interview to another time,' he told her. 'I have places to be. Someone to see.'
He was halfway out the door when she called after him. 'You're not going to find Chloe in Smallville, you know.'
That froze him in place. Of course she had known it would. He didn't bother to pretend to um and ah over a response, just caved and sat back down again. Tilting his head to one side was all the question he needed to ask.
'After you were freed from Doomsday you were sick.' That wasn't what he'd asked, even wordlessly: but he knew now that it was either her own pace or interminable delay. 'You were in a coma for six months: I had you cared for in a Luthorcorp private medical facility, and when you had significantly recovered, but were still in a comatose state, here in the Luthor mansion.'
'I'm much obliged. Any reason for that?' he asked, raising a brow. 'I'm pretty sure even Metropolis county employee health insurance wouldn't begin to cover it.'
Tess tilted her face down, looked up at him through blackened lashes. It was unsettling. Her expression would have been better suited to a supplicant kneeling in church on a Sunday. 'The last time I saw you, I explained a few things. About Clark Kent, and his origins, and his dark mirror image.'
He knew. He'd been there. At the impatience on his face she closed her hand over his. 'But now I believe I was crucially wrong in one respect. Kent has proven to be...' She paused delicately. 'A disappointment in some respects. With all the power, the inheritance, the ability to save and re-shape the world and improve the lot of humanity... yet he's still caught up in pettifogging ego issues, performing the equivalent of rescuing cats stuck up trees while stroking his angst. And expecting pats on the back for it.' The bitterness of distaste on her face was like someone snorting ammonia-laden cleaning products.
'He's not the big damn hero after all, then?' Davis enquired, attempting to sound more than tepidly interested. He'd been jealous of Clark, once, strange to remember. Foolish: Chloe was too smart to spend her whole life loving someone more infatuated with his own reflection, literally and figuratively. The thought set an engine running inside him: Chloe was somewhere out there, and if this woman wasted another minute with her pointless mystifications...
'He's the illusion.' Tess set her cup down on the desk with a careless little snap, her face excited, even flushed. 'The decoy.' Really her gaze was uncomfortable. 'You know your origins. Maybe you know the Kawatche interpretation too.'
'Yeah. The dark side. The killer. Or I was.' He remembered the pain, the resolve and panic on Chloe's face as she broke his chest wall with that burning damn black rock. Worth it. Oh how much it had been absolutely worth it, though he'd never felt pain and shock and fear like it, the bodily transformation, the monster ripping out of him. Not obscured by blackout, unconscious bliss and lack of responsibility. Seeing the dark half of what he'd been, and what he'd done.
The trauma for her must have been horrible too. Maybe she wasn't over it yet. Surely she would have visited him otherwise? That would have woken him sooner.
'No,' Tess said tensely. 'That's not what you are. It's not all you are. You've seen the Kawatche depiction of Sageeth and Namath: the two-headed beast, good and evil, the saviour and destroyer.'
'Me and Clark.'
'No. You yourself were created as a mosaic, not one creature but two forced into a single body. Doomsday was never you: you were room-mates sharing housing, that's all.'
He rolled the idea around his mind experimentally. It would be nice to believe... Even so... 'Well, what then? Your point being?'
'Clark is pointless: a puffed-up irrelevance.' She put a hand on his arm, and her face was flushed like she was burning up. 'You are the two-headed one: you were. Now you are separated, not half of a single creature. Free, and whole. Almost whole. You are Namath. The one foretold: the one awaited.'
He considered it. It definitely beat being the Cornfield Killer. 'Okay. Now tell me where Chloe is.'
*************
He had to threaten to leave to get any information out of her. She called security: she just didn't let them actually do anything, so her goons stood around impotently and looked embarrassed as he searched for the exits in her damn Luthor rabbit warren, as she tripped after him in stupidly high heels and clutched his arm.
Her face was bitter and her eyes brimming as she caught up with him at the grand front entrance. 'All right, all right! I'll tell you what you want to know. It's just not what you need to know: you need to stay to hear the rest.' She must have been used to being abandoned: she caved easy.
He stopped, turned to her and folded his arms. Her breath was a heavy outgoing gasp, like she'd been running. Might as well have been in that outfit. And her eyes were wary. 'I said you were almost whole.'
She had. He'd barely picked up on it in the moment, but it had snagged subliminally on his awareness. 'And what does that mean exactly?'
Sulky face, unwillingly dragged out words. 'It's not natural, what was done to you, to Sageeth... Doomsday. It weakened you. Comparatively: you're still many times stronger than a human. But the effect of the black Kryptonite was changed: the break wasn't clean.'
Shit. He thought he knew what she was hinting. 'I still have some Doomsday in me?' The outbreak of panicked sweat was immediate. So stupid, to think he could ever be free...
'No! No, not that.' Her smile is vivid, pleasure showing from having at least some good news for him. 'The dark half is gone: forever, if the League's plans hold. But... the darkness in you is gone too.'
'Yes, Doomsday...'
'No. Not just that. Your normal, human darkness... there's a killer inside all of us. Hate, rage, selfishness... it's in all of us. Cain and Abel. The break wasn't clean: it should have been Doomsday, and your normal Kryptonian self. Two halves.' Her hands are on his arms, now, closer than he wants her. Her eyes like blue glass marbles, wet, shiny, popping, awed. 'But the split went three ways. Doomsday. Your better nature, with all your virtues: you, here, now. And your worse nature: every violent impulse, every moment of hate and rage you've ever felt. It split off too. Three bodies from one, matter created.' She mused, led off her own path with sudden fascination. He remembered she'd been a scientist. 'Interesting with regard to thermodynamics... however.'
He pulled away from her and her hands dropped, face a little bereft. 'My dark half. What happened to it?'
'The natural one, not Doomsday? Not half, I don't think: a fraction of you. But physically your twin: a whole body, capable of impersonating a whole you. You were broken, sickened by the black kryptonite, thrown far away. But it was conscious, undamaged: maybe the evil in it let it withstand the shock better.'
He has never taken well to foreboding. 'It did something. You're building up to something.'
She turned great gleaming eyes on his face. The calm was affected: every word was measured for effect. 'It killed Jimmy. And it tried to kill Chloe.'
************
He was at the outskirts of Metropolis before he realised he was going there with no reason, no objective. And no memory of how he got there. Wasn't it just moments ago that Tess Mercer had squeezed all the new freedom and joy out of his existence? He looked at the watch he'd picked up from the bedside cabinet in the mansion, had a vague feeling he should have been exhausted, panting for breath as he saw, yes, it was just moments.
So it was true, he was a Kryptonian, all the bullshit he'd tried to pass off as such to himself that Faora had spouted... Spawned from the same freakish alien gene pool as Clark Kent, for his sins. Inhuman speed might be useful, other times, other situations. Now it just reminded him that he wasn't human, wasn't any more a part of the human life all around him than he'd ever felt as the skinny silent kid shuttled around from bolthole to hellhole. Not even a whole, intact alien like Kent. A fraction, a fragment. And that other section of his self had killed Jimmy.
There was no way he was coming back from that with Chloe. Small wonder she hadn't visited. If she knew... Well. She wouldn't have anyway.
He carried on walking, mood dreary, hating the sunshine. No way he was heading back to the Luthor mansion, despite Tess's increasingly desperate offers and suggestions. But where the hell could he go?
In Metropolis he was officially a killer. As well as officially dead, as Tess had kindly outlined for him. That brutal, worthless fraction of himself, staked good by a dying Jimmy, six feet under. No loss there.
His feet slowed as his mind got lost in a maze. He was wanted... but he was dead. So he was free. Whatever he looked like could be explained away as a bizarre resemblance to a defunct serial murderer. Of course, to be free, you have to be free to do something. He couldn't think of anything he wanted to do, now.
Maybe he should go save the world. It seemed to be rather expected in some quarters. He stood and scuffed his feet in the dust for a few moments, shrugged and began to walk again, slowly. No rush, any more.
The TVR that drew up beside him was out of place on the dusty back road, or maybe it fit perfectly. A silly, pretty rich boy's car, never out of the specialist garage or running smoothly more than a couple of days at a time, a deserted road, idleness, looking for trouble, a foreign world. He didn't change his mind about his verdict when Oliver Queen leaned out.
Of course if you give a damn about what someone thinks you offer explanations when they look at you with disbelief too profound for actual emotion. So he just stood and waited while Queen came up with something coherent.
Queen pointed at him. (Was he supposed to need information on his own current location?) Still a further pause. 'You're not Davis Bloome.'
Davis fingered the cloth of his shirt, felt the solid flesh and muscle beneath. He felt real. He wondered if it was an observation worth the trouble of a detailed and accurate answer. 'It's more complicated that that,' was the most he could offer. 'I'm tired of walking.' Not physically tired: not any more, maybe never any more. But tired just the same. 'Give me a ride into Metropolis if you want to hear the story.'
*********
Queen's office was about what he would have expected: a level of luxury sufficiently opulent to be hilarious, over-the-top. He'd had no intention of inviting himself, but with nowhere else to be hadn't cared about Queen's assumption that they had more to discuss and plans to make.
He wandered restlessly, sat in a window seat with the coffee Queen's PA had brought, stared out at the city below. He was aware of Queen's disbelieving eyes still on him, but it was untroubling until the guy came closer and continued staring. 'I guess your mother wasn't around long enough to tell you about what was polite and what wasn't,' he observed without heat, levelly meeting the other guy's eyes. 'Me too. Actually she wasn't much for manners anyway.' There was no challenge or pissing contest going on: Queen was clearly just having a little trouble adjusting to a new reality.
'Yeah. Okay. Okay.' Queen ran a hand through his hair, paced around in a circle, stopped and stared again. 'As far as I can tell, you believe what you're telling me.'
The coffee was good, the reiterations were getting tiresome. 'Depends. I believe a couple of hours ago Tess Mercer was spinning me the tale I've just told you. As to whether it's true or not, that's a different issue. Certainly there's some suggestive corroborating evidence.'
Why was he here? He'd never liked Queen: entirely too rich and attractive to be a suitable friend for Chloe. Oh yes. Chloe. He had nowhere else to be.
Oliver Queen nodded. 'Your powers. Speed. Strength?'
Davis nodded. 'Something weird going on with my eyes, too. Just... like they're adapting, something's developing. Can't describe it better than that.'
Queen passed a hand over his face again. 'Yeah, that one'll take some getting used to. Don't worry, I hang out with Kryptonians all the time. We'll run through what you can expect later on. Thing is, I don't want to suggest that Tess Mercer is a raging nutbag and you can't trust or believe a word she says... but...'
Davis nodded. 'I hear what you're saying. I've had a run-in with her in the past.'
Queen met his eye, a little warily, weighing up his next words. 'You could have powers without her story being true. You could be a clone.'
He digested the thought. It wasn't especially pleasant, which put it on a par with most of the rest of his life.
Queen hesitated a moment more. 'If you're willing, we could check it out, along with a few other things. I've been working with Emil Hamilton lately: when it comes to Kryp-science -when it comes to the sci-nerd area in general - he's the best of the best. If anyone can give you solid information and reliable answers, he's the guy.'
Davis wrinkled his brow. The name was familiar. 'Hamilton... no.' Yeah, he knew the name. 'A friend of Chloe's.' Everything seemed designed to make the melancholy worse, however he tried to shake it off.
Queen sat on the edge of the desk opposite him, face losing, finally, the last trace of troubled incredulity. He looked like a businessman. Like they were sealing a business deal, like they had work to do. 'Yeah. Chloe. That's the other reason I'd like you to stick around for a while.'