fire in your eyes
Her steps echo on the stone steps as she climbs slowly down. There’s no one here, she knows, or at least, no one who could possibly question her actions, but still she moves with caution.
The room she ends up at is right at the end of the corridor. In the dim light she can just make out the shape of a man huddled by the far wall. His head, resting on his knees, is tucked under his arms and he rocks back and forth slowly. He’s not like the others: he doesn’t pace the floor, muttering incoherencies, or scream and shout whenever someone walks by. Now when she enters his cell, he just looks up, his eyes following her movement as she walks purposefully across the floor to come and stand in front of him.
“Hello, Laurence.” She stares at the man before her. She hasn’t seen him since the...incident, and she almost wishes she hadn’t now. He’s so much changed from the strong, composed man that he was before, it’s almost like he’s someone else. But then, he is someone else. He’s no one.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she says. She’s not sure if she’s talking to herself or to the “man” who slumps in front of her. “This is wrong. This is very, very wrong.” She moves to sit beside him on the floor and lets her head fall back against the wall. “So why can’t I stay away?”
O.o
“I cut my hair, you know,” she tells him. “I don’t think you’d like it. Sometimes, when you thought I wasn’t looking, I’d catch you staring. I don’t know what, but there was something about the long locks that drew you in, that you liked. I liked them too, but lately they’d begun to feel like this heavy weight bearing down on me. It became a challenge to lift my head in the morning. So one day, as I passed a hairdresser, I thought to myself, ‘Just cut it all off.’ So that’s what I did. Everyone needs a change once in a while.” She glances over at the man beside her. “Even if they don’t want it.”
O.o
“I miss you, Laurence. God, I miss you. Everything’s changing. It feels like my house is falling down around my ears and I’m helpless to stop it. I can’t do this alone. I need you by my side. I need you to be there. Langton’s nice but the way he looks at me... God, you should see the way they all look at me. Like I’m less than human.” She drops her head into her hands and when she speaks again, her voice is bordering on hysterical. “But maybe I am. Maybe they’re right. I did this to you, after all. Stole your soul without a second thought. And who’s to say I wouldn’t do it again? No, I have done it again. That poor girl...what I put her through... And Topher. The things I said to him... If you could see me now. I’m a monster. I’m...
“Before, you accused me of believing in the Dollhouse’s mission. You talked of the people we’ve hurt through it, and I counted that with the people we’ve helped, that it balances it out. But now...I don’t think it does. Not after today, and I’ve been blind, and I don’t think it ever has. How could it, when we treat people like this?”
“I signed a girl’s life away today. She was innocent, and I signed the papers authorising her presentation to the man who willingly destroyed her life. Because I was too scared and too weak to face the consequences. I know I put you in here but this... this was different. Putting you in here, that was between the two of us. It was a war, and you lost. But Priya...she was just an bystander. She wasn’t meant to get hurt. And I promised to protect her. And I failed.”
She raises her head to find him staring at her, but there’s no recognition in his eyes. “And the things I did to you can’t be forgiven either.” As if without thinking, her hand reaches up to stroke his scruffy cheek and she stares into those endless pools of blue, now empty. “I took the fire from your eyes.” She drops her head again and openly sobs now.
“Please don’t make me do this without you, Laurence. Please don’t. Please don’t make me do this. I can’t... I just can’t. I need you to be there, I need your support and I need your reassurance and I just... I need you. I don’t think I can keep on much longer without you.”
She wonders absently how on earth she came to this: sitting, broken, on a cold stone floor next to the shell of a man who once betrayed her, now the one person she can trust. She remembers the last time she cried like this. When there was a strong, comforting arm to wrap around her and hold her tightly. Now there’s nothing but the floor and a lifeless body.
O.o
When she’s finished, she stands, ignoring the way he legs shake beneath her. Her eyes, cold and hard now but with renewed vigour, meet his vacant ones. “I’ll find a way to save you, Laurence. I’ll get you out of here, I promise.” Feverishly, she says, “I want to see that fire burn again, even if it is against me.”
The door clicks shut with finality, but she knows this is not over.