Whedonland 20in20
Themes
01. Family
Topher had a family once. He had a mother and a father and even an older brother. His family had realised she was special-‘gifted’ they called it-very early on. From then on they’d pushed him to be the best: advanced placement classes, high school finished with at fifteen, and then it was onto the best college in the country, far away from everyone he knew and loved.
As such, Topher had never really had time for family, and he’d always regretted it. It was only after he’d joined the Dollhouse, where he was surrounded by likeminded people with no home and no family, that he realised it might actually be a blessing. The less people he loved, the less people he hurt in the long run.
02. Competitive
“Whiskey’s number one, that’s for sure,” a woman Echo doesn’t know says to the caretaker with a grin.
Echo’s sitting next to Whiskey, painting a picture. Whiskey looks up at the woman’s words with a soft smile, pleased by the remark.
Echo takes that moment to study the other doll’s face. She’s pretty, definitely. Very soft and sweet. Echo likes her. She’s always nice and says hello to Echo when they see each other.
Whiskey looks over at Echo and asks in a sing-song voice, “What are you painting?”
Echo glances down at her picture, then back at Whiskey. “It’s a pool. Like the one we swim in. I like swimming. It helps me be my best.”
“Yes, it does,” Whiskey agrees. She inspects Echo’s work. “I think that painting is your best, too. It’s very good.”
“Thank you,” Echo says. “Yours is very nice too.” Whiskey’s drawn a garden covered in flowers. Echo thinks it’s probably better than hers, and she doesn’t like that.
Whiskey goes back to her painting and Echo watches her while she does it.
“Yep, Whiskey’s definitely the best,” the woman is saying.
Echo glances over at them, thinking hard. Whiskey might be the best at the moment, but she’s here now, and Echo’s going to try as hard as she can to be the best active that everyone talks about. She’s going to be number one.
03. Beginnings
Priya grows up in country town Victoria. She lives with Ma and Pa and Gran and Aunty Di and a whole load of younger brothers and sisters on the farm that grandad owned. As the older, it’s Priya’s job to help out on the farm more than anyone: milk the cows and collect the chicken eggs every morning, and help Pa feed the animals every evening.
It’s not that Priya minds the hard work. Quite the contrary, in fact. She loves the feel of dirt beneath her nails, the smell of sweat and the burn in her muscles. She loves the swim in the dam that Ma always lets her have to cool off and the room she shares with her three sisters. It’s just that sometimes, Priya dreams of more.
When she’s eighteen, Priya receives a scholarship to Sydney University. It’s all she could ever dream of and more. Gran digs up the money she’d been saving “for a day like this” and Aunty Di takes her on the bus into Melbourne, and then she’s on the plane to Sydney, leaving her small town life behind.
This is a whole new world. She can do anything she likes now. And Priya’s not gonna stop at Sydney. She’s aiming far further than that. One day, she’s gonna make it to America.
04. Danger
“It’s not safe here, Ms DeWitt,” Mr Dominic is saying and all she can think is AlphaAlphaAlphaAlpha. There’s screaming going on downstairs, and why isn’t Mr Dominic down there helping them? Except he’s just standing there, watching her with concern, and she realises she hasn’t actually said anything since he stopped talking. Best fix that.
“Nonsense, Mr Dominic. This is my House and I intend to stay here to make sure it still stands tomorrow.” She gives him a worn out smile. “Now go do your job.”
“Yes ma’am.” He nods.
Once he’s gone, she falls into her chair, weary.
05. Humor
“Do you find this funny, Mr Brink?”
Topher’s just been grinning uncontrollably (and laughing before), so it’s obvious he does, but Adelle’s disapproving gaze is fierce and more than a little scary, so he wipes the smile off his face and shakes his head vehemently. “N-noo.”
“You do realise Mr Dominic is your superior, caries a firearm, and has a very short temper?”
“Yes, Ms DeWitt,” Topher says, trying to look remorseful. It won’t happen again.”
But Adelle shakes her head, a smile threatening. “That won’t be necessary,” she tells him. “Just make sure you don’t get caught next time.”
06. Eyes
Her eyes open slowly as a low humming noise dies down. Her name is Louise today and she wants to go see Connor. She’s in some tech room and sitting in a chair. She doesn’t know why, exactly, but she accepts the fact without question.
“Hello Louise,” a man says. He looks familiar. She trusts him. “If you’d just come with me.” Her takes her to see Connor, and he’s gorgeous when he comes to greet her, a boquet of flowers in his hand a kiss on her lips. He takes her hand and leads her on the most amazing date of her life, continuously the sweetest, most loving person.
Later, as she follows the man (Boyd) into the room from this morning, her head is so full of happiness she doesn’t even really realise what’s happening. ‘I’ll never forget this,’ she thinks as she sits in the chair.
She leans back, relaxed and happy. Her eyes close, and then everything disappears.
07. Finale
‘You’re not coming back,’ she realises, and Adelle feels like her heart’s breaking into pieces, crumbling to the floor along with the dreams of the two of them side by side. Topher! her mind screams. She wants to cry, to rave, to lock him up and refuse to let him go. She can’t let him go, not when she just got him back. It’s not fair.
But that’s the point, she supposes. None of this is fair. And this is the price they will pay for their sins. He will die and she... she will struggle on without him. This is their reward.
08. Temptation
She brushes past him, her hair falling against his shoulder for just a fraction of a second, and he gets an intoxicating whiff of her scent; jasmine and something fruity. When she sits, the material of her skit rides up, revealing an extra three inches of her thighs. She leans forward towards him, her smile inviting and her posture open, and her blouse is far too low to be considered appropriate.
This temptation is killing him. He thinks he might seriously be going insane, and there’s no way she can’t know what she’s doing. This attraction is too strong; it’s palpable in the air around them. It’ll only be a matter of time until one of them breaks, he knows.
He can’t say he’s not looking forward to when that day comes.
09. Ship
He comes to her, as he was bound to do sometime, and there’s murder in his eyes as he points that gun at her, cold and cruel. She thinks of what it would be like to die at the hands of the man who’s life she took away. How fitting it would be to have him kill her in the way she, effectively, killed him. Only she wouldn’t come back this time. There would be no return to claim back what was rightfully hers.
Still, she thinks she’d be okay with that. After all these years, the trust she’d once bestowed on him seems to have returned, even with the gun in her face, and she is okay with putting her life into his hands this one last time.
10. Crossover
Topher comes running up to join them and says, a little breathless, “I didn’t want to miss anything!” He’s carrying a large gun that Dominic’s not even sure he knows how to use, let alone should be allowed to.
They’re facing out onto a pack of butchers, about fifteen in total, gunning them down as best they can.
Casey grunts as he shoots a butcher who gets too close and Dominic hands him another clip when he drops the old one. They’re silent, working efficiently side by side, until there’s a crash and they both turn to see Topher fumbling with his gun.
“Reminds me of Bartowski,” Casey mumbles.
“You have no idea,” Dominic returns, sighing.
In an attempt to turn the attention from him and his apparent failings, Topher asks, “So, um, how do the two of you know each other again?”
“NSA,” Dominic grunts.
“Old friends,” Casey adds.
“Aww, isn’t that sweet?” Topher grins. Dominic glares.
“Yep, definitely Bartowski,” Casey says to himself.
One character: Adelle DeWitt
01.
She hadn’t intended to be the one leading the restoration process. In fact, she’d had quite a plan figured out. She’d go out of the city, travel between communities, helping where she could.
Now that Topher was gone, she felt there was nothing left for her at Safe Haven, and there were too many memories there anyway. She thought she might hang around the ports a bit and charm someone into giving her a lift to England when the boats started going again. She could go back home, to where she grew up. There was nobody left there now, even before the apocalypse, but it might be good to get away from America, from where she had caused so much damage.
But in all honesty that idea holds little appeal to her. That place stopped feeling like home a long time ago and, like Safe Haven, there is nothing left for her there.
So she stays in LA, rebuilding infrastructure and community, and she does not begrudge that she cannot leave. Perhaps, after all, this is where she’s meant to be.
02.
“Hello, Adelle,” the woman says. She’s dressed in a sleek black gown-the colour a stark contrast to Adelle’s bright green and blue dress. Her long blonde hair hangs dead straight down her back, limp and flat, her makeup is harsh and obvious, and there’s a tight, insincere smile on her face.
“Elizabeth,” Adelle returns tightly, moving the embrace the other Head of House.
With fake concern, Elizabeth leans towards Adelle, whispering, “I honestly didn’t think you’d show up here, Adelle. The higher ups are not happy, you must know that. They won’t be pleased to see you. If I were you, I’d leave while you still can.”
Adelle glances back at Dominic, who stands a little off to the side; close but unobtrusive. “What do you think, Mr Dominic,” she asks with a smirk, clearly unfazed by Elizabeth’s warning. “Should we leave now, when we’ve come all this way just to attend?”
Dominic’s face remains impassive but his eyes sparkle with mirth as he replies, “No ma’am.”
Adelle turns back to Elizabeth. “There. It’s settled then,” she says. “We will not be leaving. If the higher ups have any problems then they can raise it with me themselves instead of using some lackey of theirs to try and scare us off.”
Elizabeth seems unable to reply: yet another thing Adelle dislikes about the woman; her words had not been so harsh, it should have been easy to retaliate, and Adelle does enjoy a little competition.
“It was nice seeing you, Elizabeth,” Adelle says. “We’ll have to catch up some time,” although she has no intention of holding true to her offer. “Mr Dominic?”
He nods, and then follows her as they walk away from a still speechless Elizabeth.
03.
Six months after his death, Adelle visits the cemetery. Constructed in the middle of Los Angeles, this cemetery is for all who died during the apocalypse. Very rarely are there bodies to accompany the rough tombstones. Topher’s is no different. There’d been no remains, according to Alpha, who’d gone up to check. Adelle’s sort of glad for that. She didn’t really want Alpha to come back with dismembered bits of her Topher.
Alpha had, however, brought back a twisted piece of metal that he said belonged to the device used to restore the world. Adelle had buried it in place of a body.
Now, she kneels beside the grave, her first time back since she made it. Her fingers trace over the words she’d engraved into the stone herself and she bows her head, shoulders shaking. A tear falls and her voice shakes as she speaks. “Missed you, sweetheart.”
04.
The butchers are upon them almost instantly. They raise their guns and start firing. A butcher breaks through their fire and tackles him. His gun drops to the ground while she continues to shoot at the still advancing ranks. He pummels the butcher, and when he’s gotten far enough away, she tosses him the small gun tucked into her pocket. He catches it, shoots the butcher in the head, then picks up his gun from the ground.
Her slight distraction allows another butcher to run at her. His arms wrap around her waist, making as if to squeeze the life out of her body. In such close proximity it’s impossible to use her gun, but she can reach the knife in her waistband. She pulls it out and digs it unto the butcher’s chest. The butcher gasps, his grip loosening slightly, and she takes that opportunity to kick out, knocking the butcher over, then shooting it.
She glances around, finds him about six feet away, keeping most of the butchers at bay. They’ve come across a colony or something, because there are so many of them. When he realises she’s started shooting again, he shouts, “There’s too many. I think we should fall back.”
“Agreed,” she yells back. They count to three, then take off down the street in the opposite direction. Their guns fly across their backs, banging painfully. He reaches out and takes her hand as the run, but it slows them down and she makes him let go after a minute.
He grins at her, and she smiles back, and they keep running.
05.
When she was little, her grandmother used to tell her stories about knights in shining armour. Brave, heroic men who fought horrid dragons and rescued damsels in distress. Six year old Adelle had thought it all terribly romantic, and had demanded countless princess costumes from her parents in order to act out the stories.
Forty years later, and she’s grown out of her obsession. Except now it seems all her childhood fantasies are coming true and she has her own knight in shining armour come to rescue her.
It’s not quite how the fairytales tell it. His armour’s dilapidated and worn-a ripped suit and bulletproof vest-, he carries a gun rather than a sword, and he speaks to her in harsh, angry words: “Adelle, we’ve got to get out. Stop being a fucking martyr. They need you at Safe Haven.”
But she has grown from a princess into a queen, and though it is also a prison, this is her castle and she will not leave.
So he drags her, kicking and screaming from her throne and carries her over his shoulder down the stairs, not tenderly in his arms like he’s supposed to. But, when she thinks about it, this warped fairytale fits them far better than the real one. It’s a great deal more romantic as well.
Authors Choice
01.
When the apocalypse first begins, Echo decides they need somewhere free of the pulse, somewhere safe, somewhere where they can relax for awhile.
“What about the Dollhouse?” Adelle asks, voice mixed with scorn and something else. Perhaps pride. “Isn’t that good enough?”
“The Dollhouse isn’t safe, Adelle. It’s hell.” They glare at each other and Echo refuses to say anything more.
Topher starts to work on it but goes mad before he’s finished. So Echo leaves, Paul Ballard hot on her heels, leaving the rest of them stuck in ‘hell’ as she goes off in search of the ever elusive ‘Safe Haven’.
02.
‘I loved you,’ she had said. I loved you. I loved you. I loved you. I loved you. Her mind repeats it over and over again as she tosses and turns, trying to sleep. She misses him. She misses what he was. Or rather, what she thought he was. She keeps forgetting none of it was real. She misses what they had-that connection, more than just the imprint. She misses the caring hand, the guidance, the father she never had.
She remembers the feeling of his betrayal; it still cuts her inside. Caroline came into her head, and there it was, right at the forefront: the man she trusted more than anything in the world, the founder of the thing she hated most.
And yet, even with his betrayal, her mind still plays her all the good moments: Boyd finding her in the forest. Boyd fighting Paul to protect her. Boyd nurturing her, helping her grow.
She misses him, still; she loves him, still, and it kills her.
03.
They’re the couple everyone wants to be. Striding through the halls of the Dollhouse side by side, arms swinging (occasionally touching), awesome clothes and matching expressions of scorn and detachment. There’s this aura around them; they seem to just exude cool.
Sometimes he leans in too close to hear what she’s saying when he could easily be a few inches back. Sometimes she laughs when he cracks a joke, and her eyes light up as she watches him.
Judith thinks they might just be the most perfect thing that ever existed, though she might be a bit biased. Still, there’s something about DeWitt and Dominic that, she thinks, anyone would see that they’re meant to be.
04.
He picks them off one by one, little glass dolls that smash into thousands of tiny little pieces. They don’t even put up a fight, and his knife makes quick work of their delicate, beautiful faces. They’re broken on the inside, all of them, despite how the Dollhouse likes to convince them otherwise, so why not make them broken on the outside as well? Then everyone will know. Then everyone will know the lies the Dollhouse tells it’s people, both clients and employees alike. He’ll break them, smash them and destroy them, and then he’ll take his Echo and they’ll be gone from this nightmare.
05.
He screams, just to hear the sound escape his throat. Just to prove he’s still alive. He’s still here. He’s still fighting. And right now there’s half a dozen butchers wanting to take a bite out of him. He jumps up onto a ledge and empties a cartridge into the air for the thrill of it. He should be worrying about the limited amount of ammo they have left or about the butchers he should be aiming at but he’s so high right now he doesn’t give a fuck.
He jumps off the ledge, shouts again, and then takes off through the trees. The butchers give chase, but they’re thick and awkward, lumbering along. He runs, his blood pumping in his veins and pounding in his ears. He feels alive. He feels more alive than he has in years. He speeds up, zipping through the trees. The butchers have long fallen behind. He’s running just for himself now. Just for himself and the exhilaration of being free.
01. Family
Topher had a family once. He had a mother and a father and even an older brother. His family had realised she was special-‘gifted’ they called it-very early on. From then on they’d pushed him to be the best: advanced placement classes, high school finished with at fifteen, and then it was onto the best college in the country, far away from everyone he knew and loved.
As such, Topher had never really had time for family, and he’d always regretted it. It was only after he’d joined the Dollhouse, where he was surrounded by likeminded people with no home and no family, that he realised it might actually be a blessing. The less people he loved, the less people he hurt in the long run.
02. Competitive
“Whiskey’s number one, that’s for sure,” a woman Echo doesn’t know says to the caretaker with a grin.
Echo’s sitting next to Whiskey, painting a picture. Whiskey looks up at the woman’s words with a soft smile, pleased by the remark.
Echo takes that moment to study the other doll’s face. She’s pretty, definitely. Very soft and sweet. Echo likes her. She’s always nice and says hello to Echo when they see each other.
Whiskey looks over at Echo and asks in a sing-song voice, “What are you painting?”
Echo glances down at her picture, then back at Whiskey. “It’s a pool. Like the one we swim in. I like swimming. It helps me be my best.”
“Yes, it does,” Whiskey agrees. She inspects Echo’s work. “I think that painting is your best, too. It’s very good.”
“Thank you,” Echo says. “Yours is very nice too.” Whiskey’s drawn a garden covered in flowers. Echo thinks it’s probably better than hers, and she doesn’t like that.
Whiskey goes back to her painting and Echo watches her while she does it.
“Yep, Whiskey’s definitely the best,” the woman is saying.
Echo glances over at them, thinking hard. Whiskey might be the best at the moment, but she’s here now, and Echo’s going to try as hard as she can to be the best active that everyone talks about. She’s going to be number one.
03. Beginnings
Priya grows up in country town Victoria. She lives with Ma and Pa and Gran and Aunty Di and a whole load of younger brothers and sisters on the farm that grandad owned. As the older, it’s Priya’s job to help out on the farm more than anyone: milk the cows and collect the chicken eggs every morning, and help Pa feed the animals every evening.
It’s not that Priya minds the hard work. Quite the contrary, in fact. She loves the feel of dirt beneath her nails, the smell of sweat and the burn in her muscles. She loves the swim in the dam that Ma always lets her have to cool off and the room she shares with her three sisters. It’s just that sometimes, Priya dreams of more.
When she’s eighteen, Priya receives a scholarship to Sydney University. It’s all she could ever dream of and more. Gran digs up the money she’d been saving “for a day like this” and Aunty Di takes her on the bus into Melbourne, and then she’s on the plane to Sydney, leaving her small town life behind.
This is a whole new world. She can do anything she likes now. And Priya’s not gonna stop at Sydney. She’s aiming far further than that. One day, she’s gonna make it to America.
04. Danger
“It’s not safe here, Ms DeWitt,” Mr Dominic is saying and all she can think is AlphaAlphaAlphaAlpha. There’s screaming going on downstairs, and why isn’t Mr Dominic down there helping them? Except he’s just standing there, watching her with concern, and she realises she hasn’t actually said anything since he stopped talking. Best fix that.
“Nonsense, Mr Dominic. This is my House and I intend to stay here to make sure it still stands tomorrow.” She gives him a worn out smile. “Now go do your job.”
“Yes ma’am.” He nods.
Once he’s gone, she falls into her chair, weary.
05. Humor
“Do you find this funny, Mr Brink?”
Topher’s just been grinning uncontrollably (and laughing before), so it’s obvious he does, but Adelle’s disapproving gaze is fierce and more than a little scary, so he wipes the smile off his face and shakes his head vehemently. “N-noo.”
“You do realise Mr Dominic is your superior, caries a firearm, and has a very short temper?”
“Yes, Ms DeWitt,” Topher says, trying to look remorseful. It won’t happen again.”
But Adelle shakes her head, a smile threatening. “That won’t be necessary,” she tells him. “Just make sure you don’t get caught next time.”
06. Eyes
Her eyes open slowly as a low humming noise dies down. Her name is Louise today and she wants to go see Connor. She’s in some tech room and sitting in a chair. She doesn’t know why, exactly, but she accepts the fact without question.
“Hello Louise,” a man says. He looks familiar. She trusts him. “If you’d just come with me.” Her takes her to see Connor, and he’s gorgeous when he comes to greet her, a boquet of flowers in his hand a kiss on her lips. He takes her hand and leads her on the most amazing date of her life, continuously the sweetest, most loving person.
Later, as she follows the man (Boyd) into the room from this morning, her head is so full of happiness she doesn’t even really realise what’s happening. ‘I’ll never forget this,’ she thinks as she sits in the chair.
She leans back, relaxed and happy. Her eyes close, and then everything disappears.
07. Finale
‘You’re not coming back,’ she realises, and Adelle feels like her heart’s breaking into pieces, crumbling to the floor along with the dreams of the two of them side by side. Topher! her mind screams. She wants to cry, to rave, to lock him up and refuse to let him go. She can’t let him go, not when she just got him back. It’s not fair.
But that’s the point, she supposes. None of this is fair. And this is the price they will pay for their sins. He will die and she... she will struggle on without him. This is their reward.
08. Temptation
She brushes past him, her hair falling against his shoulder for just a fraction of a second, and he gets an intoxicating whiff of her scent; jasmine and something fruity. When she sits, the material of her skit rides up, revealing an extra three inches of her thighs. She leans forward towards him, her smile inviting and her posture open, and her blouse is far too low to be considered appropriate.
This temptation is killing him. He thinks he might seriously be going insane, and there’s no way she can’t know what she’s doing. This attraction is too strong; it’s palpable in the air around them. It’ll only be a matter of time until one of them breaks, he knows.
He can’t say he’s not looking forward to when that day comes.
09. Ship
He comes to her, as he was bound to do sometime, and there’s murder in his eyes as he points that gun at her, cold and cruel. She thinks of what it would be like to die at the hands of the man who’s life she took away. How fitting it would be to have him kill her in the way she, effectively, killed him. Only she wouldn’t come back this time. There would be no return to claim back what was rightfully hers.
Still, she thinks she’d be okay with that. After all these years, the trust she’d once bestowed on him seems to have returned, even with the gun in her face, and she is okay with putting her life into his hands this one last time.
10. Crossover
Topher comes running up to join them and says, a little breathless, “I didn’t want to miss anything!” He’s carrying a large gun that Dominic’s not even sure he knows how to use, let alone should be allowed to.
They’re facing out onto a pack of butchers, about fifteen in total, gunning them down as best they can.
Casey grunts as he shoots a butcher who gets too close and Dominic hands him another clip when he drops the old one. They’re silent, working efficiently side by side, until there’s a crash and they both turn to see Topher fumbling with his gun.
“Reminds me of Bartowski,” Casey mumbles.
“You have no idea,” Dominic returns, sighing.
In an attempt to turn the attention from him and his apparent failings, Topher asks, “So, um, how do the two of you know each other again?”
“NSA,” Dominic grunts.
“Old friends,” Casey adds.
“Aww, isn’t that sweet?” Topher grins. Dominic glares.
“Yep, definitely Bartowski,” Casey says to himself.
One character: Adelle DeWitt
01.
She hadn’t intended to be the one leading the restoration process. In fact, she’d had quite a plan figured out. She’d go out of the city, travel between communities, helping where she could.
Now that Topher was gone, she felt there was nothing left for her at Safe Haven, and there were too many memories there anyway. She thought she might hang around the ports a bit and charm someone into giving her a lift to England when the boats started going again. She could go back home, to where she grew up. There was nobody left there now, even before the apocalypse, but it might be good to get away from America, from where she had caused so much damage.
But in all honesty that idea holds little appeal to her. That place stopped feeling like home a long time ago and, like Safe Haven, there is nothing left for her there.
So she stays in LA, rebuilding infrastructure and community, and she does not begrudge that she cannot leave. Perhaps, after all, this is where she’s meant to be.
02.
“Hello, Adelle,” the woman says. She’s dressed in a sleek black gown-the colour a stark contrast to Adelle’s bright green and blue dress. Her long blonde hair hangs dead straight down her back, limp and flat, her makeup is harsh and obvious, and there’s a tight, insincere smile on her face.
“Elizabeth,” Adelle returns tightly, moving the embrace the other Head of House.
With fake concern, Elizabeth leans towards Adelle, whispering, “I honestly didn’t think you’d show up here, Adelle. The higher ups are not happy, you must know that. They won’t be pleased to see you. If I were you, I’d leave while you still can.”
Adelle glances back at Dominic, who stands a little off to the side; close but unobtrusive. “What do you think, Mr Dominic,” she asks with a smirk, clearly unfazed by Elizabeth’s warning. “Should we leave now, when we’ve come all this way just to attend?”
Dominic’s face remains impassive but his eyes sparkle with mirth as he replies, “No ma’am.”
Adelle turns back to Elizabeth. “There. It’s settled then,” she says. “We will not be leaving. If the higher ups have any problems then they can raise it with me themselves instead of using some lackey of theirs to try and scare us off.”
Elizabeth seems unable to reply: yet another thing Adelle dislikes about the woman; her words had not been so harsh, it should have been easy to retaliate, and Adelle does enjoy a little competition.
“It was nice seeing you, Elizabeth,” Adelle says. “We’ll have to catch up some time,” although she has no intention of holding true to her offer. “Mr Dominic?”
He nods, and then follows her as they walk away from a still speechless Elizabeth.
03.
Six months after his death, Adelle visits the cemetery. Constructed in the middle of Los Angeles, this cemetery is for all who died during the apocalypse. Very rarely are there bodies to accompany the rough tombstones. Topher’s is no different. There’d been no remains, according to Alpha, who’d gone up to check. Adelle’s sort of glad for that. She didn’t really want Alpha to come back with dismembered bits of her Topher.
Alpha had, however, brought back a twisted piece of metal that he said belonged to the device used to restore the world. Adelle had buried it in place of a body.
Now, she kneels beside the grave, her first time back since she made it. Her fingers trace over the words she’d engraved into the stone herself and she bows her head, shoulders shaking. A tear falls and her voice shakes as she speaks. “Missed you, sweetheart.”
04.
The butchers are upon them almost instantly. They raise their guns and start firing. A butcher breaks through their fire and tackles him. His gun drops to the ground while she continues to shoot at the still advancing ranks. He pummels the butcher, and when he’s gotten far enough away, she tosses him the small gun tucked into her pocket. He catches it, shoots the butcher in the head, then picks up his gun from the ground.
Her slight distraction allows another butcher to run at her. His arms wrap around her waist, making as if to squeeze the life out of her body. In such close proximity it’s impossible to use her gun, but she can reach the knife in her waistband. She pulls it out and digs it unto the butcher’s chest. The butcher gasps, his grip loosening slightly, and she takes that opportunity to kick out, knocking the butcher over, then shooting it.
She glances around, finds him about six feet away, keeping most of the butchers at bay. They’ve come across a colony or something, because there are so many of them. When he realises she’s started shooting again, he shouts, “There’s too many. I think we should fall back.”
“Agreed,” she yells back. They count to three, then take off down the street in the opposite direction. Their guns fly across their backs, banging painfully. He reaches out and takes her hand as the run, but it slows them down and she makes him let go after a minute.
He grins at her, and she smiles back, and they keep running.
05.
When she was little, her grandmother used to tell her stories about knights in shining armour. Brave, heroic men who fought horrid dragons and rescued damsels in distress. Six year old Adelle had thought it all terribly romantic, and had demanded countless princess costumes from her parents in order to act out the stories.
Forty years later, and she’s grown out of her obsession. Except now it seems all her childhood fantasies are coming true and she has her own knight in shining armour come to rescue her.
It’s not quite how the fairytales tell it. His armour’s dilapidated and worn-a ripped suit and bulletproof vest-, he carries a gun rather than a sword, and he speaks to her in harsh, angry words: “Adelle, we’ve got to get out. Stop being a fucking martyr. They need you at Safe Haven.”
But she has grown from a princess into a queen, and though it is also a prison, this is her castle and she will not leave.
So he drags her, kicking and screaming from her throne and carries her over his shoulder down the stairs, not tenderly in his arms like he’s supposed to. But, when she thinks about it, this warped fairytale fits them far better than the real one. It’s a great deal more romantic as well.
Authors Choice
01.
When the apocalypse first begins, Echo decides they need somewhere free of the pulse, somewhere safe, somewhere where they can relax for awhile.
“What about the Dollhouse?” Adelle asks, voice mixed with scorn and something else. Perhaps pride. “Isn’t that good enough?”
“The Dollhouse isn’t safe, Adelle. It’s hell.” They glare at each other and Echo refuses to say anything more.
Topher starts to work on it but goes mad before he’s finished. So Echo leaves, Paul Ballard hot on her heels, leaving the rest of them stuck in ‘hell’ as she goes off in search of the ever elusive ‘Safe Haven’.
02.
‘I loved you,’ she had said. I loved you. I loved you. I loved you. I loved you. Her mind repeats it over and over again as she tosses and turns, trying to sleep. She misses him. She misses what he was. Or rather, what she thought he was. She keeps forgetting none of it was real. She misses what they had-that connection, more than just the imprint. She misses the caring hand, the guidance, the father she never had.
She remembers the feeling of his betrayal; it still cuts her inside. Caroline came into her head, and there it was, right at the forefront: the man she trusted more than anything in the world, the founder of the thing she hated most.
And yet, even with his betrayal, her mind still plays her all the good moments: Boyd finding her in the forest. Boyd fighting Paul to protect her. Boyd nurturing her, helping her grow.
She misses him, still; she loves him, still, and it kills her.
03.
They’re the couple everyone wants to be. Striding through the halls of the Dollhouse side by side, arms swinging (occasionally touching), awesome clothes and matching expressions of scorn and detachment. There’s this aura around them; they seem to just exude cool.
Sometimes he leans in too close to hear what she’s saying when he could easily be a few inches back. Sometimes she laughs when he cracks a joke, and her eyes light up as she watches him.
Judith thinks they might just be the most perfect thing that ever existed, though she might be a bit biased. Still, there’s something about DeWitt and Dominic that, she thinks, anyone would see that they’re meant to be.
04.
He picks them off one by one, little glass dolls that smash into thousands of tiny little pieces. They don’t even put up a fight, and his knife makes quick work of their delicate, beautiful faces. They’re broken on the inside, all of them, despite how the Dollhouse likes to convince them otherwise, so why not make them broken on the outside as well? Then everyone will know. Then everyone will know the lies the Dollhouse tells it’s people, both clients and employees alike. He’ll break them, smash them and destroy them, and then he’ll take his Echo and they’ll be gone from this nightmare.
05.
He screams, just to hear the sound escape his throat. Just to prove he’s still alive. He’s still here. He’s still fighting. And right now there’s half a dozen butchers wanting to take a bite out of him. He jumps up onto a ledge and empties a cartridge into the air for the thrill of it. He should be worrying about the limited amount of ammo they have left or about the butchers he should be aiming at but he’s so high right now he doesn’t give a fuck.
He jumps off the ledge, shouts again, and then takes off through the trees. The butchers give chase, but they’re thick and awkward, lumbering along. He runs, his blood pumping in his veins and pounding in his ears. He feels alive. He feels more alive than he has in years. He speeds up, zipping through the trees. The butchers have long fallen behind. He’s running just for himself now. Just for himself and the exhilaration of being free.