"Tarnished" (PG; Victor, Claire)
Title: Tarnished
Author: obiwahn
Pairing/Characters: Victor, Claire (hints of Victor/Sierra & Claire/Topher)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Bleak, possibly political
Spoilers: Through Omega
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Joss. Just playing.
Word Count: 400
A/N: Written for dollhousefics Challenge 013: Self.
X-Posted to dollhousetales , blank_dolls , and dollhouseflash .
This didn't come out quite as I'd hoped, but I tried :)
In the military, men wear their scars with honor.
It's a part of who they are - the battles they’ve fought, all the people they think they are saving.
Scars are like medals: the more you have the more heroic you look.
It's far better than losing a limb. Nobody looks at a cripple as though they are heroic. All they see are missing pieces. Shadows of former selves. Scars are different.
But not for him.
He feels like a cripple. He can't even go out to the market without women cringing and pulling their children away from him. Children cry when they look at his face. And his gentle soul - the soul that was far too sensitive to ever serve in the war in the first place (that’s how he ended up in the Dollhouse) soon hardens, until there's nothing left beneath the scars that resembles the man he once was.
He’d been told that there had been an automobile accident. It was a fluke occurrence - their contracts protected them from any legal action on his part. But he knows that this is a lie.
At night he dreams of a man with scarecrow eyes and a lascivious grin - a man that cuts his face to shreds, and takes pleasure in it.
He also sees a girl with yellow hair. She is beautiful, and strong, and broken all at the same time, and his heart aches for her. He can’t even remember why, but his heart aches for her.
She has suffered too.
***
She can hardly look him in the eye anymore - which makes her job nearly impossible. There is nothing worse than being looked at with pity.
Don’t you want to know who you really are?
I know who I am.
This conversation plays over and over in her head as she examines the dolls after their engagements - wondering all the while if they’ve been imprinted with one of the same personalities that she had once been imprinted with. It's like a great circle - nothing goes to waste. She has to applaud Topher’s genius for that.
If she had been someone - before all of this - that person is gone now. She could never go back. She has a duty here: a duty to take care of these poor lost souls; a duty to protect them from the awful truths outside.
It's a horrible world.
Author: obiwahn
Pairing/Characters: Victor, Claire (hints of Victor/Sierra & Claire/Topher)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Bleak, possibly political
Spoilers: Through Omega
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Joss. Just playing.
Word Count: 400
A/N: Written for dollhousefics Challenge 013: Self.
X-Posted to dollhousetales , blank_dolls , and dollhouseflash .
This didn't come out quite as I'd hoped, but I tried :)
In the military, men wear their scars with honor.
It's a part of who they are - the battles they’ve fought, all the people they think they are saving.
Scars are like medals: the more you have the more heroic you look.
It's far better than losing a limb. Nobody looks at a cripple as though they are heroic. All they see are missing pieces. Shadows of former selves. Scars are different.
But not for him.
He feels like a cripple. He can't even go out to the market without women cringing and pulling their children away from him. Children cry when they look at his face. And his gentle soul - the soul that was far too sensitive to ever serve in the war in the first place (that’s how he ended up in the Dollhouse) soon hardens, until there's nothing left beneath the scars that resembles the man he once was.
He’d been told that there had been an automobile accident. It was a fluke occurrence - their contracts protected them from any legal action on his part. But he knows that this is a lie.
At night he dreams of a man with scarecrow eyes and a lascivious grin - a man that cuts his face to shreds, and takes pleasure in it.
He also sees a girl with yellow hair. She is beautiful, and strong, and broken all at the same time, and his heart aches for her. He can’t even remember why, but his heart aches for her.
She has suffered too.
***
She can hardly look him in the eye anymore - which makes her job nearly impossible. There is nothing worse than being looked at with pity.
Don’t you want to know who you really are?
I know who I am.
This conversation plays over and over in her head as she examines the dolls after their engagements - wondering all the while if they’ve been imprinted with one of the same personalities that she had once been imprinted with. It's like a great circle - nothing goes to waste. She has to applaud Topher’s genius for that.
If she had been someone - before all of this - that person is gone now. She could never go back. She has a duty here: a duty to take care of these poor lost souls; a duty to protect them from the awful truths outside.
It's a horrible world.