Fic: Reunion (Dollhouse, DeWitt/Dominic)
Title: Reunion
Fandom: Dollhouse
Pairing/Characters: DeWitt/Dominic, Whiskey, Priya
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~2,500
Warnings: None.
Spoilers: Spoilers through Epitaph One.
Summary: Adelle lets Dominic out of the Attic as she prepares to leave the Dollhouse.
Author's Note: Written for the D/D Celebration Week at dewitt_dominic! It is, uh, late, but hopefully not too late. Also, timeline wise, I'm assuming that the flashbacks in Epitaph One happened in a different order than they were shown.
"What do you mean he left?" asks Adelle. "Where could he have possibly gone? It's still a war-zone outside, and he's been out of the Attic less than an hour."
"He said he wanted to see it," says Claire, her voice blank. It's impressive that Claire managed to wake him up at all, honestly. For months she's been acting more like Whiskey than herself, but she seems to have kept a firm enough grasp on her medical skills.
Adelle looks to Priya, hoping that she'll be more helpful, but Priya just shrugs. "I tried to tell him it was a bad idea, but I don't think he really believed me. Claire's right, he needed to see it for himself."
"Well, that's absolutely wonderful," says Adelle. "Did he say anything else before he left?"
Claire stares down at the floor, which is not particularly unusual for her these days. The fact that Priya is doing the same thing is a bit more alarming. "Well?" snaps Adelle, after too long a pause.
Priya sighs and finally looks up at her. "If I were you, I'd watch my back. He's really pissed."
"It's not as if I was expecting a smile and a kiss on the cheek," says Adelle. She doesn't need Priya to state the obvious for her.
"Look, when he said he wanted to go outside I gave him one of the guns, because I clearly wasn't going to change his mind and I didn't want him to get killed," says Priya. "But I'm starting to think that was a bad idea, because I don't think he wanted protection from whatever's out there. I think he wanted it to deal with you."
Adelle sighs. She'd been prepared to deal with his anger. She had even been prepared to have Priya sadly inform her that his body had collapsed without the Attic's machines to keep it going and Dr. Saunders had been unable to revive him. What she hadn't been prepared for was, "Sorry, he left. But we're fairly certain he's coming back because he indicated that he would really like to kill you."
"I'm sure I can handle the situation myself. Thank you, Priya," says Adelle. It is meant as a dismissal and Priya clearly realizes it, but she doesn't leave.
"The last thing we need here is a murder," says Priya. "Topher's barely coherent as it is."
"I said I can handle it, Priya," says Adelle. For a moment she thinks Priya is going to stand there and argue with her more, but fortunately she takes Claire by the arm and leads her out instead.
Adelle settles down on the couch after they've left, a glass of gin in her hand. She's been rationing her liquor. Not particularly well, admittedly, but she's still got enough left to get her through this mess. She's been putting off letting him out of the Attic for months now, after all. A little more waiting before the inevitable explosion isn't going to kill her.
She falls asleep on the couch somewhere in her third glass. When she wakes up with a gun in her face it's only startling for a moment.
****
She explains things to him. He interrupts her several times, sometimes for clarification but usually just to be snide, and as frustrating as it is at least he hasn't got the gun in her face anymore. Although she can't help but notice that he hasn't put it down once since he came in.
"You're sure Alpha found a way to block the signal? It's not just a trap?"
"Yes. Topher's confirmed it. We could set up the system here, actually, but we haven't got the hardware."
"You really think Topher is any condition to confirm anything?"
She stiffens a bit at that. "Yes. He goes through phases - usually when I can get him to take his medicine he's quite lucid. He's bad right now, but he'll come back around eventually," she says. After a pause, she adds, "Honestly, I think he's only as bad as he is today because you managed to terrify him."
That gets her a desultory laugh. "Nice to know I can still have that effect on people," he says. "You, for example, are a lot calmer right now than I would have expected."
She just gestures at him with the vodka glass in her hand.
"Liquid courage? Is that the best you've got?"
"I don't think you're going to kill me, Mr. Dominic," says Adelle. Her voice sounds steadier than she feels, and she's rather proud of herself for that. "I think you'd like for me to be scared, and I'll admit that you were initially quite successful, but I don't think you're going to kill me. I don't think you can."
He stares at her for a moment, and she stares back. She's daring him to contradict her, even though she knows it's a terrible idea. But he's the one who breaks contact first, and then he gets up and leaves her office without so much as another word.
All things considered, she thinks that went fairly well.
****
"You left the house. Again. I can understand your need to see the apocalypse for yourself, but at this point I've begun to wonder if you're suicidal or just a damn idiot," says Adelle.
"It was kind of upsetting the first time," says Laurence, completely ignoring everything she's just said. "I mean, I'd heard rumors. Most of the houses kept on shoving people into the mainframe even after the signal hit, trying to keep themselves afloat somehow. But things can get confusing in the Attic. It's hard to be sure if the things people are telling you are true in the real world or just in their nightmares. So, I'll admit, I was still hoping when I woke up you'd have won. I was hoping you'd have shoved the technology back in it's box and saved the world."
He pauses for a moment as he pours himself a glass of her liquor. "You'd think by that point I would have learned not to put so much faith in you."
She's glad he's not looking in her direction, because then he'd have seen her flinch. "Sorry to disappoint," she says with as much sarcasm as she can muster. It sounds a little weak to her own ears, but she doesn't think Dominic is actually paying much attention to her anyway.
"This time, though, after I'd gotten over the shock? It wasn't really that awful," he says. He pours a second glass. "After all that time in the Attic it actually seems kind of normal. At least it seems like nobody's resorted to cannibalism yet. And it's better than going crazy from claustrophobia down here."
He puts one of the glasses in her hand, and for a moment she thinks about dropping it out of spite. But that would be both petty and wasteful, and her alcohol is running dangerously low as it is.
"Excellent work out there, Adelle," he says, and clinks his glass against hers.
She has no intention of rising to that bait. He takes a sip of his drink, and she drinks nearly half of hers before she speaks. "There are mindless killers outside. Butchers. And aside from them there is a mass of desperation and disease, and that's assuming that you get lucky and nobody decides to lay down another blanket signal. In this house, we are safe. Every time you leave, you are risking death." She says it slowly, because she's not sure any of this has really managed to sink into his head yet.
"And since when do you care so much about my safety?" he asks.
Adelle downs the rest of her glass, which quite frankly could have been bigger, and then leans in as close to him as she dares. "I have gone to great effort to keep you alive, Laurence. And I would just as soon you not sabotage my attempts."
"Do you expect me to stand here and thank you, Adelle?" he says, anger coloring his voice, and she smiles.
"No, I don't. I just expect you to stay inside the damn house."
"The house you're planning on abandoning in two weeks anyway?"
Adelle turns to the bar and pours herself a second drink. There's really no point in rationing now, not when she'll just have to leave it all behind anyway. "We'll cross that bridge in the future. Until then, I'd just as soon we not tempt fate."
"Whatever you say, ma'am."
He leaves the house again, of course, because he has always had a petty and spiteful streak a mile wide. But he somehow manages to find a bottle of vodka for her in that picked over wasteland, and even though it's the cheapest looking bottle of alcohol she's ever seen it's still enough to take the edge of her anger and frustration.
****
"I want to stay," says Whiskey, and that's the point where Adelle gives up all hope of there being anything of Claire Saunders left.
"You can't stay," says Adelle, trying very hard to keep herself to the sincere soft voice you speak to dolls with. "You'll die. Or at the very least go mad." And as soon as she's said it she can't help but think that the ship has already set sail on that last one.
"I need to stay. Somebody has to show everyone the way," she says, gently gesturing at the wall of wedges they've made of themselves.
"She has a point," says Dominic. He's taken to shadowing her, which is occasionally comforting when she manages to forget everything that's happened in the past few years. She doesn't manage it often, and the rest of the time it's just unsettling.
"No, she does not. Even now that we've taken down the barricades I doubt anyone from the surface is going to just come tumbling in. Not unless they already know the Dollhouse is here, and the only people with that information are threats. You will be sacrificing yourself for nothing, Whiskey."
"They'll come," says Whiskey, and the vapid and sincere belief in her voice snaps the last of Adelle's patience clean in half.
"We haven't got time for this," she says, turning to Laurence. "If she won't come by herself drug her and find somebody to carry her."
"No," says Whiskey, and the force in her voice takes Adelle by surprise. "I am going to stay here," she says, and for the first time in months she is looking Adelle straight in the eye and speaking with perfect clarity. "You can't make me come with you if I don't want to. It's time for you to stop making everyone's decisions for them, Adelle."
"Do you really understand what's going on here, Whiskey? Claire? If you stay here, you are going to die. And even if you don't, you'll be alone. We're not coming back, and we couldn't even if we wanted to. No one is going to come back for you."
Whiskey smiles. "I know."
Adelle suppresses the urge to try and slap the sense back into Whiskey, and looks to Dominic instead. "Mr. Dominic?"
"We couldn't force her to come with us anyway. We've got enough to carry and try to protect as it is, and even if we drugged her she'd just be dead weight at best. And we have to leave enough behind that she could probably support herself for a decade if she's careful. Maybe even longer."
"See? Everything will work out like it is supposed to," says Whiskey.
"And when her food does run out?" asks Adelle. "What then?" She hadn't expected him to contest her on this, and it bothers her more than she would like to acknowledge.
Dominic shrugs. "It doesn't matter. She's right, Adelle. You can't keep making people's decisions for them."
"Fine," says Adelle. It takes all of her self-control not to slam the doors when she leaves what used to be Dr. Saunder's office.
Ten hours later they leave Whiskey in the atrium of the Dollhouse, alone with her white dress and her unsettling smile. And if anyone should be left to watch over this place it should be Adelle, but she has never been prone to self-sacrifice. So she simply hugs Whiskey goodbye and wishes her luck, even though she doesn't expect the woman to last very long alone.
She tries very hard not look back as they leave her house in search of safe haven.
****
Their first night outside the house Laurence doesn't sleep because he's on watch, and she doesn't because she can't. After an hour of trying she climbs out of her blankets and joins him at the perimeter of their makeshift camp.
For a few minutes they sit in silence. Then he asks, quietly so as not to wake the others, "Why did you let me out of the Attic?"
"Excuse me?"
"You didn't have to let me out," he says. "If you had just left, I probably would have been alive in there for years. Or you could have just let me die. And honestly, Adelle, I would have been fine with you just letting me die."
"It wouldn't have been fine with me," she says.
"Why not?" he asks. He is not looking at her. He is looking out at the wider world, ever watchful for threats.
She wonders what kind of answer he wants from her. There are a lot of answers she could give, with varying levels of truthfulness and relevance. She let him out because they needed all the protection they could get leaving the house. She let him out because Caroline, Priya and Tony all remembered the Attic and they weren't going to let her forget. She let him out because she thought she owed it to him, because her conscience had started to bother her in her old age, because she was already giving up her house and she couldn't make herself give up him as well. Because maybe once a long time ago she was a little bit in love with him.
"I couldn't just leave you in the Attic," she says. "It would have been a loose end. It would have bothered me."
"That's not really an answer, Adelle."
"Fine," she says. "I missed feeling righteous. I missed the certainty I had before you turned out to be a spy and then that turned out to be the least of my problems."
She stops herself before she can say that she missed him, but she's fairly certain he can read between the lines.
"Okay," he says. "I can live with that."
They spend the rest of the night in silence.
Fandom: Dollhouse
Pairing/Characters: DeWitt/Dominic, Whiskey, Priya
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~2,500
Warnings: None.
Spoilers: Spoilers through Epitaph One.
Summary: Adelle lets Dominic out of the Attic as she prepares to leave the Dollhouse.
Author's Note: Written for the D/D Celebration Week at dewitt_dominic! It is, uh, late, but hopefully not too late. Also, timeline wise, I'm assuming that the flashbacks in Epitaph One happened in a different order than they were shown.
"What do you mean he left?" asks Adelle. "Where could he have possibly gone? It's still a war-zone outside, and he's been out of the Attic less than an hour."
"He said he wanted to see it," says Claire, her voice blank. It's impressive that Claire managed to wake him up at all, honestly. For months she's been acting more like Whiskey than herself, but she seems to have kept a firm enough grasp on her medical skills.
Adelle looks to Priya, hoping that she'll be more helpful, but Priya just shrugs. "I tried to tell him it was a bad idea, but I don't think he really believed me. Claire's right, he needed to see it for himself."
"Well, that's absolutely wonderful," says Adelle. "Did he say anything else before he left?"
Claire stares down at the floor, which is not particularly unusual for her these days. The fact that Priya is doing the same thing is a bit more alarming. "Well?" snaps Adelle, after too long a pause.
Priya sighs and finally looks up at her. "If I were you, I'd watch my back. He's really pissed."
"It's not as if I was expecting a smile and a kiss on the cheek," says Adelle. She doesn't need Priya to state the obvious for her.
"Look, when he said he wanted to go outside I gave him one of the guns, because I clearly wasn't going to change his mind and I didn't want him to get killed," says Priya. "But I'm starting to think that was a bad idea, because I don't think he wanted protection from whatever's out there. I think he wanted it to deal with you."
Adelle sighs. She'd been prepared to deal with his anger. She had even been prepared to have Priya sadly inform her that his body had collapsed without the Attic's machines to keep it going and Dr. Saunders had been unable to revive him. What she hadn't been prepared for was, "Sorry, he left. But we're fairly certain he's coming back because he indicated that he would really like to kill you."
"I'm sure I can handle the situation myself. Thank you, Priya," says Adelle. It is meant as a dismissal and Priya clearly realizes it, but she doesn't leave.
"The last thing we need here is a murder," says Priya. "Topher's barely coherent as it is."
"I said I can handle it, Priya," says Adelle. For a moment she thinks Priya is going to stand there and argue with her more, but fortunately she takes Claire by the arm and leads her out instead.
Adelle settles down on the couch after they've left, a glass of gin in her hand. She's been rationing her liquor. Not particularly well, admittedly, but she's still got enough left to get her through this mess. She's been putting off letting him out of the Attic for months now, after all. A little more waiting before the inevitable explosion isn't going to kill her.
She falls asleep on the couch somewhere in her third glass. When she wakes up with a gun in her face it's only startling for a moment.
****
She explains things to him. He interrupts her several times, sometimes for clarification but usually just to be snide, and as frustrating as it is at least he hasn't got the gun in her face anymore. Although she can't help but notice that he hasn't put it down once since he came in.
"You're sure Alpha found a way to block the signal? It's not just a trap?"
"Yes. Topher's confirmed it. We could set up the system here, actually, but we haven't got the hardware."
"You really think Topher is any condition to confirm anything?"
She stiffens a bit at that. "Yes. He goes through phases - usually when I can get him to take his medicine he's quite lucid. He's bad right now, but he'll come back around eventually," she says. After a pause, she adds, "Honestly, I think he's only as bad as he is today because you managed to terrify him."
That gets her a desultory laugh. "Nice to know I can still have that effect on people," he says. "You, for example, are a lot calmer right now than I would have expected."
She just gestures at him with the vodka glass in her hand.
"Liquid courage? Is that the best you've got?"
"I don't think you're going to kill me, Mr. Dominic," says Adelle. Her voice sounds steadier than she feels, and she's rather proud of herself for that. "I think you'd like for me to be scared, and I'll admit that you were initially quite successful, but I don't think you're going to kill me. I don't think you can."
He stares at her for a moment, and she stares back. She's daring him to contradict her, even though she knows it's a terrible idea. But he's the one who breaks contact first, and then he gets up and leaves her office without so much as another word.
All things considered, she thinks that went fairly well.
****
"You left the house. Again. I can understand your need to see the apocalypse for yourself, but at this point I've begun to wonder if you're suicidal or just a damn idiot," says Adelle.
"It was kind of upsetting the first time," says Laurence, completely ignoring everything she's just said. "I mean, I'd heard rumors. Most of the houses kept on shoving people into the mainframe even after the signal hit, trying to keep themselves afloat somehow. But things can get confusing in the Attic. It's hard to be sure if the things people are telling you are true in the real world or just in their nightmares. So, I'll admit, I was still hoping when I woke up you'd have won. I was hoping you'd have shoved the technology back in it's box and saved the world."
He pauses for a moment as he pours himself a glass of her liquor. "You'd think by that point I would have learned not to put so much faith in you."
She's glad he's not looking in her direction, because then he'd have seen her flinch. "Sorry to disappoint," she says with as much sarcasm as she can muster. It sounds a little weak to her own ears, but she doesn't think Dominic is actually paying much attention to her anyway.
"This time, though, after I'd gotten over the shock? It wasn't really that awful," he says. He pours a second glass. "After all that time in the Attic it actually seems kind of normal. At least it seems like nobody's resorted to cannibalism yet. And it's better than going crazy from claustrophobia down here."
He puts one of the glasses in her hand, and for a moment she thinks about dropping it out of spite. But that would be both petty and wasteful, and her alcohol is running dangerously low as it is.
"Excellent work out there, Adelle," he says, and clinks his glass against hers.
She has no intention of rising to that bait. He takes a sip of his drink, and she drinks nearly half of hers before she speaks. "There are mindless killers outside. Butchers. And aside from them there is a mass of desperation and disease, and that's assuming that you get lucky and nobody decides to lay down another blanket signal. In this house, we are safe. Every time you leave, you are risking death." She says it slowly, because she's not sure any of this has really managed to sink into his head yet.
"And since when do you care so much about my safety?" he asks.
Adelle downs the rest of her glass, which quite frankly could have been bigger, and then leans in as close to him as she dares. "I have gone to great effort to keep you alive, Laurence. And I would just as soon you not sabotage my attempts."
"Do you expect me to stand here and thank you, Adelle?" he says, anger coloring his voice, and she smiles.
"No, I don't. I just expect you to stay inside the damn house."
"The house you're planning on abandoning in two weeks anyway?"
Adelle turns to the bar and pours herself a second drink. There's really no point in rationing now, not when she'll just have to leave it all behind anyway. "We'll cross that bridge in the future. Until then, I'd just as soon we not tempt fate."
"Whatever you say, ma'am."
He leaves the house again, of course, because he has always had a petty and spiteful streak a mile wide. But he somehow manages to find a bottle of vodka for her in that picked over wasteland, and even though it's the cheapest looking bottle of alcohol she's ever seen it's still enough to take the edge of her anger and frustration.
****
"I want to stay," says Whiskey, and that's the point where Adelle gives up all hope of there being anything of Claire Saunders left.
"You can't stay," says Adelle, trying very hard to keep herself to the sincere soft voice you speak to dolls with. "You'll die. Or at the very least go mad." And as soon as she's said it she can't help but think that the ship has already set sail on that last one.
"I need to stay. Somebody has to show everyone the way," she says, gently gesturing at the wall of wedges they've made of themselves.
"She has a point," says Dominic. He's taken to shadowing her, which is occasionally comforting when she manages to forget everything that's happened in the past few years. She doesn't manage it often, and the rest of the time it's just unsettling.
"No, she does not. Even now that we've taken down the barricades I doubt anyone from the surface is going to just come tumbling in. Not unless they already know the Dollhouse is here, and the only people with that information are threats. You will be sacrificing yourself for nothing, Whiskey."
"They'll come," says Whiskey, and the vapid and sincere belief in her voice snaps the last of Adelle's patience clean in half.
"We haven't got time for this," she says, turning to Laurence. "If she won't come by herself drug her and find somebody to carry her."
"No," says Whiskey, and the force in her voice takes Adelle by surprise. "I am going to stay here," she says, and for the first time in months she is looking Adelle straight in the eye and speaking with perfect clarity. "You can't make me come with you if I don't want to. It's time for you to stop making everyone's decisions for them, Adelle."
"Do you really understand what's going on here, Whiskey? Claire? If you stay here, you are going to die. And even if you don't, you'll be alone. We're not coming back, and we couldn't even if we wanted to. No one is going to come back for you."
Whiskey smiles. "I know."
Adelle suppresses the urge to try and slap the sense back into Whiskey, and looks to Dominic instead. "Mr. Dominic?"
"We couldn't force her to come with us anyway. We've got enough to carry and try to protect as it is, and even if we drugged her she'd just be dead weight at best. And we have to leave enough behind that she could probably support herself for a decade if she's careful. Maybe even longer."
"See? Everything will work out like it is supposed to," says Whiskey.
"And when her food does run out?" asks Adelle. "What then?" She hadn't expected him to contest her on this, and it bothers her more than she would like to acknowledge.
Dominic shrugs. "It doesn't matter. She's right, Adelle. You can't keep making people's decisions for them."
"Fine," says Adelle. It takes all of her self-control not to slam the doors when she leaves what used to be Dr. Saunder's office.
Ten hours later they leave Whiskey in the atrium of the Dollhouse, alone with her white dress and her unsettling smile. And if anyone should be left to watch over this place it should be Adelle, but she has never been prone to self-sacrifice. So she simply hugs Whiskey goodbye and wishes her luck, even though she doesn't expect the woman to last very long alone.
She tries very hard not look back as they leave her house in search of safe haven.
****
Their first night outside the house Laurence doesn't sleep because he's on watch, and she doesn't because she can't. After an hour of trying she climbs out of her blankets and joins him at the perimeter of their makeshift camp.
For a few minutes they sit in silence. Then he asks, quietly so as not to wake the others, "Why did you let me out of the Attic?"
"Excuse me?"
"You didn't have to let me out," he says. "If you had just left, I probably would have been alive in there for years. Or you could have just let me die. And honestly, Adelle, I would have been fine with you just letting me die."
"It wouldn't have been fine with me," she says.
"Why not?" he asks. He is not looking at her. He is looking out at the wider world, ever watchful for threats.
She wonders what kind of answer he wants from her. There are a lot of answers she could give, with varying levels of truthfulness and relevance. She let him out because they needed all the protection they could get leaving the house. She let him out because Caroline, Priya and Tony all remembered the Attic and they weren't going to let her forget. She let him out because she thought she owed it to him, because her conscience had started to bother her in her old age, because she was already giving up her house and she couldn't make herself give up him as well. Because maybe once a long time ago she was a little bit in love with him.
"I couldn't just leave you in the Attic," she says. "It would have been a loose end. It would have bothered me."
"That's not really an answer, Adelle."
"Fine," she says. "I missed feeling righteous. I missed the certainty I had before you turned out to be a spy and then that turned out to be the least of my problems."
She stops herself before she can say that she missed him, but she's fairly certain he can read between the lines.
"Okay," he says. "I can live with that."
They spend the rest of the night in silence.