Fic: My Many Faces Are The Same
Title: My Many Faces Are The Same
Author: Corona
Fandom: Dr Horrible
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Hints of Billy/Penny
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: Every day the suit gets a little harder to take off.
Every day the suit gets a little harder to take off.
At first Billy doesn't want to. Dr. Horrible has the luxury of not feeling anything at all, and Billy left him to his moment of glory while he sat quietly at the back of his own head and fell apart inside.
But when he wipes the condensation off of the mirror he sees his own face and almost doesn't recognise it. It's been a long time since he stared into his own eyes. It's starker and thinner; it's not used to soft any more, not used to uncertain, it looks odd staring blankly back at him. His own face looks alien now, it looks naked and strange. Less real somehow than the reflective goggles of his own monstrous creation. It makes him laugh, a quick tragic little laugh that hurts somewhere.
His eyes water, they're more sensitive to the light now.
Dr. Horrible doesn't take the goggles off any more.
Billy thinks eventually he might be swallowed up completely. One day he'll drag off the goggles and the coat and there'll be nothing left underneath. Dr. Horrible will have seeped all the way under his skin.
Not the Doctor Horrible he was, not the one from before. When he just wanted someone to see, he just wanted to show people what was wrong with the world. When he wanted to be someone. It was the ideas that were important.
It was, in the beginning.
The new Dr. Horrible, the new one is alive, the new one is sharp like glass, the new one has gone past wishing the world was different and into making it different. The new one doesn't want to convince the world to change, he just wants to break it, one piece at a time.
The new one knows that it's not how you laugh but when you laugh that matters.
And he doesn't have time to sleep.
It's Billy who wakes up in the basement, head pounding, slumped over formulas and equations that he's ashamed of, that he's afraid of. And he'll have barely enough time to be himself again before the Evil League of Evil will demand him- will demand Dr. Horrible.
And he'll sit at their table and listen to his own voice string together words like 'hoses' and 'acid' and 'playground' and people will clap approvingly while he's lost somewhere in the horror of it all.
He knows that he's not in control of this any more. He knows that when Penny died something broke, some important part of him that he didn't know he needed until it's just not there any more.
All that's left is the world through circles of glass. A world full of screaming people and ambition and a quiet voice that whispers that Bad Horse doesn't understand people, and someone who doesn't understand people can never truly destroy them, or own them.
And Billy will stare through the goggles while his fellow members nod and make suggestions and Dr. Horrible will carefully catalogue every single one of their weaknesses.
It's like he's the only one in the world who notices he's gone insane.
But how can that matter if you're the only one.
And Billy's tired, he's so incredibly tired. Too tired to protest, too tired to fight the sheer burning intensity that is this new darker, larger thing that owns him now.
And Dr. Horrible won't let him sleep.
When he dreams Penny's still here, she's still here but everything's the same. He's still lost in the red suit, teeth clenched so hard behind his smile that his jaw aches all through the night. And no matter how many times he tries to tell her that he's sorry, that he never meant her to get hurt, that he knows it was all his fault but he never meant it.
He never wanted that.
It was her.
It should have been her.
But she just looks at him like he's lost. Like there's nothing left to save.
Because she knows what he's done, she knows what he is now.
And Dr. Horrible looks through her like she's nothing, like she doesn't matter.
Billy always wakes up then, drags himself free of the dream with a noise in his throat that never comes out, it just stays there, sharp and endless and painful, because everything is wrong.
He's left alone in his own bed with a life he doesn't know how to fix, a life that's tumbling terrifyingly fast somewhere he thought he always wanted it to go.
And he can't make it stop.
When he looks up he's staring into the mirror and for a fraction of a second it's not Billy that looks back.
But out of the coat the world is too bright and too painful and it eats away at him in a thousand different ways, in a thousand places. Until he's left so full of nothing he can't breathe any more.
And he has to put the coat back on just to stay sane.
Or to go mad again.
He thinks he finally knows what it feels like to desperately, desperately want to be saved.
Author: Corona
Fandom: Dr Horrible
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Hints of Billy/Penny
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: Every day the suit gets a little harder to take off.
Every day the suit gets a little harder to take off.
At first Billy doesn't want to. Dr. Horrible has the luxury of not feeling anything at all, and Billy left him to his moment of glory while he sat quietly at the back of his own head and fell apart inside.
But when he wipes the condensation off of the mirror he sees his own face and almost doesn't recognise it. It's been a long time since he stared into his own eyes. It's starker and thinner; it's not used to soft any more, not used to uncertain, it looks odd staring blankly back at him. His own face looks alien now, it looks naked and strange. Less real somehow than the reflective goggles of his own monstrous creation. It makes him laugh, a quick tragic little laugh that hurts somewhere.
His eyes water, they're more sensitive to the light now.
Dr. Horrible doesn't take the goggles off any more.
Billy thinks eventually he might be swallowed up completely. One day he'll drag off the goggles and the coat and there'll be nothing left underneath. Dr. Horrible will have seeped all the way under his skin.
Not the Doctor Horrible he was, not the one from before. When he just wanted someone to see, he just wanted to show people what was wrong with the world. When he wanted to be someone. It was the ideas that were important.
It was, in the beginning.
The new Dr. Horrible, the new one is alive, the new one is sharp like glass, the new one has gone past wishing the world was different and into making it different. The new one doesn't want to convince the world to change, he just wants to break it, one piece at a time.
The new one knows that it's not how you laugh but when you laugh that matters.
And he doesn't have time to sleep.
It's Billy who wakes up in the basement, head pounding, slumped over formulas and equations that he's ashamed of, that he's afraid of. And he'll have barely enough time to be himself again before the Evil League of Evil will demand him- will demand Dr. Horrible.
And he'll sit at their table and listen to his own voice string together words like 'hoses' and 'acid' and 'playground' and people will clap approvingly while he's lost somewhere in the horror of it all.
He knows that he's not in control of this any more. He knows that when Penny died something broke, some important part of him that he didn't know he needed until it's just not there any more.
All that's left is the world through circles of glass. A world full of screaming people and ambition and a quiet voice that whispers that Bad Horse doesn't understand people, and someone who doesn't understand people can never truly destroy them, or own them.
And Billy will stare through the goggles while his fellow members nod and make suggestions and Dr. Horrible will carefully catalogue every single one of their weaknesses.
It's like he's the only one in the world who notices he's gone insane.
But how can that matter if you're the only one.
And Billy's tired, he's so incredibly tired. Too tired to protest, too tired to fight the sheer burning intensity that is this new darker, larger thing that owns him now.
And Dr. Horrible won't let him sleep.
When he dreams Penny's still here, she's still here but everything's the same. He's still lost in the red suit, teeth clenched so hard behind his smile that his jaw aches all through the night. And no matter how many times he tries to tell her that he's sorry, that he never meant her to get hurt, that he knows it was all his fault but he never meant it.
He never wanted that.
It was her.
It should have been her.
But she just looks at him like he's lost. Like there's nothing left to save.
Because she knows what he's done, she knows what he is now.
And Dr. Horrible looks through her like she's nothing, like she doesn't matter.
Billy always wakes up then, drags himself free of the dream with a noise in his throat that never comes out, it just stays there, sharp and endless and painful, because everything is wrong.
He's left alone in his own bed with a life he doesn't know how to fix, a life that's tumbling terrifyingly fast somewhere he thought he always wanted it to go.
And he can't make it stop.
When he looks up he's staring into the mirror and for a fraction of a second it's not Billy that looks back.
But out of the coat the world is too bright and too painful and it eats away at him in a thousand different ways, in a thousand places. Until he's left so full of nothing he can't breathe any more.
And he has to put the coat back on just to stay sane.
Or to go mad again.
He thinks he finally knows what it feels like to desperately, desperately want to be saved.