An Angel has no Memory, Part 4/4, a Dollhouse fanfiction
Title: An Angel has no Memory, Part 4/4
Author: mightyfastpig
Characters/Pairings: Ivy/Sophie Alvarez femslash
Rating: M for sexual content
Spoilers: Up to 1.12 "Omega", but occurs before 1.06 "Man on the Street"
Disclaimer: Dollhouse belongs to Joss Whedon and FOX
Word Count: 2335
Summary: She needed the idea of the machine that could break her open and free her from herself.
Ivy had carefully hand laundered the outfit last night, and practised doing the smooth, steady doll walk around her living room. She slept in her homemade pod.
Today, everything appeared the same, but she felt different, detached. She wondered if this is what the dolls felt like when imprinted. She couldn’t help looking for Sophie on the floor or in the lunch room. Sophie kept up a remarkable poker face.
At last the day ended. Now that the dolls were put away in their boxes and everybody else had gone away, she crept into the women’s washroom and changed in one of the stalls, having kept the outfit neatly folded at the bottom of her messenger bag all day. She took off her alterna-chick glasses and put in her rarely-used contacts, then took all the clips and braids out of her hair and combed it out.
What looked back at her in the bathroom mirror was a doll. Ivy hadn’t felt this scared, this excited, this turned on, this everything since Lucy Yuen taught her how to French kiss in the server closet at math camp.
Dolls didn’t get nervous. They were infinitely patient and accepting of what happened. Tell them to wait for you and they’d stay in one place for an hour or more.
“I try to be my best,” she whispered. She stopped waiting and just stood.
The bathroom door opened. Ivy turned to face the door.
Sophie’s dark suit stood out against the pale blue walls of the bathroom. Her white blouse was open to her waist, showing a tiny crucifix necklace against her olive skin and a hint of a lacy black bra. They were about the same height, but Ivy was barefoot, and Sophie was in her Cuban heeled boots. Ivy had to look up to meet Sophie’s and that made it just a little more perfect. “There you are, India.”
It took her a moment to realize Sophie wasn’t talking about the country. It was her name. Her Active name. “Yes, Ms. Alvarez?”
“It’s time for art class.”
Sophie led her out of the bathroom and across the empty floor, past the koi pond and the decorative screens. Her bare feet brushed against the polished hardwood. They even kept the floor warm here.
In the art room, Sophie watched while Ivy put on an apron and set up the watercolors.
“What do I paint?”
“Whatever you like.”
Ivy-- India-- immersed herself in the actions of painting, finally able to shut off her busy mind. She remembered she used to like art class back in grade school, mixing the colors and stroking the brushes, before it was all science and math classes.
“What’s that you’re painting?” Sophie stood behind her and looked over her shoulder.
“That’s me.” Ivy pointed at a stick figure in green paint. “That’s you.” She pointed at a bigger stick figure in black, holding the smaller figure’s hand. “We’re walking in one of the green places in the picture books.”
“It’s very nice.” Sophie’s hand rested on her shoulder, one thumb stroking her hairline, making her shudder. This was part of it, knowing they were constantly being watched, that what they felt could be destroyed in an instant.
She leaned slightly, brushing her shoulder against Sophie’s hip. She spoke the way an Active would, as simply and directly as possible. “When I touch you, I feel better.”
“I know. It’s time for your treatment, India,” Sophie said.
It was the next, logical inevitable step of this, but the words still hit her hard. “My treatments make me better.” India took off the apron and let her handler lead her to the Imprint room. Each step up the stairs increased her arousal by another notch.
And there it was the chair, waiting for them. Ivy, somewhere behind India, knew exactly what it could do to a person, what would happen if it was misused: destroy a person’s memories, reduce them to drooling catatonia or hopeless schizophrenia, take everything that made you you and put it in a little box to be mixed and burned. She needed the idea of the machine that could break her open and free her from herself.
Dolls didn’t struggle or resist. They sat in the chair obediently, almost welcoming it. India sat, arms and legs on the rests, and looked up at her handler. Sophie’s face was flushed, and there was a hint of sweat between her breasts.
The chair lowered until her head was surrounded, and she could hear the imprint array faintly hum as it went through a maintenance cycle, like something alive.
“We could do that to you,” Sophie said, her fingers expertly stroking Ivy’s breasts through the silky fabric, then continuing down her stomach. “Wipe you. There’d be nothing in your head but how many laps you’ll swim today, or what they’re serving for dinner. We’d put you in the chair and imprint you--” Her fingers reached between Ivy’s legs. “-- and send you out on engagements. You’d fuck people and kill people and love people and torture people, and at the end of it all, you’d just go back in the chair and then you’d be just another a sweet, soft, pretty, smiling, perfect Doll.”
Something clicked in the chair, and it rose again, lifting her head out of the imprint array. Sophie half-sat on the chair with her, face to face, breast to breast, legs entwined so their pussies were close together.
“How are you feeling, India?” Sophie said in her ear.
Saying those words to her was like pulling the pin out of a grenade.
“D-did I fall asleep?”
“For a little while.”
“Sh-shall I go- ah!- go n-now?”
“If you like.”
The grenade went off. Her hands clutched at Sophie’s back, her pussy rubbing hard as she could against Sophie’s leg, and spasmed hard.
“You’re mine, my Active, my Doll, my girl.” Sophie kissed all over her face.
***
Bundled up in Sophie’s jacket, smelling the sweat and sex, Ivy rested on Topher’s couch.
Sophie dropped onto the couch beside her and passed her an open water bottle and a bag of chips.
“Sure we should do this?”
“De nada. We raid Topher’s snacks all the time. You’d think a genius would notice something like that.” Sophie drank from her own bottle.
“Believe me, he’s crap at keeping inventory.” Ivy snuggled under Sophie’s arm, and looked down on the darkened Dollhouse’s main floor. It felt like the first night her parents left her home alone.
“Did we invent a new fetish just now?” Sophie wondered.
“Not really,” Ivy said. “I’m second generation ABC, American Born Chinese. My Mandarin is pretty much useless. But when I was a kid... sometimes I’d go to a mall or something and if anybody talked to me, I’d answer like I could barely speak English. Sometimes people were nicer to me.
“Then I figured out I was a lesbian, but only some people know. And only some of them know I’m kinky, and only some of them then I do ageplay and stuff like that.”
“Huh,” said Sophie. “You’ve got closets within closets.”
Ivy continued, knowing this was her usual post-Scene drop talking, but going through with it anyway. “My first real girlfriend, back in undergrad school, we had this special bag with my Little clothes. She’d be my sitter, and we’d watch Disney movies and things like that. She’d teach me how to kiss for the first time, over and over again. When we broke up, I purged all of that stuff, haven’t done it since.
“Then I came here, and saw the Actives. They just look so... I don’t know, happy, relaxed, content. What does it say about me I envy a bunch of brain altered sex toys?” She ate some of Topher’s chips.
“So what?” Sophie said. “Lots of people want to be coddled, and lots of people want to do the coddling. November gets plenty of adult baby engagements, and my girl has plenty of daddies and mommies.
“You’ve hardly got the weirdest kink I’ve ever seen, even before I started working here. One of my old girlfriends had perfectly good legs, but she owned a wheelchair. Some days she’d go to malls or parks and just roll around, pretending she was paraplegic. We had this whole scenario worked out where she’d been paralysed in a car crash, and I was her home health worker who’d prove she still had feeling below the waist.”
Ivy shook her head. “That’s pretending to be physically disabled, not mentally. I’ve been told since I was a little kid I was smart, that I’d go into science. But it’s tiring, and it doesn’t get me anywhere. Sometimes I want to be dumb and helpless. Doing stuff like this is the only thing keeping me going. I’ve been here two weeks, and I’ve never even touched the imprint suite. Topher treats me like I’m his gofer. I’m five seconds away from asking DeWitt for a transfer.” She shifted away, feeling guilty for wanting to leave this place, and leaving Sophie too.
“Ivy, you’re getting backwash from stuff that happened long before you got here, between me and Topher and Whiskey... and Dr. Saunders. Believe me, you’re not the broken one around here.” She sighed. “This place does things to people. In more than one way, I mean.” She took a drink of water. “This is up to you, but please don’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for starters, I’d miss you!” Sophie hugged her close and tickled her, making Ivy laugh a little. “Another reason: If things are going to get better around here, it’ll take new people changing things. It won’t be easy, but I think you could do it.”
“Maybe.” She hadn’t thought of it like that.
“Actually, there’s something else you should know before you stay or go.” Sophie took another long drink of water. “Let me tell you about Alpha....”
***
Ivy stood before Topher in his chair and showed him her find. “Eight-pack of strawberry-mango soy milk, 250 millilitre tetra packs, chilled to 5 degrees Celsius, with straws attached.”
“Nectar of the gods!” Topher reached out greedily.
Ivy held the package up out of his grasp. “Not until you give me a user account on the imprint suite.”
“I don’t have time, Ivy.”
“Make time,” she demanded. “This is only getting warmer. Second law of thermodynamics.”
He sighed and looked at the ceiling. “All right. You’ve got a sadistic streak, you know that?”
Ivy handed him the juice boxes and pulled her chair up beside his.
“Type your password here...” he said, pointing at the monitor.
Ivy smiled.
***
“If you’re going to stay here, you need to see this,” Sophie told Ivy as she beckoned her into the medical office.
“What is it, Sophie?” said Dr. Saunders, her fingers typing away over her keyboard.
Sophie closed her eyes. “Dr. Saunders, are you ready for your treatment?”
The doctor stopped typing. “Let’s make it quick.” She got up from the desk and straightened her white coat. “If it isn’t one piece of petty bureaucratic busywork, it’s another.”
Ivy followed Sophie and Saunders up the stairs and into the Imprint room. To Ivy’s surprise, Adelle DeWitt was there, waiting while Topher readied the machinery. Everybody was quiet, solemn. Even Topher’s fidgeting was subdued. It was like a funeral; no, like an estranged family gathering around the bed of a sick child.
Dr. Saunders casually got into the chair, as if she were getting a haircut. The chair lowered until her head was surrounded by the imprint field generator.
“Ivy, could you double check the transfer protocols?” Topher said quietly.
“Ah, yes.” She stepped over to one of the terminals, tapped a few keys and examined the display. “They’re good.”
Topher nodded and hit Enter on his keyboard. The chair glowed with blue light and Dr. Saunders-- Whiskey 1.1-- shuddered, wide eyes staring at the ceiling.
Ivy heard the doors open, and just caught Sophie hastily leaving.
She followed, and found Sophie sitting wearily in Ivy’s chair, elbows on her knees and face in her hands. Ivy knelt next to her. “Sophie?”
Sophie’s voice cracked. “It happened right in front of me. He just went off on my girl, cut up her face, and I didn’t stop him in time. I took her out to be used, fucked, banged up, shot at, but I always took her back here where she was safe. Supposed to be.” She looked up at Ivy. “Don’t think I can always keep you safe.” It was a painful admission.
Ivy’s hand found Sophie’s. She said the only thing she could think of. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Now that you’re here.” It began sarcastic, but it became sincere by the end.
“Do you trust me?”
“With my life.”
Ivy kissed her softly on the lips, security cameras be damned.
The imprint room’s doors opened. Ivy and Sophie jerked apart.
Dr. Saunders walked out, grumbling, “I’ve half a mind to quit and work for a brothel in Nevada. There’d be less bullshit.” She descended the stairs and disappeared.
Sophie and Ivy quickly stood. A moment later, Ms. DeWitt stepped into the office as well. “You wanted to see me, Ms. Chung?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m staying.”
--30--
Author: mightyfastpig
Characters/Pairings: Ivy/Sophie Alvarez femslash
Rating: M for sexual content
Spoilers: Up to 1.12 "Omega", but occurs before 1.06 "Man on the Street"
Disclaimer: Dollhouse belongs to Joss Whedon and FOX
Word Count: 2335
Summary: She needed the idea of the machine that could break her open and free her from herself.
Ivy had carefully hand laundered the outfit last night, and practised doing the smooth, steady doll walk around her living room. She slept in her homemade pod.
Today, everything appeared the same, but she felt different, detached. She wondered if this is what the dolls felt like when imprinted. She couldn’t help looking for Sophie on the floor or in the lunch room. Sophie kept up a remarkable poker face.
At last the day ended. Now that the dolls were put away in their boxes and everybody else had gone away, she crept into the women’s washroom and changed in one of the stalls, having kept the outfit neatly folded at the bottom of her messenger bag all day. She took off her alterna-chick glasses and put in her rarely-used contacts, then took all the clips and braids out of her hair and combed it out.
What looked back at her in the bathroom mirror was a doll. Ivy hadn’t felt this scared, this excited, this turned on, this everything since Lucy Yuen taught her how to French kiss in the server closet at math camp.
Dolls didn’t get nervous. They were infinitely patient and accepting of what happened. Tell them to wait for you and they’d stay in one place for an hour or more.
“I try to be my best,” she whispered. She stopped waiting and just stood.
The bathroom door opened. Ivy turned to face the door.
Sophie’s dark suit stood out against the pale blue walls of the bathroom. Her white blouse was open to her waist, showing a tiny crucifix necklace against her olive skin and a hint of a lacy black bra. They were about the same height, but Ivy was barefoot, and Sophie was in her Cuban heeled boots. Ivy had to look up to meet Sophie’s and that made it just a little more perfect. “There you are, India.”
It took her a moment to realize Sophie wasn’t talking about the country. It was her name. Her Active name. “Yes, Ms. Alvarez?”
“It’s time for art class.”
Sophie led her out of the bathroom and across the empty floor, past the koi pond and the decorative screens. Her bare feet brushed against the polished hardwood. They even kept the floor warm here.
In the art room, Sophie watched while Ivy put on an apron and set up the watercolors.
“What do I paint?”
“Whatever you like.”
Ivy-- India-- immersed herself in the actions of painting, finally able to shut off her busy mind. She remembered she used to like art class back in grade school, mixing the colors and stroking the brushes, before it was all science and math classes.
“What’s that you’re painting?” Sophie stood behind her and looked over her shoulder.
“That’s me.” Ivy pointed at a stick figure in green paint. “That’s you.” She pointed at a bigger stick figure in black, holding the smaller figure’s hand. “We’re walking in one of the green places in the picture books.”
“It’s very nice.” Sophie’s hand rested on her shoulder, one thumb stroking her hairline, making her shudder. This was part of it, knowing they were constantly being watched, that what they felt could be destroyed in an instant.
She leaned slightly, brushing her shoulder against Sophie’s hip. She spoke the way an Active would, as simply and directly as possible. “When I touch you, I feel better.”
“I know. It’s time for your treatment, India,” Sophie said.
It was the next, logical inevitable step of this, but the words still hit her hard. “My treatments make me better.” India took off the apron and let her handler lead her to the Imprint room. Each step up the stairs increased her arousal by another notch.
And there it was the chair, waiting for them. Ivy, somewhere behind India, knew exactly what it could do to a person, what would happen if it was misused: destroy a person’s memories, reduce them to drooling catatonia or hopeless schizophrenia, take everything that made you you and put it in a little box to be mixed and burned. She needed the idea of the machine that could break her open and free her from herself.
Dolls didn’t struggle or resist. They sat in the chair obediently, almost welcoming it. India sat, arms and legs on the rests, and looked up at her handler. Sophie’s face was flushed, and there was a hint of sweat between her breasts.
The chair lowered until her head was surrounded, and she could hear the imprint array faintly hum as it went through a maintenance cycle, like something alive.
“We could do that to you,” Sophie said, her fingers expertly stroking Ivy’s breasts through the silky fabric, then continuing down her stomach. “Wipe you. There’d be nothing in your head but how many laps you’ll swim today, or what they’re serving for dinner. We’d put you in the chair and imprint you--” Her fingers reached between Ivy’s legs. “-- and send you out on engagements. You’d fuck people and kill people and love people and torture people, and at the end of it all, you’d just go back in the chair and then you’d be just another a sweet, soft, pretty, smiling, perfect Doll.”
Something clicked in the chair, and it rose again, lifting her head out of the imprint array. Sophie half-sat on the chair with her, face to face, breast to breast, legs entwined so their pussies were close together.
“How are you feeling, India?” Sophie said in her ear.
Saying those words to her was like pulling the pin out of a grenade.
“D-did I fall asleep?”
“For a little while.”
“Sh-shall I go- ah!- go n-now?”
“If you like.”
The grenade went off. Her hands clutched at Sophie’s back, her pussy rubbing hard as she could against Sophie’s leg, and spasmed hard.
“You’re mine, my Active, my Doll, my girl.” Sophie kissed all over her face.
***
Bundled up in Sophie’s jacket, smelling the sweat and sex, Ivy rested on Topher’s couch.
Sophie dropped onto the couch beside her and passed her an open water bottle and a bag of chips.
“Sure we should do this?”
“De nada. We raid Topher’s snacks all the time. You’d think a genius would notice something like that.” Sophie drank from her own bottle.
“Believe me, he’s crap at keeping inventory.” Ivy snuggled under Sophie’s arm, and looked down on the darkened Dollhouse’s main floor. It felt like the first night her parents left her home alone.
“Did we invent a new fetish just now?” Sophie wondered.
“Not really,” Ivy said. “I’m second generation ABC, American Born Chinese. My Mandarin is pretty much useless. But when I was a kid... sometimes I’d go to a mall or something and if anybody talked to me, I’d answer like I could barely speak English. Sometimes people were nicer to me.
“Then I figured out I was a lesbian, but only some people know. And only some of them know I’m kinky, and only some of them then I do ageplay and stuff like that.”
“Huh,” said Sophie. “You’ve got closets within closets.”
Ivy continued, knowing this was her usual post-Scene drop talking, but going through with it anyway. “My first real girlfriend, back in undergrad school, we had this special bag with my Little clothes. She’d be my sitter, and we’d watch Disney movies and things like that. She’d teach me how to kiss for the first time, over and over again. When we broke up, I purged all of that stuff, haven’t done it since.
“Then I came here, and saw the Actives. They just look so... I don’t know, happy, relaxed, content. What does it say about me I envy a bunch of brain altered sex toys?” She ate some of Topher’s chips.
“So what?” Sophie said. “Lots of people want to be coddled, and lots of people want to do the coddling. November gets plenty of adult baby engagements, and my girl has plenty of daddies and mommies.
“You’ve hardly got the weirdest kink I’ve ever seen, even before I started working here. One of my old girlfriends had perfectly good legs, but she owned a wheelchair. Some days she’d go to malls or parks and just roll around, pretending she was paraplegic. We had this whole scenario worked out where she’d been paralysed in a car crash, and I was her home health worker who’d prove she still had feeling below the waist.”
Ivy shook her head. “That’s pretending to be physically disabled, not mentally. I’ve been told since I was a little kid I was smart, that I’d go into science. But it’s tiring, and it doesn’t get me anywhere. Sometimes I want to be dumb and helpless. Doing stuff like this is the only thing keeping me going. I’ve been here two weeks, and I’ve never even touched the imprint suite. Topher treats me like I’m his gofer. I’m five seconds away from asking DeWitt for a transfer.” She shifted away, feeling guilty for wanting to leave this place, and leaving Sophie too.
“Ivy, you’re getting backwash from stuff that happened long before you got here, between me and Topher and Whiskey... and Dr. Saunders. Believe me, you’re not the broken one around here.” She sighed. “This place does things to people. In more than one way, I mean.” She took a drink of water. “This is up to you, but please don’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for starters, I’d miss you!” Sophie hugged her close and tickled her, making Ivy laugh a little. “Another reason: If things are going to get better around here, it’ll take new people changing things. It won’t be easy, but I think you could do it.”
“Maybe.” She hadn’t thought of it like that.
“Actually, there’s something else you should know before you stay or go.” Sophie took another long drink of water. “Let me tell you about Alpha....”
***
Ivy stood before Topher in his chair and showed him her find. “Eight-pack of strawberry-mango soy milk, 250 millilitre tetra packs, chilled to 5 degrees Celsius, with straws attached.”
“Nectar of the gods!” Topher reached out greedily.
Ivy held the package up out of his grasp. “Not until you give me a user account on the imprint suite.”
“I don’t have time, Ivy.”
“Make time,” she demanded. “This is only getting warmer. Second law of thermodynamics.”
He sighed and looked at the ceiling. “All right. You’ve got a sadistic streak, you know that?”
Ivy handed him the juice boxes and pulled her chair up beside his.
“Type your password here...” he said, pointing at the monitor.
Ivy smiled.
***
“If you’re going to stay here, you need to see this,” Sophie told Ivy as she beckoned her into the medical office.
“What is it, Sophie?” said Dr. Saunders, her fingers typing away over her keyboard.
Sophie closed her eyes. “Dr. Saunders, are you ready for your treatment?”
The doctor stopped typing. “Let’s make it quick.” She got up from the desk and straightened her white coat. “If it isn’t one piece of petty bureaucratic busywork, it’s another.”
Ivy followed Sophie and Saunders up the stairs and into the Imprint room. To Ivy’s surprise, Adelle DeWitt was there, waiting while Topher readied the machinery. Everybody was quiet, solemn. Even Topher’s fidgeting was subdued. It was like a funeral; no, like an estranged family gathering around the bed of a sick child.
Dr. Saunders casually got into the chair, as if she were getting a haircut. The chair lowered until her head was surrounded by the imprint field generator.
“Ivy, could you double check the transfer protocols?” Topher said quietly.
“Ah, yes.” She stepped over to one of the terminals, tapped a few keys and examined the display. “They’re good.”
Topher nodded and hit Enter on his keyboard. The chair glowed with blue light and Dr. Saunders-- Whiskey 1.1-- shuddered, wide eyes staring at the ceiling.
Ivy heard the doors open, and just caught Sophie hastily leaving.
She followed, and found Sophie sitting wearily in Ivy’s chair, elbows on her knees and face in her hands. Ivy knelt next to her. “Sophie?”
Sophie’s voice cracked. “It happened right in front of me. He just went off on my girl, cut up her face, and I didn’t stop him in time. I took her out to be used, fucked, banged up, shot at, but I always took her back here where she was safe. Supposed to be.” She looked up at Ivy. “Don’t think I can always keep you safe.” It was a painful admission.
Ivy’s hand found Sophie’s. She said the only thing she could think of. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Now that you’re here.” It began sarcastic, but it became sincere by the end.
“Do you trust me?”
“With my life.”
Ivy kissed her softly on the lips, security cameras be damned.
The imprint room’s doors opened. Ivy and Sophie jerked apart.
Dr. Saunders walked out, grumbling, “I’ve half a mind to quit and work for a brothel in Nevada. There’d be less bullshit.” She descended the stairs and disappeared.
Sophie and Ivy quickly stood. A moment later, Ms. DeWitt stepped into the office as well. “You wanted to see me, Ms. Chung?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m staying.”
--30--