004. Dollhouse: Shut Down The Mine, 15 drabbles, G.
Title: Shut Down The Mine
Fandom: Dollhouse
Author:
hkath
Summary: Whiskey spends a lot of time alone.
Notes: The last 15 of my 100 drabbles for
whedonland's big bang alt challenge, on the theme "bad girls". This assumes that a certain scene in Epitaph One directly led to a certain scene in Epitaph Two, namely that: (the gas Whiskey releases simply puts people to sleep and wipes them, as a mechanism protecting the Dollhouse from intruders.)
You're Not Here
In the morning, Alpha's upset. He screams at her, waving around a piece of crumpled paper. A letter. He calls her by someone else's name.
“I'm sorry,” Whiskey says, over and over. She doesn't know what she did. Alpha won't tell her.
“It's alright,” he finally says, but he still looks sad.
“Was I not my best?” Whiskey says.
Alpha shakes his head. “You were peachy.” He leads her upstairs to a little metal door in the wall.
“Open it,” he says. “I'm going to show you how to stay your very best, Whiskey.”
Different
When she wakes up, she's not alone anymore.
The others here are almost like her. They greet her with familiar smiles, familiar words. Go about their days in familiar patterns, blocks of time set aside for fitness, for art. The faces change, but the patterns are always the same.
Day after day, year after year, the others come and go. It's easy for them to fall into the patterns. They wake up knowing what to say. They care for each other. They're family.
But Whiskey knows she's different.
She's always been here. They haven't.
She has a name. They don't.
Light
She has a memory of sunlight, though she’s never seen it herself. That’s odd.
Odder still is what sunlight makes her feel. She paints a picture about it, then another, carefully smoothing the paint along its swirling lines and curves. She saves them for someone. The person she’s waiting for.
He’s coming for her. She’ll know him when she sees him.
Her friends here don’t like her paintings very much. They always want to know what the swirls mean. They just stare at the joyful spirals and blots of colour.
They don’t understand about sunlight, not the way Whiskey does.
Doctor
She likes Alpha’s visits.
She has many friends here, but none of them are ever Alpha. Only Alpha is Alpha, who used to be like her, but is different now. Better.
Whiskey wonders if she’s sick.
There used to be a doctor here. Now there are only traces: instruments, gloves. Sometimes, behind her thoughts, Whiskey can picture his hands. She likes to sit here in his office, where it’s dark and cool. She likes to touch his things. Everything but the knives, which are locked away.
A doctor would be good for this house. Whiskey can almost see her hands.
Without You
Whiskey doesn't like being alone. She likes the comfort of other bodies around hers, likes to have someone to talk to. When she was first left alone, the kitchen stayed untouched for months. Whiskey ate canned peaches (her favourite, she'd have said, if someone had been there) until they ran out. Then she started on the pears.
Days bleed together under the soft lights of the Dollhouse. She teaches herself laundry, then she teaches herself cooking, both through trial and error and the puzzling over of little pictures. She never thinks about leaving, or about outside at all. She waits.
Touched By The Sun
Alpha finds the pictures, rolled in a drawer of the doctor's desk. She'd forgotten. She forgets a lot of things.
“Are these yours?” he says.
“I made them,” Whiskey says. “Does that make them mine?”
“Yes,” Alpha tells her.
She rolls them up again, places them in his palm. Alpha's eyes never leave hers.
“Would you like to see it?”
“I don't understand.”
“The sun. Would you like to see it?”
Whiskey considers this idea. She considers what it means, to belong to this place.
“It's not for me,” she says, regretful.
There's Only One Of You
Every time she meets Caroline, she's meeting a whole different person on the outside. Caroline always recognizes her. She's very nice. A little intense.
She always wants to leave, which confuses Whiskey. She thinks they must not be friends, because so many Carolines leave here. None of them ever comes back.
Once, one of the bodies came back, but there was no Caroline inside. After that, there were no more Carolines, not for a long time.
Maybe one day, Whiskey will let Caroline in. Then she'll leave here, and go wherever the others go. She'd like to find out where.
The Beginning After The End
She wakes up on the ground, bright sky above her, blinding her. Just a second ago, she was elsewhere, underground, under soft blue light, surrounded by stereotypes: the nerdy scientist, the ice queen. She gets to her feet. There are others here, dizzy, struggling to stand. She helps.
They share names and recent memories. She's the only one who remembers the chair, the blue light. Dollhouse. Everyone else's life stories just stop right in the middle, but hers – it had a chapter heading for this. When she catches her reflection in a window, she doesn't recognize what she sees.
Fandom: Dollhouse
Author:
hkathSummary: Whiskey spends a lot of time alone.
Notes: The last 15 of my 100 drabbles for
whedonland's big bang alt challenge, on the theme "bad girls". This assumes that a certain scene in Epitaph One directly led to a certain scene in Epitaph Two, namely that: (the gas Whiskey releases simply puts people to sleep and wipes them, as a mechanism protecting the Dollhouse from intruders.)You're Not Here
In the morning, Alpha's upset. He screams at her, waving around a piece of crumpled paper. A letter. He calls her by someone else's name.
“I'm sorry,” Whiskey says, over and over. She doesn't know what she did. Alpha won't tell her.
“It's alright,” he finally says, but he still looks sad.
“Was I not my best?” Whiskey says.
Alpha shakes his head. “You were peachy.” He leads her upstairs to a little metal door in the wall.
“Open it,” he says. “I'm going to show you how to stay your very best, Whiskey.”
Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth
A few weeks after they seal the doors, Claire finds Juliet in her office, hands clasped anxiously in her lap. She's pregnant. Of course.
Claire's made it a point to keep her distance since she came back. She has to ask who the father is. Juliet (Renée, her real name is) blushes, tells her the guy's real name (Dennis), and it takes Claire a few seconds to realize that Juliet means Romeo. She didn't see that one coming.
It makes sense, she thinks, that they'd start grouping, building families. Their world is over already. Whatever's happening outside is just afterthought.
Different
When she wakes up, she's not alone anymore.
The others here are almost like her. They greet her with familiar smiles, familiar words. Go about their days in familiar patterns, blocks of time set aside for fitness, for art. The faces change, but the patterns are always the same.
Day after day, year after year, the others come and go. It's easy for them to fall into the patterns. They wake up knowing what to say. They care for each other. They're family.
But Whiskey knows she's different.
She's always been here. They haven't.
She has a name. They don't.
Love At First Sight
Do two pairs of eyes perceive colours the same way? Are any two people really able to share an experience? She's asked herself these questions her whole life. What she perceives to be her life, anyway.
If Claire really wanted to, she could find out, easy. She doesn't want to.
Priya and Anthony argue almost hourly. There's a passion to it, of course, and a physical devotion that cuts to the very core of the self, but now there's also reality, weighing them down.
They used to see the world through each other's eyes, Claire thinks. Now they're both alone.
Light
She has a memory of sunlight, though she’s never seen it herself. That’s odd.
Odder still is what sunlight makes her feel. She paints a picture about it, then another, carefully smoothing the paint along its swirling lines and curves. She saves them for someone. The person she’s waiting for.
He’s coming for her. She’ll know him when she sees him.
Her friends here don’t like her paintings very much. They always want to know what the swirls mean. They just stare at the joyful spirals and blots of colour.
They don’t understand about sunlight, not the way Whiskey does.
Idioteque
“It doesn't bother you to be surrounded by morons?”
Claire wonders if Dominic has forgotten what she is. What they all are, deep down.
“I like it here,” she says. “I like to stay close, in case I'm needed.”
There it is: the realization hitting him right in the eyes. Claire never knows she's reciting a scripted line until the audience reacts. She used to find it embarrassing. Now it's just another curiosity, like waking up one day without the scars that defined her. Like finding out she was made from a man, like Eve from Adam.
Doctor
She likes Alpha’s visits.
She has many friends here, but none of them are ever Alpha. Only Alpha is Alpha, who used to be like her, but is different now. Better.
Whiskey wonders if she’s sick.
There used to be a doctor here. Now there are only traces: instruments, gloves. Sometimes, behind her thoughts, Whiskey can picture his hands. She likes to sit here in his office, where it’s dark and cool. She likes to touch his things. Everything but the knives, which are locked away.
A doctor would be good for this house. Whiskey can almost see her hands.
Wedding Song
They look to Claire for the strangest things. Like being a doctor qualifies her to run their lives.
“I think I'm losing him,” Priya says. “I can't get through to him anymore.”
Claire doles out sage advice about communication, reminds Priya what they all know: that what she and Tony have is inexplicable - undeniable proof of a link between soul, mind and body. Of course they'll work it out.
She placates Priya. Swallows her bitterness.
They're so ungrateful, able to just be.
She's buckling under the ethics of her own existence. The constant guilt and terror of it.
Without You
Whiskey doesn't like being alone. She likes the comfort of other bodies around hers, likes to have someone to talk to. When she was first left alone, the kitchen stayed untouched for months. Whiskey ate canned peaches (her favourite, she'd have said, if someone had been there) until they ran out. Then she started on the pears.
Days bleed together under the soft lights of the Dollhouse. She teaches herself laundry, then she teaches herself cooking, both through trial and error and the puzzling over of little pictures. She never thinks about leaving, or about outside at all. She waits.
Lingering
She says goodbye to all of them, eventually. First Priya's group, all hopeful eyes and tears, then some smaller factions, and finally, inevitably, Echo shepherding them all in mass migration to safety. Claire can't even imagine going. She's never felt safe anywhere else, not even with Boyd, back before the missing chunks of memory she's stopped asking them to fill in for her.
She wonders if it's a program: this comfort, the sense of belonging only here and nowhere else, written into her somehow by Topher along with her fake memories. It doesn't really matter. She's staying, and that's that.
Touched By The Sun
Alpha finds the pictures, rolled in a drawer of the doctor's desk. She'd forgotten. She forgets a lot of things.
“Are these yours?” he says.
“I made them,” Whiskey says. “Does that make them mine?”
“Yes,” Alpha tells her.
She rolls them up again, places them in his palm. Alpha's eyes never leave hers.
“Would you like to see it?”
“I don't understand.”
“The sun. Would you like to see it?”
Whiskey considers this idea. She considers what it means, to belong to this place.
“It's not for me,” she says, regretful.
Canned Heat
“You built all this?” Claire says, unlocking the door to the control panel. “Designed it, I mean?”
Alpha shrugs. “In a way.” He reconsiders. “Not really.”
She hasn't missed the way his eyes avoid hers. She wonders if he's even noticed her scars are gone, or if that's the reason he's averting his gaze in the first place. He examines the map on the inside of the little door instead, then flips a couple of switches.
“This is just auxillary heat for the labs. I can use these circuits.”
“By all means,” she says.
There's Only One Of You
Every time she meets Caroline, she's meeting a whole different person on the outside. Caroline always recognizes her. She's very nice. A little intense.
She always wants to leave, which confuses Whiskey. She thinks they must not be friends, because so many Carolines leave here. None of them ever comes back.
Once, one of the bodies came back, but there was no Caroline inside. After that, there were no more Carolines, not for a long time.
Maybe one day, Whiskey will let Caroline in. Then she'll leave here, and go wherever the others go. She'd like to find out where.
Somebody Nobody Loves
“When you leave,” Claire tells Alpha, “I want you to take me with you.”
Alpha looks startled. “Thought you were here for the long haul, Doc,” he says. “Weren't you waiting for someone?”
“You misunderstand,” Claire says.
She does the deed herself, while Alpha and the House's handful of remaining inhabitants are asleep. She always does the important things herself.
Writing the note feels strange, sinister. Goodbye cruel world, and all that. She seals it into an envelope and labels it with his name.
Reclining in the chair feels nice, familiar. She closes her eyes.
The Beginning After The End
She wakes up on the ground, bright sky above her, blinding her. Just a second ago, she was elsewhere, underground, under soft blue light, surrounded by stereotypes: the nerdy scientist, the ice queen. She gets to her feet. There are others here, dizzy, struggling to stand. She helps.
They share names and recent memories. She's the only one who remembers the chair, the blue light. Dollhouse. Everyone else's life stories just stop right in the middle, but hers – it had a chapter heading for this. When she catches her reflection in a window, she doesn't recognize what she sees.
