Inviting Danger
by templemarker
Notes: For callmesandyk who asked for Dr. Saunders. Spoilers for the seasone one finale of Dollhouse.
***
She put her hand to the mirror, trying to envision himself as she once was Fingers small, thin, finely boned, traced the outline of her face, imagining it bigger, rounder, more flooded with lines.
If only this damned body could remember what he looked like; it had been under his care so many times, but she knew better than anyone how each pulse of an imprint erased what came before.
She thinks this imprint is breaking down somewhat; he’d seen it before. In Alpha, when he exerted his own will. In Victor, when he would come back from his engagements glassy-eyed, a momentary glitch before returning into the patter of his embedded personality. She doesn’t know how long he has been imprinted, but it must be the longest imprint the Dollhouse has ever authorized; certainly her memory of her time away seems unbroken, but with the secret of her former body revealed, who knows how long he has been inside this frame?
She lets her hand drop, pockets the pair of them in her robe, and does not question whether her devotion to covering so much of her flesh is shame borne from Alpha’s marks eked on her, or fear of what he might see if he looked at his reflection in full.
The thought of ending it all has crossed his mind, her mind; but there is no true end for a mind that lives on in the code written first and always on one of Topher’s wedges. Who knows how he would wake up? What is to say that would be any better than this? She strives for mortality even as its denied him. In his dark moments, growing more and more as the secrets come tumbling out, she thinks that this must be why the gods denied humans unending life. We are not built for it, he thinks as her hands closes the door.
***