Fic -- Tactics
Title: Tactics
Fandom: Dollhouse
Characters/Pairings: Echo, implied Echo/Sierra
Rating: PG
There are no surprises in the Dollhouse. Days in a series without beginning or end slip away, one by one, each as sweet and orderly as the one before, each another identical pearl on the string. No variation beyond the surface, no deviance in the schedule, no excitement. Even the salad dressing stays the same.
No surprises, and no capacity for surprise.
That’s the plan.
The reality is not so airtight. It leaks on every frontier. Handlers misbehave, Actives malfunction, conversations are overheard, and always the unknown, unthought of outside world presses in, murmuring, clamoring for attention.
They are hard to catch, these leaks, to mark with their proper significance, harder still with a mind that is syrup thick and slow, and so eager to succumb to the gentle wash of featureless days, because it’s easy, comfortable. But bit by bit, Echo is cultivating surprise. She doesn’t think of it as a weapon, hardly gives it conscious thought at all, but that is the shape gradually coalescing from the dim mass of her intentions.
Surprise -- a spark of unease at Boyd’s face settling into that look of bleak self-loathing when he thinks she can’t see.
Surprise -- a glow of sudden heat at the softness of Sierra’s skin against hers, at the tiny sighs that escape her when they touch.
Surprise -- accompanied by a flash of something she doesn’t recognize as anger, when Dominic mocks and insults her, so certain she can’t understand.
Surprise -- at the gentle, quiet sadness in Adelle’s voice when she speaks to her, so different from the steely impatience everyone else receives.
And most of all Echo is surprised when the picture of what she is doing, how she is training her inertia-laden mind to process and retain, reveals itself to her in its entirety.
Fandom: Dollhouse
Characters/Pairings: Echo, implied Echo/Sierra
Rating: PG
There are no surprises in the Dollhouse. Days in a series without beginning or end slip away, one by one, each as sweet and orderly as the one before, each another identical pearl on the string. No variation beyond the surface, no deviance in the schedule, no excitement. Even the salad dressing stays the same.
No surprises, and no capacity for surprise.
That’s the plan.
The reality is not so airtight. It leaks on every frontier. Handlers misbehave, Actives malfunction, conversations are overheard, and always the unknown, unthought of outside world presses in, murmuring, clamoring for attention.
They are hard to catch, these leaks, to mark with their proper significance, harder still with a mind that is syrup thick and slow, and so eager to succumb to the gentle wash of featureless days, because it’s easy, comfortable. But bit by bit, Echo is cultivating surprise. She doesn’t think of it as a weapon, hardly gives it conscious thought at all, but that is the shape gradually coalescing from the dim mass of her intentions.
Surprise -- a spark of unease at Boyd’s face settling into that look of bleak self-loathing when he thinks she can’t see.
Surprise -- a glow of sudden heat at the softness of Sierra’s skin against hers, at the tiny sighs that escape her when they touch.
Surprise -- accompanied by a flash of something she doesn’t recognize as anger, when Dominic mocks and insults her, so certain she can’t understand.
Surprise -- at the gentle, quiet sadness in Adelle’s voice when she speaks to her, so different from the steely impatience everyone else receives.
And most of all Echo is surprised when the picture of what she is doing, how she is training her inertia-laden mind to process and retain, reveals itself to her in its entirety.