A/N: This was a fic actually spawned by the question I asked the one day after looking through and realizing... there were barely any fics focused on my favorite Gung-Ho Gun. No one, it seems, has ever looked into (or written) about Dominique the Cyclops. Therefore, I felt I had to remedy this issue with the following one-shot. (If reviews are good, I might continue)
I don't own Trigun, now ONWARD!
"Dominique? Dominique, are you listening?"
The masculine voice woke the woman out of her awakening reverie... what had that been again? Beware the ides of march...? No matter. Back to the subject at hand.
"Of course," the stylized woman spoke. Midvalley smiled.
"Sometimes I think you should get an ear-patch to match that one on your eye, Cyclops," he teased, his left hand fingering the keys on his saxophone. The duo were sitting at a bar, watching as a novice tried his hand poorly on a trumpet. The black-haired man sighed. "Kids know nothing nowadays."
"Oh? Like we did?" Cyclops asked, her voice deep. She stared into the mead set before her and picked it up. Seconds later, the glass she had was downed. "Joining up with Legato? I don't know what God cursed me into thinking that idea up-"
"Shh," Midvalley cautioned, tapping his forehead. "The boss is still around, you know."
Dominique glanced through the waning reflection of the shotglass, then set it down. "I don't really give a damn anymore. All our lives are is hunting and killing anyway."
"Like you hate it."
"I used to," she smiled. Turning towards the barkeep, she motioned for another round. The simply dressed man nodded once, then brought a round to the two. Midvalley raised an eyebrow.
"I can't imagine you as a pigtailed child."
"Some of us give up more than just our lives whenever we turn to the Guns," she admonished with a tart smell of whisky on her breath. "Some of us give up our souls and our hearts as well..."
Whisky. Pa's hand clutched at the bottle that he nursed so desperately. "No'- Not enuff-" he croaked through his alcohol-laiden breath. "A-agin."
"Father, don't you think you've had enou-"
"SHUT UP AND PRA-TICE!"
Dominique Connely squinted and physically drew back from her drunken father. However, the need for self-preservation kicked in and she drew herself into a strong sitting position, her fingers tickling the ivories of the family's piano. Her father fell back into his chair, swinging his bottle to the unplayed music.
Taking a deep breath via her diaphragm, she started to play.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood And sorry I could not travel both And be one trav'ler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could-"
The sound of breaking glass hit Dominique's ears before the shard hit her. When it did, it was all she could do to not cry out; the glass had penetrated her left eye.
"Go- go to be'-bed, you un-talenshed husshy-" he cawed at her as both blood and tears intermingled on the girl's face.
With a strong will, she stoicly stood up and turned away from her father, walking solemnly until she was in the hallway. By that point, she started to sob unrestraintedly against the woodwork panels of her family's mansion. The tears stung against the newly-wounded eye that wouldn't open, but the pain was so great that unrestrained sorrow won the fight against preservation.
"Mi-Miss Dominique- whatever is the-" Sorcha, the family's maid started to ask, when she noticed the blood trickling down from her mistress's eye to her shoulder.
"Miss Dominique!" She cried, and kneeled next to the hurt girl. "Was- did he-"
"Fa-father," the raven-haired girl whimpered. "My playing wasn't good enough, and he broke his bottle..." Sorcha painfully winced sympathetically as she forced Dominique's left eye open. The young woman fought against the servant's touch, but Sorcha pressed on.
"If I had my way, that father of yours-" she started, then bit her lower lip as she surveyed the damage. She'd need a doctor, and fast. The entirety of the iris was becoming stained with blood.
"Now hold on, little miss," she whispered. Dominique flinched as Sorcha pulled a kerchief from her own left pocket, holding open the girl's eyelid with her right hand. Quickly as possible, as to not cause the girl further pain, she took the shard out of the white of her eye. Dominique cried out as Sorcha held it in the handkerchief. Her lips were pressed in a pensive stance.
"We need to get you to Doctor Michael's, and fast," she whispered. The girl began to whimper again, and Sorcha held her tightly against her own frail body. That father of hers was something else... Tears mixed with blood stained Sorcha's front, and the older woman swore under her breath. With a supportive hand, she helped the girl stand up.
"Come. We have go to now... if we don't, you might lose that eye-"
"Lose- my eye?" Dominique shook with fear.
Sorcha didn't answer the question, instead pulling the girl with her towards the medical center. The loss of blood seemed to be getting serious, so Sorcha put all her effort into her back and carried the girl to the center. She prayed it wasn't too late..
"-you're sure about it?"
"-nothing more I can-" "-get over it, of course-"
"-hard to hide it, of course-"
Dominique woke up and opened her eyes- or eye, rather. The voices were familiar- Sorcha and someone male- Dr. Michael, was it? sitting by and talking, their manners clearly worried. Sorcha's face seemed drawn in and pinched, as though she'd been thinking too hard.
"S-Sorcha?" the young woman asked. Her servant turned at the sound of her mistress's voice and stared at the girl on the bed. Breaking the news was going to be interesting indeed. She rose and kneeled by Dominique's bed.
"I'm here, Miss. What do you need?"
"Wha- where am I?"
"At my clinic," Dr. Michael spoke gently. He put on his glasses and sighed, ruffling fingers through blonde hair. He stared at the girl as he continued, unsure of what to say.
"You-your eye. Did your father do this?" He questioned. Dominique looked away, ashamed for the moment. Michael sighed.
"We can't keep you away from him unless you tell us something," he pressed. Still the young woman didn't respond, looking away. She seemed to be thinking elsewhere.
She pressed her right hand against her forehead. Sorcha made a move as to stop her, but Micheal nodded towards her with a serious glance, and she stopped. Dominique felt the bandage covering her left eye and looked plaintively at Dr. Michael.
"Did you have to- will I still be able to-"
"Your eye..." Dr. Michael started, hesistating. He coughed, then started again. "Your eye... you will still be able to see out of it. But in order to save it-" he looked down, "I had to use a chemical operation that makes it... sensitive to light."
"Wha-?" Dominique started. She started to clutch at the bandage. Sorcha bounded forward again, but Michael once again gave her that icy glare he was so good at. The teen peeled off the edges of the bandage, then opened her eye, only to bite her tongue as she did so.
The pain- it was like being hit by lightning- Dominique gasped as the light burned against her iris. She quickly shut the eyelid, her other eye compensating by opening wide.
"What in the name of- what did you do to me?" Dominique cried, tears streaming out of her right eye- and ONLY her right eye. Dominique stared at Dr. Michael. "My left eye can't even- I can't cry! Father will-" she stopped, the memory seeping back to her of the glass shard hitting her eye, and she stopped silent. Dr. Michael sighed.
"The chemicals I used.. they basically are new and unstable, but are known to heal wounds fast, so I... I took the chance. I knew there'd be consequences, but.." he threw his hands in the air. "I thought... you'd rather be able to see out of both rather than have a gaping hole where your eye was..."
"But if open my eye-" Dominique started. Sorcha nodded and stepped forward with what looked like a circle attached to leather straps.
"Miss, if you use this..." she started, and stopped. "You can see through it, and it will filter the light so it won't be painful." Carefully she snapped the edges of the leather strap into place underneath Dominique's black hair, then adjusted the circle part of the rig so that it covered her mistress's eye. The girl took a step back from her servant, then looked up at her with her one good eye.
"I- I need a mirror."
Dr. Michael brought the requested item forward to the young woman, who intook a deep breath before both her eyes and looking into the mirror. What stared back at her was a girl who looked like a freak of nature- like one of those cyclops she'd read about in that novel that her mother had left for her after she'd died. A girl with one brown eye, and one eye hidden behind a patch...
Dominique readied herself to cry, when a tiny voice in the back of her mind spoke.
'Why? Why do you have to cry?'
Dominique blinked at the new presence, but answered.
'Because this terrible thing has happened to me, and there is nothing I can do about it.'
'You mean, you look like a freak.'
Dominique smiled at Sorcha and Dr. Michael, her happiness feigned as she curtised to the medical practictioner. Inside her mind, she banished the unknown voice to the deepest sanctum of her mind- dismissing it as she did the people in front of her. "Thank you," she told the doctor and her servant as she gathered herself up and made ready to go back to her house.
'I do not look like a freak- I mean, yes I do, but...' Dominique found the self-talk she was having fairly disconcerting. Sorcha went as though to stop the girl from walking home, but Dr. Michael stopped her by laying a hand on the woman's shoulder.
"She will tell us about her father when it's time," he told the woman consolingly. "Until then, we can only hope that she will adjust to the change with little difficulty." He sighed. "The police would take this matter seriously, no matter what his status. But there's no hope of bringing him to justice unless she tells the truth of the matter."
"I just hope that she comes to realize the truth soon," Sorcha answered, giving the man a quick thank-you squeeze of the hand and going to follow her mistress. "Otherwise, next time..."
She did not finish as she stepped out of the doorway. They both knew what would happen the next time... but would rather not say.
It was safer to stay quiet in the dark.
The conversations between Dominique and the voice in the back of her mind continued long after the initial meeting at the doctor's office. Somehow, the voice found its way back to the front of her mind, echoing her thoughts that she had wanted to repress.
Her father continued to treat Dominique as though nothing had happened; in fact, it would have been a miracle if he had noticed anything, so full of liquor was his body. She played her piano and sang her notes to him, acting as though she were the good girl she'd always been.
Even though she wasn't. The voice in the back of her head kept nagging her, pulling at her conciousness until Dominique was forced to confront it head-on in her dreams.
"Who are you?" The raven-haired girl asked the conciousness. Its form was indescribable, as it currently took on no shape save for a clouded red mist that enveloped her vision.
"I am you," the mist answered in her own voice. It writhed and condensed into a sphere-like ball, finally expanding into a tube of red light. Dominique covered both her eyes, her patched one hurting as it closed against the bloodly cylinder. Finally the tube-like container shifted, and when it had, an exact duplicate of Dominique stood before the young woman, the only difference being that both her eyes were stained with red.
"You're not me!" The original Dominique cried against her doppelganger, her index directed at the parody. "Who the hell are you?"
The double smiled with what looked like viciously large canines. "I AM you, little Dominique." A formerly red-tinted hand reached forward and stroked Dominique's cheek. "A you that exists WITHIN you... a you that you have kept locked away for years. I am the demon inside of you."
"D-demon?" Dominique shivered against her twin's touch; it was both cold as ice and hot as a fire. "B-but-"
The double placed her other hand against Dominique's face. "You have not known of my existance for long, and for that... I am sorry, little Dominique," she whispered. "However, I am here now, and it is time that you fulfill your true destiny."
"Destiny?" Dominique tore away from the spirit's touch, falling to the ground. She pulled her knees close against herself, shivering. "I have no destiny," she spat, as tears fell from her eyes. "Father has made sure of that..." The tears continued, as did her words.
"At worst, I was going to have been married to a wealthy man... someone who perhaps ran a water machine or worked for a Plant. Even if he wouldn't have loved me, I would have had money to fall back onto. But now..." Dominique placed her palm against the see-through patch she wore over the injured eye. "Now, it will be best if I can find a man who will stand the sight of me when he sees me in the street... most likely father will die without leaving me a penny, and I will be forced to work as a-" the tears were choking up her sinuses; making the girl sniffle. "A prostitute!"
Finally she gave into her emotions' inner turmoil, and Dominique found herself sobbing onto her knees as she held them close against her form. It was then that the other conciousness took upon itself to hold the saddened girl, holding her against her own unstable form.
"Shh... it's going to be okay," she told Dominique, brushing the girl's hair with a free hand as she rocked her gently. "We're not going to be a prostitute. Just wait and see."
"But-" Dominique looked up into those red eyes, willing herself to believe this foreign presence. "But how can I-"
"Let the demon inside take care of this," the spirit hushed her, still holding her and comforting her in her iced and burning arms. "Look into my eyes."
"But what- what will that do?" Dominique asked, tilting her head slightly towards the former red mist.
"Free you from your current future," was the only answer that she recieved before a powerful burning sensation took ahold of her formerly injured eye. The patch also seemed to burn, then grow cold.
It was not until the next morning when she awoke in a cold sweat that Dominique realized what had happened.
"That's when you got your... ability, right?" Midvalley queried, tapping his empty shotglass as a signal for the barkeep to return. The man nodded, then slipped into the background to get his wares to appease the Hornfreak.
"That's right," Dominique said with a slightly soft inclination to her voice. "That's when I gave into temptation- I really became Dominique the Cyclops that very night." She stared at her half-empty glass.
"But that still doesn't explain a few things- you've never dropped hints about a father or any relatives," Midvalley admonished as the barkeep brought back his tonic and poured his shotglass full. He took a meager sip, then set it back down. "And I know you said both of your eyes were brown once, so..."
"So I haven't finished," the gun-woman smiled genially, swiping his hardly-touched brew and tanking it down. "You see, it really all happened the next day anyways."
She'd awakened at dawn, yawning as she stretched her limbs. The dream last night had been far too disturbing for the young woman to think about. So, she didn't.
Instead, she hopped out of bed and went over to her mirrored desk to brush her hair as she did via her usual morning routine. When the young girl opened her eyes and glanced into the mirror, she nearly did a double take.
Her one normal brown eye was as normal as ever. But the eye that hid behind a patch... well...
The iris was blood red, and the patch had transformed into what looked like a clockwork-rigged piece. Dominique dopped her hairbrush and placed both her hands against her face, staring into the mirror with both her eyes fully open.
"My- my-"
"Like it?" a familiar voice from inside called to Dominique. The girl blinked, and when she turned, she saw those familiar red eyes boring into her that shared the same face and body as herself. Dominique glanced back at the girl, then turned back to face the mirror. She fingered her new eye cover with her right hand.
"I- what has happened to me?"
"I've given you a gift," the other young woman smiled and told Dominique. She leaned forward and hugged the girl's shoulders with both her long arms. "A wonderful gift. A gift that will make certain you don't become a prostitute- a gift that will give you undreamed freedom."
"Gift?"
"Your eye," the girl repeated. She turned Dominique's face towards her own. "Look at me." She took her own hand and gently held the right side of the black-haired girl's face.
"Your eye is your future. Never let anyone but those you call your fellows at arms know about it," she whispered, then smiled. "It is a gift known as the Demon's Eye- an ability to make your opponents blind to your movements and location whenever you fight them."
"Wait-" Dominique whimpered. "Opponents? Fight? But I don't want to-"
"Listen, girl," the doppelganger repeated. "In this barren world, there are two things a woman like you can do- either sell themselves, or learn to fight. You told me that you didn't want to rot away and become a prostitute, so I gave you this gift."
Dominique remained silent for a moment, her whole body going limp against the chair she sat on. The woman vanished away, as imaginary as it had once been. Finally, the girl gathered the courage to stare in the mirror once more.
"A Demon's Eye..." she whispered, her heart fluttering for some reason. "Able to make your... opponents blind..."
The past few years' worth of torment from her father came back to haunt her mind at that moment, rage bubbling inside her body as water might have done in a kettle. Dominique held her head in her hands, willing the alien emotion to subside as it had in the past. But the turmoil did not stop; instead, it surmounted into an almost volcanic-type feeling, as though it was ready to burst.
Dominique stood up, her mind mad with rage and her Demon's eye red as blood. Dantilly picking up her hairbrush, she stood up and glanced in the mirror once more before walking downstairs to where both her nanny and her father lay in wait of her awakening.
The black haired girl smiled. What they didn't know was that they had awakened something much more sinister than the little child they were expecting.
The news reports came over the radio a few days later. A man and his servant dead with such gorey remains that the local sheriff had thrown up at the very sight of the corpses. All that had survived the massacre had been the man's daughter, who had been found laying in a puddle of blood next to her butchered family. When the sheriff had returned with a woman from the local orphanage to take the girl back with them, they hadn't found her.
A three-week search was conducted to find the soul survivor of the bloody killings, but to no avail. The girl, who had since been dubbed the 'one-eyed miracle', had vanished off the face of the earth. When all searches came up negative after approximately a month and a half, it was assumed that whomever had killed the girl's father and servant had come back and finished the job, even though no remains were found.
"You know the rest," Dominique smirked over her drink. "Legato found me in the desert, about a hundred isles from town. It didn't take him much to see what I really was, and after that, well-"
"He took you in and trained you," Midvalley finished with a grin. He chuckled. "Hard to see that psycho actually caring about someone other than his Master."
The stylized woman laughed. "Who was on my case earlier about not saying anything bad about our Master?"
"Oh, hush," the Hornfreak snickered. "You know he doesn't keep that close of tabs on us. Otherwise... I think he'd have done something about us before this."
Dominique smiled and placed her hand on his as he reached for another glass of alcohol. "And what makes you think that?"
"Because-" he smiled as he gripped her hand gently, "a man who lives on death alone would utterly hate the idea that two of his underlings could have found happiness in his bloody paradise."
"I think you're being too dramatic."
"I think we've been out here too long. What do you say we go back to the base and see if we can't figure out some new uses for that Demon's Eye of yours?"
Dominique grinned, the blood-red iris of her eye shimmering behind her eyepatch. "I'd be delighted to."
With that, the two laid some coins onto the bar and strode out, never to return to the city again while there were people still living there. They were too busy, after all, with the affairs of death.
Well, that's my fic. Hopefully you enjoyed it- let me know by reviewing it, please!