Not Easily Broken

Disclaimer: All characters are the property of Fox and Mutant Enemy, JK Rowling and Scholastic

Chapter 1: Something Closer To Myself

For years Adelle DeWitt has kept the details of her job hidden from her family. A secretive person by nature, no one thought it strange when she would give vague answers to questions of her profession and with her intelligence most people assumed it was a covert government position. It also helped that both her parents were deceased and she lived on an entirely different continent than her only sister, Helena.

One day nearly 4 years ago, when Adelle succumbed to a bout of nostalgia and picked up the phone to call Helena, she was shocked to learn that her sister and her family were no where to be found. It was as though Helena, her husband and their daughter had magically been wiped off of the planet. Eleven months, Adelle had called in every favor she had from her old contacts in Great Britain, she even had a few actives selected from the London Dollhouse on the hunt but weeks of fruitless searching turned up nothing.

Just as Adelle was about to resign herself to never seeing her little sister ever again, she received a most peculiar phone call in the middle of the night. It was Helena for certain, even if she hadn't spoken to her sister in years she always had the uncanny ability to pinpoint Helena's crisp tones and perfect diction in a crowded room. But it wasn't the Helena she had known, this woman was angry, franticly prattling about nonsensical things. As Adelle sat up in her bed, pressing the phone tight against her ear better to hear the tall tale her sister spun, the more concern she became for Helena's sanity.

Witches…Wizards…Magical War…Mind Erase, that one caught her attention. It wasn't until Geoffery eased the phone from his wife's grip and calmly tried to explain to his sister-in-law what had Helena so rankled that Adelle's brain was able to process the information. Her niece, quiet little bookworm Hermione was a Witch, who in order to fight in a magical war erased her unsuspecting parents minds and squirreled them away in another country under assumed identities. Adelle had to suppress the inappropriate laughter bubbling in her throat, that was completely underhanded and borderline cruel, the girl was definitely a DeWitt through and through.

After their memories were restored and the war was at an end, Helena and Geoffery refused to see Hermione's reasons for committing such an act. Maybe it was because she was so far removed from the situation that Adelle could understand that the girl simply didn't want to leave herself open to exploitation should her parents be captured in the midst of a genocidal war but she found herself impressed with the lengths Hermione had gone through to ensure her parents safety. So she kept her mouth shut and listened while Helena ranted about the evils of magic and how she wanted to erase all traces of it from all of their lives forever. She listened as her sister sobbed her heart out, her words no longer coherent and Geoffery sighing warily into the phone.

"Sorry to dump all of this on you at once Addy but we were told before she entered that world that it was best we not speak of it with anyone else. There were laws, you see and Hermione was just ever so excited to know that there were others out there who were special just like her. If I could go back to that day, I swear I never would have opened that damnable letter. From the moment Hermione stepped foot in that school the daughter I knew ceased to exist. She's become distant to the point of being unfeeling in her actions, no doubt a byproduct of what she's endured in that place, surrounded by so much hate. I just…I just wish she could understand that what she did was not alright even if it was to protect us. I simply wish Hermione could understand that every action has consequences."

Adelle would later tell herself that it was the sheer hopelessness she heard in Geoffery's voice that propelled her to even make the suggestion but the comforting words that were so much more appropriate in a situation such as this was forced to the back of her mind. Instead Adelle DeWitt said the one thing she never wanted anyone she loved to ever hear,

"What if they didn't?"

'This is wrong,' Topher thinks as he nervously cracks his knuckles before continuing to type commands onto his keyboard, 'this is just so…wrong.'

When DeWitt approached him earlier today with a special assignment, Topher Brink thought he had died and gone to Neurological Modulator heaven. He pranced around his 'big kid' office, much to his assistant Ivy's annoyance, like a peacock eager to show off his mad skills, but the second he caught a glimpse of the subject, the wind was knocked right out of his sails.

She was struggling, somehow he hadn't expected that. Oh, he's not stupid, Topher is well aware that the majority of the Dolls in the House were coerced into enlisting and in some extreme cases (Sierra for example) some were here mainly because they pissed off the wrong people and needed to be dealt with. But with the way DeWitt spoke of the newcomer with a twinge of an emotion he's rarely seen her express, Topher was unprepared to see the tiny slip of a girl resisting the hold both Ballard and Ramirez had on her.

There was a crushing sensation in his chest that he wasn't familiar with and therefore proceeded to ignore, as the two handlers finally managed to strap the little spitfire into the chair and Ivy began to attached the two dozen or so electrode needles to her heavily sedated yet restless body. Her frightened brown eyes caught his in an intense final plea for help, Topher hesitated momentarily, hand poised over the enter key and with deep regret pressed the button, setting off a chain reaction that will strip away life as she knows it.

Hermione claws at the armrests of the ergonomically designed chair, the luminescent blue lights surrounding her head are blinding and a zapping noise crackles in the air before an intense neon green bolt of electricity shoots through every nerve in her body. She struggles to pull her hand free, desperate to reach for her wand and make the pain go away. The sedative that was slipped in her morning tea has dulled her war sharpened reactions, giving the Men In Black enough of an advantage to drag her off to this torture chamber.

The pain continues to accumulate and a thousand images zigzags through her brain, memories, she realizes, brief glimpses of the past year…the Final Battle…corpses littering the school grounds…werewolves sinking their fangs into young tender flesh…being on the run with Harry and Ron…dodging death at every turn…long days spent in the enormous library at Hogwarts…kissing Krum by the Black Lake…summers spent at the Burrow watching the boys play Quidditch…receiving her Hogwarts letter and the apprehensive look her parents exchanged…being teased in the park near her home for some weird accident a bushy haired bucktooth young girl committed…her father hoisting her up into the air spinning her around while explaining how a airplane stays in the air and just as the final burst of blue light shoots through her sweaty and strained body, her mother's eyes are teary as she lays her perfect little two day old bundle of joy into her crib. Then it's all washed away. Her entire existence erased in the blink of an eye.

Nearly an hour later, the electrodes are detached and as the odd shaped chair rights itself a goofy looking blond man with a sharp beck like nose tentatively grins down at her.

"Hello Fox." he greets, clapping his hands together softly

"Did I…did I fall asleep?" she asks in a bewildered tone

"Only for a little while." the man assures her

"Shall I go now?"

"If you'd like."

One Month Later…

Art class is nice. Picking up a brush, dipping it into the colorful paint and spreading it across a crisp white sheet of paper is very relaxing. There are many activities to partake in here that are soothing…yoga, swimming, even climbing the rock wall gives her a sense of tranquility. And then there are the things that are not so peaceful.

Fox can't quite ascertain exactly what it is that causes such unease but she instinctively knows it has something to do with that Chair. Her eyes are drawn to the second floor landing, where she spots Bravo entering the room with the funny little man and his strange chair. Bravo is going for a treatment. Treatment, just thinking the word causes an odd wave of euphoria to wash over her and it should feel good but for some reason it frightens her. Fox isn't the only one who feels this way, Echo feels it too.

Echo knows how to hide from the people who watches over them, Echo remembers, just like her, the things that they are not suppose to remember. Echo tells Fox when she is doing more than she should.

In the middle of painting a sprawling castle perched on a cliff, Fox gets an undeniable urge to hold the long wooden handle of the paint brush vertically. Her hand grasping the end tightly, she stares hard at the wooden stick ignoring the paint covered bristles and trying to recall why this seems so familiar. Unbidden, her wrist swishes and flicks, words of a long forgotten language slip from her lips and the white construction paper before her floats smoothly into the air, hovering for a moment until her concentration is broken by a soft gasp to her left. Sierra, the blond haired Asian woman who sleeps in the pod next to hers, is gaping at Fox in childlike amazement.

"They're watching." a voice to her right warns, she turns to see Echo pretending to focus on her painting, her long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail swishes when she subtly jerks her head in the direction of the men and woman dressed in suits that are always walking the halls watching over them.. "Be careful, Fox."

Nodding discreetly, Fox casts a serene smile at the tall man with the kind brown eyes that comes to stand before her table.

"Good day." she greets

He throws her a dubious look, glancing between Fox, Sierra and Echo then back to Fox, measuring the sincerity of her blank stare. Fox's smile doesn't falter under his scrutiny. He opens his mouth to speak but a quick look at her painting halts the words in his throat.

'Damn,' Langton thinks, 'that's the third time this month that she's drawn the same castle.' Topher assures them that the wipes are clean but it's clear to anyone who looks close enough that slowly but surely Fox is compositing memories from her former life. And from what Boyd Langton has read in Fox's highest level of security background file, he does not want to be around if/when she regains all of her memories.

But for now, Langton pastes on his most professional half smile and in his deep calming baritone asks Fox if she would like a treatment. He pretends not to notice the momentary flash of fear in the girl's honey-brown eyes before she complacently tidies her workstation then follows him up to the Imprint Room.

Stoically positioned on the second floor landing with a full panoramic view of the Dollhouse proper, Adelle watches the little exchange with Head of Security Mr. Langton and the three actives Echo, Sierra and Fox. Fox, Adelle sighs deeply, it will be one month tomorrow since Fox was added to their roster and her addition to the L.A. Dollhouse has been both a blessing and a curse. Within three weeks, Fox has managed to do the impossible, she lead a team of five actives and a handful of their security, hunted down and killed the sociopath Designation: Alpha. To say that she was impressed would be an understatement, Alpha had eluded their capture for well over a year after breaking back into the Dollhouse with an ex-FBI agent's help no less, and making off with Echo. Yet it had taken Fox less than a month to track Alpha and only several hours to eliminate the threat with Victor, Echo and Sierra at her side.

Adelle should have been ecstatic but the sight of Hermi- no Fox, she's Fox now. The sight of Fox covered in bruises, her clothes stained with dried blood made Adelle's heart clench painfully in her chest. She had swore to Helena and Geoffery that their child would be well taken care of while Topher searched for a cure to rid her of the magic that has wreaked havoc in their lives. And though she has specifically refused to send Fox on any romantic engagements, a bit hypercritical of her considering she doesn't give a flying fig if the others are sold to the highest bidder, Adelle is learning that Fox, Sierra and Echo are the tri-fecta of choice when it comes to high risk engagements.

In spite of praise from the higher-ups at Rossum for running such an efficient and profitable House, Adelle can't shake the cold ball of dread building in her stomach that's telling her this is all going to blow up in her face and when it does…God help those caught in the path of divine retribution.

He had thought they were past this by now, last year when she hacked into his files and learned that she wasn't the real Dr. Saunders, Topher had given her leeway and not reported all of the kooky and down right mean spirited tricks the good doctor played on him, out of some misguided sense of guilt. After Whiskey cornered him and got Topher to finally admit why he made her the way she was, he had assumed that they could at the very least call a cease fire to the endless barrage of witty insults.

Instead, Dr. Saunders took an exploratory jaunt out of the Dollhouse for the first time since Alpha assaulted her and returned with a less timid attitude but a new passive aggressive way of expressing her dislike for his brilliance. Her favorite topic as of late, Fox and the special treatments he has designed for the Doll.

"Have you read my latest report?"

"You mean the one hundred page manifesto denouncing some of my greatest work as…what was it again?" he mockingly flips through the medical and psychological report Dr. Saunders insists on pushing him to read, "Oh right, 'A desecration of the laws of nature', that was kinda poetic. Did you and your gentleman caller stay up all night thinking up the perfect zinger to prove what an evil genius I really am? Cause I gotta say I'm flattered and oddly titillated that I'm the subject of your pillow-talk."

"Could you take your mind out of the gutter for five seconds and answer the question like someone with morals would respond?" Saunders fires back in that irritated yet bored tone she reserves just for Topher.

"Take a good look around Saunders, this place is Fantasy Island. We're in the business of granting peoples wishes, so if Hermione's parents want their daughter scrubbed clean of the Merlin aspect of her brain that nearly got them and herself killed, who are we to judge?"

"Fox." comes her quiet reply several seconds later.

"What?"

"Her call sign is Fox, you should be careful not to let DeWitt hear you call an Active by her given name."

Saunders is looking at him in the same sad pitying way that everyone else regards Ballard when he's mooning over Echo. Topher Brink does not moon, especially over a Doll. He's merely fascinated by Hermione, he's intrigued…yeah that's the word. He was intrigued when he first mapped her brain patterns and discovered that her I.Q. level rivaled his own, that in another life they could have been great friends, she may even have provided better competition than Takahashi. He's intrigued that no matter how thoroughly he wipes her she always manages to default back to her British accent, not even Gamma or Roger have been able to retain their respective Irish and Mexican heritages and both of their contracts will be up next month.

At a loss on how to cover his slip of the tongue, Topher is relieved when Saunders turns to leave his sanctuary. She stops in the doorway, half glancing over her shoulder at the gangly young man.

"I'm not asking that you develop close bonds with every Active in this House, I know it would only serve to complicate your work. But what I am asking is that you consider the long term ramifications to stripping away what makes a person who they are. These abilities Fox has, they are something that genetics and nature decided she should have, not an imprinted skill you cooked up for someone else's enjoyment." her white lab coat flutters behind her as Claire exits his office, leaving Topher more conflicted than he'd care to admit.