Spoilers: Up to end of S2
A/N: Written as part of smallfandomfest for aaronlisa with prompt "Dollhouse, Adelle/Topher, trying to fix things". It's my first time writing this pairing and I'm not entirely happy with the balance in this story, seeing as it is probably simultaneously too shippy in some ways and not shippy enough in others, but the deadline loomed, so I am releasing it and hope it is still enjoyed. Many thanks to stars_inthe_sky and rodlox for betareading – any remaining mistakes are my own.
"It's too late, isn't it?"
It's a question that she doesn't need to know the answer to, not really, but she looks to him for the answer, just in case it differs from what she knows. In case his brilliance, his strange perspective on all this, will yield a solution she isn't privy to.
Topher only nods, eyes downcast. That he makes no attempt to cover the shift in mood with an inappropriate joke informs her it's exactly as she thinks.
"Nevertheless, we must do what we can. Get back to work," she orders, straightening the papers on her desk and slipping back into her role: to be in control. Before, she'd thought she'd still had time to turn the tide in their favor and simply hadn't managed, too lost in the maze of company politics to effect real change, but this war will be hers to win.
"What work?" he prompts, incredulous, "The Dollhouse isn't..." He steps closer, and she can see out of the corner of her eye his head bob down, searching to catch her eye as he approaches. "Rossum is..."
Ending the world as they know it. But he doesn't want to finish that sentence, doesn't want to make it that real. The world won't go without a fight—that she knows too.
"Fixing this," she strikes back harshly with her words and he stops stock-still where he is, suddenly straighter, tighter in his being. So unlike him. Though she never says it, she might as well have: it's our fault. She knows he understands all too well. He leaves silently and she fetches a glass, preparing herself a drink to soften the blow of the fact they will, someday soon, kiss goodbye to any last semblance of normality in their lives.
She watches him indirectly, her excuse that she's unable to give up her much of her time from the arduous task ahead of taking the world back from Rossum. Requests updates on him from others on the remaining staff. Medical. Security. Technical ones too, from an ex-handler turned part-time apprentice imprinter, who is hardly any use and yet better than nothing. But, for the most part, Topher's babbling is incomprehensible. It isn't anything entirely new, either—simply an extreme, a manifestation of all the pressure they are under. There is concern, of course, for his wellbeing, but Adelle and the scant medical staff – primarily a bunch of first aiders - have far too much to deal with. Topher does his job, and then some. It isn't notable until suddenly he can't anymore and then questions get asked. Once again, it appears to be too late.
For so long, they were both people with questionable morals, justified by self-preservation and self-interest, and they have almost always been on the same side. She'd been glad of it, to know she could rely on Topher to see her view, never entirely alone in her judgments. It was only when they'd failed everyone so spectacularly that she'd resented it; he'd been just like her, just as wrong, just as responsible, and she hadn't wanted to look at his all-too-expressive face anymore, afraid of seeing everything in it she doesn't want to feel herself.
It turns out he hadn't been sleeping enough, not that anyone gets to do so anymore. He hadn't eaten enough, either, though no one refused Topher's rations when he palmed them off to others. He hadn't seemed himself, but neither had he seemed another person entirely. That had been good enough, all things considered. None of it is different enough to explain because everyone was different these days. The signs that something was wrong had been there, and no one had been watching closely enough, their attention understandably directed elsewhere.
But Adelle knows she should have taken more time with him. She needs him, after all. He's one of the few people she'd allowed herself to grow close to, practically the only one left now. Furthermore, she can't fix this by herself. Her sole ambition these days is to fix their mistake. Every other thought or temptation, whether seeking comfort in drink or from him, has been thrown out, regardless of what she wants for herself because it had seemed the rational choice and a suitable penance.
Instead, she has broken their world a touch more, with the guilt they'd both laid upon him. He'd had enough of his own without her unspoken accusations of blame and that guilt had weighed down too hard for one man to bear. She could have shouldered it with him, she realizes now, if she had not been so eager to soldier on in her isolation, the leader standing on high above her troops, and, now, she is down on her knees, begging in her own way to bring him back from the brink of insanity.
The floor of his pod is cushioned, but it was never designed for two, and she struggles to approach him at the right angle. She settles for enveloping him in an awkward hug where she is forced to lean into him to stabilize herself. She strokes his hair with one hand and after a few minutes he relaxes finally, ceasing his incessant train of thought previously spoken aloud. She rocks back a little to maneuver her hand into her pocket and tips up his chin with the other hand. After a moment of fishing around, she proffers a palm full of pills to him.
"A solution for you."
She doesn't know if he understands what they will do. Fear filters through her mind, the idea planted that he thinks she is helping him to end it all. Even if he wanted that, it would not do. They still need to handle the damage done, to unravel the mess they had a hand in. He doesn't get an easy way out—doesn't deserve it, she thinks a little spitefully. Like him, she will live in this hell until one day it is better. She does hope that tomorrow will be better—for him, at least, because her frustration doesn't extend so far as to want him to suffer like this, and it pains her to see. The world has had far, far too much of it in these few dense years. She wishes he'd come back to her, the same as she wishes everything could simply go back to how it'd been - not perfect but their world.
He swallows the tablets dry and lies back down to sleep. She leaves him be, closing the pod and wondering if he wishes he could forget everything, like he has made possible for so many people in the past. That dream has never been hers but she has always known how attractive it was, how alluring to the right people in the right situation. She makes sure Claire—now returned to them in body and mind, plus slightly improved on technical skills as they have a sudden need for those—knows to be vigilant. They can't afford to lose Topher altogether. Even in pieces as he is, he is still their best hope and she'd like to think that, like the world outside these walls, he can be put back together when it is over.
Things do get better, bit by bit. He's more responsive on certain days, though his flow of work is as incomprehensible as ever to the others. Occasionally, she'll indulge her desire to see him and stop by to inquire unnecessarily how his work progresses, not expecting to understand, but he will react to her interest and dumb it down just enough for her to see where he is going.
He works best when there is hope. It's a thread he follows; he clearly wants to believe something will change their situation radically. On those days, he sometimes smiles at her, genius thrumming underneath as he talks it over, shaking out thoughts from between words on their journey out of his mouth. She can often see the "eureka" moment forming, and it is thrilling to think of an end in sight.
Sometimes, she lets herself smile back unbidden at the old him she misses—returned, if briefly—but that's when his own smile falters, and it is never very long before he locks down again, as if one second of normality is too much. It crushes him when he once again realizes the weight upon him.
She isn't sure she has ever been a good influence on him, but she is at least a tie to who he used to be, with that dual-edged result that she reminds him both of better days and of what they've done. It feels like her presence hurts as much as it helps, for both of them. He doesn't see his boss anymore, no impediment there, but neither does he seem her as her own person. Whatever they had had between them is one of the aspects discarded in his madness—only the technological guru and the guilt that drives him remain. She may have been foolish in the first place to think there was a tension there, inappropriate and unacted on as it was, that spoke of something other than camaraderie. Now, it's irrelevant and probably for the best that it's forgotten. Together, even in the limited way they were, not merely colleagues and not entirely friends, they only compounded their errors and created this chaos.
Things get worse, bit by bit. Members of their topside scavenging parties get picked off by butchers nearly every week. Food stores almost run out. Only Claire handles the rare imprints now that Topher won't even enter the room. Of course, Echo turns up, their defences too easily breached, and the Dollhouse is deemed no longer safe. Reluctantly, she allows them to move out, and Adelle loses her control of the situation. A roving camp becomes their new reality for a short time, en-route to Safe Haven, but Harding becomes aware of them once more, raids their makeshift home, gets Topher, and Adelle loses hope too.
Echo completely takes over planning after that, and Adelle sits back, lost in a grief she hadn't allowed herself before. Suddenly she's unsure what her place is in their world, if it isn't as some kind of authority. She doesn't think she qualifies as one of the good guys, but if she can't fix it, all that is left is the fact she broke it. The blame. Every day, as they build up Safe Haven, she struggles to push the ugly thoughts about her life into the back of her mind and at least help those who can do something to do their best.
They get Topher back, eventually returned to their relative safety and to her. He's worse than before—something she hadn't imagined possible—after witnessing the bloody executions of Harding's hostages. But Topher hadn't given in to Harding's demands—he'd latched onto an idea, exactly what they needed. Harding had inadvertently planted the solution in his brain. It requires backtracking to the old haunt in LA, not somewhere easy to access. Everyone else makes it a priority, and Adelle knows they will achieve it; with an end in sight they're digging deep, drawing on their last closely held reserves. She does what she can and guides Topher. It doesn't feel like enough.
She can see by his intermittent glee as he talks of the fix on their journey that he's held onto hope all this time; it may well be the only thing that got him through. Hope flares up inside her again, too, at getting him back, as well as this final chance to undo some of the damage they've caused, and then it dies again when he tells her what he has to do in order to enact the scheme. She doesn't disagree, though, not after her first couple of attempts to dissuade him. There isn't an alternate, except the cowardice of palming off the task to another. For Topher, this is his redemption and his end. Both are welcomed.
So she does her piece and it goes to plan. Busy for days with the survivors before she finally gets a few moments to herself and steals away along the streets, back to the topside site of the Dollhouse. Saving the world should feel better than this, she thinks, as she sits in the remains of the offices – which are little more than rubble now - with an empty hand, no brandy or scotch or any other liquor to be found in the surroundings anymore. Perhaps it would feel better, if she hadn't been saving the world from herself, essentially. Back to square one, back into a scenario where everything is less good than before. What she had years ago—power, people, a future—she'd wasted in myriad ways. She isn't proud of who she is anymore, but she will still stand tall before she leaves this place for the last time, because that is who she is, and, importantly, she has that.
She returns over a year later, eager to see how her ragtag family have fared underground. If they are still themselves as they'd intended, hoped, and planned for. She's missed them more than she would like to admit, but there is one person she has missed most of all and the one ultimately she comes back here for.
It's a big favour, given their history, yet Anthony acquiesces to her request. They travel to San Francisco together, where she's grateful to find their Dollhouse, if not pretty then at least functionally intact, complete with a working chair once she jury rigs a generator for a power source. The backup she saved from destruction has weighed heavily in her pocket all this time but she is certain about doing this. One last desire given into, one last conversation with him and then they'll destroy the tech afterwards, wedge and all; the torture of temptation removed. She imprints Topher onto the man she knows much better as Victor, with a scan taken before he got too manic, before he was too far gone.
She can tell from his posture, the lack of surprise as he looks at his larger hands and the state of the rooms that he knows he isn't himself. He knows the room isn't what it was and should be, nor is it the right place, the familiar chair room he's used to. He knows they've been fighting for a long time.
"Did it end?" he asks bluntly.
"Yes," she says after a pause, feeling like she can't rouse up enough enthusiasm for their still-fresh victory. It doesn't entirely fit in her mind to call it one.
He isn't himself when she looks at him. She's not sure if that's simply because he's in another body—technically, nothing new to him—or because the print was from before she'd taken it upon herself to pay any attention to him again. Back from when she'd preferred to isolate herself and had equally isolated him. Maybe that's why he maintains his distance from her.
"I'm dead, aren't I?"
"Yes." That reply is easier to give because it is irrevocably true. If there is a soul, a connection that imprints have to the original, then she wants him to know the price he paid. He deserves to know. She still thinks it was too high a price, in the end, but they had no other choice, and she would let him choose it again no matter how much it hurts her to lose someone.
"Forgive me for sounding ungrateful for being brought back from the dead and all, but why am I here?"
He gesticulates with his arms thrown wide open, stepping closer, angry underneath the snark. She's no longer used to hearing him like this, and it throws her off. It was a long time ago that he had had this passion in him. Before things had really gone to hell. She takes a deep breath as he stalks closer to her, waiting for the answer but definitely impatient for it.
"I wanted you to know. We did it." She tries to say it with a small smile but she senses the distant threat of tears spilling over from her now slightly watering eyes and decides it better to keep to the cold, hard facts. Topher's response does not help matters.
"What does that change? People still died. Hell, so did I, but unlike them maybe I—"
She stops him there, keenly aware of where that train of thought is going. Playing the blame game. Thinking like that is what broke him, and she had never bothered to dissuade him from that when she should have.
"No!" she shouts, finding her voice again, but she pulls it back quickly to sternly composed instead of an out-of-control she can't afford, "No. You didn't deserve it. You deserved to know this, to...to say goodbye to the world you helped recreate."
He laughs bitterly, only a few feet away now, but she stays her place.
"I've already seen the world I helped create, that's what keeps me up at night."
"It's not like that anymore," she corrects.
"No, I'm dead. I get to sleep," he says faux-wistfully, a twisted smile lighting up his features as he stares into her eyes.
"That's rather my point. You can have peace now," she replies evenly.
At least the anger at him, and the situation they are left in, has stopped the remote possibility of her tear ducts betraying her as he inspects her facade. She's glad to be able to keep her cool, even under these testing circumstances. He's a little slow to catch on but he gets her meaning after a few seconds.
"But you don't," he exclaims, lips then pursing in consideration and finger pointing melodramatically when he works it out, "So...that's why I'm here? You want forgiveness?"
"No. I...I don't deserve forgiveness. It's just..."
She straightens her blouse and fidgets on her feet, avoiding his gaze but getting subtly closer with the movement.
"Did you know, it's my birthday," she says, as if to change the subject.
"I didn't," he points out too quickly, missing the implication, "I never read your file, remember. Strictly business for your backup. Zipped up and filed away."
It isn't her birthday, she isn't sure what day it is exactly today, but she'd hoped he'd recognize the relevance, the parallel of her to him, the old habits they'd had.
"I didn't want to be alone," she explains, feeling exposed by the admission.
"Hah. So, you picked me. How's that for bad taste? Saving the world not get you enough hero-worshippers lining up at the door? I mean, it's not like that many people knew we did it. Frakked it up in the first place, I mean."
She can't look at him. She didn't want to rehash her sins, but he seems intent on spilling every bitter thought about them that he never got to while alive. That's why she doesn't have the heart to tell him to shut up, because this is his last hurrah, his only chance to say whatever he wants to. She does, however, say what she wants to say much more forcefully than she intended, words clipped and harsh to her ears.
"I didn't want anyone else."
He only scoffs at her statement though.
"Really? Not even dear old Roger," he says as he steps forward to flaunt the body he is in at her in reminder, "He made for one hell of a fantasy boyfriend back in the day."
She squares herself up and looks into his eyes directly, with such small space between then as she does.
"I'm sure you understand, Topher. Fantasies come with a price."
"What's the price of this one?" he asks quietly, losing his edge as he bridges that final pace that separates them, "Because that's all I am, given I'm pushing up daisies every other day of the rest of eternity."
"The price," she says, her voice dropping as low as his, almost breaking on every other word, "is that you'll go away, and it's my fault. That's what I have to face, my punishment. It's all my fault and I have to stay, I can't forget."
"It's almost like you envy me or something, which is saying something—a massively messed-up something, considering."
There isn't anything to say to that so she kisses him, angrily. She isn't angry at him anymore, though. She's just desperate, knowing he will be truly gone soon enough – in body, and in mind - once she brings a hammer ruthlessly down on the drive storing the single remaining copy of him.
He is motionless, shocked at first, before he responds with the hunger of a dying man. Exactly what he is, technically. Every moment is one closer to when he will cease to exist.
"I don't get it," he questions, dazedly, as she breaks the kiss.
"You don't have to understand this, you already understand me."
There is an intense look of concentration on his face, his gaze angled up towards the ceiling as he ponders it. When he glances back at her she reads him as defeated, sad in a simple way.
"You want it to be real, don't you? No lies, no pretense at happiness. Who better than a dead man who shares the blame?"
He's hit it exactly on the head of the nail, so naturally all she can say, semi-antagonistically, as her arms encircle his torso, pulling him to her, is "Shut up."
He doesn't even do so when she moves attention to his neck, hot breath in his ear. He always did want the last word.
"Fixed the world and now you're trying to fix yourself."
She stops, leaning back in order to stare at him, meeting his glare.
"It doesn't work," he sounds cold as he speaks but he seems more regretful, "You didn't fix me and you can't fix yourself"
"At least I'm trying," she retorts, not meaning to be so glib. After at, at least she can still.
He doesn't respond, strangely, finally letting her have that last word. Instead, he kisses her like he's asking for forgiveness—not from the world, just from her. She suspects it is as much for his sacrifice, that is also in part hers, as for the failings they share. Forgiveness she can give him; that she can do even if it breaks her to go, to let go of him. That was always what this moment was, though—her goodbye, to him and to the woman she used to be. A fresh new world is out there, and this is the last day she will be Adelle DeWitt, so she will spend it with him and push out all the useless regrets.