Love. The broken doll had said the word, tossed it at Bennett in a gravity that she was not used to. Love. Topher loved her. She could still feel warmth of his lips on hers. Hear his words, phrased questionably, but with meaning. Love. What was it, really? Well, technically speaking Bennett knew. She'd programmed it into countless dolls, reproduced this once meaningless, silly little word into wedge after wedge. It was a process to manufacture it and was dependent on the type of love the client desired. Lust mean testosterone and oestrogen, but also dopamine, a neurotransmitter. But then there was real love, "pure" or so it was meant to be if all moral stigmas regarding the dollhouse were put to rest for the moment. Oxytocin is a biggie, transmitted through pheromones and into the amygdala.

Bennett knew all of that, somewhere, but as the old doll reaffirmed her words, Bennett forgot for a moment why it mattered, why anything other than Topher Brink really did matter. Who was Caroline to Bennett when she had Topher, his mind and his emotions, true emotions, triggered by no other motivation, but his own brain. And what a brain it was! Incredible and vast and beautiful. He thought she was beautiful. "He's remarkable."

And he was. Topher. Topher Brink. The Topher Brink. As the meaning of Topher expanded within Bennett, Caroline faded. Years of revenge sunk as possibilities opened up. Hope. Now that was a funning feeling. It linked itself onto love, like bonding atoms. She felt them inside her, stirring and whispering. Whatever Rossum had in-store, whatever projects needed doing and brains needed remolding, Bennett and Topher would do all of it together. Love.

I honestly didn't think he was capable of admitting the existence of another human being, let alone loving one. I think you're the remarkable one.

And Bennett can hear Topher coming back, but the doll's words ring through her head. Love. Bennett thought she understood it, the science of it. She had thought of it as an experiment, an overused trope of the Dollhouse. Boring, after a while, programming the same chemicals and parts of the brain. But that wasn't love. It was a facade, a meaningless state of being until Bennett felt it herself. But now it lived, grew inside her, so much that she could almost believe that everything—

Love ended almost as quickly as it had begun to grow. And Bennett's swan song to Topher was only the splatter of blood on his face and the dewy pin in his hand.