Hey! Sorry this one took longer then normal...
I think I've forgotten to do this, but:
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, all Dr. Horrible related ideas and characters belong to the Whedons. This is just for fun.
The Doc stormed into his lab, angrily tearing off his goggles and throwing them into a corner, not caring where they landed, before throwing himself into the armchair, in the same way a two year old would throw himself onto a time-out chair.
"You ruin everything!" Billy whined childishly, picking up the picture on his end table. "We were so close! And now she hates me!"
"She was just getting in the way. You're spending way too much time with that girl, Billy, you're letting everything we've worked for go to hell." The Doc lectured, anger coloring his every word.
"You love her too! It was your fault in the first place!" Billy retorted. He hated it when he and the Doc clashed. It didn't happen often. In fact, this was only the third time he'd ever had to endure a battle. The first time he'd discovered the Doc, was when he'd found out his dad had cut off his mom. No child support, all she had were tabloids. However, he hadn't found out about all of this until much later.
"Billy?" Abigail called from her front porch in surprise. Her son hadn't shown his face around their home for almost four years. The young man, so different from when he had left for MIT, yet still the same scared little sixteen year old she'd shipped off to Massachusetts after he'd graduated early.
"Momma, what's going on?" Billy asked confusedly glancing at the boxes in the front lawn of his childhood home. He dropped his overnight bag on the grass, it wasn't out of place like it should have been, and he ran up the stairs.
"We're being evicted, Billy, I'd hoped you'd be late, that all this would be taken care of before you got back." Abigail started crying.
"Mom, mom. It's okay." Billy reassured her, leading her into the stripped house.
She told him about how his father had left her for another woman, how she always felt like a terrible mother, because they never had any money. All Billy could do was sit an try to comfort her about things beyond his control. But that night, as he slept in the cot that was laid out in his old room, he began to hear voices.
"You could help her." The angry, gravely voice enticed him. "The human race frowns on people like her, but you, you, Billy the Scientist, you could change all that." Billy protested, but the voice persisted. He didn't know what it was, some malevolent spirit that had lain dormant in the old house, waiting for an open and willing target, or if all the stress from the work at MIT, and now his mothers' hardship, had caused him to snap.
"You love her just as much as I do." Billy yelled at the empty room, gripping the armrests until his knuckles turned white.
"Oh-ho, I do, Billy Buddy. And that's why she has to go. How many ideas have you come up with in the past two months? That's right, none. I've run out of work. Fury Lieka is on your tail now, for skipping out on the meetings of the Evil League Of Evil! We've worked so hard to get into this, Billy." The Doc sounded so scared, vulnerable, almost. "You're not going to blow this. I don't know what we're going to do with her. Obviously both killing her, and putting her back here are out of the question." Billy looked down at the picture he took of Penny in the park. He remembered crouching behind some bush, waiting for the opportune moment to take his snapshot. That was the day she'd lost her job, he remembered.
"What if we sent her to Herman Holdan? He'd take her in. She has the capability." He could feel the Doc's anger lessen.
"That's not half bad Billy, maybe you're not a waste after all. Of course, we'd have to make a few changes." Billy winced. He didn't want to mess with Penny at all. "It's a great plan. We dump her with Herman in podunk nowhere California, give her a reclusive personality, and change her name. Get on it." The Doc ordered, before disappearing. Billy dropped his head to his hands, glad to be rid of the Doc. But the cost. He didn't for one minute think that sending Penny to live with Herman in Bakersfield was a good idea. But what else could he do? Obviously keeping Penny wasn't an option now, as much as he wanted to.
Billy sighed, and picked up the picture again. He hadn't even gotten to see her as himself, and now she was going to be gone, and there wasn't anything he could do to stop it. Billy set the photo face down, before getting up and hunting for his goggles in the corner of his lab, trying to take his mind away from thinking about how he was about to lose the love of his life, again.
"At least I know she'll be alive this time." Billy murmured, plucking the goggles from the mess of shattered beakers. He hung the goggles on the windowsill, wanting to be as far from the Doc as he could be, before he walked out of the lab.
His apartment was so clean, so different from how he left it. Someone was taking better care of it then he had been. Penny was taking better care of it then he had been. There were no dishes in the sink, he noticed, and there was food in the pantry, and something more then a sour, half empty gallon of milk in the fridge.
It wasn't fair. Penny was Billy's friend. Billy had a crush on her. Not the Doc. The Doc didn't care. The Doc didn't even know Penny, until she'd appeared in the homeless shelter, and Billy had convinced him to save her. And the Doc was getting all her attention. Billy was sick of it. He had to tell her. He wasn't going to let her go without knowing it was him all along.
So, tell me what you think. No contest this time, I'm just gonna flat out ask you for a review. But no worries, there's a trivia question in the next one, so start brushing up on your cancelled primetime tv trivia!
~B