Heyo, and thank you for the interaction last chapter! I was aiming to have this chapter up later this week, but I was so excited to see a repeat reviewer (shoutout to jaa's mom!) that I'm posting it earlier than I intended. One of my favourite things about fanfic is seeing the same names showing up regularly (although of course it's always great to see new faces), it always makes me so happy to know people are sticking with the story. Apologies in advance though, this chapter also ends on a cliffhanger - but it's a less intense one because you can probably guess where it's going.
Before we get into it, this chapter also comes with a content warning. It involves non-graphic descriptions of an injury involving blood. If you're sensitive to that kind of thing please tread carefully, and if you want more information before you choose whether or not to read it please feel free to shoot me a message.
There's also an ongoing content warning for torture - mostly implied/referenced, but more explicit (though still no more graphic than you'd expect from the show) in some of the flashbacks.
With that all said, here's the chapter. Enjoy, review, and I'll try to have the next one up soon!
[Seventy hours, forty-two minutes.]
The name doesn't register, but the urgency does. Carefully navigating her way around the mess of broken glass at her feet, Spencer reaches the door and hesitates only a moment before unlocking it. It had been a defense mechanism, one she hadn't known she possessed – locking the door from her side, so that at least if she were trapped it would be somewhat under her control. With the door unlocked she crosses the room again and sinks down onto the edge of the bath, the broken hand mirror still in one hand and the other hanging limply by her side. The mirror looked expensive, maybe some Fitzgerald family heirloom, and now the glass is in pieces at her feet.
She's still pondering the metaphorical implications of this – of shattering something that doesn't belong to her, of breaking a mirror of all things, of seeing her fragmented face reflected back at her from the floor – when the door opens, revealing Aria standing in the doorway with Hanna on one side and Emily on the other. They're all frozen in place, and Spencer doesn't have to look at any of them to know the cogs are turning in their minds as they try to process what they're seeing.
It's Emily who breaks the silence, her voice small. "You're bleeding, Spence."
As if the observation had broken through a firewall in her mind, Spencer's awareness fully returns, bringing with it a sharp stinging sensation across her left palm. She looks down at her hand, more out of curiosity than concern, and realizes that some of the blood had been smeared onto her pants, the bright red fading quickly into the black material. Her first instinct is to cover it, to hide any signs of weakness or injury, but Aria is already hurrying toward her, that old familiar compassionate determination on her face. There's no arguing with Aria when she's in caretaker mode.
Aria sits down on the edge of the bath beside her, while Emily disappears back into the living room and Hanna starts rooting around in the cabinet under the sink.
For all the activity going on around her, the noise in Spencer's head is quiet for once. Without a word she hands Aria the broken mirror, using both hands in case another tremor comes on, and then quickly wipes the blood off her palm onto her pants.
"Hey," Hanna scolds, so very gently that Spencer feels like she's made of glass, "wait a sec. I've almost – got it -"
She stands up, triumphantly pulling out a small first aid kit and brandishing it like a trophy. As she sits down on Spencer's other side, Emily returns with a dustpan and broom and starts to sweep up the mess. No words, no complaints, just instinctively filling in the gaps and stepping in to help.
"Here," Hanna says, making quick work of cleaning up Spencer's wound. Her movements are careful but purposeful, deft fingers lightly skimming over the injury as she checks for embedded glass, flushes it with saline, dabs it dry and bandages it up. When she's done she holds Spencer's hand for longer than she needs to, seeming on the verge of asking something, but Spencer pulls away before she can, resting her bandaged hand in her lap. It's not the worst injury she's sustained, not in her life and not even recently, but it hurts in a way she can't quite put into words.
"I'm sorry," she says, inclining her head towards the floor. Emily stands up, brushing her hair aside with her free hand while the other holds the dustpan. "I didn't mean to make a mess."
"It's fine," Emily says, tipping the glass into the trash can beside the sink. She laughs, but it almost sounds like a question. "I clean up worse on a daily basis now the twins have started crawling."
When Emily looks over at her, Spencer realizes that she's forgotten to react. The twins. Emily and Alison's children. Such sweet, beautiful girls, and… Spencer's heart twinges at the thought of her twin touching them, holding them. Pretending to love them. Emily's face falls, misconstruing Spencer's disgust as disinterest. She tries to cover it, to force her lips into a smile and hide the anger that she knows must show in her eyes, but Emily's already turned away.
"So," Aria says, guiding her attention back, "what happened, Spence?"
"Nerve damage, I think," Spencer says absently, not realizing what she'd said until Aria sucks in a breath. She rests her uninjured hand on top of her bandaged one, shifts a little way away from her friend. "I was… I wanted to use the mirror," she goes on. Emily's gone back into the living room, but Hanna and Aria are listening to her ragged words with rapt attention. "But then it – I guess my hand spasmed, and I -" She breaks off, looking at the blood on her pants, the broken mirror in Aria's hands, anywhere but at her friends. "I'm sorry."
A gentle hand on her shoulder makes her flinch, but Aria's voice holds her in place. "You have nothing to apologize for," she says firmly. "Have you… How long has this been happening?"
Spencer glances at her, trying to gauge her tone. She sounds almost… disappointed. "The spasms?" Spencer asks, and Aria nods. "I don't know. Ever since…"
Cold metal prongs digging into her wrist.
Laughter from the other side of the door.
Bright hot pain, then unnerving silence.
"Ever since what?" Hanna prompts.
"I -" Spencer starts to say, but she's saved having to find a way to finish a thought she'd never given voice to by Emily's return.
"Hey," Emily says from the doorway, hesitant but determined as always to help. "I, uh." She holds up her phone. "I called Wren."
Panic grips Spencer for a moment – only a moment, until reality kicks in. There was a time when Wren would do anything for me. She looks up at Emily, trying to get a read on her. Is Emily apologizing for calling Wren without her permission? Or is there more of a challenge to her voice, daring Spencer to ask why she called him? There was a time, not so long ago, when Spencer could take one look at any of her friends and know exactly what they were thinking. They could do the same to her, which was always as comforting as it was uncomfortable. They'd come a long way from the days of lies upon lies, keeping secrets from each other in order to placate A.
But this is one secret she has to keep for now.
"Let me guess," she says drily, "the good doctor was unavailable."
Emily shoots a quizzical look at Aria and Hanna. "How did -"
The sound of her ringtone cuts through her words, and this time the sudden noise only makes Spencer wince. It's a familiar path to healing, one she and the other girls had followed when they'd finally made it out of the Dollhouse. At first there's the hypervigilance, the paranoia. Then there's the gradual readjustment, the slow re-learning of how the world works, of finding their place in it again. Of fighting the urge to flee when a fire alarm goes off, of not jumping at the sound of an incoming text. Spencer's phone had been on vibrate for years after that, all calls screened carefully before she'd even begin to think about answering them.
It had been a slow process, one that they'd all gone through together – even if they never really talked about it. There were some things that were best left private, even among friends. Not that the girls really were friends. She considered them family. Or she had, until her 'real' family had arrived to show her just what the word meant.
"It's Ali," Emily says, looking at Spencer with a question in her eyes.
"Oh." Spencer reads the question, feeling a trickle of guilty relief. As much as she craves comfort, she doesn't want her friends to see her like this. "Yeah. You should take it."
"Are you -" Emily begins, the ringtone still cutting through her words.
"I've got Doctor Hanna and Nurse Aria here with me," Spencer jokes, but before the others even react she can tell her tone is wrong. She'd been aiming for begrudging gratitude, the kind of friendly banter they once would have had, but the words come out with a bitterness she hadn't intended. She shouldn't have come here, not yet. She should have waited.
With one last look Emily answers the phone as she heads back into the living room, closing the door behind her. Spencer breathes out deeply, running a finger along the edge of the bandage on her hand. Hanna's first aid skills have drastically improved. Wren would be proud, Spencer thinks, and this time the bitterness is intentional.
His fingers, brushing against her wrist with the lightness of a butterfly's wings. "Your pulse is quite weak, Spencer. I'm concerned y-"
"No, you're not. If you were, you wouldn't be helping her keep me here."
"Can I get you anything?" Hanna asks as the door swings gently closed.
Relieved at the thought that she won't have to continue the earlier conversation – she'd become so complacent about the extent of her injuries that Spencer had forgotten they could be considered alarming to someone who hadn't just been tortured for three months – Spencer glances at the door, lets her mind spin on its axis a couple of times. She wants to give Hanna something to do so she'll feel useful, even though the only things Spencer really wants right now are so far out of reach she won't even let herself visualize them. Then it hits her, and she almost – almost – smiles.
"Yeah, actually," she says, trying her best to sound like her old self. She falls short, and the irony isn't lost on her: someone else had pretended to be her for months, and now she's forced to pretend to be herself too.
Hanna brightens immediately, turning to face her properly. "What do you need?"
"I know it's late, but…" Spencer takes a deep breath, fighting against the learned reluctance to ask for anything. It wasn't often she'd asked her twin for anything, even less often that she'd been granted it. These are your friends, not your kidnappers, she reminds herself, then looks up to meet Hanna's eyes. "I would really love a cup of coffee."
"You got it!" Hanna's already on her feet, her usually infectious enthusiasm now bordering on overwhelming. "I'll be back in a minute."
"Hey Han?" Aria calls as Hanna reaches the door. She turns back to them, a curious look on her face. "Make it strong."
Hanna grins, and for just one moment Spencer can imagine that this is all happening Before, that they're just a group of friends hanging out for the sake of it. But the feeling fades as Hanna leaves, and Spencer's once again alone with Aria. She'd seen the way the other woman looked at her when she and Ezra had arrived at the apartment, like she'd seen a ghost or something worse.
As the sounds of quiet conversation from the kitchen drift into the room, Aria turns to her. "What were you using the mirror for?" There's no judgement in her voice, no anger over Spencer breaking the mirror. Just concern and compassion, unfamiliar emotions that are even harder to swallow.
Spencer looks down at the mirror in question, realizing how stupid it's going to sound. "I just… I wanted to brush my hair," she says. "I can't really see back there, and I…"
I thought if I looked a little less disheveled, I'd feel a bit more like myself.
Aria nods, a glimmer of a memory in her eyes. Getting rid of that pink dye in her hair had been one of the first things she'd done after getting out of the Dollhouse, and Spencer has the sudden feeling she knows where she's coming from now. "Do you want me to help you?"
"No," Spencer says at once, not giving herself a chance to actually consider it. "That's… I can't ask you to do that."
"You're not asking me." Aria rests her hand on top of Spencer's uninjured one, the hesitancy in her touch making it clear she's ready to remove it the second Spencer shows any discomfort. "I'm offering."
His hands folding over hers, stilling the spasms but doing nothing for her racing heart. "You shouldn't have gotten her angry like that. If you just -"
"If I just what, Wren? Sit here quietly in my cell for the rest of my life while my sister goes gallivanting about with the people who are supposed to love me?"
An exhale, averted eyes. The chain around her ankle jingling as she shifts away from him, though there's nowhere else for her to go.
"They do love you, Spencer. And I -"
"You don't. You never loved me, and I doubt you even love Alex. I don't think you even know the meaning of the word."
"I…" Clinging to her last shred of independence, Spencer hesitates. But Aria's quiet insistence, carefully trying to feel out her boundaries so that she doesn't overstep them, melts the last of her reservations. "Yeah, I'd – Um, thank you."
She sits still as Aria retrieves a comb from under the sink, then obligingly turns around so that she's facing away from her friend. Aria's touch is so gentle it makes Spencer want to cry. Instead she closes her eyes, trying to lose herself in the feeling – or rather the absence of feeling. She doesn't feel safe here, exactly, but she doesn't feel scared either. Aria doesn't talk as she works, seemingly sensing the need for silence. There's something strangely intimate about the scene, some unspoken vulnerability in letting Aria get so close to her. She can think of few other people she'd be this open with, and fewer still who'd be so observant.
Spencer's hair falls over her shoulders as Aria parts it, working through a particularly tough knot at the nape of her neck. Suddenly the fingers falter. The rhythmic movement of the comb halts. Aria goes deathly still.
And then, in the frozen silence, the inevitable question: "Spencer… what is this?"