Dollhouse fic: Crossed Stars (Echo/Sierra)
Mar. 5th, 2009 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Crossed Stars
Fandom: Dollhouse
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,029
Characters/Pairings: Echo/Sierra, ensemble
Timeline: Spoilers for the first three episodes.
Summary: Echo and Sierra are soulmates. They just can’t remember it.
Author’s Note: Eleanor Penn is Echo’s engagement from the pilot, while Jordan is from 1x03 Stage Fright and Jenny is the name of her persona in 1x02 The Target. Svetlana is Sierra’s engagement in the pilot, while Audra is the name of her engagement in 1x03 Stage Fright.
Sierra and Echo exhibit natural cooperative tendencies and ‘chemistry’. I recommend they be paired on all future assignments. Topher clicked Send and the e-mail flew off to Adelle’s desktop.
***
Topher tried to give Boyd a fair shake. He seemed like a good guy, as inflexibly self-righteous as anyone could be at this level of legality. Which was surprisingly very.
“Look at them,” he said, hands at his waist in paternal unease.
Topher pretended to ‘notice’ Sierra and Echo holding hands on their way to calisthenics. “Worried Sierra’s going to be a bad influence, man-friend?”
“Why are they touching?”
“Probably saw a trainer doing it. Monkey see, monkey do. Next wipe will clear it right up, if you’re worried.”
“I’m not.”
***
“Your complexion looks pretty. You are very good at taking care of your skin.”
“Thank you. Your skin is pretty too.”
“Good skincare is an important part of a healthy life.”
“May I touch your skin?”
“Yes.”
***
Eleanor Penn petted the little girl’s hair for five minutes before realizing she wasn’t wearing her glasses. She hadn’t had time to pick them up before Svetlana had rushed her out.
“I’ll get you new ones,” Svetlana said. The mercenary was a stone-faced professional with everyone but her. When Svetlana took her hand, Eleanor felt a thumb rub the groove where a ring would go if it weren’t for Prop 8.
My Russian teddy bear, Eleanor called her. It was a bit mean because of how sensitive Svetlana was about her weight, but when Svetlana folded her spare, almost lanky body around Eleanor, the negotiator felt like a big teddy bear and wanted to return the favor.
“It was him,” Eleanor said, when the girl was safely asleep. “The man from the nightmares. The ghost.”
“Was he one I shot?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Svetlana kissed Eleanor, a quick promise of things to come. “No more nightmares.”
***
Dr. Saunders said Jenny had to have her wounds treated before she could get her treatment done. She was worried about the drug interfering with the treatment. Jenny gritted her teeth and let the doctor sew up her leg. Shoulder to the wheel. Her dream guy was a serial killer, what’d that say about her? She would have to have a word with her parents before she sold her story to Katie Couric for never-work-again money. They had clearly been derelict in their duties.
The door was still open from where Boyd had hobbled out and a pretty girl was standing there, Asian, familiar. Jenny squinted her eyes trying to recognize her. She looked… sad.
“Hey. Think I’ll ever win the Boston Marathon?”
“Yes,” the Asian girl said unthinkingly.
“This is probably the painkillers annoying you, but you look like a girl I used to date. Outdoors type, hunt a bear with a shotgun from a hang-glider.”
The girl nodded, not understanding. “What happened?”
“I don’t remember.”
***
“Your skin is very soft, but your muscles are hard. What is this red thing on your leg?”
“I don’t know of a red thing.”
“It’s rough and bad to look at. I don’t like it.”
“It hurts when you touch it.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll stop.”
“Please don’t. I like it when you touch me.”
***
“They’re spending time together,” Boyd said. “They’re next to each other at every class, they’ve synchronized their schedules, Echo even asked me if her bed could be next to Sierra’s.”
“Herd instincts,” Topher said readily. “Lizard brain stuff. Take away the higher functions, that’s what’s left.”
“I’ve never heard of a two-man herd,” Boyd said in that unique cop way of ‘stop wasting my time, guilty boy’. “You’re sure you haven’t messed with the imprints? Given Echo a girlfriend because you thought it’d be funny?”
“Man-friend, it hurts that you could accuse me of that. I would never think something like that was funny. Hot, maybe.”
“Then you should whack off on your own time.”
“Boyd, buddy, baby, with the salary my mutant brain pulls down, I could buy a hooker every day of the week. Which I don’t, because I’d miss Heroes. The only masturbation I engage in is intellectual.”
***
Audra felt dizzy. Jordan kept bringing her drinks and laughing at the faces she made when she drank them. Her thighs felt warm and she hoped no one called upon her to stand up anytime soon.
“I’ve never met an Aussie before,” Jordan said, her Boston accent getting thicker with every drink. Her ‘you’ was already ‘youse’. “Say a dingo ate your baby.”
“A dingo ate your baby.”
Jordan laughed uproariously, pointing at Audra like she was indicating to Rayna where the funny shit was. “So you one of those dyke fans that wanna stick a dildo in my girl here?”
Audra spewed out her Bloody Mary. “I don’t… what… dildo?”
“Nah, she’s never even kissed a girl.”
“Well, I did have a girlfrond… girlfiend… girl once, in college. She looked kinda like you.”
“That’s just the alkie annoying me. Hey, if Rayna told you to, would you kiss me?”
“Closed mouth or with tongue?”
“Tongue,” Rayna decided.
***
“I like it when our lips touch.”
“It’s a way to show what good friends we are.”
“You’re the best friend I have.”
“I’m the best friend you have… I like being your friend.”
“Am I your best friend too?”
***
“So, if you could take out any Active for a bow-chicka-wow-gagement, which would it be?” Topher asked.
Boyd shook his usual scowl up with a hint of sneer. “I wouldn’t.”
“Okay, if Adelle wouldn’t cut your balls off for the office romance.”
“I just wouldn’t. I’ve been married for twelve years.”
“My sympathies.”
“Every day I can look in my wife’s eyes and see she loved me. You can do an awful lot with neurochemicals and brainwaves, but love is more than that. It’s time, it’s work, it’s hard…”
“What if you couldn’t remember your wife? Would you still love her?”
***
“Intangibles,” Topher lectured, “is my little word for things that persist from wipe to wipe.”
Claire shook her head. “But nothing persists. The wipe gets everything.”
Topher scowled for an instant. “It’s just a theory.”
***
Richard ran the hard, cold metal of the arrowhead over Jenny’s throat, while she whimpered appreciatively at the pain. “You know, my mother used to say that love is what keeps people together when the world whole is tearing them apart. Of course, that was before she left my father to ‘find herself’ and ‘feel alive’ in a lesbian commune in Vermont. But still a lovely sentiment.”
Jenny giggled as he turned the arrow over and dusted her nipple with the fletching. “You’re crazy, you know that, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
***
“That feels strange,” Sierra said, watching the feather draw nonsense circles on her stomach. It had come out when one of the pillows had broken during playtime. Mr. Dominic had been very upset.
Echo kept innocently/mischievously pushing her shirt up to have a broader canvas. “Should I stop?”
“No. I don’t like it when you’re not touching me.”
“I don’t like it when I’m not touching you either.”
Sierra laughed. Then quickly rolled her shirt down when trainers came to investigate.
***
Maybe love can’t be built Topher wrote in his notebook. Grown?
***
“Echo, could you think about Sierra for a moment?”
Echo smiled.
“Emotional response based on memory,” Claire muttered.
“Without the memory.” Topher grinned, his smile altogether less pleasant to look at than Echo’s. “You think that’s cool, watch this. Echo, tell me how you feel about Sierra.”
“She’s… good.”
“Hear that? That little pause lit up bits of her brain I never even touch. She’s trying to express concepts outside the imprint.”
“How’d you know she would do that?”
“Because I asked her the same question before her last wipe.”
***
“Oh, Audra, you’re good, baby, you’re so good!”
***
“Echo, do you touch other people?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you… like touching them?”
“Not as much as touching you.”
“Why?”
“Your skin is the softest.”
“Are you saying the others’ skin is rough?”
“No, but… yours is the softest to me.”
***
“Damn.” Rayna looked under the bearskin rug to find out no, Audra and Jordan weren’t wearing any clothes. “Worlds collide. If my dad were here, he’d say you two were lovers in a past life. And that homosexuality was a sin in the eyes of the Lord and that I should be wearing a longer skirt.”
“I usually never do this,” Audra said, embarrassed to the point of apology, as she pulled her scattered clothes under the rug.
“What, have sex with strangers or have sex with girls?”
“…drink. I like tequila,” Audra added, holding an empty bottle upside-down.
“I don’t think it’s gonna like you. Jordan, anytime you wanna do something about being naked on my living room floor…”
“’s my floor now.”
“Where’re my glasses?” Audra groaned, discovering that tequila did indeed not like her.
Jordan handed them to her. “That’s two you owe me.”
***
“You may very well have introduced the snake to the garden of Eden,” Adelle said, running a finger over the imprint machine’s headrest.
Topher had a sinking feeling no amount of witty patter could disguise. “Or Eve. She made the place better, right?”
“You’re the one playing go with these sick fantasies…” Boyd was making a not entirely successful attempt not to shout.
“It’s not sick, it’s science. My intangibles could revolutionize the field of neurology!”
“By making two ‘hot chicks’ fall in love,” Adelle said dubiously.
“I just gave them a nudge out the door. It’s deeper than sex. Did you know they scored eighty percent compatible on the entry questionnaire? If they met at a singles bar, you’d get the same reaction. It’s like a physical constant. This is not something I did to them. This is a variable present in them, ingrained in them. Laugh if you want, but I think I’ve scientifically quantified the soul.”
Adelle looked out at the Dollhouse, her keen eyes seeking out Echo and Sierra. They were together, as they always were now, arms wrapped around each others’ waists.
“Wipe them. Down to the marrow if you have to, but wipe them.”
“Ms. DeWitt!”
“Our clients aren’t paying for love. They’re paying for the illusion of it. One thing I’ve learned about the ‘real deal’; it’s very inefficient. Very unprofitable. Get rid of it.”
***
Svetlana kissed Eleanor, hard. “As soon as our treatment’s done, I’m gonna fuck those pretty blue eyes right out of their sockets.”
***
The strange Asian girl leaned forward and kissed Jenny’s cheek. “I hope you feel better.”
***
“Shit, yeah, you’re making me come!” Jordan shoved Audra’s face harder between her legs and took a swig of vodka. “I love it, I love it—“
***
“I love you,” Sierra told Eleanor, and Jenny, and Jordan, and Echo.
***
“Touch me more down there,” Echo said, flustered and supremely excited by this new road they had set down.
“I like touching you. You like touching me.” Sierra guided Echo’s hand between her legs. “I’d like to touch you forever.”
***
“Wipe complete,” Topher announced, jerking the HDD out of its slot and tossing it away even as it burnt his fingers. “From here on out we’ll redo the vocabulary and muscle memory installs, then the level-deep imprints. Treatments and call-and-response. All told, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re off the market for weeks.”
“Just a fucked-up kid playing with dolls, taking their clothes off and bumping them together,” Boyd muttered.
“Yeah, heard you the first quadrillion times.” Topher wondered where he’d put the first of the installs. He wanted to get them going before the Actives tested their erased bowel control. “This is not pornography, you know. This is art.”
“Maybe you should try watercolors,” Boyd advised, leaning on the counter to keep a closer eye on Topher.
Neither of them noticed Echo’s head lolling to the side. She saw a girl next to her, drooling slightly.
Echo smiled at her.
Fandom: Dollhouse
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,029
Characters/Pairings: Echo/Sierra, ensemble
Timeline: Spoilers for the first three episodes.
Summary: Echo and Sierra are soulmates. They just can’t remember it.
Author’s Note: Eleanor Penn is Echo’s engagement from the pilot, while Jordan is from 1x03 Stage Fright and Jenny is the name of her persona in 1x02 The Target. Svetlana is Sierra’s engagement in the pilot, while Audra is the name of her engagement in 1x03 Stage Fright.
Sierra and Echo exhibit natural cooperative tendencies and ‘chemistry’. I recommend they be paired on all future assignments. Topher clicked Send and the e-mail flew off to Adelle’s desktop.
***
Topher tried to give Boyd a fair shake. He seemed like a good guy, as inflexibly self-righteous as anyone could be at this level of legality. Which was surprisingly very.
“Look at them,” he said, hands at his waist in paternal unease.
Topher pretended to ‘notice’ Sierra and Echo holding hands on their way to calisthenics. “Worried Sierra’s going to be a bad influence, man-friend?”
“Why are they touching?”
“Probably saw a trainer doing it. Monkey see, monkey do. Next wipe will clear it right up, if you’re worried.”
“I’m not.”
***
“Your complexion looks pretty. You are very good at taking care of your skin.”
“Thank you. Your skin is pretty too.”
“Good skincare is an important part of a healthy life.”
“May I touch your skin?”
“Yes.”
***
Eleanor Penn petted the little girl’s hair for five minutes before realizing she wasn’t wearing her glasses. She hadn’t had time to pick them up before Svetlana had rushed her out.
“I’ll get you new ones,” Svetlana said. The mercenary was a stone-faced professional with everyone but her. When Svetlana took her hand, Eleanor felt a thumb rub the groove where a ring would go if it weren’t for Prop 8.
My Russian teddy bear, Eleanor called her. It was a bit mean because of how sensitive Svetlana was about her weight, but when Svetlana folded her spare, almost lanky body around Eleanor, the negotiator felt like a big teddy bear and wanted to return the favor.
“It was him,” Eleanor said, when the girl was safely asleep. “The man from the nightmares. The ghost.”
“Was he one I shot?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Svetlana kissed Eleanor, a quick promise of things to come. “No more nightmares.”
***
Dr. Saunders said Jenny had to have her wounds treated before she could get her treatment done. She was worried about the drug interfering with the treatment. Jenny gritted her teeth and let the doctor sew up her leg. Shoulder to the wheel. Her dream guy was a serial killer, what’d that say about her? She would have to have a word with her parents before she sold her story to Katie Couric for never-work-again money. They had clearly been derelict in their duties.
The door was still open from where Boyd had hobbled out and a pretty girl was standing there, Asian, familiar. Jenny squinted her eyes trying to recognize her. She looked… sad.
“Hey. Think I’ll ever win the Boston Marathon?”
“Yes,” the Asian girl said unthinkingly.
“This is probably the painkillers annoying you, but you look like a girl I used to date. Outdoors type, hunt a bear with a shotgun from a hang-glider.”
The girl nodded, not understanding. “What happened?”
“I don’t remember.”
***
“Your skin is very soft, but your muscles are hard. What is this red thing on your leg?”
“I don’t know of a red thing.”
“It’s rough and bad to look at. I don’t like it.”
“It hurts when you touch it.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll stop.”
“Please don’t. I like it when you touch me.”
***
“They’re spending time together,” Boyd said. “They’re next to each other at every class, they’ve synchronized their schedules, Echo even asked me if her bed could be next to Sierra’s.”
“Herd instincts,” Topher said readily. “Lizard brain stuff. Take away the higher functions, that’s what’s left.”
“I’ve never heard of a two-man herd,” Boyd said in that unique cop way of ‘stop wasting my time, guilty boy’. “You’re sure you haven’t messed with the imprints? Given Echo a girlfriend because you thought it’d be funny?”
“Man-friend, it hurts that you could accuse me of that. I would never think something like that was funny. Hot, maybe.”
“Then you should whack off on your own time.”
“Boyd, buddy, baby, with the salary my mutant brain pulls down, I could buy a hooker every day of the week. Which I don’t, because I’d miss Heroes. The only masturbation I engage in is intellectual.”
***
Audra felt dizzy. Jordan kept bringing her drinks and laughing at the faces she made when she drank them. Her thighs felt warm and she hoped no one called upon her to stand up anytime soon.
“I’ve never met an Aussie before,” Jordan said, her Boston accent getting thicker with every drink. Her ‘you’ was already ‘youse’. “Say a dingo ate your baby.”
“A dingo ate your baby.”
Jordan laughed uproariously, pointing at Audra like she was indicating to Rayna where the funny shit was. “So you one of those dyke fans that wanna stick a dildo in my girl here?”
Audra spewed out her Bloody Mary. “I don’t… what… dildo?”
“Nah, she’s never even kissed a girl.”
“Well, I did have a girlfrond… girlfiend… girl once, in college. She looked kinda like you.”
“That’s just the alkie annoying me. Hey, if Rayna told you to, would you kiss me?”
“Closed mouth or with tongue?”
“Tongue,” Rayna decided.
***
“I like it when our lips touch.”
“It’s a way to show what good friends we are.”
“You’re the best friend I have.”
“I’m the best friend you have… I like being your friend.”
“Am I your best friend too?”
***
“So, if you could take out any Active for a bow-chicka-wow-gagement, which would it be?” Topher asked.
Boyd shook his usual scowl up with a hint of sneer. “I wouldn’t.”
“Okay, if Adelle wouldn’t cut your balls off for the office romance.”
“I just wouldn’t. I’ve been married for twelve years.”
“My sympathies.”
“Every day I can look in my wife’s eyes and see she loved me. You can do an awful lot with neurochemicals and brainwaves, but love is more than that. It’s time, it’s work, it’s hard…”
“What if you couldn’t remember your wife? Would you still love her?”
***
“Intangibles,” Topher lectured, “is my little word for things that persist from wipe to wipe.”
Claire shook her head. “But nothing persists. The wipe gets everything.”
Topher scowled for an instant. “It’s just a theory.”
***
Richard ran the hard, cold metal of the arrowhead over Jenny’s throat, while she whimpered appreciatively at the pain. “You know, my mother used to say that love is what keeps people together when the world whole is tearing them apart. Of course, that was before she left my father to ‘find herself’ and ‘feel alive’ in a lesbian commune in Vermont. But still a lovely sentiment.”
Jenny giggled as he turned the arrow over and dusted her nipple with the fletching. “You’re crazy, you know that, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
***
“That feels strange,” Sierra said, watching the feather draw nonsense circles on her stomach. It had come out when one of the pillows had broken during playtime. Mr. Dominic had been very upset.
Echo kept innocently/mischievously pushing her shirt up to have a broader canvas. “Should I stop?”
“No. I don’t like it when you’re not touching me.”
“I don’t like it when I’m not touching you either.”
Sierra laughed. Then quickly rolled her shirt down when trainers came to investigate.
***
Maybe love can’t be built Topher wrote in his notebook. Grown?
***
“Echo, could you think about Sierra for a moment?”
Echo smiled.
“Emotional response based on memory,” Claire muttered.
“Without the memory.” Topher grinned, his smile altogether less pleasant to look at than Echo’s. “You think that’s cool, watch this. Echo, tell me how you feel about Sierra.”
“She’s… good.”
“Hear that? That little pause lit up bits of her brain I never even touch. She’s trying to express concepts outside the imprint.”
“How’d you know she would do that?”
“Because I asked her the same question before her last wipe.”
***
“Oh, Audra, you’re good, baby, you’re so good!”
***
“Echo, do you touch other people?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you… like touching them?”
“Not as much as touching you.”
“Why?”
“Your skin is the softest.”
“Are you saying the others’ skin is rough?”
“No, but… yours is the softest to me.”
***
“Damn.” Rayna looked under the bearskin rug to find out no, Audra and Jordan weren’t wearing any clothes. “Worlds collide. If my dad were here, he’d say you two were lovers in a past life. And that homosexuality was a sin in the eyes of the Lord and that I should be wearing a longer skirt.”
“I usually never do this,” Audra said, embarrassed to the point of apology, as she pulled her scattered clothes under the rug.
“What, have sex with strangers or have sex with girls?”
“…drink. I like tequila,” Audra added, holding an empty bottle upside-down.
“I don’t think it’s gonna like you. Jordan, anytime you wanna do something about being naked on my living room floor…”
“’s my floor now.”
“Where’re my glasses?” Audra groaned, discovering that tequila did indeed not like her.
Jordan handed them to her. “That’s two you owe me.”
***
“You may very well have introduced the snake to the garden of Eden,” Adelle said, running a finger over the imprint machine’s headrest.
Topher had a sinking feeling no amount of witty patter could disguise. “Or Eve. She made the place better, right?”
“You’re the one playing go with these sick fantasies…” Boyd was making a not entirely successful attempt not to shout.
“It’s not sick, it’s science. My intangibles could revolutionize the field of neurology!”
“By making two ‘hot chicks’ fall in love,” Adelle said dubiously.
“I just gave them a nudge out the door. It’s deeper than sex. Did you know they scored eighty percent compatible on the entry questionnaire? If they met at a singles bar, you’d get the same reaction. It’s like a physical constant. This is not something I did to them. This is a variable present in them, ingrained in them. Laugh if you want, but I think I’ve scientifically quantified the soul.”
Adelle looked out at the Dollhouse, her keen eyes seeking out Echo and Sierra. They were together, as they always were now, arms wrapped around each others’ waists.
“Wipe them. Down to the marrow if you have to, but wipe them.”
“Ms. DeWitt!”
“Our clients aren’t paying for love. They’re paying for the illusion of it. One thing I’ve learned about the ‘real deal’; it’s very inefficient. Very unprofitable. Get rid of it.”
***
Svetlana kissed Eleanor, hard. “As soon as our treatment’s done, I’m gonna fuck those pretty blue eyes right out of their sockets.”
***
The strange Asian girl leaned forward and kissed Jenny’s cheek. “I hope you feel better.”
***
“Shit, yeah, you’re making me come!” Jordan shoved Audra’s face harder between her legs and took a swig of vodka. “I love it, I love it—“
***
“I love you,” Sierra told Eleanor, and Jenny, and Jordan, and Echo.
***
“Touch me more down there,” Echo said, flustered and supremely excited by this new road they had set down.
“I like touching you. You like touching me.” Sierra guided Echo’s hand between her legs. “I’d like to touch you forever.”
***
“Wipe complete,” Topher announced, jerking the HDD out of its slot and tossing it away even as it burnt his fingers. “From here on out we’ll redo the vocabulary and muscle memory installs, then the level-deep imprints. Treatments and call-and-response. All told, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re off the market for weeks.”
“Just a fucked-up kid playing with dolls, taking their clothes off and bumping them together,” Boyd muttered.
“Yeah, heard you the first quadrillion times.” Topher wondered where he’d put the first of the installs. He wanted to get them going before the Actives tested their erased bowel control. “This is not pornography, you know. This is art.”
“Maybe you should try watercolors,” Boyd advised, leaning on the counter to keep a closer eye on Topher.
Neither of them noticed Echo’s head lolling to the side. She saw a girl next to her, drooling slightly.
Echo smiled at her.
