seriousfic

Title: How It Ends
Fandom: Dollhouse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,303
Author’s Note: Betaed by

prozacpark. Takes place after 1x09 - A Spy in the House of Love.
Characters/Pairings: Paul/Mellie, Echo, Adelle
Summary: Paul isn’t the first guy to fall in love with a fantasy. But he’s going to be the last.

There is a scar on Mellie’s wrist. It traces the ghost of an older line, like a train rumbling down well-beaten tracks.

She remembers going to work, chatting with Fred, leaning against a desk, the mail cart swerving, catching her hand, the edge digging into her flesh, the blood and the doctor and the urgent apologies.

She doesn’t remember November seeing a broken window, reaching for the fascinatingly sharp edge. The window was replaced, the wound stitched up, the memory erased. All that was left was the scar.

Plastic surgery would soon take care of it.

***

There was an absurd thought. What if the scar disgusted Paul? Of course it didn’t matter and of course he wouldn’t think that, but… she wore gloves to go see him, building it into an ensemble. Trenchcoat. Cute little hat. It seemed less obvious than lingerie and a raincoat.

Ever since she’d gotten back, Paul had been distant. Well, not always. There’d been one of those sparkling diamond moments where there’d been no Dollhouse, just them and their skin and their fingers, but then he went limp as a cold fish and wouldn’t tell her what was wrong. She’d wondered if there was another woman, before remembering there had always been another woman.

Mellie rang his bell. His shadow shifted under the door. She smiled at the peephole. His shadow went away.

She started pounding on the door, loud enough to make the downstairs tenants open up. Maybe she should’ve stuffed her dignity in her pockets and walked away, comfortable in her empowerment, but she needed him. Without Paul, her days were as gray as an overcast sky. She wondered how she’d even lived without his presence in her life.

After what seemed like hours, the lock cracked. All his barricades came down for her. Like his shadow had, his head shifted into the space between the ajar door and the frame. His cheeks were dusky with stubble and his eyes were almost red and she could smell the booze on his breath. Just another way he told her to keep away, just another reason he needed her. God, Mellie asked herself, what’s wrong with me?

“You don’t take nonverbal cues very well, do you?” Paul asked, the criticism lost in how gently he said it.

“And how much lasagna did I bake you before you slept with me?”

“I thought if I slept with you, you’d stop baking me lasagna.” His smile was rueful. “Go home, Mellie. I can’t be with you.”

“Why? Because the Dollhouse would hurt me to get to you?”

“They already have,” Paul muttered. Mellie fought down the memories rising like bile. His eyes weren’t so bleary that he didn’t see her distress. He sagged against the doorframe in defeat, letting her see the wifebeater and unbelted jeans he wore. Made her miss the FBI dress code. “I won’t let you be hurt because of me.”

“Don’t I get a choice in that?” She reached through the gap to touch him, letting his stubble prick her soft hand. “I’m not afraid of them. I’m afraid of losing you. Open the door, Paul.”

“I’m supposed to protect people like you, not… what I’ve been doing.”

She reached inside and undid the locks, stopping at the bar she couldn’t reach. Paul said “Oh, fuck it” and Mellie heard the bar thud against the wall. She rushed in, throwing her hands up to his face. “Are you alright? Did they hurt you?”

He paused for a long moment, feeling the weight of her touch. “Yeah. They did.”

She pulled, wrapping him around her in a deep kiss. Mellie felt his leaden response, like whatever spark they’d once had was too far away to reach. He put his arms around her like she was made of sand and he didn’t want her to fall apart.

Mellie tried to stay upbeat. “Do you have any new leads on them?”

“I’m not investigating the Dollhouse anymore. You can’t fight lies. They’re too thick. Why would anyone want the truth when it hurts this much?” He forced himself to feel her as too hot to touch, to let go of her. Collapsed into a chair like a puppet without strings.

“But all those people they’re holding, with no free will and no rights, being whored out and raped without even knowing—“

“And who am I to stop it!?” Paul shouted, his bulging eyes seeming too big for his face.

“You’re a good man.”

“I’m part of it. We’re all part of it. Victim and victimizer. Only I don’t want to play anymore.” He rubbed at his face with his hand, tears smearing on the whorls of his fingerprints. “I’m sorry I wasn’t enough. If it were real, I would’ve picked you. Taken another job, lived somewhere new, been someone else. But you’re too good to be true. You’re a doll, sent to keep tabs on me. Everything about you is a lie, including how you feel about me. Especially that. And I’m no better than the people I’m after, because I love you. Knowing how sick and wrong and twisted my feelings are, I still have them. I think that’s enough to warrant execution, how about you?”

Mellie felt a detached panic, separate from her but still overwhelming. How could he say these things about her? Didn’t he know she loved him? She leaned over him, her hands cupping his cheeks—“Do it,” Paul said, his voice lost.—and felt a sickening sense of loss rippling through her. “I had a life. I had a life, growing inside me. I only turned my head for a second… to fix the vase.”

He moved her hands down to her throat. “I’m sorry this is the only justice I can give you.”

“There were three flowers in the vase… and there should’ve been four. One was missing. I need my treatment now.”

Paul felt her hands leave his throat with an aching sense of emptiness. “Please. I need this. I need you.”

“I have to go get my treatment now.” She looked at the door like a heroin addict eyeing her next fix. “Please tell me it was real for you.”

“I wanted it to be.” She disappeared out the door.

Paul stared at his gun a long time.

The phone rang.

“Yes?”

British accent. Female voice. “You sound hoarse, Agent Ballard. Have you been crying?”

“What are you waiting for? Kill me.”

“And make a martyr out of you? I think not. I can only hope this little exercise has shown you that we don’t deal in fantasy. We sell truth. Reality the way it should be.”

“Everything she meant to me was a lie.”

“Agent, I believe you and Mellie had something pure and unfettered. You should thank me for crafting it for you. And I can always arrange further liaisons for you. My people tell me it’s quite healthy for her psyche. Of course, love is compromise. Simply regale the word ‘dollhouse’ to toy stores and I’ll give you Mellie, no strings attached. I’ll even let you modify her, if you find an aspect of her problematic.”

“Burn in hell, whore.”

“Please. I’m the madame. And you’re too thoroughly discredited to present a threat, so enjoy early retirement. I’ll just find a new therapy for November. That’s her real name, so you know.”

“If you touch her, I’ll…”

“I can promise you I won’t touch her. Goodbye, agent. We won’t speak again.” She hung up.

Ballard looked at his gun again. “Yes. We will.”

***

It wasn’t revenge he wanted. It wasn’t like the wrong he’d been dealt was even the greatest in the room. He’d been splattered by the blood of other victims. No, he’d learned something from her. She’d taught him that everyone was programmable. He’d been programmed to believe that goodness and loyalty and compassion were magical talismans that let you win, even in the face of all the world’s darkness. She’s disabused him of that childishness. Wiped the slate clean. He wanted to thank her for that.

And so, once Paul reprogrammed himself, erasing the useless FBI rules and red-tape and tears, he found it was almost too easy to chip away at the Dollhouse. He started at the foundations, the clientele. Joel Mynor was more than willing to talk once he had a bullet in him. And he was equally willing to keep his mouth shut, courtesy of another. It only took a few more before the clients started realizing there was only one way to save themselves.

Without its anonymity, the Dollhouse began to go up like gas-soaked rags. Journalists, FBI agents, police detectives, they all wanted a piece. And Paul doled out what information he had, playing them against each other, coming at the Dollhouse from all sides. It was fun, watching them play defense. Joyce Williams was arrested in a sting operation. In thirty-two hours her treatment broke. Sierra asked her interrogators if she had fallen asleep.

Then the dominos really started tumbling. Caroline appeared at Paul’s door, a gun in her hand. She asked him if he needed any help. He didn’t ask how she had gotten free of the Dollhouse. The fact that her clip was half-empty was answer enough. They rounded up the Actives on suicide missions, last-ditch grabs for cash by whoever was in charge. Caroline said Adelle would never send “her” Dolls out on those kinds of assignments.

She knew the way the wind was blowing. Caroline knew her Swiss bank account number. They tracked her down at a private airfield.

“I have no stake in what happens to her,” Caroline said. “Just so you know.”

Paul said nothing. Not before he shot Adelle, not after.

He saw Mellie… November… once before the end. He was standing in the Dollhouse, wondering what Caroline would say if he asked for one memory modification to forget everything that’d brought him there. Topher, unsurprisingly cooperative for a man with nine fingers, was reinstalling everyone’s original personalities.

Paul tried his best to cajole the agitated dolls up to their treatment, telling them to ignore the handlers who’d been handcuffed or gunned down. He saw November file past him, her innocence so like Mellie’s that it made him shake. She wouldn’t stop staring at him. He supposed he was a sight, the stitched-up cut across his cheek, his arm in a makeshift sling. He said nothing as she got close, then ran a hand down his injured cheek. She examined her blood-slick palm with interest.

“You’re hurt,” she said, her child-like diction so far from Mellie’s warm tones that he wondered how he had ever thought she was real.

“I’ll get better.”

“Promise?”

He put a hand on the small of her back and gave her a gentle push toward the stairs. She left, looking at him as she and her fellows marched like lemmings. This time, for once, their blind faith would be rewarded.

***

There was a catch. There always was, when you made a deal with the Devil. Caroline thought this as she burned up the contract with her name written in big fuck-you letters on the dotted line.

The five years, the money, that was all real, but they never mentioned the scars. She’d already been dealing with recurring nightmares of being hunted in the woods… blinded and alone in a burning building… but she wasn’t going back in that chair, no matter how close Topher said he was to a fix. He’d been very helpful once Ivy put a new personality in him. He was even aware that he’d been altered. Caroline’s idea.

She saw Victor leading Sierra out, arm around her slender shoulders, and realized she had no idea what their real names were. Later, there’d be time for names. And lawsuits and legislation and shitty made-for-TV movies. For now, she wanted to sleep in her own bed, wear her own clothes, hug her parents. Wanted to go back to that childhood house she hadn’t known for so long. But now, all that was left of that was ashes and headstones. Three years into her contract; faulty wiring. She watched her contract fully curl up into a blackened crisp.

“Thank you,” November said, startling Caroline out of her reverie. She was wearing a coat tailored for her, but it seemed oddly too big on her.

“For what?”

“You have to ask.”

Caroline smiled weakly. “I didn’t think you would.” November—her real name was Pattie—shrunk further into the coat at the implication. “I read your file,” Caroline explained. “I read everyone’s file. I had to make sure no one was a psycho killer. I’m so sorry…”

“It’s okay,” Pattie assured her, sitting down. “You remember… you remember that time when we woke up with Priya and Tom?”

So those were Sierra and Victor’s names. Caroline swore to herself she wouldn’t forget again. “Vaguely. It’s all a blur.”

Pattie nodded thankfully. “You remember me?”

“You were confident, assertive, sexy… the kind of person I’d like to be when I grow up.”

Pattie bit her lip. “Even before I was wiped, I hadn’t been that person for so long - my daughter was my life. And losing her… I wasn’t going to keep the money. I was going to give it to charity when my five years were up. Then I was going to sign up for another five years.”

“Oh…” Caroline put her arms around Pattie, rubbing her back gently in their embrace. It felt so good to have someone close and to have it mean something that tears came to her eyes.

“And another five after that and another five… until they wouldn’t have me anymore. And then I was going to see if they’d legalized assisted suicide yet. Because I didn’t have the guts to… I used to have scars, on my left wrist, going halfway down my forearm. Plastic surgery took care of them, I guess.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was!” Pattie’s voice tightened like a fist. “Anything else, I could’ve... But it was my fault. My fault. And, now that I can look back… you gave me back my freedom. If I do something with it that you don’t approve of, will you be ashamed of me?”

“Will you be ashamed of yourself?”

“I won’t have an opinion.”

***

Seeing Paul Ballard in a suit again made Caroline gasp with déjà vu. Then she remembered that when she’d first laid eyes on him, he’d been in a suit. He’d changed out of it before she’d actually tried to kill him, though, and throughout their partnership he’d never worn anything in three pieces.

“So, you’re the hero of the hour,” she said, leaning against the wall of the last in their series of rundown apartments. As insane as it was, she was going to miss their shared morning routine, the intimacy and passion of their work. It’d been the cause she’d always dreamed of finding. She had actually changed the world.

“You can be the big damn hero,” he assured her, trying to remember how to tie his tie and not succeeding. “I’m content to stay out of jail.”

“You really think any judge would give you more than a slap on the wrist?”

“Dollhouse still has a lot of friends. You really think I’d make it to the courthouse?”

“Touché.” She did up his tie for him. “So, where will you go?”

“Heartland. My dad always wanted me to be a farmer. It would’ve been better if I had.”

“I know one phonetic alphabet that thinks different… She wants to see you.”

Ballard’s head whipped around at the abrupt reversal, brow furrowing. “Who?”

“Pattie.”

“I don’t know a Pattie.”

“November, then. Mellie.”

“Don’t know them either.”

“Paul. It’s what she wants.”

He looked at her, his entire body weakening. Caroline nodded to him. He put his hand to his mouth, squeezing his lips inside his fist until he pulled his hand away. “I suppose I do owe her an apology.”

“She loves you,” Caroline said, cutting through the bullshit. “Everyone else used her. You cared for her. Respected her. That counts for something.”

“Does it?”

“It should.”

“I tell myself that sometimes. You know what I end up answering?” He fixed his tie, falling into practiced routine. “That just makes it worse.”

***

He doesn’t know why he waits as long as he does. He doesn’t know why she wants to meet him at a train station. He doesn’t know what he’ll tell her when he sees her. He loves her, but she isn’t Mellie; she’s flesh and blood and his lover was a daydream.

He doesn’t know how to ask for forgiveness. He doesn’t know how to accept her thanks, and he hopes to God she doesn’t thank him. He doesn’t know what word lies between “stay away” and “stay with me.” He doesn’t know how to make things like they were before.

She wears a pretty flower-print dress and pearls and sensible shoes and she’s so real, so heart-stoppingly actual that the memories shoot through him like a rush. He can’t pretend it wasn’t real. It was real to him. And to her, a part of her, a false part grafted on or a real part buried deep inside, he doesn’t know anymore.

She walks up to him, kisses him like he’s returned from a long trip and this is their reunion. Her fingers rest on his shoulders like they used to, her fingers coil slightly into the muscles of his back, her body slides against his as he responds. It twinges when her hands brush an old scar or yellowing bruise. That’s the only way to tell that years have passed.

“Hi Paul,” she says, her smile as warm as ever, warmer, warm as hell.

“Hi Mellie,” he says back.

He’s numb. He wishes he could be sickened by this, wishes he still had the morals to hate it, but his burdens have hit the ground and it feels so good to be a man. They sit down on a quiet bench and he tells her everything. He doesn’t tell her she was a doll. She doesn’t say anything about his tears. They hold hands and when he admits to killing Adelle… the one part he never talked about with anyone, not even with Caroline… she kisses his fingers like it’ll wipe the blood away. She shows him two train tickets. Her things are packed. She asks if he’ll come with her. He says yes without thinking.

Caroline helps him pack his things. He already knows what she’ll tell him, but he listens anyway. He’s all out of tears, but he cries anyway. For Pattie, the woman he never got to know, who died so Mellie could live. Caroline hopes she’ll be happy as Mellie. Paul swears she will be.

Caroline kisses him goodbye sweetly on the cheek and then Mellie’s arm is hooked in his and they’re on the train, watching LA fade away like a bad dream.

“Ignoratio beatitudo est,” Paul says, letting the words sting his throat.

“What’s that mean?” Mellie asks.

“Ignorance is bliss. You think that’s true?” He will never be that cruel to her again.

“I think the wisest of us are blissful. They don’t waste time regretting the past. They look to the future.” She runs her fingers over the scar on his cheek, now old and faded and only visible if you look for it. “You’re a good man, Paul Ballard.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

He feels her fingers gently raking his face again, and he thinks she is touching his scar until she turns his face to her and kisses him. It is absolution. He accepts it as the gift that it is.