who am i, truly? && what about this? <--Saunders

[JULIET]

[/i] about Quebec made Juliet’s skin crawl. She folded up the paper again and leaned forward to look into the mirror across from the sink. She looked the same; she was still Juliet, so why did she feel so different? She was unsure of these emotions welling inside of her just as she was unsure of what DeWitt would say about the paper she held in her hands. She didn’t know very many people to go to, even though she was supposedly supposed to trust everyone in the ‘House. Well, she didn’t.

Then her mind clicked, and she let a smile fall onto the worried features of her face. “I’ll go see Dr. Saunders.”

Thus having her raging mind nullified, Juliet drew her hair back into a ponytail and whisked away. Only a few steps away did she notice she did not have the paper in her hands. She dashed back to the counter, casting a furtive glance at anyone who might have seen, and stuffed the paper deep into her pockets. Dr. Saunders, here we come.

Juliet didn’t know how long she was waiting, had been waiting, always waiting. She sat on the patient’s spot like she saw many Actives do before her. Her legs were left swinging as she coddled the predominantly blue-painted paper in her hands. It was folded—no one must see what she had written. Eyes Only. Only meant for a few, not the majority. But Juliet wasn’t going to ask Dr. Saunders right away about heat-seeking technology and if Rossum could track them down here with such a ‘weapon.’ No, she’d ask first, innocently of course, about sexuality, and why she might like Quebec… a doll.

If only Dr. Saunders would come.
[/ul]

[CLAIRE SAUNDERS !]

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Claire was, for once, in her bedroom—if it could really have been called a room. She’d purposely chosen the smallest one in the facility, and she was pretty sure that it had actually been a closet, once. She didn’t need a large space; she had few personal possessions (which was actually rather obvious, when you thought about it) and she spent as little time as possible in here. There were some nights when she woke up in the beanbag chair that she’d hidden among the bookcases in the medical room – Claire liked beanbags – and realised that she’d not been to bed at all. She wasn’t an insomniac, as such, but she didn’t like to sleep; she had nightmares, always the same one, and they were getting worse. Sure, she could have given herself something for it, but Claire was on enough pills as it was and if she didn’t sleep, it meant she could get more work done. It was a perverse way to work, given that sleep refreshed the brain and you need it to function, but Claire often stayed up all night, sitting at her desk and scribbling away. Once, the only sound had been the tapping of the keys on her keyboard, but since the ban of computers for everything other than running the Chair, Claire had taken to writing all her reports by hand; just because she didn’t have a word processor anymore, it didn’t mean that she could skimp on the record-keeping. The reports were important, in case anyone ever found this place, in case anyone ever tried to do this again. She didn’t think they would – there weren’t enough people left in the world – but she wanted to be thorough. Claire was always thorough, and writing reports was a good thing to do after so long of barely doing anything by hand. With technology, they’d all got lazy. Now they couldn’t use it, they were having to think of new/old ways to do things again.

But even Claire needed to sleep at some point – for a period of more than four hours in one go – which was precisely what she’d done last night. She’d woken up about half an hour ago, and was already sitting cross-legged on her bed, a report on her lap as she ate a bowl of dry cereal; breakfast was the most important meal of the day, but she didn’t have a fridge in her room and she didn’t want to go all the way to the kitchen to find some milk. She felt more refreshed than she’d done in weeks, but she still had a lot of work to do; she might have work in her bedroom, but she couldn’t sit in here all day. Claire finished her breakfast and put down the bowl – she’d have to remember to clean it up later, but now she needed to get to the medical room, as she was always late and there was bound to be someone or other waiting was there always was – getting dressed quickly and running a brush through her hair before slipping on her shoes and stepping out into the corridor, shutting the door behind her. Not that there was anything inside that anybody would want. Claire’s possessions didn’t have sentimental value, either, not even to her. She’d never been one for sentiment.

She’d been right; by the time she reached the medical room, Claire could tell that there was already someone inside waiting for her. “Hello, Juliet,” she greeted, picking up her lab coat from the back of her chair and putting it on, finding her clipboard and making sure she had clean paper and a pen to hand. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.” Juliet was an interesting active, having been reimprinted with her old personality but choosing to remain with her doll designation and act as doll-like as the rest of them, and Claire would have liked to study her more in depth, but the time for studies on a whim was over; she had a job to do, in making sure that these people survived the apocalypse. Which, down here, they had an extremely good chance of doing. “What’s the matter?”

[JULIET]

[/i]—Juliet acknowledged Dr. Saunders’ presence. The movement, the slight twisting of the girl’s head to the door as Dr. Saunders strode into the room, might have been likened to the twisting of a dog’s ears when a sound was interesting. Slowly, Juliet’s eyes focused on Dr. Saunders, and then Juliet brightened. Dr. Saunders had always helped Juliet. Though this might have been because she was made to help patients, Juliet was nonetheless grateful.

Upon Dr. Saunders’ welcome, Juliet smiled and raised a hand in greeting, but her eyes saw that Dr. Saunders had turned away, unable to see the welcome Juliet had given her. However, Juliet did not feel the need to say hello; she was sure Dr. Saunders got enough ‘hello’s every day from dolls who knew no better. Juliet was no doll, even if she acted like them. However, when Dr. Saunders continued in the spirit of basic communication—something that dolls might not have been able to continue in—Juliet realized that she just might have to answer that question. The only problem was, she’d blanked out and she had lost track of the time. Time, what a waste of time to keep track of it! “I don’t believe I’ve been waiting long.” Juliet said slowly, as if she were still a doll. When Seraphim had been reimprinted, Sera had accepted the fact that Juliet was now a separate person, and had slowly melded with her. That meant Juliet had kept certain… prospects of being a doll. One of them was the sometimes simple-minded way dolls talked, though nearly every non-doll person in the House knew her brains far exceeded those of normal dolls. Point in fact: the folded piece of paper in Juliet’s hands. She had been fidgeting with it again, starting up almost as soon as Dr. Saunders had walked in.

Dr. Saunders then continued with a question. ‘What’s the matter?’ Juliet straightened her back and smiled. Her smile nearly always succeeded in having that innocent doll-like quality to it, no matter what. “I’m fine physically, Dr. Saunders.” She declared intuitively, if only speaking slowly like normal. “But I have a question or two that I would like answered.” She stopped and looked down as if in thought not embarrassment, “Questions that I would not be comfortable asking anyone else.”

It was true; Juliet was not going to ask sexual questions to Boyd or DeWitt, and if she were to ask Topher he probably would stretch things too far out of the main concept of the idea… if he even got to the main concept of the idea at all. Topher’s mind was continuously drawing blanks on everything, and besides, he was a guy. Plus, asking Dr. Saunders if the heat-seeking idea might work before asking DeWitt and Topher might be a good idea. Saunders was knowledgeable enough about that kind of stuff.

“Well, actually, it might be somewhat physical.” Juliet countered herself, blinking and putting a finger on her lip, thinking again. “I know when I was a doll I was put on physically sexual missions.” Juliet couldn’t ever believe her body was given away for that, even when she was seventeen (though, most likely, those missions hadn’t begun until she was in her twenties). “But my mind is my own now, and since I came here at seventeen I was just starting to explore… you know… sexuality.” Sera had still been in the space between a child and an adult. She hadn’t ever thought herself as the type to like anyone, and then, when she was given back her body years later, sexuality came as a very large jolt. “I can’t explain it, really, and that’s one of the reasons why I came here. You are the only one I can really trust with these questions.”

She bit her lip, looking at Dr. Saunders, sort of scrutinizing her, though not really. Dr. Saunders was someone she could trust, even with her life… even if she were no longer a doll. “I was sitting with Quebec yesterday, and we were painting. But whenever he got close to me, my stomach tied itself into knots… my chest tightened… and I blushed. Dr. Saunders, I never used to do any of that when I was seventeen.” A lot of years had passed, and a child’s mind was trying to live in an adult’s body… even if the child’s mind was even more adult than most adults in the House. Still, there were downfalls… and this was one of them. “What happened? Did I do something… wrong?”
[/ul]

[CLAIRE SAUNDERS !]

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Sometimes, it seemed to Claire that she didn’t exist outside of the medical room. She spent almost all day in there – a lot of that was spent with patients, whether because they’d injured themselves, needed a simple check-up, or just felt like she was the one to come to with a question (not that she blamed them, since the only other sane – relatively – senior member of staff around regularly was Adelle, and she was pretty scary, especially if some of them were remembering that it was her that recruited them in the first place), but she also had things to do that nobody thought about which were also time consuming. She had to keep up-to-date records, of course, so she knew who she’d treated and with what, and had reference if any major problems came up during examinations, and then there was inventory, something she’d found herself doing regularly now that the stock of medication was dwindling, and reports to write and…well, there were a lot of things for Claire to do. Perhaps she didn’t need to do all of them at once, but she’d always been a multi-tasker. She didn’t trust anyone else to help her, either, even if they were capable; Claire trusted very few people. Boyd and Echo were the only two she trusted implicitly, and even then, she didn’t think either of them had medical training, although there was the possibility that there was a doctor somewhere in Echo’s head. Everyone else…she just got along with them. There were some that she didn’t trust at all (Topher Brink), and some that she’d trust up until a point, but not with personal matters, and not with her work. Claire had always been of the mindset that if you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself. She’d only end up redoing everything anyway. No, perhaps she should consider setting up a bed in here, so that she never had to leave, but Claire wasn’t going to ask for assistance. The very idea of having somebody in here all the time was enough to make her cringe.

Claire could deal with patients absolutely fine, but she didn’t like company. There was a difference; she could be business-like with patients. Actives had set responses to things and were easy to get answers out of, as long as you smiled at them and were kind, while everyone else tended to want to get in and out of her room as quickly as possible, which suited Claire just fine. People who were spending time with her for the sake of spending time with her…they required more. They needed conversation, a connection, trust—all things that Claire found very difficult to find. She was better off on her own; at the end of the day, she didn’t know if one of her friends was going to hurt her, or let her down, or force her back into that chair and wipe her out of existence. She could trust some of them – Boyd and Echo – but others, she was still wary of. Perhaps it would have been easier on her if she’d let people into her heart easily, but Claire wasn’t built that way; she wasn’t an open person. She didn’t talk about her past – because it was all just a story, now – and she didn’t like to talk about her feelings, because it left her vulnerable. Claire had enough phobias to power a haunted house; she didn’t need to be scared of people taking what they knew about her and using that against her. She needed to be strong, and she couldn’t be that if there were too many people who knew her well. She just wanted to be the doctor; friendly to her patients, always ready to listen, but not having to open herself up. Other people could do that; Claire just wanted to be alone. Even now, when there were people in her life that she cared about in a way that was more than a doctor caring about her patients, she wanted to be alone. She didn’t mix well with others.

“Questions that I would not be comfortable asking anyone else. Whenever he got close to me, my stomach tied itself into knots… my chest tightened… and I blushed. What happened? Did I do something… wrong?”

Actives becoming self-aware had meant that Claire had suddenly had an increase in the number of visits she got with slightly more personal questions; while attraction and lust had been dampened with the wipes, the fact that very few of the actives were completely empty now meant that suddenly, they were feeling things that they weren’t used to. Apparently, she’d been nominated as the person to talk to about this kind of awkward question; Juliet wasn’t the first to come to her with things that she didn’t want to ask any of the other staff – not even her handler. “Of course. Anything you ask me will be held in the highest confidentiality. Secrecy,” she replied, amending her word choice slightly as she remembered that even the self-aware dolls had limited vocabularies, and she had no idea if Juliet would know what she meant. She put her clipboard down and folded her arms, listening to Juliet’s stilted speech in silence. “What you’re feeling is perfectly normal, Juliet,” she assured her first, trying to think of the best way to explain in simple terms; teaching the equivalent to children about sexuality was not the easiest of things and could be awkward if she got it wrong. “You were seventeen when you got here, just learning about boys and sexuality, but you’re much older now. Your body…it reacts when you’re attracted to someone. Blushing, butterflies in your stomach—it’s all a normal reaction.” She smiled, remembering the fluttering butterflies in her own stomach every time Boyd walked into a room. “I think you like Quebec. It’s nothing to worry about.”

[JULIET]

[/i] in this place helping people. Forgetting about one person and how she was fully aware, but chose to live with dolls, was a small price to pay for what she was doing. She was working, and she was working hard. Dr. Saunders seemed to never leave the infirmary, which was why Juliet was surprised and slightly dazed when the woman was not there. Now Juliet realized that Dr. Saunders might or might not have known exactly what was wrong with her in the first place, before she’d even asked. When the woman said it was nothing to worry about, Juliet felt her knotted stomach unclench, and she smiled and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank you, Dr. Saunders,” Juliet declared, “I will have to be more on guard around Quebec from now own. But that’s not the only question I have for you.” Juliet said before once again feeling the knot clench her stomach. Obviously, Quebec and her feelings for him had only been a small part of a larger whole. She had put the paper back in her pocket again, so now she elevated herself with one hand to reach in the pocket with her other. Out came the paper, which she discovered now held a new crease from stuffing it unceremoniously in its hideaway. She unfolded it and smoothed out the wrinkles and creases as best she could using her hands and her legs as a sturdy place. Another hole had formed from the corner of one of the creases. She frowned at the paper.

Quebec had helped her with this; if she hadn’t sat down to speak to the man, she probably never would have been thinking about bettering the ‘House. As it was, she wasn’t too sure if it would work, or if the ‘House had already tried something like this. Why not go to Saunders first to see if she knew anything about it? She ran her fingers absently over the creases in the paper, her eyes travelling around the page, silent for a moment. Then she looked up. “I know you have a lot of things to do, and I know how much you don’t like anyone to stick around for a long time.” That much Juliet had seen from simple observation. Dr. Saunders liked to be alone, or at least was not comfortable in anyone’s presence other than Boyd, Echo, and once in a blue moon DeWitt. “I’ll keep this quick.”

Juliet looked back down at the paper quickly before she could see the look Dr. Saunders gave her, if there was one. Her legs started back and forth, a jigsaw motion beneath her. Cut, cut, cut. She began, her voice a lot faster than it was normally, “I don’t know if DeWitt thought about this before, but maybe the reason why butchers have found this place is because of our heat. Humans give off a lot of heat when placed together, and even though this House is widely spaced, we are closely packed, like sardines. We give off a lot of heat, so I’m not surprised that if Rossum wants to find us, they will use satellites. I’m no fan of technology, but I do realize that satellites are known to punch their rays through buildings to look at things underground—using heat signatures. I know Topher might not want to help, but if we could, you know, imprint people with technician brains we could understand… things.”

Juliet looked up, confusion littering her face even though this was her idea. “What I mean is, if we can somehow create a device to mask our heat signatures—it’s been done before—we might stand a better chance against Rossum.” She finished in a rush, and held her sloppy schematics of the ‘House (painted blue, of course) out to Dr. Saunders to take. “It’s not the best representation, but I’ve been thinking. If we place cooling devices at the ceiling, or maybe just electrical jammers, we might stop the satellite signal. We might buy ourselves some time, for what, I don’t know, but it is time.”

She looked hopefully at Dr. Saunders then. She didn’t care what the woman thought of her now. Dr. Saunders could have thought that she was just another doll, only slightly more aware. Dr. Saunders would have been wrong. Juliet was Sera. Juliet had almost all of Sera’s memories, and all of Sera’s personality. That Sera had acted like a doll before becoming one was not Juliet’s fault. However, that fact made it easier for Juliet to… be with the dolls. They were considerably more cheerful than she had ever been as Sera (but not as the Juliet-doll, since she’d been one of them), but Juliet could still see how people could mistake her as one of them.

“Will this, in any way, work?” Juliet asked, her blue eyes clouding in confusion, in questions. “Or was my intelligence needed for something other than trying to find new ways to shield the ‘House from Rossum?”[/ul]

[CLAIRE SAUNDERS !]

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“I will have to be more on guard around Quebec from now own.”

Claire smiled slightly, although she couldn’t say that she was entirely comfortable with the conversation; this was why she’d never had children. Actually, there were a myriad of reasons, including the fact that she never left the Dollhouse and therefore her options of whom to have a child with were limited, but she’d never relished the idea of having to give The Talk to someone. Now the actives were slowly awakening, and she was having to explain all sorts of things that they’d have known if they were themselves but wouldn’t have had any call for if they were dolls. It was a little awkward, but she wouldn’t have had them wiped for it; they needed the chance to grow up, now, and it was growing up. They were becoming people – some of them were people already, like Juliet – and this was what she was here for. “You may find that he likes you too,” she commented; this was almost like being at high school again, watching people in her classes pair off and trying to guess who’d be the next couple while never expecting anyone to ask her out. Claire hadn’t been particularly sociable at school. She guessed that hadn’t changed much, either. “Just be careful. Don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

“I know you have a lot of things to do, and I know how much you don’t like anyone to stick around for a long time. I’ll keep this quick.”

The dolls had noticed that? Oh dear. Claire never wanted to give off the impression to the actives that she was unavailable; she was their doctor, after all, and she wanted them to be able to come and see her whenever they wanted, both with physical aches and pains and problems that, like this, were probably not Claire’s real area of expertise. If anything, Claire preferred the company of actives to that of the staff here; they were easier to get along with, even those who’d been reimprinted with their personalities again, and they never demanded anything of her. Dewitt, the handlers…they all wanted something from her, when they came to see her. Boyd and Echo were the only two who she didn’t feel were judging her, and they both had a lot of things to do too; time spent in their company was nice (especially Boyd’s) but it was limited by virtue of the fact that they were fighting the apocalypse. And they were going out there, actually seeing what it was like, while Claire stayed in here and tended to their wounds when they returned. It was better this way; Claire had no desire to go to the fight. It would be bad enough if – when – it came to them. She hoped that it wouldn’t get to that point, but there had already been infiltrators here who’d been trying to kill them all; Claire wasn’t an optimist by nature. It would have been nice to believe otherwise, but she knew that it was only a matter of time before they were found…and there were no guarantees that those who found them would be the other people who’d survived getting their minds wiped. “You can always come and ask me things,” she reassured Juliet, hoping that there wasn’t a general consensus that she disliked company and it was just something that this particular person had noticed. “Please don’t think otherwise.”

“We give off a lot of heat, so if Rossum wants to find us, they will use satellites. If we place cooling devices at the ceiling, or maybe just electrical jammers, we might stop the satellite signal. We might buy ourselves some time, for what, I don’t know, but it is time.”

Whatever else Claire had been expecting Juliet to ask, it hadn’t been this; the theory was an extremely good, well thought out one, and though Claire would have been the first to admit that her knowledge lay in computers, not other sorts of technology, she thought that it made a lot of sense. “I don’t think Topher’s inability to help has anything to do with his desires,” she muttered bitterly, taking the creased paper from Juliet and smoothing it out to look at, a slight frown on her face. Juliet was right; humans gave off a lot of heat, and though signals didn’t work down here, she had no idea whether the same applied to heat-seeking devices. It wouldn’t just be Rossum who would be able to find them, if it didn’t; the so-called butchers were sure to have some way or another to seek out people and determine whether they’d been wiped or not, and if they found the Dollhouse…it wouldn’t be pretty. Claire wondered if she’d be alright, given that she was technically a doll and therefore imprinted, but that was beside the point right now, and either way, she didn’t want to watch all the people around her get wiped or killed, not when they were her friends – or at least people that she cared about. “We could probably adapt the technology that stops signals getting in to stop all electronic waves,” she mused; it wasn’t her area of expertise and they would almost certainly need Topher’s help with it – perhaps they could use his back-up wedge and imprint a doll with it, like they’d done before with Victor, and have a Topher that wasn’t completely insane – but she didn’t imagine that it would be too complicated to do. The tech was already there, after all, it would just need modifications. Anything that could be done to keep them safe was of the utmost urgency, in Claire’s book; as far as they knew, this was the only place left in the world where people could be safe. They needed to keep it that way. “Time is all that we can ask for at the moment.” They all needed more time.

“Will this, in any way, work? Or was my intelligence needed for something other than trying to find new ways to shield the ‘House from Rossum?”

Claire smiled reassuringly at Juliet, pulling over a chair so she could sit down too. “I think it will work,” she said, smoothing the paper over her knee. “Can I keep this?” she asked, gesturing at the sketch. “I’d like to show it to Ms. Dewitt.” Hopefully Adelle would see the importance in it too, and push it forward as a matter of urgency; Claire had avoided the boss in the past, but found her rather difficult to get along with, but she had to admit that Adelle was doing everything she could to keep the people in her care safe – and she was better at looking after Topher than Claire was, given that she didn’t hate his guts and wish him dead every time she was in the same room as him. It was admirable, what she was doing for the people here. “I don’t know what you’re needed for,” Claire admitted, leaning back and looking at Juliet. “I don’t really know what any of us are needed for. We just have to help each other stay alive.”

[JULIET]

[/i] her idea, after all. Juliet deserved some say in who saw it. “Adapt technology, yes.” Juliet continued, nodding, shifting her legs so that the circulation in her hands was not cut off. She blinked her bright blue eyes at Dr. Saunders. “Is that how I should feel? Protective of my idea?

“I mean… you can keep it if you want; the paper. I can make a better one, too, if you need me to. But I would like to be there when you showed her.” Juliet quickly corrected herself, her eyes now downcast. Her feet were twining with each other. “I guess here is where a doll would say ‘I try to be my best,’ you know. Since we don’t know exactly what we’re needed for—and here I mean us as in the dolls, since you are obviously meant for a doctor—we must try to be our best at everything.” She scowled at herself.

“Alive? Can anyone truly live down here? My real personality… she remembers the sun and the outside; nature. I haven’t been allowed out of this House to even glimpse sun since, you know, DeWitt closed us off. Apparently she doesn’t trust us or something. Or maybe she’s looking out for us—I might not be an actual, but I am definitely sure that butchers don’t distinguish.” Look at her. She was so nervous that, apart from her twitching legs, she was trying everything to keep that paper in her sight. She had even become wary of everyone’s movements, even through the tinted glass of Dr. Saunders’ office. Though only shadows and faint outlines, she was sure that two actives were sitting together on a couch close to the office. She could see one doll’s head moving up and down emphathetically.

“Uhm,” Juliet stopped with a sharp intake of breath, “Sorry. No, I’d like to go talk to DeWitt with you, if I may.” Juliet sounded sheepish, repeating what she’d said before. She’d been like this when she was Seraphim, as well. She’d glossed over some things, talked about other things, then came back to the glossed things as if nothing had happened. Selective details, or whatever, her mother had said. Juliet had thought she had gotten rid of that, but apparently the only thing that Topher had gotten rid of where the last couple days before becoming an Active.
[/ul]
((*cough* sorry for the shortness!))

[CLAIRE SAUNDERS !]

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Claire had to admit, she’d never foreseen a time when it would be the actives that were coming up with ways to defend the Dollhouse, and not Topher, Ivy or Adelle herself. She knew that they were becoming more self-aware, and that some of them were forms of themselves again – people who may have been extremely intelligent, before their lives took a downward turn and everything spiralled so out of control that the Dollhouse was their only hope – but yet the knowledge that they, too, might want to join the resistance and help save the people in this place hadn’t occurred to her in the slightest; it was possible, but they were still dolls to her. That didn’t stop them being people, because Claire had always been one of the few who’d considered the dolls to be people when to everyone else they’d been assets, or toys, but the fact that they were no longer child-like and empty took a bit of getting used to. But this was a very good idea; it certainly wasn’t something that she would ever have thought about, and Topher, when he was lucid, seemed more concerned with inventing a device to reverse the effects of the mass-wipes, or something—Claire never paid much attention to his ramblings (it was Topher, why would she listen?) but it made sense nonetheless. Keeping people safe, though, was why Claire was here; she had no great views one way or the other about the Dollhouse itself, she simply cared about the wellbeing of its occupants – and about not dying herself. Juliet’s idea could work, and the longer they stayed alive, the better, as far as Claire was concerned. She was quite happy to spend the rest of her life down here if necessary; she had no desire to go outside again.

“Oh, no, please. I’d like to tell the boss, too. With you, I mean, if you must tell her. Is that how I should feel? Protective of my idea?”

“Of course,” Claire replied. It was perfectly understandable; in the real world, anyone who designed something pitched it to the person in charge themselves. The Dollhouse wasn’t quite the real world – it had its own rules and customs, its own hierarchy and it was above the law that would have once condemned it – but Claire could understand where Juliet was coming from with wanting to be there too; Claire wasn’t going to take credit for it, given that she had no reason to do so, but if Juliet wanted to tag along, that was fine by her. Perhaps it would be better, since Claire only grasped the concept in theory, and Juliet was the one with ideas about how it could work. “I think she should know, so it can be decided if it’s a viable option. I’ll arrange an appointment and we can go and see her.” It was strange how she still thought she needed arrange appointments to see Adelle, who spent almost all of her time in the main Dollhouse now rather than up in her window-filled office. She probably didn’t need to, but Dewitt was the boss; Claire didn’t trust her entirely. She knew that she had the dolls’ best interests at heart, but she was still going to go with Juliet to present the idea; she wanted to be there to defend her, if Adelle decided that she was getting too clever for her own good, just like she’d done to Echo. It was unlikely now – she’d allowed the self-awareness to develop and authorised the reimprinting of original personalities – but Claire wanted to make sure, all the same. “It’s understandable,” Claire said, trying to stay away from telling Juliet what she should be feeling. Only you had the right to tell yourself what you should feel. “It’s your idea and your design. Not wanting someone to take that away from you makes sense.”

“Alive? Can anyone truly live down here? My real personality… she remembers the sun and the outside; nature. Apparently she doesn’t trust us or something.”

Claire handed Juliet the piece of paper back, thinking about what she had said. “I prefer it down here to up there. I have no desire to see the world.” She didn’t normally talk about how she felt with her patients – her place was to listen, not to talk – but sometimes it was a conversation rather than a consultation; if she shared something about herself, even something like the fact that the world outside of the Dollhouse scared her, which was pretty much common knowledge, then the chances were that the active would want to share something back—the only way to get to know them now that they were real people was to talk. Claire was just glad that they seemed to trust her enough to want to come to her with their problems. “I think that seeing those things again would get you killed. Isn’t it better to be in here and alive?” Claire thought it was, at least; if she never had to see the outside world again, it didn’t matter. She was alive, and the actives were alive, and neither the butchers nor Alpha could get in here to change that. “It’s not that Ms. Dewitt doesn’t trust you. It’s that she wants to keep you all safe. You’re right; the butchers wouldn’t distinguish. In the long run, it’s better to be in here.”

[JULIET]

[/i] opinions unless they were allowed to grow, like Adelle was letting them. Yet, even when their awareness grew, the doll’s opinions were simpleton opinions at best. Juliet’s opinion, therefore, was a simpleton one. Seraphim’s opinion was more thought-out yet much rasher. Which should the collective Juliet figure out to use? Which could she trust more in to keep her and her friends safe? The outside sounded harsh and unforgiving, two words the collective Juliet mind had never experienced physically. It was strange calling Juliet a collective mind because more often than not (actually about 95 percent of the time) the two personalities coexisted peacefully, effortlessly melding into one Juliet as opposed to Echo’s mind, which held many separate personalities. Now was one of the small percentile of the times that she did not agree with herself. Maybe this was what having a conscience meant instead of a small cricket that followed one around, carrying a journal that was too hard to read even with a magnifying glass.

“We’re not really friends, are we?” Juliet asked suddenly. No one was friends down here it seemed. Either the people were dolls and everyone was friends or the people were actuals (or semi-actuals, because Dr. Saunders didn’t like to call herself a doll even when she was one) and no one trusted each other. There might be inter-group mixing as dolls gained their intelligences, like Juliet, but there were never friendships. At least that’s what the OCD mind of Juliet saw—and trust me, she saw a lot of what went on around the House. Sure, the people who loved each other like Sierra—Priya—and Viktor—Tony—were mighty big exceptions because they loved each other, but the others were never close enough to be called friends. Adelle had never wanted anyone to get too close to everyone else before—as per Dollhouse rules—but now, when the House needed it the most, no one was really doing what needed to be done. “I can understand that, you know. That we’re not friends. You have too much to worry about besides friendships—Echo, Ms. Dewitt, the dolls, even some actuals.” Juliet looked up then, a small smile on her face, “I don’t know what I’m getting at. Maybe this conversation is too far, going too far.” She spoke slowly again, like she’d lost her intelligence… or maybe she’d been speaking slowly but this topic was one that dragged on and made her seem like she was speaking even slower. “Do you really have to, you know, make an appointment with Ms. Dewitt?”

A change of subject… though maybe not a welcome subject.
[/ul]

[CLAIRE SAUNDERS !]

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Conversation was something that was severely lacking in the Dollhouse; even back when it had been operational, discussions had been to do with assignments, or actives’ welfare, or occasionally about the new coffee machine in the handlers’ ward room, but it had all been work related – the answer found or a decision reached, there was no more talking. Everyone went their separate ways, and inter-departmental mingling was, while not frowned upon, unusual in a non-work related capacity. Now, Claire would have thought that there would be more time for socialisation, at least of the shallow kind; they were all stuck in here together for the rest of forever, after all, and while she personally had no desire to share her past or regale people with childhood anecdotes (and not just because she knew they were falsified), she would have expected it to happen. The actives were people now, capable of conversation and conscious thought, and while the majority of them might not remember their pasts, it didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything they could talk about. And yet, nobody seemed to do it; it was certainly unusual for Claire to have a conversation with someone that wasn’t either related to their health, a new plan or advance warning that there might be some actuals joining them soon, or simply passing the time of day. She wouldn’t go so far as to say that talking to Juliet here was nice, because it was definitely a business-related discussion – and Claire wasn’t generally one for conversation, she just thought it was strange that she didn’t have more people trying to engage her in it – but it wasn’t completely terrible either. It was informative, to say the least, and not just from the perspective of studying the way Juliet was evolving and coming to terms with having her original personality back in her head.

“We all have different opinions.”

“Yes, we do,” Claire agreed, and she didn’t feel as though she was lying about it; the dolls had opinions now. Perhaps they weren’t always the most in-depth ones, but even if it was down to their preference of breakfast foods, it was still an opinion; at one time, they wouldn’t have been allowed even that. “It’s what makes us…different.” Actually, it was what made them sure they weren’t dolls, at least not in the original sense, but Claire wasn’t going to mention it in so many words; she wasn’t sure how sensitive a subject it could be with some of them now, or if it would be upsetting or something else entirely. She knew that she looked back on Whiskey’s memories with a sort of fondness; she couldn’t always remember doing the things, but she remembered liking them, or at least being happy and content. The simplicity was something that would have been nice, sometimes; life was too complicated. Even now, without the influences of the outside world, it was too complicated. The knowledge that she was a doll had been upsetting at first – more so because she was an imprint rather than somebody who had willingly signed up for this, with it being the only option left to them (and she hated to think what the original owner of this body had to go through to get caught up in the world of the Dollhouse) – but Claire had reconciled with it; she was Claire. That was who she thought of herself as and who she wanted to be—but she was also Whiskey. She knew that, and she hoped that the other people could work out a way to be at peace with the knowledge that they were dolls too. Even if the other staff didn’t understand, Claire did; they just didn’t need to know quite how well she understood. That information wasn’t something that she was going to share with people beyond those who already knew.

“I can understand that, you know. That we’re not friends. You have too much to worry about besides friendships—Echo, Ms. Dewitt, the dolls, even some actuals.”

Claire wasn’t quite sure where this topic of conversation had come from, but Juliet’s frankness about it all was actually rather refreshing; she still seemed to have that clarity of mind that the dolls had – things were either one way or they were another; there were no shades of grey between the black and white. Claire liked that; this was a place of moral ambiguity, where everything was grey in some shape or form, and it was good to know that there were still some people in here who saw the world through simpler eyes. They didn’t have the moral dilemmas that the staff had, or the notion that things were terribly, terribly wrong—they just were. They were happy, she hastened to add, but even those with personalities now seemed to be sticking to the simpler life of being a doll. Perhaps it was less scary than remembering who you were before. Claire couldn’t answer that. “We’re not friends,” she agreed quietly; she was always their doctor, they were always her patients. It was only with Echo that she felt on somewhat of a level playing field, and even then…was that friendship. “It’s not because I have too much to worry about, it’s because…I don’t know if I can make friends.” She laughed at that, although Juliet wouldn’t get the joke; Topher had imprinted her with computing skills and intelligence far higher than she would necessarily need to be a doctor, yet he’d left out things like social skills, replacing them with a list of phobias so long she couldn’t name them all. Was it intentional? Huh, who was she kidding; it was Topher, of course it was intentional. Whatever he said, she still believed he’d made her hate him.

“Do you really have to, you know, make an appointment with Ms. Dewitt?”

Claire crossed her legs, tapping her pen thoughtfully against her clipboard. “I suppose that it’s not necessary to make an appointment,” she agreed, although she liked to stick to the old routines as much as possible. She would go and seek Adelle out if Topher was being a pain (well, more of a pain than usual, and in direct relation to his medication), or if there was something urgent that needed seeing too, but otherwise it seemed appropriate to make an appointment with her boss; it was protocol, and Claire happened to like protocol. “I think it’s the best way, though. That way, we can be sure that she has the time to hear your idea properly.”