living in the land of nightmares

[LAURENCE DOMINIC]

It has grown quieter in the Attic. There have been few new submissions; at most, one a month. They were going after Rossum, he knows from his brief time in the real world. They must have succeeded, at least in part. He will not let himself think about the consequences of their attack; of possible casualties. Nor will he admit that it terrifies him.

Without new submissions to care for, he finds himself with more time on his hands. There is no Arcane to kill, no one to rescue and the camp he and Clyde set up is doing just fine on its own. He has nothing to do and his gruff, antisocial attitude is not wanted. With the help of Clyde, he has become an expert at jumping from mind to mind and now he once again sets off, chasing not a monster this time but answers and a way to get out.

He explores to the furthest reaches of the Attic, digging deeper into minds than ever before, and what he finds does not surprise me. The further into a mind he goes, the blurrier it gets; the less organised. And each time he jumps, he gets to that weak spot just a little sooner. The Mainframe is growing weaker with each passing day. He doesn’t know why, just that it is. But whatever it is, it is his key to escaping. He just has to bide his time.

Seventy days later, he is ready. Before he leaves he makes sure his camp will survive without him, helping collect provisions and schooling them on anything he thinks they might need to know. They are perfectly capable themselves, but after all this time, he is almost reluctant to let them go. Almost, because he knows he wants to be back in the real world even more.

As he’s packing up the last of his things, he finds one of the boys watching him. Michael, one of the first he’d found. He turns to him with a smile on his face. “I’ll get you out of here, kid. Don’t you worry about it.” Honestly, he’s not sure he’ll be able to rescue everyone in here, but he won’t tell them. They need hope. He gives him another grin, ruffles his hair, and walks away.

He says goodbye to what few people he’s made friends with, tells them he’ll try his best to save them, and then he’s gone.

It’s now or never.

---

He wakes with a gasp, filling his lungs with air they were empty of just a moment ago. There is no one around; obviously the Attic is less well-staffed than he’d expected. He sits up, still gasping, not quite grasping the fact that he’s out.

Then he stands, shaky legs be damned. There is someone he needs to see. She needs to answer for what she’s done.

It’s time to meet Adelle DeWitt again; the woman who put him here in the first place.

[LAURENCE DOMINIC]

Adelle is the first thing he thinks about when he escapes the Attic (he will not let himself continue that thought any further) but as he becomes further accustomed to his surroundings, he notices the Dollhouse is not as it used to be. There are few Actives below, and even fewer staff. None of the higher-up staff are anywhere to be found, and neither is Echo. The Dollhouse feels...empty. Abandoned, almost. Where are all the clients? Where are all the imprinted Actives, and the handlers, and the ground staff, and the security personnel? Where is everyone?
He goes to the imprint lab. Topher will be there, surely. He never leaves the place. And as much as he doesn’t want to see the other man, he needs answers.

But Topher isn’t much good. He finds him at his desk, and when he asks him about what’s going on, he’s met with a blank stare. “Where is everybody?” he asks, and it’s shocking, really, to see the younger man’s face break. He’s used to an arrogant bastard, not a sobbing mess.

Shocked and slightly shaken (though he will not admit it), he leaves the lab and Topher behind. Something has happened. Something drastic, and something very, very bad. His mind flashes back to Clyde and his warnings—“This is the shape of things to come”. Could it be? Clyde said... God, he doesn’t even know what year it is! He needs to see Adelle. Surely she has not broken like her programmer, surely she can explain to him what is going on. No doubt it’s her own goddamn fault.

On his way up to her office, though, he finds himself growing more curious about the state of the world. If what Clyde said would happen has happened, and it’s more than likely—he’d learned to trust almost everything the man said. And honestly, he doesn’t exactly want Adelle to have to explain it to him. Why give her another thing to hold over him? No, he will find out himself. He presses the elevator button to take him to the ground floor.

---

The world is in anarchy outside. He’s seen a lot in the Attic, more than a lot. It should have prepared him for this. It doesn’t. Because the Attic...it was all fake. Sure, it felt real—more than real, but he knew, he always knew, that it was just in his mind, that it was just a nightmare.

This is real. This is reality. He escaped one hell to land smack-bang in the middle of another. And it sort of kills him.

Clyde’s prediction has come true. It looks just like his 33rd scenario, with a bit of his 96th mixed in. He does not want this. He wants to confront Adelle, shoot her maybe, probably not kill her, just hurt her a bit, then leave to find his family. Oh, God, his family. Emily, Sam... They couldn’t be dead, could they?

He pulls himself up tall. He is an NSA agent, a Rossum Head of Security and he will not break. He will go back inside to Adelle and make her atone for her sins. He will deal with this as if it is just another crisis; just another Attic scenario he has to work through. So what if the world is in ruin? He is alive, and there is a chance that the people he loves are too. He will fight still.

Adelle’s office is on the second floor of the building. He goes in, anger blazing because this is her fault. There’s a gun in his hand that he’s not yet decided if he’ll use yet. She turns when he enters, and she is not surprised. Someone has told her he is back. She is surprised, however, when he storms towards her and shoves her back on her couch, hovering over her with the gun pointed at her face.

“I regret to inform you, ma’am, that we’ve had a security breach.”

[ADELLE DEWITT]

The mainframe was coming down. That much Adelle knew for certain. Echo and Paul were working on it. Finding a way to get those lost souls out of their prison. Honestly ever since Echo had returned and told her about The Attic, she found herself imagining all the nightmares she herself could possibly live in, but to be perfectly honest, nothing compared to the world as it stood now and that made her feel guilty.

The people in That Attic, that had been part of Rossum's mainframe, were waking up from an eternal nightmare only to live in one. Perhaps they were better being hooked up to a computer. Though in her mind, she knew that wasn't much of a life either.

Using any form of communication wasn't a good idea, so Adelle had no idea how liberating those in safe haven was going. Which explained the look of surprise on her face when he entered her office with his gun his hand and threw her onto the couch with one arm over her head.

"I regret to inform you ma'am we have a security breach!" he began.

"I sent for you Mr. Dominic," Adelle replied calmly. Her tone cold. She wanted him out of the attic. She could use a good security officer now. With the world ending and all.

[LAURENCE DOMINIC]

“I sent for you, Mr Dominic,” Adelle says. She is calm where he wants her quaking with fear. He want her to feel. Fear, like his when she put him in that blasted place. And his anger grows, because she can take no credit for this. He got out of the Attic himself, no thanks to her. All she wanted was for him to stay trapped there, forever. But it’s just like Adelle, to take credit for something she didn’t do, and so he steers the conversation down a different path.

“After everything we’ve been through, you think I’m still your faithful lapdog? After the Attic, after what you did with my body?”

And here they come to it. A revelation, of sorts. A heart-to-heart maybe, though they are no cuddled together in bed, giving admissions in lover’s whispers (and he will not allow himself to wish for something such as that—it is long past, anyway). But maybe this is their version of such a thing; they always had been fire, even when there was no cause for it.

He thinks back to before—before his betrayal, before the Attic, before the end of the world—when he was just Mr Dominic, her faithful Head of Security, and she was just Ms DeWitt, his attractive, unattainable boss. When he would think what it would be like to slip; just once. To feel the silk of her hair in his hands and the heat of her skin on his and to know with absolute certainty just how good they could have been.

But it is a moot point now. Here they stand, with a gun pointed at her head, and it would be so easy to let his finger slip on the trigger; to end it all. He could ignore everything that stands between them, and go about saving the world. He could—

[ADELLE DEWITT]

<i>“After everything we’ve been through, you think I’m still your faithful lapdog? After the Attic, after what you did with my body?”</i> Laurence screamed at her. She remained calm. She wasn't going to panic. Sure sending him to the Attic in the first place was a ruthless decision on her part, but the second time she put him in the Attic to save his live. If it hadn't been for her Laurence Dominic would already be dead and buried, if not buried at the very least decorating a slab in Doctor Saunders' office.

She had to admit. She missed how it used to be. When the world was still in tact and they didn't have to worry about every little piece of technology causing them to wipe their minds. She missed the way they used to be. The way they would get things done together. The dynamic that had existed. They weren't quite friend, but they were comfortable. They had a sort of domestic relationship where one minute they wouldn't say a word and the next they would be taking each other's head off in an argument.

"You were a spy! You were caught! What did you think would happen?" Adelle stated to the man with the gun. He wouldn't pull the trigger. She knew that he wouldn't. He always was a good little soldier but only when there were threats to be taken care of. Adelle had never been a threat. He said himself the day they put him in the attic, he was sent to make sure that the Dollhouse didn't bring itself down. Then he called her naive and that infuriated her. She was far from naive, at least she wasn't anymore.

She was still Adelle DeWitt, that much was unchanged, but she was far from the woman that had put him in the Attic. All the delusions she had about what the Dollhouse could do to help people had vanished and were replaced with the cold hard reality. She'd seen it in Topher's designs but she didn't want to imagine that the technology she had seen in those prints would ever crossover into the real world, but then Harding and Ambrose had. They'd used the tech, and now the world was burning.

[LAURENCE DOMINIC]

"Exactly what happened. Everywhere." Because oh yes, she will not admit her wrongs and so he will not admit his surprise--will not admit that, when he had been caught, he had had no idea the world would come to this. Maybe he had been as naive, as blind, as she, back then. Though he had believed the Dollhouse technology to be evil, to be capable of terrible, terrible things, he had never imagined it could do something like this.

But that was before the Attic. That was before he met Clyde and learned of the way the world would end. He had expected this, then. At least, he should have. He had told himself he was expecting the world to be in ruins when he woke up.

He was not.

It was still a shock; still a jarring, terrifying shock, to see what had become of the place he once called home, the place all of them had thought of as home. And it was still hard to accept that this, this messed up place, was reality, not some nightmare situation from the Attic. He had woken from one nightmare only to be shoved into the next.

So here he was, and here she was, and here the world was, and he could not, for the life of him, bring himself to pull that trigger. Adelle DeWitt was evil; it was her fault, or at least partly, the world was like this.

And yet-- even here, even in this place, even after what she's done to him and what she's done to the entire world, she lies there looking more beautiful than ever, spitting words back at him with as much fire as he remembers and he will not waste this life, though maybe he should.

So he pushes off her, because he cannot stand the smell of her. Her chair is a sufficient replacement and he lounges there, remembering the last time he got to sit in this thing. How much has passed since in this office that he does not know about? How much has changed? How is the woman who stands before him now different to the one he left behind?

He lets her live, and soon enough he will find out.

[ADELLE DEWITT]

He put the gun away. It surprised her a little, that gesture of mercy. She knew he probably had more then a few reasons to shoot her dead right then and there, but to a degree she also believed that living through this disaster, called the end of the world, was enough punishment for anyone. Maybe he knew this and wanted to let her live with her sins. The disaster she caused.

As he receded from his position, hovering over her and she propped herself up on one of her elbows, finding purchase on the edge of one of the cushions to help propel herself up.

"So you've been briefed," she noted calmly. Realizing exactly how much he knew about the current situation. She was reasonably certain that he'd run into one of more of the Dollhouse staff on his way out of the attic. Christ, she wouldn't be surprised it Echo herself had told him about what had been happening all over the world.

She touched the area of her neck where his hand had been holding her down. She couldn't remember the last time it had felt warm from someone's touch. Even someone who hated her. She ran her thumb over the area for a moment, remembering the past. The distant days where they'd maintained a professional distance, how she'd wanted him to touch her.

Funny what it took for people to get close to each other.

[LAURENCE DOMINIC]

“I saw Topher’s face. Almost worth the price of the ticket. And I took a walk outside.” Sarcasm is all he has left, and by God, he’ll use it to the best of his abilities. It’s about time someone stood up to Adelle DeWitt. He had never dared to before, back when they were both professionals (professionals, he scoffs at the word. Look at where their professionalism has got them now. How wrong they were) and he still respected her.

He is aloof and scathing now, in perfect comparison—no, not comparison; rather, in perfect time—to her cool authority. They had always been like this, so perfectly in tune. He used to enjoy it back then; used to love the feeling of knowing someone who was so perfect for him, who fit with him like a matching puzzle pieces. He wishes it were not so now. He wishes for sharp edges and clashing ideals. He wishes she were just some other nobody who he could not stand, who he could not talk to or get along with or even stand the sight of.

Because yes, he hates her. She should make him sick to his stomach. And yet— she doesn’t. And he has no doubt that the hate he feels will pass. When he runs out of fire, she will be there, standing tall and firm, just like she is now, even though everything has fallen apart.

[ADELLE DEWITT]

A walk outside. The words stuck with her. A walk outside. There used to be a time when the glass in this office looked out onto a city of iron and steel and when the sun shone on it, light would reflect off the city. The view from her office used to be beautiful. It used to be full of life.

Now the city was dark. Even when the sun was up the view was not what it once was. She looked out the window and saw how dark and dreary the world had become and she was not sure what made the rest of the "actuals" as they were called carry on.

His smug tone was getting to her. The way he spoke of Topher. Like he expected this all to happen. She had to say that after Echo's return from the Attic, she was sure that this was the end that was coming as well. Particularly after she handed Topher's plans to Harding. Everyday she beat herself up over it and everyday she tortured herself with the knowledge that she'd had a hand in the end of the world.

And somehow seeing Dominic there, sounding all righteous, it made her furious. What right did Dominic to be this way. He was a spy, he was caught. He could have exposed the Dollhouse at any time and now here they were fighting over who ended the world.

"That wasn't a wise idea," she stated. Her tone angry and venomous.