Composition, by Lirazel

[irony-rocks.livejournal.com]

Fandom Category: Dollhouse
Pairing: Sierra/Victor, aka Priya Tsetsang/Anthony Ceccoli
Fic Title: Composition
Author: Lirazel
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/58493
Rating/Warning(s): Mature, mental manipulation?
Genre: Post series
WIP?: no

Why This Must Be Read: Torture and hope: the dreams are both, and she doesn't know how to separate one from the other anymore. Five ways Priya and Tony never fell in love (and one way they did). Wonderfully written, and great characterization of two individuals where the word "characterization" has unique interpretations. Great read.

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For nearly the first year after T is born, Priya is worthless, or that's how it seems to her. Tony leaves (she sends him away) a week after he holds his son for the first time, when Priya is still bedridden and weak ( there was blood; so much blood: the combination of premature labor, the terror of another attack by Harding's men, and a lack of medical facilities…well, Adelle says that it's a miracle she survived at all, and Tony hadn't been able to deal with almost losing his family).

Adelle says it's postpartum depression, says that many women suffer from it and that she'll find her balance eventually (perhaps Claire could help her, Adelle says, if she were here, but Priya knows that there is no Claire anymore, not when they'd restored her to Whiskey's body and she asked to be taken out again when they left the Dollhouse. They left Whiskey behind as the messenger, and Claire is now only a computer program in a wedge hidden in a place that used to be the Dollhouse, and maybe it's that knowledge, more than anything else, that makes Tony's decisions so terrifying to her). But that's just one of the many little lies they have to tell themselves now to find ways to carry on, because it's much, much simpler than that: they're living in hell, and the father of her son has abandoned her, and she's petrified of raising her child in a world like this one (much simpler? Or much more complicated? It's all shades of the same thing).

T is teething when Echo finds Priya tracing patterns with her finger into the dirt that always seems to coat the windows no matter how many times they're scrubbed (this is how Priya measures time now: with T: his first smile, his first word, his first tooth. Any other way would cause too much pain). Echo doesn't really say anything, just bumps her hip into Priya's, but when she comes back from the next raid, she hands Priya a small plastic case, then saunters off with that smug grin of hers.

Priya opens it, and there are watercolors inside, hollows filled with dried paint, just waiting for a little water to bring them to life. The red is crushed, nearly ground away entirely, and there isn't any black at all, but she doesn't care. She can't imagine where Echo found it, but it's just what she needed, and she doesn't ask.

There isn't any paper, but T's cradle (Tony made it, she doesn't know when, only that when she stumbled back into the bedroom after he left, there it was, waiting) is pushed into a corner, and she covers the off-white walls on either side with birds and bright colors. She hasn't used watercolors since she was a doll, but her fingers seem to remember. She doesn't remember that time at all, but Echo does, and she says that Sierra loved to paint, and Victor loved to watch her, and Priya wonders if, since he became Victor again, he remembers those times, and she finds the question burns inside her till she almost can't breathe. She hates the Dollhouse with an intensity that scares her (sometimes finds herself hating Adelle, no matter how hard she tries, and Topher, no matter how broken he is); it spoils and taints everything.

She had thought, when she became Priya again, that the fact that she and Tony still loved each other meant that they were soul mates (even though she'd never ever believed in them before, what else could it mean?), that no matter what, they would have found each other. She paints another bluebird above the T's cradle, listening to her son fuss and coo, and she thinks that if it hadn't been for the hell that is the Dollhouse, Tony might be beside her, critiquing her art, holding their son, himself and whole and human.

The night she paints the first bird is the night she has the first dream.