Fic: The Artist

[briarwood]

Title: The Artist
Fandom: Dollhouse
Rating: Mature
Pairing: Sierra/Topher
Warnings: Darkfic, Rape (not graphic), spoilers up to Belonging.
Notes: This was my fic for this year's Yuletide, written to a prompt from hauntedd. She asked for Sierra/Topher post-Belonging. That's a tough episode for me to write about, so this ended up somewhat different from her actual request. But it does fulfil the prompt.

Summary: What no one truly appreciates is that Topher Brink is an artist. Sierra was his masterpiece.

---

The Artist

What none of them truly appreciate is that Topher Brink is an artist.

The personality implants he creates are fine art: the Van Goghs of memory. Anyone who understands the technology could create implants. Although, very few people do understand the tech well enough to use it. De Witt doesn't: she understands the results, not the process. The handlers think they get it, but none of them could do what Topher does. But anyone smart enough to understand it can create a new personality that will work.

But they are like Peanuts cartoons next to Topher's Mona Lisa.

Each implant is a composite of any number of personalities the Dollhouse has in its extensive library. Topher takes slices from many different minds to create an entirely new person for each engagement. The artistry lies in how he does it.

It's never necessary to create a complete background for an active's personality. Instead, you create the key memories that person needs to have. Not a whole childhood, but a few vivid childhood memories. Not a lifetime of study, but the results of that study - the knowledge - together with a few selected memories of college years. Layers upon layers, and if it's done right, the newly created mind will fill in the blank spaces.

Topher can create anything. Most of the time he's creating someone's fantasy: a woman in love or a perfect white knight. Those assignments could easily become routine, but Topher doesn't let them. Even if the assignment is just a standard romantic engagement he takes the time and effort to create a real person: someone with quirks and habitual gestures and hopes and dreams. Someone with depth.

The original personality of each active is part of Topher's library and he's been known to use them occasionally, but usually he pays little attention to who or what each of the actives used to be. That's irrelevant to him. He knows each of them volunteered for this, signed a contract. That's all he needs to know.

But Priya was different.

De Witt had presented her to him as a kind of gift; she knew he'd been dying to see what Rossum's technology could do for someone with real mental problems. He was planning to start with something easy, like creating an autistic imprint, but this was so much better. An actual paranoid schizophrenic. Not only would he get to take a complete neural map which he could study at his leisure, but having her as an active meant he could observe, first hand, how the imprints reacted with her neurology.

It wasn't just about having a new toy to play with. No, this was about learning. Although they wiped the actives, the human brain was far more complex than a computer hard drive. Topher knew that certain mental aberrations could survive the wiping process and manifest in the tabula rasa state. It was even possible for deeply-buried trauma or psychosis to influence the implanted personalities. Alpha had been an object lesson for all of them in just how bad that could be, which meant De Witt was taking a risk with Priya. But working with Priya would help Topher understand how that worked, and ultimately, he hoped, to prevent another Alpha incident.

Topher went to the hospital to collect the girl who would become Sierra. He knew the moment he saw her that she was the one. Sitting there with her hair all tangled, insisting the doctors were making her sick...she needed help.

In the van on the way to the Dollhouse she explained to him that the hospital had been poisoning her and that was making her crazy. She used to be an artist, she told him.

Topher leaned over and took her hand in his, gently. "Don't worry, Priya," he promised her. "I'm going to fix you."

He was an artist, too. Priya was going to become his masterpiece.

*

He kept his promise when he wiped her for the first time. In the tabula rasa state she was no longer broken. Whatever horrors and delusions had haunted her were gone. Along with the rest of her personality and memories, those horrors were safely stored on disks with multiple backups, but they were no longer in her head, nor able to hurt her. It showed. Her eyes were calm and a small smile played around her lips. Her hands hung at her sides, her fingers relaxed and slightly curved, no longer pulling at her hair. Her fingernails were ragged and bitten, Topher noticed, but the beauticians would fix that. They'd fix her hair, too. She was slim, her skin smooth and unblemished, and she had an athletic body. The Dollhouse staff would help her make the best of that body, tone up those muscles, but she was already suitable for most physical engagements.

She lay passively in the chair while Topher adjusted the settings for her handler imprint with Hearn. During the short exchange he thought he detected a little hesitation in her soft voice. He was watching her scans, though, the whole time, and her vitals never wavered. She accepted the handler relationship as easily as every other active.

After, Topher put the drives containing Priya's imprint into storage. He would study them carefully when he had time so that eventually, he would be able to restore her original self, but healthy and whole. In theory that would be easy - just like any other imprint - but Topher knew it would take all of his skill. In the meantime, Priya existed only on the disc drive. Her body was Sierra now.

*

There was blood all over him. It had seeped through his sweater and the shirt beneath, making the cotton stick to his skin. The blood cooled and dried, adding weight to the fabric. Blood coated his hands, thick and sticky between his fingers, under his fingernails. He was leaving smears of blood everywhere he touched, little bloody fingerprints on the polished rails and sparkling glass of the Dollhouse.

Not all of the blood was his.

Topher could hear the whistle and wheeze of his breath as he crawled. Was his lung damaged? He couldn't tell. There was too much pain: he couldn't tell what was hurting. It all just merged into pain. But still, he fought it, dragging himself to the bottom of the stairs.

Maybe, if he could reach the chair, there would be time to fix all this...

Topher stretched out his arm, reaching for the first stair, bloody fingers seeking the far edge. He managed to get a good grip, but for a while he just lay there, too exhausted to move. The stairs looked so steep, the mezzanine above too high. He would never make it.

But if he stayed where he was, he would die. Help wasn't coming.

Bracing himself, Topher gripped the stair and pulled, dragging himself forward and upward. Pain surged and he cried out. He stifled the cry as soon as he heard it. Oh, god, did anyone hear that? Oh, god, oh, Jesus, please don't let anyone have heard that...

He felt for the next stair and began again.

*

Sierra's first imprint went well. The engagement was a simple one: she was needed to back up Echo. The personality Topher created for her was an assassin and sharp-shooter. He gave her power, emotional control and focus. Her personality was perhaps colder than it needed to be for the engagement parameters, but Topher was being cautious. Until he was sure he'd eliminated her schizophrenia entirely with the wipe, he had to be careful not to hit some buried trigger with his implants.

In the end, it seemed like he needn't have worried about that; the squigglies never got even close to the red zone during the engagement.

When she returned for her treatment, Sierra regarded Topher coolly for a moment, evaluating him and the room before she walked across to the chair. Topher shook himself as he turned to the console, feeling like she'd been looking into his very soul. Damn, I do good work.

Sierra lowered herself into the chair with the liquid grace of a panther, her eyes never leaving him. He had to turn his back to begin the wipe and even then he could feel her eyes on him. A spot between his shoulder blades itched, although he knew her handler had disarmed her before she came in for her "treatment". Topher fought not to look back and meet those cool eyes.

"Did I fall asleep?" Sierra asked dreamily.

Only then could Topher relax and he met her questioning gaze. Sierra smiled a soft, grateful smile that made him forget his place in the script. For a moment, Topher returned that smile.

A puzzled frown crossed her lovely face. "Shall I go now?" she asked.

Topher realised he'd missed his line. "If you like," he responded automatically.

Sierra rose gracefully from the chair and Topher watched her go. Maybe he did a bit too well with that one. Sierra was going to be a challenge.

Topher loved a challenge.

*

Sierra became Topher's special project.

He kept an eye on all of the actives during their engagements, but Sierra he watched carefully. Watching her charts was like listening to a Chopin concerto. The rise and fall of her emotions, the steady pulse of her heartbeat, her breath. Sierra was beautiful. She was incredible.

After each of her engagements Topher studied her wiped imprint in minute detail, comparing it to the record of her vitals. Early on, he detected small anomalies that might have led to glitches. He refined his process, altering details to eliminate the anomalies, learning more and more about her mind as he worked.

*

Topher cowered in the tiny crawl-space behind the server rack. It was cold back there: it had to be, to offset the heat from the server farm that powered the chair. Topher drew his knees up to his chest, hugging his legs and shivering uncontrollably.

The pain in his chest had lessened, but he couldn't breathe right. He was sure, now, that one of his lungs was damaged. He probably had broken ribs, and he was bleeding...it felt like everywhere. He knew he should be doing something, planning an escape, perhaps, but terror paralysed him. Here, he felt safe. Which was all wrong, because he wasn't safe at all. He understood, now, that he was dying. He leaned his head against the wall and tried to breathe quietly.

Oh, crap! They were in the room! Topher could hear them above the white-noise hum of the servers: hands rifling through drawers, opening cupboards. There had to be more than one of them but Topher heard no voices, so he couldn't tell for sure how many were out there.

Don't find me. I'm not here. Please god, Jesus, fuck, don't find me.

Metal clinked on metal and he knew they were going through the archived imprints. That was no surprise, really: the imprints were the most valuable thing in the Dollhouse.

His breathing was too loud, too fast. They would hear! Topher covered his mouth with his hands, but it didn't help. He balled up the stiffening fabric of his sweater and stuffed it against his mouth and nose. It muffled his whistling breath but his stomach rebelled at the stink of his own blood saturating the wool. He retched, acid burning the back of his throat.

Too loud! Oh, god, did they hear?

He pressed himself into the corner, trying to make himself smaller, invisible. It was dark in the crawl-space. Maybe he would be...

"Hello, Topher," Sierra's voice said.

*

The Dollhouse operates with layers of secrets within secrets.

De Witt knew the names of the clients but not the details of their requests. Usually she assigned the actives, so no one else within the Dollhouse could know whether a particular active had been requested for an engagement or randomly assigned.

Topher needed to know the broad outline of all engagement scenarios and everything about the types of personalities requested, but he was never told the client's name or anything about them. He didn't even know the gender of the client unless it was relevant to the engagement.

Handlers knew what was supposed to happen within the engagement, but they were not supposed to see it at all. Their job was to monitor the data and be ready to step in if the engagement went wrong. If intervention was necessary, they would see it, of course, and might see the client, but they wouldn't know what was happening or who the client is.

In a way, the clients of the Dollhouse are as anonymous as the actives themselves.

But everyone talked about the work inside the privacy of the Dollhouse, so they made up their own names for the clients. Miss Lonely-Heart. Daredevil. Cowboy.

The client who was to become Sierra's most regular engagement, Topher dubbed Prince Charming. Prince Charming wanted a sweet, innocent girl to fall crazy in love with him. There were a couple of specifics in the request Topher received: artistic ability, a love of the sun and the sea. Unimaginative stuff, in Topher's opinion.

De Witt assigned Sierra. And, because it was Sierra, Topher worked harder than usual on that imprint. He gave her a happy life: loving parents and a nice, middle-class home. It wasn't perfection, because perfection isn't very believable. There were sad memories in the mix: the loss of a friend in an accident, the homesickness after she left home for the world of work. He gave her the memory of being mugged on the street; she wasn't hurt, only scared but that particular memory was important because it was the worst violence in her life.

Her name was Amber.

The imprint was perfect. The engagement parameters were simple. Topher watched her charts as he always did at the beginning of an engagement. Amber was happy and carefree, but there was an undercurrent of something a little...off. It was probably nerves. She was meeting the man of her dreams, after all.

*

"Did I fall asleep?"

Topher usually heard those words spoken in a soft tone, questioning, sometimes with a little confusion. But not this time. This time the words were harsh and demanding. He didn't understand them.

A hand slapped Topher's cheek: a hard, stinging pain. His eyes flew open. He saw her standing over him, her body silhouetted against the light. She slapped him again and the pain on his already-burning flesh forced a sound of protest from him.

"Say it!" she demanded. "Did I fall asleep."

Topher's first instinct was to obey. He didn't have much courage, and it was obvious she would keep hurting him until he did what she wanted. Saying a few words wouldn't cost him anything. But then he tried to sit up and found himself restrained. There was a strap across his chest. Each of his wrists was handcuffed to... He looked down and saw it.

He was in the chair!

All thought of co-operating with her vanished. He wouldn't get out of this by being nice. He might not get out of this at all.

Topher stared up at her. "I was unconscious, not asleep," he announced firmly. "Because you hit me with a keyboard."

A laugh came from the darkness behind him. It sounded masculine, but Topher couldn't identify the voice.

She stepped forward, distracting him. Now the light shone on her right side and he recognised Sierra. She wore black: skin tight leather pants with thigh-high boots, a close fitting top. Her long hair was brushed straight and fell in a silken curtain around her shoulder. Topher found it terrifying and oddly reassuring. This wasn't Sierra. No doll in the tabula rasa state could show that much distain in her eyes, or hold that arrogant tilt to her chin. It wasn't Priya, either. Someone had imprinted her.

But who? And why?

A better question: what were they going to do with him?

As if Topher had asked the question aloud (he was almost certain he hadn't), the voice behind him said, "Here it is. Is he ready?" Topher still couldn't place the voice. Was it Victor? It might be, but he couldn't be sure...

Sierra - or the person in Sierra's body - nodded curtly. "I think it's time you found out how it feels to be in that chair," Sierra told him.

Topher heard the distinctive slide and click of a hard drive being inserted into the Chair control.

"No! Wait, you can't!"

"Can't?" Sierra repeated, her tone dangerous.

"You can't force an imprint onto a normal mind," Topher tried to explain. His voice was shaking. "You - our actives - you're special."

"Oh, I know," Sierra purred. "I'm special."

"Y-you're all special," Topher stammered.

She leaned close to him, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Do you program everyone to be a slave to one rapist and fall in love with another?"

Topher swallowed. It was true. He had wanted to help Priya, but he had given her to her worst nightmare. He had no answer to give.

*

Sierra was Topher's birthday gift to himself.

He couldn't choose for himself which active to imprint for his birthday; it was necessary to maintain the fiction that he was using an active to test and calibrate the equipment. Even so, Topher hoped it would be Sierra. She had been inactive for a while and would be a logical choice. He almost danced when Boyd told him to use Sierra for his "tests".

The imprint was Topher's own design, naturally. He used the same imprint every time, but for Sierra he tweaked it just a little, adding some physical agility and giving her memories of being a swimmer. Although Prince Charming was Sierra's most regular engagement, she was best suited to physically demanding engagements. Sierra had an athletic body and surprising strength for a woman. Topher's imprints could supply skills and muscle-memory but the active's own body had to be able to perform in line with those skills. Not all of them could; Sierra was exceptional. She could be a gymnast or a marine commando with equal conviction.

And Topher was only human, after all. How could he not want to play with that fantastic body.

It was the best birthday ever.

With the actives safely in their pods and everyone but Doctor Saunders and a few security staff gone for the night, Topher and his playmate had the whole of the Dollhouse to themselves. And boy did she like to play!

They played war games in the atrium. She kicked his ass. Of course she did, he'd programmed her to do it. Losing was fun, too.

It was after that, when they were back in Topher's room, that the engagement went just a little off-program.

She was going through his stack of games, tossing each aside with a bored look, when she stopped suddenly and looked up at him with a mischievous grin. "There's a pool somewhere around here, right?"

"Yeah," Topher agreed, a little dubiously.

"Come on, then!" She grabbed his hand and pulled Topher along with her. Topher allowed himself to be led. He hadn't told her where the pool was, but she seemed to know exactly where she was going.

Maybe tweaking her imprint wasn't such a great idea after all...

On the other hand...

She was already half-naked before Topher had fully processed what she was doing. She laughed at him. "Come on! What are you waiting for? It'll be fun!" She tossed her head, flipping her hair back like a model in a shampoo commercial, then dropped her bra to the floor.

Topher stared. He couldn't help it.

This imprint - his gift to himself - was never intended to be a...a sex toy. Not that Topher had any problem with the idea of having sex with a gorgeous woman, but that wasn't the point of this engagement. He'd designed a playmate, a friend who shared his hobbies and his left-field way of thinking. Gender was irrelevant. But this...wow.

Topher grabbed the bottom of his sweater and pulled it off over his head. She grinned at him, a daring look, then dived into the water, buck naked. She'd done two lengths of the pool before Topher was down to his boxers. He hesitated then, certain parts of him keener than others on the idea of skinny dipping with this woman. Then he jumped into the water with the boxers still on.

She swam to him, cutting through the water with clean strokes. As she neared him, she dived and came up behind him, smiling, water pouring down her face and shoulders.

"Coward!" she accused.

"Maybe," he answered. Not his most snappy comeback, but damn it, girls could hide certain...reactions. He couldn't.

She gave that mischievous grin again. "Alright. I'll race you. Loser gets naked."

He started to point out that she was already naked, so maybe they could just skip the -

But she was off, swimming away from him. Topher followed her. He could swim well enough, but he wasn't fast and wouldn't have beaten her in a fair race. He had no chance against her unfair head start. When he reached the far end of the narrow pool she was sitting on the edge, kicking her legs in the water, waiting for him.

"You lose," she teased.

Topher sighed. "Fine." He bent to wriggle out of the boxers. The wet cotton tried to cling to his skin, but after an awkward moment or two he got them off and laid them on the edge of the pool beside her. He would just have to stay in the water and hope she couldn't see.

"Much better." She slid into the water, moving closer to him.

"Er..." Topher started to back away. She touched him. He gasped.

"Much better," she said again, in a very different voice.

"Um..." was the best he could manage.

"Shut up," she instructed. Then her lips met his insistently.

Topher stopped thinking.

When she wrapped her long legs around him, drawing his cock deep into her body, Topher decided changing her imprint hadn't been such a bad idea after all.

*

"Please," Topher begged. "Just tell me what you want."

He was certain this wasn't Sierra standing over him. Someone had imprinted her. She had Priya's memories and Sierra's memories, but somehow they had overlaid a different personality. A psychotic personality. It was actually a pretty incredible piece of work. Topher wasn't sure he could have done it: memory and experiences are what form the personality. How could you change one but not the other? Under other circumstances, he would have admired the artistry.

But he was chained to his own chair and this twisted thing in Sierra's body was planning to melt his brain.

"I want you to know what it's like," Sierra said. She looked up at the man Topher still couldn't identify.

"Please. You can't imprint a mind that hasn't been wiped first. Whatever you want from me, this isn't the way." He was babbling, but he didn't care. His whole life was at stake here!

"This is," Sierra whispered, her face very close to his, "exactly the right way." She straightened, her expression hardening. "It's time for his treatment."

Topher felt the chair activate beneath him. He wrenched at the handcuffs holding him and cried out at the pain. "No! Don't do this! Please, Sierra - "

Cool, violet light surrounded him and Topher's protest cut off abruptly. He couldn't make a sound. He couldn't move or struggle, but he no longer wanted to. There was no pain, not even from his earlier wounds. He was floating and all he could see was Sierra, her lovely face, her gentle eyes.

Sierra took his hand in hers and he felt the warmth of her touch. "Everything's going to be alright," she said softly.

Relief washed over him. He had been so scared, but now he was safe. "Now that you're here," he whispered gratefully.

"Do you trust me?" Sierra asked.

He felt a little hurt that she needed to ask. "With my life," he answered, as if it should have been obvious.

When she smiled, Topher felt such radiant happiness he wanted her to keep smiling forever.

"That's good." Sierra unlocked the handcuffs as the soft violet light faded and the chair rose back into its upright position. She patted his hand gently. "I want you to know how it feels to be fucked by someone you've been programmed to trust."

Topher nodded, not understanding, but knowing he didn't need to understand. He could trust Sierra with his life.

~ End ~

Also posted on AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2009/works/30881