Dollhouse/Veronica Mars: “Mind Games”(Bennett/Cassidy)
Title: Mind Games
Fandoms: Dollhouse/Veronica Mars
Characters/Pairing: Bennett Halverson/Cassidy Casablancas
Timeline: Very AU, post Veronica Mars 2.22. Vaguely AU (aka, hmm, could this fit into canon?) for Dollhouse.
Word Count: 498
Author’s Note: Written for the prompt “weapons” at the TV crossover comm, choco_cherries.
Mind Games
You see, Bennett had said, peering down at him, they made you disappear too.
Discarded one, sanity detonating with everyone he put to sleep (death), every other person he’d crossed (broken); he’d be at home with her ghosts in no time
His screams broke with Make it stop, make me go away, and she’d dealt with them soundly, until at long last they all turned into Did I fall asleep?
(Don’t be foolish. You’re awake- and she remembers, she was smiling.)
-
Bennett walks in and there he is. He’s pale and fever-eyed, mislaid in the blinking lights of the lab.
She arches her eyebrows at the energy still droning beneath his fingertips, at the sight of the Doll, perfectly blank in front of him.
He freezes under her gaze, starts to stammer out who he is (who she made him), why he’s here (partner-playfellow -experiment). And then he screens a glimpse at her black-clad hand, and all the lines of Bennett’s body go rigid, smile not included.
Cassidy is a girl’s name, she says before he gets another word out. He blinks and bows his head; she shoulders past him, and that’s when he counters-
Well, uh, Bennett is a last name. So can we call it even?
She turns and scoffs, and a half-shy flicker breaks on his lips.
-Bennett holds her breath.
-
She rolls theories off her tongue while sleek in her seat; and Cassidy’s all eagerness, tension, and pacing feet, and words that somehow make her tight smiles teeter into laughter (and she didn’t count on that, but he was…faulty to begin with).
Clockwork ruthless with the Dolls, he binds them tight with ‘Go to sleep, everything’s fine’, but with it, there’s an utter lack of edges in his voice, a quiet cast in his eyes.
One day, he says in that peculiar tone some call joking that he’d kill to have the brain she has--and don’t look like that, it’s high praise.
Her laughter hits an edge.
-
No secrets here…you know all about me, right? The lab coat’s still too loose on him, but his eyes peer out at her, fascinated with empty space one moment, blue and fever-bright the next.
Oh, yes-
(- she’d given him imprints of a long-dead brother, of parents who never cared to know him, of some pretty girl who never understood; and his mind, his deft hands, they’re his only weapons now.)
-I do.
(- he was far too easy to map out and erase: she knows all about being abandoned as a lost cause, about staying murderous at the ones who left you cold.)
He’s here to be her lie.
-
That’s it-next time, you fetch your own, Cassidy says, handing her another diet soda, and then he’s cracking open one of her books, tapping his fingers on the open page as he does, and she knows he’ll be riveted for hours.
She can wait.
-
In the mirror, she’s wearing his smile.
Fandoms: Dollhouse/Veronica Mars
Characters/Pairing: Bennett Halverson/Cassidy Casablancas
Timeline: Very AU, post Veronica Mars 2.22. Vaguely AU (aka, hmm, could this fit into canon?) for Dollhouse.
Word Count: 498
Author’s Note: Written for the prompt “weapons” at the TV crossover comm, choco_cherries.
Mind Games
You see, Bennett had said, peering down at him, they made you disappear too.
Discarded one, sanity detonating with everyone he put to sleep (death), every other person he’d crossed (broken); he’d be at home with her ghosts in no time
His screams broke with Make it stop, make me go away, and she’d dealt with them soundly, until at long last they all turned into Did I fall asleep?
(Don’t be foolish. You’re awake- and she remembers, she was smiling.)
-
Bennett walks in and there he is. He’s pale and fever-eyed, mislaid in the blinking lights of the lab.
She arches her eyebrows at the energy still droning beneath his fingertips, at the sight of the Doll, perfectly blank in front of him.
He freezes under her gaze, starts to stammer out who he is (who she made him), why he’s here (partner-playfellow -experiment). And then he screens a glimpse at her black-clad hand, and all the lines of Bennett’s body go rigid, smile not included.
Cassidy is a girl’s name, she says before he gets another word out. He blinks and bows his head; she shoulders past him, and that’s when he counters-
Well, uh, Bennett is a last name. So can we call it even?
She turns and scoffs, and a half-shy flicker breaks on his lips.
-Bennett holds her breath.
-
She rolls theories off her tongue while sleek in her seat; and Cassidy’s all eagerness, tension, and pacing feet, and words that somehow make her tight smiles teeter into laughter (and she didn’t count on that, but he was…faulty to begin with).
Clockwork ruthless with the Dolls, he binds them tight with ‘Go to sleep, everything’s fine’, but with it, there’s an utter lack of edges in his voice, a quiet cast in his eyes.
One day, he says in that peculiar tone some call joking that he’d kill to have the brain she has--and don’t look like that, it’s high praise.
Her laughter hits an edge.
-
No secrets here…you know all about me, right? The lab coat’s still too loose on him, but his eyes peer out at her, fascinated with empty space one moment, blue and fever-bright the next.
Oh, yes-
(- she’d given him imprints of a long-dead brother, of parents who never cared to know him, of some pretty girl who never understood; and his mind, his deft hands, they’re his only weapons now.)
-I do.
(- he was far too easy to map out and erase: she knows all about being abandoned as a lost cause, about staying murderous at the ones who left you cold.)
He’s here to be her lie.
-
That’s it-next time, you fetch your own, Cassidy says, handing her another diet soda, and then he’s cracking open one of her books, tapping his fingers on the open page as he does, and she knows he’ll be riveted for hours.
She can wait.
-
In the mirror, she’s wearing his smile.