Work Text:
Claire Saunders has been torn to pieces too many times.
Her face, of course, is the most obvious. First whole and brimming with hope and sorrow, then notched with ragged scars and sort of quiet terror, and finally cleared of the marks the knife left (but you can still see the fear in the deep shadows beneath her eyes).
Her mind is an even more hopeless mess, a Frankenstein monstrosity of stitched-together lies: the doctor that once was, the woman the madman-genius designed to counter his antics, and the girl dominated by the pathetic list of fears and phobias that served to chain her to the Dollhouse for so long. She wonders if she is anything more than the sum of these three functions, but she can never be sure. Sometimes she is envious of Caroline, who is so clearly both herself and all of the others.
Claire doesn’t even know most of her “others.” She once thought about searching Topher’s cabinet for all of her old wedges and running through them, seeing everyone that she had been and everything that she had done, but she stopped as soon as she found the one whose description listed the three people the imprint had assassinated. There were some things that a person should never know.
Topher’s “Self Shelf,” however, she has never even approached. She knows that if she did, she would likely seize the wedge that contained her original self and let Claire Saunders slip away. Would it be the right thing to do? Some days, she feels as if every breath, every moment, is being stolen from someone else. She fights this feeling with logic, a weapon dulled by years of doubt. Her original self (she cannot even bring herself to learn her name) gave this body away, tossed it aside when it suited her best. What right does she have to it? But Claire can no longer convince herself.
(Is it suicide if you are bringing yourself back to life?)
Her heart, perhaps, has been torn apart worst of all. Machines can stitch together minds and faces, but hearts are hidden deeper and scar longer. The list of deaths and treacheries goes on and on, longer than she can always even remember. It seems like her head is full of holes these days, and things slip through the ripped seams. But one name always remains, because her heart will never let Boyd go.
Claire Saunders is damaged beyond repair, so maybe it is no surprise to Adelle and Caroline that she volunteers to stay behind and show others the way to Safe Haven. Other may find reprieve there, but there is none to be found for her.
Once they have all gone, lambs herded away by earnest and determined shepherds, it becomes easier to fade away. Her name is one of the first things to go – a lie, it doesn’t matter. The doctoring knowledge is gone soon after, but there is nobody left to help here, nobody but herself, and she is beyond helping. Everything else is gone within a year, everything except the names and details that she needs to remember to guide others to safety. But nobody comes, nobody ever comes, and Claire Saunders is left alone to become what she has always been.
A phantom.