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Priya knows that most of her fellow survivors see the Dollhouse as a fallout shelter from the dangerous world aboveground. To her, stepping back over the threshold felt like stepping into her own tomb. She recalls how tightly Tony gripped her hand as they descended the stairs that day, and the nights that he’s cried out in his sleep, in languages that she didn’t recognize. Both of them remember too much, and not nearly enough.
Now, after a day of dwindling rations and bickering within the group, Priya is relieved to lead him into their room and shut the door behind them. Minutes later, they’re tangled together among the sheets, and she’s trying to pull his shirt up over his head. It gets caught, on an elbow she thinks, and she laughs, startling them both. “I never get tired of hearing that,” Tony murmurs in her ear.
“Not much that’s worth laughing at, these days,” she replies. “And that was not an invitation for you to start tickling me, love, so don’t even think about it.”
He kisses her instead, brushing his lips along her jaw line and down her neck, and she whimpers and closes her eyes.
When she opens them, the man that she killed is staring back at her, the flesh sagging from a face that she only sees in her darkest of dreams. He whispers her name…
…and she shrieks and pushes him away, not sure if she wants to flee or vomit or both, but certain that the was never truly awake, that this is one more nightmare that the Rossum scientists have looped into her head, that even if she runs, it will just start again.
“Priya, look at me, okay?”
The voice isn’t Nolan’s. (Of course it is.) He isn’t here. (She can’t trust her own mind, never could.) She’s safe. (None of them are safe, even from themselves.)
Hands have landed on her shoulders, moving gently and cautiously, not pulling or groping or restraining. She opens her eyes again, and feels the tears slip free.
She’s still on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest. Tony hasn’t let go of her shoulders. “You with me, babe?”
Priya brushes her fingers across his face, and it doesn’t change or fade away. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, don’t be. I’ve been shoved around much worse than that.” As she tries to steady her breathing, he asks her what she needs. “I can get Adelle, or Dr. Saunders…”
Priya shakes her head. “Not now. They can’t make this better.”
“Do you want to be alone?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Since the world ended, Priya has tried to be strong, and to trust in the things she knows to be real. She even still hopes, sometimes, for a life and a future outside these walls. Even so, she’s never quite shaken the feeling that if Nolan were alive, he’d be pleased to see her back here, and satisfied that after many years and so many new memories, she’s still not completely free of him. “Maybe you can’t make everything better, either.”
“I know that,” Tony says, and she lets him pull her into his arms.