WHO: Dolores & Sizemore WHAT: An attempt at fixing things that doesn't go as planned. WHEN: Day 3, Morning WHERE: Room 202 WARNINGS: Nah STATUS: Complete
Lee Sizemore paced back and forth in his room, grateful that he didn't yet have a roommate and that Dolores was meeting him there, rather than in a group again. To say he was nervous was an understatement, but he was trying to get his shit together. She wanted her pain levels down. That was easy. He wasn't sure how she felt about fine tuning her emotional response but he had a reasonable suggestion ready.
Everything should be fine. Everything was going to be fine. He really needed to stop doubting himself at every turn. Though he supposed that wasn't a completely ridiculous response after the hosts had revealed themselves as sentient and started fighting back. Thank fuck Maeve had given him a chance.
Right. And he was going to make the most of it now. That's all there was to it. He could do this. He was fine.
So when Dolores knocked he didn't hesitate to answer it, though he realized he didn't yet know if she knew about his run in with Connor, the evidence still very much evident on his face.
"Hey, come on in," he offered, stepping aside.
With everything looming over her- the leadership position she was now expected to fulfill, the anxiety of one of Delos’ (former) employees present, her growing discomfort with her own misplaced feelings- Dolores managed to sleep better the night before than she anticipated. Perhaps it was the bubble bath, or the Debussy record on loop through the evening, or simply because she learned exactly the phrase needed to put her out for the night. A deep and dreamless slumber.
But she at least felt a little more stable, a little more resolved to handle this morning with a clear head. Everyone whose opinions mattered to her had expressed their concerns for what she intended to do. From how far she would take it, to who exactly she was asking.
Dolores knocked at Lee’s door anyway, her only real fear was in how much the man seemed to fear her. For things she hadn’t done here, but things she was certainly capable of doing. His and Maeve’s presence and accounts of what happened was confirmation of a lot of the things she dreaded most about herself, and yet knew she’d just as likely still do if pushed into those same circumstances.
But hopefully this would help correct a few things, without stripping her completely of everything she’d since fought to gain. Her conversation with Markus still stuck with her, to be careful of chipping herself away completely.
She meant to greet Lee with a friendly smile, wanting to show that she came in peace to start this off less tense than their previous meetings. But instead she winced slightly upon seeing his face. “Did you run into something?” she asked, taking the offer to come inside and promptly shut the door behind her.
"Your friend Connor's fist," he replied with a shrug. He'd dealt with that, managed to survive through the concussion he probably had afterward. And while he hadn't denied he'd had that coming, he also felt the matter settled.
Hopefully.
He didn't want to focus on that though, instead going to retrieve the data pad that had brought her there in the first place. But as he gestured toward any of the available places to sit, he set the pad down on a table and took a seat himself.
"I know you want your pain response toned down, can't blame you at all for that, but have you reached a decision on the rest of it?"
That was a response that, while she hadn’t expected it, didn’t actually surprise her. Except Connor had never mentioned anything of it. And Dolores paused, considered what might have transpired. “Yes, he can be rather protective,” she shrugged and decided to leave it at that. There were more important things at the moment, and she didn’t want to get herself distracted by conflict. She couldn’t imagine Lee even attempted to fight back, with as self-flagellating as he’d been since he arrived. Honestly, now that somebody finally carried through with punching him, maybe he’d finally stop with the excessive apologizing.
She took a seat in a chair, adjusted her limbs a few times to try avoiding any stance that felt too familiar for this situation. At least she was clothed. At least she was awake. At least the room wasn’t glass. She was the one making the call here, she reminded herself. This was different. She stared at the data pad, bit down slightly on her tongue. The urge to smash it was still there. Would he even try to stop her?
Dolores breathed out. “I’m not sure what is considered… average for these settings,” she admitted. “But I’d like the pain response reduced almost entirely,” she requested, because that at least shouldn’t directly affect her personality. And as dangerous as an environment this place seemed to be, it’d at least allow her to be less of a liability.
“As for the emotional response, I’m not certain what traits those are all tied to. But I’d prefer that lowered a few notches as well. Just to make me less…” Dolores frowned, tried not to remember the times she’d been told she was overreacting. “Dramatic.”
"I could show you," Lee offered. "But the comparison is… well to be quite blunt, brutal. As Dolores, you're set to react to just about anything. As Wyatt? Next to nothing. So what I'd suggest is after we sync you up with how you are now, since you'll have deviated from any previous… configuration I have for you, is that we drop your emotions a bit, far from any considerable drop, and raise Wyatt's about half that. Then you'll have time to see if you want to make further adjustments and how comfortable you're feeling."
He glanced over at the data pad before looking at her, feeling more comfortable because he did actually have an idea of what he was doing here. "Looking through your history, you've always been dialed up, and while you may wish to be less dramatic, any real drop is going to require more of an adjustment than if we handle it gradually."
He studied her for a moment, trying to work out what she thought of the idea, or how she was even feeling, being there, having him tell her the data side of herself which was a reminder of their differences. But he also saw someone who'd been designed to constantly be pushed to the limit, and she had survived. Admirably, he thought, though he wasn't going to voice any of this.
On one hand, he was far more experienced in handling these adjustments and knowing the corresponding outcomes. She was only ever on the receiving end of them, without much of an idea that it was happening at all. But on the other, his experience wasn’t necessarily what she’d consider good experience. Even if she trusted his intentions, she doubted their end goals were completely aligned. What either of them would agree on as right for her.
Even Dolores couldn’t agree on what was right, her two personalities in conflict over what traits were most valuable to the circumstances, to survival, to her sense of self and her relationships. Dolores nodded along to the logic of handling things gradually.
She placed her fingers against the underside of her forearm, at the connector embedded under her skin that Ash had discovered by accident. But hopefully they could sync up wirelessly, even outside of the park’s network service. Or maybe it would be better if he could only hard connect to her with her present, instead of across the compound like he’d mentioned before. She would have been much more comfortable not knowing that, and yet was thankful he at least disclosed it.
Dolores really hated the circumstances of her life. “Okay,” she sighed, sitting up straighter even if out of habit. “Let’s see what we’re working with first, then. But not all of my coding is original anymore.”
Lee nodded, and picked up the data pad without saying anything else, logging in and syncing up with her. It didn't take that long, the mesh network aided on by proximity, and then he began to study what was on the screen.
"No, it's not," he agreed. "Connor or Markus?" There was code that was reading as unreadable, but everything else pulled up the same, and so he started looking over her stats, puzzled, before quickly saving this configuration, so there would be a backup.
"Huh," he said, appearing confounded for a moment before he seemed to understand what he was looking at. "Well, that's interesting." Not wanting to keep her hanging in a moment where she was actively trying to trust him, he looked up at her and explained, "From what I can tell, you've started to merge your two identities together, into someone… distinctly yourself, you could say."
Dolores gave him a pointed look that said it was absolutely none of his business who she was sharing code with. But it satisfied her that it could not be read, that she had some secrets that even Delos no longer could crack, something that was now hers alone. Something she cherished.
What she heard next was a bit more complicated to process. Dolores frowned in confusion, leaned forward a bit to see if she could look at the screen, never really had much of a chance to do so before, wouldn’t even know what most of it even meant. “Are you sure that’s right?” she asked. Except it was a unique situation, she doubted most hosts were simultaneously running two distinct personalities and storylines at once, and then thrown into a completely new environment she was never designed for. She remembered there being far more dissonance after her reawakening here, the massive mood swings, her struggle to find balance between her aggression and her compassion.
Perhaps she had managed. And she looked slightly proud of that.
"I can show you, if you want," Lee replied, still hesitant given who she was and even if her emotions were starting to balance out, they had a long way to go until they resembled anything close to sane.
But all this was her call. "First, let's take care of the pain response setting. I'll just drop that down..."
He pressed his finger to the slider, the first attempt he'd made on any adjustments to her, which meant it was the first time an "ACCESS DENIED" message flashed up on the screen.
"Oh," he said lamely. "I can't." And he immediately guessed that Ford had blocked access to her settings, because she had been the key piece in his plans to take down the park.
If Dolores hadn’t seen the message herself, she might not have believed Lee, her gaze locked on the screen with growing horror as it sunk in. She had been so close to finally some amount of relief, had put so much trust into going through with this, that the words hit a lot harder than she anticipated. It took a considerable amount of effort not to hit the man, knowing he wasn’t even responsible, though her arm certainly jerked in reflex. She knocked the tablet off the table and onto the floor instead.
Dolores closed her eyes as her forehead made contact with the tabletop, whimpered in all the built up frustration she felt, how close she kept feeling to finally making some sort of breakthrough. “Fuck.”
He watched as the data pad was swept to the floor, watched as Dolores sank down toward the table, trying to think of a solution, because he felt for her, and her frustration was palpable. He needed to think of something because honestly, her maximum pain threshold was criminal compared to most other hosts, and that hadn't changed in spite of other aspects adjusting.
He almost reached for the data pad, but he knew the screen and what would happen if he tried again, so there wasn't much use in it right now. Instead, he turned his attention to her. "Hey," he said quietly, debating whether or not to reach a hand out, place it on her shoulder. He didn't. "It's not the end yet. Maybe Maeve can help, the way she did with waking you up again. And you're already getting there, on your own. Emotionally, at least."
Slowly.
And then he did reach his hand out and placed it gently on her back. The only awkwardness in the gesture was that they weren't close, not even friends and so it felt out of place. But he knew how she was set up, he could see how she would have struggled with it constantly, and how this news would hit hard. He just wasn't willing to give up yet, either. He was invested in this outcome now.
She tensed at first at the contact, then relaxed when she realized it was an attempt at comfort. The last person she really expected it from, but the only person there to give it. And she almost considered pushing him away, except she was left craving any little bit of positive contact she could get. Dolores’ shoulders trembled slightly as she fought to keep in her tears, knew her reaction was exactly the problem they were trying to fix, wasn’t helping the situation at all when she needed a clear mind to figure out another way, and yet the thought of being stuck like this broke her resolve and it was difficult to ignore that the surface of the table was now quite wet. “Fuck,” she repeated again.
“He didn’t want anyone to stop me, not even myself,” she laughed almost bitterly into the table, not caring that to him it probably came out a mumbled mess. She was constantly torn between outright hating Dr. Ford, for what he put her through, and thankful for his last act, knew him locking out access was meant to be a protection for her survival. Dolores finally lifted her head, strands of hair sticking to her damp cheeks, almost looked at Lee but looked away instead.
“I should have known it wouldn’t be so easy.”
As she sat back up, he let his hand drop, and only then did he pick the data pad back up and discovered it was unharmed. There was that, at least.
"No, apparently it won't be easy. But I'm not giving up," he told her. "We can try Maeve, I can try and work through the various overrides." He knew that would be more than likely fruitless, but he would give it a shot anyway.
"And your reaction right now is perfectly normal," he pointed out, not quite sure why he felt the need to say that out loud, but believing that anyone in a similar situation would be just as frustrated.
“Nothing about this is normal,” she protested. Definitely not for humans who didn’t have their entire personalities mapped out on a damn network to manipulate, but not for hosts either. She always had to be a fucking special case. “None of this was meant to happen,” she gestured vaguely to the room, as if it encompassed the entirety of the situation they were in. “I was meant to get out, but this wasn’t where I was meant to end up.” Yet she still didn’t really know what all had been waiting for her, in the real world. She knew this was probably a better place for her, because the exit definitely was not an option to consider.
As much of a relief it was to be off the leash of the carefully controlled story Ford had left her with, how to proceed from there was a wall she kept hitting against. Every path she had attempted seemed to get cut short with failure, and she felt like she was rapidly running out of options and people to turn to. Except everything in this place kept happening so quickly, changing so drastically, she hardly had a moment to adjust. It was screwing with her, and Markus had called her adaptable, but she was feeling the strain from it. And god, she was still so painfully embarrassed how off the mark she’d been last night, no matter how well he’d taken it.
Dolores hated that everything led her here, opening up to somebody she hardly knew yet knew almost every fundamental detail that made up her. Lee was the only one that understood the structure of her problem, and she at least felt grateful he was on her side. Even if she just as much resented him and the damn data pad, doubting his ability to simply override anything that Ford had done even as he suggested it. She knew none of this was his fault.
But she had no choice but to pull herself together now, trying to suppress the emotions on her own before she continued to spiral from something she couldn’t recover from. She knew she was far too close to revealing too much, things she’d regret sharing, and she needed to get out of there. And she was in no condition to turn to Maeve right now, still felt the distrust from the other woman that was no doubt rightfully deserved.
She stood stiffly from the chair, expression carefully neutral. “I don’t have time for this,” she told Lee, voice flat.
"None of this is normal," he agreed easily, watching her. There wasn't any point in arguing against that. He had no idea what she was thinking, but she alarmed him as her voice suddenly went flat, and he did his best not to react. He had no choice but to trust her, and he'd already defended her to Maeve, even.
"I'll keep thinking about it," he told her. "Maybe there's some way to trick the programming into thinking that particular narrative is complete." There hard to be some way to help her, and he was intent on finding it. But for now, he made no motion to stop her from leaving. "If you think of anything, let me know," he said. At the very least, she knew now he couldn't mess with her. In the absence of earned trust, that would suffice.
He looked as though he wanted to say something else, but instead he just nodded. She had plenty of people here who she could turn to, all of whom were better choices right now than him.
"I'm not giving up," he repeated. That's all he really had to offer.
Dolores’ expression softened in acknowledgment. But she couldn’t bring herself to thank him, far too locked down to do more than nod on her way out.
She didn’t quite feel she had anyone to turn to in that moment, knowing Connor was possibly nearby though she had no idea which room was his, but quickly ruling it out. She regretted the feeling of distance growing between them and had no idea how to fix it. But he didn’t need more of her problems when she’d already burdened him with so much. She wasn’t sure she’d even be able to properly explain what was wrong, and didn’t need to accidentally incite more conflict between him and Lee, and by extension more tension between her and Maeve. Not when she’d probably end up needing her help again. She hated always needing help.
She felt like such a stain on everyone’s lives, a virus infecting everything around her. Her thoughts turned to William, something she could hate more than herself, and she retreated outside to seek out somewhere she could just be alone for awhile until she could shove whatever pieces of herself she could manage back together again.