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‘Absolutely not.’
Logan glared down the table at Emma, who was wearing an expression that was somehow both detached yet forceful. ‘Why the hell not?’ he growled, narrowing his eyes and leaning heavily on the desk in front of him, his muscles taut with tension.
Emma raised an eyebrow.
‘Do I really have to answer that question, Mr. Howlett?’ she asked calmly. ‘Here I was, thinking that you would much rather spend your time monitoring Charlie on his Assignments than leading some – frankly very boring – surveillance on a run-of-the-mill police officer … but perhaps I was wrong. I don’t suppose that you’ve grown tired of poor Charlie so very soon, have you?’
‘I’d be running surveillance on Charles’s stalker,’ Logan said tightly, forcing himself to ignore the jibe about his interest in his Active. ‘That hardly makes him run-of-the-mill, Frost. And I was thinking more on the lines of splitting my time. It’s not like Charles is always on Assignment.’
‘He is more often than not,’ Emma replied coldly. ‘And you know better than most that some of these Assignments are scheduled at the very last minute. I am afraid that we simply cannot to afford to have your attention split in such a way, Mr. Howlett.’
Logan let out a growl of irritation, grimacing as he realised the truth in her words.
‘At least tell me who is in charge of the surveillance,’ he finally said, crossing his arms over his broad chest. His expression darkened, however, when he saw the slightest flicker of something on Frost’s face. Slowly, he lowered his arms. ‘There is surveillance, isn’t there?’ At Emma’s blank expression he slammed his hand down on the table. ‘Goddammit, Frost, please tell me we’ve got some fucking surveillance on the nut-job who’s obsessed with my goddamn Active!’
Emma’s face immediately hardened.
‘Watch yourself, Mr. Howlett,’ she said coldly, straightening up in her seat with an imperious lift of her chin. ‘And no, we do not have a team on Lehnsherr.’ At Logan’s thunderous expression, she added, ‘He, I’m afraid, is not the priority here.’
Logan couldn’t tell whether the “he” in question was Charles or Lehnsherr, but either way Emma’s meaning angered him.
‘What do you mean he’s not the priority?’ he barked, all but baring his teeth at her. ‘That sonofabitch is a threat to my Active and he damn well is a goddamn priority to me!’
Emma’s eyes narrowed.
‘You are getting far too possessive about our Active, Mr. Howlett,’ she said icily. ‘Might I remind you that he belongs to the Dollhouse, and not to you personally?’
‘And might I remind you that you’re the one who put me in charge of him when you recruited me to this damn madhouse!’ Logan snarled. ‘Or was all that talk about putting the Active’s needs ahead of your own just that - talk?’
Emma grimaced.
‘It was not,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘And you are right – I apologise.’ She sighed then, suddenly looking tired. ‘I think I owe you an explanation for my attitude towards this, Mr. Howlett. I think it is time that I tell you what happened three years ago.’
Logan went still, suddenly alert. Slowly, he straightened up.
‘Well then,’ he said coolly, his eyes not leaving Emma’s. ‘What happened three years ago?’
Emma didn’t answer immediately. When she did, her mouth was twisted into a grimace.
‘Tell me,’ she said slowly, her expression far away. ‘Have you ever heard the name Nathaniel Essex being mentioned inside these walls? Doctor Essex, perhaps?’
Logan was watching her narrowly.
‘No,’ he said at last, his mild tone a direct contrast to the sharp intensity of his gaze. ‘Can’t say that I have.’
A corner of Emma’s mouth twitched upwards in a humourless smirk.
‘There’s a reason for that,’ she said quietly. ‘What happened here three years ago – what really happened – is not common knowledge, even amongst our own people. The only reason that I am telling you this,’ Emma’s eyes flicked up to meet Logan’s dead on, ‘is because Charlie is to some extent involved.’
Logan didn’t so much as twitch. He was already well on his way to thinking that his Active was involved in way too fucking much of Dollhouse business for his liking.
‘Yeah,’ he said gruffly. ‘I figured.’
Emma huffed out something that almost resembled a laugh.
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling wryly at Logan, ‘I’m sure you have.’ She abruptly sobered and once again a tired expression stole over her face. ‘You had better sit down, Mr. Howlett,’ she said, nodding at the chair facing her. ‘This might take a while.’
Logan eyed her for a moment before drawing out the chair and gracelessly seating himself upon it.
‘So,’ he said, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair. ‘I’m listening. Go ahead.’
And Emma began to speak.
*
Logan walked out of Emma Frost’s office an hour later, feeling more tired than he could remember having been in a long while.
What Emma had told him had not been pretty.
Not for the first time, Logan lamented Charles’s association with the Dollhouse. He had often wondered how Charles had come to be involved with the House and now Emma’s words had given him the barest insight into what might have been, even if the woman herself had not meant to. Logan might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but no one could call him dumb; he hadn’t survived this long by not picking up on the things that went unsaid. And Frost had said – or not said, as the case were – a hell of a lot.
She had also, however, warned Logan to not reveal anything of what had been said in that room to anyone. She had even gone so far as to threaten him with the Attic in order to impress upon him the seriousness of her warning.
Logan had simply stared at her.
‘Who would I tell?’ he’d asked her, somewhat bitterly.
Frost had not replied.
The words had got Logan thinking, though. What had happened in the Dollhouse – what was happening in the Dollhouse – was wrong. There was no two ways about it. Logan had always had, concealed deep beneath his gruff and often wild exterior, a strong sense of self and he had always known right from wrong. That knowledge didn’t often change things – a man had to survive, after all – but he knew. And he’d known, from the moment that he had been inducted into the Dollhouse’s fold, that what was happening there was wrong as hell.
He’d underestimated just how wrong, however.
Logan sighed and kept walking. He had left Frost’s office in something of a daze, without any real destination in mind. He had merely followed his feet and kept walking away from the office, away from anyone who might want to speak to him.
Unsurprisingly, he ended up at in the main centre of the Dollhouse, by the open space that served as the recreation area for the Actives. When his mind finally cleared, he found that he was standing next to Charles, who was once more busy at his paintwork as he almost always was during his recreation hours. Painting seemed to be a favourite pastime of his, Logan had noticed.
Logan watched Charles closely, his eyes following the Active’s movements as he leisurely swirled his paintbrush around. Then, in an abrupt movement, Logan pulled a chair away from a nearby table and, placing it close to Charles, sat down heavily on it.
Charles paused in his painting to turn around and smile at Logan in welcome before going back to happily splashing daubs of paint on a canvas with a thick-ended paintbrush.
Logan watched him for a while, seeming perfectly content to do nothing but sit there, his eyes never leaving the happy, contented expression on Charles’s face. On the inside, however, Logan felt anything but content, Frost’s words revolving endlessly around in his head. He had thought that he had made his peace with his work but what he had heard just now had shaken him; he was no longer sure of where he stood with anything, and he hated that.
Logan scowled and glanced down at his feet. He wasn’t a man who put much store in thinking things out, preferring to strike first and think later, but strategy had always been something that he had known the value of and there was no doubt in his mind that strategy was what was necessary now.
Loyalty, after all, was not something that was given or revoked lightly.
Frowning, Logan lifted his gaze, which automatically fell on his happily oblivious Active. Logan watched him for a moment, and his gut twisted as he realised that, despite everything, it would be impossible for him to leave. Whatever the wrongs perpetrated by the Dollhouse, however much they sickened him to the core, he could never leave. Not yet. Not until Charles’s contract ran out. Not until he was sure that Charles was restored to his own true self and was safe from everyone – the Dollhouse, Frost, Shaw … Everyone.
He thought back to what Frost had told him in her office not even an hour before and he felt his stomach clench. Running his eyes over Charles once more, Logan sighed and slumped down in his seat.
‘Goddammit, Chuck,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘What the hell have you got yourself into?’
Charles smiled in response and then, as Logan watched, drew a long, thick line of furious crimson across his canvas, mercilessly wiping out everything that had been painted underneath.
‘Gone,’ he said, and smiled.