Porcelain Masks
by Timesprite
Disclaimer: Cable and Dom aren’t mine. *sniff* Marvel owns them. Alvina is mine. No profit is being made, so don’t sue. Archive with permission
Note: Written for Alternate Timelines’ ‘Dirty Little Secrets’ challenge. Thanks much to Thren and Lyss for the betas, and Lyss again for the title. This story has no relation what so ever to any of my other story arcs.
They were just masks, the ten dollar ones with glitter and metallic paints shining on the identical, perfectly molded faces. All lined up, empty eyes staring soullessly from the store display window. Just plain, everyday masks, but she stared at them as though they were alien things, entirely out of place on the busy New York street.
I should have realized something was up when she stopped mid-sentence and planted herself on the concrete to stare at the things. Dom doesn’t go in for that sort of thing- she’s minimalistic by nature and things mass produced in China don’t appeal to her. Obviously it wasn’t the masks themselves that had her standing there like a statue on the sidewalk.
After a moment she tore her eyes away from the display, linked her arm through mine in an uncommonly affectionate gesture, and we headed back out into the noon-day throng as if nothing had happened. I didn’t think any more of it.
She was unusually quiet at dinner that night. She normally takes perverse pleasure in stealing off my plate because she knows I won’t make more than a token protest. It’s disturbing the way she knows exactly how to manipulate me. That night, she wasn’t. She wasn’t even eating her own steak, though she kept pushing it around on her plate and fiddling with the end of her napkin. Her body language was clearly saying she didn’t want to be there. At that point, I decided that it was time to call it a night.
We went home (or as much of a home as a safehouse can be). When Dom goes distant, it usually means she’s ready to leave again. That she stayed the night, and the next day surprised me. What she did after that-
Domino is not an open person. Anyone who’s spent more than ten minutes with her could tell you that. I wonder how she manages to be so hypocritical about that- freely stating her annoyance with my tendency to be cryptic and obscure, while she’s managed to keep me guessing for more than a decade.
Given that history, the last thing I expected her to say was, ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’
She took my hand and pressed something into it, a jagged, blackened piece of ceramic. I stared at it a moment before I realized what it was. A piece of a painted mask, like she’d stared at in the shop window. “I don’t understand.”
She looked me in the eye and I could see how upset she was, her pain rolling just beneath the surface. “It was my-” she paused, “It was Vihnie’s.”
I must have still looked puzzled because she sighed, ran a hand back through her hair and continued. “Alvina was my daughter, Nathan. At least in all the ways that counted.”
I handed back the mask fragment without a word. There were a hundred things running through my mind that I wanted to ask her. A daughter? But Dom was already stretching her limits by telling me even this much, so I stayed silent, knowing she’d reveal everything she felt I should know.
“It was years ago. I was in Moscow for what was meant to be a nice, quick job. One target, in and out, minimal fuss. Only problem was, when I got there, it became glaringly evident that someone had beaten me to the punch.” She frowned slightly and I could tell from her expression that whatever came next wasn’t going to be pretty.
“It was a blood bath, plain and simple. Whoever it was that’d gotten there first, it was clear they enjoyed their work. There were fifteen people in that house, most of them completely innocent, and they’d been killed like cattle.” She paced the room, as if fighting with the memories. “Most of the fighting had been on the ground floor...that’s where most of the bodies were. But there were people upstairs as well, ones who’d tried to run and failed. I found Vihnie in one of the bedrooms, hidden in a small crawl space behind the wall, the panel hidden behind the body of a woman I assume must have been her mother. I would have missed it entirely if she hadn’t been crying at the top of her lungs by this point. She must have been there for awhile.” At this point, Domino slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, and wrapped her hands around the cup of coffee I poured for her.
“I don’t know why I did what I did,” she continued. “I could have walked away right then and there. But there she was, alone in that house filled with death. She wasn’t even a year old, and I felt like...” She shrugged. “I dunno. Like I owed it to her to take her out of there. She deserved a shot. So I wrapped her up and carried her out of there with me.
“Of course, at the time it didn’t even occur to me that I had no idea what to do with a bawling infant. I was a mercenary, not a nanny. Easiest thing would have been to take her to an orphanage, but I was damned if I was going to just dump her at that point. It was a rough first few weeks, I’ll admit. I was probably the most inept new mother ever, and Lord knows she deserved better but we managed somehow. I think it took me almost a week to think of a name for her.
“I certainly wasn’t prepared for all this, but is anyone ever? I don’t know... but it was worth it, I know that much. She managed to make me happy, Nate, and that was something I hadn’t been in a very long time.” She raised her cup to take a drink and I noticed her hands were shaking ever so slightly. “When she looked at me- well, I suppose you know the feeling.”
I nodded. She’d been so supportive in helping me deal with what happened to Tyler, despite her own issues, and now I was feeling slightly guilty, though I knew it was irrational, that I hadn’t known the personal pain she must have been feeling at the same time.
“Eventually, I brought her back to the states with me. We had a nice little house- no one would have ever guessed she wasn’t my real daughter.” Her head dropped, eyes sliding away from mine and I reached out to take her hand. “Y’know, I don’t even have a picture of her? It’s all gone.” For a moment, I wasn’t sure she would continue, but she took a deep breath and plowed ahead determinedly. “It was good for two years. Best decision I’d ever made. I was happy, she was happy...I’d found meaning outside of death and destruction. Vihnie managed to help me find a part of myself that could thrive in that day to day world.” She tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling so that I wouldn’t see her tears.
After all the pain we’ve shared, she still won’t let me see her cry. Instead, she swiped at her cheeks, wiping away the tears before she could fell them run down her face, before she could give in to the grief she wasn’t hiding from anyone but herself.
“I was stupid to think I could find happiness that easily. Stupid to think my past wouldn’t come back to haunt me. The official report,” she continued, held back emotion finally creeping into her voice, “said it was a gas main that blew that night. Maybe it was. But I can’t help thinking that it was because of me...that she died because of who I’d been. I felt like I died that night, Nathan, wished to God I had. But lucky me crawled out of the burning remains of my house almost without a scratch, with Alvina in my arms.” She paused. She was laying herself open raw before me, reopening old wounds and finally talking about things she’d never shared before.
“She was like someone’s broken toy...a battered rag doll, and I knew she was gone before the paramedics took her from me. All I could think was, it’s over. I’d never be able to have that life again. It was two weeks before her third birthday...” She trailed off, sounding drained, and I knew she’d said all she could for the time being. I was silently trying to come to grips with it all. Why? I wanted to know. After all this time, why had she decided to deliberately tear herself to pieces to share this with me?
“I’m sorry for just dumping this all on you,” she said finally, getting up from her seat and pacing the room. “It’s just... have you ever had that feeling that you just can’t hold onto something any longer? That you’ve been clinging so tightly for years that your arms are going to give out?” She turned and looked at me, face stoic, but her eyes searching for answers. Not from me, but from the universe itself. She reached over and plucked the broken mask from the table top.
“It’s stupid, “ she said, turning it over in her hands. “I never liked these things. Pretty much hated them, to tell you the truth. But she liked them, so I got a bunch and hung them on the wall by her bed. Kinda ironic don’t ya think? Now that’s all I have left of her...a piece of a mask that I hated-” She didn’t cry again, but bit down on her lip and clenched her fists. I got up from my own seat and wrapped my arms around her, though she remained ridged and unyielding.
“I was at her grave last week,” She said in a quieter voice, no longer struggling to be stoic. “Every time I’m there, I wonder if she hates me for doing this to her. She should hate me.”
“Dom, you gave her a chance. How could anyone hate you for that? You gave her the very best you could, loved her when she had no one else in the world. She doesn’t hate you.”
I really don’t know how much of a consolation I really was to her. Then again, maybe that wasn’t the important part. She wasn’t really looking for my sympathy, though I think she knew she had it. All she was really looking for was a cathartic release, the chance to talk to someone who she knew would understand her. Someone she could trust to listen to her, and not ask questions. To simply absorb the information without pressing her to give more than was possible for her. Someone who would not test her limits.
And she came to me. It was both flattering and tragic. She trusted me enough to let down her barriers and let me see into a past that pained her, but at the same time, I knew I’d only seen the barest glimpse of the secrets she carried around inside her.
Fin
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