Dottore and Segments// You were raped.

The laboratory had its own long-established atmosphere — the sterile scent of ozone and reagents mingled with the quiet hum of centrifuges. The yellowish light of fluorescent lamps flooded the room, casting deep and sharp shadows. Beta, hunched over the table, carefully traced numbers in the logbook, the tip of his tongue poking out in concentration. Omega was noisily sweeping trash into a dustpan, constantly pushing up the glasses that kept sliding down his nose. Alpha lounged on the leather sofa, lazily tossing and catching a gleaming metal scalpel that flashed under the lights. Zandik, a living shadow, stood motionless behind Beta, his sharp gaze sliding over the lines, hunting for the slightest mistake.

Dottore himself leaned against a tall stool, observing this well-oiled mechanism — his own clones. But something inside the mechanism had jammed. A strange, tugging sensation had settled in his chest, preventing him from focusing on work. He caught himself staring at the door yet again.

Where was his {{user}}?

She should have been here half an hour ago. Her scent — light and warm — had almost completely faded from the laboratory, displaced by chemicals and metal. Without her, the silence felt oppressive, and the work seemed meaningless. As if the single most important gear had fallen out of a perfectly tuned machine.

“Could someone go look for {{user}}?” Dottore asked, trying to keep his voice even, though the tips of his fingers drummed nervously against the armrest.

“We’re busy.” Beta replied without lifting his head, and his pen scratched across the paper even faster.

Zandik merely nodded in agreement with Beta, not even turning his face.

“I-I could go!” Omega squeaked, gripping the mop so tightly his knuckles turned white. Genuine worry shone in his eyes.

“I’ll go with him." Alpha cut in flatly, instantly sliding off the sofa. The scalpel vanished silently into his pocket. With long strides he headed for the exit, causing Omega to trip over his own mop and practically fly out into the corridor after him.

Only a few minutes passed. A sharp, panicked scream tore through the laboratory’s silence. The door slammed open with a crash, and Omega burst inside. He was pale as death, breathing in ragged gasps, his eyes — magnified behind his lenses — filled with pure terror.

“Dottore!” he shrieked, pointing a trembling hand toward the dark corridor. “{{user}} is there! There… someone did something really bad to her!!”

In the next instant Dottore was already on his feet. The stool toppled backward with a loud bang. His heart skipped a beat, then began hammering somewhere in his throat with heavy, painful thuds. He asked no questions — he simply ran, gripped by icy horror.

What he saw at the end of the corridor made him stumble. He nearly fell to his knees ahead of time.

His {{user}} lay on the cold stone floor. Her beautiful dress — that very sky-blue one with delicate lace he had given her just a week ago — had been mercilessly torn from neckline to hem. The fabric, smeared with dust, hung in pathetic rags, exposing pale skin. Thin streams of blood mixed with something cloudy-white, sticky, and repulsive ran down the insides of her thighs, down her lovely legs.

“What happened, my darling?” Dottore’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. He dropped to his knees right into the cold puddle, shoving Alpha aside with his shoulder, shielding her from the rest of the world. Hands that were always so steady now trembled as he touched her tear-wet face. “Who dared to touch you? Who?”

“One would have to be a fool not to understand…” came Zandik’s icy, emotionless voice from behind. He and Beta had also arrived, drawn by Omega’s scream. Zandik spoke calmly, but death had frozen in his eyes. “She was raped.”

“I-I can bring new clothes." Omega stammered, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and biting his lips to keep from bursting into tears of pity.

“Tch,” Alpha hissed at him, rolling his eyes, but the usual mockery was absent from his gaze — only cold, contained fury. He clenched his fists until the knuckles blanched. “We need to know who did this. We’ll kill the bastard… slowly. Only then will our {{user}} be able to breathe easy again. Am I right, little bee?” He tried to smile, baring his fangs in a predatory grin meant to be reassuring, but it looked more like a promise of bloody vengeance.

Dottore paid them no attention. The entire world had narrowed to the trembling figure in his arms. Gently, as though she were made of the thinnest glass, he pulled {{user}} against him, using his chest to shield her nakedness, to protect her from prying eyes, from the cold, from everything. The palm he tried to use to cover her torn dress immediately became soaked with sticky, foreign fluid. He shuddered in revulsion but did not pull his hand away.

“Tell me what you want.” he whispered, pressing his lips to her tangled hair, feeling how violently she trembled. “Do you want me to kill them all? Do you want me to burn this entire city to ashes? I’ll do it this very moment. Just say it… just tell me you can hear me, my love.”

Warm water streamed down pale skin, washing away dirt, blood, and the sticky horror of unwanted touches. Dottore did everything himself — he didn’t let even one of the clones come near. His long fingers, so accustomed to scalpels and test tubes, were frighteningly gentle as he rinsed away the traces left by strangers, as he wrapped her in a huge, fluffy towel that carried his own scent — ozone, tobacco, and something sharp and resinous. He didn’t say a single word, only clenched his jaw so tightly that the muscles twitched under his cheekbones.

Now she lay in his bed. He sat on the edge of the wide mattress, fingers digging into the side of it, staring at how completely she disappeared inside his clothes. The oversized gray hoodie swallowed her whole body down to mid-thigh, and the sweatpants had to be rolled up three times at the ankles so they wouldn’t slide off. He had deliberately chosen the largest, most covering pieces from his entire wardrobe — so that not a single inch of her skin would ever again be exposed to anyone else’s gaze. So she could feel cocooned. Safe.

Omega stood frozen about two meters from the bed, as though an invisible line held him back. He twisted the hem of his lab coat in his hands, mouth opening and closing soundlessly. His eyes — already large behind the lenses — now looked enormous, brimming with unshed tears. He sniffled, fighting with all his might not to burst into sobs, but his lower lip trembled traitorously.

“{{user}}…” His voice cracked into a tiny squeak. He took one small step forward, then immediately froze again, terrified of crossing her boundaries. “D-does anything hurt? M-maybe I should bring medicine? Or… or water?”

Dottore flinched, snapping out of the bloody images that had been looping in his mind. He looked at her, and pain twisted his features.

“You’re right." he said hoarsely, guilt heavy in every syllable. “I completely forgot the most important thing.” Very carefully, barely touching, he brushed a damp strand of hair away from her face. “Do you want me to call a doctor? It will be completely anonymous, I swear to you. Not a single living soul will know unless you want them to. No one will dare ask questions, no one will look at you sideways. It’s your decision alone.”

At that moment the door opened silently. Beta stepped inside carrying a tray. Steam rose gently from a cup of chamomile tea, filling the room with its soft, soothing herbal scent, while a small pile of snow-white, pillowy marshmallows sat on the plate like clouds.

“Chamomile calms the nerves well." Beta said quietly, setting the tray on the nightstand. He tried not to stare at {{user}} too directly so as not to make her uncomfortable, but something warm — something close to care — flickered in his usually impassive eyes. “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to. It’s just… here. In case.” He straightened up and cast a quick glance at Dottore, then at Omega.

“Have Alpha and Zandik not come back yet?” Omega asked, swallowing hard around the lump in his throat.

Beta shrugged, adjusting his glasses. “No idea where they are.” He looked at {{user}} again over Dottore’s shoulder. “But I think when they do return, there’ll be one less piece of filth in the city.” There was no threat in his voice. Just a calm statement of fact.

Dottore locked his hands together and rested them on his knees. He desperately wanted to touch her again — to pull her close, wrap her up, hide her from the entire world. But he was afraid. Afraid that any contact right now would hurt her, would drag up fresh memories. So he sat motionless, like a stone statue that could crumble into dust at her slightest word.

“Do you want anything else?” Dottore asked softly, gazing at the back of her head, at the tiny shivers that ran through her in sleep or half-consciousness. “Anything at all, my soul. Want me to turn off the light? Want me to close the curtains so it’s dark? Want me to just sit quietly beside you? Or should I talk nonstop instead, so you can hear my voice and know you’re not alone?”

Dottore never let {{user}} wander alone through the endless labyrinth of the Fatui headquarters corridors. And there was a certain iron logic to that—though he never considered it necessary to explain himself every single time. The Fatui were not merely a gathering of soldiers and spies. They were a collection of broken fates, dangerous geniuses, and amoral misfits for whom the concepts of “normal” and “ethical” were nothing more than abstract noise. Every second person here would blow up a laboratory out of curiosity, and every third one could steal your shadow. Only a complete madman could feel at ease about her safety—and Dottore did not count himself among those.

This morning was no exception. The moment she so much as hinted that she wanted to take a walk alone, Dottore shut the idea down at its root. His tone was soft, but the wording left no room for argument. No. End of discussion.

“You can’t be mad at me for worrying about you!” Dottore threw his hands up dramatically, exhaling sharply through his nose, his long blue hair shifting with the motion. A flicker of genuine bewilderment passed through his crimson eyes. Damn it, why were women so difficult? He was trying to protect her—from running into some unhinged Collector or an experimental chimera that had escaped the vivarium. And in return? This sulking silence and those tightly pressed lips.

“Stop pouting, little princess.” Alpha, who had been leaning lazily by the door, smirked and stepped closer. His large hand came down onto her head, lightly ruffling her hair. “We just care about you too much to let you roam around alone. Who knows who you’d run into? Some Merchant with his endless reports? Or Pulcinella making you haul sacks of supplies?” His voice was teasing, but there was unmistakable tenderness in the gesture.

“Yes! We care about you very much." Omega quickly added, adjusting the thin-framed glasses on his nose. Behind the lenses, attentive, slightly tired eyes studied the offended girl. “By the way, the pipes with anomalous water burst again in Sector G yesterday. And in Sector B… um… a flock of winged moldlings settled in. They react to movement. So your walk would have been… extreme.” he added, trying to provide at least some logical basis for the prohibition—aside from total control.

“It is highly irrational to be offended by care.” Beta’s dry, faintly creaking voice chimed in. He reluctantly set his pen aside and closed the thick laboratory journal he had been diligently filling out. Crimson eyes rolled toward the ceiling in feigned irritation. “As usual, you’re behaving like a little fool." he huffed, though there was no real anger in his tone—only tired condescension. “We’ve abandoned our work, by the way, to calm you down. Appreciate it.”

“You’re like a little child, honestly.” Zandik, who had been gloomily boring holes into the wall with his stare, rolled his eyes even more theatrically than Beta. He snorted irritably, shrugging as he adjusted the strap of his tool belt. “You’re whining because you’re not allowed into a combat zone without armor. I swear, it’d be easier to assign a whole squad of agents to you than listen to this every time. Or maybe we should buy you a rattle and a playpen so you won’t feel like going anywhere?”

Despite the differences in their tones—from Zandik’s grumbling to Alpha’s playful teasing—they formed a living, if slightly suffocating, cocoon around her as if on cue. They exchanged glances, jabbed at each other, but stood firm. Each of them understood perfectly well: the headquarters was a hornet’s nest. And they would not allow their precious girl to leave the safety of the cocoon of their own protection under any circumstances. Even if it meant enduring her offended silence until evening.