Dollhouse Siblings AU: Backstory
('Dollhouse Siblings' are Nikolai, Lucy, and Q. I thought these characters would be interesting together as secret siblings, so I made up a backstory for them).
So I've decided, since it's gonna take a LONG time to get to the key moments with these three in BITB (dollhouse siblings is more likely going to be an Arc 3 plot point), I'm just gonna post content of them anyway and just not mention any key plot points to avoid spoilers. I originally wasn't even gonna reveal that dollhouse siblings happens in the fic but oh well, I want to have fun with these guys now and not wait years for it.
Good thing is, the dynamic and backstories I made for them aren't BITB exclusive, so they can still be enjoyed outside of the fic. Anyways,
Nikolai and Lucy:
(Lucy is trans in this AU, so I'll be referring to her as 'he' while she's a child. Also Lucy isn't her original name but for ease I'm just going to keep calling her Lucy here)
- Neither Nikolai or Lucy were born with their present hair colours. The two are naturally pale blond, with the same turquoise eyes. Their hair matches their mother, and their eyes match their father. Lucy especially matched him, considering she also sported the same ring shape in her eyes that her father had.
- Nikolai and Lucy were born and raised in a small closed off village in Ukraine. The village was essentially a cult, but their father denied this heavily. He believed the leader of their village was a great man and that he was helping that man achieve great things with his research. Neither of the siblings knew exactly what this research was.
- The youngest children of the village would be taken away every midday-evening to the 'research facility'. Nikolai was no longer young enough to go, so he'd attend the nearby school while his younger 'brother' was taken by his father.
- Lucy was an obedient child, but was also fussy when it came to his appearance. He always complied, up until the point someone tried to cut his hair. In this traditional village all the young boys are meant to have short hair, but to make sure Lucy complied with the 'research' they allowed him the exception of having long hair.
- Nikolai adored the hair his mother had, the beautiful braid, but whenever he asked her to teach him how to make one she just tried to keep to herself and passively ignored him as usual.
No one touches Lucy's hair because of how agitated he'll get about it, so it would usually hang in a long tangled mess in front of his face if not for Nikolai looking after him.
He tried to braid Lucy's hair to look like their mother's, but it ended up coming out not 'quite' right. It was a bit loose and spiky looking. Nikolai instead decided to name the style as his own style, as their own style. He tried to teach Lucy how to braid it, but he could only reach the lower half of his hair, so he usually had low twin braids when he did it himself. Nikolai often did it for him, and the small bonding activity was always nice for the two of them.
- Nikolai was raised to be obedient, but he realised very young how curious he was about the world outside the village. It started when he saw some birds from the nearby forest suddenly fly overhead and far from the village. There must be something else out there, a place they were going to. It was unfair that they had the freedom to just fly away from everything and see more, while Nikolai was trapped here with just his legs and no way of knowing what else is out there.
- When he's able to sneak his little brother away, he takes him to the forest and they play games. He's done this since Lucy was only a few months old. He also teaches Lucy about the birds, and freedom, and how he shouldn't accept a life forever in this place. He doesn't want his younger brother to become brainwashed. He's still young enough to not be fully affected, and it was already rare for Nikolai to 'wake up' and see the truth. He wants to prepare his brother. Maybe one day they can escape together and see what's out there. He doesn't know when, but maybe one day he'll see an opportunity.
- One day, when Lucy is 4 years old, he goes missing. The village stops what they're all doing to search for the missing child. Nikolai goes to the forest, and he runs into a single door. When he opens it, he finds his younger brother inside. Lucy looks like he's playing happily, an unfamiliar expression for him, and he excitedly brings Nikolai into his 'new play room'. Nikolai convinces Lucy that they need to leave wherever 'this' is, not yet realising that his younger brother is causing it. He believes it's some kind of monster trying to lure his brother away. When he opens the door again to leave, it opens not into a forest but into Lucy's room, and they're now facing their mother and father.
- Their Father is absolutely thrilled at this discovery, and Lucy is suddenly praised as 'a blessed child'. He says something about his research finally showing results. Lucy is not the first 'blessed child' this village has had, but they are extremely rare. The few blessed usually join the researchers as they get older. Nikolai is not thrilled to find out that his younger brother will now be taken away by his father even more. He worries that this might cause him to get too involved and stuck here.
- One day their mother approaches Nikolai, and asks him to tell her what he knows about his brother's 'ability'. Nikolai is hesitant, considering it's unusual for his mother to speak to him, or anyone besides their father. She's usually just as quiet and reserved as the two siblings. She eventually convinces him by explaining that she's also worried about Lucy, about their father taking him away too much recently. She says she wants to understand what's going on so she can help, but their father won't tell her anything. Nikolai makes the mistake of believing her, and trusting the maybe his mother is finally deciding to act like a parent and wants to help them.
Nikolai tells her what he understands of Lucy's blessing. He says she can create doors to 'a room', and the doors seem to make Lucy and anyone in the room teleport.
- Not long after, Lucy and his mother are missing. A letter was left for their father, explaining only that she has decided to leave for good. Lucy's ability could help her, so she had no choice but to take his 'blessed child'. She wished the two of them well. Nikolai's mother had left the village for good, and she had taken Lucy with her. Lucy was free, but Nikolai was still trapped. He wanted to be happy for his brother, but all he could think about was the fact that he was still trapped. That they could never go together because he would never be able to find him. That his mother had tricked him.
- After their mother leaves, Nikolai's father is in a pathetic state of grief. He talks about how she was 'the love of his life' and how 'he'll never find a woman like her' (despite the fact that he never acted this way while she was here. She seemed more like his property). Nikolai never liked his father entirely, but he at least respected him, even if he internally disagreed with him. But his father's attachment to someone else has now caused him to crumple into something utterly pathetic at the loss of it. Nikolai can't even stand to look at his Father anymore.
- Nikolai's desire to leave only grows with time as he gets more restless, and as his resentment for his father grows. The stress of everything starts to turn his hair white, and on the day he realises its fully turned white, he also realises he has an ability. Despite now being 12, Nikolai still ends up developing an ability later than expected. (Most people gain their abilities before they even reach 7 years of age). It's a manifestation from his pain of being trapped in this place, the perfect power to finally free him, a teleportation ability. It manifests from one of his own bed sheets. He plans to leave as soon as he figures out how to use it.
(In actuality, Nikolai's father had been secretly experimenting on him in the way he did when he was younger. With Lucy now gone, his father still wanted to have a child that was a success. The village rules didn't allow for children past a certain age to go through the research, considering it a waste of resources, so he did this in secret. Nikolai's hair was turning white over time because of his father injecting him while he slept).
- Nikolai left as soon as he could, but not without causing a bit of havoc first. This village trapped him for his entire youth, it would only to continue to trap every other child that grew into it. He freed them from the cursed cycle. He figured out a way to use his ability to kill multiple people at once. He unfortunately didn't manage to kill everyone, but he was able to free most of them, and the village was so destroyed that he could at least be satisfied with the knowledge that the cage was broken.
This was empathy. He bloodied his hands and soul to set them all free. He was freeing them from the cage they didn't even know they were in. This was a mercy.
His father, unfortunately, got away.
- Nikolai figured that it didn't look right to just be carrying around a bedsheet everywhere. He had worn it around his shoulders as a cloak before, and came up with the idea of turning it into a proper cloak. A little bit of threatening towards a seamster he found, and he had his new look. Despite Nikolai growing as he got older, he never had to adjust the cloak because it would grow with him, as if it was now a part of him.
- As Nikolai got older, he let his hair grow out, considering his village was always so strict about keeping his hair short. He eventually started to tie it in the same way he tied his younger brother's braids years ago. His younger brother was the first person to escape the village, wearing those same braids. He now considers this style to symbolise freedom, and he wears them himself to show that he is also free. From the village, from their brainwashing, from everything. It's also a way to still feel connected to the sibling he lost years ago.
- Now that he was free, he finally left he village to explore the world outside of it. Instead, Nikolai found himself in an even bigger cage. So many people were still trapped, and they didn't even know it. Nikolai set to work freeing whoever he could, and his work eventually caught the attention of a man named 'Fyodor Dostoyevsky'. The man talked with him, and understood him in a way no one ever has. He agreed to join his organisation.
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So what happened with Lucy?
I'll make another post on that, going into detail on some Lucy backstory and her time at the orphanage too.
I might not go into Q's backstory and how they connect to these two though, considering that might be a more plot relevant reveal for the fic. I will say though that in this scenario, Q is their half sibling. Same father, different mothers.
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Also. Her hair scarf thing where she takes it off during emotional moments is VERY similar to Nikolai’s eye patch thing where he takes it off when he’s being genuine. And there are a lot of similarities between Nikolai and pre-healing Lucy. So I’d personally keep Lucy in mind when theorizing a backstory for Nikolai, since they have similar emotional traits, they might have similar themes in their backstories (social ostracism & escapism)
Lucy’s hair analysis
The color and the braids are a direct reference to Anne of Green Gables. In the books, Anne’s hair was a bright orange-ish shade, but Lucy’s is a darker color, because Anne’s hair darkened as she grew older.
The shorter part is a reference to when in AoGG, Anne had to cut her hair short.
The blunt and somewhat uneven bangs are similar to Atsushi’s, because Lucy’s character parallels him, and so this is a visual reference to that. (The bang similarity is more obvious in the manga)
The flower and scarf that she alternates wearing in it show the two sides of her, a romantic dreamer and a hard worker. She occasionally takes off the scarf during more emotional moments, to differentiate between the person she’s supposed to be and the person she wants to be.
Uhh disclaimer just my personal opinion I’m not stating any of this as canon
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