Chapter Thirty-Two

Bree woke first the next morning, the sunlight coming in through Lila's rainbow curtains, and she remembered her situation.

She was in a straitjacket. In an absolutely soaked diaper. And her mouth felt dry.

Remembering the talk from the night before, Bree reminded herself that she wasn't supposed to talk. She was supposed to let herself be the baby... but even so, she decided to let Lila sleep a little longer. The girl was wrapped around her, one leg thrown over Bree's body, arms holding her close.

It was nice.

Bizarrely, she felt wanted. She felt loved. She felt ironically safe in Lila's arms.

When those pretty brown eyes fluttered open, they were smiling instantly. "Baby Bree," she whispered. "You're a baby and I'm your big sister." Lila sat up, rubbing her eye before poking her diaper. "I'm big, I can tell that my diaper needs changed." Looking at the mesh wall on the side of the bed, she huffed. "But I'm stuck."

Climbing to her knees, Lila put both hands on the railing, shaking it. "Faiiiiith! Faith! Faith I can't get out and Bree is hungry, she's crying!"

It took a moment, but the helpless girl in the straitjacket slowly realized that Lila wasn't faking. She legitimately believed all of it, somehow, and she genuinely couldn't let herself out of the bed. The mesh panel might as well have been the steel bars of the cage in the living room.

"Faiiiiiiith!"

The redhead appeared in the doorway, stinky-princess shirt and all, rubbing her eye as well. "What's up sweetie."

"Oh." Lila looked disappointed. "I forgot you're little sister. You're too little to help. Joooooo! Jo! Jo! I need help! Faith is wandering around and I can't get up and Bree needs a bottle! Jo!!"

Faith's arms went to her sides, fists balled up to go with her frustrated pout. "I'm big enough to go get a bottle for the baby."

"Nuh uh." The argument was the most childish thing she had ever seen, but Bree remembered what Kinsley had said. She just had to let herself be loved, and in this case it meant staying quiet while they bickered like children. "You're not bigger than me and I'm too little to do it, so that means you hafta be too little to do it. Jo! Jo, I think Faith might be stinky!"

Stomping her foot, Faith's cheeks went nearly as red as her hair. "I am not!"

"Prove it." Lila narrowed her eyes at her little sister. "Sit down on your bottom." Confusion was mirrored between Bree and Faith at the odd command. When she obeyed, Lila's trap snapped shut. "Good, I knew you were too little to be walking around. What a baby sitting on the floor in the doorway, you can't even stand without something to hold onto!"

"That's not fa-"

Lila cut her off, wiggling her fingers. "I'm Little Witch Lila! You hafta, and now you're the even littler sister! Not as little as baby Bree though, shh shh baby Bree, don't cry so loud."

There was a threat hiding among those words, but Bree had no idea how to cry like a baby. A simple wah would just be stupid, so she did the only thing that made sense. She started whimpering and whining. That was apparently good enough as Lila leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. "There there, it'll be okay. Jo! You sleepy butt! Come he-"

The only Doll without a Southern accent stood there in the door, rubbing her eye, her brown hair mussed and a wet diaper sagging below the hem of an oversized t-shirt that declared "I'm Baby."

"What's all the fussing about? Faith, why are you-"

Lila was adept at cutting people off. "She's too little to walk today 'cuz she thought she was bigger than me and she's not."

"Of course she's not," Jo caught on instantly, patting Faith on the head before stepping over where she sat in the doorway. "Just gonna ope on by you there. Okay Lyly, what's all the fuss?"

"The baby is hungry. I was a really good big sister keeping her safe all night, wasn't I?" Any semblance of sanity was completely gone from the house as everyone played along with Lila, and Bree wondered how much of it was a game and how much of it really wasn't.

Hypnosis was impossible, wasn't it? Subliminal messaging and all that. She tried to convince herself, but Bree couldn't deny that Kinsley's music had knocked her out with disturbing alacrity. And she did feel more agreeable that morning.

But how much of that was letting her guard down, and how much was her guard being destroyed?

"Aw, poor baby Bree. Let's get you a baba, huh?"

"And," Lila added quickly as Jo turned around. "I need out."

Turning back, Jo smirked. "Oh you do?" She stepped back over to the bed, gently pushing Lila down and squeezing the crotch of her diaper the same way Bree had experienced so many times. "I think you can make it until I get a bottle ready for your baby sister. I'm your big cousin, after all. Isn't that right?"

"I think you might be my little cousin!" Lila protested, though with substantially less conviction than she had before.

"Gosh, then I'd be too little to lower your rails... and you'd be stuck there until Auntie Kay came to get you. So, am I the big cousin or the little cousin?"

Pouting, Lila gave in. "Big cousin." It was almost strange to see someone win against the odd girl, but Jo had managed. Lila gave in, crossing her arms. "Will you carry the baby to the living room?"

"You know I've got no upper body strength, hun. I couldn't lift her if I wanted to."

Lila apparently did know that, but had forgotten. "Oh... right."

Bree, for what it was worth, was still fussing the best she could. Before she left, Jo slipped a pacifier into her mouth, patting her on the head.

Reflecting on her situation was unnerving. She'd been stripped of damn near everything in the past few days and of all the places she thought her troubles might have taken her, the trouble the the law, the problems with her landlord, her judgemental parents... she never expected to end up in a straitjacket and a very, very wet diaper. But with that bizarre situation came an even stranger freedom.

She didn't have to do anything.

Even less than before, when she had been in charge of the dishes and tidying, all she had to do was drink water and stay quiet. Being forbidden from speaking brought an equally strange peace. She couldn't get herself in trouble. She didn't have to defend herself or explain herself or do anything other than just... be.

Faith got up to her hands and knees, her diapered ass waggling at the girls in the bed, though to Bree everything she was doing was obscured by the mesh of the railing wall. "I'm going to the living room, I'm gonna watch TV."

"No!" Lila objected, slapping her hands on the bed. "No! I wanna watch TV!" She seemed to forget that there was more than one television... but Faith glanced over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at Lila before crawling off. "You brat!"

Lila calling anyone a brat was the very height of irony.

Reaching over Bree, the girl started fumbling with the latch for the railing... but it seemed like she wasn't faking it. Or she was a better actress than Bree had thought initially.

She couldn't let herself out of bed.

Biting her lip and looking down, Lila's hand went to her diaper, lifting the hem of her nightie and pressing gently into her padding, which yielded under her fingers. "Uh oh..."

Uh oh?

A thin trickle of liquid appeared, cascading down the girl's inner thigh. "Oh no..." Whimpering, she sat back on her bottom and her eyes teared up. "Noooo..."

And Lila began to cry.

Real, genuine tears. She had essentially told Bree to cry, to be the baby, to express herself with a wail, but the restrained girl had no idea how until she saw the absolute heartbreak on Lila's face. Her tears came from the depths of her very soul - the diaper didn't bother her, being stuck in her bed by a simple child's bed rail wasn't upsetting, but the tiny leak that just happened was enough to shatter the girl.

Both Jo and Faith were in the room in a flash, Faith back on her feet and reaching over the railing as Jo lowered it. Scooping the crying woman into her arms, Faith held Lila close, one hand under her bottom, the other stroking the girl's back soothingly.

"It's okay sugar," Faith promised with a tone so kind and gentle that even Bree felt comforted by it. "It's okay, you're still a big girl."

Jo stepped over to the closet and pulled out a new diaper and supplies, giving Bree a peek inside in the process.

Lila had a lot of diapers.

Package after package after package, different kinds in different colors, but all very much sized for the adult that Lila's body happened to be. But no one could possibly mistake the girl for an adult at that moment, as she sobbed because she wet herself so much that her diaper leaked.

After spreading a mat out on the floor for Faith, Jo awkwardly stepped away. Sitting down on Lila's bed next to the helpless Bree, she lifted a large bottle to the woman's lips. "You still need to drink up or you'll get dehydrated. I imagine you're still wetting."

It took focus now, but she was right. Bree could still feel herself going, ever so slightly, meaning that for the moment, diapers were absolutely necessary. Bitterly, she was ironically thankful that the Dolls had plenty to go around.

"What's the ruckus?" Kinsley stood in the door, looking down at the four thickly-diapered women in various states of dress, two taking care of the other two.

Gesturing to Lila, Jo took the blame. "I didn't change Lila soon enough. I left her in the bed on purpose while I went to go get a bottle for the baby." She offered a sad sigh, but didn't bother to defend herself at all. "It's my fault. Lila had an accident and she's upset by it. I think today's going to have to be a pretty princess day."

Another term they all seemed to know that made zero sense to Bree.

Again she wondered how much was an act, how much was real, and just how cracked the little genius girl was after all.

It was Kinsley's turn to sigh. "Well you're lucky, I guess. The princess is going to need a helper and that's Faith, which means you get to take care of the baby. How is she this morning?"

The question was directed at Jo, not Bree, who stayed quiet as she let the cold water trickle down her throat... and into her diaper.

"In desperate need of a change, I think. It's a good thing we tripled her up, look." She felt hands between her legs but obviously couldn't see anything in her position, but Bree listened in fascinated horror to the explanation. "She soaked completely through the first two. Should probably keep her tripled again today, just in case."

Kinsley shook her head, disagreeing. "Double." Gifted with sweet relief, Bree listened as they decided her fate. "She keeps the huggy jacket on all day but don't go more than double or she's gonna get a rash, and nobody's happy when the baby has a rash. You'll just have to change her more often."

"Yes Auntie."

That seemed to please Kinsley, who nodded. "You can't carry her, right? Too heavy for your sweet little arms?"

Blushing, Jo nodded silently, giving Bree a moment to listen to the diaper change happening on the floor. To the soft reassurances offered from Faith to Lila, whose thumb had found its way into her mouth and seemed to be calming her.

She didn't see Kinsley's arms slide underneath her, but the bottle popped from her mouth and suddenly Bree was in the air, cradled by those long arms with their incredibly soft skin. "Goodness, look at you, baby. Shame you're just too little to hold your own bottle. Can you say Ma-ma?"

Now it was Bree's turn to blush.

At certain points in life, a person is offered a choice and it's not the person that chooses the answer, but something deep inside them. Something instinctual, some whisper from a place they didn't even know existed.

Bree's mouth answered. "Ma ma".

The room stopped. All eyes, including the freshly changed Lila who was sitting up on her changing mat, laying her head on Faith's shoulder, looked at Bree. She hadn't answered sarcastically, she hadn't mocked the question. Something primal answered, and it shocked her just as much as everyone.

No one said a word, but the lot of them came together, five people in one loving hug, grabbing Bree's heart and squeezing. That love, that wordless, unconditional love they gave as she finally let her guard down - whether she meant to or not - flowed into her, the tide lifting her soul in a way she would never have otherwise known that she needed.

A love she wasn't sure she had ever really felt before.

To her mother, she had been a burden, a mistake. To her father, she had been a disappointment and a responsibility, and her entire childhood was spent as a pawn in the war between the two of them. Not once in her life had she ever felt a love that filled the Dollhouse on Sortwell Road, and she broke down. Not because she was sad, or hurt, but because that love was unfamiliar rain in a cracked desert. She had no idea how to handle it, what to do, her body had no known response.

And so she cried.

Each and every Doll seemed to know why, too. The conflict was gone, Lila's sadness swept from the room in the flood of kindness that the Dolls showed one another. This was a thing no one could understand unless they had lost everything, unless they had lain at the bottom of their own personal abyss, staring up at the one ray of light filled with dancing dust particles.

Bree had been there before arriving at the doorstep of this bizarre home, wandering in the darkness with no clue how to ever reach that single beam of light, wandering without ever knowing if that light was real, whether it was hope or an oncoming train.

With those two simple syllables, offered with an open heart, made her realize that every single Doll in the house had lived in that abyss at one point or another. But they had learned the truth of that light beam.

That they were the beam of light to each other. They were the hope for one another. They themselves were what held the abyss that threatened to swallow them all, stronger together than any of them could have dreamt of being without the others.

It was Faith that broke the heavy, gentle silence. "The baby's home."