Disclaimer: Doom Patrol is not mine.

Summary: Moments in the Doom Manor. Drabble collection.

Author's Note: Have taken some artistic liberties with the canon for the purposes of this fic. Also, I'm not actually a movie buff so please point out any inaccuracies you see and I'll try to fix it. I wrote this because there's not enough Doom Patrol fics.

Will mostly only have Rita, Larry, Jane (+64 others), and Cliff. Vic will be in a few, but he's only been part of the team since 2019, so he won't be here much.

Russian translation by Sathe available at (erase the brackets and spaces): fanfiction (.net) / s/13368666/

Chapter 1

Introduction

The Sixties and the Seventies are a dark time for the residents of the Caulder house. For two decades, the only movies they are allowed to watch at home are the ones that Rita Farr stars in because she stashed all the others in a secret location and refuses to let anyone watch anything but her movies.

Larry tolerates this status quo for a long time because he understands, he really does. God knows she's not the only one in this house tormented by what they can't have, what had been torn from them by their respective incidents. But even he can only hold out for so long. In 1979, he cracks and manages to get a hold of a VCR and starts a black market of non-Rita Farr movies from his bedroom. He sets up secret movie nights every Wednesday at 3 AM for the other residents because they deserve a break too. Rita finds out about it a couple of years later. After a big fight in which Larry's little houseguest leaves his body four times and Rita melts into a large blob, they settle on a compromise: They can watch other movies, but they must watch at least one Rita Farr movie once a week.

Rita learns to enjoy movies that don't have her in them.

Larry memorizes the dialogue of every single Rita Farr movie.

Cliff discovers movies he never would have otherwise watched.

Jane expands the others' taste in movies by smuggling in DVD players, flat screen TVs, and convincing Chief to subscribe to Netflix.

This is their routine for the next few decades. Other residents come and go, but this is the one thing that doesn't change. For dangerous people like them, movies are the only safe way of temporarily escaping from the confines of the manor grounds, vicariously living through the characters on the screen. It's their little window into life in the outside world. (Well, Jane and her personalities leave all the time, but they always seem to find themselves back at the manor.)

Everything is fine and dandy until the Chief gets himself kidnapped by a villain and sends everything to hell. But that happens in 2019. Most of the stories in this drabble collection happen way before 2019, so let's not get into that. On with the story!