Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Her pain is not her weakness.

It is singing through her veins like fire, leaving her crawling on her belly against scratched wooden floors that seems to sponge up moisture leechlike, growing smooth and slick with her blood as she scrapes across the floor to the child, this slip of a girl about to be woman. Her pain is not her weakness- it is an motivator, pushing her to what she needs, and right now she needs to explain . She watches her fingers tremble above the blue silk of the girls’ skirt; a hair's breadth from touching, and yet something inside her snaps, just then- a candle snuffs out and the inside of her head goes dark, taking her awareness with it.

They leave her for dead, she later learns. The white man and whiter girl step over her on their way without a second look, like she is horse shit lining their path, an unpleasant part of the environment to be ignored. It is the way it has always been, but will not always be, if she gets her say. And she will.

That is not the problem. It is another insult to be weathered, is all. The problem is that, despite all the careful arrangement of the timeline by the Lutece twins’, the deliberate scheming of Comstock, the very laws of the universe themselves- she wakes up.

Daisy Fitzroy wakes up from her own murder, mouth thick with congealing blood and spine radiating daggers of agony, bleeding but alive. This is fine. Alive is something she can work with. Being alive is something she knows how to do . The hurt is still trying to eat her, chew her apart with teeth like needles, but she imagines on Comstock at his lectern, fake sympathy threading his voice as he addresses a crowd, addresses the news of one Daisy Fitzroy's death. “ And lo, The Lord God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life. ’” The phantom crowd howls at this, at the delicious irony involved in the death of the negress bitch Fitzroy, and she feels rather then sees her hand grab the wall beside her, shaky as an infant's in resistance. Her fingers smear blood across the whitewash, but she swallows and focuses on her movements, still nursing the embers of humiliation from the imagined speech as she struggles to push herself onto her elbows. She will not become another stepping stone for Comstock’s ego, nor for any of the others who would gladly see her dead. Instead, she focuses on dragging herself toward the door, terribly dead below the ribs. She is not thinking about escaping- instead she is working towards pulling herself forward an inch at a time. That is all.

One inch at a time.

Chapter Text

She is halfway through the doors when a pair of beetle-black boots skid up to her. Blood loss has leadened her neck, her skull, her eyes — the most reaction she can muster is a slow flicker of her eyelids. A man’s voice bursts the silence around her, shattering the exhausted quiet with his horror. 

"Boss!” 

Rough fingers wrap around her shoulders and haul her up easily, and she has the vague sensation of her consciousness sifting away, again as fine as grains of sand, before her vision tunnels into darkness. 

When she wakes, the air is thick with the scent of antiseptic and sweat, a stark contrast to the opulence of Comstocks’ beloved estate. Memories after her unexpected rescue come in fragments, the details threadbare with exhaustion; the light above her a harsh single bulb swinging from a frayed wire, casting eerie shadows across the obscured faces hovering above her. By voice alone she can recognize most of them, shifting as her focus is — they are her closest allies, the same ones who found her and brought her here, who patched her up with words of comfort and hope. Some of her longest-standing supporters, they make up the earliest people who had seen her vision and rallied to her side. 

Now, alone in the dark of the makeshift hospital, she can do nothing but think, sorting through the myriad of sensations through her. Her pain, howling and relentless, is not a weakness. It is a symphony playing in her very soul, a crescendo that fills her ears and blots out the world, leaving her to fully consider the details of her failure. She lies there broken and bleeding but she is not defeated. The imagined news of her demise spur her on, a mockery that she refuses to let become her reality. She refuses to be another feather for Comstocks' cap, another log on the fire of Columbian fanaticism.

Daisy Fitzroy has felt this agony before, the kind that should end her, but instead it fuels her. Her eyes flicker open, the world a haze of shadow and lamplight. The room is spinning, but she knows where she is; on the floor of the same makeshift clinic she was sheltered in before she was cut apart. The airship, then. 

Her breaths come in shallow gasps, each one a battle won against the reaper trying to claim her. In her minds’ eye she sees the outline of the girl, the one she had tried to save, retreating into the night with the man — her would-be killer. They think they have bested her, the idiots. but they have not. They have no idea what she is capable of.

Regardless, for now her body is a map of pain, a tapestry of bruising and stitches. The room opens and fills with the low murmur of worried voices and the occasional clang of metal instruments. The doctor, a middle-aged man with patched spectacles and a furrowed brow, enters the room, looking at her with a mix of admiration and concern. Her hand, sticky with drying blood, bumps against the wall, leaving a crimson smear. The surface feels cool and solid against her palm, a lifeline in a sea of pain.  The relief to see them here, her people, is a sweet balm to the fire burning in her chest. They are a stark contrast to the cold, iced-over rage in the faces of her enemies. The Vox Populi, the downtrodden, the forgotten—these are the ones who have gathered around her, their eyes reflecting the same anger and determination that fuels her own soul. They are her kin, bound by a shared struggle, and their presence is a silent promise that she is not alone in her quest for justice.

But the anger — it is a beast, a creature born of years of pain and oppression, and it stirs within her now, threatening to consume her. It is a rage so potent it could melt steel, a wrath that has been simmering just beneath the surface for too long. It shifts and coils in her belly, hot enough to glow red, demanding action, demanding revenge. She can feel it in the clench of her fists, the grind of her teeth, the throb of her heart — a pulse that echoes the rhythm of their footsteps fading into the night.

But she is no fool. She knows that anger is a weapon that can cut both ways, that it can make one blind to reason, to strategy. The doctor, his hands shaking slightly as he stitched her up, does not deserve her ire. The nurses, their faces tight with worry as they pass her water and wipe her brow, do not warrant her fury. They are her kin in this battle, her comrades, her family. They are the ones who have bled beside her, who have shared in her pain, who have seen the monsters she has faced and not turned away.

So she swallows the anger, forcing it back down into the depths where it can stew and grow stronger. It will be a weapon for another day, a sword to be drawn when the time is right. For now, she focuses on the doctor, the one who has seen to her injuries, whose face is a blur of gray and white. He turns to her, his eyes meeting hers, and she feels a strange kinship with this man, a bond forged in the fire of their shared struggle.

"How long?" she asks again, her voice a rasp that feels like it could shred the very fabric of her throat. The doctor, Errol, she remembers now — his name is Errol — pauses in his work, his eyes meeting hers with a gravity that speaks of truths unspoken. He does not lie to her, she knows that much. He is a man of science, of precision, and his words hold the weight of reality.

"You've been out for a day," he says, his voice low and gruff, a hint of an Irish burr to it. "The knife missed your spine, but you lost a lot of blood. We had to move quickly. You're lucky to be alive, Miss Fitzroy."

Her mind races, trying to piece together the puzzle of the hours lost to her. A day. It could have been an eternity in the grand scheme of things, a lifetime in which so much could have changed. But she is alive, and that is all that matters. A day is a mere blink in the face of what is to come.

The room falls into a tense silence as Errol finishes his work, his movements deft and sure. He wraps her in fresh bandages that feel like a cocoon, a prison of her own making. But she knows it is not to hold her back, but to hold her together. To give her the strength to face what lies ahead.

When he is done, he stands back, wiping his hands on a bloodstained cloth. His eyes are sad, but there is a spark in them, a spark of hope that mirrors her own. "You're a tough one," he says, a hint of admiration in his voice. "But even the toughest need to rest."