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“I’m sorry.”
Daisy doesn’t realize, for a moment, that Jon is talking to her. She looks up from fiddling with her body armor to see who had entered the room before it sinks in that Jon’s words had been directed towards her . It would help, she thinks wryly, if he would at least look in her general vicinity when doing so.
“For what?” She asks, returning to her mental checklist of safeties. She is trying to focus on protection, on defense, and to keep from that undercurrent mantra of offense being the best defense.
Focus on the stab vest, she reminds herself, not the baton that normally resides on her hip.
Clothes allowing for freedom of movement are so that she can run , if need be, not chase.
The point is to defend herself and the others here, not to attack.
“Earlier.” Jon’s words drop like rocks, each more abrupt than the last. He looks towards her for a moment with those tired, tired eyes, before looking away again. “I didn’t mean to, ah, throw you under the bus like that, as it were.”
“Call me a monster of the Hunt, you mean.” Daisy says casually and she looks at him in time to see him flinch. There is a savage satisfaction at getting a reaction out of the man, but it lasts only a moment before melting away.
All exposed nerves and flesh, this man. There’s no fun in toying with broken prey.
“I didn’t mean to-I don’t think you’re a monster.” Jon tries and Daisy just looks at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Anymore, you mean?”
“That’s not what I-”
“Isn’t it?”
Jon is quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know.” He says finally, looking lost. “I don’t think I thought you were a monster? I just knew you hated me. And wanted me dead.”
“I did.” Daisy says placidly.
“And now you don’t.”
“And now I don’t.” Daisy confirms. “I don’t think so, anyway.”
“Hate me? Or want me dead?” Jon’s tone is dry.
“Both, maybe.” Daisy shrugs.
“Figures.” Jon says sardonically, sounding, for a moment, like his normal self. “Plenty of others did too. Do. I don’t have the luxury of dividing everyone into monsters and not-monsters.” He lapses into silence for a moment before piping up again, moments later. “I am sorry, though. I just wanted you to know that.”
“Why?” She tilts her head at the enigma that is the Archivist, her target of so many weeks ago, a lifetime ago.
Another person ago.
He shrugs. “I don’t want you to be mad at me?” He tries half-heartedly. “I think-,” He cuts himself off, chuckles softly, before continuing. “I think you might be the only one that doesn’t completely doesn’t hate me at the moment, and I’d rather keep it that way.”
“S’okay.” She says, sounding more casual than she feels, because she can’t think of what to say. “You weren’t wrong. Didn’t feel great to hear it, but you weren’t wrong.”
Jon looks down, and Daisy has the feeling that if he were anybody else, he’d be wringing his hands together. “Yes, but I’m still sorry.”
“Yes, so you said.”
Jon continues to sit quietly, before looking up with a sort of panicked desperation in his eyes. “Why are you here?” He asks abruptly, a sudden, strange strain in his tone.
“Where else would I be?” She asks, baffled. “‘S’not like I can go back to the force right now. Anyway, I told you. I signed the paperwork, this is my job now. ”
“No, I mean, right now. Here. With me.” Jon waves his hand briefly, a wild, jerky motion. “You could be off with Basira, or Melanie. I wouldn’t blame you.”
Daisy looks at him for a long moment. “What are you really asking, Jon?”
“I-” Jon sighs and looks away. “People don’t like me much, these days.” He says softly, and Daisy bites down the whiplash urge to ask if anyone had, ever. “Or more so than usual.” Ah, so he did have some self-awareness. “I always seem to be fucking things up lately.” He says wearily. “So if you want to go, I-I’d understand.”
And that’s sad, Daisy thinks, and is only mildly surprised to find she means it. Jon is not a warm person, by any means, and the last person she’d call an extrovert. But there’s a difference between being bad with people, and being alone.
Daisy considers him for a moment. “I think it’s fucked what you did to those people.” She says finally. Jon sags and she doesn’t feel sorry for him at that. Much, anyway. “And I’m not condoning it. But I don’t have much of a leg to stand on, do I?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” Jon says dully and Daisy scoffs.
“Really?” She challenges, and Jon doesn’t respond. She continues. “But I don’t know that you’re a monster.” It’s almost pitiful, the wary hope that sparks and sizzles in his hollow eyes. “I don’t know what you are, you’re definitely not human at this point, but-”
“But?”
Daisy frowns at him, thinking over her words carefully, and then she sighs. “Listen, I heard from Basira what happened while you were in that coma. She told me about Melanie and how she saved her life. She also told me about Melanie and that...Slaughter thing, you guys cut out of her.”
Jon, if anything, looks more defeated than ever. “Yes.”
“Well, no matter how stab-happy Melanie gets, Basira won’t forget that she saved her. And you…” Daisy rubbed the back of her head, feeling awkward. “Listen, you and I have had our differences, that’s not going to disappear. And part of that was-well, I want to say it was the Hunt, but I don’t know. And I understand not knowing what’s you and what is .” She pauses, trying to shape her words properly. She knows how to use her words to bite, to hurt. She’s not at skilled at softening her words and conveying what she is trying to convey right now. “I don’t know what you are, Jon, or what you’re becoming. But whatever you are, you came and saved me from the Buried. I’m not going to forget that.”
Jon's gaze is dull. “I hardly want to bind you to me through obligation-”
Daisy snorts. “That’s not what I’m saying, you depressed dunce.” She tells him, exasperated and, oddly enough, fond. “I’m grateful, that’s all.” She remembers the darkness, the not being able to move, not being able to breathe. And she also remembers a dry, slightly callused hand in hers and his voice, a miserable, ornery light in the darkness. “You didn’t have to get me, you know.”
“I rather think I did.” Jon says mournfully, Greek tragedy hero that he is apparently convinced he is. Her own monstrous, platonic, and significantly more successful Orpheus, her brain supplies, unhelpfully.
“The point is,” Daisy says, raising her voice ever so slightly over his. “No one asked you to give up a rib and come into the coffin. But you did it. And you brought me with you.” He hadn’t even blamed her, when he realized that he might be stuck forever. Had agreed with her that even if he was stuck down there, at least they wouldn’t be alone. “Hill Top Road...it’s a bad idea and I’m going for Basira. But I’ll have your back too. Won’t even try to put a shiv in it.”
And Jon looks at her, really looks at her, at last.
“Really?” He asks, voice suddenly, painfully small.
“I won’t leave you alone.” She tells him, and once upon a time, those words would have been a threat.
But now?
It’s a promise.