Chapter Text
Daisy’s world was stained in shades of red for so long, she forgot it could be any different. The blood was everything, everything she heard and felt and tasted, everything she saw. It curled up and made a home inside her chest. Made her believe the racing pulse was the sound of her own heart.
She had let it make a home there. She wasn’t strong enough to pretend otherwise, not anymore.
It really had been about protecting people, once. She was sure about that, in the way you knew things about family you’d never met, a flat colorless fact about someone else’s life. It had been about killing monsters, so they couldn’t hurt anyone again. Then it had been about killing before they could hurt anyone at all.
Eventually it had just been about killing. About looking into their eyes right at the end, everything red red red, and knowing they were afraid of her.
The blood leeched every other color out of the world.
And then there was the coffin and there wasn’t even red anymore, just black, just dark. No light in the choke, no anything. Nothing but the sound of her own real heart beating fast and feather light in her chest. The steady thump of the hunt was smothered out of her veins, and in the almost-quiet she could hear her own thoughts for the first time in years.
For a while, Daisy thought it had been worth it. A little quiet. A little suffering to break the chain around her neck. If anyone deserved it, surely she did.
But there was no way back to the surface, not for her. She was going to spend eternity in the dark, crushed by earth and stone and her thoughts turning useless circles of shame and terror and there was no light at all there was nothing she didn’t even have the option of just being a fucking animal who didn’t have to think anymore who didn’t have to feel everything and—
And Jon had been there, in the black with her. Jon held her hand and it wasn’t earth. He spoke and it didn’t sound like blood.
He pulled her out of the coffin. Dragged her back to the world above. They spill onto the floor together, two badly-strung skeletons knocking bruises into each other, and they don’t move.
The blood is there again, a whisper against her eardrums, probing, promising. But her thin heartbeat still flutters in her chest. It isn’t inside her anymore. And if she did nothing else in what would realistically be her very short life, she would keep it that way.
They lay in a scattered pile of dozens of tape recorders and she lets the overlapping voices, the familiar static hiss, drown it out.
Then the door bangs open, the sound going off like an explosion in her head. Daisy flinches and all her muscles scream in protest. Her face twists into what feels like a snarl and she flinches from that, too.
The shaft of fluorescent light pouring in from the doorway splashes the room with color. Not even exciting colors, just gray floor and brown wood and shiny black plastic. But they aren’t red. How long had she not realized, how long had she gone thinking it was normal?
What else had it taken from her?
Basira stands in the doorway. Basira, who Daisy thought she’d never see again, and she’s golden, she’s sunlight, she’s so bright that Daisy’s eyes immediately fill with tears. She squeezes her eyes shut. Focuses very hard on breathing slow and even to keep the sob out of her throat.
So long in the dark. A lifetime soaked in blood. All she’d wanted to do was see Basira again and she can’t even look at her, it’s too much, it hurts, looking at Basira isn’t supposed to hurt.
“Hi,” she breathes. It isn’t enough. It would have to be.
-
If someone had told Daisy half a year ago that she would find the Magnus Institute soothing, she probably would have barked a laugh. Maybe would have hit them. Maybe both.
But everything in the Institute is the palette of bureaucracy—white and beige and gray—and she can usually get from one place to another without having to screw her eyes shut and feel along the walls. The Archives are dim (but not dark, not dark) and she can sit with her back to the lamp and watch her own shadow stretch across the wall, half expecting it to raise a clawed hand when she reaches up to rub her eyes.
The blood whispers. Daisy breathes, and she listens to the recorder and the sound of Jon murmuring behind her.
Not long after they emerge, when Daisy’s still sleeping down in the Archives on a tiny cot that smells like Basira, Jon comes into the office—tea in one hand, coffee in the other—wearing a garishly-patterned sweater, loud and neon bright. Daisy takes one look at him and pain spikes into her skull. She hisses through her nose, shuts her eyes on instinct. The dark behind her eyelids never belonged to the Buried. She would close her eyes in the coffin, sometimes, just to have a darkness she chose.
And then the earth would shift and press so close than she couldn’t move her eyelids at all, so close she could feel the grit against her eyes, behind her eyes, inside her—
“Oh,” Jon says when she curls inward. “Oh, I’m—I’m sorry, the jumper, I didn’t think—”
Daisy huffs. “Just Knew about this, did you?”
“I didn’t, actually. I can still observe my surroundings like a human being. Should I—I mean, would you be—” He stops, sighs in a heavy way that makes shame curl in her gut for causing it. “I think you might be more comfortable if I changed.”
“Don’t,” she says immediately. He shouldn’t have to, he’s done enough, and she didn’t deserve any of it. It isn’t like she’s going to break. “Just surprised me. I’m fine.”
“Mm.”
No point lying to the Archivist, she supposes.
But he doesn’t take it off, just walks past her and sits at his desk, and she’s so grateful it makes her sick.
“Some sensitivity left over from the coffin, I assume,” he says carefully.
“Some of it, yeah.”
She perches on the edge of the desk, shoulders hunched, hands gripping the edge under her thighs. Used to be she would leave gouges in the wood. Now her hands just ache from it.
Jon doesn’t push. Only listens.
“Some of it’s from...before. From the blood. Didn’t notice until we got out, not much to see down there. Made me colorblind, I guess, like a…” She almost laughs, but chokes on it. She feels like she’s choking a lot these days. “Like a dog.”
“Dogs are actually red-green colorblind, interestingly. True achromatopsia is quite rare—”
“Sims,” Daisy says gently. He stops short.
“R-right, sorry. Um, is it better now? Without the—the blood?”
He forgets himself and she feels the question sink into her skin. Relaxes into it. It’s easier, sometimes, not to have a choice.
“I can see in technicolor again, if that’s what you mean. But it hurts if they’re too bright, or I’m not expecting them. Not used to them. I don’t know how long it’s been since…” She doesn’t want to tell him it wasn’t achromatopsia, that it was only ever red, only ever rage and bloodstains. “Spending eight months in a lightless abyss didn’t help either, though.” It doesn’t come off as light as she intends.
“No, I imagine not,” he murmurs. He sounds tired, the guilt familiar in his mouth and that isn’t what she meant, but she doesn’t know how to take it back.
She turns to him. Looks deliberately at his face, dark and scarred and lined too young. Her head still throbs a bit, but looking at him is easy. She manages something like a smile, doesn’t show her teeth.
“That for me?” She asks, pointing at the coffee.
He relaxes, as much as she’s ever seen Jon relax. Half a year ago, she would have laughed to think the Archivist might ever feel safe in her presence. That anyone might. Now there’s just the strange sensation of something pushing at her ribcage, of warmth branching through her like roots.
“Cream and three sugars,” he says, turning back to his notes. “I won’t be held responsible when it rots your teeth.”
She hums and wraps her hands around the warm mug.
Safe.
-
Basira can’t stand to be in the same room with her.
She thinks Daisy can’t see it, but Basira isn’t exactly subtle. She doesn’t snap like she does at Jon. She makes sure Daisy’s eating and doing her physical therapy. But she won’t look at her. She moves like any loud noise will send Daisy spiralling, sometimes meets Jon’s gaze with a question before making her excuses and leaving again. Her eyes slide off of Daisy like she’s not really there, like she’s still lost down in the dark.
Daisy can barely look at her either, but she wants to. God, she wants to, even if it burns the eyes out of her head.
Daisy has enough pride, barely, not to follow her around like some wild animal too used to being fed from human hands. She doesn’t even blame Basira, not really. She knows she’s scared, weak, can barely stand without her atrophied limbs giving out on her. Unreliable. Just another burden among many, and the only one who seems willing to bear it is a man she’d almost killed. Nothing’s like it was before, why should this be the exception?
She’s almost resigned to it, to the hollow ache in her chest whenever Basira leaves the room and takes the light with her, when Basira apparently makes a decision.
“We’re going to my flat,” she says. She’s talking about Daisy, but looking at Jon.
“What? Why?” Jon looks up from his endless piles of notes and conspiracy theories, sounding like a man coming up for air after a long dive.
“Because the Institute’s not exactly a five-star hotel. She needs a real shower and a real bed and to get some actual sleep somewhere that isn’t...this place.” Like she hadn’t been sleeping on that exact cot for months herself.
Jon blinks. Glances at Daisy. She sits on the floor behind his desk, back against the wall, and just shrugs. Lets them argue over her like she’s a child.
“I—I thought it wasn’t safe outside the Institute.” He drags himself to his feet, but he’s so thin and stooped that it somehow makes him look smaller. Daisy realizes that he’s trying to protect her, trying to protect her from Basira. The thought is so backwards and wrong that she almost laughs.
A muscle ticks in Basira’s jaw, like she isn’t used to being questioned. When had that happened?
“It’s been quiet,” she bites out. “We’ll be fine.”
Jon looks down at her again, questioning, concerned. Basira doesn’t.
But it’s different this time. Not avoidance, not fragile silence, but familiar unhurried expectation. Like she’s waiting for Daisy to back her up. It’s that more than anything else that makes Daisy say, “Sounds good to me.”
She almost balks before they even make it outside. The sunlight blinds her when she tries to follow Basira onto the street and she stumbles back into the cold, artificial light of the Institute. It’s Basira’s face, though, haloed by the too-bright sun, that nearly has her turning and walking back down to the Archives. Not quite anger, not quite disgust. Just broad, unsurprised disappointment.
Daisy grits her teeth and pushes past her—or Basira lets her pass, Daisy probably couldn’t push over a toddler. She stands on the sidewalk, refusing to close her eyes against the light or the blue sky or the dozens of other colors that riot around her as people pass. Loads of people living their normal, ignorant lives. In the bowels of the Institute, sometimes it seems like the world’s already ended. The sun soaks into her skin and she trembles like it’s forcing the sunken cold up and out of her.
She looks over her shoulder at Basira. “Coming?”
Basira relaxes like a fist unclenching and falls into step beside her.
-
A part of Daisy hoped it would be easy, after that. Hoped that with just the two of them whatever jagged edges had risen between them would smooth out and they would fit together again. They used to orient themselves in relation to the other, effortless, not having to speak to know instinctively where her partner needed her.
She wonders if Basira had hoped so too, if that’s why she was so insistent on getting them out of the Institute. If she thought the place was the broken thing, and not the person.
It isn’t easy.
The silence is still heavy, crowded. Basira still watches her like she’s waiting to catch her in a lie. Daisy feels anger rise hot in her throat, but traps it before it can show on her face, smothers it with guilt. She wants to fix this, but the only easy solution is the one thing she won’t do.
From the look of the place, Basira hasn’t been staying here for some time. There’s a fine layer of dust on everything that Daisy finds oddly comforting. A bit like going to ground in an old safehouse, warm and satisfied after a job. A part of her feels sick at the memory but she’s not in the business of turning down comfort these days.
Most of the food in the fridge has gone off, so they order takeaway from the Thai place down the street Basira knows she loves. She doesn’t realize how hungry she is until she smells the curry and for a second she feels like herself again.
Basira puts on some bad movie and they sit on her worn yellow couch and it's almost right. Almost, except for the way Daisy’s legs ache underneath her when she tries to curl up in her usual spot. Except for the foot of space between them. Daisy dimly notices she’s cold. You’re together, she chides herself.
She spends most of the time glancing at Basira’s face, lit blue by the screen, and doesn’t remember the movie’s plot once the credits roll.
The shower is nice. The water pressure is better than the sparse facility at the Institute. She dries with a soft towel, and she smells like Basira’s shampoo.
She hesitates in the doorway, wearing her own loose t-shirt and boxers. Basira had kept them. She’s relieved they don’t stink of blood or gunpowder. She towels her hair slowly, watching Basira where she sits on the bed, a book in her lap. Considering the space she’s left beside her.
Basira feels her eyes and looks up. “All right?”
“Sure,” Daisy lies. She doesn’t know how to explain she’s afraid. There shouldn’t be anything to be afraid of.
“Come on, then,” Basira says with a jerk of her chin.
Daisy’s eyes fall closed in relief.
She settles next to Basira, wraps her arms around one of the extra pillows. Basira quirks an eyebrow at her.
“Sure you’re all right?” She asks slowly.
“Yeah. Just tired.” Basira doesn’t touch her. Daisy doesn’t reach out. She thinks about it. But she never had to think about it before, did she? Just did it. Like it was easy, like it was uncomplicated. She used to reach for Basira as naturally as breathing. Now she thinks about claws, about bruises and broken bones, and she digs her fingers deeper into the pillow.
She falls asleep to the sound of turning pages.
She dreams of Choke. She dreams of dirt and airless passages, of the crushing loneliness at the center of creation, of darkness so deep and black that light never even existed.
Daisy jerks awake and it’s still black, she’s down in the dark and she can’t move, she can’t breathe, she’s in the coffin and she never left and she’s alone, alone in the dark—
The blood roars in her ears, still distant but closer, closer than it’s been since Jon pulled her out. Before the coffin fear was useless, prey-feeling, and the Hunt turned it to anger, fed the anger into her muscles to let her run faster, strike harder. In the near-perfect dark the fear lances through her like an electric current and the blood tries to press it back. It hisses bargains in the back of her mind, whispers weak, pathetic, trembling rabbit and wouldn’t she like to be strong again, wouldn’t she like to tear the throat from anything that dared make her afraid?
A thought struggles through the haze of panic and adrenaline: the blood couldn’t reach her in the coffin. She’s out, she’s out, and that gives her enough strength to roll out of the bed. She can’t quite get her shaking legs under her and half-crawls to the bathroom. She flails at the light switch, closes the door so as not to wake Basira, hopefully closed it quietly but it’s hard to tell over the rushing in her ears. The light burns into her, the bathroom is white, white, white. She fixes her eyes on the golden sunflowers on the shower curtain.
Her instinct screams danger and old habit spits back against the wall, eyes on the door. She folds herself into the bottom of the tub, head almost between her knees, and tries to slow her racing heart.
The pulse of the Hunt doesn’t abate. Her jaw aches. Her teeth feel too big for her mouth. She sinks them deep into the base of her thumb and her mouth fills with copper. It doesn’t help, if anything the blood roars louder, angry now, but she doesn’t let go. Keeps her teeth anchored in her own flesh.
She sees red run down her arm and drip between her feet. Feels the edge of a hysterical laugh in her throat. She reaches down with her other hand, trails her fingers through the drops, admires the way it smears on her skin.
“Daisy?” Basira opens the door, hair loose and sleep-mussed, and Daisy shrinks against the wall, growls a warning that stops Basira dead.
Basira looks at her and is afraid.
All at once, the Hunt recedes.
Daisy gasps and pulls her hand from her bloodied mouth. She can feel the violent shakes of an adrenaline crash coming and clenches her fists against them, pain stabbing up her injured arm. “I’m sorry,” she says between gulps of air. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Basira hangs in the doorway for an endless moment before lowering herself to her knees beside the tub. She gently pulls Daisy’s torn hand towards her, looks at the wound instead of Daisy’s blood-streaked face.
“Why?” she asks.
Daisy has to take a few more ragged breaths before she finds the words. “Didn’t—didn’t hurt anyone else,” she pants.
Basira looks up and the expression on her face makes Daisy a liar.
“I’m sorry,” she says again.
Basira swallows, tries for a reassuring smile and comes up short.
She lets Basira clean and bandage her hand. Earlier all she’d wanted was for Basira to touch her, but her skin feels slick with poison and now she just wants to pull away, to keep it from burning into Basira’s palms. Almost, she wishes for the darkness, so neither of them would have to see her tears.
Basira leaves the bathroom light on and leads Daisy back to bed.