Work Text:
The most noticeable thing about Alice Tonner was her hair. Even when she was born, a soft fuzzy yellow covered her head, making her otherwise plain features look almost cute. Her mother, always fanciful and flighty, struggled over names for an age. She flitted between Alice and Aurora – her two favourite blonde Disney heroines – and, after much antagonising, settled on Alice, the world a wonderland for her baby.
Her hair grew much faster than would be expected, becoming more cumbersome as the years passed. Her mother brushed it 100 times every night and styled it every morning, while Alice watched her own pinched face in the hallway mirror. She didn’t quite recognise the girl looking back, knew even then that she wasn’t entirely her own. Her hair belonged to her mother and her heart belonged to the wolf. Not just her heart, her whole chest, its jagged edges pressing against her ribs and tearing her stomach. It was hungry, but Alice didn’t know for what. It just waited, prodding at her lungs at the sight of blood and revelling in her breathlessness. Alice didn’t like it. Not at all. She had read her fairy-tales and watched all the Disney films, and she knew the wolf was always evil. Never trust a wolf. It was clever though – they often were – and sometimes it would slink up to Alice, cosy up around her heart. Whisper to her of all she could be, all her potential, if she just picked up that knife, just stole those matches, just cut her hair.
But of course, her mother didn’t know about that. She just wanted her baby, her Alice, to look pretty. Alice’s wardrobe quickly filled with blue dresses and little white aprons and black hairbands, and when she put them on, her mother looked at her with an expression very close to pride. And that’s what she wanted, not the knives and the poison and the danger, but to make her mother pleased. What was the point of a daughter if not to make her mother happy?
It became harder though, less half smiles and forehead kisses, and more scoldings for chewing the loose strands of hair and pointed comments about the company she kept and warnings to stay away from the building site. She missed it, so she kept her hair long, even though it got in her way and meant she couldn’t play with the boys at lunch. Calvin liked it though, when they were still friends, thought it was cute.
And then, after Alice got her scar and her nickname, he sneered at it as she walked home, and the wolf nudged her: maybe cutting her hair off would mean Calvin would like her again and she’d be one of them, not mummy’s little broken princess on her own. Her mother still brushed her hair 100 times, even though she was 11 – old enough to do it herself by now – and refused to call her Daisy, refused to even acknowledge the scar exploded on her back. She never did, and Daisy felt it itch at her funeral. Her hair was down, brushed 100 times and pushed back with a black hairband. She felt she should be sadder than she was: people she’d never even met were crying their eyes out. She just felt a strange emptiness, even the wolf curled away in a corner. It was like she lost a part of herself, looking at the coffin and wondering who she was keeping her hair long for now. She did though, the fussy hairclips and the tiara hairbrush and the rainbow of bobbles as much a part of her routine as breakfast. It reminded her of her mother, but she couldn’t say if that was a good or bad thing.
She wondered, not for the first time in her life, what was wrong with her. She knew it was something, because normal girls didn’t feel a flash of exhilaration at the sight of blood or bruise. And they didn’t feel the clenching at their hearts when they saw a happy couple, the knowledge of how far that was from her and how impossible it always would be. For who could love a monster? Daisy knew that was all she was now, not a broken, empty girl anymore, but a creature who would bite and scratch and claw to get what it wanted, what it needed. And she needed that chase, her heartbeat in her ears, in the same way she needed to not cut her hair, no matter how much she wanted to. Leaving it long let her pretend she was still the heroine of her story, not the beast feared by all.
She joined the police, obviously. She stopped pretending she didn’t need the hunt the same way she needed food and sleep. She moved to Lancashire where no one knew her and applied as soon as possible. It wasn’t what she’d expected – mostly sitting in a car with a cold cup of coffee, listening to the radio or sitting in silence. Even though she spent so much time with her co-workers, their conversation never got past small talk and light gossip. And then when Zach went into the coffin, she uprooted her life to move to London and didn’t miss Lancashire at all. It was the same there, more “odd” and “weird”, but the wolf didn’t mind that. It loved the vampires though, the ritual of it and the burning and the feeling that ran through Daisy watching a monster burn. Restoring the order, she thought of it as, burning the bad out of the world.
She met Basira after a few years in London, just after her Section 31. Things like that spread like wildfire and she knew they’d be pushed together to investigate anything strange. She’d met a few sectioned officers, but none like Basira.
“oh.” said her heart. “so that’s what it feels like.”
She ignored it though, she knew it was wrong. Wanting was wrong. Look where it had got her last time: standing over the boy who was once her best friend while the life drained from him. That wasn’t normal, she wasn’t normal. She was Mummy’s delicate little flower, ripped apart by a hunger. Beauty was always destroyed by a wolf. So she tried to stay away from Basira, the fairest of them all.
When Daisy met Jon, she knew he was the same. Seized by that same need. And she saw something familiar in his eyes when he looked at Martin. It comforted her, in a way. To know she wasn’t alone. She knew it was wrong though, the hunger. Knew that one day she’d have to kill Jon. She thought about it when she brushed her hair, how he’d frowned when she let it down from its ponytail. No one else did that. Basira loved it, re-plaiting it when Daisy’s tired fingers hadn’t quite managed to do it right. She’d asked to cut it, just for the split ends, but Daisy hadn’t let her. Her hair needed to be long, needed to remind her of her mother and her purpose. Without it, she wasn’t sure what she’d become, without her last tie to the fantasy world. And, although she hated it, she knew she had to be punished, reprimanded for her sins, and her hair seemed as good a way as any.
On the morning before she went into the coffin, Basira had plaited her hair, secured with a red and pink bobble. Daisy thought about that moment often, twirling the bobble between her fingers and chewing at the ends of her hair. She hadn’t done that for years, she knew she wasn’t meant to: it was unladylike. Her mother had told her so. Her mother wasn’t there though, when all the days and all the nights blurred into a nightmare of close walls and squirming dirt and darkness. She knew she’d never see light again, never see the sky or Basira. That was enough to make her sob, curling around herself in the tiny space, trying in vain to comfort herself. She gave up eventually, even on crying. Even the wolf was silent, unmoving. Daisy wasn’t sure if it was even still alive. If it was even alive to begin with. She just lay there, trying to think of nothing and failing, waiting to die.
When Jon arrived, she didn’t even recognise him at first. His face was skeletal, eyes sunk deep in their sockets, and he seemed unreasonable thin. He looked so tired, like any minute he was going to collapse into a pile of bones. He was there though, there and alive, and he had come for Daisy. And maybe they were both streaked in sin, but when he reached out his hand, she understood why people worshipped a saviour from the darkness.
And then she was climbing out the coffin, she was in Jon’s office, she was standing in the Institute, she was back, she could breathe properly for the first time in months. And then Basira opened the door, after months of picturing her face and believing she’d never see her again. Her Basira.
That night, she sunk into her sheets and slept for the first time in months, revelling in the comfort of the sheets and mattress. But even if she was home, something felt wrong. She found herself staring into the mirror for far longer than before, trying to find herself in the stringy hair and tired blue eyes. Her hair was even more of a burden then before, and Daisy found herself struggling to finish the 100 strokes she’d managed effortlessly before.
And then one night, she woke up and her hair had untangled itself from the plait and was plastered across her face, in her eyes and ears and mouth. She had cried again, longed to feel someone reaching for her, smother her in love instead of this pressing fear that choked her. Instead, she held herself, horribly reminiscent of her time in the coffin, and pretended it was enough.
When she was washing the tears from her face, she glanced at her reflection and realised she didn’t recognise the girl looking back. Seized by an impulsive fit of sadness and fear, she grabbed her nail scissors and chopped off a strand of hair. It coiled in her palm and fell onto the floor, snaking around her bare feet. She couldn’t quite believe she’d done it; she’d been allowed to destroy her best feature. All promises of braiding and flower crowns were gone, and her hair was on the floor. Vaguely, she wondered if it could be saved, before shearing it all off, leaving a spiky uneven mess. The Daisy plucked of its petals. She loves me not. Daisy went back to bed and didn’t dream.
People reacted exactly how she expected them to. Martin was shocked and Elias was disgusted and Melanie was confused. Basira seemed upset, which ate at Daisy slightly. Jon was… genuinely happy? He smiled at her and explained he used to help Georgie shave her head in college. He offered to help Daisy even it out, which struck her as stranger than it should have. He’d risked his life to save hers, they were probably on the level where they could meet up outside work hours. She accepted quietly and put it out of her mind.
When she got home, she only had time to turn on the TV before the doorbell rang. She assumed it was Basira, even though she always texted in advance. It wasn’t though. It was Jon. Jon? Jon, standing on her doorstep, slightly out of breath from the steep stairs up to her flat, and clutching a satchel. Immediately, he made a beeline for her tiny bathroom, where her hair was still scattered on the floor, dragging her living room stool with him. Ignoring it, he picked out clippers and a bag of Percy Pigs from his bag.
“Basira told me,” he shrugged when Daisy furrowed her brow. “It’s always nice to have your favourite sweets when you do your hair.”
Daisy didn’t respond, trying to work out what her next move should be.
“It won’t take long; I got enough practice on Georgie. Come on.”
Daisy did what she was told, although she wasn’t entirely sure why. She watched Jon’s hands in the mirror as he ran them over her head, checking for parts he’d missed. It looked better; anyone could see that. She seemed better defined, harder round the edges and not someone to be messed with. Deciding he was satisfied, Jon prodded her shoulder to turn her around. A smile crept onto his face – “it looks great Daisy, it really does” – and something broke inside Daisy. She thought it might be the wolf. She started crying, not moving to wipe away her tears. Jon watched for only a second before stepping forward and enveloping her in a hug. He was a full head shorter than her, but she let herself be held, burying her head in his jumper.
“Jon, I think I’m evil. I think I’m a monster.”
“You’re not evil.” Jon rubbed a hand across her back, brushing the hairs away.
“You can’t know that! I chose to hurt people – oh my God! I knew I wanted to hurt people, and I let myself? I enjoyed hurting people – how did I ever delude myself into thinking I wasn’t completely evil?” Daisy was almost screaming, her fingernails pushing crescents into her palms.
“You’re not evil Daisy, honestly.”
“You don’t know me Jon, no one knows me! Not even Basira does, she’d never like me if she knew what I really am.”
“You love her.”
“Don’t look in my head, I’ve already- “
“I didn’t have to.”
“Oh.”
A silence hung in the air for a second. Jon took Daisy’s hand in his, easing her fingers away from her palm.
“I’m sorry for being a mess, really, I don’t want you to feel like you’re stuck looking after me, you can go.”
“I’m not leaving you Daisy. You’ve been through a lot, it’s perfectly understandable.”
“We’ve all gone through a lot. I don’t see Martin cutting all his hair off in the middle of the night or Melanie crying every ten seconds.”
“We don’t see Martin at all, and Melanie plots to kill Elias at least twice a day. In comparison, I think crying in your own flat after being stuck in the Buried for months is perfectly reasonable.”
Daisy sniffed, swiping at her face with the back of her palm.
“Do you really think it looks good?”
“Of course I do. Now come on, Say Yes to the Dress won’t watch itself.”
“How did- oh. Basira.”
“Indeed.”
“Will you help me do it again?”
“Anytime you want.”
Jon packed the clippers back into his bag before leaving, brushing hair from his jumper as he went. Daisy decided, maybe she was right not to kill him.
The next day, she got ready as usual. She dragged herself into the bathroom to brush her teeth and do her hair, the pink crown-shaped hairbrush and purple bobbles waiting for her in their container. She looked in the mirror and finally recognised the woman looking back at her.