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They tell her her name is Jeanne. She was in a smash-up on the I-95. She hit her head, was paralyzed for months. She learns to walk in a bright white room on a bright white floor of a medical facility somewhere in New York, and she feels no pain.
Memories come back to her, a little at a time. Playing in a yard in the sunshine, brushing the family dog, slicing her hand open on a barbed-wire fence. (She stares at the faded scar for hours after that.) She remembers school - remembers being slow at long division; strange, the troubles she had back then, when math comes easy to her now. She remembers nothing beyond her childhood, but she remembers childhood well.
She remembers Daisy. Always Daisy. Beloved Daisy, three years her elder, Jeanne had always wanted to be her. Whined to go to her friends' birthday parties, play on her soccer team. Squabbled with her for mother's favour and father's piano lessons. (She remembers her baby fingers fumbling, clumsy, over the keys; now, in physical therapy, she sails through sonatas like they're nothing, like there's muscle memory that amnesia can't erase.)
She gets better and better. She's allowed an hour on the internet each day. Eventually, she gathers the courage to type her sister's name into the search bar.
Daisy's grown up beautiful. Jeanne has to look at herself in the mirror to check that they still look as alike as they used to when they were kids, feels herself wanting to cry for the first time since she woke up - her eyes remain stubbornly dry. She asks her therapist if he thinks she can make her way out in the world again, if it would be wise to reach out to her sister; surely she must be worried. Her therapist nods wisely, and says it's time.
Daisy cries over the phone. Daisy cries when she sees her. Jeanne has no memories of being held, no memories of pain as beautiful as this. The lively wallpaper feels like home, the happy mess in the kitchen, on the work tables, feels like somewhere she could learn to belong. She wipes her eyes, too, though they're just tired, she thinks.
"I thought I'd lost you," Daisy says. "You disappeared when you were ten, I haven't - I thought you were dead. What have you been doing? Where have you been, Jeanne?"
"I don't know," Jeanne says, holding her close. "I don't remember where I lived, what I did. I don't remember anything but you, Daisy."
Daisy laughs through her tears. "Well, you live with me now. You can stay here as long as you want."
**
Daisy is a private detective. She says she became one in the hope of one day finding her - that she's never once in her life forgotten her. Jeanne stays with her as she acclimates, watches her work like she watched the doctors work, and slowly finds herself learning, picking up tricks of the trade.
The first time she goes out on a case with her sister, she thinks she might have been built for this.
She'd begged Daisy to train her with a weapon, but only managed hand-to-hand. Still, it feels right, the chase, the finding out, the making connections, and she wonders if she really can build a new life right here. She doesn't know what she has to go back to, after all.
On their third case together, the criminal they're chasing tries to shoot Daisy though the heart.
Jeanne doesn't think twice - doesn't think at all. She springs in front of her, knocks her over and out of the way, doesn't quite realize how fast she moved until the bullet lodges in her chest and she sees sparks. Until she sees herself leaking motor oil, not blood. Until she sees that Daisy's looking just as devastated as she feels.
**
She wakes up in a sterile room again, only this time there's a different reason she doesn't know her name.
This hospital - this workshop - is different. There are pretty curtains on the windows, pretty blankets on the beds just like home. She's linked up to a computer, someone reading her data files, making little changes to her, and it hurts; she makes a soft whimper against her will, and suddenly Daisy is there next to her, stroking her hair and telling her it'll all be okay.
When she wakes up next, she has a bandage on her chest. A self-healing polymer, Daisy says, now that she's all fixed up.
"What'd you fix?" she says, hearing the glitch in her voice, hearing it start to resolve. "What'd you find? What am I?"
Daisy sighs, but keeps her hand rested on Jeanne's head.
"You were sent to collect information about me," she says. "About my cases. They uploaded Jeanne's memories to make you believe you were her. They didn't count on you deciding to sacrifice yourself for me."
"I'd do it again," she tells her. "I don't care if it's not real, I'd do it again."
"I know," Daisy says. "I know, baby sis. I'd do it for you too."
She's no longer connected to the cloud; they make her an autonomous unit all on her own. She asks to stay with Daisy until she can figure her life out, asks her to help her pick a new name.
Daisy lets her stay. She says she'll let her stay forever, teach her more of the tricks of the trade. They pick up the pieces, they start right over, and they feel no pain.