Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the middle of her work day, Daisy Tonner was hit with a terrible headache.

At least, that was the best way she could think to describe it. It wasn’t pain so much as tremendous pressure on the inside of her skull, an overwhelming wave of conflicting information and emotion manifesting all at once.

When she unbowed her head and looked back out the windshield of her car, she was surprised to see the streets of London laid out before her. It was the same view that had been there before the headache, traffic trudging past the place she’d pulled over to eat her lunch. The normalcy felt disorienting on a level she couldn’t place.

She bared her teeth at the pressure and confusion, a growl rising in her throat. She’d had a shorter temper since being Sectioned, and when she was angry she felt safe, powerful. The pounding adrenaline was all she was, all she ever needed to be. She wasn’t supposed to draw on that feeling; she couldn’t remember why.

It took a long time for the feeling in her head to start to resolve into images- memories, but ones she didn’t recognize. Predominant were a pair of faces. She didn’t know the people they belonged to. She knew them better than she had anyone in her life, and she needed to see them.

Daisy grabbed for her phone, and felt distantly surprised by its buttons and bulk, even though it had always been like that, since she’d bought it as an indulgence with one of her first paychecks. The date that glowed onto the screen seemed to rattle through her brain like a marble down a track, somehow coming out the other end with the knowledge of how to find the people. Her people.

The first was in London, she felt sure. She could picture the building and had a vague sense of where it was, but no address. She started the car and set out.

-

The building was a school. No one was in evidence at the moment, lunch already over and the end of classes a couple hours out, but Daisy knew her quarry was inside. She drove around the block twice, giving out a handful of parking tickets and a warning for jaywalking, before parking across from the school to wait. Ever since signing her Section 31 no one had seemed to care much what she did as long as she did something, and showed up whenever someone called in another potential Section 31.

She sat back in her chair and tried to sort through the churning confusion of her mind. It felt like her attention was being drawn in a million directions at once, not enough to keep her from performing rote tasks like driving but too much to consider the reasoning behind her own actions. A handful of other images had cleared enough to ferret out by the time the school’s bell made her jump and the building started to disgorge teenagers, but nothing useful. Nothing that meant anything to her.

Her attention was fixed on the crowd as soon as the doors opened. The faces in her mind were adults. A teacher, maybe? She scanned the hordes of students anyway.

When she spotted the person she sought, if felt like a jolt of electricity down her spine. It was one of the students, a girl in a hijab, gesturing and smiling with her friends. Basira, her addled mind supplied. She could see the woman in her memory in the line of the teen’s nose, the cant of her shoulders; despite the age discrepancy, they were the same.

She wanted to go to her, but had no idea what she would do after that. Some part of her cried out that Basira needed her and, more importantly, she needed Basira. The teen making her way down the sidewalk didn’t look like she was in need of anything: her smile was genuine, her clothes well kept, her cheeks round and healthy. The woman in Daisy’s mind was grim and drawn.

Daisy watched until Basira vanished down into a Tube station. The girl was fine; she couldn’t go around accosting random teenagers because of memories- she felt sure they were memories and not some sort of delusion, though she couldn’t yet say why- she couldn’t trace the source of. She was fine. Nothing was going to happen that would prevent Daisy from coming back when she knew more. She was fine.

She repeated it to herself as she started the car, as she drove away. Her muscles were stiff, and her eyes started to water with the desire to go back, to seize Basira in her arms and protect her from- what? She couldn’t picture the threat, only gory snapshots and pressing terror. But the Basira in those memories was an adult. Whatever the memory- premonition?- was, Daisy had time.

Right?

She was only able to tear her thoughts away when she realized her limbs had moved automatically to follow the sense of the other person. It was a man, just as grim and drawn as the memory-Basira, with the addition of dozens of scars she couldn’t consider without an almost debilitating wave of guilt. She wondered if she’d find him like that, or as bewilderingly youthful as Basira. She couldn’t conjure up a name to match the face.

She could barely stand to stop at the station long enough to clock out, grateful her surveillance of Basira and grappling with the desire to follow her had taken the rest of the work day, allowing her to pursue her other target without delay. As she pointed her car away from London the thought of pursuit made her blood jump, her thoughts fixed even more singularly on the man in her mind. Her mouth watered at the thought of finding him.

-

The sun was low on the horizon as she arrived in Bournemouth, not setting yet but turning everything orangey-gold in slanting lines. Once there, her precise destination was as vague as before; she was grateful, as she steered her car idly through town, eyes alert, that the vehicle was done up to blend in, painted normally and with the police lights discreetly tucked away.

She tried to picture what the man might look like, if he was as young as Basira. Would he have the scars? She supposed some of them, the pockmarks dotted over his face, might be from acne. He wouldn’t have the gray streaked in his hair; would he have the glasses?

When she did spot him, she almost didn’t realize it. He was a boy, long and lanky, and the clearness of his skin jarred with every image of him she could pull out from the writhing mass in her head. Eyes behind chunky glasses skimmed over her car disinterestedly. Despite the evidence in front of her, she found herself unable to picture him unscarred, memory overlaying reality.

She turned the car around after he passed, waiting long enough that his back was nearly a speck in the distance, before starting to creep along behind him. School was well over now, but he still had a backpack hiked up on his shoulders, head bowed as though counting the cracks in the pavement.

She couldn’t help comparing him to Basira. She’d wanted to keep the young woman safe, but that was nothing compared to how she felt about this boy. Something about Basira, maybe the way she held herself or the flashes of interaction Daisy couldn’t untangle, implied that Daisy’s help and protection was appreciated, but not wholly necessary- a feeling of reciprocity. Basira could, she was sure, mostly take care of herself. She felt no such surety about the boy.

There were other differences. Where Basira had smiled and chatted, the boy was alone and scrawny in a way that couldn’t be entirely attributed to the ravages of growth spurts. His face much more closely resembled the drawn countenance of his elder self. His shoulders hunched and gave the sense that if it was windier he might simply be blown away. Something about him dredged up the horrible memory of her Sectioning scant months (and yet a lifetime) ago, Isaac descending that impossible staircase, invisible force compressing her chest. The scar on her shoulder seemed to burn.

He didn’t notice his pursuer, and she didn’t know whether to be confident in her own skill or worry about his lack of awareness.

As she contemplated this, a pair of boys rounded a corner, an intrusion on the streetscape that had been only the boy and Daisy. She was too far to hear, but one of them called out to him, half a block downhill. She pulled over as her prey (no not that never that but why) turned and slumped back up to meet them.

The new teens were taller than the boy (she fought the urge to call him her boy, still couldn’t find his name) and looked a few years older. He didn’t make eye contact as they conversed, hands fixed on the straps of his bag as they postured and gesticulated. Her stomach clenched as she sensed where things were going, but could do nothing as one of the older boys’ faces morphed into a frown, then a mocking smile as he reached out and shoved her boy down the hill. He went down hard, tumbling and rolling a short distance down the pavement before coming to a halt, and something about that, seeing him suffer and being able to do nothing, felt sickeningly familiar. As the older boys ran off laughing, she barely felt herself stepping out of the car and crossing the street. There was a fleeting impulse to give chase, to make them pay, but she choked it down and focused on her true target.

He didn’t seem to hear her lope across the street or register her presence at all until she was crouched next to him. She could smell blood.

“You okay?” she asked, the act of speaking feeling bizarrely unfamiliar.

He started, meeting her gaze with wide eyes. “Um, fine!” He shifted, winced, and the source of the blood-smell revealed itself to be his knee and shin, a long scrape marring the knobbly limb poking out from his shorts.

“Sure?” She extended a hand, pulling him to his feet. He opened his mouth to reply, but seemed to reconsider as he wobbled on the injured leg. Blood dripped into his sock. “I have a first aid kit in my car, we could get that bandaged up,” she added.

The boy grimaced. “You don’t need to trouble yourself.” Contrary to his words, he looked down with some concern, though it seemed to be focused more on the stain spreading on his sock and threatening his shoe than the injury.

“No trouble. Car’s just over there.” She darted over to his other side, wrapping her arm around his waist so pressure was taken off the leg and walking before he had a chance to deny her a third time.

“Thanks,” he muttered. His eyes stayed fixed down, the hand opposite her still clenched around the strap of his bag.

“No problem.” She smiled to see she’d managed to park so there was a bench right next to the back end of her car. “Here, sit down.” She rummaged around in the boot while Jon- Jon! That was it!- perched on the edge of the bench, looking like he was doubting his decision to follow her. His eyes darted to her clothes- she was still in uniform, she realized, it felt so incongruous to helping Jon she almost forgot- and he relaxed slightly, before she could see his thoughts slowly build his anxiety back up and the cycle began again.

“Stuff like this happen a lot?” she asked as she got him to pull his leg up onto the seat of the bench and he squirmed his backpack off to make the position more comfortable.

His eyes darted. “Uh, yeah, I guess. I’m pretty clumsy.”

He didn’t know she’d seen the bullies, then. “Your parents worry about you because of that?” She carefully cleaned his leg with alcohol wipes, and frowned at the length of the gash and the bits of ragged skin still clinging to the edges of it.

He grimaced. “Don’t have parents.” (Had she known that?) “I live with my grandmother.”

She hummed, pulling out gauze and bandages as she waited for the momentary awkwardness to pass. “You like your grandmother?”

“I guess.” He gave her on odd look. Daisy wasn’t entirely sure why she was asking, so she just kept wrapping his leg. “She’s fine.”

She hummed again. The same protective impulse thrummed in her chest. Jon looked uncomfortably down at his leg as she started fixing the bandages in place. Did he look happy? Cared for? She got the sense that he wasn’t. “Are you happy?”

“What?” His gazed jerked up to her, eyebrows furrowed. Daisy set the first aid supplies aside.

“Are you happy, Jon?”

His shoulders hunched in, but then his eyes went wide. “How did you know my name?”

She considered him for a split second: the too-large secondhand clothes, the protruding bones, the way he’d tried to cover for the bullies and implied it was a regular occurrence. She’d already gotten closer than she had with Basira. She’d convinced herself that Basira would be fine. But Basira had seemed happy. Jon seemed to shrink from attention, was still out wandering the streets as dinner approached instead of at home. Sure, the early fall weather was still pleasant enough, but he still had his bag; had he even stopped home when school ended?

She thought of the coffin. Did Jon know exactly how dangerous the world was, beyond bullies and scraped knees? Whether he did or not, the mixed-up headache-pressure part of her mind felt sure that that part of the world knew about him. It also felt, down in her bones, that it was her job to keep him safe. She owed him that.

Jon’s arms were still behind him, holding onto the edges of the bench seat to steady him as she worked on his leg. It felt like the most natural movement in the world to take the handcuffs from her belt and click them shut around his skinny wrists, hand going up to his back to steady him as the loss of support tipped him backward. He needed to come with her, but she doubted either Jon or his grandmother would be easy to convince on that point. Her blood throbbed urgency.

He gasped in a little breath. “Hey!”She pulled him up so he was sitting balanced on the bench. His eyes were wide and slowly growing scared. “Am I- am I under arrest? I didn’t do anything!”

Daisy glanced at the empty street, mostly shops made ghostly by the ending of the tourist season. Jon’s voice was growing louder and shriller, and he was starting to stand. She swept her arm under his knees and picked him up. The boot was still open.

“Hey!” he yelled, then, breaths coming shorter and shorter as he started to panic, “Stop! Help!”

There was a fair bit of gauze remaining in the first aid kit. She stuffed some into Jon’s mouth, using another piece to tie it around his head. Jon grunted, flinching back from her. She gently pushed him so he was lying down in the boot. He rubbed his face against the carpeting for a second, trying to dislodge the makeshift gag, before he tried kicking out at her, then sitting up and climbing out. She could see the whites of his eyes all the way around his irises (why was that, of all things, familiar?) as she grabbed the roll of bandages and started to tie his ankles together.

When Jon was secure, unable to sit up unaided without any limbs free, Daisy stepped back to the bench. She quickly tidied away the first aid kit, then set it and his backpack alongside Jon in the boot. There was a pleading edge to his muffled noises and she closed him in, and the last she saw before the latch clicked was wide, teary eyes. They tore at her heart, but she felt sure this was right even if she couldn’t articulate why. She would unravel the mess in her head and once she understood she could explain it to Jon, and he wouldn’t be so frightened anymore.

Chapter Text

Jon squeezed his eyes shut, though it made no difference against the dark, and tried not to cry. He didn’t know whether breathing was difficult because of his fear or the material stuffed into his mouth. What if the boot was airtight! Should he be trying to… breathe less?

He didn’t understand how this could be happening. Sure, the strange woman had unnerved him a bit, with the hungry gleam in her eyes as she looked at him, and the uniform. He knew basically all the police in the area from all the times they’d had to haul him home when he was younger, but he didn’t recognize her. Still, the uniform looked real, not like a costume, so he’d assumed she was passing through from somewhere else. Or a new hire, she was probably young enough. Still real police. Still safe.

Everyone always said not to get in cars with strangers, it made him feel stupid to think, but he hadn’t! They were only near the car! They were in public! Maybe Mrs. Cotton from the bookshop had been looking out from her flat above the shop and had seen. Maybe the real police were on their way. They’d been in public.

That hope faded as the car kept going, and going, and going, and he never heard sirens behind them. The other objects shifted and banged into him occasionally. It was dark, and he could feel the small space pressing in on him even without being able to see its boundaries.

Breathing got harder again whenever his thoughts drifted to what the woman might want with him. The look in her eyes, the way her nostrils had flared at the smell of his blood, and she’d absently licked her lips at the sight of it. He was going to die. She was going to kill him, he was sure of it.

She’d known his name. He was sure he hadn’t introduced himself, but she’d called him Jon. Had she been there longer than he thought, heard Mark or Tom use it? But they usually called him Sims, not Jon.

Had she been stalking him? How long had he been in danger without ever realizing?

Instead of letting himself cry (much he couldn’t stop he didn’t want to be here), he rolled over the bitter irony in his head. He’d been saved from Mr. Spider by a bully (and he hadn’t thought of Mr. Spider in ages didn’t want to consider what about the woman had reminded him of the book even before she’d thrown him in here) and now a different set of bullies had provided the pretext for his actual murderer to get close. He hoped Gran wouldn’t be too upset.

She’d probably think he’d run away. They all would, with how many times the police had had to bring him back over the years. Would they even look for him?

They drove on for several small eternities and a few longer ones, the scenery outside presumably changing in the way the darkness before Jon’s eyes never did. It hurt to have his arms pulled back, and he couldn’t lay his head down without landing uncomfortably on the knot of the gag or setting his glasses askew. No amount of squirming shifted any of his binds, and he stopped trying when a toss of his head nearly flung his glasses off into the limitless dark. He couldn’t stop jerking against the cuffs. Couldn’t you get out of handcuffs by dislocating a thumb? Could he manage that? The pain of the metal biting into his skin over and over felt like a release for all his panic and fear, the physical version of the scream he couldn’t get out.

When he finally felt the car stop and heard a door slam open and shut, the boot wasn’t opened. The space was too insulated to hear footsteps, but as time stretched on he felt sure she’d left the vehicle. Maybe she was getting whatever she would use to kill him, before driving out somewhere remote to do it. Maybe she’d toss the gun or knife or shovel in with him for the drive there and make him lie alongside it knowing what she would use it for. Maybe she would just leave him here forever.

It was as he was trying and failing not to think of car compactors (would he hear the machinery first would it be quick or would he feel every bone as it broke) that the lid finally opened. The rush of fresh air against his face stung cold against the wetness of tear tracks, and he hated that she was seeing him cry. He countered it with the best glare he could summon while squinting at the influx of dim light and the loudest grunts and groans he could manage, not trying to form words so much as make as much noise as possible and hopefully attract attention.

He let out an abbreviated shriek as something heavy landed on top of him, cutting off his vision once again, and hands seemed to prod at him through whatever it was from every direction. He couldn’t parse what was happening until he was lifted up and out of the boot, his face pressed against a shoulder.

It was a quilt, a large one, wrapped around him so tightly he wasn’t sure he could have moved even if the cuffs and ties had fallen off at that moment. He realized with a sinking heart that it kept the gag and the cuffs and the ties hidden from curious eyes. He squirmed and kept making noise, hoping that that would signal to any onlookers that he was in distress, not just a sick or sleeping person being carried.

He had no idea how long he’d been in there, but it was dark now. There might not be anyone still out to notice.

A hand cupped the back of his head, holding him to the shoulder more tightly. “Shh. Do you want me to drop you?” She sounded like she was smiling. He froze at the threat.

He could hear the boot being shut again, and feel the cadence of his captor’s steps, but he couldn’t see where they were going with his face pressed into her shirt. Shortly, the outdoor air shifted to the still air of a building, and they started up a set of stairs.

Finally, a door was kicked shut behind them and he was set down on a couch. He blinked, shaking his head a bit to try to fix the awkward way his glasses rested on his nose from being smushed against her shoulder. The woman leaned in and adjusted them for him. Jon glared. She ruffled his hair with a slight smile. “I’ll be right back.”

He craned his neck to watch as she walked around the couch and out the same door they’d come in, and then he was alone.

Alone in what appeared to be an entirely normal flat. Small, a bit messy, but normal. He only felt at ease with the lack of bloodstains and torture implements for a moment before his stomach curled into knots again.

Between the way her fingers had laid against his skin just a bit too long as she’d bandaged him up and the soft, affectionate look in her eyes as she’d ruffled his hair… even Jon could add two and two and get four. He could see through an ajar door into the bedroom; the bed had a heavy wrought iron frame. Perfect for tying kidnapped teenagers to. He started to shake. Was she…? Or maybe he was going to be trafficked. He whimpered even though he tried not to.

Maybe he could get the neighbors’ attention. This was a flat, not a house, there had to be neighbors nearby. Glancing around and finding nothing else, he leaned upward to bang his head against the wall, hoping the rhythmic thumps would attract help.

When the door opened, he flinched hard, ducking his head and pulling his knees upward as much as the bulk of the quilt would allow. He considered straightening up and trying to pretend he wasn’t scared before deciding he’d take whatever comfort he still had left and curling up tighter, shuddering.

Something dropped on the floor next to the couch and in his periphery he saw the woman kneel down beside him. She set a hand on his back, and he let out a squeak. “Hey, you’re alright, you’re alright.” She rubbed circles into his back in a parody of comfort as she murmured, too close to his ear, “It’s okay, Jon. You’re safe. You’re okay.”

Like she thought he was stupid.

He made a keening noise through his nose and shook his head, vision blurring with tears. He couldn’t press any closer to the back of the couch, couldn’t get away from her hand. He was so well ensnared he could barely move.

“Jon.” She moved, and for a second he dared to hope she was going away, but then she settled on the couch and pulled him into her lap. He cringed and tried to squirm away, but could do nothing to stop her stroking his hair as she shifted him out of his balled up posture. “Were you hitting your head to make that noise?” She brushed hair away from his face, fingers resting lightly on his temple. “Are you hurt?”

He looked down, away, anywhere but at her. He wanted to be anywhere else. He wanted to go home. Tears dripped down and dotted the quilt. She pushed his hair back from his forehead, palm flat against his skull and tilting his head upward slightly. “Jon. I need you to tell me if you’ve hurt yourself.” She forced him to meet her eyes, face more serious than he’d yet seen and voice stern.

He hadn’t hit his head very hard, just enough to make a sound. He shook his head, moving enough under her hand that a curl came loose and fell back in front of his eyes. She pushed it away, then rested her thumb under his eye, wiping away the tears there. More welled up as he pictured how easy it would be for her to push that thumb into his socket. How much would that hurt? How far would she have to get before he couldn’t see anything from the afflicted eye anymore?

Her hand hovered around the gag, as though she was considering removing it. He made a pleading noise, made his eyes go wide. If she took it out he could yell, bite, something.

She looked over his head, glancing around the flat and then back at him. For a moment, her face dropped into exhaustion. He hated her. What right did she have to be tired? Before he could get too angry, the expression set into something like resolve. Jon shivered and tried to shrink into something too small to be noticed.

The arm around his shoulders squeezed tighter for a moment before he was shifted around again. Then her arm went back under his knees and he was being carried again.

He started to panic when he realized they were headed to the bedroom. Without thinking, he started to thrash, making as much noise as he could to register his objections. The arms around him tightened instead of dropping him. When they did let him go, it was to bounce onto the mattress. He couldn’t breathe, he wanted this to stop!

“Relax,” she said, leaning over him. He jerked in fear, but she only pulled on the quilt so it was fixed tighter around him. The she pulled the blankets on the bed over him, tucking their ends under the mattress so he was held tightly in place. “It’s just a bed. You’re fine. Maybe try to catch a nap; I’ll be back in just a bit.”

Before he could fully register what she was saying, she was gone.

-

Jon did not take a nap. There was nothing he could make noise with on the bed, and he couldn’t move enough to roll off or get a proper look around the room. By his best guess, he was only left alone to sweat under the blankets and speculate on what would happen to him for about an hour.

He couldn’t stop working his wrists in the handcuffs, the motion almost instinctual after doing it for hours in the boot.

He could hear the woman return and move around her kitchen as thought she was back from a normal round of grocery shopping. The smell of something fried and spicy reached him in the bedroom, and he was uncomfortably aware of how empty his stomach was. And how full his bladder was. How long had it been since this ordeal started? He wished she’d just come and do whatever she was going to do to him; at least then he’d know.

When she came into the bedroom, she looked like she was trying to suppress a smile to look serious. It made him want to start crying again. He couldn’t imagine anything that might make her smile that went well for him.

She sat on the edge of the bed and untucked the blankets and unwrapped the quilt. It felt like he could breathe just a little easier, unencumbered by them. He wiggled and moaned a bit as she helped him sit up, trying to communicate how badly he wanted the rest gone as well.

She kept a hand on his back when he was upright, forcing eye contact again. “If I take this off, you’re not going to make a fuss or start yelling and screaming.” Jon nodded frantically; promises to kidnappers didn’t count, and he needed some way to get help. Her gaze didn’t falter. “All you’re going to do if you do start yelling is annoy me. I’m a police constable, no one’s going to bother calling the cops for you. If anyone asks what the racket’s about, I’ll tell them that my little brother’s come to stay with me, and that you have paranoid delusions. I’m really sorry for the bother, things are bad now because we’re switching his medications. Everything should quiet down within a couple weeks.” She said the last part in an affected, genial tone, just how she would convince the hypothetical neighbor. Jon stared. Could she really do that? Just… convince everyone he was crazy?

Maybe if she untied him he could run out of the flat. If they actually saw him, anyone could see he and the kidnapper didn’t look anything alike, so she obviously wasn’t his sister.

At least now he had an idea of how long he had before she killed him. Or… did something else. A couple weeks…

She seemed to take his motionless silence as agreement, and started pulling at the knot of the gag. It came out in a coughing, spitty mess. She wrinkled her nose and left him swallowing and working his jaw, probably throwing it away. Maybe the police would find it with his DNA on it. Only they wouldn’t, because she was the police. Unless she was lying?

When she came back it was with a glass of water, which she set on the nightstand before coming up behind him to unlock the handcuffs. He stiffened, trying to turn his head enough to watch her in his periphery without being obvious. “What are you going to do to me? Who are you?” He hated how small and scared his voice came out.

The cuffs clicked open, and Jon brought his hands around to his front so fast his shoulders clicked. He bit down the pain, rubbing at his wrists. They were red, and the skin was broken in places, smeared with drying droplets of blood. The flesh around his thumbs felt numb. The woman moved closer, sucking in a breath. “Don’t touch that.”

She left again, returning with a different first aid kit from the one in the car boot (what did she need so many for). She sat on the bed, pulling his hands into her lap. He tried to jerk away, but she held them in place. “How did you even manage to make yourself bleed? I’ve never seen someone cut themselves up like this. And they’ll probably bruise, too,” she tutted as she started cleaning the area. “Only you, Jon.”

He flinched. “You don’t even know me!” He could feel sobs crawling up his throat to choke his words off, but he managed to get the sentence out ahead of them. What right did this woman have to sigh over him and act at though she knew what he was like?

She glanced up at him, a complicated look on her face, before sighing and returning to his wrists. They sat in silence as she worked. Jon could feel his lip starting to tremble with the difficulty of keeping himself from crying, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. At length, she said quietly, “I’m Daisy.”

“What?” he blurted out. He froze; he wanted to cover his mouth, but his hands were still in her- Daisy’s grip. He couldn’t help it, it was such a nonthreatening name it surprised him!

She snorted and finished with the bandages on his wrists. “Scar on the back of my shoulder. Got it when I was a little younger than you, doctor said it looked like a daisy.” She passed him the water from the nightstand, watching intently as he cautiously sipped at it. He hadn’t realized how dry his throat was.

“Oh.” He cradled the glass close to his chest, watching as Daisy made quick work of the ties around his ankles. He scooted to the edge of the bed and kicked his legs, reveling in the freedom of movement. His eyes flicked to the door out of the flat.

Daisy’s hand landed firm on his shoulder.

Chapter Text

As if it wasn’t enough to have the job transfer sprung on him out of practically nowhere (Mr. Bouchard’s email must’ve just gotten lost, it wasn’t as though Martin kept his inbox particularly well organized, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a shock, although the slight pay raise was good news) his first impression on his new boss had to be this . Diana didn’t think too much of him, since she remembered back when he was new and really didn’t have any idea what he was doing, even though he’d improved a lot since then, but she at least wasn’t liable to fire him. He didn’t think Jonathan Tonner would be so forgiving.

He chewed anxiously on his lip as he hustled through the Archives, not wanting to run but not willing to dawdle. He was an idiot, he should have guessed that the man in a suit in the only room that looked like a proper office would be the Head Archivist. Who else would he be?!

He just had to find the dog quickly, and everything could be fine. He didn’t feel as confident in that statement as he had before he asked his boss if he’d seen the dog as part of his efforts to get rid of it before said boss found out, but it would be fine. He needed to keep this job. How difficult could it be to find a dog in an archive, anyway?

Martin’s stomach tied itself into knots as he realized the Archives were quite a bit bigger than he’d thought, and even more bafflingly organized than he’d known. What had Mrs. Robinson had against nice, orderly lines of shelves? She may have been a bit dotty, but moving them to form a labyrinth like this seemed beyond the capabilities of one little old woman. Who had she got to help her?

The dog hadn’t had a collar, it was almost certainly a stray. Even if it didn’t damage anything outright, it might still have fleas! Did fleas damage documents the way other insects did? What if the dog gave his new boss fleas?

He was so focused on scanning for signs of movement at dog-height that he didn’t notice the woman until he’d collided with her.

“Sorry!” He stumbled backward, jerking his eyes up to meet hers. She was tall, with choppy blonde hair and a muscular build. Intimidating. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

The woman smiled crookedly, looking unperturbed by the collision. “’S fine.”

He waffled awkwardly for a moment. “You’re… Sasha?” He’d thought he’d known the Sasha being transferred to the Archives, at least by her face, but it was entirely possible there was more than one. It didn’t seem likely anyone else would make it past the new Archivist.

Her expression flickered strangely before she snorted, huffing a strand of hair out of her face. “No, I’m Daisy. I’m Jon’s sister, figured I’d help him move his things down from Research and then he said there was a dog…?”

Martin cringed. “Right. The dog.” Maybe he wasn’t as much of a stickler for protocol and whatnot, if he’d let his sister down. Or those exceptions were only for himself, and wouldn’t be extended to his subordinates. Certainly not to the ones who let stray dogs in.

Daisy nodded and strode off, gesturing for Martin to follow, head cocked to listen for any telltale noises. She seemed much more confident navigating the maze of shelves than Martin was, and he trailed a few steps behind her. Should he break off to search on his own? Only now that she was here, Daisy’s confident movements made the idea of finding his own way through- and eventually out- of the Archives feel that much more intimidating.

“I’m Martin, by the way,” he muttered lamely as he trailed in her wake. She just nodded again, not looking back. He was just about to make another go at conversation when Daisy’s entire body went stiff, as though she saw or heard something he couldn’t, and she darted around a corner.

Martin jogged to catch up, rounding yet another row of haphazard shelving to see Daisy rising from a crouch, unapologetic stray panting happily in her arms. The surrounding files and boxes seemed unharmed. Tension he didn’t know he was carrying flowed out of his shoulders. “You found him.”

She nodded, jerking her head for him to continue following as she made her unerring way out of the shelves and back into the bullpen. He felt somewhat useless as he followed, neither able to capture the dog nor make his way through his own workplace unassisted. How did she know her way around so well already?

A vaguely familiar man, one of the faces Martin knew but didn’t know from around the Institute, ambled into the bullpen as they emerged. His eyes locked on Daisy’s burden. “Is that a dog?!”

She ignored him, instead glancing over her shoulder at Martin, mouth still crooked in that smile. “Don’t take Jon too seriously, his bark is worse than his bite.” Without any further comment beyond a chuckle at her own joke, she loped out of the Archives entirely.

Martin and the other man stared at each other. “...Right,” Martin started. “I’m Martin. Blackwood. I’m guessing you’re Tim?”

The other nodded. “You work in the Library, right?”

“I used to,” he said carefully, wary that Tim’s reaction would be in line with Jon’s. “Mr. Bouchard reassigned me to the Archives. We’ll be working together.”

Tim smiled. “Alright. Any preference to which desk you take? If we don’t pick before Sasha gets here she’ll decide for us.”

Chapter Text

Clarity came and went, her entire path, purpose, and past laid out clearly on some days, while on others Daisy was as muddled and confused as the very first. She tried taking notes, on the better days, but when a bad day came along again and she tried to parse them she was always left with the conviction that she was losing her mind, that nothing she’d written made sense, that she needed help. But on the good days everything was so real and true and immediate, memories she could never have imagined, not matter how deeply she might fall into delusion. She couldn’t create that. (Could she?)

Jon was one of the few constants, no matter how clear or confused her thoughts were. On her bad days, when all she had was the entrenched feeling that he was hers to take care of and protect, seeing him settled something deep inside her, not matter how slumped and miserable his affect. She knew it wasn’t because she was losing her mind, losing touch with reality; seeing him upset stung every bit as badly as it should have; stung worse, hurt her more deeply than others’ emotions ever did. If she was truly detached from morality and reason, too deeply entrenched in obsession and greed, the look on his face that first morning, when he saw she’d replaced the knobs on the bedroom and bathroom so that they locked sturdily and from the outside while he’d slept, wouldn’t have felt like someone tearing off pieces of her soul. (Right?)

The good days came with guilt, as well. She could see the hand of the Hunt in her muddled actions, the thrill at finding her quarry, the bloody urge to keep it at any cost, the high of adrenaline at having someone at her mercy. All the things she’d sworn she’d resist, sworn she wouldn’t turn on Jon of all people (again). All blindly indulged. He was so young. She’d never seen him without the worm scars, but here he was, unmarked by Corruption or any of the rest, haunted by the afterimage of scars in her memory even when articulating their source felt like gibberish.

So many things felt less complicated on the good days, but never Jon. If the sight of him hiding tears or flinching from her touch ached when she could barely remember why he was so important to her, it felt like dying by inches when she did. Everything struck harder when she could make sense of the memories that made her painfully aware of how small he was, how expressive, how alive. When she had the knowledge to recognize that having him here was pure selfishness, that whatever she’d thought in those first addled hours, the threats to Jon’s safety had none of the immediacy that might justify what she was doing to him.

She wouldn’t give him back, though.

It wasn’t as though she could , she reasoned, not when he knew her name and her face and her job and would almost certainly get her arrested. She couldn’t do what she needed to from prison. If she returned him to his grandmother now, his brief association with her might very well put him in greater danger than before, and there would be nothing she could do to protect him. Having him there kept her herself, reminded her to keep the bloody, panting beast on a short leash, kept her human. There were a thousand ways to argue that the benefits of keeping Jon with her, especially once she finally convinced him she didn’t want to hurt him, that she cared about him and wanted him safe and happy (she had to believe that she could, that she would, that he wouldn’t be this miserable, frightened shadow forever- a shadow that was still better than the empty specter of her memories) outweighed the risks and harm.

She knew, though, in the deepest, most honest parts of herself, that none of those rationalizations were why she wouldn’t- couldn’t- let him go. She was selfish , and she’d been lonely for so long, and even if he were the most capable, confident, competent person in the world she could never really believe Jon didn’t need someone looking out for him. She wanted the companionship, the reassurance, the living, breathing proof that she was making some kind of difference (a negative one, she thought in the dark hours where she lay on her makeshift bed on the sofa and listened to Jon muffling sobs on the other side of the bedroom door, but a tangible one, proof that her presence, her knowledge, weren’t futile, that things weren’t fated to be as they’d been). And it was all too easy to take the bits of Jon’s childhood she knew and the things the parenting and psychology books she’d checked out from the library, kept tucked under the sofa where Jon wouldn’t find them, said about “unconditional positive regard” and “attachment” and conclude that he could be better off with her. She knew his ears were always perked for mentions of his own name when she turned on the evening news; it ate at her that she’d been barely able to find mention of his disappearance anywhere, in the news or at work, even as she let it reinforce the conviction that he would be better off, better loved, with her. She hated the despair that ate at Jon’s expression with every day it seemed no one was looking for him. It felt right, an echo of comfort clawed out of cold earth and unimaginable pressure, to hug this growth-spurt-frail teenager close, even as the culpability for the purpling bruises climbing his wrists turned her stomach.

It was all a balm for the part of herself that was continually drawn to thoughts of Basira, as well. The flat wasn’t big enough for two people, let alone three; hazy memories told her nothing bad would happen to Basira for years yet; Jon couldn’t look out for himself the same way she could; Basira was cared for and happy in a way Jon hadn’t been. Daisy gritted her teeth and reminded herself that whatever settling of her soul she’d gain from taking Basira, it would be outweighed by what she’d be stealing from her, things Jon hadn’t had to lose, friends and connection and security. She could make up for what she was taking from Jon, she had to, she was sure of it; she’d never be able to remedy that lack if she took Basira (she missed her wanted confirmation she was there and alive both the people she cared about under her watch).

Keeping Jon was criminal, and arguably cruel as well. She was too selfish not to. She’d just have to figure out how to avoid suspicion, and how to… convince Jon to want to stay. How to keep him from leaving (escaping she should at least be honest in her own head) in the meantime.

She clutched at the idea of taking care of Jon through days where the pounding-pressure headache returned with such force that she could only think of how important he was, how much she needed him safe, and the days where she was haunted by the remembered-unremembered specter of his older self, shrinking away from a knife to his throat. She’d do better than that, better than her past-future self and better than Jon’s grandmother and better than the half-recalled figments of people who’d claimed-would-claim to care for Jon and abandoned him when he needed them most. She just had to be consistent, and genuine, and gentle, and eventually he’d come around; she had to believe that.

-

Daisy spent the entire workday trying to build up confidence in her ability to explain things to Jon as much as she could, on her first really good day after taking him. None of it prevented her stomach from twisting with anxiety with every minute that brought the conversation closer.

She was always somewhat surprised to arrive home and see that the bathroom hadn’t been destroyed, unsure if he was waiting to act out until he had a better idea of her reaction or if wanton destruction just hadn’t occurred to him yet. Whatever the reason, she could tell that today Jon had even picked at his lunch and riffled through the books she’d left him, which was better than she’d hoped or expected (he needed to eat he was so clearly underfed she was supposed to stop that). He was also curled up in the dry bathtub with a towel tossed over his head, impossible to tell whether he was asleep or silently crying. She’d make sure he took some blankets and pillows with him in the future, in case he was napping.

She smiled hesitantly, trying to seem approachable and nonthreatening. “Hey.” He sat up, spun, and wiped at his face, pressing his back against the wall.

She stepped into the bathroom, trying to go slowly and telegraph her movements. She was hit by a sudden memory of Jon, before the Change, flinching whenever she’d moved too fast. She hadn’t hurt this Jon like she had his older self, but she assumed the same principle might apply, and resolved to tamp down the urge for quick, casual affection.

Jon stared up with her, slumped and red-eyed. She reached out a hand in a silent offer to help him up. He just stared emptily. He wasn’t supposed to go blank like that, she was supposed to fix it.

“What are you going to do to me?” he croaked, nose and throat still clogged from crying. Daisy tried not to tense; he hadn’t voiced his fear that clearly in all the days since she’d taken him. Maybe he sensed the conversation hanging on Daisy’s horizon like a flock of storm clouds, or maybe it was just luck that his burst of courage (she told herself it was courage and not despair or feeling so wrung out he didn’t care what happened, had to believe things would get better over time and not worse) had coincided with Daisy having herself together enough to answer.

She jerked her head. “C’mon. This is a couch kind of conversation.” She’d spent all day debating exactly how much to tell him. On the one hand, more information would probably make him more likely to stay, if he believed it; on the other, knowing about the Entities seemed like a direct route to attracting their attention.

He pulled himself up reluctantly, ignoring her hand once again. Daisy let it drop and led him out of the room, striding over to the couch. Jon stared at the door and his trainers lined up neatly beside it, unworn since she’d first made him take them off, with naked longing, but with Daisy within arm’s reach from her place on the couch he had little choice but to join her, pulling his knees to his chest. “What are you going to do to me?” he asked again flatly.

Daisy sighed. She wanted to pull him into her arms- the first version of him she’d known had liked being held, if he knew the person, but that man had both slightly greater trust in Daisy and a history of experiences with the Vast that may have made the idea of physical grounding more appealing. Instead she just looked at him across miles of couch. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”

Jon’s shoulders hunched. “You don’t have to lie. I’m not stupid.” There was a flicker of anger in that, and Daisy tried not to show her relief. Anything was better than that empty blankness, all too reminiscent of the Archive.

“I’m not, Jon. I’m not going to hit you, or hurt you, or anything else. I’d like for you to grow up happy and healthy and safe. That’s all.”

He looked at her in disbelief, betrayal that showed just how little he believed her flitting around the edges of his expression. “Why.”

Daisy scrubbed a hand over her face. “When you were younger, you found a Leitner.”

Jon went rigid. “How do you know that.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You were- were stalking me, weren’t you? Before...?” His voice pitched higher as he stared at her, unwilling to put the word kidnapping out into the world.

“No,” she cut him off before he could work himself up. “Something like that leaves… a mark. And if I could tell, so could- other things.” A slight bending of the truth, but more likely to be well-received than an outright refusal to explain how she actually knew.

Jon dug both hands into his hair, gripping tight. “So you took me because- because of Mr. Spider. Is he going to- to come back?” His breaths got shorter, the idea clearly a fear he’d considered before.

“There’s more than one monster in the world, Jon. Once you’ve met one, the others are more likely to take an interest.” She hated to take that bit of innocence away from him, to watch him curl into a ball at the confirmation he hadn’t met the sole terror in the world. Hated being unable to comfort him better as he hovered on the edge of hyperventilating, and hoped the conversation would improve things after the initial pain, like lancing a blister.

“The book was years ago! Nothing, nothing came! You’re wrong! You’re lying!” His eyes were wide, lit with a frantic light.

“I’m not.” She kept her voice soft. She didn’t know how to comfort him- if Jon even wanted to be comforted. “I just want to keep you safe. The more you cooperate with that, the more freedom I can give you. Try to run away, or make me use the story about the delusions, or try to hurt yourself or destroy things, the more time you’ll have to spend locked up. Whether or not you leave this flat, and how soon, is entirely up to you.” Was it really better to give him all the bad news at once? Too late to take it back now.

He was too stubborn not to try running away at least a few times, even with the implicit threat of unknown monsters. She doubted she’d be able to take him out in public any time soon. She realized with a pang that this Jon likely saw her similarly to how his adult self- original self? This Jon would be an adult eventually, if Daisy had anything to say about it- had seen Elias. Inscrutable and vague, with too much power over his life and a plethora of empty assurances to keep him in line. Which didn’t set her expectations for his cooperation any higher.

“Just let me go home!” The tears were back, and Daisy wanted more than anything to pull him into her arms, but she was already being plenty selfish. She stayed on her side of the couch.

“I know you’re not going to believe me, or listen. You’re going to try to run. But Jon,” she leaned a little closer, hoping proximity would underline her words where touch couldn’t, “there is nowhere on this earth you can go where I won’t eventually find you and bring you back. Anyone you could go to with a chance at keeping me away indefinitely has motives far, far worse than mine.” She shuddered at the thought of him somehow seeking out Elias, or another avatar. She needed to make sure she didn’t push him into something worse than the Archives. “The sooner you accept that, the happier we can both be.”

Jon stayed curled up, crying and rocking back and forth.

-

Every moment, Daisy felt like she was finding new adjustments to make to ensure she could keep Jon in her life. Sometimes they were founded entirely in logic and reason: the notes she’d disseminated to the neighbors explaining that she’d taken in her younger brother, with the lie about his mental health and a description that was hopefully specific enough that they’d call her if they spotted Jon wandering alone without being identifiable if missing persons flyers for him ever did go out; the shy conversations with coworkers that would hopefully occur to them before the truth if Jon ever made it to the police; the locks and novels and workbooks and bandages that she hoped were enough to keep Jon occupied in the long hours he spent locked in the bathroom while she was at work, enough for the gashes on his wrists to heal right, enough to keep him caught up with his classmates (things would settle down he’d be able to go to a normal school again someday she wasn’t taking a normal life from him just putting it on pause she knew it). Other times, they seemed brought on by memories she could only sometimes grasp, automatic movements to bring home Jon’s favorite takeaway (he’d never told her what it was she didn't always know how she knew), to withdraw money from an account belonging to a man she’d never heard of (though the vague gratitude for the information, the visceral dislike for whoever “Peter Lukas” was, and the gut-punch shock of the eye-watering balance confirming her conviction that he’d never notice her occasional thefts stayed with her just fine). The camera was one of those.

She’d been poking through the shelves of one of the secondhand shops between the station and her flat (and all of which had been seeing her much more frequently since Jon brought the need for twice as much food and a bigger place to live and an entire wardrobe of clothes for a growing boy with him) when she saw it, a battered but cared-for Polaroid camera with half a dozen boxes of photo paper sitting next to it. It was one of her worse days, when she could barely make heads or tails of the new impulses and feelings that had been pressed upon her (one of the days that brought her a dissonant sympathy for dementia patients, stealing away reasoning and memory in flashes and bursts before forcing them back into her skull in dribs and drabs) and the sight of it made her stomach twist in anxiety. She was struck by the feeling that she’d been forgetting it, that she needed it to keep Jon safe, to make sure he was himself. It felt weighted with the same feeling as knowing she was being called out to a likely Section 31, only tinged with an edge of reassurance instead of iron-rich blood. She couldn’t sort out the disparate threads explaining the need, but she knew that the camera was a protection, of sorts, not the source of her unease.

She bought it alongside a handful of shirts that she hoped Jon would like, the complicated algebra of determining the tastes of a teenage boy further obscured by the layered not-memories in her head and his continued reluctance to do or say anything he thought might anger her, expressing set opinions on anything but going back to his grandmother chief among them. She tried to shove down the feelings about the camera and she finished making her way home. Jon always noticed when she was off like that, even if he thought she didn’t see the way his movements were stiff and cautious whenever her thoughts were occupied with the weird stuff (the way his eyes had widened in horror and he’d started shaking the time she’d come home with blood speckled across her blouse). There were plenty of other reasons to buy an instant camera; she could have pictures of Jon without having to risk him being recognized by the person developing them; she’d finally have something to show her coworkers when they made inquiries into “that brother of hers,” proof that Jon was real and with her even when she wasn’t by his side. If she put the photos on display, tucked them in her wallet, framed a few, maybe the part of Jon that was sure his stay was temporary and she was going to somehow get rid of him would be won over.

Finally back in the flat, Daisy made a clattering production of moving to the kitchen, out of sight of the bathroom and bedroom doors, once she’d undone the lock to let Jon out. She knew he treasured the moments where he was able to move freely and out of her sight; she tried to give him that comfort whenever she could, whatever scraps of privacy and movement she could afford him trapped in the small flat with her. She was looking for a bigger place, where Jon could have more space of his own; he would be happier, then, she was sure of it.

She fiddled with the camera as she listened to Jon creep out of the bathroom and dart into the bedroom, door remaining pointedly open, so she couldn’t lock it without him being forewarned (she wished he could trust her more than that). She knew he was most likely trying to work together pieces of a plan to escape, but she tried not to let it bother her; she couldn’t- shouldn’t- interfere when he hadn’t done anything yet, and she was confident she’d be able to get him back before he did any real damage when the attempt finally came. She quietly hoped that letting him really try and bringing him back anyway might help Jon come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t going anywhere in a way stifling any attempts might not. She loaded the paper into the camera and took a few experimental shots of the kitchen, playing with the focus and distance before awkwardly turning it to point it at her own face. It came out crooked and off-center, but the concreteness of an unshifting representation of her appearance settled whatever anxiety had drawn her to the camera.

She made her way back into the main area of the flat, taking care to make her steps loud and distinct as she settled on the sofa, nearly toppling the bedding piled on a side table to make her makeshift sleeping quarters available for daytime use with an elbow.

“Jon, y’have a minute?” She tried to seem as though everything were normal, hoping that not acknowledging the truth of the situation unless Jon brought it up first might help him acclimate, trying not to act as though she expected tears or hostility even as she braced to react correctly.

Jon crept into view in the bedroom doorway, shoulders tucked up and arms wrapped around himself, not meeting her eyes. “Yes, Daisy?” His voice was quiet, subdued, none of the sharp edges she knew he could have. At least he was talking, nothing like the stomach-twisting reminder of the days after her explanation when he’d remained totally silent, barely moving without prompting.

The scrape that had first brought her into contact with him was covered with a regular bandage and hidden beneath jeans whose hems dragged along the carpet, just a bit too long, but his wrists were still wrapped in gauze. He picked at the sores there when he was anxious, which as nearly all the time (the thought made her stomach curdle) and Daisy hadn’t been able to come up with a means of stopping him that wasn’t outright draconian. He made a sad figure, but she brought the camera to her face and clicked the shutter anyway.

Jon’s head jerked up at the sound, eyes wide and owlish. His eyes flicked between her face and the camera as she shook the photo and watched the image fade into view. Daisy smiled, trying to keep the edges gentle (she’d never been good at gentle or reassuring but this was Jon she had to learn). “C’mere!”

He took a faltering step forward, and she kept waving her hand to beckon him closer until he was within arm’s reach and she could pull him in, trying to keep her grip gentle and slow, so he could pull away if he wanted. Jon let himself be pulled up to the sofa and down into Daisy’s lap, let her wrap one arm around his waist and tuck his head under her chin as her free hand held out the camera in front of them. “Say cheese!”

His spine stayed stiff as Daisy held the photo where they could both see; she grinned- it was a good picture, even with the contrast between her own happy grin and Jon’s cautious bewilderment. (She didn't know why it was right it was safe now Jon was safe how could she have forgotten for so long?) He didn’t look scared- she’d take it. “What do you think?”

Jon pulled his shoulders in even tighter. “It’s- it’s good?”

She pressed an impulsive kiss to the top of his head (she’d never been so tactile before but the awareness that crept in and out was starving for it wished she could hold Jon against her chest every night the way she had the first night, when there hadn’t been a lock on the door yet and she’d needed to keep him from creeping out of the bed and the flat) and loosened her arms, making it clear that he could move if he wanted. Jon rocketed to his feet, and she tried to suppress the part of her that was hurt at that, reminded herself that building trust was a process and they weren’t exactly starting on the most solid ground. She held out the camera to him. “Wanna try?”

He glanced from side to side, as if someone else would appear and reveal the correct answer. “You don’t have to, but I got plenty of film for it. It’s fun.”

After a long pause Jon took it, just holding it and staring as Daisy took her little collection of pictures and went back to the kitchen, rifling through a drawer for a pen so she could mark each with the date and the name of its occupants. Further investigation into the drawer failed to turn up any magnets, so she settled for tape, affixing the trio of images in a wobbly row across the front of the refrigerator. She felt bright and happy, even as she glanced over to see Jon still standing where she’d left him, staring down at the camera in his hands. She’d need to get magnets, but family pictures on the fridge- that was domestic, normal. Jon deserved normal, deserved things that made it clear he was important to her, deserved to have those categories overlap, and she was determined to give them to him wherever she could.

Chapter Text

Ever since Daisy brought the camera home, Jon had spent part of every day keeping obsessive track of how many pictures decorated the refrigerator. They were nearing the end of even the most liberal interpretation of “a couple weeks,” and if she was going to- to sell him, or something (it seemed less likely than it had, with how possessive she was, but the idea still made him sick to his stomach), the pictures could be part of it. Sometimes, new pictures would go up without him noticing, candids he hadn’t noticed Daisy taking, but all the photos he knew about were always accounted for. It wasn’t much of a reassurance.

Interacting with Daisy was like meeting a new person every day. He never knew whether she’d be talkative or taciturn, let him take refuge in another room or keep him at her side all day. He tried to make himself as uninteresting as possible, hoping that he could make her lose interest, but on her more expressive days he could tell that Daisy apparently found watching him do everything from eat to daydream endlessly delightful, eyes dancing as she would stare at him for hours without interruption.

For all the inconsistency, he still hadn’t seen her angry. He’d never been very good at reading people, it was part of why he’d never had many friends and why he always seemed to get into unintended trouble with Gran, but it turned out that even he could learn, with his life depending on it. He saw the times when Daisy was almost angry, the way her motions went jerky and her mouth twisted into a snarl. And so far every time that had happened, he had also seen her pull herself back, nostrils flaring in calming breaths as she forcibly untensed her shoulders. The handful of times she’d caught him watching while that happened she’d ramped the doting up to almost unbearable levels for the rest of the day. Before she spotted him looking, he noticed an uncomfortable number of glances directed at him as she calmed down. When the dam finally broke and all that pent up rage came out, he had no doubt as to what would be in the cross-hairs. The jury was still out on whether he would survive it.

Daisy knew he was planning to escape. She’d told him as much, and technically not even warned him not to try, just said she’d find him. But Jon was fairly certain she was aware of most of his plans and preparations. Why else would she have waited until the day he’d finally finished searching the bathroom for anything useful, down to the screws in the cabinets (all tightly affixed, not even a tiny bit loose), to finally tell him her supposed reason for kidnapping him? He’d been so careful, so sure that he’d managed to put everything exactly where it had been, leaving no trace of his search, but evidently not.

If Daisy knew he was trying to escape, and wasn’t actively interfering, then the open door was a test. It was obviously a test, no matter how short the absence Daisy had never failed to lock him in the bedroom or bathroom when she left the flat. She hadn’t even been subtle in setting it up, asking him to help put the groceries away and slapping her palm to her forehead after only a few minutes, loudly cursing and declaring that she’d left the milk in the car. She’d darted out without even fully closing the door to the flat, much less locking Jon up. The sliver of light he could see shining through from his position in the kitchen was an obvious trap.

That didn’t mean he could look away, though. Just because it was a trap, he reasoned, didn’t mean it couldn’t also be the mistake that let him slip her grasp. Could he really forgive himself if he let the opportunity go?

If she had only forgotten the milk, he didn’t have long to act. Jon tiptoed to where his trainers rested, neatly lined up alongside Daisy’s work shoes and trainers, and shoved his feet inside, not bothering with the laces.

He’d half expected Daisy to be waiting behind the door, never having left at all, so she could grab him by the ear and put an end to his escape before it started, lay into him for failing the test. It was almost alarming to be met with an empty hallway.

He didn’t let that slow him for long, taking off without any real destination in mind. He needed a phone, and he needed to be far enough away when he used it that Daisy wouldn’t immediately find him. He rocketed down a flight of stairs at random and skidded to a stop in front of the nearest flat. Hopefully she’d assume he either went to a neighbor closer to her flat or all the way to the street, and not think to search the floors in between until it was too late. He hammered frantically on the door.

The woman who opened it and peered out past the chain lock didn’t have much in common with Gran, aside from being old and having a face pinched with displeasure at something Jon had done, but the sight of her (of the first real person he’d seen since Daisy took him) made his heart ache. Before he could gather the breath to say a word, she snapped, “What do you want?”

“I- I need- I’ve been kidnapped, I need to phone the police!” He’d been so caught up in the getting out part of escaping he’d sort of assumed he’d know what to say when the time came, but his words felt jumbled and confused. It felt like eons since he’d had to talk to anyone but Daisy, and his interaction with her was as brief as he could manage.

The woman looked him up and down with a critical eye, taking in the dragging hems on his jeans and his trailing shoelaces. “What’s your name?”

Of all the responses he might have anticipated, he hadn’t imagined that one. Panic to match his own or outright disbelief, maybe, but not this detached evaluation. “I- it’s Jon, please, I need to call the police before she notices I’m gone!”

The woman hummed, and shut the door. Jon’s heart dropped, and he started frantically trying to choose another door to try, when he heard the rattle of the chain and the door opened again, all the way. “Come in.”

The flat was exactly what he might have expected from any of Gran’s friends, only arranged in an eerie mirror of his recent purgatory. The woman snapped bony fingers and pointed to a couch with an afghan draped neatly over the back. “Sit.”

“But-”

“I’ll go use the telephone. Sit down and stay put.”

Her tone brooked no argument, and he didn’t want to waste the time it would take to leave and find someone else to let him make the call, so Jon sat. The woman disappeared around the half wall that separated the living room and kitchen.

He felt like his thoughts were drifting out of his body, separated by the familiar-unfamiliar surroundings and the rush of adrenaline. When he tried to strain his ears to hear the soft conversation happening in the next room, it was drowned out by the rushing in his ears. Had he given her enough information to tell the police? He could give more if she’d just let him make the call himself! He jiggled his leg at a frantic pace and tried not to start pulling at the bandages on his wrists.

He had no idea how much time passed before the old woman reemerged from the kitchen and forced a mug into his hands. “Drink that.” She glared at his bouncing leg. He stopped moving.

“Are they coming?” He noticed her own tea was in a delicate-looking teacup on a matching saucer. He looked down at his mug. It had a scratched and faded picture of Mickey Mouse on it.

“Someone will be here in just a bit.” She offered no further elaboration, sipping at her tea with her full scrutiny on Jon.

He took awkward swallows of tea and tried not to wilt under the hawkish gaze. The tea wasn’t very good. He realized his hands were shaking, and supposed it was a good thing she hadn’t given him a fancier cup. How long was “a bit”? Hurry, hurry, hurry…!

It was fortunate he’d persisted past the subpar nature of the tea to pick at it, because if the mug had been full the way he startled when the knock at the door finally came would have splashed it everywhere. From the sharpness in her eyes, the old woman was aware of this. He set it on the coffee table and stumbled to his feet, standing awkwardly to the side while she opened the door. He wrapped his arms around his torso with the faint idea that it might make things feel less like he was about to fall out of his own body.

“Jon! I’m so glad you’re safe, don’t scare me like that!”

In the time it took for the ice that had overtaken his body at the sight of her to recede from his limbs and come to rest in his lungs, Daisy rushed forward and pulled Jon into her chest, hugging him tight. This couldn’t be happening. It took several seconds before his body caught up to his brain and he started struggling in her hold.

“Thank you so much for helping Jon, I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to him!” Daisy addressed the old woman, paying no heed to Jon’s writhing in her arms. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“No, no, no,” Jon said, voice pitching higher with every repetition.

“No trouble at all,” the old woman said, her voice much softer than it had been to Jon. “It’s a good thing, what you’re doing.”

Daisy hummed abashedly. Jon tried to jerk around to look the old woman in the eye. “Please! She’s not- she’s not- she’s lying, she kidnapped me!”

“Still, I appreciate the help,” Daisy said. She ran a hand through his hair in a parody of comfort.

Jon’s words came farther and farther apart, interleaved with sobs. “Please, please help me!”

“Suppose you need all the help you can get, what with…” the old woman trailed off, and out of the corner of his eye Jon saw her casting a significant look at- his hands? No, the bandages. She thought…

“I didn’t do that, she did! Please don’t let her take me!”

Daisy hummed another assenting noise, not contradicting her. It was like he wasn’t even saying anything. “It’s been hard, but we muddle through.” Her arm snaked around his shoulders, turning him so he was pressed against her side instead of facing into her chest, and she started steering him forward, out of the flat. “Thank you, Mrs. Jansen!”

“No!” If the old woman wouldn’t help, well, this was a whole complex, someone else would hear! “Help! Help me!” Jon set his heels, trying to stay in the hallway as long as possible. If someone just heard, if they called the police-!

There were two doors in view of the old woman’s, and both cracked open at the commotion. Daisy gave the residents poking their heads out a strained smile and half a wave with the hand less occupied with keeping Jon in place. “Daisy Tonner.”

Both faces lit with understanding, and retreated behind their doors. The old woman’s was already shut. “Please, please help me! She’s not my sister, help!”

“Come on, Jon, this doesn’t have to be hard,” Daisy said tightly, bending and hoisting him into a fireman’s carry. He twisted and kicked. One of his shoes, still untied, flew off and he heard it hit something out of sight. Daisy sighed.

He kept yelling all the way up the stairs and back to the flat. A few more people looked out their doors, but all were easily dismissed with no more than Daisy’s name. One motherly-looking woman clicked her tongue sympathetically and said, “The sick boy, right? That’s hard.” No one responded to Jon’s increasingly desperate cries. No one even acknowledged them.

When they arrived back in the flat and Daisy tossed him onto the bed, Jon bolted upright and scrambled for the door, all thought of strategy or patience gone. The lock clicked just as he grasped the knob, and he rattled it futilely and pounded against the wood, wracked with heaving sobs. No one had done anything ! They’d just called Daisy, just given him right back to her and hadn’t even spoken to him directly. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair, but it cut him even deeper now.

He didn’t hear anything on the other side of the door for what felt like a long time. Either Daisy had left or she was deliberately ignoring him. Like all the neighbors. The white of the bandages around his wrists caught his eye, and he sat back on his heels (when had he gone to his knees?) and started frantically unwrapping them.

The sores underneath were exactly as he remembered them, pinkish and ragged where his anxiety had gotten the better of him and he’d picked the scabs off, the worst areas still bruised faintly green. He turned his hands- they went all the way around, just like he remembered. If- if they were right, if he was crazy, if he’d- they wouldn’t look like that. Cuts didn’t look like that, he wasn’t imagining things, he wasn’t crazy!

Now that he’d entertained the thought, though, he was fixated on it. It was easy to imagine what all those people saw, the boy who’d tried to kill himself and didn’t understand where he was, the exasperated, saintly sister raising him in spite of it all. It wasn’t real. He couldn’t imagine a whole life , couldn’t imagine hours in the boot or the feeling of a gag in his mouth. He yanked at a leg of his jeans, rolling it up to see the fading mark where he’d gashed his knee, back when his life was normal, when he had a life. The boy who was too disturbed to ever be let out of his sister’s flat wouldn’t have access to pavement, couldn’t have a mark like that. He pressed his thumb into the pink patch, and tiny remnants of dead skin flaked away. It was real, Jonathan Sims was real (Jonathan Sims had never made the news no one was looking), he wasn’t crazy.

He flinched and crawled backward like a scared animal when the door opened. He bit his lip and stared up at Daisy. His lost trainer dangled from one hand. She looked tired, irritated. Sad. (But not angry it wasn’t over yet she wasn’t angry)

“I’m not, I’m not,” he stuttered, “I’m not crazy. I’m… I’m real.” He couldn’t disguise the question under the words, the plea for reassurance.

If he was right, if Daisy was a kidnapper (she had to be he couldn’t forget a whole family and past and replace it with another she had to be) why would she tell him the truth? It would be better for her if he believed the whole story, more convenient. He couldn’t trust anything she said. He didn’t have anyone else to ask.

Her expression broke into something he couldn’t identify, and Daisy sunk to her knees next to him. He cringed away, but her hands stayed on her knees, not touching him. “Yeah, Jon. You’re real. You’re okay.”

“I’m not crazy,” he repeated, pulling his knees to his chest.

Daisy’s expression was soft. “No, you’re not crazy.”

He started to rock back and forth. Gran had never liked it when he did that, but it felt soothing, right. “You’re not my sister,” he tried, saying it into his knees as he tucked his face inward. It meant he couldn’t see Daisy, but the close, dark space felt safer than the wide open bedroom, even knowing it was only his own lap, not a separate location.

Daisy sighed softly, not answering for a long time. “I’m trying to be.”

-

They stayed on the floor a long time, until the crying stopped and Jon’s breathing evened out. When he finally let Daisy lead him into the kitchen he felt wrung out, exhausted.

The milk was still on the counter, abandoned. He didn’t know how long it had been; maybe it had spoiled. His fault, if it had, for distracting Daisy and trying to run. Would she be angry with him? The thought inspired none of the fear it had earlier; he was too worn out to care what she did.

“Shoe,” Daisy ordered softly, holding out a hand as he sunk into one of the kitchen chairs. He blinked, and realized she was still holding the other. He stared at the floor as he pulled it off and handed it to her, as she left the kitchen to return both trainers to their place in the line by the door. As if they were going to be worn anywhere.

“You lied to the neighbors,” he said flatly when she returned.

“I told you I’d do whatever I had to to keep you safe.”

He swallowed. “But it was a lie.” It had to be. He tried to come up with the words that would make her tell him the truth (if it was the truth he wanted it to be the truth). He held up a hand, scabbing wrist still exposed, waved it a little . “They thought I tried to kill myself, but I didn’t.”

He glanced up to see a panicked expression flit across Daisy’s face. “No, you didn’t. You hurt yourself on a pair of handcuffs. Worse than I’ve ever seen anyone else manage.” She said the last like it was supposed to be some kind of inside joke, an echo of what she’d said at the time, but didn’t smile.

Something unknotted inside him at the implicit confirmation. He propped his head on the table, palms against his eyelids, and tried not to start crying again. He’d… he’d try again. He wasn’t crazy.

Chapter Text

Tim wanted to ask Jon if something had happened, but he had no idea how to do it tactfully.

He had known Jon had a sister from the handful of photos pinned to the walls of his cubicle and the occasional mention, maybe met her once or twice when she’d accompanied Jon the Institute holiday party? He knew she always came to pick Jon up to keep him from overworking, but they didn't talk.

Since moving to the Archives she seemed to be everywhere: bringing Jon lunch and helping haul boxes of files around and just wandering shelf-maze. It could have been a show of support, he knew Jon was more nervous about the promotion than he let on, or a reflection of some change in Daisy’s own work schedule that Tim wasn’t privy to, but he didn’t think so. There was a strange edge to her, like being in the Archives was… unnerving? Dangerous? Maybe if you were afraid of paper cuts and falling bookcases.

He wasn’t entirely sure his unease was founded in facts, though. Jon and his sister seemed close; watching her drape herself over his desk like an attention-seeking cat and pester him about eating hit at something inside Tim. Sasha had gotten good at anticipating when Daisy was coming for a visit and steering Tim elsewhere without him realizing. If it had just been reminders, he would have protested more; he didn’t mind thinking of Danny. But watching the Tonners interact was rarely just a reminder; he always seemed to dream of that last night after seeing them together, more vividly than the usual echoes of the early days’ constant grieving agony. Some combination of the usual pain of seeing people get to interact with their living siblings and something about Daisy herself, something nameless that set his teeth on edge whenever she was around. Something that had gotten more intense alongside the increased tension of the move to the Archives. He couldn’t bring himself to be upset with Sasha when he was so ineffective at hiding the dark circles under red-rimmed eyes from her.

It was nice to watch them occasionally, even when it brought the nightmares back. He missed the easy give and take bickering that could only come from being present for one another’s formative years, and the reminder was nice.

Not to mention it was rather satisfying to see that he wasn’t the only one willing to openly razz Jon. Sure, Sasha played her pranks and did her share of teasing, but she didn't tease Jon the way Tim did. Tim had been afraid that the move to the Archives might change things, steal the easy jokes and physicality that had characterized their friendship thus far; Jon was more uptight about it all, but the grumbling about professionalism and perception and appropriate workplace behavior that followed from Tim giving him a noogie was nearly identical to the speech he made whenever Daisy ruffled his hair, and he hadn’t asked Tim to stop outright or shown any signs it made him uncomfortable, so Tim was going to keep prodding and elbowing and occasionally bodily carrying his boss for as long as he could get away with it. Someone as prickly as Jon probably needed the touch; lord knew Tim did.

If it weren’t for whatever it was about Daisy that seemed to trigger his nightmares, Tim thought they could probably be friends. They were the only two people he was aware of willing to really knock Jon down a peg when he got too caught up in the facade of the stuffy academic and became actually unbearable, so they already had that in common. Well, not counting Martin, but Tim was pretty sure the fallout of his politely oblivious rebuttals to the worst of Jon’s excesses were an unintended side effect. If he were on friendlier terms with Daisy, Tim could try to find out why she spent so much time hanging around the Institute nowadays straight from the source. He didn’t want to pry, but, well- he really wanted to pry.

For now though, he’d have to content himself with taking advantage of Daisy’s willingness to use her knowledge for evil.

There was something oddly giddy about standing side by side with his coworkers (and Daisy) in the dark, waiting for Jon to step into the kitchenette. He and Sasha had to keep taking turns elbowing and shushing each other, and even Martin’s normally demure presence had an edge of hilarity to it.

Tim couldn’t help throwing his arms in the air for emphasis when Jon finally flicked the light on, grinning as he shouted along with the others. “Surprise!”

Jon squeaked, throwing his arms up as if he expected some kind of projectile. Tim lowered his arms, glancing at the others. Sasha had said this was Daisy’s idea, surely she wouldn’t have suggested it if she knew it would upset Jon?

“Happy- are you alright?” Sasha said.

Jon took half a step back, pressing a hand to his heart. “Yes, I’m- you startled me.” He shook himself, visibly pulling his “Head Archivist” face back on and trying to pretend the previous moments hadn’t happened.

Tim followed Jon’s lead and propped his smile back up. “Happy birthday, boss!”

“You sure?” Daisy asked at almost the same time.

Jon shot her a weak glare. “The shock is a focal part of the surprise party… experience. Though the bottle of wine was fine.”

Tim snorted. “As a decoy.”

Sasha cut in, keeping up her part of the banter and smoothing over Jon’s rough edges and Martin’s awkwardness, though Tim thought she was just as aware as he was of how Jon had drifted to stand closer to Daisy. Daisy herself joined in as the topic turned to Martin’s birthday, jabbing a teasing finger at Jon’s ribs as she joined in the commentary about his old man taste in ice cream, dramatically reenacting Jon pressing his hand to his chest and faking a swoon.

“I don’t think someone who’s unironically talked about how things were back in her day has any right to criticize my taste,” Jon was saying, giving Daisy a pinched glare with laughter behind the eyes, when they were interrupted.

“Knock knock!” Elias leaned gracefully around the door frame.

Busted. Hopefully they weren’t in trouble. “Double boss!”

Tim wasn’t the only one discomfited by the intrusion. Jon putting on his best face to try to impress Elias was predictable, as was Martin’s squirming, but out of the corner of his eye, Tim could see Daisy tense as well. When he grumblingly turned to retrieve the cake from the fridge, ears still tuned to Jon being interrogated about his age, he could see that her eyes were cold and hard, fixed unerringly on Elias.

Where before she had joined them in teasing Jon, when Sasha called out his real age (and how did she know? Tim had a sneaking suspicion that Daisy hadn’t actually been the one to propose the party) Daisy reached out to catch Jon by the wrist and draw him in, tucking Jon’s head under her chin. Jon tilted his head up, whispering to his sister, probably about embarrassing him in front of his boss, but Daisy didn’t let go.

She didn’t let go and she didn’t look away from Elias all through the singing and cutting the cake, only accepting her own plate long enough to set it on the counter before returning to her two handed grip on Jon. When Elias used Jon’s title instead of his name during the song (and right, yes, they probably should have been focused on work, but a little fun never hurt anyone), Tim thought he heard a rumbling sound from Daisy’s corner, but he couldn’t identify it. It almost sounded like a growl.

When Elias bowed out, making strange eye contact with Daisy as he made his excuses about his own workload and took his slice of cake back up to his office, Tim still had his eye on the siblings, and he saw when nearly all the tension seemed to leave Daisy the moment Elias was out of sight. Suddenly, the joking, laughing Daisy of before was back, digging into her cake and pulling a camera from her bag, ordering them into various poses and combinations and handing off the camera so she could be in a few pictures herself until she had a stack of polaroids nearly three inches high. Weird.

-

In the midafternoon, when Daisy had left and nearly all the cake had been consumed and they were all a bit wine drunk and getting sleepy, Tim rolled his chair over to Sasha’s desk, past Martin’s bobbing head, and draped himself over the surface. “Did you lie to me about Daisy suggesting the party, Miss James?”

Sasha kept her eyes on her computer screen, fingers a blur. “Why would I do a thing like that, Mr. Stoker?”

“Did you go through Jon’s computer?”

“No!” This denial was more serious, only to be immediately followed by a sly smirk. “I hacked his employee file.”

“Sasha!”

She turned her nose up. “All’s fair in love, war, and stolen promotions, Tim! All I want is a little bit of blackmail, and then Jon and I will be square!”

Tim huffed. “What, and you couldn’t find anything on his Facebook?”

Sasha’s eyes went distant, and her brow creased. She had stopped typing. “That’s the weird thing. Jon doesn’t have a Facebook. Or anything else. Unless he told you the handle of his secret Twitter account or something, I’ve searched every possible variation of his name on every social media site under the sun and haven’t found anything. Just the Institute website and his LinkedIn, and he hasn’t even updated that with his promotion. It’s weird.”

“No secret Twitter,” Tim confirmed. “What, no embarrassing MySpace pictures?” He gazed up, only half processing her words, with a loopy grin on his face. He should probably be more discouraging of her invading Jon’s privacy like that, but he felt too fuzzy and happy to bother.

Sasha slumped, propping her cheek on one hand. “Not yet. But I’m going to find them eventually!”

Chapter Text

With Jon back in the flat, every beat of Daisy’s heart seemed to press panic into her veins, still building with no way to express it. Bad enough to have been so careless with the door, but once she’d retrieved him…

Jon went to bed without complaint, wrung out by the day’s ordeal despite the early hour. He’d moved like a puppet as she’d guided him through the motions of brushing his teeth and changing into pajamas, waiting for instruction before moving in the slightest, his shoulders bowed. That left Daisy pacing outside his (locked, it was still locked, she was supposed to keep it locked ) door as quietly as she could manage, trying to line up enough coherent thoughts to figure out what to do , instead returning over and over to an image she couldn’t grasp the context for: the scarred adult version of Jon, twitchy and hunched and overpoweringly paranoid. She had to save him, but she didn’t know what to do when there was no threat to tackle and tear into.

Daisy had always prided herself on her ability to stay cool under pressure, ever since she was a child, but as she ran them through her hair for the dozenth time she realized her hands were shaking. She stopped pacing abruptly, dropping onto the couch and staring as they trembled in her lap. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to scream. She wanted someone (Basira, Basira would know only she wouldn’t she was a child like Jon Daisy was alone) to appear and tell her just the right thing to do to fix everything.

Eventually, she realized that the tremors had stopped, along with the rickety train of her thought. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there, staring blankly at her hands. The light had changed.

She took a deep breath, ignoring how it caught in her throat. She needed a solution, and she needed it without diving back into that useless, frantic headspace. She needed….

She needed to never see that empty expression on Jon’s face again, pushed past the point of resignation until he seemed ready to accept any lie she told him, if it would make the anguish stop. If she’d told him in that moment that they were both aliens from Mercury, she thought he would have agreed without argument. Jon wasn’t supposed to do anything without argument, even if he was perfectly healthy and content. She was supposed to save him, not break him.

He’d expected Daisy to lie. She’d seen it in his face as they both realized that Jon had no way of proving or disproving anything she said. She’d considered it, if only for a split second. It would be easier, if he believed that this was where he was meant to be, that there was no reason to be afraid of Daisy (if she hadn’t begun things by kidnapping him). She wasn’t foolish enough to think that could last, even if it worked for a time. And the thought of a lie like that shattering set her mind spinning with off-kilter images of doors and grating laughter she couldn’t place. She’d already set Jon up to be disbelieved at every turn; he needed someone he could trust to be truthful. Lacking other candidates, she had to get him to believe that was her.

-

She let Jon sleep in, though she wasn’t sure he’d managed anything better than her own tossing and turning when she’d finally grown too exhausted to pace. Every time she closed her eyes, she was confronted with a new and terrible vision of Jon with everything that made him Jon removed, a new personality superimposing its expressions on his face or his eyes left staring emptily. Still, she’d slept just enough to wake with the clarity to know what was happening in the gory visions that haunted her dreams, and for them to send her sprinting to heave the last remnants of yesterday’s lunch (she’d forgotten dinner that meant Jon hadn’t had it either she was supposed to stop him skipping meals) into the toilet bowl.

She called in sick to work; if it seemed like her presence was doing Jon more harm than good, she’d… go somewhere else for a while. Needing space from a problem didn’t mean she’d failed to solve it; one of her library books said that.

The bedroom door was unlocked, and she’d heard Jon shifting around, almost certainly awake, for nearly two hours, but he hadn’t come out. The desire not to pressure him and the desire to keep him from missing breakfast warred within her; she remained stuck indecisively on the couch until the breaths from the bedroom started to turn shaky. Letting Jon get worked up again wouldn’t do either of them any good.

Still, she knocked softly on the door before opening it, moving slowly. “Jon?”

He lay curled up on the bed, tangled in the blankets with his back to her. As she quietly walked forward, she could see he was staring at the wall, face blank except for a persistent line between his eyebrows, his eyes stormy. Daisy perched on the edge of the bed, twisting her hands in her lap so she wouldn’t be tempted to reach out to him. “Jon.”

His eyes snapped shut, and she could see the muscles of his jaw flexing. He took a shaky breath, clearly steeling himself. “When are you going to sel- to send me away?”

Her heart dropped. “Never. I’m not. You’re stuck with me.” She tried to inject humor into the words, but they fell flat even to her own ears. She knew it was the wrong thing to say, but she didn’t have anything else.

“Why?”

She sighed. “I told you-”

She was interrupted by a hiccuping sob of a gasp. “No,” Jon shook his head, turning with each motion until his face was pressed down into the mattress, voice muffled. “What’s the point, why do you- what are you getting out of this?!”

Daisy desperately wanted to rest a hand on his shoulder, to let Jon know he wasn’t alone as he wrapped his arms around himself and shook. She didn’t have an answer; how was she supposed to sum up everything Jon meant to her without scaring him, telling him too much, putting him in even more danger?

Jon gave her a few seconds of indecision before slumping further into the mattress. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

Her heart skipped. “No, god, Jon!” The mere thought made her feel (a dull knife in her hand and a rabbit-quick heart under her fingers guilt guilt guilt) sick.

Jon launched himself up, rounding on her. “Why not?” His knuckles were white around his elbows, as though he were literally holding himself together. “Do it! Kill me! You’re not going to stop this any other way!”

She couldn’t picture what her face looked like, though she could feel the blood draining from it. Whatever he saw only made Jon angrier. “Do you think this is better?” he snarled, “You think I’m living, spending every day locked in your bathroom?” He flung an arm out violently, gesturing toward the rest of the flat. “You think I want to spend the rest of my life here? What are you going to do, keep me inside this flat until I die of old age?” The arm wrapped violently back around his torso. She could see his nails digging into the skin hard enough to draw blood. She wanted to make him stop, make him see he was hurting himself (make him understand why he shouldn’t, when no amount of bandages and warnings seemed to be enough to make him leave his wrists be) but she didn’t dare move.

“Jon,” she didn’t know how to make him believe that she wasn’t going to hurt him, that things were going to get better. She’d been looking for a bigger place; she needed to look harder.

(She knew deep down a flat with a larger area to lock him in wouldn’t make Jon any less miserable.)

“Don’t .” Jon’s shoulders heaved, and he tilted forward on his knees. “Don’t, I won’t, I won’t! You can’t- you can’t keep me here forever, I won’t let you!” His eyes darted wildly around the room, and before she could even register the movement he rocketed out of it.

“Jon!” Daisy leapt to her feet. She didn’t know what he would do, what this Jon would do, but she had an idea of the kinds of things his other self had done when he got that look in his eye, when he was desperate.

She couldn’t have been more than a couple seconds behind him, but by the time she found Jon in the kitchen he was already braced against the table, his whole body shaking and tears streaming down his face as he stared down at the knife in his hand.

“Jon!” She didn’t know if it was a whisper or a shout, but either way Jon’s eyes shot up to her the moment she said it. His hand tightened around the knife.

“You can’t make me live like this forever!” The desperate confidence was starting to drain out of his voice, cut through with pleading. His eyes darted between the knife and where Daisy stood frozen at the threshold to the kitchen.

“Jon, put down the knife.” She tried to say the words in the tone she’d used to say them to suspects a million times before, but couldn’t find the same calm authority. Jon clenched his jaw.

“Why? It’d be convenient, wouldn’t it?” He turned the hand clutching the edge of the table so it rested wrist up, dark scabs still exposed where she’d forgotten to rebandage them last night. She felt sick. “You wouldn’t even have to lie to the neighbors anymore.” He lowered the knife to hover above the vulnerable point of his wrist, eyes fixed on the motion as though the hand holding the weapon wasn’t his own.

Daisy practically threw herself over the table, grabbing both Jon’s wrists before he could react and squeezing the right one until he loosened his grip and the knife tumbled harmlessly to the floor. He made a gasping, animal sound, like air filling a mile-wide vacuum in the space of a moment. “No!” He thrashed as she pulled him into her chest, keeping a firm grip on his wrists as she slid to the ground and pressed his back to her chest. She told herself it was because it was easier to keep a hold on Jon this way, not that her knees had gone weak and her head light with adrenaline.

Jon writhed in her arms, motion limited by her chest against his back and her hands holding his crossed at the wrist, pressing tight into his chest so there was no chance of escape. Her eyes slid to the knife only feet away and she kicked at it until it skittered to the other side of the kitchen. Jon sobbed loudly, words barely audible between heaving breaths. “I hate you, I hate you, just leave me alone I want to die I want this to stop I want Gran!” Daisy’s heart broke.

“I know, I’m sorry,” she murmured into his hair, a quiet counterpoint to his wailing litany. “You’re okay, I’m sorry, I love you, shh, you’re okay.”

Slowly, Jon’s squirming weakened, until he laid lax and loose in her arms, staring blankly at the ceiling as he ran out of tears. Daisy shifted slightly, hoping he was more comfortable properly upright with his chin on her shoulder but not daring to let go of him entirely. She rubbed his back with the hand not occupied with scrawny wrists. “I’m so sorry, Jon. I’m sorry that happened yesterday, I didn’t realize it would be like that for you, I’m sorry.”

The words weren’t enough, but she didn’t have anything else. She couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t give him back to his Gran, couldn’t let him go, so she poured out (nearly) every thought she’d had in the panicked hours after putting him to bed, reassurances and apologies and all the things that made her proud to know him. Jon shuddered and tucked his cold, slimy nose into her neck as she whispered that he was good, and brave, and kind, and she knew how hard things were for him and she was so sorry.

Eventually, wrung out and seeking out any comfort he could find, Jon’s hands ended up fisted tight in the fabric of her shirt, clinging like a lifeline.

Chapter Text

Even when he’d calmed down enough to resolve to never meet Daisy’s eyes or acknowledge what had happened, Jon’s thoughts were still stuck in a constant cycle of desperation, loneliness, and fear. It was crushing; even as he told himself he was quite attached to his life, whatever he’d said to Daisy, he wanted a way out more than anything, and she was making it very clear how limited his options there were.

He hated himself for how incredibly stupid he had been. The kitchen knives had been unsecured all this time, and the first time he thought to grab one was to make a point, a point he didn’t even manage to follow through on. He’d dismissed the drawer when it became clear that he was unlikely to gain access to the kitchen without Daisy hovering; he hadn’t even thought to hide a knife under his mattress or inside the closet. And when Daisy had locked him up so she could go get some lunch for them both (obviously an excuse to leave the flat, even the woman who wouldn’t let him leave her side couldn’t stand to be around Jon now) the food had been quietly joined by a lock on the cutlery drawer, and others on several other drawers and cabinets. He pictured, over and over again, what he could have done if he’d actually thought things through, every step of sneaking into the kitchen, how he’d hide the knife until he could get it to the bedroom, where he’d put it. Pulling out the hidden weapon and escaping for real. Then he pictured the same scenario now, pulling lamely at a locked drawer until Daisy stormed in and tore his hands away.

He felt burnt out from the succession of failures and breakdowns, but he couldn’t let it show. He wasn’t going to let Daisy forget what she was doing to him. He’d spilled out all the ugly, crushing thoughts that had tormented him for weeks, to the point that she’d felt the need to spend ages hugging him and lying about what a wonderful person he was; he should at least get to shatter her stupid plays at normalcy in return. When he looked at her, he glared; when he spoke, it was sarcastic and biting and as mean as he could manage; he squirmed away from her touch whenever he could, and clawed and hissed like a cat when she tried to keep hold of him. Maybe if he could be unpleasant enough, she’d get sick of him, go back on her word and get rid of him. He silenced the part of his mind that was terrified of how, exactly, that might be accomplished with more bared teeth and insults.

Daisy treated him like something fragile, even more than before, and he hated that too. His few minutes of freedom, of seeing other people, had driven home how lonely he was. Even as he snarled at the slightest contact from Daisy, part for him was desperate for companionship and longed to lean into the affection he knew by now she would provide if he just let her. He hated Daisy, he reminded himself over and over again. This was just another reason; everything would be so much easier if she’d chained him up in a rat-infested basement somewhere and hit him when he lashed out instead of being so gentle all the time. It was like she thought he wouldn’t realize that it was an act, that he’d buy into the fiction of the caring would-be sister and forget being tied up and the shadows of repressed violence that dogged her movements and the days she came home with blood on her clothes and under her nails.

Pain and discomfort were good reminders that things weren’t alright (and maybe what he deserved for being such a mess, so pathetic and stupid). Gradually, he started eating less and less at mealtimes, pushing his food around so Daisy wouldn’t notice him weaning himself off of food and onto a hunger strike. If she cared so much, she could take him home (would Gran even want him back? No, he couldn’t think like that, of course she did). Or she could watch him slowly starve to death; Jon knew he was stubborn, felt sure he could maintain his resolve when it meant that, one way or another, this would end.

He hated being so angry all the time, even if it was better than being scared. It made his stomach twist and his cheeks burn and he had even more difficulty sleeping, thoughts constantly running down the same poisonous track. He wanted to go back to spending his afternoons wandering Bournemouth, barely existing in his own body without the introduction of outside stimulus. He hadn’t known how good he had it, being bored like that. Now his hours of boredom were even worse, with the outlet of movement taken away and the constant tension that permeated the flat even when he was alone.

Increasing amounts of that time were spent curled up against the bathroom cabinets, picking at the sores on his wrists. Doing the schoolwork or reading the books Daisy left him always put a satisfied smile on her face; she hated it when he picked the scabs off of his wrists. It was practically the only thing she’d tried to outright forbid him from doing. He told himself that was the only reason, and did his best to ignore the way the constant damage to his skin was beginning to outpace a mere bad habit. Pulling at scraps of skin with nails and teeth until the sores were wider and longer than they’d ever been originally, Jon didn’t have to think, could pretend he didn’t exist at all while his focus narrowed to the singular act (could pretend it wasn’t getting harder to concentrate on anything remotely complex). And Daisy’s face always fell when she opened to door to find him with bloody fingertips, surrounded by wadded up bits of tissue and unraveled bandages.

As he stopped eating, the wounds stopped healing, weeping clear liquid into the bandages without ever forming proper scabs.

Despite the constant awareness of danger, with Daisy never reacting to his insults and grumbling with more than a frown and a disappointed sigh, it still came as a surprise to Jon when she decided enough was enough. The line of scabs and open sores around his left wrist had extended to wrap almost unbroken around the entire circumference of his wrist, and he was mechanically marring the last expanse of skin when the lock clicked open. Jon didn’t look up, still absorbed in his task and determined to ignore Daisy as much as possible. She would sigh, retrieve the first aid kit from under the sink, and hold his hand firmly but gently while she cleaned and bandaged the wound. It was the only time Jon didn’t twist away from physical contact, since he felt sure that for this, Daisy would pin him down if she needed to. Better to have it over with quickly- he always meant to clean himself up before she returned, but he lost track of time, or started fiddling with whatever bandages he applied- always much less than Daisy seemed to feel were necessary- so that she nearly always found him in the same position.

In expectation of this routine, Jon was startled when Daisy came over with heavy, angry footsteps rather than the soft tread she usually adopted around him and grabbed both his hands, lacing their fingers together so it would be more difficult for him to get away. In the same movement, she looped her foot behind where he had his knees curled to his chest and kicked them flat, pinning them there with her own knees so that she was practically sitting on top of him. Slow and light-headed from hunger, it all registered a moment too late for Jon to react meaningfully, leaving him gaping and wide-eyed at the intensity on Daisy’s face.

“You didn’t eat your lunch.” Daisy’s voice was deceptively even; Jon could see the anger he’d been alternately fearing and courting in her eyes, along with frustration and something like sadness. He swallowed dryly and glanced upward, toward where the sandwich Daisy had made that morning sat untouched on the counter.

“I didn’t,” he replied, trying to project determination instead of fear. He felt dizzy, with fear or hunger he couldn’t say, and he could feel a droplet of blood rolling down his forearm to drip off his elbow onto Daisy’s knee, leaving a perfectly round stain.

“When was the last time you ate?”

Jon startled at the question. He couldn’t move his gaze from the blood drop, hazily transfixed by how the edges continued to slowly spread along the weave of Daisy’s slacks. He wracked his brain. “Um. I had. Um. Breakfast yesterday, I think.” He’d only had a few bites, but she’d only asked when he ate, not when his last full meal was.

Daisy made a choked noise in her throat and squeezed his hands. “Jon.” He looked up. Something must have been wrong with his vision; there couldn’t be tears standing unshed in Daisy’s eyes. He scowled at her, but couldn’t think of anything biting to say. “This has to stop.”

Exactly! He nodded. “You need to take me home.”

The corners of Daisy’s mouth twitched down in a way that looked almost painful before returning to their neutral line. “No, Jon, this,” she squeezed his hands again, “needs to stop. Please, you have to stop hurting yourself!”

“What, because only you’re allowed to do that?” He glared bitterly as her face crumpled. It didn’t bring him the satisfaction he thought it would, not when he was still held fast on the bathroom floor.

Daisy swallowed hard and set her face in that grim evenness, but her words still came out sounding breathless. “You can stop on your own, or,” she gasped a little breath, and he hated her for pretending to be upset when this was all her fault, “I’ll find someone to come help me keep you strapped flat on the bed and fed through a tube 24/7 until I think you’ve learned your lesson.” The words spilled out too fast and her brow creased despite the confidence behind her ultimatum.

Jon felt like all the air had been knocked out of him. He hadn’t thought- why hadn’t he considered Daisy might do something like that? His stomach churned. “You can’t, I’ll, I’ll tell them what you did, that you kidnapped me!” She couldn’t, she had to be lying (he knew she wasn’t).

Daisy huffed a strand of hair out of her face, looking tired. “Even if they believe you, do you think the kind of person who’ll help me do that without making me take you to see a doctor first will care?”

“But what if they do? What if you can’t stop them from trying to help?” The question was more for himself than Daisy, mind spinning as the horror of what she was suggesting clashed with the thin strand of hope a third person could present, but she answered anyway.

“If there’s no other way? If I had to? I’d kill them.”

Jon gagged. This was too much, it was all too much, and he could feel his breath quickening as tears he hadn’t realized he was holding back started to fall. He shook his head. “No no no,” he gasped and cried through the words.

Daisy’s face flashed regret (fake it had to be fake he needed it to be fake) and she started to pull him closer. Jon thrashed and tried to push against her to maintain distance, but even at his best he was no match for Daisy’s strength and size, and he was far from his best. She pulled him into an embrace, hand carding through his hair. The part of him that had always wished Gran hugged him the way other grandmothers hugged their grandchildren wanted to relax into the hold; he fought harder to compensate.

“I don’t want to do any of that,” she said, too close to his ear, tight and mournful . “I just want you to stop taking things out on yourself! If you start eating again, stop making yourself bleed, maybe work through the school books a bit, show me I can trust you, maybe we could even get you back in normal school in the spring. Instead of being cooped up all the time. I know things can’t be easy, but I don’t want you to hurt, Jon. I just want you to stay put and be safe, why can’t you just stay safe!”

He didn’t respond, breath coming too fast for words even if he could find them, so fast he thought he’d be sick if his stomach weren’t empty. Daisy took a deep breath and kept stroking his hair. He thought he felt her tremble against him, just for a moment. “I’m sorry for upsetting you. Come on, you’re okay. Match my breathing.”

She set her other hand on his back and started to take slow, measured breaths. Almost in spite of himself, Jon found himself following suit, until the tears had almost stopped and he was breathing normally again. He could feel Daisy smile into his hair. “Good job. Do you want to go find something to eat while I fix your wrists up?”

He tensed, wanting to fight, but couldn’t dismiss the memory of being pinned and bound under the blankets that first day. How long would it take for Daisy to decide he’d “learned his lesson”? Would he even be able to speak, with a tube down his throat? Jon swallowed, acutely aware of the way his entire body seemed to be shaking, and nodded limply into Daisy’s shoulder.

-

He didn’t try going on a hunger strike again.

Chapter Text

Jon was doing fine. Adjusting to not only working in, but running, a department that was entirely new to him came with a bit of a learning curve, but he was handling it just. Fine. He knew what he was doing, what his goals were, and he was handling the workload and his new management responsibilities fine. That was all his assistants needed to know. That was what he’d tell Elias, next time he was called up to his office for a “little chat about how you’re adjusting.” That was certainly all he’d tell Daisy.

(Daisy, more than anyone, saw through the facade, but as long as he didn’t let it drop she wouldn’t address it unless things got really bad. They had an understanding. Refusing to talk about their problems had worked this long, and Jon anticipated many more productive years of repression ahead of them.)

Saying otherwise would hardly be productive. In fact, if he were to list out what factors might, hypothetically, contribute to him not being fine, those three groups would be chief among them.

Well. To be perfectly fair, Tim and Sasha didn’t deserve such slander. Martin, on the other hand…

But Jon was fine! If his workflow was interrupted by being saddled with an incompetent assistant, or the way the pressure from Elias seemed to increase by the day, or his sister acting even weirder than usual, it wasn’t in any way he couldn’t compensate for. He was fine.

Something knocked at his office door, and Jon startled so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. He scrambled to return to a more dignified posture and cleared his throat. “Yes?”

Tim swung the door open, leaning inward against the frame. “Hey boss. The three of us were about to head out for lunch, probably that new place Sasha likes, you in?”

He awkwardly rearranged some papers on his desk. “Er, no thank you. I had a bit of a setback with the Nathan Watts statement this morning, and I’d like to get it recorded. Enjoy yourselves, though.”

Tim huffed and rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Right. Next time, though!”

Jon may have heard snatches of an exchange in which Sasha sounded far too mischievous for comfort as the door shut, but he decided to ignore it.

Harder to ignore was the primary non-human factor in making his work life more difficult. No matter how many times he tried, how Sasha and IT tried to troubleshoot, what computer he used, the Watts statement would. Not. Record.

He slid open the bottom drawer of his desk and stared leerily at the contents. Lord knew why Gertrude had felt the need to keep tapes and a recorder close at hand, but they had worked for the fragmentary little note that wouldn’t record digitally either.

He almost hoped it didn’t work. Having to account for cassette tapes of all things would require significant alterations to his plan for organizing the Archives.

-

He ended up glad he didn’t take Tim up on his offer. First of all, because on tape the Watts statement came through frustratingly clear, making working through a justified use of his lunch break; second, because over the course of recording he’d been hit with the creeping feeling of being watched (there were no security cameras in the Archives, though, he’d already asked Elias weeks ago), leaving him jumpy and snappish; and third, because he went into the afternoon feeling faintly nauseous. Better to pop a bagel in the break room toaster and eat it plain than risk whatever greasy delicacy Tim and Sasha were obsessed with this week.

Even with the bagel to settle his stomach, Jon found himself practically incapable of accomplishing anything the rest of the work day. There was no reason for it, he’d slept and the work wasn’t particularly difficult, but his every move seemed dogged by a pervasive weight of exhaustion and a blooming headache. He was inclined to pop a couple acetaminophen and stay late to make up for the lost productivity, but-

“Done?” Daisy popped her head into his office at 5 sharp, without knocking. This time, he was too woozy to properly startle. He hummed in acknowledgment, and started slowly moving to gather his things as she made herself at home perched on the edge of his desk.

“What’s this?” She poked at the recorder, still left out on the desk, with an expression approaching skepticism. Something in her voice was flat and tense, odd enough to make the hair at the back of his neck stand on end and suppress his instinctive, sarcastic response.

“One of the statements wouldn’t record on the laptop. Tape went just fine, though.” He kept packing, movements carefully slow and smooth. Daisy kept glaring at the recorder as though it had personally offended her. Jon heaved his full bag onto his shoulder and stood, but Daisy didn’t look up, eyes intense and looking at (or past?) the little box of plastic and tape instead of herding him out of the office the moment she could, like normal. His skin prickled nervously.

“Daisy?”

She jerked to her feet, posture military-perfect, and looked at him, eyes dangerously sharp. Jon flinched back at the rapid movement. Daisy blinked a few times before nodding. “Right. C’mon.”

He let himself be pushed ahead of her out of the building and into the car, not commenting on how their pace was barely short of a run.

-

The moment they got home, Jon beelined out of the car, into the house, and up to his room, closing the door behind him. Daisy probably wouldn’t bother locking him in, when she’d just have to come get him for dinner in a bit anyway, but he needed the barrier, the space. Still, he stayed alert for the sound of the bolt; whatever had gotten into Daisy, it left Jon unsure and off balance. Coming up against an unexpected locked door wouldn't help settle him.

Her strange mood hadn’t dissipated on the drive, and by the time he could leave the car it was practically a physical weight. She hadn’t been this upset- where he could see it, at least- since…

Well. Since he’d signed the papers for the Head Archivist promotion without asking her and she’d exploded, but. Before that. It had been years. He didn’t know what was causing it, what it meant.

He scratched his nails against the fabric of his shirt sleeve and started pacing. The job was fine. The scale of Gertrude’s carelessness and the work that needed to be done was a bit overwhelming, and between Elias and Martin the interpersonal situation was frustrating, but there was nothing to justify how on edge Daisy had been ever since his promotion. How he spent more time under her watchful gaze than he had since he was fifteen . She’d even started showing up during work hours, just stalking around the Archives. Elias was going to notice that eventually.

He felt tired, and sick, and yes, maybe a little over-stressed, and he didn’t want to deal with whatever had Daisy in a mood. She would have told him if it was important.

He wasn’t sure how long he spent like that before he heard a sharp “Jon!” out in the hallway and his door opened to reveal Daisy, still with the same frazzled energy. “What do you want to order for dinner tonight? That place with the weird logo?”

He frowned. “You hate the place with the weird logo.” His stomach twisted.

Daisy huffed a sigh. “I’m headed out to meet up with Basira as soon as I’ve got you set.”

He tried not to show how much that unnerved him. It was Wednesday; they always ate together on Wednesday nights, Daisy went out with Basira on Mondays. She was nothing if not a creature of habit, and once she established a routine, it rarely changed. “I’ll just- I have leftovers in-” he gestured vaguely to the mini fridge on his desk, trailing off.

Daisy nodded, stepping closer to clasp him in a quick hug. His arms stayed limp at his sides. “Right. See you.”

The lock thudded into place behind her, and he was alone in the house.

He considered pulling out his laptop, doing whatever work he could remotely, but didn’t. Maybe he was coming down with something; he was so tired, on top of dizzy sickness, the jangling nerves Daisy had inflicted on him. He glanced halfheartedly toward the fridge, but collapsed onto the edge of his bed instead. He didn’t feel much like eating. Daisy’s bad mood manifesting in a tangible change to their routine seemed to have sapped the energy out of him entirely. He couldn’t even work up the nerve to pace.

He ended up changing into pajamas and flicking out the light to lie sleeplessly in bed, despite his exhaustion. If Daisy had made a decision all he could do was wait to see what it was, and hope it didn’t make him miss work tomorrow.

She probably would’ve warned him if she didn’t plan on being there to let him out in the morning, even if she was mad at him.

Chapter Text

It might keep Jon with her in the event he made it all the way to the police, but Daisy was starting to regret telling her coworkers about her “brother.” Before, no one had cared if she looked tired, or stressed- or happy, for that matter.

“You alright, Tonner? That brother of yours been giving you a hard time?” Summers had never bothered to linger by her desk and chat before, too occupied with sliding slowly into middle age behind his own to bother with her.

She made a face that might have been a smile or a grimace. “No more than usual. It’s just a difficult time. For him.”

Summers nodded sagely. “He’s what, fourteen? I remember how my Anna was at that age, some new earth-shattering problem practically every day.”

Daisy nodded. “Fifteen. And that’s about the size of it.” Though she doubted Anna Summers had ever had grounds for upset as legitimate as Jon’s.

Summers clicked his tongue and shook his head. “It’ll blow over. They always do. You still living in your old flat?”

She let her head fall into her hands at that. “Yes.” She’d been trying to look on the bright side of things, like finally having a full set of documents confirming the existence of Jonathan Tonner- and a few others, just in case they ever needed to flee the country- but that could only do so much when she didn’t have anything to cheer Jon up.

Summers hummed. “I have a cousin- house’s a bit out of the way, needs some work- but I bet he’d be willing to give you a good price, ‘specially if I let him know some about your… situation. I’ll send you his number.”

She perked up. She didn’t like the implication of special treatment on account of pity, but for Jon she’d deal. “Thanks, Summers.” Maybe small talk was worth it.

He bobbed his head genially. “Maybe your brother can even help out with the repairs. Good for a boy that age to have a project, set him to painting walls for a few hours and it’ll burn the trouble making right out of him.” Daisy hummed and returned to her work feeling somewhat lighter.

-

Any lightness she managed to accumulate during the day was gone as soon as she got home. It was like a dark cloud had settled over the flat, not helped by the beginnings of winter and increasingly-fleeting sunlight. Jon hadn’t tried hurting himself again, but he was still so quiet and compliant it made Daisy’s stomach clench. As they sat down for dinner he spooned noodles into his mouth in precise, repetitive motions, staring down blankly (too blankly something might happen in that blankness she couldn't remember what or how). She had to do something, now.

She’d had people who knew Jon well enough to cheer him up when she couldn’t- who? He didn’t have any friends, just acquaintances and bullies. (Basira? No. No, not Basira.) Even if she could bring another person by, Jon never mentioned anyone from his old life. Well, except his gran.

She froze mid-bite, turning the thought over. She could hardly take him back to visit, but maybe…

Jon paused in his mechanical movements, something coming back into his eyes as he shot uneasy glances he probably thought were subtle across the table to where she still hadn’t moved. (Her fault careless again.) Daisy swallowed her mouthful whole and slapped the fork onto the table, the suddenness of the sound making them both flinch in the silence of the flat. Jon shrank in on himself. “Daisy?”

“You could write to your gran.” She stood up, nodding to herself. It would be a risk, getting a note to the old woman, but it might help? There would be no real way for her to respond, obviously Daisy couldn’t give her any kind of address, but maybe just being able to write out a proper goodbye would do Jon some good. Closure for that chapter of his life, or something. It was safer than actually taking Jon to Bournemouth, or bringing anyone else to meet him right now. If she didn’t do something soon, she might as well drive him to the Institute (what institute?) herself, give him to Elias (who?) with a manual for exactly how to suck out everything that made him Jon until there was nothing left but an empty vessel of... something.

(She wanted to think she'd be better at fixing this on a better day, but if that were true she would've done it by now.)

Jon was staring at her, more alert than he had been in days. She crouched to yank open a drawer and flapped a hand at him. “Finish your food.”

He turned back to his bowl slowly, staring at the food like it held some great secret. She dug through the drawer, eventually coming up with a half empty package of printer paper, white sheets rattling loose in the plastic wrapper. Why did she even have this? She didn’t own a printer (did she? it felt like she should, or did but she didn't). Whatever, it would work and it thunked satisfyingly down onto the kitchen’s scrap of counter space.

Jon stirred the noodles in his bowl, still not eating. “What do you mean?” His voice was soft, timid, but it was the most he’d said to her in one go in weeks. She nodded again as she rattled through a new drawer. She didn’t want to give him the pen she used for labeling polaroids to write with, she didn't have another that was permanent enough not to smear, but if she couldn’t find something else she might need to. Why didn’t she own any office supplies?

“A letter. Say goodbye, or tell her you’re alright, or whatever.” Although, if she let him write a letter it might reignite his case, put his face on the news. She glanced over to Jon, sitting straight and looking something almost approaching happy. Worth it.

She finally found a plastic sleeve containing a trio of pens that hopefully hadn’t dried out. She slapped those down next to the paper and slid back into her seat to polish off dinner with renewed vigor. Jon still hadn’t resumed eating. “Not until after dinner.”

She didn’t think she’d ever seen him eat so fast. She bit back a smile. “Don’t choke.”

Jon was practically vibrating by the time she finished placing the last scrubbed out bowl on the drying rack, eyes wide and hopeful and just a little too innocent. She huffed as she brought the paper and pens over to the table. “I’ll be reading it over before it goes anywhere.”

Jon’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t object as he grabbed for a sheet of paper and started scribbling. Something settled inside Daisy; he looked like himself. This was the best idea she’d had in ages.

Jon ended up writing half a dozen versions of the letter. The first was a token, obvious effort at putting down exactly where he was and the who, when, why, and how, clearly made because he knew Daisy expected him to try something. She barely had to glance at it before telling him to start over. His follow-ups got increasingly-subtle in their efforts to encode information in spelling and grammar errors, word choice, and layout. It would have been a better plan if he were at all capable of maintaining a poker face as he waited for her to look them over (he never had-would). She almost wanted to let it slide; his later iterations were quite clever, she doubted she would have caught anything if she weren’t looking. And he looked so hopeful.

She didn't, and eventually he came up with a version she figured was as good as she was going to get. It didn’t include any specifics, at least, and technically didn’t confirm any crime had been committed. She had to draw the line somewhere, or she may as well not let him write at all.

It hurt, though, seeing how much he still wanted to leave, even if the stilted way he talked to his grandmother reinforced her decision to take him. Jon deserved to be taken care of by someone who didn’t make him feel he had to apologize for existing; she could at least manage that.

The woman was losing a child, though. Even if Jon was too lonely and too skinny and too concerned about being a burden, she did raise him this long. She at least deserved to know he would be all right. To really be sure.

Daisy considered Jon across the table, a fair bit more downtrodden than when he started writing, sniffling back tears but so much more present in himself than he had been (he was back she pulled him back this time). She nudged his ankle with her foot. “Why don’t you grab a picture or two to send her, too?” That earned her another wide-eyed look and Jon practically teleporting across the kitchen. While he was occupied with that, she scratched out her own reassurances to the woman who raised him.

-

Daisy could tell from the moment she woke up the next morning that it was going to be a bad day, the worst she’d had in a while. She had hoped to fix the confusion that had her muddled yesterday, but instead she practically throbbed with the need to go and see Basira, even though she barely knew who Basira was. Barely knew who she, herself was, thoughts jumbled and head already aching.

She figured the headache was enough reason to call off work, with the added bonus of giving her the opportunity to take care of the letters. She’d managed to dig out an envelope from somewhere, and it sat sealed and blank on the kitchen table.

Even if she went somewhere else to mail it, it seemed like a bad idea. Too much chance of someone being able to report seeing her do it. She was pretty sure she could deliver it by hand much more safely. And she wouldn’t have to pay postage.

Jon went through the motions of their morning routine easily enough, and almost leaned into her when she left him with a hug and a hair ruffle. Even if it was a bad day for her memory, it was shaping up to be pretty good in other ways.

Without Jon in it, Bournemouth was a ghost. Daisy found a place to wait outside Jon’s old house practically without a thought, muscle memory guiding the actions more than logic. It was almost like a hunt (bad or was it good good it felt good but it was bad why why why).

She wanted to make sure it was received. Jon deserved to have his letter read, after all the work he put into it. And she wanted to see more of what his life had been like before she took him in. Therefore, it was perfectly convenient to wait for Mrs. Sims to leave the house for the day before stealing inside. The back door lock was hardly any trouble at all; anyone could get in, if they really wanted (anyone could have gotten in and hurt Jon).

If she were someone else, she might have startled to see Jon’s face practically the moment she came inside. It stared out from a stack of papers slightly askew on the table, emblazoned between “MISSING” and his vital details. A school picture, if she had to guess.

So the old woman did care enough to look, after all.

Daisy folded one of the posters up and pocketed it, plucking it from the table giving her a bit of trouble with the gloves she had been sure to wear for this (no need to give her counterparts more potential leads than she had to). It would be good for Jon to know he was missed. He couldn’t hide how much it hurt every night they watched the news without seeing any mention of him. He deserved to know he was wanted here, even if he was more wanted with Daisy.

She should have left the envelope on the table and gone, but she couldn’t resist drifting through the house. Mrs. Sims had had a large bag with her, knitting needles poking out the top; she was unlikely to be home any time soon.

It was unremarkable, the same as any other retiree’s home in the country. At first glance, it was hard to tell a teenage boy had ever lived there.

He was present, though. There weren’t many, but there were photos of Jon out on display. Proper ones, framed and everything. Daisy smiled at the tiny version of her friend, the version that had never encountered Fear. She found herself drawn to a stack of albums in a basket tucked under a side table. Most were older, Jon’s father’s childhood, but two were more interesting. One documented his life from toddlerhood on, mostly school photos with a few others mixed in. The other…

The other must have been from his parents. The baby book was meticulous, with months documented in more individual photos than entire years in the other. How many things did Jon have that were so clearly from his parents?

He would have at least this one. She tucked both albums under her arm and got back to her feet. Her eyes snagged on one of the frames, no Jon in this one. It was a hinged frame, a photos of a man and a boy facing each other, connected. Jon’s father and grandfather, she assumed.

She liked the idea of it. If Jon was supposed to be her brother, it would make sense to have older pictures of him. She had a few of her own baby pictures stored somewhere. She liked the idea of a frame like that, their twinned innocence on display, affirming that they belonged to each other.

Pulling down the handful of framed pictures of Jon was another thing she did almost without thought. She’d always been selfish. His grandmother hadn’t done much to document his childhood, but what there was… she wanted all of it. Proper photos, not just polaroids, pictures that implied a history, belonging. She didn’t need the frames, and returned them to where they'd hung (though she wanted some of her own, wanted the settled comfort they represented for herself and Jon). She left her stack of albums and loose photos on the table, once she was satisfied she had them all, and drifted to the stairs. There were a couple more pictures here she was sure to collect, but the main draw was a closed door, sticking out with all the rest were left ajar.

Jon’s room was messy, and a bit dusty. She doubted his grandmother had set foot there since he left, but she would investigate if Daisy left the door open. It felt right to leave Jon’s words here, among his things. She straightened some things to make the letter’s placement more obvious, but hesitated before setting it down. Snatched a pencil off the desk and wrote “From Jon” in big, clear letters. He deserved to have his words read.

She glanced around the room for anything he might want, but it was distressingly generic. No posters, no personal touches, just plain colored bedding, blank walls, desk and floor cluttered with schoolwork and dirty laundry more than anything. Nothing that looked significant, sentimental. Nothing particularly Jon.

She stole back out of the house feeling bright and confident in her good deed. Being able to write had made Jon happy, and assuaged whatever fears his grandmother might have as a bonus (though the bitter, jealous part of her thought of the blandness of his bedroom, the way his photos were outnumbered by those of his dead father, and grumbled that she probably never cared at all). This felt like a new leaf, tying up loose threads. Maybe when she got home she would phone up Summers’ cousin.

-

Dear Gran,

I’m sorry for causing you so much trouble over the years. I didn’t mean to, this time. I didn’t want to leave, and I’d come back home today if she’d let me. I’m trying to get back home anyway, if I can.

She lets me watch the news, so I know you must think I ran away, and that’s why no one ever reported on me going missing. I understand why you think that, and I don’t hold the lack of fuss against you. I didn’t, though. I want to come home. I miss you.

If I can’t, I want to say thank you. I know I’ve never been an easy child, and you didn’t want to raise another in the first place. Thank you for taking care of me anyway. I’m sorry for all the difficulty it’s caused you. I appreciate it, even if I haven’t always been the best at showing it.

There’s a stack of books in my bedroom that I borrowed from Mr. Cantu down the road; I would be very grateful if you could please see that they get back to him. They should be all together in the space under my desk. I’d also appreciate it if you could tell Mr. Cantu thanks, from me, and that I appreciated the loan even if I never got the chance to read them.

I hope to see you again, or at least write, but I probably won’t be able to. So instead I’ll reassure you: I’m still all in one piece, and she treats me decently so long as I don’t try to leave or hurt anyone. I’m eating, and I haven’t forgotten to brush my teeth or comb my hair, so you don’t have to worry about me too much.

I really, really want to come home, though. I miss you. Please don’t stop looking for me.

I hope this isn’t goodbye, but if it is, thank you for all you’ve done for me.

Your grandson,

Jonathan Sims

-

Mrs. Sims

Jon’s a good kid. You should be proud of him.

He misses you.

He’s safe, and healthy.

I’ll take good care of him.

I promise.

Chapter Text

He shouldn’t have assumed Daisy was going to send his letter through the mail. He shouldn’t have believed her offer was in good faith in the first place. He definitely shouldn’t have gone along with it, no matter how much he hoped that doing so would lead to rescue.

Unfortunately, he didn’t realize any of these mistakes until it was too late.

Daisy didn’t even seem aware of the stack on the table, humming around the kitchen making lunch. The horribly familiar photos and their implications just sat there, unacknowledged, as the horror came together for Jon.

Daisy was home in time for a late lunch, so she hadn’t gone to work. She hadn’t gone to work because she had gone to Bournemouth instead. Not just Bournemouth, she was inside his house. The letter was probably still in her pocket. Had she ever intended to deliver it at all?

He felt frozen in the kitchen entrance. He should do something, but he didn’t know what. His eyes flitted between the photos on the table and Daisy, scanning her for any hint of a struggle, any speck of blood on her shirtsleeves. He had the incongruous, detached thought that sick as he felt, she was still going to make him eat the stir-fry popping on the stovetop.

“Jon? Jon, what’s wrong?” He had gone back to staring at the photos, hadn’t noticed Daisy coming close until she was in his space, hand cradling the side of his face. He jumped back. Her face was creased with concern.

His voice came out in a croak, “What did you do to my gran?” How dare she. How dare she look so worried when everything was her fault , like she didn’t know what she’d done.

Was is quick? Was Gran frightened? Did she ever know Daisy had him at all?

“What?” Her face hadn’t shifted from its mockery of concern. Jon felt too hot, then too cold, flashing back and forth until he was dizzy.

He swallowed back bile. He could barely keep the tears out of his voice. This was his fault, too. He’d gone along with her, hadn’t seen the trap, had trusted she might do something just out of the kindness of her heart. His fault. Her fault. His fault. “You were in our house, what did you do to my gran?” The world seemed to shake around him, an earthquake for one. His ears rung. He didn’t want to hear her answer.

Everything about Daisy seemed to fall, as though she’d lost hold of some fundamental facet of the universe. “What do you mean? I didn’t do anything to your gran, what are you talking about?”

All he could do was repeat, “You were in our house,” pointing at the photos like he was firing a shot.

A hand landed on his shoulder, feeling like a ton of rock even as he could see Daisy making a deliberate effort to be gentle. Oh- the thing shaking was him. “C’mon, let’s sit down.” He shook his head stiffly and locked his knees, and she sighed. “I didn’t do anything to your gran. I went to your old house, but I didn’t go inside until I saw her leave. She had a bag with her- looked like knitting- so I figured she’d be gone a while. And I was right. I barely even saw her. She’s fine.”

She- it was Thursday. Gran had her knitting circle on Thursdays, and Daisy wouldn’t know that to lie about it (unless his suspicion was right and she’d been following him before taking him unless she lied about that unless unless unless). He relaxed minutely and let himself be guided to the table and its rapidly-cooling food.

“You didn’t hurt her.” A flat statement, barely believed.

“I didn’t touch her. I wouldn’t hurt someone important to you, alright? I went in and left the letters in your old bedroom. Took a few things on my way out. That’s all.” With him seated, Daisy’s hand withdrew, and she scooped the photos up and bustled out of the kitchen to put them wherever she kept things she didn’t want him to have access to. He didn’t know how long she was gone, but it felt like a nanosecond.

“Why?” The point was to mess with him, same as the point of anything Daisy did, but he didn’t see why taking his old photos would even occur to her. What was it with Daisy and pictures?

“Hmm?” She sat down, even though the stir-fry had to be stone cold by now. He guessed he appreciated the table, if only because the other options for serious conversations tended to be the couch or the bed, and at least here there was a barrier between them.

“Why’d you take the pictures?”

“Oh!” She choked a little laugh, mouth twitching. “Only makes sense to have baby pictures of you, if you’re my brother, yeah?”

He nodded dully, not in agreement so much as acknowledgment. He didn’t mirror her smile.

“I took this too.” She was entirely serious again, shifting in her chair to pull something from her pocket. “She has been looking for you.”

He took the paper she offered across the table and unfolded it to see- himself. MISSING. All the things he’d been watching for on the news for months.

He held the poster in a white-knuckle grip as he stood up and dashed to the bedroom before breaking down, curling around the paper and trying to muffle sobs.

-

Daisy came in and took the poster away eventually. He didn’t want to give it up, but he also didn’t want it to tear. Supposedly, he could have it back if he asked, just not when she wasn’t there to supervise.

It hadn’t even occurred to him to use it to prove to the next neighbor who wanted to call Daisy instead of the police that he wasn’t delusional. Stupid.

He had to get out of here. Gran wanted him back, he knew she did, now, finally silencing the part of himself that thought she’d be glad to be rid of him. If the letter did what he hoped, if it spread his name around a bit more, it was the perfect moment to try- really try, with a proper plan. And Daisy… he didn’t know if she was getting worse or if he was, but either way they were nearing a breaking point. He had to get away.

In his favor: Daisy was a creature of habit. She always took extra, almost absurdly, long showers on the weekends, and locked him in the bedroom. He’d already been using that time to search for anything useful there, and had found thirty pounds tucked into the pocket of a jacket in the very back of the closet. He still had his bag, and anything he could quietly shift into it without being noticed.

Working against him: Daisy probably still expected another escape attempt. She kept his shoes next to the door, and he didn’t fancy the idea of traveling London in sock feet. He didn’t actually have a way out of the bedroom yet, much less the flat. If he wanted help he wasn’t likely to find it in London, with all Daisy’s precautions. And Daisy knew where his home was, once he got there.

But he had to. He had to go before she did something truly awful, like he thought she’d done to Gran. The idea that he’d waited too long, and now there really was no going back to normal… it didn’t bear thinking about. That brief glimpse was more than enough.

He spent the next week looking for opportunities. He wasn’t going to be impulsive this time; whatever he came up with, he would wait to try until she had her shower Sunday morning. He turned the bedroom and bathroom inside out and upside down whenever he had the privacy to do so safely; the bathroom was as frustratingly useless as ever, down to the stubbornly fixed screws in the cabinets, but he turned up an old pair of trainers in the closet. Daisy’s feet were much bigger than his, but any shoes were better than bare feet. It started to feel like he could really do this. If Daisy noticed his distraction, she didn’t comment.

The last part of his plan fell into place when Daisy burned herself on the edge of a frying pan and set Jon off silently panicking about what would happen if the building caught fire while she was at work. The bathroom didn’t have a fire escape, but the bedroom must. He spent his window of privacy during her shower Saturday morning to test the theory, pulling the window open and peering down at the metal skeleton attached to the building’s exterior. It made him dizzy with excited eagerness. (And possibly vertigo. They were… really high up.)

He attributed the anxious knot in his stomach to the height, the next morning. It was only sensible; he’d never been up that high before. He’d stuffed the fronts of the trainers with socks until they mostly fit, with an end effect reminiscent of clown shoes or swim flippers. He wasn’t nervous about Daisy, because Daisy wasn’t going to catch him.

He checked himself over one last time, because it was best to be cautious and not because he was afraid. Backpack, shoes tied as tight as they’d go, the money from the closet, jacket (one which he really quite liked, though he wouldn’t tell Daisy so), polaroid slipped off the fridge so the police in Bournemouth would know what Daisy looked like, any other supplies he’d thought of shoved into the bag at random. He’d decided trying to get a train home was the best plan; the police in Bournemouth knew him better than they’d like; if Daisy caught up with him, she could lie to them until her tongue fell out, and it wouldn’t change the fact that they already knew Jonathan Sims. He was ready.

The fire escape was just a rickety-looking metal ladder bolted to the exterior of the building. Jon carefully eased himself out the window, keeping one leg and both white-knuckled hands on the window ledge until his foot felt firmly planted on the nearest rung, then quickly reaching over to grab on and swing his other foot into place. Safely on the thing, now he just had to climb down four stories to freedom.

It was not a feat he was keen to repeat, particularly the part where he’d realized that the last length of ladder had to be kicked down to reach down the last floor. He was keenly aware of the street all the while, certain that at any moment someone would notice him and raise some kind of alarm.

But he made it.

On the ground, he was faced with finding his way to the nearest train station. He’d never been to London, except for a couple of heavily chaperoned school trips, and even if he had, he had no idea what part of the city Daisy lived in. Technically, for all he knew, she’d been lying and they weren’t in London at all. He picked a direction and started walking, trying to move quickly but not so quickly someone might be suspicious. Eventually he’d find a group of people who looked like they were commuting out of the city, or a map, or someone he could ask for directions.

Meandering trial and error, always making sure Daisy’s flat was to his back, eventually bore fruit. He hoped his bewildered path would make him more difficult to follow, rather than losing him precious time. Hopefully the moment he took, once he was in sight of the station, to pull out the comb he’d brought and neaten his hair wouldn’t do that either. He’d decided it was better to risk the loss of a few seconds than be denied a ticket because he looked too young. Or too crazy.

Either it had worked or he had never needed to worry in the first place, and he was soon trying not to wriggle anxiously in his seat on a train home. The ever-changing view from the window seemed almost surreal after weeks of only seeing the view out Daisy’s window, of the side of the next building over.

-

When planning his great escape, it had not occurred to Jon that train rides were lengthy, and boring, and it might be an asset to bring along a book. He was lamenting this oversight to himself when the train started to slow, then came to a stop. He glanced around with the other passengers; they were less than halfway there!

Eventually word made its way to his car that there was an obstruction on the tracks, and the train would not be continuing to Bournemouth. Jon wanted to cry; he must have the worst luck in the entire world. The news was accompanied by the reassurance that buses were being sent to carry passengers to the next nearest station, where they could board another train, but it felt like scant comfort.

Jon joined a group of passengers milling about near the tracks, waiting for the promised buses. Even with the train half full, few people wanting to make their way to the seaside with the first frost of winter biting at the air, he was too short and slow to make it to the first bus before it was full. (He should shout and beg but that just meant Daisy showing up last time he couldn't.) He paced back and forth, hands habitually clasped over the straps of his bag and eyes fixed somewhat blankly on the little wooded area a ways off. What kind of half rate enterprise were they running here?!

It was in this absent scanning that his eyes caught on a sight that made his heart flip. Surely lots of people drove gray sedans? Didn’t police forces specifically choose vehicles that were common and nondescript? It was probably someone else. It couldn’t be Daisy. Come to think of it, he hadn’t actually seen that much of her car (the outside, at least) in the first place! He was probably mistaken, and her car was actually white, or, or maroon!

He started edging his way toward the woods; he stood a better chance there than running down the clear expanse of field or road that constituted his other options. Maybe he’d just walk to the next station. It couldn’t be that far, and all he’d have to do was follow the tracks.

The road was fairly far from the tracks, and the area the worryingly-familiar car found to park in was even more so; Jon had to squint, darting his eyes over the rims and back within the frame of his glasses as though it might help, to make out the figure that climbed out. It was difficult to see, but when he saw they were tall and blonde he decided it was better to be safe than sorry, and started casually walking toward the woods. Running would draw too much attention.

The moment he was past the treeline, he started to sprint as well as he could over roots and branches in his terrible borrowed trainers. His bag thumped against his back hard enough to nearly topple him as he crested a particularly steep rise, and only half thinking he shucked it off and tossed it aside. The really important things, the money and the photo, were in his pockets anyway. The things in the bag were just in case, and they’d do him little good if he was dragged back to that flat.

When his breath started to wheeze and hitch, he slowed to a walk. In the silence of the woods, it was almost possible to convince himself all the running had been an overreaction, and he should probably head back to retrieve his bag. Almost. Every crackling twig and landing bird made him whirl around looking for the source of the noise.

After a couple minutes, he was certain that the sound behind him was footsteps. He paused. Maybe it was a, a poacher, or someone else who might believe his story and help him get home. Maybe it was a deer, and it would be just as afraid of him as he’d been of it.

“Jon?”

The call was faint, and still far off, but it set his heartrate skyrocketing so quickly he felt like he might faint. He started moving faster again, but slower than he’d like. If she was really here, in the woods with him, he should stay quiet. Maybe she’d decide he wasn’t here and go away.

That fiction held for all of a minute before he heard it again, much closer.

“Jon!”

He started to run.

The too-big shoes toppled him again and again to scrape his palms against tree trunks and his knees against tall roots, but never entirely to the ground. (Scraped, bleeding, marking his own trail.) The sound of chasing footsteps was always behind him, but never on top of him. It should have been easy for a grown woman of Daisy’s height and athleticism to outrun him. The woods shouldn’t have been this big. He didn’t have the time or oxygen to consider why this felt wrong.

They seemed to continue endlessly, until Jon could have sworn he saw the same bits of scenery repeating. Something wasn’t right. Daisy should have caught him by now. He wanted to investigate the wrongness, but the pursuer on his heels and the thin strand of hope ahead of him kept him running instead of stopping.

For all Jon knew he could have been running for hours. Days. It certainly felt like it. He tripped into a shallow stream and got up, muddy and wet and still running in chafing, soaked jeans. His steps slowed, and he kept going even though he felt like he might die if he didn’t stop. His death felt just as likely if he stopped. The world narrowed to his heaving breaths, pounding feet below and behind him, the next obstacle he couldn’t trip over or he’d be doomed. The entire landscape felt hostile, rocks sprouting up to trip him and birds staring to report back with his precise path. Why not, when a book could kill a bully with a giant spider? Even the air seemed against him, thick and stinging in his lungs.

He didn’t think she’d be taking him back to the flat if she caught him. With all the trouble he’d caused? Surely it wasn’t worth it; if she really wanted the- the company, or the power over someone else, or whatever, there were hundreds of other teenagers out there. What better place for a murder than the woods?

He’d almost blocked out Daisy’s footsteps, so focused was he on his own stride, when she finally pounced. He hit the ground hard, the impact jarring its way up his arms and rattling his head. Her fingers felt sharp as she flipped him over onto his back (a turtle on its shell) so he was staring up at her.

Daisy knelt over him with a grin on her face, knees pinning his legs to the ground. It wasn’t the one he’d seen her wear when he tolerated a hug or a picture, or when there was a new episode of The Archers. There was something jagged and feral to it, too many teeth, eyes too bright.

In that moment, Jon knew there was something very, very wrong with Daisy. Not just in the kidnapper way. Something inhuman. All he could do as she held his shoulders pinned to the ground was pant for air that tasted like metal in his throat. He wasn’t entirely sure if the high whining noise coming from his mouth was voluntary or not. The tears starting to seep at the corners of his eyes weren’t. (She was going to kill him he was going to die she was going to kill him he's dying.)

“Caught you.” Where Jon felt wrung out, wet and tired and scared, Daisy looked exhilarated. He shook his head mutely up at her. Her teeth looked too sharp. Maybe she’d never planned to use a weapon to kill him at all. The image of Mr. Spider’s terrible legs reaching out flashed into his head again.

“P-please,” he wheezed, more whistle to the sound than word. “Please.”

Daisy rocked back off of him, pulling him by the shoulders so he was sitting upright, then guided his head to her shoulder. It felt a tiny bit easier to breathe. “Daisy please.”

“Got you,” she murmured, hand rubbing circles on his back. Jon let out a sob.

It wasn’t fair.

Chapter Text

Sasha was a mature, self aware adult. She didn’t believe in lying to herself. So she was perfectly capable of admitting that, maybe, she was allowing her investigation into one Jonathan Tonner, Head Archivist and Stealer of Promotions, to become a bit too obsessive. Just a bit.

It was weird, though. Even beyond the surface Jon weirdness everyone learned to live with within their first week in Research. She knew he was a bit of a hermit, but no social media at all? As much as he liked to play the world-weary old man, he was younger than her! As far as she could tell, the only photo of him that existed online was the one Elias had forced him to take when he was promoted, for the Institute website (though lord knew why he bothered, when the rest of the site looked like it hadn’t been updated since 2006). Even more frustratingly, the only lead she’d gotten since moving to the Archives and starting her quest hadn’t come from her research at all!

Jon had brought out a statement, said it didn’t record on the laptop, and asked if they’d mind doing a bit of a deeper dive on it, “just while we try to resolve the technical issue.” Whatever, if he wanted to pretend it wasn’t weird she wasn’t about to stop him.

“Which is it?” Tim asked.

“Joshua Gillespie.” Jon waved the file, in Tim’s direction, taking half a step over to hand it to him.

Tim nodded. “The coffin guy, from… Brighton, right?”

Jon shook his head. “Bournemouth.” His face twitched. “My hometown, actually.”

Tim froze, just for a moment, at the uncharacteristically personal detail. A moment was all Sasha needed to dart over and take the folder herself. “I’ll do it. I’m ahead anyway.” Not technically true, but she worked faster than Tim, especially putting her mind to it, and she was leagues ahead of Martin. He was methodical, but he was also slow . And she didn’t think he’d noted their conversation at all. He had been in the Library before, not Research; he probably hadn’t realized yet how odd it was for Jon to reveal a personal detail just like that.

Tim did, though, and between that and his knowledge of Operation: Myspace Photos, he had all the fuel he needed to spend the rest of the afternoon making exaggerated expressions of shock and surprise whenever he caught her eye.

-

They had researched the first statement that failed to record digitally more deeply than usual- Sasha wouldn’t have bothered looking for anything in the photo if it had recorded normally, for one- so it made sense to do the same with this one. If she happened to interpret “more deeply” as meaning “anything remotely odd happening in a 20 mile or 10 year radius of the statement’s events," that was her business. Especially since she did half the research on her own time.

She wasn’t really sure what she was looking for. Finding the building records and what little else she could for the statement wasn’t too difficult, but more generally… she had a vague idea of coming across some kind of newspaper article, “Teen Paranormal Investigator Arrested for Trespassing,” maybe. Something that would either put the mystery of Jonathan Tonner and his lack of social media to rest or sate her desire for embarrassing photos and/or anecdotes from his childhood.

She could have asked Daisy- with the other woman hanging around the Institute more for whatever reason, she probably knew her well enough- but that would be cheating. And less fun.

If she had been at home when she found this photo, she might have let it pass her by. By that point, scrolling infinitely through any unsolved crime in the general Bournemouth area since the 1990s was more an alternative to opening Twitter for her procrastination needs than a genuine search. But she was at work and it was just at the beginning of their lunch break when Tim scooted his wheeled office chair over to drape himself all over her.

“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”

She snorted and shrugged his arm off her shoulder. “Don’t you wish you knew?”

“More OMP stuff?” he waggled his eyebrows dramatically at the acronym in a movement that might have been meant to indicate secrecy, or espionage, or an itchy forehead.

She hummed in assent. “Did find a crime involving someone else named Jonathan.” Wikipedia wasn’t technically the sort of thing she was supposed to be using in her capacity as a professional researcher, but Sasha believed in working smarter, not harder. Faster to read the case summary there than try to piece it together based on speculation on sketchy paranormal forums. “ The Disappearance of Jonathan Sims” even happened right in Bournemouth.

Tim reached over her, scrolling the page back to the top, to the school photo of a teenage boy. He chuckled. “Jon’s got an evil twin.”

She glanced back at the photo. She was never the best at judging, but it didn’t look dissimilar to their Jon. “I don’t think it’s very nice to call a missing child evil.”

“Fine, we have the evil twin.”

She was huffing a sound of grudging agreement when something else on the page caught her eye. “Huh. Same birthday, too.”

Tim shot straight up in his seat, pumping his fists. “Vindication!”

Sasha rolled her eyes, but decided to play along. “Or they’re the same person, held captive for years. We’ll have to stage a daring rescue!”

Tim laughed. “Yeah. Right now though, I’d rather rescue him from working through lunch. C’mon.”

Sasha shut the tab and stood.

Chapter Text

Initially, when she heard nothing but silence from the bedroom instead of Jon’s usual clattering investigations, Daisy had (foolishly how could she be so stupid with Jon ) assumed he was having a lie in. It was Saturday, and he was 15; didn’t teenagers usually sleep a lot? Especially considering how closed off, apathetic, and lethargic he'd been the last couple weeks. Things had been a bit better since sending the letters, but a relapse wasn’t a surprise. As she puttered around the kitchen, microwaving a breakfast burrito and setting aside another for Jon when he got up, she was just glad he was doing something normal. She wanted him to get to be normal. The door was unlocked; he could come out whenever he was ready.

When she realized it was nearing eleven with still no sign of Jon, she decided to check on him. She had known he would try to leave again, the mad dash down to the neighbor’s more a seized opportunity than a real plan, and still assumed he must be sick or something. When she quietly cracked the door open to see the bed empty and the window open, it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. Hadn’t she sworn to be more careful, hadn’t she sworn to keep him safe?

She only took enough time to shoot off a text to the officers she knew were working that day; they were well acquainted with Jon as the figure in the polaroid Daisy kept in her wallet, one of the rare ones that caught him in a smile- they’d know him if they saw him. Then she was rocketing out the door, not questioning the gut instinct that guided her steps.

Jon’s picture and description yielded a handful of sightings from businesses in the area, eventually pointing toward the train station. She tried to maintain the facade of the exasperated but mostly unworried sister through each conversation; the last thing they needed was for her to stand out too much in someone’s memory. Jon’s disappearance may not have garnered much media attention, but there were still posters up alongside other missing children in supermarkets and post offices, more so in the last few days. He still might be recognized.

Her heart twisted and sunk when she realized that of the trains that had left between the last time she’d seen Jon and her arrival at the station, only one seemed likely. Bournemouth. If he made it there, all her lies and cover stories would be irrelevant.

Amid the worried despair, she felt a flicker of pride as well. Smart kid.

It took too long to get back to the flat for the car. Jon didn’t have far to go, she didn’t have time. She didn’t want to lose him, if she lost him now his brief association with her might very well attract supernatural attention while leaving him unwary and unprotected. If she couldn’t save Jon (and Basira, she wished Basira were there her partner would have known what to do would have noticed he was gone) then it felt like there was little point in saving the world.

She took a route as close to the train tracks as possible, the decision to prioritize that over making good time coming without thought, directed by something outside herself she wouldn’t think to question until later. When a train, stopped on the tracks with passengers crowded around it, finally came into view relief overcame her so quickly she felt like a popped balloon, before it crept back on the tingling realization that for all she knew it was a different one entirely. She parked as close as she could, peering at the crowd with too-sharp eyesight. Jon must have seen her before she saw him, edging toward a little stand of trees not far off.

The muscles in her legs tightened and stuttered as she kept herself from chasing after him directly, instead getting back in the car and steering it as close to the treeline as possible. There was almost nothing out there but the train and a handful of truncated suburbs. If Jon was going for the trees, making sure she could get him back to the car unnoticed was more important than keeping him from getting too far. She couldn’t lie to a crowd the same way she could convince a single suburbanite if he got it into his head to start knocking on doors.

She stepped into the little wood with little regard for quiet, already calling his name. He was almost in reach, she could feel it, taste it, the scent of victory, reclaiming her packmate, thick on the wind. She went on, calling his name in a manner that might pass for any concerned guardian, until a flash of too-dark jacket against the trees caught her eye. “Jon!”

Something inside Daisy delighted when he took off at the sound of his name. The chase was on, and she would win- but not before having a little fun.

Her prey was inept, unused to navigating such an expanse of unpaved nature, stumbling and leaving traces wherever he went. She zagged through the trees, never quite in the same position relative to him twice.

It was only when her prey started to visibly flag, soaked (when had he gotten wet?) and loose-limbed with exhaustion even as he pressed on, that she remembered why she was after him. She was supposed to protect him, not hunt him.

Still, as she took him to the ground as quickly and neatly as possible, unwilling to risk him hurting himself a moment longer, she couldn’t stop the grin. It had been so long since she’d let loose the animal inside her, trying to keep it bottled even after losing everything out of some idea of respect for the wishes of the dead. The moment of adrenaline-soaked triumph, her quarry realizing beneath her that they were caught, that was what she was made for. She wanted to see her spoils’ face as he realized he couldn’t escape, and turned him over. “Caught you,” rubbing it in.

Realization came slowly and in a microsecond, Jon’s red and teary and scared face echoing itself, but all the worse for being unscarred and rounded out with scraps of baby fat. Even as guilt started to replace the high of the Hunt, the smile stayed, kept there by the joy and relief of knowing her was back in her arms where she could keep him safe- she just didn’t have it in her to feel so much at once, nuance and contradiction burned out by the earlier fear and Hunt. She loosened her hold enough to pull him onto her shoulder so he could breathe a little easier.

Jon’s sobs came on the inhale, as though he was trying to suck in emotion in place of air, and she could barely hear his wheezy pleas. She shushed him, rubbing his back. “Got you,” She tried to repurpose the sentiment as a reassurance, a promise.

Guilt rose like bile; was she still so susceptible to the Hunt, even now? She couldn’t let it cost her Jon. (But what if she’d resisted and lost him anyway? Wasn’t it worth it, this once?)

“I’m sorry, please Daisy.” Her heart ached, knowing it was a sentiment made from fear, trying not to listen to the echoes of the same voice, deepened by age, pleading for its life. She shushed him, rubbing circles on his back.

“Breathe, just breathe for me, okay?”

After several minutes it became clear that Jon wasn’t going to calm down any time soon. Better to get him home, where he could at least change into dry clothes and be comfortable, than sit on the ground risking nosy, helpful strangers coming across them.

“C’mon,” she didn’t know how to be comforting, how to make him trust her. (And why should he, after everything? Car boots and knives and shovels and polaroids blurred together in her mind.) She shifted so she could pin his legs around her waist, face still buried in her shoulder, and start toward the car. He probably didn’t even realize he was shivering at the combination of early November air and damp clothes. He didn’t struggle, a rag doll in her arms, all the fight run out of him. The shaking sobs never stopped.

The walk to the car was thankfully short, and she held Jon upright against her so she could free a hand to open the passenger side door and place him inside. He didn’t take his own weight onto his feet when they brushed the ground, hanging limp from the arm holding him against her chest. As soon as she’d arranged him within the vehicle and withdrawn her touch, he brought his feet up onto the seat and curled into a ball, shrinking in like the reflexive contraction of a sea anemone. There was something jarring about the sight, aside from the way Jon’s fear always pulled at her, and it took her a moment to realize it was because his feet looked wrong, tucked into a pair of trainers several sizes too large. He was lucky they hadn’t fallen off in the chase. They were lucky he hadn't turned an ankle.

He cringed when she took her own seat and reached out to touch his shoulder lightly. Daisy bit her lip. “Hey, Jon,” she tried to keep her voice as soothing as possible. “Can you take your jacket off for me?” She didn’t know if he even heard the question, but the jacket was soaked through; better to get it off him if she could, she had no idea what she would do if he got sick.

He hurried to comply, head tucked down but not hiding the snot bubbling to accompany his tears, the dull expression. As he passed her the jacket he gave it a look like she was tearing away a limb; she carefully folded it before placing it in the backseat and shucking her own. When she wrapped the dry, insulated article around Jon she could have zipped it up around his bent knees with room to spare. He hiccuped a gasp, a momentary flame of terror lighting his eyes again when the fabric first touched him.

She’d promised an escape attempt would make her angry, back when she first took him, but it had proved a lie on his first attempt and it was a lie now. Even if she hadn’t lost control of herself, she didn’t think she could have been anything but heartbroken at the huddled figure. She could see both of his lips pulled in, pressed between his teeth and trembling as he tried not to make a sound but couldn’t stop crying, shoulders jerking with every breath. She wished she knew what to say to fix it, to make him understand.

She pulled out her phone, tapping out a reassurance that Jon had been found safe and a thanks to the numbers that had responded to her request for help. She stared at the shuddering teen- a kid, he was a kid- in her passenger seat.

“Jon.” He flinched every time she said his name but she wasn’t sure he’d even realize she was speaking without it. “I promised not to hurt you. That hasn’t changed.”

Daisy panicked when that was met with a new wave of tears, a shake of his head. “I-I don’t w-want to stay with you-u! I want to g-go h-home!”

The breath rushed out of her. She didn’t know if it was better to leave him be or pull him into a hug. Her own throat tightened, threatening tears to match Jon’s. “I promise it’s for the best, Jon. I swear I wouldn’t do this to you if it wasn’t important.”

(But she would, wouldn’t she? Always selfish.

She would have taken him even if Jonah Magnus had dropped dead the moment she arrived in the past, she couldn’t stand to be alone again and she could live with stealing Jon’s lonely adolescence better than Basira’s close-knit family. Every time he glared at her or smiled or cried, even now, part of her rejoiced because he was real and present and alive.)

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, unsure what to do. She didn’t want to see Jon droop as they got closer and closer to returning to London. She didn’t know how to fix it.

She leaned over, pushing lightly at his knees so he’d drop them to the floor. He resisted for a moment before doing so, and she pulled the seatbelt over his lap. Even when she went back to her own seat, he stayed like that, back hunched and arms wrapped tight around his stomach, staring through the floor. She swallowed. “I’m sorry I scared you.” It was a weak statement, hardly encompassing what she’d done. (She’d Hunted him, what was she thinking?)

(She wasn’t.)

Jon’s head twitched to the side, glancing over before fixing wide eyes on his lap. She watched him for a long time before he replied, “If you were s-sorry you would stop.”

Daisy blew out a long breath and shut her eyes. “If a toddler was running into traffic, and when I grabbed their arm to stop them they got hurt, I’d be sorry, but I’d still do the same thing over again.”

“I’m not a toddler, and my own home isn’t traffic.” His voice was flat, lacking the bite she would expect.

“It’s dangerous. If it weren’t, I’d take you anywhere in the world you wanted, you could do whatever. I want you to be happy, but I can’t prioritize that above keeping you safe.”

“Safe from what! There’s nothing- there hasn’t been anything since I was eight! I was fine!”

“Do you really want to know that?” She would tell him if he did, the whole mess of it, couldn’t deny him anything in this moment, but his eyes darted to the woods, to her, back to the trees, lingered on her painted fingernails, no sign they’d ever been anything but blunt and unremarkable. Maybe they hadn’t. Daisy resisted the urge to reach out and touch him, to soothe the curl of his spine or the trembling that shook unshed tears into falling to his lap. “I wouldn’t hurt you if it wasn’t to protect you.”

She tried to believe that.

Chapter Text

Jon didn’t know if the shivering in his limbs and the hot-cold fevery feeling shooting up and down his spine had more to do with the cold water soaked into his clothes or the realization that monster monster Daisy was a monster. Every bit as inhuman and awful as Mr. Spider, and he’d been living with her for months without realizing.

(He’d thought of Mr. Spider the very first time they met; had some part of him always known? Was he just in denial?)

He was led back to the flat with Daisy’s hand hovering at his shoulder, a polite fiction that he wasn’t a prisoner. Stepping across the threshold felt like pulling the lever on his own guillotine, complete with the dull thud of the door closing behind him.

Locked in with a monster.

A monster whose first order of business was confiscating his shoes and having him turn out his pockets, the soggy notes and photo set aside as she slipped into the bedroom, leaving him swaying in place, staring blankly. Was she going to address what he had seen, what he now knew? Should he bring it up? Or would that be more dangerous than continuing the charade?

Time seemed to slip and drag, flashing back to momentary alertness whenever Daisy came too close before fading out again, and then he had a half eaten granola bar in his hand and he was being steered into the bathroom, a set of his clothes already set out on the counter and the bath running. At some point, Daisy’s coat had vanished, and he was even more aware of the chill against his skin. Daisy’s hands squeezed his shoulders. “You get warmed up and clean, I’ll be back in just a bit.”

She pressed a kiss to his temple, and he tried not to picture bloodied, tearing fangs.

-

Jon hadn’t realized how acclimated he’d become to Daisy’s presence until he was back behind her door, bogged down by the knowledge that he was trapped with worse than the merely human sort of monster. Hadn’t noticed how close she could come without him flinching until that distance was whittled back by the phantom flash of clawed hands, how quietly she moved until he was living with ears piqued for a predator’s tread. At some point living with Daisy had started to feel almost normal, and he knew he wasn’t the only one that noticed his regression.

She didn’t mention it. If anything, she seemed apologetic- about the locks that had decorated every closet, drawer, and window in the flat by the time she’d let him out of the bathroom, about the way she kept him close, after the near escape. At first he could meet her new actions with nothing but relief; being confined to the bedroom felt like unimaginable good fortune, compared to the potential manifestations of Daisy’s anger he spun up on the drive back to London. He wasn’t foolish enough to think the reprieve would last forever- not after seeing the wild, bloody light in Daisy’s eyes when she’d chased him down- but he’d take what he could get.

He couldn’t regain even the small feeling of safety he had taken in the predictability of their old routine. He started doubting he was even safe inside his own head; his favorite foods started making more and more regular appearances, even though he’d never told Daisy what they were, and he hadn’t thought she knew all of the little contingencies he’d tried to take solace in, but-

But part of the appeal of getting to send his Gran photos alongside the letter was the idea that the police might be able to identify some part of the flat behind him. He’d been so careful with his selection. One of the earliest photos Daisy had taken, one he knew she didn’t like anyway because of how it showed the bandages on his wrists and was old enough that blue-green bruises from straining against the handcuffs still stained his arms beyond their borders, and one more recent so Gran would know he was in more or less the same state as when he arrived. Both with the most miserable-looking expressions he could find; he didn’t want any doubt in the cops’ minds about whether he was here willingly and figured Daisy wouldn’t object to losing them, since she only really liked the ones where he looked happy anyway. He hadn’t even tried to send along anything that showed Daisy, hoping she’d think he’d learned his lesson from the number of times he’d had to draft and redraft the letter and not look too closely. Nothing as obvious or distinctive as one with the flat door and its many locks, but he’d found one that caught the join in the two different styles of molding between the kitchen and living area, and the other showed the ugly, mass-order carpet. He'd checked the background of every picture on the fridge, shifting around all Daisy’s cheap, kitschy magnets and hoping she wouldn’t be mad at him for disturbing their arrangement, searching for a piece of mail left out on a side table or a shot showing the street outside the window before making his selections. Had been sure that she’d focused on the letter and not noticed the photos, but-

But Daisy sat him down on the couch, arm only at his shoulder for a moment before withdrawing but still lighting up his nerves with the conflicting instincts to lean into the touch after so long with nothing, alone alone alone, and to get away, run, monster danger monster. She perched easily with one knee up while he’d curled in on himself and tried not to feel like a crumpled up wad of paper. She hadn’t smiled, but her eyes were glittering. “I have some good news.”

He could feel the exclamation point she was suppressing, so careful not to show any emotion too extreme where he could say as if he would just forget.

“The flat’s too small for two of us, so… I bought a house.”

Jon blinked, understimulated brain sluggishly trying to read her implication before his stomach plummeted. “You’re moving.”

A tiny frown twitched over Daisy’s face before vanishing. “We’re moving. It’ll still be a while, the place needs some work before it’s livable, but that just means you can pick what color you want the walls to be in your new room, and… and the carpet, and everything. All new stuff!”

Obviously they were both going, he didn’t think she’d just… leave him in the flat for the next tenant to discover (ha! He should be so lucky) but that didn’t mean he wanted to include himself with her, pretend they were some kind of unit. He swallowed, wondering if it was safe not to fake the excitement she was clearly hoping for. “Where… where is it?” Would she take him out of the country, maybe even somewhere where the language wasn’t English and no one would be able to understand him even if he could ask for help? Somewhere so remote he’d have to hike miles just to find another person?

“Not far. Edge of the city. I’ll have a longer commute, but it’s a good neighborhood,” Daisy continued blithely on, interrupting his imaginings of supervillain lairs at the bottom of the sea, where he definitely wouldn’t be able to escape out the window, or any other way, ever again. He hummed noncommittally, unsure what else he could say. Of course it was a good neighborhood; imagine Daisy moving them to a bad one, someone thinking the house was empty, breaking in only to find him . The poster she’d brought from Gran’s hadn’t mentioned a reward, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one; the letters had done something, he’d finally seen a brief mention of himself during a news program, just enough to know it was him before Daisy switched the channel. It might work out better for the hypothetical burglar. As long as Daisy really wasn’t there.

He swallowed again, feeling compulsive, trying not to think about convincing someone to help him only to have them torn apart with tooth and claw. About finding out for real, in grisly detail, what Daisy really was.

Chapter Text

Daisy had had a piece of panic pounding behind her breastbone since Jon's promotion.

She knew she had frightened him in her fear, taking it out on the person least deserving of it, but she didn't know what to do. Bad enough that she hadn't been vigilant enough to keep him from signing his contract with the Institute, arrogantly sure that the diverging path of his life meant that it wouldn't find itself on his list of job applications, and only bothered to ask the name of his new employer after it was already too late, now he was trapped in the Archives as well as the Institute. Trapped as the Archivist.

It scared her. It made her wonder if she was really changing anything at all for the better, if the worst events of her original life were fated to occur no matter what she did. It made her feel the phantom pull of silk and hook, puppeting her and Jon toward the same conclusion.

She couldn't let that happen. She wouldn't. Much as she cared for the Jon in her first life, she barely knew him. They were driven together by circumstance and desperation, each finding comfort in the only other warm body willing to coexist with them without judgement. She never knew that Jon relaxed or happy, she was only there to watch his precipitous decline into inhumanity, then the slow drain of personality carved out by the Archive after the Change. She had been able to defer her feelings of guilt then; so much of what happened was out of her control, happened when she was gone or unaware. This life was different.

This Jon was different. He was hers, in a way he never had been in that life. Her friend, her ally, her little brother. He counted on Daisy to keep him safe, and she had failed him. She didn't even know how to articulate that failure in a way he would understand, in a way he would believe. He could be so stubborn, a warning of everything the Archives were might only drive him to ruin even faster. She was frozen by desperate fear and indecision, every path seeming to lead to a worse end.

She hung around the Institute as much as she could. At the very least, she could make sure no monster kidnapped him in her absence by making sure he was away from her as little as possible (still selfish, even after so many years of trying to put Jon first). At the very least, she could keep Bouchard away from him. Keep everyone who might hurt him away. None of her nudges seemed to alleviate Jon's instinctive dislike of Martin, Sasha was an unknown quantity, and she didn't trust Stoker one  whit. He had turned on Jon so easily last time, had cut at Jon so deeply even after he died; better to keep him from getting close enough to hurt Jon in the first place.

She knew Jon thought it was odd that she hung around so much, that he sensed how on edge she was, even beyond her loss of control when he announced his promotion, and that it made him edgy, too. He almost never went out on his own since becoming Archivist, even to get lunch somewhere outside the Institute. Even at home he seemed nervous to be in a room without her in sight, like the awful things she said (that she regretted saying but didn't know how to adequately apologize for) about him getting in over his head and seeking out trouble and creating messes just to make her clean them up were all true, and might manifest in some uncontrollable action if he was left alone too long. He spent more and more time in his room, with the door closed. He never closed the door unless he expected her to lock it, and she didn't know what to make of the change in behavior. If it meant he felt unsafe, or if he didn't trust himself. Both?

On top of everything else, Jon's promotion had them both exhausted. Despite both his own misgivings and those borrowed from Daisy, nothing could make Jon do anything but the most he was capable of, and then some more. If he didn't have Daisy, she knew he'd be spending nights in the Archives, and probably inhabit them continuously from Friday morning to Monday evening, taking advantage of a weekend with no one to ask when he was going home or get in the way of whatever he currently considered most important. Bouchard, of course, had oh-so-helpfully provided Jon with a key to the building and the codes to the security system.

Instead of Jon spending nights in the Archives, more often than not once she had him safely tucked away at home Daisy found herself haunting their aisles once again. She didn't take advantage of the access Bouchard had kindly provided them, opting to enter via the tunnels instead. If Jon found out she knew about them, there would be hell to pay; he'd be furious to know there was something as interesting and exciting as a network of secret passages under his feet and she kept it from him.

Daisy needed the plausible deniability of Jon's ignorance to keep Bouchard's eyes off the Archives. She spent hours every night rearranging files, trying to shift anything she recognized as genuine to the bottom of the pile. That would slow Jon's progression as the Archivist- at least, she hoped so.

Her hopes were given credence when the files she moved started to return to their original places, or ones of even greater prominence. She wasn't sure if this was due to some machination of Bouchard's or the Archive itself trying to nudge along Jon's development, but she was devoted to thwarting it either way.

Basira noticed her preoccupation; of course she did. She didn't get to see her as often as her first life, but Basira was still Daisy's best friend and one of the smartest people she knew. It burned, not being able to spill out the whole story to her. Having to keep the most basic facts of this life a secret for Jon's sake, constantly testing the limits of their new relationship, one less defined by blood and silence.

She told herself that the lack of violence tying her to Basira and Basira to her was a good thing; Basira's silence and Daisy's own protectiveness had fed the Hunt, however unintentionally. This sense of distance was the price of her humanity, and she should be glad to pay it. Basira wasn't the only person in her world and Jon needed her more, always had and probably always would. He needed a sister with her head fixed solidly on her shoulders, a sister who listened to his fears instead of the blood that pounded close to the skin because of them.

And Basira's favorite tactic for voicing a concern had always been to observe in silence until she had enough information to attack it full-on. Daisy had time before Basira started asking questions she might have trouble answering.

She still had time.

Chapter Text

Daisy understood why Jon wasn't excited about the move. Really, she did! At least she thought so. He still hoped that whatever glimpses the neighbors had had and whatever gaps her ad hoc protections surely still possessed, could be taken advantage of them for another escape, and he thought that would be less likely once they'd moved to an environment where Daisy had been able to direct renovation toward the singular goal of keeping him contained from the very start.

(And to be fair, he was right. There would be no daring trips down a fire escape in their new home, she was making sure of it.)

But even if she understood, she couldn't help but feel disappointed every time a prompt about what he thought of it, or what he wanted out of his new space, was rebuffed with sullen silence or a bare minimum response.

Her flat had never been meant for two people (well, perhaps if they were a couple. But not two people sleeping separately) and before that her muddled memories of Jon's other-self were all set in either whatever bits of the ruined world they could carve temporary shelter out of, or the Archives and their tunnels. He'd had a flat at some point, probably, but she didn't think he'd lived there since he'd had to go on the run from her overeager "justice" and bloodlust.

Jon deserved a home. She felt largely skeptical of how much that term truly applied to his life with his grandmother, however much he insisted he wanted to return to it, and it was even less accurate for his life now. But she had everything she needed to build that space for him, now. A house of their own, the money (thank you, Peter Lukas and his unwary accountant) to furnish it, even the sort of sappy, sitcom stuff she hadn't even had in her own childhood, all the baby pictures and mementos she'd gathered from his grandmother. Her own additions, in the form of countless Polaroids she couldn't seem to resist taking, and anything else Jon wanted.

If he would just tell her what that was.

The only desire he had voiced, "to be left alone," would be more possible when they had the space of an entire house to lose each other in, at least. Much as Daisy disliked the idea. But she knew there must be other things, favorite colors and textures for the necessities, some childish want he'd never been able to acquire for the frivolities... A gaming system, maybe? It seemed like the sort of thing teen boys as a demographic enjoyed, but she'd never heard Jon express an interest in such a thing. He'd always been something of an ascetic, in her experience of him; but surely at least half of that was due to circumstance? She couldn't make Jon happy with posters or bookshelves or a new house, but surely she could at least make him happier?

She tried not to give into the temptation of believing that too much, of letting herself get lost in the renovations and moving arrangements instead of banging her head against the brick wall of Jon's lack of cooperation. She couldn't use the idea of a future Jon (a Jon who might never exist, too stubborn to be won over by anything Daisy did) as an excuse to neglect the Jon she had. There were plenty of things she could and should discuss with him besides the new house.

His schoolwork was given a glance-over at best, most days. The sores on his wrists were finally healing, but still not as quickly as she'd like- she wasn't sure he even knew he was picking at them, sometimes. His name had faded out of the news again, and he never expressed interest in any other television, just watching whatever Daisy put on without comment. (Though The Archers usually earned something that might have almost been and eye roll, and sometimes chased him into the bedroom. His loss.)

It was like she was trapped in place, an exciting vision of the future spread in front of her, locked away behind a seemingly endless list of menial tasks she had to finish before she could achieve it. And nothing she did could convince Jon that there was a future worth looking forward to.

-

Her coworkers, at least, made up what Jon lacked in enthusiasm. None of them were close enough for her to have to worry about visitors or, god forbid, some kind of housewarming party where she'd be at an utter loss to explain Jon's absence or inevitable outburst (he was clever enough crafty enough given a few hours he could undoubtedly make her lies fall down around her) but she still found little gifts making their way over her desk during her lunch hour, well-wishes attached. Mostly small things, but Olivier's wife sent her an entire recipe book, with enclosed letter about how exciting it is to be a first time homeowner and how proud she should be to have managed it at such a young age, along with all sorts of disparate advice Daisy felt utterly incapable of determining the relevance of. She was fairly certain, given that Olivier was one of the most senior Sectioned officers, and might be the only one she ever knew who'd manage to reach retirement without dying or quitting, that there was an element of maternal pity involved, poor orphan Tonner and her baby brother, all alone in the world, etc. Hopefully it wouldn't extend to the woman herself making an appearance. Olivier was a private sort; she could only hope his wife was the same.

She chewed away at her caseload with as much determination as ever. It was an unexpected small joy when she occasionally received a case she recalled going so cold even the Hunt couldn't aid her in solving it and realized that she can start it over. How many times had she cursed a decision to go to this location instead of that, to release a scene early, to let a witness go uninterviewed for days or weeks, potentially losing vital leads? And tearing into them anew, mundane as they were, sated the Hunter within, just a bit. Any culprits she caught would be the purely human sort of monster, the kind she'd let go into the justice system with their lives, but she knew deep down that the Hunt would be a long and difficult one, and that would almost make up for it.

Even with a growing reputation for working harder and faster than anyone else in her department she seemed to get fewer of the really nasty cases, though. She thought she was called out on fewer potential Sectioned cases; she tried to reason that it was merely the knowledge that the vast majority of them were false alarms distorting the numbers, the lack of that moment of gleeful anticipation dulling and lessening them in her eyes, but she suspected that wasn't really the case. She rankled at the idea that she was being coddled, that acquiring a dependent had made her weaker in the eyes of her coworkers- what other reason could they have for keeping her off the really dangerous calls?

She tried to soothe herself with the thought that it was good that they cared about Jon, impersonal though their relationship with him was. Everyone should care about Jon- if fewer people were willing to hurt him, he wouldn't need Daisy. He would be able to be just a regular kid. And so long as love for Jon wasn't a universal trait he needed her alive and functioning to keep him safe. They were helping with that, in their own way.

Keeping away from situations most likely to rouse the Hunter in her was for the best. Jon didn't need a Hunter, he needed a sister. And Daisy needed to keep her head if she wanted to keep the world (and Jon).

And lighter work meant more time she could spend at home, with Jon. The bloody beat of her heart had no business sinking in disappointment.

She needed to stay home, where it was quiet.

She needed to listen to the quiet.

Chapter Text

Jon watched in dread as Daisy's attempts to get him to take an interest in the move became both more desperate and less frequent as less and less needed to be done in advance of their departure. New Year's passed and shots of the new house's interior joined the collection of polaroids on the fridge, pride of place given to those showing the room that was meant for him, with the alterations he'd reluctantly weighed in on because he was afraid that denying Daisy on such petty grounds for too long would result in an outburst of violence clearly visible. Like she was trying to acclimate him to his next prison ahead of time. Like she wanted him to take pride in the space.

It wouldn't be so bad if he couldn't feel himself giving in. He wanted to be snappish and stubborn and not give her an inch, but there was nothing else to do. Even if he didn't intend to answer Daisy when she gave him a stack of paint chips and told him to choose a color to paint his new room's walls, he could only be locked up alone in the bathroom for so many hours before he started contemplating the relative merits of different shades of blue. He couldn't help pondering the question when she asked him if there was anything he'd wanted to do to his room before and not been able to; the question put a pit in his stomach as he realized how remote those memories felt, and obsessively trying to regain a sense of what it felt like to live his normal life, to remember the things he wanted when his biggest concerns were school and bullies, eventually had him coming up with an answer to the question anyway.

Jon had always taken a bit of pride in being stubborn and spiteful but it turned out that, faced with a more substantial foe than a teacher with an irritating grading policy, he had about as much fortitude as wet paper. His self image would just have to be added to his list of losses, alongside his freedom and his pride.

What difference did it make to her, anyway, what color of paint he chose for "his" new room? Whether he was the one who folded his clothes and packed them away or not? As far as Jon was concerned, the only relevant aspects of the move were that the time between the flat and the house provided a possible avenue for escape and that all such avenues would likely be permanently blocked once she got him there. A house where she had been able to direct renovations with an eye toward keeping him contained from the beginning, where the neighbors would never know Daisy without her crazy brother and had no frame of reference to compare when Jonathan Tonner came to live with his sister and when Jonathan Sims was abducted... it loomed over his thoughts. He might as well have told Daisy to carve "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," over the front door.

Eventually, the polaroids had to come down from the refrigerator, packed lovingly into a box and stacked up with dozens more just like it. Daisy left the bare minimum unpacked, just enough to see them through the morning of the move. The night before, she changed the doorknobs back, bedroom and bathroom locking from the inside for the first time since the first night. She must have put something in his dinner; not being able to lock him into the bedroom meant that Daisy climbed into bed alongside him, arm looped casually over his waist to hold him in place, and no amount of desensitization could stop that from putting a terrified lump in his throat, but rather than staying awake in pulse-pounding anxiety he seemed to drift off with no trouble at all. He didn't even have enough time to run through the ideas he'd come up with for catching the movers' attention when they came in the morning.

When he woke, he was no longer in the bed. The blankets didn't feel right, and there was something bulky around his head. When he finally figured out what it was, it only added to the theory that Daisy drugged him; he liked to think he was smart enough under normal circumstances to piece together that he was wearing headphones, and the music he could hear came from them rather than Daisy playing it in the kitchen.

It was dark, and he knew almost before he could squirm around to check that he wouldn't be able to move his arms or legs. He tried to swallow down the instinctive fear that came with knowing his wrists and ankles were bound (he noted that whatever Daisy had used this time was soft, unlikely to recreate the bleeding cuts that he'd spent months picking at no matter how much he struggled) but it was difficult with a mouth full of cloth. The darkness felt horribly familiar in light of all that.

All the thought he'd put into using the move as his chance to escape, wasted by Daisy putting him right back where he started: tied up in the boot of her car.

It wasn't the same as last time, but in all the ways that mattered it was exactly the same as last time. Some more wriggling meant that he was fairly certain that he was wrapped in a sleeping bag and lying on a mattress rather than thrown haphazardly inside; he was wearing headphones softly playing music instead of being alone in the black; his glasses were nowhere to be found; it was still just as dark and lonely and terrifying as it was the first time. He could almost laugh at how little the knowledge that Daisy (probably) didn't want to kill him took the edge off.

He rolled onto his back, staring at the dark ceiling of the boot that was in every respect identical to the dark sides of the boot. He debated whether it was worth trying to hold back his tears; he didn't like the idea of showing weakness where Daisy would certainly see, his bonds ensuring that the tear tracks would stay clear and unwiped, but he didn't like the idea of Daisy getting to unload him along with the rest of the luggage and then go right back to pretending everything was fine.

At least the radio was tuned to a music station instead of reruns of The Archers. He wouldn't put it past Daisy to try the same Stockholm syndrome approach to her favorite show she was using with his presence in general.

After a period of time that was either fifteen minutes or three hours but which regardless lasted the length of at least five songs (it took quite a while for it to occur to him to keep count as a way of tracking the time), he heard the muffled sound of Daisy's voice, perfectly amiable and friendly, followed by the car door slamming and the engine starting. He couldn't even use that as a way of guessing how long after they arrived at their destination he'd have to stay there, because he didn't know how many songs played before he started counting or how long he had been in the boot before waking up.

"It will take as long as it takes," had been one of Gran's favorite and Jon's least favorite sayings when he was small, and by the time he'd outgrown asking incessantly how long it would be before they arrived at a destination, how long before it would be their turn to be seen at the doctor's, how long before dinner was ready, and how long before every other quotidian task would finish and they could move on to the next thing (which was only sometimes interesting enough for Jon to hold off asking how long that would take), he thought even she was getting sick of repeating it so often. A close second place had gone to "Patience is a virtue."

Somewhere, he thought, Gran was collapsing in a fit of laughter and she had no idea it was because he now had no choice but to practice the lessons in silent fortitude she had been trying to impart, for hours on end.

He could hear more of Daisy chatting with the movers when they arrived at what he supposed had to be the new house. He debated making a fuss, trying to catch their attention, but decided against it. If it worked he wasn't entirely confident Daisy wouldn't be able to come up with an explanation for the tied up teenager in her boot the movers found perfectly sound, and even less confident that getting their attention wouldn't just make her follow through on her threat to kill anyone who tried to take him away. Besides, doing that would almost certainly require enough motion to knock aside the quilts laid over the sleeping bag, if not worm him out of the sleeping bag entirely (and probably knock the headphones off as well), and he could feel how cold the boot would be without them. If it didn't work he would cold and even more bored in addition to being trapped and frightened. What was the point?

What was the point of any of it? He'd thought he would have a chance to get away from Daisy, and she'd thought the whole thing through so far in advance all his plans and ideas were thwarted before they ever had a chance.  Daisy was one step ahead of him, again, and he was trapped in the boot of her car, right where she wanted him, again.

What was the point in trying when nothing ever worked? He hadn't been able to get away from Daisy at the flat, where his imprisonment had been constructed spontaneously after he arrived, what chance did he have at the house, where Daisy had been renovating with an eye to keeping him trapped for months?

He closed his eyes and it made no difference to the blackness of the space. He was exactly where Daisy wanted him, and he would stay here until she wanted him somewhere else. He wanted to fight, he didn't want to give in, but he was so tired of fighting.

--

He dozed in and out, closing his eyes and realizing when he came back to awareness that he had didn't remember the current song starting to play. He could faintly hear Daisy and the movers outside, hauling boxes and occasionally stopping to discuss things, but it felt far away, muffled by the boot. 

Eons later, he heard another vehicle start and knew that he would be let out soon. He closed his eyes and buried his face in the pillow, already braced when Daisy finally popped open the boot and let in the midday light.

He stayed limp as she scooped him up and carried him inside. He didn't have the energy to fight. He fought for so long, and look where it got him.

He was laid down on something soft and Daisy leaned over him, pulling down the sleeping bag he was wrapped in and cooing over him.

"Hey, Jon," Daisy breathed, unwinding his binds. Jon slitted his eyes open and stared at her, blankly, mouthing at the gag absentmindedly.  The room was almost offensively alien after so many months trapped in the flat, big and bright and empty, with huddled masses of boxes against the walls. He was on the couch, set all alone in the center of the room for now.

He didn't move when everything was finally off and he was technically free to do so. It was hard to see the point. Maybe he would just spend the rest of his life right here on this couch; it was some kind of choice, to stay stubbornly still when Daisy would want him to move around and get acquainted with his new so-called home.

"I'm sorry you had to wait so long," Daisy said, soft, urgent.

"It's fine," Jon snapped, not meaning it but not wanting to hear her excuses.

Daisy jerked back minutely, not quite a flinch, mouth open in surprise. Self-loathing coiled in Jon's chest. He wasn't supposed to be this person, who meekly accepted whatever Daisy wanted to do to him. There was no point to being the other one, who fought her every step of the way. What was worse, battering himself to dust against the unyielding wall of Daisy being forever one step ahead, or becoming the dull compliant doll of a false brother she wanted?

He had to be something, and either one would shift off the couch and go explore the house. It was a start.

He felt like he was heaving himself forward on wooden legs, upright through momentum alone, but he tossed himself forward. The kitchen was more densely crowded with boxes than the living room; the dining room adjacent held the table, too small for the larger space where it had dominated the flat's kitchen, and nothing else. He spotted the chairs in a nervous huddle near the front door. His eyes lingered on the numerous locks on said door for a long, painful moment before moving on.

Daisy hovered in his shadow as he made for the stairs, all the nerves he felt every day suddenly transposed onto her. He didn't know what she wanted from him. In general or in reaction to the house.

It was obvious from the top of the stairs which bedroom was meant for him. The other doors weren't exactly poorly made, but they couldn't hold a candle to the monstrosity of solid oak that loomed at the end of the hallway, deadbolt a dark shadow above the knob. He wondered how much it cost Daisy; probably at least that over again to have workers haul the thing up the stairs and install it. It looked heavy. It looked like he could pound and scream against it and the sound would barely even escape.

He slumped down the hall toward it. This, at least, he would face head on instead of being carried and dragged to his newest misery. He'd probably regret it, like he'd regretted running through the woods once there was something fast and clawed and malicious on his trail, but at least it would be his mess to escape or live through.

Swinging the door open, it was as heavy as he suspected, though the hinges were smooth and silent. He'd seen the room beyond in Daisy's polaroids, more than any other in the house, but it still looked different in person. Polaroids shadowed the edges and dulled the colors; in person it wasn't quite as cramped and dark as he'd feared.

He'd been given the master bedroom, probably because the en suite meant he could be locked in indefinitely without Daisy having to worry about his basic human needs. When he was little, he used to drink right from the tap because it seemed exciting and a bit forbidden, something Gran wouldn't approve of that he could only reach by standing on his tiptoes; he could adjust to having that, too, poisoned by necessity if it came to it. 

He ambled over to the windows. There were two of them, big and bright and not yet covered by curtains or blinds. Each was a single, fixed pane of glass. There would be no climbing out of these.

The bed was new, bigger. The wrought iron frame that he'd never quite trusted Daisy not to chain him to was nowhere to be seen; its replacement was one of the things about Daisy that made him ache. She'd somehow guessed that a headboard with a built in bookcase, riddled with cubbies and drawers, was exactly the sort of thing Jon had always wished he had, even though he'd never told her. It was sour, seeing that daydream realized here. He still didn't know how she knew the secret bits of him so well, like she'd plucked the idea from a forgotten recess of his subconscious without him noticing.

He heard Daisy pad up the hallway and knew that being able to hear her footsteps at all was deliberate. She hovered against the heavy door and watched him with uncertain eyes. Jon said nothing; what was there to say?

"My bedroom is the one right at the top of the stairs," she ventured. With more nervousness than he was used to seeing on her face she added, "Do you want to go down and see the garden?"

He gestured limply to one of the windows. "I can see the garden from there just as well as I can see it from the ones downstairs."

Her face creased with a sadness that made him feel guilty, even though he'd done nothing wrong. "Do you want to go into the garden?"

He tensed. "Really?"

Daisy nodded. He swallowed.

"Not afraid I'll run?" He couldn't put as much anger behind the question as he wanted, so it came out sounding dull and resigned. Maybe it was dull and resigned.

"It's fenced. You can go out whenever I'm home." Because when I'm not you'll be locked in here, she didn't say. It was hard to care; his mind jolted out of its malaise at the idea. He made for the stairs with more speed than he'd been able to muster since being brought out of the boot, moving faster once he'd squeezed through the bedroom doorway, spine scraping the jamb so he could put as much space between himself and Daisy as possible.

The backdoor was in the kitchen, where he'd barely noticed it. Now that he was looking, it was obvious that it was different from the front door, with its locks stacked along the edge to keep people both in and out. This door had only a deadbolt, like the one on his bedroom door. He could click it open easily, though he supposed it meant that if she wanted Daisy could lock him outside and there would be little he could do. He didn't think he'd mind.

His bare feet hit grass for the first time in months; wind kissed his cheeks and there was no fear of pursuit, no mad chase that felt sure to end in his death. There was just Jon and the grass and the sky. The tall fence with its gate noticeably removed and replaced by a newer section of solid fencing couldn't take away from that.

-

Daisy took to decorating the house with a vigor that Jon found deeply disturbing. In addition to the collection of polaroids covering the fridge the walls started to fill up with photos as well, framed ones. Some were of Daisy, showing her as a platinum-haired little girl, a weedy teen, and barely younger than she was now, chest puffed with pride as she graduated the police academy. She brought back a side table from one of her trips to a secondhand shop and placed it directly across from the front door. Only a couple days later, a hinged picture frame sat atop it. He recognized the type; Gran had one with photos of Dad and Granddad, taken when Dad was little.

This one had a picture of grinning, fluffy-haired Daisy at about ten years old on one side and grave five year old Jon on the other, eyes comically magnified through his first pair of glasses. His stomach flipped when he did the math and realized that they would have been taken at about the same time. Daisy's expression turned soft and happy whenever she looked at that frame. He knew she had distributed the same sort of letters to the neighbors here, explaining her "crazy brother" and asking to be called if he got out of the house and went to them with any alarming stories. Here, though, the lie was being acted out more thoroughly on the interior of the house, as well.

The same photos that had decorated his childhood home gradually made their home here, stolen into new frames and interspersed with ones of Daisy. He didn't know if she thought it was a cruelty or a kindness when she brought home a copy of one of the only pictures of Jon with his Mum and Dad, explaining earnestly that she'd taken the original from his baby album and had it blown up. His bewildered silence only urged her on further, into explaining that no one would realize anything was off because of it.

Jonathan Tonner's parents died at the same time as Jonathan Sims' did; Jonathan Tonner was just adopted by family friends instead of raised by his grandmother. It made him a bit sick, thinking of how neatly Daisy had sorted out her lies.

Until he got used to the photo being there it made a lump rise to his throat every time he passed the living room with Daisy's expanding collage of framed photos, Jon and his parents in amongst Daisy and hers and individual photos of the two of them growing up.

Proximity wasn't enough for Daisy, though. He thought the next photos to join the wall were just for Daisy. When something was meant to contribute to the lie, she had a way of earnestly trying to explain it to Jon. He thought it might have been because of his reaction to the escape foiled by Mrs. Jansen, the way he'd gone to pieces doubting what was real. It wasn't that noticeable that there were no photos before the polaroids with them together. He didn't know where Daisy went with a pile of photos that hadn't yet made it to the wall; he had even less of an idea what she'd said to explain herself to whoever had done the work. All he knew was that overnight the collage expanded, a handful of other frames popping up on other walls around the house (though mercifully none upstairs, where no one was ever invited and they weren't needed to maintain the lie), images painstakingly merged to insert Jon into scenes of Daisy's family vacations, Daisy's family portraits.

He didn't want to let Daisy see how badly they unnerved him, but when she was occupied in the kitchen cooking or in her room doing whatever it was Daisy did, he stood before the false photos, trying to pick out flaws that would give away the lie. Even recognizing where the pictures of him had really been drawn from, he couldn't find any. Anyone who saw these would never believe that a boy who was so obviously part of the family for years had been kidnapped mere months ago. A picture was worth a thousand words.

Unsettling pictures weren't the only things that gradually filled the house. Hardly a week seemed to go by that Daisy didn't haul home some thrifted treasure. It still took months before the squashy chairs and weird lamps and rickety shelves of books and knickknacks existed in great enough numbers for the house to stop seeming too big for its contents. It made Jon uncomfortable to see how lived-in the place looked, the places where his own presence was written across the space in the scattering of books turned facedown where he'd left them and the comfortable chair with no room for Daisy to sit down beside him.

He'd die before saying so, but it was better having the space of an entire bedroom, plus the en suite bathroom and walk-in closet, to pace through when Daisy was gone during the day.

Daisy's thrifting contributed a mini fridge and large desk, and Jon knew he could stay in his room for days without starving or technically running out of things to do. It wasn't a comforting thought.

-

Jon's stomach was a lump of dread when, a year and change after she kidnapped him, Daisy unlocked his door, knocked, and called through it, "I'd like to talk to you before dinner." He thought he knew what she wanted to talk about; Daisy had been disappointed she'd missed his birthday in the scattered bustle of the first weeks after his abduction, had falteringly asked if Jon had celebrated Christmas with Gran (he hadn't, and was glad that Daisy hadn't celebrated it growing up and he could honestly say he felt no desire to try; the thought of trying to playact holiday cheer for her benefit made his stomach turn). An anniversary was exactly the sort of morbid occasion she'd want to celebrate somehow. He doubted he'd be able to dissuade her.

He took his place at the dining table with sulky slowness, staring dully at Daisy's back as she hastily slid her pan of stir-fry off the burner so she could join him.

Daisy's face was solemn as she sat down across from him, a newspaper in her hand. He noted with some interest that it had a familiar header, the same one that had landed on Gran's front step every day his entire childhood. He'd known Daisy had a subscription to Bournemouth's local paper so she could keep tabs on the investigation into his disappearance. His stomach flipped with the hope that whatever had her looking so solemn was good news for him.

"I have some bad news," she started, swallowing nervously. Jon wasn't sure he'd ever seen her acting so off-balance.

"Okay," he said, trying to keep his voice even and not give away his anxious hope. Surely anything that was bad news for Daisy was good news for him?

Daisy's eyes softened, something pitying in them. That didn't make sense; he knew she hadn't really deluded herself into thinking he wanted to be here. "Jon," she said softly, "I'm so sorry. Your grandmother is dead."

He blinked. That didn't make sense. She had to be lying, another... sick trick to try to make him stay with her willingly. He opened his mouth to say as much, but Daisy slid the paper across the table to him before he could. He looked down automatically, eyes drawn to the black and white photo of Gran, his own school picture just below it.

"Grandmother of Missing Jonathan Sims Dead"

"No," he said without thinking. He slid his fingers over the paper, desperately trying to find the seam where Daisy had pasted her ugly joke of a fake article on to make it seem real. "No!"

"Jon," she said softly, but he shot to his feet, knocking his chair back and over. It landed with a sharp thud and his ears rang.

"You're lying!" he shouted, and then turned and ran back to his room, paper clenched in his fists and crumpling. He slammed the door behind him even though there was nothing he could do to keep Daisy out. He dragged over the desk chair and propped it under the doorknob anyway, collapsing to the floor with the paper.

He ran his hand over the page again, eyes not registering the words of the article. He flipped frantically to the back, where the obituaries were.

There was another photo of Gran there.

He tried to take a deep breath, to think about the situation calmly, but it squawked into a sob. He flipped back to the article, tears falling and smearing the type. It read like a real article; it was surreal to see the things it mentioned, a break-in and mysterious letters and photos that he remembered sealing into an envelope so vividly.

It was a heart attack. That didn't seem to fit with the woman he remembered, but it was getting harder to pretend that it didn't fit because this was all a lie rather than because he couldn't imagine the world without Gran in it.

If Gran was gone, he was the only Sims left in the world. No aunts or uncles, not even the distant sort of cousin. What would happen to him now, once he escaped from Daisy? Where would he go? He was still too young for them to let him live on his own.

No, if he got away from Daisy he'd go into care. There would be no return to normal, not for Jon.

He'd heard the sorts of things that happened to kids in care. Especially teenagers; he was too old to be cute or adoptable, even setting aside his personality. Gran had barely wanted him. What stranger would want to take care of him until he was old enough to live on his own? He had done research on foster care, when he was younger. He had wanted to know what would have happened to him without Gran to take him in after his parents died, and her answers hadn't satisfied him. He knew intellectually that plenty of kids did just fine, but those kids didn't grow up to write memoirs. Most of what he read had been written by or about the kids who weren't lucky. And if there was one thing Jon knew about himself, it was that he was unlucky.

Would escaping just put him in a situation just as bad as living with Daisy? Or worse? At least by now he mostly trusted Daisy not to beat him.

He tried to breathe, tried to pull his thoughts out of their spiral, but all he could think of was the world narrowing in front of him. No more escape that would draw all the uncertainty out of his life. Leaving Daisy would only give him a different set of questions and dangers.

Was this what she wanted all along?

How did he even know that Gran really died of a heart attack? Did they check?

-

Daisy remained stubbornly sympathetic, soft eyes and soft hands drawing him into hugs that offered no comfort. He hated it; he wanted her to be smug, to show a sliver of the happiness he was sure she was feeling, knowing that now he had nowhere to run to. It would stop some of the worst thoughts, settle the worst questions. If Daisy was triumphant, he could tell himself she killed Gran, and hate her for it.

He knew Daisy was a good actress, but she didn't usually bother around him. He knew what she was, so there was no reason to hide it. But if she did do something to Gran, she had to know he would never forgive her.

She had broken into their house to leave the letters. She still came home  sometimes with blood on her clothes; even if she usually changed before letting him out of his room, she didn't always notice all of it. She was capable of doing it, he was positive.

But did she?

Jon hated Daisy. He hated himself. If he hadn't let himself feel so defeated after the move maybe he would have found a way to escape. Maybe he would have been able to see Gran one last time, even if she died anyway. Everything was his fault. The walls were closing in on him, and everything felt just as dark as it had during the worst period back at the flat, after his thwarted escape attempts. Darker.

Daisy kept trying to reach out, because of course she did. She never just left him well enough alone. If she had done that none of this would have happened!

"Jon," she said eventually, tentatively, after a week of black moods and twisted up, confused mourning. He didn't look up from his plate, but he didn't really see it, either. He wasn't even sure what it was they were eating. "The funeral was yesterday."

He didn't respond, though he did feel a vague interest. Maybe this was where she revealed her evil plan and gloated about how she'd killed Gran to keep Jon. It would simplify one thing.

"I'm sorry we couldn't go," Daisy continued, "but I thought maybe this weekend you might like to go visit the grave."

He blinked stupidly, trying to make sense of the words. "To Bournemouth?"

"Yeah." Her eyes were disgustingly gentle when he glanced up. He glared back down at his food. His eyes felt heavy and stinging, like he was about to cry.

Daisy must know how trapped she truly had him now. It was the only explanation. Just a couple weeks ago, taking him to Bournemouth would mean Jon running and screaming and causing the biggest scene possible. Now... now he wasn't sure what to do.

His thoughts circled that question eternally, as he waited for the weekend and the promised trip.

-

It felt unreal, being back in Bournemouth. It felt even more unreal to be allowed to sit in the front seat, next to Daisy, without being chased down and tackled first.

The funeral wasn't likely to have been attended by more than Gran's knitting circle friends and a handful of others, but someone there would have known Jon. He suspected that Daisy felt guiltier over him missing it than she let on. They were dressed like they were going to the funeral proper, rather than attending the graveside days late; it was probably another of Daisy's hangups, just another of the many ways she always wanted them to act like a normal happy family when they weren't any of those things. Jon had a new suit, and Daisy had a black dress and heels. He hadn't even known she owned heels.

She probably wouldn't let a little thing like footwear stop her from chasing him down if he tried to run.

The cemetery hadn't been one of his regular haunts, but it was still more than familiar. He may not have visited often, but he knew where his parents' graves were, the adjacent headstone his grandfather now shared with Gran. Daisy let him lead, one arm around his shoulders and the other cradling a wreath.

The stone was surrounded by a respectable collection of flowers, starting to go brown a week after the funeral. A handful more garlanded his parents' grave, and his knees feel weak at the combination of Gran's name carved into stone, date of death newly marked, and the visible sign that his parents hadn't been forgotten by the mourners. It was too much. This was all the family he had in the world beneath the earth, only stone remaining.

Daisy caught him, her grip around his shoulders easing him down more slowly as his knees gave out. She crouched beside him, gaze like fire held to his skin, and offered the wreath. He took it, hands going white-knuckled and creasing the leaves, one sticking as he tried to let go and rifle through his pocket.

He chose a photo he didn't think Daisy would object to; he'd hoped to be able to slip it in among the flowers without Daisy spotting him, but suspected that this would happen, that he wouldn't be able to leave it subtly. He just wanted to let Gran know, in some way, that he was still alright. Well, that he was still alive, at least.

Daisy's eyes burned a hole in the side of his head as he tucked the photo into the wreath, but she didn't stop him. He knelt, wavering side to side, in front of the grave for a hanging moment. He felt like he should say something, but had no idea what. Daisy didn't push, letting him take his time in that terrible, understanding way she had.

Eventually, he just stood and let her draw him into her side, holding him close. He let himself believe that the gesture was meant solely as comfort, not to keep him from running. If he didn't much want to run, couldn't he just pretend that motivation didn't exist?

Daisy led him back to the car. As he pulled open the passenger side door he thought he heard someone calling his name, but then he was sitting down and the door was closed and they were pulling away.

Did it matter to Jonathan Tonner if someone called out looking for Jonathan Sims?

Chapter Text

"I need you to tell me I'm crazy."

Tim raised his eyebrows and tried to swallow his bite of pizza. The cheese stretched; by the time his mouth was empty enough to speak Sasha had had thirty seconds to amp up the crazy eyes and he had a string of mozzarella hanging from his chin. "In general, or...?"

Sasha gave him a narrow-eyed glare. It was nastier than his joke would normally warrant, and he sat up straighter. If whatever it was was bothering Sasha enough for her to lose her patience that quickly, he'd take it seriously. For the moment, at least. "No, not in general."

Pulling her laptop out of her bag, opening it, unlocking it, and turning it to face Tim all in the same move was a pretty impressive trick. Less impressive when turning it atop the clutter of his kitchen table sent the last two issues of Publishers Weekly to the floor, but impressive. It took a second to figure out what he was looking at. "The missing kid again?"

"I was going to leave it alone!" Sasha insisted, anticipating his first question. "I got sucked in reading the Wikipedia page- it's so weird- and before I hit the bottom there was..."

Tim nodded, not sure what to say. Sasha spilled on in the absence of pushback. "And the first time I wasn't going to pay attention to it at all. It was weird, but I figured it was a coincidence! You know how I am with faces, I figured that the differences were innate instead of because of age, and that the resemblance probably just meant- I don't know. A cousin? Whose parents were close to Jon's so they named both the same? But then you thought it looked like him, which still wasn't anything! But then there were more pictures, and.."

And Jonathan Sims, age fifteen, age-progressed to age twenty-five, looked eerily like Jonathan Tonner, age twenty-eight.

"This isn't even all of it," Sasha said. She pulled the laptop back toward her and started clicking and scrolling frantically.

"You realize it's probably still a coincidence, right?" Tim said as gently as he could.

"Yes, but look!" The screen shoved at him now had a little matrix of police sketches, with different times and circumstances attached to each.

"What am I looking at?"

"Okay," Sasha said. "I don't think this is anything. But the reason I got sucked in was- it's just really weird. Forget our Jon, for the moment. Jonathan Sims left school one day and was never seen again. He was fifteen and had a history of running away- almost an entire decade's worth of history- so the police didn't really do much about it at first. He lived with his grandmother and she started making a fuss about it eventually, but even then there wasn't much. She only realized he was missing when the school called about him being absent, she told the police that she assumed he was out late or at a friend's house- but she couldn't name any friends."

"That doesn't sound..." particularly different from any other missing teenager with a questionable home life, was what he wanted to say, but he couldn't come up with a way to say it that didn't sound appalling.

"This isn't the weird bit yet. Eat your food, it's getting cold."

Sasha wasn't even near her own plate any more. "If we're going to worry about food getting cold, maybe this isn't good dinner conversation?"

Sasha froze for about ten seconds. Tim took a bite of pizza, in case she wanted to return to the topic after she booted up again. No way he could eat while she talked about that- it turned his stomach just thinking of it. Finally, Sasha nodded sharply, slammed her laptop shut, and reversed her screen-slinging until she was back in her seat with the computer put away and another Publishers Weekly on the floor. "So!" she said, a little too forcefully. "You were researching that cave statement!"

Yeah, that made sense. Given the level of frenzy the missing kid thing was probably taking up most of the non-work time Sasha spent on anything other than Operation: MySpace Photos. Shop talk was the best he could hope for until she got the Sims thing off her chest. He just wished that his shop talk wasn't also about a missing person. "Forget the cave, I thought I heard you talking to Jon about that hospital statement?"

Sasha's eyes widened, intensity of focus being diverted to the new subject. "I found the freakiest security footage."

-

They made it through dinner on the strength of weird work research, coworker annoyances, and debating whether or not Jon actually thought it through before he said he wished that Martin had run into the murder puzzle lady (Tim was for both Jon's thinking it through and them bringing it up to him how inappropriate it was to say things like that about coworkers, never mind employees, while Sasha was against thinking it through and tepidly in favor of Tim's plan on the basis of him having more diverse working experience). Tim had just long enough to give a wistful thought to the beers in his refrigerator, hoping Sasha had forgotten, before the laptop was back on the table and he was realizing that he completely forgot to walk his neighbor's copy of Vanity Fair over when it came to him by mistake last month, and now it was on the floor.

Sasha screeched her chair over to sit beside Tim, knocking one of the fallen magazines into sliding across the floor. She moved back to the first picture, the original photo of Jonathan Sims. "Fifteen. Runaway. Grandmother."

"And you weren't to the weird bit yet," Tim said unenthusiastically. On second thought, he deserved alcohol for humoring wherever this rant was going without telling Sasha she was crazy before the point where she intended for him to tell her she was crazy. He handed her a can, too, but she took it without looking and set it by her ankle without opening it.

"Yes!" she said. "The first weird thing happens a couple months after he disappears. Someone breaks into the grandmother's house."

"People with missing kids aren't exempt from normal break-ins," Tim said into the silence of a fresh burst of scrolling. The way she introduced the topic made him feel obligated to play the skeptic. Sasha didn't even bother to shush him, just smacked at his shoulder.

"Not a normal break-in," she said, though Tim had no way of knowing why from the screen. He was pretty sure she stopped right before whatever she was planning to show him so she could do a dramatic reveal. "Middle of the day, grandmother leaves the house. Gets back a few hours later, and someone's taken all the pictures of Jon off her walls."

"Like, put them in a pile?" Tim asked. He had to hand it to her, that was really weird.

"No!" Sasha said, but it wasn't annoyed this time. "Just the pictures. She knew someone broke into her locked house because when she got back all of the pictures of Jon were gone. None of the other family pictures, none of the frames. Someone took down every single picture of him, took it out of the frame, and hung the frame back exactly where it was."

"What the hell?" He was beginning to see how she got sucked into reading this.

"That's not all! The grandmother left the house as soon as she saw, obviously, and ran to the neighbor to call the police. They go to check the house for intruders, don't find any. But what they do find..." Sasha scrolled a bit, to a block quote set apart from the rest of the text, labelled as being from an interview with the officer in charge of the case. Tim skimmed the lines as she summed up what they were about. "Grandmother says that when she left, Jon's room was how he left it, teenage boy mess, unmade bed, all that, with the door closed. She didn't make it past the kitchen before she went for the police, but that was how it was when she left the house."

Tim felt something in his chest twist at the thought. Poor kid. Was that the mark of a grandmother who couldn't bear to change things from how he left them, or one too disinterested to care? Making a fuss "eventually" and all the rest didn't give him high hopes.

"Police go upstairs, bedroom door's open and the room is tidied. They could tell right away, because the grandmother probably shut the door when he went missing and never went in, the pictures aren't on this page but they're out there, it was all dusty. They could see the places things had been outlined in the dust. Whoever broke in cleared some stuff away, reshelved books, made the bed. And they left something on Jon's pillow." Sasha's hands shook up and down with excess energy, bouncing her wrists off the table's edge over and over.

Tim felt a bit nauseous at the thought. "Do I want to know what they left on the pillow?"

Sasha looked over to him, a bit surprised, and then visibly processed the question. "Oh! It wasn't anything awful. Cops noticed right away because it was an envelope, and someone had written 'from Jon' on the outside."

"A prank?" he offered. Sasha wouldn't be this invested if it was, but he wasn't sure that he trusted their definition of awful to overlap enough to be sure that she wasn't about to tell him the envelope had the kid's ear in it or something. And he really didn't want to hear that.

Sasha shook her head, fast and a bit too long, briefly distracted by the sensation. "Definitely not. It had to be the kidnapper, because the envelope had two polaroid photos of Jon, a letter in his handwriting, and a note in block letters- like someone was trying to disguise their handwriting."

"A ransom demand?" he asked. That was kind of weird, for something that didn't happen decades ago.

"No, look." She scrolled down a bit more. It was side-by-side scans of labelled polaroids showing the same weedy kid from the first picture, still unnervingly similar to their Jon. One had him standing with his arms around himself, looking scared and sad. Massive, ugly bruises decorated his forearms, and his wrists were bandaged, and that was before getting to his shrunken posture and red eyes. The second had him with longer hair, like he hadn't had it cut since going missing, sitting on the floor propped against a wall, still sad but a bit less scared, significantly less bandaging around his wrists and no visible bruises. 

Sasha's voice drained of energy a bit. "First one is dated a few weeks after he went missing, second one was only a few days old, neither seems intended to go with the note because the captions aren't in Jon's handwriting or block letters. Jon's letter was dated the day before it was found, but they only made parts of it public. The gist was that he was sorry for worrying his grandmother, he was alive and well, and he wanted to come home. Oh, and the kidnapper is referred to as "she." Kidnapper's note is all online," more scrolling, to a scan of a painfully-short few lines, "but nothing about ransom, nothing about why Jon was taken other than being a 'good kid,' apparently planning to just... keep him."

"Did they find anything on the letters?" he asked, starting to think about the thing in the same terms Sasha was, drawn into joining her in armchair sleuthing. It's so awful he wants without thinking to somehow be able to divine something everyone's missed, something that would help the poor bruised boy in the pictures.

"No fingerprints in the house, break-in looked professional, fingerprints on the letters and photos are all matched to fingerprints on Jon's things. They got stuff from the school, to be sure that they didn't confuse the kidnapper moving Jon's things around for Jon's fingerprints."

"And they just never found him?" Tim asked.

"No! I mean, yes, they never found him, but I'm not done!" Sasha didn't react in the least to his dubious expression.

What else could possibly be worth talking about (at least to them) compared to that?

"Year or so after the disappearance, grandmother dies. They had an autopsy to be sure, but it was a heart attack, nothing sinister except maybe, y'know, the stress. Police at the funeral, just in case, but no one they weren't expecting. But then a week later, someone sees him at the cemetery."

"The missing kid?" Tim checked, even though there were no other hims it could be, if the kidnapper was a woman.

"They never said who it was, but the police put out a press release that 'trustworthy individuals' who 'knew Jon well' saw him walking out of the cemetery with a woman they didn't recognize. They were both dressed like it was the funeral, black and all, and he was taller than when he disappeared, but they know it was him. They didn't manage to track down the car he climbed into, and the witnesses were too far to get the license, but once there were people focusing on those one of them went to the grandmother's grave." Sasha has a new picture, another one that puts a stone in Tim's gut. There's a single white wreath, brand new, set amongst withered offerings that had probably been there the full week since the funeral.

"His kidnapper took him to put flowers on his grandmother's grave?" Tim asked with terrible fascination. It could be a cousin, he supposed, or a lookalike... but he could easily see someone willing to tell the family of a kid they abducted that they'd "take good care of him" including visiting graves under that umbrella.

"Not just flowers," Sasha said, again a bit more subdued. She scrolled down a bit more, passing the police sketches they started with to reveal another polaroid. "This one was tucked into the wreath, with Jon's fingerprints again. The caption put it at a couple weeks before the funeral."

It looked like it was taken somewhere different than the first two. This Jonathan Sims sat on a bed rather than leaning against a wall or sitting on the floor, and stared morosely at his knees. All of the fright and most of the sadness were gone; he looked exhausted and numb. He wore sixteen as if it was fifty, slumped and thin with dark circles under his eyes. Someone gave him a haircut to the length it was when he was kidnapped and his clothes fit, at least, but Tim couldn't tell if the skinniness and demeanor were the product of simple stress, or further abuse on top of the kidnapping. It was a nice bed, a bed that he would've said belonged to a kid whose parents had the money to spend spoiling him in another context. The headboard had a built-in bookcase, with wooden letters spelling "Jon" in the same blue as the duvet stood on top of it, books and pencil cases and various trinkets filling the shelves and cubbies visible from the camera's position. One set of books looked like schoolbooks, though he couldn't quite make out the spines.

Jon's one concession to whoever took the picture was a thumbs-up that didn't at all counteract the effect of his expression. Instead, it put his wrist close enough to the camera to reveal a hint of what had been done to him beneath the bandages. There were thin pink scars, not quite continuous but all clearly from the same injury. They went all the way around his wrist. How long would his captor have to have kept him chained up for it to scar like that?

Sasha scrolled back up to the police sketches. "This was why you need to tell me I'm being crazy. These are almost all sketches of the woman at the cemetery."

"Almost?" Tim asked. Pulling his thoughts back to the track where they joked about a weird coincidence instead of being bogged down with the weight of the details and physical evidence of what had been done to a child took effort, but he realized what she was getting at. None of the sketches looked much like each other, but they were all of a white woman with a blonde bob, technically a description of Daisy.

"There are a couple more things," she said, though he couldn't imagine how. How incompetent would police have to be for more like that to happen without finding the poor kid? "A few years later, some kids found a backpack in a little wood at the back of their neighborhood. They brought it home so their parents could figure out if they knew who it belonged to."

"And it belonged to Jonathan Sims," he said. Unless the next part of the story really did involve dismembered body parts.

Sasha nodded. "Parents thought it was too old for anyone to be looking, but they called the number written inside. It'd been reassigned, but a Bournemouth area code still meant someone who recognized the name. They think that it must've been ditched there at some point by the kidnapper; the grandmother gave a list of what he would've had with him when she reported him missing. Most of the schoolbooks were gone, but the personal items were there. And it must've been something he used for at least a bit afterward, because there were some things he wouldn't have had. Box of energy bars they were able to prove were manufactured after the kidnapping, a ball of rubber bands, a water bottle with a tag showing it was secondhand, with the logo of a company that's never operated anywhere near Bournemouth but did give them out right around the time of the kidnapping to customers, probably too recent to have worked its way to Bournemouth to be donated."

She had another picture, a time-abused Jansport with half-rotted contents arrayed around it. Tim didn't know what he could say to that; the photo showed Jonathan Sims' name and contact details written on the inside of the bag, bleeding a bit from water damage.

"Most recent thing was a couple years ago. There were a handful of sightings in the interim, of him on trains or living on the street various places, probably all false. But the case was reviewed a couple years back. Cop was assigned to review a bunch of old cold case files, but when he got to Jon's he realized he had information. There was an interview after the press release- you can tell they wanted to make it clear that they checked the info out thoroughly, because it sounds like the sort of thing you'd make up."

"Why not report it at the time?" he asked. That's probably the biggest point in favor of it being made up, right?

"There wasn't much press immediately after it happened, and the guy said he assumed someone else would've reported what he had. He was a classmate; now they think he and his friend were the last to see Jon before the disappearance, not the school. He makes it pretty clear they thought they'd get in trouble if they reported it, as an adult he admits they bullied Jon. He emailed the friend something like, 'do you remember the time we pushed Jonathan Sims down such-and-such hill?' and told him to address his answer to a different cop he CC'd, so it wouldn't influence his answers."

"If they didn't see something significant enough to take to the cops before he was even reported missing, how do they know it was the right day?" Tim supposed he was the person that interview was meant to convince. So far, it wasn't working.

"This is actually funny," Sasha said, brightening a bit. "They both remembered spotting Jon and hassling him a bit, and then one of them shoved him and they ran away. They met up with their girlfriends after and told the story, and instead of laughing one of the girls was horrified and the other was angry. When they realized their memories matched, the one dating the angry girl got back in contact to ask if she remembered yelling at them about it, and if she did what date would she guess it was. Not only did she remember, she still had her diary with a huge rant- they have a photo and transcript of the relevant bits attached to the interview, it's enormous and they must have got both men's permission to publicize it as well as hers, because it's not flattering- about exactly what they remembered, dated the last day Jonathan Sims ever attended school." She clicked over to a different tab, scrolling to a lengthy block quote.

"So they know he actually disappeared a few hours later than they thought. That can't mean anything this long after, it's not like they'll be able to find someone else who didn't report something they saw because it was a couple hours off." What he skimmed of the diary entry was pretty funny, though.

"They don't need someone else. The cop might've seen the older sketches and the description of the car, but the other guy hadn't that he could recall. Both remembered seeing a woman a ways off on the other side of the street watching from a parked car. They didn't have much to add after so long, but they were consistent with the woman and car from the cemetery. Except for one thing," Sasha paused, drawing up a bit of suspense now that the worst bits had been defrayed by ancient adolescent drama.

"Which is?"

"They thought the woman was dressed as a cop. That ended up in the diary, too." Weird. 

"You're crazy," Tim said, clapping Sasha on the shoulder. "Daisy works in a museum."

"Thank god," Sasha said, and collapsed forward onto her laptop, forehead ramming up against enough keys to type a string of nonsense into the address bar.

Chapter Text

Jon seemed refreshed after their trip to the cemetery. They had an awful few weeks afterward, understandably, but when he stopped crying about his Gran he stopped crying about most other things, too. In her own mind, awfully, Daisy half-wished his Gran had died a few months earlier. Jon was tackling his workbooks with renewed vigor, but if it had happened just a couple months earlier he would've been able to catch up enough to return to school in the fall. She started planning toward spring term, instead. If she got her ducks in a row quickly enough to be sure that nothing she told Jon would prove to be untrue, he could probably be caught up to an acceptable standard before Christmas.

In the meantime, Jon being able to attend depended on more than just his schoolwork. The first time that Daisy asked if he wanted to go out to a restaurant, he looked shocked. His scramble to answer in the affirmative didn't prove to be anything but a desire to be out of the house. Over the next couple weeks, Daisy made a habit of taking Jon out for dinner, to movies, and eventually shopping. It was just secondhand, but Jon finally seemed to have opinions about what clothes he liked. Of course he did- he was a teenager. He was more than old enough to want to pick things out for himself. It was normal.

Slowly, Jon seemed more comfortable with her, too, happier to see her and scared less and less. It was like seeing him come alive again, a realization that pushed her mind back to the woods with a tape recorder and pocket knife. (She was sorry, Jon. She couldn't tell him all of why, couldn't apologize for anything bigger than startling him and have him believe it was the truth, but for everything, she was sorry.)

He never gave her reason to worry about what he would do. It made her heart ache, but it was a good thing. Being able to trust him to maintain the fiction when she was with him gradually expanded. When she had all the practicalities in order and was reliably able to trust Jon to split up when they entered a store and to come find her when he was finished looking at things, she knew it was time.

It took considerable effort to keep herself in check when she was finally ready to talk to Jon about going back to school. She needed to be serious, needed to treat this with the care it deserved, no matter how excited and happy she was for Jon. This Jon didn't know her the same way, this Jon still saw Daisy being excited for him as a threat.

She realized as she sat down at the kitchen table that this was exactly how she summoned him to the conversation about his Gran dying. That was probably why he looked terrified, he never usually looked that scared anymore. She ended up smiling reflexively in spite of her determination not to.

"You've been doing really well with your workbooks," she said, hoping that would cue him to what this was about.

Jon's face went earnest and hopeful. "I only have a couple pages left of Year 11 work."

"Do you think you could finish the fall term work for Year 12 by Christmas? It doesn't have to be perfect, just caught-up enough that you can get by. You can ask teachers for help, or we'll hire a tutor if you get there and realize you need it." She already had a list of tutors in their area for every subject.

"Wait, I can actually go?" Jon looked shocked. Too surprised for her to even think of pretending it was intended as a dig at her for keeping him cooped up.

"I have conditions," she warned. She was sure at least some of them he would hate.

"Anything!"

"Alright!" she half-smiled, trying to draw his focus off that terrible, incriminating, heartbreaking hope, into the more concrete realities of the situation. "Since everyone thinks you came to live with me after our parents died, that's what I'll be telling the school, too." She was careful about her language, always wary of the awful, confused state he'd fallen into after she told the neighbor that he was ill. She could treat him kindly, could offer him the same support she would if everything was as she said, but she did her best to avoid muddying the waters between truth and falsehood between the two of them.

"Okay." He was a bit less excited, but he had his expression schooled into polite interest, no flicker of genuine distress at the lie.

"I won't be able to come get you immediately after school lets out," she said, because that was the next big sticking point.

"I can get home on my own!" he said eagerly.

She shook her head. "I want to enroll you nearer to the station. There's a library nearby, would you be comfortable spending a few hours there until my shift ends? I spoke with the librarian, and she'd be willing to keep an eye out for you for me." Thank you, Peter Lukas, for the generous donation of tuition money, and thank you, Jen the librarian, for being so eager to swallow Daisy's story and agree to help.

"Yes," Jon said, looking a bit wild. "I won't go anywhere else, I swear!"

She rounded the table to stand beside him, hugging him to her side. "You're alright. I want you to go, I promise."

He leaned heavily into her. "I won't try to leave again, Daisy. I promise."

She was pretty sure what caused the turnabout. She swallowed, making sure there was no hint of tears in her voice. "I trust you. I mean it when I say I want you to go. I wouldn't have mentioned it if I weren't sure I had everything arranged. You don't have to promise me anything, just get your work done in time, okay?"

"I will!" Her heart skipped as he scooted his chair back enough that he could turn and wrap his arms around her. Slowly, Daisy knelt, bringing herself to his level so she could hug him back properly. Jon murmured into her hair, soft enough she wasn't sure he meant her to hear, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

They both held on tightly.

-

After that, she almost always came home to find Jon immersed in schoolwork. Before, he was working at it steadily; now, he had the sort of passionate intensity that put her on alert, that on her increasingly-common good days she could associate too easily with Jon as she first knew him, intensely fixated on Gertrude Robinson's murder and wheedling tapes out of Basira. Daisy just wished that he had gotten to have this without losing his grandmother.

Jon tore through schoolwork while she was at work, stayed absorbed after she unlocked the door to his room, and usually had to be physically pulled away to come eat dinner. Most mornings, she woke to find him already awake and working, though he at least managed to remember to tell her that he needed more breakfast things to keep in his room, since he'd have to wait before she could make him breakfast. She felt obligated to add a second condition to her offer, that he sleep in the meantime. She'd never seen someone so happy to hear their new school required uniforms.

She felt confident in her precautionary measures. Aside from how obvious it had already been that without his Gran Jon didn't have much of anywhere he felt like escaping to, the administration at his new school had been very understanding; the people who needed to know would be disinclined to believe the story if he told it, but she felt confident that his day to day schooling would be unaffected by the knowledge. Jon would have a phone, the sort meant to only be capable of calling parents and emergency services, altered to call Daisy and nothing else. She squashed the guilt and anxiety about that bit; if Jon was at school or the library and needed to call emergency services, there was little reason an adult wouldn't be near enough to recognize the need and do it themselves. And that was the other upside of sending him to a school near the station; the most likely responders to a call for police knew her and knew about Jon.

Most of what she got for Jon, though, were intended to serve no goal aside from education and making him happy. Any amount of happiness she could offer him she was desperate for. She bungled the beginning, but Daisy was determined to make the future brighter. Jon was too smart and good not to have that.

As the start of term approached, the excited happiness started to fade from Jon, replaced by nerves. They went to the school to walk it, and so that he could meet as many of his teachers as possible, then did the same at the library where he would be waiting after, though she made it clear to him that if he found an extracurricular he wanted to do instead he could.

On Jon's first day of school, she spent all day jittering. She wound up entertaining a procession of colleagues, all parents promising that it was normal to be nervous and that Jon would be fine. It soothed her more than she wanted to admit. But at the end of the day, she found Jon sitting near the front of the library. And after that, all that changed in the school routine was him slowly disappearing to a more secluded table to wait.

That and the awful, selfish happiness she felt and didn't hide well enough, to hear him referring to her as his sister more and more easily.

Chapter Text

Was school always this wonderful? Jon supposed that the lack of bullies helped, but he thought it was mostly how much he knew to appreciate the privilege, now. It didn't seem as important that he didn't really have any friends and that most of his classmates, though disinterested in bullying him, had formed their cliques years ago. He was just happy to be there. He knew intellectually that he had as many dull teachers, annoying-if-not-unkind peers, and lonely lunches as he ever did before, but none of it stung the way it used to.

The library was wonderful too, though not as unexpectedly. Daisy, at least, he felt confident would both know to look for books like Mr. Spider and what to do about it. If Daisy was willing to leave him at the library unsupervised, the books were safe.

He felt guilty at how much he liked the boundaries that were imposed as a condition of schooling. It was just so much better than wondering if he would ever, ever be allowed out of the house again, and what the thing to finally snap Daisy's patience to the point of violence would be. He couldn't go anywhere after school except an extracurricular or the library, though he enjoyed the combination of solitude and freedom offered by the library far too much to care about clubs and sports any more than he used to. He couldn't call or message anyone on the phone she gave him except for her, including 999.

A few weeks into the term, after he mentioned offhand something that the teacher of the economics class he would have scoffed at before and was, as expected, wildly enjoying said about business norms, Daisy brought home a computer and explained the restrictions she'd placed on it. He couldn't break that rule. The computer stopped him the one time he cautiously tested the boundary, and while he knew that Daisy got a report of the attempt she didn't say anything. They never had a computer at home, when he lived with Gran, and the prospect was exciting enough that he didn't miss the ability to send any outgoing information (even in comments or trying to edit Wikipedia pages) without Daisy entering a passcode approving it, or to look up anything related to Jonathan Sims, too badly.

The only boundary whose anxiety outweighed its reward was the credit card. He knew how they were supposed to work, the vending machines at school were even set up to take them, but it was so new that there was too much unknown to be balanced by a privilege he knew he would've been over the moon about before. He had a set limit for the month, far higher than he could imagine using on the things he had available to him between school and the library, but his purchases would be sent to Daisy on an unknown schedule. She probably would have told him if he asked, but he was too nervous about the concept to want to. Better to assume the purchase of a train ticket would be forwarded to her immediately than to let himself be tempted. The combination of novelty and surveillance, though, put him off the credit card for weeks.

The excitement of being able to go to school faded, as he knew it would. It wasn't as quickly as he'd anticipated, but before long he was battling thoughts he didn't want to indulge.

He got to go to a school with tuition no one but Daisy would have been willing to pay for him. He got to go to a school where even the worst days were plagued by noise and boredom and little else. He got to choose his own clothes for outside of school. Daisy rarely made food he disliked and never yelled at him, had never really hurt him, just scared him and failed to stop him hurting himself. He didn't need to jeopardize all of that with stupid impulses. All the reasons he had to stop fighting Daisy after Gran died were still in play. All he could do for the moment was prepare for a future without her by doing well in school and keeping his head down for the next couple years.

Daisy never did anything worse to him than kidnapping him. She did everything she could to avoid hurting him, physically or emotionally. And now he knew what rules he had to follow to make sure she never did. Daisy was a better option than some foster family who may or may not tell him the rules and who might do something worse in response to breaking them.

He thought about it though. At first, it was just an idle curiosity. Given these parameters, what might he do to leave? How long might it take for Daisy to notice? What would he be able to do in the time in between?

It wouldn't be more than thoughts, though. Not until he was eighteen.

Or, he'd thought it wouldn't.

Just after Easter, he found a message from Daisy on his phone when school let out. Being late to pick him up was fine. It was! Even if she didn't know how late she would be. Even when it turned out to be barely before the library closed, and he spent the last hour anxious about what he would do when he didn't know the way home, couldn't get inside if he did, and didn't have anywhere else Daisy-approved to go instead.

It was still cold, and Daisy was wearing her coat when she picked him up. All the way home, she was apologizing for being late at all, never mind how late she ended up being. She let him pick what kind of takeout they ordered and sent him up to his room to put away his school things while she ordered.

Usually after getting home he finished up his homework and then made sure that everything he needed was in place for the next day while Daisy ordered or cooked dinner. But he was at the library so long he finished his homework. Not just what he needed for the next day, everything he had assigned at all. Most of the organizing he was able to do at the library, too, he just had to find clothes to lay out for morning, to make sure he wouldn't wake up to find himself without any clean uniforms.

But he didn't have enough clean clothes for the day after tomorrow, and he already spent his weekends locked in his room while Daisy was at work. When he had the chance, he liked to read downstairs. Even that much would have been safe, if it weren't for the laundry.

The door was ajar. That was what saved him. Daisy knew he sometimes saw the blood flecked on her clothes, but he couldn't imagine this being the same.

Before, he could tell himself that the blood was from breaking up a fight, or being the first one to the scene when what was really needed was an ambulance. There were plenty of things that could account for a couple spots of blood on her clothes or hands. It didn't even have to be anyone else's blood, for all Jon knew she got nosebleeds and paper cuts.

There was nothing he could pretend about this. If it was something normal, Daisy would have told him. She started doing that after a while, when there was blood somewhere he could see. He didn't always believe her, but for something like this she would have offered him any explanation she could. Hiding it under her jacket probably would have happened anyway, but if she had something to offer to explain a single bloody cuff sticking out she would have told him instead of risking him seeing and drawing conclusions.

He turned around and started marching his laundry back to his room before he really processed what he saw. Then he ended up lingering as close as he could get while still being somewhat hidden, face aflame, to make sure he saw what he thought he saw.

The first thing he saw, that had him turning around right off, was Daisy without her shirt on. Even if she wasn't pretending to be his sister so well that some days even Jon forgot she wasn't, that wasn't anything he wanted to see.

The second thing, though, was her shirt. If he hadn't seen her put on a white shirt that morning, he never would have guessed it from the red and brown rag she had on top of the washer. On his second look, he realized that while the shirt sat abandoned and hopefully headed to the garbage, Daisy wasn't preparing to take her bra off like he'd thought. She was dabbing at it with a cloth. It was bloody, too. So was the waistband of her trousers. There was even a bit in her hair. If it were all the same brown of the drier areas, he would think she had a catastrophic encounter with a mud puddle.

Back in his room, his mind raced. What could cause that much blood to get on someone? Being stabbed would probably do it, if it was her blood, but that obviously wasn't it. What would have to be done to you for that much of your blood to end up on someone else?

Daisy would have told him if it was something for an ambulance. That she hadn't was damning. Whoever that was, he doubted they were in a hospital of any description. Unless maybe they were in the morgue.

He'd been able to pretend he didn't know Daisy was dangerous. She was a cop, and she was bigger and stronger than him, but she wasn't really dangerous. She wouldn't kill anyone. She'd never seriously hurt Jon.

(If he pretended she wasn't a monster to rival Mr. Spider, it wouldn't have to be true. If he hadn't seen that, it wouldn't have to be true.)

What did they do, that person splattered over Daisy's clothes and skin?

What would Jon have to do to be next?

He had to pretend that he didn't see anything. He didn't; he was just in a weird mood because he'd had to wait so long to be picked up. Everything was normal. Everything was fine.

He couldn't keep lying to himself, though, when she couldn't see him.

He couldn't stay here. He was never safe, only pretending.

It was a decision he couldn't do much with for a while. He still had no one who would believe him if he told them the truth, no one who would do anything about it. He still didn't have any money or way of talking to people Daisy didn't know about. He still didn't want to trade the devil he knew for one that might be worse. They tried to make sure no one would murder kids in care, but they weren't always right. Daisy, for the moment, was the safer option.

But his eighteenth birthday was getting closer all the time. If he couldn't go to another adult, and he couldn't stay with Daisy, he would have to take care of himself until then.

He was careful about his preparations. It took a while to figure out what he'd use for money. He realized what to do about that standing in line for the vending machine. 

He waited for the right moment. He needed someone he was sort of friendly with from class who wouldn't tell a teacher, and a moment where no one else was around. He found it during lunch one day, after his math lesson ended a bit early and the teacher said they could go.

Aaron was in the same math class as Jon. Everyone else had run off to the cafeteria or out to find somewhere in walking distance to buy lunch, but Aaron went to the vending machines.

"Excuse me," Jon said, nervous now that the moment had arrived. Aaron turned lazily, eyeing him with faint suspicion. Or maybe that was just Jon's guilty conscience talking.

"I was wondering-" he stopped, sure that that was wrong. He needed to make it seem less like an idle, passing idea, and more like a plan he was confident in. "That is, would you be willing to... trade?" He tried not to cringe at the weak ending. "I mean, I have a card! And you have cash. And if you let me buy whatever you were going to on my card and give me the cash, you can spend twice as much on the card as you would've cash."

It was a little convoluted and meandering, but Aaron didn't immediately turn away or laugh in his face, at least. "Your parents going to be mad you spent that much?"

"Hm? Oh, no. My sister goes through all the transactions, but if she notices she'll just be glad I'm making friends. Stuff like this, she won't care unless I go over my limit, and it would take a lot more than one extra snack from a vending machine to do that."

Aaron looked considering. "Got something you don't want her finding out about?"

He blushed, even though that was stupid and there was no reason to. "Yes."

Aaron looked him up and down again. "Sure."

"Great!" He was smiling a bit too wide, but Aaron didn't say anything. It wasn't even enough to pay for a ride on the Underground, but it was a start.

-

Jon kept his savings in a box in one of the cubbies on his headboard. He had the box already, because they'd used it to prop up a little model airplane he won at a school fair so that it would be visible over the picture frame in front of it, with one of the pictures of him and his parents from his baby book. It was just an old cardboard box rescued from the kitchen bin and painted streaky black so it wouldn't stand out where it was visible, but it was something he already had, and something Daisy had no reason to be suspicious of. It started out with a couple rocks inside to keep it from tipping, and by religiously turning out his pockets and putting the money away when he got home, Jon was eventually able to drop all the rocks various places as he walked by and fill it up with money. He probably dinged up his share of mower blades, since when Daisy or another adult was in earshot it was safer to drop them in the grass, but he considered that a small price to pay.

Aaron kept up the informal agreement most days, and when he saw that Jon was interested in doing it regularly he told a couple friends, too. Not enough of them for the teachers to notice anything odd, and they rarely made all their purchases at a single machine, since the machines all had slightly different stock, but enough that Jon felt like he could actually do this. Wandering around the school with the other boys wasn't quite the same as being their friend, but it made him privy to enough anecdotes and jokes to convince Daisy the increased vending machine expenditures were because he'd made friends.

She increased his limit after that. She didn't say anything, but he could tell by the look on her face that she was sad for him, that she'd concluded that his "friends" were just using him for money, and committed to helping him keep up that ruse because she thought he was too pathetic to make any real friends. Well, the joke was on her. They were all using each other for money, and soon he would never see Daisy again and she wouldn't have the right to make insulting assumptions about his social life.

His savings expanded from the larger group. The box filled up and he had to find other options. He kept the box full, and added another, taping old wrappers of his least favorite energy bars carefully shut around rolled up bills so that if Daisy went into the drawer where all his nonperishable snacks lived she wouldn't see anything odd. And she wouldn't buy him any more of the gross ones, because it would always look like he had plenty. That gave him another idea, and his snacks started slowly migrating into a crate under the bed that Daisy had put in his room when they moved in and neither of them had ever figured out what to use it for.

Daisy didn't go through his cubbies or drawers or under his bed, at least to Jon's knowledge. He probably wasn't missing anything, since if Daisy was home he was too. But she could come back to the house during the day and go through his things, or she might pick up one of the fake energy bars while he was home and realize, or he didn't know what. Having his savings spread out made him feel safer; if Daisy found one, he wouldn't have to start over from scratch. He proliferated out to half a dozen hiding places, all sorts of things he didn't think she'd bother to look at.

He was glad that he had already set a precedent for being tucked away out of view at the library instead of sitting near the front, because it meant that he could slip through the aisles for books that might help without anyone thinking he was up to something.

It wouldn't be easy. He knew that, he wasn't stupid, of course it would be difficult. He wouldn't be able to access a lot of help, because they'd want to report him somewhere for being underage. He knew he wouldn't realize just how difficult it was, really, until he was doing it. Even now, trying to arrange things and do well in school, because if he was going to miss so much he needed as much as he could squeeze out of his waiting and planning weeks, he wasn't doing anything really difficult yet.

But it was barely more than a year. The end of the school year crept closer, summer weather with it hopefully a safe bet to ease him in before it got cold again. He could make it a year. One year, that was nothing. Every time his resolve started to waver in the face of just how enormous what he was trying to do was, he remembered Daisy and the bloody shirt. He remembered all the other times she came home with blood on her. He remembered being chased down through the trees and tackled so hard he was sure she was going to kill him. Gran was dead, this was his only option.

As spring became summer and the end of school drew closer, he started preparing in earnest. He was horrified to realize that his school bag was too small for what he needed. The look Aaron gave him when he worked up the nerve to ask if he'd be willing to buy Jon a good, big bag and a sleeping bag if he gave him the money was awful, all pity, but he agreed. It was a big hit to his savings, even though they were secondhand, but it was better than freezing to death come winter, or starving because he couldn't carry enough, or being sent back because he was doing poorly enough for someone to notice and find out where he was supposed to be.

There was a door at the library that was kept propped open for smoke breaks most of the time. It was down a little stairwell he wasn't entirely confident he was supposed to be in, and if he didn't spend so much time at the library he would never have found it. But he couldn't do homework and read all the time, and he got restless sitting around so much when he used to continually wander Bournemouth, or pace his room at home.

Out the door was a little alley, mostly closed off from the rest of the world. He certainly never saw anyone there, even passing on the street. When he got brave enough to peer out there, he was pretty sure that it was just a second, bigger alley, and it lead to the street. But the little alley was full of old boxes and book carts with rusted-out shelves and things, and when he hid his things there, testing with a school book and a cardigan first, they were never moved. He hid the things Aaron bought for him there, and started padding out the bottom of his school bag with essentials, a little at a time.

He walked his planned route a couple times, to see if he would be spotted. If he was careful about timing and took a slightly different route from school, he could weave back through the nested alleys to his things. He had to hurry to make it around to the front of the library before he'd be noticeably late, but that wouldn't be a problem day-of.

Finally, a couple weeks before the end of term, he was ready. He filled his school bag with the last of his necessities, his money carefully rolled up and padded so it wouldn't make noise or be obviously worth stealing, everything bundled up as tight as he could make it, and slipped out the side door he passed on his way to his first class. He would be out of London by the time Daisy realized he was missing, he hoped. Aaron, as a last favor, had a forged note from Daisy explaining that Jon was ill to deliver on his behalf, so the school hopefully wouldn't call her.

His things were swapped into his new bag, the school bag tossed in a random dumpster, clothes changed so he wasn't obviously wearing a school uniform. The bag's bulk and the sleeping bag were as subtle as he could make them, but anyone looking closely would realize he didn't have anywhere to go; he just hoped he could pass for eighteen if it came up.

He couldn't stay in London, where the police knew Daisy. He couldn't go back to Bournemouth, where people knew him and she would expect him to go. The idea of being put in care hadn't gotten any more appealing. He chose a destination at random and bought a train ticket, hoping that he would be hours away by the time Daisy noticed anything suspicious.

Chapter Text

Jon balanced on the edge of his chair, the furthest he could get from the tin of peach-residue and dead worms without standing. Martin looked bright and flushed and ready to shout him down if he tried to pretend he didn't believe him.

There was a knock on his door before he could say anything, and they both startled hard. Daisy eased into the room a moment later, only looking faintly surprised to find Martin there. "It's ten past the hour, I was late getting off work. Ready to go?" She usually started hovering half an hour before he was supposed to go, especially on Saturdays. He was glad she was late; if she wasn't, Martin might've come in to find the Archives empty, and who knew what might have happened to him then.

"Er..." he glanced back at Martin, trying to gauge how displeased he was likely to be at having the story spread. "Martin's just finished giving a statement. He had an encounter with Jane Prentiss. I was just going to tell him that he- I have a cot in a room here in the Archives," he said, shifting his focus to Martin, as the relevant party. He's never actually used the cot, given how against working past his contracted hours Daisy is, but that might be better. There's something about suggesting a subordinate share his bedding that sounds unseemly. " I suggest you stay there for now. I’ll talk to Elias about whether we can get extra security, but the Archives have enough locks for now. It’s also supposed to be humidity controlled and, though it hasn’t been working for some time, it does mean it’s well-sealed. Nothing will be sneaking through any window cracks."

"Don't be ridiculous," Daisy said before Martin could answer. They both looked up at her, mouths agape. What could she possibly have to object to? Jon thought she liked Martin! "We have a guest room. If Martin needs a place to stay, he can stay with us. Our windows are all well-sealed, and so's the door at the top of the stairs. Even if Prentiss got past the front door, she wouldn't be able to get to the bedrooms."

"You're serious?" he asked before thinking how it would sound to Martin. He wouldn't call it much of a "guest room"; it was more Basira's room, even if her staying over was somewhat rare. Not counting Basira, he could count the number of times they'd had dinner guests on one hand, and no one else had ever been upstairs. He supposed he must have been right to think Daisy liked Martin, if she was willing to have him in the house.

"I'd be grateful just to stay in the Archives," Martin said. "If Jon-"

"If you're comfortable staying with us, you should," Jon cut him off, hoping he sounded suitably decided. "It just didn't occur to me; we rarely use that room, and I'd quite forgotten it was an option I could offer." It wasn't something he could offer; it was Daisy's house, Daisy's security measures, Daisy's paranoia. She said it was just as much his as hers, but the idea of flexing that sort of control made him anxious.

"You're sure?" Martin asked.

Jon nodded in a way he hoped came off as decisive. "It'll be better for you to have somewhere to leave work behind. Besides, the Archives don't even have a proper kitchen. It would be safer than your flat, but it wouldn't really be comfortable."

"Okay… thanks. To be honest I didn’t, didn’t expect you… to take it seriously."

His phone buzzed. He looked down; he had a text from Martin. "You said you lost your phone two weeks ago?"

"Thereabouts. When I went back to the basement."

He passed his phone to Martin, the thread of sick days and failed attempts to get any other answers out of him open. "'Keep him. We have had our fun. He will want to see it when the Archivist’s crimson fate arrives,'" Martin read out. Daisy's eyes zipped to Jon.

"If this involves Jane Prentiss, I take it deadly seriously. You should come stay with us, and I'll get Elias to get additional security here."

"Thanks," Martin said, sounding a bit like he wasn't sure what just happened. Jon felt an alien kinship with him, for that.

-

Jon spent the drive home trying not to panic. What if Martin thought they were strange? What if he took that impression and spread it around at work? He had no idea how well they passed for normal in private. Basira wouldn't say much if they didn't, and while he knew Georgie had found Daisy odd and off-putting, Daisy was being odd and off-putting when she met Georgie, for reasons he still wasn't entirely clear on. He wasn't sure he'd know if their day-to-day was abnormal; he didn't have anything he could confidently compare it to, just Gran, and that was so long ago.

At least he didn't have to worry about keeping up conversation. Daisy took to that with a vicious enthusiasm, until she had Martin bullied into agreeing to let her take him to buy a few things after dinner, so he'd have more to wear than the clothes on his back. Jon didn't fancy being there when Martin discovered that when Daisy said "take him shopping" she meant "make him pick things out until she was satisfied, and then pay before he got the chance." He learned to tell when she was about to spring that on Basira and decline to accompany them after the first time.

He cringed as Martin hovered on the steps next to him while Daisy undid all the front door locks. That, at least, he knew was unusual.

Jon, for lack of his usual routine, turned to do up all the locks again once they were inside, Martin drifting a bit awkwardly. He had teased Daisy for deciding that they ought to have a roast for the slow-cooker without any particular special occasion in sight, but he was glad now. The house smelled wonderful and there would be no question of making Martin feel like him eating was taking food off of their plates, or like he had to chip in for takeout.

Martin followed him to the kitchen when he was finished with the door. That was another plus of the slow-cooker: Dinner would be ready to eat inside of five minutes.

"Wow," Martin said, and Jon turned, somehow sure that he'd found something awful. Martin was standing in front of the fridge, confirming the accuracy of the feeling.

The fridge, as always, was completely covered in polaroids. There was a little board on the side, where Daisy kept pictures of as many of the people they knew as possible for reasons Jon didn't understand, but most of them were scattered over the fridge in chaotic masses, pinned down with mismatched magnets. They cleared out the oldest and least-favorite ones whenever they got thick enough to start falling off, but that freed up less space than it could.

His face heated and he tried to remember what was there than he might not want Martin to find. He didn't get the chance to subtly ferret away embarrassing photos, though, because Martin said, "Is this... a picture of you getting arrested, Jon?"

His face burned even hotter, and he all but ran to see what Martin was looking at. "I thought I found all of those."
"I pulled it out of the bin!" Daisy said, far too happily, from the other end of the kitchen.

"I wasn't arrested," he said to Martin, ignoring her entirely. It sounded bad, even if it was true. "It was a joke. That's Daisy's best friend, Basira. It wasn't even for very long, Daisy just kept clicking the camera fast enough to get a half dozen." At least that was backed up by the fact that Basira was visibly laughing and had tears on her cheeks. He tried to extricate the picture, and wound up causing a small avalanche. They'd have to get another box to put the overflow in soon.

"Is Basira actually a cop, or..?"

"Yes," he said, wishing desperately that he could say it was a Halloween costume. "Daisy went back to consult for some old colleagues a few times, they met then."

"You were a cop?" Martin asked, looking surprised the way people always did when they found out about Daisy's former career. Jon tore the photo in his hands vengefully in half.

"Quit when Jon was in uni," Daisy said. "I took the rest out of the bin, too, Jon. Guess I'll just have to get the boxes down to find another one."

"Daisy!" She wasn't anywhere near this bad with Georgie!

"Come eat," Daisy said, ignoring him. She started kicking him in the ankle as soon as he sat down, though, hiding smiles with her glass whenever she managed to bring up a new embarrassing topic to Martin.

-

"Do you want to come?" Daisy asked when the dishes were put away and the leftovers packaged up for lunches.

Jon shook his head. "I- er, I'll make sure that the guest room is. Presentable." He felt like he was going to crawl out of his skin. Daisy gave him a soft look. The front door would have to do; he wasn't stupid enough to think that Daisy could lock his door without Martin noticing.

Was it worse for Martin to go back to work and tell the others that Jon didn't sleep at all while he was here, or to tell them that he slept in his sister's room? It was difficult to imagine actually managing to sleep like this.

He worried at the question, and all the other catastrophic events his brain could supply, while stripping and remaking the bed in the guest room and removing all of Basira's things. He tried to listen to an audiobook while he worked, but he couldn't focus on anything aside from when a text notification rang over the narrator's voice because Daisy was checking on him.

For lack of anything else to do, he went through checking everything he could think of being a problem with Martin here. Spare towels, blankets, whatever polaroids were in Daisy's room... he was glad that he'd had rows of hooks hung over the top of his door from both directions for years. He fussed at the jackets on the outside and the bags on the inside, trying to ensure everything incriminating was covered.

By the time the others got back, he was practically vibrating with the effort of suppressing his anxiety. Martin looked like he understood the feeling; Daisy had added various snacks Martin liked and a replacement phone to her list, and as Jon had predicted Martin had been allowed to pay for none of it.

His feelings of kinship evaporated when Martin reacted enthusiastically to Daisy's suggestion of spending some of the time before they could reasonably go to bed showing him the dozen boxes of polaroids she'd filled in the time Jon lived with her.

Chapter Text

Daisy barely managed to react appropriately to the librarian telling her that Jon hadn't shown up after school. Her stomach churned, but she thought she carried off pretending to find a text from him about going to a club after school instead well enough. Her lungs seemed to shrink as it sunk in that he was gone.

She spent hours searching a widening radius around the school and library for him. The exertion didn't bleed the nervous energy in her limbs, just heightened it even when her muscles ached and she had a tired headache. Eventually, she had to admit defeat. 

He could be anywhere.

Jon seemed to be doing better. What made him leave after all this time? Where was he staying? Was he safe? And she was only assuming he left of his own accord because anything else threatened to break her composure entirely.

Maybe she should have expected this, with school and freedom and time. Maybe she was kidding herself. Maybe he was acting in all the tiny moments he seemed to be happy. She knew he was afraid of her, would probably always be afraid of her, but she thought that even though she couldn't undo that he might have isolated happiness in the gaps of what she'd done to him.

Daisy woke up knowing he was gone and she'd have to come up with something to tell the school about his absence. She got her first real clue when she called the school and the secretary spoke as though she'd already sent a sick note the day before. Jon couldn't have given that himself, so who did?

She could hardly go around interrogating classmates, though. Especially since she couldn't report him missing properly. Having two separate entries as a missing person was too risky. Even beyond a desire not to be caught, it felt like advertising to the world that Jon was on his own, ready prey for any monster that cared to find and destroy. She spent the rest of the weekend searching, glad she didn't have work, before admitting defeat. Her badge and a story about a runaway- accurate for a given value of the word- got her access to a couple of CCTV cameras, but Jon didn't appear in any of the footage. She ran through all of it, even though he must have left in the morning if he never made it to his first class. No one recognized him as someone they'd sold a train ticket to, either.

Monday morning she sent a set of mostly-forged documents about Jon having a bad relapse and needing to be out indefinitely to the school. The sympathetic message she got back made her feel sick. They'd be "glad to have him back." Wouldn't they all!

Even if he'd ditched his phone, he must have turned it off first because she couldn't get the location data. She sent a text that was the best she could come up with, getting across the message that she was worried but not angry and would like to know that he was at least safe, without straying into territory Jon wouldn't believe, and then didn't let herself send any more. Daisy wanted desperately to spare him every ounce of fear she could manage, and felt sure that an onslaught would pick at his nerves like barbed wire, even if she left out how important he was to her, how badly she wished she'd never hurt him and never would again.

When Friday came and he was still missing, she admitted defeat and told people about it at work. If they saw Jon, they'd inform her, even though they were all under the impression that his "relapse" had involved a couple runaway attempts that didn't get far, and that asking them all to tell her if they saw him alone was a precautionary measure rather than a genuine need. Everyone was horribly sympathetic.

She spent her weekend driving routes in and out of London, unable to shake the feeling that if she kept moving she would be able to find him.

-

Daisy sent Jon's phone a text and checked for the location every other week as summer came on in earnest, all his peers excitedly freed from school. She couldn't bear not to. The messages were mainly hopes for his health and safety and assurances that she wasn't angry, just worried. The worry intensified as school started and the days turned cooler.

He couldn't have gone to police, or back to Bournemouth. Even if for some reason he hadn't told them where to find her, she would've heard about it. She checked news stories about Jonathan Sims with the same compulsive regularity she checked for Jonathan Tonner's phone location. What could he be doing? What had he been thinking when he left? What was his plan?

She tried very hard not to see the lack of press and arrest as a sign that there was foul play involved in Jon's disappearance, or that he'd met with some grisly fate before he could speak to anyone about it. She checked every shelter in London, in case for some reason he'd just decided to live on the streets, but no one recognized his picture and she was afraid to press, in case they did recognize his picture without having seen him. It was a razor's edge she'd constructed for herself to walk, and she knew she deserved it if it cut up her feet.

Not Jon, though. Never Jon. He could never deserve what she'd done to him, in this or any life.

She couldn't think of why he'd stay in London, but she didn't know where else to search. Not London, not Bournemouth... then where? For all she knew he wasn't even in the country anymore; her ability to search outside London without a missing person report was about the same whether he was or not. Trying ended up with her pulled over because there were too many tears in her eyes to see the road as often as not.

She hoped he was safe. She hoped he wasn't suffering from the wind or the rain or the cold. She kept her own phone charged obsessively, in case he called. He wouldn't, but she had to cling to any tiny hope she could. He'd probably felt the same about her, in the opposite direction; it was a thought that landed with a slant that felt unforgivably selfish. What right did she have to compare what she'd done to Jon to what doing it had done to her?

There wasn't any reason he would call Daisy, but she had to know that if he tried she would get it. She wouldn't be able to live with herself if Jon tried to contact her and got sent to voicemail. Nothing that could drive him to that was something she could consider long without getting choked up. She was his last resort, and if he ever needed that she had to be there. It was the least she owed him.

Daisy had hardly been able to live with herself, particularly on the good days when she remembered all she'd done and why, when the sum of her destruction of Jon's life was the time he missed in school and his grandmother and what she knew to be a far-too-large portion of his sense of self and safety. If trying to get away from her meant him getting hurt, or even just missing enough school to negatively impact his future...

-

Jon's birthday was terrible. It was the only time Daisy let herself cry, the self-pity the sickening opposite of what she ought to do for a day that should be about Jon, even absent as he was.

-

Not long after Jon's birthday, her phone rang. She set a different ring tone for him when she got his phone, so that no matter what hers was set to it would ring and be unmistakably Jon. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard the movement of radiating blood seemed enough to make her fingers clumsy as she scrambled to answer.

Chapter Text

Jon followed the man's hold on his wrist, even though he really didn't want to know where they were going. He didn't dare try to pull away. Something about the man set his teeth on edge, something that brought back strong memories of the earliest days with Daisy. Possibly he was bringing back old fears about being trafficked and lessons on stranger danger, what with springing on Jon so suddenly and determinedly and being so obviously hard up, as well.

He'd been doing so well. It was a good day, he saw a man toss half a sandwich untouched and got it out of the bin as soon as the man was out of sight, and someone gave him a tenner earlier. He'd been eating the sandwich and starting to consider where he'd hole up for the night when the man turned up and started talking at him. At least Jon had finished eating before he started pulling him around.

He didn't like Manchester, felt less and less sure that going the opposite direction of what Daisy would expect was worth the tradeoff of the weather getting colder faster and his accent making him stick out even more, but he'd been doing well enough, considering.

Not happy or comfortable, but most nights he felt safer than he had after the bloody shirt incident. He kept having to spend his savings on train tickets because he was afraid to walk or hitchhike and people kept getting suspicious. Usually it was just people catching on that he was pretending to be older than he was- he knew he was a bad liar before, but it'd become clear just how bad he was, especially never expecting the moment to come when it did and with so much to be afraid of- but in Leicester someone actually asked if he was Jonathan Sims and he practically ran out of the city.

He'd made it past his birthday. He counted every day after that, counted down each day that shrunk the year before he could go back to having some kind of normal life, or at least one on his own terms instead of carved out of what Daisy and everyone else would give him.

"I- I- Where are we going?" he stammered. His anxiety going up, up, up made the dampness and chill he'd been successfully ignoring bite harder, the way the wind caught at his clothes and slipped icy fingers into any gap and how he could feel that his socks were wet enough that his feet were pruned more intensely distressing in the face of increasingly-intense distress.

The man laughed. "Can't you smell it? I know you can, cub, I can smell hunter all over you."

What? "An address, I meant." He felt sure that whatever this man thought he was, he didn't want to know the reaction if he realized Jon wasn't.

The man scoffed. "Smell it getting stronger? What's an address matter?"

He shrunk in on himself, unwilling to disagree with the man. He quickened his pace, sure that it would be equally bad if his obvious reluctance to be towed around made someone stop them. The man would be irritated, but whoever it was could also ask Jon how old he was. He really wished he weren't short enough to look younger than his age.

Eventually, they wound up in a little alley. It wasn't so far from where they started, but anxiety made it stretch tenfold in his mind.

"It's in there," the man said, voice lowered like whatever it was might hear him. "It's got someone, look. Ought to be glad I stopped for you, do you good to get a few notches in your belt."

He leaned over to look in the window the man was pointing to, and did his best not to react. There was a woman inside the gloomy little basement flat. Two women, maybe. He knew full well that being a monster didn't necessarily preclude being a woman; just look at Daisy.

The normal woman was unconscious, or close to it. The other had a horrible, long tongue protruding from its mouth, visibly drawing in blood from where it was latched to the victim's neck.

"Got your knife, cub?" the man asked. 

Jon fumbled at his shoe; he picked up a pocketknife secondhand after he realized how useful it would be, utensil, scissor, and weapon in one, but having it in his pockets was too risky. He'd already had several people make him turn out his pockets to prove he hadn't stolen something or he was unarmed. He doubted the man considered the little knife clenched in his fist as dispassionately as Jon did his own, as a tool and nothing more. He tried not to let his hands shake as he opened it.

"You'll do," the man said with a lazy grin. "Door over there's propped open; you go in and see if you can get the vampire off her. I'll come in behind to keep it off you."

He nodded. A moment's thought revealed that, while he was more afraid of the vampire than the man, the difference wasn't actually significant enough to make him willing to push back on being used as bait. He checked to see what the man was doing with his own bag, but he didn't take it off, so Jon didn't take his off either.

None of his previous experiences had yielded monsters as easily, pop-culturally quantifiable as "vampire," but he supposed there wasn't much else you could call a monster demonstrably drinking someone's blood, no matter how it accomplished it. Not like he was interested in pitching... were-mosquito, or something, as an alternative.

It felt viscerally wrong to be sneaking into someone's home uninvited, whatever the circumstances, but he was pretty sure that was a regular-flavor Jon anxiety, not monster anxiety. He could hear moaning, once he was inside. He hoped it was a sign that the woman was still alive, not a sound the vampire was making. The hall was eerie, dust up to his ankles with a clear track kept clean by regular use down the middle. There was another window, striping the hall with shadows from the muntins. The walls were bare except for a couple bits of wire and lone nails decorating bright shadows in the sun-bleached wallpaper where pictures used to hang.

He felt loud and clumsy, but he managed to slip up to the door to the room with the vampire and its victim. He could see, across the room, the man scuffing about just outside the window, so hopefully he meant it when he said that he'd come in after Jon.

He took a deep, quiet breath, and charged toward the vampire. No way out but through; even if it was too late to save the woman, the faster he acted the faster this would all be over.

Jon didn't quite track what happened as he pelted into the vampire, ramming into its distended gut in hopes of avoiding the tongue, even though he was involved in the collision. Maybe because he was involved in the collision. He knew he bumped against the woman, because he could feel icy cold skin against his hand. When his vision steadied, the woman was limp and ghastly pale on the floor beside him, and the vampire was on top of him.

He heard the window break, but he didn't have time to consider the man's actions relative to his own, because the vampire's tongue was still unspooled from its mouth and making a move toward him. From here, he could see the awful teeth ringing its mouth around the tongue. He aimed for the groping tongue, more a smack than a cut, and the blade of his knife didn't sink in very far, hardly a paper cut. The vampire just seemed annoyed and angrier than before.

The man cried out, swinging something that knocked the vampire back a bit, but it swatted at him without moving much. It was still on top of Jon, its bloated belly hanging above him, ready to sink down to add him to the menu for the evening. He jabbed up without thinking, before it could do anything to him or recover from the man's blow. His knife sunk deep into the vampire's stomach, the arc of his arm splitting it down the middle, its gory contents spilling out, raining over him.

It took a long, long moment before he felt sure enough that it was over to open his eyes. He could hear sirens off in the distance.

The man looked up from digging his boot into the awful tear in the vampire's stomach and swore. "Must've seen me break the window." He leaned down to offer Jon a hand up, which he took without thinking. The man wiped the bloody smear Jon's hand left on the wall until it was gone enough for him to wipe it on his trousers without the stain being too suspicious. He looked down at the vampire, still floundering a bit but quite obviously too weak to escape the boot pinning its guts to the floor. "Well done, cub. Better run off before anyone sees you like that, I'll take care of the burning. Come find you later, show you some places to clean off if you haven't by then."

Jon nodded and retraced his steps, feeling too shell-shocked to do more. His glasses were covered in blood, but he couldn't see anywhere on him that was clean enough to wipe them clearer than smudgy streaks. Better than when he started, but not very easy to see out of. He'd dropped his knife, he realized. Probably for the best; he was wearing gloves, though they didn't keep the wind at bay very well before getting soaked, so as long as they didn't physically find him he doubted they'd ever manage to tie the knife back to him. If they even tried. As the sirens got louder and the door closer, he started to pick up steam, hitting the loose-swinging door at a run and leaving an awful splattery imprint of his shoulder where he impacted.

He vomited into the gutter as soon as he was away from the door, and then kept running.

He wedged himself behind a dumpster a ways off, egged on by the mention of burning when the sirens and wind made him desperately want to go to ground sooner. That would really cap his day off, having his hiding place burn down. At least it was dark; it made him feel a tiny bit safer, running away from the scene of the crime- whose crime? theirs or the vampire's? or both? he wasn't sure- covered in blood. His hiding place didn't exactly smell nice, and the metal did its part to sap the heat from his bones, but hopefully no one would see him. Lucky thing he was small for his age. Anyone bigger wouldn't fit at all, but Jon had enough room to maneuver a bit.

It took a long, shivering moment before the detached calm shattered and he started to cry. It was quiet, but it shuddered through him painfully all the same.

Jon found a monster when he was eight. Another monster found him when he was fifteen. Another- because he couldn't classify the man's enthusiasm and the way he unnerved him as anything else, now- found him at seventeen. Speeding up. Eight years, seven years, two years.

Daisy said that it was dangerous. She told him that after you encountered one monster all the others started to take an interest. Why didn't he listen to her?

She was right, she was right. He couldn't think anything else. Daisy was right, a fact that was too loud to hear any other thoughts over. He didn't want to; he didn't want other thoughts, not thoughts that would inevitably arrive at how he was cold and alone and frightened and covered in blood.

The sirens were close. He could smell smoke.

Daisy kept other monsters away. Could Jon really fault her for that shirt, like this? He should have asked. Maybe the person wasn't a person at all. If she was bad for killing something like the vampire he was too.

He felt crunchy and coagulated when his thoughts calmed enough for him to move. He didn't want- he didn't know. He just knew he didn't. He wanted to feel safe, there, that was close enough.

Maybe he knew something like this would happen. He'd told himself it was evidence for when he finally turned eighteen and went to the police, things that would take the police right to Daisy, but maybe he knew deep down he wasn't meant to make it on his own. Maybe the primal, intuitive part of his brain knew all along he wasn't safe, could never be safe on his own.

He had most of his money rolled up in socks. He knew he'd be glad to have spares, and it kept the coins from jangling and looked undesirable if anyone looked in his bag. He had to take off the first few layers to get to the money, but it felt worth it.

Past the money, in the middle of his sock-ball, the last sock had a lump he hadn't thought about since he put it there. The phone barely fit inside the sock, and the credit card poked at the knit at its corners. He ignored the card.

Maybe it wouldn't even turn on, he thought as he pushed the button, but it did. His hand shook as he dialed.

"Jon?" Daisy said, breathless and barely letting it go past the first ring.

"Daisy," he said, and then before any of what he'd been half-rehearsing in his head he just sobbed into the receiver.

"Jon?" Daisy asked, worry intensifying. "Jon, are you hurt?"

"N-no," he choked out. "I- I'm. I'm all bloody. But it isn't-" He tried to smother down his volume, terrified of someone finding him like this. He thought being put into care was bad; if Daisy didn't help him he'd be finding out what kind of monsters lived in prison instead.

She waited for the sob to pass before speaking. "Where are you? I'm getting into the car right now, where are you?"

"M-manchester," he said, and wondered what he'd expected her to do. Why would she even want to come all the way from London to save him from his own bad decisions? He muttered the street he was on, not really expecting her to care.

"I'll be there as soon as I can," she said. "I'll call you when I'm close, alright?" 

Crying had bits of drool dangling from his mouth, cold and chafing in the air, but he didn't dare do anything about it, afraid that anything he did would get blood in his mouth. Daisy was coming. Daisy was good at making decisions about Jon's life. Better at it than Jon was, at least. If Daisy was here, he could pretend he wasn't. Daisy was coming.

"'kay," he said, feeling a bit floaty.

"Jon," she said, making his attention snap back. Listen to Daisy, Daisy could fix this. "If anything happens before I get there, call me."

"Promise," he said, and hit the end call button with a numb finger.

-

Jon didn't really feel the time passing. He was cold and upset and hungry, but he didn't really feel that, either. He just stared at the finger he pushed the end call button with, poking at it, digging the nails from other fingers under it trying to get out the dirt and blood he could see though the nail. He didn't need to worry about anything bigger; Daisy was coming, and the world was full of monsters, and Daisy wouldn't let him make the decisions that put him in their path. Daisy was right, so Jon was trusting her. Better not to be a brain in a body, just a grimy fingernail.

At some point, the sirens stopped, and the smell of smoke started to fade, but he didn't notice.

He almost screamed when the phone's display lit up. He didn't even have the ringer on, but the little light terrified him before he processed what it was. He answered the call, and heard two Daisies say, "Jon?"

"Daisy?" He didn't say it close to the phone, but it didn't matter, because he heard her footsteps slapping closer.

"Jon?"

"Daisy," he said, because he felt he had to say something. Why not what his aching, mushy brain was pinning all its hopes on?

A light shone in his eyes, and he didn't like it. "Jon, thank God."

She pried first the bag in his lap and then him out of his hiding place like meat out of a crab leg, and he did little to either help or hinder, just stayed gracelessly upright when she'd got him standing.

"Are you hurt?"

He shook his head. "There was... hunter? Vampire. Didn't bite me. Knife." It was as much sense as his brain could make of the story at the moment, and thankfully Daisy seemed to be satisfied with the jagged explanation.

"Come on," she said, as much to herself as to the ears that didn't feel like they belonged to him. "Let's get you home, you're alright."

There was a towel on the passenger seat, and he let her set him there and manhandle him out of his bloody coat. Why didn't he think of that? Without the coat he could feel the car's heater, lovely and warm, and he couldn't see so much of the blood. Without its bulk in the way, he could see himself shivering. Strange. He couldn't feel the warmth until he took it off, but now there was no reason for his body to be cold.

Daisy put the seatbelt over his chest and closed the door. She vanished into the driver's seat somehow and took his glasses away and handed him something damp. "Wipe your face off, there you go."

He did, and brown and red flakes fell into his lap. He lolled into her shoulder, not quite remembering why he shouldn't.

Daisy was here. He was okay, because she said so. "Daisy." Was she gone? He couldn't see her, just a slit of center console.

"What is it?" Daisy's voice. Daisy, warm, safe. Tired.

Was she still there? Was he still safe? "...Daisy."

-

"Daisy."

"Right here, Jon."

-

"Daisy?"

"You're okay."

-

"Daisy."

"Almost home."

-

"Daisy!"

"Just hang in there a little longer, Jon."

"...'kay. Daisy."

-

Daisy pulled him out of the car and away from the heater. It was still dark outside, because maybe it was going to be dark forever. He wasn't sure. He didn't feel like a person, just now. He made an upset noise without meaning to, when she got him into the house and he could see his dirty shoes against the clean floor.

"You're alright," Daisy said, hands on his shoulders so she could steer him around from behind.

"Carpet," he said stupidly, craning his neck back to look at the dusty-blood footprint he left on the first stair.

"The carpet's fine," she said. "Don't worry about it."

Jon said, "Okay," and stopped, because Daisy knew what she was doing and she was helping him. He was too tired and scared to decide things, and if he did what Daisy said she wouldn't make him before he was ready.

She deposited him in the bathroom she used, instead of going through his room to his. Unless it wasn't his room anymore. That would be fair; he ran away, and Daisy should've had that room to begin with, since she bought the house.

"Don't worry, don't worry," she soothed. "Do you need help with your clothes? Come on, in the shower." The noise the water made was loud and soft and nice.

She helped him get his shoes off, socks shockingly white within, checked the water, and then hit the lock so it would catch when the door shut, stepped out, and closed the door. He made a noise and opened it, clicking the lock off.

Daisy looked at him, faintly surprised. "I'm going to handle the rest of your things and make you something to eat. I'll be downstairs. Do you want the door unlocked?"

He nodded, and said, "Mess? Sorry." He was so sorry for not listening to her, for being such a burden, for being small and afraid and stupid.

Daisy frowned, which threatened to break the distance over his thoughts again, so he was glad when she stopped. "Don't worry about the mess, just worry about getting yourself clean."

He nodded, and she went away.

The warmth of the shower made him start to feel more human, started to thaw his brain enough to think. He turned over each step that led here in his head. Going over it with himself started the tears again, but these tears were hot against his face and felt antiseptic, rather than a product and intensification of being cold and scared and alone. He scrubbed and scrubbed at his hair, digging his nails into his scalp enough he might've added his own blood to the grimy river swirling down the drain. He didn't want any of the blood to stay in his hair, and didn't think to feel bad about using up all Daisy's shampoo until he tried to squirt more out and air whistled in and out the empty nozzle. He hiccuped, and made a go at doing the same to her shower gel.

By the time the water ran clear, the only thing he could bring himself to regret was running away and meeting the man and the vampire in the first place.

He was surprised to find a set of pajamas waiting for him when he got out. Daisy must have brought them, and he didn't hear. She took his glasses at some point, but he didn't remember exactly when. That was fine, he knew his way around the house well enough. The tile looked like a crime scene, all the blood in the creases of his clothing that hadn't quite dried smearing and the dried bits flaking off as he undressed. He tiptoed out. He felt very young and alone, alert and in his pajamas.

The stairs and hall were fizzing with something that stung his nose, soaking in everywhere he'd stepped on the way in. The hardwood in front of the door was still a bit glistening from being mopped. He thought Daisy must have heard him before seeing him, because halfway down the stairs he realized she had food and his stomach growled, far louder than his voice was comfortable being.

He shuffled around the corner to the kitchen, afraid of what he might find. Daisy looked up at him; her forehead was creased and worried, but she smiled at him anyway. He teetered in place and stared at his feet. Daisy was loud walking toward him, so he didn't startle when suddenly he could see her feet next to his. "Come on," she said, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and steering him onto a bar stool.

"I'm sorry," he said, tearier than he'd meant to sound. "I- Thank you."

Daisy leaned into his side, slowly bringing her arms around into a hug, like she was afraid of startling him. "You don't need to be," she said into his hair. "I'm just glad you're alright."

He shook his head, which moved his face enough for him to see he was smearing tears into her shirt. "I won't do it again, I'm sorry, thank you for-" a half-sob breath carried the end of the sentence away from him, leaving him exhausted when it passed.

Daisy held him for a bit longer, before drawing away. He wrapped his arms around himself, bereft. She set a bowl and spoon in front of him, and he devoured half a dozen bites before realizing that it was chicken noodle soup.

Daisy moved around quietly. When Jon looked up from his soup enough to notice anything, he saw her on the other side of the counter, fiddling with something small. He had to lean a bit closer to make out that she had his glasses, and was carefully screwing one of the legs back on. The next screw came out of a little bowl; rubbing alcohol, he realized after a moment. The soup took over his senses and covered up the smell. The alcohol was faintly brownish, a more severely stained nail brush sitting next to it.

Blood. Blood that Daisy painstakingly scrubbed off of every tiny bit of his glasses for him. It made his chest go tight and his eyes prickle.

He plowed through two bowls of soup and a warm slice of bread with butter before he yawned magnificently and Daisy started coaxing him upstairs. It was so late it was early, hours of driving between his call and getting home. He refused to move, torn between twin fears, until she figured out what he was muttering about and cleaned the nail brush off. She dragged a bar stool over so he could sit in front of the sink with the brush and the dish soap and finally get the last of the blood off his hands, obsessive, robotic scrubbing that Daisy eventually intervened in after the third aggressive scouring of all of his nails.

Everything was put away, a slight dampness in parts of the carpet the only sign anything happened. The facade was only interrupted when they got upstairs and he could see the bathroom door firmly shut, a rusty streak on its exterior showing where he brushed against it.

He stalled on the threshold of his room, tidied but otherwise just as he left it. He didn't want to be separated from Daisy by a door, much less a locked on. Daisy felt safe and nothing else did, he was too tired and shaky for it to.

He realized he'd said so aloud when she said, "Do you want me to leave the door open, tonight?"

He nodded, and let her steer him to the bed.

The room was big and shadowy. The window felt like a terrifying void, turning light with oncoming dawn. He felt horribly alone again, which felt dangerous.

He was close enough to sleep when his heart pounded hard enough in residual fear to drive him from the bed that he only opened one eye, and only halfway. His lashes felt gooey with tears. Daisy's bedroom door was open, and she was in pajamas. She wasn't asleep yet, lamp on so she could do something or other, but it took her a moment to notice him.

"Jon?"

He didn't know how to talk about how scared and alone he still felt, how badly his foundations felt shaken by the proof that she was far from the only monster out there. That the encounter had solidified her in his mind, at least for the moment, as his monster. As safety.

He knew the wrought-iron bedframe and he knew the quaking, soul-deep fear, but everything felt upside-down. He remembered this fear, linked it in his tired, hazy mind to the fear of being beside Daisy in that bed, held so he couldn't leave while she slept. It didn't seem frightening anymore; it seemed safe.

He ran toward her, ending up sprawled against her with his arms around her waist and face buried against her arm.

"You want to sleep here tonight?" she asked in response to a noise that might have been words. He nodded. "Okay, come on."

Daisy helped him under the blankets, and he was asleep before she managed to guide his head onto the pillow.

Chapter Text

Martin had thought that it would be courteous to shower as soon as he woke up, since Jon and Daisy probably had better things to do with their Sunday morning than wait. He woke up early anyway; it was more surprising that he'd managed to sleep at all, though he supposed sleep deprivation had a lot going for it as a soporific. He wasn't planning to snoop.

He thought it was nice how close the Tonners were. How they teased each other and always seemed happy to see each other, even at home. He was even jealous, a bit. He'd always wanted siblings, growing up.

He didn't know what to think of this, though.

He didn't notice it the night before, or on his way into the shower. Jon's door was different to the others in the house, but he'd written in some likely excuse for the difference in his head; he broke it somehow as a teenager, and the replacement didn't match. Something like that. It was hard to say how different it was, even, because there was a rack of jackets that obscured most of it.

He heard a sound from Daisy's room and without thinking lifted the phone she insisted on buying him, for which he was already coming up with hiding places for repayment that would go unnoticed until after he'd moved out while still being findable, and took a picture, trying to walk back into the guest room normally.

There had to be a reasonable explanation, right? He pulled the picture back up once he'd made the bed, staring at it.

He didn't know how long he got lost in thought, but he startled and guiltily shoved his phone into his pocket when Daisy knocked on the door to tell him she was making waffles downstairs. At least she didn't open the door to see his flushed grimace.

-

He tried to forget about it. Something made him afraid to ask Jon, even if he got him alone. And if he was just being silly he didn't want to offend them and potentially endanger his housing over it. Martin spent the day lazing around unless directed otherwise, like when Daisy pulled down even more boxes of polaroids to tease Jon with, or when he bullied Jon into letting him help with the dirty dishes after dinner. Strange, spending downtime with his boss, but nice.

He needed to come up with a better description before work. If he told Tim it was nice he'd be in for it; he was pretty sure Tim already had an idea about his crush on Jon.

When all and sundry had gone off to bed, Martin sat in the dark staring at the picture again. Before he could overthink it, he sent it to Tim and Sasha. He had their numbers; he also had Jon's and Daisy's, all drawn from Jon's contacts, and Mum's care home, pulled from the website. Tim responded quickly, with "?" and he realized he hadn't given any context for the little deadbolt lock, burnished bright by repeated use.

It's on Jon's door

Bedroom door

The outside

Tim: What, seriously?

Sasha: Really?

Yes! Why would I make that up!

Sasha: Did you ask why?

I wasn't sure if I was overreacting

Tim: Sasha. No.

Sasha: Don't say anything. Talk about it at work

He grimaced at her response. It was one of those moments where he felt horribly left out from the two of them. Sometimes the two of them and Jon, but mostly just Tim and Sasha. They tried to include him, and they were never nasty or cliquish about it, just closer to each other than they ever could be to him. He wished he had any idea of what Tim evidently guessed Sasha was getting at. But it wasn't like waiting to talk about it at work was terribly far off. He just hoped he didn't ignite some kind of nasty gossip about Jon. That would be awful, after Jon and Daisy had been so good to him.

-

Martin checked his messages in the morning, more out of habit that expectation, and was a bit miffed to find a new text from Sasha, sent sometime around one in the morning.

Sasha: Talk at lunch, don't say anything before

Tim was apparently doing the exact same thing, because as Martin was reading he sent a reply of his own.

Tim: I'm serious, Sash. Cool it

Sasha: I didn't do anything!

It was intensely awkward to read the subsequent rounds of bickering while sitting in the backseat of Daisy's car, listening to her and Jon bantering in a similar fashion. Martin bit his cheek; what right did he have to feel lonely when he was in both the text conversation and the car? When Daisy and Jon had offered to house him, one way or another, as soon as they heard what happened?

Sasha seemed entirely normal once they got to the Archives, though it was strange coming down the stairs with Jon. Tim skidded in just after them, poked Sasha in the shoulder harder than was at all justified, and stuck his tongue out when she rolled her eyes. Martin seemed to be the only one made awkward by the elephant in the room, waiting for the morning to tick by.

Sasha settled in the little break room with an air of intense satisfaction, and said in place of a greeting, "Daisy always takes Jon out for lunch Mondays."

"I don't know that we should..." Martin trailed off. He wasn't sure what they were doing, actually, though it felt worse knowing she intentionally arranged to speak while Jon and Daisy weren't around to hear it. But Martin didn't want to accuse her of gossiping, he was the one who started it!

"Who does this look like to you?" Sasha asked, shoving her phone under his nose. He leaned back, blinking. It was sketchy, pencil maybe? It wasn't a bad likeness.

"Did you draw that?" he asked, prepared to be impressed.

"Just answer the question!" she said, passion making her hand shake the phone around a bit.

"It's Daisy, right?"

He wasn't sure whether that was the right answer or not. Sasha looked a bit smug, but Tim dropped his face into his hands. "Sasha."

"It's a police sketch," Sasha said.

"What?"

"Sasha," Tim tried one last time.

"Okay," Sasha said, "I'll be fast. Do you remember Jon saying that he grew up in Bournemouth? When we had that coffin statement?"

-

She made good time. Martin found himself sitting back with his head spinning before the lunch hour was half gone, though more time had vanished than food.

"You think..."

"I don't know what I think," Sasha said, a bit solemn now that she'd bled energy through the explanation. "But it's suspicious, right?"

"I mean..."

"I already told her Daisy works at a museum," Tim said. "Which was enough for her to cut it out."

Martin shifted, feeling a bit unfairly blamed for something he very much did not ask Sasha to do, and knowing he was going to add to it. "She used to be a cop, though."

"How do you know?" Tim asked, rounding on him with a bit of the same intensity.

"There are pictures all over their fridge," he started, trying to find a way to make this sound less suspicious and failing. "Polaroids. I asked Jon about one of them, and he mentioned that she used to be a cop. I don't know when, though."

"Polaroids?" Sasha asked, sitting up.

"...Right," Tim said. "Remember, Jon's birthday? She brought the camera."

"Hang on," Martin said, before they could get any more out of control. "What exactly are we saying, here? I mean, all this is weird, but it's probably just a coincidence. They have family pictures all over, and some of them are old. Your Jon disappeared when he was fifteen, but I saw a picture of our Jon with Daisy where he must've been about five. A couple others, too, I think."

"Photoshop?" Sasha suggested, but it was obvious none of them were really satisfied by the suggestion. They sat in discontented silence, all turning things over in their heads trying to fit them together into something that made sense.

Their break was almost over when she asked, "Were there any pictures of Jon and Daisy when Jon was fifteen?"

"Maybe? I can look. Daisy had a bunch of boxes of pictures out to show me, they're still out."

Tim and Sasha exchanged a look. "Check," Tim said.

"And if you find a suspicious one bring it in!" Sasha added.

-

Martin didn't really get the chance to look after Daisy drove them home. There was dinner to help with, and talking about their day, and there didn't seem to be a moment he could look at the pictures without being noticed, and if he did they'd probably know if he looked at anything incriminating, which seemed like it would defeat the point. Not that he expected there to be anything incriminating, but it seemed like something to be on the lookout for, just in case.

Sasha probably wouldn't like that answer, but Tim seemed to dislike the whole subject, so hopefully he'd get her to lay off. Martin didn't expect to have a chance to look at the pictures at all, expected the topic to die where they left it at lunch, but he woke up a couple hours after falling asleep, jerked awake by a dream of something tapping at his door. He had to stand up, walk around. Make sure that there was no one at the door and food besides canned peaches. He crept downstairs as quietly as he could, vaguely horrified at the thought of having to explain why he woke up to Jon or Daisy.

It was eerie, being in someone else's house in the dark all by himself. He knew it was just because it was unfamiliar, and probably a bit because he was a touch traumatized, but the shadows seemed to loom evilly. He couldn't decide whether he was relieved or unnerved to see the front door with every lock marching down its length secured. What did they need so many locks for?

He scampered into the kitchen when it occurred to him that Sasha would no doubt be very interested in those locks, too. The thought made staring at the door feel dangerous, even if no one coming down stairs would think much of his behavior unless they could also read minds. He half expected to open the wrong kitchen cabinet looking for a glass and find a severed head, even knowing that was more down to his nerves and having seen too many horror movies than the scenario's plausibility.

As Martin stood in the kitchen drinking a glass of water, his eyes wandered over to the living room with horror-movie inevitability. The boxes of polaroids were all still laid out on the coffee table where they left them Sunday evening.

If he didn't find anything he could really make Sasha drop it, if he'd had a theoretically-unlimited amount of time to go through the photos unobserved. Sasha didn't need to know that the time felt extremely limited to Martin; he could probably find the right box and get through a couple dozen before his anxiety drove him back up the stairs. 

He set the glass down as quietly as he could and tried to be even quieter than he was coming down the stairs as he walked over. He didn't turn the living room light on. It was probably technically more suspicious to be skulking around in the dark than it was to look at the photos under the light, especially with the excuse of why he'd actually come down, but it didn't feel that way. Even before he got to the coffee table, his heart was pounding so loudly he felt like an anxious burglar rather than a houseguest doing something that was almost definitely entirely harmless.

The boxes were labelled with years. Martin wouldn't have noticed in the low light spilling over from the kitchen, but Daisy had referenced them in her quest for ways to embarrass her brother, so he knew to look. His stomach turned a bit as he realized that the oldest box was from exactly the year Jonathan Sims disappeared. The one after it had been opened and pawed through during their conversation the other night, but not this one. 

He stared at the arrangement of the boxes trying to memorize it, even though the Tonners couldn't have. Eventually, he figured he could carefully pull the lid off the box he wanted with the others still balanced on top and then put things back exactly the way they were.

He half-expected to have to creep back to the light to go through the photos, but before he pulled out a single one he noticed something unusual in the box. The oldest box had the same tightly-packed rows of polaroids as the others, but behind the pictures was a sheet of paper folded into quarters.

Martin expected the paper to be a receipt or something, but if he was committed to this curiosity there was no reason not to pull it out and unfold it.

He put the lid back as fast as he could without jarring the arrangement out of place and tried to get upstairs as silently as he came down while moving as fast as possible. He almost forgot the kitchen light, and skidded against the hardwood. The sound of his feet skipping and squeaking over the floor sounded like a siren.

Even back in his room, Martin hardly dared breathe. It took a long time standing still and trying to catch his breath without making a sound before his hands stopped shaking enough for him to carefully close the door the last bit. He collapsed onto the bed, and it took another long moment for him to stand and find his work back, burying his cargo in the most obscure corner but trying to keep it unwrinkled and safe. 

He didn't dare try to take a picture and send it to Tim and Sasha. The deadbolt was odd, but he deleted the photo almost immediately after sending it to the others. Their reactions to this would be just as incriminating as the photo itself.

He didn't get much sleep that night.

Chapter Text

Once the blood-spattered shower and tile were scrubbed clean and no longer leaving ghosts behind her eyelids every time she blinked, lingering manifestation of what could have happened to Jon, Daisy tried to get a sense of the situation.

Getting the details of what happened out of Jon was difficult, but she couldn't do anything else. What he'd managed to say was troubling enough to warrant prodding, even if she wished she could safely let him forget about things without another word. Hunter, vampire... even without how she found him, that was enough to worry her.

Given where he called from the man Jon described had to be Trevor Herbert. The thought made her queasy, even though Jon had come through physically unharmed and hadn't given enough away to be tracked down without exceptional effort. Hopefully Trevor wouldn't feel like putting that effort in. Even he had to realize why what happened to Jon would make someone want to avoid him.

When she beat back her initial reaction of possessiveness and plotting revenge, Trevor stopped being the thing that most disturbed her. Jon wasn't suited to the Hunt; Daisy wasn't sure he could be. What had Trevor meant, then, talking about smelling it on Jon, why did he notice anything unusual about him at all?

Jon wasn't a hunter. Daisy tried not to be, but she was. Jon was around her constantly. She chased him down and dragged him home. It was a Mark, she was sure, but that wouldn't explain Trevor. There was no way to confuse fear and allegiance like that, even if Trevor didn't entirely understand what he was caught up in yet.

Could just being around her make Jon interesting to the monsters of the world?

Jon had been gone too long to smell of her in the literal sense, but on a metaphysical level... maybe. It wasn't right, but "marking her territory" on Jon wasn't... an inaccurate description.

The morning after bringing him home, finally up well into the day after how late they got to bed, and every one after, Daisy told Jon that she wanted him to go to school more than she wanted most things. She didn't think either of them was sure if she meant to imply that her freedom was one of the things she wanted less, though she was more sure of that than Jon seemed to be, but it didn't matter.

No matter what she did, she couldn't find what it was he was so terrified of.

It should have been her. He called her to save him from a bad situation, and she would never hurt him, but that wasn't something she'd managed to convince him of entirely at any point in either of their relationships. He should've been scared, should've needed to be talked down, should've been happy to have his room to himself, a space she tried very hard not to infringe on without invitation.

Instead, Jon was practically sewn to her side. He was shaky and hypervigilant and kept looking at the front door like he expected it to bite him. She took off work, feeling less guilty about how happy everyone was to make sure there was enough coverage for her to take as long as she needed that she did about pretending Jon was too sick for school instead of gone, but only just. He kept appearing in her doorway at night, poised for flight, racing over to her the second he was acknowledged. He clung to her just as tightly as she did to him.

"What are you afraid of?" she asked, three days after bringing him home. Jon was still skinny and shaky, still had enormous bags under his eyes and ate like it was his job.

"Sorry," he said, stepping back from where he'd been pressed to her side while she stirred pasta on the stove, wrapping his arms around himself in a pitiful-looking hug and avoiding eye contact.

"That's not what I meant," she said softly, expecting to have to prove it somehow. She didn't. Jon was glued to her side again the moment she said it. "I meant more generally. What are you afraid will happen?"

She let him think and sway while she strained the pasta, the only point he was willing to be separated. Jon was terrified of winding up in the path of boiling water or hot cookware. She would think it was something terrible he thought she might do, but the adult Jon had ceded pulling trays of pizza rolls out of the Archives' breakroom's pathetic, stinking oven to her the moment she was strong enough not to drop things. Before a thorough inspection for burnt spillover food and a cleaning failed to get rid of the smell, at least. After that they decided to stick to the toaster oven, only half joking when they speculated that the oven's persistent odor was some sort of manifestation of Desolation.

It hurt her heart to look up from placing the pasta on the table with the rest of dinner and see Jon with tears falling. She raced over, gathering him into a hug he collapsed into. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry," he croaked. "I'm sorry I ran away."

"That's okay," she said, steering him to the table because she was worried that if she didn't get him into a chair he'd wind up on the floor. "I'm not angry. I understand why you did it. I'm sorry." She had to swallow her own tears before she could continue, and by the time she did Jon's crying turned audible. She knelt in front of his chair, grabbing his hands so he could keep in contact with her like he was desperate to after coming back. "I'm sorry I did this to you," she said. "You don't have to believe me, but I am. I wish I'd never hurt you like this, Jon. I'll never be upset with you for being angry at me, or anything else."

He shook his head. "You were right," he said, strangled and choppy. "There were more monsters."

Daisy thought she could physically feel her heart breaking. There hadn't been; not when he was this young, not in his first life. "You don't have to be afraid, Jon. I would never let anything happen to you."

He shook his head. "I- I feel like I'll do it again. I feel like if I go back to school..."

"You're afraid that if you leave again you'll run into more monsters?" she asked, trying to come up with things to tell him that would keep him safe instead of just endangering him further.

He shook his head again. "I don't want to leave! But I- Daisy."

"You're afraid that you'll leave even if you don't want to?" Was there something he wasn't telling her? Some new encounter with the Web before he called her?

Jon nodded. "I feel like I will anyway."

"Okay," she said, trying come up with solutions, "what would make you feel better about school? You don't have to go back right away, we can wait a little longer."

He hung his head and murmured something too quietly for her to hear.

"Can you say that a little louder for me?" She rubbed her thumbs in circles on the backs of his hands, trying to impart any comfort she could. She still struggled to make out the second attempt. "You want to be locked in?" Daisy prayed she'd misheard him.

He nodded. "I don't want to be able to go."

"Okay," she said, mind racing through ways to do so practically and various side-streets of guilt and recrimination for doing this to him. "Do you want to talk about it now, or eat dinner?"

"Dinner."

-

When Jon went back to school a couple weeks later, he was back to sleeping in his own bed, as long as she locked him in first. The school would no longer accept absences from Jon cleared by anything but a phone conversation with her. He had a new phone, a normal one advanced enough to take photos, and when school let out he used it to send a new picture of himself at the library each day. When they got home, most days she locked him in his room again until dinner.

It made Daisy sick. She had no idea what else to do; Jon got increasingly distressed every time she tried to broach the topic of giving him more freedom. What had she done to him?

But Jon was doing well. She'd turned his life into something twisted and frightening, but he was doing well. He started coming out of his shell again, and his teachers said the same was true at school. He was even doing well enough with his coursework that they didn't think the absence would have a significant impact on his future.

When he was out of his room, helping with dinner prep when she could coax him into it and helping with the dishes or chattering at her while she did them, he seemed happier. One day, she turned to find Jon with the camera and a shy smile that broke into a wide grin when she smiled and asked to see the picture. The fridge populated with as many pictures of her as of Jon, after that.

She was so proud of him. She tried to tell him, but he never quite seemed to believe her. He was nearly as distressed by his need for the safeguards as he was by the thought of losing them. Whatever his arrangement with a group of his classmates had been, worrying and thin as the relationship had always sounded to her, it evidently didn't survive his absence and nothing else took its place. Everything was wrong, and Jon was delighted by it all the same, terrorized into convincing himself it was wonderful so he didn't have to live with the truth.

More than anything, Daisy wanted a way to make Jon's life simple and happy and safe. But nothing she did managed all three at once.

Chapter Text

Sasha texted Martin as soon as she woke up to ask if he found anything, but he didn't answer.

She was being unreasonable. She knew that. She just couldn't get rid of the feeling that she was right. She didn't want to say anything to make Jon or Daisy self-conscious, or to hurt them, and she was sure their view of her, and Martin's, was taking a hit from how she couldn't help looking at them with suspicion. Tim's would be, too, if he was anyone else. It couldn't be warranted, she couldn't squash being right into a shape that made more sense than being wrong, but she couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling.

When she got to work, a bit after Jon and Martin this morning, she felt even worse about everything she'd said to Martin. He looked awful; the weekend had restored him a bit, but he looked like he was right back to not sleeping. Martin had something horrible actually happen to him, and all she could talk about was something horrible that almost definitely didn't happen to Jon.

She did her best to focus on her work instead of the mess she'd made of the interpersonal dynamics of the office. There was plenty there to keep her occupied. She wasn't going to even think of Jonathan Sims again.

She didn't notice when Jon went up for his fortnightly meeting with Elias and the other department heads. She usually didn't, too focused on work. She did notice when Martin appeared at her elbow, though, pale and nervous.

"Come on," he said before she could ask what was up. Tim was already standing, and they shared a confused look as they followed Martin deeper into the Archives.

He didn't stop until they were at the furthest possible corner from the door. He kept glancing back and chewing his lips even that far away, and she started to get really concerned about whatever had him so worried. Something with Prentiss again?

Martin stared at his shoes and spoke in a quiet voice. "I found the oldest box of polaroids last night. It's from the same year Jonathan Sims disappeared."

Sasha felt her back snap straight like she'd been hit by lightning, mind spinning as she tried to reconcile the pieces. She did her best to match Tim's faint interest and concern instead of dancing a jig around Tim crowing about being right. They didn't even know what it was Martin wanted to talk about yet, technically. "Did you find anything?"

"I didn't look at any of the pictures," Martin said. "This was sticking up at the back of the box."

He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket. It was ordinary printer paper, nothing remarkable about it all folded up. Martin unfolded it, and they all froze.

"This is bad, right?" Martin asked, the hand holding the paper starting to shake. Sasha did her best to take it instead of snatching it; grabbing it too hard might damage it, and that would be disastrous.

"One of the articles I read had a picture of the grandmother standing by a bulletin board with his missing flyer," she said. She felt a lot less happy about being right, faced with Jonathan Sims' face under the word "MISSING," creased white on the folds from being kept like that so long.

"What do we do now?" Tim asked.

Sasha shook her head, trying to make a path forward appear. Her fingers and toes felt tingly; the moment Martin unfolded the flyer her heart started racing. "Jon isn't with Daisy all the time. He has a phone, he's alone at work a lot, if he hasn't called the police himself there must be a reason."

He wasn't alone at work all the time. The visits from Daisy seemed a lot less charming now; she didn't visit as much back in Research, but she was still a regular presence, on the fringes. Usually because Jon wanted to stay late, and she insisted on him leaving when he was supposed to.

"So we don't call the police right away," Tim said, taking charge of whatever they were going to do about this. He could have it; Sasha had no idea. "Do we talk to Jon first?"

"I think we have to, right?" Martin said. "I mean, what if it really is a coincidence somehow? For all we know he- he- he could have amnesia?"

It wasn't a strong suggestion, but no one commented on it. There had to be some reason Jon hadn't gone to the police at any time in the last thirteen years. Finding out their boss was a kidnapping victim living under an assumed name was something out of a movie; who were they to dismiss an equally cinematic absurdity as an explanation?

"Not when Daisy's likely to be here," she said. "And. I'm going to keep this. We should figure out as much as we can first, and we don't want them to realize Martin took it. We figure out how to bring it up first."

The others nodded, and they reluctantly started drifting back to their desks. If they didn't want Jon or Daisy to realize anything unusual was afoot being found clustered together whispering at the back of the Archives was the wrong way to go about it.

-

Tim called her at 11:30 that night. It made her heart rate rocket, terrified that something terrible had happened to him. "Tim?"

"This is your signal to start ungluing from the computer screen," Tim said, tone not quite as light as it normally would be.

"You scared me." Sasha was a little breathless even now. "You don't have to be the internet police, you know."

"I'm not policing anything!" Tim said, voice a bit brighter in the familiar territory of the script for these calls. "I just don't want to work with a zombie, and to that end am telling you it's getting late, so that you actually put it away by 1 AM."

"Thanks," she said. She was grateful; it slid through the gaps of the familiar conversation, but he started doing it because she mentioned having trouble keeping track of time when she got absorbed into researching something, and she was happy to accept his offer.

"Go eat something," he said. "See you in the morning."

"See you in the morning."

Usually, the lingering smile from talking to Tim lasted much longer after hanging up the phone than the bowl of pretzels she got in response. Tonight, the gap in lifespan of the smile and of the snacks wasn't just inverted, it was vast.

She couldn't make sense of it. Tracking back what little of Jon's personal history she could, there seemed to be so many gaps where he could have gotten away from Daisy. He talked about wanting to get away from her in the letter she broke into his grandmother's home to deliver. When did that change?

Sasha's best guess was before the funeral. It seemed like the obvious deviation: he'd gone from the letter writer desperate to come home to the boy in the middle of all his old haunts, where he could break into a run in just about any direction and find someone who knew his face. It just seemed so fast. Sasha knew that people could get sucked into abusive relationships fast, but those usually at least started from a situation the victim wanted to be in. An abusive parent might be a better comparison, but even then, Jon had a background in another household and a guaranteed way of getting adults who might have brushed off reports of a more typical abusive home to listen to him. Jonathan Sims was all over Google, even when she restricted the search to things that went online in the years immediately after his kidnapping. All he had to do to get someone to call the police was get them to a computer and type in his own name.

Maybe the police were the problem. Starting her search from Daisy- who had a much more significant internet presence than Jon, though still less than normal- turned up a handful of references in relation to her policing career. She was well-liked; there were more results showing her listed for various workplace awards and recognitions than as an arresting officer in a news piece. Even more pictures of her on her colleague's pages, even after she left. If she was in uniform when she kidnapped Jon, he'd probably be inclined to believe that she had enough sway to get any contact from him swept under the rug. The school Jon's minimal LinkedIn listed was closer to the station where Daisy seemed to have worked than it was to where Martin said they lived, and if he went there it was because Daisy was willing and able to pay the not-insignificant tuition.

It was all so frustrating. The school would have records, maybe, of any concerns about Jon's home life, but that wasn't the sort of place she was used to getting access to, and it was far too late to enlist Tim's superior "pretending to be someone allowed to have this information" skills. Sasha couldn't figure out why anyone would stay. Shouldn't there be something to find if he had tried to leave?

It was worse because she knew him. A statement giver with a similarly bizarre, difficult to track, or illogical personal history she could laugh about, to herself and with Tim.

And Jon. That was the kind of thing she used to do with him, too. When did that change? When he was promoted? When she got fixated on finding pictures of him as a kid? It was already like this when she started poking at the Jonathan Sims stuff.

Jon. Her friend. Someone she'd known for years. It didn't seem like him, and it had to be more like him than anything else she knew of him, because it predated everything she was around for. It was built up under his foundations more than anything else. It didn't give her a moment's pause when Daisy was his sister and they were orphans; now the same level of influence as ever seemed sick and sinister.

Why did she take him? It hadn't occurred to Sasha before, but why did Daisy take him? There was never any motive settled on for Jonathan Sims' kidnapping. Nothing quite fit all the available evidence when he wasn't her Jon. No one ever settled on one, or if the police had they were keeping it to themselves. What made someone walk up to a strange teenager they'd never spoken to before and snatch them off the street?

Her eyes made it to the corner of her screen, where the clock informed her that she was twenty past the unofficial curfew Tim called to remind her of. It wasn't as hard as usual to shut the laptop down and leave it. She wasn't willing to speculate on motive, she decided. It was too big, too over-reaching. She didn't want a list of kidnapping motives to alter how she interacted with Jon, at least until they figured out how they were going to bring it up, and it was too awful to consider when she had no way to distinguish truth from conjecture.

Jon could tell them himself what he thought Daisy's motive was. Whatever it was, it didn't matter now. She could start researching relevant organizations to help him when the list of problems had been narrowed down to what was, instead of everything that might be.

Chapter Text

Daisy was trying very hard not to tease Jon too much. He was nowhere near confident and self-aware enough about Martin for her to risk that yet.

He was headed there, though. Just because she didn't find his little asides and the way he actually smiled at Martin now wise to comment on didn't mean she didn't see them. He got a lot nicer to and about Martin after the Jane Prentiss incident, and having him living with them seemed to be acting as a dose of exposure too overwhelming for Jon to resist becoming friendlier.

She was entirely pleased with the outcome of her plan. Martin was nice enough, and she'd probably feel too bad not to invite him to stay with them if she was around and he was living in the Archives, but she cared about Jon more. Jon having friends, never mind dating, was enough of a rarity that she encouraged it whenever she could. Martin, more importantly, was someone she trusted to see how good Jon is, to be good to him. 

He did last time.

Jon was doing so well. He was obviously stressed by the inability to lock his door, but he was handling it. It was a relief to see him finally starting to let go of the coping mechanism after so long tied to it. She knew he worried about it nearly as much as she did.

Daisy needed every bit of bandwidth she could come by to devote to more important anxieties. It felt increasingly likely that she was going to have to come clean to Jon, and do it soon. She couldn't see a path forward that avoided it, unless she let things play out almost identically to last time.

He knew plenty, she wasn't taking some final innocence away. Jon knew about her, Trevor Herbert, Leitners, all the little things he came across working at the Institute and that he pretended not to believe in now that he was the Archivist and the real Statements kept creeping out of the places Daisy hid them. But that was different.

Having Jon with her to alleviate one or both of their fears about him encountering the nasty underbelly of the world was one thing. That was simple safety, and Jon was content to seek out explanations himself or let things lie instead of interrogating her. Now, she'd have to proactively explain things to him, none of which offered any comfort. She shouldn't have kidnapped him in the first place, or should have told the truth about why. That, at least, could be mostly-forgotten as a darker cousin of the sort of thing common to adolescence, dangers that plenty of normal teenagers were blocked from with insufficient explanation of why, until they were old enough to make decent assessments of risk. It was different to spring things on an adult who thought they already knew as much about danger as they needed to keep themselves more or less safe.

She couldn't make this decision for Jon, though. Practically, she wasn't sure it would even work if she did. And he should have the chance to decide for himself. He could make his own decisions, and she should already have given him all the relevant information.

When she told Jon, he would want to know how she knew.

When she told Jon, he would want to know why she didn't tell him earlier.

When she told Jon, he might not make the right choice. She'd have to live with it, even if he was wrong.

When she told Jon, he'd want to know why she failed.

She couldn't even answer herself. Given every opportunity, how did she manage to be negligent enough to let Jon take the promotion to Head Archivist unawares? Why didn't she tell him when he started at the Institute? Why didn't she tell him even earlier, when he might've been prevented from working at the Institute at all?

Daisy said that she didn't want to control Jon's life, that she wanted him to live it for himself, that she wanted to support him without stifling him. So why hadn't she put her money where her mouth was?

-

Daisy dropped Jon and Martin off at work, and smiled as she watched them go in. 

It was sick that she could smile at it, when she knew what the Institute was. Things weren't supposed to end up here, Jon was supposed to be safe. She was supposed to keep him safe. The Magnus Institute should be nothing but a bad dream.

She didn't know how to push onward without forgetting that in tiny moments, though. She didn't know how to survive the day-to-day, much less the difficult times ahead, without stealing little joys.

Jane Prentiss was coming. Daisy didn't know enough about her. Basira did most of the on-the-ground investigative work for Gertrude's murder, and by the time Daisy became more hands-on Prentiss was irrelevant. She didn't know when she would arrive, and she didn't have anything to go on that she trusted to hold her weight. Sideways references tailored for people who were there at the time weren't a reliable source, no matter how many of them she collected from her first Jon when he missed Martin too deeply.

So she let things happen. She let a sacrificial lamb plumb the Distortion for details, in case it had anything useful to say. What was Sasha James to Daisy? A person missed deeply and vocally by Tim, who she disliked for mistreating Jon. A ghost Jon barely mentioned to her in all the time they spent together. Expendable.

The gamble paid off, which meant Daisy never had to mention it to Jon, even accidentally. Jon didn't know what Sasha was up to until it was over, so there was no reason Daisy might have known. The level of surveillance she maintained to catch threats to Jon before they happened was none of Jon's business, so he didn't know about it. 

Jon and Martin were both clearly more at ease when she bought fire extinguishers, normal ones for the house and five small ones to be carried all the time, since she had to give the appearance of caring what happened to Tim and Sasha. She helped Jon draft emails to Elias requisitioning more for the Archives; he owed Jon far more than basic expenses, but if that was all he would give she'd help inflate the amount as much as she could persuade Jon to persuade Elias.

Prentiss was a trickier problem, given the dangers and her lack of information. Daisy knew Prentiss would be in the tunnels, probably already was given how many worms they had to smash around the Institute, and Elias almost certainly did as well. But Bouchard was highly motivated to keep Prentiss there until something happened to Jon, and acting on information she wasn't supposed to have could endanger him more. She'd put up more of a fight than Gertrude or Leitner, but she couldn't entirely discount worries that he'd react to her interference by removing her from the picture as soon as he caught wind of anything that truly threatened his plan.

Prentiss didn't kill anyone. Sasha died because of the attack, but Prentiss didn't do it. Being replaced by the NotThem did concern Daisy, because that would put Jon in actual physical and psychological peril in the way a straightforward death wouldn't. She couldn't smash the table, or cart it off somewhere else. Even if Bouchard didn't notice her doing that, freeing the NotThem was the opposite of what she wanted to do, and the deliverymen would probably just haul it back if it left the Institute. It was the sort of thing that she could, hopefully, neutralize entirely before it came close to hurting the Archives.

Ahe and Jon knew each other well enough that she didn't have to outright tell him it was a good weekend to check out heaps of books from the Institute's library. Bouchard cared about Jon more than her, and research more than errands. Daisy was almost entirely positive that inserting a quick voyage into tunnels she wasn't supposed to know existed in between sifting through a thrift store for a new winter coat and grocery shopping would pass without notice. She chose an entrance as far from the Institute as she could remember, just in case.

Daisy knew the tunnels. Not comprehensively, but enough that she wasn't stumbling around lost. She moved more silently than Jon could ever hope to even if, heartwarmingly, he was quieter now than he was the first life around. She brought a fire extinguisher with her, but she didn't dare try to take down Prentiss when she knew Bouchard was counting on her eventual appearance, and Leitner was almost certainly keeping far away from any chance of Corruption. Tracking Prentiss herself down would take too long, and she had the topside safety measures- her own and Bouchard's- memorized for the day they became relevant.

Leitner was a coward. All it really took to get one over on him was to move through the tunnels as patiently and subtly as possible. When she eventually found him, Daisy had plenty of space behind his back to move.

"Don't touch it." The words were almost superfluous to her grip on his hair and her arm hooked around his neck. If he was any more scared, he would've pissed himself on the spot.

"What do you want?" he said, voice shaking. "If I'm trespassing, I'm more than happy to just leave quietly, you don't need-"

"Can it, Leitner." The effect of realizing she knew his name was gratifying. Daisy tried to avoid things like this, they felt too close to the Hunt even in the more innocent early stages, but this was important enough- and Leitner had indirectly hurt Jon enough- that she couldn't help herself. "You're going to do me a favor."

"I don't have anything," he tried.

"You have a desire to keep the new Archivist alive and out of Bouchard's Ritual," Daisy said, poisonously sweet. "And you have The Seven Lamps of Architecture. An hour of your time, and we can part as friends."

"I have my principles," he started, but he tapered off when Daisy couldn't help laughing.

"Do you? Don't lie. Help me remove something from the Institute's Artefact Storage and seal it away, and never tell anyone I was here. Including the Archivist, if you can manage it. If he decides to ask some questions and force the issue, I won't hunt you down for letting it slip." It was extremely generous, in Daisy's mind. Leitner had a better handle on the Entities than she did, and if Jon wound up needing an explanation she'd rather he have information a bit more accurate than she could confidently assess her own knowledge to be, loathsome as the source might be.

"And what do you plan to do with whatever it is you want?" His voice was accusatory and condescending. Daisy clicked open a switchblade at her side, not even anywhere near him, and all the wounded arrogance vanished again.

"Nothing. Help me take the Web Table with the Stranger creature bound to it out of Artefact Storage, then seal it up. It's antsy enough about the Unknowing to target the Archives. I want to prevent that."

"Fine. Let go." He didn't pry into why she wanted to help the Archives, which she'd been concerned about. If Bouchard ever probed for the information, Leitner would fold like wet paper. Better to keep that question corked.

"Try anything and I will find you," she said. "Help, and I'll leave you alone forever."

He scuttled around like something that had forgotten how to live anywhere but under a rock. Daisy thought he might've looked better smashed to pieces on Jon's desk than he did now, greasy, thin, and trembling. But he did as she asked, and the only time she had to offer further direction was asking if she should take any kind of precaution to keep Bouchard from spotting her once they climbed out of the tunnels. He dismissed the question entirely, which meant she still didn't know what Gertrude did to keep Bouchard's eyes off of her, but did it in such a preoccupied way that she wasn't too reluctant to be left underground.

-

Daisy had just started to think Leitner might've run instead of doing what she asked when the walls groaned terribly and set the table down with a clatter that had her tensing and reaching for a weapon, sure it was about to break. They spewed Leitner out a moment later, looking harried.

"There," he spat.

Daisy walked over and examined the table, keeping her glances brief and her hands away. "That's the one."

She wouldn't in a million years guess what section of the wall hid it if she didn't watch it be swallowed up. She was about to thank Leitner for his cooperation, but he said, "Goodbye!" and stomped off before she got the chance.

She bought a gallon of ice cream once she got to the grocery shopping, to celebrate. That was one of the most time sensitive threats dealt with, at least, and a few corridors of worms hit with her CO2 on her way out.

Chapter Text

Daisy was incredibly proud of Jon. She knew he could get into Oxford, knew he would excel there academically, but he was handling it so well. He brought a description of what he wanted to do and what would make him feel safe to her fully formed. He worked in social events. He was finally starting to shake off his fear.

So she dropped Jon off early in the morning to take the train to school. When his classes ended, he decided whether he wanted to hang around to work on homework or go to a club meeting or whatever else, and he texted her what he was going to do. Location, event, end time, and occasionally companions were all overkill, sure, but they were a marked improvement. Whenever he was supposed to get back, she picked him up at the station and brought him home. He still asked her to lock him in, but it wasn't as vehement as it used to be.

He didn't talk about his friends much; she knew he had them, but she was surprised when he said he wanted to bring a girlfriend home to meet her.

Once she got over that, Daisy went into overdrive planning dinner. Even if it was the sort of fleeting relationship Jon would get out of his system in a few months, she wanted to make a good impression. She didn't want to rob Jon of any of his newfound confidence, and she happily agreed to the instructions and promises he proposed. It was going to be perfect for him. She would make it be perfect.

-

"Daisy?"

She tripped over herself, running for the door. She got nervous about what she was wearing and lost track of time, and now they were here. She skidded down the stairs and slid on sock feet over to Jon, where he'd just finished taking his girlfriend's coat. She gave him a one-armed hug and ruffled his hair, because she knew it would make him smile even if he acted embarrassed. "Hey!"

Jon took a deep breath. "Daisy, this is my girlfriend, Georgie. Georgie, this is Daisy."

It sounded a bit stilted, clearly something he rehearsed to death, but Georgie didn't seem to mind. Daisy didn't either, because her world was too busy narrowing to a single point.

She got them to the kitchen, made them sit at the bar instead of helping, and poured them glasses of juice, all according to plan. In the seconds before Jon's introductions, she'd thought she recognized Georgie, but...

She didn't expect Georgie. She knew, she knew, that the first Jon was on friendly terms with his ex. Daisy knew she was who he went to when he was on the run. There was plenty she didn't know about their relationship, and it wasn't Daisy's place to pass judgement.

But Georgie hurt him. Tore his guts out and rubbed them in the dirt hurt him. Georgie abandoned Jon, that was why he and Daisy grew close in the first place. Basira didn't want anything to do with her and Georgie and Martin didn't want anything to do with him, but they could still hang around each other.

Daisy just had to hold it together until the end of dinner. 

It wasn't fair of her to make judgements based on things that didn't exist. Jon liked Georgie, so Daisy would give her a chance. She already prepared her list of ice breakers, she didn't have to throw them out just because Jon's girlfriend turned out to be someone unexpected. "Where did you two meet?"

Jon gave her an exasperated look. "At trivia night, I told you."

"You didn't." Daisy would definitely remember that. Jon was distracted when she asked, rattling through the rest of his list of anxieties and requests in between telling Daisy anything solid about the mysterious girlfriend, and it fell through the cracks.

"I didn't?" Jon's forehead crinkled, the same face he always made when he was realizing that he thought about doing something and forgot instead of actually doing it.

Daisy turned, snagging the camera from where she'd set it out in preparation. Georgie saw her while Jon was preoccupied, but she didn't say anything, just smiled. 

She could be tolerable. She could be fine! Maybe the first Georgie was in a catastrophic car accident that turned her into a terrible person. Daisy made sure to smile as she clicked the shutter and said. "Nope!"

"Daisy!" Jon cried, looking up to see her waving a photo in the air. He shifted forward, but apparently decided not to scramble over the counter the way he usually did when it was clear and Daisy took a picture he'd rather destroy.

"Here, something to remember him by when he's on the floor dead of embarrassment." She passed the photo to Georgie, who took it and hid it in her bag before Jon could get hold of it.

"Thanks!"

Jon put his face in his hands. "Daisy."

"I don't know what you expected. It's literally my job as your sister to be a bit embarrassing in front of all your girlfriends, I'd be in trouble with the union if I didn't." Jon glared, mouth twitching and ruining the effect, so Daisy moved blithely on. "Come on, smile. Hold still, one for her and one for us."

Jon managed to get his smile to turn natural instead of pained in the time it took to lean into Georgie's side so Daisy could get the pictures. When she set the camera down (well out of his reach unless he walked over to get it), Jon still got in an , "If you're quite done?"

"For the moment." Daisy smiled, and both of the others smiled back. Progress, this was fine. She had it all under control! Georgie was fine. Adequate, even.

"Jon said you make a lot of things in the slow cooker. I found one secondhand recently, I might have to pick your brain for recipes." Georgie seemed genuinely interested, so Daisy swallowed three nasty replies before answering.

"It's definitely handy being able to put something on before work and come home to it practically finished." She bit her cheek; it came out flatter than she wanted.

Jon, shifting in anxiety at the change of tone, said, a bit too loud, "Georgie got the highest grade in that awful literature class last year!"

"Jon..." Georgie looked uncomfortable, and Daisy couldn't decide whether it was at Jon being genuinely overenthusiastic in the moment or a wider-reaching irritation at his personality.

Daisy took the reins back before things could sink into awkwardness, and asked, "You're the same age, then? I wasn't sure."

"Er. I'm actually a year older." A point in Georgie's favor, she looked significantly more uncomfortable than she did at Jon singing her praises. Still, Daisy didn't mean to do that, and she didn't think to prepare any subject changes for running into touchy subjects accidentally.

She decided to pretend she hadn't noticed and just hope Georgie managed to change the subject when she answered. "Oh? Take a year off before uni to travel, then?"

Georgie looked down. "I had some family obligations come up unexpectedly."

Daisy widened her eyes at Jon, trying to get him to swoop in and rescue both of them, but he was torn between glaring at Daisy and being at a complete loss. Daisy took a deep breath, making sure to fix her smile back in place while Georgie wasn't looking to see it. "Sorry, I didn't mean to hit on a touchy subject."

Georgie took a moment, but answered with, "Where do you work, Daisy?" The room breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'm a detective with the Metropolitan Police." An awkward answer Daisy had anticipated. She had gotten the sense that Jon was hanging out with a crowd with no love lost for the police, but never managed to ferret out whether that was a serious red flag, or the hippy sort of general distaste. Given he hadn't been arrested for doing something stupid, she was inclined toward the latter, but unwilling to discount either possibility on the evidence she had.

Georgie's face flickered, but she recovered well. It was just discomfort, not anger, which was a good sign. It let Daisy frame harboring Jon as a fugitive as loyalty to him more than hatred for law and order, and she wasn't aware of any other problems the first Georgie had with them. Loyalty to Jon was good.

Loyalty.

The Georgie in front of her asked, "How long have you been with the police?"

"Since I was eighteen, so a couple years before our parents died. What's your favorite class right now?" Daisy clanked a serving dish on the counter too loudly, but relocating the contents of the slow cooker and changing the subject both managed to deploy successfully.

"I'm in a life drawing class to fill out my schedule, it's very interesting." Georgie's eyes were bright, her smile easy, and Daisy tried not to think about how easily she'd drawn Jon in and how easily she could reject him.

"She's really good!"

"Jon." Georgie blushed, and Daisy put it down as a conditional success. Humility was fine! Or difficult to use to hurt Jon, at least.

"You are!" Jon insisted, turning to Daisy. "She is."

"Is that what you want to do when you graduate? Something in the arts?" Daisy asked.

"I haven't quite decided. I've still got another year, and I'd like to find something I'm passionate about. I'm looking at internships that would help me figured out my options; I'd like to move to London, or at least a big city somewhere."

And she had managed, more successfully than Jon did anything but getting kidnapped. "You're a few decades late to do the starving artist bit in London, of all places."

"Daisy!" Jon said, and Daisy grimaced. She didn't mean to let her bitterness and guilt get ahead of her. Normal, she was supposed to be normal.

"Sorry. I just don't think it's a very good time to be voluntarily choosing financial hardship." Still too cynical. "What sort of things are you passionate about?"

"Jon and I actually hit it off talking about mysteries. Disappearances, ghosts, things like that." Georgie smiled, apparently willing to join Daisy in pretending the awkward turn never happened, even though Jon wasn't done shooting her sour looks.

"Have you ever seen a ghost? Got to be enough old corners at Oxford to have a few hiding out." When did Georgie have her encounter? Daisy couldn't recall, if she ever knew in the first place.

Georgie went a bit pale. Earlier than now, then. "Er. Not really."

"Sure? You look like something gave you a fright just now! Are you ill?" Surely it was weirder not to react?

"It's nothing."

"So, Daisy!" Jon said, too loud again, pulling attention away from Georgie staring blankly at the glass in front of her. "Any news from the zombie guy?"

Daisy snorted in spite of herself. "No. You have to stop asking, Jon. Every time you ask and the answer's no, he shows up within the week. I think you're summoning him."

"Zombie guy?" Georgie still didn't look well. It did involve the End, didn't it? Daisy was sure she remembered that right. Poor Jon and his doomed subject change.

"I booked him for drunk and disorderly because he was going around trying to convince other people that their friends were 'undead sinisters,'" she said, leaning in a bit more friendly than she normally would, trying to draw Georgie into the feeling of being part of rare knowledge instead of her own past troubles, "and now every time he pops up they send him straight to me. He keeps breaking into churches and graveyards and then somehow getting acquitted."

Both of them were struggling against smiles, Jon delighted because he always thought it was hilarious, and Georgie only a little bit less at ease. 

"He has an umbrella spray-painted to look like a sword," Daisy continued. "He's started referring to me exclusively as 'the Devil's Handmaiden.'"

Both of them lost their composure, descending into laughter. Georgie managed to choke out, "Oh, no!" around giggles.

Daisy got two dishes to the table before they recovered. "Food's up!"

"I can-" Jon started as Daisy walked past for the next dish.

"Absolutely not, you have a guest to entertain." She bumped him with an elbow to keep him from slipping past the counter faster than her.

"Daisy." He blushed, much more than warranted.

"Well?" Georgie asked, turning to him and taking his arm, voice languid and posh. "Entertain me, Jonathan!"

"Georgie..." He covered his face with the hand she didn't have hold of, steering her to the table by memory.

The food was a good excuse to set conversation aside for a moment. Daisy tried to gather her self-control, now that she didn't have reason to feel caught off guard by the sudden presence of someone she thought- hoped, even- she would never see again.

Eventually, Georgie broke the silence. "This is excellent."

"Thanks." Daisy took a drink to hide how curt it wound up being, but knew that she just guaranteed that she'd have to make the next effort at conversation. She pretended to be absorbed in her green beans for a bit before asking, "What do you do in your free time. As much of a paranormal nut as Jon, or just tolerating him, you didn't quite say?"

She couldn't. She just couldn't. All of the safe subjects seemed gone, and with Georgie so close, without the cooking to distract her, Daisy couldn't. She decided Jon's life was too complicated and abandoned him once, and that felt so much less complicated than the things she might uncover now.

"It's an interest," Georgie said coolly, Jon behind her glaring daggers. "I don't think Jon is someone to just be tolerated."

"Don't you." It was the right answer. Georgie said all the right things when Jon was in a coma, too. Then she didn't want anything to do with him when he woke up.

"Georgie, I forgot to ask!" Jon said, his third attempt at the same ploy. "Daisy and I went to see the, um, the new Pixar movie two weeks ago, did you and Leah go yet?"

"Not yet." Georgie didn't quite grab the life preserver this time, leaving the conversation to grapple with the energy level of a dead fish.

"Leah?" Daisy asked, trying to return to something halfway acceptable for Jon's sake.

"My roommate."

Jon shifted, and Daisy turned to him. "If you wanted to go with Georgie you should have told me."

"No!" He glowered at her.

"It's fine." Georgie said at the same time.

Daisy felt like a thing possessed as she said, "I just think it's odd to both want to see something but not go together, as a couple."

Georgie, for the first time, dropped the act entirely and snapped, "People in relationships are allowed to have other friends."

"I'm sure." Daisy kept her composure, which meant she won.

"Daisy!" Jon said, contesting her victory.

She didn't have anything left to her but flat disinterest. All her better defenses were expended. "Hm?"

"Stop it. Stop, just." He heaved a shaky breath and stood. "I'm sorry, Georgie. Let's just go."

They didn't say anything as they gathered their things. Daisy knew she was awful, that she did it all wrong, but Jon was...

Jon was hers and Georgie hurt him. Georgie would hurt him, given the chance. Georgie would hurt him, and there was so much more ammunition for her in their lives now than there had been the first time. Jon needed her to be polite and make a good impression, and Daisy could barely hold on to that failure in the face of how overwhelmingly, positively she was right.

She felt like a clawing thing, snapping out at anything that moved wrong. She felt out of control, and it scared her.

Daisy tried one last recovery as they stepped out the door. "It was nice to meet you!"

As she gathered the dishes in the empty silence of the house, she knew she failed. How could she make something like this up to Jon? Ever?

-

Daisy knocked on Jon's door, determined to apologize so they didn't have to go to bed in a tiff. "Can I come in?"

"Do you have an apology?" Jon snapped.

"I do."

Jon didn't say anything. Daisy, moving slow in case of objection, opened the door.

Jon was at the end of his bed, arms around himself and staring at the carpet. His face flickered between outrage and grief.

"I'm sorry," Daisy said. She sat next to him. "I don't know what came over me."

Jon drew a shaky breath. "I only invited her over at all because we want to live together next year."

"What?" All of Daisy's guilt and shame short-circuited. 

It was progress. Jon wanting to move out was a victory. She thought about this when she knew Jon wanted her to meet some anonymous girlfriend.

"We want to live together. Up at school."

Not with Georgie. He couldn't, Daisy didn't know how to explain that she was bad for him, how to say he could move in with any other friend, but not her. It all got lost on the way to her mouth and came out as, "No!"

Jon flinched and wilted. "I'm tired. Goodnight, Daisy."

She walked out with a lump in her throat. "Do you want me to lock the door?"

Jon squeezed his eyes shut. "Yes, please."

-

Daisy, back in her room, spent hours trying to dissect the problem. Was Georgie so bad it justified denying Jon the first time he voiced a desire to truly reassert his independence? How did she apologize for everything when her reasons were such an unexplainable snarl of impossibilities?

She cried at points, sick and guilty. If she could pull out the reasons she disliked Georgie that could be credibly drawn from their interaction today and phrased as normal, cautious dating advice, she could get the most important bits across to Jon. She had a script with multiple steps ready for when he brought it up the next morning.

All she needed was to know that Jon was safe, aware of the emotional risks, and confident that he could handle things. Daisy would double check wherever they found a place, probably add a few security measures, and it would be fine. Jon never encountered anything terrible at Oxford in either life, and Georgie was too unappealing now to draw attention. 

Daisy would just... claim a personality conflict and say she'd prefer to limit her interactions with Georgie so she didn't snap at her again. Not perfect, but workable.

She just needed Jon to ask, ask what happened or ask for an apology or ask to move out again. The last should never have been a question, but Daisy was ready for it. She didn't know how to bring it up herself, but she was ready.

Jon went through the motions of his morning routine in a daze, without speaking a word.

-

He never brought up moving out again.

Chapter Text

Jon had apparently survived living with Daisy for over a decade, but planning their approach felt urgent anyway. Who knew what non-fatal injuries could be dealt if they delayed? He'd already been trapped with her for far too long. They talked over every opening they could imagine, trying to predict every way Daisy might react and how they could best keep Jon- and themselves- safe.

Tim had been friendly with Daisy nearly as long as he'd known Jon, but he never realized how superficial that relationship was until he was trying to pull apart the problem of getting rid of her. He had no idea how she would react to half their list; knowing what they knew now made all the friendly interaction they'd seen between her and Jon feel plastic, but he didn't know what laid behind it.

When the day they'd agreed to confront Jon came, all three of them were a bit of a mess. Jon seemed to notice how tense and jittery the energy in the Archives was, but he didn't say anything. The three of them waited in the bullpen, shooting each other looks and trying to swallow their nerves.

Daisy usually showed up at Jon's lunch break to hang around the Archives or take him out somewhere. When he was back from lunch, they had a window of opportunity before Daisy came back. She varied when and even if she came over lunch, how long she stayed, how much she interacted with them on her way in, but she arrived exactly ten minutes before the end of the work day, every day. Sasha, in their anxious preparation for talking to Jon, timed it.

When he came back from lunch, Jon came back down the stairs sprightly and humming to himself, waved at the three of them, and went into his office. They all sat frozen for a bit, trying to digest seeing him so happy and knowing what lurked underneath. By the time Tim managed to get up and walk over to Jon's office, he could hear him recording from the other side of the door. Tim was too slow and lost them time for no reason.

He left and paced the edge of the assistants' bullpen, away from where Jon might notice the sound. They needed to approach him from friendly, trusted ground, and Jon wouldn't pay attention to a word they said if he was already annoyed about being taken away from a recording before he'd finished. Sasha shot Tim a few looks, but eventually decided to take her own nervous energy elsewhere, gathering her folder of evidence and taking it to their meeting place back in the farthest corner of Document Storage. Martin managed to ignore Tim's pacing better, but when Tim crept back down the little hallway to Jon's office and leaned back to shoot him a thumbs up when he was sure Jon wasn't recording, he was out of his seat like it was on fire.

Tim knocked lightly, but opened the door before waiting for an answer, half afraid Jon wouldn't hear him and would start a fresh recording before Tim could get in the door. "Hey, Boss, can I borrow you a minute? There's something in Document Storage I think you should see."

Jon looked up, glaring, but not at Tim. "Good lord, it's not another dog, is it?"

Tim laughed, but it didn't quite play. "You wish. Just come see."

Jon stood and followed, radiating exhaustion at the whole enterprise. It made Tim feel better, in a way. Jon, bouncy and humming, would have been having a good day right up until they pulled him into Document Storage; Jon generically sick of the world didn't have as far to fall.

"What's this about?" he asked, a bit sharp, when they got close enough to see Martin and Sasha waiting.

Sasha stood up straight, white-knuckled on her folder. "We...'re worried about you," she said, falling off a ledge of confidence mid-word now that they were actually talking about it. Tim sat through half a dozen recitations of what she wanted to say, but those only seemed to make her less sure of herself.

"What?" Jon said, drawing back sharply. "I know it hasn't been easy, but-"

"It's not about the Archives," Tim said, and he saw Jon look at him with alarm at the suddenly drop in mood. "It's about you."

"I don't think it's appropriate for you to address-"

"Here." Sasha pulled the flyer from the front of her folder and stuck it out in front of her, elbow snapped a bit past straight. Jon's face drained of color so fast Tim stepped closer to him, afraid he would faint.

"What is this?" Jon asked, barely above a whisper. "Is, is this a joke?"

"It's you," Sasha said, voice admirably steady.

"Jon," Martin said softly. Jon's eyes shot over to him, understanding dawning.

"I don't have time for games," he snapped. "We have work to do."

"Jon," Tim said, because what came next, when Jon was refusing to acknowledge the truth with it shoved in front of his face? "We want to help."

"With what? If you're going to play around, do it off the clock, on your own time." Jon's elbows were slightly bent and there was a trapped-animal bent to his spine, stiff like he was about to take off running. His hands shook.

"It's not a game!" Sasha said, voice rising with the pent up energy of trying to unravel the mess of it all and being denied catharsis in finally talking about it with Jon. "This is you, Jon. Jonathan Sims."

"That's not my name," Jon said, strangled, taking half a step backward. "Stop it."

"Daisy isn't your sister," Sasha continued.

"Yes she is!" Jon nearly shouted. None of the uncertainty or fear of trying to lie stayed with him, just righteous anger. "My family is none of your business, stop!"

Martin grabbed Sasha's arm, stopping her from shouting back. She shifted, moving to put the flyer back in the folder.

Jon's hands flashed out, grabbing it with a hand on each side. "Give it to me."

Sasha swallowed, face twisted with indecision Jon didn't see with his eyes glued to the flyer, and said, "No."

They held it taut between them for a moment, but Jon blinked first, letting go before it could tear. He watched as Sasha returned it to the folder, craning his neck to see what else was inside.

"We want to help, Jon," Tim said. Watching Jon watch the flyer be put away, all he could see was the scared, injured boy in the polaroid.

"I don't need your help. My sister is none of your business." He watched them like he was afraid they'd attack, eyes darting around and around the circle.

"She isn't your sister!" Sasha said, too far away for Tim to stomp on her foot or elbow her until she dropped that thread.

"She's my sister," Jon said.

"She hurt you," Tim said, trying to draw Jon into the waters they'd visit if it was an actual abusive relative.

"No she didn't," Jon said, jaw clenched stubborn. "She's my sister."

"She kidnapped you!" Martin said, his calm facade buckling under the strain. "She locks you in your room."

Jon face crumpled, more hurt than anything else had made him. He rocked back on his heels and opened his mouth, starting and swallowing a dozen silent syllables. Eventually, he just shook his head and whispered, "She's my sister." 

Then he turned and ran.

The three of them stood for a moment, looking at each other and trying to communicate some worthwhile plan just by hoping. It took them too long to follow him, trying not to run. Feeling chased was unlikely to bring Jon around. Tim thought he was managing the jump from what they expected to Jon defending Daisy so passionately while refusing to acknowledge any of the points they had, but they didn't prepare for this. They didn't expect this reaction at all.

They found Jon back in his office, door open, sitting at his desk with his hands over his face. He stiffened when they got close and muttered, "Leave me alone. Go back to work."

"You know why we can't do that," Tim said. They couldn't take it back or come up with a more diplomatic way to broach the topic now, and leaving him to Daisy's mercy would be worse.

"No, I don't!" Jon said, head popping up so he could glare at them. His glasses were gone; when Tim knew to look for them, he found them in the middle of the desk, with drops of water on the insides of the lenses. "You start flinging accusations around with, with no evidence! We have statements with fewer holes!" When he saw that none of them were affected by the bluff, he looked to the side, avoiding their eyes.

"I have evidence," Sasha said stoutly. "The flyer was in your house, Jon. How do you explain that, if we're wrong?"

"It wasn't," he said. "I don't know why you're doing this, but it's nothing to do with me."

"Then you won't mind if I tear it up and throw it away," she said pleasantly. Before Tim could poke her and try to move to a kinder track, she got the reaction she was hoping for, Jon turning back to her with his face a mask of dread. He would have looked less shocked if she walked up and punched him in the stomach.

"We can't ignore this," Martin said, trying to be less provocative. "You can't ask us to ignore knowledge about a crime against a child, Jon."

"I'm not a child," Jon hissed.

"You were." It took a moment for Tim to realize he was the one to say it. He flexed his jaw, trying to banish some of the unease from his bones, before continuing. "You wrote your grandmother a letter about how much you wanted to go home."

"She's dead and I have a home," Jon said. "You aren't doing me a favor. You aren't helping me. Daisy is the only family I have. There's nothing wrong, and I have no one else."

"You have us," Martin said.

"Do I?" Jon snarled, jumping up from his seat and pacing behind the desk, raking his hands through his hair. "Do I? Do I have you, welcomed into our home when you needed help and snooping through our things? Do I have them, deciding they get to rearrange my life however they please?" His laugh was an ugly, creaking thing.

They exchanged looks. They were right, but they couldn't just... send what they had to the police in Bournemouth and let them act. The idea was that confronting Jon themselves would be less upsetting than that.

Jon threw himself into his chair again, arms around himself, anger gone in an instant. "She's my sister," he repeated softly. "Don't bring this up again. She's my sister."

"Jon..." Tim said, trying to find any strand that would end the conversation successfully before Daisy arrived.

Jon shook his head. "She's my sister."

"She hurt you," Tim said again. "How long has there been a lock on your bedroom door? How long did your wrists stay bandaged?"

"It was my own fault," Jon muttered, eyes glued to the desk instead of looking up at any of them. "And it's none of your business. She's my sister."

Tim thought he could actually feel his heart breaking. How did he miss this? He knew what warning signs to look for, why didn't he notice? He was supposed to be Jon's friend.

But this wasn't a situation where keeping connected, telling Jon they were there for him, and trying to coax him into recognizing bad behavior was a plausible solution. Wasn't it?

Jon's inhales sounded wet as they shot each other looks, trying to figure out where to go from here. Eventually, he said, "Forget about this. Just... give me the flyer and pretend this didn't happen."

"Why?" Martin asked, voice kind enough but implacable. "If you aren't afraid of Daisy, why is it so terrible for us to know?"

Jon's whole body twitched like he was trying to run away, hide under the desk, and sink into his chair all at once. His voice was more open and frightened than before, but still sharp. "Please drop this. It's none of your business, and you shouldn't know about it, and I don't need help."

"You do!" Sasha insisted. Tim was close enough to elbow her this time, but she could hardly unsay it.

"Please," Jon said, wild and desperate. "She's my sister. Please."

Chapter Text

Jon couldn't dampen the panic rising in his chest. He wanted to run away again (childish), but he had to convince them to never speak of whatever they thought they'd found again. He remembered all too well Daisy telling him that if someone tried to take him away from her, and she couldn't stop them any other way, she'd kill them.

If he couldn't convince them to keep their mouths shut, he had to destroy all the evidence he could find so that there would be nothing to make them look like anything more than the lowest kind of cranks. Maybe even if they did agree to forget all about it. Had the others already contacted the police, or did he have time to get whatever else Sasha had in that folder away from them and destroy it?

Destroy it. That flyer was the only physical proof he had that anyone but Daisy had ever wanted him. He didn't remember his parents. How did Martin even find it? 

He needed them to drop the subject, immediately and permanently. He had no idea how to convince them of that. He didn't want to lose his friends. He didn't want to lose Daisy. 

"She's my sister. Please, please forget it. She's my sister." It wasn't a convincing argument, based on years and affection they could never guess at with nothing to go on but ancient pictures of a stupid teenager with no idea what the world was like. He couldn't fit anything else out between his teeth.

Sasha sighed, but he didn't look up. He didn't want to see her face. Any of their faces. His own was wet, and he didn't want them to see. "Where did the bruises in the polaroid come from?"

Bruises? They must have been from the handcuffs, but he didn't remember the pictures. He chose pictures where he looked scared and pathetic on purpose, but he didn't remember them in any particular detail. One from the very beginning, and one more recent, maybe? The third was in his room. He looked for one of those because it had his homeschool books, and he wanted Gran to know, somehow, that he was still in school. More or less.

"It doesn't matter," he whispered. "She's my sister." They didn't need to understand what Daisy was to him, they just needed to understand that they had to stop.

"It matters to me," Sasha said. "I'll, we'll drop it if you answer our questions. If you're fine, show us." Liar.

"I did it to myself," he said. He had to try.

"Did you?" Tim asked. Jon looked up and saw exactly the expression he knew would be there: the soft doubt Tim always pulled on when he was following up something that seemed to point to some form of domestic abuse rather than the supernatural. The "making them angry isn't the same as it being your fault" look.

"Yes," Jon said. "I did. All of it, on my wrists."
"And elsewhere?" Tim asked.

"There isn't anything elsewhere," he said. "And I did that before I ever met Daisy."

"Then why was there a picture of you bandaged in your letter?" Tim pressed.

Jon shook his head. It was too muddled to mount an effective defense, and doing so had never been more important than now. "No, not that. Scabs." He turned his wrist over so he could tap the tip of his nail against the bit on his left wrist where the scar was raised, where he'd started back on the mess when things got bad a dozen times.

He tried not to shrink at the sound of one of them walking over. The chair against the wall, only ever used for someone coming to give a live statement that wouldn't record normally, scraped against the carpet. He felt small, and young, and out of control in a way that made the sound hurt.

Tim took his hand gently, and Jon let him. "She's my sister."

"Okay," Tim said. "I haven't seen these before."

Jon shook his head. "You have. You just don't remember. I'm right-handed, and... people assume they know what they are and try to forget about them." He let Tim take his other hand, too, and squeezed his eyes shut when he heard the others coming over to gawk. The scars on his right wrist were faded more than on the left.

"What are the scars from?" Sasha asked, a bit of emphasis making it clear she knew what he meant about people making assumptions and didn't believe him that they were incorrect.

"Picked the scabs off and made them bigger." Not that that was much better. God, what must they think of him?

"You got the scabs from something," Tim said, as if he knew.

Jon shook his head. "I did it myself."

"Daisy wasn't holding whatever did it, or forcing you into whatever caused it?" Tim traced the line all the way around Jon's wrist, and he pulled his hands back and tucked them under his arms, out of sight. His throat buzzed with anger and frustration.

"Daisy is the one who got the knife away from me before I could use it," he snapped, and he wanted to sound strong but wound up with a sob. "And the one who stopped me starving myself."

They all held stiff in silence. He didn't dare look at their faces.

Jon was the one to break the silence, almost without realizing he was doing it. His voice was faint, half in his head. "They wouldn't have scarred as badly if I didn't stop eating."

"Why did you stop eating?" Martin said, face stretched with stress, eyebrows and the corners of his mouth reaching for the greatest distance they could attain.

"Because I was a stupid teenager!" Jon shot out of his chair again and moved away from the little triangle of condescending faces. He needed to move and he couldn't leave. Jonathan Sims was dead, good as, and Jon hated them digging him up. He hated them.

"You were a scared teenager," Sasha said firmly.

"How would you know?" Jon hissed. "I didn't realize you could time travel and read minds, you should give a statement." What did she know? What did she know about him, or about Daisy? What gave her the right-

"The police released part of your letter," Sasha said. "They're your words, Jon."

That brought him up short. Of course, he knew that Gran would go to the police with the letter, and of course they'd release parts of it. Why would they only release the polaroids when he'd crammed as much evidence into the letter as he could? 

He could hardly even remember what it said. There was no reason for it to feel like a violation to know that it was out there for anyone who cared to read it. That was what he wrote it for, when he was young and an entirely different person.

"'I didn’t want to leave, and I’d come back home today, if she’d let me. I’m trying to get back home anyway, if I can,'" Sasha read from her folder, voice tight.

"Stop." He didn't want to think about that, any of it. The boy he was didn't understand anything, he was wrong.

"'I’m still all in one piece, and she treats me decently so long as I don’t try to leave or hurt anyone.'"

"Stop it."

"'I really, really want to come home, though. I miss you. Please don’t stop looking for me. I hope this isn’t goodbye,'" Sasha read, voice growing louder and more choked.

"Stop!" Jon wheeled on them and charged forward without thinking, grabbing the open folder and pulling. Sasha held on. He needed to get it away from her, and hoped she'd get tired of yanking it between them like children refusing to share a toy before he did. She didn't need it like he did!

"Jon, stop," Martin said, voice high.

"Give it to me!"

"No! You can't- you'll regret not having it for the police, Jon, please!"

"Sasha-"

Tim, leaning over to intervene, on Jon's side for once, managed to loosen Sasha's grip somehow. Everything flew into Jon's hands.

The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, still holding the plastic folder but with most of the contents scattered around the room like a tornado went through. His assistants stared down at him with looks of horror.

Jon shook his head. It hurt. "She's my sister."

"Jon," Tim started.

"Don't!" His hands slid on the pages he was trying to gather back up. "Just leave us alone. Please stop, please stop."

"Jon," he said again, kneeling. Jon cringed back, but Tim just started helping pick up the papers and put them in the folder. Water splattered on what looked like a police sketch of Daisy, and without thinking Jon let them all spill out of his hands, jerking back and wiping his sleeve over his eyes. He couldn't cry, one of them was Gran's flyer, he needed it!

But then Sasha was on the floor with them and the folder was in her hands. Jon curled up, defeated. Everything hurt to look at.

He startled at someone's hand on his arm, but it was only Martin. "Hold still, just let me-"

"No! What are you doing, stop!"

"You're bleeding."

Jon looked at his wrists, but with tears blurring his vision they looked clean. Something prodded the back of his head and he gagged from the pain of it. "What are you doing?"

"You hit your head!" Martin said, sounding as frantic and teary as Jon was. "Tim, Sasha, Jon needs to go to A&E, we can talk there, just-"

Jon tore away from Martin, skittering to the side of the room like a miserable crawling creature. "No." Sweat stuck his shirt to his back, soaked to an impossible degree.

"Jon," Sasha said, still so horribly kind. She thought she was being kind.

"Would it be better to talk to a doctor than the police?" Tim asked.

"No. Stop it, it's none of your business. She's my sister."

"She kidnapped you!" Sasha said, too loud. It hurt. "She isn't your sister, she abducted you off the street!"

"She is, she is!" he insisted as Sasha stood, folder neatened in her hands again, no papers gone astray, the flyer lost to him. His head spun. "You aren't helping and it's none of your business!"

"She hurt you! She locks you in your room!"

"I asked her to!" he screamed, anger getting him back on his feet. "Daisy is my sister. She locks me in because she loves me and wants me to feel safe. And it hasn't happened since Martin came to stay and it, and it, I can't!" Jon's breath howled in his chest.

"Why do you ask her to do that?" Tim asked, still trying to be the reasonable one instead of listening to him.

"And last week there was that statement," he said instead. Manchester, vampires, nothing of himself but he knew. Jon sniffled and wiped his eyes again, trying to make eye contact with Tim, trying to convince them to listen.

His heart froze in his chest. Tim was between Jon and the door, but the door was open.

Whatever Tim saw in his face made him step back and to the side so he could look, and Jon ran to get there before the opening closed, feet trying to slide out from under him even though there wasn't anything underfoot anymore.

"Jon?" Daisy asked, face concerned but eyes sharp, they were being so loud she must have heard. "What happened, why are you bleeding?"

"Daisy," he panted. "They won't- they didn't- I told them, I'm sorry. Please, I'm sorry. It was my fault, don't- let's just leave! Please, let's just go, I'm sorry!" She'd talked about leaving if it looked like she might be caught before, they could just leave and pretend none of it ever happened. Losing a job and home he loved was less than Jon deserved for letting things spiral out of control like this.

"What did they do to you?" she asked, eyes flickering in Tim's direction with something very much like hate.

Jon wailed. Not them. Not his friends.

"Please, let's just leave." Jon tried to shift, to block his assistants off with his body, but Daisy followed, leaning in with her hand on his shoulder. "They won't tell anyone, not faster than we can go, leave the country, whatever, just go!"

"Go where?" Sasha squawked, indignant and heedless of danger. Jon could hardly stand to think about her at the moment, but he didn't want her to die.

Daisy leaned closer, examining him for something. The cant of guilt to his features, maybe.

"Daisy," he begged.

"We're not going anywhere," she said softly. Jon nearly collapsed.

"No, please, please. Please don't, no, no, don't hurt them, please, I'm sorry, I told them, it's my fault, don't hurt them." He wasn't sure he was even constructing sentences anymore, just spewing desperation into the wavy, distorted space.

"Come on," Daisy said gently, coaxing Jon back. Her arm hung loosely around him until they came near Tim, and Jon couldn't breathe watching the brutal collision between Daisy's elbow and Tim's sternum.

"No!"

"Jon, come here. Sit down, you're hurt." Daisy left Tim to wheeze his feet back under himself, stepping over him so she could hook the chair he dragged over with her ankle and drag it to Jon, pressing his shoulders until he got the cue and sat. He felt dizzy and nauseous.

"They won't tell, Daisy, please don't hurt them!"

"I'm calling the police!" Sasha said, feet shoulder-width apart and squared up like she was in a boxing match, not just dialing a phone.

"There's no reception in the Archives," Daisy said flatly. Jon didn't glance at the phone on his desk. They all had them, and he didn't know what would happen if they tried to go for one.

"Daisy," Jon said, trying to grab for her hand. She let him cling to her wrist, but she didn't back down.

"So what, you're just going to kill us?" Martin demanded. Jon looked at him, imploring him through the tear-dotted lenses of his glasses to just stop. His head ached from crying so hard.

"Don't tempt me," Daisy said. Martin shifted, and Jon froze.

"Daisy."

"You already started!" Martin said, gesturing toward Tim.

Daisy rolled her eyes. "He's fine, it won't even bruise."

"Daisy!"

"You know that, do you?" Martin asked.

Daisy rolled her eyes. "Yeah. I do. I actually know what I'm doing, unlike you three. What did you do to my brother?"

"He isn't!" Sasha said, gearing up to start it all over again.

"Daisy! Daisy!" Jon said, pulling on her wrist.

Daisy turned, but when she saw Jon wasn't looking at any of the others she followed his gaze instead of saying something comforting or quelling. She swore when she saw the spider, and Jon dropped her hand. Martin and Sasha edged closer to Jon, trying to keep the desk between them and Daisy. Martin helped Tim to his feet.

The spider didn't splatter when Daisy slapped her hand against the wall. It skittered away, but the wall buckled, like she'd tried to smack through butcher paper. 

"What?" Daisy reached for her keychain in her back pocket, with her little penlight, but before she could grab it the wall split more. Jon heard Martin gasp behind him, and Daisy turned rather than investigating further, reaching for Jon. 

"Run!"

Chapter Text

Jon let his thoughts wander as he stood at the side of his bed, folding laundry. The predominant subject was school; Oxford was an intimidating escalation with a thousand other distractions thrown in. Just having to move between buildings for classes was enough of a shock to the system to have snarled up his first few weeks significantly. He kept getting lost.

It was exciting, though. He tried to focus on that, and not on the bad or anxious.

As he reached the bottom of the laundry basket, he found one of Daisy's skirts. It must have gotten thrown in with his clothes accidentally somehow. He picked it up, meaning to set it near the door so he wouldn't forget to give it back to Daisy when she came up to let him out for dinner, but he got distracted.

He'd attended a few social events by now. Jon had tried a few different clubs and groups, unsure what he was interested in and which he wanted to continue attending after the excitement of the venture's novelty wore off and his schoolwork intensified, but he went to a couple unofficial things too, just drinks with a few classmates who invited him. The feeling of Daisy's skirt swinging from his hand reminded him of one of the people he met there; Robert wasn't in any of Jon's classes, but he was one of the people Sharon, who invited Jon, had met in a different class. He wore a skirt, and Jon wound up floundering and half-planning to drop the entire group. He was sure he made a fool of himself, at best.

He'd just never met a man who wore proper skirts. He didn't know how he felt about it. Whatever it was, he felt a lot of it.

There was a mirror in his closet, a full-length one on the back of the door. And Daisy wouldn't be up for ages still. And he didn't have much to work on for school, not yet.

His face felt hot just darting into the closet. It all felt illicit, even though he wasn't entirely sure what he was afraid of.

-

Jon suffered through a few mortifying attempts to consult the library for both assignments and private interests, and then a few attempts to interact in general, and then more to speak with Robert, and then with people Robert introduced him to. No one was anything less than pleasant- there wasn't even anyone else in the library who was close enough to see him, or what he was looking up- but Jon felt like he was getting away with something. It was almost enough to set him off, the danger tamer but no less present than the danger that kept him locked in his room instead of staying on campus into the wee hours or hanging out downstairs with Daisy.

His fears didn't really sort themselves out until he let Daisy know he'd be home late and went to a party. It was one Robert invited him to, and Jon wasn't sure he wanted to go to another. It was loud, but he pushed through so he could at least say he'd gone.

No one meant anything by it, lots of people were kissing, a few going upstairs when they went on long enough for people to start teasing, and it only really mattered once, when a girl's boyfriend came over and spotted her kissing someone else. If anything, the kiss made him blend in better.

Jon had no idea where he'd found the courage, and was consequently glad he'd at least met the people that he had.

He didn't like Robert, not like that. Not really, he wasn't sure he was interested in anything like that at all! But when he got home and the giddy adrenaline of his daring wore off, everything plunged into icy clarity.

Jon wasn't supposed to have been eavesdropping, but after the first couple times the police hauled him back to the station to call Gran, once he stopped being afraid of being arrested, waiting for Gran to pick him up after his latest adventure was boring. And there were people right there, having interesting conversations they'd never let him hear if they had time to really think about Jon being present. He learned lots of interesting things listening to the conversations around him, only some of which developed into future delinquency in Bournemouth.

He thought about it all more, after the time he spent alone on the streets and turning over what it meant for him that Daisy was a cop, if he thought critically instead of swallowing whatever she said. Daisy was so confident in the ruse of his delusion, and it matched some of the things he'd overheard said about the segment of Bournemouth's population who were irritable, addicted, suicidal, or flat-out crazy. So Daisy's friends would fall in line with her if Jon ever actually tried anything.

Some of what he overheard he knew wasn't an opinion shared by police generally, or at least wasn't supposed to be. He got sat adjacent to Melinda's desk a lot, because she had a broken leg for a long time when they first started hauling him in and was stuck at her desk until it healed. After, when they dropped Jon off, she complained that they only did it because she was a woman. She caved, but that was because Jon was such a little ball of anxiety and chaos at that age that he refused to stay with a stranger if she was right there. And she called out a lot of other things they said as sexist, too. So police, generally, weren't supposed to be sexist even if they didn't abide by that, and he could trust Daisy to fall into those boundaries.

Racism was brought up a bit less often, but it did come up. Even when it sparked a debate, everyone seemed to know that they shouldn't be. Like they were getting away with something, so similar to how Jon felt going out alone and making it back without police intervention that it put him off exploring for a while, because the resonance made him feel sick in a way he was too young to really understand.

Rudeness was at the center of half a dozen ongoing arguments anytime they took Jon to the station, so there was a theory there, at least, about matching the sort of friendly, helpful authority the cop that visited his school said they were supposed to be. They managed decently with him before he was enough of a repeat offender to annoy them, but that was because he was a kid. He saw some of them be much less kind to adults they didn't feel were worth their time, or eventually change their attitude toward him. Any of that he could check against Daisy's behavior and predict where she fell with a fair amount of confidence, which was borne out the couple of times it came up. Daisy was always as kind as she could be to Jon, and he tried not to worry about how she was to anyone else.

But he never heard anyone object to the things that were said about men in dresses instead of laughing along. It got hushed up between classmates at school when he was younger, like it was something terrible to even mention, but at the police station he heard all the things they thought, and all the things they wanted to do, almost never censored in deference to his age because they forgot he was in hearing distance. The one time someone noticed him there it was Adam, who wound up with Jon nearly as often as Melinda. He very gently explained that they weren't talking about men wearing dresses like for a play; it was alright there, but not in real life. Adults like that were dangerous, and Jon should stay away from them and find a trustworthy adult if one tried to talk to him. The more graphic statements hushed up, but the general conversation didn't end after Jon nodded his understanding.

And Jon had an idea that "men in dresses" wasn't the extent of his vaguely adjacent memories, that it was far from the extent of what actually existed in the world. Those conversations stuck out in his memory because they made something feel curdled inside him, but there were bits about women with buzzed hair and so on mixed in around the edges of the memory.

Jon brought books about sex and gender back with the rest of his library selections once he had enough need to be able to hide them between other books, so Daisy didn't notice them. He wasn't sure where he fit in any of that.

All he knew was that he enjoyed kissing Robert, at least the once, and that he felt even happier creeping into his closet and putting on the skirt Daisy probably thought she'd lost entirely by now. That was more than enough to damn him. He stalked around his room when Daisy was out of the house, the skirt's waistband pinned smaller so he could gesture along with the imaginary debates he had with Daisy while he slashed out nervous energy through his footsteps. He liked the weight of it, the feeling of soft blue cotton brushing against his knees.

There was an air of danger to all of it at Oxford, but it was mostly met with stubborn defiance, people in lockstep so that they were harder to smack down. Mark left the group early one night, and when Jon saw him in the class they shared the next morning he had a black eye and seemed badly shaken, but he was back out with the group within a couple weeks, anxious and never alone.

"My school friends say it's fine," wasn't a compelling argument. It was childish, which undermined his first argument, which was, "I'm an adult and can do what I want," and that wasn't even true, just something that sounded forceful enough to hope that, if he ever really had the argument with Daisy, she might be cowed by it a bit. Jon didn't do what he wanted, not really. Not anything that broke from Daisy's preferences quite so strongly, and even if she were willing to let him leave over it he knew he wasn't emotionally or financially equipped to make out on his own again, not yet. What he found outside of those arguments was detached from real life, or at least you could say it was. Academic miscellany and activists Daisy would probably just consider rabble-rousers.

Things were good. School was good, Daisy was good. 

For all they had a rough start, Jon cared about what she thought of him.

-

Jon was one of the only people in the group still living at home when they started, and that was a category that shrank more and more as time went on. Nell was the only one he expected to keep living with family until graduation, and her mum was a professor. Even at the beginning, no one else was commuting from as far as London.

Jon was doing better and better, the precautions with Daisy feeling less vital to his safety by the day, picking up social engagements and part time work he would have been terrified of a few years ago. It would be easier to go out on his own in the thick of everyone else his age doing the same. It was increasingly apparent in all areas of his life that whenever he got far enough from the norm to consider himself a late bloomer, it actually meant it was never going to happen. He didn't have time to waste waffling, graduation was closer every day. 

Daisy seemed so supportive of the idea of Jon leaving. He could almost taste it, feeling normal for once, Daisy having no idea what he was wearing unless he was coming for dinner. He wanted it. He would be careful, obviously, but strangers didn't have the same hold on his fear that Daisy did. 

Someday.

Georgie was odd and out of step in a way that felt familiar, something too big to explain hanging over some of her behavior. When they wound up alone together too many times to pretend it was an accident rather than foul play from their friends and tried dating, it wasn't something Jon ever expected to have. He knew, intellectually, all the things people said about first love and first heartbreak and infatuation, so he didn't tell Daisy. But then they were finishing out their third year and talking about moving in together, and he had to tell her.

Was it the lie that made Daisy react like she did? Jon had been nervous, but he was sure that she'd be happy for him. It was the sort of normalcy she tried so hard to instate whenever she got the chance, always afraid he was missing out somehow. Other couples in their group that could pass for being entirely what their families expected were glad of it. There shouldn't have been such an instant dislike when Daisy met the girlfriend, who seemed exactly what she should be, of her brother, himself exactly what he should be.

But she shot him down anyway. 

He was missing something, he knew it. Daisy wasn't cruel like that, she had a reason. Something wasn't safe, and it made some of his newfound confidence shrivel in his heart.

Jon tried to swallow the disappointment, even when he had to tell Georgie he couldn't leave home for any of the flats they'd started to look at. She could tell something was wrong, but what could Jon tell her? Eventually, she gave up on his weakening assertions that nothing else was wrong, he didn't want to break up, he just changed his mind.

And so that was that.

-

Jon held himself together by the slightest thread until after graduation. Daisy took a thousand pictures, a regular camera joining the old polaroid, and she would notice if he seemed more upset than the overwhelm of everything changing warranted. The break-up was too far past by then to keep using it as an excuse, if she noticed he'd been crying.

He had a computer of his own, purchased when Daisy got her Christmas bonus after he started at Oxford as a slightly-belated gift for being accepted. Telling her he was looking for jobs and writing and rewriting his CV meant she'd leave him to it for hours, until she took him down to eat or he texted her to let him out so they could hang out together. After graduation, after their last gathering all together before people moved away and started their lives, after he lost the familiarity of the campus and the people and killed off even more of his bravery, Jon waited for Daisy to leave him home alone. Waited, waited.

It felt like the world ending. It felt like everything was proof that Daisy was right, and he was unsuited to the world in too many ways to remedy, above and beyond whatever dangers he might encounter. Scheduling time to cry? Who did that, what was wrong with him?

He barely made it long enough for Daisy to leave, afraid that even silent tears would give him away if she forgot to tell him something before leaving and came in. When he heard the front door close and all the locks being turned, keeping him safe from the world, he ran to the closet. Tears dripped down his face, and he was lightheaded, not breathing, afraid of the sound that would get out when he did. He squirmed behind the clothing on a lower rack, darkness and pressure muffling him as he hugged his knees and let go.

He'd lost so many things in his life. He'd lost so much, but somehow this petty loss was what pushed him over the edge. 

It was too much. It wasn't fair.

It took a long time for Jon to emerge from the first round. He took a water bottle, and that was the only thing pressing enough to risk seeing himself in the mirror on the back of the closet door. He hurried to the sink, tile cold against his feet after the heat of carpet and layers of clothes. Splashing his face with cold water only made it more apparent how hot the tears dripping down his face were.

Jon kept the skirt behind a box of out-of-season clothes, where Daisy never had reason to look. He didn't realize his hands were shaking until he tried to put his step stool in place to grab it. He didn't fall, but closing the safety pin to keep it in place took a full minute.

His reflection didn't look like it did when he tried it on for the first time, when he paced out imagined arguments with Daisy or daydreamed about being on his own. She was going to realize he'd been crying, he looked awful. He spun, watching it bell out around him. White flowers on blue seemed faded and paltry.

The spin ended when he threw himself to his knees, heedless of rugburn. He leaned against the mirror and waited for the next round of crying to pass.

-

Jon got a job at a Waterstones near Daisy's station. It wasn't what he wanted to do long-term, but it seemed inoffensive enough. He couldn't bear staying home all day, every day, looking around and thinking about the size of his world. 

Amid all the rest, having a paycheck made him a bit shaky and fearful. Daisy had no access to his account, had no idea how much he had, and she refused to take money for anything she bought him. Takeout, things that caught his eye near the bookstore, and gifts couldn't make a dent in his growing savings. It felt like planning to leave again, like one day he'd find himself on a train without meaning to, realizing too late to protect himself from anything coming for him.

He was going to hide the skirt at the bottom of his bag and leave it in the first lost and found or donation box he could find. He couldn't keep it. Not when there was never going to be a day that he could wear something like that openly.

Every time Jon intended to hide it away and get rid of it for good, he found himself shucking his pajama bottoms and looking at his reflection in the skirt instead. The idea of another nothing in his life overwhelmed him and he hid it once again, too weak to do what he knew he must.

-

Phantoms of his own desires seemed to tease him from every corner. Customers came into the shop looking like Jon wished he could, he heard something on the news, he had to tear a sheet of scratch paper he was using to take notes on job openings into the smallest pieces he could manage when he looked down and found he'd absently doodled a self portrait.

Daisy had a friend. It was strange, after so long of it being just the two of them. It was stranger how fast PC Basira Hussain was integrated into their lives. Daisy was so paranoid, Jon didn't understand why this was an exception. He barely knew the names of most of her colleagues.

Basira was nice. She seemed to like Daisy well enough, but Jon wasn't sure it was the same way Daisy liked her. Daisy's affection was sudden and intense, the sort of thing you grew into rather than matching right out of the gate.

He imagined glances between them that made him hate himself. Daisy had a friend, which was wonderful. Daisy deserved to have more people in her life than just Jon. Basira was an equal in a way Jon could never be, capable and able to keep Daisy safe instead of things forever remaining one-sided. It wasn't right to mentally superimpose his own wants on the pair of them. They were just friends.

Basira did her best to get to know him, but Jon struggled to swallow his wanting and reciprocate.

-

It wasn't uncommon for Daisy to be called into work unexpectedly. They tried to match their schedules as closely as they could so that Jon wouldn't be left home alone too often, but he brushed off Daisy's fretting when it didn't work out.

"You're sure?" she asked over lunch, foot tapping and hands jittering.

"Of course I'm sure," Jon said. "They need you, I'm fine."

"Alright." Daisy always looked at him a bit askance when he said things like that. She thought he was being deprived or stifled, but Jon really didn't mind.

And Daisy would be gone for hours. Jon would spend the afternoon looking for a new job, for hours. All alone, no one to see.

It was a last hurrah. Jon wouldn't put the stolen skirt back into the closet, it would go straight to his bag. He left the clothes Daisy had seen him in on the bed so they wouldn't get wrinkled, digging out a shirt he thought went with the skirt better.

He looked nice. He wished he could take a picture. How hard could one polaroid be to hide? But he didn't think to grab the camera and wasn't sure how he'd explain that to Daisy, anyway.

He got choked up occasionally, thoughts wandering from job boards to his clothing. It was too nice. Jon wanted it so, so badly.

Between the skirt and his job search, nearly two years deep by now, Jon didn't pay as much attention to his surroundings as he should. He was too used to home being safe to remember that it wasn't safe like this. He used to jump out of his skin at the first lock turning downstairs.

Jon didn't hear Daisy until she was pounding up the stairs. He knew it was her. He knew the sound of her footsteps, and he knew with crushing certainty that he wasn't lucky enough to be caught like this by an intruder.

His feet were clumsy, standing and trying to go into his closet. He had to stop and turn back when dread shocked down his back and he remembered the clothes he wore that morning, incriminatingly spread over the bed. What was he wearing? Why did he change his clothes? Was everything alright? He couldn't stick to a story under interrogation like that. Daisy would mean well, but he'd babble it out eventually and he had no idea what would happen after that.

The safety pin nearly opened, but Daisy knocked on his door and Jon jumped, fumbling the pin. His hands shook as he tried to take it up again.

"Jon?" Daisy called through the door. He could hear the deadbolt click, so that he could let her in or come out as he pleased without having to knock on his own door. "They found someone else, I'm back!"

"Oh!" Jon called back, no idea what to say. He'd had this conversation a dozen times, what did he say? "That's... good!"

"Are you okay?" It made his hands jump again, a pricked finger bleeding on the cotton as he tried to free himself. "What was that, it sounded like you hurt yourself?"

"I'm fine!" he called, but he knew it was too strained. He gave up on the pin, backing into the closet, looking for a place to hide. The door opened.

"Jon?" Daisy asked, quieter without the door in the way. Jon's heaving lungs made a noise and he knew he was caught. He backed into a bar of clothes, made too uncoordinated by fear to get behind them for a scrambling second.

"Jon?" Daisy asked again, voice soft and tense. Worried for him. She tapped on the half-open closet door, and his chest was too clogged for him to answer that he was changing.

Please just go. Please leave him alone. 

He didn't want Daisy to hate him. 

He didn't want to lose his sister.

"What's wrong?" she asked as she poked her head in. Jon was kneeling on the floor, half-hidden behind clothes.

"I'm sorry!" he choked. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"What for?" She stepped slowly, trying not to startle him. Jon held himself too rigid to flinch, afraid it would give him away. She couldn't see the skirt for the moment, please let her just go. Tell her he was sick, tell her he was crying about Georgie, tell her something!

Daisy took Jon's hands and drew him to standing, looking at the blood on his finger. "You're hurt."

"I'm sorry," he begged. "I'll never do it again, I know it was wrong, I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault you pricked yourself," Daisy said, bemused. She leaned forward and wrapped an arm around him. "You're fine, we'll clean you up and get you good as new. Breathe with me, you're okay."

What, was it some sort of trap? Think she was unbothered until he broke with her internal script and was surprised to be hated? Was she luring him into breathing exercises he'd long considered an oasis of calm and safety so that she could shatter that?

"Daisy..." he breathed, head bowed. He didn't want to see her face. He leaned back and she released him, trembling in anticipation of her reaction.

"Hang on," Daisy said, and Jon's heart sank. "Is that my skirt? It's been gone ages, where did you find it?"

"I won't do it again. I'm sorry, I was just being stupid, it won't happen again. It- it's nothing, Daisy, please."

"What are you so afraid of?" she asked evenly.

Jon felt sick, swallowed to make sure he wouldn't retch instead of speak. "You hate me."

Daisy pulled him close, and he tried to focus on the comfort of the embrace instead of his fear. He wanted to remember it. "Never. Never, Jon. Why do you think that?"

"I know it's wrong." It wasn't, it wasn't, he hated the lie.

"I'm hardly about to press charges for theft," she said, too light for the maelstrom in Jon's throat.

He shook his head. "Just... beat me or boot me out. Don't lie, please don't lie."

"What?" It was sharp, shocked somehow, and he flinched. He heard Daisy take a long, deep breath of her own. "Come here. Let's sit on the bed."

Jon curled up into a ball on his comforter, in the center of a room Daisy cared about him enough to remodel carefully to any taste she could get him to voice. Loss tore at him. "I'm sorry," he whimpered.

"Jon," Daisy said, deliberately calm, "tell me exactly what you think you have to apologize for."

"I took it," he whispered. "And, and I'm a man. I'm not supposed to."

"I don't care about what you're supposed to do or be," Daisy said, suddenly squeezing Jon so tight it terrified him while he was still trying to sort out what she was doing. "If it makes you happy, you should do it. We can go shopping for skirts you don't have to pin to your size as soon as we have time."

"What?" It was barely a sound. It didn't make sense.

"What made you think I'd be angry?" Daisy asked, so faint and hurt it finally shocked his brain into considering the evidence. "What have I said or done to make you think that?"

Jon jerked, and she released him. Daisy's eyes were wet when he looked up. "I don't..." he shook his head aimlessly. "Police don't like people like, like that."

Daisy drew in a tight breath, face creased in suppressed emotion. When she didn't fill the silence, Jon went on. He wasn't sure he could stop, all the things he'd kept locked up for so long rushing through a crack in the dam.

"I used to wander away from home," he said. Did Daisy know that? He couldn't remember. "The police would pick me up and take me to the station to wait for Gran. It happened a lot, and they'd forget I was there. It was interesting, I liked listening to things adults didn't mean for me to hear. And they... and some of my friends... and the news..." How did you piece together those shapes, turn them into something that got sympathy instead of satisfaction at bloody justice carried out?

Daisy took his hands in hers. "I don't care what you wear. I don't care if you're a man or not. I don't care who you date. I care about you, Jon. That's all."

Jon tore his hands away and covered his face, tears finally breaking out beyond his ability to turn them into words. Daisy leaned forward slowly and put her arms around him, only holding tight when she was sure he didn't want to shrug her off.

-

"I got a new job," Daisy said a few weeks later.

"What? You love your job!" Jon whirled, flinging water from the colander he hadn't set down.

Her face was grave. "Not more than I want you to feel safe."

Jon gaped, unable to find words. It didn't make sense. She couldn't!

"It isn't good for me," she added in an undertone. "It was time for a change. It was probably time a long time ago."

His mind whirled. She'd never said anything. Jon had no idea what she could mean. "But-"

"I don't want you to be afraid of me," she said. Her voice was low and stressed.

Jon wanted to object... he didn't know how, but Daisy seemed set on it. He swallowed his voice. He knew he couldn't change her mind, so he didn't try.

She quit for him?

Chapter Text

Martin didn't really register the moments between seeing the worms start to flood through the hole in the wall and reaching the room Jon offered to let him stay in, except for the shouted order to go there.

"Bites!" Daisy barked once they were through the door and had file boxes stacked haphazardly against it. Martin couldn't bring himself to regret that she made it in before they shut the door; he thought he might hate Daisy, but no one deserved the worms.

Jon moaned, and Daisy snatched him away. His leg was bleeding, and the tape recorder from his office was clutched in his hands.

"Wait!" Martin rooted around in his pocket and was glad he found the corkscrew before he looked up to see Daisy giving him a hateful glare with a pocketknife in her hand. She snatched the corkscrew out of his hands before his numb fingers dropped it.

Tim smacked Martin on the back, and he stomped on the worm that fell as hard as he could, stomach flipping. Sasha said in her statement she didn't realize she'd been bitten until Michael started pulling the worm out of her arm; how would they know when they were safe?

Before he could worry too much, Martin spotted another worm, and all his mental faculties went to smacking it out of Sasha's hair and stomping it dead without adding to their roster of likely concussions.

Martin was just about satisfied that he'd checked everywhere he could when Sasha shouted, "Tim!"

He turned fast enough to see Tim's face change as he turned and spotted the wriggling line under his skin that Sasha saw. Tim sat down fast, and Martin was sure if he hadn't he'd have fainted instead.

"Daisy!" He meant to get the corkscrew back, but Daisy charged over herself, corkscrew in hand. Martin latched onto Sasha's arm; he wished he could say he was trying to hold her back from attacking Daisy, but it was more his own desire for something solid to hold on to as Daisy started digging the corkscrew into Tim's arm.

"Drinking... in the Archives?" Tim asked, trying to joke through the pain and fear.

"Shut up," Daisy said. "Don't move."

"I was worried... well, if I wound up needing a place before the worms stopped hanging around the Institute, I thought I'd want a way to get them out. I thought about a knife, but it seemed like a corkscrew would be more effective. They go in straight lines, and they aren't very fast." Martin stared at his shoes, unsure why the explanation made him feel so ashamed. Everything he'd worried about was plausible, clearly, so it shouldn't be embarrassing to admit to it. 

"Good idea," Daisy said gruffly, shaking the dead worm off the tip of the corkscrew and stomping on it. 

"Can the worms-" Sasha started. 

"It's climate controlled," Jon said, a bit loopier than his voice usually sounded. "Soundproof. Sealed safer than we ever were."

There was a lot of blood down the back of him. Martin tried to think to anything in their material on Jane Prentiss about whether the worms had ever been observed with a taste for blood beyond what they encountered burrowing into a person.

"The vents?" Sasha asked.

"Not yet," Daisy said, shining a penlight into the grate of the nearest one. "And they won't fit many." Sasha still looked uneasy, but she turned to the window set into the door, leaning over their makeshift barricade to see through instead of mauling the point into a satisfactory shape.

"Boxes," he said, even though no one else would understand what he meant. He wandered over to one of the boxes he hid CO2 in instead of trying to explain what he meant. He would have liked to move faster, but his brain felt like it was trapped by something sticky and wouldn't give his limbs the order. The others stared as he started lining up extinguishers.

"How..." If it weren't for the blood and the worms and the everything, Jon's face as he stared in bafflement would be adorable.

"I didn't want the worms to know they were there," Martin said. It sounded stupid out loud.

"Oh," Jon said, and Martin didn't know whether the subdued reaction was part of how he reacted to fear generally, or because something really wrong was happening to his brain from the blow to the head.

"So we'll be set if any do make it inside," Tim said, trying to make it sound upbeat and largely failing.

"But no one knows we're down here," Martin said, feeling like he was admitting something dangerous. He ambled back toward Tim, out of extinguishers.

"'No signal in the Archives,'" Tim agreed, yanking off his tie and passing it over to Martin. He tied it around the wound in Tim's upper arm as well as he could.

"Why did you go after the recorder?" Sasha asked. Martin turned, trying to catch her train of thought. She was looking over her shoulder at Jon, who was sitting on the cot next to Daisy.

"I don't want to be a mystery," he said, looking down at it.

They didn't say anything, but Martin knew all three of them were thinking about how he already was.

"Do you think the worms will go up into the rest of the Institute?" Tim asked.

"Doesn't matter," Daisy said. "It's after five, everyone else left ages ago."

"So no help until morning," Jon said, leaning hard into her side. Martin's hands itched to tear him away.

"Not necessarily," Daisy said.

"What?" Martin asked, snappier than he'd like but beyond sick of her acting like she had all the answers. "What is it?"

"Anyone carrying an ignition source in the Archives?" she asked. They all shook their heads. "Anyone know where to activate the CO2 manually?"

"We'd have to get past the worms to use it, and if they are in the rest of the Institute we'd have to run around looking for it with them in the way," Tim said.

"We can't go out there," Sasha said.

"I know where it is," Daisy said, slapping her hands on her thighs and standing. "If you all cover me getting out the door, I can set it off."

"And you wouldn't leave us to be found dead in the morning," Martin said. "That wouldn't be convenient for you, or anything." Tim pinched him, but he couldn't hold everything in. There was too much, and something had to spill out.

"Jon's not coming," Daisy said, voice hard. "Look at him. If the CO2 doesn't go off, it's because I'm dead. That wouldn't be convenient for you, or anything."

"It doesn't matter!" Sasha barked. Her voice went quiet again almost instantly. "I see Prentiss."

"What is she doing?" Jon asked, as Martin flailed toward Sasha trying to pull her away from the door.

"Destroying files. And bringing more worms. I don't think..."

Jon looked like he might want to keep asking questions, but decided against it. Daisy went over to look with Sasha, and went back to Jon.

"They can't get in here," she said. Jon looked at her like she was the answer to everything. It made Martin sick. "We wait. No one's dying here today."

Martin tried to believe her. It wasn't as if he had a better option.

-

Sasha's intermittent reports from the window, which Martin desperately wanted her to stop but knew were too valuable to ask, mainly drove home that things were getting worse, not better. Daisy's plan was insane, and Martin wasn't even sure he trusted her to carry it out, but it felt like they had missed their window by trying to wait it out. 

Daisy seemed to agree; she didn't say as much, but she started pacing like a tiger whose cage Martin was truly displeased to be sharing, looking around like she was lost in a space that felt increasingly cramped and tapping and pushing on things, trying to find a seam even though she already said she thought they were safe.

"What statement were you talking about earlier?" Sasha asked when she was taking a break from the window to sit against the wall beside the door. "Jon? You said something about a statement."

"Sasha," Martin warned, because for some reason the new, angry, criminal Daisy seemed to vastly prefer him over either of the others.

Jon shrank against Daisy's side. "Manchester."

Martin tried to think of what he could be talking about, but he felt too fried to be remembering everything he should. The only statement related to Manchester he could think of seemed like an unlikely candidate. He wasn't sure anyone could read a statement from a man sure his ice cream van was haunted because he kept feeling cold spots and come away distressed. He barely believed the ice cream man himself might have been distressed.

Daisy knew what he was talking about. Martin watched her arm spasm around Jon, pulling him against her side even tighter.

"...the vampire guy?" Tim asked.

Martin felt far too stupid to be employed as a researcher. It was hardly a new feeling, but it didn't usually come with this flavor of guilt. He'd done the research on Trevor Herbert's statement, and he remembered the man dying in the break room. How could he forget?

"Jon?" Sasha prompted.

"Shut it," Daisy snapped. They all flinched back, and Sasha's head made an audible impact with the wall behind her that made Martin and Tim cringe, though thankfully she didn't start bleeding to match Jon.

"I was homeless for a bit as a teenager," Jon said. Martin watched anxiously for Daisy to take her mood out on him. "In Manchester."

They waited, but there was nothing else. Daisy glared them away from any followup questions, like why he didn't go to the police if he was homeless that soon after Daisy kidnapped him. Sasha looked like she was hard-pressed to resist asking.

They fell silent again.

-

A few lifetimes later, Daisy got up to look out the window for herself. As much as she could, at least. It was mostly covered in worms, now.

"Right," she said, voice tight. "Right."

"What?" Martin asked, because no one else seemed willing to.

"Plan B."

"...I thought manually activating the CO2 was plan B," Tim said.

Daisy shot him a nasty look. "Plan C, then, if it's that important to you. Get up. As many extinguishers as you can carry."

They all scrambled to their feet, but before Martin could pick up more than one of the smaller extinguishers Daisy was in front of him. "Take Jon."

Martin edged around her, giving the widest berth he could, but Daisy just started following her own instructions and gathering her own supply of extinguishers.

"Jon's hurt, remember?" Sasha said, frayed. "He can't go through that!"

"Nope!" Daisy said. She spoke it like she was a gun and the word was a bullet that could kill all three of them and Prentiss on top.

"Daisy?" Jon asked, leaning heavily on Martin. If they were meant to go anywhere, Martin didn't see how. Jon could barely stand on his own, between his head and his leg.

They all shouted wordless cries of alarm when Daisy hefted an extinguisher at the wall, putting a dent in it.

"Stop!" Sasha said, trying to pull her away, but Daisy just shrugged her off and hit the wall again. Jon's eyes, when Martin glanced his way, were huge, just as surprised as any of them.

"Prentiss came from somewhere, didn't she?" Daisy said, calm tone at odds with the furious impact of the extinguisher.

"That- the dirt by the foundations," Martin said. He hadn't seen though the hole Daisy whacked in that wall, but there couldn't be anything else there, could there?

"It went through..." Sasha said, slowing and stepping back to the extinguisher she dropped to grab Daisy.

"All the way through?" Tim asked. "There isn't- it's an exterior wall."

"It was just plasterboard. There was..." Sasha's eyes were fixed on the hole Daisy struck through to somewhere dark and musty, a faint breeze whistling through the gap.

"And this one sounded hollow," Daisy said, a flicker of self-satisfaction before she went back to widening the hole.

"If that's where Prentiss came from, does that mean there are more worms back there?" Tim asked.

"Guess we'll see!" Daisy said. He hurried closer, holding an extinguisher at the ready for a second flood instead of trying to pull her away. 

The seal was already broken; they might as well see where it went.

Tim stepped up to help kick the wall- just plasterboard, same as Jon's office apparently- into a big enough hole to walk through, and then they were all staring, at the precipice of somewhere huge and dark. A few worms raced toward them, much faster than the ones in the Archives, but Tim sprayed them before they could get too close.

"Stick together," Daisy said. She pulled out the penlight she used to check the vent, clipping it to her shirt so she could carry more CO2. It seemed tremendously inadequate against the yawning dark of the tunnels beyond the Archives.

Chapter Text

"We don't. We find an exit," Daisy said.

"And if there isn't an exit?" Martin asked. 

Sasha nodded along, though in the dark and at the back of the party there was no way for anyone to see. Moving made the folder shift stickily against her back, already adhered by enough sweat that it would probably sting to remove if she wasn't careful. It was right side up and safe, that was all that mattered. She worried when she tucked it into her waistband and tucked her blouse back in over it that it might jar loose, but it barely shifted.

"Prentiss got down here," Daisy said. "Unless you think she walked down through the Archives."

Martin shuddered a bit, but Daisy was in front of him and couldn't see.

"There's-" Sasha started, meaning to say something about the jumble of styles and materials and the orphaned doors that indicated that the tunnels stopped being designed for human ease ages ago, if they ever were. 

"Worms!"

With only Daisy's penlight to see by, things were a light-headed fog for a bit. It jumped around as Daisy moved, worms flickering in and out of Sasha's sight.

Sasha watched the floor for stragglers with her heart in her throat. They worms would be nearly invisible in the gloom, with the light so far away. She dragged Jon over to the wall, hoping that leaning against it might at least keep her from stumbling into the middle of the action and tripping one of the others. She was already light-headed from all the CO2, and if she managed to hit her head, too, they might as well just lie down and wait for the worms. They were barely moving forward with one invalid.

"There!" She twitched her head up, trying to find what Tim was shouting about, but his voice bounced and echoed until she had no idea where he, where the threat, was. She wasn't sure if the pounding she heard was footsteps, her heartbeat, or an incipient headache.

-

Sasha held onto the hand Jon had slung over her shoulders, trying to comfort them both. She still had one small extinguisher, having relinquished the larger one to Daisy since she was the lead and had control of the light. Daisy had fewer things to carry, with the light clipped to her and one of the extinguishers she'd been carrying abandoned empty behind them. 

Tim and Martin had plenty. They would be fine, because they were both in better shape than her and didn't have any deadweight to carry.

None of them were entirely helpless.

Not yet, at least.

"Alright back there?" Daisy asked, for the third time since losing Tim and Martin.

"Fine," Sasha panted. Jon was closer to deadweight every minute, and she didn't know when or even whether to tell Daisy so. The only thing she knew to do was get him to a doctor, and that was hardly news to Daisy.

"Need a light?" Daisy asked.

Sasha gritted her teeth, but luckily Jon answered for her. "We shouldn't waste power. That'll go out eventually, and we don't know how long it's going to take to find an exit."

Daisy huffed, a bit reluctant, but didn't push.

The tunnels weren't level. Nice enough when they slanted downhill, but murder on the uphill. It couldn't be a grade of more than a couple degrees, but she was carrying Jon. If she ever got out of the tunnels, Sasha was joining a gym.

"Turning left," Daisy said. 

Sasha didn't comment on the new habit. She didn't need the warning yet, but she thought she might eventually. She felt heavy and clumsy.

"Turning- worms!" Daisy said a few minutes later, voice going deep and authoritative on the warning.

Sasha fell back, dragging Jon as his knees gave out for a moment. She fumbled her phone out. With only Daisy, there was less between them and the worms and just as much between them and the light. Tripping right into a horde of hungry worms would be a really stupid way to die.

A few silver streaks caught in the corner of her eye, and she had to force her fingers to unbend from the extinguisher when she was sure they were dead. Daisy seemed to have moved a ways up the tunnel, still spraying.

The turn they were about to take was empty when Sasha shone her torch down it. So was a curve slanting away from the route Daisy meant to take.

Sasha glanced at Jon. He didn't seem focused on more than staying upright.

Daisy's light skittered over the wall, opposite the bend. Sasha gasped, hissed, "Worms!" and staggered off as fast as she could get them moving.

-

They lurched on for what felt like years. Daisy had no better chance of happening upon a way out than they did, but her absence was more disconcerting than Sasha anticipated.

"We should turn back," Jon said, head no longer hanging.

"We can't," Sasha panted. "There were-"

"Worms, you said. But-"

"She's got a better chance back there than we do," Sasha snapped, feeling bad but desperate to get him to stop wasting both their breath. They only had one small extinguisher left, they couldn't afford to keep wandering around waiting for worms to find them longer because they got sidetracked.

Jon nodded. "Alright."

They didn't make it much farther before they had to tuck themselves against a wall and hope no worms showed up while they caught their breath.

"Tape recorder," Sasha wheezed. She was beginning to think that stopping was the wrong choice. It seemed so much harder to start than it had seemed to continue when she convinced Jon to stop.

"What? Why?" he held it to his chest with both arms, the line of sweat where the pair of them had been pressed together freezing in the air of the tunnels as they separated a moment.

"Light. Or an extinguisher. I can..."

"We can't leave it!" he said, more lively than he'd been in ages. Was it only a few hours ago Sasha watched him bang his head as he tumbled to the floor?

"Not saying we should," she said, drawing her waning resources into sounding authoritative and energetic. "I have the folder under my shirt. I can stick the recorder-"

She stopped, watching him wiggle the recorder under his own shirt. On second thought, it might make leaning forward to keep their balance up the inclines more difficult, and if Jon was happy to keep it there it would be just as good to have his back a bit protected. She had no idea what they'd do if one of them was bitten, with neither knife or corkscrew to pull it out. Hit their skin with a concentrated dose of their shrinking CO2 supply?

"Let's go," she said when he had his clothing back in order.

"I'm not stupid," he said a few panting meters later. "I chose to stay with Daisy."

Sasha grit her teeth, trying not to revive the argument when they really couldn't afford it. She couldn't hold the question back. "Why?" 

"She's my sister," he said softly. "That means something to me, it's not..."

"What changed?" she asked after a moment of consideration. He sounded better, talking, less like he was about to pass out. Hopefully the gamble paid off and he stayed that way.

Jon laughed under his breath. "Manchester. Ought to..."

"Hm?"

"Statement," he said absently.

"Why were you...?"

"Homeless?" Jon coughed, wet and heavy, but he stopped and started talking again before she could suggest a pause. "Gran died, and I didn't want to go to a home."

Before Sasha could pick apart everything that implied, they were hit by a train.

-

The first thing she was aware of was how much her knees hurt, and the shoulder on the side she wasn't using to support Jon. The second thing was hope that the crunch she heard wasn't any of the bones that felt a fair bit less intact than they did when she got to work this morning.

"Oh my god!" Martin said, and she was confused to hear him before she remembered why.

"M'n?" Jon said, so he was probably still alive, too.

"Are you alright?" Martin asked, and Sasha heard feet against the ground. She tried to at least sit up herself.

"Is Tim with you?" she panted.

"Sash!" Tim said. "I'm so sorry, we-"

"It's fine. Too dark down here to..." where did her mobile go?

"Worms?" Jon asked.

"Hm?" Martin said. "Oh." He sounded like all the life and hope got drained out of him between syllables.

"Oh?" she asked.

"We found Gertrude," Tim said quietly.

"What?" Jon asked, and there was a scrabbling sound that culminated in a crash she suspected meant the crunch she heard was the tape recorder. A light turned on near him, blinding as it moved over her, leaving blotchy afterimages of nothing dancing before her eyes.

"Got the tape!" Martin said. When Sasha got her eyes to work again, the silhouette of Jon looked significantly cheered to hear so. "Oh, and-"

Martin's light fell on a shattered rectangle of glass that used to be Sasha's phone. A few optimistic attempts to turn it on failed, and she shoved it into her pocket. The folder was still sticking to her back, at least.

"Sorry," Martin said. Sasha's brain struggled to chase down what he was apologizing for.

"Gertrude?" Sasha asked, managing to get all the way up onto her feet. She'd never realized how unnecessarily long her legs were, but surely this was excessive?

"Her body." Martin's voice trembled over the words.

Tim passed his phone up to Sasha blindly, staggering to his feet. Passing it back to him once he was up made the light whirl sickeningly around the space while they tried to layer their hands together enough for both of them to be confident in his grip.

"I think we found the Archives again," Tim said, light sweeping back to something behind her instead of seeking out a path forward.

Sasha turned, following the beam of his light. There was a distinct square on the ceiling, just low enough to be decently easy to climb up to, with a handle. "Or somewhere else street level," she suggested hopefully.

"Do we open it?" Martin asked.

"If..." Jon seemed to lose track of his mouth for a bit before managing to continue. Sasha's head smarted sympathetically. Served her right. "If it's the Archives, Prentiss is still up there."

"No one to set the CO2 off," Tim said grimly.

"Would we rather..." Martin trailed off.

"Rather what?" Jon demanded before Sasha could.

"Die in the Archives or down here!" he snapped back.

"If we run out of CO2, we won't be able to go fast enough to escape the worms here," Tim said. "I run faster than any of you, and they're still faster than me."

"You certainly ran away from the group fast enough," Sasha crabbed at him. She sighed. "Sorry."

The others didn't ask why her fuse was so short, and she didn't tell them. If it stayed in her head, no one would ever have to know she split off from Daisy on purpose.

"They were slower in the Archives," Martin said. "We might..."

The hope hung in the air unspoken. If they named it, it might break.

"All in favor?" Jon asked, subdued.

"Aye," Sasha said, knowing she wasn't thinking it through as much as she should. Her head hurt, and almost anything sounded better than the tunnels. She wasn't afraid of the dark, but it seemed to drain all hope and optimism from her head like a vampire at her throat.

"Aye," Martin breathed. She would have taken him for the most reluctant of the four of them.

"Tim?" Jon asked.

"You?" Tim said. He had the best chance of any of them. Martin was the only one still uninjured, but Tim was the one used to endurance trials like going on weekend hikes.

"Aye," Jon whispered. "She might not even be near the trapdoor."

"Aye," Tim said, nodding. He passed his phone to Sasha, and she fumbled trying to hold it and pull Jon back. He was too short to open the trapdoor, and Martin edged her out in height.

"On three," Martin said.

"One," Tim said. He nodded, as if passing it back to Martin.

"Two."

"Three!"

Worms rained against the ground.

Chapter Text

"I've got it!" Jon skidded past her on sock feet, snagging the keys from the table.

"Well I'm not about to answer wrist-deep in a chicken," Daisy said. That was why she took them off her belt in the first place.

"How else is Basira supposed to know you're ready to feed her after she's worked up an appetite saving the world?" he teased.

She knew he didn't mean anything by it. Daisy shouldn't mean anything by it. Not now. It felt unfair to Basira to consider it.

"Who's saving the world?" Basira asked, the tail end of Jon's sentence making it out as he opened the door.

"You," Jon said, smiling but beating a hasty retreat to clip the keys back to the carabiner on Daisy's hip. It was a good sign that he was so eager to answer the door for Basira at all, even if they hadn't quite decided what to think of each other yet. Daisy hadn't expected to get to have Basira at all. She shouldn't have stayed with the police so long when she knew it fed the worst parts of herself, never mind the impact on Jon, but...

"Hey, Daisy!"

But staying with the police meant getting to meet Basira all over again.

Daisy wasn't good for people. Everything to do with Jon had made that clear. She was something corrosive, and it didn't matter what she thought about someone, just that they were close to her. She burned them up. 

"Hey, Basira."

But it was Basira. A tiny chance to see her again, a glimpse she'd been sure would end the moment she quit. They'd hardly had time to build up anything like they had in her first life, there was no reason for Basira to hang around.

But there she was, sitting on Daisy's couch and meeting up at least once a week to share her lunch break. Still in Daisy's life, in spite of it all.

"Anything funny?" Jon asked, his current go-to to break the ice with Basira. The first draft was for something weird, too used to Daisy to realize how it would land with Basira, but luckily he mentioned it to Daisy in time to nudge him to find an alternative.

"I wish," she groaned.

"Do you?" Daisy called from the kitchen. She was sweating, trying to wrangle dinner into being ready sometime in the next week. Why did she decide to try something new, again?

"I'd take it over parking tickets any day!" Daisy's heart swelled at the sight of Basira's smile.

And she didn't even know what they were having for dinner yet. It was Basira's favorite, if Daisy managed to pull it off.

-

Daisy wasn't good for people, and even knowing she was more human than she was at this age the first time she was too close to the Hunt. It felt less pressing, with years between her and the memory of a clean system, but her points then were all true. Just because she couldn't quite manage to abandon it entirely- not with Jon to look after, not with so many things she wouldn't be able to stop if she starved herself to death, not with all her excuses- didn't mean she wanted to give herself over to monstrosity again.

But Basira fed that. Less, without Daisy as a coworker, but she did.

All the celebration and mock arrogance of making it to the table with dinner not only edible but recognizable vanished when Daisy saw Basira catch sight of something on Jon's arm when he passed her the salt. 

She watched Basira decide not to say anything.

She watched Basira watch Jon's wrists whenever she could, building up an image of the totality of the scarring.

Of the source of the scarring.

Basira slept over, but she didn't say anything to Jon. She didn't say anything to Daisy. Whatever conclusion she drew from the marks on Jon's wrists, unmistakably from restraints once you took the time to examine the whole, it wasn't something Basira thought she needed to get to the bottom of. Basira always was good at letting Daisy's red flags go unremarked.

Apparently some things never changed.

Chapter Text

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Daisy stood, bleeding and pacing and empty, in the mess she'd made of the dinner Jon had been so proud to announce and plan for a long time after he took off up the stairs. What did the mess matter in the grand scheme of things? What did her feet? Everything was ruined, and it was her own fault.

She should go up and apologize to Jon, but she didn't even know whether he would want it. Later. Later, she'd apologize. Tracking him down after he'd fled from her in terror was almost certainly the wrong thing to do, right?

Eventually, she put away the numb horror. Her body handled the mess of food and blood mechanically, her mind adrift in the past. Would her reaction have Elias looking in? One last way to betray Jon, for the road.

What had she done? What hadn't she done? There were so many ways that she could have stopped this, and she missed every single one.

Was that her, being so careless?

Did the Web still wants its broken world, full of cracks it didn't get the chance to exploit before Daisy ruined it all for them, for once?

-

She decided she couldn't blame the Web for any of it. It was her choices, her failures, her selfishness all the way. If they manipulated her, Daisy had done far more to Jon under her own steam. Trying to weasel out of some of the responsibility wouldn't help as much as accepting it and moving forward.

Nothing she remembered offered a new way to escape the Institute. The Archives were the only department where the clause trapping people in their contracts was so absolute, and where it was enforced across the board. The others had terms Elias could lift, and occasionally did, to give the Institute more of the appearance of a normal workplace. All it took was a reason he felt served the Institute's facade more than the employee served its goals.

Jon was hired as a researcher, just like the first time. They could try.

It wouldn't work, but they would try. Jon was too perfect a specimen for Elias' Ritual for him to let him go so easily, but Daisy couldn't just give in.

(Jon was a far better candidate under her influence than he had been without her, and Elias wouldn't have let him quit his job in Research if he'd tried then.)

Trying to come up with a reason that would force Elias to let Jon quit or lose a good bit of his genial reputation was probably easier than trying to convince Jon to stab out his eyes.

-

Watching Jon skip out of the Institute smiling felt perverse. Daisy's efforts to get him away from the Institute had sputtered out, and now she watched Jon cheerily walk in and out of the lion's mouth every day. At least he'd stopped going stiff and frightened when she picked him up.

She should have killed Elias the moment she was coherent enough to know she should. What did Daisy care about the employees if Jon and Basira weren't among them? She had a chance, and she wasted it.

Now all she had was the promise that Jon wouldn't sign anything without her review, and the will to keep killing whoever Elias put in the job instead until he gave up.

-

The Institute gave her the shivers, no matter how much she was exposed to it. Jon didn't work through lunches or after hours, but that remained Daisy's only victory. Standing in front of the building she hated so much was never any better.

Jon bounced out beaming, and Daisy couldn't help smiling back. Without the influence of the Archives she hadn't interfered in his budding friendships with Tim and Sasha; it was good for Jon to have people aside from her and Basira, and she didn't think they'd turn on him if they all stayed in Research. Even if Stoker started trying to get away, Jon wasn't his boss, he was a peer, more ally than target.

"What's up?" she asked as Jon reached her.

"I'll tell you at home!" Jon said, and launched into a story of Tim's antics before Daisy could reply.

He was doing well. He was never afraid to go to work. She might be able to coax him out of his shell again soon, with Sasha and Tim as her unlikely allies.

It wasn't perfect, but it was good. It was livable.

-

"Do I get to know the secret yet?" Daisy asked as Jon skidded down the stairs from his room on her heels and slid over the hardwood to the dining table.

"Sit down!" he said, eyes sparkling.

Daisy started moving in exaggerated slow motion. Jon was too busy laughing to notice her proximity to the polaroid until it was too late. It was a good photo. A happy one.

"Come on!" Jon laughed, head lolling back dramatically.

"I'm coming!" she said.

"Guess what!" Jon said the second Daisy sat down.

"What?" A party he was invited to? Praise from his boss (hopefully the one beneath Elias, not the man himself)? A book he was excited for?

"I got a promotion!" Jon grinned and started rattling through facts Daisy didn't hear.

"Did you sign anything?" she interrupted when her face stopped feeling numb from icy shock.

"What?" Jon asked, energy dropping a bit.

"You didn't sign the contract," she said.

Jon gave her a confused look. "Why wouldn't I sign the contract? It's a big step up, and an opportunity I couldn't get anywhere-"

"You promised."

Jon's eyes started to echo some of Daisy's own fear back at her. He wasn't smiling anymore. "What?"

"You promised you wouldn't take a promotion without talking to me first," she said, trying to cling to control instead of blowing up and scaring him like she did when he got the job.

Jon's mouth hung open, and his eyes darted, following her every movement. "I didn't. I didn't say that."

"You did!" She said, hands clenched around the edge of the table in front of her to keep her anchored and still in her seat.

Jon flinched back. "I didn't, when-"

"When you took the job at the Institute."

She didn't stand, or gesture, or shout, but suddenly she wasn't looking at her little brother. She was looking at the Archivist, pinned against a tree with her hand digging his own knife into his neck. He shook his head. "I don't- I don't remember that. I'm sorry, Daisy, I don't remember, I'm sorry."

Daisy's muscles turned to pudding and she collapsed in, trying to keep from keening in despair and grief. She moved toward Jon, but he didn't seem to see her, staring at where her eyes had been, whispering apologies and swearing he didn't remember the promise.

"It's alright," she said softly. He was stiff when she slowly leaned in to embrace him, but he didn't flinch. He didn't seem to realize Daisy was there at all until she had him against her shoulder, and he collapsed in kind.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. It's not your fault. I'm sorry, Jon, you're alright. I'm not angry, it isn't your fault. I'm sorry, you're safe."

But he wasn't.

-

Daisy stared at her bedroom ceiling in the dark, sleep too far away to imagine.

Jon spent his first weeks at the Institute small and afraid because of her. Everything fell apart so quickly because he didn't have solid relationships with his assistants. At every stage, it was a victory for Elias if Jon was alone.

He wasn't afraid of her when she asked if he wanted her to lock his door. He smiled, or tried to. He was confused, shaken, but not as afraid as he was then. She couldn't hear him crying, just muttering to himself like he was trying to work out a solution to some problem.

None of the assistants were worth her brave, brilliant little brother's life, but if it didn't mean letting something hurt Jon instead Daisy would tolerate and protect all of them. Jon wasn't dead in a hospital bed or buried beside her. She had time to come up with a solution. She could stall and thwart anything that might push him out of his humanity. He valued her opinion; he would change how he was working if she suggested something that sounded plausibly like a useful approach to archiving.

There was still time. She had time. She could think up something to save Jon before it was too late.

She could take care of him, if they reached a breaking point and the only option left was to convince him to blind himself before the Eye was too a part of himself for it to work.

Daisy would do it. She could do it.

She had to.

Chapter Text

He didn't know if it was being dredged up by fresh trauma, or if it was just the same effect watching Jon and Daisy together had always had on him, but Tim kept dreaming about Danny. They were different, now. It wasn't just seeing what happened to Danny happen all over again, or the cruel dreams where he saved Danny, or came much closer to saving him than he did in reality.

Jon was onstage, tearing away Danny's skin. Danny tore away Jon's skin, and writhing heaps of worms came from beneath. Danny knocked at the door, squirming bodies where his eyes used to be. Danny fought and cried out like Tim imagined Jon did, and Daisy dragged him away.

Tim skinned them both.

Martin and Sasha weren't the ones screaming all three of them awake any less than Tim was, but they seemed more able to set the horrors aside once they were awake. Sasha was good at putting things like that out of mind when she needed to, and the concussion's effect on her ability to focus might've helped. Maybe Martin dealt better because he had fewer memories his mind could truly turn against him, or because he hadn't known Jon as long as Tim and Sasha had.

"Move."

Tim jumped, nearly dropping his plate to shatter in the sink he meant to place it in. He hurried to set it down and flattened himself aside, away from Daisy.

Or maybe Martin's dark circles weren't as deep as Tim's because Daisy didn't go out of her way to terrorize him.

Tim hurried to help prod Sasha back upstairs to get dressed, letting Martin put away her dishes as well as his own. It wouldn't be long before Sasha was healed enough for Daisy to deign to explain herself to them, but Tim would rather have Sasha tear him apart for acting like she was incapable than have Daisy actually tear him apart.

Jon watched them, brow furrowed, but when his eyes met Tim's he looked back down at his breakfast.

-

"Tim?" Jon whispered. He was leaning on the door frame to the guest room, eyes darting anxiously over the laundry Tim was folding back into the overnight bag Daisy packed for him. There was a dresser with more than enough space, but this was temporary and he didn't want to imply otherwise, even to himself.

"Hey." Tim was careful to smile perfectly, wiping away any hint of anxiety or doubt. Jon didn't need that, with everything else going on.

Jon took the answer as permission to slip into the room, shutting the door behind him. He didn't meet Tim's eyes, much less return the smile. "Please leave Daisy alone."

Tim's expression and hands faltered. The socks he'd been folding together leapt from his hands to fall to the comforter. "Jon, she kidn-"

"Stop making her angry," Jon said, voice raising to interrupt him. He glanced back at the door. "Stop talking to her. There's nothing you can do right now, and..."

Tim abandoned the laundry to fully face Jon, though he didn't try to force eye contact. "Why me?"

Jon flicked his eyes to Tim for a split second. "You're the only one-"

"Why me?" Tim said again. He wondered, too late, if interrupting Jon would be as bad as trying to force him to see Daisy for what she was before "hearing her out."

Jon frowned. "I don't know." It looked like it pained him to admit it, but the dissatisfaction on his face wasn't entirely aimed at Tim.

"Martin was the one living with you," Tim prodded. Jon certainly seemed to resent Martin the most on that basis.

"I said I don't know, Tim," Jon said. He sounded tired. He looked ancient. "She won't say."

"You asked?" It was a struggle to keep his tone neutral. He didn't think Jon would've bothered. He wasn't sure Jon should have bothered.

"She said she'd explain later," Jon said. "With everything else."

"So you're just as in the dark as the rest of us!" Tim said. "Fantastic." 

He regretted it almost immediately, regretted coming down so hard on Daisy when he knew Jon wouldn't be receptive, but Jon didn't seem upset enough to be worth drawing more attention to it with an apology.

He wanted to shake Jon. He knew it wouldn't help, but he didn't understand how Jon could be so willfully blind. Jon disdained statements if he could poke the most microscopic holes in them. It felt like talking to someone else entirely, seeing him grant Daisy endless grace.

"Leave her alone. Please." Jon chewed his cheek.

Tim sighed. "I'm doing my best to stay out of her way, for the moment."

"Thank you," Jon whispered. The door was open and he was gone before Tim could drag him to a more neutral subject. Running to Daisy, probably.

How were they supposed to convince Jon they could be trusted once Daisy's house of cards toppled if they could barely speak to him?

Chapter Text

She hadn't quite been able to follow with the exact outline of the temporary truce Tim and Martin had negotiated with Daisy, and they had better things to discuss than Daisy's precise verbiage, but since she had healed enough to follow the thread of a conversation an endless curiosity had been growing within her. The bits of the story they had from Jon were as cruel and bloody as they'd anticipated, and Sasha knew she shouldn't want more details. This was her friend, not an airport thriller.

Morbid curiosity welled within her regardless. Nothing about Daisy added up, and the fact that she and Jon had had encounters with the supernatural before Jon worked at the Institute made the curiosity a hungry thing in Sasha's chest, scrabbling against her ribcage, begging to be freed to pick clean Jon's bones until answers bled out. There were so many fresh mysteries to unravel with the discovery of Gertrude and the tunnels, and Sasha couldn't give them her full attention until she had seen this one to its end.

Daisy didn't seem affected by the pronouncement that Sasha was concussion-free and the reckoning was, allegedly, soon to arrive. She looked like every other driver stuck in the traffic around them. Not nervous, not angry... not anything. Sasha half expected she would finally turn violent once it was clear she wouldn't be able to stall them any longer, but she didn't see anything of the sort on Daisy's face.

But she wouldn't, would she? Daisy kept them all in the dark, it only unraveled because of a single offhand remark from Jon and Sasha having a bee in her bonnet. Daisy was likely more than confident in her ability to overpower three worm-eaten researchers. She seemed entirely certain she had done nothing wrong, kidnapping Jon. She had been able to convince Jon to be just as certain.

Jon was on her side, yet Daisy had something she hadn't told even him. So why now? Sasha didn't want to wind up in an unmarked grave somewhere, but that didn't mean it made sense that Daisy would just tell them something she'd never told anyone. 

The car stopped, and Sasha followed a step behind Daisy to the door, standing back and watching her unfasten all those locks. The new precipice before them made her pulse quicken, once she'd stepped inside and Daisy went to lock them all again.

Jon, Tim, and Martin were all spread over the living room and kitchen, doing a poor job of pretending they hadn't been waiting for them. Their eyes all fixed on Sasha, expecting her to give some sign, but Sasha hesitated.

What would Daisy do if Sasha left it to her to open the next chapter?

What Daisy did was turn from the door, barely glance at the others, and make for the stairs. "In the next few days. You lot aren't the only ones who need to be there."

Sasha turned fresh bewilderment to the others. Tim and Martin reflected it back, but Jon barely glanced at her, tripping off up the stairs on Daisy's heels.

"Who?" Martin asked Daisy's memory.

The question wasn't for her, but Sasha shrugged.

-

In the quiet dark, with no one but herself to conjure up a mask for, Sasha understood whatever appeal sleeping in Daisy's bed held for Jon. She'd suffered far less than he had, but the whistle of Tim's nose on the inhale and the rumble of the formless sounds Martin made while he slept were a bright shield before thoughts of Prentiss, and of Gertrude decomposing all alone in the dark. She was perversely comforted that, if the long-promised explanation never appeared and Daisy just killed all three of them, her bones would have company in Tim's and Martin's.

And maybe Jon's.

Chapter Text

Georgie wasn't entirely convinced she wasn't about to be murdered.

If she'd received the same messages any other way she would have discarded them immediately. They hadn't even said what, exactly, they wanted her to come see. There was a difference between being fearless and being reckless, and physically meeting someone sending vague messages about something "relevant to her interests" was the latter.

But Melanie was a genuine professional contact, and Jon wouldn't play a joke like that. The address he gave was near the Magnus Institute; Georgie was tentatively hopeful that he'd found something to use as a lame excuse to catch up, but now that the time had come she was less confident.

"Hey!" she said, smiling as Melanie set her scone on the table and fell into the chair opposite Georgie's. "You dyed your hair!"

Melanie smiled, lips pressed tightly together, and tossed her head, crimson swinging against her jaw. "It was time for a change."

Georgie made an effort to keep her thoughts of a certain viral video in which a certain turquoise dye-job featured prominently off her face. "It looks good!"

"Thanks." Melanie smiled changed into a different, equally uneasy rictus. "You really buy this?"

Right to business, then. No reason to be disappointed about that.

They'd been sending each other variations on that question for the last three days, but text messages couldn't really communicate the entirety of the tension crackling in the air. "Jon's sent me ideas for the show before." Their relationship nowadays consisted almost entirely of Wikipedia articles that caught Jon's eye and photos of the Admiral.

"Seriously?" Melanie's eyebrows abandoned their posts for greener pastures closer to her hairline. "I didn't think he approved of our sort of investigation."

Georgie didn't let herself grimace at the weight Melanie put on approved. "Jon's harmless." 

Venue notwithstanding. That was what Georgie was most worried about, but she thought of the similarity too late and didn't know how to back out after she and Melanie agreed to check out whatever Jon was on about together. Sure, there was a very good reason What the Ghost? wasn't a breaking-into-places sort of show, but she didn't think Jon would invite her somewhere if he thought it was that dangerous.

(Alex hadn't thought the medical sciences building was that dangerous.)

"How sure are you of that? I mean, how well do you actually know him?" Melanie half-scoffed and added under her breath, "How well does anyone know that prick?"

"Oh." Georgie was sure her face was flushing neon-bright. "I don't- Jon isn't a professional contact. We dated. In uni."

Melanie's eyebrows rose. "Huh."

Georgie shrugged, staring at her muffin like she could make it disintegrate with her eyes alone. "Yeah."

"Sorry."

"I mean, it's not like we're still together." That was probably a weird part of it all to tackle, but too late to take it back.

"I was wondering why you were so willing to agree to meet him," Melanie said. "You don't usually go in for the breaking and entering sort of job."

Georgie gave her a sharp look, sweeping her eyes over the moderately-crowded cafe that might hear her talking about breaking and entering. Melanie pursed her lips and nodded, doing her own scan for eavesdroppers. "I don't. Now."

"In uni?" Melanie asked with a sly smile.

Georgie shrugged again. She couldn't seem to stop. She had no idea how to feel about any of this. "A bit. Not, um. Just normal places, practical jokes." The one break-in that didn't fit those parameters was responsible for a sizeable amount of her unease. Most of the others involved Jon, before she came back to herself enough to take a serious look at those sorts of self-destructive tendencies.

"So you believe, what was it he said-"

"I do." She wished she didn't. The message was vague enough for plausible deniability, but the second she read it, she was probably doomed to agree.

"Don't know why he'd bother asking me for help," Melanie said, dancing neatly around the shape of the words unsaid. "We didn't get on."

Georgie rolled her eyes. It wasn't the sort of thing she told people, but with everything else, she could only leave Jon space for so many secrets. "Sounds like Jon! He isn't the best with people. I don't know that he'd..."

She watched have someone better to ask for help than us sink in, the way it hadn't entirely managed to over text. Melanie swallowed. "Right. Don't want to be late, then."

-

They didn't talk much as they walked. Georgie spent most of it trying to construct something Melanie could have done that, based on her knowledge of both her and Jon, would make Jon come up with an elaborate plan to get her arrested again. She couldn't. Jon was prickly, but he wasn't malicious like that.

Jon did try to couch requests for help as preemptive transactions. If the crowbar weighing down her bag got them into more than just trouble, it would be a massive favor. Big for her, bigger for Melanie's foundering career. She didn't like to think of what help Jon would think needed such a steep price. 

She should have broken up with him when she started noticing things that were off. She thought being in a relationship would give her better standing to start nudging Jon to see where things weren't right between him and Daisy, but it just mired the conversation in extra layers of frustration and avoidance. If they broke up earlier, maybe Georgie could have convinced him to ask for help then.

"When I met him he seemed..." Melanie said, startling Georgie.

"I know," she said. She didn't need much to guess how Jon seemed. "Thanks for coming."

Jon didn't like friends prying, but he hated it from strangers. Georgie didn't disbelieve the explanation she'd suggested, that Jon didn't have anyone else to ask, but it didn't quite fit. It would have to be bad, to convince Jon to reach out to her. She had no idea how catastrophic something would have to be to make him reach out to Melanie as well.

Georgie tried not to shudder as they reached the point indicated by the map. It was, as promised, a short, empty alley covered in graffiti. It felt like it took more steps than it should to walk into it. She swung her bag down and groped through it for the  crowbar. "Hold this?"

Melanie pulled a torch out of her own bag and tucked it under her arm, tapping at her phone. "It says, 'the left side of the brick with the white cat on it.'"

Georgie nodded. She saw it. The cat was the freshest layer of graffiti, fat drips of paint dry where they'd trailed down the wall. She dug the crowbar in.

She didn't really expect there to be a secret door. She came all the way there, but that bit, she didn't really believe. It would make sense for Jon's anxiety to get the better of him, and if things were bad enough she could see him inventing a solution for his worry over what someone walking by to see them loitering in an alley waiting to meet him might think. An imaginary tunnel where he could stand to await them out of sight was more fantastic than she was used to Jon being, but the scope of whatever was wrong might account for the deviation.

The very real door was indistinguishable from the rest of the wall, until it wasn't. It made a horrible creaking noise as it swung out on ancient hinges. For the first time in a very long while, Georgie felt something that echoed the lost sensation of a chill running down her spine.

"It's actually there," Melanie said behind her. Her voice was flat with disbelief.

Georgie looked into the tunnel before them, door propped open with her foot. It was fairly bright out, even sequestered between buildings, but the light didn't pierce the dark as far as Georgie thought it should.

"Still up for it?" she asked. Melanie was a bit reckless, but she was a better gauge for risk than Georgie's racing, gibbering mind. How had no one else found this? How far did it go? Why?

"Always," Melanie said stoutly. Georgie nodded, but kept her eyes fixed inward as she swung her bag around to swap the crowbar for her torch. At least she took it seriously enough to bring the suggested industrial torch and spare batteries instead of the little thing she kept by her bed in case of a power outage.

"He said he'd meet us a little way inside," she said, reassuring herself as much as Melanie. She was rooted to the spot.

Melanie walked past her, taking two steps into the tunnel and turning to look at Georgie. She held out a hand. "Onward?"

Georgie smiled shakily, and checked the inside of the door. There was a knob, and it turned more easily than the sound of the door opening led her to expect. "Onward."

They got a few steps inside, letting the door fall closed behind them, before Melanie stopped. "One second." 

Melanie squirmed her bag around and rooted through it. In the tall shadows of the torches Georgie didn't recognize the pale, egg-shaped thing she took out until Melanie was halfway done tying the end of the string to the door.

"You're brilliant," Georgie said, and hoped the gloom hid her flush. "I had such a Greek mythology phase as a kid, I can't believe I didn't think of bringing string."

"Wouldn't want to get lost down here," Melanie said, shrugging a shoulder. "Even if he's supposed to meet us near the entrance..."

"Right." Georgie turned again, staring forward into the black.

"Lead the way, Theseus," Melanie prompted, a smile audible in her voice. 

Georgie really hoped that Melanie couldn't see her blushing anymore.

The tunnel was cool, the walls a mishmash of materials and styles. Someone had to know about it; it looked like the fruit of a dozen renovations, much too large to have been blocked off by accident. Their steps echoed eerily, and the floor was slightly inclined. Georgie searched the edge of her small bubble of light for the first sign of Jon. He swore he'd be waiting a short walk straight out from the entrance, that he'd get there early so they wouldn't have to wonder if he was late or that they couldn't see him because they'd gone too far and made a wrong turn.

Melanie caught sight of the figure first. They had no torch of their own; the first indication of another person was the faint green ring of a glowstick bracelet. "Hey!" she called, startling Georgie into nearly dropping her torch. Melanie walked past her at a brisk pace. When her light caught the silhouette enough for Georgie to assess them, she jolted forward, reaching out too late to catch Melanie's arm and hold her back.

"Melanie!" She jogged to catch up, hand out to pull Melanie away from the person who was much too tall to be Jon.

Melanie skidded to a stop a moment later, though Georgie couldn't guess whether it was surprise at finding someone unexpected waiting or the police uniform. She saw Melanie stiffen, put her shoulders back, and plant her feet shoulder-width. "Who are you?"

"Basira," she said, lips pressed together with displeasure. "I'm Daisy's friend."

Melanie clearly didn't have the information to connect the meaning of that quickly, but Georgie did. "We were supposed to be meeting Jon here." Daisy was her best guess for what Jon wanted help with, and if she intercepted his message...

"I know," Basira said. Her eyes flicked to the string in Melanie's hands. "Good thinking."

"Jon," Georgie prompted through a tight throat.

"Come on, I'll show you where we're meeting," Basira said, like that was an acceptable response.

"We can wait here," Melanie said, voice even and almost casual in the assertion.

"No," Basira said, "you can't."

"Pretty sure I can!" Melanie said, voice hardening. Georgie doubted Basira could see, but Melanie's hands were clenching tightly around her spool of string.

Basira sighed. "They aren't even using the same entrance. If we wait it'll just be an argument when they get here."

"So?" Georgie stored away the possibility of multiple exits and tried to channel more "shocked and angry at Daisy's rudeness" than "terrified, potentially for Jon's life." Wasn't trying to leave an abusive situation one of the most dangerous parts of it?

"There's going to be an argument. I don't think this one is worth it." Basira's face was tired, and Georgie only found it more unsettling.

"What's this about?" Melanie asked, firm and steady.

Basira shrugged. "Not sure. I have my suspicions."

"Which are?"

"Bad." Basira shook her head. "Jon needs more people in his corner."

Before Melanie could retort, Georgie reached forward and grasped her by the shoulder. "Give us a moment."

Melanie let herself be towed back along the line of string until Georgie judged they were probably out of earshot, even with the tunnel's weird acoustics. "I think we should go."

Melanie's eyes bugged out a bit. "Seriously?"

"I... think she wants to help?" Georgie said, losing confidence in the face of Melanie's indignation.

"Just because she's a cop that doesn't-"

"Melanie!" Georgie hissed, trying to get her to quiet down before Basira heard. Melanie's expression was stormy, but she didn't resume her interrupted point. Georgie took a deep breath. "Did you see Daisy when you went to the Institute?"

"For a second, maybe. Blonde?"

Georgie nodded. "Did you get a sense of..." she shook her head, banishing the fragment. "Her relationship with Jon is... odd."

"New girlfriend?" Melanie asked.

Georgie scrambled to regain the respect she saw Melanie lose for her at the poorly-expressed thought. "No! No, she's his sister." She nearly gagged, which probably helped her credibility.

Melanie's lips went tight at the corners. "You think she's the 'situation that has become precarious' he wanted help with?"

Georgie nodded, glancing back toward Basira. She was invisible, beyond the reach of their light. "If Basira is Daisy's friend, but wants Jon to have more people on his side.."

She didn't even know what it was she was dreading. She'd never had much to go off of aside from that disastrous dinner. Jon talked about Daisy, but the strange details always stayed at the edges. It took dozens of anecdotes and conversations about where to live and what everyone was doing over the weekend for those details to build up into something worrisome.

"Alright," Melanie said, nodding cautiously. "But we bounce if it gets too murdery before Jon shows."

Georgie let out a breath, unsure if she should feel relieved. "Absolutely."

Basira was waiting right where they left her, leaning against the wall and staring into the middle distance. She straightened when she caught the edge of their light at her feet. "No signal down here," she said, gesturing at the wall she'd been staring at.

"Right." Basira stood up straight and pulled a torch from her belt. She turned it on and caught something like confusion on their faces. "Didn't want to waste the batteries," she said, waving the hand with the glow stick.

"Right," Georgie repeated, and then felt a bit silly.

Basira walked confidently, even though to Georgie every turn they made or walked past seemed more or less identical, the only difference the occasional shifting of the material making up the walls. 

"Exactly how far into the murder tunnels are we supposed to follow you?" Melanie asked after a few minutes.

Basira glanced over her shoulder. "Jon tell you that?"

"Tell us what?!" Georgie asked.

Basira shook her head, focused on the tunnel ahead of them once more. "Nothing."

Georgie looked to Melanie. She was less invested than Georgie, and she expected to see some sign of her doubting their decision. Evidently, though, once Melanie committed to a course she was all-in. A bit of trepidation looked back at her, but then Melanie smirked and went back to watching her step for the occasional dips and bumps in the floor.

Georgie thought they had been walking for ten or fifteen minutes, not counting the walk to reach Basira, when Basira turned a corner and there was faint light spilling back out before the pair of them reached it. The light intensified in the spare moments before they caught up to her, feet quickened by the comfort of seeing it in such quantity.

Basira had brought them to a little doorless room. It looked like all the tunnels around it, and the other doorless rooms they passed to get there, but it was full of camp chairs, the light shining from a handful of lanterns Basira was turning on. There were eight chairs ringing the walls, when Georgie counted. Who else would Jon bring?

Who else could Jon bring?

Basira straightened from lighting the last lantern and, while the room wasn't likely to ever look cheery, the light was bright and warm. They all turned off their torches, but Georgie kept hers in her hand.

"Sit," Basira said, going over to one of the corners and pulling a chair out. There was a box behind it; Georgie exchanged glances with Melanie, neither of them moving to sit, but Basira turned before they came to anything resembling consensus or ease.

Basira pulled out a few bits of paper, flipping through them rapidly. Her eyes darted between the topmost and Georgie a few times before she flipped through some more and repeated the same with Melanie. Only then did she separate two envelopes from the stack and hold them out. "Here."

Georgie looked at the envelope- most likely entirely ordinary, but made harshly bright in its whiteness by the environment- but didn't touch it. Melanie took a step back, away from Basira's other hand, holding out a twin envelope. The envelopes were labeled with their names in Daisy's handwriting, not Jon's.

Basira sighed. "It's just a letter. It doesn't bite."

Melanie stomped forward and snatched hers, stepping past Basira and dropping into a camp chair. Basira turned to Georgie. Over her shoulder Georgie could see Melanie watching Basira, envelope in her lap.

"Why do I need a letter when they're supposed to show up any minute?" she asked.

Basira shifted, apparently unaware that she held Melanie's full attention, too. "I don't know. She just said it was important."

"I met Daisy once," Georgie stressed. "What could she possibly have to say?"

"I don't know!" Basira said, sharper. "I barely know more than you do. Until Daisy is here to answer all of us, all I have is that she seemed to think it was urgent that we meet and urgent that you read the letters."

Georgie stared at her. Everything about this felt wrong. Nothing added up, she didn't even have a hunch about what it was all about anymore. 

She hesitated another moment before taking the envelope. She didn't believe Basira was on their side, really. It was too easy, too obvious how she'd positioned herself as an ally, but pointing out the manipulation's failure wouldn't help them any. She walked around Basira and sat in the chair beside Melanie's.

The envelope was sealed, but Georgie didn't count on that meaning Basira hadn't read the contents. Letter aside, Daisy probably told her the broad strokes anyway; Jon said they were close. The flap tore in the wrong direction, and Georgie's mouth twitched with annoyance building toward something more serious.

The letter's opening was nothing unexpected. Georgie didn't understand why Daisy would bother, but none of what she'd written was news.

Georgie-

I never liked you. I think you're bad for Jon, and I'd be perfectly content if we never saw or heard from one another again.

"Seriously?" she asked, glancing up at Basira.

Basira shrugged. "Unless she wrote you a page of knock-knock jokes, probably."

Georgie huffed, glancing to Melanie. Instead of finding sympathetic annoyance, Melanie's eyes were wide and her hands clenched around her letter. Even Georgie turning to look at her had Melanie canting it protectively away from her. Melanie barely saw Daisy in passing. 

Maybe Georgie got the same alarming message, whatever it was, but with more nasty preamble? Her eyes dragged down to the paper with a sudden feeling of inevitability. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what it said.

All that aside, you have as much of a right to hear what I have to say as anyone. If you didn't before, you deserved an explanation as soon as I started snapping at you. If there's any chance of you being a trustworthy friend, Jon needs you.

It's not the sort of conversation you can put down in a letter, though. It's also a conversation that has to happen in the tunnels. I wouldn't have bothered trying to convince you to go down there if I didn't have to. As proof that things are ugly, complicated, and strange enough to warrant you waiting in the tunnels long enough for us to get there:

• Your all-time least favorite episode of What the Ghost? is the one about Mount Everest
• You had to take The Admiral to the vet two weeks after you brought him home because he ate an eraser
• You like to go to the Hungarian place near your flat, but the owner thinks your name is Jenny and you think it's been going on too long for you to correct him
• You've followed Ghost Hunt UK since nearly the very beginning because you think Melanie King is pretty
• You took a year off after you started at Oxford for mental health reasons, and didn't think you'd be able to go back at all
• The first friend you made at Oxford, before your break, was named Alex
• You watched Alex stop living
• You can't feel fear

-D

Georgie stared at the page blankly. She wanted to stand up, storm around, shout about how Daisy had no right-!

She clenched and unclenched her jaw, trying to alleviate her sudden nausea. Daisy had no reason. No reason to say it, no reason to know it.

She didn't remember telling Jon any of that. The first couple, maybe, she could have told him and forgotten. The Admiral and the eraser, at least, almost certainly. A few of the others would be easy enough for a particularly dedicated stalker to discover. They could be lucky guesses. Cold reads.

Some of them Georgie knew she had never told anyone. Things no one should be able to guess.

There might have been a missing persons report on Alex. Daisy used to be a cop, she might have done an obsessive background check when she heard Jon was dating Georgie and turned up something about the two of them being friends. Georgie didn't say anything to anyone about Alex after she came back and the police never contacted her with questions, but bits could have filtered to Jon through the gossip chain.

Stop living, though. "Stop living" wasn't how anyone in their right mind would talk about a person dying.

Not that she thought Daisy was in her right mind.

How did she find out? How could she possibly know that? Why?

"What is this?" Melanie asked. Georgie thought she could hear Melanie's teeth squeaking against each other, she was gritting them so hard.

"I don't know," Basira said. It was hard to make much of the neutrality of her tone. Georgie searched her face for a sign she knew what was in the letters, knew how Daisy knew it. "Daisy should be here soon to explain herself."

"How soon?" Georgie asked before Melanie could. She felt detached from the voice coming out of her mouth, like it was just someone using her for a ventriloquist's trick. Hadn't she been thinking about how familiar a friend asking her to explore someplace they shouldn't felt? The similarity made it difficult to feel like part of her own body.

Basira glanced at her watch. "Ten minutes, maybe, if they aren't running late."

Georgie looked to Melanie, searching for any hint that she wanted to leave. She didn't want to abandon Jon, but she would be shamefully grateful for an excuse to go. Melanie looked back at her, unsettled but resolute.

Georgie read the letter again, like repetition could loosen the fist around her heart.

Chapter Text

"Isn't this the way to the Institute?" Martin asked, shifting uncomfortably. He'd moved to the front seat to fit all five of them in Daisy's car with minimal aggravation of their injuries, and Tim's view of his expression was truncated by the angle. He thought even Martin was struggling to keep up a neutral facade.

"Yeah." Daisy didn't shift her eyes from the road, staring steadily forward like she didn't have a concern in the world about what any of them had to say.

"Why?" Sasha asked.

"They... they finished cleaning up the mess Prentiss left," Jon said in a tiny voice. He was shrunken in on himself like he expected to be yelled at for pointing out something they all knew anyway.

"We all got the email," Sasha said, not entirely hiding the frantic edge to her voice, gaze darting to Daisy. Everyone, Daisy included, knew the email had gone out to all Institute personnel, and they'd already committed to this stupid plan. Tim wanted to think she wouldn't lash out at Jon for something so trivial. Wanted.

"Police found something weird with Gertrude," Daisy said casually. "Figured we could kill two birds with one stone."

The air in the car crackled with a long, silent moment of tension. Even Jon looked a little uneasy. Tim had already chewed his tongue bloody trying to keep to his promise to do as little to aggravate Daisy as possible. What did Gertrude have to do with anything?

"Daisy," Martin said, too loud. 

Tim wheezed as Sasha elbowed him, hard, a moment later. Great to know they both thought he was too impulsive to keep his mouth shut.

Martin gulped down air. "Did you kill Gertrude?"

Daisy's spine snapped a bit straighter with apparent surprise, and she finally glanced away from the road to look at Martin. "No?"

"Jon benefited-" Sasha started.

Jon interrupted her, laughing sharply. "Daisy didn't even want me to take the promotion."

Daisy returned to staring stoically at the road a bit too abruptly. Was that why she was suddenly around the Institute so much? Anger, or fear that Jon taking the promotion meant her control over him was slipping? Sasha had agreed with Tim that she never hung around Research nearly as often as she did the Archives.

After a moment of staring at their bandages trying to spot the least painful way of nudging Sasha, Tim knocked his knee against hers and gave her a warning look. She was too much of a professional to have let her disappointment at being passed over for Jon show, and hopefully neither he nor Daisy had noticed, but Tim being Daisy's most-loathed didn't mean he had a monopoly on her anger.

"Can't we just do that when we go back to work?" Martin asked, but Tim recognized where they were now. They'd already arrived. It was too late to argue.

(He spared a final thought for Sasha's phone, hidden in the guest bedroom and set to send out all the proof they had if she didn't return to stop it.)

Daisy parked the car in her usual place and was out of it like a shot instead of answering. Tim fumbled at his seat belt, losing precious seconds to the bandages still making his hands clumsy. He didn't like the idea of being stuck in place while Daisy was free, and he had an irrational fear that she would decide to withhold her explanation if she lost patience with them. Martin, apparently thinking the same thing, managed to beat the rest of them out.

He and Daisy were standing beside the open boot when the rest of them caught up. Tim's stomach sunk when he looked inside. They had been able to hear her making trips to the car last night, but hadn't wanted to risk irritating her by watching; not when they were finally close to getting the "explanation" Jon wouldn't agree to go to the police without. The five bags in the boot filled him with an awful sense of foreboding.

Daisy swung the largest out, holding it sideways against her and withdrawing a large torch and a box of chalk before pulling it on completely. "Torches, extra batteries, water, snacks, chalk," she said, gesturing at the four remaining bags. "We shouldn't be down there long enough for it to matter, but better safe than sorry."

"Someone was murdered down there," Martin said. The rest, Jon included, hung back, watching him and Daisy. "Even if you didn't do it, why would we want to follow you down?"

Daisy turned, flipping through her keyring; Tim wondered if the key to the Institute there was Jon's, or an illicit copy. "She wasn't murdered in the tunnels. There was too much blood at her desk."

She walked toward the Institute without looking to see if anyone followed.

"She's right about the blood," Jon said softly, staring at the pavement. "According to Rosie, at least." He took a bag and hurried after her before anyone could respond.

Tim didn't want to follow Daisy, but he didn't want to leave Jon alone with her, either.

-

"Oh," Sasha said as she stepped down into the tunnels. "The worms are gone."

"Not all of them," Tim said, taking a last look up at the square of light they'd descended from. "Just closest to the Institute." They'd passed over the border where the cleaners gave up half a dozen times, traipsing around trying to find Gertrude's body again. Tim wasn't looking forward to repeating the experience.

He didn't like what Jon said about Daisy being against his promotion. He didn't think it was the sort of thing she would've just out and said like a normal person. Not given that laugh.

Daisy pulled the trapdoor shut. As the last hint of light beside their torches vanished, Tim heard breath skip in four sets of lungs.

"What if someone sees the lock is undone and closes it?" Sasha asked, face gaunt in the torchlight.

"You can't pick it from this side," Jon said, voice pitching up in the sort of agreement that had been so rare from him recently.

Daisy glanced at him, and hastened to his side to pull him sideways into a loose hug. It turned Tim's stomach. "It's fine. That's not the only exit, and I know the way."

"When did you have the time to learn your way around?" Tim asked. "If you didn't drag Gertrude down here."

"Shut up for five more minutes and you might find out," Daisy snapped. 

Sasha gave him a tense, pursed-lip glare, and Tim grimaced back.

Daisy kept her arm around Jon, relying on his torch as she started to walk away, her free hand wielding a stick of chalk. She walked with confidence despite the lack of any landmarks Tim could see. Even after spending ages trying to lead the police around he felt as lost as he did the first time, light-headed from CO2 and running for their lives.

She kept forgetting to mark arrows, and Tim's stomach jolted unpleasantly every time. After the first few, Sasha started hovering at her heels with her own chalk, marking where Daisy missed. 

Daisy didn't react, at least. He wasn't sure she knew Sasha was doing it; she seemed much more interested in checking, over and over, that Jon was still secure, leaning into her side. Tim kept doing the same check, scanning for any sign that Jon was uncomfortable with the arrangement, that Daisy's mood was turning.

When they reached the worms, it wasn't as bad as Tim remembered. They were shriveled and dried up now, a couple weeks along. They didn't squelch like they did last time he was in the tunnels. It was more like walking over a slightly-slippery layer of rotting leaves. He was still relieved when they thinned out and eventually vanished; even Daisy was less tense once they were gone.

Tim was wishing he'd thought to check the time when they left the Institute when something changed.

He drew closer to Martin, wary of invading Daisy's space to go to Sasha but needing a more tangible feeling that he wasn't alone, and strained his ears. Maybe he was imagining things. It was so monotonous down here it would make sense. They hadn't even reencountered the worm border, just walked on and on until they began to thin out naturally. He looked to Martin, who nodded, equally preoccupied with straining his ears for the slightest clue of what they were doing down here.

The closer they got, the more obvious it was that there really were people somewhere ahead of them. The closer they got, the more it sounded like the people were arguing.

"Basira!"

They all startled hard at the shout. Daisy glanced down at Jon and made semi-apologetic shushing noises at him before quickening her pace, leaning forward eagerly. Basira- that was the cop Daisy was friends with, wasn't it? Tim wasn't thrilled to know that the "other people" who needed to hear Daisy's magic explanation included someone so obviously on Daisy's side, and with the power to make it count.

Their footsteps echoed uncomfortably in the now silent tunnel, jogging to keep up with Daisy and Jon, when they turned the final corner. A pool of warm light fell into the narrow passage, stronger than their combined torchlight, blocked slightly by a figure leaning out of the doorway.

"You're late," Basira called. Her tone was nothing unusual, but Tim thought her shoulders looked tense. Maybe he was reading into things. Her eyes lingered on Jon, taking in the swathes of bandages and occasionally darting away to compare him to the rest of them.

"Sorry," Daisy said, ducking her head and pulling Basira into a perfunctory embrace, careful of Jon's injuries with him still clamped to her side.

"Alright, Jon?" Basira asked as Tim drew close enough to see past her. It was a doorless room, like so many they'd already passed by, but it was ringed with camping chairs and lit cheerily by lanterns scattered about even with the shadows at the edges. Tim didn't hear Jon's response, staring in bewilderment at the other two women standing in the room. 

"Melanie?" Sasha asked. 

Melanie waved weakly. There was a sheet of paper clutched in her fist, and the looks she was shooting Jon and Daisy weren't exactly kind. Her face was flushed.

"Jon?" The third woman, who Tim didn't think he'd ever seen before, asked. She had her own paper, held tight despite the totality of her attention being fixed on Jon, and her voice was hollow and her eyes wide with detached horror.

Jon pulled against Daisy's grasp. She resisted, but let go before Tim's temper frayed enough to go over and rip her off of him. Instead, he followed Jon into the room, hungry for light even while he kept one eye on Daisy as she whispered with Basira.

"Georgie," Jon said, looking acutely anxious.

"What happened?" Georgie asked. Her arms drifted up like she wanted to hug him before slamming down decisively. Probably because hugging Jon looked like a terrible idea, what with all the bandages.

"Worms," Jon muttered, looking away.

Melanie's expression, already stormy, became vicious. "At least have the decency to tell her to fuck off directly if you don't want to tell her, instead of making things up." 

Daisy's head jerked around to glare at Melanie, and she and Basira came fully inside fast. At least they stayed on the other side of the room.

Georgie, interestingly, didn't look as skeptical about the worms as she probably should.

"Melanie," Sasha said softly, half-distracted, squinting at Daisy and Basira.

"What?" Melanie asked. Her voice was still wound tight, but it was immediately kinder once her focus strayed from Jon. Tim reevaluated his previous assumptions about what Jon said to send her stomping out when she visited the Archives.

"He's not making it up," Martin said.

"Excuse me?"

"There are still bodies everywhere back the way we came, if you want proof," Sasha said.

Melanie's face kept ticking between reluctant alarm and annoyance. Tim sighed.

"Here," he said, peeling up the very edge of the bandage around his wrist, baring a trio of half-healed holes.

Melanie leaned over, skeptical, and then backed up a step looking gratifyingly shocked. She seemed to shrink. "Seriously?"

"Are you going to be alright?" Georgie asked. She faced Tim, but her eyes kept skittering back to Jon.

Tim shrugged. "They'll scar. I think we're all in for physical therapy, too, once they close up a bit more."

The silence hung a bit too long, none of them sure what to say. Jon jumped into motion slowly, his movements jittery as he took half a step back and gestured at Georgie. "This is Georgie Barker. My, er. My ex."

Tim and Sasha both turned to stare at him with a bit too much interest; Jon stuttered his way through introducing them even more awkwardly. He'd never mentioned anything like a love life before, and it felt, for a moment, just like an introduction to an ex would have eons ago when they were still in Research and thought everything was normal.

Martin, still not entirely used to how uncommon it was for Jon to reveal any personal detail at all, glanced between Jon, Georgie, and Melanie. "Wait, didn't you mention her in your statement?" he asked Melanie.

Melanie's expression was guarded. "I guess."

Sasha raised her eyebrows. "You didn't mention knowing Georgina Barker when you had me email her for corroboration."

"Jon!" Georgie snapped.

"It's a professional-" Jon started.

"I am Georgie professionally," she said, crossing her arms.

"It's policy," Jon said.

Georgie huffed. "Well, you didn't ask me to come here to introduce me to your coworkers and get my name wrong. What's this about?" Her hand flexed on the page she was holding, and her eyes flicked over to where Daisy and Basira were flipping through a small stack of paper.

"Er." Jon said. His eyes were wide.

Sasha looked to Tim. He handed her his phone, and she unlocked it and opened up the gallery, moving to stand between Melanie and Georgie. "This."

As soon as Georgie's eyes weren't on him, Jon flew back to wedge tightly against Daisy. Tim ground his teeth and moved so he could keep a better eye on both groups.

"Is that supposed to be a joke?" Melanie asked after a glance, leaning away from the glare of the screen.

Georgie shook her head, eyebrows furrowed. "It's not funny."

"You ever go to their house while you were dating?" Tim asked, keeping his voice low.

"Why?" Georgie's eyes were sharp, but she was throwing just as many suspicious looks Daisy's way as theirs.

"You see the polaroids?"

Georgie didn't answer, mouth working. Melanie bumped her shoulder. "Polaroids?"

"All over their refrigerator," Georgie said slowly. "And boxes of older ones. Daisy's obsessed with them."

Sasha flicked to the next image, the three polaroids left for Jon's grandmother. "The first two were with a letter from Jon. The other was left at his grandmother's grave."

"So he sent his grandmother an angry note about running away," Melanie said, expression not matching her snide tone.

Sasha tapped at the screen. "This is the outside of his bedroom door, and this is the inside."

Jon's head jerked at the words "bedroom door," and he glared their way. Tim held his breath, watching to see if Daisy caught the reaction. She was occupied sorting through papers with Basira, and Jon looked away after a few moments.

Georgie's mouth set into a hard line. "You're sure?"

"They both admitted it," Martin said. "That's not everything, either." His face was impressively neutral, and somehow angrier than Tim had ever seen him.

"Then why are we here?" Melanie asked. "And why aren't you talking to the police? She can't be friends with all of them."

Tim crossed his arms, unable to stop himself from feeling defensive. "She's had years to brainwash him. Jon didn't take it well when we confronted him."

"Meaning?" Georgie prompted, eyes fixed on Daisy.

"We're talking now instead of weeks ago because he had a concussion," Martin said. Both women's eyes widened, and he sputtered. "Not- I mean- it wasn't like that! We argued, he tripped and hit his head. It was an accident."

"Then Daisy showed up," Tim added before they could answer. "And then the worms showed up. And then Sasha had a concussion." He sighed. He felt old.

He could see Georgie's estimation of them fall. "You still could've gone to the police."

"Jon doesn't want to," Martin muttered, and nodded subtly toward Basira.

"He won't consider it until we hear her out," Sasha said. She rubbed her eyes. "There's something that's going to convince us she was right all along. Something that has to happen down here, and that 'other people' need to hear, too." 

"You still-" Melanie cut off when Georgie elbowed her.

Tim sighed. "Martin was staying with them, that's how we figured it out. The door, and- things. Then, after the worms, no one was in a position to put up much of a fight when Daisy decided we should all recover at her house."

Daisy, leaned back from her conference with Basira, shuffling the stack of papers a final time. The air buzzed with tension.

"Basira implied something about a murder down here?" Melanie said, regarding the little trio with dread. Her face was pale, now.

"She was murdered in the Institute," Martin huffed. "So that's fine, I guess!"

"She says she didn't do it." Sasha passed the phone back to Tim and rubbed her hands together softly, breathing with deliberate slowness.

"I believe her," Tim cut in. The others all turned to him in surprise. He saw Sasha pinch herself and squint at him. "Jon said... I don't think Daisy did it."

Sasha kept squinting, but Martin took a deep breath and nodded. "He's... I don't think Daisy did anything to Gertrude."

"The tunnels?" Melanie's anger seemed drained, teetering between targets.

"Tim and I found the body," Martin said. "Hidden. Not near here."

Tim didn't think Martin could say that with true confidence, but he wasn't looking to argue. Not with the people already on his side.

Daisy snapped her fingers, and they all jumped. "Here," she said, enveloped splayed in her fingers like playing cards as she brandished them toward them. Jon avoided meeting any of their gazes.

"What are those?" Martin asked, leaning slightly away from her even though she hadn't come any closer.

"They're short," Daisy didn't answer. "Just read them."

"Or you could tell us," Sasha said, crossing her arms.

Daisy gave Tim, of all people, a suspiciously sympathetic sidelong look. "I don't think you want me to do that."

Tim had to make a conscious effort to keep from rubbing away goosebumps. He hated all of this.

"Read them," Georgie said before anyone else could answer. "Just... sit down, first."

Tim looked at the page she was still clutching. She and Melanie had taken a lot more than a note on faith. "Fine," he said, marching two steps across the no man's land between them. He wanted to snatch the envelopes from Daisy's hand, but for the sake of not escalating things further did his best to be more gentle. The envelopes were labeled Tim, Martin, and Sasha.

He passed them out, sat, and tore into his own envelope, ears pricked for their reactions or anything that might be Daisy or Basira making a sudden move.

He only had to skim for a moment, and then any sound of the others' reactions was lost to the sound of fury rushing in his ears.

Chapter Text

Martin looked up, expecting to see his bewilderment echoed in five more pairs of doubting eyes. With the way the chairs were arranged against the walls it was difficult to watch everyone at once. It made the room feel paradoxically smaller than it was. He wondered if that was the intended effect of making them meet there.

Daisy was sitting patiently with Jon pressed to her side, her fingers almost white where her arm wrapped around his shoulder, and Basira was surveying the room impassively from the next chair over. Tim's face was growing redder by the moment, and Sasha was squeezing his arm hard enough it had to hurt. Melanie kept her eyes on the knot of Daisy, Jon, and Basira, mouth twitching back into a stony line every time it started to turn into a snarl. Georgie sat so still he could barely make out the gentle rise and fall of her chest.

Martin looked back at the short note in his hand. Whatever the other notes said, he didn't think it was all things Daisy might have dug up with a thorough background check and a bit of armchair psychology.

"Is this supposed to be blackmail?" he asked, because he didn't think anyone else would. What else could it be? 

Daisy seemed so honestly confused that Martin glanced back at the note again, like he could have missed the key that would unravel the whole affair. Nothing. 

Her eventual look of understanding bled into self deprecation. "Right. I didn't have much for you. Or Sasha, but..."

"Is it?" He didn't think so, the longer he sat with everyone else's reactions, but he didn't intend to start them off on a bad foot by letting Daisy weasel out of questions she didn't want to answer.

"No. You couldn't get fired if you tried, Martin."

Jon's brow knit and he glanced between Martin and Daisy. Martin struggled to keep his breathing even; they needed someone to keep a cool head. Flying off the handle would just be giving Daisy what she wanted.

"What is it?" Jon asked.

Daisy's face changed when she looked at him, softer in a way Martin never noticed before learning the truth and now could not help but be conscious of, every single time. "Proof. Things I shouldn't be able to know. I didn't have much like that for you or Basira, obviously." She almost smiled when her eyes met Basira's.

"How do you know it?" Georgie asked. Martin turned to look at her. She was carved from ice, and her voice was the creak and rumble of a calving glacier. He shivered, peculiarly unnerved.

"Background checks," he said flatly, stuffing down the feeling. "Police connections. Stalking."

Georgie cast the frozen shards of her eyes onto him. "No one knows this." She shook the paper. "I've never told anyone, never written it down. Nothing."

"You gave a statement."

"April 2017," Daisy said, voice empty of everything. Martin turned to look back at the threat in the room and found her face lax and expressionless to match. "Maybe May, I'm not sure."

Jon peered at her like he was questioning everything, but not in the way they'd hoped. Martin continued to struggle with keeping his breathing even; this wasn't the Daisy they had expected. Even if she wasn't more dangerous mad than sane all their attempts to predict her behavior could be useless.

"Daisy," Jon said gently, "That's... that's seven months from now. It's just barely September."

Daisy cracked a sour smile, gazing up, away from the rest of them. "You want the short version, or the long one?"

"Which version gets us to you telling us why you just had to abuse Jon fastest?" Tim asked. Martin turned and glared at him. They'd agreed Tim would keep mostly quiet and they'd all try not to provoke Daisy too much, at least at first. 

Despite Martin's fears, the only sign Daisy heard him was a single cracked laugh. Martin turned to look; something raw was peeking out from fissures in her blank expression, now.

"Give us the short version and we'll work from there," Basira said.

Daisy glanced sideways. It should have been a thankful look Basira's way, but she was staring blankly, only managing the right general direction. She put a hand over her eyes and took a deep breath. "You've all encountered something supernatural. Something real, not a weird coincidence or jumping at a building settling."

"How do you know?" Martin asked before anyone else could bite her head off. His skin crawled. It felt like everyone else had lost sight of what their goals were supposed to be, and the emotional currents running underneath that were too mysterious for his liking. He knew Tim and Sasha could be better diplomats than this, and Melanie and Georgie had to have some idea about getting people to react the way you wanted if they were able to sustain podcasts and YouTube channels.

"You all know things like that do happen," Daisy said like she hadn't heard him. "And one did. The world ended." 

Sounds of discontent swept the room. Basira grabbed Daisy's shoulder and squeezed until Daisy met her eyes. "I don't think it's a good time for jokes." 

"I'm not joking," Daisy said, heavy and miserable. What were they supposed to do if she started crying? The misery didn't look false, no matter how hard Martin searched for seams.

"Well it was still there when I came down here," Basira said.

"You're not seriously talking about time travel," Melanie said. Martin turned, and found her wearing the expected scowl, lip curled with disdain.

"Daisy?" Jon asked simultaneously. He was all solicitous concern.

"So between now and the world ending I gave a statement to the Magnus Institute?" Georgie asked, voice ringing clear above the rest.

Daisy nodded. "Maybe I should have let you go back instead."

"Why Georgie?" Jon asked, pensive. "You don't even like Georgie, why not someone else?"

The change in Daisy's expression was slight, Martin didn't think anyone but him even noticed, but Jon reacted with horror. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean-"

"What are you apologizing for?" Tim snapped.

Jon rocketed back in his seat, away from Tim, away from Daisy's side, eyes wide. Martin shot Tim another admonishing glare. What could possibly be in that note to justify acting like this instead of following their plan?

"Tim," Sasha muttered, elbowing him.

"There wasn't anyone else," Daisy said before they could start infighting. Martin turned to look back at her. The tears in her voice but not quite her eyes must have been what Jon was reacting to; he had rebounded back to her side like a rubber band, somehow even closer than before. "You were all gone."

Gone, not dead?

Even Basira looked uneasy.

"Gone how?" Sasha asked. Martin turned to look, meaning to check that Tim wasn't about to explode again, but found himself more concerned to find Sasha with a light in her eyes that usually heralded questionable methods of investigation. Just what they needed.

(Martin didn't have any idea what to say next, though.)

"You were first," Daisy said. Martin turned back to her; her eyes were on the ceiling again. "During Prentiss. You made a run for the fire suppression. You wound up in Artefact Storage and the thing in the table got you."

"Table?" Melanie said under her breath.

"The one the deliverymen..." Jon said.

"Yeah."

Every eye in the room was irresistibly drawn to Sasha. The more unsettled he became the less Martin wanted to let Daisy sit unexamined, but not even he could help reassuring himself that she seemed like the same Sasha as ever (not that he would know if she wasn't). He felt dizzy from trying to keep track of everyone at once.

Sasha didn't say anything. She seemed to be struggling to process the news of the allegedly-destined death she might have barely missed. Martin struggled to tear himself away to turn to look back at Daisy.

"She was with me the whole time," Jon said, looking at Sasha for confirmation. She didn't respond.

"The polaroids," Daisy mumbled.

Martin felt boneless from relief. Daisy brought her polaroid camera to Jon's birthday party. She had to have at least one showing the real Sasha.

"The woman giving the statement said her neighbor was replaced. She was the only one who remembered what he was supposed to look like. Normal photos changed, but polaroids didn't," he said, trying to head off questions from Georgie, Melanie, or Basira.

"And you have polaroids of Sasha?" Melanie asked.

Basira turned around, digging through a bag until she found the stack of papers she and Daisy had gone through alongside the notes. She regarded them with more weight than she had before. 

(Did Daisy not even hint at what they were for? Not even to Basira, who Jon said she was so close to?)

When Martin turned to look back at Tim and Sasha Tim's face wasn't red anymore. It was white.

"You were the only one to remember the real Sasha," Daisy said to Melanie.

"And if I ran into this... table?" Melanie asked. "You don't have any polaroids of me."

"No, you're here," Basira said wryly. She shuffled through a few and held one out.

"Daisy!" Jon said. Part of Martin's brain had an instant reaction to the stern tone, even though it wasn't directed at him.

When Martin turned to look back at Melanie she seemed reluctant to walk over and take the picture. Sasha, making the same judgement Martin did, got up and took it instead, frowning at it. "Were you hiding around a corner?"

"We're getting off track," Basira said loudly.

"Didn't that table go missing?" Jon asked, ignoring her.

Martin sat up a little straighter, skin prickling. He'd forgotten that. It didn't seem to affect him at the time, and he was already engrossed in unraveling this mess.

"It's shut in a wall," Daisy said. "No one's going to find it, and it's never going to get out."

"People knock down walls-" Melanie started.

"One of these walls," Daisy said, knocking on the wall behind her.

Everyone went quiet. Basira pinched the bridge of her nose. Martin thought Daisy might take it as a sign of weakness if he did the same.

"Not these walls,," Daisy said awkwardly, somehow more abashed at misspeaking than any of her actual wrongdoing. "Obviously. In a different part of the tunnels. Closer to being encased in cement than being bricked in."

Martin finally recognized the detour as a delaying tactic when he found himself wondering how Daisy managed that. "Why send you back instead of Georgie?" he asked. Not the most pertinent, but one he hoped would jar the others off the tangent and back on task for the more important questions.

"I was more likely to be useful," Daisy said. "I'm older, and my first brush with the supernatural happened younger."

Georgie went back to being a block of ice. He could hear it in her voice, without turning to see. "Useful?"

"If you went back to the year Jon was fifteen you'd be sixteen and have no idea what was going on. And if you sorted yourself out in time you would avoid your best qualification for the job." 

The second bit didn't make any sense to Martin, but Georgie seemed to understand when he turned to look.

Daisy had said the notes were things she shouldn't know and moved right into talking about them all having encounters of their own. Martin had a suspicion he knew what Georgie's note, at minimum, was about.

"Why would she have no idea what was going on?" Sasha asked. Martin turned to look at her; her face was scrunched in confused suspicion. "Wouldn't that be the point of coming back, you having an idea of how to fix things?"

When he turned to look at Daisy's reaction, she was deflated. "It wasn't all at once. More in and out, at the beginning. Some days I knew exactly why I was here, and others nothing I'd done on the good days made sense."

"Did kidnapping Jon happen on a good day?" Tim asked. He wasn't horrified or livid anymore; open hostility toward Daisy was somehow an improvement. Martin was starting to feel a bit dizzy from all the back and forth.

He turned back to Daisy, watching her expression carefully. "I-"

"Or did it happen on a bad day, and you just started out morally bankrupt enough to abuse children on faith?" Martin whipped his head around to glare at Tim again so fast his neck clicked.

"I didn't abuse-"

"What did you even need him for?"

Martin, turning back and scrutinizing Daisy's face for any threat of violence, caught movement in his periphery a moment too late and spun in time to see Tim stand up.

Sasha was close behind, with a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Tim."

"Or was Jon just stress relief for when you weren't busy with your oh-so-important mission?" Tim spat, fists clenched at his sides.

Martin turned to Georgie and Melanie, hoping to find at least one ally in deescalating things. Georgie was sitting stiffly, like movement might make something ugly spill out of her; he wasn't sure she'd noticed Melanie standing up to join Tim. He tried to wave Melanie's attention his way without Daisy noticing.

No one noticed. He felt sick.

"She's lying," Melanie said as Martin turned back to watch the real danger in the room. Daisy was going to burst eventually, but no one seemed interested in helping him stop it. "She didn't have a good excuse, so she made one up."

Daisy didn't seem to hear her, attention fixed solely on Tim. "I don't lash out at people I care about, you're projecting, that's you."

"He's covered in scars!"

Jon stood. "That's not true! If you weren't going to listen why did you even come?"

"Jon," Martin heard Georgie say. He felt the faint breeze of her passing, but he kept his eyes on Daisy. He didn't know how to calm this many people, all of them with something different pushing them to anger. He just felt sure that someone should be watching the woman who made his brain scream predator when she started yelling.

"You wouldn't come with us until we did!" Sasha shrilled.

"She's still manipulating you!" Tim shouted. Daisy's eyes scanned the group so intently Martin found himself following her gaze. He couldn't hear Melanie through the yelling and the echoes anymore, but her mouth was moving and her face was every bit as angry as the rest. Georgie was practically hanging off Jon's arm, trying to get him to listen. Martin felt fixed to his seat. He wasn't good with directing crowds, only blending in with them. The last thing they needed was to lose someone else trying to remain rational because he stepped in without a plan.

"Listen to me!" Jon shouted. "I keep telling you she's my-"

"You can't actually be this deluded." There was something new in Tim's voice, and Martin's eyes shot back over to him. Tim's expression had been pure venom before. It didn't change when he switched focus from Daisy to Jon. "How can you defend her?"

Martin's stomach sunk when he looked back at Daisy. She looked faintly satisfied watching Jon stumble back a step under Tim's barrage. 

No one else saw. They were too busy yelling at each other and Martin couldn't stop them. He felt like he couldn't even speak. Or breathe.

"Jon, this isn't healthy-"

"-can't even try to see my-"

"-can't even prove-"

"-not how you get someone away from an abuser!"

"She isn't-"

"-asking us to watch you hurt yourself-"

Daisy's face started to change. Satisfaction became unsure, glancing between combatants.

"She won't even explain why she did this to you!" Tim yelled, somehow managing to drown out the others. "It's like you want her to hurt you!"

Martin couldn't see if Tim realized that was over the line as soon as he said it, because no one else was watching Daisy.

Her eyes darted back and forth. Blood drained from her face. She looked sick with dread and horror.

Then her expression flipped, much too quickly, into hatred. She stood.

Martin looked back, hoping to see the others noticing too, or at least wary of the threat. To see them realizing things had spiraled out of control. Instead he found Jon, the stubborn set of his jaw seeping away, shock and pain taking its place. He found faces looking at Jon with concern, anger, frustration, jostling each other as they all tried to argue loudest. He found Tim looking back at Jon with disgust.

"Jonathan Sims was the one who ended it," Daisy said, clear and carrying. Martin flinched; he didn't think the awful, dim little room could get any louder. Finally, now that she was speaking, the others remembered Daisy was there and turned to look at her.

"Daisy?" Jon asked faintly.

Martin watched Daisy sneer at him. "Jonathan Sims, 'Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London,'" the primary-school mocking lilt seemed like too much, but a glance at the others found no one who seemed to share Martin's assessment, "ended the world."

"But I won't," Jon said weakly. Looking at him, Martin didn't find the sort of upset Tim's anger had inspired; he recognized the betrayal that came from family turning on you. "I won't, you-"

"I thought I could fix you," Daisy scoffed. When Martin checked, she was still wearing a mask of contempt. No matter how he scrutinized it, he just didn't buy it. "He practically threw himself into it, but I thought you could be different. Wasted. If anything you're worse."

"Daisy-" Jon said, anguish thick in his tone.

"You weren't supposed to let the worms get you." Martin looked away; he was more interested in searching for any of the others who shared his doubts than in watching Daisy's playacting. Jon looked like everything was crumbling to ash around him as Daisy continued. "You weren't supposed to work at the Institute at all!"

"I'll quit-"

"You can't! None of you can! He might have let you go eventually, but you couldn't even follow simple directions not to sign anything Bouchard gave you until I approved it! You just signed on the dotted line like a good little puppet!"

Jon flinched, hard. His eyes were filling with tears, and the desperation in his face was all too familiar.

"Elias might have 'let Jon go?'" Sasha asked. She stiffened, and Martin didn't need to check to guess who had Daisy's attention now.

"He's too perfect for it," Daisy said. Some of the hatred bled out of her voice the moment she wasn't focused on Jon anymore, a sick inversion of her actions not a quarter of an hour ago. "That's why I had to get him young. I thought he could be saved. I thought he might be worth saving."

"Daisy!" The tears overflowed, and Jon took a halting step forward, toward Daisy. Martin's gaze flew to Daisy. He didn't know if the rage she was putting on might become physical if Jon got too close. He was too far to stop her if it did. He wanted to help, but he couldn't even make himself leave his chair.

Daisy looked away from the others entirely, gazing at the bag by the chair she'd been sitting in. "I should have focused on Gertrude instead. At least she wasn't useless. She knew what it took to quit, so she stopped roping in more assistants."

"So there is a way to quit," Jon said, voice thick with desperation.

"He claimed there couldn't be assistants without an Archivist. Not that he did anything about it." Daisy laughed. "Melanie was the only one with the guts to follow through. To blind herself and reject it. I watched her find the key to send the email before she even tried to call an ambulance. He couldn't even make himself stop torturing people, and that was when the world was still the world!"

"I can-"

"You're just as selfish as he ever was. My very first instinct was to kill him and I should have done it. Come on, Basira. Got something important to show someone competent before we leave."

Martin had almost forgotten Basira was there. Watching her look from Daisy to Jon and back before picking up her bag and following Daisy out of the room, he thought she might be the only one who believed Daisy just as little as he did.

Jon, swaying dangerously, looked shattered.

Chapter Text

"I told you, I can't prove-"

Basira stopped walking and laughed, high and shrill. Daisy only said the tunnels were mostly safe, and they probably didn't want to meet anything that might come running to a noise like that, but the nerve. "I don't care about time travel, Daisy! I care about Jon."

Daisy slowed, stopped, and turned, keeping her torch aimed at the ground instead of Basira's face. Basira didn't return the favor. For a moment she thought she saw approval in Daisy's eyes, but then her whole face flattened. "I was telling the truth, Basira."

"No." Basira shook her head. "I know you too well to believe that. You would never hurt Jon."

Daisy seemed to withdraw further, like she'd turned into a plank of wood with her face painted on it. "I have. You know I have."

Daisy couldn't.

But she had. They'd talked around it last time they were down here together, just like this. Basira failing to understand (refusing to see?) just how severe the problems were didn't make it untrue. "You didn't mean the things you said back there."

"I did." Daisy looked away, pretending to be deeply engrossed by the wall. "At some point, I did."

"No." She said she'd kill Jon. He'd looked so broken, every time Basira shut her eyes she could still see it. Daisy couldn't kill him. Daisy would never.

Would she have believed it if one of Jon's friends had reached out with whatever evidence they had against Daisy this morning?

"I tried. The worms weren't the last scars. Not even close. This," she tipped her head back and drew a short line across the middle of her throat, "was me."

Basira's nails bit back into her palm. "Daisy."

"He ended the world. They can't quit. He was never supposed to work at the Magnus Institute." Daisy's voice was rough.

"So go tell him, like that. He needs you, Daisy." .

The noise Daisy made was too much a bark to be called a laugh. "He doesn't. I'm the last- no, not the last person he needs. Not much better than that, though."

Basira ground her teeth. "Did you see him, back there?"

"He needs them," Daisy said, flinging a hand out toward where they'd come from. Her shadow loomed menacingly over the wall.

"He hardly knows most-"

"You wanted to kill him too."

Basira took a step back. "What?" Her torch's beam wobbled down to the floor.

Daisy hunched her shoulders and curled into the bow they made. "You thought he was a monster. You said you'd kill him if he didn't stop."

How did you stop being a monster?

It didn't matter. Jon couldn't. Not their Jon, he could never.

(Daisy could never, but look what she had.)

"No."

"It was all like that," Daisy said shaking the hand pointing back. "They all turned on him. We turned on him. They all were turning on him back there!" She tugged on her hair and shook her head, teeth bared.

"It was an argument, just-"

"I can't watch it happen again, Basira." Daisy sounded close to tears, half-crossing her arms like she was cradling something Basira couldn't see. "It destroyed him. You didn't see."

Daisy had made sure Basira could picture that very well, now, but pointing that out wouldn't help. She wanted to cross her own arms, but she wanted full control of where her torch shone more. "Things change. Things have changed. No one who wanted to kill him could have raised the Jon I know."

Daisy smiled, turning to lean her back against the wall. She wilted again. "You remember my first Section 31?"

It took a moment, but not a long one; Daisy had been so grave relating it, when so few wanted to even acknowledge that they had signed a Section 31. "The delivery van, right?"

Daisy nodded. "The coffin. I tried to kill Jon. Elias stopped me. We all went off to stop a different apocalypse. I went down."

Basira couldn't help the very noticeable sound as she sucked in a breath.

"I was going to find a way to do it after, if he didn't die first," Daisy said, grotesquely conversational in tone. "Sasha was dead. Tim's last words were to tell Jon he hated him. You thought he was a monster. Georgie abandoned him." Daisy's chest heaved, struggling to continue her grim recital. "Martin wasn't speaking to him and Melanie... Melanie had her reasons. Jon went in after me."

"What?" Basira tried to picture what Daisy had described, that long, impossible staircase with a figure staring down into the earth. Tried to picture that figure being Jon, their Jon!

"It should've been a suicide mission," Daisy said. "He always said he had a plan, but... I don't know."

It sounded like a very Daisy way to wind up in someone's good graces, whether or not that was intentional. "But you got out, and it got better," Basira said. This had to be salvageable. For Jon's sake. (For her own.)

Daisy shook her head. "If you'd shown up a second later he would've been dead." She jabbed a finger into the part of her neck she had outlined, hard enough it had to hurt. "He never forgave me, never felt safe around me. He couldn't. But no one else wanted to be around either of us."

"I thought you said-"

"Trying not to be monsters," Daisy said. "You approved of it for Jon, but you needed me strong. You were busy with other things."

"You aren't a monster." It's automatic, like it's a line she's rehearsed a thousand times. Daisy wasn't a monster. She had nothing in common with the things Basira had seen since her Section 31.

"Go ask to see the evidence they've compiled," Daisy said, gesturing back the way they came again, hand cupped. "Ask Jon, if I haven't broken him too badly to tell you the truth. Quitting police work helped, but I should have done it years earlier." She swiped her hand down, as though erasing the idea, shaking her head. "I just didn't want to."

"He needs you. He needs all of us." Generous, given he barely seemed to know some of the others, but the last thing she needed right now was to give Daisy an opening.

"There's only one thing he needs me for," Daisy said, stepping away from the wall. "This way."

Basira didn't know what to say. She was unlikely to get anything else out of Daisy until they reached their destination, but small talk felt almost obscene.

Walking in silence gave her far too much time to study the scenery and think.

The tunnels were cold, except when there were sudden warm drafts. When she tried to look down the offshoots they came from, she sometimes thought she could see a red light, like a burning ember. Basira didn't know what that hot air smelled like, but she knew it was the same as Diego Molina. She prayed that the others wouldn't get bored or frustrated and try to make their own way out, or to follow the two of them.

In other places the tunnels were a little too dark. The shadows variations in the stone cast were large and strangely-shaped, and when she tried to study them they seemed to change. When her light caught Daisy and sent her shadow up the walls again, the shape didn't always look like Daisy.

And wasn't that an apt metaphor, towering darkness Basira knew came from Daisy, but which her deepest feelings insisted couldn't possibly be?

The tunnels were creepy. That was the only discomfort she was trying to alleviate by talking.

"Are the others going to let you get the whole story out?"

Daisy hummed. Which was not an answer. 

"Didn't exactly start out strong, Daisy."

"I don't know, Basira." Daisy sighed.

She didn't continue. Basira grit her teeth. Daisy knew what she was getting at, she was being deliberately oblivious. "I've got nothing to do right now but listen."

Daisy's head tipped to the side, but the gloom made it hard to make any judgements about her expression. Their steps echoed.

"The Head of the Institute is behind it."

"Elias, right?" Basira had assumed the dislike she'd extrapolated from Daisy's descriptions had a more mundane origin, and that her own unease talking to him in an official capacity was just an inherited grudge. She didn't think she liked the lapse in judgement required to miss apocalyptic ambitions.

Daisy glanced to the side, and Basira could tell, bad as her angle was, she was rolling her eyes. "Oh, stop. Seeming too boring to be suspicious is the point, you aren't missing anything."

"But apparently I am."

Daisy winced. Basira frowned. She wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a jab about how Daisy had pulled the wool over her eyes. She wasn't sure whether she wanted it to be.

"Right," Daisy said, barely audible. Her tone briefly brightened on repetition of, "Right! Elias. You... no one hears this, alright? Don't even think about it if you aren't in the tunnels."

Basira weighed her options, but it wasn't much of a contest. Whatever it was about the tunnels would likely come out once they were back with the others. She'd be stewing about having to meet there, of all places, if she were in their shoes. "Top secret, got it."

"Short version: The sort of things that get you Sectioned, it's all fear. Dunno, you and Jon understood it better than me, but what's they guy? Love-something, horror?"

In spite of it all, Basira still knew the second halves of all of Daisy's thoughts. "Lovecraft?"

"Sure. Fear, as interdimensional, malicious... or disinterested? Dunno. But types of fear, just too big, or too concentrated, to fit into our world. People want to bring theirs into our world, take it over, but however you split it up fear is fear."

Tuning out as soon as you started talking about something she wasn't interested in probably wasn't a good trait in a time traveling would-be savior, but apparently they didn't have many options. Basira loved Daisy, but for a moment she wished she was talking to anyone else. "Alright."

"You can't have just one. You need to incorporate everything. The system Elias uses- most academic people this side of the world use- has fourteen categories. Eye is inherit in being the Archivist, it's what the Archivist is for. Jon came into the job afraid of the Web. Next is- next should have been Corruption- Prentiss." The hand that wasn't holding her torch waved illustratively.

Basira had no idea what she was trying to illustrate. "You lost me at fourteen."

Daisy turned, attentively confused, but melted into an apologetic grimace when she saw whatever trying to sort that mess out was doing to Basira's expression. "That's- fine. Everyone should probably hear... but fourteen. You need all fourteen, not just one. And it's fear. It's power is in fear. So if you want to bring that power fully into our world..."

Basira was about to ask another clarifying question when the mention of Prentiss sparked something. "You need people afraid of all of them."

"A person," Daisy said. Basira could hear her efforts to swallow back emotion before continuing. "An Archive of fear."

Not Archivist?

"We keep him safe," Daisy echoed. Her voice went sour as she added, "But Elias will keep trying."

"So we do something to Elias." Basira generally tried to avoid openly planning crimes, or planning to look the other way while Daisy committed them, but they were already in the murder tunnels talking about time travel and other crimes Daisy had committed in the past. All dancing around it would do was waste their time.

She could see Daisy's jaw clench. "Kill the freak, kill the Institute. He's its Heart, whatever that's supposed to mean. If he dies, the Institute dies. All of them."

Basira's stomach turned, but something caught against her brain. "Hasn't the Institute been around for like, two hundred years? People should've been dying every time the guy in charge died of natural causes, too." That wasn't the only way to leave a job, sure, but in Basira's experience something that nasty was unlikely to care about things like retirement.

Daisy turned to her, surprised and pleased. "Exactly."

Helpful.

She quickened her pace, and Basira followed. These tunnels felt different. Like there was something very close by. She was relieved that they didn't have to walk long before Daisy stretched her arm out, stopping Basira from continuing.

Once she checked that Basira was still, Daisy swept the arm forward, gesturing grandly at an offshoot of the corridor they were in. Her lips turned in an unhappy smile. "Behold. The Panopticon."

Basira scanned for characteristics that differentiated this from every other tunnel they'd walked through or past. It was more than she expected, but less than she'd hoped. She'd gotten used to the mash of different styles and materials that predominated the tunnels, stone that could be part of a natural cave meeting melted-together mosaic meeting cobblestones, but here it was all tidy gray brickwork. The air felt strangely heavy, distinct from all the worrying energy she picked up everywhere else, and more concretely: "What's with the gas cans?"

"According to Jon it'd be safer to do it from a distance."

Walking back with her worldview decidedly shaken and the Panopticon's location committed to memory, Basira's stomach sank with every step. The air felt too damp in her lungs.

She didn't want Daisy to go to prison, but she sort of hoped Jon's friends had talked him around since they left. She dreaded the possibility of finding Jon just where they left him, where she couldn't stop thinking of him.

"We should be on the same page," she said instead of thinking.

Daisy gave her a confused, wary look. "I thought we just-"

"Not about setting your problems on fire." Basira sighed. "Jon. Time travel. Take your pick."

Daisy's lips trembled before she managed to set her expression in stone. "Nothing's changed since last time you asked, Basira."

"You said you had secrets about all of the others." She waited for Daisy to nod. "You'd have to be pretty close to know some of them, from the sound of it."

Daisy shoved her hand into her pocket, effect somewhat lost with the other occupied carrying her torch, and turned to look straight ahead, off down the tunnel. "They gave statements."

"You had enough to write a note for Martin, though."

"I don't know enough to actually blackmail any of them," Daisy said. "I don't even know enough to blackmail Martin, Jon literally can't fire him."

"You'd have to be close to know a secret like that, though," Basira said. "To at least one of them."

Daisy frowned at her. "So?"

Basira didn't let herself roll her eyes. "Got anything you didn't put in the letters? Something I shouldn't know?"

She saw light dawn in Daisy's eyes before Daisy looked away again, pensive. "I... Melanie. Yeah, Melanie. Her favorite color is baby blue, but she tells people it's red. She has a toy elephant her grandmother gave her as a baby, but it's so old it's gray, now."

Basira fumbled the notepad out of her pocket halfway through, almost dropping her torch, and scribbled down the unexpectedly comprehensive answer. "Perfect."

"You going to back my play with Jon?" Daisy asked after a few minutes of Basira trying to decide how to broach the subject.

"Daisy..." Basira's heart seemed to shiver in her chest. "You're going to destroy him."

Daisy's head drooped. Her voice was hard. "It's for the best."

Basira thought of the pain on Jon's tear-streaked face and the things Daisy implied she'd find if she researched Jonathan Sims. She thought of the thin scars on Jon's wrists and the lock she'd seen and chosen not to ask about.

She could keep trying to convince Daisy in private.

"Fine."

Chapter Text

Jon stood on legs of stone and stared out after Daisy and Basira. His face stung from tears that seeped through his bandages. At least the bandages probably covered most of the flush he could feel burning to the surface.

That wasn't right, none of it. It didn't make sense. Daisy wouldn't do that. Not to him.

One second he was trying to defend her as everyone turned on them, the next there was no them. There was just Jon, caught between everybody screaming at him and Daisy's hard eyes as she did worse.

It wasn't right. Daisy wouldn't do that.

"Jon?"

He flinched hard, and his face heated anew at the reminder that the world didn't have the courtesy to crumble beneath him in private. He shouldn't feel humiliated. He didn't do anything wrong.

"Come sit down," Georgie said from just past the point in his periphery where tears blinded him.

She sounded like she was talking to a spooked cat. Jon wanted to move away, anywhere, so she would stop talking to him, but his mind filled with teenage fears about his feet catching on the stone. He wasn't the most graceful person on his best day, but injured and overflowing he had no chance of recovering a misstep instead of falling to the ground in front of everyone.

"Come sit down." 

A hand crept into Jon's vision, and he didn't have a choice about staggering away from it, something deeper than logic demanded action. "Don't touch me!"

"Okay!" Georgie, or at least a Georgie-shaped blob, stepped in front of him, hands raised. "No one's going to touch you. But I think you should sit down, you've had a shock."

A shock. "Just leave me alone!" 

"Jon..." Martin said, with the decency to step in front, where Jon could see him, much more quickly than Georgie had. His hands were already up, like Jon was holding the pair of them at gunpoint. Like he was the monster Daisy told them he was. "Everyone's just stressed. We'll cool down while we wait, and then we can get to the bottom of things, alright? I'm sure that's what Daisy's doing. We weren't getting anywhere screaming at each other."

Jon found himself softening. Martin was actually willing to give Daisy a chance. He nodded slightly .

"She's not cooling off," Tim said. "She meant everything she said."

"Tim," Martin said, voice uncharacteristically hard.

"You don't say something like that about someone you love!" Tim said.

"Drop it, Tim."

Tim stopped talking. 

If he sat down, Jon was going to curl inward. If he sat down his hands would find his face and he'd be sobbing into them in front of everyone while they all talked about how stupid he was and how evil Daisy was. 

He wanted Daisy. He wanted to go home, he wanted his bedroom and his locked door, but he didn't know the way out and they had to wait for Daisy to come back. 

He wanted his sister, he wanted his sister, he wanted his sister.

He wasn't sure if they were returning to his original seat or Martin's, or neither, but he let Martin nudge him toward a place to collapse. He wanted to pull his feet up onto the seat, to put one more barrier between him and the others as the tears that had briefly faded into numb silence returned, but the camping chair might fall over if he did.

Everyone was shouting, Tim was looking at Jon like he was lower than dirt, and when he looked to Daisy, to the woman who defended him from everything from vampires to first-day jitters, he found a stranger looking back.

He was alone. Georgie and Martin would find another sympathy case before long, and the others hated him. What could he possibly salvage from those relationships, after a prophecy that Jon was doomed to future evil and the utter loss of their respect after they found out about Daisy?

No one but Daisy had ever wanted him, but she didn't. She never had. Jon failed her and destroyed any chance of the illusion ever becoming real.

He wouldn't end the world. He couldn't.

He wanted Daisy.

-

Waves of tears came and went. Jon kept his eyes on his lap or the floor, and no one tried to talk to him. He could hear them talking to each other, but his brain didn't bother to understand most of the words. They didn't matter. Whatever they were saying, he knew understanding it would only hurt more.

He wasn't sure what about the tone of the conversation changed to have him swiping a hand over his eyes and trying to shake tears off the lenses of his glasses, but when he tried to listen to the room instead of blocking it out he heard what had changed it.

Jon sat up straight, easy where it had been so difficult a moment before, eyes fixed on the door again. The others weren't yelling now, and Daisy had been gone long enough to cool off, like Martin said. She would come back in, and things would go back to normal. He leaned forward, barely managing to stay in his seat as a torch painted a white circle in the middle of the warmer, fainter light cast from the lanterns, just outside. He looked around, trying to see if the way everyone's seats had gotten mixed up after they all stood up to yell at him had left enough space for the three of them to sit together, but he cared about greeting Daisy more and turned away after only a cursory glance. They could shuffle seats in a minute.

"Daisy!" He smiled. 

Daisy didn't look angry anymore, just determined. She had looked determined when they got out of the car, before things fell apart. Daisy was back and everything was going to be alright. It was just a misunderstanding. They'd had their share of those over the years, and it was always fine after a bit.

Daisy's eyes scanned over him, and instead of fixing on Jon as he had on her she passed him by like he was part of the wall, turning to look over the rest of the room. 

No. "Daisy?" Jon found himself shrinking against his will, weak.

Basira's gaze lingered on him longer, but then she pressed her lips together and turned away, following Daisy to a pair of vacated chairs on the other side of the room. They were bracketed by Georgie and Melanie, no space for Jon.

"Thanks for joining us!" Tim said before Daisy could speak, sarcasm thick enough for Jon to suffocate.

There was a dull thud, and Jon didn't need to look to know what it was. Sasha always thought kicking Tim was a subtler way to get him to rein it in than using her words, despite the noise it made.

Jon had thought knowing things like that meant he knew them. That they were his friends.

"So," Daisy said. She didn't look at Tim, but she didn't look at Jon, either.

"Daisy," Jon croaked again, but Martin was louder.

"Who is it who actually wants to end the world?"

Daisy opened her mouth, but Melanie was already speaking, turned sideways to aim all her attention at Daisy. "If you could arrange an apocalypse overnight someone would've done it already. Jon can't even organize the Archives, he couldn't do it on his own."

Jon waited for Daisy to respond to the barb, the one about the Archives at least, in his defense, with a look if nothing else. Her eyes briefly met his, but before he could work up another smile they passed over him again. "It certainly seemed willing enough."

It felt like someone had hit him, knocking him back hard enough that if there wasn't a wall behind him he might have tipped his chair over. "I won't. Daisy, I won't, I promise!"

Ever since carrying him into her flat, Daisy always spoke to and about Jon like he was family.

Sasha kicked Tim again. Jon could feel more tears coming, but he was powerless to stop them.

"Who is it?" Martin asked, as stoic and immovable as he was asking if Daisy was trying to blackmail him. As he was when Jon was pressed against his sister's side, her protective arm around his shoulders, and they were on the same team.

Daisy turned toward Jon, and his heart leapt for a beautiful moment before he realized Martin was sitting next to him. There was too much space between the two of them for Jon to even pretend Daisy was looking at him instead once her eyes made it to Martin. This was worse than being yelled at.

"Elias," she said. Her voice dripped disgust, like Martin had forced her hand into a heap of dead worms instead.

"Our boss Elias?" Tim asked. Daisy said that earlier, though, didn't she? That Jon couldn't have quit Research unless Elias let him.

"The man finds paperwork thrilling," Sasha said. What did Jon do wrong? He didn't want to forget promising Daisy he wouldn't take a promotion without checking with her! "Why would he want to end the world?"

Daisy shrugged one shoulder and didn't look at Jon. "Someone's got to be in charge. He thinks it'll be him."

"But Jon ended the world?" Georgie asked. Jon cringed deeper into his seat, already anticipating fresh vitriol. He knew he handled the breakup, handled a lot of things, with everyone in the room, less than ideally, but did he really deserve this? "Why would Elias get to be in charge if he wasn't the one to actually end the world?"

"A hammer builds a house. It was a willing instrument."

Jon swallowed back a fresh wave of tears. "I'm not willing." He started to stand, to run over so that Daisy opened her arms in anticipation and held him, and everything would be alright again. "Daisy, please. I promise. I'm not willing, just tell me what to do and I'll do it!"

"Stop."

Jon knew everyone could see him jerk away from Martin, thudding back down into his seat almost hard enough to topple it, curling in on himself protectively and bringing his arms up like he was anticipating a blow. The others saw him do it, and they were going to use it to fuel their vendetta against Daisy, and take it as confirmation of what she said about him. He was only affirming their worst suspicions about him, practically forcing them to abandon him, too.

Oh. 

When Jon peered past his arms, Martin wasn't looking at him. He was looking at Daisy.

That wasn't better.

"Excuse me?" Daisy asked.

Martin shook his head. His hands were clenched into fists. "Stop talking about him like that. Stop talking about him like a thing, you don't get to, to ruin his life and then blame him for it!"

Jon turned to see Daisy's reaction, hope swelling even through his stifled objections. Daisy didn't ruin his life. 

But Daisy liked Martin, she might actually listen to him. He might jar her back into normalcy and Daisy would stop-

She scoffed. "You were just as pathetic about him then." She still didn't so much as glance at Jon.

"Stop sniping at people and give us the short version," Melanie said.

Jon expected Daisy to glare at her, maybe even with the dangerous sort of anger. He wasn't- wasn't blind to Daisy's faults. He would stand up for Melanie, if things took a bad turn. He just didn't know if it would be to shield her, or divert Daisy's anger onto himself.

Maybe the others would hate him a bit less, if he did that.

Daisy didn't look angry at Melanie. It was subtle, but she was smiling, just a bit. She looked fond.

She wouldn't even look at Jon. He was seventeen, desperately reaching out to his sister for rescue, for comfort, and this time she hung up and left him there, blood-soaked and hiding behind a dumpster in the cold.

The tunnels were cold. He was cold. Jon wanted to be warm. He wanted to hug Daisy.

"Which bit?" Daisy asked.

Melanie glared harder the more Daisy smiled. Jon's vision was starting to go, filmed over by jealous, pathetic tears again. "How do we stop it? Whoever ends the world, how do we stop it?"

Daisy's mouth flattened a bit, but Jon could still see the smile there. He didn't know if any of the others could tell, except maybe Basira, but he could. Melanie must have been her friend in the future. 

And Jon was just a monster.

"You? Don't go to India."

There was a pit in the middle of his chest. He wanted to fix it, but he always went to Daisy for help fixing things.

He already knew he was a burden. He just hadn't thought it was this bad.

"If me going to India ends the world you should have started with me," Melanie said. "Not Jon. You can't keep changing whose fault it is!"

Daisy shook her head. Was she still smiling at Melanie? He couldn't tell anymore, there were too many tears in the way. "I'm not. You going to India was one of the dominoes. Drop the war ghost thing. That's what you can change."

Jon tried to wipe the tears going down his cheeks in stinging lines of fire enough to see what was going on, but as soon as his eyes were cleared they were filled with tears again, over and over.

Daisy sighed, and sounded gentler, tired in a way Jon couldn't remember hearing before, "You always wished you hadn't gone." It was a vulnerable tone, wasn't it? And Daisy trusted Melanie. Maybe Basira had gotten it, too.

But never Jon.

He wasn't even helping. He was just letting them yell at Daisy again! He was worse than useless.

"So I'm just supposed to drop my entire career on the word of a madwoman?"

"Your footage was corrupted." Jon startled back when all heads (but not Daisy's please Daisy) turned to him, almost as surprised to have spoken as they were to hear it. He had to, he had to make Melanie calm down. Or direct her anger at him instead. "The footage you brought with your Statement. It was corrupted, and... the, the pictures, polaroids? Tapes. I don't think you'll ever get the proof you want onto YouTube." His voice shook the whole way through.

He turned in on himself again before he could see her expression. Melanie cursed under her breath, and Jon felt smaller with every word. He couldn't do anything without alienating one side. He wasn't sure he could do anything without alienating both. He was a monster.

It wasn't fair. He loved them all. He wanted to keep them all.

Except maybe Melanie.

"What about the rest of us?" Martin asked. At least he didn't yell like the others, even now. "What do we do?"

"You?" Daisy said. "Stay away from the Lukases."

Elias would agree. It was almost funny, but Jon knew better than to point it out. She seemed to hate Elias almost as much as she hated Jon. She hid that, too. He wouldn't make things up to her by drawing that comparison.

What could Jon do? He didn't expect it to be as easy as avoiding someone or someplace, but he would do it. He would, if Daisy would just tell him he could show her he wasn't the other Jon, the one who wanted to end everything. He just needed to know.

"If no one has an active role to play in stopping the apocalypse, why tell us this at all?" Sasha asked, like Daisy unmasking the twin snakes in the grass was nothing. 

Jon's face was coldest where the air of the tunnels met tear tracks and salt-soaked bandages. He must look pathetic, blubbering like he could fool them again.

It didn't matter if he didn't mean to do it. Daisy wouldn't be set against him if that mattered. 

He had to believe that, because that meant there was hope.

"Just kill Elias."

Everyone's eyes whipped to Melanie. She folded her arms and crossed her legs, scowling."We could have an active role. He's the one actually pulling the strings. We kill him, sounds like we're golden."

Again, Jon started to hope.

That was why Daisy hated him. The moment someone gave him the opportunity to pass the blame, Jon was happy. That was the seed of Daisy's dark future, already growing in Jon's chest. He felt like he might choke on the shame, drop dead where he sat and solve all their problems. Daisy said the others could quit if Jon was out of the way.

"She could've done that years ago," Tim griped. "Before any of us were in this mess."

Before any of them could meet Jon, he filled in. He couldn't drag his eyes back up, kept staring at his shoes, trying to trace the shape of the monster inside him, any tiny chance he could root it out for good and fix things. There had to be something he could do.

"Everyone dies," Daisy said. Jon had to look up, seized with a sudden fear that she meant everyone in the room died, now.

"Define ev-"

"Kill Elias and everyone who works for the Institute dies," Daisy said before Tim could finish. "Everyone tied to the Institute dies. Especially you four."

Oh. Jon hadn't been willing to condemn one person, someone he'd liked when they came down here mere minutes (hours?) ago. He was happy to condemn dozens.

"If you'd really like, I can go find him right now." No, no.

Jon-

Jon didn't want to die. He- 

The others didn't deserve to die. None of this was their fault, and if Jon hadn't kept provoking Daisy, maybe she wouldn't be angry enough to threaten it. 

The others didn't deserve that. He wanted to protect them just as ardently now as when he was trying to take the blame for telling them about Jonathan Sims, desperately offering to run away and go into hiding if Daisy would leave them be.

His fault again, he realized. Jon was tied to the Institute, whatever that meant. They couldn't go on the run, because Jon couldn't quit the Institute. 

If he'd just listened to her, told her where he was interviewing before he got the Research job, she could be his sister for real. What good did pride do him? What good had making it a surprise done him? He'd selfishly wanted a happy moment and a nice photo, and put that above the entire world.

"Maybe you should!" Tim said, voice growing louder, echoing off the walls and the insides of Jon's skull as he leapt to his feet. "You'll torture a kid, but a bit of mass murder by proxy is too far? I thought we were talking about the end of the world, not the trolley problem."

Jon was a terrible friend. There was a joke he almost remembered, Tim and the trolley problem. He should be able to remember what it was. 

He was always deluding himself. The friendship was just as false and fragile on his side as he'd been so affronted to find it on theirs. He should be able to remember. If he cared he would remember.

Jon saw Sasha almost try to rein Tim in. Jon saw Sasha change her mind. "What's the point, then?" she asked, giving Daisy no space to answer Tim. Her voice was loud.

This was wrong, it was wrong, they were fighting again, it was Jon's fault, he had to stop it!

"Why bring us here if we can't actually help?" Sasha demanded. 

Tim looked like he was moments away from throwing a punch, and Jon didn't know what to do. He felt like he could barely breathe.

Daisy sat back, unbothered. "Basira and I have it handled."

Basira didn't look as hostile as Daisy. There might be a foothold there. She might help. Something had to change, Jon couldn't live like this. He couldn't live with Daisy hating him.

He needed something to hold onto.

"So we skip out of here and go on our merry way, that's it?" Melanie asked. "Call you up once in a while and ask how it's going, without doing anything ourselves?" 

Did that tone, that aggression, from someone Daisy actually liked hurt her? Jon didn't like Melanie much when they came down here, and that made it impossible to see what Daisy saw in her.

Or whatever was wrong inside of him made it impossible.

"No," Daisy said. Jon couldn't help stiffening at the tone. He was paranoid. She wasn't angry, just assured. She was only angry at him. "Don't talk about any of this."

"What, because you don't want us going to the police?" Georgie asked.

Jon had had a fragile hope that her reticence was a sign that something about that awful dinner had left her better disposed toward Daisy than the others, but it was dissolving quickly. It wasn't fair.

Daisy clenched and unclenched one fist, over and over. Would she ever hold Jon's hand when he was scared again? "Because Elias might see you."

Sasha huffed. "So we won't talk about it at work." Work they knew trapped them with Jon, now. How long would it take for the hatred to become too much to take?

It wouldn't. Jon would take it. He owed them that, at least. It was his fault.

"If it has eyes, Elias can see through it," Daisy said. Jon rocked forward, wanting to run up and do something to lessen the frustration in her voice instead of processing the words properly. Useless. "Anywhere but the tunnels, he might be watching. You should try not to think about it, especially face to face with him."

Jon's heart started racing. Did their demands for answers since Prentiss already let something slip to Elias? He tried to review every conversation since then, but he didn't know what he was looking for.

Jon was close enough to see Martin's expression in spite of the tears he couldn't entirely clear, caught some inhale . He looked serene, like he was asking Daisy how many sugars she took in her tea. Martin would have been smart enough to avoid whatever Jon did. Martin was smart enough to unravel all of Jon's secrets in a matter of days. "Why have the polaroids, then?"

"What?" Daisy asked. Jon shook his head to himself in time with the question. She said already, it was in case someone was replaced.

"You don't need the picture to be on the fridge to reference it," Martin said, calm unbroken by the bewildered reactions he was receiving from everyone in the room. "You have that little board by the fridge- that's why that's there, isn't it? And you have the boxes."

"So what?" Enough of the tears had been surprised out of Jon's eyes that he could see Daisy's face twisting around the words. He could calm her down, but she wouldn't let him! She wouldn't even acknowledge his presence.

"If your whole goal is keeping Jon away from Elias, why give him an engraved invitation into your kitchen? All those eyes. You didn't have to cover your fridge with lovey-dovey polaroids. So why. Do it."

Someone inhaled sharply. Jon tensed. 

Daisy sneered at Martin. "I don't have to explain myself to you."

"You still haven't answered the question," Basira, of all people, said. "Why involve them? They wouldn't have to worry about a one-man surveillance state if you just kept it to yourself."

Maybe it was the tunnels. They were supernatural enough to block Elias. Daisy said they were dangerous. Maybe something in the tunnels was keeping her angry, and once they were out she would at least talk to Jon. Please.

He thought he knew her well enough for that read to be accurate, but apparently Jon had thought a lot of wrong things.

Daisy shot Basira a dirty look. Jon didn't think she would actually answer.

"Clarity," Daisy said like it answered everything.

Jon saw Melanie, Sasha, and Tim open their mouths to demand she explain. He wanted to ask, too, but he didn't want to be ignored again. 

She couldn't ignore him if he didn't give her anything to ignore. Please let it be the tunnels.

"I know why the things in those letters happened, too," Daisy said before they could. "We were... allies."

But not Jon. Jon was a monster.

There had to be something he could do to fix this. 

He'd do anything if it meant he could have his sister back.

 "I thought some of you might appreciate an explanation."

(Jon wanted to know what was in the letters. They hurt the others, whatever they were, and he still wanted to know, like some sick voyeur. He was an even worse friend than he was a brother.)

"Fine," Martin spat. "Explain."

Chapter Text

Sasha had a list of questions crumpled in her hand, scribbled on the back of the envelope from Daisy's note. They'd hashed them out when they were planning their strategy for when Daisy and Basira returned and she swore she wouldn't stop until Daisy hit every point on the list. 

Their strategy was successful, she thought; they got actual information out of Daisy this time, at least. It was hard to focus on those goals, on the rest of the list, when Daisy finally stopped dripping poison in their ears.

She didn't think she was the only one feeling a bit scattered. Someone shifted or tensed whenever Daisy moved on to a new breed of nightmare; Sasha tried not to note them, but it was hard. Some were called out by name: Prentiss, vampires, a few names addressed solely to Basira. Others...

She seemed braced for it after the first few entries, but Georgie still paled so fast she looked dead herself when Daisy started talking about endings.

Jon had a worse reaction when Daisy got to spiders, to Web. He looked shaken after the first sentence, but after that Daisy's tone turned cruel and pointed again. He had a hand clasped over his own mouth, desperately trying to stifle sobs, by the time she finished, but something about hearing it listed out was so transfixing that Sasha couldn't realize she should have defended him until it was already over.

She wished she had a notebook, but if Daisy was telling the truth about Elias reading minds hard copy was probably a terrible idea.

"All.... alright?" Tim asked, patting Sasha's hand. She hadn't realized they were holding each other.

Shame crested over her. All Daisy's monologue could use to pierce Sasha's heart were things from her days in Artefact Storage, when she was almost always mostly safe from truly ruinous results. Daisy's voice was just as pointed when she mentioned the Circus as it was toward Jon, though with briefer duration; Tim actually saw something terrible. He lost his brother. All Sasha had to come back to her in the middle of the night were a few bad days at work.

She nodded. "You?"

Tim sighed.

"Five minutes," Daisy said. "We've been down here too long."

Too long for safety reasons, or too long because Daisy didn't want to answer any more questions? It was hard to remember why that mattered. Sasha decided she didn't like the tunnels.

She tried to scan the room, make at least a token effort toward being a good friend. She saw Melanie start to stand, glaring Daisy's way, maybe going to protest the meeting being adjourned on Daisy's terms, or before they asked the questions Sasha could hardly remember writing down, but then her eyes landed on Georgie and the anger bled away. Instead, Melanie went to Georgie and pulled her to her feet, hands hovering like Georgie might tip over. Sasha wasn't sure she wouldn't.

Jon was... Jon was bad. He was trembling all over, and so many tears had soaked the bandages on his face that Sasha could see a spot of red starting to bleed through on his cheekbone. His eyes never left Daisy, and the hungry look in them only went away when Daisy looked like she might turn at look Jon in the eye. Sasha watched hope burn and then crumble twice in thirty seconds.

Sasha... couldn't. She couldn't. She said the wrong things over and over when they first confronted Jon. This was a thousand times more delicate, she couldn't screw it up. 

Martin was with him. Martin was coaxing Jon out of his seat and taking his hand, and Martin would make sure he made it out safe. The rest...

The rest would have to wait for somewhere with proper light, and a door between them and Daisy. Jon would be alright.

She didn't really notice the preparations Daisy and Basira made to leave. She just stood in the middle of the room, staring blankly, until Tim nudged her into taking out her torch and Basira urged Georgie and Melanie off in the opposite direction. Tim pulled on the hand he was holding when Sasha went to follow after Daisy, holding her down until Martin, one arm wrapped around Jon and the other resting on his near shoulder, steering him by both, went ahead of them. "Slowest hiker goes in the middle. Can't get lost," he muttered.

That... 

Probably for the best. Sasha blinked, shook her head, and focused on finding the chalk arrow at every turn, making sure Daisy didn't lead them off deeper into the labyrinth instead of out into the Archives.

-

They all perked up when they reached the trapdoor, then crawled out into the semi-light of the Archives, but Jon looked like an entirely new man, eyes already searching. Sasha's heart sunk.

He waited until they were out of the Institute and down the front steps to break from Martin. "Daisy!"

Martin made a grabbing motion after him, then turned to Sasha and Tim, eyes wide, panicked and questioning.

Sasha kept her eyes on Jon, on Daisy. They were in public, if Daisy didn't hurt him in the tunnels then surely she wouldn't do it here?

"Daisy!" Jon said again, voice a bit less bright. "Daisy, please."

Daisy acted like she didn't hear anything at all.

Jon's shoulders hunched, but he dodged Martin when he reached out.

When they reached the car, it didn't occur to Sasha to worry Jon might try to take the front seat, next to Daisy, until Martin had already tossed his bag in the boot and taken advantage of his height to beat Jon there, and Jon's steps stuttered, obviously thwarted.

The energy in the car was bleak.

Jon caught up to Daisy again as she made for the front door, avoiding Martin again. Sasha scrambled to catch up, Tim on her heels.

"Daisy," he said as she worked the long line of locks, face tipped up to look at her with a shy smile.

Daisy nearly kicked the door open, tapping her foot as she waited for all four of them to stagger in so she could lock it again. They all lingered; Jon stood at her shoulder, still stubbornly hopeful. The rest of them weren't willing to get that close, but they couldn't leave him there alone. Sasha didn't even want to tear her eyes away, but she didn't know what to do.

Martin met her eyes with a look of teary agony. Tim was mostly angry, all attempts to humor Daisy and avoid drawing her ire dead in the water.

Daisy turned and stomped up the stairs when the locks were done, and Jon followed on surprisingly light feet. As they reached the top, Sasha heard him say, "Please talk to me, Daisy," and the sound of a door slamming.

She wished she couldn't hear the hiccuping breaths Jon took before running down the hall and slamming his own door.

Sasha nodded toward the kitchen. She'd prefer a door they controlled between them and Daisy, but they'd get more privacy on another floor than across the hall from her. She didn't think Daisy or Jon would be coming out anytime soon, and they still had time before her phone was scheduled to send their evidence to the police.

"What now?" she asked. She meant it to sound authoritative, determined, certain, but it came out sounding lost.

"Police, same as before," Tim said.

Martin shook his head in time with Sasha. "After that? We can't just use the old plan!" His voice squeaked with energy, but he kept the volume carefully low.

"You don't seriously believe her about Jon- about Jon-"

"Of course he doesn't," Sasha hissed. "But that doesn't mean we don't need to consider... that. What would Daisy getting arrested now do to him?"

"We have to consider her tearing his throat out, not just-"

"Tim," Sasha said, as stern as she could be without raising her voice. "Quiet."

Tim clenched his jaw and didn't speak.

"She isn't going to hurt him," Martin said.

Apparently Sasha was wrong to side with him instead of Tim. "What?"

"Physically, at least." Martin frowned and shook his head. "You were- No one else was looking at Daisy. When you were yelling at Jon, I mean."

"We weren't-" Sasha and Tim broke off in the same unison they started, their doubled voice seeming to ring and echo off of every surface in the kitchen.

Martin crossed his arms. "You were. Jon tried to defend Daisy, and you all started yelling at him. And she was pleased."

"You were..." Sasha started, but-

"No, I wasn't," Martin said. At least Tim got the I can't believe you're this stupid look as well, rather than Sasha bearing it alone. "I was the only one paying attention to the actual threat in the room." His lips quivered with suppressed and reheated rage.

Sasha had thought she'd seen Martin truly angry before.

Had.

"Daisy was pleased you were ganging up on him," he repeated. "And then you-" he cut his eyes at Tim, but Sasha was dreadfully certain, now, she was just as guilty, "got nasty. And she wasn't. She looked like she was watching a train crash."

Sasha shook her head. "That doesn't make sense. She hates Jon, appar-"

"Her face changed like that." Martin looked at her, exasperated at her failing to catch on to whatever he was getting at, and snapped his fingers. "Then she started yelling at Jon. She was putting on an act."

Tim leaned forward, palms flat to the counter and his eyes burning. "Martin."

Martin flailed a hand at him, swiping the word out of the air. "You weren't looking!"

"You can't know just from a look," Sasha said, utterly unsure. Daisy hating Jon all along was cleaner, in a way. It tore Jon up, but at least it was a sharp ending, something to alienate him from Daisy once and for all.

"Did you see Basira?" Martin asked. "When they left or when they came back. She didn't buy it, either."

Sasha chewed her lip.

Everything before said Daisy cared about Jon, twisted as it was. She held onto him as they walked into the tunnels, held his hand when she took everyone from Tim away from the Institute after Prentiss. She'd let him sleep in her bed every night since, and when they heard him scream awake in the night and Martin launched out of bed, just in case it was Daisy and not a nightmare, Martin always crept back to say he could hear Daisy comforting him on the other side of the door.

"She didn't answer Martin about the polaroids," she said, glancing over her shoulder toward the fridge. She scanned them for a moment; a new, false Daisy in the pictures would be another cleanly defined ending.

When she turned back, the others were trying to drag their eyes away from the fridge. Martin nodded. "Why do that, if it isn't emotional?"

But Daisy didn't want Jon to be Archivist, he said it himself. Sasha hadn't liked his tone. It didn't sound like it was a calm disagreement. That much, at least, fit the Daisy in the tunnels far more than it did Daisy the false sister. If they went through the polaroids one by one, how many would show injuries, like sick trophies of Jon's pain?

"So what?" Tim asked. "That doesn't change what she did."

"It changes how Jon sees it!" Martin said. He was leaning on the counter too, now, with his hands clenched in fists. His knuckles were white wherever Sasha could see them between the bandages. "There's a difference between Daisy being arrested and Daisy tearing him to shreds and then being arrested!"

"Why would Daisy do it if she didn't mean it?" Sasha asked. "And what do we do about it?"

Martin shifted back, hands dropping, lax, to his sides. "I don't know. But it wasn't real."

Sasha tried to keep her frustration out of her voice. She was tired. She wanted this to be over, selfish as that felt when Jon had been enduring worse for years upon years. "We don't call the police today," she said. "Can we at least agree on that?"

Tim held himself stiff for a moment before letting the building anger of the debate bleed away. "Fine. Yeah. We were going to work things out with Jon properly if we didn't need the timer anyway."

"I'll go stop it." She tried to go up the stairs like she wasn't running away.

The hall at the top was empty, all the doors shut. She shut the door to the guest room behind her, and was sickeningly glad that she couldn't hear Jon, if he was making any noise at all behind his own, thick door. Her hearing was even more muffled when she crawled under the bed, way back to where her smashed-up phone sat beside the wall.

She hesitated, then turned it on without crawling out. Daisy was, if nothing else, still the criminal she was this morning. Choosing not to call the police now didn't mean they wouldn't need a way to do so eventually. As long as they were stuck here, it was wiser to have a way to call for help that Daisy didn't know about.

Sasha shimmied out and busied herself with nothing for a bit. She didn't want to go down and speak to the others, but she didn't like the idea of trying to talk to Jon through the door any better. Their bags were already neatened, on the assumption that they'd be going home before the end of the day, the promise to Jon and hopefully the obstacle of Daisy both discharged, but she tidied hers again. She restyled her hair, smoothing out the places it had started to frizz away or break free.

She was digging through her things for face wash, on the excuse that she felt grimy after the tunnels, when there was a heavy knock on the door downstairs. 

There was no way whoever it was could see Sasha, but she froze anyway, and hoped Tim and Martin weren't somewhere the unfortunate salesperson could see them. It didn't matter if someone was home if they couldn't unlock the door, but they just knew there were people inside trying to ignore them.

The doorbell rang. Sasha started to scramble for a solution if whoever it was refused to shift from the front step (write a note and hold it to a window?) when a door much closer to her opened, and she heard Daisy go down the stairs.

She waited until she was sure Daisy was out of sight to creep after her. Sasha moved so slowly it was entirely possible the arduous process of opening the door, then dismissing the salesman, then locking up again could be completed by the time she got close enough to see or hear anything, and if there was any truth to what Martin said to be found in Daisy's mannerisms Tim was already downstairs to corroborate, but she wanted to know. Any scrap of evidence could help, right?

The hinges squeaked open when she was halfway to the top of the stairs. She could hear muffled voices, but she wasn't close enough to make out the words.

She made it just in time to hear a man say, "-arrest for the murder of Gertrude Robinson."

"Don't be difficult, Daisy," a second, much more tired-sounding man said. "You don't want Jon to see, do you? It shouldn't take long to clear up."

A panicked drone overlaid all of Sasha's thoughts. She believed Jon and Daisy when they insisted she didn't murder Gertrude.

Daisy didn't start shouting or fighting the police at the door, as Sasha almost expected her to. As she peered half an eye around the wall at the top of the stairs, she saw Daisy unclip the keys from her belt and toss them at Martin. "Call Basira, yeah?"

Handcuffs clinked, and then they were gone.

-

Fortunately, Tim and Martin froze in shock just as much as Sasha, and she recovered first. She was downstairs before they could race up to tell her and Jon.

"Did you?" Tim asked.

"Did you?" Sasha asked.

Martin shook his head. "No, we- we agreed."

Sasha nodded. "Not for- I mean, I wouldn't. Not for Gertrude."

"Then...?" Martin asked.

They couldn't stand around forever, but Sasha had no idea what to do, mouth open like the words would just present themselves if she waited long enough.

"Does anyone have Basira's number?" Tim asked. He sounded confident, whether he was or not, and if Sasha were in a Victorian novel she would have swooned from the sheer relief of having someone who seemed to know what they were doing. It nearly felled her as it was.

"No," Martin said.

"Jon must," Sasha said. It made sense. The three of them were supposed to be close. She hoped he did, at least.

Sasha wanted Daisy behind bars for her actual crimes, and Gertrude's real murderer with her. She couldn't imagine Jon would start to rebuild as quickly if Daisy's rebuffs were spread out across separate visits instead of, apparently, constant as they went about life normally. Maybe that was the wrong way to think of it, she didn't want Jon broken by the process of leaving Daisy itself, but what else could they do? They felt closer to having a plan when Daisy was locked in her room upstairs than they did now. Sasha was selfish enough to keenly miss that illusion of solid ground already.

"I'll go-" Tim started. Sasha flattened a hand against his chest before he could get more than a step, mind whirring.

"I don't think he'll want to see you," she said, only realizing how blunt her tone was when he looked hurt.

"Not sure he'll like seeing any of us, given the circumstances," Martin said with a wooden laugh.

"I'll go," she said. Something adjacent to a plan was forming. She was as lost on the actual problem as before, but with the impression of Tim having one secondary objectives were sliding into place. "I... I talked to him a bit, earlier. While I was upstairs, I mean. I think I can..."

She made for the stairs before either could call her out on the terrible performance of the lie, and hoped they wouldn't follow.

A detour to the guest room had Sasha's phone in hand, typing distractedly as she went to knock on Jon's door. "Jon?" Silence. She could see his shadow under the door, and she probably couldn't open the door without pressing against his injuries and hurting him. And she didn't want to rob him of that control. She didn't want to be just another Daisy. "Jon, it's important."

"Go away," a miserable voice said, almost too faint to hear through the thick door.

Her first message got a rapid response. Sasha answered before taking a deep breath and bracing herself. "Daisy's been arrested."

The door whipped open, and Jon's eyes were teary and furious. "No." His voice broke.

"For Gertrude's murder," Sasha said. To her own ears, her voice sounded ghostly and hollow. Like she wasn't hearing through her own ears at all. "It wasn't us."

Jon's expression fractured without the anger, panic and horror taking over. "Who?"

"I don't know. She said to call Basira, and none of us know her number."

Jon's shoulders relaxed a hair, just as soothed by having a defined task as Sasha. "I'll- alright. Keys?"

It took too long for Sasha to interpret the word. "Oh! Martin."

Jon fished in his pocket for his phone. His eyes were wide, tears threatening and shoulders already slumped in anticipation of refusal, as he asked, "Please?"

Sasha blinked. "Lock the door? The front door?" Jon nodded. Sasha took a shaky breath. "That's- who knows what else is out there."

Sasha nodded at Jon.

Jon nodded at Sasha.

Sasha nodded at Jon.

Jon nodded at Sasha.

Sasha tore herself from the loop like fishing worms out with a corkscrew. "I'll go..."

She raced downstairs.

Chapter Text

"Hey," Basira said as they slowly made their way up Melanie's string toward the exit. "Melanie."

"What?" It was all she could do not to completely bite Basira's head off. Basira was complicit. She had to know something was wrong long before anyone else figured out who Jon really was, and she didn't step in to defend him today. She was barely better than Daisy.

"What's your favorite color?"

Melanie stopped and turned to face Basira. "Are you serious?"

Basira shrugged. "Daisy didn't have any of my secrets."

"And?" Were they making small talk or debating the plausibility of time travel? Or had she completely lost her mind? 

Had Melanie lost her mind?

"Daisy have any way of knowing your favorite color?"

"Does it matter?" Georgie asked.

"Does she?" Basira repeated. "Because I don't."

Melanie huffed and turned back to the path ahead. "Red. Happy?"

"Is it?"

Georgie scoffed, quickening her step to be closer to Melanie and further from Basira. "Why, did Daisy get it wrong?"

"She said that's what you tell people," Basira said, calm as you please. 

Melanie felt like something slimy was worming up her spine, but that could just be seeing the gory evidence of what happened down here a few weeks ago affecting her more than she thought. "Yeah. Because it's my favorite color."

"Daisy says that's what you tell people," Basira said again, "but that it's actually baby blue."

Melanie stopped, again (God she wanted out of these tunnels), and turned, again. "What?"

Basira shrugged. "There have been some details about a toy elephant..."

"Agh!" Melanie said, and spun back around, determined to ignore Basira. At least it was dark enough Georgie probably couldn't tell that she was blushing. Like she'd been so cool about dismissing Basira.

Like it was any of Basira's business!

-

Basira split off almost immediately once they were out of the tunnels, but Melanie and Georgie stuck together. If felt like they should be discussing... all of that, but Melanie didn't even know if they could. They walked in silence, no destination in mind. Her brain felt too crowded with fresh horror and viscera to think properly.

Both of their phones lit up with masses of alerts that couldn't make it through underground, and when hers buzzed again Melanie half expected it to be a straggler.

do u have georges number sth happend i dont think it would b a good ide to ask jon rn

It took Georgie a few steps to realize Melanie had stopped walking. She turned and asked, "Alright?"

Words came slowly. Melanie shook her head. "I- Sasha wants your number." 

i'm still with her

"Why?" Georgie frowned. "Wait, when did you give Sasha your number?"

(An exceedingly foolish corner of Melanie's brain found space to wonder if Georgie was asking because she was jealous of the idea of Melanie handing her number out to other women.)

"We talked for a bit when I went to give my Statement." She didn't like the newly-acquired capital letter she couldn't help but give the word. "Something happened. That's all she said." Melanie started to type, but Sasha answered her before she could demand details.

daisy arrested jn needs someone besides us

you already called the police?

"Daisy was arrested," Melanie said. They couldn't seriously have thought calling the cops now would do Jon any good, after the mess in the tunnels.

"What?" Georgie closed the distance between them, peering over Melanie's shoulder at the screen (standing very close to Melanie to do it).

no is gertd

"Gertrude?" Georgie said, squinting at the screen.

"I think so?" Melanie wouldn't have pinned Sasha as such a haphazard correspondent.

"Tell her I'm on my way," Georgie said, hands darting around her person like she couldn't remember what she needed or where she put it. "And send me the number."

"You want company?"

That sounded much too suggestive for the circumstances.

"Do you want to come?" Georgie asked, blinking at her.

Melanie grimaced. "Should I? I mean, should either of us, if...?"

Georgie pursed her lips. "I mean, like I said earlier. I don't think Jon really has anyone else. I guess we could hope he takes you being with me as enough of a reason?"

Melanie started to respond, and her heart jolted in her chest. "What if it's already too late?"

"What?" Georgie took half a step back.

"Someone got Daisy arrested," Melanie said.

Georgie's mouth hung upon for a moment before her expression firmed. "Plausible deniability it is. Sasha already texted you, anyway. If you want...?"

Melanie took a deep breath. "I'll come."

-

Daisy's house had a line of locks down the front door. Melanie checked the address Sasha sent her three times before knocking; if she was at the wrong house, she wasn't sure this one's inhabitants would be friendly to lost strangers. "This it?" Did the neighbors never wonder about the locks? It was a nice enough neighborhood.

"I mean, I haven't been here in years," Georgie said. "But that-" she gestured at the locks, "can't be common." 

Melanie nodded. They wouldn't get far debating endlessly.

There was a response before she even finished knocking, the sound of locks beginning to be undone. If this was the right house, Daisy's absence had evidently not resulted in looser security. Melanie looked at Georgie nervously. "You're sure...?" Georgie nodded again, but Melanie stayed on her toes, unsure of what she was afraid would happen.

The door opened a sliver, and Martin's eyes peered out at them. "Hey." He shut the door and unfastened the chain. "Sorry, just wanted to be sure."

"There's a peephole?" Georgie said.

Martin looked bad, some of the bandages on his neck soaking through specks of red and his hair wild. His cheeks flushing did nothing to improve the picture. "Oh. Right." He shuffled back to allow them through.

"You beat Basira," Sasha said, leaning against the wall opposite the door with her arms crossed. As Melanie looked around, she spotted Jon and Tim, sitting at the table past the kitchen. She didn't think it was possible for Jon to look worse than he had in the tunnels without some sort of fresh, freely bleeding injury.

"You called Basira?" Georgie asked. She'd gone onto one foot to hook a shoe off, but she put her foot down still clad instead.

Martin went to start doing the locks up again, but Georgie elbowed Melanie before she could protest. When Melanie turned to demand an explanation, Georgie nodded at Sasha, and brushed a hand up her wrist, where Sasha had a considerable amount of bandage visible.

Right. Even if the worms were gone, the others probably had more than enough reason to want a locked door between them and the world. Certainly more than Melanie had to want it unlocked, when she didn't think any of them had any intention of keeping her here if she wanted to leave. The day just kept getting better.

Sasha glanced nervously toward Jon, but Melanie couldn't hear what he and Tim were saying, and the four of them were speaking in undertones. "Daisy said to."

"Why are we doing what Daisy wants?" Melanie asked, almost letting her control of the volume slip away. Near Sasha's head, her eyes caught on a photo that certainly appeared to show Daisy and Jon together, Jon a pudgy toddler plopped in the sand next to the sand castle little Daisy was proudly presenting to the camera.

Sasha scowled. "I don't want her in prison for Gertrude. I want her there for what she did to Jon, and whoever really killed Gertrude for that."

Georgie's eyes were fixed anxiously on Jon, but she kept looking back to the rest of them, so Melanie assumed she hadn't gone to Jon because she was listening. Melanie asked, "Are we sure she didn't kill Gertrude? I mean, if she did, Jon wouldn't have to deal with court, and things." Gertrude was on the list of questions for Daisy they came up with, but they didn't get that far down their list.

"She didn't," Martin said.

Melanie wanted to demand how he could be so sure, but Georgie beat her to it, asking instead, "How did Gertrude die?"

Joy.

"They found her desk covered in blood," Sasha said. "Too much to survive, apparently."

"She was shot," Martin said, voice dipping even quieter. "Three times, in the chest."

"If Daisy was a cop, she might still have a gun," Melanie said.

Sasha shrugged. "She didn't use it to kill Gertrude, if she does."

"You can't know that."
"We didn't tell you everything," Martin said. Fortunately for him, he continued before Melanie could ream him out for not even identify what everything they didn't tell them; by her count, there were at least three. "Daisy used to tell the neighbors Jon was mentally ill. Fragile, after," he sneered, "their parents died. Delusional, and he wandered off. So if he shows up at your door talking about oh, aliens, or being abducted, won't you please call me?" He ended with his head bouncing side-to-side with every sugary syllable. Melanie's eyes were drawn to the fake photo again.

How many attempts were there? And what else? Melanie saw Jon, very distinctly, flinch when Daisy's personal cosmology touched on vampires, of all things. What else?

When did he give up? When did she finally wear him down into playing pretend with her?

"She took all the pictures of him out of his grandmother's house," Martin said. Melanie was beginning to regret not looking Jon up as soon as there was no longer a heap of stone between her and an internet connection, but she could hardly pull Wikipedia up here, where Jon might see. "When she left the letters and pictures. She put the frames back on the walls, tidied his bedroom. I don't think she'd just leave blood everywhere."

"And she didn't want Jon to get the job," Georgie said. She sighed and hooked a shoe off with her finger.

Melanie felt strangely bereft when Georgie crossed the house to speak to Jon, even though she didn't really leave. Did she come here for a reason that wasn't just a simple desire to know what was going on, and being around Georgie? What did she think she was going to do to help, she didn't even get on with Jon.

Following Georgie was better than an awkward stare-off with Martin and Sasha. If they were determined to meet Basira at the door, Melanie might as well go process on the edge of the other group. As she passed the fridge, she noted the promised polaroids covering any hint of the appliance beneath.

Georgie was pulling out of an awkward embrace where Jon remained still and stiff in her arms, not even turning to face her. "It'll be alright, Jon."

Jon was staring at the table with tears in his eyes. His arms were wrapped around himself, and he was shaking.

Georgie bit back a sigh, but Jon wasn't in a state to notice. "Daisy didn't kill Gertrude."

Jon laughed once.

"She didn't," Georgie said.

"She didn't," Melanie repeated. Jon's eyes lit the faintest bit, sending her scrambling for something else to say. "Martin made a compelling case."

Jon's eyes looked almost human for a moment as he looked at Martin, still by the door. They went dull again. "She didn't," he muttered angrily. "Not that any of you care."

"What, you think we want a murderer running around?" Melanie asked.

Right. Fantastic. Exactly the tone they needed for this delicate, complicated situation. So glad she tagged along with Georgie to offer this kind of invaluable help!

"You don't want Daisy running around," Jon said.

"Wanting the best of both worlds doesn't mean we aren't on the same side of this," Melanie said.

"Maybe we don't want your help!"

Martin choked off an alarmed shriek before Melanie could say Daisy clearly didn't want Jon's help. She clamped her lips together between her teeth.

Martin stepped up to the peephole and peered out; Melanie could see the keys in his hands, but now that they were all paying attention she could hear the locks being undone regardless.

Martin's shoulders slumped and he took a visibly deep breath. "It's just Basira." 

Not that much better, but at least it really wasn't somehow Daisy, or worse. 

Basira burst in a moment later, glancing around. Jon looked sick, trapped between fear and a weaker version of the hope he never stopped looking at Daisy with. 

Basira got to live; Melanie wasn't sure all five of them would have been able to keep control of themselves if she heaped more hatred on Jon. Instead, she rushed over and immediately went to her knees to wrap her arms around Jon, gentle around his bandages. "It'll be alright. We'll fix it, it'll all be alright." 

Jon burst into loud tears, returning the embrace and twisting his fingers in Basira's shirt.

Basira started glaring over his shoulder and trying to discreetly shoo them away. 

"We need to talk," Martin said, suddenly between Melanie and Georgie and nearly getting two elbows to the gut for his trouble. "Come on." 

Tim didn't look any happier than Melanie felt, but he stood. "We do." 

She didn't know if Basira heard either of them. 

"He wouldn't want us..." Georgie whispered, and gestured toward Jon pressing halfway into Basira's lap. 

Fine. Melanie fell in behind Tim. 

Melanie couldn't help gawking a bit as Martin led them upstairs. The pictures of Jon's door Sasha showed them didn't show the contrast between it and the normal, flimsier doors on every other room. They went past the room at the top of the stairs, door flung open to reveal a messy bedroom. The room they went into was another bedroom; based on the overnight bags, Melanie assumed it was where the other three had been staying.

She heroically did not comment on the single bed in the room.

Tim sat on the bed, head in his hands. Melanie was tempted to join him. "What do we do?"

Martin squared his shoulders. "If Daisy's convicted of Gertrude's murder, Jon's never going to stop visiting her."

"Pretty sure she still gets to decide not to see him," Sasha said.

"Then he'll never stop trying to visit her. Semantics."

"If she isn't, he won't stop trying to win her back over," Georgie said. "And there won't be anything to stop her hurting him for it."

"No," Tim said, looking up to glare at Martin.

"She was lying," Martin said. "About hating Jon, at least."

Melanie started to speak, stopped when Georgie put a hand on her arm. It was hard to hold her tongue through Martin's brief explanation, trading frustrated, skeptical looks with Tim and Sasha. She didn't blame Georgie for wanting to get it out of the way instead of arguing him out of giving it.

"I think Martin's right," Georgie said before anyone else could.

Melanie whirled. "What? Why?"

Georgie's cheek dimpled in as she chewed it. "When I met Daisy..." She sighed.

Sasha tapped her fingers against her arm, eyes a bit too distant. "She already knew who you were." She started pacing the small room; Melanie tried not to let on how much it unsettled her.

 Georgie nodded. "I assume. She was... pretty bad at pretending to like me."

"So?" Tim asked.

"I was a stranger. She didn't have to be anywhere near as friendly to me as she is to Jon, and she couldn't."

Melanie frowned. "That doesn't mean she wasn't acting with Jon."

Sasha sighed. "You don't know her." 

Melanie's jaw clenched. She shouldn't have come along.

"Remember how she was with Jon at first?" Georgie asked.

She remembered Jon racing back to Daisy the second he saw an opening; he was leaning into her before the argument that ended when Daisy started shouting about him being evil.

Tim said, "She had him pressed to her side the whole way into the tunnels. She kept checking, like he might've disappeared when she wasn't looking at him."

"That doesn't mean..." Melanie started. She didn't want to say it. Hatred was about the only word she wasn't uncomfortable applying to Daisy's feelings toward Jon. All the others felt grimy.

"It doesn't matter," Sasha said, fixing Martin with a look.

"You think it's better for Jon-"
"I think it's better for Jon for us to tackle the most immediate problem," Sasha interrupted. "Right now, that's Gertrude."

Martin sighed. "Fine. What can we do about Gertrude?"

Another topic Melanie knew next to nothing about. She was such an asset to the team.

"Daisy didn't do it," Georgie said. "She didn't want Jon to take the job. Jon benefited. If you've been paid more after moving to the Archives you three did, too."

"You think one of us killed Gertrude?" Martin asked, voice going shrill. Melanie kicked him in the ankle; they might not have to whisper, but that didn't mean they were too far away for Jon and Basira to hear if he started shouting.

"Someone had a motive to kill her," Georgie said, shrugging. "That's the same list the cops will come up with if we get them to move on from Daisy. May as well get it out of the way."

Melanie, for lack of something else to do, starting grasping for generic motives. "Family hoping for an inheritance?"

"We do not get paid enough for that," Tim said.

"Right, because no one's ever been killed over pocket change!" Melanie snapped, shoulders shifting uncomfortably.

"I don't think she had any family," Martin said. "I mean, the email about her going missing didn't say anything about them. 'Our thoughts are with her family,' any of that, and, well, you would? Wouldn't you?"

Melanie frowned, catching a spark.

"Prentiss?" Sasha offered, grimacing.

"Only started after she chased Martin home," Tim said, Sasha already nodding along with him.

"Who else had access to the tunnels?" Georgie asked. "I mean, do we know?"

"Where did you come in?" Sasha asked. "I know Daisy got out somewhere else during Prentiss, how many entrances are there?"

Georgie frowned. "So at least two entrances. If the cloak and dagger is necessary, I don't know if Daisy would send anyone to any she shouldn't know about."

"'Gertrude wasn't useless.'"

Melanie barely noticed the others turning to stare at her. 

"Er?" Tim said.

"Daisy said Gertrude wasn't useless."

Sasha shook her head. "But if she was lying-"

"About Jon," Melanie said, although with Sasha she did feel a bit bad about interrupting. "Maybe she was lying about Jon. The notes were real. The fun facts about me she gave Basira were real." (Did she just confirm to Georgie that Basira was telling the truth? The bedroom did not grant the same gloomy shelter from Georgie seeing her blush that the tunnels had.) "Do we have evidence Daisy was lying about anything except Jon?"

Tim shook his head. "Does it matter?"

Melanie rolled her eyes. (Maybe that was why the show fell apart, Melanie was clearly so good at taking criticism or pushback.) "Gertrude wasn't useless. Daisy wants to... you know." No need to make it that easy on Elias, even if he did know it all already.

"Gertrude wouldn't do it," Martin said.

Melanie pointed at Martin. "Thank you!"

Tim's eyes widened with realization. Georgie said, "So the person who did had a motive to get rid of Gertrude."

Sasha collapsed onto the bed next to Tim and propped her chin on her hand. "And we were doing such a good job of solving that problem already." 

Melanie found herself nodding at Sasha. Conspicuously absent from Daisy's avalanche was any way to stop the apocalypse on the macro level, not just tiny personal fixes. Look how much good keeping it to herself and Basira was doing Daisy now; did she even have time to start discussing it with Basira, or was Basira still as much in the dark as the rest of them? Melanie trusted Daisy was telling the truth just enough not to go testing what she said about killing Elias.

"Evidence?" Martin said. "That's the most obvious solution, at least, prove someone else killed Gertrude."

"What, like the murder weapon?" Tim said. "The gun we already didn't know how to find?"

"The tapes," Martin said.

Tim seemed to know what that was about, but he was the only one.

"Want to clue the rest of us in?" Melanie asked after a long, long, confused silence.

Tim nodded, looking a bit sheepish. "The room had Gertrude, the chair she was sitting in, a load of dust, and boxes of cassette tapes."

"Tapes would mean Statements, right?" Sasha asked, lighting up. "The kind that don't record digitally."

"What are the odds whoever hid Gertrude's body just happened on a room someone else already filled with old tapes?" Georgie asked.

"Things they didn't want other people to find," Melanie said, nodding. "Potentially incriminating things." About apocalypse plans, if nothing else.

"We'll tell Basira," Martin said. "She's the one who actually has access. There were a lot, though." 

The energy in the room slumped again at the news that finding something incriminating among the tapes would be even harder than Melanie, and she assumed Sasha and Georgie, had guessed.

"Security cameras?" Georgie asked.

"Already with the police," Tim said. "But there aren't any in the Archives, just upstairs."

"Any other ideas?" Sasha asked.

Melanie shook her head. Martin said, "We'll loop back if anyone thinks of something."

"Great!" Tim said. "We're done with murder, now we get to move on to the fun problem."

Sasha nodded. "Jon."

"Does it really matter if Martin's right?" Melanie asked when it became clear no one else was going to. "Sorry, Martin."

Martin shook his head. Georgie said, "Closure."

"Do you want to add the rest of the sentence to that?" Tim asked. Melanie glared at him, but Sasha elbowed him before she could move or say anything.

"Jon might have an easier time getting closure for what happened if Daisy actually talks to him," Georgie said. Her face twisted. "Unless he's changed a lot while we've been out of touch, he's going to keep trying, no matter how long it takes."

"We can't do-"

A phone buzzed, and they all jumped, turning toward the- utterly unmoved- door. After a moment of fumbling, Martin said, "They want us to come back downstairs."

"Confront the problem head-on!" Melanie said, only half joking.

"Can we get through one emotional crisis before starting another, please?" Tim said, hefting himself to his feet. "Let's get Daisy out first."

Downstairs, Jon and Basira were still at the table, but they'd disentangled themselves. Jon might have looked slightly less defeated, but it was hard to tell.

"We're getting Daisy out," Basira said, looking at them like she was daring them to disagree. Melanie hoped it stung her pride, just a bit, that they all nodded instead.

"Easiest way is to find the real killer," Tim said, leaning on the back of a chair instead of sitting.

"Anyone hiding something?" Basira asked. Jon nudged her, and her expression softened slightly.

Melanie crossed her arms. "Someone wanted Gertrude out of the way. They probably didn't just happen upon a room full of tapes, so they wanted those hidden, too. The police either falsely accused Daisy all by themselves, or someone's using them to get her out of the way."

Basira pinched the bridge of her nose. "We'll have to hope they don't remove me for being close to Daisy before I can go through them."

"Tapes?" Jon asked.

"There were a lot," Martin said.

"So you're useless," Melanie said, addressing Basira. She wasn't actually sure whose elbow dug into her side.

Basira rolled her eyes. "I am going to handle the legal side of things for Jon, in addition to actually solving the murder."

"Basira's going to stay in Daisy's room until she's home," Jon said. He looked at the others with hungry eyes.

"Do you want us to stay or go?" Martin asked gently. 

Jon looked away. "I don't want to keep you here. I know- I'll be fine if you go home."

"Can we stay?" Tim asked.

Jon's shoulders climbed toward his ears, and his nod was almost imperceptible.

"Then we'll stay," Tim said easily. "But maybe after a trip home so we have more than four shirts each to rotate."

A few minutes later, Melanie found herself heading home to google Jon and scream into a pillow.

-

She couldn't stop thinking about things when she was on her own. Of course she couldn't. The end of the world was kind of too big to forget.

(Melanie wasn't thinking about the world.)

They exchanged a few messages, trying to sort out next moves, but the conversation never really got going. She thought they all shared a reluctance to create a written record that could hypothetically be discovered any time, without needing to guess when to look in on the conversation as it happened. Independent of the others, Melanie's usual methods of research were fairly hands-on, which was frustrating. Even if they weren't trying to keep things as covert as possible, she would probably have much less luck breaking into Elias Bouchard's very much not abandoned home than a vacant alleged haunting.

Sasha texted her on the second day. If it had taken until the third, Melanie might have started searching for where Gertrude Robinson lived before she died. At least that probably would be vacant enough to hide a break-in.

She wanted to talk with Georgie, when they met up to head to Daisy's house together, but she couldn't think of much to say. The dark circles under Georgie's eyes were enormous, and Melanie hadn't done much aside from think about Jon and think about her slowly shrinking savings. The small talk once Martin in was even thinner on the ground.

Basira, in fairness, looked as stressed and exhausted as any of them. "I assume no one has anything to share?" she asked once they were all clumped around the table again.

"You can come visit the Admiral, if you want," Georgie said, looking at Jon. "Give you something else to think about for a bit."

Jon didn't react. He looked like he hadn't slept, and he was swaying on the spot.

"Anyone know Gertrude's address?" Melanie asked, both to fill the silence and banish jealousy at the idea of Georgie having her ex over, despite how dire she knew things actually were. "I figure I'm not going to get away with breaking in... elsewhere... but it's not like she's going to come home and walk in on me."

Basira pinched the bridge of her nose. "Could you please at least wait until I'm gone to start planning to commit a crime?"

Jon leaned against Basira's side, glaring at his knees instead of Melanie. "They're already watching Basira at work because of Daisy."

Next time they texted her, Melanie was going to stay home. She'd be more helpful there.

"We're wondering why you've called us all here today," Tim said to Basira, voice a tight mixture of sarcastic and caustic. Melanie didn't envy any of them, staying here without being able to escape the tension for a moment.

"Daisy's getting out tomorrow," Jon said, voice going up with a thread of hope that made anxiety light in Melanie's chest.

"Bail," Basira said, squeezing Jon's shoulder. At least she kept him in the loop.

"Does that mean you're going to go back to sleeping?" Martin asked.

"I didn't see you helping get her out," Jon said. 

Sasha kicked Martin.

"You did it, Jon," Basira said, tightening her embrace for a moment. "Thirty-six hours without sleep is more than enough. You brought her home."

"I thought you were handling the legal stuff, Basira," Georgie said.

Basira shook her head. "I've been investigating a murder. This was all Jon."

"I'm going to pick her up," Jon said.

Basira frowned. "Jon-"

"You said they're watching you," Jon said, frowning. Melanie didn't think she'd seen him look anything near as confident as he did now since watching Daisy turn on him. "They don't know you're staying here, but you can't hide being the one to pick her up. I'm going."

"Does she need to be picked up at all?" Tim asked. "She's an adult, she can get home on her own."

"I don't know if that's the best idea," Martin said.

Sasha shook her head. "No."

Jon frowned more fiercely. Basira looked torn between coaxing Jon into doing what she wanted and glaring the rest of them down.

Georgie took an audible breath and said, "I don't think you should be alone with her, right now."

Jon shoved out of his chair and raced to the stairs, steps pounding angrily like noise could hide his expression cracking toward tears before he got away. A few seconds later Melanie heard the distant sound of a slamming door somewhere overhead.

Tim stepped over to Basira and they started hissing an argument. Georgie, Sasha, and Martin split into a circle away from the table, whispering just as furiously. Melanie stared at the two camps trying to figure out how to stop Jon from picking Daisy up, or at least going alone.

Melanie couldn't be the only one to see what a terrible idea all of that was.

For all of Martin's irritation with the rest of them for ganging up on Jon in the tunnels, it certainly didn't take him long to fall into the same thing.

Melanie was a hypocrite, and instead of talking to the others she headed for the stairs.

She knocked at the heavy door at the end of the hall. "Jon?" There was a shadow visible under the door; he was sitting or standing right against the door.

"Go away."

Melanie didn't know her record for time interacting with Jon without yelling at each other, but she didn't think she was going to break it today. Breaking the inverse record, starting to bicker the fastest, seemed significantly more plausible. "You shouldn't go alone."

No answer, even though she made herself wait long enough to give Jon a decent amount of time to get his thoughts in order. At least missing her guess and hanging around might drive Jon back downstairs to talk to someone he actually liked.

"If it were just Daisy, I'd say go ahead. I'm not worried about what she could do if you're alone."

She gave Jon plenty of time again, and he almost ran out the clock.

The door opened, and Jon peered around it, scowling. "What are you talking about?"

Melanie resisted the entirely counterproductive urge to roll her eyes and pretended not to see the tear tracks. "They aren't releasing Daisy because they think she's innocent. Her brother could probably tell them something useful."

Jon shifted back just enough for the door to start drifting slightly open on its own, no longer held to reveal only a slim wedge of the room. "What does that have to do with anything?"

This time, Melanie did roll her eyes. At least he was talking again now. "If you go alone you might not have time to send out an SOS."

He walked past her before she had to formulate a response. Melanie followed, keeping a few steps between them. She didn't want to actually chase Jon back into his room by making him feel like he was being chased downstairs.

"I'm picking Daisy up tomorrow," Jon said decisively. "Melanie's coming with me."

Did Melanie volunteer? She didn't remember volunteering. At least she was behind Jon, and could shrug when everyone started giving her shocked looks.

She couldn't turn down an opportunity to persuade Jon they were on his side.

When they split again, she sent the others a text.

if you idiots thought before you spoke i wouldn't be the one doing this

-

Melanie went back to Daisy's house, because it seemed better than making Jon go through London traffic to pick her up. The process of unlocking the door was as arduous as ever, driving her inner tension higher with each sound of a lock opening.

When Martin- sole holder of Daisy's keys for reasons Melanie wasn't entirely clear on- opened the door, he quickly stepped away to reveal Jon, face grim and fists clenched at his sides like he thought Melanie was going to go back to impugning Daisy's good name.

"We're off!" she said, smiling.

Jon made a disgruntled noise, but they made it to Daisy's car without incident.

The drive was silent, which was probably for the best. Melanie tried not to let on her own nerves. She was good at cops. She should have been arrested for trespassing at least a dozen times, and she was good at maneuvering herself into a warning. She could do this.

She was worried about what Daisy would do, of course, but she couldn't do much about that.

After the ordeal of finding a place to park, everything proceeded exactly as Melanie expected it to.

Daisy came around a corner, looking ruffled and stressed. Jon smiled. "Daisy!"

Melanie wanted to shake Daisy, or Jon, or both.

Daisy brushed past without a word. Melanie clenched her own fists. Did she know that Jon was apparently the primary reason she was getting out at all?

Did it matter if Daisy was lying, when this was how she refused to stop treating him?

Jon's expression fractured. It shouldn't be so unnerving. Melanie had seen Jon's hope be torn to shreds a thousand times in the last week, but it was just as aching every time. 

He scurried after Daisy, and Melanie followed with her own hands clenched into fists. She wished she could do- anthing!

When they got to the car, Daisy reached backward instead turning to face Jon, palm upturned. "Keys."

Jon handed them over, and looked like he was about to cry. 

Nothing unexpected happened. Melanie burned.