Work Text:
Daisy sometimes felt like she wasn’t actually there when Melanie and Basira spoke. They always had some scheme that she couldn’t understand, like color coordinated Basira’s hijab and Melanie’s hair, and seemed to know or understand something she just didn’t.
The pitying looks made her want to scream or tear out their throats. She knew she was weak, she knew how she looked, but damn it! She wasn’t some frail thing for them to… look at like that!
Daisy knew when they were talking about her. Their voices got all hushed and Melanie would look over at her in a way she seemed to think was surreptitious. It was not.
Daisy knew when they were talking about her and she loathed it. Loathed it with every ounce of her being. Sometimes she wished they treated her like Jon— like some sort of monster to be contained, not like someone who ‘had so much potential’.
God, Jon.
She also knew when they were talking about him and clearly, so did he. They weren’t exactly subtle about it, trading thoughts on how next to try and starve him to death, even when he was in the room. He was so small and frail now. Moreso than before. He was so thin she could teach an osteopathy course and use him as a skeleton, and his eyes had a haunted look to them. The green only got brighter as he got hungrier, it was almost blinding to look at. He scittered around the edges of rooms like some sort of small, scared animal. She shouldn’t feel anything like what she did towards someone who was very clearly prey, and yet. He was small and weak and feverish – a clear liability – but he was also Daisy’s. She protected him and he… well, he rescued her. Time and time again. Because he was hers, damn it, and she should protect him more than she did.
The man who’d held her hand as he dragged her out of that hellish coffin, the man who tried desperately to support her weight after her physical therapy when he could barely hold himself upright for a few minutes. The man who, no matter how little she stood up for him, always managed a small, genuine smile when Daisy stopped to talk to him, to see how he was doing, even when the answer was obvious from his shaking hands and dizzy spells.
Maybe Daisy didn’t understand much anymore, maybe she only really reacted when she was being spoken to directly, but there were always things Basira and Melanie didn’t understand — couldn’t understand.
Like what they were doing to Jon. They said they knew what was going on, they said they knew what was best, but one glance at Jon could speak to the contrary. Because they thought it was just a bad habit he could kick, like his smoking had been, some sort of addiction he could go to rehab for. But they were killing him. He smiled thinly and waved it away, retreating to his office, but it was clear from the reappearance of his cane, which he hadn’t used since aye came back from his coma, to the way he seemed exhausted at even the thought of going outside. 'Too many stairs,' he'd say, then proceed to scale all of them and more to try and find a man determined to keep him away.
They didn’t understand what Jon was to Daisy, either. He was a friend, for one. They were both each other’s only true friends, even if the relationship was a bit strange at times. But he was also a respite from everything. Jon didn’t need her to tell him about the all-consuming Hunger that thrummed through her veins, he felt it too. He didn’t need her to explain what it felt like to be not-quite-human, he wasn’t either. He simply understood her, a grim parallel. He was Daisy, if she’d gone further. If she’d taken that step and fully joined with her god, taking an actual position in its thrall, rather than just being yet another avatar. And she didn’t blame him for thanking that step. No matter what anyone else thought, Daisy would never blame Jon or judge him for becoming the Archivist.
Because Basira and Melanie didn’t understand that, either. ‘The Archivist’. It wasn’t something that could be separated from him. It never was. He couldn’t extricate himself from the Eye now. It would destroy him. Not that they seemed to care much about that.
Daisy sighed, staring down at her desk. She was being awfully hypocritical, looking down on the two women for not understanding that Jon was no monster. She’d been no better, before. It had been Basira who stopped her from killing him that day.
She’d never forget that damned day. Her boot digging into Jon’s back, urging him to dig faster or he’d start losing fingers. Her knife — it had been his, to protect himself from people like her — against his throat as blood spilled down his neck, squirming and pleading. She never asked for his forgiveness for that. How could she? It lay, unspoken between them, though Jon didn’t seem to care too much. He leaned into her when she hugged him as if she hadn’t permanently marred his skin with his own blade. And she couldn’t find it in herself to be upset about that.
Daisy looked up when Melanie’s voice rang sharp across the silence of the Archives. She slid across Basira’s desk, legs dangling as she leaned in conspiratorially.
“Had another idea. Can’t believe I didn’t think of it before but it showed up in my feed. I think it’s a sign,” she declared, pressing her phone into Basira’s hands. Whatever it was, Basira seemed intrigued, because she gestured for Melanie to continue.
“I was thinking… for Jon? Might be bullshit, but hey, anything worth a shot.”
Jon, who’d been trying to retreat to his office quietly, holding a mug of microwaved tea, froze and looked up at them like a deer caught in the glare of headlights.
“Hmm.” Basira looked at him intensely, like she hadn’t already examined every inch of practically exposed bone for any traces of what can only be considered symptoms of being alive. “I guess.”
Melanie nodded pensively then looked away from the poor cowering man to fish something out of her pocket. Basira honed in on whatever it was and in the split second they looked away Jon rushed to his office. Daisy knew that he collapsed the second he shut the door, but she didn’t go and check on him. She’d do that later, when Melanie had enacted whatever her plan was. There was no point going now, and she was tired. She'd rather rest until it was important.
The two women got up after mumbling to each other about something and headed to Jon’s office.
Daisy felt like she should stop them. She usually felt that way, when they got close to her friend, but she was so tired and couldn’t muster the strength to get up and walk to them, say nothing of convincing them to back down. So she stayed where she was and listened to the fearful pounding of Jon’s heart as he was intercepted.
“Dont listen to the blood, listen to the quiet.”
She could do that, right? At least that, for him.
Daisy focused her attention far away from where Jon’s pulse pounded at her ears— on the sickening nothing that was the archives. The misfiled statements of people lost long ago to the creatures they feared so much, the dust settled on the unused desks that would never be occupied again, the places where cobwebs used to hang, before she got rid of them after hearing Jon’s statement, the cot in document storage, where so many people had spent their nights. Jon never slept there anymore. Jon didn’t really sleep. Basira and Melanie didn’t like it. She focused on the tea kettle and mugs in the break room, which Jon pointedly refused to move, as if Martin was just taking the day off and would come back to make everyone tea. The archives were a treasure trove of silence, of absence, of loneliness – it was almost easy to not listen to the blood.
The Archivist and his Archives, lonely and mistreated, just waiting for people to come back who’d never set foot in the basement again. The only places where there wasn’t that cloying silence were Basira’s desk, where Melanie spent a lot of her time, and the corner of Jon’s office where he and Daisy always sat.
Basira and Melanie exited Jon’s office, looking almost smug. That never meant anything good.
The sweet, bright sound of Jon’s pulse pounding erratically tried to draw her focus away from the silence, but she refused to be distracted.
Daisy wasn’t entirely sure where she went after ‘work’. It was quiet and her bed was soft. She was far away from the tantalizing fear of her only friend. She might live with someone, she didn’t really know. It didn’t matter, really. Nothing really mattered to her. She was either at the Institute, in physical therapy or Elsewhere. And Elsewhere had no importance. Does anyone care where NPCs spend their time? Daisy felt like an NPC, though she wasn’t quite sure who the adventurer was.
Was it Basira, with her quick wit and frank honesty? Or Melanie, with her short temper and suspicious eyes? Was it Martin, and none of their destructive habits actually mattered compared to what he was doing? It wasn’t her, and it wasn’t Jon. They were supporting characters; moral quandaries, so the main characters will ask themselves ‘what counts as a monster?’, whose only purpose was to show just what can happen if you follow their footsteps. Exposition. And no one cared what they did with their time, so why should she?
Daisy must have shared this with Jon at one point, because whenever they spoke he made a point of asking her how she’d slept, or if she’s picked up any hobbies. In return, she asked him about what he did at night as the ‘ghost of the Institute’. A few employees from Above who’d decided to work late had seen a short, unnaturally thin figure with glowing green eyes and tattered clothes wandering the library and hallways. Rumors spread like wildfire. Daisy and Jon found it funny, when they could.
She was in the archives again. She wasn’t sure how she got there; whether she took the tube or a car or walked or rode a bloody manticore, but she was there and that’s all that mattered.
She sat at her desk for a while, staring at nothing and thinking about nothing, before she decided to go check on Jon.
She pushed open the door after unlocking it (Melanie and Basira hadn’t taken to kindly to the ghost rumors), because she’d never cared for knocking and she knew Jon didn’t like it either.
Jon was lying on the floor, limbs spread like the stereotypical pose of a dead person in a murder mystery. This wasn’t too out of the ordinary, honestly. What was a bit weird was that he didn’t respond when she lifted him up to sit.
“Jon?” She inquired, pressing her fingers into the hollow of his cheeks like one does to a get a bit into a horse's mouth, trying to get a response.
His eyelids cracked open but it seemed his eyes were rolled back in his skull because she only saw pure white when she tried to look him in the eyes.
Jon said something which she did not understand. Mostly because it wasn’t in English. She was never really good with languages, but she knew Jon’s family was from India and they spoke Hindi there, so that was a pretty safe bet, right? All she knew was that it wasn’t one she spoke, which didn’t narrow it down in the slightest.
“Jon,” she said, pressing more on his cheeks. “I can’t understand you. What’s wrong?”
This had never happened before. Usually, he was a bit dazed but came back to himself fairly quickly. He’d never started speaking other languages before. That was probably a bad sign.
Jon squirmed against the pressure and his eyes opened a little more. He was still speaking what Daisy assumed was probably Hindi (though she realized it could be literally anything, since he spoke every language ever and she only knew the one), but he seemed to be mumbling gibberish either way, so she probably wasn’t missing out on much.
“What did Melanie do…?” She asked, more to herself than to the basically unconscious man she was holding.
Daisy examined her friend and noticed a few new accessories. Hadn’t eye-shaped jewelry been banned ages ago? Still, Jon had five bracelets with blue eye things (they were called evil eyes, right?) on his wrists and four necklaces with more intricate ones hanging from his throat.
What was the lore behind evil eyes? Wasn’t it some paranoid king who pulled out his servants eyes so people always thought they were being watched? That seemed right up the Eye’s alley and it was confusing that that was Melanie’s idea.
“Jon, still with me?” She asked, because he’s gone dangerously still. He nodded weakly. “Ok, good. Can you point to where the problem is?”
He raised his hands to claw at his eyes and she had to pull them away quickly before he could do any damage. She couldn't have him getting hurt, after all.
“Other than that. What’s making you feel so bad right now?”
He seemed to think for a second before saying something in probably-Hindi and scrabbling at his wrists with his nails. Whenever he touched the evil eyes, he flinched away and whimpered.
“So it is those.” She paused, the thinking. “Do you have any knives in here?”
Jon nodded quickly and gestured vaguely in the direction of his desk. She was a little concerned that he trusted her so readily with knives around him, but it was working to her advantage and there were many more concerning things.
She quickly found the knife— the blood on it called to her. She grabbed it firmly then returned to her friend, who’d slumped back to the ground the second she let go of him.
Daisy grabbed one of his wrists and cut the bracelets off, then did the same with the other. She untied the necklaces then tossed all the accessories to the other side of the room. Jon visibly relaxed the further they got from his skin.
“Can you speak English now?” Daisy asked, propping him up in their corner. He shook his head. “Ok. I’m just gonna do some research on… what that was. Tell me when you’re ok.”
She pulled out her phone and started looking up evil eyes. The premise seemed pretty clear, and it made sense why it would affect Jon so much. They were basically blocking one of his vital functions from entering his body, like if they’d cut off his air.
She realized after a while that he wasn’t moving anymore, though his blood pulses had settled to a more regular wavering pace and he was breathing, if very shakily.
“Do you need statements?” Daisy asked, pressing a hand against his throat to double check his pulse. “Probably do, yeah. Ok.”
She moved him off her gently and got up to go get the ‘real ones’ from Basira.
“You’re making a mistake,” she said. She was waiting outside his office, expression stern. Basira didn’t understand. There was so much he didn’t understand, Daisy hadn’t even scratched the surface. “You kicked the habit, so can he.”
“There is no ‘me’ and ‘him’ in this situation. I am no more human than he is.” She couldn’t understand, but Daisy tried to get her to, sometimes.
“Don’t. Don’t say that.” She took a deep breath. “He’s a monster, Daisy, you saw what he does to people.”
“You’ve seen what I do to people.”
“That’s different.”
“How so? Give me one way I’m any less of a monster.”
They faced each other, glares firmly fixed on their faces. Daisy was going to press Basira more, just to see how far she could take this, how long it would take her to just understand. She knew she could. She knew the breaking points and how to go past them.
But then there was a trembling hand gripping her sleeve and tugging her back into the office with all its strength, which wasn’t much.
Jon said something that Daisy didn’t understand — it still wasn’t English — but Basira seemed to understand it, because she snapped at him in the language and he shrunk back. Might not be Hindi then, since Basira was Pakistani. It didn’t matter. Daisy growled and shut the door to Jon’s office, him inside it, heading to Basira’s desk. She grabbed an armful of statements and walked back into the office, ignoring Basira’s glare. She was glad Melanie was out to lunch.
Daisy shut the door and rested her forehead against it, growling. Basira didn’t understand. There was so much to comprehend in the world and Basira just refused.
Jon didn’t allow her to stew much longer. From the corner of her eye, Daisy could see his resolve snap and he lunged for the statements. By instinct more than anything else, Daisy shoved him to the ground and set the statements heavily on the desk, out of his reach.
She shook herself, resetting — “Dont listen to the blood, listen to the quiet.” — and helped him up from the floor, handing him the statements when he was settled at his desk.
Jon smiled genuinely, though nothing ever fully lit up his face like it could before. She’d tried, one day, when she felt especially sorry for the pathetic little man she had for a friend. She’d gotten one enthusiastic stim and a not-as-big-as-it-should-be smile and that was it. She’d given up on that very quickly.
She smiled back at him and went back out to the bullpen, making herself a cup of coffee. She spent some time reading… something out there, perched on the counter. A while had passed, probably, because Jon darted out of his office, looking a bit more like a living creature than he had before, and into the break room. He came to Daisy as if drawn by a magnet, hugging her tight.
“Thank you,” he whispered into her jumper and she hugged him back. She always would, and she knew he’d do the same. Because Jonathan Sims made her feel like a real person, and she knew the feeling was mutual. And that mattered.