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Daisy’s fingers were shaking around the glass of water in her hand. She wasn’t particularly scared or nervous for anything– in fact, the only other person in the room was Basira, and she was comfortable enough sitting in the chair Basira had dragged in front of the bathroom mirror, it was just her hands that refused to keep from trembling. She supposed that was what happened when her muscles couldn’t figure out what to do when not clamped in place by an endless wall of dirt, but it didn’t help the way the bright bathroom light glistened in the ripples in the glass of water in her hand.
She tentatively took a sip from it as she heard the door open again, the inside of her mouth still tasting faintly of dirt and lips dry and cracked. Her wrist ached as she held the glass, but she fought against it, instead turning to Basira as she stepped into the bathroom.
“The water helping?” Basira asked, setting a pair of scissors on the counter.
Daisy nodded as she reached over to set down the glass again, not caring to strain her voice too much more than necessary, and Basira seemed to understand it well enough. It was nice, to not have to explain so much, for Basira to have picked up enough from what Jon had briefly gone over and how Daisy was acting to get a shape of what had happened. It was nice, in general, to have Basira there again.
“Good. Anything else started bleeding?”
Daisy grimaced as she weakly reached for the shoulder of her jacket, one Basira had wrapped over her when they had returned home and cleaned off the dirt to protect the bruises and scrapes, but really, Daisy had already started to grow nauseous at the feeling of anything weighing too much on her skin. She was grateful to be able to peel the sleeve away to reveal one of the particularly brutal scrapes that had opened, head lolling against the back of the chair as she heard Basira suck in a breath through her teeth.
Daisy watched as Basira ran a washcloth under the tap, still frowning at the bleeding scrape, and shifted uncomfortably beneath the jacket. Basira’s gaze flicked up to meet hers, questioning but absent of anything that could be mistaken for pity as she turned off the faucet. No, instead she just looked concerned.
“Could I take this off?” Daisy croaked. Her voice was still weak from all the pressure on her vocal cords, but she was able to rasp out shorter sentences with the help of enough water.
“It’ll sting, love,” Basira frowned, hanging the washcloth over the faucet and drying her hands on her own coat. “But if you don’t mind that–”
“Just the weight,” Daisy replied, nodding a lock of hair out of her face, and Basira’s face relaxed with understanding. She nodded, touch light and hands just barely brushing Daisy’s shoulders as she helped pull away the jacket and set it over the edge of the bathtub instead. It was a pleasant lift of pressure, even as the unprotected wounds stung in the cool air, and Daisy felt a breath leave her lips, the sound so unfamiliar when it was smooth and unhalted.
At the sound, Basira glanced over her shoulder from picking up the washcloth again, gaze lingering and tracing Daisy’s face before she turned back to the sink. “You’re already looking better,” she hummed, and Daisy couldn’t help a tired chuckle, catching another glimpse of her weary reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Her skin was pale and terribly scraped now that she had washed off all the dirt, blue and black still blooming over one of her eyes and plenty more spots over her neck, shoulders, and torso– practically anywhere the earth had clamped around her extra tightly, cutting off her circulation and pressing harshly enough to bruise. Thick gravel scrapes lined her face, cleared of dirt but still leaving coarse, deep red patches on her skin. They were almost stark enough to distract from the scars from before anything to do with the coffin, but hopefully if she and Basira had managed to clean them out well enough, they wouldn’t end up infected and leaving any scars on top.
Her lips were still tinted with a sickly blue, eyes sunken and clouded, pupils thinned in the light that she never remembered being so bright. Tangled, still-damp locks of hair were hanging, unkempt and messy, in front of her face and over her chest. Her hair had grown more than she thought possible over the eight months, once close-cropped and undercut and now hanging far past her shoulders. She figured the way time worked that far underground wasn’t her business anymore, and she and Basira had agreed while attempting to clean it that they were going to have to cut most of it off again.
“Not joking. You’ve got some colour back in your face,” Basira continued, a thumb brushing over Daisy’s cheek before she turned her attention back to the wound that had opened.
By the way she could feel soft fingers wrap around her bicep, just firmly enough to keep Daisy’s arm in place as she cleaned the blood away from the wound, Basira had evidently already figured out that Daisy was more than happy to feel something other than a crushing wall of dirt against her skin, as long as it wasn’t pressing too much or sticking to any blood.
Even as Daisy let her eyes sink shut in preparation for the feeling of antiseptic searing brightly against the wound, it wasn’t as bad as she remembered it being– the rush of feeling was almost pleasant, a reminder that as numb as the constant press of the Buried had made her, there were still nerves and parts of her to protest against the pain. That even beneath the painkillers of that much pressure and the absence of blood rushing in her ears, she was still a human, one that could bleed and hurt and feel, let relief settle in when the throb of it died away and Basira wrapped a gauze pad over it.
“That the worst of it?”
Daisy nodded, reaching for the glass of water again, Basira watching Daisy’s grip carefully but never reaching forward to take it for her as she took another sip of it.
“Right,” Basira exhaled, running her hands under the tap again. “Should we do something about your hair, then?”
“Yeah. Bit of a mess.”
Basira hummed, opening a drawer and getting out a razor Daisy recognised as her own, something in her mind clicking as she processed a couple of the things she had passed on her way in– Basira had kept her favourite mug, all the photos on the fridge, and now her razor– whether she had believed it or not, Basira had been acting as if Daisy would come back. Her throat tightened and Daisy found it back, instead blinking at the scissor and razor before turning back to her reflection.
“Same as it was before?” Basira asked, gaze lifting to meet Daisy’s in the mirror. Something flickered across her expression, but she didn’t say anything, only glancing down again.
Daisy fell quiet a moment, tilting her head at her reflection. It was strange, for her appearance to have changed so much, but it… it made sense, in some way. She didn’t feel the same, after all, it felt like she had been ground to pieces then had some layer of herself scraped off before she was haphazardly reassembled, so there was something about staring into a reflection that she could barely recognise that felt… right. She was having just as much trouble recognising herself without a mirror, and that… she figured that was okay for the moment.
It might have felt better to look the same again, if not quite a bit more sunken and starved-looking, but it felt a bit like… lying. Grasping for the comfort of familiarity when nothing really seemed like it could be familiar anymore, and familiarity was the angry rush of blood beneath her skin and inside of her skull, given too much control and growing too hungry for her to keep back.
She ran her tongue along her teeth. “Actually… leave it a bit past my shoulders. Long enough to braid, something like that. I don’t think I want it short.”
Basira hummed in approval, picking up the scissors and brush instead and walking around the other side of the chair, fingers resting against Daisy’s shoulder as she began to sort through the messy strands of Daisy’s hair.
Daisy wasn’t entirely focusing as Basira went through layer by layer, untangling and occasionally cutting away the knots that had formed over the months, instead opting to sink her head against the back of the chair and enjoying the fact that she could breathe, the company of one she loved in the room with her, and the blissful quiet in her head. It was eerie, it was unknown and unsettling, but it made it so much easier to think, and now the world was comfortable enough to give her half-decent things to think about.
Looking at her own reflection in the mirror still felt odd, so she just shut her eyes, able to feel the gleam of the bathroom light through them and figuring she could use the rest. After all, she hadn’t slept in eight months, there would have to be a point where it caught up to her, and she figured it would mean collapsing at some point later that afternoon and sleeping for a day or two. She didn’t mind that. As long as it was anywhere more comfortable than an iron maiden of dirt and gravel and Basira was there to check her pulse every so often, she didn’t have any complaints.
It must have been fifteen minutes later that she heard Basira let out a breath, the bathroom drawer clinking as she shut it, and Daisy opened her eyes, barely having realised that time had passed. She had gotten practised at zoning out while she was underground, as being able to distract herself from the pain, the breathlessness, the walls of dirt threatening to crush her ribcage like a paper cup– it proved a useful skill.
But this time, instead of returning to the smell of earth and an agonising weight around her, she was back in their bathroom, lungs filling with cool air and lights bright in her eyes– and she caught her reflection in the mirror.
She still looked… faded, gaze not quite focusing right and form still littered with scrapes and bruises, but her hair had been brushed through and dried, fluffy and wrapped into a loose braid Basira had set over Daisy’s shoulder– neat enough to keep any extra strands out of her face, but not pulled too tight, and tied off with a scrap of ribbon that had been left in the drawer, as neither of them had really ever needed hairties.
It all framed her face in a different way than it used to, not exactly softer, but it was something… different. More loose-fitting, and the more she stared at it, hand reaching up to trace one of the neatly braided strands, the more she felt something unravelling in her chest. It felt… the right kind of different, looking just new enough that she couldn’t quite draw it back to the reflection she used to see back when the Hunt’s grip on her was stronger than she could fight, but still far from dishevelled. Not predator, not prey, something in between that she… liked.
She felt the tension draining from her shoulders as she sat up, reaching forward just enough to pick up her glass again. Basira was standing by the drawer, hands slipped into the pockets of her coat and watching Daisy’s reflection.
“It… it’s good,” Daisy hummed over her glass of water, nodding slowly at the mirror. The more she looked at it, the more it made sense, and even the glimpse of her reflection she caught in the bottom of the glass as she finished it didn’t feel wrong. “Thank you, love.” She let out a contented exhale, looking up to see a smile cracking over Basira’s lips.
“I’m glad. Was waiting to see if you liked it before saying it looks good on you.”
Daisy smirked, letting Basira take the glass from her to refill it, tilting her head again to take in the way she looked like somebody she had yet to sort out– and how much she liked it that way. “I think it really compliments the gravel marks, don’t you think?
“Oh, for sure, brings out a bit of the lingering cyanosis as well.” Basira walked over, a smile still playing on her lips as she brushed a few wispy strands of hair out of Daisy’s face, fingers eventually trailing to rest beneath just Daisy’s chin, and her eyes softened.
“May I?” she asked, gaze lifting from Daisy’s lips enough to meet her gaze.
Daisy nodded. “Mm. Gentle.”
Basira nodded, leaning forward and tilting Daisy’s chin up just enough to brush her lips to Daisy’s, who let her eyes flutter shut in relief. Part of her had worried that things would be too different once she had escaped, that something couldn’t have survived the time and the way Daisy felt like some part of her had been scraped away– but it wasn’t. Basira’s hand against her face was still warm, and the only blood Daisy could hear was the steady drum of her own heartbeat picking up when Basira’s lips met hers.
“That alright?”
“Yeah,” Daisy breathed.
Basira nodded, her hand lingering by Daisy’s cheek for a moment. “You really do look… different now. In a good way, though.”
“Shame I’m not really any good at braids myself. S’pose you’ll just have to sit with me each morning and do it for me,” Daisy frowned in mock disappointment, looking over to see the beginnings of a smile over Basira’s face again before letting the glass of water be pressed back into her palm.
“Hmm. Guess I could make time for it.”
And there was something about being able to promise something for the day after, for having been given another chance where the air was absent of the smell of blood and gunpowder. For where her lungs had once filled with dirt and gravel, there was only air and a dizzying hope– and even merely from Basira’s face as she folded Daisy’s jacket over her arm, her hands beginning to shake as well as she cleaned up the room— Daisy could tell she held the same hope.