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He was falling apart, unraveling at the seams. She didn't want to realize, to have to shove him off of her even as she desperately wanted him, even as he kissed her like he needed her to breathe.
"Daisy! Daisy, Daisy, please." Billy looked at her, eyes frantic, like he might shatter if she turned him away in this moment. But he was a god-damned idiot. He was already shattered, and she wasn't the glue to put him back together, or the air he needed to breathe. She was the same raging wildfire she'd always been, and he was that same wildfire too, but a dying one, almost out of fuel. The only thing she could do for him was set him back alight for a little while longer. But because Billy was her soulmate, even if she wasn't his, she wouldn’t do that for him.
Daisy had already known that they couldn't do this anymore. That she wasn't what Billy needed and that he couldn't be hers. And that it was hurting her too much to keep being around him. She'd indulged the fantasy of having him, of getting to keep him, as long as she possibly could, but tonight was supposed to be it. The end of everything, the last night. But then, just before they'd gone on stage, he'd kissed her, and she thought for a moment: "Maybe I missed something. Maybe, something has changed."
But now she realized, after he had thrown himself at her, that nothing had changed. It was only when Billy lost control of himself that he came for her. And Daisy loved him too much to want that for him, to spend his life out of control. Because then he wouldn't be Billy. The only person who'd ever actually known her, and still loved her.
And he also wouldn't continue to be, Daisy knew, if he kept spiraling like this. She couldn't be responsible for a world that didn't have Billy Dunne in it.
Daisy had understood all this before he kissed her earlier that night, and in this moment, she knew it was all still true. Billy though, god help her, still didn't understand. So now, even though it was going to shatter her, and perhaps push her into the loneliest world she could imagine, she had to make him understand. Because that's what you do for the person who saved you. You save them back.
He wasn't crying, Billy never let himself cry, but he was gasping through half-sobs. Her heart ached to see him like this. The crowd roared, but it felt like background static.
"Please Daisy, let's just be broken together. Let's be broken together." Billy pleaded with her, still grasping at her sides as the blue lighting pulsed.
She was broken. She could admit that to herself now. But she knew she wouldn't always be, and that was thanks to him. He'd seen her at her worst and pulled her from the floor of that shower, from the bottom of the abyss.
"I don't want…" Daisy paused, taking a deep breath of smoke-filled air, "...to be broken."
She’d always thought she wasn't strong enough to save him in the same way he'd saved her, but in this moment, she felt that she was. She could. She could do this for him. She looked him right in the eyes, self-assured, with that famous Daisy Jones confidence. She gently pushed away from him, and in doing so, knew that someday, he wouldn't be broken anymore either. Daisy was always able to see that future for him, even though Billy couldn't. There was just one aching hole in that future.
Billy stood there, shell-shocked as she turned to leave, and Daisy noticed that some of the glitter from her make-up had rubbed off on his face. Selfishly, she hoped that glitter would never wash away, at least not completely.
With that lingering thought, she walked back out onto stage, toward the crowd screaming for an encore. She knew Billy would follow. Right now, he'd follow her anywhere. The idea would be funny, if it weren't so devastating. Daisy was usually amused by the men whom she'd enchanted into following her around, but it was never supposed to be like that with Billy. He never gave her an inch, and that's what she'd loved most. Butting heads, someone who wouldn't let her get away with her shit. An equal in every way, even the worst ones.
She glanced back at the rest of their band, looking at Karen, Eddie, Warren, and Graham in turn, and didn't have to say a word. They knew, somehow. The opening notes of "Look At Us Now" started to ring out behind her.
Billy stood, frozen, tears running down his face. He didn't sing the opening. Daisy inhaled, stretched out her arms to bathe in the white lights, and took in the feeling of what it was like to be surrounded by her best friend and a family that wanted her, doing what they all loved for the last time.
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Daisy: "Billy and I, we were never just one thing."
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This night in Chicago was the first time that thought had ever crystallized in her mind. And she had realized that it was the great tragedy of her and Billy. They were best friends, rivals, bandmates, songwriting partners, people who understood one another better than anyone else in the world. Soulmates.
But they were never just those things. Plain as day to everyone in their lives, Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne were pulled to each other like magnets. Every moment between them was colored not just by antagonism and attraction, but also love. Ultimately, that meant that Billy couldn't have Camila, he couldn't have his family, if he wanted to have Daisy.
He'd once begged her to be something like a platonic soulmate, because that was the only way they could keep each other, stay in each other's lives. But that had been a fool's plea. They'd wanted each other from the first time they sang together. She'd been deluding herself to hope otherwise, to imagine a future where they could last, but it had been a beautiful mirage. For better or worse, there was no world in which Billy Dunne didn't love her.
Coming back to the moment, Daisy tilted her face toward the shining lights and stars of the open stadium roof. She felt her eyelids, heavy with shimmery pigment, shutter closed for a moment as she blinked through tears.
She looked back down toward the crowd and lifted the mic to sing the song their fans had been begging for. The song that had haunted them, had brought them together, and would finally tear them apart.
"Did we unravel a long time ago?"
The crowd ceased to matter, and it was the two of them again, like it had been that first day in the sound booth. Now, Daisy looked Billy right in the eye and knew that he finally understood. It broke her heart in two.
"Is there too much we don't wanna know?"
As they stared at each other, they both knew they were saying goodbye. That they could never have this again, this moment in space and time. Billy's eyes closed. The tears were running unbidden down both of their faces, their feelings clear as day: grief, and, at once, acceptance.
"I wish it was easy, but it isn't so."
Billy opened his eyes, and he smiled softly at her through his tears, with the purest affection and adoration. She didn't have to guess at what it meant. She knew, as she always did when it came to him. It was gratitude. For what they had been for each other. Saviors and commiserators. Partners. Friends. And it was also gratitude for what she was sacrificing, in this moment when he couldn't be strong enough to do it. Billy knew that Daisy was willingly giving up the only family she had ever loved, so that he could get his back. And so Billy could be the person they both wanted him to be.
In spite of that painful truth, she smiled and echoed the gratitude back at him. Everything he'd given her in exchange, it was enough. She could never have all of him, but he'd given her just enough. Enough to save herself.
It physically pained her, but she kept smiling as she cried, and as she mouthed the word "Go."
And he did.
And the one and only Daisy Jones? She turned toward her band to perform with them for the last time, although they did not yet know that's what it would be. But she knew. And so she sang her heart out, not sparing a glance to find out if Billy had looked back at her when he left.
"Oh, we could make a good thing bad."