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Daisy sits on the couch, looking through the video games. Most of them are multiplayer, and the cases are all damaged to varying degrees.
Remington and Jay are together, and she’d rather not be around them right now because it reminds her that she is still very much painfully single. (When will someone her type show up for her?)
(Also, the PDA can be unbearable sometimes.)
HP is… somewhere. Ever since returning, he’s started to leave the house every so often for no apparent reason. Sometimes he’ll bring back something, but more often than not, he just seems to be wandering the streets for a few hours with no aim.
Maybe there’s some psychological reason behind it, because he was homeless for five years, and that probably messed him up mentally more than he already was, not to mention five years of not having his necklace, which meant five years of the voices always talking. Daisy can’t handle five minutes without her accessory, Jay can’t handle it at all, and Remington can handle it surprisingly well, although she has her reasons that she refuses to let anyone mention.
HP’s necklace – Mark’s necklace, actually, but he doesn’t answer to that name anymore – was hidden in a drawer in Morello’s office. Daisy had found it while looking for her phone because, obviously, being worried about her friend who had run away to be with someone who Morello had painted as dangerous and murderous is reason for punishment.
Ever since Morello pretty kuch was chased away, they’d found more of Mark’s stuff in the office. Old drawings and books, as well as his CDs. It’s sad. Did she really not see any signs?
Before she and Mark were sent to this “seven-day therapy retreat” (more like seven-year), she may not have had parents that cared about her and Mark, but she had Mark. She had a brother. Morello took that from her.
HP doesn’t seem to remember anything about Mark’s life, nor does he recognise her or Jay, but when she was able to get him to put the necklace Morello gave him – and then presumably took away for the “training” – on, he remembered for just a moment before taking said necklace off and hissing at it. Hissing like a cat would.
(According to Remington, he did that to her bracelet when he was able to get into her dream. That honestly gave her more questions than answers.)
Retrograde amnesia is what Google called HP’s inability to recall anything about Mark’s life, despite being Mark. Technically. Maybe the complete personality change is also something she should look into, but she’s still trying to figure out how to get the parental controls that Morello set on her phone off, and every time she remembers she should probably look that up, her daily screen time is up.
She picks at her nails – every year, on the anniversary of Mark’s “death”, she paints her nails blue. She always used to paint Mark’s nails when they were younger, and his favourite colour was a dark blue that has glitter specs in it. The anniversary is quite some time away, and Mark isn’t dead physically, so she doesn’t need to do it ever again. She might throw out that specific blue; it upsets her just looking at it.
Right now, her nails are painted in the colours of the lesbian flag, because why not? It’s Gay Wrath Month. She might throw away that blue nail polish right now actually, because she’s bound to forget later.
The second she looks in the doorway, she sees HP, who had been presumably wandering the streets for the past half hour, which is the shortest time he’s ever done that for.
HP looks much cleaner than when she and Jay found him and Remington, considering he’s no longer wearing clothes he apparently stole from corpses (long story), and he’s also not covered in blood (again, long story), and he looks much more like Mark than HP, even though they are the same person. Kind of. He looks a lot less insane.
Now, she knows HP doesn’t respond to the name Mark anymore, but when she greets him, she always seems to forget that.
“Hey, Mark. I didn’t hear you come in,” she says, before quickly correcting herself.
HP seems to recognise the name, though, and instead of taking a moment to remember her name, he immediately replies. “Daisy, hello!”
That's an improvement, right? There’s always a lot happening in his body even when he’s completely still, but whoever he is, he is still her older brother.
HP stands beside her. He’s just about the same height as he used to be, but he’s still pretty tall, so she has to look up to meet his eyes — it doesn’t help that she's still sitting down. HP, for whatever reason, prefers to stand.
His eyes catch on Daisy’s nails. He leans over and takes her hand to inspect them.
HP’s hands are cold, to say the least, and he has a painfully tight grip, and after some time, Daisy pulls her hand away because his grip gets more and more uncomfortable as time goes on.
HP pauses for a moment. “Could you do mine?” He asks.
Daisy pauses for a moment. “Your nails?”
“Yes.” HP nods.
Daisy nods in response. “Okay! The nail polish is in my room, so wait here and I’ll get it.”
HP takes “wait here” a bit too literally and hasn’t seemed to move at all in the five-ish minutes Daisy took to find the box of nail polish and bring it downstairs. (She really has got to clean her room.)
She sits on the floor so she doesn't get any nail polish on the couch and signals for HP to do the same.
“Pick a colour, or colours if you’d like,” she prompts, pushing the box of nail polishes towards him.
HP picks out the very same shade of blue Daisy was planning to throw out after looking at it curiously for a few seconds.
Daisy tries not to let her expression show what she’s thinking, and even if it does, HP doesn’t seem to notice.
She does as he asked and paints his nails for him. His hands are bony, which does make sense, considering the entire homeless for five years thing, but it still hurts her.
She missed all the warning signs that something was wrong with Mark; she heard him crying at night, and she never checked on him. To some extent, it’s her fault that that house burnt down, which then means it’s also her fault that Jay’s mom died.
Mark always stuck up for her when Morello was being an asshole for lack of a better term, but she did nothing before Mark’s “death”. She could’ve done something.
HP seems to notice Daisy spiralling to some extent – apparently she has some nervous tics whenever she spirals – and begins to talk. “Your friend is trying to get me to put the necklace on again.”
Daisy pauses. Can he really not use names for once? “Jay or Remington?” It’s probably Jay, but she should still double-check.
“Jay.” HP confirms.
Daisy nods, “that makes sense.”
“She says she wants me to remember? Remember what?” HP furrows his brows in confusion. Jay’s definitely not been adjusting to HP being back too well, which makes sense, considering everything, but he’s her brother and the way Jay acts around him makes her want to yell, because it’s not his fault. They all know what Morello did to Mark, right? It’s not his fault, and Jay has acknowledged that, but she doesn’t act like it.
She takes a deep breath, and reminds herself she’d probably have the same reaction if someone killed her mom.
Remember burning down her house and killing her mom probably is what Daisy thinks, but she doesn’t say it. “She wants you to remember everything before you left,” is what she does say. “So do I.”
HP goes quiet for a minute, which is odd, but Daisy doesn’t say anything.
“Like this?” He asks.
Daisy’s eyes widen immediately. Does he remember, or is he just saying stuff?
“What do you mean?” She asks.
“This.” HP responds. He goes quiet again, like he’s thinking.
“You remember?” It comes out much louder than Daisy intends. She sits up straight and can feel her heart pound slightly
“It appears so.” HP says this like he’s shocked he remembers, because he is. He’s rightfully shocked.
He’s shocked, and so is Daisy, but he remembers. He remembers something, and that’s all that matters.