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Basira observes her companions – of course she does, she needs to learn how she can support them and if she should even bother. This has led her to note two main differences between the violence of Daisy – who she’d known for years, and Melanie, whose heavy breathing had only been beside her for what, eight months at this point? Sounds about right.
Number one is Daisy’s violence comes in suddenly, her heart starts ringing in her ears and she doesn’t stop until she has to, until whatever she’s transfixed on is dealt with. Melanie, on the other hand, breathes heavily and waits for something to jump out and lets the energy outlast the fear until she collapses out of exhaustion.
The second? Daisy knows how to clean up after herself. Melanie’s too busy trying not to pass out or get the adrenaline low enough to actually harbor a bit of control, even if it’s just making sure she doesn’t cut her foot open trying to stomp the rest of it out.
It’s about one in the morning, and if Basira were to give a thesis on the dichotomy between her partner and the woman she’s stuck with now, this’d be her first example cited. There are broken bones and squished meaty things all torn up over the Institute floor, and both of them are bleeding. Basira’s forearm has a nasty bite in it, pressed into her clothes and skin long enough for it to crunch and hang by her side before Melanie came in with the knife. She’s still trying to figure out how exactly Melanie wrenched her shoulder – she was going so fast and Basira was trying to hold her own too, so it’s almost impossible to tell. It smells bad, every monster Melanie killed has already started to rot.
Melanie doesn’t look happy the way Daisy does – did – after she got something done and got the blood pumping. She always found it unsettling, even once she got used to the way Daisy’s eyes dilated and muscles tensed when she transfixed on a monster, but the absence is worse. Melanie holds out the knife, calls after anything else that might try to hurt her, voice thick and piercing as it screams “This – I’ll kill you! I’ll tear you apart!” Her shoulders rise half to her ears and her face is red with both adrenaline and smeared blood.
Her vision doesn’t seem black and white like Basira’s used to, which is why she doesn’t repeat old patterns with a “Hey. Calm down,” and a hand on the shoulder. Her working theory is that in Melanie’s tunnel vision, every pulsing limb looks like it’s reaching for her and every hand will get cut off. Her mind turns down the contrast and every shade of gray needs to be opened up and dyed red.
Basira stays away and steps over piles of meat to grab the first aid kit from under the unused-for-four-months-now desk of the head Archivist. She wants to tend to the bite in her arm but the blood has stopped pouring, more of a steady ooze now, and she’s more focused on measuring the bandage against her own arm so she can wrap Melanie’s shoulder tight enough without letting the scissors into her gaze. Another thing she observed – Melanie isn’t picky. She doesn’t carry anything on her, and she’s a few inches above fighting with literal tooth and nail, but she’s maybe the fastest at finding something sharp that Basira’s ever seen, and she’s dealt with some fighters.
When she steps back into the blood-soaked hall, she has a plan in her mind. De-escalate first, tell Melanie that it’s safe and get her to sit down – don’t use force. At all costs, even once you get her vegetable knife away and clean it. Then take the first-aid kit, sans scissors, sit her down and wrap her up. Maybe yourself, if you have time. Then you let her leave – it’ll be hard not to get in her way if she stays – and get enough bleach to kill somebody if used improperly and make sure the blood doesn’t make anybody else want to throw up. It’s not the blood itself, she’s seen blood, but it’s the fact that it weren’t for her, nobody’d care enough to scrub the tile.
All that to say, the plan she decided upon becomes obsolete as soon as she turns and sees Melanie handling the meat piles, dragging them and tossing them into a yellow door, the one that the Boneturner opened and Basira had neglected to shut, apparently. Helen’s been more familiar than Martin these days, with Peter Lukas and everything. She comes in and makes snarky comments, asks around for Jon with remarks like “He can’t still be comatose, can he?” A fine statement on its own but it feels like bony fingers digging for a wound. They don’t have any guidance – Basira doesn’t have someone to tell her when she’s going to make a mess if she ever does, Melanie’s, well, talking to Helen. Yeah.
Melanie drags a disembodied arm with too many veins and ligaments snapped to double its already uncanny quanitity of joints and lets the blood get all over her hands as she shoves it through the threshold. “Think that’ll stain?” The distortion speculates like they’re old friends. “Fuck, I don’t care. If it does, I hope it’s enough that none of those fucking Viscera come back for more.” She starts breathing hard again, Basira observes this from a distance – she’s cautious around Helen. “Melanie,” Basira tries. “You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah, but they bled too,” she says, voice towing the line between casual and numb. “And the Flesh is fine, aren’t they, like, in general? All these things, they make you what – invulnerable? Something like that – you fight and you’re fine, you kill and you’re fine, you light a fire and barely breathe in the smoke and it’s just–” Melanie lets out a heavy sigh, showing more awareness than she has in a while about the fact that something changed her. Basira’s willing to bet, given her calmness, that it’s more refusal to acknowledge than repression or denial.
“You’re still – you’re still a person, Melanie,” Helen lets out a giggle at Basira’s response. “I’ll help clean up, okay? Helen can help with the bodies, I guess, but we should probably scrub that blood out.”
“I don’t know, Basira. At this rate, Jon’s not coming back, Martin never comes down here to give a shit about how stained the floor is, and nobody else is coming. Daisy and Tim – they’re dead. Nobody comes down to give live statements any more, I’m pretty sure Mr. Lukas hates visitors too much to clear most applications, it’s all just so, so, I don’t know, I’m just,” she cuts herself off again. Melanie does not want to say the word scared.
Then her body cuts her off and she drops to her knees like she’s drunk and just starting to regret it, and Basira breaks the first rule she made. She crouches down, trying to bite back her own pain even though her arm’s still bleeding and it stings and that’s more blood for her to clean. Still, she makes her already sticky with blood hand stickier by grabbing Melanie’s wrist. Melanie pulls away with a “Fuck! I – I was going to leave. I can handle this on my own, Basira, really.” Basira knows it’s not true, she knows that when somebody protects they take that role and make it their job.
“Just let me bandage your arm first,” Basira says through gritted teeth, noting that Melanie’s fists ball up as she says that. “I don’t have to hold your wrist if you don’t, um, want me to,” she’s getting a bit desperate and she thinks she might pass out before Melanie does but that might just be the fact that she’s too damn grounded for this.
“Right,” Melanie says, and Basira’s hands shake as the bandage wraps around itself and around Melanie’s shoulder. “You can leave now, if you want. I know I’m being difficult about it, and I swear, I don’t want to. Everything’s just changing.” She misses Daisy. She lets out a sigh. “Saving my life and all of the Archive, that’s a lot. If you need anything else, my cot’s going to be in the tunnels.”
Melanie stands up, waves goodbye to Basira and Helen, and walks straight up the stairs, and judging by the sounds Basira’s ears are trained on, straight onto the streets of London out the side door. Hands slick with blood and clothes stained and she’s an entire mess, just stepping out of the door. She’s the world’s problem now.
“You’re used to being able to let them leave, yeah?” Helen asks. Basira focuses on getting a rubbing alcohol pad to finally clean her wound, but she doesn’t deny it.
“I don’t think I ever met your Detective Tonner, but I’ve heard the name around. She was used to all of this. Not being human. Not needing help. Melanie’s getting there.”
“I don’t want her to,” Basira responds as she wraps up her bite with the remainder of the roll of bandages. She’s surprised by this – everyone’s…what, alignment? Whatever you call it, it’s their own journey. But Melanie seems like she loves it and hates it, and Basira knows it’s never an easy path to take. She doesn’t want to be the only human in the Archive, either.
The thing about finding oneself surrounded with protectors is that none of them know what to do with the fact that they just saved somebody’s life. And that their own lives, depending on the circumstances, may be part of the exchange.