Chapter Text
I.
“It’s gonna take everything from me, Billy! No more of all this, that’s for sure.” Daisy gives off a scorned laugh, her fingers running through the lengths of her red waves, one of her rings snagging.
“Daisy,” he starts, stepping closer to her, so close she can feel his breath. “None of this–” he clasps her shoulders– “the clothes, the hair, the stage act– none of this is you.”
“But that’s the thing.” She almost stomps her foot. “It’s not just going to stop once all the surface shit is stripped away. It’s gonna keep going, and going…”
He presses his forehead to hers. “It’s gonna try. But you’re gonna fight, and you’re gonna win.”
II.
Billy was determined they would write songs. They’d write a song while she covered her mangled, IV-taped arm with an orange throw blanket, they’d write a song while she waited for her anti-nausea meds to kick in… they’d write so many songs. Hits from the hospital. They would tour them when she made it to the other side of this with her badass battle scars that she’d show off wearing a sparkly bra on stage.
But she wasn’t well enough to write any songs.
III.
He’d played this role before; both of these roles before, actually. He’s taken care of a sick woman, right until he kissed her face and lowered the lid of her coffin at the very end. He’d also let Daisy Jones at his brick walls with a sledgehammer.
He tries to be quiet when he slips home in the middle of the night; putting his clothes that smell like hospital in the wash, and the clothes she’d been wearing, too, like he promised he would. He puts the sweet-smelling, but not overpowering, scent beads in.
Julia is there behind the door with crossed arms when Billy exits the laundry room, the mirror image of her mother. Her brows crease softly. “Be careful, Papa,” is all she says.
IV.
It’s day four of Daisy’s week-long hospital residency that Billy gets called in to consult on a recording session. It’s a good opportunity, one he absolutely shouldn’t say no to… but, Daisy.
But, in the blue station wagon waiting outside her home, it isn’t Billy that’s picking her up to take her to her appointment. It almost startles her, actually; it’s as if she’s seen a ghost. There in the driver’s seat of Billy’s truck is Camila Dunne, thirty years ago. And she waves.
V.
“Okay, okay, it’s alright,” he murmurs, a hand on Daisy’s back as it arches over the bowl. “Easy, tiger.”
She moans, resting her elbows on the seat and cradling her throbbing temples. “God, I fucking deserve this!” she screams.
He startles at the volume and at the aggression, not even to mention the statement itself. “Why would you say that, why would you ever say that? It’s cancer, Daisy, no one deserves it.”
“I deserve it,” she mumbles into the echo. “I deserve it.”
VI.
“Why haven’t you told anyone?” Billy asks. At Daisy’s request and at his great dissent, they’re sitting out on his back porch, both with joints in hand. This is what the kids called California Sobriety, according to her– and Billy gave in because he always did, and because a little dope was the least of either of their vices back in the day.
Daisy snorts. “What, I’m gonna call up the guys and have to explain to them what a mammogram even is?”
“The guys probably know what a mammogram is, Daisy, we’re not kids anymore.”
She leans back and she grins. “I know we’re not. And it sucks. I wanna go back to being kids with you guys.”
VII.
“I miss your wife,” Daisy says one day. She says it so casually that Billy has to think about it, and when it hits him, it hits with a crashing wave of grief and sadness.
“Yeah, I miss her too,” he replies simply.
“I genuinely believe that she saved my life, y’know?” Daisy looks down, musing at the injection site that’s moved to a permanent home in her chest with a displeased look on her face. “Maybe it’s the reason I’m fighting this at all. I can’t bear to let her down even now.”
“Plus, if she were still around she could teach me how to rock a wig as well as she did. I’ve seen pictures, you can’t even tell…”
Billy wasn’t all that interested in talking about his dead wife, his deepest wound, with Daisy Jones, of all people.
VIII.
Daisy doesn’t see her, head resting on Billy’s shoulder, drowning out the noise of the waiting room and the red-hot pain radiating through her like a bad trip. Billy, though, he sees her right away. He sees her saunter past the waiting room, looking but not actually looking, and then immediately backtracking for a double take. And then, she saunters into the waiting room.
“Tell me my eyes deceive me.” Like the hurricane she’s always been, Karen Sirko crashes down in the seat next to Daisy’s, placing a hand on her back. “I hate that this is where we meet again!”
Daisy wipes her eyes and unlocks herself from Billy’s shoulder, only to latch onto Karen’s instead, wrapping her up in a hug. “Hi.”
Over Daisy’s shoulder, Karen looks from her to Billy. His eyes are wet, too.
IX.
“I like what you’ve done with your hair,” Daisy says. Now that she’s upright again, she can actually take in the sight of Karen, here, all these years later.
“Yeah, ditto,” she says with a smirk. Daisy still had her hair, for the most part, but it wasn’t half as thick as it used to be. It’d be gone soon, and she was trying to pretend that she’d be okay with that.
“He called you, didn’t he?” Daisy asks. Billy stepped away to get some food, now that Karen’s here.
“I swear to you, I haven’t heard that man’s voice since Camila’s funeral. My mum… uh, my mum’s in a room down the hall…”
“Oh, Karen, Jesus, I’m so sorry.”
“Such is life, I guess. People get cancer.” She finds Daisy’s eyes. “Wasn’t supposed to be you, though. You were supposed to be immortal.”
Daisy cracks a grin, bumping her sore arm into Karen’s. “This is just a test to prove I am.”
Karen laughs, pulling Daisy in for another hug, hand on her head, feeling her scalp through her thinning hair. She wishes that were true so, so badly.
X.
“Aargh!” Daisy throws the remote across Billy’s living room, making sure to shut it off first before she flings it away from her body. The room becomes quieter, now minus the jabber of televised gossip rags.
“Are they talking about you again?” Billy asks from the kitchen. It doesn’t get any less strange, Daisy there on his couch, him cooking for her in the kitchen. The kitchen he cooked for Camila in when she was sick, while she lay on that same couch.
“Yes!” she exclaims. “Well they’re talking about Karen, but it’s because the paps caught her leaving the hospital, and they saw us at the hospital, and now it’s all oh something must be really serious…”
Her phone pings. “It’s fun to be able to text you,” Karen says. “Check channel 7. Bastards didn’t even get my good angle!”