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Knees to her chest, she leans against the wall. She’s long gotten bored of the few mildly interesting things to do in the room that she’s been staying in for the past two weeks. Now she mostly sleeps, or tries to sleep, on the couch in the room.
Usually she just ends up staring at the sleeping figure on the cot in the room instead, though, foot tapping on the ground absent-mindedly.
It’s one of many personal offices in a corporate building owned by C&A. According to what little information the staff have given them, this building has been repurposed with the express purpose of… storage.
Body storage. Every single player who had unwittingly put on a headset somewhere was found and relocated to one of the many rooms in the building. Most of them were legally missing or dead, because C&A found them before anyone else.
In every corner of every room it’s clear that it was used this way, too – machines designed to monitor vitals, breathe for people, IVs set up near beds, bright lights and a sanitized, sterile atmosphere. It feels a lot like being in an ER to her.
The most stark difference between this place and any sort of hospital setting is the headsets on the tables in every room, linked to a digital prison.
Almost none of the machines are running anymore – monitoring vitals is still important for the abstracted individuals who come and go, waking up in short bursts but rarely seeming lucid. But everything else – including the headsets – is powered off.
She’s pulled from her thoughts by movement on the bed – the person stirs awake and pushes themself to sit up as she hops to her feet and rushes over
“Rems, hey,” she barely whispers, voice scratchy from disuse and out of practice but she can’t bring herself to care, placing a supportive hand on the smaller person’s back. “Need anything? Water?” She’s already reaching for the water as they nod, and she helps them hold it so it doesn’t slip out of their shaky hands.
They drink about half the water before pushing it back into her hands, and she sets it back on the side table.
“Daze,” they mumble, reaching their hands out to hold hers. “S’okay. We’re okay.” Their hands are unsteady, but their thumbs rub circles into the backs of her hands.
Daze. Whatever she was gonna say dies in her throat the moment she hears it. Her eyes burn.
Fuck.
“Rem…” her voice wavers pathetically and she pulls her hands out of the smaller girl’s grasp to wrap them around her. “Dammit, Mona.” Her voice is weak and she feels smaller than she’s ever felt before.
Ramona leans into the hug, tilting their head to rest it in the crook of her neck.
“Daisy…” She breathes in deeply, and Daisy cringes.
“Don’t do that, ya nasty. We both smell awful.” Mona giggles and leans back enough to look up at her. It’s hard to see each other well, in the dim lighting from the window on the door, but it’s enough to see that soft expression on their face.
“...Nothing.. smelled like anything… there. I’ll take.. my stinky girlfriend–” Daisy snorts at that, and Ramona snickers before continuing, “–over the weird… non-smell in the circus…”
“You’re disgusting,” Daisy giggles, pulling back from the hug and cracking her back, sore from leaning down. “And short. Yeesh.”
Ramona just grins up at her. “Sit down with me then,” they say, sitting up properly and swinging their legs over the side of the bed. Her heart monitor beeps steadily at the head of the bed in the silence before she adds, sarcastically, “It’s super comfy. Doesn’t even feel like it’s from the dollar store!” Daisy just snorts again.
“Fuck off, that thing’s an accident waiting to happen. It’s gonna give you tetanus or rabies or some shit.” Ramona cackles.
“It’s gonna give me rabies?” She wheezes out as her laughter dies down. “Fuck, probably girl. I gotta get off this death trap.” They slide forward off the cot and when their feet touch the ground, one of their knees give, and the beeping of the heart monitor accelerates—
Daisy catches her quickly, wrapping her arms around them for support.
“Shit, thanks,” they mumble, focusing on keeping their feet under them. “Guess I.. ugh.” Daisy scoops them up into her arms easily.
“God, you’re light..” Daze mutters, worry creeping into her voice. “Here, they’ve got this— this couch, just—“ She puts them on the couch she was sitting on earlier gently. “It sucks, but it’s probably better than that bear trap with a mattress. I’ll uh, grab you some food. They’ve got like.. this— food setup thing. I dunno. Like a hotel breakfast but all the time and also probably way worse. I’ll be back with whatever the hell they have there.” She rocks on her heels as she talks before striding towards the door.
“Make sure to get yourself something too, Daze. Even if the food is ass.” Mona reminds her gently.
“That’s an insult to ass,” she snarks back as she swings open the door. “…But yeah, alright.”
Once she’s out the door, she looks down the hall on either side of her. Almost nobody is down these halls — after all, this area was designated for the non-lucid circus members, the abstractions. She, technically, isn’t supposed to be staying here, but the staff seem to have considered kicking her out to be more effort than it was worth after the first several times they caught her.
She’d honestly rather never go near the group of lucid “subjects” — ugh — because she doesn’t feel up to explaining anything to anyone. She’s tired.
But that’s where the food is, so she ultimately has to go back there. It’s open at all hours, so she can go whenever the hell she wants, and usually there’s nobody there.
Usually.
As she approaches, she, unfortunately, hears the murmur of people talking amongst themselves and stops dead in her tracks.
“Have you… do you… um,” a familiar voice stammers awkwardly. Like they’re broaching a topic everyone else has been avoiding on purpose. “…Do you think Jax is okay…?”
The following silence is only broken by plastic crinkling, the question hanging in the air heavily.
“I.. don’t know, Pomn- er, Charlie. Sorry.” Daisy can practically hear the former ragdoll wringing her hands. “I don’t think anyone’s seen him since we all woke up…”
Her heart pounds in her chest. She can’t just— not get Mona food, but she’s—
Not. Scared. She’s not. She just doesn’t wanna deal with them. For completely normal reasons. Nothing to do with the fact that they know Daisy and not Jax and that she’s dressed like herself and by process of elimination they’ll probably figure out who she was because everyone else is either accounted for or abstracted. Maybe she’ll just tell them she woke up in the abstracted hall and… doesn’t remember the circus….? Or was there before Ragatha so no one would know who she is except Kinger…?
God, she just needs to suck it up and go in.
Right as she’s about to drag herself into the room, though, Pomni — Charlie? — speaks again and she freezes.
“It’s alright, the name thing is.. weird still. Like— oh shit, holy fuck, sorry—“ She had walked through the dark doorway and nearly straight into Daisy, and both of them spring back from each other the moment they make contact. “Fuck, sorry— I didn’t see you there, uh…?” Charlie — it feels weird to call her anything but Pomni — squints up at her, and in the dim lighting she almost certainly can’t see the wide-eyed fright that captures her face before she fixes her expression into something a little less like a spooked bunny.
“Uh.. ‘s fine.” She bites her tongue at the thought of introducing herself, feeling the unspoken question like a dagger to her throat.
She breezes past the pair and into the weird office breakroom slash kitchen… thing. Silently dreading the fact that they don’t seem to be walking away from the sound of it.
Fuckkkk.
It takes all of her willpower to just not look back at them, instead picking through the packaged foods on the counter and gathering up stuff that actually looks edible and possibly even has nutritional value.
She also grabs like a dozen single-packaged muffins of varying flavors because she will be damned if she’s not getting something good out of this hellish encounter. Sure, they mostly taste like sugar, but she doesn’t care.
Turning, she sees that, yep, they just sorta stood in the doorway staring at her for the minutes it took her to go through the food. Summoning up her best non-Jax-like snark, she tilts her head a little at them before speaking.
“Wha~at, can’t a gal get somethin’ to eat without bein’ ogled?” Both of them almost flinch at being acknowledged and then looking away from her like that would fix it. “Heavens forbid women do anything,” she says dramatically, rolling her eyes as she starts to walk past them to bring her spoils to Ramona.
“Uh– wait!” She stops mid-stride looks over her shoulder at… Charlie, who seems a little surprised she actually listened. “Um, it’s… who are you? We haven’t seen anyone outside of our group up and about…”
Daisy hums, turning fully and leaning against the wall. “Who’s askin’?” She asks, instead of answering the question.
“Oh,” Charlie says, kind of looking guilty. “Sorry– I’m Charlie. This is Andrea, or Andy.” When gestured to, Andy politely smiles and waves, looking a bit like a fish out of water.
“...Daisy,” she finally says after a long consideration.
“...It’s.. nice to meet you, Daisy,” Andy says quietly.
“Have you um.. seen anyone around? One of our friends… he uh, we never found him after we woke up, even though the staff said he should’ve been in one of the rooms near us..” Daisy suppresses a grimace and just shakes her head.
“Nope! Just my friend in the abstracted… wing.” She shrugs. “Maybe he ditched.” Breathe, Daze, she can almost hear Mona say when her anxiety tightens its hold on her chest.
Something in Ragatha– Andy’s eyes shifts as she watches Daisy. “Oh, did you, uh..” She seems almost scared to say the word.
“...Somethin’ like that,” she breathes, decidedly not looking at either of their faces. She pushes off the wall with her shoulders and tilts her head to look away from them. “Great chat, girls, but I’ve got things,” she crunches the corner of one of the wrappers in her arms to make a point, “to do. Bye~” Not wanting to let them get a word in, she immediately speedwalks down the hall and turns the corner in a flash, suddenly grateful for being so damn tall.
She finally returns to the door of Ramona’s room and bumps it open with her elbow. “Hey…”
Mona blinks up at her from the couch, smiling, before saying, “Yeesh, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Daisy silently dumps the food she gathered over Mona’s head and flops onto the couch next to her.
“...I ran into some..” Scrubbing her eyes with her hands, she sighs. “Some of the people from the circus. Ugh.” Ramona, now turned on the couch to face her better, gently grabs Daisy’s wrists and pulls them in their lap, resting their hands on top of them. The wrappers crinkle when Daisy’s hands land on them.
“Take your time,” Mona soothes, giving her hands a squeeze.
“I never wound up… telling them. Like we’d planned. After we fought, after you—“ and she can’t say it, it catches in her throat like a burr.
“…I just shut back down entirely. It was… easier, to just stay… like that.”
“Oh, love,” Mona murmurs empathetically. “You must’ve been in so much pain.”
Daisy’s eyes burn with tears, again, and she scrubs at her eyes as her breathing stutters.
“Fuck,” she gasps, breath coming harsh. “They— asked about him. J— ugh.” She can hardly breathe, and Ramona tugs her down to hold her against their chest, and she sobs.
It feels like she’s drowning and can’t figure out which way is up, but Mona runs her fingers through her hair, carefully working through any tangles they catch on.
Ramona whispers warm words into her hair that she doesn’t always catch, but eventually her shoulders stop trembling so much and she just sniffles quietly. Lifting her head from her partner’s chest, she looks up at them.
“Rems… I don’t know how to go forward from here,” Daisy whispers.
“One foot in front of the other, I guess, unless you desperately want to revive that asshole from the circus.” Daze’s face scrunches up at the idea. “Yeah, sounds a bit like stepping backwards directly off a cliff.”
“They’re worried about him,” she says softly.
“They’re worried about their friend,” Mona corrects. “He’s just the name and face they have for that friend right now, because she’s too scared to show her face for real.” Daisy scowls and lightly shoves at them, and they giggle.
“Don’t worry about him or them for now. Let’s eat our shitty hotel-lobby-breakfast-ass food.” Ramona starts to gather the food into a proper pile — some of it a bit squished due to both of them completely forgetting about it in the face of the horrors they’re both working through.
“Which of us is more fucked up, the one who sort of died or the one who didn’t?” Ramona asks, and Daisy sighs wiltingly.
“Probably the one who got interrupted in the middle of dying and then had to deal with fabricated hope.”
“Yikes. Probably, yeah.”