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daisy tonner

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The past few days have been... difficult. Any attempts to reconcile his guilt with how (meta)physically good he feels have gone about as well as they ever have, both sensations heightened by just how many bloody people were involved. He eats as little as he can get away with under Martin's concerned gaze — some part of him ought to be hungry — and holes up in either their flat or his office, dreading the possibility, however slim, that he might see someone he preyed on the other night. He hasn't yet decided if being recognized would be worse than the alternative. He is too cowardly to want the answer to that question anytime soon.

The majority of his private moments are spent dwelling on what he witnessed: because he doesn't deserve to forget what he put people through; because he wants to wring every scrap of potential nourishment out of the memories as quickly as possible and render them useless; because, on a base level he hates to acknowledge, it is nourishing. It's the best fucking thing to happen to the Archivist all year.

And 'dwelling' is what he's doing now, sat on the floor next to the coffee table, a barely-touched cup of tea gone stone cold at his elbow. Martin is out on one of his walks — a reluctant step towards the idea of normalcy that John had gently bullied him into. It's better for both of them, really: Martin gets to stretch his legs and get some fresh air, and John gets a temporary reprieve from the twin torments of Martin either trying to make him feel better or being sad that he can't. His gaze has slipped out of focus, but it sharpens when there's an unanticipated knock on the door.

He knows the brisk, implacable rap of Daisy's knuckles by now, and he stares across the flat at the front door for only a beat or two before puffing out a sigh and hauling himself to his feet. He pads over to the door, unlocks it, and eases it open a few inches. "What?" he asks in a low croak, wincing a little at how unfriendly he sounds.

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She can feel him, on the other side of the door, in that way that she's been aware of John for a long time, now. She can't feel him, not his feelings or his thoughts or anything, but she can tell when he's close. It's how she found him the day she arrived here. It's a phantom sensation, not bothersome, but that's soothed anyway by sharing a building, instead of living across town from him — and soothed still more as he approaches the door and opens it literally the least amount he seems to think he can possibly get away with.

His voice is a feeble little creak, probably not unlike her own had sounded when he'd found her in the Buried.

That feels like a lifetime ago, sometimes.

She regards him through the gap between door and doorjamb, then lifts the bottle of whiskey and the two glasses she has, clutched between the fingers of one hand like a weird, pale spider holding its prey. She shakes them a little, amber liquid sloshing in the bottle.

"Let me in," she says, simply and without room for argument.

He'll probably argue anyway.

John's gaze drops to the bottle and glasses Daisy has somehow managed to carry in one hand. The absurdity of it pulls him up short, bypassing the impulse to shut the door in her face. Why did she bring glasses? They have perfectly serviceable glasses here that they could have used.

By the time he realizes he's been staring for several dragging seconds, the opportunity to refuse her outright feels as if it's come and gone. He still hesitates, glancing between her and the door, before puffing out a heavy sigh and stepping back to admit her.

"Not much in the mood for company," he grumbles, as if that will come as a shock. He hasn't been in the mood for company in days. But he knows how persistent Daisy can be, and he isn't sure he has the wherewithal to really butt heads with her. Instead, he slouches over to the table and sinks into one of the wooden chairs, unwilling to allow himself (or extend to anyone else) the relative comfort of the couch.

Daisy watches him go to the table, because of course he goes to the table instead of slumping into the couch cushions, and she rolls her eyes. She shuts the door behind her with a foot, toes out of her sneakers, and then follows him over.

"I'm not 'company,'" she points out. "'Company' is people you don't see often or estranged family coming to collect on an inheritance, and yes, I'll argue the semantics all day if you'd like." She sets the glasses down — she'd honestly brought them in the event that nobody'd done the dishes, and she's glad to get the sense that isn't the case — and pours them each a couple fingers' worth. That done, she sits, one leg drawn up so her shin is pressed against the edge of the table. The other, she extends out and rests on the rung of John's chair.

There is an easy familiarity to Daisy's companionship: the explicit offer of a drink and the more implicit offer of a sympathetic ear. This is how they passed any number of hours in his office at the Institute. But the arrangement feels both pointedly damning now and poisoned in retrospect. She'd needed someone to help her resist her own worst impulses, to keep an eye on her lest she do something she'd later regret — help that he had provided. How gracious of him, given their history. How kind. And now his own hypocrisy has been thoroughly exposed. He had checked her, but not himself. He'd rationalized his own lapses, one after the other. And a few nights ago, he'd curled up in a dark corner while The Archivist went on a bloody bender, hiding from the truth of himself instead of facing it head-on. What a fucking joke.

None of this is news to Daisy, of course, which almost makes things worse. It lends an air of specific expectation to her silence, and he has to take a bracing gulp of whiskey before he can bring himself to speak.

"I really fucked up this time," he murmurs, gravelly from the drink. He tilts the glass slightly, watching the liquid move, then sets it down with a thunk.

Daisy's thumb lightly rubs up and down the side of her glass. It would be easy to be the supportive friend, here — no you didn't, John; you didn't mean to, John; it'll be okay, John — but that isn't what he needs, is it? And that's not who Daisy is, anyway. She's not a sycophant, never has been. John doesn't want to be coddled, or he wouldn't have let her in.

"Yeah," she says softly. "You did."

She says it without judgement, without reproach. It's the truth, and neither of them can pretend to hide from it, even though she suspects that's what he's been doing, holing himself up in here since it all happened.

John nods, a silent, subtle gesture, his gaze fixed on the table. Her quiet agreement doesn't sting the way one might expect it to. On the contrary, it's more of a relief. He doesn't want forgiveness or absolution, he doesn't want to be told that everything will be okay.

He doesn't know what he wants. He probably has no business wanting anything for the foreseeable.

But that isn't how this works, is it? They both know better. He lets out a faint, humorless huff of air, rotating his glass a few anxious degrees. "I don't know how to stop," tumbles out of him, furtive and tremulous. Then, with more forceful, bitter backing, "Suppose I... I-I've never had to try— I mean, really try." Not the way you have hangs there, unspoken.

"You didn't want to, did you," she points out, less a question and more a reminder.

When she'd come back from the Buried — when John had helped her come back — she'd made her decision. She'd gotten to be herself, really be herself, underground like that, in a way she hadn't been in long enough that she hadn't even been sure she knew who she was anymore. Daisy, the Hunt, they were one entity in such a way that she had never been able to excuse her behavior, but once cleanly severed, she'd known: she doesn't want to be the Hunt. Things are different in Darrow. She needs the Hunt, needs to use it, and does. But John still helps her make sure she doesn't lose herself in it.

He'd helped her then, and has helped her now, because she'd asked him to. But he'd never asked for that in return. Whether because he'd thought he was in control, or because he saw the Eye as less invasive than the Hunt, she doesn't know, but he hadn't sought out that same restraint.

He winces faintly at the reminder, a thousand rejoinders clamoring to be aired, none of which are really airable. He could try to argue, 'of course I did,' but that wouldn't be true. After the Coffin, he hadn't considered his own missteps as being on par with hers. He'd entertained the idea that he was suffering his own sort of compulsion, that none of it was a choice he was free to either make or refuse. And Christ, he'd seen what Daisy's decision was doing to her. He can see it on her now, for all that Darrow's influence seems to have arrested its progress.

He hadn't wanted that, and he still doesn't. He couldn't bear the idea of becoming too hungry to function, or too weak to be of any use to anyone. If he ever manages to throw his life away, it'll be in service of Martin's continued survival, not out of any noble intention to go out cleanly, without harming anyone else. He'd made his choice in hospital, and there are aspects of what he's become that aren't optional.

But the taking was optional. He can survive without it, in both theory and practice. And while he wants to imagine this is a one-off, a desperate measure some part of him took out of desperate necessity, he can only call it a stop-gap if some other solution intends to present itself. And so far, it hasn't.

"I don't— I-I can't just... chuck it all out," he replies at length. "Can't stop being the Archivist. But I..." he huffs, gesturing vaguely towards his own head, as if the Archivist is a physical parasite lodged in the back of his skull. "I don't know how to-to stop fucking hunting in my sleep. Since that's apparently a, a thing now."

It's different for him, she knows that. The Hunt has never made Daisy get up in her sleep and go do things. She's never had dreams that sent her into the world to kill monsters. She's always been in control of herself. She can get hungry for the Blood and choose not to do anything and all that'll happen is that she won't do anything. She'll get thinner, again, and she'll get weaker, again, but she won't hurt anyone, or anything, unless she chooses to.

John doesn't have that luxury, and they both know it. That's the scary part, for her. Even if he chooses to stop Looking, to stop Knowing, he'll still take Statements whether he means to or not. This only proves that with a blunt certainty that has left him bruised and small and she wants to rip the Archivist from him to stop him looking like that.

But she can't.

She sighs softly.

"So we find you something so you don't get that hungry again," she says, like it's the simplest fucking thing. She knows it isn't, and reckons it'll piss him off to hear it, but she says it anyway. "Host a bloody giveaway: send us a written record of a weird thing and you'll win a hundred dollars." It's not funny, but she scoffs out a mirthless laugh at the idea.

John cuts her a sharp look, and takes another swig of his drink to keep himself from snapping any of the obvious retorts. The idea of there being some simple solution they've all missed is mostly just an insult, though a small part of him feels a stab of dread over the possibility, however slim, that his latest bender could've been avoided if they'd all been a bit less stupid. So it's almost a relief when Daisy's suggestion fails to strike him as especially promising.

"Oh, that's a brilliant idea," he replies acidly. "Let's ask the whole city if anything terrifying has happened to them recently. Can't imagine what they might come up with." He coughs out some distant cousin of a laugh. "Then we can tell them where to find us, and see how long it takes someone to try and put me in the fucking ground again."

He almost regrets his choice of phrasing, given current company, but he certainly isn't in the mood to apologize for it. The nearest he can get to remorse is just avoiding Daisy's gaze as he takes another sip.

Edited 2023-06-28 00:15 (UTC)

"I wouldn't let them," she says lowly, with the same dark insistence she'd used back in London when she'd stopped Trevor Herbert the day she'd arrived in Darrow. She takes a deep pull from her glass. She refuses to react to even a suggestion of The Buried. Whether he'd meant it to hurt her or not, she won't flinch.

She sighs softly at the way he avoids her gaze, mistaking it for frustration with her, rather than any level of remorse. It's earned, probably. She's too much of a blunt instrument when it comes to looking for solutions. She wants to find the fastest, shortest route, even if it isn't necessarily the simplest. She's too impatient, and she wants to help John feel better, not make it worse. Maybe right now, in this moment, 'finding a solution' is exactly the wrong move to make.

She leans to grab the bottle, topping off their glasses.

"Anyway, don't snap at me," she says without heat. "I brought drinks, remember?"

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