Daisy never thought she would be thankful for friends. Actually, she never thought she would have friends to be thankful for; closest thing she ever had anymore was a partner. And truthfully, she still wasn’t sure she could honestly call the Archives crew her friends. But Jon had actually climbed into the pit to find her, Tim had hugged her and welcomed her back, and Martin had made up a bed for her in the Archives without question, or even really asking her if she needed it, like he knew she did but that she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to ask for it. Sasha had lent her some spare clothes, then gone to get her some of her own, and while Melanie was the most wary and distrustful out of all of them, she had placed an enormous orange and white cat on her lap, which had promptly curled up and gone to sleep, and which Jon said was a pretty big peace offering. Even Gerard had told her to call him Gerry, although she hadn’t quite taken him up on that yet; she was still getting used to not calling all of them by their surnames. If they weren’t friends, they were the nearest thing she’d had in a long time.
Probably what surprised her the most, actually, was Martin telling her, bit offhanded, that she could keep calling him “Blackwood” if she liked. She’d brushed him off at the time, but that night while she’d been lying on the makeshift bed they’d made up for her, staring in the direction of the ceiling and listening to the others breathe around her, the realization of what he’d actually meant had hit her like a ton of bricks. Daisy had spent most of her adult life in one police station or another, and while people didn’t often get to be friends, you knew you’d got respect from the people around you when they dropped the job titles and just started calling you by your surname. Basira was the only one who’d ever insisted on going on a first-name basis with her, but they were partners, the first one she’d ever had for more than six months, so that made sense. There in the dark of the Archives, Daisy had almost started crying, for the first time in years, because someone she’d actively been planning to kill less than a year ago had been kind without making a big deal of it and offered to let her relate to them on her own terms rather than making her relate on theirs.
He’d been the easiest to start calling by first name.
She wasn’t a cop anymore. Even if she hadn’t more or less been declared dead, she didn’t feel like a cop anymore. She’d never joined to make a difference or help people—that was bullshit, anyone who said they’d joined for that was either lying or hopelessly naive. Daisy had joined to hunt down “bad guys”, but it had been about the hunt, not about the bad guys; she’d never particularly cared why she was after someone, only with actually going after them, and the longer she’d been on the force the more it had been about hunting the people and justifying why after. She knew now that that had been a powerful fear entity or god or…whatever it was, but she also knew that it hadn’t come from nowhere, that it had moved in to justify a whole lot of bad things. Tempting as it was to blame the way she’d been on the blood—the Hunt, the others called it—she knew she couldn’t. All it had done was give her an edge in what she’d wanted to do anyway.
But now it was gone. Well, not gone; she could still hear it on the edges if she let herself, and once she started letting herself hear it, it got a lot closer than that. It was one of the reasons she didn’t like being alone these days, the other being the endless months of isolation underground; when there weren’t other people around to focus on, the surging blood and choking mud competed for her attention. She didn’t want it back, though, that was the thing. It had been all she’d known for so long that she’d forgotten what she was like without it, but she wanted to learn.
She just needed to stop the shaking first.
Daisy’d seen her fair share of people coming down from highs and hangovers or going through withdrawal as they detoxed, so she knew what it looked like. She knew, too, how easy it was to nudge someone into breaking sobriety, even pushed a few over the edge so she could arrest them. Cut off enough avenues to go straight and the most well-intentioned ex-junkie would be right back at it. It shamed her, now, how many people she’d done that to, how many people would be productive members of society today if she hadn’t toyed with them. If this were a traditional detox, one of those twelve step program things, she’d have a long list of people for that eighth step.
Her mum had done it, she remembered. Or tried to, anyway. Couldn’t quite remember if it had been drugs or alcohol or both, she’d been a kid at the time, young enough that she was still Alice, but she vaguely remembered something about a car accident and an injured kid, and her grandfather saying something about how lucky she was the judge had given her a chance to get sober instead of throwing her in jail for the rest of her life. And to her credit, she’d tried. Made it more than halfway through the steps, even. But then she’d hit the stage where she was supposed to ask forgiveness, and she’d hit a wall. She’d ranted well into the night about how she’d done everything right, everything they asked her to, and still no one would accept her apologies, no one would forgive her. In the end, it had been too much, and she’d fallen off the wagon…and a rooftop.
Daisy had been Daisy by then, and old enough to be cynical. She’d decided apologizing was for weaklings, that nobody would forgive you no matter what you did, so it was better to just do things and live your life without worrying what other people thought of it. It hadn’t been until fairly recently that she’d even started thinking differently. Being buried with loads of time to think had started it, but a couple weeks back, just out of curiosity, she’d looked up the twelve steps. Most of it was bullshit—Daisy had never believed in a benevolent God and sure as hell hadn’t experienced anything in the last few years that would change her mind—but it was the ninth step, the one her mum had stumbled over, that had caught her attention. It referred back to the list you were supposed to have made of the people you’d hurt while you were in the throes of your addiction: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Make amends. Not ask forgiveness. In fact, forgiveness wasn’t mentioned once in any of the steps. Which made sense, Daisy guessed. Recovery was supposed to be about you, not about other people. You recovered by fixing what you’d done wrong, not by asking other people to let it go.
What was it Martin had said when she was interviewing him—interrogating him really—after the old man’s murder…had it only been a year ago? We both need to learn how to do it on our own terms or it’s never going to stick. She hadn’t really known what he was talking about then, but she sure as hell did now. Martin was right.
Only she hadn’t learned, and now the person she’d been relying on was somewhere she couldn’t get at her, and Daisy was afraid. Afraid she’d missed her only chance to get right. Afraid of what she was becoming, could become, might not be able to stop herself from being. Afraid there wasn’t anything to her other than the Hunt. Afraid the only way out of this was death.
Afraid she would never see Basira while she was her own woman again.
She’d spent most of the first week roaming the Institute looking for Basira, after Tim had come back down from her office perplexed and worried and said he couldn’t seem to find her. Daisy had been sure she would have better luck—after all, she knew Basira better, and surely Basira would want to see her—but it hadn’t happened and she’d had a little bit of an internal breakdown over it. Martin had finally been the one to find her, but he hadn’t been very encouraging or forthcoming about it, had only said that he let her know Daisy was back. Daisy had tried again, not as often but at least every other day, since that point, and had been increasingly more distressed and heartbroken that she kept avoiding her.
But Tim had come in that morning and said, rather cryptically, that he thought she might have better luck today, and Martin had given her a few tips, and the long and the short of it was that here she was, lurking in a back corridor and waiting.
She closed her eyes and tried to follow Martin’s instructions: to focus on the moments with Basira that had made them close. Riding together in the patrol car. Going out for drinks. Their official Section Thirty-One case prior to the Institute. The lift to Basira’s chin, the pride on her face, when Daisy got promoted to CID. The smirk and the roll of her eyes when Daisy tried to get her to listen to the Archers with her. The first time she’d come over to Daisy’s flat and taken her headscarf off. She didn’t really want to, but she made herself add the moment in the clearing when Basira had stopped her from outright murdering Jon—the moment Basira had given up on walking away from all this bullshit and sacrificed herself for Daisy’s sake. There would have been no going back for her if she’d killed Jon in that moment, and somehow, Basira had known, had saved her. Daisy had to do the same.
Wait. Were those footsteps?
Something in Daisy’s chest warmed, ever so slightly, the way it always did when Basira was nearby. She drew in a quick breath, let it out in a slow, silent exhale, and stepped out into the corridor.
“Hey,” she said.
Basira stood in front of her, stock still, her expression totally flat and emotionless—she’d always been good at that blank, give-nothing-away stare, it made her a real pain in the ass to play poker with. Daisy, for her part, was shocked, and it probably showed on her face. Basira looked…desaturated was the only word she could come up with. Washed out. Like someone had applied a video filter to her that flipped her warm undertones to cool ones and lowered the contrast. Her eyes had gone dull, her skin had gone slightly ashen, and her hair had lost all its luster. That was the biggest shock—Daisy could see her hair. Or what was left of it, anyway. She’d hacked it into an Eton crop, short above her ears and slicked flat against her head, and she wasn’t wearing her headscarf. It wasn’t even hanging around her neck like it usually did when she pushed it back while they were relaxing; there was no sign of it anywhere. She wore the world’s most boring and inoffensive black pant suit and a pair of ballet flats that even Daisy could tell would barely make a sound under ordinary circumstances. How she’d heard her coming was anybody’s guess.
Maybe it was just that she’d wanted to hear her so badly.
“Daisy. Hi,” Basira said, her voice as flat and noncommittal as her face.
Daisy wrapped her arms around her chest, a bit self-consciously. A year ago she’d have been furious with herself for feeling this way, but…well, maybe she deserved it. “I…I haven’t seen you.”
“Yeah. Been busy.” Basira’s tone of voice never changed.
Which was fair, Daisy supposed. “Yeah, uh…working for Peter Lukas, right? That’s what…that’s what the others said.”
Basira shrugged. “Something like that, yeah.”
This conversation was like pulling teeth. Talking to Basira had never been so hard before. Daisy pushed ahead. “Are you…how have you been?”
“Fine. Busy,” Basira repeated. “Lots to do. Look, I’ve got to go.”
“W-wait.” Daisy took a hesitant step towards Basira. She wasn’t a small woman—at least she wasn’t short, she’d lost weight and muscle being buried but she was still six feet tall—but she felt shrunken, and Basira…well, Basira wasn’t exactly standing tall and proud, but she seemed somehow above Daisy. “I—I missed you, partner.”
“We’re not partners.” The words cut across the space like the throwing knives that were probably still locked in Daisy’s car, wherever it was. “Not anymore. We’re not even colleagues.” Basira took a step to the side, very pointedly. “I have to go.”
Something akin to panic was starting to rise in Daisy’s words. Basira didn’t sound cold. Daisy could have dealt with cold, cruel, any of it. She just sounded…flat. Neutral. She wasn’t trying to be hurtful, she was just stating a fact. They weren’t partners, they weren’t colleagues, they weren’t anything. Simple, logical fact.
“We used to be,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm and under control, but the shaking was obvious. “Look—I’m not, I won’t get in your way, I just…missed you. I, I wanted to see for myself you were okay.”
Basira shrugged. “You can see that I am.”
“You’re—” She wasn’t okay. She was so obviously not okay. Daisy struggled to explain it. Finally, she just gestured at Basira’s head helplessly. “Your scarf?”
“Don’t need it. Who is there to care?” Basira twisted slightly to slip past Daisy and continue down the corridor. “Good to see you again, Daisy.”
“Basira—” Daisy began desperately, turning to follow her, and then stopped. The corridor was empty. The tiny flicker of warmth in her chest was gone. Basira had vanished.
Daisy stood alone in the empty corridor, staring at the spot where Basira should have been, her thoughts whirling in a thousand different directions. She’d asked Basira once, after she’d taken her truncheon to the skull of a bastard who’d called her a particularly vile slur, why she still wore the headscarf if she wasn’t religious; that had been one of the first things they’d learned about each other, back when they were still PCs Tonner and Hussain, that they were both atheists, and Daisy just hadn’t ever asked about the scarf until then. Basira had stared out the window of the patrol car for a few minutes, then admitted it was for her dad.
He was a real man of faith, my dad, she’d said quietly. Real big on the teachings of Allah and Muhammad and the lot of it. All that sort of thing was important to him. I don’t worry about most of it, like the praying and the not drinking and all that, but the whole thing about keeping part of yourself hidden and secret except around people who really deserve it…yeah, I’ll do that for him.
Daisy’s dad had been murdered when she was young, and her grandparents had both died when their house burned down inexplicably not long after she got her first Section Thirty-One, so she’d empathized with Basira for losing her own dad, assuming that, like Daisy, she was alone in the world. It hadn’t been until a lot later when she’d been on a totally unrelated case and met a young woman with Basira’s eyes who’d turned out to be her baby sister that she’d learned Basira actually had an enormous, sprawling family spread out over the greater London area, she just wasn’t in contact with any of them—Fariha al-Amin had been shocked to learn Basira was a cop. It was Basira’s choice…she thought…but it was still a bit of a shock to learn that she didn’t have to be alone. Or that her scarf didn’t have to be her last connection to the father she’d obviously loved.
Who is there to care? Well, statistically, a lot of people; it wasn’t very likely Basira’s entire family was gone now, and they’d all seemed pretty religious, so they’d be scandalized and heartbroken if they found out she was discarding the last of her outward signs of faith. They probably thought about her and prayed for her anyway, even if she didn’t acknowledge them or think there was anything listening to those prayers. But also…Basira cared. It was why she’d worn it in the first place. If she’d stopped caring…
If she’d stopped caring, then she was losing herself, too.
Daisy shivered. The blood sang to her, tempting her, telling her that it would give her the edge she needed, oh yes, let her sense, let her scent, help her to find Basira again and force her to stay, if only she would just let it…and on the other side was the rattle of falling dirt and the gurgle of rising mud and the choking, suffocating coldness and the pressure, the pressing on all sides, the feeling of being down, of being trapped, there isn’t even an up…
“Daisy, breathe.”
Martin’s voice cut through the voices and the pressure and she took a deep breath, then another. Some of the tightness eased back and she looked up to see Martin, his face creased in concern, standing a few feet away and holding out his hand—not touching her, just waiting for her. “Come on. Let’s head back down to the Archives, yeah?”
Slowly, hesitantly, Daisy reached out and took Martin’s outstretched hand. She winced at the rough, mottled feel of the burn scar, but she let him guide her back to the main part of the Institute, down the three flights of stairs, and into the Archives. Once there, he simply ushered her straight into his office and handed her a cup of tea that was still warm. She wrapped both hands around it and tried not to shake.
Martin picked up another mug of tea and sat behind his desk, looking up at her seriously. “Did you find her?”
“Yeah,” Daisy said, her voice rough. “She’s…she’s not okay. She said she was, but…”
“I know. The Lonely has her pretty bad.” Martin sighed heavily. “I wish there was something I could do to get her out.”
“Can’t you?” Daisy meant it to sound challenging, but it just sounded plaintive.
Martin shook his head regretfully. “Not yet. Not without understanding what she’s doing for Peter Lukas. I can’t See how tightly she’s bound to it, so I don’t know if I can rip her away from it without hurting her. And honestly, if you couldn’t get her to step out of it, I doubt I could right now. Not without breaking something beyond repair.” He studied her seriously. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”
Daisy did. She really, really did. She nodded slowly. “Yeah. Can…can we do it on one of your tape recorders?”
Martin’s expression softened. He nodded. “Yeah, Daisy. We can absolutely do that.”