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Basira had never been here before the Change.
She sat back in her chair, holding her jacket to her chest because she needed something to do with her hands and examining everything, labeling, recording.
There was the coffee table, messy with magazines and barely opened subscription boxes. The rug underneath the coffee table, woven and shaggy, and the bookshelf that had more cat paraphernalia than actual research books. There was a chair with a headset on it. Behind her was the kitchen. She knew everything off by heart, but if she made eye contact with Georgie she might have to say something, have to make small talk or say sorry for coming in unannounced and I know you don’t mind and this will be the last time, I promise, I won’t stay for long.
“Is she still sitting there staring off into space?” Melanie asked.
“I mean, yes.” Georgie answered. Basira always noticed Georgie had a habit of drifting into thought and acting surprised when she was interrupted. Basira had noticed a lot of things recently, looking around, creating a mental catalogue of this new world, filling her thoughts with facts and tells until there wasn’t anything else to think about. “Kind of a rude way to put it.”
“It’s not rude if it’s what she’s doing.” Melanie waved her hand in Basira’s general direction. Basira heard Georgie try to stifle a laugh.
“I can go.” Basira stood up and her chair scraped across the floor, bunching the rug a little bit.
“No, no, c’mon, stay, sit down.” Melanie said.
“I just…” Basira had run out of excuses long ago. Late for an important meeting or need to take a phonecall or there’s someone waiting for me back at the flat. The lies that were forgivable before the Change were now laughably false.
“Basira?” Georgie asked. Basira realized that she had been caught up inside her own head and only just resisted looking surprised.
“I’m fine, really.” Erring on the side of forgivable lie. Basira pressed a knuckle to the spot right between her eyebrows and above the bridge of her nose because sometimes it worked to stop her thoughts from pounding around inside her skull.
She could still notice things, like how Georgie’s hand found Melanie’s and squeezed it before she spoke again, like how both their expressions were turning to pity and how Basira suddenly felt like she was standing on the head of a pin before a panoptical audience trying to guess how long it would take before she broke completely.
“Come on, sit down.” Georgie patted a space on the couch between her and Melanie. The couch was sage green for some reason and Basira felt wariness in her bones but sitting down seemed to be closer to a confrontation that a reprieve and she didn’t want to. She did want to. Both were true.
“I have. Somewhere I need to be.”
“No you don’t.” Melanie hummed.
Basira admitted defeat and sat down. The couch was softer than the chair and warmer and Georgie leaned into her side. She noticed how the rug had managed to smooth itself out as she had stood up and she noticed that the Admiral was purring on the side of the couch and she remembered- no, no, she didn’t.
“I get it.” Georgie said softly.
Basira had been aware of the room, had known she was about to speak, stayed staring unflinchingly at the coffee table.
“We’ve been through hell and back, literally. The last few years have been just about the worst anybody could have and nobody else even knows we were involved besides…”
“The people you tried to save.”
“Yeah. And they’re not…” Georgie sighed. “What I’m trying to say is, I get it.” She hesitated. Basira noticed. “I wouldn’t want to come back to an empty flat either.”
Basira stayed staring directly ahead because what she didn’t think about couldn’t hurt her, and besides, the more she noticed the less she could make a mistake. She didn’t say anything in reply to Georgie for a long time. She inhaled and smelled cat hair and tea dregs and the smell of comfort in the midst of awfulness.
“Okay, weird awkward therapy question,” Melanie said after a while, “But when’s the last time you just… sat down and had a good cry?”
Basira thought. “December.”
”December?” Melanie asked with shock.
“2011.” Basira said. She remembered it clearly, if with a sense of distaste. “I was working on a Sectioned case and it all got a bit too much. It didn’t help.” She looked at both of them in turn. “Thinking helps. Or acting, or whatever.” A seed of doubt started to grow in her stomach. “Why, when’s the last time you did?”
“Yesterday.” Melanie said.
“This morning.” Georgie added.
“Oh, right, yeah, this morning for me too.” Melanie said. “I just.”
She paused and Basira was entirely tired of pity and whatever they were trying to do because she was absolutely fine and this uncomfortable line of questioning wasn’t going anywhere. She knew how to deal with her own emotions, she knew what to do to keep powering forward. She had kept powering forward through the institute, through daisy dying and coming back different and… she had kept marching through the literal apocalypse and now she was on a couch that smelled like Earl Grey and she didn’t know what to say to stop her thoughts from eating her alive.
“I think we’re just a bit worried about you, is all.” Melanie said.
“You don’t-”
“Yeah, I know.” Melanie sighed. “When… the slaughter… infected me, I… couldn’t. Couldn’t cry, couldn’t feel much of anything, really. I just channeled everything into being angry. Fuck, I was angry, and it didn’t feel different enough from me to matter.”
“She threw a plate at my head.” Georgie said with a grin.
“I did NOT.” Melanie reached over and swatted at her. “I threw a plate at the WALL and you happened to walk in the door. It was like five feet away from you.”
“You threw a plate at my head.” Basira reminisced.
Melanie paused. “Okay, that I did do.” She admitted, “And I’m sorry for that.”
“S’all right. I dodged.”
“What I’m saying is, it wasn’t me but that’s how it felt, like that thing with the frog that’s put in a pot of boiling water. When I broke out of it, I didn’t know what to do. So I tried to keep being angry.” Melanie’s hand scrunched into a fist and then out of one and she sighed. “And it nearly ate me alive.” She exhaled. “Georgie pulled me out. I realized I couldn’t live on rage and so I got my ass to therapy and got myself out of the Institute.”
“And we all lived happily ever after.” Georgie finished. None of them laughed but Melanie smiled a little.
“I know what you’re trying to say.” Basira said. “I know you think I can’t just live like this, but I’m fine. I’m not angry, I’m just.” Nothing. I feel nothing at all. “Being logical. It’s still not safe out there and it’s never going to be.”
“Do you feel safe in here?” Georgie asked.
Basira laughed and leaned forwards, pressing the palm of her hand to her eye. “Yeah, of course I feel safe here.” She said, “Or else I wouldn’t be coming over so often.”
“Then talk.” Georgie said. “You don’t have to carry everything by yourself.”
“I-” Basira couldn’t meet her gaze, looked down, took a breath in. “I do.” It was truth, she was used to it, she knew it, she could hold everything together.
“What happened with Daisy?” Georgie asked.
The room grew very silent. Outside there were some shouts on the street. Inside the wind whistle against the windows and Georgie’s computer beeped twice. Basira stared at the coffee table like she could split it apart with her mind.
“I killed her.” She said.
She couldn’t keep it in anymore and she sank against Georgie’s side. She didn’t realize her cheeks were wet until Georgie wiped them off and she heard herself sobbing and Melanie’s hand found hers and all her thoughts began coming loose.
The heat of the ovens and fire, the belching clouds of smoke, Daisy’s eyes staring into hers with a look that was so animal and at the same time so familiar.
“I wanted her back.” Basira sobbed, her words barely understandable. “I wanted her back so much.”
Daisy had said her name, had recognized her, had smiled even as blood dripped down her mouth, even as Jon lay bleeding out on the ground, Daisy had reached out.
“She recognized me. It was just like old times.”
The picture reflected a million times like in a house of mirrors. Daisy covered in blood saying her name because they were partners, and Basira would understand, and she always did. Somehow took comfort in those eyes because she knew it would never be her blood decorating every canine and incisor. Somehow loved her because nobody else mattered besides the two of them and the safety that came from behind held against her, even as the pile of corpses behind the stage grew.
“She didn’t want to die, not at the end.”
Back to her old self, as easy as baring her fangs and the person who had come out of the coffin caked in dirt and regret was gone. All Basira had to do was forget, hold back, smile and press their foreheads together and pretend her next steps were in any way logical.
“But I pulled the trigger.”
And it wouldn’t be enough. Not for every life Daisy had ruined, taken, shattered. Basira could have shot her a million times in every universe and she still would be too late. The more she looked at everything the more the stage behind her had fallen down and the corpses were drowning her because those were people and the one holding her hadn’t been for such a long time.
“And I held her as she died.”
Daisy had died a long time before Basira had even met her. The gunshot was a formality, a mercy, and still Basira couldn’t untangle herself from it because when Daisy’s skull shattered then her world did too because they were one and the same.
Basira knew that crying didn’t help because at this point she was sobbing so hard she couldn’t breathe and hiccoughing and grief and shame were hitting her like tidal waves and she only felt worse than she ever had because reliving it made it real, real like the blood was still on her hands and the bits of gore and organ and essence of Daisy were still splattered all over the domain and Jon and Martin were still alive and trying to treat her gentler than she deserved.
The cat made its way into Basira’s lap and sat like a ball of warmth on the top of her knees. Melanie was leaned into her side and Georgie was stroking her hair and tucking it behind her ear and Basira knew she really needed to stop this because it wasn’t serving her and she hated being so weak in front of the two strongest people she knew.
She couldn’t stop and so she didn’t and so she kept her head buried in Georgie’s collarbone and she was shivering and shaking and beyond the apocalypse, beyond Daisy, everything else started to resurface. The unknowing, the way she still looked down when she saw a clown or heard circus music. The way she still slept with the bathroom light on and how she couldn’t look at a burn injury without wanting to throw up. The way that fear and hopelessness had seeped into her life and she had let them because it was all she could do. Everything she had done was hitting her and she had never wanted this and yet she probably deserved it.
She realized for the first time in her life that there was a limit to how many tears a person could sob. Even when she had a splitting headache and she felt like all the marrow had been sucked out of her bones she couldn’t stop just going through the motions, gasping instead of sobbing, unable to focus on the couch around her. She noticed all at once that Melanie had left but as soon as she realized, she was back again with a cup of water put on the coffee table. Basira took it with a shaking hand and sipped slowly.
“I’m proud of you.” Georgie said and of course she wouldn’t insult Basira’s intelligence by lying to her about everything being okay. Basira realized now with a sudden and enlightening clarity that it had never been about pity, but concern.
Basira’s throat was dry and she couldn’t say a lot so she just nodded and sipped another taste of water.
“Do you want to stay with us?” Melanie asked. Basira wasn’t sure exactly what she meant. Right now? For the night? In general? Forever?
Basira nodded again. “Yeah.” She managed to force out, voice sounding like she had just chugged gasoline.
For the first time in a long time, Basira let herself be held and guided to a bedroom with a mattress box stood up against the window that had a logo she vaguely recognized from a sponsorship on some old episode of what the ghost and Georgie asked if she wanted a hug and she nodded and realized she still had more tears left in her.
And then Melanie followed in and lay down next to her and tilted her head to lean into her shoulder and Georgie got up for a brief moment to turn the lights off and the cat followed them into the room and sat directly on top of Basira and really she couldn’t breathe that well now but it was okay.
What could any of them say?
Some things were beyond words.
Basira didn’t feel better. She felt worse, actually, images flashing through her mind and clawing at her insides with grief and anguish and guilt and shame and should haves and buts and what ifs. Like a door to the ocean had opened in her head and now instead of trying to hold it shut she was trying desperately not to drown.
The room felt clearer now. Not as an interlacing web of facts and notes, but like something alive. Basira realized with a start that for the last however many nights she hadn’t truly felt the blanket beneath her. She hadn’t remembered to notice her own heartbeat in a while.
She exhaled and felt her breathing sync with the others, Georgie still with her arms wrapped around her, Melanie with their fingers interlaced, laying either side of her like guardians or knights or really just like people who had been through hell and back.
For the first time since her world had shattered, she wasn’t plagued with nightmares. She dreamt of nothing at all.