Even as she's choosing to do this, it takes effort not to fight the pull of a statement to be made, to just let it happen. That first time left it's mark and Daisy has always been such a stubborn, private person.
But she breathes in, and out, and lets the presence of the Archivist's watching eye help her make the whole mess make sense.
"The last thing I remember clearly from the Unknowing itself is when it all really started to kick off. I remember telling you all to get behind me and then the music becoming so loud and overwhelming that I couldn't think. After that, everything gets... distorted, and all I have is vague impressions of Breekon and Hope trying to mess with my head, and then suffering the consequences. Even when nothing was anything I knew how to kill. Guess that says a lot about what I am, but back then I never thought hard enough about it to risk realising I didn't like what I saw. Easier just to keep running. Keep Hunting."
She shakes her head sharply—get back on fucking track, Tonner. "Anyway. Point is, I don't remember walking into the coffin. And this is where things get— it gets complicated. The kind of complicated that would make me sound insane if we weren't all here in another universe already. Because I remember what happened next two ways. The first time, I woke up in a— cursed pocket dimension styled into a cruise ship called the Serena Eterna, run by this bastard who called himself the Captain. The place was filled with people from other universes that were nothing like ours, just like this place. But Nikola was there and, eventually, so was Basira.
"I was there for about four years. I think. Bits of it are blurry, makes it hard to tell. But the place was a glorified torture chamber where even if you died you came back to be tortured some more. The Captain sent us all on these trips that always turned into bloodbaths. It was like entertainment to him. He enjoyed us tearing each other apart and fed the place on our suffering. If you weren't a murderous bastard when you arrived, you learned to be. We actually had a run in with a Leitner even there, of all places. Basira got it in the post and... it was a Slaughter one. Even reading the cover made her go on a spree through the ship. I couldn't stop her without killing her so I didn't stop her. And so she killed me."
A grim echo of a future neither of them knew about at the time. Bullet to the skull and all. Daisy breathes in, out, and continues.
"It ended when another passenger called Jenny, or Guabancex, made a deal with the Captain. If she killed everyone on the ship, he'd let her go free. Not an easy task, not with people like me around, but. They all knew what could take me down by then. So she decapitated me. After making me watch her slit Basira's throat.
"...turns out even when you stay dead, the torture didn't stop. There was this place. Eventually we called it the Nothing. You can't feel anything when you're there. But you're aware. You feel the lack of feeling. I don't know how long I was there. But it was a long, long time. I only made it out when something happened to whatever was keeping our souls trapped and a few of us sort of. Slipped through the cracks. We possessed some of the passengers on the trip after ours until we all got caught out and dispatched again. Not my proudest moment."
A sigh. "And then I was back home. Back to the very second I left, with no memories of any of that. The distortion of the Unknowing was still fresh in my mind and by the time my head was clear again I was already deep underground, being crushed in on from all sides. Because that's where the coffin leads. Into the Buried itself, deeper than anywhere you could ever reach in the natural world. You called it Forever Deep Below Creation. Where the weight of existence bears down. And that— that felt right.
"But when I first came to my senses, I didn't know any of that. I didn't know where I was or what had happened to me. All I knew was I was trapped, and I was terrified. It was dark down there. So dark I could barely see my own pasty hands in front of my face even when they were stuck there. You could move just a little whenever it wasn't crushing you, but only a little. Just enough to make you think you might be able to get comfortable, but you never could. Maybe you relieve the pressure on one side for a while. Or untwist a limb so it's not cramping so much. But then the crushing starts up again and none of it matters. It would fill your mouth with dirt and choke you from the inside out. And every time you got close to losing it, or becoming numb to it all, it pulled back. It knew how to make sure you never got any less scared."
Daisy's arms cross tight under her chest and her claws pick at the fabric of her sleeve, trying to resist the urge to claw at herself. "...I thought I was in hell. I really did. I thought I'd died and gone to hell. And after everything I'd done? I knew I deserved it. Down there, my head wasn't just clear of the Unknowing, it was clear of... everything. The Hunt couldn't get to me so long as the Buried had me. I couldn't feel it in my blood anymore, telling me who to hurt. Making me need it. For the first time since that day with Calvin, I felt... I felt like myself. I'd finally stopped running. From everything I'd done. From my past. From myself. I knew I wanted to change but I was so scared that I'd never get the choice. That I'd never see the sky again, never see Basira..."
There's a pause, followed by a deep breath and Daisy meeting Jon's eye. "And then you turned up."
"I-I thought I was dreaming, even though down there you didn't sleep, let alone dream. But it wasn't a dream. It was really you, with another one of your insane plans that should've killed you. You'd come to find me. I didn't even understand why. I'd tried to kill you and I was going to try again if we'd all made it out—I told you that, when you found me. You just asked if it was still true." Daisy snorts. "Like I said. Insane.
"You said you'd left a piece of yourself outside the coffin to use as an anchor. Something you could See to lead us back out—your rib, I think. It didn't work. We were still stuck down there, but unlike everyone else in that— godforsaken place, we weren't alone. We talked. I told you everything I just told you about the Buried and the Hunt and you told me that we always get a choice.
"Three more days we were down there. Talking. Choking. Listening to the singing whenever it rained on us. Until something changed and suddenly you just Knew the way out. You had to practically drag me out of there I was so weak, every muscle in my body stripped by the atrophy of eight months underground, but we made it. There were tapes all around the coffin. Your tapes. All playing. Guess that's what did it, but I wasn't really focused on that at the time. Basira had come in to yell at you and— and I was so happy to see her again I almost cried.
"You all had to drag me to the hospital with some half-baked excuse that no one cared about let alone bought. Just the words 'Magnus Institute' made them hand us off to some poor sods who'd already dealt with you lot before. I stayed there a day or two before they released me with a physical therapy plan and appointments to keep. I'd lost my flat, but you were all living out of the Archives by then anyway, so I did too. And life went on. We still had other rituals to figure out how to stop. I didn't like to be alone anymore so I spent a lot of time with Melanie and you, when Basira was out. She was out a lot. Chasing down leads the way I always chased down monsters."
Her face scrunches up and the gaze that was set on Jon now slips to the side. "...things weren't ever the same with Basira after I got out. Resisting the Hunt made me dead weight. I couldn't have her back. Even when you two had to run off to Norway to deal with the People's Church I couldn't come with. Too risky. We both knew if I let the Hunt back in, there was no guarantee I'd ever snap out of it again. But I still heard her ask if you thought I'd been replaced, like that Sasha girl. And she never could accept that knowing resisting was going to kill me wasn't going to stop me doing it. You did. You— you understood that.
"We'd all made our choices. Melanie— you and Basira got rid of that bullet and saved her from becoming like you and me, but she hated you both for it. You came out of the coma as The Archivist, plain and simple. I was a starving wreck living on borrowed time, but I'd chosen it. Basira was straddling the line between the Eye and the Hunt but never quite giving herself to either. Martin was playing some long game with Peter Lukas. All in all we made it about six months before things took a turn again.
"We had some Spider problems. Annabelle Cane playing mind games by leaving a statement at Hilltop Road for you to find. Making sure you knew that every statement you took from people on the street was your will. Then Montauk and Herbert turned up to get back at you for stealing Gerard's page. I scared 'em off, but they came back right as everything with Elias and Lukas blew up. You needed cover to get away and go after Martin before Lukas could kick off a ritual, or something, so I— I told Basira that when everything was said and done, she had to find me, and kill me. And then I let the Hunt back in.
"...that's the last thing I remember from home before I woke up on the ship a second time. I was still skin and bones. I snapped and attacked a half-dozen people after only six months. Hasn't happened since, but only because I had help. Erin, mostly. But there was a version of Erik that helped too. And others, in their own ways. This time around I was there maybe a year and a half before someone managed to give a woman who wanted to turn us all into museum exhibits power over the realm. We were thrown into cells. Our powers were taken away. And I died of blood loss after I scratched myself up out of panic. That's when I got the deal and... here I am."
The long-drawn tension snaps, at last, and the breath Daisy releases is one of tangible relief. Fucking hell. Even she didn't expect it to end up so long. She actually has to sit down on the floor to give herself stability as the re-lived feelings fade.
At least she managed to keep the whole apocalypse thing to herself. For now. Though it was a close call.
cw: reference to self harm and suicide, torture, violence, and assorted other horror
Even as she's choosing to do this, it takes effort not to fight the pull of a statement to be made, to just let it happen. That first time left it's mark and Daisy has always been such a stubborn, private person.
But she breathes in, and out, and lets the presence of the Archivist's watching eye help her make the whole mess make sense.
"The last thing I remember clearly from the Unknowing itself is when it all really started to kick off. I remember telling you all to get behind me and then the music becoming so loud and overwhelming that I couldn't think. After that, everything gets... distorted, and all I have is vague impressions of Breekon and Hope trying to mess with my head, and then suffering the consequences. Even when nothing was anything I knew how to kill. Guess that says a lot about what I am, but back then I never thought hard enough about it to risk realising I didn't like what I saw. Easier just to keep running. Keep Hunting."
She shakes her head sharply—get back on fucking track, Tonner. "Anyway. Point is, I don't remember walking into the coffin. And this is where things get— it gets complicated. The kind of complicated that would make me sound insane if we weren't all here in another universe already. Because I remember what happened next two ways. The first time, I woke up in a— cursed pocket dimension styled into a cruise ship called the Serena Eterna, run by this bastard who called himself the Captain. The place was filled with people from other universes that were nothing like ours, just like this place. But Nikola was there and, eventually, so was Basira.
"I was there for about four years. I think. Bits of it are blurry, makes it hard to tell. But the place was a glorified torture chamber where even if you died you came back to be tortured some more. The Captain sent us all on these trips that always turned into bloodbaths. It was like entertainment to him. He enjoyed us tearing each other apart and fed the place on our suffering. If you weren't a murderous bastard when you arrived, you learned to be. We actually had a run in with a Leitner even there, of all places. Basira got it in the post and... it was a Slaughter one. Even reading the cover made her go on a spree through the ship. I couldn't stop her without killing her so I didn't stop her. And so she killed me."
A grim echo of a future neither of them knew about at the time. Bullet to the skull and all. Daisy breathes in, out, and continues.
"It ended when another passenger called Jenny, or Guabancex, made a deal with the Captain. If she killed everyone on the ship, he'd let her go free. Not an easy task, not with people like me around, but. They all knew what could take me down by then. So she decapitated me. After making me watch her slit Basira's throat.
"...turns out even when you stay dead, the torture didn't stop. There was this place. Eventually we called it the Nothing. You can't feel anything when you're there. But you're aware. You feel the lack of feeling. I don't know how long I was there. But it was a long, long time. I only made it out when something happened to whatever was keeping our souls trapped and a few of us sort of. Slipped through the cracks. We possessed some of the passengers on the trip after ours until we all got caught out and dispatched again. Not my proudest moment."
A sigh. "And then I was back home. Back to the very second I left, with no memories of any of that. The distortion of the Unknowing was still fresh in my mind and by the time my head was clear again I was already deep underground, being crushed in on from all sides. Because that's where the coffin leads. Into the Buried itself, deeper than anywhere you could ever reach in the natural world. You called it Forever Deep Below Creation. Where the weight of existence bears down. And that— that felt right.
"But when I first came to my senses, I didn't know any of that. I didn't know where I was or what had happened to me. All I knew was I was trapped, and I was terrified. It was dark down there. So dark I could barely see my own pasty hands in front of my face even when they were stuck there. You could move just a little whenever it wasn't crushing you, but only a little. Just enough to make you think you might be able to get comfortable, but you never could. Maybe you relieve the pressure on one side for a while. Or untwist a limb so it's not cramping so much. But then the crushing starts up again and none of it matters. It would fill your mouth with dirt and choke you from the inside out. And every time you got close to losing it, or becoming numb to it all, it pulled back. It knew how to make sure you never got any less scared."
Daisy's arms cross tight under her chest and her claws pick at the fabric of her sleeve, trying to resist the urge to claw at herself. "...I thought I was in hell. I really did. I thought I'd died and gone to hell. And after everything I'd done? I knew I deserved it. Down there, my head wasn't just clear of the Unknowing, it was clear of... everything. The Hunt couldn't get to me so long as the Buried had me. I couldn't feel it in my blood anymore, telling me who to hurt. Making me need it. For the first time since that day with Calvin, I felt... I felt like myself. I'd finally stopped running. From everything I'd done. From my past. From myself. I knew I wanted to change but I was so scared that I'd never get the choice. That I'd never see the sky again, never see Basira..."
There's a pause, followed by a deep breath and Daisy meeting Jon's eye. "And then you turned up."
"I-I thought I was dreaming, even though down there you didn't sleep, let alone dream. But it wasn't a dream. It was really you, with another one of your insane plans that should've killed you. You'd come to find me. I didn't even understand why. I'd tried to kill you and I was going to try again if we'd all made it out—I told you that, when you found me. You just asked if it was still true." Daisy snorts. "Like I said. Insane.
"You said you'd left a piece of yourself outside the coffin to use as an anchor. Something you could See to lead us back out—your rib, I think. It didn't work. We were still stuck down there, but unlike everyone else in that— godforsaken place, we weren't alone. We talked. I told you everything I just told you about the Buried and the Hunt and you told me that we always get a choice.
"Three more days we were down there. Talking. Choking. Listening to the singing whenever it rained on us. Until something changed and suddenly you just Knew the way out. You had to practically drag me out of there I was so weak, every muscle in my body stripped by the atrophy of eight months underground, but we made it. There were tapes all around the coffin. Your tapes. All playing. Guess that's what did it, but I wasn't really focused on that at the time. Basira had come in to yell at you and— and I was so happy to see her again I almost cried.
"You all had to drag me to the hospital with some half-baked excuse that no one cared about let alone bought. Just the words 'Magnus Institute' made them hand us off to some poor sods who'd already dealt with you lot before. I stayed there a day or two before they released me with a physical therapy plan and appointments to keep. I'd lost my flat, but you were all living out of the Archives by then anyway, so I did too. And life went on. We still had other rituals to figure out how to stop. I didn't like to be alone anymore so I spent a lot of time with Melanie and you, when Basira was out. She was out a lot. Chasing down leads the way I always chased down monsters."
Her face scrunches up and the gaze that was set on Jon now slips to the side. "...things weren't ever the same with Basira after I got out. Resisting the Hunt made me dead weight. I couldn't have her back. Even when you two had to run off to Norway to deal with the People's Church I couldn't come with. Too risky. We both knew if I let the Hunt back in, there was no guarantee I'd ever snap out of it again. But I still heard her ask if you thought I'd been replaced, like that Sasha girl. And she never could accept that knowing resisting was going to kill me wasn't going to stop me doing it. You did. You— you understood that.
"We'd all made our choices. Melanie— you and Basira got rid of that bullet and saved her from becoming like you and me, but she hated you both for it. You came out of the coma as The Archivist, plain and simple. I was a starving wreck living on borrowed time, but I'd chosen it. Basira was straddling the line between the Eye and the Hunt but never quite giving herself to either. Martin was playing some long game with Peter Lukas. All in all we made it about six months before things took a turn again.
"We had some Spider problems. Annabelle Cane playing mind games by leaving a statement at Hilltop Road for you to find. Making sure you knew that every statement you took from people on the street was your will. Then Montauk and Herbert turned up to get back at you for stealing Gerard's page. I scared 'em off, but they came back right as everything with Elias and Lukas blew up. You needed cover to get away and go after Martin before Lukas could kick off a ritual, or something, so I— I told Basira that when everything was said and done, she had to find me, and kill me. And then I let the Hunt back in.
"...that's the last thing I remember from home before I woke up on the ship a second time. I was still skin and bones. I snapped and attacked a half-dozen people after only six months. Hasn't happened since, but only because I had help. Erin, mostly. But there was a version of Erik that helped too. And others, in their own ways. This time around I was there maybe a year and a half before someone managed to give a woman who wanted to turn us all into museum exhibits power over the realm. We were thrown into cells. Our powers were taken away. And I died of blood loss after I scratched myself up out of panic. That's when I got the deal and... here I am."
The long-drawn tension snaps, at last, and the breath Daisy releases is one of tangible relief. Fucking hell. Even she didn't expect it to end up so long. She actually has to sit down on the floor to give herself stability as the re-lived feelings fade.
At least she managed to keep the whole apocalypse thing to herself. For now. Though it was a close call.