sinnabird | your hands protect the flames (FTH Fic)

Rating: T
Warning: canon-typical trauma
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Ship: Queerplatonic Basira/Daisy
Summary: Daisy and Basira. The moments that matter, and the moments in between.
My gift for Prim as part of the Fandom Trumps Hate exchange.
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Sometimes, on bad days, Daisy finds herself sipping tea out of one of Basira’s delicately patterned cups, and wondering how things came to this. She doesn’t even remember the day they met. Not really. She remembers the first time they worked together on a case, but she’d known Basira well enough by then. She knows they joined the force at around the same time, but they’d been in different divisions and they hadn’t really had any sort of new officer solidarity.

Daisy thinks that it should have been like in the movies. She should have seen Basira across the room and something should have changed. She should have known that one day she’d protect this woman more fiercely than anyone else in the world. That Basira would someday be Pack, and Family, and Important.

But it hadn’t been like that. Daisy hadn’t even liked her at first. Hadn’t disliked her either. Just thought of her as a mildly annoying coworker who cared too much about lofty ideals like Justice and Right. If you’d told Daisy Then how much she would come to care for Basira, she would have laughed. Daisy Then thought that she didn’t need anyone.

Daisy Then had been an idiot.

“What are you thinking about?” Basira asks.

She’s sitting on the sofa across from Daisy, holding her own delicate tea cup in her lap. With just the two of them home, her dark hair is uncovered, and Daisy feels a warmth inside her at the intimacy of it all. At moments like this, it’s easy to quiet the voice of the Hunter inside her.

“I’m not thinking of anything much,” Daisy tells her, because it’s easier than telling her the truth.

Basira smiles like she knows better, but she doesn’t actually ask, which is one of the things Daisy loves about her.

And there she is, thinking about that word again.

Daisy loves Basira, she can’t deny that, but it’s not the way people think. She knows Martin and Melanie have made some assumptions about the two of them. Tim too, probably, if he isn’t too caught up in his own personal angst. She thinks Jon knows better though. Maybe because he’s a monster. Maybe just because he doesn’t assume things like that.

Whatever the reason, Daisy finds that she’s gone from wanting to kill the man, to considering him a sort of workplace ally.

Basira shifts on the couch.

“Does it bother you?” she asks after another minute or so.

Basira doesn’t have to specify what she’s talking about. The Magnus Institute. Her contract. Elias treating Daisy like an attack dog on a leash.

“Of course it does. It bothers you too, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does,” Basira agrees readily enough. “But I’m just the hostage.”

“You’re not just anything,” Daisy reminds her.

“I feel like I’m not doing anything but sitting around reading.”

“And what are you reading?” Daisy asks.

“Anything useful I can get my hands on,” Basira tells her.

“Exactly. You’re preparing.” She looks Basira right in the eye. “I can fight and kill without hesitation, Basira, but I’m not a strategist. I need you to tell me what to do and how to do it. And you need information for that.”

She puts down her tea cup and stands, crossing the short distance to the sofa and leans down to press a kiss to Basira’s forehead.

“I trust you,” she says quietly.

Basira takes her hand and holds it gently.

“And I trust you, for all that I probably shouldn’t.”

Daisy smiles.

“What is it with you and Basira?” Tim asks, on the night before they’re going to save the world. “Are you together, or what?”

Daisy grins at him, all teeth.

“Or what probably covers it,” she says.

“Right.”

He doesn’t ask more – doesn’t much seem to care even – and that’s probably why Daisy decides to tell him.

“I love her, but not the way you’re probably thinking. She’s my soulmate, but not… in a romantic sense. You ever have someone who you’d burn the world down for?”

“Yeah,” Tim admits quietly.

She’s heard enough of his story to know that he’s talking about his brother.

“It’s like that. She’s Family. Not by blood, but by choice. She’s Mine. And I’m Hers. It’s like being in love, in some ways, but I’ve never wanted her in quite that way. Never wanted anyone in that way.”

She’s never tried to explain it before, and it’s even harder than she expected to take this feeling inside her and try to communicate it to someone else.

She half expects Tim to laugh at her, but he just nods solemnly. Perhaps their lives are strange enough now that the intricacies of the human heart pale in comparison.

When the world goes sideways, she doesn’t even remember her own name. Names don’t seem to have much meaning in this place anyway. She can’t recall who she is, or why she’s here, or what’s happening to her, or if there was even ever a before where things made sense.

But there’s blood singing through her veins, and if she focuses just enough on that, she feels like something in this world of not-things makes sense.

There’s another pull on her, too. Something that might have once been a hand on hers. A voice that she no longer recognizes but that reverberates in her soul even so. She can’t even remember her own name, but she can remember Basira.

Basira said… what did she say?

She wracks her brain for the thing that Basira said. The important thing.

“She’s… a fixed point.”

She can’t remember if that’s something she said, or something Basira said, or even something else. It’s not the important thing, she doesn’t think. But it’s enough. It’s an anchor.

“Hello, Daisy.”

And she begins to lose her grasp on Basira as the singing in her veins grows louder and louder.

In the coffin, there is no day, or night. There’s just the endless, horrible dirt pressing close against her until she can barely breathe.

She thinks she can remember a time before it was like this, but only barely. It’s not until she hears Jon’s voice that she remembers there used to be other people.

That she remembers Basira. And for the first time, she wants more than just an end to it all. She wants to go back, even if it scares her.

Because she has someone who needs her.

It all comes back to this, doesn’t it? It all comes back to Daisy and Basira and the words they'll never say.

Daisy worries that she doesn’t remember how to be human. Between the Hunt and the Buried, what’s left of the person Alice Tonner used to be?

She thinks she remembers a girl, once upon a time. A young woman who applied for the police academy with bright eyes and delusions of justice. That girl might as well be dead now. There’s no trace of her in the weary monster curled up in Basira’s second best armchair.

Basira always tries to shepherd her to the best one, insisting that guests deserve the best, and Daisy used to let her win. But today she’d shaken her head and insisted that she wasn’t a guest here. This is her home. And Basira couldn’t – wouldn’t – argue with that. So instead Daisy has the pleasure of watching Basira sink into that well-loved chair and it’s worth the slight discomfort she herself faces as she sits quietly and watches Basira pour tea into two teacups.

“Sugar?” she asks, as if the way Daisy takes her tea might have changed.

Which, really, it could have. It’s been long enough.

“No, thank you.”

Civilized, for a pet monster, she thinks, then dismisses the thought. There’ll be plenty of time for wallowing in her own self-pity later.

Basira hands over the teacup with a weary smile. Daisy’s noticed that, even in the short time she’s been back. Basira looks exhausted, like she’s trying to shoulder the weight of the entire world.

And Daisy….

She should be helping. She should be helping, but right now she can barely hold herself upright. It will take time for her to become useful again. Time that none of them have.

A part of her wonders why Basira hasn’t replaced her yet. A part of her wishes that she had. She’s not sure she wants to be a monster anymore. But if Basira needs a monster, that’s what she’ll be. Maybe not now. Maybe not even soon, but the time will come. Basira will need a monster, and Daisy will be that monster.

Daisy doesn’t believe in destiny, but she does believe in choices, and that’s a choice she made a long time ago.