[ in the last moments of consciousness, daisy remembers pain. the ache in her bones, her back screaming out, likely broken in at least one place; she remembers her limbs trembling as she sunk into the concrete, and gasping for air as her body caught up to the wave of adrenaline that had been pushing her forwards.
she expects, somehow, to wake in the same place. if not in the ground, on the zephyr, strapped into one of jemma's patient tables, being wheeled out of surgery or coaxed out of anesthesia, squinting into bright lights to be able to see the faces of people still left on her team.
her first thoughts, then, are muddled, confused. what's underneath her is much softer than concrete, more comfortable than the cold steel tables in the medical bay. it's — plush? and as her body gingerly moves against it, she realizes it's adjusting with her. she's halfway to understanding when she's jostled again, body hauled into a tight embrace that smells like — is that tea? and earth? and the soft scent of rain, too.
jyn, her brain screams, and daisy jolts in awareness, eyes opening wide to take in the surroundings of a room that is simultaneously unexpected and reassuringly familiar. and then, two seconds later, her body catches up again, and daisy lets out a panicked, ] Ow!
[ her body. it hurts. but she missed jyn with a fervency she wasn't even aware of, a part of her soul left behind, so she doesn't pull away. ]
daisy is whole and solid and warm enough in jyn's arms that it feels like her chest is going to crack open. she'd dealt with the loss in the same way she always has, shoving it deep down and acting like nothing was wrong. she'd sparred with catra to try to live up to daisy's seemingly intuitive ability to root out and train people's abilities. she'd gone to work, she'd come home, she'd carried on like nothing happened, crying in the peace of the shower or not at all.
but something had happened.
daisy had left her, same as everyone else in her life, regardless of how brief or involuntary it was, and it hurt in a way she didn't imagine. daisy was her sister, sure, that was what they called each other but it wasn't until jyn was faced with losing another family member that she realized how true and accurate it was.
she needs daisy, her best friend, her sister, the woman that watched her die and hugged her like she could put all those broken pieces back together. when she hadn't come home it felt like those pieces fell apart again and it hurt.
idly, jyn notes that daisy is in pain, she can feel the ripple of it under her hands, but she is so desperate to hold on to daisy she can't think that maybe it would be better to let go and assess the situation. what if she lets go and that's it? a strangled sob breaks free before jyn manages words, waterlogged and grief stricken. ]
[ she can't say she missed her too. not because she wouldn't, but because up until this moment, daisy hadn't had any memories of this life. she'd been thrown back into a reality as if she'd never left it, her memories and dreams of this place walled off as if they'd never happened.
but that doesn't mean she doesn't know what jyn is feeling. even without the empathy bond, daisy knows the ache jyn is feeling all too well, the desperate pain of loneliness and loss that weaves through them both. they call each other sisters, but it isn't a farce or a joke; it's a reality of their shared experiences, their shared pains. they are sisters not by blood but by suffering, and by choosing to continue on despite it.
so daisy doesn't correct her or lie to her. she simply tells the truth. she knows jyn is in pain, and she's sorry for it. ]
[ jyn could say that about nearly everyone that has left her except... she can't.
her mother chose to go after galen and engage krennic, her father chose to go with krennic to protect jyn, saw chose to leave her behind on tamsye prime, he chose again to stay behind on jedha and welcomed death with open arms. they had all chosen to go to scarif, knowing their was not much of a likelihood that they would leave scarif.
daisy was at the whims of a universe hell bent on kicking them when they were down. ]
I know.
[ it doesn't lessen the hurt, but it does allow her the clarity to shunt it aside enough to tackle later. more tears in the shower, little actual acknowledgement outside of cassian and daisy herself. ]
You're hurt. [ she says it muffled into daisy's hair, wringing as much comfort as she can from her sister's embrace before the shame of her selfishness moves her to draw back, eyes skating over daisy like she can intuit the injuries without any physical signs and tears clouding her vision. ]
Yeah, [ groaned out as jyn's grip lessens just enough for daisy's back to drop into the mattress, even that soft touch jostling her injuries more than it takes to push a low whine of pain through her lips. ] I fell.
[ kind of an understatement, but it's same as saying it was hot on scarif. she knows jyn will understand. she just knows, the same way she knows that jyn has missed her without either of them saying a word. ]
My back.
[ daisy doesn't know it, but she and cassian likely had much the same injuries. they'd fallen the same way... if not harder on daisy's part. ]
[ the noise she makes is similar to the sound their pygmy marmoset, piglet, makes when jyn picks him up too quickly. that is worrying in and of itself but then daisy says "i fell" and jyn's stomach bottoms out. no, no, she can't do this again. she had outright attacked cassian with her panic and horror, forcing it through the empathy bond, but she tries very hard to hold it back with daisy, gingerly looping her arm under her sister's. ]
This is going to hurt, but we've got to get you to the safehouse.
[ she had felt cassian growing weaker and weaker in her arms, frail when she is used to him to strong and full of life, she refuses to let it get that far with daisy.
[ she is trying to be brave for jyn, trying not to frighten her more than necessary when she knows just how sorely her disappearance has hurt the other woman. ]
Strange knows we're coming. We can take a cab.
[ it's pricey, but who gives a shit. they have the money to spare, don't they? they can be dropped off a block from the safehouse for privacy and not have to walk the whole way. ]
It's okay, Jyn. I'm gonna be fine.
[ don't worry about her. she's lived this far through worse. ]
[ sounds like something a dying best friend would say.
it isn't that jyn disbelieves daisy, it is simply that outside of new amsterdam literally all her friends are dead. there is too much loss in her past for the reassurances to do much to settle the craggy spikes of anxiety that seem to punctuate every step.
she makes a noise of acknowledgment, terse, and carefully navigates daisy through the apartment, down the hall, into the lift that whirs softly as it carries them down to the ground floor. stan has abandoned his concierge desk to help support daisy when the lift doors open, mostly to lead them through sam's open front doors and into the waiting taxi hovering by the entrance. jyn had obviously called down the moment she and daisy started moving and while both men look concerned, neither of them voice those concerns, closing the door once both women are settled into the cab.
jyn inputs a close enough address before the car pulls out and into the sky. ]
Do you want me to tell Illya?
[ maybe she will ignore the injuries that are looming between them like the ghostly spectre of jyn's fear. ]
[ she doesn't want him to worry — and he would, upon hearing the extent of her injuries. she also doesn't want him to panic and rush to the safehouse when she'll be inside a mediunit for the foreseeable future. it'll be better if she waits. she can tell him herself, in person, and see how he takes it.
plus, she's pretty sure he's still mad at her. ]
Just. Try not to be mad at him. For me.
[ because she knows. jyn holds a grudge like it's a damn olympic sport, and jyn had always been on her side. but daisy hadn't been in the right, either, and she doesn't want the two people she cares about most at odds. ]
[ jyn doesn't answer if only because it stopped being about jyn being mad at illya for hurting daisy about the time daisy had vanished and started being about the realization that illya and jyn aren't really friends. her own fault, but it still stung realizing that their relationship was built around someone else. illya left daisy, there was nothing (is nothing) to stop him from flouncing on jyn as well.
shockingly, keeping people around doesn't work when you keep them at arm's length. jyn made her bed and now she has to lay in it, but also she can be angry with illya for something she has wrought.
[ jyn already knows what happened between daisy and illya, so the only reasonable context is what happened that she doesn't know about. what happened while daisy went home.
it's the question she could have expected, but didn't really want to answer. ]
A lot. [ there's evident exhaustion in the answer. ] I don't... know how to explain it all. We went to — the future, I guess? Not this future, a different one. I apparently blew up the Earth with my powers in that ... timeline, so the future was in space. Like on a space station, not on a moon or Mars or Jupiter or anything. But it was a shit future, run by these fucking alien scumbags, the Kree —
[ daisy has told jyn about the kree. about her own heritage, part alien but to what percentage unknown. about her mother. she has not told anyone about hive, about being possessed, about nearly sacrificing herself for some alien reincarnation of her nazi ex-boyfriend. it's just not great conversation. ]
They, uh. They put an inhibitor in my head, to stop my powers. So they could auction me off to their alien buddies as a prize. [ she stops for a moment to laugh, but it's strangled, painful. ] "Destroyer of Worlds."
[ the hovercar takes a right, and daisy wavers; there's a look of something pale and nearly green in her expression, but after a moment, she carries on. ]
We made it out of the future. Back to our time, I guess. Fitz... [ her mouth presses together, hesitant; jyn knows of fitz, but not the way he was. not the doctor. ] Fitz took out my inhibitor. Not — I didn't want him to. I thought, if I didn't have my powers, I couldn't destroy the Earth, everything would be fine. But he — he knocked me out, he tied me up, he cut open my head and took it out...
[ her head shakes, just once, as if to ward off the combination of nausea and tears that threaten to come. ]
I guess I needed them, but I just — I can't forgive him for that. And now Coulson's dead and I'm here again, and I ... oh, it doesn't matter, does it? Whatever Illya did, whatever I was mad at him for, it wasn't that. He never hurt me. He'd never do that to me.
in all honesty, jyn's only opinion about fitz has been "well, he's an idiot" ever since he cut into the columns in the dreams, but she tempered that because he was daisy's friend. that indulgence is over.
fuck leopold fitz and the pretentious, self-satisfied horse he rode in on. it takes a lot for her to keep that inside and not interrupt daisy because she can tell this is hard to get out and she doesn't want to make it harder for daisy -- she's had a shit fortnight, and apparently a shit year (or more? she is blonde, it could be more). there's a burning in her throat, bile rising at her disgust for fitz, but she pushes it down, stops herself from touching the scars circling her own wrists when daisy describes her forced surgery.
the way she reaches out, taking daisy's hand and winding their fingers together is automatic, she doesn't think about it even when she gets the wave of pain that makes her head swim and pushes down some of the hot fury she feels on daisy's behalf. she hadn't felt cassian's pain on scarif but it still feels familiar. maybe it is the swell of loss that is more familiar.
it does matter, because it happened, but jyn allows the deflection; she and daisy are alike in that way. it happened, it's over, ignore it. ]
We've got you now.
[ there are no right words for what daisy went through, not even cassian or chirrut could have be able to find the right words, all jyn can do is offer what she is able. herself, their little broken family. they've still got daisy's back. they're still here. ]
[ she doesn't want reassurance, doesn't need psychoanalysis to tell her why she did or didn't want her powers back then vs now, doesn't crave the spotlight or someone to ask her in rapt attention for further details.
right now, all she wants is to breathe, to sink into jyn's embrace with absolute bonelessness, to let her face bury into the crook of her sister's neck and just cry. because it hurts — physically, her whole body aches, a thousand potential broken bones, but it's more than that. it's the ache of betrayal, of a friendship shattered, of unimaginable loss and pain and the almost guilty relief that washed over her as she'd woken up to her friend in a place she'd nearly completely forgotten.
for a long, long while, that's all she does. the hovercar drives, jyn holds her, and daisy weeps, ugly and painful sobs that wrack her sore body, until they pull up to the safehouse where strange is sure to be waiting inside, waiting for their arrival. ]
[ jyn is ill-equipped to offer the comfort daisy deserves, lacking an example for most of her life. saw tried his best but he wasn't a soft hand who held her when she cried. jyn tries her own best, combing her fingers gently through daisy's tangled hair and trying to soften the movement of the car, trying to keep daisy from feeling any more pain.
getting daisy safely out of the car is more of a feat than manoeuvering her into the car in the first place, but jyn manages. ]
Almost there. [ she murmurs something at the end, an endearment of some kind, a pet name in a soft, lilting tongue that is too foreign to be translated. they just have to make it inside and then daisy will be able to rest, inside and then jyn will be able to quell the violent anxiety pressing down on her chest.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
she expects, somehow, to wake in the same place. if not in the ground, on the zephyr, strapped into one of jemma's patient tables, being wheeled out of surgery or coaxed out of anesthesia, squinting into bright lights to be able to see the faces of people still left on her team.
her first thoughts, then, are muddled, confused. what's underneath her is much softer than concrete, more comfortable than the cold steel tables in the medical bay. it's — plush? and as her body gingerly moves against it, she realizes it's adjusting with her. she's halfway to understanding when she's jostled again, body hauled into a tight embrace that smells like — is that tea? and earth? and the soft scent of rain, too.
jyn, her brain screams, and daisy jolts in awareness, eyes opening wide to take in the surroundings of a room that is simultaneously unexpected and reassuringly familiar. and then, two seconds later, her body catches up again, and daisy lets out a panicked, ] Ow!
[ her body. it hurts. but she missed jyn with a fervency she wasn't even aware of, a part of her soul left behind, so she doesn't pull away. ]
no subject
daisy is whole and solid and warm enough in jyn's arms that it feels like her chest is going to crack open. she'd dealt with the loss in the same way she always has, shoving it deep down and acting like nothing was wrong. she'd sparred with catra to try to live up to daisy's seemingly intuitive ability to root out and train people's abilities. she'd gone to work, she'd come home, she'd carried on like nothing happened, crying in the peace of the shower or not at all.
but something had happened.
daisy had left her, same as everyone else in her life, regardless of how brief or involuntary it was, and it hurt in a way she didn't imagine. daisy was her sister, sure, that was what they called each other but it wasn't until jyn was faced with losing another family member that she realized how true and accurate it was.
she needs daisy, her best friend, her sister, the woman that watched her die and hugged her like she could put all those broken pieces back together. when she hadn't come home it felt like those pieces fell apart again and it hurt.
idly, jyn notes that daisy is in pain, she can feel the ripple of it under her hands, but she is so desperate to hold on to daisy she can't think that maybe it would be better to let go and assess the situation. what if she lets go and that's it? a strangled sob breaks free before jyn manages words, waterlogged and grief stricken. ]
I missed you.
no subject
[ she can't say she missed her too. not because she wouldn't, but because up until this moment, daisy hadn't had any memories of this life. she'd been thrown back into a reality as if she'd never left it, her memories and dreams of this place walled off as if they'd never happened.
but that doesn't mean she doesn't know what jyn is feeling. even without the empathy bond, daisy knows the ache jyn is feeling all too well, the desperate pain of loneliness and loss that weaves through them both. they call each other sisters, but it isn't a farce or a joke; it's a reality of their shared experiences, their shared pains. they are sisters not by blood but by suffering, and by choosing to continue on despite it.
so daisy doesn't correct her or lie to her. she simply tells the truth. she knows jyn is in pain, and she's sorry for it. ]
I didn't mean to leave you.
[ she never would have chosen that. ]
no subject
her mother chose to go after galen and engage krennic, her father chose to go with krennic to protect jyn, saw chose to leave her behind on tamsye prime, he chose again to stay behind on jedha and welcomed death with open arms. they had all chosen to go to scarif, knowing their was not much of a likelihood that they would leave scarif.
daisy was at the whims of a universe hell bent on kicking them when they were down. ]
I know.
[ it doesn't lessen the hurt, but it does allow her the clarity to shunt it aside enough to tackle later. more tears in the shower, little actual acknowledgement outside of cassian and daisy herself. ]
You're hurt. [ she says it muffled into daisy's hair, wringing as much comfort as she can from her sister's embrace before the shame of her selfishness moves her to draw back, eyes skating over daisy like she can intuit the injuries without any physical signs and tears clouding her vision. ]
no subject
[ kind of an understatement, but it's same as saying it was hot on scarif. she knows jyn will understand. she just knows, the same way she knows that jyn has missed her without either of them saying a word. ]
My back.
[ daisy doesn't know it, but she and cassian likely had much the same injuries. they'd fallen the same way... if not harder on daisy's part. ]
no subject
This is going to hurt, but we've got to get you to the safehouse.
[ she had felt cassian growing weaker and weaker in her arms, frail when she is used to him to strong and full of life, she refuses to let it get that far with daisy.
not this time, not again. ]
no subject
[ she is trying to be brave for jyn, trying not to frighten her more than necessary when she knows just how sorely her disappearance has hurt the other woman. ]
Strange knows we're coming. We can take a cab.
[ it's pricey, but who gives a shit. they have the money to spare, don't they? they can be dropped off a block from the safehouse for privacy and not have to walk the whole way. ]
It's okay, Jyn. I'm gonna be fine.
[ don't worry about her. she's lived this far through worse. ]
no subject
it isn't that jyn disbelieves daisy, it is simply that outside of new amsterdam literally all her friends are dead. there is too much loss in her past for the reassurances to do much to settle the craggy spikes of anxiety that seem to punctuate every step.
she makes a noise of acknowledgment, terse, and carefully navigates daisy through the apartment, down the hall, into the lift that whirs softly as it carries them down to the ground floor. stan has abandoned his concierge desk to help support daisy when the lift doors open, mostly to lead them through sam's open front doors and into the waiting taxi hovering by the entrance. jyn had obviously called down the moment she and daisy started moving and while both men look concerned, neither of them voice those concerns, closing the door once both women are settled into the cab.
jyn inputs a close enough address before the car pulls out and into the sky. ]
Do you want me to tell Illya?
[ maybe she will ignore the injuries that are looming between them like the ghostly spectre of jyn's fear. ]
no subject
[ she doesn't want him to worry — and he would, upon hearing the extent of her injuries. she also doesn't want him to panic and rush to the safehouse when she'll be inside a mediunit for the foreseeable future. it'll be better if she waits. she can tell him herself, in person, and see how he takes it.
plus, she's pretty sure he's still mad at her. ]
Just. Try not to be mad at him. For me.
[ because she knows. jyn holds a grudge like it's a damn olympic sport, and jyn had always been on her side. but daisy hadn't been in the right, either, and she doesn't want the two people she cares about most at odds. ]
no subject
shockingly, keeping people around doesn't work when you keep them at arm's length. jyn made her bed and now she has to lay in it, but also she can be angry with illya for something she has wrought.
that's fair. ]
What happened?
no subject
it's the question she could have expected, but didn't really want to answer. ]
A lot. [ there's evident exhaustion in the answer. ] I don't... know how to explain it all. We went to — the future, I guess? Not this future, a different one. I apparently blew up the Earth with my powers in that ... timeline, so the future was in space. Like on a space station, not on a moon or Mars or Jupiter or anything. But it was a shit future, run by these fucking alien scumbags, the Kree —
[ daisy has told jyn about the kree. about her own heritage, part alien but to what percentage unknown. about her mother. she has not told anyone about hive, about being possessed, about nearly sacrificing herself for some alien reincarnation of her nazi ex-boyfriend. it's just not great conversation. ]
They, uh. They put an inhibitor in my head, to stop my powers. So they could auction me off to their alien buddies as a prize. [ she stops for a moment to laugh, but it's strangled, painful. ] "Destroyer of Worlds."
[ the hovercar takes a right, and daisy wavers; there's a look of something pale and nearly green in her expression, but after a moment, she carries on. ]
We made it out of the future. Back to our time, I guess. Fitz... [ her mouth presses together, hesitant; jyn knows of fitz, but not the way he was. not the doctor. ] Fitz took out my inhibitor. Not — I didn't want him to. I thought, if I didn't have my powers, I couldn't destroy the Earth, everything would be fine. But he — he knocked me out, he tied me up, he cut open my head and took it out...
[ her head shakes, just once, as if to ward off the combination of nausea and tears that threaten to come. ]
I guess I needed them, but I just — I can't forgive him for that. And now Coulson's dead and I'm here again, and I ... oh, it doesn't matter, does it? Whatever Illya did, whatever I was mad at him for, it wasn't that. He never hurt me. He'd never do that to me.
no subject
in all honesty, jyn's only opinion about fitz has been "well, he's an idiot" ever since he cut into the columns in the dreams, but she tempered that because he was daisy's friend. that indulgence is over.
fuck leopold fitz and the pretentious, self-satisfied horse he rode in on. it takes a lot for her to keep that inside and not interrupt daisy because she can tell this is hard to get out and she doesn't want to make it harder for daisy -- she's had a shit fortnight, and apparently a shit year (or more? she is blonde, it could be more). there's a burning in her throat, bile rising at her disgust for fitz, but she pushes it down, stops herself from touching the scars circling her own wrists when daisy describes her forced surgery.
the way she reaches out, taking daisy's hand and winding their fingers together is automatic, she doesn't think about it even when she gets the wave of pain that makes her head swim and pushes down some of the hot fury she feels on daisy's behalf. she hadn't felt cassian's pain on scarif but it still feels familiar. maybe it is the swell of loss that is more familiar.
it does matter, because it happened, but jyn allows the deflection; she and daisy are alike in that way. it happened, it's over, ignore it. ]
We've got you now.
[ there are no right words for what daisy went through, not even cassian or chirrut could have be able to find the right words, all jyn can do is offer what she is able. herself, their little broken family. they've still got daisy's back. they're still here. ]
the saddest icon i have
right now, all she wants is to breathe, to sink into jyn's embrace with absolute bonelessness, to let her face bury into the crook of her sister's neck and just cry. because it hurts — physically, her whole body aches, a thousand potential broken bones, but it's more than that. it's the ache of betrayal, of a friendship shattered, of unimaginable loss and pain and the almost guilty relief that washed over her as she'd woken up to her friend in a place she'd nearly completely forgotten.
for a long, long while, that's all she does. the hovercar drives, jyn holds her, and daisy weeps, ugly and painful sobs that wrack her sore body, until they pull up to the safehouse where strange is sure to be waiting inside, waiting for their arrival. ]
no subject
getting daisy safely out of the car is more of a feat than manoeuvering her into the car in the first place, but jyn manages. ]
Almost there. [ she murmurs something at the end, an endearment of some kind, a pet name in a soft, lilting tongue that is too foreign to be translated. they just have to make it inside and then daisy will be able to rest, inside and then jyn will be able to quell the violent anxiety pressing down on her chest.
she can't lose daisy. ]