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Summer in the Archives was stifling. Weeks of winter in the Archives made even Basira's dreams turn frosted and cottony. In the cold before the Flesh, she'd wake up expecting to be covered in a fine layer of dew, or spiderweb when things were worse. With the red of stubborn gore still flaunting itself on most surfaces, and the image of one woman playing unfailingly behind her eyes, now more than ever she woke as if coated in blood.
Before the Flesh attack, she also slept alone. Uneasily, obviously, and unceremoniously next to a tall shelf of statements—not very alone after all, then, if they were counting Entities. Melanie had bought a sleeping bag and taken to the tucked-away storage room after a brief stint directly on the floor of the break room. It was an upgrade, despite recitence over its history during the worm... situation.
It wasn't an ideal room for two. They were like bugs crawling on the underside of ideal, Basira thought; a backwards kind of almost pleasant. Living in each other's pockets, they approached security again. Basira was safe with Melanie's warm body beside her cot, breathing fast in her sleep. Basira watched for a while that morning—Melanie with her blanket thrown off and goosebumps up her arms—but there was nothing past a vague emptiness in her chest.
Basira left quietly, stepping over her curled up form.
She didn't worry about her waking up alone. Melanie didn't chase.
—
In theory, Basira knew the words for the state she was in. She'd done enough sectioned paperwork and heard enough pop psychology. Taken deep breaths and wondered what stage of grief this was, mused on manifestations of pain. Nothing was like living it. And no one had lost what she did, her life reduced in increments to only a brick building and memories.
So the knowledge that what she and Melanie had wasn't normal didn't gnaw at her. They were only surviving. No one would fault her for it, especially not the one person who did everything to keep her alive.
It was just that...their new proximity meant it was easy to always be touching each other. And lately there was always a reason to. Day after day, closer and farther and past the point of needed. No one was around to ask if they were going too far. Basira couldn't ask, because her knee-jerk reaction to call a memorized number was being dislocated with the fact it would just keep ringing, and at the end of every day it was still another one of the nights.
Basira wasn't sure if she felt more or less alive at night. They didn't even pretend to be functioning employees during the day anymore, the checks still rolled right in courtesy of Lukas whether or not they organized files. But late at night it really was just her, Melanie, and their closets stuffed with skeletons.
"God, it's fucking frigid," Melanie hissed as they slid into the storage room. She then put a freezing hand up Basira's shirt, to which she ungracefully arched away, pushing her off. The other woman growled, and when Basira turned, Melanie kissed her.
It wasn't the first time they'd kissed—far from it, she knew, though it was oddly hazy to remember how they acted in the grief-soaked days early on. At sunset when she should have been crying, in spots so blatant it was embarrassing, while laden with nauseating guilt, they did this. It was a blur she recalled living very deliberately at the time. Basira tilted her head to give Melanie better access.
Melanie who stuck her hand to Basira's stomach like a little leech while she was distracted. "Okay, enough," she snapped, grabbing both her wrists.
They decided to share the cot that night. Necessity. It was dead cold.
—
Basira woke up with the sound of explosives ringing in her ears; she woke up to lips on her neck. She shifted, dragged Melanie up by the hair, which was shorn choppily short after Basira found her sawing it off with the same knife she used to fight away masses of limbs. They couldn't do much better with scissors, and her roots were so overgrown besides. She didn't look a thing like Daisy.
Basira kissed her anyway, long and languid with a fist gripping her hair, those bleach-light ends just barely enough to flicker like echoes of her dream. When they parted, Melanie's pulse drummed rapidly, beating against her palm. Basira wasn't flattered; hers always raced. There, then, was one thing her girls had in common. She could close her eyes and imagine, but Melanie looked love drunk, sweet.
"Good morning," Basira sighed. Melanie responded with a bite.
—
Melanie had been a live wire all day. When Basira, reeling from too many days and nights of her own subconscious, suggested they make a night of it, she spit, "Oh, yeah, let's just have a sleepover."
It was a very half-hearted game of pretend, but that was all Basira needed. Creature comforts. Then the slope of a shoulder, the sound of lips parting, were there for her to Frankenstein together. Sometimes Daisy would take Melanie's place. Sometimes she lay among them, without the real hassle of coordinating limbs in a too-small bed.
Sometimes, Basira thought she smelled her.
Afterwards, Melanie lay crowded in beside her, back to her chest. They were both yawning, too comfortable and cautious to get up and turn the lamp off.
"Y'know, I used to not be able to sleep in anything but pitch black," Basira murmured.
Melanie huffed a scoffing laugh. "Least now we don't have to worry about the Dark."
"Sure," she said. "But isn't it a little concerning that if whatever else gets in, you'll get to look it in the eye first?"
"Half of them don't even have eyes!" Melanie exclaimed, incensed. Basira pressed a kiss to her back out of instinct, and she settled heavily into the pillow. "I'd kill any bastard that comes crawling through," she muttered.
"You've proven it."
The other woman hummed. Basira thought it was a satisfied sound, and she was inclined to agree.
—
She'd found her keys resting on an unscathed brick. Things were still smoldering in piles nearby, though it had been too long for that.
She burnt her hand lifting a wooden structure out of the way. There were bones, but they weren't hers, they shuddered into the wrong shapes as she looked at them.
Calling out recieved noise in response, fragmented syllables she couldn't tell apart from echoes. In its all-directions, she spun around, and with a sudden wind a whispy grey dirt was carried away, up into a greyer sky. She knew in her gut that it was her.
But as she chased, confusion slowed her. How could she recognize it from any other ash on the ground?
On her knees sifting through it. Standing on tiled floor.
Daisy scrutinized the darkened tile under her soot-smeared boots. She sat on a chair she didn't own. Did hers splinter apart with the explosion?
Daisy asked, "Will you sweep?"
—
Basira was sleeping with a ghost.
—
"It's...fine. Last night, it was stabbing something over and over. Just blood and bits of fat. Like an animal."
Yesterday, Melanie had slammed a letter opener into the door of the archive entrance when someone from the library looked in for too long. They were lucky it didn't go straight through and catch him, old wood that it was. Basira knew conversation about Melanie's anger was futile, but the last gasp of the HR department didn't, and they had got it into her head that she should try.
She didn't want to linger on the topic of dreams. But now Melanie flexed her fingers as she described them, voice reedy.
"—I don't know, fields of it? And I wake up tired." She finished the rant with a listless gesture, grimacing or baring her teeth. A thick silence dampened the room, until Melanie turned to look Basira in the eye, expression changing.
"Did...Daisy ever tell you about her dreams?"
Dread bloomed like ice cold water across her body. Her breath hitched and Basira held it there.
"Um. I...She—" Of course she did. Not all of them. Not when I asked. She never told me any about me.
"...No," she said. Then, intrusively, "Sorry."
Melanie's eyes were dull. She held herself so rigid. Basira remembered whispered apologies that she stood on the other side of, just months ago, when she returned from the Unknowing half missing. There, too painful to look at head on, were the last times they talked about her. She remembered the warmth of Daisy, the warmth of Melanie, the bare trees outside.
She watched Melanie leave without a word. Her chest ached, one phantom pain ricocheting off the other.
—
Melanie pushed her into a low shelf, but it was Melanie's skin that split like ripe fruit.
She bled arterial spray. Basira kneeled in front of her and couldn't focus her eyes on the wound.
Melanie keened nonsensically. Blood pooled and glistened around her.
"Stop," Basira gasped, choked. Something was caught in her throat. She tried to stand but her feet slid out from under her, and her scrambling hands refused to catch her weight as she fell. The ground was too slick to get traction, dizzying.
Melanie was nearly at a howl. Basira tilted her head back; out the window, it was snowing. At the door, a knock, the click of opening.
Basira knew it was
—
She woke with a sharp inhale that punched out of her. The imprint of Melanie was still warm on the bed, blankets tossed back. Suddenly Basira ached to feel the rise and fall of her breathing, proof of life. Something to clear the swimming in her head. The want only made her own lungs spasm.
It hurt. She thought everything had stopped feeling like a bullet wound.
As she collected herself, an inkling of annoyance grew to take the place of sorrow the longer the other woman was out. She hated to feel like a fretful parent, waiting up for their delinquent kid. Melanie was a grown woman. Melanie could hold her own, maybe too well. If she was down in the tunnels carrying out some secret plot...
Maybe it was just cold in the room without her, and she missed her personal heater.
Daisy had always run hot.
When it was her going off at night, she stayed gone for as long as possible. Basira got used to a nervous kind of waiting. It used to be that she could fall asleep relatively easily even with the knowledge of her out there. She wouldn't start that pattern with Melanie, she grit her teeth at the thought of—
The door opened. Even expecting it, the sight startled her, for a split second seeming like a surreal continuation of her dream. But Melanie stepped through, visually unharmed and predictably sullen-looking. Basira might have felt better if she was hurt.
As it was, she couldn't keep the judgement out of her voice as she asked, "Where were you?"
Melanie paused in shambling into bed, sending her a glare. "I was robbing the place," she bit out, toneless.
Basira didn't push. When Melanie laid stiffly against her, her nerves refused to settle how she wanted them to. It was a resigned, shoddy comfort, leaving too much room for her mind to wander. Staring over Melanie's shoulder, she could almost see Daisy cross-legged by the door, keeping watch. It made her sick; it soothed something deep in her.
She closed her eyes tight. Refused to consider what Daisy would say.