[TMA] If you're scared I'm on my way

Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Personaggi: Basira, Daisy
Warning: cannibalismo (circa)
Note: scritto per Esploratori del Polyverso 0.II con prompt: Wendigo + Fantasma

( The world has changed, and Basira would rather it had ended instead. )

 

Aside from the more blatantly graphic ones, most transformations were subtle, and they did take her a few days to recognize. Like the way the air smells, that faint stench of rot and decay that takes a moment to register, even more so when you realize you don’t even need to breathe anymore. Same with the food, the way it tasted putrid when she finally managed to convince herself it was better not to starve to death – only to come to the conclusion that eating, like breathing, or sleeping, is not a requirement for life anymore. She’s not sure she would call this warped impression of a nightmare life, either, and yet here she is, very much alive and very much alone. 

 

Or so she wishes, at least. 

 

No, because the Eye never shuts, it never looks away – it observes, it feeds on the terror of the subjects it created, and it reminds them that there is no mean of escape, because if one does not need to breathe, or sleep, or eat to stay alive, then it means nobody is allowed to die unless the Eye so wishes. 

 

Or unless the slaughter is perpetrated by a fellow prisoner, Basira can’t help but thinking, and there is a brutal sense of self-awareness in this simple understanding. It feels like this particular fear was crafted meticulously after her very own, greatest regret, for when she looks straight into the Eye she does not do so with terror, but with disgust and hatred, but when she is reminded of the last promise she made as a mortal, that’s when she shakes in despair.  

 

She and Daisy are wandering the same lands. Some nights, when she closes her eyes to feel some semblance of humanity under her skin, she can hear the terrible howling rise up to the sky, and she knows they are not far.  

 

The thought neither comforts nor scares her, strangely. Her heart is so full of doubt these days, as she is slowly losing every comforting certainty that made her who she is. Or was. Back then it was so easy to hate, to love, to make promises, to take responsabilities she believed she could own, but now? The world has changed, and so has her, nothing but a pale ghost of a woman she could once respect and trust.  

 

They’re all ghosts of somebody who once was, walking these deadlands with nothing but screams and agony and the Eye to keep them company. Not even the fears have changed. They have been let loose, yes, free to wander and chase and own the nights and days alike instead of lurking from a place of secrets, but ultimately, Basira knows it, nothing has truly changed. 

 

Now it is only more distinct, the one thing she already feared the most – and it is not Daisy, it is never Daisy, it couldn’t be her. Some nights, when she hears the distant howling, she looks up at the Eye and thinks: I don not fear her, you will not make me fear her; and she knows the Eye will hear and see whatever is inside her heart, if she really has one left, and she is glad to let it know the truth.  

 

She also knows the gratification is essentially narcissistic in nature, and thus doomed to be nothing short of temporary – the same way she is doomed to make a final choice one day. 

 

Basira doesn’t want to. Not when every possible consequence is bound to destroy her.  

 

She doesn’t want to live in a world where Daisy doesn’t exist, even if that world is ugly and twisted and full of terror – especially because it is the way it is – and even if it means breaking the last promise she made to her. The reassurance she finds in listening to the growl of the Beast is sickening, and Basira hates what she’s become, but the Hunt was never her territory and it pains her to be the one that’s supposed to be stalking in the night. 

 

That is not Daisy, she tells herself everytime, but she knows she’s not being honest. The lie only eases the decision a little, but it is not, unfortunately, any less painful. 

 

The day it happens, of course, Basira is not ready, above all because it is not the result of a choice.  

 

She finds the Beast hunched over a still body, drenched in mud and covered in worms. Daisy’s fur is dark from the rain, his jaws soaked in thick, fresh blood after it's pulled out from the revolting dead flesh of the corrupted corpse. 

 

The crunching noise of bones and tissues being torn from the body and then chewed is dreadful. Basira will never forget it as long as she lives – and maybe, if she’s lucky enough, she doesn’t have to endure it for long.  

 

When the Beast becomes aware of her, Basira is already crying but she doesn’t dare look away. Daisy’s eyes are round and red, all pupils, and her lips are vibrating in hatred showing sharp teeth underneath. Her limbs are thin and long, her fangs sunken deep in the poor corpse’s flesh.  

 

In her restless, feral gaze Basira doesn’t recognize any trace of her old partner. 

 

She tightens the grip on her gun, tears streaming down her face like any other droplet of rancid rain that’s coming down from the endless Eye covering the sky. Tears of joy and amusement against tears of despair and resignation.  

 

That Beast is not Daisy, and Basira doesn’t want it to be, finally. She holds her gun in both hands, slowly taking aim. The Beast’s eyes sparkle for a moment, and Basira knows the Hunt is about to begin.  

 

When they start running into each others, their screams and growling get lost in the sound of rain that’s falling only for them. 

 

They are both ghosts of something – someone – that is no more. 

 

They may as well be laid to rest.