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Another night blasts awake with the announcer’s gratingly familiar voice, and Alice tunes out his crowd-warmup speech. It’s not difficult to. The pounding in her ears is more than enough - the rhythmic beat of her heart that no longer spikes before a fight like it used to. She can still feel that adrenaline, the constant reminder that no matter how normal these matches become for her, there’s always the chance of a freak accident. Crack your head wrong, snap your neck on the fall off the arena. Sometimes things worse than cracked ribs and bloody noses happen.
Just hopefully not to her.
The announcer does another round, making the crowd cheer once, twice, egging them on. There’s good money today, the abandoned building’s remastered parking lot full of people quick to bet and get drunk. Alice finishes wrapping her knuckles and stands from the arena’s corner, assuming her position. The opponent’s already up, a taller, wider woman with red hair and a red tooth guard. She’s called The Hunt and it looks funny, displayed up on the betting board next to ‘Daisy’.
Alice eyes her up and down, filing away where she’s bruised already from past fights, where her center of gravity is. Jon leans over the arena’s ropes and taps Alice on the shoulder. She doesn’t turn but tunes in to what he’s saying, just audible above the faint music and overwhelming crowd noises of their audience.
“The majority’s bet on Hunt so if you get this one, it’s a big win,” he quickly says, poor soul, in debt to the rink’s owner and now working as Alice’s agent, “Try not to end up needing the hospital, there’s someone here looking for you, so it’d be great if you could meet them without it being in the ER, yeah?”
“Who?” She asks over her shoulder.
“Some lady called Basira, Elias says she’s not police so he let her in.”
Before Alice can answer the first whistle sounds and Jon immediately vanishes, taking a safe distance from the ropes. Alice snaps into her fighting stance before she can fully process the exchange, instincts kicking in with the sound. The referee lifts one arm, whistle in mouth, and blows again: begin.
Alice won’t attack first, she needs to see how fast Hunt is, they circle each other instead, and it gives her those three seconds to full slip into the mindset of underground fighting, of putting her bones on the line to give Elias’ joint entertainment and to win enough money to pay off her debt. And, raising her wrapped fists and slowly moving in tandem with Hunt as they both stall, she’s far from Alice: fists raised and steps light, she’s Daisy.
Hunt doesn’t make her wait. She lunges, big and heavy and angry, they’re not in the same weight-class and shouldn’t be fighting, but that’s what makes this interesting, and Daisy dodges, but the side of Hunt’s fist catches her shoulder and she quickly puts distance between them. She attacks next and while she’d never advise another fighter to check out like this, Daisy suddenly understands Jon’s last sentence: she remembers Basira.
Wonderful, beautiful Basira with her smart quiet jokes and soft hands Daisy had regretted evading for years. Basira who Daisy had written off as part of the past and not a very active piece of her present as Jon’s promise of meeting her after the arena had suggested. She gets Hunt in the gut and once more pulls back to get distance as Hunt strikes back.
Basira is waiting for her somewhere, god, probably sitting in a room, inexplicably calm- what else would she be? (Daisy dodges a punch and retaliates) What else would Basira be if not calm? What reason does she have to worry? There is no reason to worry about Daisy, and he memories lie to her, she tries to convince herself there was never any worry between them, nor any care. Hurts less that way, yes. Hunt is heavy and strong and persistent, and Daisy gets hit bad in the side of her head, stumbling and trying to get far away enough to straighten back up.
Worse, she thinks: what if Basira isn’t in a waiting room and is instead watching from the audience or from somewhere else? From the staff halls? What if she’s watching Daisy dash at Hunt and get her in the nose, only to be knocked sideways by a punch to the gut? Daisy swallows and avoids a tackle, kicking up at Hunt and feeling the front of her foot connect with the hard muscles of her opponent, terrifying in her unshakable power. Curse Jon for telling her Basira was here, she can’t not think now.
She can’t not remember.
Can’t not remember dragging Basira out for ice cream on a weekend once and listening to her stories about some particularly weird students, about how some kid brought a life bird to class in their sleeve, and laughing, and later snorting coffee up her nose by accident in another café as they couldn’t split up after the ice cream place at all, remembers Basira quickly sticking tissues in her direction and helping dab at Daisy’s- Alice’s now coffee-splattered shirt, chastising her and saying:
“It wasn’t that funny, I don’t know why you needed to inhale coffee.”
But she’d been smiling a bit, small and secret and so incredibly beautiful, and Alice had stared so hard she barely helped with fixing the spilled coffee damage. She’d been able to smell the coffee for hours later and it made the back of her throat hurt, but her face had also hurt from grinning, hard and wide, and walking back to the metro station, their hands had brushed, once, twice, and Alice had never taken the initiative to pick up Basira’s palm and swing their joined hands, or kiss her knuckles-
Hunt gets her in the chin, scraping Daisy’s cheek into her skin so hard she immediately tastes the all too familiar pang of blood. Daisy springs back and lands a hit to Hunt’s ears but Hunt blocks it, her hands bigger than Daisy’s a manic kind of rage in her eyes now that they’re close and Daisy thinks: this mad woman is taking is far too seriously.
Elias’ fighters mostly know this is a money grab for him, this place is entertainment no matter how morally bankrupt. Most injuries come from accidents and missteps: the jobs of the fighters is to make it fun, make it fast, and come away only the necessary amount of bruising.
Hunt is from another state and Daisy’s never met her, but she knows one thing now, clear as water:
She’s out for blood.
For the first time, the adrenaline that pours into Daisy’s system is unfamiliarly sincere. She needs to stop thinking about Basira because otherwise, she’ll never fucking see her. Hunt will fucking end Daisy before the match is called. Right.
Daisy tenses her core and lunges again, clocks Hunt’s jaw and immediately kicks at her knee, she needs to take Hunt while she still has the stamina and hadn’t sustained too much damage. She can’t let Hunt win over with her superior height and – Daisy suspects – strength. But not speed, not speed, Hunt is slower, still, and Daisy supposes she’s planning on wittling Daisy down with hit after hit until she’s weak. Tire her out and take over. Daisy needs to act quickly.
Make it fast and painless.
“Make it fast and painless,” She’d muttered, sitting on Basira’s bathroom counter and staring resolutely at the floor and not at her busted knuckles, not at Basira’s professionally manicured hands as they faltered before beginning to clean the blood away.
“What’d you do,” Basira had said, recently awoken by Alice’s phonecall. This was the last time they’d see each other. Neither knew yet.
“God mad at a hornet,” Alice had joked, no humor behind it, “we had to fight it out.”
“Over flowers?” Basira had answered, equally monotone as she swabbed at Alice’s hands, holding them, the bathroom light harsh and sharp and cutting.
“Over flowers.”
And if not for the pain of her split skin that she was going to pay for, much later, and if not for the eye-stinging white light over them, if not for the cold marble of the bathroom counter and the keys digging into her thigh from within her pocket and not a myriad of two hundred other things… If not for them, Alice would have peacefully thought: her hands are so soft.
Instead she lied about whose face she’d beat up (it’d land her, only a few days later, right into Elias’ debt like a wrapped gift of a soon-to-be-fighter). And lied about it not hurting and about that she really couldn’t stay the night, it’s okay, thank you for patching me up though.
She still doesn’t know why she didn’t stay, when offered. And somehow feels like if she had, Elias’ men would’ve never found her, because Basira’s flat would be inexplicably safe from the rest of the world.
Hunt gets her in the ear and Daisy’s head rings. Piercing and insistent, she stumbles, muscles burning, and thinks: I’m dying today. Fuck.
Elias wouldn’t let it, she dodges a punch and Hunt’s fist connects with the arena’s corner poll that was behind Daisy, Elias won’t lose as good a fighter as her, he won’t. No way. But the bugger’s a scheming little man, god, Daisy will kill him if she ever gets to. Hunt hits her in the shoulder and it hurts like a bitch, it’s her punch-out shoulder too. She’d dislocated it three years ago and the incident comes back to remind her about it now, the joint burning from Hunt’s attack.
“How’d you even manage this…” Basira had stared at Alice as she held her elbow in an impromptu jacket sling, “How… what did you do?”
“You won’t believe it.”
“Test me,” Basira’s face was almost angry but not cold. Concerned, instead, and trying to suppress it. Alice wondered if Basira would insist they go to the hospital right now, but she’d set Alice’s shoulder. She’s given her an ice pack and they’d drank coffee at Basira’s place, two weeks before Alice would drop off the face of the Earth and into Elias’ hands. She’s sat there with her jacket folded in her lap, the plethora of pins on it glinting in the kitchen light and she’d let Basira study them and ask questions about their various origins. Alice had smiled, involuntarily, and promised to buy Basira a pin and it’d been on her mind after that, for days, until she’d been at a weird vintage little shop and she’d seen a little pin with a wonderful spider sitting on a flower on it, and while Alice hadn’t been one for spiders she knew Basira had her afflictions. She’d bought it in a heartbeat.
She’d never gotten to give it to Basira.
Hunt gets her in the brow and Daisy decides to not flinch back and attacks immediately after, the nose, then with her second hand the ear, and this exposes her to be left defenseless but it’s worth it, she gets Hunt again, upside the jaw, they’re both silent but the crowd is screaming, cheering, laughing, and Daisy kicks her, tries to go for her ankle, but Hunt’s too heavy and stays upright.
She shoves Daisy, disoriented for a moment, and Daisy comes dangerously close to going down.
Dangerously close. That’s when it hits her twofold: if she’d fallen, Hunt would’ve been on her in seconds and she realizes she might… she would’ve… She’d never see Basira. Jon told her not to wake in a hospital and she can’t let the fear bury her, can’t give in to it and get caught off guard, and she suddenly sees Jon, right outside the rink, and his eyes are always so sad but now they’re scared too, but when he sees Daisy chance him a split-second breath of eye contact he pumps a fist in the air and shouts something, or simply cheers, his voice getting lost in the hooting of the crowd, and Daisy nods, looking back to Hunt and just in time: she dodges a kick to the chest, hopping back and she will fight to see Basira again and to, maybe, against all hope, get to hold her hands.
She breathes in, breaths out, and on the exhale punches Hunt. Hunt’s core is too heavy, she’ll never get her with kicks, but everyone’s head is the same no matter how much muscle you have. Daisy needs to take down her senses before Hunt can give her the same treatment. Ears, nose, brow, mouth. In quick succession Daisy hits Hunt and gets hit back, the mouth again on the other side down, more to her cheek than lip and she tastes blood again, spits it out when they put distance between themselves again. Hunt spits too and it’s a tooth that in the smoky light looks almost doglike in it’s sharp length. Must be the fear getting a hold of Daisy, must be that, she needs to fight, her head rings, she needs to make it back to Basira, no matter if it’s to be berated for vanishing and getting taken in by a rink.
And Hunt gets her bad shoulder again and Daisy kicks at her knee again though and this time the joint gives and Hunt topples and Daisy dashes on top, beating her and thinking: I need to get out I need to climb out before I’m dead. I need to see Basira before I am buried in this life and forgotten by the real world. I need someone who still remembers my name.
She gets Hunt in a chokehold and squeezes, tensing up to stop Hunt from overturning her, and waits, waits, and the crowd is screaming and it’s all so loud and Jon is watching her and shouts too, not in cheer but in support, a lost scream of you can make it, just come back out of the rink. And she follows the soundless move of his mouth and promises to do whatever it takes to get out of here and get Jon out of here and hunt down Elias and his goons and end it, end it all.
And the feeling that overwhelms her when Hunt finally taps out, when she lets go of the choke and lets Hunt slink away, falls back on her haunches and tips her head back, closing her eyes against the noise and light. The referee picks her up, hand in the air, and the crowd makes noise, people had just lost money, so much money, and Daisy grins and licks blood off her teeth and she’s ushered off and Jon’s hot on her heels and he’s already got a cold damp towel around her shoulders to cool down. He’s saying something, like you made it you made it good job, you made it, and before they turn into the hall for cleanup, she stops dead in her tracks and grabs him by the front of his shirt and leans in close and whispers, “I’ll get you out of here, I promise.” And he looks at her completely unafraid and calm and his eyes are so fucking huge and sad and just so knowing. He doesn’t say anything in return and instead gives Daisy her jacket and points her at the backrooms.
“She’s in there,” he says and Daisy loves him so much and all she can remember is how he got his ribs broken by another fighter who got mad for some reason while Jon was trying to help, always only trying to help. His greatest flaw, she supposes, as it’d also landed him in here. She’ll get them both out.
Daisy steps into the room.
It’s small, there’s a cooler, a heavy wooden table that doesn’t match the interior, no windows but a strong white bulb, a glass cabinet full of old pictures of some man holding up fish he’d caught, a medkit on the bottom shelf, an ugly carpet, a framed dollar on the wall… Basira.
Less than five minutes ago feels so far away now, the screaming of the crowd and the pump of blood feels so distant, looking at Basira standing in the middle of the room, watching her back. She’s wearing olive green pants and a black leather jacket, almost like the one Alice used to own, her hijab is a similar green to her pants and her shoes are thick-soled and Alice misses her so fucking much. over God, Alice wants to say she hasn’t changed at all but there’s worry lines she doesn’t remember and she almost seems taller, stronger somehow, and Alice knows she’s buffed up too, in between arena fights, knows she’s got some new scars that must be on full display as she stands here under unrelenting light in only her sports bra, shorts, and draped jacket.
They look at each other and none of the stinging in her knuckles and bruises hurt as much as the novelty of seeing Basira again.
“Daisy?” Basira asks. She must’ve seen Daisy displayed on the betting boards. Barely anybody calls her Alice here.
Alice shrugs, wanting so bad to just grin and hug her and apologize for years of not doing enough, but it feels too soon, she can’t gage Basira’s mood yet.
“Why are you here?” She asks, she needs to know. Is it to see her one last time? To confirm it’s her? To… to what?
The question makes Basira’s face harden, “I spent months looking for you,” she says it quiet with anger, fists balled at her sides, and Alice wishes she didn’t notice the balled hands so easily, a force of habit preparing for a fight.
What can she answer?
She starts unwrapping the fighting gauze around her knuckles instead, opting to look at her hands instead of Basira. The cloth had left red prints on her palms and wrists and her knuckles are beginning to bruise.
“Alice.” Basira says and Alice looks up sharply, hands pausing.
“Basira.”
This isn’t fucking go anywhere. They’re just standing there and Alice doesn’t understand. She knows she’s fucked up but the signals Basira’s sending are convoluted. She looks ready to leave and like she never wants to take her eyes off Alice again.
Alice lets the gauze drop onto the table and sees Basira’s eyes dodge down to her hands, then back up to Alice’s face and she exhales, shaky, spreading her hands in a half-shrug, “What have you done, Alice?”
What has she done.
Alice feels her face scrunch up, nose getting pinched by the long forgotten need to cry. The five steps she takes to reach Basira and hug her, hard and unrelenting and oh so desperate, are the easiest steps she’d ever taken in her life.
Basira hugs her back, instantly, familiar and so warm and soft and kind and Alice sobs, face hidden in Basira’s shoulder and whispers, “I don’t know. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Basira’s hand drags up and down her back and accidentally brushes her ribs too hard and Alice’s breath hitches with pain where they’d bruised and Basira pulls away, “You’ll get blood on my clothes, let’s clean you up.”
As they break apart, Alice can already see blood from her mouth and nose leave faint traces on Basira’s jacket. “Sorry about that.”
Basira doesn’t answer and instead leads Alice to the desk, making her sit on it as she retrieves the medkit. Alice can hear shuffling outside the door and Jon’s distant voice telling someone to give it another fifteen minutes. For his height and complexion, Jon can sometimes stand his ground surprisingly well. And the door isn’t bothered, the commotion stops, and Alice loves him so much.
Basira examines her hands.
“How’d you find me?” Alice watches her face while Basira isn’t looking at her, watches her eyebrows and eyes and lips.
“Far too much interrogating for a history teacher.” Basira grumbles, “You didn’t make it easy.”
“History teacher?” Alice smiles just a tiny bit, the moment allowing that tad piece of calmness, “Don’t downplay your detective skills, you used to teach at the police academy.”
“I left.” And Basira doesn’t elaborate, instead beginning to dab the little blood there is on Alice’s knuckles.
“Where to?”
“Our high school. History and sometimes physics.”
Alice nods, “Has it changed?”
“Too much.”
Alice remembers meeting Basira at the first drama club meeting, an activity they both ended up hating halfway through that first evening. They’d become friends because they didn’t want to team up with the people much more excited to be there… The bored gaze they leveled each other across the room had been a spark to a friendship that’d only grow throughout freshmen year and onwards.
She thinks about Basira back in those hallways, now tall and grown, walking around with folders of assignments and she so desperately wants to hear more about it, more stories about her students and about assemblies and she can feel the last years weighing on her almost to the point of bone-crushing agony: they’d lost so much time.
Basira’s hand catches her off guard as she wipes a stray tear off Alice’s cheek.
Alice looks up from where she’d been staring at the carpet and finds Basira studying her, face for once soft and sad and she asks, “What happened?”
“I got lost.” Alice whispers, sitting there with Basira standing between her legs and cleaning her hands, “I got scared and I ran but they got me, in the end, they got me. I should’ve thought it through-” and now words are spilling after only ever having Jon to talk to, and even then, not extensively, but now she can’t stop talking, “I should’ve been more logical and smart but when you’re being chased it’s so difficult, and Elias said he could keep me alive if I worked for him and then you just get stuck in the fighting and the blood and the routine, the simple routine, and I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Basira’s quiet for a long time. When she moves on to cleaning Alice’s face, she asks, “Do you like it here?”
Alice doesn’t know. Or didn’t know until she caught the glimpse of death and then the glimpse of normality, of returning back, of surfacing from the never-ending grime and dirt and blood of Elias’ rinks.
“I don’t anymore. I’m not staying. I should’ve… I should’ve. Sooner.”
Basira disinfects her split lip and her touch is so foreign and she’d missed the attentive care that comes with having someone care.
She closes her eyes and sighs, almost without thinking, when Basira’s palm cups her face to stabilize it.
“I still have connections in the FBI.”
It’s an offer. Basira says it without implication but it’s an offer of closing this whole place down.
“Or I could just kill Elias.” Alice shrugs, cracking a grin and immediately regretting it when it pulls at her messed up lips. She hears Basira sigh and dab at the new blood.
“One thing I didn’t miss is your humor, Alice.” But there’s a smile in Basira’s voice and Alice tries to smile back without pulling at the wound.
“So you’re admitting you missed the rest?”
“Don’t let it get to your head,” she deadpans but Alice can see a smile in return, even though Basira chooses to look at her cut instead of her eyes. She’s so beautiful, Alice thinks, I don’t deserve her but I also won’t lose her again. Never.
When Basira lowers her hands from Alice’s face, Alice catches them in her own and holds, palms warm, and stares at their linked fingers. She’d always wanted to do this. Without any context. Just wanted to get to hold her hands. The touch is so calming and so novel.
“I’m sorry.” She says again. “Thank you for finding me.”
Basira sighs, looking at their hands too, “Don’t do that again.”
“I won’t,” and Alice’s eyes wander up to Basira’s jacket sleeve, noting that the scuffs on it seem too familiar, “Is that my jacket?”
She looks up at Basira who’s definitely blushing, “Leather goes bad if you don’t wear it for too long. Would be a shame to…” She must see the lack of accusation in Alice’s face and relaxes, abandoning the sentence, “It is. I had to take the pins off though. Against dress code.”
“You wear this to you job?” Alice exclaims, so happy to be back at emoting and messing with Basira and it’s so amazing.
“Hey, it’s, hm, comfortable,” Basira grumbles. “I still have the pins in a box though, don’t worry.”
“That’s okay,” Alice smiles, remembering the jacket Jon’d given her after the fight, a tattered gray thing she’d been wearing for a good two years. “We can build a new collection,” she reaches for the discarded jacket and takes a pin off the back: the only one. “I’d, um, saved this for you and never got the chance.”
She gives Basira the spider pin and Basira accepts it with careful reverence, “Alice…” and as she studies it she instantly notices the flower the spider sits on, “Daisy. How long have you had this?”
“Since before I disappeared.”
“You kept it?”
“For you.”
Basira looks up, “That’s horribly sappy, stop it.”
“You inspire the worst in me,” Alice smiles, her chest aching, “Don’t stop.”
Basira nods and clips the pin onto her- or rather once Alice’s leather jacket, “Thank you, Alice,” and she leans in to kiss her forehead, “I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Likewise.” Alice blinks away the intrusive tears and pulls Basira in for another hug, holding her close and wrapping around her, “If I buy you coffee will that cement my apology?”
“You’ll need to buy me so much,” Basira’s voice is also, against all her efforts, shaky.
“That can be arranged.”
There’s a mild knock on the door and Alice knows it will be Jon before he even pokes his head in, “Daisy?”
Basira tenses but Alice murmurs, “It’s okay, he’s good.”
Jon comes into the room, shutting the door behind him, “I’m assuming you’ll make a run for it?”
Alice and Basira involuntarily snicker, “is it that obvious?”
Jon wrinkles his nose, “Be glad no one else is paying attention. If that’s a yes I can, um, assist.”
Alice hops off the desk and walks over to him, doing what she’d wanted to for months and pulling him into a hug, “No worries, you’re coming with.”
“I owe Elias.”
Basira comes up to them, catching on to the situation, “You can’t owe a man behind bars.”
Alice sets Jon down, “Let’s go.”
Jon rightens his glasses, eyes wide but not any more scared than when he’s dealing with his boss, “Right now?”
Alice grins even past the pain in her lip, knowing they will make it out, “Patience was never a virtue.”