#anchoir

basira doesn’t get distracted on jobs. that’s why she’s the best mI6 has.

and even this, she’ll keep telling herself, isn’t a distraction. the woman’s been following her from the airport in versailles, and it’s in basira’s best interest to find out why. who is she working for? a government? one of basira’s many self-aggrandized nemeses?

Daisy hasn’t been staying with them long, and it’s probably concerning, or it should be, that Basira already finds herself inseparable from the other girl. Her father’s relieved Basira’s found a friend, someone to go out with. He’s always allowed Basira access to his library (he can’t deny his eldest daughter much) but he worries over her being lonely, with her mother and sister away for the summer. It’s a blessing, truly, that Daisy had come to them the way she had, even though the carriage accident had been unfortunate.

They don’t talk about their feelings much, as there’s everything else to talk about. Basira’s never met someone who can keep up with her the way Daisy can, who can speak to her like an adult and yet make her feel so little-girlish, when they run barefoot just because they can and nobody’s around to catch them, when Basira had hesitantly suggested they sleep in the same bed in case Basira’s nightmares returned and Daisy had agreed without question.

HER VOICE STARTS DISTANT ,    whisper caught on a creeping breeze,    somewhere out from beneath the ever-elusive roil of languid shorelines.    martin vaguely knows why his little slice of the forsaken is a beach,     knows in the passive way one remembers anything of themselves this deep in the forsaken.    his memories are a fistful of sand,    spilling through the cracks in his fingers    ---    only the lonely-touched grains of stone and salt stay stuck to his skin.

if he were more himself he’d remember,    he’s sure,     why the salt-air weighs so heavy as it sits on his skin,   why it shrouds him like the world’s most depressing weighted blanket and tells him he’s home,    you’ve always been here,   don’t you remember   ?

(    it had been their way out,    once.    the forsaken isn’t exactly conductive to introductions,    robbed of anything of yourself but the knowledge you are alone now.    so they’d put a name to the person they were,   any name would do;   to give the intermittent reminders of a lost life something tangible enough to can grab hold of,   before they fade back into the fog.   )

‘ we invent each other-- ’    she’s familiar,   almost warm against the chill of isolation,   though tinged with the same grey that martin can taste lacing his every breath...    she makes him think of music,   this familiar stranger’s grey words tinged with red,   unmissable in the monochrome of his mind.     he tries to hold onto it.      his tongue feels too thick in his mouth as he tries to speak,   words heavy,   like they’ll sink into the soggy footprints behind him,    and fade away with the next incoming wave. 

‘   a long time ago   ...    how long have i--    sorry,   i just can’t--    remember---   ’

the gaze he hadn’t noticed straying from her form,   drifting back into distant grey mist,   adjusts,    and martin tries to make her out with more clarity.    to recognise the face in front of him.    the idea of music seems to grow louder,   without ever making a sound.