𝖋𝖑𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖗 𝖕𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖗 ⋆ 𝕶𝖊𝖛𝖎𝖓 𝖉𝖆𝖞

𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖞 𝖙𝖜𝖔

TRIGGER WARNING for CSA (mentioned, not described)

a short recap will be at the very end of this chapter underneath the last break for anybody not comfortable with reading it <3 be kind to yourselves

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She wasn't Daisy yet, the first time she laid eyes on Kevin Day.

She was a set of statistics on a page, a height and weight and racquet class and court position. She was a photograph of a girl thing made small by a monster that shared half her DNA, submitted to half a dozen colleges around the country just to prove to herself that she can get in, even if she can never actually go.

Margaret Naomi Cohen, backliner. The number four to replace the one that got away, or at least, that's how it was supposed to go.

The night of high school graduation. She hadn't attended the ceremony because Jack had something 'special' planned, and nobody had really noticed that she wasn't there anyway. Maggie Cohen didn't have any friends, didn't fly high or low enough in class for the teachers to notice, never got in trouble but never really excelled. It was easy to stay invisible.

So Jack brought her along in Dad's old car that he'd kept barely running all these years, through the nicer parts of town and further away from Brownsville than Maggie had ever been in her life. Across the bridge to Manhattan, and uptown to the stadium the girl had been lusting after for most of her life.

"You gotta be cool, okay?" Jack says, hand gripping tight on the back of her neck as he pushes her towards the looming building. "You don't wanna know what will happen if you're not cool. I don't wanna know what will happen if you're not cool."

Maggie nods, as much as she can with her neck in a choking hold, and lets him push her towards the arena.

Inside, the lights are blinding compared to the dropping evening sun. Fluorescents guide a path from a security-guarded entrance, through 'away' team locker rooms, and into the presenter's box a few floors up. It overlooks the inside of the stadium: in the summer, a basketball court for the local league, and in the fall, converted with plexiglass walls into an Exy court. Maggie can barely draw her eyes away from it, the size of it amplified by the twenty thousand seats cascading down the walls towards the buffed wooden floor.

Somebody clears their throat. Her head whips around and she sees that Jack has left her side, and is now standing opposite with a group of men she's never met before.

Well, never met. Seen on television, sure. Drooled over in magazines, absolutely. Pinned their posters to her bedroom walls? Uh, duh?

"Oh my God," she whispers, eyes the size of dinner plates. Her body is limp; any and all ways to act like a normal human being leave her head.

"Margaret Cohen," greets Tetsuji Moriyama, extending a hand towards her. She leaps for it, gripping it and shaking it almost violently. He withdraws, and she sees him massage his palm tenderly.