The breath she takes is slow, like she's inhaling Daisy's confession in return and letting it sit in the space where she'd held her own. Secrets for secrets. And knowing that the gamble paid off in the way that she'd hoped against experience that it would. Daisy takes every word with the weight it has inherently, because she knows that all of hers will be treated the same way. They are something unknown, wearing mortal skin, not infected or cursed or possessed - it is them, and the self cannot be cured save by death. And they are trying, every hour of the day, to not fall back into the waiting maws of what birthed them.

Eight months. It must have felt like eight eternities. Yet there will be no whispers from her of condolences, of being so sorry that it happened. Sometimes, everything must collapse, until your back hits the ground in the darkness. Only then can you start to climb up.

"...terrifying, isn't it? To realize you want to say no."

Looking at the god that owns you down to the last scrap of your marrow, and refusing them. Knowing they will never be removed, that they're too tightly wound in, but still saying I will not. It causes more fear than any near-death ever could.

But if a self is to be salvaged from the wreckage, if the chrysalis is to be broken open and the butterfly not to die trapped inside, if it is to emerge with each struggling step and to let the sunlight unfurl its wings-

What choice really is there?