Fever leans more of her weight against the tree, the rough texture blunted by her clothes, her hair. Slowly, her eyes close, and stay there.

(Under all that joy, in those fragments of memory, there has always been fear. Look at me. Love me. Don't hurt me, I'm doing what you want.)

It is intentional. Trusting Daisy so obviously, essentially turning her back to her. It's probably not smart. But she's not a smart person. She's just someone who's figuring out the way to arrange all the remnants of whoever Fever was in a shape that they'll actually take. It's constructing a skeleton with nearly every bone missing, and trying to draw a new face for it.

How do you control it, she wants to ask, the question that drives her to do so much. What way does she need to stretch herself, what influence does she need to put herself under, what does she need to do to herself to manage this. She can only throw everything she can at it. Everything that comes her way. Everything that might hold it off for one more moment, one more moment, before it breaks through her skin wearing the blood of countless other souls.

"How do you keep going?"

Maybe Daisy's got something she hasn't tried yet. They made it this far, after all.