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The apocalypse ended. The war is over. They’re safe. Jon, Daisy, and Basira spend the first weeks after the apocalypse ends destroying the archives. Tearing the place apart from the roots. Burning Jonah’s withered body until there’s nothing of him left. It helps, a little.
After that, they’re lost, too long spent working towards salvation that they don’t know what to do when they have it in their hands. All they can do, really, is stay home, lay in bed, and talk. Talk about anything, everything. Jon had never shared as much as he did with the two of them, and he suspects they feel the same way. Daisy tells them one night how, when she was young, she had wanted to own a flower shop; they had all had a good laugh at that, each of them trying to come up with the best name for the imaginary store- Daisy’s Daisies won out in the end, courtesy of Basira.
They fall into an easy, comfortable routine with each other. Every morning, they get up- Daisy first, Jon last- and they eat breakfast, not always together, but in each other’s presence which is just as good.
Then they sit in the house, Jon and Basira read, Daisy listens to the radio. Sometimes they think about going for walks, but after the time spent hiding from monsters in the apocalypse, it’s hard to trust the calm outside. It seems like a lot of people are afraid to go outside, or just so used to only leaving when it’s necessary that they don’t even consider leisurely walks an option. As the months go by, though, Jon, Daisy, and Basira- more like JonDaisyandBasira at this point, really- start to hear life return to the world outside, but the three of them are slow to join the rebuilding world; Jon and Daisy because they are afraid of the monsters they became over the years, and Basira because she was wary to leave either of them alone.
At night the three of them go to sleep in a just slightly-too-small-for-three-people bed. Daisy sleeps on the outside, always, the buried had made her claustrophobic to a horrible degree, to the point that she couldn’t even handle being between her two partners. Jon and Basira alternated the middle spot, while Daisy found the cuddling suffocating, Jon found it comforting, grounding in a way he found hard to find other ways.
And though the apocalypse was done, though the worst was over, they all still had mountains to climb.
Jon would wake from nightmares almost every night. Together, the three of them had to establish a set of rules, in a sense, just a list of things they should and should not do if Jon is having a nightmare. Rule number one was to not touch him, or to do their best not to do so. The first time Jon had a nightmare in their shared bed, Daisy had tried to hold him after he awoke and he had punched her square in the face, harder than she would have thought him capable; Jon had avoided both her and Basira for nearly a week afterwards, so rule number one was very important for all of their well beings. The rest of the rules were more simple, less dire, things like ‘don’t get too close’ -subset of rule one, like many were- ‘speak calmly and quietly’ -one time Basira had gotten frustrated in her weariness and had snapped at Jon, to which he had spiraled into a full blown panic attack, so they all agreed to avoid loud noises- and more of the like. It took work and understanding, but eventually, Jon’s nightmares became less frequent.
After Daisy freed herself from the hunt, she found that her body hurt, constantly. Maybe it was the shifting from human to monster back to human that did it, but it always felt like her bones were at the same time too big and too small for her body, both bent out of shape and too perfectly in place. For the first few weeks after the apocalypse ended, Daisy had tried to keep it a secret, had tried to simply grin and bear the pain she constantly felt, but Jon and Basira knew her too well and they both noticed the change in her body sooner than she would have wanted. It took going to multiple different doctors before they found one that could help them, or at least tell them what was happening. They learned, together, that Daisy’s body had reformed wrong, that her bones and muscles and skin had grown in misshapen. They also learned that there was no way to fix it, only to endure it. The doctor told Daisy that there would be good days and bad and there was only so much they could do to help. When the three of them got home later that evening and Daisy sat on the bed and cried, Basira and Jon held her shaking frame.
Basira was the most complex, she hid her hurt past a thousand brick walls that she refused to let down. She didn’t have nightmares like Jon or physical ailments like Daisy, but she found that she could never calm down. She was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for a beast to come barreling through their front door and tear Daisy and Jon apart. Jon, surprisingly, was the first to notice her growing worry, he tried to bring it up gently but she denied any claim he made with a well-practiced smile. She knew he didn’t believe her but she didn’t have time to worry about that past the fear of the apocalypse coming back. It all came to a head one night when she couldn’t fall asleep, too busy watching the door in case someone broke in. She heard a noise from outside and suddenly she was sparked into action, pulling Jon out of bed and shaking Daisy awake. She could barely breathe as she told them to hide in the closet, pulling them along with shaking hands. Come morning, she, Jon, and Daisy had had a long talk about what was happening. Within the next week, they had her set up with a therapy appointment and were already setting up their own system to help her keep calm.
Together the three of them made it through the months after the apocalypse, one nightmare, panic attack, and pain filled day at a time. And, on a pleasantly warm, clear day, the three of them left their flat and went for a walk.