Aliya made her point. Daria nodded. "I know. But I just...think it's the only choice worth making." Tony spoke next, and Daria smiled slightly. "I figured. We talking Lord of the Rings, War and Peace, or Game of Thrones?" Rest. A rest would be nice. She hadn't really rested since...

Daria listened to both of them, nodding slowly to each of their objections. Her eyes landed last on Tony. "I know it's true," Daria said. "I talked to Quinn." She didn't elaborate further. She didn't want to elaborate further. That electric memory was still swelling and unfurling...

"Nah," Tony said. "I didn't get shot. It was a spear or something. Crazy shit, right?" "A spear?" Daria repeated. "That's some Lord of the Rings shit. I'm...sorry?" She laughed--a short, sharp, bemused sound. "Sorry you got stabbed, ha! That's...how the f...

"Not...you know, great." She shifted self-consciously, trying to make as much noise as possible, trying to sell the act of the scared girl who didn't want to get shot (act what act are you lying to yourself really Daria really) She emerged from cover, scratched and scruffy-looking. She cou...

The terror is different now, seductive and insidious. It isn't paralyzing her so much as it's soothing her, quieting her urge to act, like a warm blanket on a cold day. You could wake up, but you could sleep instead. Just sleep Daria. Just rest. Aren't you tired of trying? “Something like that.” Ano...

(Daria Bhatia continued from The Tower ) How certain she had felt, scant days before. How fast that certainty receded, beneath the weigh of hunger, and dirt, and fear. She wandered, ate a little (hunger pangs in her stomach), drank a little (and tried not to think of the performance a girl with the ...

Deep breath. Inhale. Exhale. In. Out. Head's too full of Carrie, the thunder of guns, and renewed fear. The breathing's not helping. Your shoulders still shake, and your eyes still burn. It's not stage fright, but mortal terror, an the clarity of purpose hat guided you from the beach to this moment ...

Daria stood close to the fighters, close to the flame, heart pounding though there was ice in her veins, cold and hot at the same. Gunslinger. Debonair. Dangerous. BANG Gunshot cleaving through the air, shattering calm. Someone screamed. Someone fell. Someone's heart stopped for a moment and then po...

Daria sauntered in with all the Clint Eastwood energy she could muster, a woman with no name, absolutely at ease between a rock and a hard place, a fire and a frying pan. Good that she'd found her pretense, her role, because the scene she stumbled into devolved into fucking chaos almost at once. Eno...

“Okay. I’ll talk you through this. I’m going to step behind you now. I don’t want to be the last thing you see, but I’ll be here.” Tom nodded, his eyes still closed, wet with tears and grating with sand. He heard her footsteps as she circled around behind him, and felt that awful cold radiating out ...

She was staring down at him, distant and judgmental, no understanding in his voice. Tom shook his head frantically side to side, so fast and violently his neck ached with it. He wanted that pain, that clarity that release. "There is no escape, Erika!" he exclaimed. "There's...no relie...

Her footsteps crunched slowly in the sand, closer and closer. Tom did not have to lift his head to feel the lethal weight of the gun, the shadow as heavy as any imagined reaper. She was standing over him. He could feel that weight, just like he could feel that gun. His reaper, come at last. Erika fu...

(Daria Bhatia continued from Binary Suns ) Naked in the sea, electric with freedom, electric with danger. Euphoric. She felt like herself again. But like all euphoric moments, it passed. When she emerged from the sea, her skin was cold, and pulling damp clothes on did nothing to dispel the cold, or ...

The girl with the gun looked up at him, and there was a lurching, surreal, uncertain moment. Tom stared at her in disbelief. He smelled weed, saw the thick of a Destiny raid with enemies thick around them as their guns blazed, and now there was a real gun, now there was Erika with a body close to he...