Saying Goodbye
A/N: Most of this was written before watching season 3, but has been adapted since doing so. Funnily enough, most of it was also written before I read the book 'The Personnel Files', but most of the information included in this which I made up, fits in with the information in aforementioned book. Perhaps I'm psychic? I don't really know where this came from... it's rather random and I wasn't expecting it to be this long. I just think I needed an answer to my questions and a proper goodbye to my ships, and I thought 'hey, if you're not going to get one, you might as well make one!'
Unbeta'd as always. Cos I'm an idiot. Any mistakes are my own!
Disclaimer: everything is copyright to Kudos and the BBC – I am just borrowing their characters! Zoe and Will's daughter, however, is out of my own imagination.
-
Zoe sat on the end of the bed, the envelope on her lap, the letter's blurry through her tear-filled eyes. She recognised the handwriting. She'd not allowed herself to think about them for a long time now; to think about who she was before, and what she'd done. Of course, that was easier said than done. She'd just about managed it during the day, when mundane every-day tasks had kept her occupied, and her mind had been forced to think of other things, like what time Will was coming home, or what they were going to have for dinner. Often she found herself drifting around the house, cleaning or picking up toys that had been left on the stairs – anything to stop herself from thinking.
It was in dreams that she couldn't control the thoughts.
It was nearly always Danny. He seemed to enjoy popping up at least one night a week. It had started with work. She'd dream of sitting at her desk, playing cards, or chess, or just chatting to him. Sam was sometimes there too, sitting on the end of the desk, drinking up their conversation but rarely joining in. Her mind would glance across to the desk opposite, and see Ruth buried in paperwork; the only person in the whole building who actually seemed to be working. Sometimes, her mind went further back. Sometimes Tom would be there, and even, at times, Helen.
But then it had become worse. She'd dream of sitting on the floor of the apartment she shared with Danny, drinking and laughing. And then they wouldn't be in the living room any more, but in her bedroom. And she'd be kissing him, and he'd have his arms around her and for once she'd feel safe.
And then she'd wake up and realize it was all a dream. And realize that she was in fact still here, in Chile, in a life that wasn't really hers.
Zoe turned the envelope over, her hands shaking, but she could not bring herself to rip it open. Did she want to know what it said? Was it even safe for her to be reading it? How did she know that it wasn't a trap, or that by merely opening it she wouldn't be getting someone else in trouble. Sure, it had been seven years, but perhaps seven years wasn't enough. She knew it would never be safe for her to go back; knew that she could never see any of them again. It was a thought which ripped her apart on a daily basis, when she allowed herself to think about them.
Part of her had contemplated leaving Will a few times. Whatever they'd had had died long ago, and she didn't feel happy in his presence; he didn't make her feel safe and loved any more. If it wasn't that it was too dangerous, she might have left him years ago. At least, that was the excuse she'd always used at such times. That and that she owed it to her daughter to keep the family together. It wasn't only her life she'd ruined on that mission; it was theirs too – Will's, and their unborn daughter. She hadn't even known she was pregnant until two weeks after they'd arrived in Chile. It had come as a shock and a blessing at the same time. Zoe finally felt like she had something to live for.
The first night, she'd cried her heart out as Will held her, rubbing circles in her back and whispering words of comfort. Of course, neither had done anything to detain the feeling that everything she'd worked for, everybody she'd loved, was gone. But she was grateful for his trying; after all, he had left his life behind too, to be with her.
"Mummy?"
A voice in the doorway caused Zoe to jump. She quickly picked up the envelope and slipped it in the top drawer of her dresser, sliding off the bed to pick up her daughter.
"Hey sweetie," she pulled her onto her hip and kissed her forehead, causing the child to giggle.
The little girl looked at her mother with big green eyes, titling her head to one side so that her dirty-blonde curls bounced against her shoulders, "is everything okay mummy?"
"Yeah, of course," Zoe paused; she knew that she didn't sound at all convincing, not even to a six-year-old, "where's Daddy?"
"Daddy went out."
Zoe nodded, holding the child close, knowing that it was the only way she could ever feel safe in her new life. She'd always felt bad for using her daughter in such a way. She often compared herself to the bright pink giraffe stuffed toy that the little girl insisted on carrying around; she used her as a safety blanket, as a reminder of why she was still alive and something to cling on to when she was scared. She'd never been a particularly good mother. She didn't think she'd ever really get used to it. Once, as a child, her parents had bought her a hamster. It had died within a week because Zoe was incapable of taking care of it. The thought always lingered in the back of her mind. She felt sort of like this was just another one of her undercover identities – a legend. When she'd first had the baby, she'd thought it would have passed, but it never had.
Setting the little girl carefully back down on the bed, Zoe brushed at her eyes to rid them of the salty tears that had gathered there. She could see her daughter watching her closely, and she smiled as a weak attempt of reassurance.
"Mummy?" she repeated, staring up at Zoe, wrinkling her tiny freckled nose.
"Mmm?"
"Are you crying?"
Zoe shook her head, forcing another smile, "no, honey, of course not."
"You look like you are... are you sad?" there was real worry in the child's eyes.
If there was one thing she couldn't stand, it was her daughter looking that afraid. Zoe leant down and kissed the top of her head.
"No, I'm fine. Don't worry."
-
The envelope taunted Zoe for the rest of the week, but she set about busying herself so that she wouldn't think about it. She went through every day just as she had the one before; cleaning, tidying, cooking, waking her daughter up, taking her daughter to school. She was quite aware that she'd changed since moving away; grown up perhaps? If Danny could see me now, she thought, picking up toys from the living room floor. If there was one thing her ex-flatmate couldn't stand about her, it was her untidiness. He'd voiced this opinion on several occasions, much to her annoyance. And here she was, tidying and cleaning as if she enjoyed it in some way. A soft, bitter laugh left her lips.
She wasn't laughing for long, as she realized Will had appeared behind her. She noticed his reflection first, in the mirror directly above her head. Turning to meet his cold, annoyed glare, she raised an eyebrow, readying herself to hear about whatever she'd done to provoke such an expression.
"Yes?" she asked, hesitantly, dropping the assortment of toys that she'd collected into a small plastic toy-box in the corner of the room.
"Who is Helen?" Will said.
Zoe laughed softly; nervously even, "you don't half have a bad memory," she joked, the inside of her mouth becoming drier with every word.
"Well, unless I'm completely mistaken, our daughter didn't die nine years ago," he dead-panned, looking Zoe squarely in the eye.
When Zoe had chosen the name for their child, Will had noticed how passionate she was at the decision. She'd sobbed, clinging to the bedsheets and staring at the baby as if it was a completely alien concept to her. When he'd tried to question her on it, she'd not said much, and he assumed that the name had come from a relative; her grandmother maybe. He'd left it at that. It was a nice name anyway; he didn't have any objections to it. He just didn't like Zoe keeping things from him.
"Will..." Zoe started, avoiding his glare.
"No. No, don't you dare 'Will' me. Do you remember when you said that our entire relationship was built on trust? Do you? You were willing to leave me because you thought you couldn't trust me. I thought we had no secrets from one another Zo? I have never kept anything from you. And then..." he pulled a book out from behind his back, and flicked it open, before reading aloud, "'it still pains me to think about her. A beautiful young life snuffed out so quickly. It's been nine years, and she still pops up in my dreams--' need I continue?!"
"You obviously do not trust me one bit, or you wouldn't go rifling through my personal things!" Zoe snapped, snatching the diary from his hands, ripping the page he was on in the process.
As the ripped sheet of paper fell to the floor, Zoe followed it, feeling the tears streaming down her face. Tiny droplets fell on the paper, smudging the words, and she wiped frantically at them. This wasn't fair. He wasn't supposed to have read any of that stuff. Everyone needed their secrets.
"I'm your husband Zoe, or have you forgotten that? What else are you keeping from me? Am I going to open up our dresser and find letters from Danny?! Am I? Because I hear you, in the night, whispering his name. Do you have any idea how horrible it is to hear your wife asking for another man, whilst she's in your bed. Jeez Zoe! You can't even bear to have me touch you... we've not had sex in months, and yet you'll--"
He hadn't seen the slap coming. Her hand connecting with his skin felt surprisingly good, and she was rather tempted to repeat it. Breathing out sharply, Zoe pulled her hand away, not daring to look up at him. Will could get a pretty bad temper, something she'd not had the misfortune to see until after marrying him. An apology lingered on her lips, but she remained silent, realizing that she didn't want to apologize. She had no reason to apologize. I won't have him talk about Danny like that, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut in a failed attempt at keeping back the tears. Of course she'd felt guilty having those dreams, but it wasn't her fault that she couldn't stop thinking about him. She'd tried; oh god had she tried. Nothing worked. She'd tried taking pills, they'd just made the dreams more frequent, more detailed.
"Will," she finally said, looking up at him through heavy eye-lashes, "Helen was a colleague... a friend of mine at MI-5. She was killed during a mission... a mission which I should have been undertaking, but didn't because... well the reason's not important. She was tortured and killed. Okay? She was my friend and someone killed her. Shoved her face-first into a chip fat fryer full of oil, and shot her in the head. I'm so fucking sorry that I didn't tell you about it, but to be perfectly honest, I didn't feel the need to!"
Will was silent for a moment. Zoe was unsure whether he was in shock because of what she'd told him, or if he hadn't quite recovered from the surprise of her hitting him. She tried to gage his anger, but his face was blank.
"I'm...I'm going to go," he said after a long pause.
"Where?"
Will looked away from her, "I don't know. Away from you."
"Okay," Zoe breathed, running her hands through her shoulder-length blonde hair, "I'll pick up Helen from school."
"Yeah. Good."
And with that he left the house.
-
Zoe found herself staring at the letter again as it peeked out from under various other pieces of paperwork in the open drawer. Her argument with Will had brought up demons from the past that Zoe had rather not revisited. She'd only taken to writing a diary as a way to get her anger out. She'd rarely mentioned Danny and the rest of the people she'd left behind, but Helen played constantly on her mind, and she'd had to let it out somewhere. It had been a gut reaction – when she saw this beautiful blonde baby lying beside her; something she'd created – to think back to Helen. Although Zoe had never admitted it to herself, her main reason for disliking Sam at first was that she saw her as Helen's replacement. And she honestly felt like no one could ever have replaced her.
Moving into Danny's, at first, had been weird. She'd found some of Helen's belongings under the bed, and that had of course set her off with more tears. Danny had found her balled up on the floor, crying over a pair of underwear.
She'd not addressed the issue in many years. In fact, she doubted if Helen's name had even left her lips once after the funeral. She hadn't so much as thought of her. That was, of course, until the birth of her little girl. She couldn't explain it, but the baby had instantly reminded her of Helen. She felt like it would have been wrong to name her anything else. Of course, the fact that she still partly blamed herself for Helen's death didn't help. But naming her baby after her wasn't going to make up for losing her, or rid Zoe of the guilt.
It was difficult to not dwell over things when you had nothing to do but sit around thinking. Without a job to consume her, Zoe had done a lot of thinking. Will had tried to persuade her to find a new job, but she'd known that it would never be the same. Working for MI-5 hadn't just been a job; it had been Zoe's life. She couldn't even imagine herself working anywhere else. No, she'd decided she'd stay at home and take care of the house. That would give her something to do, and less to think about. That hadn't really gone to plan.
Zoe sighed, reaching into the open drawer and plucking the envelope from between the layers of paper. Her eyes drifted delicately over every handwritten letter of her address, as if drinking it all in. She felt as if the scrawl had given a new meaning to every word. Sighing, she gently turned the envelope over, and lifted the corner of it that was already slightly unsealed. She slid her finger down and watched as the paper ripped, seemingly in slow motion. Should she be doing this? A breath caught in her throat as she lifted out the piece of paper within, and unfolded it.
"Dearest Zoe,
I don't know why it has taken me all this time to write to you. Perhaps I just haven't had the courage. I know what I'm about to tell you is likely to rip you apart, so I do hope you're sitting down..."
Even from the first line she knew something was wrong. The second and third sentences just clarified it. She crumpled the paper up, deciding that whatever it was, she didn't want to know. Hot tears flooded her cheeks again; she couldn't remember the last time she'd cried so much in one day. Snatching up the letter, she pushed it into the drawer and snapped it closed, not wanting to think about it any longer. If it had taken Harry that long to write, then it wouldn't mind waiting a bit longer. She wasn't strong enough for any more bad news.
Removing any signs of tears, Zoe decided she'd go back to the only room in the house where she could feel safe; Helen's bedroom. Stumbling on the stuffed giraffe as she walked into the darkened room, Zoe bent down to pick it up, tucking it back in next to the sleeping child. She sat down, switching on the small lamp beside the bed, and watching Helen sleep for a while. There was something so soothing about watching the little girl's body rising and falling with every breath, and Zoe soon found herself drifting off to sleep.
-
"Zo?"
Blearily opening her eyes, she glanced over at the figure resting gently on the white wardrobe of her daughter's bedroom, a cheeky little smile on his dark features. She closed her eyes.
"You're not real Danny, go away," she said quietly.
"If Will's going to go shouting his mouth off, he could at least use your alias and not 'Zoe'. Does he not realize how much trouble you could be in if anyone ever finds out?"
Opening her eyes, Zoe looked across the room, her gaze following Danny as moved over to the bed and sat down beside Zoe, looking at her little girl Pain stung in her chest. She'd never seen him look at anyone with such affection. Besides, perhaps, herself. He's not really here, she reminded herself, knowing that this was all just another horrible dream and soon she'd wake up from it feeling just as alone as always. She remembered when Danny had mentioned the idea of her having a baby in Chile; she'd never have known that she was already pregnant. And with a little girl, just like she'd always wanted. His whole face had lit up for a second when she'd mentioned wanting a child, but had dropped again when he realized he'd never see that child or have anything to do with it.
"What should I do Danny?" she whispered, thinking about the letter, which of course hadn't left her mind at all that day.
Danny seemed to ignore the question. Zoe looked at him with wide, expectant eyes, but he was staring further than her, still at her sleeping child. There were tears in his brown eyes. It seemed so strange to see him cry. He was always so strong; she'd only ever seen him cry three times in all the time she'd known him – when he'd seen Harakat assassinated in his car, when he'd been forced to kill someone himself, and finally when Zoe had left for Chile. She wanted more than anything to reach out and hold him, but she knew that doing that was only pushing herself further into the dream, and into more hurt.
"Danny?"
He looked up, his eyes glistening with tears still, "she's beautiful Zo," he murmured, standing up from the bed.
Zoe stood too, and hesitantly wrapped her arms round Danny's waist. Instinctively, he wrapped his own round her and they held each other for a long moment, just breathing in each other's warmth and sense of safety.
"I try to be happy for you, you know," he said, "I tried to tell myself I did the right thing by giving you Will."
"You did Danny, you did."
He didn't need to know about how violent Will had turned, or how she longed for some way out, some way back to her own life. He didn't need to know that she'd taken to telling people that her last name was Hunter, not Hamilton. He didn't really need to know anything; after all, he was nothing more than a figment of her own imagination.
"Read the letter Zo," he said finally, letting go of her, and stepping back into the shadows of the doorway, away from Helen's night light and the open curtains, "just read it. You know what you're like; you're just going to think about it all day and all night, every day until you've read it. Read it."
And with that, he left her.
-
Zoe awoke to find herself lying on the floor in her daughter's bedroom. She wasn't quite sure how she'd wound up there, but she quickly stood up, checking Helen was still asleep (as she should be; it was only 5am) and made her way back to her own room. She had expected Will to be back by now, his brooding only usually lasting a couple of hours, but part of her was glad that he wasn't. Pulling back the bed covers, she slipped inside and closed her eyes, controlling her breathing in a weak attempt at going to sleep. It was no use, it wasn't going to work. Danny was right; it would drive her mad not knowing what it said. But could she really handle any more heart ache from a world that she wasn't a part of any more?
She slid off the bed and over to the dresser, pulling the heavy drawer open and fishing under the layers or rubbish for the crumpled piece of paper. Tugging on it until it dislodged from the over-filled drawer, she took a deep breath. The paper didn't unfold as easily it had, and she briefly contemplated ironing it flat, but she knew that was just her procrastinating; putting off the inevitable.
Her eyes skimmed over the first few sentences that she'd already read, and she squeezed them closed when she reached the start of the next. She couldn't do it. It was too painful, reliving all the memories and everything they'd all been through together. What if she was better off not knowing what Harry had to say?
"Firstly, we know you sent Danny a letter. As you know, this was a flagrant breach of the OSA. I would, however, like to say congratulations on your daughter and hope that she, as well as Will and you are well. I cannot condone what Danny did, but given the circumstances, I can understand why he did it.
Which leads me onto my purpose for this letter..."
Zoe felt a lump form in her throat. If Harry had seen it, had Danny even got to read it at all? She'd known it had been stupid to send such a letter when she could easily have gotten a lot of people into a lot of trouble by doing so, but she'd needed to. Not receiving a reply, however, had been harder than not sending it at all. She looked down at the paper, the words blurring as she read them through a cloud of tears. Blinking hard, she watched as a salty puddle gathered on the paper, running the ink.
"Shit!" she muttered, rubbing at it with her thumb, but only making it worse.
"...I'm sorry to say Danny never got your letter."
So, her suspicions were right. She could have killed the bloody government and their rules and regulations, that one day, she would have sworn by.
"Unfortunately, it arrived ten days too late."
Zoe read the rest of the letter in silence, the tears welling up in her eyes, and finally giving away, streaming down her face as she struggled to breathe. Danny was dead. She'd never told him how she felt about him, and now he was gone. Forever.
Nothing was ever going to be the same again, she just knew it. Something had finally broken within her.
-
In the weeks following the letter, Zoe grieved as she had never done before. She locked herself in the bedroom, for whole days sometimes, only thankful that Will had come back and was taking care of Helen for her. She couldn't bear to see their daughter, let alone him. It hurt so much. She couldn't explain it – he'd been dead for six whole years, but her tears were still fresh, the wounds still far from being healed. Will would knock on the door and she'd ignore him.
It was only alone in her bedroom that Zoe could still be with him, could still feel him next to her. She heard him too. They'd have whole conversations, the topics of which were never anything important, but she clung to them. Some nights, she'd fall asleep, and he wouldn't be there, but she'd wake and he would be sitting beside her, and they'd both laugh at how stupid she was to believe that he was really gone.
Zoe wasn't sure how long went by. The weeks had long since melted into one and she spent every one of them alone with him, in her bedroom. She'd get dressed, brush her teeth, shower and put make-up on in the small en-suite bathroom, and they'd spend the day together, as if they had their whole lives together.
"We can be together," he'd said, clutching her hand.
She knew what he was asking of her, and she did it willingly.
-
"Where's Mummy?" Helen asked, as her daddy fastened the white bow in her curly blonde hair.
"I explained to you; it's time for us to say goodbye to Mummy," he said, his voice gruff, as he picked her up and put her gently down on the floor.
Helen looked at him with confused eyes, but she soon got over her unanswered questions. After all, Daddy was letting her wear her new dress, which made her look like a princess, and flew around her when she spun. It reminded her of Alice in Wonderland.
The funeral was very small. Zoe – or rather, Gina – had been reluctant to make new friends in this new life. Will had only invited their next door neighbours. They had been over for dinner a few times, and even babysat Helen, much to Zoe's annoyance. She didn't like letting her little girl out of her sight.
Will sat down at the front of the church and gazed across at his daughter, who was still spinning down the aisle, enchanted by the way her shoes sparkled and her dress floated. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.
"Come on Helen," he said, beckoning the little girl towards him.
She did as she was told and sat on his lap, looking up at her dad and giggling.
"Daddy, who is Danny?" she asked suddenly, not noticing the tears in Will's eyes.
"Danny... Danny is who Mummy is with. He's going to make Mummy very happy," Will said after a long pause.