Cold

Father completes his doctorate soon after Zeta and Calidus' wedding. They see less of him after this, because he's been hired as a consultant for some type of government security project. Zeta doesn't know anything about it. Not even her sister, Anfi, who works as a government clerk and spends most of her time at the Citadel of the Time Lords, has any idea what their father could be doing shut up in a council room all day.

Zeta's life is busy as well. She gets a job in the archives room of the Great Prydonian Library. Calidus gets a job manufacturing time travel capsules. They purchase a mountain house with stately columns that quickly fills up with excess files from the library and spare parts from Cal's home workshop. Soon the house is filled with children's toys as well. They have two children—a little boy with sandy brown hair, and later, a dark little girl with her grandfather's eyes. Worried as she is about her father, Zeta can't help but love him when he is with his grandchildren. She watches him lift his granddaughter high into the air, and he chuckle in that charming way, as if to say: "A grandfather? Me? I can hardly believe it!" Mother smiles and rests a hand on his shoulder. Zeta doesn't think much of it at the time, but her mother's hands are shaking.

The shock comes very shortly after this visit when she receives a panicked message from her father. He sends the message psychically, so she already knows something is wrong even without feeling his terror in her mind. Psychic messages have a limited travel range, and they are terrible at conveying specifics, but they're quick. All Zeta manages to get from her father's message is that her mother is in the hospital, and that she needs to come right away. Zeta tells him to wait for her. She scoops up the children, taking her son, a toddler, by the hand and strapping her infant daughter to her back. She sends another mind-to-mind message to her husband as she boards a capsule for long-distance travel. She grits her teeth as she feels the capsule de-materialize. She hates traveling this way, but speed is the imperative right now.

Father meets her in the waiting room.

"I don't know what happened," he says. Sweat is dripping from his forehead. He wipes it away with a sleeve of his robe. "We were talking, simply talking, and then she collapsed."

Zeta takes his wrist and gently guides him to a chair. She notices, not for the first time, how old he's beginning to look. His hair is almost gone on top and what's left is nearly white. He's walking with a stiff leg, too. He may need a cane if that keeps up.

She settles the children on the carpeted floor with some of their toys, then sits beside Father and looks around the grand white room. She's never been to a hospital before. It's never been necessary. Every ailment she's ever had has been quickly cured by a pill or a potion. The fact that Mother needs to see a Healer at all is worrisome. The fact that it's taking the Healers this long to treat her is even more so.

In time, a Healer comes out of Mother's room and explains the situation to Zeta and her father. Mother has some sort of rapid-aging virus that Zeta has never heard of. She's not responding to medications, and the virus has followed her even when she's tried to regenerate. The Healers will let them know if anything changes. For now they'll just have to wait.

Wait they do. Zeta finds a crumbling old book to pretend to read while her son plays with Rontgen blocks and her daughter chews on a stuffed toy. Calidus, Io and Anfi arrive about an hour later. Zeta fills them in on the details, since Father is busy pacing back-and-forth in front of Mother's room, questioning the Healers on her condition whenever one comes out. A young Healer hurries over and tells them to "deal with" their father. He's distracting them from their work. Io hurries over and tries to tempt Father with a walk around the hospital grounds. Father shakes off Io's offer.

"I'm just fine, thank you very much. I'd rather wait here for my wife."

He plants himself in a seat directly across from his wife's room. His shoulders shake, but he won't talk to Anfi when she comes over and tries to comfort him.

Zeta's daughter cries. Calidus picks her up and bounces her on his knee, reaching out to take Zeta's hand as he does so. She weaves her fingers through his and holds tight. She doesn't want to think about what any of this means. It's bad enough to see her father like this, but she doesn't want to see her mother shriveled and broken, either. They've always been so strong, her parents.

A group of Healers re-appear to tell them the latest. They call Mother's case a lost cause. They've never seen this virus before, and it's progressing too quickly for them to develop a cure. Charming Anfi attempts to keep a cool head and reason with the healers. Have they really tried everything? Is there really nothing to be done? The answer is an unequivocal no. Mother has gone through five regenerations in thirty minutes. At this rate she'll kill herself even without the virus.

"She claims she's ready to go," the head Healer says, "You'd best go in and say your goodbyes while you still can."

Zeta is the first of her siblings to enter the room. She leaves the children with her husband. It doesn't seem fair, going in one-at-a-time like this, but it's the Healers' orders. Mother lies in the middle of an enormous bed that makes her look like a child. This is strange, though, because her face is so aged—sunken and folded. She is so unrecognizable that she may as well not have regenerated at all. Zeta sits beside the bed and smoothes her mother's long white hair from her face. She is surprised by her own calm.

"Dear one," Zeta murmurs, using her mother's own term of endearment. "Dear, is there anything I can do for you?"

Mother looks up at her. Zeta tries to focus in on her eyes. Perhaps she is lying to herself, but when she looks at her mother's eyes she can still imagine they look the same as they once did. Mother opens her mouth and tries to speak. Her voice is hoarse, each of her words labored, but it seems she is still lucid.

"Take care of your father," she says, "I don't think he can get by all on his own."

Zeta nods, though she's not sure her mother can see it. She leans forward and whispers.

"Of course."

"I love you so much," the aged woman mutters. "But I'm so very tired…"

Zeta kisses her mother's sunken cheek, blinking rapidly to keep herself in check. It's time to go.

Zeta leaves her mother for the last time. Her eyes are still dry, but she finds herself needing physical contact. She takes the children back from Calidus and hugs them until her son squirms away. Then her husband sits down and wraps his arms around her shoulders. She leans into his chest and tries not to watch her brother enter the room, then leave. Her sister enter the room, then leave. Father goes in last, and he is holding his wife's hand when the last shudder of life leaves her.

It is Gallifreyan custom to cremate a body after death. Zeta is nearly middle-aged, but she's never been to a cremation before. Neither have her siblings. In a society where people live for thousands of years, they're relatively infrequent. She knows this isn't her father's first funeral ceremony, though. He lost his own father before she was born, his brother even before that. He's known a lot of loss for his 500 years. Even so, something in him seems broken at the memorial service. He floats around the hall in a daze, drink in hand. He only acknowledges the other mourners when someone comes over to talk to him. Even then, his answers are monosyllabic. Perhaps in keeping with her mother's last wishes, Zeta goes over to her father and silently takes his hand. It's cold, as if he, too, were among the dead. He doesn't look at her, but he squeezes her hand back before leaving her so that he can be alone somewhere else.