Grace did her very best to get through the rest of the day normally, chatting with Brigitte and answering e-mails as if everything was the same, as if her whole world hadn't been turned upside down. After all, that was how she'd always dealt with her depression: by hiding it. Through years of carefully rationing willpower and energy, she had created a convincing façade of a healthy, happy woman in her late twenties. And if all she ever did outside of work was eat and lay in bed, then that was simply the price she had to pay for being treated like a whole person, instead of an invalid or a malingering layabout. Many people didn't have that choice, she reminded herself. Many had to wear their weaknesses on the outside, whether they wanted to or not. She was one of the lucky ones.

But this was not an ordinary day with ordinary demands, and Grace was only human. It was, in hindsight, a completely unsurprising surprise when she burst into tears in the stationery cupboard just after lunch.

Why are there never the right size staples? she demanded inside her head, sinking to the floor and hugging her knees and trying to at least not actually sob out loud. She could have brought her own staples, she always meant to bring her own, but she never remembered to look for them when she was at the shops. What was she supposed to do now, use paperclips? Hadn't she done enough harm already?

"Grace?" Brigitte's voice came from behind and above her. "Is that - oh, shit!"

Grace heard Brigitte close the door of the cupboard and sit down on the floor next beside her, her numerous silver bracelets jingling. Grace wanted to respond but her body felt like a car stalled in the middle of a busy intersection.

"What's wrong, Grace?" Brigitte asked. Her tone grew threatening. "Was it something Clyde did?"

Grace managed to shake her head.

Brigitte sighed. "Well, since we're in here, maybe we should get some staple removers and scratch up the paint on his car anyway."

Grace laughed, barely. Brigitte said nothing more, but simply put her hand on her friend's shoulder and waited until she was ready to talk.

How do I even begin to tell her? Grace wondered. I know it was real, I'm not that kind of crazy, and aliens did kill half the government a while ago so everyone knows they're real. But this…

Grace looked up at Brigitte's face - kind, patient, ridiculously pretty - and decided to do her best.

"There are these…" The image of the pax-klefti appeared vividly in her mind's eye. "Problems. A lot of people have them, and they're usually not that bad on their own, just another part of life. But they affect me differently."

She closed her eyes for a moment and saw it all play out again. The pax-klefti surging greedily from the open cage towards her head. The Doctor and Rose's frozen faces: his halfway between determination and pity, hers a mask of pure disbelief. And then the ribbon of energy leaping from the centre of her own forehead like a lightning bolt, instantly reducing the pax-klefti to a handful of luminous ashes.

"My brain deals with these problems in a way that takes a lot out of me," Grace continued. "It always has. It doesn't leave me with a lot of capacity for dealing with anything else, but I've always made do with what I had."

"Until you took on these extra responsibilities at work last month and stopped sleeping properly." Brigitte turned slightly pink and averted her gaze. "Don't look so shocked, I sit right across from you. Your concealer technique is excellent but you've been yawning non-stop for weeks."

Damn it, Grace thought. "Well, yeah. And because I haven't been sleeping, my brain hasn't had the energy to zap - I mean, deal with these problems like it used to, so their numbers have just been building up and building up. And now this - this Doctor has offered to give me something that can stop these problems from bothering me so much. It's a chance to be normal. But it scares me, I think maybe it just as much as staying as I am. I don't know what I'm supposed to do! Oh, this all sounds nuts, doesn't it?"

Brigitte didn't reply at first. She just rolled up the sleeve on her left arm, revealing scores of horizontal pink scars. Grace's mouth fell open.

"You know how I changed high-schools when I was fifteen?" Brigitte said. "Well, I saw a therapist about it eventually, but for about three months after the move I was cutting myself nearly every day." She twirled one finger through her blonde curls. "I didn't know why, I just felt like I had to. But in the end I decided I needed to tell someone, because no good was going to come from going on the way I was." She smiled crookedly. "I thought I sounded pretty nuts trying to explain to my Mum why I couldn't wear the tank-tops she got me for Christmas. And where the blood stains on my bathrobe had come from. But when she nearly cracked a rib hugging me I knew I'd made perfect sense."

Brigitte leaned over and planted a kiss on Grace's forehead. "And so do you."

She sat back. "Grace, I can't tell you what the right choice is for you. All I know is that picking the least scary option isn't the right way to choose. You've already been brave a million times, coming to work every day with all this on your shoulders. Just be brave once more. Whatever you decide, I've got your back."

Grace wanted to look into Brigitte's eyes and thank her, but she was still transfixed by the scars on her friend's arm. How many of those are because of pax-klefti? She wondered, and felt something entirely new begin to grow within her chest.

"Okay, here's the plan," Grace said, standing up suddenly and bumping a shelf of printer paper. "First, I'm going to the bathroom to clean myself up. Then I'm leaving for the day - Doctor's appointment, he said he could fit me in early. You can cover for me with Clyde, right?"

"Um, yeah, of course." Brigitte rolled her sleeve back down as she climbed to her feet, looking confused but not unhappy about Grace's abrupt change in mood.

"Then I'm going home, sleeping for about thirty thousand years, and actually getting up on time tomorrow morning." She took a deep breath. "And then tomorrow night you and I are going on a date."

Brigitte's mouth opened and closed a few times - then she grinned so widely that Grace thought the top half of her head would fall off.