Chapter Fifty-Three
Upon hearing of her return from the network of gossips that worked the estate, Rose's best friend, Shareen, popped around the flat to drag her down to the local pub with Keisha and Little Dave. No one had told her of Zoe's illness for the simple reason that no one knew about it. Never social at the best of times, since her return three days before, she had yet to leave the flat. So when Shareen burst into the flat with a clatter of her heels against the ground and ringing of her bangles that were piled on her wrist and talking a mile a minute to Jackie about the new bloke that she was seeing – an accountant from Essex – whilst her perfume filled the air, she was wholly unprepared for the sight that awaited her. She entered the living room and stopped short when her eyes clapped hold of Zoe. Her painted red mouth froze around her words, and her heavy eyes widened as she took in how sick and frail Zoe looked.
"Jesus Christ, Zo." She said forcefully when she found her words again. "What the fuck happened to you?"
Zoe gave her a wry smile and began to tell her the agreed upon lie.
After some deliberation that Zoe wasn't a part of, having spent most of her convalescence aboard the TARDIS sleeping, it was decided that they would explain her illness and appearance away as the aftermath of having contracted malaria. Since everyone believed that she and Rose were travelling with an actual physician and not an alien with more curiosity than good sense, the story they planned on telling people was they had been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo working with an aid organisation when Zoe was bitten by a mosquito. She didn't notice anything at first, but then she started feeling dizzy and light-headed and her body temperature rose steadily with a fever. She was eventually diagnosed with malaria and was airlifted out to a hospital in Rwanda before she came home to finish her recuperation whilst Rose stayed behind with the Doctor to complete their much needed aid work.
Jackie wasn't sure the story would hold up despite Jack telling her that if anything was said with enough casual confidence then it would be taken as the truth. He then launched into the story of how he had met Rose, which hadn't been as reassuring as he clearly it would be. However, Shareen listened attentively as she chewed her gum. When Zoe finished she released a heavy breath and snapped the gum between her teeth.
"Fuck me, mate, that's awful." She said. Behind her, Jackie rolled her eyes in exasperation, annoyed that it had actually worked. Zoe pressed back on her smile. "No wonder we haven't seen you out an' about. Then again, this is you."
"What does that mean?" Zoe asked, not sure if she should be offended.
"You're not exactly the most social of people, babe." Shareen lazily shrugged one bare shoulder: she wore a pretty, strapless dress that was completely unsuitable for the late September chill. "So, reckon this means you don't fancy goin' down the pub for a couple of vinos then?"
"She can't drink." Jackie interrupted. "She's on medication."
"She can have a coke though?" Shareen asked. "Or a lemonade?"
She hesitated. "If she wants."
Zoe rubbed her fingers across her mouth, amused that they were talking about her as though she wasn't there. "I'll come if you don't mind pushing my wheelchair."
She nodded to where her chair was folded up in the corner.
"Course not!" Shareen beamed, surprised but pleased that she had actually managed to persuade Zoe to go down the pub. "C'mon then."
"I need to change first."
"What's wrong with what you're wearin'?"
"These are pyjamas, mate."
Shareen looked closer and her eyebrows climbed her forehead. "Babe, that looks like real silk."
"My skin itches if there's anything abrasive against it." She protested, cheeks heating when she remembered how out of place silk pyjamas were in her life in London. "And they were a gift."
Shareen snorted. "Fancy gift."
Zoe limped her way into her bedroom to change, leaving Shareen and Jackie to chat in the living room, and she shut the door behind her. She closed her eyes and let the embarrassment roll over her. It was harder than she thought it would be getting back into the swing of things in London. Life was different than she was used to and, whilst Jackie was being good at not pointing out the odd things that she now did that were habit from her life with Reinette, she knew that she was to blame for the strangeness settling around them. Although, her mother had quickly got on board with Le Goûter, which was the French equivalent of afternoon tea where small cakes and tea were had, there were other things that just made it clear that she wasn't the same person she had been when she left, and she knew it made Jackie peer at her with an odd, curious expression on her face.
Muttering to herself in French didn't help matters, nor did her sudden insistence on a napkin across her thighs at dinner either. It made her look as though she was too good for the life Jackie had worked hard to give her when that wasn't the case at all. It was simply habit. However, she was often oblivious to the situation when it happened or simply too tired to find the energy to explain it to Jackie when she thought about it. And it wasn't as though she was ashamed of who she was now, but having the differences splayed out before her in stark contrast of who she had been to who she was, was unpleasant.
It made her miss Reinette.
Everything would have been so much easier to deal with if she was there with her.
It took her longer than normal to dress, but by the time she emerged from her room her wheelchair was waiting for her by the front door. Jackie fussed over her, making sure that she was warm enough, before giving Shareen a long list of instructions that was half-forgotten by the time they reached the bottom of the building.
Zoe didn't particularly like the local pub. It had been there for as long as she could remember, sitting on the corner and slowly growing old and grimy; she remembered days of her youth walking past it after school in the summer where groups of gnarled old men and their young, hardened counterparts were clumped around the outside smoking. She never liked the smell of stale alcohol that wafted from it or the type of people that would get drunk there on a Friday and Saturday night, but it was where all the birthday parties, wedding receptions, christenings, and Christmas and New Year parties took place, so she was unhappily familiar with it.
It was a different experience approaching it from the perspective of a wheelchair user though as she and Shareen were presented with a problem at the entrance where there was a small step that the wheelchair couldn't roll across.
She had to lever herself out of her seat and hold tightly onto the door whilst Shareen carried the wheelchair inside before she could sit down in it again. She was feel just the wrong side of weak and possibly shouldn't have agreed to drinks down the pub, but she was missing the Doctor, Rose, and Jack fiercely. She hadn't heard from them beyond a photograph of a bird and a stream of excited emojis from Jack, which made next to no sense but he seemed to be enjoying himself in Japan. She suspected that they were out of sync with her, accidentally of course but displaced nonetheless, and she tried not to be annoyed.
She knew how hectic life could get on the TARDIS, but worries of being forgotten crept into her and she tried to swallow them back.
The biggest disappointment was that the Doctor hadn't called her. Not that she'd really expected him too as he was never much of one for the phone, and whilst he could text he insisted on using proper grammar and punctuation and would grow exasperated with her text speak. She missed his voice though. She missed his face, and the warm comfort that his presence brought her. It wasn't as bad as the first time they were separated as she had plenty of ways to contact him, but she did feel as though they'd left things unsaid between them after their kiss.
She hadn't meant to kiss him.
It was just that she hadn't bothered to fight the temptation to do so.
"Look who I've dragged out!" Shareen crowed proudly, jerking Zoe out of her thoughts as she was wheeled across the slightly damp carpet towards Keisha and Little Dave, who both did a double take when they saw her, thus necessitating the repetition of the lie.
"Guess travellin's not all it's cracked up to be." Keisha, who had never been out of London and had no desire to do so, said with a teasing smile.
"It's not that bad." Zoe smiled, adjusting her blanket on her lap. "Really, we meet some nice people, and only a few of them want to hurt us."
Little Dave chortled over his pint. "Where's Rose then?"
"She's still in the Congo." She lied easily. "It's all hands on deck, and she's really good at what she does."
"Rose Tyler doctorin' people." Shareen shook her head, deeply amused. "Who'd have thought it? Diet coke, babe?"
Zoe nodded, fingering the edge of the soft blanket with a hint of anxiety at being out in the open and so vulnerable. She distracted herself from that feeling by deflecting the attention away from herself, which would only involve half-truths, and instead focused on them. It wasn't difficult for her to feign interest as the last time she'd seen them she was seventeen years old and just back from her weekend trip to Paris with Jackie. For them only three months had passed since that time; for her, a lifetime.
Fortunately, they were eager to talk about anything and everything. There were some bits that were new to her, or had simply been forgotten over time or with the still-shifting landscape of her memory, but she was able to keep up. The conversation soon turned to Mickey and Trisha Delaney. Zoe hadn't seen much of Mickey since they got home, but she simply assumed that was because he was working. The knowledge of him and Trisha had completely slipped her mind with everything that had happened, and so seized the opportunity to hear all of the gossip.
Despite all the changes she'd been through, she was still Jackie Tyler's daughter, and she still enjoyed a good piece of gossip.
"It's weird." Little Dave said, one large arm resting around the back of Keisha's chair. About two years ago, he'd started going to the gym more and more often and knocking back protein shakes. It didn't do much for his height but he bulked out quite significantly so that his nickname seemed a bit erroneous. "None of us even knew that Mickey liked her."
Shareen snorted, her large hoop earrings shivering when she did so. "Please. Trisha probably dropped her knickers. You know she'll spread her legs for anyone."
"Shareen." Zoe frowned, uncomfortable with the coarse language. "She's not that bad, and if she wants to have sex, let her have sex. Besides, isn't she working at the bookies now? That sounds like she's making a good go of it."
"Only because she gave old man Mahmoud a blowjob." Shareen said, her red lips forming around her straw. "No one else was hirin' her 'cause of what happened at her last job."
Zoe searched through her memories to see if she could remember but nothing relevant came to her. "What happened?"
Keisha laughed into her vodka and coke.
"She got a case of the old sticky fingers." She said, waggling her fingers at Zoe. "The manager caught her with her fingers in the till. Sacked her in front of everyone. She was cryin' and beggin' for her job, but Julia practically threw her out of the shop. Told her she was lucky she wasn't callin' the police."
"That sounds horrific," Zoe said honestly. Garish displays of power, particularly the abuse of it, never sat well with her. "Was this down at the chippie?"
"Yeah," she nodded. "Course, after that, everyone knew what she'd done an' she wasn't gettin' any work, least not round here. Wasn't even bein' called in for interviews." Keisha hesitated, looking a little sorry for Trisha. "Between you an' me, I actually felt a little bad for her. Her dad's still not been able to work after his accident an' they really needed the money. Reckon she was thievin' because of that."
"Don't feel bad for her." Shareen said. "Girls like Trisha always bring it on themselves."
"Shaz, come on." Zoe said with more sharpness than she intended. "No one deserves to be assaulted."
"Shit, Zo, I don't mean that." She waved her hand, her nose wrinkled. "I just meant karma. She's been a bitch her entire life an' now it's just come round to bite her on the ass."
"You still can't be sure she gave Mahmoud a..." she trailed off, not wanting to say the word.
She could feel the blush rise in her cheeks when Shareen laughed at her. It was one thing to talk crudely to Reinette, whose body had responded with ferocity to such words whispered against her skin, but it was another thing to just throw the words out into conversations with people that she wasn't intimate with.
She wondered if the Doctor would enjoy such things.
Heat exploded through her and she shifted uncomfortable, pleased that the colour in her cheeks was taken for embarrassment.
"He's been goin' around tellin' everyone who'll listen." Little Dave said. "Sides, he's got it on camera as well."
The coke lodged in her throat and she coughed. Shareen pounded her gently on the back.
"Oh my god, that's disgusting!" She exclaimed once she could breathe again. "And Trisha's all right with that?"
"Says she doesn't care as long as he pays her every two weeks." He shrugged. "Anyway, we reckon she sees Micks as a meal ticket."
"Really?" She spoke with disbelief in her voice. "I love Mickey, I do, but he's not exactly rolling in extra cash. I know he's got the new promotion and everything, but still."
"Mickey's steady." Shareen reminded her. It almost sounded as though it was an insult the way she said it, but it wasn't: steady and good was about the best anyone on the estate could hope for. "An' he treats his girlfriends right."
"Change of tune for you." She heard herself saying. "I remember you leading the charge when Rose was missing. Something about him killing her and leaving her dead in a ditch somewhere?"
Shareen turned an ugly red colour. Keisha and Little Dave exchanged a look.
"Yeah, well, your mum thought so too." She said, defensiveness cutting brittle edges into her words. "How were we to know she was off with that doctor-bloke?"
Zoe made a noise in her throat before looking to Keisha. The air was uncomfortable around them. It was evident she spent too much time with the Doctor as she had forgotten how to talk politely to people. She changed the topic once more.
"How's your brother, by the way?" She asked. "He out of jail yet?"
"Two more weeks." Keisha replied, seizing on a less awkward topic and running with it. "Although, he's got a bird on the outside. One of them prison bride types. She's been hangin' 'round the flat a lot."
"Little crazy?"
"Mad as a box of frogs." She nodded. "I swear, I'm goin' to wake up an' find that she's wearin' my skin as a suit."
Zoe thought about the Slitheen family and took a large drink of coke to cover her laughter. The atmosphere began to ease and soon they were all chatting happily with each other; Shareen relaxed next to Zoe, who began to feel comfortable despite the low ache in the small of her back. They stayed until closing time, and Little Dave took Zoe home.
"You stayin' home for a while then?" He asked her in the lift, leaning heavily against the wall as he was six pints deep and had never been able to hold his alcohol well.
"Until I get better," she nodded, "so a few months most likely."
"Cool," he said, "fancy gettin' dinner sometime?"
Zoe opened her mouth to reply when she realised what he meant. Surprise whipped through her and she stared up at him. "You're asking me out on a date? Me?"
"Why's that a surprise?"
"Cause I've known you most my life," she replied, "and you've never once shown an interest in me."
"Well, you are eighteen now." He said. More or less she thought. He frowned. "You are eighteen now, right?"
"I'm old enough." She said her half-truth. "Dave, I'm flattered, really."
"But no." He said and the doors opened on her floor. He pushed her out.
"It's just..." she faltered, uncertain how to explain it to him.
I'm widowed.
I'm not the person you think I am.
I think the Doctor and I are moving towards something.
"I travel so much." She finally said, settling on something that was true, pleased that she didn't have to look in his face. "And I'm very sick at the moment, so now's not the best time."
"I get it." He shrugged, rapping his knuckles against the door. "Figured I'd give it a shot though."
"Like I said, I'm flattered." She said honestly, still not accustomed to people finding her attractive despite Reinette and the Doctor. "Really. Thank you for the compliment."
The door opened and Jackie stood there in her dressing gown and bare face.
"Evenin', Jackie." Little Dave greeted, straightening up. "You look lovely."
"Oh, get on with you." She rolled her eyes. "Thanks for bringin' her back."
"See you around, Zoe."
"See you, Dave."
Jackie watched him leave before looking down at her daughter. "What was that about?"
"I'm not entirely sure." She said, covering her yawn with the back of her hand. "I'm sleepy, and I think I need to pee."
"You sure you don't want to come?" Howard asked, adjusting his faded suede jacket uncomfortable. "It won't take much to get your wheelchair in the van."
Zoe smiled up at him, trying to put her mother's boyfriend at ease. "Really, I'm fine. You two should go and enjoy yourself. I'll probably just read a book and have a nap."
"If you're sure..." he said, relieved even though he did his best to hide it.
It wasn't that he didn't like Zoe, it was just that she was more than a little intimidating with her silences that stretched for just that bit too long and eyes that had seen more than they should have. He was spared from having to think of something to fill the silence between them when Jackie emerged with freshly applied lipstick and a happy smile on her face.
Howard's face lit up at the sight of her. In the few hours that Zoe had known him, which included a quietly awkward dinner before Shareen arrived and an even more awkward night where she listened to the springs of her mother's bed creak and the laughing shushes that accompanied it, he seemed to have a number of good qualities, which included his easy access to fresh fruit and vegetables. However, his best quality by far was how much he appreciated Jackie Tyler. Zoe had watched him carefully during their time together, painfully aware of the lacklustre luck Jackie had had in the past with men that often ended with dark bruises on her skin, and she was pleased to see that he acted as though he could scarcely believe that Jackie agreed to be seen with him let alone date him. She could therefore overlook his oddities, which included the strange hobby of soap carving; she was now the somewhat bewildered owner of a set of cheap soap carved into approximations of London landmarks.
Still, she appreciated the effort he was expending in getting her to like him, or at the very least tolerate him.
It was more than most of her mother's men had done.
"You look nice, mum." Zoe said, leaning on her walking stick. It was a good day and she didn't feel as tired as she normally did.
"You do," Howard said sincerely. "I like how you've done your hair."
One thing Zoe noticed about Howard was how he always possessed a new and specific compliment whenever he had something to say. His earnestness was rather adorable if occasionally jarring. She didn't need to be told that she ate very well, for not only was it a weird compliment in itself but it also served to make her feel self-conscious of the fact that Howard didn't know about her unique personal history. Try as she might though, she wasn't able to revert to her old manners: six years in the royal court of France had seared dining etiquette into her, and she wasn't sure it would ever fade. She wasn't quite sure how to take his remarks at first but she soon came to realise that it was just Howard. He was an awkward, slightly bumbling, seemingly harmless, somewhat attractive man with a receding hairline who thought that Jackie carried the sun within her.
"Thanks," Jackie said, patting her carefully styled hair. She looked to her daughter, concern creeping into the lines around her eyes. "Now, will you be okay?"
"I'll be fine," she replied, barely managing to not roll her eyes. "If anythin' happens, I'll call Mickey. If anythin' bad happens, I'll call the Doctor."
"It's really nice that you have a doctor on call like that," Howard said, hanging back so that he didn't crowd them: at five-foot-five, it would be a difficult task. "It must be very helpful."
"Would be if he wasn't such a pain in the –"
"Mum," Zoe cut her off with a laugh. "Sorry, Howard. Mum and the Doctor don't really get on."
"We get on well enough," she replied on a grumble. She leaned in and kissed Zoe's cheek, leaving a smudge of lipstick behind. She wiped it away with her thumb. "I'll be back late. Don't wait up."
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Zoe said, earning a soft snort of derision from her mother. "And have a nice time."
"I'll bring her back in one piece," Howard promised, hand on the small of Jackie's back.
Zoe shut the door behind them and rested her shoulder against it. She didn't begrudge her mother her happiness, but it did make it more obvious how unhappy she, herself, was: an unhappiness that she was able to avoid on the TARDIS with the Doctor and new things to see to distract her. She felt Reinette's absence from her life painfully. The space she had once occupied was filled with a dark, empty coldness that froze Zoe's skin and made her ache with loneliness and regret. She breathed in deeply and ran a hand over her face, wiping underneath her nose as sadness leaked out. Bracing herself against the emotions that touching the empty space brought, she pushed away from the door and made her way back into her bedroom.
Dark patches of grief crept up on her more and more now that she was away from the TARDIS, who had helped to protect her mind against the worst of her thoughts and feelings, feeding it back to her like milk dripped into a baby's mouth. With her memories coming back and solidifying in greater colour and strength than before, all those feelings of love, loss, happiness, and heartbreak slammed into her with the force of a thousand burning suns. It crippled her and left her awake at night, going over and over in her mind the days she'd spent with the woman who became her wife. She replayed old arguments that left her feeling sore and bruised, unable to apologise again and again, unable to seek Reinette's benediction for sins long forgotten and even longer forgiven.
It was what she had wanted though when she made her decision to leave the TARDIS. She needed to recover physically, but mentally she needed the time as well. She simply hadn't expected that the worst was yet to come. Perhaps not the worst; she still couldn't remember those early days after Reinette's passing: three days when she was prone in Louis's bed and darkness swallowed her whole. Even now with her new and improved memory, those days were lost to her. It was over a year since Reinette had passed from her life, sliding into death in the hope of reuniting with her beloved children, but the pain remained the same. It remained strong, surging on waves that dragged her under and left her gasping. She thought it was behind her, but without the Doctor's calm, soothing presence and eyes filled with kindness and understanding, she realised she hadn't left anything behind. She just brought it with her.
She just missed him.
She missed the TARDIS.
Most of all, she missed Reinette.
Entering her bedroom, she rested her walking stick against the wall and carefully lowered herself to her skinny knees that protested at the action. She was putting weight on, slowly but surely accumulating pounds of fat that would soon spread out through her and add to her skeletal frame, but her body still ached when she pushed it too far. Ignoring the pain, she reached into the lower drawer of her dresser and pushed aside old clothes she hadn't worn since she was a teenager. Her fingers lingered on her denim jacket, the one she'd worn when she discovered that the universe was so much bigger and fuller than she thought it was, before that too was pushed aside in favour of a small wooden box.
Hesitation crowded her and her fingers paused over the latch. Yatta's voice, familiar from hours and hours spent in her company, filled her mind, reminding her of one of their many conversations about grief. Zoe once stated that she wanted just to break through to the other side of grief so that it no longer consumed her and gnawed at her energy and happiness; she wanted to step out of it and feel happy again. Yatta simply looked at her with kindness and a thorough lack of judgement before telling her:
"There is no pushing through. There is no other side. There is just absorption, acceptance, and adjustment. Grief isn't something to be triumphed over, but rather it's something to be endured from now until always."
At the time, she hadn't enjoyed hearing that but now, months later, it made sense. Her grief was something that she was always going to have to live with, just as the Doctor lived with his own grief over his family and his planet, and Jackie lived with the grief of Pete Tyler's death. The three of them were bound to their grief as surely as they were bound to the air they breathed in order to survive. She wished that it wasn't the case. She wished that the pain within her would become dull and disappear, but she now understood that grief was the price people paid for love.
"You're worth it," Zoe whispered to the box. She eased herself back up onto her bed, knees cracking, and she rested the box in her lap. "You will always be worth it."
The knowledge that she would give anything for one more minute with Reinette shivered through her and made her shoulders curl forwards, hunching in on herself. To hear her voice and touch her skin and to breathe in the soft, warm smell of her would be a joy beyond all measure, and Zoe wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.
She opened the box and was forced to make do with the paltry objects inside, not one of them holding a candle to the force of beautiful nature that Reinette was when she lived.
Very carefully, she removed the lock of Reinette's hair that she had cut away from her corpse on that awful day she died. She rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. It was so soft; softer than it should have been given how frail Reinette was towards the end, but she was a vain woman and had insisted on taking care of herself until the very end. Zoe closed her eyes in memory of feeling it against her skin and the way it shone in the sunlight. If she focused, she could feel the warmth of the French sun and the singing of the birds in the gardens as Reinette leaned into her with a laugh, her hair spilling over them, lips bruised with kisses. She lifted it to her nose and inhaled, but the scent of the wood had seeped into it; she could smell nothing but that.
She gently placed it back before removing the sketch of Reinette. Done by her own hand, she compared it unfavourably with sketches she had seen Rose do countless times over the years. She was nowhere near as skilled as her sister, and she wished Rose had been there to draw Reinette for her as her hand would have better captured the brightness of her eyes, the warmth of her smile, and the curve of her nose. Her changed mind helped her to have sharper, clearer memories of her wife, and she saw that the sketch was a pale imitation: a ghost of a woman dead and decaying.
Her departure from France had been abrupt and emotional, standing in the rain as she raged against the Doctor for his tardiness, and so she hadn't properly packed, nor did she intend to return to the palace where every inch of the building was swarmed with memorise of Reinette Poisson. Therefore, she left France with barely anything of her own, and even less of Reinette's. She had long since suspected that the Doctor returned to France when she was unaware in order to collect some of her personal belongings and a few keepsakes to better remember Reinette by. Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw the porcelain flower.
Reinette adored flowers but she hated cutting them down and ripping them from their earthy home. She liked having flowers in the apartments though and so she had porcelain flowers made and dipped in scented oil. Zoe remembered teasing her about how aristocratic that was, but Reinette remained unashamed and simply filled their home with more and more flowers until she cried for mercy on the tidal wave of her laughter. Once, it frustrated Zoe because of the waste of money but now she saw it as a sweet little quirk. She picked up the porcelain flower and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger.
She lifted it to her nose where the faint scent of floral oil clung to it. The scent made her hurtle back through time until she was in the home she'd shared with her wife with the fragrance all around them. She traced her finger around the decorated edge of the petal before smiling and putting it back.
The smile dripped from her face when she saw the final item: Reinette's letter.
For months, she'd been ignoring it as easily as one could ignore an elephant in a small room. No matter where she was or what she was doing, the knowledge that there was an unopened letter from her wife waiting for her was there, pulsing and throbbing like a sore tooth.
It was the letter that Reinette wrote to her before her death. Louis had read his instantly, devouring the final words of his best friend with a sharp pain etched across his face, but she'd been putting off reading hers as she'd been unable to face the last words she would ever receive from Reinette. Even now, she toyed with it. She ran it through her fingers and brushed her thumb over the black ink that was her name. She looked at the wax seal and let it bump under her thumb when she pressed against it. There would be no right time to read the letter; there was going to be no time when she was suddenly, miraculously, in the best mental and physical health that would make reading it any less painful than if she'd done so straight away.
She knew that, yet she hesitated still.
The Doctor called her brave, but she wasn't. She was a coward who was afraid to lose the last bit of life that Reinette had for her. If she never opened the letter, then Reinette was never really gone. There was always something more waiting for her; one last conversation they could have.
She brought the letter to her forehead and pressed it there.
She wasn't ready, but she opened it anyway.
The letter was written on heavy, thick parchment that felt soft and familiar in her hand. She unfolded it and looked at Reinette's familiar handwriting. Countless little love notes had passed between the two of them over the years, so she easily recognised her wife's smooth, elegant hand.
To my wife,
And so, my darling, our journey is now at an end.
How I longed to see the stars you came from, and to step foot on the planets that you spent wondrous hours telling me about. Yet it seems that fate has decreed that such a future will not come to pass. My sadness for that is nothing in comparison to the grief I feel knowing that I will soon be leaving you to live this life alone without me by your side. I hope, and I pray to my Lord, that your Doctor will soon return for you so that you do not have to live in a time that is not your own without someone to hold your hand and to love you as I have loved you. I hope that you will be able to return to your family and tell them of your time here, and tell them that you were loved beyond all measure.
I imagine that you're going to be sad for some time when I'm gone. Be sad, my darling, but do not let it consume you. Do not let your grief make you forget how to live. Go and explore the stars once more with your Doctor. Save people from danger, help those who need it, and spread your kindness and your love far and wide so that people are better off for having met you, as I have been better off for it.
You have been the great love of my life, Zoe: my darling who walked through my life like a dream before setting out on the slow path with me. I have so enjoyed these last six years with you, and I know I should not demand more than I have received, but I wish that we had more time. I wish that we had a thousand lifetimes to spend together and to love each other, but, alas, it is not to be.
Know this though, and carry it with you always: I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you. You are my soulmate, my lover, my dearest friend, and my heart made flesh.
Do not be afraid to love again. You are still young and there are, one hopes, many years ahead of you to fill with love and happiness. Love once more, my darling. You have such a capacity for it, and you deserved to be loved and loved well.
I know that we will meet again in the Kingdom of my Lord for our love is strong enough to transcend death itself.
I love you, for now and always.
Your devoted and loving wife,
Reinette
Zoe lowered the letter to her lap and touched her fingers to her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears and her throat was full of sadness and grief. She pressed her hand over her eyes and shook silently as Reinette's words swirled around her mind, searing themselves into her, never to be forgotten.
Reinette had been dead for just over a year, but for the first time, Zoe accepted it.
Two days later
"What I don't get," Mickey said around a mouthful of chips, "is why they didn't just peel the bananas in the first place? Why did the Doctor have to show them how?"
Zoe laughed and dipped her battered sausage into a pot of curry sauce; it dripped from the end in globulous rain drops when she answered him. "If you've never eaten a banana before, would you look at it and think: all right, all I need to do is peel it so it's edible? If you think about it," she was warming to her subject, "who the hell discovered the the inside of a coconut was edible and drinkable? And pineapples – kiwis – potatoes. Because if you really think about it, the process to figure out that a potato could be eaten was probably a long one."
Mickey thought on the matter as she bit into her sausage, the grease leaving a film of tackiness on the inside of her mouth that she enjoyed. It was all well and good eating according to the dietary plan the Doctor had mocked up for her, but sometimes all a person needed was a styrofoam tray of the best chips in London. They sat outside on the old, paint-peeled bench, which was sprayed with crude graffiti, on the courtyard of the estate. They faced the small area of greenery that was available to them, patches of dry earth shining through the tattered park, watching the Nichols boys play kick-about; they should really be in school but neither she nor Mickey were going to tell them that. Rumour had it that Owen Nichols had knifed the last person who told him he should be at school, and Zoe was fairly certain a knife to the ribs would do what the Untempered Schism hadn't and kill her.
A sharp, stiff breeze made her tighten the scarf about her neck. It was bitter outside, and she felt the tip of her nose ice over with the cold, but she didn't want to go back inside. The last two days had been spent curled up in her bed, oscillating between crying heavily and simply staring blankly at whichever wall she was facing. In her panic over not being able to decipher what was wrong with her daughter, Jackie announced that she was going to call the Doctor; it was enough of a threat that Zoe was able to piece her words together to explain what the problem was.
The Doctor, for all that she loved him, was the last person she wanted to see when wrapped up in her grief. Her feelings for him were confused and muddled, and she didn't want him near her when she was vulnerable and emotionally weak for fear that she would do something careless with his emotions. Having been through the grieving process herself, Jackie understood and kindly left her alone, only interrupting to bring her cups of tea and bowls of soup until that morning. She had come into Zoe's bedroom, ripped the covers off her, and told her in a tone that left no room for argument to get some fresh air so that she could wash the sheets and air out the room.
Grumbling, she had complied and was now pleased to be outdoors.
It was nice to be sat outside with the wind against her skin, even if the Peckham estate was nowhere near as wondrous and relaxing as the gardens of Versailles. In France, she hadn't been interrupted by car horns blaring and the low rumble of traffic ever present in the background. France also smelt better; she could do without the sharp sting of pollution in her nose, and the acrid taste of burnt rubber in her mouth. She at least had good company though. Mickey had taken his lunch break so that he could keep her company, and she'd bought them both some chips from the local chip shop. He was dressed in his dark blue overalls, and the hat he normally wore was placed atop Zoe's head. She'd forgotten hers and instead of going all the way back upstairs for it, had commandeered his.
"When they come back – " Zoe started, polishing off her sausage. Her hunger was ravenous after two days of soup and cereal, and she eyed Mickey's chips with an air of faint hopefulness. "You should go away with them. Now that I'm not there, there's room for one more. You can even use my bedroom."
Mickey scoffed, shaking his head. "Nah, mate, don't reckon it's for me."
"Bull-shit." She sang. She nudged him with her pointy elbow until he looked at her. "I saw how much you enjoyed it. In between the coma and the painful exhaustion, I saw you liking what was going on. Don't sit there and tell me you didn't."
"It was fun," he agreed with a small, shy grin, "but I don't think I could do it full-time. It's exhausting just being around the Doctor, an' Jack for that matter. I mean, look what happened to you."
She waved a hand dismissively. "One, I'm the exception, not the rule. Two, Jack's really not that exhausting. You thrust a broken piece of tech into his hand and he'll be quiet for a good ten or fifteen minutes, twenty if it's especially complicated. And three, a bit of travel's good for the soul."
"Yeah, to bloody France," he replied, "not the back end of the bleedin' universe."
"Sometimes France felt like the back end of the universe," she muttered, shaking her memories off to reclaim her enthusiasm. "Think big, Micks! Why settle for France, lovely as it is, when you can have the whole universe to play with? The Doctor might act like a dick and, admittedly, like seventy percent of the time he is, but he's also a really decent bloke and the things he can show you –" she mimed her head exploding, "you won't ever regret it."
"What are you?" He asked with a laugh. "A bloody travel agent for the final frontier?"
"I would be an excellent travel agent, thank you very much." She replied. "I'd have posters of all sorts of places, and charge a reasonable fee as well."
"You're mad."
"Quite possibly," she agreed, tapping the side of her head. "Who knows what the Untempered Schism did to me. The Doctor did say madness might wake up and shake its stick at me."
He grimaced. "Please don't joke about that."
She rolled her eyes and sighed. "I'm surrounded by people who don't appreciate my gallows humour."
"Only because we don't want you dead."
"Stop being kind," she said with a haughty sniff. He grinned. "Come on, tell me honestly, why aren't you leaping at the chance to travel in the TARDIS? I know you want to but there's something holding you back. What is it?"
He hesitated. "You didn't go with him when he asked the first time."
"No, because I wanted to go to uni." She said easily. "And this is about you, not me. Has he already asked you?"
"Zo-e." he whined.
"Mickey." She mimicked. Her attention on him was sharper and more focused that before. "Did the Doctor ask you to travel with him?"
He had never mentioned anything to her, and she wondered when such a conversation between the two had taken place.
"Once, months ago." He shrugged. "After the whole Downin' Street thing. Said I should come along to keep an eye on Rose. I said no."
"Huh," Zoe said, surprised that it happened at the same time as her offer. "Well, that's – why?"
"Despite what your sister sometimes thinks," he began, "I don't actually enjoy being the third wheel."
She thought back to her first week of travel. The Doctor took her to Gaju for a festival, and she had felt slightly out of place. Not so much that it was a problem but despite only travelling together for a few days, the Doctor and Rose had had their own rhythm. They were both warm and welcoming to her, and they swallowed her into the mix easily enough, but she imagined that it would have been different for Mickey. He was Rose's sort-of boyfriend, and she knew he was jealous of the Doctor. It would have been a wildly different experience for him, and he was smart enough to realise that. Her heart ached for him, but she worked hard to keep the pity off her face.
"You wouldn't be the third wheel," she promised him. "Not even the fourth. Even if the Doctor and Rose are shit about it, Jack's never be known to leave someone out. I think it's the 51st century in him."
"He is very...friendly."
Zoe raised an eyebrow at the odd emphasis. Mickey avoided her eyes, and her curiosity deepened. She was disappointed when he continued their conversation, preventing her from pursuing her line of questioning any further.
"Besides, some of us don't want the universe." He replied, and she gave a snort of derision. "Some of us are quite happy with our small little corner of it."
"Problem is," she said, munching thoughtfully on a chip, "I don't think you're one of them. There's too much of a curious spirit in you, Mickey Smith, try and hide though you do."
His response was to maturely take a handful of chips and shove them in his mouth.
Allowing him the childish escape from her questions, she tilted her head back to squint suspiciously up at the sky. She suspected it would start raining at some point, but she hoped that it would hold off for just a little longer as she was enjoying being outside despite the chill and the lack of useful loquaciousness from her friend. Within her, there was a lightness and ease that had been missing for a long time: two days of cathartic crying had helped her move deeper into the acceptance stage of her grief.
Reinette was dead.
Nothing she could do was ever going to change that. She now needed to learn how to adjust her future hopes and dreams so that they no longer included her. It wasn't something she was in a hurry to do, aware of the pain that waited for her down that rocky path; she hoped that Yatta would help her with it during their next session. Her day-to-day living had already been adjusted out of necessity, but there were plans and hopes that she had had for their shared future that needed to be dwelt upon, set aside, and grieved for their own sake and for hers.
After months of speaking with her therapist, Zoe knew better than to attempt such an emotional undertaking alone.
"You decided on a language yet?" Mickey asked once his mouth was clear, startling her out of her thoughts.
"I think I'm going to do two," she said, "Arabic and Spanish."
"Two?" His eyebrows lifted. "You sure?"
"I want to test out this new brain of mine," she confessed. "Mum says that I've been reading things quicker, and I'm remembering things much, much more easily than before. The Doctor said I might experience something like this, so I want to see how far it goes."
Normally, her rate of attrition regarding books was one to two a week, depending on the week. However, according to Jackie, she'd consumed six books in five days and that was extremely unusual for her, particularly as she'd been busy doing other things as well. They weren't small books either but weighty tomes that she had put off reading because she wanted the time to properly sit down and get lost in them:Don Quixote, It, and Moby Dick to name only a few. She could remember the stories vividly; she easily named the characters and their story arcs; and she accurately remembered when and where within the book certain scenes took place.
Whilst these changes frightened her, they also made sense.
The Doctor had said that her brain had to change in order to make room for what she had seen. Her mind, notably her storage capacity, was too small for the strength and infiniteness of the Untempered Schism. Therefore, with the increase of space in her mind, and the strengthening of her boundaries, it was only reasonable that her her memory and processing ability had improved in some manner. It wasn't the worst thing that could have happened to her by far. She was glad that her memories had come back and that madness didn't actually seem likely to happen. So, if it made her better at learning and reading and actually retaining the information in front of her, then she wasn't going to be upset about that.
The number of books that she would be able to read in her lifetime had increased exponentially.
How could she possibly be unhappy about that?
"Most people when they have a card with unlimited money would do somethin' fun," Mickey told her, "but you go back to school."
"School's fun!" She protested. "What's not to like about school? You go there and when you leave at the end of the day you know more than you did when you woke up. How is that not fun?"
He reached out and pulled the hat of her head just so that he could ruffle her hair. "Oh, Zo, you're a right little nerd."
"Geroff," she pulled away from him with a half-laugh.
She jammed the hat back onto her head as the wind picked up around them and the familiar sound of the TARDIS began to fill the air. Both she and Mickey looked around in surprise. Neither of them were expecting the TARDIS for another few days when it was meant to be arriving to take Zoe to Yatta's office on Reylar. Quickly, Mickey gathered their rubbish and tossed it into the nearest bin before helping her the rest of the way into her wheelchair, ignoring her protests that she could do it herself. He pushed her along the courtyard and down onto the path, both of them following the sound of the TARDIS to a street corner just off from the main estate. An unusual place to park for sure, but Zoe wasn't worried until she saw Rose emerge from the inside of the TARDIS, body collapsing in on itself, tears cascading down her pale cheeks.
"Rose?" Zoe called out, concern washing out from her.
Mickey picked up a brisk jog, and they moved faster, closing the distance between them.
Rose looked up. Her mascara ran like black rivers down her her cheeks. "Zoe?"
"Hey." She was jerked to an ungainly stop by Mickey, but she didn't care. Her arms opened wide, and Rose all but climbed into her lap, pressing her face into her neck as she sobbed. No one else left the TARDIS. Familiar fear wrapped around her insides like an icy hand stretching out to close around her heart. "Hey. What's wrong? What's happened?"
"The Doctor..." she sobbed. "He sent me away. There was danger, and Jack left to fight it and then he tricked me. He tricked me and he sent me away, and now he's dyin' and there's nothin' I can do to help him!"
Her sobs tangled on top of each other.
Zoe held her close as her stomach fell into her feet, worry and fear clawing at her. For the Doctor to send away the TARDIS, his home and the last connection he had to his people, meant that something extremely bad was happening and he didn't think he was going to survive it.
She hugged Rose tight and stared at the TARDIS, her mind already turning over as she considered what to do.
