darker_london | Family (Zoe, Rachel, open to all the Zoe people) [backdated January]

Even though Zoe had extended the invitation for Rachel to come over to her house it took the girls ages to actually do it. A week after that first invitation, Rachel had made good on what she'd said in one of her letters I'll try anything once and had climbed the roof of the gymnasium on a dare from a boy in their PE class, had been given suspension for the rest of the week and was grounded till Christmas.

After that she was a little more subdued. "I got in so much trouble," she told Zoe, when Rachel was allowed back at school (after signing a contract that specifically stated she would follow the rules). "My dad and my step mum fought about me for ages."

"Why did you do it?" Zoe asked her, after their lunchtime run. Rachel had become the legend of the week for her lunch hour on the gym roof, evading capture and posing for photographs. At one point a group of students started yelling at her to jump off but then the teachers had caught on that something was happening and had started yelling up to Rachel that if she didn't climb down right now they were going to call the police.

"It sounded like fun," Rachel told her. "And no one was going to get hurt. It's an easy climb, up and down, I've been on loads of roofs before, and it's such an arbitrary rule!"

"But you knew you were going to get in trouble."

"But I didn't hurt anyone!" Rachel insisted. "Everyone was having a great time!"

"Except me!" Zoe snapped at her. "Listening to those guys trying to convince you to jump? You think that was fun?"

Rachel sobered, the smile falling from her face. "Oh," she said. "I'm so sorry."

It felt strange to be in her final year at London College. It felt strange to have survived. No Gloria, no Silva, no Belle, and only traces of Juliet. It felt strange... even stranger because it seemed that some people were starting to forget. There were two girls in Zoe's chemistry class that talked to her like she wasn't plotting their deaths; there was a boy who kept complimenting her work in Art and Design. Some days Zoe felt like she might be living a life almost encroaching on normal. The anniversary of the shooting passed once again - it had been four years - and life carried on.

But Zoe still kept her eyes wide open for any signs of trouble, because life was not normal. She kept a journal at home of all her classmates and any worrying behaviour they exhibited. She meticulously wrote down every dream and every vision.

And yeah, Rachel worried her too but she couldn't pinpoint anything in particular. 'Has a wild rule-breaking streak' wasn't exactly cause to break out the tranquilisers, after all. Not till she started making children drink bleach (actually, preferably before that...). Maybe it was the number of times she answered something with "I don't actually remember" or maybe it was all the stories of her home life that seemed infuriatingly contradictory that Zoe didn't quiet trust. Some days Rachel would come to school ranting about how much of a tyrant her father was but then she'd meet him in the car park after school and he'd get out of the car to greet her and call her "princess" and she'd run into a hug with him looking happier to see him than Zoe had ever seen.

Zoe didn't understand. When she was mad at Liz or Emma she'd stay mad for days. If she went to school angry she'd come home angry and she'd stay angry until she'd worked out her feelings with them. Zoe didn't change her mind about how she felt without reason. You didn't go to school furious and then go home ecstatic. It didn't make sense.

She'd asked Rachel at lunch the next day, what had happened to turn him from tyrant back to doting father. "I don't know," Rachel shrugged, bending to lace her running shoes. "He's my dad I guess. He just wants what's best."

"Does he?" Zoe was sceptical.

"You haven't met him," Rachel said, which set in concrete Zoe's need to do just that. Maybe it was Rachel's father Zoe should be worried about.

"No, not yet," Zoe said, stretching her hamstrings.

The next day she invited Rachel over for dinner. Maybe introducing Rachel to her family would get Rachel to open up about her own. Maybe (Zoe hoped) there was a mundane explanation for her behaviour. Maybe she was just on medication because of chemical imbalances or because her brothers died. Zoe really did hope. She didn't like being suspicious of her new friend all the time. (Although how rubbish did she feel that she hoped Rachel was mentally ill? It was better than evil, she told herself. She didn't think Rachel was evil. But she was something.)

But how could Zoe not be suspicious? She didn't exactly have a great track record (apart from her literal track record, where she had one of the fastest times in the school.)

They walked out of school together, rugged up against the mid-January cold to wait for Zoe's ride. "Just don't climb any walls, huh?" Zoe poked Rachel in the side.

Rachel swatted her away. "That was one time."

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Liz pulled up in Peter's Aston-Martin which she used more than he did these days. She smiled and waved at Zoe and her blond friend and then unlocked the doors so the girls could climb in. "Hello," she greeted them, happily enough. This new friend did worry Liz, but mostly because she honestly wanted Zoe to be happy. Zoe had lost enough for many lifetimes; too much for one.

"Hi," Zoe said to Liz through the car window. She was happy it was Liz, Liz was predictable. Not quite like Hope. Zoe wasn't quite sure she wanted to be alone in a car with Rachel and Hope.

She debated for a moment where she should sit. In the back so she could sit with Rachel? In the front so Liz wouldn't make any smart comments about being a taxi driver? But she only had to debate for a moment before Rachel swung herself into the front seat next to Liz with a "Wow this car is a movie star car!"

Alrighty then, thought Zoe, chucking her bag into the back seat. "This is Liz," she said, sticking her head through the cap in the seats. "Liz, this is Miss Elaine Eos."

Liz only hesitated for a second when the blonde plopped herself into the front seat. Her confusion was masked with a smile as she started the car up again. "It's my brother's car," Liz explained with a laugh. "I may have taken it from him, but it's for his own good. And it's very nice to meet you. How was your day, girls?"

Rachel had sat down and buckled herself before properly disengaging from her bag. One of the straps was twisted around her shoulder and it hurt but it was the shoulder away from Liz and if she held her bag on her lap she could disguise it. But the car of the seat was so comfortable! Her stepmother had a fancy car that was technically her father's car now too, but none of her stepmother's money really felt like hers. "Oh! Is your brother Zoe's alcoholic uncle?" Rachel asked, pleased with herself for remembering facts about Zoe. "Is that why you confiscated his car?"

In the back seat, Zoe winced.

If Liz had been anyone else she may have been horrified by that question, but instead she chuckled. "That's the one! Though mostly I confiscated it because he shouldn't be driving for other more epileptic reasons."

"Oh, I knew a kid with epileptic fits once," Rachel said, frowning a little and she worked out the memory. "Yeah, you don't want those people driving."

"Hey," Zoe said. "I'm one of those people." She hadn't told Rachel about her fits, yet, but now seemed a good a time as any. She was so annoyed about the fact it meant she couldn't drive. She really want to learn, and had memorised most of the road code already.

"What?" said Rachel, whipping her head round in the car to look at Zoe. "Didn't you say you weren't on meds though?"

"I did and I'm not," Zoe said. "It's my decision."

Rachel frowned. "Well that's a stupid decision."

"Well you have a stupid face," Zoe countered.

"My face is great," Rachel said. "Liz don't you think my face is great?"

There was a hell of a lot of teenage girl in the car with her and as Liz drove, she found herself glad she didn't have as many children as Peter did.

"I think your face is great and I think whether or not Zoe is on medication is her choice," she said diplomatically.

"Wow," said Rachel, looking at Liz. "You're really nice."

"I told you so," said Zoe, oddly pleased, like she won something for having a cool mum.

That made Liz grin as they headed towards the Kemp family manor which was about a twenty minute drive from London College.

"I am also excellent at darts," she informed Rachel, just because.

"She is," Zoe agreed. "She has excellent aim. It's actually scary. My theory is she developed it by throwing hairbrushes at Peter when she was little."

Rachel looked at Zoe carefully, trying to work out if she was bullshitting or not. Zoe kept an infuriatingly straight face. Rachel turned back to Liz (because twisting in her seat was making her stupid bag strap dig into her arm and it was far too late to fix it now.) "Do you just have one brother?" she asked.

Liz kept a straight face too, but there was a smirk somewhere in her eyes, which showed it could have been truth.

"Just the one," Liz acknowledged. "Well, no- Just the one I grew up with." God, how did she explain her family to this girl? And would Zoe murder her for doing so? "I have two other brothers, Jeremy and Ben, younger and older respectively."

"Cool," Rachel sat back in her seat, her head turned to Liz. "You really met grown up brothers when you were grown up?"

"Their Dad's a man-whore," Zoe explained, still deadpan. "Littering London with nerdy men." Oops, 'littering' had probably been the wrong word. She hadn't meant to imply that Peter and Jeremy and Ben were rubbish. Zoe bit her lips together, hoping Liz might let it slide. It was Klaus Zoe had the problem with, not her uncles.

Liz laughed out loud when Zoe described Klaus perfectly. "A man-whore and a total jerk. Glad he's dead!" she said in a slightly sing-song voice. "And they are pretty nerdy, but I'll keep them." Even Jeremy.

Rachel's eyes widened when Liz said she was glad her father was dead. Was she serious? She looked back at Zoe, who shrugged in a grim kind of fashion. Did that mean she was serious? Rachel didn't know what to do so she thought it was probably best if she copied Liz's attitude. "My mum's a dead jerk too!"

"Terrible parents can get bent," Liz summed up as the pulled into the driveway at the manor. "Though he did leave me this bitchin' house."

Rachel's mouth dropped right open. "Zoe!" she yelled at Zoe without turning around. "Look at your HOUSE!"

"Oh my god it's huge!" Zoe slapped her hands to either side of her face. "Liz did you install an extra wing while I was at school again?"

Rachel got the distinct impression she was being mocked. However, arrived at the house did mean she could undo her seat belt and free herself from her twisted bag strap. Thank god.

Zoe fell into step with Rachel as they made their way up to the house. "I didn't know your mum was dead too," she said quietly.

Rachel shrugged, looking at the grass on the side of the path. it was meticulously cut. "She kind of deserved it," she said.

Zoe made a mental note to add thinks her mother deserved to die onto Rachel's file. But Liz felt the same way about her father, so did that mean it wasn't necessarily bad?

Liz continued to chuckle at the antics of the girls as they climbed out of the car and headed towards the house. "Well make yourself at home. Emma is making dinner tonight, so I hope you're brave," Liz said with a slightly amused expression.

From inside the kitchen, Emma called out, "I heard that, you virago!"

"So long as it's not that weird mince and sultana thing!" Zoe yelled into the kitchen by way of greeting.

"Holy holy," Rachel said, craning her neck to look up at the ceiling, which was incredible. Incredible and tall and glassy and she felt so dizzy she stepped backwards into Zoe. Zoe reached out and grabbed her arms to support her, and Rachel had a sudden and surprising feeling that she didn't want Zoe to let go. She leaned into her a little. "And I thought my step mother was rich."

Emma just tsk-ed and kept cooking, and that made Liz hope that wasn't a sign it was the mince and sultana thing.

Rachel was reacting to the house and Liz was well used to people making eyes at her ceiling. "My parents liked to show off and I'd sell it because it's far too large for us, but I can't. Too many memories."

Hope, who had been changing out of her work clothes, leaned over the railing and grinned down at the two girls. She was now clad in a track suit that was far too pink for most nineteen-year-olds. "Hello!" she called out cheerfully.

As the other teenage girl appeared on the landing Rachel stepped quickly forward away from Zoe. She didn't know anything about Hope apart from the fact that Zoe sometimes spoke about her with exasperation. Mostly they didn't talk about families. But she worried that Hope was going to be just like her own step sister, Indigo-Hope, who would give her hell for any suspicion that Rachel might be into girls. Indigo thought Rachel was weird enough.

Rachel smiled thinly and nervously at Hope and didn't say anything to greet her, instead she turned to Liz. "I can't imagine living in the house I grew up in, it must be so weird!"

Hope didn't even notice and she bounced down the stairs to give Zoe an hugely affectionate hug as she usually did.

"Sometimes it's strange," Liz admitted to Rachel, "but I've tried to make it a much nicer place than it used to be."

Zoe gave Hope the world's most world weary sigh as she hugged her, patting her patronisingly on the back. She didn't mind Hope's over enthusiastic hugs, not unless she was in a really bad mood, but she wasn't about to pump up her own enthusiasm to Hope levels. Zoe wasn't even sure she could. She'd probably burst something.

"Wow! What did it used to be?" Rachel looked up toward the ceiling again, doing a slow circle to try and pick up on what this place might have looked like when it was not nice. "Did you do one of those home design shows those things are amazing?"

"More the atmosphere than anything else," Liz admitted. "And I brightened everything up a bit. My late husband's brother was an interior designer and he came in and gave it a spruce up. When the house belonged to my father everything was much more dark and moody."

Hope looked back and forth between Rachel and Liz, blinking as the spoke about interior design. "You should put a pool in!"

"They're too much trouble," Liz said, waving her hands about. "And we already have the jacuzzi."

"You have a JACUZZI?" Rachel exclaimed. "In your HOUSE? ZOE!" She yelled at Zoe, as if Zoe not telling her this vital piece of information was a vital betrayal of trust.

"Oh, you all go wild over the jacuzzi, but no one gives a shit about the dart board," Zoe said.

Liz laughed and she went to go settle on one of the sofas to wait until dinner was ready. "I care a great deal about the dart board, though I think the pool might be missing some balls."

That made Hope double over with laughter. "BALLS!" she squealed happily.

Zoe snorted with laughter at Hope, and patted her mental sister on the back as she bent over. "Maybe I should have warned you about Hope," she said to Rachel. "But there aren't really words to warn people about Hope. So I didn't."

Hope looked well pleased about being non-descript when she finally stopped laughing. She straightened up, smiling with pride. "I should come with a warning label!"

"You all should come with a warning label," Emma said, stepping into the lounge room as she wiped her hands on a tea towel.

"Hmph, warning label," Zoe said, perching on the arm of the sofa near Liz. "I like to think my reputation precedes me."

"Well everyone at school knows who you are," Rachel pointed out, without considering the fact that Zoe was not okay with this. Zoe raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, I'm friends with the mental girl who spent a whole lunch period on the roof of the gym."

Liz took that in stride as Emma sat down beside her and leaned against her shoulder. Wrapping her arms around her wife, Liz said, "I had a reputation in high school too, and look how fabulous I am!"

Rachel took a seat on the fancy rug on the floor, near Zoe's feet and facing the hugging lesbians on the couch. "What did you do?" she asked, genuinely interested. She'd never met an adult like Liz before, an adult that acknowledged that sometimes horrible people died and that was a relief to the living, an adult that properly seemed to enjoy her children, and for that matter, enjoy herself. It was enthralling.

Liz planted a kiss on Emma's head as the other woman turned to look at her, amused. "Well my father was this uptight German man, you know...really pushing the stereotype there. And he wanted all of us kids to grow up and be lawyers like he was. So I took it upon myself to take absolutely any class that was in no way related to law. It led me to art, which I still love.

"And of course I did other things too; smoking and sleeping around," she said easily. "It was all to get a reaction out of someone, which is not the best reason to do any of those things, but it was my only solace at the time."

"You're such an excellent role model," Zoe sighed. "How am I supposed to rebel against these two?" She asked Rachel, jabbing her thumb in her lesbians direction. "By being a straight, smoke-free virgin? Jesus."

Liz just sort of shrugged and grinned while Emma snickered. "Not rebelling just seems easier," Emma winked.

"Seriously," Hope added, "not much shocks them."

"Ugh," Zoe threw her hands in the air. "See? I can't even not rebel because it's exactly what they want? I tell you," she said, leaning back into the luxurious arm of the couch, her nose full of Liz's perfume and the full meal cooking in the kitchen, her eyes taking in the great sweep of the ceiling above her. "It's so fucking hard being their daughter."

Rachel laughed at Zoe's over the top sarcasm. She was sitting with her legs crossed, her hands clutching her ankles, leaning toward Liz. "What does shock you, then?"

Liz gave Zoe a fondly affectionate look and she reached out to touch her daughter's shoulder for just a second.

Liz considered that, and how to answer it. "The terrible things peole do to other people, I suppose," she finally decided on. "But best not to dwell on that."

"Oh," Rachel said, as Liz had to go and bring reality into the whole thing. "Yeah... like your father?" she asked, thinking like my mother.

Zoe straightened up again, looking down at Rachel on the floor. Rachel's eyes flickered to her for a moment, and Zoe gave her a supportive grimace, not really a smile but an acknowledgement that people sucked. Then Rachel went back to watching Liz.

"Exactly," Liz said with a nod. "Like him and several other people not worth our time or attention."

Liz wondered if Rachel was going to continue to ask her questions the entire night, not that she minded at all. "What do you like to do, Rachel?"

"Not much," Rachel shrugged. "I run a bunch. Getting faster than Zoe is pretty cool."

"Hey!" Zoe was outraged. "There is no way you are faster than me. I beat you almost every time."

"Yeah and almost used to be always," Rachel smiled sweetly up at Zoe. "Face it, I'm going to start overtaking you every time, one of these days."

Zoe snorted in derision, her arms folded.

"I'm a better dancer too," Rachel smiled at Liz.

Liz glanced at Zoe, her eyebrows raised. "Does Zoe want to be a dancer?" she asked, wondering if that information was relevant. "I love running though Zoe is better than I will ever be."

"Zoe only dances victory dances," Zoe said, her arms still folded. "Like when Zoe gets a hundred percent on a chemistry quiz because Zoe was the only one who knew how to reverse every single reaction."

"Zoe thinks she's so clever," said Rachel.

Zoe smiled. "Zoe knows it."

Liz laughed and then added, "Liz knows it too!"

Emma grinned and stood up to go check on the roast, but not before kissing Liz goodbye.

"PDA!" Hope shouted, but she was clearly smiling about it.

God but Hope was loud! Rachel was starting to decide that this Hope was not like her Indigo-Hope. This Hope had no restraint. Indigo was all restraint. This Hope was also clearly not going to make fun of anyone for touching other girls even accidentally. "What's PDA mean?" she asked.

"Public display of affection," Hope said, clearly thrilled she actually got to explain something to someone for once. Usually it was someone else filling her in on what she had missed. "These two do it all the time."

"Ah, guilty," Liz said with a grin.

"Oh, there's a name for it!" Rachel was pleasantly surprised. "PDA, pad, no..." she aborted her attempt to make the acronym into a word, realising a moment after she'd said it that she'd got the letters around the wrong way. "Hope what do you do, with your life?" she asked quickly to cover up her mistake.

Hope didn't notice the mix up, and Liz didn't mention it. "I help Uncle Peter in the office of his hospital," she said proudly. She had a real job and made real money.

Liz looped an arm around Hope and gave her a quick kiss on her cheek. "And he sings your praises all the time," she informed Hope.