darker_london | Creeping sense of dread (Zoe, Rachel, Danny)

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Creeping sense of dread (Zoe, Rachel, Danny)

Rachel hadn't been at school for two days and Zoe was dreadfully worried. Yesterday she'd called Rachel's house and Rachel's stepmother said she was just sick. But she wasn't replying to texts and she hadn't been online and maybe she was sick but maybe she was kidnapped and Imogene was lying and Zoe had a huge knot in her stomach as she waited to find out which.

She'd had another bad dream last night, and she'd written down what she could remember but it wasn't much more than creeping sense of dread. This was worse than a vision, because maybe it was a premonition but maybe it was just a dream.

Basically Zoe had arrived at school that morning as an anxious mess. She had only done half her homework, and only then because she'd been using her Critical Thinking essay as a distraction. There was going to be a short test in Chemistry this afternoon too but Zoe thought she could probably wing it and get a decent mark anyway. She was good at Chemistry. And even if she fudged one small test she'd still be alright.

She and Liz had a good run of traffic on the way to school so Zoe had plenty of time to wait around before class began. She lingered in her usual spot near the front gates, where she and Rachel (and lately, Danny and sometimes even Dylan) would meet if any of them were early. There was a little flower garden protected by a short stone wall which was the perfect height for sitting and watching everyone arrive at school.

Relief crashed over her when she saw Rachel walking through the gate, and Zoe jumped up from the wall and ran over. It was obvious something wasn't right though; Rachel looked wrecked. Drained of all energy, dragging her feet. Her hair was dirty and pulled up in a ponytail and she clutched the straps of her backpack like it was a parachute.

"Rach?" Zoe asked, putting herself in Rachel's path so she had to stop and look at her. "What happened? Are you alright?"

Rachel looked up at her, without her usual smile. She breathed in deep and let it out, like she was gathering the energy to talk. "Having a bad week," she said.

"Why? Did your Dad do something? Is you family being awful?"

Rachel shook her head. No, her dad was being very helpful. He'd pulled her out of bed yesterday and guided her downstairs and put a spoon in her hand and watched as she ate breakfast. He'd put clothes in front of her and made her get dressed. He'd put her in the car and taken her to Regent's Park zoo and wasn't even mad when she refused to get out of the car because people in a crowded zoo sounded like the worst place in the world to be. He'd called school and lied and said she was ill. Today he had work, and had left her care with Imogene.

They must have arranged it because Imogene took much the same approach. Pulling her out of bed (she was stronger than she looked) and sitting her in front of breakfast. Getting her into her school uniform, putting her in a car, and driving her to school. Rachel felt like the world's must useless puppet.

"Was it finding out about what happened to Danny?"

Rachel closed her eyes and leaned forward, till her forehead rested on Zoe's shoulder. "Danny," she murmured, so sadly. Zoe wrapped her arms around her and held her, even though this caused a few members of the stream of students walking past to start calling out things like "get a room!" and "gaaay!"

"It's just everything," Rachel said, trudging the few steps back to the flower wall and sitting heavily down. "I just feel like everybody is going to die."

"Oh shit," said Zoe, who knew that feeling in her own way. She looked up as she noticed one of the people in the student stream walking deliberately toward them, but it was just Danny. "Hey Danny," she said, and shot a smile towards him.

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Rachel wanted to tell him he hadn't done anything. He was just being nice! And making her feel important! "N-no," was all she could manage, through her tears though, shaking her head, and grabbing for his sleeve, hoping that it might show him that he wasn't the problem here.

"Should I go get some food?" Zoe wondered out loud. "Yes, I will go get some food. Some chocolatey food."

Danny nodded over at Zoe and then he said, "and maybe some decaf?" he asked, his eyes wide and joking.

Zoe mirrored his wide-eyed look, half joking and half properly alarmed. On her way over to the counter she asked herself what would Liz do? Do that! but she was drawing a blank. Be nice and comforting and not awkward? Zoe wasn't sure how not to be awkward. She felt like anything she did right now would just make Rachel worse. So she ordered too much food, a couple of chocolate caramel slices and a pretty pink belgium slice and a ginger slice and two bits of chocolate mud cake and a piece of carrot cake. And a pot of tea "What kind of tea calms people down?" she asked the lady at the counter. "That. I'll have lots of that."

While Zoe was gone, Danny wrapped both his arms back around her, so she knew he wasn't going anywhere. It was strange, comforting someone else for a change. "I'm sorry I made you cry," he said gently, hoping she would be okay.

Unattractive and snotty, Rachel sniffed deeply. She'd pulled up one of her arms so she could cry into her sleeve, but the other arm was wrapped around Danny's back. "You didn't," she rasped, tears still running too easily from her eyes. "S'my brain, s'just my stupid brain."

"No, hey-" he said softly, "Rachel, your brain isn't stupid. It's the same as mine. We're not stupid okay, we just have to try harder sometimes. And that sucks and some days we just need a break, but we'll be okay."

"So stupid," Rachel muttered bitterly into her sleeve, which was already pretty slimy.

Zoe came back over balancing plates of slices in her hands and on her wrists, setting them down in a clatter on the table. "No one's stupid," she said. "Not unless you let all this go to waste.

Danny looked up at the food, his eyes a little wide. "Oh my goodness, that's incredible," he breathed. Suddenly he wanted to eat everything, but he held back because Rachel still looked upset.

He handed Rachel a napkin and said, "you're really not stupid at all. I think you're brilliant."

Rachel took the napkin and pressed it against her face, soaking up her wet cheeks before she blew her nose. She wasn't hungry, but she thought she'd still be able to eat. She'd had cereal, methodically spooning it into her mouth like a robot. She didn't want her friends to have to force her to do the same, so she picked up the little cake fork herself, and cracked off a corner of Belgium slice. Her free hand was still around Danny's back, clutching the clothes at his back.

Her nose was all blocked up from the crying so she didn't taste much, but she chewed and swallowed. She didn't reply to Danny, because he was being way too nice to her now and she didn't know where to go with that. Her face, already splotchy from crying, went a deeper shade of red though.

Once Rachel ate, Danny dug in himself. Sure, he'd eaten breakfast, but he was a teenage boy and on the days he actually had an appetite he tended to wolf food down like it might disappear. Since he was sharing it, he tried not to take it all. He dug into a caramel slice and grinned after he shoved it into his mouth. "It's really good," he said to Zoe. "Some days I can't really eat anything."

"Mmhmm," Rachel agreed, acknowledging that some days food taste like dirt, food was dry and chocked her, that it sat heavy in her stomach like mercury, slowly poisoning her.

Zoe looked at the caramel slice on her fork, turning it this way and that as she thought about eating. "I've never really had that," she said. "Why don't you eat?" she asked Danny. Rachel was working her way through a second bite, and was reaching for the glass of water on the table to help herself swallow it down.

"Medication," he explained with a shrug. "Sometimes I just feel too sick. Or like- Sometimes when I have nightmares I don't feel like it, but it's usually the meds. I threw up in class the other day. It was pretty gross." He said this as he was eating, as if it didn't bother him at all.

"Mm," Rachel nodded again, she'd been there. "Was on a thing once, started throwing up after everything. I, then Dad thought I was bulemic, because, cos he thought that." She wasn't sure why he'd thought that, since the side effect had probably been written right there on the side of the box (she couldn't remember which one it was specifically that was worse than the others; she tended to forget the long names) but he'd sat her down and had a long talk at her about how she didn't need to be any thinner and she had to stop throwing up.

"Jesus," said Zoe. She'd rather just be miserable, she thought, than have to deal with throwing up. She hated throwing up. Last time she'd thrown up was when she thought she'd had the demon bleeding virus and had been about to die, but that was only because of a mix of sheer panic, over-exertion, and because her bleeding nose had been running down the back of her throat. "I hate throwing up," she added.

"I guess I got used to it," he said as he took another bite of the caramel slice. "It's not fun though." He put down the fork before he stole all the food and leaned his head against Rachel's for a moment. "I wish I could help more."

Rachel just shrugged again. Her shoulders were getting a real workout today. "Don't matter that you can't," she said. "Just..." she said, then frowned, stopping herself from talking as she realised what she was about to say.

"Just what?" Zoe asked. If there was anything Rachel could say that would help Zoe work out what was going on with her, or how to make it better, she needed to know.

"I dunno," Rachel muttered, working away at the corner of the carrot cake till it was just crumbs and mush. "Don't get in a car with me driving, when I'm down, okay? Might drive you all into a river."

Zoe glared at her, setting her jaw. "No you won't."

It worried Danny that she thought that, and he didn't really know what to think about that. "Rachel, you won't do that. We know you won't do that."

"It's in my blood," Rachel said, crushing a crumb into the plate. "I don't want to, right now. But it's there in my blood."

"Rachel," Zoe said firmly, savagely. "Blood doesn't mean shit."

Danny swallowed roughly and he shook his head at that. "It doesn't. I have the same blood as my uncle but I could never be like him. I couldn't do the things he did. We get to choose."

"Yeah, I choose to be depressed," Rachel muttered, glaring at the cake.

"That is not what he meant," Zoe said, snappishly. "You've got things your mother didn't have, clearly. Like angry friends who will stop you."

Danny winced at the comment Rachel made and his gut twisted uncomfortably. "I'm sorry," he said to her. "I didn't mean that. I meant- We can choose what we do with it, you know?"

"Do we?" Rachel asked, looking at him for a genuine answer. "Like, it's an attitude makeover I need?" That was what her stepmother said she needed. And she was trying, she really was. This week had just hit her so badly that it was too hard to try very much.

"Wh-what? No. I don't think you need to change anything. I just think...like they say some people who deal with abuse go on to abuse other people, right? Because it happened to them so they see violence as a way to deal with things. And other people who go through that don't go on to abuse other people because they make a decision not to? Do I make sense? Am-am I fucking up?"

I don't think you need to change anything, that was the first time in Rachel's memory that anyone had said that to her. "Really?" she asked him. "You really think that?"

"What? Yes, really," he said, surprised that she seemed surprised. "I like you the way you are." He rubbed his hand up and down her arm because that's what his mum did when she was reassuring him of things.

Rachel let the fork drop onto the plate, and leaned against Danny again. Zoe's heart broke at how confused she looked - well, not broke, because Zoe made sure her heart was stronger than that, but it was still awful.

"No one is driving anyone into a river," she said, with finality. "You ever feel the need to, you call me."

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Creeping sense of dread (Zoe, Rachel, Danny)

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