darker_london | What made us think that we were wise (Zoe, Rachel)

Deirdre was an idiot.

It was late. Zoe’s dry eyes were viciously burning hot with the promise of tears and though she was shaking she managed to lace her shoes.

Deirdre was a fucking idiot and Zoe wanted to scream but screaming would alert Liz and Liz must not be alerted.

She didn’t take anything with her, just her phone, and got out of the house as fast but as quietly as she could. She walked on the grass even long after she was out of hearing range of the house and as soon as she’d passed the gate she broke into a run.

Not a sprint straight away, no, a careful run, starting off slow and building up, concentrating on her movements, her breathing, where each foot fell on the pavement.

She needed to run. Energy wound up inside her, coiled and dangerous and ready to strike. She didn’t want Liz or Hope or even Emma to get in the way, and she needed to remove herself from her computer before she said anything wrong in front of Danny.

As if she hadn’t already.

Fucking Deirdre.

She was blocks away from home by the time she shook something loose inside her, her body knew these movements well enough that she didn’t need to think about them, so her mind started to go over and over the things she’d said, felt… the worse things she’d wanted to say.

She was supposed to be Danny’s guardian and Deirdre had ripped off Zoe’s cool, calm, nothing-can-shake me mask and now Danny thought she was talking about him behind his back, now Danny thought he had caused this fight, now Danny was feeling guilty and even more exhausted than he was before and she should have been strong and supportive but she wasn’t. She was fucking weak and angry and felt poisonous, proper poisonous inside and surely now Danny could see it. Something shook loose inside her; Zoe grabbed onto a lamp post as she started to unravel, wrapped her arms around it and held on as emotion swept through her. Guilt and worry and terror and anger, resentment, regret. Blinding, panicked fear. She wanted to scream but she didn’t, she held it inside. She wanted to cry but also she really, really didn’t – she kept that inside too. Just held onto the lamppost, forehead pressed against the cool concrete, waiting for something.

Zoe reached inside her pocket and pulled out her phone, ignoring the icon that said she had email, she pressed her contacts button, she pressed C, she stared at his name for a minute. Wanting… wanting something she wasn’t sure what but there it was. She pressed Cai’s name and it rang twice before she panicked – WHAT WAS SHE DOING. NO CAI. WHAT A BAD IDEA. STOP STOP STOP – and hung up and stared at her phone like it and her thumb had ganged up and betrayed her.

Come and get me she would have asked and of course he would have said and he would have been concerned but he would try not to let it show. They’d go somewhere quiet and peaceful (he’d known somewhere) and he’d say something calming about life and Zoe would ache, ache because she could never be as sure as he was.

But she didn’t want to be the girl who needed to be rescued from her own emotional breakdown. Zoe hated that girl.

She pocketed her phone again and kept running and when the phone started to ring Cai’s ring a few moments later, Zoe blocked it out, and kept going.

-

She ran south along the route they would have taken to school. It felt better in the dark. It felt better to be moving under her own steam. It definitely felt better to know that when she reached London College she didn’t have to stop.

-

Zoe ran on.

She wished Deirdre hadn’t even been there hadn’t even been involved in the rescue she wished it was just her and Cai and Rachel – goddamit, she should have just told Cai and Rachel.

They should have dealt with it themselves.

They would have found a way to resist that invasive, blood-pumping mind-altering sense of need (Zoe refused to call it desire – that wasn’t fucking desire) that Greg forced her to feel. They would have worked something out. Zoe was certain. She shouldn’t have trusted Deirdre and Peter. They should have done things Zoe’s way.

Should have should have should have – it was agonising.

So she ran on.

-

Four hours seven minutes, her phone said. Four hours seven minutes to get to Rachel’s flat from her house, but that was at a walking pace, at a slow walking pace. Twelve and a half miles if she took no detours. She could do that. People did that. That was not even half a marathon.

She had all night.

-

By the time she got to London College she was screamingly thirsty, and her body made a beeline toward the campus because she knew where the drinking fountains were and her higher brain functions had switched off at least five miles ago. It was 1:47 in the morning and all that mattered was that she kept moving, that she avoided other people, that she keep moving, and water.

She drank deeply; the water felt like an invader, not part of her body. It was shock and relief in one. She poured it over her face and down her back and when she started running again – slower, now, than before – she felt the night wind start stripping her of heat. It did not feel good, but it felt raw and pure. It felt like she was cutting through the night.

-

Her body ached in that all-over but gorgeous way that told her she existed. Every muscle and every bone.

Proof she existed. Proof she was strong. Proof she needed no one else to cross this wild city.

She felt stripped to the bare bones of herself. She should run every night.

-

Rachel’s was not so far away now, but if she took a little detour and went east under Regents Park she could run past Cai’s. This was not a scary thought any more. She’d left fear behind. So she turned east, and let her phone guide her through the unfamiliar streets till she slowed to a walk in front of the pink house on the corner.

Cai’s house was dark. Part of her new fearless self entertained the thought of calling him out, or getting him to let her in. Part of her old guarded self laughed and told her she’d never do it, so it was safe to think.

-

She couldn’t handle standing still for long. She had less than an hour to go.

-

She felt wrecked by the time she got to Rachel’s, across the river and only four more miles from Cai’s. Wrecked, but it felt perfect. She should hurt, she should burn. She should shake. It felt right that she’d run till she was empty.

Zoe walked up and up the flights of stairs toward Rachel’s door, as Rachel was coming down them to find her. Zoe had lost count of how many flights she’d taken up before she saw Rachel’s body silhouetted by the security light behind her.

“What the fuck, Zoe?” Rachel said, breathy. Her hair was a tangle around her head, and she looked grouchy.

Zoe smiled at her widely.

“Are you losing your mind?” Rachel whispered, looping her arm around Zoe’s waist, getting her pyjama singlet immediately soaked with sweat.

Zoe laughed and hugged her arms around Rachel, who made a face and a couple of choice comments about a shower. “You’re shaking,” she said.

“Fifteen miles,” breathed Zoe. If her phone was true.

It hadn’t been a small detour to Cai’s at all, but it had felt small, and easy, and necessary. The night had been hers. London had been hers.

“You are going to regret that tomorrow,” Rachel promised. She let her into the flat and Zoe aimed herself toward Rachel’s bed and let her body collapse forward onto it.

Rachel, unsure what was happening or what she was supposed to do, sat down on the end of her bed. Zoe kicked her gently with one of her feet, then said, “ow,” because her feet didn’t even feel like feet any more. Now that the weight was off them, they felt like pure bruises, three times the size of normal feet. Zoe flopped onto her back and threw one leg across Rachel’s lap.

“You can’t even imagine,” she said, her voice barely her own. Much huskier, much drier, much breathier. “How perfectly clear everything is right at this moment.” Zoe felt like she was floating, especially when she closed her eyes and the bed dipped and swayed and her muscles twitched and ached and buzzed. To Rachel, she seemed drunk. This stupid smile plastered across her face.

Rachel had woken about eight minutes ago when her phone rang and Zoe announced she’d run across London and could she come up. Rachel’s head felt like iron wool and her mouth tasted like shit and she smelled sweetly of alcohol and she wanted to lie down and close her eyes and go back to unconsciousness but Zoe was freaking her out. “Are you sure you’re not losing your mind?” she asked again, sort of almost half a like a joke at first, except she was too tired to joke (her head hurt like her brain was pressing against her forehead). “Zoe, you can’t lose your mind, you’re my rock.”

“I am a rock,” Zoe said, her eyes still closed. “I am a rock, I am stuck here. But do you know, it would be so easy to leave. Like I just put my shoes on and I ran from my house. I could do that… keep doing that. Leaving is easy, you just have to go and I could…” Her eyes were closed, so she couldn’t see the frown on Rachel’s face. “I got into Durham University,” she said, because she felt like she could say anything tonight. “I could cut myself loose, escape this all, I could do it.”

She sounded, Rachel thought, full of yearning. This was completely wrong. Zoe didn’t yearn for things. She just got on with it. This was all wrong. Zoe wanted to leave? A small and lonely knot of terror wedged itself in Rachel’s chest. If Zoe wanted something, Zoe would make it happen.

If Zoe wanted to go she’d go.

Rachel waited, motionless, for an invitation. For a come with me, for a lets fucking leave, for a we’ll take Danny and Cai with us, and Wolf, and start somewhere else.

For anything that suggested Zoe wasn’t leaving them all behind.

Nothing. Zoe just lay on her bed, breathing deep, thinking her own thoughts.

Rachel got up abruptly and went to the bathroom. She sat on the lid of the toilet with her face in her hands and felt like everything was beginning to fall apart. Through this summer, since her exile from Imogene’s, she hadn’t cared because Danny was still with her, because Zoe and Cai and Danny were together – and during Danny’s disappearance, Zoe and Cai and Rachel were bound together, so close. They were three people united with one purpose: Danny.

Danny was back and Danny still loved Rachel, but Zoe was stability and strength and if she left, what would become of them?

Why did she want to leave? Weren’t they enough? Didn’t she feel this bond as strongly as they did? Was it so easy for her to break it?

This was a very difficult thing to wake up in the middle of the night from an uncomfortable and drunken sleep to try and process.

When Rachel finally pulled herself together (it was cold in the bathroom and she wanted to lie down) Zoe was writing something on her phone. She lay it aside on the cardboard box Rachel was using as a bedside table and edged over so Rachel had some space on the bed. Rachel climbed back into her warm cocoon of blankets, feeling the heat radiating off Zoe.

“Cai called me,” Rachel said, bitterly. Zoe made a noise that could have been a question. “He said you called him then hung up.”

“Mm,” Zoe said. She had done that. It felt like a very long time ago.

“Hours ago,” said Rachel.

She did not say hours before you called me.

She did not say you called Cai first. You always call Cai first.

She threw her arm over her head and stared out into the dark of her bedroom and Zoe didn’t notice. Zoe had her eyes closed.

It was a few minutes later that Zoe’s phone lit up. Rachel was still watching the opposite wall, just staring, stuck in her own head. Rachel reached for the phone on her bedside box and swiped it open to the web page.

Zoe said: I care about you I think more than I've cared about anyone else in my life and I have known you for less than a year.

Danny said: Thank you for always sticking up for me, Zoe. And for always being there. I'll try my best to get through all of this. If I can't do it for me right now, I'll try to do it for you.

She’s leaving us, Danny Rachel wanted to scream. She’s leaving us.

“Zo,” Rachel said, rolling onto her back, neck turned toward Zoe. Zoe flopped her hand out, finding Rachel’t face and patting it.

“Shhh,” Zoe said, her voice very far away. “Sleeping.”

“Fine,” Rachel muttered, bitter. “Sleep it fucking is.”