Darker London

Zoe couldn't sleep. Rachel was safe in the room upstairs with Danny and Deirdre and Jason were about, being demonic shields. As soon as they'd got home, Rachel and Danny had gone straight back to Danny's room and Rachel had climbed in, piled up with blankets. Zoe had poked her head in on them, a little while later, like her mother would have, and Rachel was either very firmly asleep or very firmly pretending. Either way, safe, wrapped in Danny's arms. But it wasn't enough to relax Zoe. Her head ached and banged, whatever she did.

Deirdre had set up mattresses for her and Cai on the floor of the library at Victoria Lane, and Zoe was lying fully dressed under the quilt staring at the ceiling. Cai looked lost. He wanted nothing more than to wriggle over and hold her.

"They need to find his body," she said to Cai, in the dark "She needs to be sure he's dead. Or alive. She needs that."

( ... )

The scene smelled of spilled petrol and Stephie clutched Marie tighter, gagging not from the smell itself but the sense memory of the Templar splashing Thomas with petrol. She pressed her face against Marie’s hair, and clung. Marie was wailing and clinging too, Stephie could feel her tears hot on her neck in heartbreaking contrast to the icy shock as they were both soaked completely in the rain.

( ... )

Zoe shrieked as she dashed from the front door of Vic Lane to Cai's car, right outside, the rain almost instantly soaking her face. "HURRY UP!" she yelled at the boys. "Stop letting your hearts slow you down, I'm getting soaked!"

"You're mean when you're cold," Cai grinned, moving as fast as he could toward the car and unlocking it so that Zoe and Danny could bundle in. He was delighted that Zoe was in such a good mood, despite the cold. She'd been through the wringer lately and a movie marathon at Danny's new place was probably just what she needed.

( ... )

It was that weird, timeless time between Christmas and New Years, Joss was lying awake beside Hope in her bed listening to the rain thrash against the window above his head. He had slept a little, but really only long enough for Hope to fall asleep as well, and she slept so much deeper than he did.

He got up slowly, carefully trying not to wake her, and went to find somewhere in this house he could read somewhere, out of the way. Living in Razvan's house for so long - longer than he'd lived anywhere else in his life - meant the size and grandeur of the Kemp manor wasn't as intimidating as it might have been. Besides it was hard for a house that contained Hope and Liz to be intimidating, and Emma was perfectly nice.

( ... )

Alex couldn't keep still as she waited for Cai and Danny to arrived at the house, she was a mass of nervous energy centered around an uncertain stomach. Liz and Emma had lent her several suitcases and this morning Alex had gone out and killed the time by buying herself a green trench coat with wonderfully deep pockets.

Aesthetically, the coat made her feel like a spy from the 1940s. The rest of it - the suitcases, the waiting, the company, the thought of screaming at her mother - made her feel wild and feral and cut loose. It felt good, knowing that the anger toward her mother was going to have somewhere to go, but it also felt uncomfortable and unpredictable.

When Cai's car came rolling up the drive, Alex climbed down from where she'd been balancing on the railings around the porch and threw open the side doors to the van. No time to waste! The empty suitcases were already inside, the van just needed people. "Hey!" She said, too nervous to be patient. "Let's go!"

"Hold your horses," Cai said, pulling an empty bag out of his own car and locking the boot. Zoe descended the porch stairs to meet them, empty backpack on her own back. "Alright?" he asked Zoe, since last time he'd seen her in person she'd been pretty much wrecked by her vision and last night talking to her online she hadn't sounded much better.

"Yeah, we're good to go," Zoe told him, making her way over to join Alex at the van.

"Hold my horses," Alex repeated, incredulous, to Danny and Zoe. "What does he think I've been doing all morning?"

"Shopping?" Zoe offered, with a nod to the coat, and Alex good-naturedly flipped her off.

Zoe went to her room early, under the excuse that she was going to sleep because she was exhausted. The exhausted bit was true. She did climb into bed, but fully dressed, music playing on her laptop as she tried to read.

It was too much - she turned the music off, but that only extended her concentration for another couple of sentences. She pulled up a set of her flashcards, and managed half a dozen, but on the seventh her mind gave her an image of cages in the dark, instead. There'd been someone sobbing in the distance of the warehouse, Zoe had never seen their face but couldn't get them out of her head.

( ... )

Zoe sat down on the cushioned window seat in Cai's room, looking around her, over Cai's universe styled quilt and his messy bookshelves and the soft worn rugs on the floor. "I missed your room," she said, feeling sentimental but a bit silly about saying it. Cai flopped down onto the floor at her feet, arms resting on the windowseat as he looked up at her.

'I missed you in my room," Cai said, having no such qualms about feeling silly. Zoe had been pretty adamant that she was coming over to visit instead of the other way around. "How's Alex settling in?"

( ... )

Leaving Paddington at rush hour meant Alex had someone in the seat beside her most of the trip, though it was no comparison to the tube because she'd paid for this seat. The tired looking woman beside her got off at Reading and Alex stretched out a little, finally free to finish her rum and coke in a coke bottle without worrying the woman would report her. The coke said Alex on the bottle because she wasn't immune to stupid marketing, although she'd peeled most of it off by the time the train terminated in Bedwyn station.

She'd only chosen it because she'd never heard of it before, and once she was off the train it was obvious why. Great Bedwyn was one of those places where the word 'village' was a bit of a grasp and 'parish' was much more apt. She started walking, since she had no other plan, looking for something to do (and, probably, eat, since it was past seven thirty and she'd skipped dinner because her mum was freaking poisoning it.) The first street she took wound past little houses that didn't even touch each other and ended up on a street called Farm Lane that trailed off into the darkness, losing streetlights, heading, Alex imagined, for farms.

( ... )

I'm here Cai messaged the others as soon as the signal returned to his phone, running up the escalators from the tube up into Paddington Station itself. The tube had been packed and the escalators were a crush (but, luckily, a crush that let the left half of itself actually move) and there must have been hundreds of people on the platforms. He felt his heart sink a little - there was no way he was going to be able to spot Alex in this crowd, if she was still here.

Still, he pushed his way through, elbows first and apologies after, toward the main ticket office and stopped under the huge hanging departures sign. The next train departed in seven minutes and was going to Hayes and Harlington, in eleven minutes one was going to Cardiff Central, in eighteen, Worcester Foregate.

He pushed toward platform three, Hayes and Harlington, trying to spot her from the other side of the barriers, couldn't, swore loudly, and crushed in behind a man in a suit as he swiped his ticket through the reader. He heard the man protest but was already running across the platform, his chest burning, searching for her. Couldn't see her in any of the windows but there was a lot he couldn't see, there were just too many people.

The crowd thinned out quickly, everyone on this platform had to be on this train in three minutes and everyone was very frantic about it. Cai wondered if he should but couldn't imagine Alex going to Hayes and Harlington, although he was having trouble doing any imagining at all through his panic. He should stop, and think, or - there was a conductor talking to him, now, asking if he was getting on, and Cai's eyes went wide and he very thoughtfully ran away.

He put it down to adrenaline, jumping over the barriers. He'd never done that before but this time there wasn't a rushed man to slip in behind. He felt guilty but also, he wasn't actually stealing train travel, he was heading back to the main platform and the main mass of people and it was against the rules but was it actually against the law?

His phone buzzed but he wove through several more groups of people to get away from platform three and anyone who might be after him before he checked it. Zoe was ten minutes away. Danny should be closer. Cai put his gloved hand against the pole and stretched up onto his toes, trying to see his brother - or Alex - through the crowd.

Cai had messaged Danny, letting him know that he and Zoe were back together and going about things slowly. Danny had jumped up and whooped so loud that Wolf had run to hide and his mother had run into the room to make sure he was okay. Then they had had a conversation about sudden loud noises and Danny felt like he needed to get the hell out of his own house.

He loved his mother, but he was starting to feel a little suffocated by her. She was still so worried about him and honestly he understood why. Greg hadn't just hurt Danny, he had hurt her too. His mother had lost one child, and nearly another, of course she was overprotective. Danny was feeling really great these days, however, and his mother's brand of protective was slightly retraumatising. As if he shouldn't feel better because the world was still shit.

He managed to get away and he tubed over to Cai's to celebrate, though he left before dinner so the family could be together. Then he messaged Zoe and took an Uber to her place where Liz let him in.

"Oh, Danny!" she said, as he gave her a big hug. "Will you stay for dinner?"

"If it's okay with Zoe," he said carefully, looking around for her.

Cai opened his front door, two days after Zoe broke up with him. Bad days. Hard days, trying to understand what to feel, trying not to let bitterness or frustration get too strong because she didn't deserve that, trying not to be self pitying because maybe he didn't deserve it, trying not to be too moody around his sisters because they didn't, trying not to tell Nonnie he was fine because he wasn't and she didn't deserve being lied to. Hard days.

And then there was Zoe, standing on his doorstep. He didn't know if it was foresight or just hope, but he'd known it would be her.

( ... )

Zoe slept through the night, and blinked her eyes open, staring at her wall. Her eyelids felt rough as bark, and it took her a few sleepy moments to work out why she'd been crying.

Oh.

Cai.

Everything else as well, but, Cai. For another moment she tried to convince herself it had been a dream but her body ached like she'd been kicked in the stomach; it was real. Everything was ruined.

( ... )

Zoe had had a difficult day already, but it wasn't any more difficult than any other day had been since she'd realised the funeral they'd seen had been Alex's. She'd spent the morning studying, lunch with Danny and Rachel at uni - that had been fun, or at least, didn't set off any new things to worry about - then a few more hours of studying because even though it was still early in the term Zoe was bracing for a death and if she was going to fail at keeping Alex alive then she'd rather not fail university as well.

Studying felt heartless, when she thought about it like that. But it was something she could do, so she did it, and chemical equations came together on her notes in ways that the rest of her life didn't.

( ... )

Alex went to bed the earliest, though it was far from early. In the living area, on their soft fat couches with the windows facing the beach open to the warm night air, everyone else was sitting around, legs and laughter all entwined. Rachel had come back from her dinner with her parents and things seemed okay but Alex's mood had changed, and she just kept thinking you're all so sick.

How could they laugh, and flirt, and order room service like nothing had happened.

How could Lydia and Dylan forget the sound of people screaming as they tried to escape the theatre.

How could Rachel forget she'd lived with that monster for so long before she snapped.

( ... )

When Cai and Zoe arrived on Danny's doorstep, Zoe was grinning in pure nerves. Sure, they had demon bodyguards was hanging close but in order to relax Zoe would have to have faith that someone like Rosa could keep them 100% safe and since nothing in the world could do that Zoe didn't think relaxation was really on the cards.

Cards, however, were on the cards. Cai had packed some. "Gonna park my butt under the air conditioning unit and play some poker!" Cai was trying to make up for Zoe's nerves by being overenthusiastic about everything and talking about his butt a lot.

Although currently he was poking his head through Wolf's dog door. "Dannyyyy!" he called. "We're heere!"

Zoe looked down at his butt, sticking out of Danny's door, then back down the road to check she could still see the bodyguard car.

Cai called Zoe, later that night when everyone had gone home from the pub. He led with 'How are you?' which was a hell of a question.

She could have been mean about the answer. I had a panic attack in a pub so bad my mother had to come and get me. I have the strongest feeling Alex is going to die but haven't seen anything to help me stop it. My friend's evil stepsister killed my cousin and I know in my bones she's coming back for Alex and maybe Rachel and maybe me. When I got home I cried for longer and harder than I think I ever had in my life. How do you goddamn think I am.

"Is everyone still alive?" she asked, instead.

( ... )

After the service let out, Cai saw Alex break away from her mother while Ellen talked to their priest. His first instinct was to bolt through the elderly and plant himself in front of her, but she looked like a harsh breeze would blow her over, as Dom used to say. She was dressed neat, her skirt just long enough for church but just short enough to let her legs breath in the heat, the crochet lace cardigan long enough she could pull it nervously over her hands but airy enough she wasn’t dying. There was a pinched look on her face and she looked entirely alone. Cai restrained himself to some extent, and sidled over with a casual motion he felt must look altogether false from the outside, because it certainly felt false from the driver’s seat.

She spotted him; Alex was on the lookout for any kind of approaching movement. Cai pushed his hands into his pockets and smiled at her. She had not been at church since Indigo had put her in hospital and it wasn’t like she’d been a faithful every-Sunday attendee before that, but her absence since the massacre had been notable. Her mother’s presence in the congregation radiated even stronger, ever since, and Ellen had made sure that her daughter’s name was mentioned, every service.

( ... )

Cai came over later in the afternoon, arriving a while after Zoe and Liz had returned from dropping Rachel back at home. Zoe was still frustrated, and was reading angrily on the porch swing when he peddled up on his bike, leaning it up against the side of the house. “So I was thinking,” he said as he climbed up the porch steps, as Zoe sat up. “What if I got a motorbike. Think I’d look cool on a motorbike?”

“I think you’d feel like you looked cool,” Zoe said, sceptically.

( ... )

The floor in their house had never been cleaner. True fact: nothing in this house had ever been cleaner, but Rachel’s bare feet were on the floor - well, one bare foot, one bandaged one. All her toes were bare, and hadn’t picked up crumbs or hair or stepped in anything sticky, so it was the floor she was noticing at the moment.

Imogene had also bought a thick rug that lay on the floor between the couch and the television, so when Rachel sat on the couch she could bury her toes in it. She was trying to notice more nice things, like new rugs around her toes, soft and thick. If she began with the rug, she could spread the niceness out further and further, till it breached the walls of the apartment and spread out into the rest of the world.

( ... )

I promise! Now, I gotta stop replying because I'm in the car and about to start driving. See you soon!

Cai put his phone down on the car seat, and hit the eject button so he could put his own CD in. One day, he thought, they were gonna upgrade this car stereo so it would play iPods, and he’d probably kinda mourn that day, because there was something pretty awesome about a grand CD collection. He pulled out the CD and froze, because it was one of Dom's, and the thought that this was the last music he ever listened to in the car stole the breath out of his lungs.

( ... )