Zoe hadn't considered that the apartment she'd left earlier in the day would be different from the one she came home to. She couldn't even find the key that would let her in, or anything else. She tried walking to the building; then she tried getting a cab to take her to the address. She even tried thinking of anything but it and hoped that she'd find it by accident - Zoe'd lived in the City long enough to have multiple ways of getting from point A to point B when the City was feeling difficult.
Nothing.
With a sigh, she decided to try a building she had been in a few times. If she couldn't get to her building, maybe the City would let her get to his building. It felt strange to feel as if Jesse were both gone and not gone; it also felt strange to think of a cat at that time. Jesse had been a dog; she'd been the cat.
There it was. His building. She muttered a few curses at it and the City with it; the words definitely Chinese. The warrior woman ignored anyone who might have thought of barring her from going to the proper floor; no one tried. Perhaps she wanted someone to get in her way.
She walked right to Jesse's door, and rather than knocking, she tried the key. She stepped in to see the most bizarre combination of her place and his. It was...It worked, and it shouldn't have. The way the rooms, that she could see, were arranged fit somehow, and that was frustrating.
That's about when she heard the voice she thought she'd never hear again, which clashed a little with other feelings. He was gone, but he wasn't. He had been gone.
"Your cigarettes are probably wherever my apartment is." She had taken off her shoes by the door and moved quietly through the apartment to stand in the bedroom doorway.
"Gone." She looked down at him, tears forming in her eyes. The word hurt to say sometimes.