Chapter Text
Christofer sighed with fond exasperation as he shouldered open the heavy door to the roof and saw Kate, still in the borrowed sweatshirt and jogging bottoms from hospital laundry, sitting stiffly on a bench. Somewhere between Shirley questioning her about what happened last night and Christofer going to make her a cup of tea, she had slipped out from under the doctors’ noses and disappeared seemingly into thin air. A hunt was declared, several nurses panicked that she might injure herself accidentally, but Christofer simply wielded his head-of-security privileges and tracked her keycard swipes to find her location.
Kate had populated the spaces between vents and satellite dishes with trees, flower beds and benches, creating a mish-mash utopia of metal and greenery that had a strangely peaceful feel about it. As Christofer approached her, weaving between flower beds, he cleared his throat to announce his presence.
“Would be nice if you informed us of any sudden departures,” he said teasingly, sitting next to her on the bench.
Kate had a pale pink petal between her finger and thumb. She stared resolutely out over the cityscape. “Commander privileges.”
“I don’t think those apply when you escape from a hospital ward, Kate.”
The early morning sunlight illuminated the scrapes and bruises on her face in horrific technicolour. She turned her face away, untucking the hair from behind her ears so it fell across her cheeks, shielding the damage—and her expression—from view. “I needed some air. Someone attacked me and drugged me last night. Forgive me if I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, Christofer.”
Knives laced her tone. He did not flinch. When Kate was in shock, she went on the defensive, lashing out to deflect from her exposed vulnerabilities.
He nodded at the petal in her hands. “I didn’t realise we had cherry blossoms up here.”
“We don’t,” she said shortly. Then, “...must have floated here on the wind. Stupid thing.”
Her fingers closed over the petal, crushing it. She tossed it over her shoulder. Still not looking at him, she asked, “Did you check my desk drawer? That’s the last place I remember the items being.”
“I checked,” he confirmed. “Nothing. They’ve been labelled as stolen.”
The rigidness seemed to leave Kate’s body in a split-second. She buried her head in her hands, exhaling heavily, fingers tugging at the flyaway strands of hair around her temples, her movements slow and a little uncoordinated due to the painkillers still coursing through her veins. Christofer still could not quite believe she was planning on going back to work after only two days’ rest, but he knew that if she had her way, she would be back in the office within an hour of waking up. Her acceptance of the forty-eight hours was nothing short of a miracle.
“And I can’t remember a single thing about the attack,” she groaned, her voice hitching. “A single thing. I’m walking home, and then I’m waking up in the bloody hospital, and between there, it’s—well, it’s nothing, Christofer. Not even flashes. A big, black void of nothingness.”
His hand hovered above her back, then settled between her shoulder blades. “I will find them, Kate. I promise.”
“As if you haven’t got enough on your plate already. As if we haven’t got enough on our plates already. That’s UNIT life for us, I suppose.”
“I get tired of it, sometimes,” he admitted quietly.
Kate hesitated. She peeped at him from between a crack in her fingers. Then she said, just as softly, “Me too.”
The confession hung in the air, quivering and delicate. Christofer wanted to say more; he sensed, however, that Kate would not be willing to pursue that line of conversation any further. Not at the moment, anyway, with—as she’d pointed out—so much on their plates.
She ran a hand through her hair, grimacing. “I’m going to go back in, apologise for disappearing, and then sign my discharge papers. You can offer me a lift home, given you’re my very kind Colonel and I cannot be trusted behind a wheel with half a pharmacy’s worth of medication in my blood, and then… well, you can stay if you want, but I reckon Shirley will want you back at work.”
“Shirley will want what’s best for you.”
“And do you consider yourself best for me, Colonel?” Kate asked, one eyebrow arching in that familiar dry way of hers.
He smiled, shrugging. “All I’m saying is, if you want me to stay with you, I’ll stay. Shirley will pull strings.”
“That woman pulls so many strings on a daily basis that she practically runs her own puppet show.”
Christofer barked a short, surprised laugh, and Kate offered him a weak grin.
“Suppose I should get back then,” she said. Bracing her palms on the bench, she hauled herself upright, jaw clenching. “The sooner those papers are signed, the sooner I can get home. I can feel a headache coming on, anyway.”
“Headache?” Christofer echoed, his smile fading, but Kate was already moving back towards the door, and all he could do was hurry after her.
*
By the time they arrived back home, Kate was struggling to be in any bright environments at all, and Christofer had half a mind to turn around and take her straight back to the hospital. Yet she reminded him that headaches were common with concussions and that she really did not think it required urgent attention. Christofer countered with the fact that Kate had a very different idea to most people as to what required urgent attention, but one look at her exhausted, bruised face and the way she could barely keep herself upright, and he relented. His only condition, he said as he helped her up the stairs, was that she stayed in bed and tried to get some sleep, which Kate whole-heartedly agreed to.
Once she had changed into pyjamas and settled under the duvet, Christofer went around the apartment to prepare care supplies for her. A big bottle of water, a blister pack of painkillers and a cold compress were first on the list. Then he cut up some fruit—watermelon, strawberries, nectarines and peaches—and arranged them in a bowl for her to snack on when she felt up to it. He added some jammy dodgers too, because Kate would overturn nations in a heartbeat if it meant she could get her hands on those biscuits. Next, when he was sure she was sleeping, he dashed out to the nearby florist and purchased a single white lily to put in a small vase, which he placed on the bedside table, complete with a ribbon and a paper tag with a hand-drawn heart on it. Finally, he found his favourite hoodie (or rather, Kate’s favourite hoodie of his, the ownership was much contested between them) and folded it up, placing it on the end of the bed for when she woke up.
For the rest of the day, Christofer busied himself with working from home, popping into the bedroom periodically to check in on Kate, who was out like a light. Shirley informed him that his cover story was being summoned to a defunct UNIT base along the coastline to survey it and review its old security features; truthfully, he had been planning to travel out there at some point anyway (UNIT needed more coastline bases, now more than ever) but a nearby team had sent through blueprints and photos of it, so Christofer conducted a preliminary remote assessment instead. Once that was complete, he turned to organising the Tower’s security rota for the next two months, which kept him occupied until late afternoon, when his train of thought was interrupted by an incoming call from Shirley.
“We’ve found the identities of the attackers,” she announced without pre-empt, as soon as Christofer picked up. “Three women, two men, all part of a larger syndicate who focus on targeting high-value politicians, leaders, scientists et cetera. The syndicate’s primary goal is to scare, not to kill, hence why they didn’t try to fatally injure Kate.”
“I see,” Christofer said, grip tightening around his pen. “Do we know who hired them?”
“Osgood’s working on that,” Shirley informed him. “They operate out of the dark web and have military-grade security on their servers.”
“So no match for Osgood, then.”
“No, not particularly.”
“You said their goal is to scare.” He frowned, scratching his nose. “Any leads on why they stole the items?”
“To cause unrest?” Shirley suggested. “Undermine UNIT?”
“Well, that sounds painfully familiar. But…”
A chilling thought struck him. “It can’t be Think_Tank, right? I don’t quite understand all the stuff that happened with Desiderium and the Rani, but if Conrad’s personal history was rewritten, then…”
“Think_Tank has never been the only anti-UNIT group, they’ve just been the most prominent. But… if the space-time continuum is throwing a temper tantrum at the moment, then things could be going a little more skew-whiff than we originally thought. By the way, that stays between you and me, as it’s just a theory, and it may well be disproved. Please don’t tell Kate, she’s got enough going on as it is, and quite frankly, we’re all worried sick about her.”
“She did mention that Osgood and Mel have had chats with her.” Christofer lowered his voice, fearful of Kate’s sharp ears.
“I think Mel was planning on cornering you and asking if you’ve noticed anything.”
“Apart from the headaches, the uncharacteristic worrying, and the frequent rabbit holes of going over the events of the War?”
“Yeah, apart from that,” Shirley said dryly. “She’s fixating on the War again?”
“Not as bad as before.” He rubbed his forehead. “But I sometimes catch her doing it, late at night. She’ll say it’s only one or two documents, but even then, given how bad it got before… I’m worried about a relapse, Shirley.”
The words came out before he could stop them. “Those couple of months after the night she was nearly assassinated were terrifying. It was like trying to catch water in a fishnet; she kept slipping away from me faster and faster, and I thought—I genuinely thought—”
A lump rose in his throat. He found his dog tags from under his shirt and clutched them in his fist.
Shirley hummed sympathetically. “You know, Christofer, our social circles have always been pretty separate, but that doesn’t stop you from talking to me, right? Or Mel, or Osgood, or… well, anyone who’s also close to Kate.”
“I know. Thank you, Shirley.”
“Actually, maybe we should invite you to a drinks’ night one night. Would you like that?”
“I would!”
“Or a spa day. We could get our nails done.”
“Um—”
“I can see you with gels, actually. Maybe some glitter.”
“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.”
“You’ll just have to find out then, won’t you?”
*
As evening arose, the sound of stairs creaking beneath footsteps echoed through the apartment. Kate (who had, as predicted, swiped his hoodie) descended, one hand gripping the banister for balance. When she saw Christofer in the living room, she made an unsteady beeline towards him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He responded in kind, his arms circling her only loosely, not wanting to cause her any more pain than she was already in.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “For the tray.”
“Of course, Liebste.” He wound a hand into her hair, his palm fitting the curve of her skull like a glove. “How are you feeling?”
“Shit.”
“Are you sure forty-eight hours off work will be enough?”
“Yes.”
“Kate.”
“I’ll see tomorrow evening, then,” she conceded, nudging his chest with her forehead. “Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, but I’ll make it. Shall we sit outside?”
“OK.”
She wandered out of the terrace doors, sleeves pulled over her hands. Christofer prepared a pot of English breakfast tea, a jug of milk, a small pot of sugar (for him, not for her) and two mugs, then followed her outside.
Steam drifted up into the mauve-blue evening sky as he poured them both tea, the beige liquid catching the last of the evening sun and arcing into the mugs. The swinging bench was just big enough for the both of them, and Christofer used his feet on the ground to rock it back and forth gently, whilst Kate let her head fall onto his shoulder.
Christofer thought about bringing up Germany and visiting his parents, but decided against it. Whilst he considered himself to be a man careful with his words, he had made the occasional blunder in the past by timing a very sensitive conversation very poorly indeed. Kate was weak and in pain and suffering from drug-induced amnesia, and it was clear from the tension lines on her face that she was not up for any conversation at all, let alone the do-you-want-to-meet-my-parents conversation.
He trailed his fingers up and down her bicep, sketching invisible patterns into the hoodie material. A breeze blustered through the plants, rippling flower petals and casting some off their buds altogether. Kate’s terrace garden, like UNIT HQ’s rooftop garden, was a haven of peace, a bubble of greenery within the towering metal and glass and concrete buildings of London’s city centre. The garden had been there for her in the aftermath of the War, and he was fairly sure that if she had not had it, had the flowers and trees and plants to tend to, she would not be here today.
It was strange how blurry his memories of the War and its aftermath were becoming. Perhaps it was a trauma response of sorts, his brain desperate to block out the horror of seeing ninety percent of a species eradicated, the whirlpool of anxiety and dread and guilt that his loved one descended into afterwards. He did not want to forget everything altogether, but maybe… maybe not remembering every tiny detail was for the best.
Kate was still here. He was still here. The world was moving on as always—perhaps not changed for the better immediately, but he hoped to see steps taken towards progress soon—and they had survived one of the most harrowing interspecies conflicts the planet had ever seen.
They had survived, and they were together. That was what mattered to him in the end.