#I'm just a particularly aggressive hanger-on

[mangled-by-disuse]

so funny story I offered to go to Oxford with the dance team I'm notionally part of (but not at ALL good enough to perform with so I'm strictly practice only) because I am 31 and have been driving for over a decade so I made a good extra driver for the 8-hour-each-way trip

EXCEPT

on the way down yesterday I took over driving for maybe 20 minutes at the outside and then got told to stop because big man doesn't like how I drive I guess?

(to be clear, I did not break any laws or do anything that would get me even a minor on a text, I'm just a slightly more aggressive driver than he's comfortable with and also I've never actually driven an automatic before so I was a bit uncertain about a couple of things?)

anyway about an hour ago we confirmed that I am also not driving on the way up and I'm just sitting in the back of a full people carrier in fucking floods of tears because I DID NOT PERFORM I DID NOT GO TO THE SOCIAL THINGS I AM LITERALLY ONLY HERE TO DRIVE AND YOU WON'T LET ME DRIVE

it has been a fucking pig of a week I was exhausted before this and THERE WERE OTHER THINGS I SKIPPED FOR THIS FUCKING WEEKEND. THINGS I COULD ACTUALLY HAVE MEANINGFULLY CONTRIBUTED TO. THINGS THAT DON'T MAKE ME FEEL LIKE A SMEAR ON SOMEONE'S SHOE.

but also I'm stuck in this fucking car for the next four hours and there's nothing to be done to help the situation at this point so I'm trying very hard not to Make A Fuss bc like the only thing worse than being stuck in this car until midnight is that, but people are Trying To Help. trying to help is, after all, what got me in this mess.

[picnokinesis]

Psst! Wanna talk about the future dust mass grave incident?

YES ok so because of the nature of this one (which I'm not gonna describe in graphic detail but, well, it involves a mass grave during a zombie pandemic) and because it takes a few paragraphs to explain the context, I'm gonna put it all under the cut for everyone's sake

Essentially it goes like this: it's been about....two months or so since Theo last saw Yaz, after they had that terrible argument and went separate ways. She ends up a what looks like a reasonably stable survivor community that's set up in the remains of an old military base and/or airplane hanger - it's nowhere near as big as the community in the Liverpool hospital that we see in the fic, but that is actually an abnormally large community. This one that Theo stumbles across is actually a fairly average size, maybe larger than average.

Of course, Theo's main objectives are 1) find a cure for Gallex and 2) survive long enough to complete objective 1 - which then leads itself to several subset objectives such as better understanding Gallex, not getting killed by random people etc. etc. you get the picture. I'm not sure precisely what happens when she first finds this community in the base, but she ends up staying with them for at least a little while - I think there may actually be a character there who's a medical scientist, possibly? Which is why Theo is particularly invested in staying, because that person has been trying to collect data on things she's observed in Gallex patients, and maybe Theo is trying to figure out whether new variants are developing or something, or trying to figure out if there's anything that can be done to alleviate symptoms?? IDK. SOMETHING. Stuff happens. Theo stays for a few days.

But. I think that the scientist/people running the camp....maybe they think they've found something that supresses the symptoms or maybe they think it alleviates them completely (but in actuality it just delays them), but Theo is pretty certain that it's Not going to work based on what she knows about Gallex, but she can't EXPLAIN how she's so much of a Gallex expert without explaining who she really is, that she MADE Gallex. And so I think she's trying to stop them from testing it on someone who comes to the base who has very clearly been bitten, and when it 'works' everyone is like YAY LOOK IT WORKED and theo is just sitting there like hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh because she is. not convinced. BUT LIKE?? If it DOES work then this will be INCREDIBLE, and so she has to stay and at least see if it does actually have a lasting effect? I'm making some of this up on the fly but I wonder if she actually tells the scientist that she knows that she's immune and that therefore they should move the person who's been given the treatment to somewhere isolated, and SHE can keep an eye on him because she's the only one who won't actually be in danger. I think the scientist's reaction is...bad, maybe? I don't think she believes that Theo is immune and I don't really know what else she thinks, maybe that Theo will try and kill the guy outright out of fear of the virus (or maybe that, if the cure DOES work, Theo will try and take credit for it?? But like sksksk the world is a MESS babe). WHATEVER. The point is that the scientist is overconfident that her treatment will work and just keeps the guy....in an 'isolation' corner in the main medical area. But like it's fine! They're keeping an eye on him, and if anything goes wrong they'll deal with it and it won't spread to anyone else! Like they've dealt with the infected for over a year now so this will be fiiiiine. One guy? Totally manageable. Theo is just sitting in the corner with her head in her hands because she just KNOWS where this is going but she can't bring herself to leave these people. And no-one will listen to her.

Anyway. Obviously, treatment doesn't work - actually I wonder if the treatment made the virus more aggressive, or cause more aggressive behaviour in the infected person?? A bit like the worst of the cases in the initial explosion in Gallifrey Labs, because the people infected there got a higher than average dose of the virus. Point is - things go wrong VERY QUICKLY and manage to catch them by surprise. Probably it happens at night. But - it causes a mass panic as people realise what's happening, a lot of people running and trying to evac (I actually think they maybe had a secondary emergency camp just in case they got raided or something?) and, long story short, a lot of people get bitten in a short space of time, before the infected person manages to get taken down. And, in the process of all of that, Theo somehow manages to get concussed and knocked out (and, also, quite possibly got bitten?).

Whatever happens - Theo is out for the count, and the survivors of the whole mess (which does not include the scientist - she died, without telling anyone what Theo said about her being immune) decide that they need to quickly deal with the bodies because leaving infected bodies all over the place is just not something they can afford to do - and so, thus, mass grave. I think that they probably had some kind of decent depth ditch anyway for waste, possibly? And then once the bodies are dealt with, the survivors move to the emergency camp. Theo gets thrown in because she looks just the same as anyone else who got bitten, especially in the dark. Of course, this is the apocalypse, so they're short on resources so they take anything like boots/jackets/bags (ESPECIALLY bags) from the infected bodies that they can manage to carry.

Theo comes too after they're gone - and like, I don't need to explain how horrible it is to wake up amongst a pile of infected people that are still alive but definitely not human anymore. You've all read her flashbacks in the main fic. But, it's Theo, she's stubborn as hell, even when she's living through what's arguably the most traumatising experience of her entire life and also super concussed, and so she manages to clamber out of that ditch and get away. Naturally, she's absolutely out of her head, and mostly just focuses on getting the HELL out of there, but once she's out of immediate danger she actually quickly realises that she's missing her JACKET, her BOOTS, and HER BACKPACK, which she is NOT happy about. And so, she heads in the direction of the emergency camp because dammit she wants her stuff back. So you can just. Imagine her. Arriving at this camp, concussed and terrified and A Bit Peeved and also covered in a lot of blood, not all of it hers, and trying to like. Convince all these people who were pretty sure she was infected that she's not, actually. She does have some chance in that she's not showing any signs of haemorrhaging, which after a few hours is pretty much guaranteed. So they do eventually realise - however, Theo has not yet realise that her touch aversion has now been dialled up to 100, and so when someone actually tries to give her a hand (because, uh, she's a mess and shaking and still has genuine injuries) and help her over to somewhere safer, she just completely loses it. I'm not sure precisely what happens afterwards - but I expect that, as soon as she's able (and has all her stuff back) she heads out on her own, and starts isolating herself even more than she already had been.