Title- In the Numbers
Characters/Pairings- Zoe
Rating- K
Summary- "Sometimes, in her dreams, she sees such strange creatures, and a magical man with an impossible box, and she wonders who he is." Zoe-centric drabble.

A/N- More cough syrup fic! Yaaaayyy... *unenthusiastic-slash-sarcastic fist-pump* This was mainly written because I really miss Zoe. I miss lots of companions, but Zoe's up there on the list.

"Keep on fighting to remember
That nothing is lost in the end."
-Tegan and Sara

When Zoe looks in the mirror, she sees a woman of thirty. She wonders where those years have gone. She is but twenty. Her mind is sharp. She's still light-years ahead of anyone else she knows. Yet she knows that somehow she has lost ground. Her mind goes fuzzy, sometimes, and the numbers streaming behind her eyes slip a little, like a dropped stitch. Human calculator, they call her. Maybe that was true, once, but now her once-perfect mind is fallible.

It is the same old life, day after day, but there is something... just on the edge. Sometimes, in her dreams, she sees such strange creatures, and a magical man with an impossible box, and she wonders who he is. The sound of laughter echoes down to her ears from so far away, and she feels safer and more loved than she can ever remember.

Something is lost, and Zoe thinks, when she wakes in the night with days she doesn't remember spinning in her head, that maybe it isn't the keen edge of her mind. Maybe there is something else that is gone. Something that she used to have.

Zoe knows this, too: the answer is always in the numbers.

A woman with ten years on her face that she can't recall. Twenty minus thirty. Negative ten. But there is no such thing as negative time.

Or... is there...?

And there is that mirage of a magical blue box again, just at the edge, like a name you almost remember. And there is a little man with a flute, and a handsome young man with a shy smile.

And just like that, Zoe Heriot finally remembers.