Nothing's Gone Forever (Only Out Of Place)

Chapter 2

(This chapter is mostly a reworked version of Paizley's Limelight one-shot "Memory", but with some extra details)

Chapter 2 theme songs: Quiet from Matilda the Musical and Escapism from Steven Universe

"So... that's it?"

"That's only the beginning. I didn't mind who called me 'Zeddy' back then. But you said you wanted the whole story and that means everything that happened that made it hard to hear from anybody but my mom. And then how I ended up letting Paizley say it."

"How is there so much history to this?"

"You have no idea. There's a lot to unpack here. Speaking of which, did you know that Paizley's autistic, too? 'Cause that's something to keep in mind."

~ Pulled against the grain, I feel a little pain, that I would rather do without ~

It had been a while since something like this had happened in Zombie Town.

At seven years old, Paizley had taken to choosing her own projects from the collection of items Treaza and Dezmond brought home to fix up. Her bedroom was filled with gadgets and homemade toys and sculptures. Some days, when Zana and Zevon would come round, Zed would sit watching her work as she tried to explain to him what she was doing, but it was all in one ear and out the other. He was only four, he wasn't going to understand it all. Still, he could keep her company and at least pretend to be interested, and maybe hand her tools or something.

After a few minutes of Paizley tinkering while Zed waited, though, she'd set her tools down and grin down at him.

"Aza, Zeddyka." Look, Zeddy.

Then she would press a button, or flip a switch, or move a piece just the slightest bit to the left and his eyes would widen in awe as a light shone or music played or some kind of chain reaction would be set off. He would tell Eliza about it and she'd change the subject. He would tell Bonzo about it and his shoulders would slump in jealousy. Even if he found the process boring, Zed loved seeing the outcome and Paizley loved sharing her passion with her 'cousin'.

It was a day when he wasn't there with her when it happened. The raid.

Busy with repairing some human child's old, forgotten toy, Paizley paid no attention to the knock at the front door and barely even heard the call of "Zombie patrol!". It was the sudden shouting that followed, then the slam of the door against the wall, that alerted her to the trouble. She stopped, only just catching every few words.

"You can't just-" That was her mother.

"What's going on here?" Her father.

He didn't get an answer. Other voices that Paizley didn't recognise drowned out her parents' questions and objections. She looked down at the pieces lined up on her floor, waiting to be put together, and hesitated for a moment, but then she scrambled to her feet and ran to see what was going on. From the top of the staircase, she could see patrol officers moving back and forth, coming in empty-handed and going out again carrying... their treasures...

"Search every corner of every room," someone was saying, though she couldn't even tell where the words were coming from, "Check upstairs. Take anything that looks out of place."

Treaza and Dezmond were trying to argue but of course, the humans weren't listening. Paizley, starting to panic, backed up towards her bedroom as two patrol officers came up the stairs. One of them turned in the other direction while the other was walking right towards her. He pushed her aside but she followed him in. Tears filled her eyes at the sight of him picking up the carefully arranged pieces of the toy still on the floor like they were nothing, like they were just junk.