“He’s ancient history,” says Phil and Dr. Jacobs is frowning.

“Of course he is. What ever is your point, Phillida?” sniffles Dr. Jacobs.

“My point is he’s ancient history and you’re a brand new creation. He’s stone and fossils and you’re freshly upturned dirt, you know?”

Dr. Jacobs does know, far more than her students give her credit for. She is well aware of the gap. The gap! Oh the dreadful gap! How will anything ever work with such a monstrous entity? The gap eats at common things. It’ll take away what you both share, and get bigger and bigger and...

It will swallow you both whole. You can’t survive it. Dreadful thing that it is.

And oh, how Dr. Jacobs knows. She knows that of colleagues and students, it is the students who become most worried about her. She knows that Felix is the one who is concerned primarily, but he is good at spreading worries thin over his fellow classmates and so soon, Phillida is bothered too. Then it spreads to Symphony, and Thad, and even dear Rafe becomes a bit troubled by the private life of the good doctor. So when she is caught sobbing up a storm in her office one day, it is her students who try to smooth things over. Not her colleagues.

“Doc, ye know... He’s reee-leh not worth it,” says Rafe. Felix is nodding rapidly, and Phil is offering Dr. Jacobs a tissue. “He’s just got ya weepin’ all o’er the place an ye know ye can’t handle dehydration. Look, ‘ave some water...” Rafe pauses in his comfort speech and pours the doctor a glass of water from his liquefied fingertips. “An’ look now ye got the hiccoughs!”

It is strange that she should start sipping on water that comes from one of her student’s hands, but it tastes as clean as any filtered water from a sink.

Baby sips. One two three four five -HIC- six -HIC- seven...

“It’s not his fault,” she says finally, once the hiccups die down. “And he doesn’t know. He doesn’t need to know. I don’t need to be a burden.”

“It’s not a bad thing to be.. you know, in love and to like.. you know, want to go with your uhm, love, to a.. dance,” says Felix. “But Sunday, he’s like.. what? A million zillion years old. I don’t think he even knows how to ask a girl out, he’s just hopeless. I mean, you’d think a guy who had time to get all wise or whatever the heck, would master the trickeries of love.. but obviously not. Really, why don’t you like... HEY. WHAT ABOUT MR. JONES?”

HIC HIC HIC

“Felix, Mr. Jones is a dumbass, he’s no good either..”

“Shh, he might hear you!”

HIC!

It’s a silly thing for her to cry over a boy, but when it all comes down to it... Sunday Jacobs is only eighteen years old. It’s time from prom and all the girls in her classes are buzzing with ideas for their perfect dress. They have swarmed her front desk and pointed out pictures of their gowns and pictures of make up ideas and Sunday has had to put up with it all for three weeks now. She’s had to smile bright for three weeks even though she just wants to tear up those stupid pictures.

Sunday wants to go to prom too, not as a chaperone.. but as someone’s date.

Ronan’s date.

And it’s that gap... the gap, that for once troubles her so. After all, why would a man that is thousands of years old really want to go to a silly high school prom with a girl that has only ever been, at her oldest, twenty six years of age, and at the moment, eighteen?

“Aweeee... Sunday... well. If I wasn’t already going with whatsherface from English, I’d so go with you!”

“Thanks -HIC- Felix. That’s a -HIC- nice thought.”