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It had been a while, and Tate had been kind of… well, kind of caught up in catching up, if you knew what she meant. Her uncle had taken care of the apartment, presumably, shutting off the utilities because there'd been no one there, but rent had been paid, and you know, it worked out. She didn't have to move back home after her months-long coma, which was a huge relief. There was no way she was going to put herself through the ordeal of Mariska pretending she cared and Iuri kind of just staring at her like she had come back from the grave. Which, you know, she had, but all the same it would have been seriously annoying to be treated like the Second Coming when all she really was totaled up to an eighteen-year-old girl who was really ******** pissed about losing the graphic design internship she'd worked so hard to get.

She'd had to clean up a lot. The carpets had been liberally coated with dust, the walls she remembered painting with Parker, Dani and Ladon just as bad. Because she wanted to be there if--when, not if--Parker came back, she had wiped down the walls, vacuumed carpets and dusted furniture and countertops. The fridge had been defrosted, which bothered her for some stupid reason, so she started that up again. Bought coffee--the crappy fair-trade s**t, because Parker would eventually be back, wouldn't he, and he would want it. Folgers wasn't good enough for him, or something--whatever. Picked up a new job at a tiny, stupid print shop setting lead type, and then finally, nervously, ventured into Parker's room to wash his things. Just in case, you know? (It was empty, like he'd just gone to work or something, and Tate wasn't really so tough as she'd pretended, because she'd cried while shoving his comforter into a washer at the laundromat, stupid stubborn tears that wouldn't quite stop coming.)

And when that was done, she'd gotten Aristotle back. Uncle Ivan had looked after Parker's cat, and she had to admit that the stupid little fuzzball had been kind of a comfort while she sat in her living room and pretended to play video games, or when she was cooking or doing whatever she could to fill time. She almost wished she'd decided to go to Sovereign, except not really, she liked her new job and she liked being off on her own, she just didn't like being alone.

So she'd been patting a purring fluffball of kitten as she answered an email on the couch when she heard someone come up the fire escape--no big deal, because everyone forgot their keys sometime. The window in Parker's room was unlocked, but no one had come through it in ages, so she wasn't particularly worried. It was when something went thump in the room next door that she looked up, setting aside the computer to investigate. The door opened before she got to it, and her dark eyes widened a little bit.

"I've got to admit, the beard threw me," she said, cradling Aristotle. "Was not expecting that. Where the ******** have you been, you stupid a*****e, I haven't-- you were gone."

The idea of Parker trying to be manly was hilarious to her, or it would have been if he hadn't reappeared for the first time in who knows how long. She'd been worried, damnit, and what right had he to just pop out of nowhere and--well, she'd wanted him back, anyway. She rubbed her own chin, still staring at the beard. Wouldn't it itch? She would think it would itch. Parker looked like a vagrant, did he have fleas or something? "You seriously need to shave, no one's gonna know who you are," she said, and then she yelped when Aristotle wormed his way free with claws flailing everywhere. "You little monster!"

Cat abandoned--by the cat's choice, the little b***h--she stomped off around the counter that served as barrier between kitchen and living space, started a pot of coffee before falling into her habitual seat. "You got mail," she said, gesturing to it, her back to him; "And I washed all your stuff, you know, it was mad dusty. The whole house was. Ugh, it was disgusting. I felt like I should have glued a surgical mask to my face, you know, so I would stop sneezing all the time. Some of it looks really official, you should check it out when you have time. My uncle kept track of it for us."

It didn't occur to her that he'd never known she'd been trapped in that weird dreamworld. That it might sound a little odd that her parental figure was the one keeping track of their possessions while he was gone. Instead, she just pulled mugs down from the cabinets and washed them out, humming the theme from Silent Hill the entire time.

She was mostly just busying herself with mugs and coffee, which was mindless work but familiar; Teavana might work with tea but the concepts were the same. The only thing she refused to do anymore was prepare other people's drinks for them; Parker got his coffee poured into the mug that had traditionally been 'his' and then passed, and that was it.

(Tate proceeded to turn her coffee into creamer and sugar with coffee flavoring. This was normal, and not to be remarked upon, except at the expense of the remarker's life.)

"Yeah, um. 'Bout that." She took a sip of the creamy-tan coffee, black eyes directed off towards a corner of the ceiling. Her arms were crossed just under her chest, elbow resting heavily on her wrist. "I really couldn't have kicked you out? And Aristotle didn't, er, have me. Not until like, three weeks ago." One dark eyebrow arched, a corner of her mouth tugging towards a wry grin, and she uncrossed her arms to impatiently hook auburn hair behind one ear. She didn't remember Parker leaving, just that her uncle had told him she couldn't find him, so he must have left after that weird coma. Had he just forgotten or something? Maybe he hadn't known, which would explain how he seemed to be under the delusion she'd been around.

Best to just ask. "I was kind of in a coma most of the summer, so~... Can't really say I missed too much. I have a new job, though, I set lead type for a printers'. It's kind of labor-intensive but worthwhile. Did you not know?" She took a sip of her coffee; for once, there really wasn't any blame in her voice. "Why'd you leave, anyway?" Tate tilted her head. "I was kind of starting to worry."

(Kind of was kind of an understatement.)

He was really changed, she decided, her dark eyes steady over the coffee. Whatever had made him freak out and run like that, he really was changed. Seemed more solemn, more circumspect, and there was this weird-a** non-Parker vibe that she was getting. It was so frustrating, and she kind of wanted to just... harass him until he spilled whatever it was.

"I kind of figured you didn't," she said, the corners of her eyes dark and eyebrows drawing together into a straight line; she was concerned, that was undeniable. But, in true Tate fashion, she didn't move from her space leaning against the counter. If she crossed it, it'd probably be because her coffee was finished and she was going to punch him in the arm. "Anyway, yeah. Four months of my life, gone. Well, whatever. Wasn't really doing anything with them, anyway, right?"

Her mind wandered to Wolframite in the momentary silence. Had he noticed she was gone?... had he even worried? There wasn't anything she could do to change that, whether he had or hadn't. A poor Ladon's missing eye... "Don't worry about it," was her final conclusion on the topic of sleeping sicknesses and... everything. Lid on, mess neatly tucked away.

She shrugged at the mention of Ivan, tapped her fingers along the side of her mug. It was pretty full still, so the noise wasn't as loud as she might have wanted. Her yelp when she almost dropped her coffee was definitely loud enough. "Dani is dead," she asked, eyes wide. "What... how? When? Parker, I'm sorry." It was one of the most sincere apologies she'd ever made, in her entire life. "I'm really sorry," she said again.

So when you were female, there were certain traits you were supposed to have. You know, like empathy, and loving and caring, and knowing how to deal with crisis, especially in brother-like figures. Tate was pretty sure she'd missed out on every single damn one of those classes or traits or whatever they were supposed to be. Murky dark eyes met his for only a moment--his almost weirdly dead, hers wide and shocked. Then she looked away, and flinched when his mug hit the floor. It was almost too easy to get mad; she'd have to clean that up, and mop up the coffee that spilled across the slightly slanted floor, running across the linoleum towards the western wall.

But that wasn't appropriate and she wrestled it down, set her coffee aside and just--Parker was crying, what was she supposed to do with this? Was there anything she could do? She was really just his friend, they'd only known each other for a year even if they were so close. She inched across the kitchen, hands hovering an inch away from his shoulders uncertainly. "Parker," she said, quietly, "It's... it's... what am I thinking, it's not okay, I'm sorry, Parker, please don't cry, I don't know what to do with tears--"

Hesitantly, she touched his shoulder, her palm against his shoulder blade. "Is... is there something I can do?-- no, that's stupid, I'm sorry."

What was she supposed to do.

Liar, Tate wanted to say, but she didn't; she lifted her hand after a moment, ran it through her hair and then looked down to the floor. What was she supposed to do? She didn't have any kind of experience with this; the closest thing to this she'd ever done was talking to Ladon about death, about how it was all right to kill people who weren't good at heart. She and Dani hadn't been really close, or even gotten along well, but she knew that the blue-haired girl had meant the world to Parker, so she bit her lip and crouched to pick up the shards of his mug, gathering them up into a basket of a palm.

The tink, tink of porcelain shards clinking into the larger pieces grated on Tate's ears as she listened to Parker's harsh breathing. "It's all right," she said, subdued. "I guess I would have understood, if you'd decided not to come back." Eventually she would have figured out that he wasn't returning and she would have hated him--it fueled the fear that she was not enough for anything, that she was just useful in the interim, hearing what she was, but it was so much better than him just vanishing. He had come back, and that had to mean something, didn't it?

She swallowed past the lump in her throat, stood up to throw out the pieces of the mug. "Don't walk in here barefoot until I mop and vacuum," she said, and it felt so stupid, so banal, next to the knowledge that Parker's girlfriend, his other half she'd thought sometimes, was dead. Who cared?

Parker probably didn't. Still, it was something to say to fill the silence. "I dunno," in a small voice. "...I'm really sorry. I didn't know. We don't have to talk about it anymore if you don't want to."

Tate was apparently selectively deaf/mute and probably blind, too, considering the way she was staring at the mug in the trash can; if he wanted to cry some more, she would probably ignore it. "Don't worry about the utilities," she said, her toes curling tight against the meat of her foot. "They were shut off while I was gone, and Uncle Ivan's handling them this month. We can figure out the scale again... tomorrow or something, it's not due for ten days anyway." As long as she didn't look, she didn't have to acknowledge Parker was crying, or had been anyway; she could hear the crackling wetness of tears in his voice anyway, and she didn't want him to start sobbing again, so.

"Yeah, I, uh. I missed you," she mumbled, tilting her head to stare at the opposite wall, one hand bunching up thick brown hair at the back of her head. To his receding back, she said, "I'll knock when dinner's here?"

But he didn't seem to hear, and she eventually returned to her place on the couch. Just a few more emails to answer, anyway. Maybe she'd order pizza.