Four months.

Four goddamn unbearable months, forced to hear about things from Babylon rather than getting to see and do them for herself. Forced to sit and endure being attacked and drained like a common civilian, because for the past four months (a third of the year, so much time wasted!) she had been. It could not be endured any more than she had been and now there was this, this--

Tate straightened up, pressing spidery hands to the small of her back and stretching as best she could, her back arching in a painful parabola until finally it cracked. Around her lay her mothers’ things, scattered like so much debris, the painstaking effort of the past three days. She had finished with Iuri’s things only recently, and now she wished for a little help--just a little. A car to carry this s**t down to Goodwill, a second pair of hands to help pack away the things she wanted to keep. So very little love was lost between Tatiana Konstantin and Mariska, her mother--it felt odd to feel so empty when the woman was gone. She had no siblings and her uncle and her father were dead too; Tate was very much alone, and without recourse, without even magical powers to comfort her, and it wasn’t fair that everyone was so far away.

She’d skyped to Marlo, in New York City, about the incident. He’d reacted with such shock to the fact that she’d even brought it up that she had almost hung up right then--but of course, he was a businessman, he’d picked up her reluctance and offered to come down. And it’d been nice to be around Marlo again. They didn’t click romantically--hadn’t even tried--but he cared, and he’d been a steady presence at her back at the funeral. He didn’t even criticize her for the tears she shed over the three people who had raised her, he even hugged her. (“Marlo, stop treating me like a girl, I’m fine”) They had been few, but still embarrassing. Yesterday she’d seen him off, and felt all the more alone for it.

Kneeling back down, she scooped Mariska’s jewelry box up from the ground where it had fallen. It was the very last thing to handle--she didn’t know what she would do with the things inside, but knew she should go through it just in case. Examining the contents, she started to lift up pendants on silver chains and a macaroni necklace Tate had made her as a child; it was easy to settle into a rhythm of things she wanted and things she could care less about. The last three items had never been touched, nor cleaned, and she almost tossed them into the pile too before she paused, noticing the designs--apples.

Tate held up the pendant before her, set the earrings next to it. She couldn’t tell the metal from which they were made, they were so old and dirty. She rolled them between her fingers, the faceted red stone of the pendant with its incised apple glimmering in the light from the overhead lamp. She felt choked up, for a moment; she wanted to call Finn, call Marlo, call Kess, call someone and explain to them what was happening and what had happened but she’d been so careful not to even hint at the trouble in her personal life. Tate had held her silence to everyone but Marlo and Finn--and only Marlo knew everything...

No matter how much it would have pleased her to find Camelot and go, she knew that she couldn’t return yet. The time didn’t feel right. And until it did, she had to wait, as the pendant and the earrings had waited. She tucked them into the box again, with the items she wanted to keep, and closed the cherrywood lid on it. Only then did she notice the subtle etching on the clasp--Avalon’s apple, leaf straight up like a flame, crossed with Earth’s sigil.

Word count: 672