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This RP is backdated to December 12th

When Finn got home from another day on the job search, there was a large cardboard box outside the apartment door with Finn Derouen printed on it in big, block letters. It couldn’t have come by postage service - there were no mailing labels. He looked around, hoping to maybe catch sight of whoever had left the box, but they were long gone. “There is probably a twenty-five percent chance that this is a letterbomb,” he said to the winter air, and then opened the front door and pushed the box inside.

“Vanya?” he called, taking off his coat and hanging it by the door. If she was home, maybe she’d seen whoever left the box. “I’m back. Applied to White River Outfitters and a few other places. Maybe they’ll call me back. Did you happen to see who left this huge box of stuff on the doormat for me?” There had to be a lot of things in it - it was too heavy to easily lift.

“Anyway, I’m going to open this up, and I’m really sorry in advance if it explodes and makes a mess,” he called, peeling the packaging tape off the top of the box.

“I think she was waiting for me to get back into town,” said Finn, looking numbly up from the letter. Surely, he thought, Mariska had to be grieving for her daughter, but the letter just read as sort of detached. Maybe it was the insistent use of Tatiana, which always sounded odd to him. “I’m probably going to cry,” he warned Vanya, setting the letter aside. There was no probably about it - he could feel tears welling in his eyes. Tate was really, truly dead, no ifs ands or buts about it; as if his battle with Avalon and the cut on his face hadn’t proven that. Tate would have never hurt him. Not on purpose.

Reaching into the box, his hands found something soft and woollen. A knot formed in Finn’s throat and he bet he already knew what it was before he lifted the argyle monstrosity out of the box. Thirteen pairs of blue googly cat eyes stared at him. Tate, beyond all logic, comprehension, or fashion sense, had loved the s**t out of this sweater. Finn let out a weak laugh, which turned into a sob halfway through. He hugged the sweater to his chest and buried his face in it, inhaling deeply. It still smelled like Tate and the cologne she always wore: clean, crisp, and slightly masculine.

He wanted to die wrapped in that scent.

With a hiccup, Finn unfolded the sweater and pulled it over his head. It had always been far, far too large for Tate, and it was baggy on him. He hugged his knees, and tears tracked down his face. If taking the first thing out of the box was this bad, then what would the rest of Tate’s things do to him?

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said, mostly to his knees, but also to Vanya.

Finn slouched against Vanya, shoving the box away with his feet. “Thanks,” he said. Vanya was tall, with long, skinny arms - like Tate had, thought Finn. With Tate’s sweater on so he could smell her, it was almost like having her back, and he wasn’t so sure that was helping. “It’s a lot of stuff,” he said, glancing at the box. Tate’s whole life was in there, maybe.

“I just miss her a lot,” he told Vanya, in case that wasn’t pretty dang obvious. “She was my best friend, so, like, it’s a lot to get used to.” Having all of Tate’s things here, well, in a lot of ways it only confirmed what he already knew, that Avalon wasn’t Tate anymore at all. If there was any of Tate left at all, she would have at least taken her favorite sweater with her - right? So he didn’t stand any chance of bringing her back, and he’d come back from Alaska basically for nothing but a whole lot of heartbreak.

“Sorry, um,” he said to Vanya, becoming aware of the growing wet spot he was leaving on her shoulder. “It’s not really - It’s really nice that you’re taking care of me like this, but I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You didn’t know her.” She hardly knew Finn. She hardly had any obligations to the freckly kid renting her spare bedroom.

“I’ll go through the rest of this later,” Finn said quietly, shoving the box further away. He felt bad just leaving it in the middle of the living room, and would drag it into his room later, where it would in all likelihood languish for a few more weeks until he got around to going through it and all of the books and journals and tchochkes Mariska had dragged over. He expected Tate’s bedroom was probably a guest room by now, more than it had been before. Her mother was not one to keep a tomb in the middle of her house.

“Thank you, Vanya,” he said, sniffling quietly, and he leaned to rest his head against her legs. “I’m just gonna. Sit here a while. And cry. Yeah.”

So he did.