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Arkady. Arkady. It was the same kind of name that Avalon always favored for her civilian form, following in the proud tradition of Tate and Vanya: androgynous. Russian. She picked it for herself without having really had any sense of her past identities lives and personalities, and it reassured Finn that at her core she was still fundamentally unchanged. Arkady, though… the name sounded like sunshine and rolling hills. It lacked both the abruptness of Tate and the aloofness of Vanya.

And she was as utterly helpless as a newborn kitten. Of course they’d needed to go shopping - Finn was no more equipped to deal with the sudden appearance of a six-foot-three amnesiac on his doorstep than he was to deal with an actual, literal zombie apocalypse. All of Vanya’s things had vanished, along with, really, any trace that she’d ever existed, so it wasn’t like they could just go raid her apartment for clothes.

He’d never tried to go to the mall with a seven-year-old before but he imagined it was something like this.

“We’ll get you some sneakers,” said Finn, following Arkady with the cart. “Even their name is quiet,” he added, trying to convince her of the suitableness of this idea. If he could get her fitted with a good pair of running shoes and a workable pair of flats today, he’d call their visit to the shoe section a success and he’d start trying to sell her on the rest of her wardrobe… which would probably be easier said than done. Arkady, if she was anything like Tate and Vanya before her, would most likely have exacting tastes.

“We’ll find a sales girl and get you fitted and then you can wear them out,” he said, doing his best to get her to take a seat on a bench and not move from it. Yes, he got that it was her first day out and everything was the most exciting thing ever and there was probably a great deal of sensory overload happening, but she was currently wandering around barefoot in testament to her need to be babysat. “No more flip-flops. Okay?”

Arkady was proving herself to be just as exacting about her shoe choices as Tate and Vanya combined, and that was honestly too reassuring to be aggravating. “A pair of black flats with good arch support,” said Finn, feeling like the sensible version of every cinematic gay best friend ever. Once that was all taken care of - and despite the simpleness of the request, it took just as long for Arkady to find flats as it did to find sneakers - they finally headed out of the shoe department.

Finn checked the shopping list on his phone. “Okay,” he said to Arkady. “The last thing we need to do is get you a wardrobe.” Because she was currently wearing jeans from nick, a shirt from Kaatje, and one of Tallulah’s sports bras, and none of them really fit and he could tell Arkady was unhappy in them. She was thin enough that he could very well take her to shop in the Junior’s section, if she weren’t so tall that every dress would become a tunic. He had no idea how he was going to find pants for her - probably order them online.

“You don’t have to get everything right now,” he added, as they approached the actual grown-up women’s section. “We can order stuff or whatever.” Which was descriptive, right? Anyway, he was expecting this to take a hell of a long time. “Where do you want to look first?”

Kaatje had given him her credit card for all this. He was expecting her to come to regret that decision.

“You’re just tall,” sighed Finn, but he agreed that they could go home. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if Arkady spent the next few days bumming clothes off Kaatje and maybe Keren. They were almost as tall as her. He wasn’t about to spend Kaatje’s money on clothes that Arkady would never wear, anyway - and he knew she’d sooner sit around in pajamas all day than wear jeans that didn’t fit right.

“Okay, you’re right, let’s go,” he said, taking her by the hand. Tate had always been impeccably dressed - how had she done it? At least Arkady had underwear to call her own now, which was good. And they’d gotten her, like, acceptable pajama bottoms. It was just real clothing that posed a problem. “I’ll see if I have any more of your old clothes at home.” He still hadn’t gone through the box Mariska had given him in its entirety. Maybe it would be easier now that he knew things worked out okay. Maybe not - Tate would still never come back.

He paid for their purchases so far, and they headed back out towards the mall. “Is there anything else you want before we head home?” he asked, trying to be chipper. He fully expected the answer to be no I want to go put my feet on the dashboard of your jeep.

Finn wheeled around, realizing that he’d lost Arkady somewhere and that would be very bad. He felt a momentary lurch of terror that quickly quelled when she called out to him. She’d found the pillow pets. Tate would have scoffed at these. Vanya would not have given them a moment’s notice. But Arkady - maybe because she was lacking any childhood memories? - looked at him and said she needed it.

It was like twenty bucks, right? Cheap thrills. “Okay,” he said, coming up beside her. “We can get it.” Like, it wasn’t on their shopping list? But he had a feeling that Arkady’s continued happiness depended on this.

Finn put the shopping bags into the back of the jeep and gave her an odd little look at her mention of knowing the fact about penguins from before. “Do you know anything else from Before right now?” he asked, helping her with her seatbelt. If Arkady’s amnesia was wearing off, so to speak, then he definitely wanted to know. But it wasn’t like he was getting his hopes up. Nope.

“So we’re going home,” he narrated, putting the car into gear. “Do you want- what do you want for dinner?” So far, Arkady had seemed averse to eating full meals. He was trying to work on that, but he’d only had a few meals so far to try to enforce sitting down and eating vegetables and protein. But she was still a delight and he’d stepped in and told everyone that she was his amnesiac to deal with so it wasn’t like he was complaining or anything. He was just mostly still trying to wrap his head around her being there at all.

Pop tarts were not a real meal, thought Finn, and he was going to have to have a long talk with the kinds of food he was passing out. This was how terrible lifelong habits got started. “I - uh - maybe?” he said, still caught off-guard by the fact that she remembered that the backs of his knees were ticklish, which was something not even Vanya had known. “Chess, yes. Pop tarts, we can negotiate.”

He pulled up to a red light and gave her a calculating look. “How do you know that?” he asked, and quickly added, because he saw her starting to bolt: “Not while I’m driving!”

Finn gave her a sidelong glance, pretty sure that the only reason she knew she loved him was because she’d had his letters in her pocket when she purified. He didn’t want to second-guess it too hard, though. There was a part of him that sincerely hoped she did remember at least something. So far she seemed blindly devoted to him, and it just made him want to set platonic boundaries. Do not ******** the amnesiac, he heard Kaatje say. I know you are a better dude than that.

“I love you too,” said Finn, and he reached over and ruffled her long hair affectionately. “What about pop tarts and something else. Like fruit or something,” he suggested. “Breakfast for dinner. I’ll put them in the toaster.”