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The CD player was Alex’s, not really hers at all, but the headphones she’d bought on her own. With her employee discount. She had counted up the money left on Kaatje’s prepaid card carefully, and then bought the best pair of headphones she could afford with a discount that took more than half the total price off. And since she’d gotten home from her new place of employment, she had been carefully listening to the Big Bands Of The Last Thirty Years, as narrated to her by her new friend Alex Masters. She’d made it through the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties by the time Finn got home; the sun had set, and she was nursing her fourth cup of black tea when the door opened.

It was Finn, of course. She smiled at him and took the headphones off, dropping them on the bed in front of her. The pounding bass of Rihanna--who, by the way, she didn’t like, but only because she’d listened to Beyonce first--could still be audibly heard, and she self-consciously turned the volume down before hopping up off the bed and throwing herself into Finn’s arms. “I missed you all day,” she said, pressing at least ten kisses along the curve of his jaw. “I was waiting and waiting and waiting!”

What use was a biological form anyway, it wasn’t like it gave her any kind of advantage in wooing Finn--except--yeah, it did. “I guess,” she said. “But I had a pastry with Alex. It had cherries in it. I can make something! What do you want?”

Wait. Wait. News first. “Guess what I did today,” she said, tugging Finn into the living room after her like a much-beloved toy. “You’ll never guess. It’s literally impossible.”

Who was Alex? Oh, right, she hadn’t told him! How terrible of her, she was the worst. Wait, no, wrong. She was the best and she was an adult who could make her own decisions and have friends that weren’t personally vetted by Finn Derouen or Kaatje van der Weydin and no one could stop her!

I have gone mad with power, she thought. Maybe next she would buy a whole cake and eat it. By herself.

“Can we make the fancy noodles,” she asked, rummaging through the cabinets and then presenting Finn with a box of the ones shaped like bow ties. These were, obviously, the best noodles, on account of there were all kinds of places for the sauce to get in, and also they didn’t have to get spun around a fork, thus endangering one’s wardrobe. She liked her cute green dress: it was cute. And green. With a little brown lace yoke! So cute. “I’m going to make the fancy noodles,” she decided, locating the noodle pot (the pot which was only used for noodles) and filling it.

She beamed at Finn over her shoulder, and said, “I got,” and then she paused dramatically for effect, “A job! I am going to sell music to people, which is why I am listening to music, so I can pretend to remember things. I start next week, and I have to have black pants and close-toed shoes, but other than that I can wear whatever I want.” That was an important consideration. Wearing an ugly uniform would suck.

Arkady pointed to the door and her pretty purple sneakers. “I have closed-toe shoes,” she said, proudly, shifting the direction of her finger to indicate the black flats, too. “And black pants. They were in the box of Tate’s things.” She still had a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that Tate Konstantin, Vanya Morgenstern, and herself were all the same person; the only thing they shared was a face and Avalon, really. Referring to her past selves in the third person, she thought, would definitely make Finn feel better about stuff like trying to mold her into whoever she’d been before.

The saucepan went on a burner right next to the water, which was not yet boiling, but that was okay. Arkady didn’t mind if it took a bit. She wasn’t really that hungry, but maybe all the talking would build up her appetite! The tomato sauce didn’t splash, not even a little, as she poured it into the pan; she had been practicing. “Umm,” she said, “I like when they have just the guitar and just someone singing. Or just a piano. Sometimes I think I know what the chords are on the guitar and the piano, but that’s silly, right?” Those thoughts had the flavors of Before, but without her memories, she could never be sure.

“I like mozzarella,” said Arkady, “and do we have any more cold coffee?” Cold coffee was a thing Arkady had started doing just because it had seemed like a thing to do, like brewing a pot of coffee and then pouring it into a pitcher and then throwing it in the fridge was normal. She liked it, though. It was sharp and bitter, and if she put a tiny bit of chocolate syrup in it, it turned delicious as ********>. Or well, as delicious as she imagined ******** would be. She sighed, thinking about it.

She brightened up, and said, “Can I borrow your laptop? Alex told me about this really pretty band, he said it wasn’t his taste but a friend of his had liked it so I want to see if you like it, too!”

She took over coffee making while he went to fetch his laptop. Very little of her life happened on autopilot anymore, but this one thing. She had always known how she took her own coffee, cold or hot. She did it by rote.

"I thought Tate didn't like music," said Arkady, which seemed nigh unimaginable to her. A world without music was like a world without sunlight. Sad. Boring. Lonely. Regardless, she loved it, and she queued up the album she had been lent. The song was simple, a woman's low husky voice and a guitar. That only made it lovelier to her.

There was a lot she didn't know, she supposed. "I... It's all set up how she liked it," she said. "All the dates are lined up, folders for every month, and... It feels... Weird. It feels weird to look at someone else's life and know that was you, once." Arkady shrugged, a little bob of her shoulders. "I don't think I can just wipe her computer, either. Then it's like she's just. Gone."

She looked at Finn, a little glance out of the corner of her eyes before she turned her gaze to the bubbling water in the pot. He often spoke of Tate like she was dead, which made sense, because she was... but his voice turned fond, in those moments, in a way that she wasn’t sure she liked. Did he put up with her because of Tate’s ghost, the one whose face she wore even if she had none of her spirit? Did he love her because if he squinted, she looked like the person he lost? The song wound down with a shaking note, and she tried to imagine being irritated by the waver in the singer’s voice.

Tate must have been very sad, she thought: for she had read the text files. Endless ruminations on what to do. Budgets. Plans. A terrified, neurotic girl with no appreciation for the beauties in life, who tried to hold it at arm’s length, and categorized it, and… and in the end, had been conquered by it. Above all else, Tate Konstantin--Vanya--Arkady--whoever she was, whoever she was then, had wanted to live.

No, it wasn’t that Tate hadn’t appreciated life. It was just that it had been terrifying.

A tear ran down her long nose to plop, unceremoniously, on her hand. She scrubbed at it with one hand, and smiled a little tearily at Finn. “Okay,” she said, putting the strainer in the sink. She poured the noodles out, and shook the strainer a little bit. “I think that would be okay. Because then we could leave Tate’s computer, and. She has pictures on there. Of you and her? I would hate to lose those.”

Video diaries. She wondered if Finn had seen them.

“She’s very emotional,” said Arkady, “I like that.” She brushed the basil cuttings into the sauce and stirred it carefully, methodically, a serious expression on her face. “I think it adequately reflects her feelings for the person she’s singing to. Very sad. She misses them.” When she turned to look at Finn, there was a tiny smile on her face, shy and sweet.

She got out the silverware, and hopped onto a chair. The next few minutes were spent engrossed in stirring in exactly the right amount of cheese into her pasta before she started eating it, methodically, a single piece at a time. “How is the park,” she asked. “You smell nice, like sunshine and trees.”

She looked up at him, big-eyed. “You went looking for birds? Did you find any? How many?” She abandoned her bowl to loop her arms around his neck. “Can we go hiking and find the birds?” For all she was ‘growing up’ and regaining her years quickly, there were three topics which could reliably knock her back to a more childlike state: birds, languages, and space. “I want to take pictures!” How many birds could she find? Oh, doubtless maybe a thousand. With Finn on her side, the possibilities of bird-finding were endless.

“I didn’t apply to the music store at the mall,” she said, kissing along the top of his head. “I don’t like all the people. I applied at the little one by the park. It smells like plastic sometimes but it’s nice and the only people who come in are, like, alt rock teenagers and like… old people.” She had done her research. There would be time to learn, at such a slow store. And she had a friend to help her out! That was exciting.