Grief strikes when she least expects it, and with shaking hands Athena puts down her new phone, eyes wet with unshed tears. She takes in a hitching breath, then another, and thinks of Pallas' face, so similar to her own, so often wild with paranoia and hallucinations unseen by anyone but her. And she'd been so reluctant to step outside of her own head, digging in deep with her entrenched ideals, skipping medication if at all possible, a spitting furious thing who just wanted to live in her head.

It hurt then and it hurts now, knowing that she's dead. To Athena, she's only been dead two weeks, and even though it's actually been closer to a month, it might as well be a blink of the eye. With the back of her hand, Athena wipes away the tears, collecting herself into a jumbled mess of nerves, pushing open the flap to her tent, making her way to the edge of the base, runic in hand.

Reporting for patrol, she said, words bland and eyes cold, and slips towards the wilds, just beyond the pines, before the ground turns from soil to swamp, and drops to her knees. With her palms alone, she scoops into the dirt, great heaving sobs echoing around her, falling apart around the seams.

She buries the glowstick and the radio and the car keys, the remnants of her time Before, because she doesn't remember them but it feels important, more than going back to find her remnants, more than trying to do anything to preserve that which was no more.

Athena covers up the trinkets, dirt beneath her nails, buried and buried and buried.

And she stays there, beneath the dappled light bleeding in through the trees, until night falls and her limbs are stiff and the chill sets in, deeper than the bone.

Goodbye, she breathes, and there is no reply but the rustling of leaves and the scurrying of craetures in the dark. Athena has never felt so alone.