Participants:
| Scene Title | Estate |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A series of items are finally received by the person they've been passed on to. |
| Date | May 2, 2021 |
"I'm sorry, what?" Emily says to the courier at her door, preemptive offense in her voice. What the fuck was going on?
"Paperwork, ma'am. I need you to sign for it."
"Am I being fucking served?" She's more abrasive than she should be to the middle man, but if this is something work-related it should be going through work. If it's something she shouldn't agree to accept and in any way take ownership of, it should be going through a lawyer. If it's—
"Listen, I don't know," the courier balks. "All I know is that I need a signature before I can hand it over, and it's addressed to Emily Epstein." The taller man sighs, brown eyes considering her with a certain weariness. "If you want to turn around, I can pretend I never saw you, and I can just mark this as delivery failed and you'll have to come pick it up in person from Pigeon. This is the third time we've attempted."
Emily's eyes flit to the name pinned to the man's uniform. If Aman is pulling a fast one on her, she knows exactly where to file her future complaint at. "Just… hand the stupid thing here."
Aman turns over his handheld, sighing internally rather than externally. Fantastic.
Epstein-Raith Residence
May 2, 2021
Emily lets the scissors clatter to the countertop after opening the envelope by its end. She tips it to the side, and out come the paperclipped stack of papers. It looks legal in nature, instantly incensing her. The worst thing this could be, she thinks, is some kind of summons related to her recent mission. Her mouth firms into a thin line as she resolves to read at least the cover page before tossing it back in the envelope.
It's from a law firm. Of course.
"Dear Ms. Epstein, we are writing to you to inform you of…"
The tension in her brow suddenly slacks, her eyes ahead of her spoken words. Her hands clutch the paper a little more tightly. "What?" she whispers to herself, beginning to pace away from the kitchen while she reads further, at a more desperate pace than before.
The matter is in regards to the estate of Rory Karrington.
Estate???
We apologize for the time it has taken to reach you about this matter, but are prepared to elaborate and answer any questions needed should you…
The papers threaten to slip from her fingers, dread piercing past any emotional filters as though they were paper. Numb but motivated all the same, she scrabbles for her phone and dials the number in the letterhead, waiting impatiently for someone to pick up.
A thin sound leaves her, one of the desperate need for this all to be a dream. She steadies herself again by the time someone answers, voice terse but not strained. "Hello? Hello, yes, I'm calling about this letter I—"
May 14
It is not a dream. There are cardboard boxes filled with Rory's things now sitting in her and Julie's living room to prove it. They contain almost everything Rory had, which in turn also contains everything he had from when Nathalie died.
It takes the knife of all of this and serrates it, barbs it, makes it feel like it'll kill her if she tries to rip it out of her.
All she can do is begin to go through them one by one, sifting through personal effects that now legally belong to her. She doesn't understand and yet does fully comprehend why of all people in the world his things came to her. It just… makes it hurt worse when she thinks about how long ago all of this happened. How it is she didn't learn about this sooner. She'd been busy with reintegrating and then with work, and she hadn't even—
Bewildered, she sags against the box nearest her, trying to sort out a timeline for when even he could have arranged all this. She struggles with the fact he died months ago and she's only just learning now when she was the closest thing he had to family in the States— to family he'd want to leave anything behind to.
There wasn't a body even to bury. He'd done that already. He'd heroically saved who knew how many lives when Providence was burning, when a cluster of robots from the war somehow reactivated and threatened to kill everyone. She screams silently at herself she should have known sooner— should have looked into this sooner!— but knows she was still trying to just manage her day to day with varying levels of success.
She was doing her best, and her best at that time did not involve being aware of things outside her immediate sphere, and the project she had begun to try and occupy herself productively. She'd been writing and trying to set up communication with those who could help her start her own anti-antiEvolved news network, and she hadn't wanted to face the topic of the fires. She hadn't. Couldn't, because of how uniquely vulnerable to that issue she would have been months prior had someone started a fire in Queens.
She missed this entirely. She missed a last opportunity to connect with him. To see how he'd been— if things had really been better since starting at Yamagato or if he still—
A heavy box filled with figurines made of shaped earth serves as her answer, in a way. It's filled with artwork, of various things, but so many rabbits. Some are larger and more detailed than others, but even the lesser-refined others indicate she's never left his mind. Emily stops counting how many there are when her eyes blur, and decides she'll have to leave that box for a while before she trusts herself to know what to do with it.
She resolves to make a memorial marker on his behalf, even if she has no idea where to put it yet. His sacrifice deserved recognition. And she— she'd have to ask at work to see who put the report in about the event that happened when Providence was overcome in flame. She needs to know. Needs to— know how he should be remembered.
Emily smears her hand across her cheek to rid it of the wetness there, feeling hollow inside. The boxes take up so much negative space in her heart and demand acknowledgement she doesn't rightly know how to give at the moment.
The apartment door slams shut behind her as she decides she needs an afternoon of space before she can face going through the rest of them.