SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR S4E5 NO PAIN, NO GAIN.
She fingered the locket hung around her neck and stared out of the window. She was antsy, her brain not really on the book she had propped up against the steering wheel of the rented SUV she'd been driving around the North American continent since the incident. Always watching. Always waiting. She pulled a thermos of tea from the rucksack beside her and poured it into the lid, not without spilling some on her knee. She winced. When had her hands begun to shake anyway? At some point between running out of the rink and finding herself here, replaying that moment in her head.
She couldn't help it. She couldn't help the fact that she hadn't moved on when Myka clearly had. When Pete was clearly encouraging her to do so. She couldn't help the fact that she had wanted to walk in there and wipe the stupid grin off of that stupid Neanderthal's stupid face. And now she was starting to sound like Myka, going off on one of her rants. The idea of that put a smile on her face, the first one in a long while. The thought of Myka was the only thing that did put a smile on her face anymore. The way she walked, the way she smiled, the way she just was. And it killed her that all she had were thoughts; running around in her head, all day, every day, never giving her one second's peace.
She didn't suppose it would ever change. She'd lost the one she loved before and the thoughts still plagued her, a century later. She knew she wasn't helping herself, following them around like this, but it was the only way. Her only way. She didn't know how to go back now, how to explain her absence after the incident. How to explain how she stayed away from the one place she could call home when the people she called her family needed her. So she stayed away, forcing herself to watch from the sidelines as Pete made Myka scowl in that adorable manner or Claudia did her little dances to prove she was right. It was hard, the hardest thing she'd done since being debronzed but she managed. Because this was the best way to keep the ones she loved safe. And especially the one she loved the most; her beautiful Myka.