Tori stood there plastered against Nimmie for a long enough time that she couldn't remember, crying harder than she had in living memory. Slowly, she could feel some of the negative spiral she'd plummeted into, the pain that she'd refused to let herself feel, pulling away. The hurtful, painful emotions that she'd buried deep within her bubbled up and popped, dissipating into open air. 

Loneliness was the first to go, the loneliness she had felt ever since WNTR's fracturing. Her teammates, her friends, had been stripped away from her in one fell swoop. The utter desolation that had stripped her of everything she'd valued, every[i]one[/i] she'd valued, and tossed her into a team with people she didn't know, nor care about about. Team Abbot. ABOT. And she? She was the last letter. The remainder. An afterthought tacked on because she had no team of her own. She'd known she didn't fit in, didn't fill the void that their old member had left just as they could never fill the gaps that hers had. And so her graduation that year was a somber affair, not the joyous occasion that it might have been. She didn't belong anywhere. She'd lost her friends—her family. Forever. 

And yet, it wasn't forever anymore because one of them had returned. Nimmie. She clung to the word like it was the only thing tying her to life. She clung also the words that she'd said: [i]I'm sorry. I missed you.[/i] Five words. Five little words to begin warming the chilly fountain that her heart had become. Ultimately, it came down to the fact that she [i]wasn't alone[/i].

After loneliness came anger, the inevitable, long-buried vindictiveness that came with Nimmie's absence. The festering wound in her psyche that had polluted her thoughts for so many years. Standing there, desperately clutching Nimmie like the last life raft of a sinking ship and smelling the familiar scent of motor oil and sobbing brokenly into her shoulder, the anger just faded off into nothingness. It had been born of the loneliness, had been a parasite upon it; with its host gone, it could no longer exist. 

And finally, at the root of it all, the most important emotion loosened its hold: fear. Fear of being alone, of being forgotten, of being nothing to anybody. As she shakily stood up, she opened her mouth, faltering for a moment before speaking in a voice still hoarse with tears. 

"Come on, Nim. It's not your fault. I could've been there for you too."

Only then, as she stood marveling at the girl in front of her with blurred, watery eyes, did she notice the...malfunction that was currently affecting her. She coughed out a rough, lame laugh, gesturing at the stump. 

"Technical difficulties?"