It was never really her ‘home’.

Her home had always been the First Timeline. But regardless, this was where she was born.

Where her mother had died, years and years ago.

When Casey got the notice that Tiжa was finally safe to visit, after thousands of years of radioactive contamination, she knew she had to go see it. Even if it was only to satisfy some morbid curiosity.

She popped into existence in a narrow alleyway, made narrower by the crumbling buildings on either side of her. Something crunched under her foot, and she grimaced.

She didn’t look at what it was.

Her partner had offered to come with her and she had refused.

She was beginning to regret that decision.

She cautiously walked through the streets, between the deteriorated skyscrapers full of corpses, under the dangling power lines that were long since dead.

Casey knew exactly where she was going.

In front of her lay the rubble of the tallest building there had been on the planet.

Underneath was the crushed body of her mother.

Her fingers itched to move the rubble, to transfer her mother’s remains to a better resting place, but she knew that it would only hurt her more.

Instead, she reached out to her side, and a small bouquet of lilies formed in her hand, pulled from the dimensional pocket she’d been saving them in for years.

She knelt and arranged the flowers in front of the rubble.

With a whispered goodbye and a rueful smile, she turned and disappeared once more, leaving the ghost town to its rest.