Work Text:
It's been…
Too long.
She doesn't know what compels her to step inside, she doesn't know what compels her to slowly open her eyes, she doesn’t know what makes her stay – she doesn't know, she never knew and she will never know.
She, too, was meant to leave it a long time ago, meant to forget and move on, but exactly like Kevin, she is… weak.
Her heart beats inside her chest still, beats steadily and weakly and strongly and arrhythmically – still there, still feeling and still so very easily broken, despite so many mendings with material that should have made it sturdier.
Fu Hua is all grown up now, a woman in every sense of the world, but it’s as she steps inside–
The cold air, the quietness of eternal late afternoon, the small little sounds at the back of her mind telling her that this isn’t truly real. Fifty thousand years have passed, eons slowly chugging along as slow as the sands that fall inside of an hourglass, and the Elysian Realm has not changed.
Fu Hua feels so very small all over again.
She steps inside rather carefully, adjusting to the sensation of being engulfed by the absolute madness the Realm system is, and she notices with nothing but nostalgic fondness that nothing has truly changed. The lounge remains the same, with Eden’s portrait still on the wall and the small bar still displaying the many wines of names Fu Hua has forgotten – the war room, too, still has every seat they used to sit down at back when the room was still tangible on the outside world.
So very silent, so very… homely.
She basks on the quietness, stepping closer to the lounge and climbing that step that separates it from everything else. She runs a hand through the velvet cushions of the couch, feeling the texture she knows some part of her will always recognize, then she eyes the information on the archives, catching brief glimpses of words she helped write when she was but a little nestling so dutifully carrying the mantle of soldier on her back.
Fu Hua feels small, so very small and weak the longer she remembers, the longer she stays here. Her heart beats faster, beats so strongly she thinks she might be sick, but death hasn’t been an issue in so long that she has forgotten what fearing for one’s life is meant to feel like.
She thinks and thinks and thinks– she thinks some more, memories long gone from ages past ressurging with every little detail she takes in again. Like stepping behind a painting where everything looks how it should, but in a new angle, a new closer shot, a near tangible knot forming inside her throat.
She takes a deep breath.
Then her heart jumps as she hears a set of footsteps coming near.
"Hiii~ Welcome to–"
The voice stops and Fu Hua already knows.
She turns ever so slightly, almost afraid of looking over her shoulder and seeing her, of stepping inside the picture of Elysia in her mind and seeing her up close, as more than an image and memory. A painting still, the real Elysia has been dead for fifty thousand years now, but one that moves and talks and feels almost perfectly close to reality.
Her mouth is agape, eyes wide and body frozen in place. Fu Hua is the same, almost completely unwilling to move, almost afraid , and she doesn't notice how she fidgets with the sleeves of her shirt.
Ah, she looks the same. Fu Hua doesn't remember, not anymore, but she knows. Her heartbeat quickens, the knot in her stomach does a few loops by itself and her head spins just a little bit.
They stare at each other for a brief yet eternal moment.
"Hu… Hua? Is that you? Is that–" Elysia finally asks and it's only then that she seems to find within herself the power to move.
Her bright pink hair is the same, her pointy ears angling downward, double-colored eyes full of scarcely hidden and sudden grief . She shakes her head, letting out a small chuckle that sounds more disbelieving than anything else, and her eyes cannot leave her old friend's form.
"Is it… really you?"
She takes a small step forward, hesitant, and Fu Hua can feel herself smile weakly.
Her heart hammers inside her chest, threatening to break itself out of its cage.
"Yes," She mumbles, almost too quietly to be heard. "Missed me, Elysia?"
A strained little sound leaves the elf's throat, uncharacteristic and foreign, but Fu Hua understands.
The hug comes faster than she had previously anticipated.
They stumble back, Elysia throwing her arms around her neck and squeezing her into a tight embrace with what almost sounds like a muffled sob. She feels real, so very real, and it's now that Fu Hua understands why Kevin cried so much when he first came here – and why he wasn't scared of admitting it to her.
I missed you.
"It's you! Hua– heavens, it's you, you're back!" If either of them shed any tears as they embraced even more strongly, no one will ever know. "I thought– we thought you had–"
There is nothing to stop Fu Hua from wrapping her arms around the woman's body and pulling her closer, so much closer to her, and so she does so without hesitation. Something breaks in her as she feels the so incredibly real and yet fake form of her old friend in her arms – something fragile, something that had been on the brink of collapse for years.
Her eyes water.
"I know, I– I'm sorry, I forgot–" She takes a deep breath, ashamed of how easily her voice breaks. "I'm sorry."
It took forever and a day for the past to meet the future in an embrace – a timeless moment that feels much like the long forgotten shadow of a home.