Disclaimer: LR does not belong to me. The italicized part in the beginning comes from something I saw on tumblr by an "l.m". First verse is "today in science class I learned/every cell in our entire body/is replaced every seven years".
Author's Note: I just keep writing Yeul. Sorry. D:
Homecoming
(how lovely it is to know
one day I will have a body
you will have never touched)
o
She does not remember the others.
No, she thinks – that is not entirely correct. She certainly remembers them, and she remembers being a part of them, but she no longer has two thousand years' worth of memories spanning the expanse of her mind, of the countless lives she lived and lost from the moment of humanity's creation to the very end of the world. All she remembers, now, is purely herself: her parents, and growing up with Noel, and her companionship with Caius until the very last moment of her life (she had been fifteen, then). She remembers Noel's face above hers and the feel of his tears on her skin, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed her last.
She remembers the hope she held for the future, whether it was a lie to pacify her crying friend, or herself, it does not matter anymore – she promised that they would see each other again. It took the destruction of their world to fulfill that promise, but fulfilled it they did.
Beside her, Noel's hand around hers tightens. Outside her window, the moonlight casts strange shadows throughout the room.
The clock on her nightstand keeps a steady pace. She chances a glance at it from the corners of her eyes.
Two minutes to midnight.
Instinctively – honed by hundreds of years of experience – her chest tightens with fear and expectation. Her breath hitches, and Noel's thumb begins to trace comforting circles on back of her palm.
.
.
The first Yeul to ever live met her untimely demise at the mere age of seventeen, setting a precedent for all the Yeuls to follow. This Yeul, living in the normality of her life, does not remember this – she knows it, and the difference is immense. She no longer dreams of past lives ended far too early, knowing that a similar ending will be coming for her soon. She no longer expects her vision to flash gold at any second and to find herself flying through a promise of a future that may happen. She no longer fears the future and what it may bring.
She dreams of death sometimes, of Valhalla and of Etro's voice crooning in her ears; she wakes up from these nightmares weeping and shaking, curling into Noel's warmth and the comfort of his words. She learns to forget the caress of the goddess and the waves that brought her to shore – she forgets the touch of the Chaos at the end of the world, of the darkness that held all the fragments of her soul within it. All she chooses to remember is Caius standing at the edges of the Unseen Realm and the broken affection in his voice as he flings her into the safety of Noel's embrace.
She chooses to remember Noel's arm around her shoulders and the beauty of humanity's rebirth as they streaked across the galaxy. She keeps the exhilaration of witnessing such an event not through a golden haze but through her own eyes close to her heart, a small flame that she fans to life whenever the new world brings her difficulties.
The clock continues to tick.
"Yeul," the whisper from beside her comes, Noel's voice laced with fear and determination and hope. He shifts so that his body leans across hers, his eyes searching her face. "If this – if something happens, I swear I will find you again, wherever you may be—"
"Stop," she interrupts him, her quiet voice piercing through the haze of panic she can see welling up behind his eyes. "It'll be alright, Noel. It has to be."
He makes to say something again before deciding better of it, and instead leans his forehead against hers, his breath fanning out across her lips and cheeks. She brings her hands up and embraces him, her eyes closing as she attempts to steady the beating of her heart.
"Thirty seconds," he whispers raggedly against her lips, the words hitching midway through.
Yeul thinks of the other hers that were not as cowardly as her, of their decision to forever more stay within the Chaos and lead the cycle of death and rebirth.
She thinks of Caius and his lone figure against the swirling darkness, his posture proud and expression resolute.
She thinks of the past three years she has had with Noel, of their life together discovering the new world.
She thinks of selfishness, because she doesn't want to go.
For a brief moment there is nothing but silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock.
"Midnight," comes the whisper above her.
.
.
She opens her eyes, and the first thing she sees is Noel's tear-streaked face above hers.
"Hello, Noel," she manages to say past the lump forming in her throat, her own tears beginning to run down the planes of her cheeks. "I am going to spend the rest of my life with you."
She smiles through her tears.
It has been two thousand years, and she finally feels alive.