Fandom: Chobits
Title: beyond the walls of the world and the heart.
Rating: G
Description - Ever wonder who Chii was before she came to Hideki?

Disclaimer - Chobits belongs to Clamp.

Let me find
The person I was once before.
Or the person
who is only for me

will not know
All of me.

beyond the walls of the world and the heart.
By miyamoto yui

Elda watched Freya as she slept.

Before Freya shut down into an eternal sleep, she reached out her arms towards an image that Elda couldn't understand. She kept on saying in a quivering, singsong voice, "Papa?"
Then, those heavy arms fell down to each side of her because she could no longer hold them up.

No one was there to see her. No one but Elda.

Now, Elda was all alone in the room.

Even though she vaguely went through the data her sister had given her, Elda could not process anything so quickly. Was it so wonderful for their father to search after that bridge which gave emotions to persocoms?
Wasn't that what made her a Chobits and not just a normal persocom?

The white-haired persocom with the innocent face picked at her dress to see her body in the mirror. There was the mark that showed proof of her enhancements and her bitter pain. Her eyebrows touched one another in confusion.

She held her chest. That's what her sister said was the place where things hurt.

She never understood until that day.

Maybe it was because of the information her sister had given her or miswiring, but the "heart" built into her felt a bit heavy. Was this what it meant when humans said they were in pain?

Elda blinked her eyes as she gently touched her sister on the forehead.
Time passed as she looked at the frozen figure, a living apparition which held the same countenance as her own.
Yet her blank face did not how to react at such a situation. She just continued to watch her sister carefully.

After a few days, her mother came in and cried into her hair.

"Mama…when will Onee-san wake up again?" Elda's fingers intertwined with the soft skin of her sister's.

Her mother, no matter how smart she was, could not answer such a thing. She kept silent as she tried to hold back the tears that wanted to crash down all together.
What could she say to her little girl about her older sister?

How do you explain death?
That all people die and persocoms had an expiration date?

What could she have said that would have encompassed everything she thought and all the feelings that accompanied such an explanation?

It was then that when her mother left and the lingering tension-filled silence filled finally made its way into Elda's body. With her sister's memories, she took a black bag into her hand and simply left. She left to explore the world which was kept away through the walls of their home.

With her sister's "heart" in the shape of "memories", they would experience things together.

But the world was nothing she experienced as she was at home.

It was big. It was wide.
It was full of people. It was full of persocoms.

Her eyes couldn't believe what they saw. So many designs of anything possible!
But why didn't people wear clothes like hers? Why did they look at her curiously as she walked by herself? Why did they raise an eyebrow when she put her hands to feel the bark of a tree?
"I saw this in the picture books Mama drew! So this is what they feel like!"

She bent towards the ground on all fours to smell a petal which Mother had told her was called a sakura. Elda picked it up and put it into her pocket.

Elda went about the streets with multiple expressions to show her interest at the everyday things that others took for granted. Of course, she couldn't really tell what anything was or what to make of them.

After all, she was only a little girl with a body that wasn't fit for her mind.
Yet.

And her mother fell to the floor in anguish as she clenched her fists after throwing her glasses to the ground. They smashed as she fell to her knees with her sobs drowning the room.

"The promise…I must keep my promise to you, Anata. I won't interfere, but…Oh, Elda…"

Owari. / The End.

Author's notes: This fic popped out of nowhere. I missed watching Chobits. I was extremely curious about Chii's past, so why couldn't I just make one for her?
(Hopefully, I can pulled off such a task.)

My goal is that I hope that it preserves the vitality of hope and tension that made the Chobits manga different from other Clamp manga to me.

January 13, 2005, 12:56 AM