Respite

"Vanille! Vanille!"

In the linoleum-floored washroom of their single-story house out in a beautiful high desert region of the new world, the redheaded Vanille stopped halfway through pulling stuff out of the washer to listen to her friend. Her voice came thinly through the winding hallway, but she could tell Fang was practically shouting – unnecessarily loudly, too, which made her wonder what she could possibly be up to.

"What? I'm busy!" She pulled the rest of the still-wet clothing out, dropped it into a basket, moved to the dryer, and began to unload again. Until the two of them managed to get decent jobs – or until one of them got married, she was beginning to suspect – she'd keep living and splitting the living expenses with her friend… which also meant she would continue to be the one to do the laundry due to losing a coin-toss way back at the start.

Fang's footsteps came down the hall. Vanille groaned. Fang left her shoes on indoors sometimes after trodding in the garden, so it was usually her job to sweep up the dirt.

As she muscled a large bundle of sheets into the dryer, she heard the door creak. She looked over her shoulder to see Fang, dressed in a stained tank top she used for gardening and knee-length khakis standing at the door with her hair pulled out of her face. Fang enjoyed tilling the garden, using the repetition of working with her hands amongst the vegetables to keep her mind off slow-to-fade memories of the old world.

At Vanille's confused look, Fang merely raised her eyebrows. The redhead, however, did not fail to catch the touch of emotion and mischief in her eyes.

Realizing she wasn't going to get a response until she paid complete attention, she shoved the rest of the laundry in the dryer, kicked it shut, and switched it on. Only then did she finally turn around and place both hands on her hips. "Alright," she said flatly, "what do you want?"

Fang placed on a hand on her hip as well. "Someone's here to see you. Been looking for you, he says."

Vanille blinked. "Uh, okay, who?"

Fang yawned. "Someone you'd like to see. Go on, then." She turned away, heading back down the hall, and Vanille gave a squeak of irritation that turned into a growl.

Someone I'd like to see? Letting her irritation fizzle out, she left the washroom and stopped at the mirror hanging on the wall a short distance down the hall. Her hair looked somewhat disheveled, spilling about her shoulders, not being in its usual pigtails; she ran her fingers through it, straightened her shirt as best as she could, and hurried to the door, which Fang had apparently thought best to close.

Sighing, Vanille grasped the latch, ignoring the bits of grass stuck to it, and swung it open.

It took her mind a few seconds to realize there was a man standing there, taller than her, a bit on the spindly side, who had been looking down at something in his hands, but now his gaze shot up to hers. At the same time, his eyes abruptly widened, and it took her brain much longer than it should have to realize that not only did she know the man, but that he just happened to be the one person she'd had yet to meet again.

Her throat tightened. All that came out was, "Hope?"

He stared at her, then seemed to snap out of his trance. "Vanille," was his response, and just like that, his entire expression cleared and lit up like the sun.

She had seen glimpses of Hope growing up from her perch inside the crystal pillar and was perfectly aware of how much he had grown. But, it was one thing to see hazy glimpses and hear his promises echoing through crystal lattice and waking dreams from miles away. It was quite another to see the boy she had known, who had become a man, stand before her and tower over her, looking at her like she was the most amazing thing in the world.

And with that, her composure promptly broke.

Feeling a bit like a startled chicken, she began stuttering, not sure what else to do and half-hating her mouth for going on like that without her express consent. After a good few seconds of this, his name finally came out properly, at the same time as a broad smile covered her face and she bounded forward. For a moment, she found herself swept back through the years to a much more carefree time, centuries ago, in another world, and found her hands coming of their own accord to his, taking his wrists, and he dropped what he had been holding.

Hope Estheim had been a fourteen-year-old boy when last they had seen one another, witnessing the arrival of a new and far more peaceful world, before being separated by time and space.

She had known him as a boy when she had turned to crystal for the final time, but as she had watched life unfold beneath her, seen centuries march by without slowing their pace, witnessed Hope lose all he had ever known and choose to go forward into the future, still seeking to save herself, Fang, and Lightning… something in her perception of him had definitely changed, and she thought it had been nothing.

But… Fang had known. Fang knew her. It had been evident just in the way she had told Vanille there was someone she would like to see, looking specifically for her.

When Hope's fingers entwined with hers and he grinned with the brilliance of a thousand stars at her, she was done.

"I can't believe it," was what left her lips then, and she felt her chest tightening. "I… can't."

"It's…" He hesitated, and his hands tightened. "It's been so…"

Vanille stared at him, feeling her own smile blazing across her face, before she came to her senses enough to see that he was still standing out on the porch in the heat, the door was still open to let the air-conditioned air out, and Hope had no doubt traveled far just to reach h– to reach them.

"Come inside," she said, and, still holding his hand, tugged him inside. Hope followed without a word, other than a soft grunt as she pulled rather suddenly. The cool air washed over them; he shivered and closed the door.

"I really had to hunt for you, you know," he said.

Vanille's grin melted into a softer smile now. "We live quite a ways out, I know," she said, chuckling, "but it was kind of the only place we could find that was cheap enough." Wrinkling her nose, she released his hand, pointing out the narrow window beside the door. "I mean, c'mon, who'd want to live here? Our nearest neighbor is a bunch of horses, and the next-nearest, an old cow who just stands out in her pasture and... chews."

He kept staring at her, and she suddenly got the impression that something was happening. There was a slight trace of a smile on his lips, but his eyes – vivid, beautiful green eyes – were full of unspeakable emotions that made a tremor pass through her. Whatever words she had been thinking about saying died, somewhere in the back of her mind, not even making it out to get tangled together on her tongue.

"I'm… happy… to see you," she said, hesitantly, suddenly feeling very shy and not knowing why. Hope had always been just Hope, hadn't he? Sure, he was tall and lean and made her feel way shorter than she ever had, but he was still just Hope, the kid she'd had to tug out of the darkness so often back in the days preceding Cocoon's first fall, and nothing really had changed. It was still just him.

But then she knew, when he suddenly pulled her into his arms, and she gasped lightly at the realization that he was doing what she had done to him so long ago, when she had looked down at him… not the other way around, as he now did to her. Her body felt jittery, as though crackling with electricity, before she grinned, ear-to-ear, and wrapped her arms around his waist – the only thing she could actually, properly reach, now.

"I looked all over," he said. "It was so hard to find you. Both of you should be ashamed of yourselves!" She heard the amusement in his voice and felt her feet leave the floor, eliciting a squeak as she dug her fingers in, instinctively trying to keep from falling back out of his arms to the floor.

"Well, it's not like I did it on purpose!" she insisted, but moved her arms to his neck and let her head drop to his shoulder. It felt amazing.

Then Hope made a strange choking sound and lowered her back to the floor. When she looked up, she saw that his face had turned oddly... pink. Like, fresh-cooked lobster pink. Actually, more like red. Trying to avoid the same fate, she turned an accusatory glare in the direction he was looking.

"There, I said hi, happy now?" she demanded of her friend, desperately trying to ignore her self-righteous grin.

"Yeah, yeah, it's all good and happy. Man, you've grown!"

Hope just stared at Fang for a moment, opened his mouth, audibly swallowed – well, audibly to her, at least – and finally said, "It's good to see you safe, Fang."

"Shot up like a weed. 'Bout as skinny as one, too. You eatin', kid?" In a few long strides, Fang was standing in front of him, hands on her hips, both eyebrows raised. After a moment, she jabbed him in the chest with one finger. Hope was doing his best to look fierce through it all. It wasn't working that well. "We grow our own food here, and most of our meat's from the ranch down the road." She stopped with a finger on his chest. "You hungry?"

"Uh... n– no thanks, Fang, I'm fine." He looked uneasy, and Fang's gaze was definitely a little bit dangerous. "I was... just... leaving... about to leave."

"What?" was Vanille's shocked contribution. "You literally just got here, you big dork!"

"Ah, what I meant by that... uh..." And then, wisely, he shut up.

Fang made a knowing sound in her throat. "Too late, kid, you're here now. Guess you're stayin' for lunch. Hope you like vegetables and don't mind a little dirt. You run out of this house, I will catch you and drag you right back here, you hear? Don't you go haulin' off, you'll regret it. Besides, can't leave Vanille all by her lonesome."

Knowing better than to say anything, Vanille glared.

"Good, settled. Be another ten minutes. Takes a lot of effort to make a salad, y'know." Flashing Vanille another grin, she made herself scarce before the younger woman could lunge at her.

Vanille sighed. "You were really going to leave?"

"No!" he insisted. "No, no, of course not. I just kind of... I don't know, froze up or something."

Forcing herself to relax and smiling up at him again, she took his hand in a familiar gesture from very long ago and was pleased to feel him return it. "Well," she said, "since you're here, you might as well rest a bit before you go back to... wherever you came from. Just be sure and visit again sometime, okay?"

"You know I will." There was a pause, and then, "I'm very glad to see you, Vanille. It makes me happy to know you're alive and well, and..." He smiled. "...and everything."

Not sure what to say, she blinked at him.

His smile widened.

"And... it makes me happy when you smile."

Part of a series of one-word prompts given to me on deviantArt. Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!