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After the horror of Taejin’s Tower and the showdown with Dahaka, Vanille was practically bursting at the seams for the familiar comfort of Oerba. In her mind’s eye she saw lush green grasses and flowers as far as her she could see; she heard bees buzzing and birds cawing, and Bhakti chirping. She missed it so desperately she could have sworn she remembered exactly what dinner cooking in the air smelled like, and she bounded ahead with eager anticipation, hoping beyond hope that surely her home would have some people left.
When they peered over at it from the top of Taejin’s Tower, with its centuries old layer of crystal dust and Cie’th lined entrance, it made her stomach bottom out, but she still hoped. When they finally made it inside the village, what she felt was left of her heart tore in half.
Before they moved on, they chose to settle in for one night. The rest of the party was willing to keep going, to rest literally anywhere else if it made it easier on Fang and Vanille, to keep them as far away from the desolation of what used to be so busy and bustling, but the two Pulsians refused and set up camp in their own trailer. But while the rest of the party slept Vanille found herself migrating towards the schoolhouse, where the garden above it thrived despite the surrounding desolation.
Between her fingers she twiddled one necklace of many, one that had been hidden in one of her drawers before she volunteered to become a l’Cie and left so many centuries before. She held it between her fingers, the dust so crusted between the beads that she worried they would never spin again, the dye so faded from time that the beads no longer looked any different. She craved the sound of them rattling together, the feeling of the beads moving underneath her fingers, the sight of the bright orange and blue contrasting with the white.
She didn’t realize until Fang appeared beside her how frustrated she felt. She didn’t know she had tears leaking out the sides of her eyes until Fang brushed a calloused thumb over her cheeks and smoothed them away.
“I have this one,” she told Vanille, holding a clean necklace. As she handed it over, Vanille caught the polish staining her fingertips, and the freshly colored beads on the necklace stood out even brighter than the ones wrapped around Vanille’s neck. “I had to pick it clean with what water I could summon but that ate at the dye. Then I had to make due with what we had, which… wasn’t a lot, I’ll be honest, but there were a few berries and flowers and things I saved from the Steppe that did the job.”
Vanille turned the beads over in her fingers and closed her eyes against the sensation.
“I know they don’t really match. Not with the rest of your beads or your outfit, really, but….”
She trailed off and looked towards the horizon, at the moon directly across from them and Vanille wondered for a moment how long she’d been struggling with her old necklace that Fang had the time to work on another.
She turned it over in her hands, reveling in the calm that came with it, and moved closer to Fang with a teary smile curling over her lips. As Fang wrapped an arm over Vanille’s shoulders she pressed her lips to the top of Vanille’s head, and Vanille couldn’t help but voice a contented hum, her hands still twisting the beads of the necklace between her fingers.
“I love you,” she said softly, speaking the words into Fang’s chest.
“You’re welcome,” Fang responded. Then, “I love you, too.”