Work Text:
It wasn't the first time that Elizabeth Adams had seen snow - Virginia made sure of that. But it was the first time in a while.
It was strange - like glancing a face from kindergarten on a magazine or finding it worn by an adult. Achingly unfamiliar.
When she was younger - much younger - she'd rush into the freezing dust with Will. Raining destruction upon him with highly compacted snowballs, she could revel in the beauty of her craft and find it unmarred by its impermanence. Snow seemed synonymous with piping hot cocoa and duvets which swallowed you whole. Crisp and unbroken. Pure.
Then she grew. Will grew. Her parents died.
Since then, snow had been nothing but insidious, bruising rain. She still found herself amongst it - her two feet pacing until their body and brain were numb. But, more often, she stumbled across murderous ice sidewalks and find them to be a kindred spirit. Cold. Hard.
It was just a recollection of that curious fact of life: snow sinks through the toughest of fabrics. Eventually, everyone becomes unfeeling.
Now, hair whipping around her face, she is anything but.
Sun glitters off the snowflakes - the fragments of her youth - reflecting memories of her future - of the witty genius she needs to spend her life with.
His lips are warm like long-ago cocoa. His laughter, electrifying, seems to embrace her and a smile creeps with his hands up to her face.
Because, for the first time since the days her parents had to all but drag her in from the snow, the lump in her throat isn't the byproduct of misery.
The colour in her cheeks isn't from the biting temperatures.
She is not numb. Today, she is invincible.
Impervious to this: the first snow of their life.