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It takes them weeks stretching into somewhere between half a month or two before they leave the space between Elysia and nowhere, the space Mikleo has lived in for centuries. They spend the first few weeks wrapped up in each other, relearning things about each other they already knew, Sorey reading books Mikleo wrote over and over while Mikleo kisses his neck. Every journal he published and every journal he didn't begins with For Sorey.
It takes time before Mikleo can wake up in an empty bed without spiraling into a panic and gripping the sheets. Part of him hates how clingy he has become, but with Sorey here and real and smiling and awake, Mikleo is beyond caring. Sorey understands. Sorey has always understood, and if Mikleo entwines their fingers more often these days, Sorey doesn't say a thing about it.
---
One morning, when Sorey is pressing lazy kisses up the dip of Mikleo's spine and Mikleo is humming with content, Sorey stops at the nape of his neck to murmur, "I want to start exploring again. I want to leave Elysia."
Mikleo goes still. Rigid. It takes a second, but Sorey rolls over to Mikleo's side, brushes his hand over his, and meets Mikleo's eyes. Sorey's smile is crooked, and he's wearing that stupid, stupid look that Mikleo has never been able to say no to. Some things change, and a lot of things don't.
"It's our dream, isn't it?"
That's right. It's their dream. Their dream wasn't staying here in this isolated little house, Mikleo listening to Sorey's heartbeat for hours with a hand cradling his back, and it wasn't drowning in pages and pages of aged writing, and it wasn't living off of vanilla ice cream, as lovely as every single one of those things is. It was experiencing the world again, the world that Sorey has yet to see more than inches of since waking. All those lovely things will still be here when they return.
Mikleo smiles, a soft curve of his lips reserved for Sorey, cool eyes warming. He doesn't have to say anything, but he does anyway.
"Right. It's our dream."
When Sorey wraps his arms around Mikleo's bare waist so tight it pulls a laugh out of him, Mikleo says, "We'll leave tomorrow."
Sorey goes back to pressing kisses over every inch of skin, and that's how they spend their last morning in Elysia for the time being.
---
Before they start their journey, Mikleo brings Sorey to the hill Rose and Alisha's graves sit, buried next to each other. They're well kept, pink flowers decorating Alisha's and red decorating Rose's. The other seraphim seem to come once every decade or two. Mikleo doesn't. He's used to keeping his memories tucked away, and this is no different.
Sorey kneels down and brushes over the names engraved in the stone with tentative fingers, his smile gentle. Mikleo rests a hand on his shoulder, silent. He said his goodbyes long ago.
And then Sorey weeps. With a light squeeze to his shoulder, Mikleo steps into a clearing nearby to give Sorey the privacy he deserves to thank the two people he'd cared about so much, ignoring the way his heart twists in his chest with the unrelenting desire to wrap his arms around him and soothe him. When he's ready, Mikleo will tell Sorey all about the things they'd accomplished, all the laughter they'd shared.
By the time they head back out, Mikleo's eyes are carefully trained on Sorey, but he's smiling again, eyes ringed red.
---
They camp out anywhere from wide, open fields to dark and desolate forests. Without Lailah, a fire is too difficult to manage all night, but at the very least, Sorey can start one with ease. When it burns out, it doesn't bother them too much, because he's always Mikleo's blanket, anyway, sprawled out all over him. He's always been able to sleep anywhere, and Mikleo keeps close enough to him to stay comfortable.
Mikleo often wakes up with leaves and sticks stuck in undone long, wavy strands of hair that Sorey had begged him not to cut. Every morning, Sorey is up bright and early and combing through it with his fingers, detangling it before tying it up and adjusting it until every windswept strand is in place. Back in the beginning, when Sorey woke and Mikleo was still clinging onto him like a leech, Lailah stopped by once and taught him how to tie it up properly. Mikleo could do it himself, of course, but Sorey insisted, and 700 years later still, nobody can seem to deny him.
---
Whenever they come across rivers wide enough and lakes big enough, Sorey pleads that Mikleo show him what he's learned over all this time. Mikleo can't bear to admit that he's been practicing things to entertain Sorey with for centuries. He can conjure intricate shapes and soaring waterfalls that gleam in the sun with a quick flick of a staff, and every time, Sorey is absolutely entranced, like he hasn't seen Mikleo manipulate water hundreds of times before.
Mikleo amuses Sorey with something new every time, turns water to ice and ice into long, wide spirals and has to grab Sorey's hand because of course he thinks it's a good idea to start learning how to skate.
Centuries of practice paid off, he supposes.
---
They visit the others when they've covered enough distance. Edna hasn't changed a bit, teasing and taunting and telling Sorey to thank her for keeping Mikleo from ending up circling this mountain with razor sharp teeth while he overslept.
Mikleo's cheeks burn angry red at that, but it's not a lie. Edna had been there to tap him with an umbrella and remind him that Sorey will return soon, back when it'd just been decades since he went to sleep and Mikleo still couldn't cope, when ugly tears ran down his cheeks.
Edna was the only one who ever saw him like that. He isn't proud of it, but she was the only one who knew what to say. Don't you dare end up like Eizen. That'd been enough.
They visit Eizen's grave, too, still there after all these years. Sorey thanks him for keeping an eye on her. Edna never knows.
---
Mikleo argues against seeing Zaveid at all, because he'd annoyed him and pestered him and even tried propositioning him every century or so, although Mikleo doesn't tell Sorey that part. But they go anyway, and Zaveid slaps Sorey on the back and starts rambling on about how lonely Mikleo had been what with a seven-hundred-year long dry spell-- Mikleo whacks him with his staff before a startled Sorey can even react.
"I told you he hasn't changed," Mikleo grumbles, closing his eyes and turning away. "There was no need to come visit. He's been just fine, rest assured."
"When did I say I wanted him to change?" Sorey asks, tilting his head. Vaguely surprised, Mikleo opens one eye to gaze at him curiously, and when Zaveid slings an arm over Sorey's shoulders and tells him he's glad he doesn't have to deal with seeing poor Mik's pout anymore, Mikleo doesn't say a word.
With a moment to himself, he wonders if there was ever a chance of him turning into... turning into something else without the people they called their friends. He rarely thinks about the countless people Zaveid has lost, and he rarely bothered to consider why Zaveid would care enough to come check on him.
The next time Zaveid laughs, Mikleo has to hold back a small smile.
---
They'd seen her once before, back when she'd come to show Sorey the intricacies of styling hair, but when they visit Lailah, she weeps. She must have been holding back.
Sorey might be the only Shepherd she hasn't lost. She may have lost count, but he's still here. Her hair is still just as long, and her voice is still just as bright. She stays in Ladylake, her home, watching and waiting just as she always has. Mikleo can tell that she's lonely, been lonely for a long, long time, when there's an unmistakable sadness in her tone when she asks them to come visit every once in awhile.
He feels guilty. Maybe he should have come to see her. It's just that he couldn't come up with anything to say, and there was nothing Lailah could say to ease the ache in his heart, either. So he didn't.
Mikleo doesn't miss the way her eyes soften when Sorey promises. Sorey doesn't break his promises.
---
Ladylake is not the city Sorey remembers. There's so much to take in that Mikleo notices Sorey's digging the balls of his heels into the grass in anticipation, so Mikleo attempts to give him a tour, although he isn't quite familiar with the city himself. He handles most of his business in Marlind, these days, another place that's flourished into something unrecognizable.
Their fingers are interlocked, but this time, Mikleo isn't terrified that he'll disappear any second. Sorey stays close, and Sorey stays safe. Things are almost normal again.
Both human and seraphim walk the streets together, smiling and laughing and arguing and everything humans have always done with each other. Mikleo swears Sorey looks so happy he might burst.
Instead, he throws his arms tight around Mikleo and kisses him long and hard enough to attract attention, Mikleo coloring but unable to resist him. Sorey is laughing against his lips when he breaks away, and he murmurs, "We did it," before kissing him again, still smiling.
Mikleo laughs, too. He supposes they did, although he'll still give Sorey all the credit.
---
As they wander the crowded streets, Sorey glancing left and right, they reach the castle. Mikleo decides that he'll tell Sorey how much Rose despised the dresses Alisha made her wear to the parties that were mandatory to attend, how much she complained as Lailah styled her hair every time. There was an argument over the Diphda family line when Alisha passed, but Mikleo never cared to pay much attention to such things, so instead, Mikleo tells him all about the royal guard having insisted on throwing Alisha and Rose a huge, elaborate wedding. The princess and the Shepherd united, a parade through the streets and confetti and two long, white veils.
In the end, though, she and Rose had eloped in Pendrago the minute Rose had managed to drag her away from the damn wedding planner, and that was that. Not much changed, really.
Sorey seems like he's always smiling, these days, but Mikleo swears he looks especially happy when he doubles over laughing. "I'm glad they were so happy," he says, when it dies down. Mikleo agrees.
---
They visit countless ruins they'd explored, and countless ruins they hadn't. Mikleo had made it his personal duty long, long ago to keep as many as he could preserved, and he was able to manage a good amount with the help of others just as invested, although there were those that were inevitably lost to time, nothing more than rocks and sand anymore.
There are ruins Mikleo revisits, discoveries he's been waiting to show him for years, and there are unfamiliar ruins he had waited to explore with Sorey. Ice and snow and fire and lava, just like they'd promised back then. He has the sense to keep a map on hand, but they get lost over and over anyway, and Sorey is always reminiscing about the countless times this had happened before until they manage to climb their way out. Mikleo can barely get Sorey to dust himself off before he's puzzling over the map again and trying to decipher where to go next.
Mikleo realizes that they've lost track of time. Mikleo doesn't know how long they've spent traveling, at this point. They must have left Elysia months ago.
But every time Sorey grabs Mikleo's hand when he slips, his heart still lurches as he remembers that first time.
Sorey's home.