Chapter 26: Finally
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Eliza smirked and stood up. Daniel looked up at her with just a tinge of confusion, messing with the kind of determination he had hoped to take with him out of the in-between void. “Yes,” Eliza said. “You wouldn’t… well, you’d probably believe me. Get up.” She held out her hand, and Daniel took it. He was surprised at how easily she pulled him to his feet. Almost like…

“You’ve got magic,” he said, squinting. She nodded apologetically. 

“I do. Are you ready?” She held up a hand and he quickly blocked it with his own. 

“Wait.” They stood frozen like that for a moment. “I think we should… we need to talk.” Why was stuff like this so hard? He’d quite literally wrestled with infernal beings, why was even saying ‘We need to talk’ like trying to pull teeth with a pair of tweezers and oven mitts? He sighed and looked into her eyes. “Please.”

“I don’t think I can do it, Daniel,” Eliza said, her voice soft and fragile, carried across the lake by frozen winds. “I don’t think I can do a goodbye. It hurts. Too much.” He looked at her for a moment. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? Of course, he had hoped that she’d be okay with him staying, and he’d let himself believe what Sally had said, about him being allowed to want things, but it couldn’t be that simple. 

“So… what if we didn’t?” he said. He gently lowered her hand with his own. 

“You mean… leave together?” Eliza shook her head and turned half away. “I told you already, Daniel. I’m not going back. I don’t want t--”

“No,” he said resolutely. She turned to look at him again and their eyes met. Really met again. The way they should have. The connection that had been missing for some time now sparked up. Like a puppy hearing its owner come home, hope, hope for the two of them, perked up its ears and raised its head and considered the possibility that what they wanted was actually possible. 

“Oh,” Eliza said. The moment stretched to infinity, and then just a little bit longer, because moments like that are savoured by the universe itself. 

“Yes,” Daniel said. Eliza looked at him for a moment and a half-smile painted itself on her face, tears forming in her eyes again. 

“No, you--” Eliza shook her head. “You can’t. You hate it here, it’s not… It hurts you and I can’t… You need to go back… Your body isn’t good enough for you…” Daniel shook his head. Sure, it hurt, but the problem wasn’t that, was it? Wasn’t it that it wasn’t good enough for her? And there was more to it than that, too. 

“Your body hurts too, Eliza,” he said. Now Eliza was the one to smile, pacing next to the lake. The wind blew her hair in every direction, and she’d clearly given up on trying to go  through the motion of putting strands behind her ear. 

“I… It’s been getting better. I can manage, Daniel.” He could read the lie on her face. “I don’t want to compare our pain. That’s not fair to either of us.” She sighed. “I know it hurts. And I’m so, so sorry. But once you’re there, you’ll be happier. I can even…” She raised her hands again, and Daniel saw her hands begin to glow. 

“What are you doing, Eliza?” he asked. “Don’t send me back yet!” He was starting to panic and took a few steps forward. Eliza immediately dropped her hands and took a step back, looking surprised. 

“Wh-- no, I… Okay, I get why you’d think that,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just… I can give you your body back before I send you home.” She smiled. “Better me than anyone else, right?” Daniel took another step forward. This time she didn’t back away. “Just… don’t come too close when I’m doing this. Magic like this can leak over and there’s not enough in here.”

“Eliza,” he said. She looked at him again. “For the first time since we’ve met, I think you’re the one missing something obvious that I’m not.” Eliza blinked a couple of times. 

“What do you mean?” she asked. Daniel smiled, despite himself. She was smarter than him, and a lot better at figuring things out. She was better with people, and better with electric things. She was a powerful mage, and would probably have made a pretty good queen, all things considered. But this, she’d missed, and he hadn’t. 

“I don’t want to go,” he said. “You can just… not send me back.” Eliza’s mouth formed a perfect little ‘o’ of understanding, and then she bit her lip, squeezed her eyes shut, tears rolling down her cheeks. 

“Daniel, if you’re messing with me right now, I swear…” she said quietly. 

“I’m not. I want to stay. Here. With you.”

“Please, tell me that’s the truth. I don’t… If I can…”

“More than anything,” he said. “Sure, this body hurts, but--” Eliza raised her hands again and Daniel stopped. 

“Let’s do that first then,” she said, her smile fragile, her lip trembling. “I want to see you happy, Daniel. I love seeing you smile.” Her hands started to glow a soft blue and he felt magic pour into him. It was a strange sensation, but it wasn’t the first time. He’d been healed before, and the sensation wasn’t unlike that. Except that there was a distinct feeling of… elongation. He was getting taller, and he could see the gentle light pour off of him. He looked at his hands, already becoming stronger, and he looked at Eliza, smiling at him with her hands wrapped around herself. He made a decision. If he was good enough for her, then this was good enough for him. “Wait, what are you--” Eliza said as he closed the distance between the two of them and took her face in his hands. “It’s going to spill over,” she said softly as the glow spread to her. He smiled. 

“I know,” he said. 

“There won’t be enough for a full transformation.”

“I know.”

“Or for you to go back.”

“I know.”

“It won’t be enough for y--”

“It will be,” he said, “with you.”

“Daniel?” Eliza said.

He wanted to say it. He wanted to say the words, but they weren’t coming. He felt magic burrow into every pore, every cell, and set his blood on fire, and he could tell the same was happening to Eliza. Her cheekbones sharper, her hair longer and softer, her shoulders a little more slender. Still tall but… softer, somehow. He wanted to speak but he couldn’t. All he could do was hold her. 

Well, there was more he could do. Even he knew. He looked her in the eyes, and asked an unspoken question. Through tears and smiles that went on for aeons, the answer was, of course, yes, not because the story demanded it or because it was the right thing to do, but because Eliza, in that moment, wanted nothing more. 

So he kissed her. His lips touched hers and nothing else mattered. Nothing else made a difference or mattered or even existed. For a brief and perfect moment, nothing in the universe existed but the two of them. Magic, both the kind that shoots lightning and turns pauldrons into ferrets, and the real kind, shared between two people who have been dancing around each other for months, poured through them in waves. 

She was soft and warm and gentle and he could hear her heart beat against his chest, her hands clinging to him, never to let go. He was tall, and strong and gentle, and he held Eliza more carefully than anyone had ever held anyone. 

The universe held its breath for a perfect, infinite moment, and then exhaled as the two of them finally pulled apart slightly, smiling, laughing with joy and relief, tears streaming down both their faces. Eliza ran her hand through Daniel’s short brown hair, over his stubble and square jaw, and looked at him, the same way she always had. Like she could see him. 

“Your eyes,” she said softly and bit her lip. 

“What about them?” Daniel asked. 

“It’s nothing,” Eliza said. “I’ll tell you later.”

The two of them looked each other in the eyes for a moment, and another moment longer, Eliza’s arms wrapped around Daniel’s neck. For the first time, he was taller than her. Not by much, but it was there. When he moved, he felt like himself again. It wasn’t the same, but it was so, so much better. The changes were, all things considered, not even all that major, but they were enough. Enough for her, and enough for him. 

“You look beautiful,” he said. Eliza smiled and cried, so he continued, because truly loving someone does require a slight sadistic streak. “You always have. You’re so, so beautiful and I… I feel like now that I’ve told you I might never stop telling you, because you’ve always been so gods-damned beautiful to me, Eliza.”

“Shut up, Daniel,” Eliza said with a grin, a grin that finally looked on her face the way it had in her eyes. “You can’t get to me that easily, blight of my life. I’m stronger than that.” She bit her lip and then kissed him again. When she pulled away way, way too fast, he could feel her breath, soft and warm against his lips. “I can’t believe I get to do this,” she whispered. 

“Don’t you dare stop,” he said, and it would have been a lot more cool if he’d managed to say it without his voice catching in his throat. There was so much he wanted to say and he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth. All he managed was witty banter, quick responses, or overly dramatic confessions, there to try and fluster her. But there was one thing he wanted to say over and over again. He could say it a million times and he’d never get tired of it. And it was the easiest thing in the world to say. “Eliza.” 

“Daniel?”

“That was it.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said with a smirk. 

“You’re right,” he confessed and took her hands in his. “There’s more. There’s… so much more. But right now… I just… I want to be here. With you. Eliza. If you’ll have me, gods help me, I would rather have one more moment here with you, than a thousand lifetimes without you.”

“Let’s start with one,” Eliza said. “Together. We can take it from there.” 

“That sounds perfect.”

“It does.” They kissed again. And again. And one more time, for good measure, because good things come in the thousands, if you know what’s good for you. 

“Eliza.”

“Daniel.”

He felt sillier and sillier. The longer and longer it went unsaid, and when their eyes locked both of them laughed out loud. He could see it in her eyes. The words were there, too, and she, too, wanted to say them. “This is getting ridiculous,” he said with a wide grin. 

“It is,” Eliza said, laughing softly. “We are!” 

“I just… I can’t go back without telling you, Eliza.” He put his hands on her waist and pulled her in close, kissed her forehead, then her nose, and then, softly, her lips. “I just… need to say it. I need to say it once and then a thousand times more. And then a thousand times for every day I haven’t said it, like the fool I was.”

“Start with once, then,” Eliza whispered into his ear. He could feel her body against his. She was close and she was, in that moment, the only other person in the world. He tried to find the right way to say it. Like this? In an intimate embrace? Or should he…He stepped away. There was no right way, no perfect way, because every way was going to be perfect, as long as she was there, and he was there.

“Eliza,” he said, leaning back so he could, at least, see her face.

“Daniel,” Eliza said with a chuckle.

“I love you.”

It was there, it was said, and not even the winds of Iceland were drifting these words away. The words hung between them, glowing hot, burning them both up inside. 

“I love you too, Daniel,” Eliza said, and he wondered if it was as impossible for her to stop smiling as it was for him. 

“I love you. Gods, I love you,” Daniel said. “It’s over. It’s out there now, and I’m ruined. It’s all I’ll ever be able to say again. I love you, Eliza, and I’m never going to be able to stop saying it now.”

“Better not,” Eliza said. “I love you.”

“Oh no,” he said quietly. “You’ve caught it too.”

“Oh nooo,” Eliza said as she moved in to kiss him again, because it had been seconds since the last time, and that kind of transgression she couldn’t let slide. “What will we dooo…” Daniel didn’t even get a chance to say something silly or cheesy. They just kissed, and that was more than enough, and it would never be enough. 

In time, they did pull away. For one, the driver would be coming back, and would probably be surprised at how different they looked. That would be an interesting conversation to have, certainly. 

“How long?” Daniel asked as they held hands and watched the sun set towards the furthest end of the lake, sitting in the grass by the edge of the water. 

“Couple dozen miles?” Eliza said with a grin.

“That’s not what I meant,” Daniel said and nudged her. 

“I know. I think… I don’t think there was a moment. Just the way we were together.” She shrugged and kissed his shoulder. “You?”

“The way you got excited about things. Your face would light up,” Daniel said, memories happier with every second now that he knew he’d be making more. “It was the most beautiful thing in the world.”

“You… sap,” Eliza said, but he could see her fight back tears.

“You’re gorgeous,” Daniel retorted.

“Monster.”

“Demon.”

“Not anymore,” Eliza said with a self-satisfied little wiggle.

“There was one thing though,” Daniel said thoughtfully, and he could feel Eliza stiffen a bit next to him, clearly worried. “Something I didn’t want to mention before.”

“What is it, Daniel? What’s wrong?”

“You…” he paused. “I didn’t know how to say this but…” She looked up at him with genuine concern, so he decided to put her out of her misery. “You taste like ketchup and mustard, Eliza.”

With a shriek, Eliza fell backward, hiding her face in her hands. Daniel dropped back next to her and kissed her cheek. Soon, both of them were laughing like happy fools in love, and they stayed like that until the car came to pick them up.

I feel like I've had to drag these two through hell to get here, even though it's just been a few days of quiet insecurity, and you have no idea how relieving it's been to finally get here <3

A reminder that this story is completely finished !

You can already read all of it through my Patreon, (as well as get some insight on the next project ;) ) and you get a whole bunch of added benefits! On top of that, it keeps my lights on and even lets me eat! Patrons get a ton of benefits, like access to new stories, sometimes weeks or even months in advance, as well as cheaper commission rates, exclusive discord roles, and access to private polls about future projects. 

Regardless, I hope you like this, and I'll see you all soon!

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