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“You ate all of it?!”
Elle starts frantically shaking the empty cereal box as she exclaims it, as if doing so might cause some to magically appear. None does, and the teen lets out a long moan, pouting up at Milla through messy, still sleep-ruffled bangs.
Milla shrugs, a hint sheepishly. “You still have a bunch of other brands in the pantry,” she points out.
“But this one was my favorite,” Elle whines, “and you don’t even need to eat!”
“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Okay, maybe Milla shouldn’t have helped herself to Elle’s pantry when she didn’t even get hungry anymore, but in her defense, Elle did tell her to make herself at home. And…well, this apartment certainly isn’t anything like the home Milla has come to know in the spirit realm, but it does make her think a lot about a certain other apartment from her memories, one where Milla would often find herself brewing coffee in the kitchen and helping herself to whatever was in the pantry despite herself. It doesn’t help that Elle keeps the dual pistols that Alvin taught her to fight with leaned up against the wall, or that the clothes strewn messily about the floor remind Milla a lot of how another huge idiot also tended to keep his shirts lying around.
But Elle just glares up at her, and Milla isn’t sure how to feel that eighteen-year-old Elle still glares the same way eight-year-old Elle did—with her arms stiff at her sides and her chest puffed up and her neck jutted out as if trying to make herself seem taller and more menacing—which is now a lot more effective than it used to be seeing as Elle is not even a head shorter than Milla.
“…Sorry,” Milla finally murmurs, when it’s clear that Elle is seriously miffed at her. “I guess you’re pretty angry.” Honestly, Milla isn’t sure how she feels about Elle now—it’s been ten years since they last saw each other, and Elle’s not the same little girl anymore. It’s weird, how someone Milla was once so willing, so desperate to die for, now can seem almost like a stranger. Maybe choosing to stay with Elle had been a bad idea after all.
…Then again, there’s no way in hell she was gonna follow the other Milla to stay at Jude’s place.
"Who wouldn’t be angry?" Elle mutters, stalking off to her cupboard and fumbling through it as if in search of another box of cereal. "First you don’t tell me you’re alive for ten years, then you eat all my favorite cereal…”
Milla winces. Not letting Muzét tell Elle about her revival had been for contrived reasons, she’ll admit—because she was a spirit now, because she couldn’t even visit Elle anyway, because it was so much easier for her to pretend all those memories up until her death never really happened. Bottom line, it had been selfish of her.
But then Elle pauses in her merciless cupboard rummaging, and pulls her arms back down, and sighs. “That was…harsh. Sorry.” She turns to Milla, and reaches up to rub her eyes tiredly. “I just get kinda grumpy in the mornings.”
“You’re not wrong,” Milla concedes, but Elle shakes her head.
“I’m just glad you’re here now,” she whispers, so low and quiet that Milla’s not sure at first if she was even supposed to have heard it. But no, Elle meant it for her, Elle is staring straight at her, and those eyes may be a little bit more tired and world-weary now that she’s an adult, but they’re still bright and blue and so very unmistakably Elle—
"How about I cook you breakfast?" It leaves Milla’s mouth before she even realizes it was forming on her tongue, and once the offer’s out Milla can’t take it back, but she doesn’t want to. Milla may have been in the spirit world for the last ten years, but Maxi’s insatiable appetite helped make sure that she never forgot how to cook. “Anything you want, just name it.”
"Really?” Elle bites her lip. “Then…then I want fish and soup. Y-you know, your soup.”
The third best soup, Milla recalls faintly, except now both the competition are gone and this isn’t how she wanted to gain first place. But Elle obviously hasn’t had a good home-cooked meal in a long, long time and no way in hell is Milla going to deny her that now.
"Coming right up," Milla promises with a nod and a tentative smile.
Elle grins at her in response, wide and free and full of simple joy—and Milla decides then that no matter how different a woman Elle may be now from the little girl she used to be, Milla doesn’t love her any less.