It takes one look for her to decide that none of this is real. She's tired, dragging on the cusp of fatal exhaustion, sore and bitter and hazy, and nothing about this place looks like anything she's seen outside of poorly painted recreations. It's calm, flourishing, not a setting set perfectly but still one much better than anything she's used to. Her first line of thought is that she's dead, she's failed, she's used up her allotted nine lives and this is just her aggressive reminder of what could have been. Her second thought falls somewhere into a dream, into hopeful thinking brought about by her body's refusal to move forward anymore without any sort of rest. Her third, and perhaps the most potent thought, is confusion.
Because this is nothing like she'd experienced thus far and she's bound to the memories of what's already happened.
She notes reconstruction, buildings rising from the ashes. She notes smiles and health, flowers and air that's both clean and fresh. She sees bright colors and glowing skin and everyone looks so much better here, now, like a film's been removed from the world as a whole, like she's pulled back the curtain after painstaking picking and she can't help but look around for the pieces that are leftover, for the remnants of that film still stuck on the surface.
It takes a good minute for her to notice he's there at all, another for her to hear him. When she finally does, it'll take her years to accept what she sees behind her, countless nights of wondering to even digest how any of this is possible. She'd spent so much of her time fighting and striving for a world where he and everyone else could be safe and comfortable and free but she'd never pictured it clearly, never went much further than thoughts and hopes and dreams.
It's not entirely what she expected. He looks a little worse for wear, a little let go, but she notes the positives far more than the negatives. His skin is brighter, less ashen, less sunken in under the eyes. He's not as dark and grim looking. He's getting more sleep, she thinks, more water, more rest. More food too, probably, enough so that his entire complexion has shifted from borderline unhealthy to something much more approachable.
He seems to stand taller, too, walk lighter, breathe easier. She'd never seen freedom so preciously painted on someone and it's honestly hard to believe at first, if only because she'd been thrown so many things recently that were grim and vicious and bitter that she can't help but imagine this is some sort of trick, a folly of the mind meant to make her feel worse.
It takes a lot of effort to smile but eventually she returns the gesture, albeit tiredly, albeit half-heartedly. "I -- yeah, heh. I asked around, I guess. Figured out where you live. I hope you don't mind." Quietly she thanks the stars for her ability to lie, save face and pretend. "Eh? Oh, right. It is kinda cold. Guess I forgot." She wasn't dressed for it, by any means, nor had she really noticed until he brought it up.
"You live here?" It's a nice house, though wholly what she'd expect from him. It's small, out of the way, quaint and quiet and a little run down, but it's cozy. She imagines it's nothing like the home he used to have, the house he'd grown up in as a kid, but she never really thought he fit that lifestyle anyway. "It's nice! It looks like you, you know?"