Requested by: iiPigtailMargaritaii

Lord, the time has come. Eliza hadn't pictured her death to go any other way than with a quiet breath and silence. Unlike her husband, she never thought of the afterlife much and lived every moment to its fullest ability. He waited for death to greet him, as if it were a friend, when she avoided it at all costs.

The years had gone by however, and she wasn't the same woman everyone knew her as. Aged features and defining shadows underneath her eyes, it became clear how close death was to grasping the old woman after a while.

Relief washed over her aching, elderly body as she finally left the world. She could almost feel the younger part of her rise again. Death was so refreshing, yet full of uncertainty.

"Betsey, love." Amongst her thoughts and worries of what laid ahead, she could make out the sound of a familiar voice. Eliza opened her eyes and though her face still felt a bit more wrinkled, there wasn't any doubt that she managed to arrive in the afterlife.

The voice startled her again. "Try to not feel frightened, my dear. You're safe here." She sensed two hands assist her up from wherever she had been laying, and they wrapped her into an embrace. Eyes not completely adjusted to the blinding light, Eliza fumbled to hold onto whoever it was for support.

"You must forgive me. If you could believe it, time at one time didn't age me. I could move with much more grace, but now it seems I'm stumbling over my own feet," Eliza chuckled in reply to what could only be a male voice.

She blinked vigorously as her caretaker spoke again. "You were the most elegant of them all, eh?" The hands gripped her arms tighter to support her more. Eliza recognized that touch, but she couldn't think of whom it would be.

"You're clever in your remarks, but you have no knowledge of my family and-" What came next, as her eyes finally focused on the slightly blurred figure, made all those years of waiting crumble to the ground.

"I do have an extensive knowledge on your family. From the moment twenty three year old me fell in love with you, it was enough to put the devotion into pleasing you." Alexander. Covering her mouth in shock, Eliza almost tore up there on the spot. She couldn't believe it.

"Oh, oh," she softly murmured, collapsing into his arms in relief and surprise. She had forgotten what his arms felt like around her body, now much more tender than before, and how they wrapped her in a shield of comfort.

Her aging vision cleared, and she captured a full look of him. Still the handsome, but stubborn man she fell in love. Those eyes held something deep within that made her become seventy years younger.

"Why, it has been-" Eliza thought better of that and closed her eyes. All that had been bottled up and prepared for fifty years somehow slipped from her fingertips. Whatever came out of her mouth had to be right, oh it needed to be.

Alexander chuckled and clutched her face in his hands gently. "It's been years, my dear. You have aged, but with great elegance." He couldn't have looked more proud in that moment. Nothing in his lifetime could compare to being reunited with his wife like this.

Eliza's cheeks turned a faint pink, but only for a moment. "And you still charm me whenever given the chance." Though her face expressed the much older side of her life, the younger girl shined through the wrinkles as she spoke.

What hadn't been on her mind the entire time was her children. Eliza recalled within a second that she had left her sons stranded with her lifeless body, and she almost lost her breath.

"J-John, oh he must be so frigh-" She tried to contain herself as best as she could, but it was known that her children were her weak point.

Alexander soothed her with some reassuring and guidance. "I have been watching the children, and they can handle this. You've raised them to have thicker skin, and there is no better quality for this situation."

"I learned how to gain that quality throughout my marriage, dear." The remark was sharper than her others, but it managed to silence her husband briefly.

The open space of empty air left a gaping hole for conversation. He wrapped his arms tighter around her own and replied softly, "I never meant to harm yo-"

"Shall we discuss something else? I wish to not address that scandal anymore." By the look on her face, she actually meant it. Alexander would have not imagined for his wife to simply let go of the past. Yet there they were, moving onto other topics of conversation.

Eliza cleared her throat and sighed. The sigh didn't feel like an eternity compared to the others when she had been alive. She linked her hand with her husband's carefully, insisting that she could walk with ease.

"Tell me that you have been doing well. You took care of me from above, but I'm unable to help you in the same way," she began, limping slightly alongside him.

"I cannot say that death hasn't been well. It's unlike anything one could imagine, and to think it was the one thing that I feared most-" He paused. "Well, it's been like waking up almost from a long sleep."

Eliza tilted her head up towards him in question, only to be surprised by a distant sound of giddy laughter. "Philip, you can move faster than that to greet your mother," her husband joked, and she gasped.

"Oh, Philip," she breathed as her son neared the two of them. He looked vaguely flustered at how much she had aged, but also how much she hadn't changed within. Philip glanced at his father and then back at her.

"I missed you."

Her heart, which had broken for so long, finally repaired a piece. She recalled the night it had broken when her son left the world and when she blamed herself and anyone else within her path for his death. Endless days had gone by without any promise of a better tomorrow.

But it lead up to this, and she certainly couldn't have asked for a better gift than being reunited with the two people she had missed dearly.

"I missed you so much more, my son," she whispered, pulling him into her arms and embracing him. Alexander momentarily watched the two of them and then felt her take his hand in his. He allowed himself to push back the oncoming tears and join the embrace.

Though death had greeted her like an old friend and took away her life, it hadn't taken away all she had left to give. Eliza intended to keep making a difference, even if she was worlds away from where she started. If she started by looking around, and accepting the warm welcome of loved ones, there wasn't anything to hold her back now.

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A/N: Thank you iiPigtailMargaritaii for the request! I absolutely loved writing this and working more with this series of one shots! I apologize for the wait for this. That can be said about my activity on here too, I haven't been on as often, but that has a lot to do with stress and personal things. I'm doing my best to write, write, write, so please don't feel like I've forgotten about any requests. Thank you so much for reading everyone!