002 // text; username: grollschwert

[hauntedsavior]

cw: chronic illness, ruminations on death

Fun one for you tonight.

[this message comes in the middle of the night, when no one in their right mind should be awake. but that's never stopped anna. she can't sleep, and if flynn and ruby and everybody are right then she has to at least try not to keep this stuff inside her at all times. sorrow's silence we needn't bear, or whatever.]

You know a girl. Her body is breaking down and her meds are failing her.
She has years left. Maybe months, if it gets worse.
But something happens, and she gets access to amazing new technology. Things that prevent her body from attacking itself.
Things that stop her timer from ticking faster than everyone else's.
Great, right?
You get to know her better. You entertain her little crush on you. Maybe you like her back a little and maybe things aren't gonna be so bad.

But one day, you do something.
Something that sets off a chain of events that you couldn't have predicted. Not in a million years.
Small things collide into medium things collide into big huge massive things.
And after the butterfly version of you is done flapping its wings, she doesn't have access to that technology anymore.
She's back on the timer.

She doesn't know you did anything.
She never finds out.
You can't bring yourself to tell her, and she wouldn't believe it if you did.

She barely recognizes you anymore, by the end of it.
Her family finds your name on her phone and invites you to pay respects.

Do you still go to her funeral?

Did you kill her?

Comments

[vibing]

hey i didnt say anything

[ lies, all lies ]

maybe its good for you
caring about something
a reason to stick around

[hauntedsavior]

It helps.

[she thinks back to a conversation she had with lillian. a little shameless flirting that anna wasn't able to engage with on her own. she wasn't really feeling it, she said. but it helped the loneliness, the confusion, the isolation of her reality. even if anna couldn't give back, lillian was still willing to try.]

Wouldn't be here now if I didn't have that.
Can't care about the garden if you don't lay roots.

[vibing]

[ the damn garden metaphor again. is this something in other worlds? yuri's never had a green thumb in his life, and yet there diluc is, saying he could be a gardener, as much as it was a metaphoric, and here anna is making him think about his friends, his life, as a garden.

it's like estelle's damn books. this is why he hates reading, it doesn't make any sense, all metaphors instead of saying what you damn well mean

but he does have roots, if he thinks about it. deep roots, back in zaphias, roots that welcomed him home even when he was gone for months at a time, roots that called him back when he knew his people were in danger. as far as he strays, zaphias and the lower quarter are his home, his people. hanks and miriam and ted, they're the people who are his family, no matter if they don't share blood.

brave vesperia are new growth, but ones that he can't forget, either. and here's anna and diluc and blue and all of the new people who have wormed their way so readily into his heart in so short of a time. he would die for them, he would kill for them, and he already has

but, of course, he doesn't say any of that ]

you ever do that? garden?
been thinking about it

[ even if that would be admitting that he's growing roots here, real ones. that he isn't just going to go back home, to return to the sea. he doesn't know how likely that is, but this place sure feels permanent ]

[hauntedsavior]

I've done a little here already.

[which she feels like she can say freely. it's not a lie, after all. she's trying to tend to her blood flower, planted next to samatoki's in a monument to worlds that no one else remembers. but it's wilting, still, and she doesn't know how to make the petals perk back up anymore. so she's trying not to think too much about it.]

[and since she doesn't recall seeing yuri on that post—which wasn't nearly as busy as this one is, jesus christ, contemplate death for a while and everyone comes out of the woodwork—anyway, she feels like she can get away with a little more, too. worse to worst he just won't get what she's saying.]

I already planted five. It could've been six.
But she is not ready yet.

[vibing]

[ yuri read that post in passing, idly skimming it, but it was a little beyond him, a story with too many metaphors and without anna's name attached to it. he doesn't remember it in detail at all ]

do they have to be ready to plant?
man i really know nothing about gardening

[hauntedsavior]

[good. mercifully, she doesn't have to keep peeling back her own layers for him. but she was ready to do it in the first place, right...? she was prepared for the chance that he knew what she meant, at least.]

Don't worry about it.
More metaphors.
I don't really know much about literal gardening.
Black thumbs, you know.

[what with the android parts.]

[vibing]

[ its a real pity that he hates reading, or maybe he might know ]

damn metaphors
had me going there

guess ill get my gardening know how somewhere else
see what kind of thumbs i have

[hauntedsavior]

You could probably figure it out.
I'm sure Flynn could teach you, too. If you really wanted to know.

You don't need to know a lot to keep mushrooms alive. I'm working on a little, uh.
Enclosure? I guess. Trying to, at least.

Just in case.