A/N:
Flowers x Takasugi birth child fic
(title means become a flower *waves at flumpool fans*)
xxx
Takasugi cuts people down, and they lie in the earth, pushing up daisies. He picks the best of the flowers that bloom, ripping them from the cycle of life, while the ones left standing in the dirt continue as before, closing at night and opening in the morning, until they close forever.
To wither is inevitable for any bloom, but the daisy mocks that, Takasugi thinks, affecting to die every night and then appearing unscathed at next light, fresh and lovely in the dawn. Perhaps that is part of the reason why he rips them from the ground, to remind them that they are nothing but common, insignificant weeds.
Subconsciously, he knows that this belligerence towards a flower belies a painful truth, that in his younger days he and his friends were the daisies, callously trampled over by the Bakufu. In the Joui war, where every day and night brought fresh reinforcements and fresh attacks, there was nothing for it but to adopt the coping mechanisms of a tiny white flower, and ape the behaviour it displayed. And it worked, did it not? Their pretending to be crushed after every wave of assault by the Amanto forces, only to rise from the bed of corpses anew, ready to face another fight.
Lying among the slain in the gathering darkness (of the evening, and his heart), Takasugi could see at eye level the winking head of a small white bloom as it closed for the night – a signal that they should fall back for now. He closes his eyes and dozes off, waking hours later to the weak sunrise. He unfolds his aching frame from the hollow he'd slept in, body bruised and crusted with blood. His eyes are still bleary from sleep, but they sharpen immediately when he levers himself up onto one knee, scanning the area for familiar silver curls, or a long mane of brown whipping in the wind. He can't afford to be completely like this flower, after all, no matter how much it has helped. Its content to stay there and slip through each day unnoticed, unharmed. He is different, he must leap into action, must fight for his country and his life and everything else he wants to believe in now that Shouyo-sensei has been taken away.
The boot that he supports his weight on as he stands up to join his comrades crushes the flower underfoot, but it doesn't die. Takasugi thinks of reaching out to straighten the defiant stem, but stills his hand. There's no point.
xxx
The day he loses his left eye, it is as if one flower closes and another opens. The sword that gouges into his glassy green orb is cold metal that brings hot, searing pain, a sensation that bubbles up inside him as sharp as hatred. His muscles are alive, blood coursing through his vessels, but there is a taste of iron in his mouth and a leaden weight in his heart – he lunges forward, almost weightlessly, delivering death.
Takasugi makes sure to find a moment for himself after they're done bandaging his maimed eye socket. He thinks of the piercing blade and the agonising rupture and the spurt of blood that darkened his vision – as he was pushed backwards by the force of the concentrated blow, the flower came to mind again, he imagines it withering in sync with his eye: the beautiful green dirtied by ruptured veins of red, slowly dying – sight will never bloom in it again.
Yet something else blooms inside him, formerly a closed bud, it now comes fully into itself. Like the blood that splatters and spreads outwards, it unfurls rapidly, explosively in his chest, multiplying and leaping in dizzying spirals. It's a swirling blackness that only knows how to destroy, how to crush something so far into oblivion that it will never have a chance of living again. Takasugi mindlessly obeys.
Years later, that flower is still blooming inside him, and it helps other flowers bloom in other people too. They gather around him and they stand together, a veritable army of daisies raised from the corpses of a thousand other men, whose forgotten decay feeds and nourishes their fury at the world, in morbid parody of a symbiotic relationship.
The flower in his past is dainty and white, the one in his body monstrous and black – and the flowers he will raise are all the various shades of red. Flowers seek out the sunshine; what is his sunshine? He doesn't know anymore, to be honest. It's been gone so long that what remains in his memories are just faint echoes of what sunshine was, so he's actually stuck looking for something he won't be able to recognise, isn't he? Then perhaps that's the reason for the destruction he advocates so fervently: if the flower that he is cannot know the sunshine, then like the weed it is too, it will spread and strangle the life around it so others cannot know the sunshine too. It's selfish, but whoever said flowers had to be considerate of the feelings of people? Exactly. No one did.
xxx
Takasugi dreams of cutting Gintoki down, of severing that traitorous head from its body with one clean stroke, soft silver hair fluttering over wild red eyes as it rolls in the dirt. It would be so beautiful in the moonlight, giving off a dull, mysterious gleam like a pond lotus in the fog. Katsura would make a lovely corpse too, with his lily white complexion and that hair, it would float so perfectly in a pool of water, tendrils curling with ropes of blood below the surface, hyacinths in full bloom drifting peaceably next to the ivory cheeks, pallid in death.
Instead, he sighs, he has to be content with this. This scrap of a girl, one who's been carefully cultivated – a greenhouse variety, not the wild, hardy hybrid of the sort that he would love to add to his collection of flowers. She would be so easy to snap, too, but plucking her in a trice would be no fun at all; he'll pull slowly instead, gentle but firm pressure on the stem until it is cleaved, unwillingly, from the earth it was rooted in. He'll press and preserve her body carefully, then, after carving it into a work of art.
Takasugi sets to work, telling the others not to disturb him while he's working. Soyo watches as he lays out the rows of scalpels and knives in various sizes, a wash basin of hot water, cloth, ink, a bottle of sake. He's pretty sure she is intelligent enough to anticipate some torture, but not the sort of treatment he has in mind – though equal amounts of pain will, in all probability, be involved.
He drags a futon out and lays it on the tatami, parallel to his tools, and beckons to her.
"Come here," he murmurs, "kneel on the futon with your back to me."
It's an order, one she wants to flout, but this person in front of her is a madman, so she can't take any chances. Besides, he has let her have free reign in this room so far, and to be tortured (or whatever it is he intends) while unbound is more comfortable than being trussed up. She lowers herself onto her knees precisely, back straight, senses heightened by the foreboding smell of metal. When she can't see him, she can push that lone green eye and the cruel slant of his lips out of mind. A small comfort, but beggars (and prisoners) can't be choosers. In a way, she is a spoil of war, his prize for the taking.
Soyo sighs when he cuts her kimono away, lifting the collar with one hand and slashing downwards with the other. It slits down the middle, like a mirror of its front, and he folds them to the side, pushing fabric down her shoulders and forearms like unfurled petals; layers and layers of cloth. Her hair is elaborately braided close to her head, and his nimble fingers twist and turn repetitively, in jarringly peaceful motion. The thick black braid is flipped over her shoulder, and he runs appreciative hands down the pale smoothness of her back, the perfect canvas. He'll carve his sin onto it, and the end product will be a flower of evil, beauty born from the malignance of the world. Traces the words with his eyes as he washes her back and dries it, primed for his purpose.
I saw with my eyes a single flower
Winking white against the coarse red
And all-consuming black of a battlefield.
And it taught me to live the way it did -
Plucked me from death many a time
When I had no desire to live.
Takasugi begins by writing words on her back in ink, and they flutter down column by column. The brush strokes feather her with their touch, followed closely by his fingertips. Line after line of grievance forms, ugly and real things given the façade of beauty by his neat penmanship. It's good to be allegorical too, because then so much can be simultaneously masked and revealed.
A perfunctory warning is issued before he takes the blades to supple flesh.
"You may scream or make any noise to deal with the pain, Soyo-hime-sama," he says calmly, and then adds with dangerous intensity, "But you must not move."
"Understood?"
Soyo raises her chin a notch, and Takasugi presses the knife down without hesitation – the cuts are shallow but sure, and deep enough to scar. Progress is slow, though, because he has to do everything himself; the carving of the word into her flesh, then catching the blood, and cleaning the new wound with a rag dipped in sake.
The things that have bloomed in me since
Bring not the sweetness of fragrance
But the putrid stench of choking death
And a futile yearning for light
To somehow halt the wither and decay
That plagues the soul.
It hurts terribly, and Soyo cannot help the anguished gasps and whimpers that escape her – the cuts sharp; the air burning; alcohol cold, then hot – pain so various. She wants to writhe and scream, but fear and pride keep her on her knees, fists bunching tight the fabric there, and then releasing it. Tears well up unbidden and fall unnoticed, as the line after line of grievance is carved onto her skin. His soul, now a part of her body.
The world tells me I am a weed
But in my heart I know
How much I should try to be a flower.
I will not let my head
Turn traitor to my heart;
I will become a flower.
At the end of the last word, she falls forward, completely spent. She can feel cold hands pulling at the remains of her clothes, stripping her naked and straightening her body on the futon. Soyo falls asleep to the steady plucks of the shamisen and cool drafts of air on her back.
Takasugi keeps her with him until her back is fully healed, until she is able to sit up again, then wraps her skilfully into a kimono and sends her back to the palace. They actually walk there side by side, through the streets of Edo, straw hats covering their faces. Soyo clutches the fabric of her kimono close, deathly afraid that something will slip and then the light will shine through her skin like lace, exposing her for what she is now.
He leaves her at a safe distance from the gates, and his parting words make her shudder when she thinks back on them later – a strange disquieting mix of revulsion and anticipation.
"Until next time, Soyo-hime-sama," he'd smiled.
"When you become a flower in your own right."