An Array of Flowers
AN: I know; it's a little dry in the beginning. Give it a read; I swear to God it'll get better. Exposition is dull like that.
CH1: Cypress and Lucern
In her first world, the most important thing that she had been taught was to always, always, use their weaknesses against them. The second was to never let her guard down, and the third was that famiglia came before everything.
It wasn't hard, not in the beginning. It had been fairly easy, actually. What had been difficult were the daily trials that she had been forced through to achieve that point where her knives were as sharp and deadly as her tongue, and her body as strong as the ruddy grey metal that she'd been surrounded by all her life.
It was her arrogance that had killed her the first time, a definite defiance of the Second Rule. In her defence, it had been in her own house; a tiny but overprotected fortress. She would know. She'd put the security there herself. It was the only place she could relax, until it wasn't.
The second time she'd died, she had been a 60 year old lady with a deceased husband. Her husband had died some 30 years before her; they said cardiac arrest, and she'd cried. It was only when she'd burned his remains under her belladonna bush that she'd stopped crying, and instead, her expression was replaced with cold satisfaction. In that life, nobody had found out who she was after him, and nobody knew to ask.
In her third world, she'd met a man when she was about twenty-one and in college. His name was Byakuran, and he looked to be in his late teens. As soon as he'd seen her, he'd laughed so hard she thought he was mad. And he was. He really was; anyone would be as mad as him with all the lives he was living.
"I'm sorry," she'd offered, once he'd calmed down and explained his amusement. He chuckled dismissively.
"Don't be. You're going to go be just as mad as I am. I've already met you."
Her throat clenched and she grimaced at the thought.
In that world, he had kissed her not long after she'd graduated college. They'd moved in together and she'd cared for him more than she had for anyone else. Once again, it was the second rule that she forgot.
In that world, he had killed her before she'd turned 30.
It wasn't till her twenty-second world that she'd met him again. She still wasn't mad, and he still wasn't sane. She had to give him credit for his pretence, though; his façade was so realistic that if she wasn't standing on the brink of madness herself, she would've thought him perfectly fine.
"Hi there," he'd greeted cheerfully. After giving him an once-over, she'd glared suspiciously. He looked exactly the same as he did all those universes ago.
"What do you want?" She'd bit out irritably. She honestly tried not to harbour grudges from her past lives (it had gotten awkward after the time with the plumber and the tree) but this man had killed her and damn if he didn't know it.
"Only to see you again," he'd said cheerfully, grasping her shoulder. In a flash, she had caught his arm between her humerus and ulna, and broke it.
He didn't even flinch, but she snickered anyways.
"That felt good."
A few weeks and some crazy sex later, she was dead again.