Days Past

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Short, basically drabble fic I wrote because I wanted to write another dark fic. Not because I feel bad, I just want to test myself. Also, listening to nothing but the original song and remixes of Reminiscence will do that to you. Hence the title. That and I have a penchant for stealing song titles for fics.

As a note, I know nothing about flowers. So I couldn't tell you the names or even if these ones are real. The idea just hit me and I wrote it.

As always, comments and criticisms are appreciated.

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Her garden is nearly dead. Her most precious flowers are withered and ugly and gone. Not for lack of love, but, she can't help thinking, for just the opposite. Just because you love something doesn't make it bloom, nor does love keep anything alive indefinitely. A hard learned lesson, but one she's witnessed many times over.

But it never stops hurting.

So she sits in her garden, knees dirty and hands hovering over the flower before her. It's pale, or was once before the edges blackened and withered and turned the rest of the flower an ugly ashen color. While not one of her favorites, it had been strong and beautiful, lying in its patch of soil like a proud warrior. It had been different than all the others around it, but still somehow, barely, managed to fit in, managed to ingrain itself in the small bed of flowers it called home. And as it had found its way into the lives of the other flowers, it had showed her its beauty, and finally she loved it as much or more than the other, more vibrant flowers.

She touches the wilted petals gently, almost in a caress, smiling sadly as the flower falls apart beneath her fingertips. The petals fall to the earth slowly, like the dirge that echoes off the stone walls of the Hyuuga compound, that echoes in the streets of Konoha. They hit the earth softly, as gentle as they are strong, touching nothing else and disturbing nothing else and just being.

Settled into the dirt, they look almost white again, pure once more.

Maybe, if she tries hard enough, she can imagine away the crackled and blackened edges, the yellow-grey center. Maybe, just maybe, she can imagine the petals have fallen from a fresh, newly bloomed plant and can be helpful in medicines, or just to make a simple potpourri for her room. Or maybe she can imagine that the stem isn't withered and brown, and that there are no weeds growing up among the flowers, and that the once-majestic, once-strong, once-white flower isn't dead and gone and lifeless.

Her imagination has never been that strong.

Among the once-white flower are smaller, brighter ones. Like weeds, they grow all around the larger flowers, vying for attention and light. Usually, they go ignored, although she uses them every now and then for some of her more potent medicines. But she doesn't make those often, and so many of the small yellow flowers are needed that she's careful to make only as much as she can afford to without using all the plants.

They're pretty, the yellow flowers. Not as pretty as the larger white one, but beautiful in their own way. They don't quite fit in—not like the white flower. Even while different, it was still accepted, albeit hesitantly. These appear more as weeds than flowers, although unlike the weeds she finds everyday, the weeds that now choke her precious garden, these don't strangle her plants. They vie for attention, yes, proclaim themselves loudly with their bright yellow petals, yes, but they do not kill their own.

Now, however, they're as ugly as the white flower has become, petals folded in on themselves so much they don't look like petals anymore. Their bright yellow color is gone; brownish-green can be seen on the rare part that isn't curled up. Her eyebrows draw together as her eyes mist over. They're dead, so far gone that they're almost unrecognizable to those that don't care for them, but still they stand as tall as they can, their stems refusing to bend even in defeat.

As with the white flower, her hands find their way to the petals, touching them lightly. The flower gives a valiant effort, but the weight of her soft touch is too much and the entire plant crumbles to the ground, the dry stem breaking off halfway. She pulls her hands back quickly, afraid to touch any of the other plants lest she destroys them too. Even if they're dead, even if she can't help them anymore… The sight of them falling to the ground is too much.

She doesn't want to watch them fall.

She's seen enough already.

It's started to rain, lightly at first and then faster, the drops cold, moving fast enough to sting. She winces as the drops break apart the yellow flower, grinding it into the soil. The ground around her knees becomes mushy, little rivers of water forming all around her as the dirt is shoved every which way. Beside her knee, the little once-white petals are swallowed one by one into the mud, the dark brown color washing over them like dried blood.

Washing over the dead.

Red on white. Blank eyes glazed over and sightless, open wide to the sky.

Yellow to a dark red-orange. A huge grin frozen on a cold face, eyebrows turned down sadly.

Faces, smiles, lifeless eyes. She hates those eyes, hates those smiles, hates the way they've burned themselves into her memory.

White. Blue. All the colors blur together in the rain, washed away and cleansed. Whatever color they once were, no matter how beautiful, is gone. Once gone, they can't be brought back. Once dead, they can't return.

Outside her garden the dirge continues, well into the night and throughout the storm. She sits in her garden, kneeling in the flowerbed beside the once-white and once-yellow flowers, mud around her knees and spattering her once-blue clothing. The clouds have long since buried the sun, and the sun has long since set, and her petals have long since vanished with the rivers of rain.

But she sits there because there's nowhere else for her to be but by her loved ones. She never told them, never showed them how she cared beyond the way she tended them, healed their wounds and watched them grow, never saying anything. But she was happiest then, watching them. Happy to know that they were alive and well and strong when she wasn't, but that she could still help them in the rare times they were weak.

Those days are past now.

Her flowers have died. Her flowers have died because she loved them, and they loved her. But she never knew. Couldn't know. Flowers, they don't speak, they just watch, waiting for their time to shine, for the chance when they can return the love they've been given. They live for that purpose, and that purpose only, and once fulfilled they fade away, still beautiful in the minds of those who cared.

If this is love, she doesn't want it.

She just wants her flowers.