A/N: This is the original piece that I wrote for Sairin, but deemed unfit for Valentine's Day for obvious reasons. That's why the one in the Secret Valentine thread is "A Fruitful Encounter", which is the one I posted on this site a couple of days ago. Now... Well, Sairin has obviously seen this one, so I'll just post it here too.
Disclaimer: Like I said, you don't want me messing with Sound Horizon. Not even in fanfiction, but you can't stop me here BWAHAHA.
Rotting Roses
~Of love at first sight
It began with a lavender rose.
She first found it in the early hours of the morning, when the sky was still pink and the weak rays of the sun gave the furniture in her sparse room a comforting glow. It was the first thing she noticed when she woke from her fitful slumber, a pretty thing with the soft sunlight shining through translucent petals. A single rose that sat serenely on her dresser at her bedside.
She sat up and inspected it more closely. The long stem was carefully stripped of thorns and leaves. The blossom lay at an awkward angle. The lavender petals were dry and papery to the touch. She had never seen a real rose before, only pictures of them, pictures that slept far more soundly in their tattered books than she ever did.
Those pictures were more like caricatures than reliable representations of the real thing, she decided quickly. They looked nothing like the flower before her eyes. And the books never captured the pure scent that the lavender rose carried.
Tentatively, she reached out with her slender fingers to pick it up. Instantly, it fell apart, the petals scattering over her dresser and her sheets. The cloying stench of rot cut through the clean scent of nature, and she released the stem, knowing who had left the gift. Her heart pounded, her pupils dilated, she held her hand close and scrambled off the bed.
Even if it was a gift, she wanted nothing from Death.
Hours later, when the sun scorched and blazed, the stench of death became too much to bear and she finally found the courage to gather up the loose petals on a sheet of blank paper. As she slid the remains of the rose out of her window, she caught the real scent of the rose again, and she found herself wishing it hadn't died.
~Of innocence and secrecy and silence
He delivered a white rose next.
Thanatos did not know what the girl did with the first, for he only permitted himself to watch her at night. The day belonged to the thanatoi to behave as his capricious mother willed; the night is the only time he could be comfortable with intruding on a world that foolishly feared him.
The first time he discovered that the girl could see him, he had been both intrigued and apprehensive. Intrigued, for few have been capable of noticing his very existence, and apprehensive, for those who had taken note of him had not taken to him kindly. She, however, had become overwhelmed by fear every time she saw him – fear of what he represented and consequently of him.
But she never hurt him the same way that her fellow death-fearing thanatoi did. Not like his mother had, either. She was far too innocent for malice and hatred to take root. And for that he returned whenever he could, if only to watch the curious girl that strayed too far on the wrong side of Moira's graces but tried hard to please her nonetheless.
It made him envious, but that was nothing new. All the resentment that he already bore towards his mother was more than enough to make the envy trivial. He despised Moira for blinding the thanatoi to the source of their suffering, so that they desired ever more of life even while she cut them at every turn. He despised Moira for making him Thanatos, the one who would reign over the dead and command the irrational fear of the living.
He always wanted to save them, and this girl more than any other.
The rose began to wilt in his hands as soon as he removed it from the rest of its brethren. He frowned at the effect he had on it – perhaps he should have asked Mu and Phi again. They were generally less corrosive to the living – and held it gingerly, as though it would slow down the rate of decomposition.
Once again, he left the white rose by her side after she had fallen into a light slumber. It looked tired, no longer as crisp and fresh as it had been when it had caught his eye. A wry smile made its way up his countenance. If not even plants, the most tenacious and long-lived of all things mortal, could bear his touch, what more this fragile girl and her tenuous grip on life?
~Of death
It continued with a black rose.
She had agonized over the pale wilted offering on her dresser before clearing it away in the late afternoon. It was pretty enough to brighten up her drab room, that was true, but as it decayed throughout the day she felt it as an unwelcome reminder of her own mortality.
It frightened her, the idea of death. But the pure white color of the rose planted the idea in her mind that perhaps Death meant her no harm for now. And for all the fear she harbored towards being taken away, she couldn't envisage a being who could appreciate flowers as one who did not have at least a touch of kindness.
Papers were ripped, paints daubed, as she struggled to imitate the shape and feel of the rose she just discarded. Pulling and twisting, painting and drying, cutting and pasting, until she was finally content with her first and only creation.
The flickering flame of a candle lit up the room immersed in night, as she set the black rose on her dresser. She lay down and fixed her eyes, dulled by exhaustion, on her handiwork, all the while fighting the onslaught of sleep that made her sight blurry and her eyelids heavy.
When she next opened her eyes, the sun's light once again tipped everything with a golden hue. The candle had been blown out, and the rose was gone.
~Of love immortal
It ended with a red rose.
It laid exactly where the black one had the night before. Not yet dried, not yet wilted, ethereal in its beauty. A crumbling wreath of crinkled leaves and once-bright, now-dull pink puffballs circled it.
Even a fool knew the meaning of a red rose, and she was no fool. She reached out for it, her fingers nearly brushing the long stem before she caught herself.
If she touched it, it would crumble like the rest of its ephemeral predecessors.
So she wouldn't. Let it remain glorious for the moment, if only on the surface. Let it appear perfect, as though it was plucked out of her book of fairy tales.
Let her pretend that a form of love existed, even if she knew none should.
END
Note: the pink puffballs refer to a flower called the globe amaranth, which stand for everlasting love.
A/N: Much more sincere and serious than the other one, yes? Also much more morbid, LOL.