A/N : Hello everyone, this is my first time writing Secret Garden fanfiction. This isn't very well edited, but I wanted to give it a go. All reviews are welcome! :D
Roses swirl around a white painted lattice, deep green ivy dances around a heavy door, a swing sways gently in the summer breeze.
A girl laughs, tossing her curls wildly. A boy grins, pushing poppy seeds down into the rich dirt.
The dirt becomes mud, the laugh becomes the scream of a flying grenade and the grin snaps into a grimace on a bloody, dirty face, two hollow blue eyes the only shadow of the grinning garden boy left.
His feet are numb in the thick boots, so he barely feels the freezing mud squelching through a rip in the side. The roar of a superior is followed by a sea of weapons pointed over the trench.
He doesn't need to think anymore. The motions are drilled into his brain, as simple and autonomous and planting a seed.
Dig, plant, water.
March, shoot, kill.
He remembers the first time. He remembers the bang ricocheting through his ears, the force of the still trembling in his hands, the crumple of the nameless, faceless body at which he had just fired.
He also remembers the scream of agony, but perhaps worse, how it slowly died away.
Once standing tall and strong, breathing in the fresh winds of the moor, he collapsed into the mud, shivering from the cold blooded horror of what he had just done.
And then he remembers reaching into his uniform, brushing his fingers against dry, wrinkled paper, how the elegant black script told him how she missed him, begging him to be safe. It told him how a successful friend of her cousin had married her, and that she hoped he was happy for them, and he couldn't read the rest through a curtain of salty tears which spilled at the bottom of the page, blurring the ink where she had the nerve to give him all her love.
Which made him laugh, in a dreadful sort of way, because he didn't think he ever had any of her love, much less all of it. Whereas he knew, they both knew, that if she wanted all his love all she had to do was ask.
A bellowing shout from his commanding officer resonates in the air.
Overthetop.
His body pulses with the continuous gunfire.
A searing pain below his ribs.
His last thoughts are of her, spinning in the garden, skirts billowing, eyes sparkling.
"Dickon, I want it all to be
wick!"
"I'll help thee save it Miss Mary. Come spring you
won't be able t'see the ground for roses!"
Something fast and sharp pierces his helmet.
As the world spins and goes dark, Dickon knows that nothing can be wick, not anymore.