Day/theme: March 11th, "once the words are spoken, something may be broken"
Warnings: AU, deathfic. If you squint real hard, there are some spoilers for Enies Lobby.
notes: I wrote this for the community, but because of travel-related drama didn't manage to post in time. But I liked it too much not to post somewhere.

seven flowers

Surrounded - and his voice becoming ever fainter - there was nowhere to go but across the ocean and one by one up the ghostly chain of arms, warm as flesh beneath their broken feet, taking advantage of a hole blown in the wall - some use at last out of those confounded warships - coughing choking dust in the eyes before the body remembered to close them shut (even as the brain screamed for every organ to be used; anything to find him among the rubble and hunks of mortar ever raining down on their heads as they ran down the corridors and then some stairs - now up broken steps stumbling when newly-garnered wounds betrayed their presence, only to be caught and pushed along by hands for the moment not quite as weary as they; in this dance of push-and-pull-and-fall they dodged stone, shied away from gunfire, clambered over pillars, threw themselves across chasms without gauging the distance (what was the point? - the only importance lay in reaching him in time before his voice became unthinkably silenced) to finally stumble across the very top last step and not so much burst as fall on the door, bearing it down by the sheer collective weight of their tired trembling aching yearning mad-with-worry bodies.

The room was full of the familiar stink; if they didn't find him soon he would leave them, he was leaving -

red red red red red, all over the room in pools and long streaks; they could almost judge the hours and minutes by the shaded palette of vermilion and dull brown, accompanied by the particular metallic odor that was strange yet vital companion to lifeblood - now forming a trail (they caught themselves automatically guessing the movements of battle, thinking of the location of his body in time and space while they were running leaping ducking jumping climbing racing to reach him) not to the center as it should and not narrowing to a trickle as it should, beneath his firmly planted feet, but to a rubbled-littered space next to a wall unremarkable from the rest of the room and so carelessly, horrifically wide that their boy, eyes shut tight against the destruction which he had wrought, seemed to be drowning sinking slipping down away from them

- or maybe already gone.

The world stopped beating.

He bent down next to the broken body. His large animal eyes were wet. "He's -"

"Don't say it." His voice was clipped and quiet. The hardness in the one visible eye flared for a moment, then vanished.

The same tension and release flashed around the circle. And old hardness from another lifetime, familiar but long unseen.

The tower was falling. The floor rocked like the ocean without. Large blocks of wall and ceiling landed precariously near.

They didn't dodge, or duck, or leap, or run. Their attention cared only for their poor beautiful boy.

A cannonball broke through. Stone and wood rained down. Dust and more stone flew back up.

It was a bright blue day.

Clouds hung fat and lazy, piled to dangerous heights.

A second cannonball rose ponderously upwards. Dominating the sky.

It caught their gaze. They tilted their chins to follow its movement:

flowers arching towards the sun.

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notes: As always, feedback and concrit deeply appreciated! Thanks in advance!