Title: Roses II
Pairing(s): Kain/Ruka
Words: 371
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"I wonder," Ruka heard over her shoulder, "If Shiki will be okay returning homeā¦"
"He's Shiki," the brunette picked up a razor, lifting it to the stem of a rose, "He will be fine, Rima."
"Yeah," the younger girl sighed. "Hey, Ruka, are you sure you're allowed to do that?"
"How hypocritical," the older girl told her, "You've just done it yourself. I've been cutting from the gardens since I was ten, Rima. Aidou's mother adores me and Aidou really doesn't care about flowers." Pause. "Ow."
The brunette lifted her punctured hand, dotted with little red holes from the vicious thorns of the rose, and examined it emotionlessly. Rima looked up as Kain suddenly appeared out of nowhere, squatting beside Ruka at the rose patch and picking up the flower she had dropped.
"Ruka," he said, averting his eyes from the blood tricking out of her hand, "Don't do that. I will do it."
"No," Ruka said softly, stemming the flow with her mouth, "You've been doing it since we were kids."
"There is obviously a good reason."
Rima watched contemplatively as the tall redhead seared closed the stem of Ruka's rose, before doing the same to every other rose still on the bush and plucking them rapidly out of the air before they fell.
"Somebody might have smelled that," he told Ruka, now stripping off leaves and thorns. "Go back to the house. I will take care of this."
With a slight pause, Ruka obliged (to Rima's surprise), disappearing from the greenhouse without another word. Rima waited until Kain stood up and stared at her expectantly, before she did the same.
.-.-.-.-.
Kain found Ruka later, bearing a massive bouquet of freshly arranged roses in a silver vase. She took them without a word, and he did not look like he was expecting any thanks.
"I'll go put them in Kaname-sama's room," Ruka said quietly. "It is rather dismal in there."
Kain shrugged, and left.
"That was very cruel of you, Ruka," Rima told her from her perch on the bed, "How terribly cold."
Ruka did not move. "It's nothing," she replied monotonously, then, as if she were trying to convince herself, "It not cruel, or cold. It's nothing. It's always been this way."
As she left, Rima wondered if it would always be that way.
.-.-.-.-.
I got this idea from reading chapters 28 and 29. Kain asks for Ruka, Aidou tells him, and he vanishes. Rima and Ruka are in the greenhouse. Kain later appears with a bouquet in a vase, the same one that Ruka is arranging in Kaname's room two pages later.
Review, please!
