Interlude X

My father's infatuation with his garden began roughly around the same time as his episodes. He'd never bothered to take care of the house or our lawn beforehand, caught up surviving at his job with the news agency before they fired him.

It started with a bougainvillea, which is just as evil as its name looks. The thing was covered with inch long needle-sharp thorns to protect the leathery vines that grew flowers the prettiest shade of purple, hiding its true nature to any outsider. Growing to disproportionate sizes in mere weeks – its stalks bulged more than a pro-wrestler's 'roided arm – it wasted no time trying to consume our house. No matter how many times my father clipped away at it, the vines would come back twice as long and twice as vicious.

It was left behind when we moved, of course. Then in Flagstaff he planted those pointed orange things that look like cranes with neon plumes, which never really took well to the climate. Not like the flamevine that just as greedily consumed everything it touched like the bougainvillea, thankfully lacking any nasty fangs. After we finally settled in Tucson, my father decided to give up on the weeds and any of the more tropical shrubs for good. Our backyard in Catalina went from a barren wasteland to a hub of little crops for radishes, carrots, cabbages, tomatoes – if you can think of it, we probably had it. If my father wasn't in his room, he was out in his garden.

For a time I was jealous of those plants, who had somehow managed to garner more attention from my father than I ever could – no matter how many temper tantrums I threw when I was younger.

"Why's dad like gardening so much?" I asked one day while helping my mother with the dishes. She looked up to the window where I was watching him from, a far away, but warm expression gracing her usually hard and stoic exterior.

"Only one way to find out," she said, touching my back for a light push.

So outside I went.

Frau had passed away not too long ago and I hadn't been going out into the hills so much since then. My room, cushioned with with the music from the player I'd received at ten, was far more appealing. Her grave was lost somewhere in the sprawls of trees and trellises, or so I liked to think. I knew exactly where that spot was. I'd dragged her there.

I was barefoot while walking across the hard, pebble riddled dirt, trying to find where my father had disappeared to. He was kneeling by the roses, hands going about their careful work. He allotted extra care to those glowing crimson buds. Those and the lilacs. Mother's favorite. There was always a vase of them sitting on our kitchen table. Beside me were bushels of pink-red and purple flowers, which may as well have been giant fuzz pillows from afar.

"Do you like the azaleas?" I jumped at my father's voice. He was staring at me and the flowers called my attention back, absorbing me in their light. I shook my head anyway and he grunted, a half-smirk poking at his mouth. Pink and purple weren't boy colors. He didn't care.

"Be careful," he said as I reached a hand out, taking a knee beside me. "Their leaves and nectar are toxic."

"Why?"

"It's just how they protect themselves," he said, hands reaching between the open, bell-shaped buds to snap off dead stalks. "In China, they call it the 'thinking of home bush'. They'll be in bloom all over Japan this time of year."

The homeland. Over the ocean there was a half flooded series of long islands, sunken and bombed out cities left over from a forgotten era. Were its beaches like those in Panama, rough but brushed with the touch of the sea and the roar of the winds? Were its mountains green and thick with summer musk, or scorching and dusty like Arizona?

"Here," father said, handing me his old pair of clippers. "It's your job to take care of them now, okay?" Some rust had spotted the blades and the rubber on the handles was worn away to the rough metal underneath. He never let mom take care of anything in his garden. He saved that for me.

The backyard became a world in and of itself – separate from the house and my father's episodes. They didn't exist out there, not that I ever saw. They couldn't find us amidst the rich yellow plywood and cool, coffee brown dirt. The radiance of the flowers kept all of that at bay.

He was planting watermelons that year and we had to wait long months for the vines to wander and grow their bulbous fruits. Most of our time was spent with our fingers dipping into the soil, caking dirt under our nails and ripping out weeds that looked deceptively similar to the watermelon's budding vines.

"There's nothing more satisfying than helping something grow," my father had said, letting me water them for the first time. The melons had bloated to juicy plump orbs, their vines curling and thick. "Someone showed me once, all before you were born. It took me a long time to understand."

Just like Aunt Misato's villa, the garden became a place to shut down whenever mother was hard on me. If I was being yelled at – not the over exaggerated kind of yelling kids whine about, but the kind full of a very real anger and very real reprimands – I had to stand with my hands behind my back and maintain perfect eye contact with her. When I was being scolded, she wasn't my mother anymore. She was "ma'am" and if I faltered in this protocol in the slightest, my punishment would be worse. I was often confined to my room, left with nothing but schoolwork to do.

It was after one such incident that I retreated to the garden for shelter, getting lost in the azaleas as my father tended the roses.

"Why's she have to be such a bitch all the time?" I mumbled, her words still burning me, even out by the bright flowers. I'd never said anything like that about her before, least of all to my father. I'd never trusted him that much. It just felt good to spit hate at her, even if she wasn't around to hear it. I didn't have the courage to say that to her face, not for another six years.

"She doesn't mean to be that way," he answered, quietly. I sat in the dirt next to where his expert fingers snagged dead petals and brittle branches from the rose bushes. I thought he must have liked the sting of the thorns to handle them without gloves. Or maybe he'd just gotten good at not getting hurt. His fingers pinched one of the sharp barbs, snapping a long fang off to show me. "The roses have thorns to protect themselves, like the azaleas."

"Do you cut your fingers up a lot?"

"A lot."

"If it's painful, why do you do it?"

"Because when you take care of them, they bloom." he snipped one of the roses from its bush and placed it in my palm, nodding me off to the house, where my mother was hunched over a stack of papers in her musty, drab office. I entered with trepidation. It wasn't her favorite like the lilacs and I was still sour at her for my most recent tongue lashing. But when I brought her that little red flower, she could've lit up the whole house with her smile. Dad knew how much it would mean to her coming from me.

He wasn't a man that smiled much, but he smiled then.

He made everything okay.

One day in November, he'd ended up in the hospital with a broken leg and a concussion. Fell off the roof fixing up a patch of shingles, snapping his tibia right below the knee. Had to use a cane for a while after the cast came off. Even today he has a slight limp from the bone never setting quite right again.

I tried to take care of the garden when he couldn't, but it was too much and I didn't understand all the plants like he did. I couldn't even tend to the roses without ripping my fingers open. I never showed him that. He didn't like blood. So I stopped looking after them, frustrated with their thorns and their graying petals.

The doctors had him on a lot of painkillers for those eight weeks his leg mended and all it seemed to do was make his mood swings worse. To the point where he stopped coming outside altogether. His condition had never diminished to begin with, only subsided from time to time. The flowers were starting to die and I didn't know how to save them. Even the azaleas began to wither. That stung more than the thorns of the roses. It was my job to take care of them.

"Don't let my flowers die," he'd said, a hand snagging my shoulder as I walked by, the fact that he was out of his room a rarity once more. Cold sweats kept him up in the night and he wasn't sleeping so well again. I could see how tired he was, how much life had been sucked out of him in just the past few weeks. Or maybe he'd always looked that way and I just never noticed.

"Kazuya. If something ever happens to me, don't let my flowers die, you hear?" he said again, a bit of desperation in his voice as his eyes searched mine. "Promise me."

The garden had become his new drug and he craved it with the same fervent need. As every flashback and nightmare fought for dominance over his reality, it was the one constant he was ever allowed to keep – and he couldn't stand the idea of losing it.

Hesitating, I nodded back, trying not to crumble under the weight on my shoulder.

I promise.

It was winter and the roses weren't in bloom. Come spring time, it didn't matter. They died anyway.

Author's Notes: As I edge ever closer to a ̶m̶i̶d̶w̶a̶y̶ transitional point, I'll likely stop doing the Interludes altogether just so the more immediate story can unfold relatively unhindered.