The Gardener

My first kill.

There—there it lies. This being. I cannot call it a he or a she anymore. I killed it. It is not a man or a woman anymore. Just a dead corpse. An empty shell. A soulless vessel.

A beautiful flower.

It has hair, long and flowing, blinding in its own livid sort of beauty. It has lips, swollen and red. Its limbs are stiff and hard. Its fingers seem to have lost the softness that used to reside in their touch. Its eyes are closed, as though it was shielding itself from the rest of the world, but I know what lies behind those eyelids. I've always been able to see through them. But the life has drained away from it like leaves blown off a tree.

Like the seemingly harmless gardener, I take what I love, I care for it, nurture it, create it!—Only to water it at the top, then cut it off at its roots.

It still looks the same as it did moments before I killed it, but don't all flowers? Subtle in its beauty, though that unique beauty has been wilting away from the moment I touched it.

At first I had only eyed it, appreciating its beauty. But then I came nearer—I wanted more. Surely something so beautiful would be better to touch, to hold, to caress—and oh, it was better—so much better.

But no one told me it had thorns.

I was shocked the first time one of its thorns cut into me. The thorn hurt and stung, but when I pulled it out, red blood—my own red blood began flowing through the wound. Scared, I looked at my beautiful flower contemptuously, but all it could do was stare at the wound from which my blood flowed—like it was fascinated by this masochistic display.

Furious, I took that thorn and shoved it back into my skin. I used my thumb to shove the thorn deeper than the original puncture, making absolutely certain that there would be no way my beautiful flower could ever take it out to look at what lay beneath the fragile layer that is my skin.

But roses have more than just one thorn. And I have a lot of skin.

As I came closer and closer to my flower, more and more thorns began to perforate through my being. At one time, I wasn't even sure if these thorn wounds were accidental anymore, but at that time, I did not care about the thorn wounds. I just needed my flower—yearned for it. So as the thorns tore through, I ripped them out, though once the thorns became too many to count, I let the blood flow and I let my flower look into my wounds and into me.

But what I did not know was that those thorns were poisoned. I don't think my flower knew it either. All those thorn wounds were weakening me slowly, and without its thorns, my flower had no source of protection anymore. We were both naked to the world, and in a sick way, we had both undressed each other.

We were from two different worlds and wished to live in just one—together. But that could never happen. The sensible action would have been for each of us to return to our own worlds. But like an addiction, my flower knowing I still existed, and I knowing my flower still existed, and each of us knowing that I had its thorns and that it knew my inner workings—it simply was not possible for us to just part ways. Nothing's ever that easy.

Instead, in this very last meeting between the two of us, as I watch my beautiful flower wilt into nothingness, I open my hands to see my palms swollen, red, and bloody with dozens of thorns darkening my fair skin.

I think somewhere inside, somewhere none of those thorns could ever find, I think I always knew that it would have to end this way.

And suddenly my flower looks ugly. Flecks of dirt and debris are caught in its long hair. Its lips are red and swollen from its own blood. Its limbs are stiff and hard, bent in awkward angles. Its fingers are callused and clenched into fists. And even though they are closed, when I try to look through its eyes now, I see nothing. I cannot see good or evil or kindness or sin. I look at the thorns in my bloody palms again and realize that I see nothing because I took, from my flower, everything there was to see.

I find a stray cloak nearby and begin to cover its mangled form. I can take no more from this flower—this corpse. All its beauty is gone, its wisdom shattered, its life stolen. By me.

"Ginny."

I quickly cover the remnants of my flower and hastily turn at hearing my name. It's Harry, standing tall and proud. His dark hair dominating the bright sky around him, his green eyes piercing the daylight around us, his tanned skin giving off a healthy look. He stood rooted to the ground in all his flower-like beauty.

"What're you doing here all alone? C'mon, let's go," he says. He can not see the flower behind me. My flower. And he starts walking away toward the tents.

I know I must follow him, though never again will I delight in the pleasures and beauties that are flowers. I look back at the covered shape of my decaying flower and see a wisp of platinum peek out from underneath a corner.

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that crushes it. And looking back at Harry, now that I'm back in my own world, and even though everything smells good, I know what is causing that smell. And though Harry does not know, I know that I cannot find the love I once knew in someone else's kiss.

I give up being a gardener, but I am forever a murderer, for I killed the love I found.

That love only lasted a heartbeat. And now it doesn't have one.

Author's Note: So… who can tell today was a bad day? I wrote this up through pure anger and frustration in about twenty minutes, and now that I look back at it, half of it looks like really cliché metaphors and junk, but then there are parts I like, so I've posted it here. It's Draco/Ginny/Harry angst, of course, and it works (in my head) mostly because most fans ship Draco/Ginny or Harry/Ginny, so that obviously throws up a love triangle crisis. This is set during the wartime, but I couldn't really find anywhere to mention that in the ficlet without ruining the tone to some extent. But now that you know, it might be a bit more understandable why Ginny was in a situation where she ended up killing Draco. Sadness, right? I ship Draco/Ginny, too. Dude. Anyway, leave me reviews (whether they're good or bad) and thank you for reading.