This has been sitting in a draft folder on my computer since December 2017, actually written around the time I started posting the first parts of the AU. And then I just, never did anything with it, for years. Until finally finishing it now. The funny thing is this was actually a dream I had that was about a dream Flowey has. So it was a bit of dream-ception. Now it's named this but threats made in the dream really don't hold any water. Flowey wouldn't wake up soulless again. It's mostly just his still-an-actual-child mind personifying things to work through fears and regrets. That being said even though a dream this is probably the goriest thing I've written since SCP-Marty. So fair warning. There is a lot of plant-on-plant violence here. Re-reading this over to edit and clean up I did keep thinking "2017 me... you ok?" Its probably because it WAS written right after that so it was fresh off the burners of a Uni teacher telling me to "make things darker!" So this too had become pretty dark. This has been added into the chronological order list of fics for this AU in my profile.
This is further proof this poor child needs actual therapy. Which he does get starting when he's 12. I just haven't written it yet.
Flowey sniffled, rubbing a vine over his eyes. The steady stream of tears had dissolved into just a few remaining trails that still dripped down his white cheeks. He hiccupped softly as Frisk held him, her hand brushing over his petals in a soothing manner.
"I don't want these emotions anymore, Frisk," he finally said, almost whispering. "I don't. I-I like the happiness, I like finally feeling compassion again. But-" Flowey let out a shaking breath, "I don't deserve it! I don't even deserve to live after what I've done!" He shut his eyes tight, burying his face in the girl's arms. "I can't take the guilt! I can't! I can't! I can't!"
Frisk continued to stroke the blossom's petals. After Flowey regained a soul, these emotional breakdowns began happening almost daily. She did her best to comfort the weeping flower, but she could feel his anguish through their shared link. The raging emotions were so strong tears ran down her own face. "Shh shh, it's ok, Flowey." Frisk wiped her eyes.
A somewhat muffled voice came from over her sleeve. "Y-you've been in my head. You know what I've done!" Finally he lifted his head, looking up at the girl holding him. He sagged in her arms, both her compassion, and his wild sobs having drained his energy. Tears continued to leak down his face and drip from his lower petals. "How can you even stand being anywhere near me…?"
"Because you're my brother and I love you." Frisk reached down, wiping some tears from the flower's face. "I will find some way to get you to like yourself again."
Flowey sniffled, lowering his head back to Frisk's arm. His eyelids becoming heavy as his petals drooped over his face. Fatigue finally overpowered his small body.
...
Flowey shot upright, wide black eyes darting around his gloomy surroundings. Frisk was nowhere to be seen. The whole house seemed strangely quiet. If it was night-time, why wasn't she in their room?
"…Frisk?" Scuttling on his roots, Flowey reached the door and peered into the hallway. He eased out and looked around.
No one was in the hallway or guest room upstairs.
Coming to the top of the stairs, Flowey first peered down into the darkened living room. "…Frisk? …. Mom? Hello?" Careful to not trip over his own vines, the flower started climbing down. As the golden blossom descended, a strong metallic scent hit him. Flowey climbed down faster. "Frisk! Mom!"
As soon as he made it to the bottom, Flowey skittered around the corner. When he did, he screeched to a halt.
Laying on the ground was both Frisk and Luna in enormous pools of blood. Deep gashes had been torn into them; they were blackened with bruises.
Nausea rose in the flower's stem. His whole body shook as he stumbled backwards.
"I was wondering when you'd come down to see what you did?~"
Flowey blinked as tears started to sting his eyes. Who said that? "I-I didn't!"
Something tutted from below, next to the bodies. "Don't lie.~" The voice finally rising, Flowey was soon looking at …. another him? This other him had blood spattered across its face, with more dripping from its petals and thorns, running in a tiny stream down its stem. So much blood! Its features were twisted into a demonic face with a wide, crooked, fanged grin covering almost the entire width of its face. It also had large hollow eyes with tiny red pupils gleaming somewhere within.
Flowey's petals lowered as he continued to back up, shocked eyes locked on his doppelganger. It began slinking closer on its own roots with a slithery sound.
"Things were so much easier when we were soulless. Wouldn't you agree, Asriel?" the thing said, once it was in Flowey's face.
Flowey took a moment to find his voice. "That's not my name anymore!" He tried backing away further only to realize this thing's vines were winding around him. He winced as the thorns dug in. He also felt a flash of rage.
"Are you sure? You cry just as much as you did back then." As the vines wrapped higher up his stem, Flowey used his own, trying to pry them away. It only squeezed tighter, cutting off his breath and making the flower cough. "You're crying even now! Ever since gaining that SOUL you've turned back into a cry-baby!"
Flowey clenched his teeth, one eye shut tight while the other was barely open, looking at his twin. "L-Let go…!"
"Why don't you make me? Or has your new SOUL taken away your will to FIGHT?"
Pellets materialized behind Flowey's double, spinning for a moment before slamming into its stem. As it recoiled in pain, it finally released its death-grip on Flowey's throat. Backing away, Flowey wheezed and gasped in air. Then he growled.
The other flower straightened tall, green sap-blood oozing from pellet wounds. "At least you're not totally lost." Despite only sitting on a solid floor, it sprouted more vines, smashing upwards, with floorboards splintering. Nails flew in the air. "Once I get you out of the way, I can come back and have some real fun up here on the surface!" The thorny vines shot out at Flowey.
Flowey skittered across the floor, darting left or right to avoid large vines as they slammed into the floorboards, just barely missing him. He ducked as one swung at his head.
"How fun is it being on this end of the attacks?"
Flowey ran on his small roots, weaving around the furniture, in an attempt to tangle the other's vines. With each thump into the floor, each attempt to smash Flowey's head, the aggressive vines batted chairs and lamps over and out of the way to reach him. He kept materializing his pellets and firing them back at the other flower. A vine shot up just in front of him and Flowey skidded to a halt and scuttled in another direction before it could curl around him.
"Scared. Alone. Dodging vines like your life depended on it. Desperate to not…" As Flowey tried darting behind a bookcase, a vine shot out, wrapping tightly around one of his roots. "…get caught…~" It dragged Flowey out from behind upturned furniture before lifting him up by the root. "How's it feel being the mouse rather than the cat this time?"
Flowey formed more pellets only to be slammed into the floor. He let out a pained groan as he was lifted, and then slammed back down over and over. After a while it all began to blur as he lost count of how many times he was smashed into the floor. It finally stopped, lifting Flowey up again by the root. The flower hung there limply, breath coming out as stuttering pants as he spit out a few teeth. Several of his petals had jagged rips in them.
The vine brought him over to the human corpses, then dropped him. Flowey splashed into the blood with a whimper.
Pushing himself up on shaky roots, the flower crawled closer to the remains of his new family. He nuzzled both of them as he started to sniffle.
"Oh Stop. It's really getting pathetic now. It's not like you haven't done worse."
Flowey clenched his eyes, trying to ignore his other self.
"Without emotions you could kill everyone. Fast. Slow." It let out a bubbly laugh. "Children in front of their parents, parents in front of their children."
"Stop it."
"Befriending everyone only to betray and kill them.~"
"Stop it! I know what I did! You don't have to tell me!" Using his vines, Flowey tried to wipe some of the blood from Frisk and Luna's faces but as he was also now covered in it, he only smeared more of the sticky red horror into them.
"Just like with your two Big Brothers!"
Flowey's petals flattened against his head. "Stop it! Stop it, stop it STOP IT!" The flower sank lower to the ground, curling his vines around himself as if for protection despite them being rather small.
"Aww, did I strike a nerve with that one?"
Flowey stayed quiet for a moment before he finally spoke again. "Why are you even here? HOW are you even here? What do you want from me?"
A vine reached over to pat the flower on the head. He winced at the several sharp strikes. "I already told you. Once you're out of the way I can have some fun again." The vine curled around the bloody flower, lifting him up, and dropping him down next to his doppelganger. The same appendage actually patted the flower this time, in a mock comforting manner. It then pressed down on Flowey's stem until his face was forced against the floor. Another, sharper one, hovered over the flower's head. "Well. It's been fun. But we've drawn this out long enough. After all, didn't you say you deserved death? Why want to live in a world where no one could ever love a horrible creature like you."
The spear-like vine shot forward only to be blocked by another shooting up in its path.
"How could you hurt them! Frisk loves me! I don't even know how, but she does! Mom does too!" The vine Flowey had managed to form knocked aside the one holding him down. "I did … very bad things." Flowey dug another few vines up from the floorboards. The other flower grinned at the fight about to start. "But you've destroyed my chance to do better!" Flowey formed some pellets. "How dare you!" The other flower swung a vine which Flowey blocked with his own and pushed away. Flowey screamed in a rage. "How dare you!"
"There's the anger! Good!" it shrieked, joyfully. "There's the REAL YOU!"
"No it's not!" Pellets tore into the smirking monstrosity, making its vines twitch with each hit. "Frisk saw the real me! She's been trying to tell me that for months now! I just haven't been able to hear her!" Flowey struck at the doppelganger with vines, pellets and words. He could yell as loud as he wanted. Frisk wouldn't tell him to be quiet now. He became angrier, but with a different kind of rage. A clean rage. The sort used against bad guys.
"Frisk cared! If someone I've killed so many times can still believe in me, I'm gonna believe her! Leave me ALONE!"
The other flower stabbed at Flowey, and he ducked, then thrust his own thorny vine back. He pierced one of the other flower's petals. It grunted, but before it could retaliate, Flowey struck with another vine and launched more pellets.
The darker flower snarled as green sap-blood leaked from it. It lunged at Flowey, pinning him on the floor, and biting into his stem drawing sap.
Flowey cried out and thrust a vine through the other's eye.
It shrieked and backed away. Sap poured from the wound.
Getting back up onto his roots, Flowey materialized several rings of pellets around the other flower, striking it over and over. By the time the final ring smashed into it, it was wilted, panting, and bleeding heavily. Flowey stopped. He stared at the crushed flower.
At the lack of any further attack, the other flower gasped, "Well? What are you waiting for?"
Flowey cringed at how familiar this situation was to him. "No. Nothing more. I'm not going to kill you." He brought up more vines to surround the other flower in what looked like a cage, however.
"If you don't-"
Flowey tiredly sighed, shutting his eyes for a moment before turning back to the other. "Yeah, yeah. You'll 'come back and kill me and everyone I love.' I heard it all before, trust me."
The other plant wrapped its roots around two of the vine-bars of its cage. "Then why won't you-"
"My sister taught me how to spare. It doesn't have to be 'Kill or Be Killed' anymore." Flowey's tongue dipped into one of the holes where a tooth used to be. He winced at the sensation. "And killing you won't change anything I've done. I can't run away from my crimes, I have to live with them."
Turning away from the other flower, Flowey looked back over at the bodies of his family. He sniffed and wiped his eyes with a vine before limping on his roots over to the stairs.
"Come back here and fight me, you bastard!"
...
Flowey woke up with a start. Panting, he looked around the room. He was in their bedroom, in his tub of fertilizer and wrapped up in his sweater. Was he dreaming? "…F-" Flowey cleared his throat. His voice came out far weaker than he wanted. He paused, listening. "F-Frisk?" he called after a moment.
His petals lifted at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Frisk entered the room. "Hey. What's up, Buttercup." She grinned at her own little rhyme as she crossed to the golden blossom and knelt down to his level. "Are you feeling any better?"
Flowey gave a slow, small nod, then raised two roots, silently asking to be picked up. Frisk carefully eased the plant from his soil and pulled him into a soft cuddle. Flowey wrapped his roots around her shoulders to return the hug.
"I don't know how possible it'll be," he murmured, "but I'll let you try to help me like myself again, Sis." Flowey shut his eyes and just enjoyed the warm embrace.