So I decided I would write another one shot. I really love these two. Thank you to everyone who read the last one and thank you very much for your reviews- really does mean a lot.

Spoilers for 5x17

Zelena x Hades

Flowers

She had always loved flowers.

As a child she would allow herself to get lost for hours in the meadows behind her house, wading deeper and deeper into the thick undergrowth. She went to the parts of the meadows where she was dwarfed by giant daffodils, and caressed by roses.

Flowers never judged her.

Flowers never asked questions.

As she grew so did the world around her. She returned to the meadows one day to see they weren't hers anymore- a town of travelling men had moved onto them, trampling them to make way for their new lives. She watched as they hacked away at her beautiful paradise. She watched as they burnt it all to the ground. She watched as they called it all weeds and listened as they called it a waste of space.

She wept the whole way home.

Perhaps if she'd been allowed to keep her happy place the wickedness wouldn't have engulfed her soul. Perhaps if she'd had one more evening amongst the daisies she wouldn't have cut her father's throat. Perhaps they would have been her salvation.

Perhaps.

He'd been the only person she'd ever told about the meadows. On the way to finding Dorothy on that damn bicycle they'd come into a clearing that was covered in a sea of bluebells. It was the first time she'd seen so many flowers together since her childhood and she'd been unable to hide her joy. He had noticed, it would have been impossible not to and so stopped the bike. He parked it against the tree and leant down to pick her one. It was the first time in a long time anyone had given her anything beautiful voluntarily. She accepted it, brought it to her nose and all she could say through her smile was how much she loved flowers.

She had long given up on a world of flowers.

Flowers didn't grow in the darkness.

Apart from this one. She knew it was broken- wilted and damaged beyond obvious repair but it was still here, proving that even in the darkest place in all the realms light was still possible.

She'd placed it in a jar in the centre of the table. She knew it was dead but she still gave it water on the off chance it wasn't, after all, it deserved every god damn opportunity to prove her otherwise.

Initially she focused her magic on it; attempting to nurture it and conjure the life back into its wilted petals, but the magic was unfamiliar to her. Nurture wasn't exactly in her nature. After a number of failed enchantments she realised she didn't need to change it- it was beautiful the way it was because it had grown here in the first place. It was trying to be beautiful in a world where beauty seemed impossible.

She stopped her spells and let it be.

In the middle of the night she heard a knock at the door. Before she even opened it she knew it was him. He stood on the porch steps. He told her he was having trouble sleeping. He told her that her being this close but not close enough was driving him increasingly mad. At least when they were in different realms he was forced to have boundaries but now she was here in his world, or rather in the world he had created for her and he couldn't stay away. He hung his head in shame because he hated the fact that he was troubling her but he just needed to see her, at the very least hear her voice and then he would go if she wanted him to.

She looked at his broken soul. It was fractured in the same way as hers was. The stories made it all so simple- good and evil were so black and white and she knew he was never going to be the white knight in the stories but white was boring- white was unilateral- she didn't want white. She wanted him, with his grey eyes and contorted soul because she knew he would never seek to change her. If they wanted to be 'evil' they could be 'evil' or if they wanted to try to become better they could do that too… but what label they had was unimportant, the only thing that mattered was they would love each other anyway

Some people would call it toxic but she knew this was because they would never understand. A pure heart would never understand what it is like to carry darkness and that perhaps redemption is not always necessary to find love because in a way love is redemption; or at least the only redemption you need.

She steps back and gestures him in. He looks at the decaying flower in the centre of the table and is filled with immense sadness that he can't give her a bouquet, that the best he can do is yet again sub-par. He gestures to it and tells her one day it will be different- one day he'll plant her a whole meadow, a whole realm of flowers which he'll make sure is never ruined or burned. It will be all for her. It will always be all for her.

For a second the past all becomes irrelevant. It doesn't matter what realm they are in or whether they are above or below ground, whether they are technically alive or dead because it is just them, their souls occupying a shared airspace. They look at each other for a long time before he steps a little closer. He clicks his fingers and she hears music start to play. It is quiet at first; the notes of the piano trickle slowly into the room. He offers her his hand and they start to dance.

It is a little clumsy at first but they soon find their rhythm. The tune intensifies and suddenly it as though there is colour in the room again. The darkness is gone and he is spinning her in the light. She feels her hair come free, she feels her feet unsteady slightly and her brain is unbalanced but she doesn't care because in that second she knows he would catch her, she knows he would.

The music slows again and she feels herself moving closer into his body. His hand leaves hers and places itself on the small of her back. They are so close now, his face inches from hers. Their legs intertwined, their pelvises joined to the rhythm of the song and when she feels his breath softly on her neck she feels the nerve impulse run up her spine.

Their gazes meet as the music stops. She cannot stop looking at him.

They do not notice the flower on the table. They do not notice that in the light it has sprouted new petals. They do not notice as its fragrance lingers in the previously stale air. They notice nothing but each other.

They stand still.

She leans in and kisses him gently.

The darkness vanishes.

The light is overwhelming.

They are free.