Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
By icecreamlova
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Regret
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There are many things Rosethorn regrets. Many things. One is studying at Lightsbridge, where nothing blooms.
Academic spells beyond the scope of Winding Circle are necessary. She knows this. It's just...
Before lifeless Lightsbridge, she had been in love, and sure of it. (No one made her laugh and shout and scowl like that.)
But feelings were confused, and people changed (into arrogant sticks) and made a muck of things. (No one watched walking away quite like that.)
Lightsbridge cut her ties with absolutely everyone.
She will never forgive losing the chance to learn if it was really time to let Isas go.
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Choice
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She doesn't choose him.
Crane knows he shouldn't be surprised, because, in the end, he hadn't chosen her either. The greenhouse had taken his time; then picking an apprentice among the talented novices. And there was throwing himself into his work, to stop thinking, to keep from choosing... He had never managed to find the time to stop by the Earth Temple to see her. Now he has the time, but no reason to go.
It does surprise him, though.
He had forgotten.
Crane doesn't tell himself he's arrogant and self-absorbed to think Rosethorn would have waited for him, when he wouldn't do the same, because he remembers now.
Dedicate Rosethorn has never waited for someone else to make the decision for her. She blazes through life in a glory of wild thorns and bristles. Now someone else shares her bed and heart.
When the world moves around you, overwhelmingly fast, one can stop at where two roads diverge, can dither, but that in itself is a choice. One cannot 'abstain' from choosing. And when it's something as simple, as important as reminding someone "I love you," it is often a decision people regret.
By then it is too late.
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Mercy
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Rosethorn did not expect to see that venerably uptight, annoyingly stiff former best friend of hers outside Discipline's gate, looking as lost as one of the twitterpated novices on their first day with classes.
Superficially, he was utterly composed and absolutely under control. Crane would never leave the Air Temple were he not immaculate and dressed in a shade of yellow that complimented his features - in a way that made his frown seem thunderous, and pursed lips seem forever on the edge of a lofty barb. But... she thought he looked...
...What was she thinking? This was Crane, not Isas; she was Rosethorn, not Niva. And now that she was Earth and he Air, they never even spoke. They hadn't, really, for nearly eighteen months.
"Your tomatoes," Crane said. It took a moment for Rosethorn to realize he was speaking to her - so lacking was his voice in familiarity, or the casual sarcasm that familiarity can breed. "They're growing well."
Rosethorn laid her gardening fork aside and wiped her hands briskly, leaving a shower of dirt on her habit. She didn't rise. She wouldn't, for him. "You would sound more convinced about that if there were other plants to compare mine with, wouldn't you?"
She hadn't meant it as a barb, but she wasn't surprised that he took it as one. Heated nights sharing a bed didn't equate to sharing a mind, but it seemed now that they had stopped, their words lost meaning, unless the meaning was the worst insult possible.
"My greenhouse is more than your, your-cabbage patch," he bit back.
It took exactly two seconds for Rosethorn to abandon any sense of civility and reply, "Said like a rich man who doesn't know what really matters."
She knew it hit him hard. She also knew she didn't regret it. Even argument could be a mercy now that it was compared to stifling silence, and she had never truly minded bickering in the past.
Crane blinked, perhaps as surprised as she felt, at the target she'd chosen once she decided to strike back. (Rosethorn had always known his sorest points and all his hidden weaknesses.)
But where Rosethorn held out a hand, Crane stepped back:
"You never change," he scoffed condescendingly, and that was true, because plants were earthy and cranes flighty, and only one person needed to move to scratch a line in the sand between them.
Crane's abrupt dismissal was as deep as a trench, dividing the past and future, the joy and strife they would never again share.
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("Rose petal extract."
"Rosehip oil - seven parts at least."
"Would you wager your apprenticeship on that?"
"I bet on whatever I like, Isas."
"Twenty-four hours then before we ask who was right."
"Don't spend it all in the library, Rich-boy!"
"I wasn't planning to," he said, hiding paper-cut hands, while she yawned and bit her lip to keep from grinning.)
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And perhaps, that, too, was a sort of mercy, for two whose pride kept their rivalry alive.
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Green
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Envy
Isas took to Lightsbridge like a starling to the skies: it took a few days to adjust, but after that, it felt like he had been born to live there. Rosethorn told herself she didn't wonder what it was like, but she did.
Rosethorn and Lark walked the roads of Winding Circle blissfully unaware of anyone else. Lark laughed, and Rosethorn smiled, and they didn't argue. Crane didn't wonder what it was like to feel Rosethorn's soft side, rather than her hard edges and anger.
Spring
Pink flowers were budding on her plants in her garden patch. Rosethorn spent her day on her knees, dragging her student with her, and together they bathed in new life.
Death
The body floated in the sea, face bloated, and cast an eerie shade of green by the refracting sea-water. Crane had to turn his face away.
Plants
"A tomato plant for a shakkan? You cannot be serious."
"It's hurt! Even you can see the edges of its leaves turning brown!"
Crane sniffed. "Through no fault -"
"It didn't choose you," Rosethorn snapped. "And Briar can -"
"A child -"
"It called to him," Rosethorn said. "That's what it wants. What it needs."
They glared at each other across Discipline's breakfast table.
Crane left with the tomato plant.
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Crane vs the Tomato Plant
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For three days it sat in his greenhouse, and he wouldn't touch it. He tended his seedlings.
On the fourth day, the plant got offended and turned half its leaves brown, and Crane finally decided to speak to it. (He wasn't as empathic as Rosethorn, he was forced to admit, but he could communicate.)
Rosethorn, the plant said, had told it to flourish, but it couldn't when there was barely any dirt under its roots.
Crane sat back for a moment. The next few hours were spent digging it a place in the glasshouse.
The plant seemed a little surprised, or as surprised as a plant could be, that the warmth and sunshine of the glasshouse didn't bother it. Crane couldn't squash a small hint of satisfaction at that, and wondered how he might mention the fact to Rosethorn.
The plant didn't bloom, though. It didn't die, but it bore little fruit, and just sat in the corner, drinking in the sunshine, off in its own little patch of dirt.
Somehow, Crane fell into the habit of checking up on it just as the glasshouse was to close for the night. (He would never admit it was because the tomato plant seemed to speak with Rosethorn's sharp, mocking voice.) The tomato plant was always a bit sleepy, but also willing to talk about such important things as the state of its patch of soil, and how fertilizers were used.
Crane started speaking to the plant, and his glare was sufficiently intimidating to scare off any novice who might spread rumors to that infuriating woman at Discipline about his visits.
It took until Rosethorn fell ill from working great magic on Winding Circle's walls that Crane just decided to ask. In between booms from the attacking pirates' weapons, he sat beside it on the soil, and laid a hand on its stem, and said, "Why aren't you flourishing?"
The tomato plant may or may not have been thinking in the moment before Crane got a sense of a reply: Longing and loneliness, for Rosethorn's garden, for Rosethorn's love, because at least, there, the gardener cared for it.
Crane didn't admit that he thought he knew how the plant felt. Sometimes, he couldn't help himself, and felt the same way.
When Rosethorn returned from Emelan's north, it was to find that the tomato plant was flourishing. Crane refrained from telling her what the plant, thriving now, had also conveyed:
She thinks about the bird one. But sometimes, she can't help but let her mind wander to the glasshouse.
He didn't say that, sometimes, he felt the same way.
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Reality
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In reality, things were often a double-edged sword. There were some outcomes that Rosethorn loved, others she hated.
In reality, working with Crane in his greenhouse was confusing. They hadn't properly spoken for years and she'd convinced herself that she was fine with it.
She had always hated the glasshouse, and she had forgotten how much she disliked him.
But working with Crane on the Blue Pox also reminded her of the better side of their relationship. She had forgotten that Lark and Briar weren't the only one to bring out her softness. She and Crane fought often, but there were many moments when they didn't, working side by side and understanding without words.
In reality, working with Crane was a gift, as well as a curse.
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It Will Hurt
"-and-yes-Crane! You'll be leaving him behind." - Briar, Circle of Magic #4, Chapter 13
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Briar's every word drops like a stone, casting painful ripples of the smooth pond of her death.
She hadn't been expecting that, but she should have: the children have surprised her at every turn. Of course Briar would find some way to bring her old wounds into death, in his misguided attempt to bring her back. Of course they would strike her hard, when she should be beyond regrets.
There are some things magic cannot fix. The past is one of them, because what happens, happens, no matter what someone else says. From the past stems old regrets. You can't change those either, but if you're lucky, you can accept them, maybe forget them. Rosethorn thought she had.
But the succession of names proves her wrong: Rosethorn wants to be at peace, but she can't when every name brings out a flinch: the girls, Little Bear, Niko, Frostpine, Lark.
And Crane.
His name hurts. That's unexpected.
Yes, Crane too, Rosethorn finally admits to herself, now that only Briar is watching, and nothing is lost and everything gained by admitting the truth. Both Crane and Isas, because you don't choose your regrets, no matter how many child-friendly synonyms for idiot you call yourself. She'll miss the others, because she likes them, because she [i]loves[/i] Lark and Briar. She'll miss Crane - has missed him for years - not because she likes him, but because despite herself, even now, there's respect there, and she does care for him.
(It makes her smile wryly: even in death, he's a burr between her toes. It surprises her, a little, that for all the unchangeable regrets she holds about Isas, this isn't one of them.)
Dead, she shouldn't have to think about the unchangeable.
But Briar doesn't understand when she tells him, "I can't go back. It will hurt." He makes her think about it anyway, when he threatens her with holding the greatest regret of her existence - his death - and brings her back to life.
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To be concluded...
Well?