|A/N| Greetings and salutations, my beautiful people! (Kudos if you get that reference.)

Another chapter, another character! There are still a few of our loveable dorks to get through before we get to the nitty-gritty of the plot. I'm so excited!

Okay, with all that out of the way, I hope you all enjoy.

February 8, 2016

Santander, Spain

"I'm telling you, Armando; the flowers spoke to me! They actually spoke to me last night."

Armando sighed, tightening his ponytail before lifting up a heavy box of tree saplings. "Is that so?" He grunted through gritted teeth, lifting the box up to his upper chest and dropping the it onto the countertop with a sigh. Damn, it was heavy. He leaned against the marble, putting a cheek on the palm of his hand, and tilted his head so he looked at his little brother, Antonio, in boredom. "Alright, then, I'll bite. What did they 'say' to you?"

Antonio's grin doubled, becoming so bright that Armando sarcastically wondered if he would need some sunglasses. "They told me about...about..." Antonio's smile fell in a matter of seconds, replaced by a look of an elderly man trying to bring up a fifty year old memory. "They told me something. I don't remember what it was exactly, but that's not the point, Armando!"

After a few minutes of waiting for some kind of "destiny" rant, Armando rolled his eyes when none came. "Listen, Antonio," he started, picking up one of the smallest saplings from the crate and scanning it, "Carnival was last night; everyone—including both of us, may I mention—was drunk out of their minds. The flowers didn't speak to you, you just had one too many beers, sí?"

"But it wasn't just last night!" Antonio exclaimed, sliding off of the counter and redoing the straps on his green apron. "When I'm in the greenhouse—When I'm in here even. The plants, they tell me things, Armando!" The older brother opened his mouth, but Antonio cut him off. "I know it sounds like I'm crazy, but it's the truth! Remember the time that I caught that one guy stealing from the cash box when our register was broken?"

Armando nodded, "I don't see how that has to do with anything, though."

"Well, I wasn't the one to see it. It was the plants, Armando, it was the plants that told me about it!"

Another sigh left Armando as he finished up scanning the last of the saplings in the wooden crate. "Antonio, you know I love you, right?" As soon as Antonio nodded in confirmation, Armando continued, leaning his back against the counter after he turned to face his younger sibling completely. "So, because you know that, you know that I don't mean to hurt you when I say that what you're saying could land you in a institución mental." Armando tapped his head, as if to (albeit vaguely) indicate someone going insane.

"I'm not crazy!" Antonio huffed, following his brother as the older boy grabbed the now-empty crate again and hoisted it into his grasp, walking to the backroom of their parent's old florist's shop. As soon as he placed the collection of saplings with the other boxes like it, Armando turned around and frowned at Antonio as he replied. "And I never said you were. All I'm saying is that you were probably drunk when the flowers 'spoke' to you. Either that, or there really is something messed-up going on inside that head of yours."

When Armando made a move to brush past him, Antonio grabbed his brother's wrist. "It's not just them speaking to me, Armando. I...I feel them; I feel it when we trim their leaves, when we accidently leave them out for bugs, when we let them dry out! Armando, it hurts...I feel that pain they have." At the sight of his brother's skeptical face, Antonio felt like crying. "Please, just believe me. For once."

"Well..." Armando swallowed, growing worried at his brother's genuine sad face (did he actually believe some non-sentient flowers talked to him?) before jerking his arm back so suddenly that it slipped right through Antonio's fingers. "We'll talk about this later, hermano pequeño. I can't have a hangover and deal with this shit all at the same time."

The tension between the two brothers was palpable, filling the normally cheery coffee shop with a smoky form of dread. Armando raised his coffee mug to his lips, gazing at his brother through the thin tendrils of translucent steam coming from the white ceramic. Antonio was staring at the fern sitting just outside of the window, his green eyes narrowed as if he were willing the plant to do something.

Nothing happened. The leaf didn't even twitch.

"So," Armando began after he set his mug back down, the clinking sound of ceramic against wood catching Antonio's attention before his brother's voice did. "Talking plants, hm?"

Biting his lip and playing with his hands, Antonio finally nodded, "Yeah." He sighed, sliding down in his seat like he was trying to hide from how silly Armando's wording was. "I know it sounds insane, but...It's the truth! So what if I was drunk during Carnival? That wasn't the first time it happened. I heard them in the shop!"

There was no reply from Armando, cloaking them in a silence that forced Antonio to think.

He knew that his first experience was real, for sure; he remembered every detail of it—from the fact that the plant had been a large carnation patch to that he had been trimming its overgrown leaves and removing a few of the prettier flowers for a large-scale afterschool party. What had happened had been the oddest thing: He had just been snipping some brilliant red flowers from the bush when it started to feel like the shears were cutting into him.

The pain had been so sudden, he had dropped the shears into the carnations; effectively crushing most of the healthy ones and causing more pain to bloom across his skin.

He hadn't picked up a gardening tool (with the potential to harm, at least) after that.

Explaining why he didn't want to prune or prep their plants anymore had been slightly difficult, but Antonio was able to accomplish it with relative ease; Armando just cut his paycheck a little and left everything regarding the why of the situation alone. No need to tell his brother that when the plants felt pain, he felt it to. At the moment.

Now, though? Why was he finally admitting now?

Really, Antonio didn't know the exact reason himself, but he knew the gist of it. Antonio knew was that it was like he was going to burst if he didn't explain, if he didn't admit to what he could experience, as the "ability" he possessed developed and mutated. How it went from feeling the plant's pain to being able to almost hear them whisper some sort of other language to him, until he could finally understand the whispers as more time passed.

It was frightening, Antonio decided, it was frightening and he needed someone to confide in.

"Listen," Antonio finally said, pushing away from their table with a screech of his chair. The brunette put both hands onto the table, fingers splayed out and his usually smiling mouth set into a firm, determined line. "I'll prove this to you! I'll show you that I'm not crazy."

With that final statement, Antonio grabbed his dirt-brown jacket from the back of his chair, flinging it over his shoulders as he ran out of the coffee shop; leaving Armando sitting alone with their bill and an untouched cup full of coffee sitting on the table.

Armando sighed after a second (he was sighing a lot today, wasn't he?) slamming a fist on the tabletop as he growled, "Damn it." Standing up and grabbing his own coat, the Portuguese man threw some money on the wooden surface and stomped out, purposefully ignoring the slight whistling of wind coming from outside of the window.

"Come on, Antonio, focus...focus..."

Antonio scrunched up his nose in concentration, glaring at the same rosebush that he had been focusing on for the last half hour, trying to hear something. Anything. He sat amongst numerous other plants in the storage room of the Armada flower shop, having been there ever since he ran out of the coffee shop he and Armando had been in. Antonio would show his brother. He wasn't crazy...

There was nothing.

None of the plants were whispering to him. Why the hell weren't they whispering to him?!

The Spaniard suddenly felt like screaming, an angry frustration engulfing him like flames. He didn't even know where the sudden burst of emotion appeared from; all he could fathom was that it just appeared. His head began to spin, a dull haze filling his thoughts. It felt doubtful, but he couldn't be completely positive of the emotion.

He wasn't crazy...he wasn't...

Everything felt like it was shaking, unsteady, like an earthquake. He found that he couldn't see. Everything was black...Was he screaming? Or was that someone else? Both, maybe?

"Antonio!" A harsh slap to the face brought him back to reality, dragging him from the dark and making him gasp at the suddenness of it. He felt Armando shaking him, heard him yelling and cussing at Antonio with the most worried look on his face. Why was he so worried? When did he even get there? "What the actual f-ck are you doing?!"

Another source of pain tingled at his hand, slowly bringing Antonio's gaze to the rosebush as the odd burning sensation increased. He could only make out a little bit, but he understood enough: Red coated the thorns of one rose, rivulets of the same slippery substance making their way down the flower's stem and his hand dribbling blood onto the concrete floor, forming a worryingly large puddle. He had...grabbed the rose? He didn't remember doing that...Everything felt...fuzzy...He couldn't think...

Armando uncurled Antonio's already limp grasp from the rose's stem, gazing with horror at how deep the thorns had gotten into the younger brother's flesh as they slipped out. He hadn't even known thorns could actually grow that large. Antonio was swaying with every little movement Armando made, flopping to and fro like a boneless ragdoll, with his eyes just as glassy as one's. How much blood did he actually lose?

"Oh God, we have to get you to the hospital." Working as quickly as possible, Armando gently laid Antonio's arm over his shoulder, hoisting him to his feet before they started to inch towards the door at a snail's pace, with Armando being careful not to jostle Antonio's wounded hand too much.

"You dumbass. You f-cking dumbass..." Armando refused to believe that the heat building behind his eyes were tears.

He was not about to lose his little brother, no matter how stupid Antonio was.

Powers:

Antonio Fernández-Carriedo - ? ? ?

Armando Fernández-Carriedo - N/A (?)