Roses Are Red and So Are The Violets.

by Bloody Simpson Chibi

Disclaimer: I do not own Ed, Edd, n Eddy.

Hey folks! You might remember me from the Return to Peach Creek story I completed a few years back. It was an attempt to get back into writing for good by finishing some of my older works and while things didn't go exactly how I wanted them to, I was able to return to fanfiction and slowly but surely improve my writing. For the past year, I've been writing plenty of stories for my three major fandoms and so I think it's time to start branching off a bit.

Just in case you missed it in the summary, this is a Hanahaki fic. Don't ask me why I'm so obsessed with this trope. I don't ask you how you live your life!

For now, this story doesn't have a regular schedule like my other stories but that might change in the future. This will be my first multi-chapter Hanahaki fic as well

Chapter 1: Begonia

Marie wasn't sure how she ended up standing in this field. The sky was pretty cloudy with only a few beams of sunlight shining through the condensed masses of moisture above her. A gentle breeze blew through her hair and clothes, sending a tiny but noticeable shiver throughout her body. The bangs that normally covered her right eye fluttered toward the lone tree standing before her and beneath its pink leafage, she could make out a familiar shape resting against the trunk.

"Is that Double D? It is!" Marie happily exclaimed to herself as she rushed up to the person. Mischivious thoughts ran through her head as she could practically hear his frightened protest against her forced affections. She could already feel the writhing and contorting of his lean body against her own as she held him in place. Her smirk became an outright grin of malicious intent. Once she was close enough to confirm without a shadow of a doubt that it was indeed her unwilling "boyfriend", she leaped from the ground toward the sitting figure, her arms outstretched like the forepaws of a hungry lioness. "Come to Mama!" She roared, expecting to see him look at her in utter terror.

Double D did indeed look up from his book toward Marie. However, there was no trace of surprise or panic on his face. Just a warm, inviting smile. "Marie," He said.

"Huh?" Caught off guard, Marie blotched her own landing and hit the ground next to Double D headfirst. She skipped upon the ground like a stone thrown across a pound for a while before finally stopping amongst the flowers that covered the field. Her body was bruised and her head was spinning. She was sure she had suffered a concussion. She had to open and close her eyes quite a few times for her sight to recover. Through her blurry vision, she could make out a shape approaching her, appearing closer with each little blink. Once her sight had recovered fully, she was shocked to find Double D looming over her, his face merely inches away from hers. "Marie!" He whispered loudly, "Are you alright?"

"I'm...I'm...fine?" was all the dumbfounded Marie could think to say. "What the heck's going on here?" She thought with frustration. "Is this guy trying that reverse psychology mumbo-jumbo again? Because it's not gonna work!" As Marie allowed her gaze to shift toward Double D's eyes, however, she felt her irritation and annoyance at the possibility he was trying to dupe her again ebb away, only to be replaced by an eerie presence of timidity. "D-Double D."

"Marie," Double D, appearing to have calmed down upon realizing Marie was no worse for wear, gently clasped his left hand around her right and picked it off the ground. He slid his fingers between hers and with his other hand, lifted her upper body away from the ground so that she was sitting up next to him. Marie could feel her face begin to heat up and turned away from Double D's gaze, only for the wind to suddenly hit her between the eyes and force her back to him. Now the wind was blowing through both of their clothes and hair. Riding along the gales were a bunch of pink flower petals, a few of which stuck to Marie or Double D as they sat silently, their gazes locked toward each other.

"Double D," Marie whispered as she leaned him to kiss him, only for one of the flower petals to land directly on her lips. She turned, spat it away, and tried again to smooch Double D. Another petal landed in her exposed eye, causing her to cry out which in turn allowed another petal to fly right into her throat. She started to choke and clasp both hands around her throat, rolling along the field as fought for air. She looked toward where Double D was but a moment ago, expecting him to come to her aid but to her shock and horror, only an abundance of flower petals remained where he once sat. "Double D!" She tried to cry out. All that came out was a weak gasp. Alone, Marie continued to struggle against the petal lodged in her throat, tossing, turning, coughing...

"Gah!" Marie's eyes flew open as she awoke. She screamed, only to be silenced by a toaster suddenly smacking into her jaw and knocking her off the bed and into the nearby wall. As she peeled off the wall, she noticed her older sister Lee standing in the doorway.

"Quit dreaming and get out of bed already, ya bum!" Lee shouted. "We got lives to wreck!"

Marie's only response to her sister's morning "greeting" was a pained groan. She got back to her feet, holding her throbbing head. "What a weird dream!" She thought. "I guess that's why Mom says never to eat pickled pig's feet before bed." She felt a strange tickle in her throat and swallowed, wincing at the sudden pain it caused. "What the hell? Why's my throat hurt so much?" She thought back to her dream and how those flower petals from Hell were choking the life from her. "That must have been one intense dream," She gathered the cleanest clothes she could fish out of the laundry hamper and headed for the doorway to begin her day. As she passed her and her sister's bed, however, something caught her eye. She had to double-take to make sure that what she was seeing was really there.

Resting on her pillow were three flower petals, the same shade of pink as the ones in her dream.

Marie rubbed her eyes and gawked at the petals one more time before forcing herself out of the room. "One really intense dream!"

As she had gotten up last, Marie was last in line for her morning shower which inevitably meant she was the last to the breakfast table. She made it to the kitchen just in time to see her helping of pancakes vanish down May's throat. More irritable than most mornings due to the dream and her hunger, Marie tackled her blonde sister to the ground. As the two wrestled, Lee helped herself to the morning paper. "Would you two keep it down? I'm trying to read the funnies here!"

"Tell that to May! She's the hog around here!" Marie yanked as hard as she could on her sister's hair.

"Hog!? I'll show you hog!" May opened her mouth as wide as she possibly could and chomped her buck teeth down onto Marie's arm. The blue-haired Kanker howled in pain before shoving her fist into May's stomach. May retaliated with a kick to the back of the head. Over and over, the sisters exchanged blows, their pained grunts and screams keeping Lee from reaching the final panel of the comic strip she was trying to read. Finally, the eldest Kanker sister couldn't take it anymore. She grabbed the head of both of her sisters, bashed them together like a pair of cymbals and sat them both down at their seats. Seeing stars, the girls were rendered silent long enough for Lee to finish her strip.

Once she had read her fill of cartoons, Lee took a sip from her cup of grease and asked Marie, "So Marie, just what the heck were you dreaming about last night?"

"Huh?" The question seemed to snap Marie out of her stupor.

"You were tossing and turning something fierce." Lee finished.

May, who had also recovered from her concussion, added, "Yeah, you knocked the both of us off like bowling pins!"

"I did?" Marie thought back to her dream again. Usually, around this time in the morning, her dream would have already faded into obscurity and the most she would have been able to recall would be bits and pieces. This time, however, she was able to recall the dream in vivid detail. It was almost like part of her was still stuck in the dream, under Double D's embrace with petals caught in her throat.

She couldn't recall having a girlier dream since she was six years old.

"Eh, I don't remember. It was probably a nightmare though." She lied. "Pretty sure I was choking or something."

"Whatever." Lee finished off the last of her grease and balled her newspaper up. May continued to stare at her sister with a concerned face but said nothing.

"Well I'm stuffed," Lee proclaimed as she tossed the newspaper toward the trashcan. It missed by a whole foot and landed near the fridge where it would remain for the rest of the day. "I'm thinking we work off this meal with a good ol' fashioned manhunt!"

"Manhunt?" Marie asked, "Manhunt for what?"

Lee suddenly grasped her younger sister's cheeks and held her up. "What? Are you stupid? I said a manhunt! We hunt for men of course!" She threw Marie into the living room where she hit the wall and knocked over a chest as she slid down. From the chest tumbled three dolls in the likeness of three boys the sisters knew very well. One of the dolls, sporting a black cone-shaped hat and an orange shirt, landed on Marie's lap.

"Our men!" Lee finished with a chuckle. Upon realizing what her sister meant, May joined in on the laughter.

Marie grabbed the Double D doll and rubbed the back of her neck as she got back to her feet. She examined the doll and found herself once again plagued by visions of her dream as well as...a tickling in her throat?

Marie rubbed her throat up and down, wincing as the tickling sensation only seemed to increase with her meddling. She drew her hand back with a sharp inhale which she released with a choke. For the briefest moment, she could have sworn there was actually something inside her throat causing the sensation but just like that, it was gone, leaving only the uncomfortable feeling behind.

"Great. First that weird-ass dream and now a sore throat." Marie thought. "This day just keeps getting better and better." She looked back at the Double D doll for a few moments and smiled. "Oh well, maybe playing with the real deal is just what the doctor ordered!" In her head, Marie rationalized that the uncomfortable feeling she had been plagued by all morning was the result of Double D's role in her dream. How he seemed to be one step ahead of her. She shook her head. An Ed catching a Kanker off guard? What a joke! A little one-on-one with the real deal would help to set the record straight in her mind. Tossing the doll aside, Marie went to join her sisters in cackling like the man women they were.

"Alright!" Lee rubbed her hands together," Let's get this show on the road!"

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon at the creek. The water shimmered in the sunlight and the air around it was filled with bird song. One could even compare it to a scene from a jigsaw puzzle if only it weren't for the short, adolescent pacing back and forth by the creek's edge. "Come on! How long does it take to find some stupid animals?"

Suddenly the head of another, taller boy broke through the creek's water. Wiggling between his teeth was a grey fish.

The shorter boy grew excited upon seeing the helpless animal in his friend's mouth. "Way to go, Lumpy! Now hand it over nice and e-" He was sent flying into the forest by the force of the fish smashing into his chest. He only stopped once he slammed into a tree, a few of his teeth popping out of his mouth as he made an impact.

"Whoops! Sorry, Eddy!" The other boy said as he stepped out of the creek. Clad in only his underwear, he dropped to his hands and knees and shook himself dry like a dog. "The stinky sea fish has been captured Double D!"

Near the edge of the woods, a third boy with a black hat was wiping an aquarium clean. It was one of several containers that the trio had brought with them for the purpose of housing the animals they hoped to catch today. "That's nice, Ed." Double D complimented. His attention was captured by a rustling from behind and he turned to see his other friend, Eddy, stumble from the brush with the fish wiggling in his hand.

"Why that no good lousy..." The rest of Eddy's sentence was lost under his breath as he handed the fish over to Double D who carefully took it and examined it. "Well?"

"Hmmm. Intriguing." Double D hummed as he turned the fish over, his smile growing upon discovering a star-shaped pattern on its belly. "How delightful! It would seem Ed's found a rare Star-Bellied Trout! It's a new species for the collection Eddy!" Double D placed the trout inside the aquarium he had just cleaned. Sitting next to the aquarium was a hollowed-out TV set with a snapping turtle resting at the bottom and a small bucket with some minnows swimming inside.

"This is great!" Eddy exclaimed. "Pretty soon, we'll have enough animals to open Ed's Aquarium Adventure!"

"While I do take great pleasure in spending such a lovely day putting my species identification skills to the test," Double D brought up, "I still fail to see how you intend to draw intrigue to your aquarium with only local creek fauna Eddy."

"Just you wait sock head!" Eddy replied, "Once we get enough stinking animals from the creek, we'll take this party to the beach and grab us some real goldfish if you catch my drift."

"The beach?" Double D gulped, "On the other side of town?"

Eddy turned to Ed and called out, "Get back in the water, and don't come out till you nab a whopper, Ed!"

"Oh boy! I love whoppers! Especially dipped in gravy!" Ed did a backflip into the creek.

"But Eddy, We don't even have any saltwater aquariums!" His concern was meant with a container of salt slammed into his face.

"There. Go nuts." Eddy said offhandedly before heading toward the creek to see Ed work.

"Gah!" Double D tore the salt container from his face. Some of the white specks fell into his eyes, causing him to cry out in pain. His cries, of course, went ignored by Eddy as loomed over the pond. "Hey Lumpy! Find anything!?" He called out.

Ed burst from the water's surface and saluted Eddy as his tongue flapped in the breeze. "I sure did Eddy!" He reached down under the water and pulled out a rusted urinal. "One French toilet. Oh la la!" He tossed it to the other side of the creek and reached back under the water, pulling out a drenched but still somewhat useable office chair. "One science chair for Double D!" He tossed it near the urinal and continued fishing through his loot. Next, he pulled a blonde bucktooth teen out of the water by her feet. Her clothes were drenched as well but she didn't seem to mind as she sneered at Ed and Eddy. On her face was a snorkel. "One Kanker, hold the onions" Ed absentmindedly tossed the Kanker into the pile of junk he had created behind him, completely oblivious to the danger he was now in.

Eddy would most likely have realized it himself if he wasn't so focused on Ed's lack of actual animals. "Come on, Lumpy! Get real! We need real animals and we need them now!" A finger tapped Eddy's shoulder but he ignored it as he continued to weigh his options for pond fauna. "I wonder if we can find an alligator around here?" The finger tapped him again and this time succeeded in grabbing his attention, albeit simply because he was annoyed. "Hey, what's the big...idea?..."

"Heh. You look so cute when you're confused," Lee teased.

"K-K-Kanker!" Eddy screamed as Lee grabbed him. "Ed! Help!"

"Kanker!?" Ed ducked down into the creek. "Kanker bad for Ed, Eddy!" He tried to say underwater, although all that came out was a bunch of blubbers and bubbles. A hand reached out from above the water and grabbed the back of his neck, yanking him out of the creek. Shivering from both fright and cold, Ed found himself face to face with May Kanker and her already puckering lips. "Mom always said there was plenty of fish in the sea! It looks like I caught me a winner!" She smooched at Ed as he cried out, "Girl germs!"

It was around this time that Double D finally managed to wash the last of the salt from his eyes using the water from one of the unused aquariums. As the liquid drained from his eyes and his vision cleared, his short sense of relief was immediately replaced with intense fear as he saw two of the Kanker sisters assaulting his friends. His senses were in full-blown panic mode and he looked around frantically for any sign of the missing Kanker, the one that would most surely be coming for him. When he failed to find her, he foolishly let himself believe he yet may escape to find help and turned to flee, only to smash right into a waiting, grinning Marie.

"Heya pumpkin!" She greeted with venomous glee as she watched her "boyfriend" peel off of her and fall back to the ground.

"M-M-Marie! W-What a pleasant surprise," He stammered as he tried to crawl away, beads of sweat forming all over his body. "W-W-What brings you here on s-s-such an f-fine day?" He tripped on his sweaty palms and fell back down, giving Marie enough time to crawl all over him. He started to shake rapidly and she took great delight in hearing his teeth chatter.

"Ha! This is more like it!" Marie thought, "Me, being the one on top and Double D being my helpless little boy toy!" She leaned in closer to Double D's frightened face, her lips puckering in anticipation of once again leaving their mark all over him. "Just the way-

Then it all came back to her. Every detail of the confusing dream she had last night raced into her head like a blow from a mallet. The calm, confident look in Double D's eyes, the flower petals clogging up her throat. Those same petals appearing on her pillow with no explanation. At that moment, Marie found herself feeling the same as she did in the dream, even while she sat on Double D's stomach.

"..the way...it's supposed...to be..." She trailed off. That same itching from this morning once again attack her throat and she fought the urge to scratch at it. It grew stronger by the second and it didn't take long for Marie to realize that this time, there really was something stuck in there. She wasn't sure what it was but she could feel it in the back of her mouth, threatening to cut off her air.

"M-Marie?" Double D asked. He was still scared of the Kanker sister of course but, gentle soul as he was, he couldn't ignore the fact that his tormenter seemed to be suffering. "Are you alright?"

Despite the desperate screams and pleading of their own "boyfriends", both Lee and May overheard Double D's concerned inquiry and turned to their blue-haired sister just in time to see her climb off of Double D while clutching her throat. Both Eddy and Ed had overheard their friends as well but were much more concerned with their unsuccessful attempts of getting out of their respective Kanker's grasp. "Hey Marie, What's wrong with you?" May asked with genuine concern in her voice. Lee followed with a less sympathetic "Yeah, you look like you're about to vomit or something!"

Marie turned to her sisters and opened her mouth only to close it again as she felt whatever was inside her throat about to slip out. She felt a sharp, burning pain in her stomach, chest, and throat and found herself mentally agreeing with her sister. She really did feel like she was going to throw up any second or to be more specific, that whatever was trapped in her throat was going to force its way out, with or without her consent.

And then, it happened.

Marie erupted into a violent coughing fit and from her mouth flew bright pink flower petals. They shot out from her throat, remained airborne for half a second, and gracefully drifted to the ground below. A few of them landed in the aquariums Double D had prepared for the scam. One lonely petal, the last one to emerge from Marie's throat, landed softly right on the frightened boy's forehead. Once it was over, Marie found herself gasping for air, her throat, chest, and stomach engulfed in a soreness she had never known before. She was so dazed by her sudden coughing fit and the pain it had brought with it that it took her about 10 seconds to realize that the flower petals that now surrounded her were a product of that very coughing fit. That it had been these damned petals that were clogging up her throat in the first place.

It then took her five more seconds to realize that all eyes were still locked on her.

Aside from the sound of the running water and the fish Ed caught earlier splashing around in its new home, the creek fell completely silent and totally still. No one moved a muscle. No one, Ed nor Kanker, spoke a word. They were all mentally processing what the hell had just happened.

When the silence was finally broken, it was by the sound of Eddy and Ed bursting into hysterical laughter. All thought of their impending doom abandoned, the two boys howled like a studio audience as the Kankers and Double D watched on. Lee and May exchanged a confused look, both at a total loss for words, before the former started to chuckle alongside her "boyfriend". This caused May to giggle as well. All four of the tweens continued to laugh alongside each other, May falling backward and holding her sides and Eddy even pointing at Marie.

Marie felt her cheeks begin to heat up and with mortification aplenty, realized she was blushing. She opened her mouth to shout at the peanut gallery to shut up but nothing came out. As the laughter continued, her embarrassment grew and she could feel the blood under her cheeks spread to the bridge of her nose. It was then that she heard another snickering voice join the cacophony of mockery, one that was right next to her. Looking down, she saw Double D, her own "boyfriend" giggling with his hand over his mouth. He quickly realized that Marie was looking at him and stopped, his eyes widening with fear that he had been caught laughing at his tormentor's misfortune. He shielded himself with his hands, expecting to take a beating as retribution for his thoughtless actions.

But that was not to be.

Her entire face now burning with shame, Marie got up, backed away, and ran off into the forest without a sound. May happened to open her eyes from laughing just in time to see her sister flee and ceased at once. "Hey, Marie! Where are you going?" Her voice alerted Lee to what had happened and both sisters ran after their runaway sibling, leaving the Eds alone at the creek.

Ed and Eddy stopped laughing as well if only for a moment as the Kankers ran off. Once they were out of sight, they looked back at each other and resumed their uproar. Double D, on the other hand, got up and dusted himself off. "Just what on Earth transpired here right now!?" He asked himself as the petal on his forehead fell off. He caught it in his hand and pulled out his trust magnifying glass to examine it closely. "A petal from the common Begonia flower?" He asked himself. "Just what was this doing longed in Marie's throat?"

"I don't know," Eddy interjected through his laughter. "But whatever it was, it got the Kankers off our backs! Lady Luck's finally smiling upon us boys!"

"I should have brought an umbrella! Can I borrow yours, Eddy?" Ed asked as he pulled his height-challenged friend into a hug.

"Get off me!"

As Eddy struggled to get out of Ed's grasp, Double D continued to look the Begonia petal over, his rational mind trying to make sense of this irrational situation.

One thing was for sure. Today had taken a turn for the Eds. Both for the better and the bizarre.

(Well that's the first chapter. Again, I'm not sure how frequently I'll be updating, especially with my other stories keeping me occupied but hopefully, it won't be too long. Until next time, good-bye and happy Midsummer!)