Chapter Text
“Is that normal?”
Bob has heard that question oh-so-many-times now it doesn’t even make him mad. Or annoyed. Or anything anymore, not really. It doesn’t make him feel anything and maybe that’s part of the problem. Just like someone who’s asking him about the weather and Bob doesn’t think he’s particularly interested in answering.
“Yeah, it’s always been like this.” He knows the doctor means well. They always do. And he always replies like that, pleasantly but clipped. The doctor is somewhere in her forties and gives him a questioning look she’s not even trying to hide.
“You’ve seen a doctor about this before, I assume?” Yes, another of the same questions.
“Many.” Bob answers ever so patiently and that seems to do it for her, and he’s grateful. Because there had been many more invasive people over it. And he’s not sitting there because of his predicament, right? It was a bird strike. His body is sore from ejecting so abruptly, his neck feels stiff but like they said, he’s lucky and that’s about it. A little bit of whiplash, a little bit of soreness and staying the night for observation. Regular procedures, nothing he hadn’t been trained for, either.
She asks a few more things. Checks his blood pressure, heartbeat, the whole nine, all in silence. Bob almost feels guilty, almost, because it’s always like this. It weirds people out.
His completely blank canvas of a skin.
You can feel things normally, right?
Countless doctors had asked and he liked to think that yes, his sentiments and emotions were perfectly fine and normal. Surely, Robert Floyd was on the quiet side. He wasn’t shy nor a shrinking violet or wallflower – a funny term for someone who, in a world represented by flowers, showed nothing. But he liked to think his emotions were just fine, apparently they liked to be just his, not known to anyone else. No, on his skin not even dry twigs or branches like some people who were more reserved had.
Bob had even considered getting tattoos so people would stop asking him about it. But what was the point in lying like that? He just didn’t have flower markings. Or actual flowers, for that matter. Was he broken?
Maybe.
It came up all too often and he didn’t know how to feel about it, even three decades down the line. Eaten away by the thoughts, sitting alone in the infirmary room, a quick almost urgent rapping at the door made both him and the Doctor jump a little. They exchange a look before the woman reaches for the door, letting a nurse in.
“I’m really sorry to interrupt but we have a… situation with Lieutenant Trace, would you mind, Doctor?”
That’s more than enough to drag Bob in from whatever pensive trance he’d fallen in, alarm bells ringing. The Doctor and nurse excuse themselves and he’s left alone for the entirety of two minutes before simply following. Not the kind to question authority, not even close to that, the one thing Bob worried more was over, well… Natasha, now. He couldn’t justify it more than he couldn’t justify why he had been born without any kind of flowers but just the same, it was a reality.
He follows just a couple doors down into the hallway where the commotion is and understands why the doctor had been called. For a good moment Bob thinks if he were ever to sprout any flowers, this would be it. By the way his stomach and heart suddenly sank into knots.
Phoenix is sitting in her hospital bed, hospital gown and all, hair let down with blood dripping down her forehead and face, staining the soft pastel green of the gown with a thin ruby stream. It’s shocking. They had both been fine, shaken, alright, after the strike. But fine. And now she was bleeding. It takes him another moment to realize why.
Natasha, sitting upright so straight that she might as well be a statue, hands balled up in fists over her lap, lips pressed into a line so thin they were nonexistent, jaw tensed so tight he was sure she was going to break a tooth, glassy eyes staring ahead. An inhuman effort to look calm and put together, completely in control of herself, unwavering but nothing could stop the flowers crawling around her head and neck.
Nothing could stop their thorns, too.
Giving away the internal turmoil, it was all the thick branches and thorns, flowers barely there. No, instead now the markings covered her arms and neck. Bob finds his feet stuck in place for only another moment, watching the Doctor and two nurses trying to figure out how to make it stop. The word sedation is mentioned and Bob finally moves ahead.
“ ‘scuse me.” His voice comes out softer than intended and from the corner of his eye, he catches Natasha’s glassy gaze focusing on him. Both nurses and the Doctor look back at Bob, whose hands are dutifully placed behind his head. “...can we have a minute? I’ll help.”
Maybe it was presumptuous of him but by the way Phoenix’s gaze shifted, at least, there was a budding warmth across his chest. If anything, she trusted him. He trusted her, too. Together, alone together, he knew he could help. Whatever it was, he wanted to help. It’s a leap of faith. The Doctor nods, says she’ll give them a few moments. The soft click of the door behind his back announces their shared solitude and Bob finally moves directly towards Natasha.
She’s still quiet, eyes then cast down, hands holding into themselves so tight he can tell there’ll be fingernail marks inside the palm.
Standing silently in front of her, Bob gently moves, so so carefully to put his fingers under the dry and thorny branches, he starts breaking the thorns that are digging into her forehead first. They cut into his fingertips. The snapped thorns bleed white sap that he brushes as well.
“It’s–” Phoenix starts trying to speak, her voice hoarse catching at the back of the throat.
“Euphorbia milii,” Bob cuts ever so gently as he continues to devotedly work on the thorns, trying to keep the sap from the cuts in her forehead, keeping the palm of his free hand between the thin branches. “Crown of thorns… kind of poisonous, I know, but really it’s just mildly irritating, don’t worry.” He tries to sound as firm and reassuring as possible. It was the truth, after all. Not quite bothering about the slight burning sensation the white sap started to cause or the scratches against the pads of his fingers.
“Used to be obsessed with flowers because I couldn’t grow mine, you know? Don’t laugh.”
Natasha’s lower lip quivers and he watches her battling emotions. Another strand crawls around her head, slowly and less thorny this time. The very small, bright red almost pink flowers swirled with clear milky white, sprouts in round clusters.
“I’d never laugh at you.” Her voice is so small, like a pin drop and Bob still catches it tenderly. He doesn’t bother responding, still working around the thorns of every stem until they were bare and until they’d stopped cutting into her skin. “I think you’re perfect.”
Robert stops and stares down. Hand full of thorns, covered in sap and blood. His eyes meet Natasha’s halfway and there’s a silent exchange of something he can’t name.
A boy who couldn’t grow flowers wasn’t imperfect. There was nothing wrong with him, not to her. Because he wasn’t afraid of a girl covered in thorns.