Chapter Text
Flowery’s passing was quiet. Peaceful.
It was as if the wind whisked him away, leaving nothing more in its tracks than faint howling. Not long after he closed his eyes, lost in the cradle of dreams, he took his last breath—and where he once laid in Susie’s bed, a singular seed and his wilted remains as a flower took his place. If nothing else, it was painless; as he drifted off, the ache through his middle had finally numbed over, and drowsiness caressed him gently, soothing him enough to let himself fall away from the world.
The reaction to this peaceful passing was… not as serene.
Ralsei recalled, sitting against the wall of his barren room with a half-complete to-do list in his hands, hearing a guttural scream from the floor below. Unmistakably Susie’s voice. She must have…
Scrambling back to his feet, he practically flung himself out the door and down the stairs to Susie’s room, where much to his heartache, he found exactly the scene he expected. Susie, huddled against the bedside next to the display of pillows and blankets made to make Flowery comfortable, empty save for his botanical corpse and parting gift… A thud against the floor startled Ralsei—she’d punched the floor in her grief—and brought him to kneel next to her, placing a gentle, cautious hand on her shoulder.
“It’s… not your fault,” Ralsei whispered, flashing a pained smile at his good friend.
“He was… it was only a matter of time…”
“I know!” Susie shouted at the floorboards, before bursting into sobs. “But I still… I still wanted to save him, damnit!”
“You did everything you could,” Ralsei tried to reassure her. “That’s what matters, isn’t it?”
Susie simply shuddered, body wracked by tears.
“I did, but it wasn’t enough, Ralsei! If I just… if I dragged him back out with me and cut his stem like he said…”
…Ralsei didn’t know what to say in response. Situations like these were fragile. Too fragile. Instead, he sat in silence next to her and patted her back as she cried, giving her the space to release all the emotions building up around his death.
They hadn’t known each other for long, but… death was heavy-handed enough to split the earth of even the lives of acquaintances. Susie had taken it in her hands to fix Tenna, too, so perhaps that success made her feel as though Flowery was her responsibility too, and that she had to save him—but Flowery just couldn’t be fixed the way someone like Tenna could be. He wished, if selfishly, that he could get her to understand that it wasn’t truly her fault. He wished, if selfishly, that he could take her pain and inflict it upon himself instead.
Just to remove the burden from her. Just to see her smile again. He knew how much she’d been struggling with the reality of the situation since the moment she left Flowery’s side to seal the fountain with Kris.
Instead, he decided the least he could do was let her bury him.
Flowery’s burial was quiet. Peaceful.
Wishing not to draw attention to the scene, Ralsei and Susie chose to bring Flowery’s remains to the rear of the TV studio. It wasn’t the prettiest spot in the area, or even the most thoughtful—but Ralsei figured he’d want to be laid to rest near someone he knew, from back when things were better in Kris’s life. Shovel in hand, he pierced the soil and began to dig, creating a small hole just deep enough to fit Flowery’s cadaver and the seed he’d left behind.
It wasn’t a very pretty resting place; Ralsei wasn’t exactly the strongest physically. Yet, he didn’t want to ask Susie to do it, not when she was still grieving; since he calmed her down enough to get back on her feet, she had cradled Flowery’s broken, wilted body in her arms, wrapped gently in a towel taken from one of the other rooms in the castle. A black and blue towel, patterned with Lancer’s face…
Ha. It only felt fitting she’d use something like that. Lancer must have given it to her when she’d hung back to talk to him on their way out of the castle.
Glancing over to Susie, Ralsei’s heart sank as he watched her sniffle and wipe her eyes, staring at the corpse in her arms and nothing else. In a fucked up twist of events, it made him feel distraught, too; the last thing he wanted was to see her in pain. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel so hopeless in a world that was meant to foster her love of the world.
Tears welled in his eyes as he called Susie’s name, directing her attention to the newly made grave.
“…Guess this is it, huh,” Susie mumbled through tears, choking back a sob.
“You… you did good, Flowery. Even if you were kind of a jackass.”
Refusing to say more, Susie knelt onto the ground and gently placed the wilted flower into the hole, making sure the makeshift blanket was wrapped around it comfortable—but before leaving it be, she retrieved the seed from the arrangement, holding it between her fingers and putting it up close to her face. Seeing her do this, Ralsei was initially horrified—what if she accidentally ingested poison?—but hesitated to say anything, instead smiling at her with worry in his heart and his own fingers around the end of his scarf.
“Guess we should plant this, huh?” she supposed, staring at Ralsei as if expecting an answer despite the low voice she spoke in.
“…Oh! Yes, we should,” Ralsei replied once he realized he was being asked a question. Kneeling on the ground himself, he began to gather some of the dirt that’d been dug up, waiting for Susie’s go-ahead to finally put Flowery to rest.
“Is… there anything you wanted to say before I…?”
“I’m… not good at words, Ralsei. I said everything I could think to say. What about you?” Susie answered, turning the question back around at him.
“I know you guys didn’t get along, but I thought you’d have more to say than just… I’unno, is that…?”
“No, you’re right,” Ralsei said, pushing up his glasses and smiling in melancholy. “I’ve…”
Cutting himself off, Ralsei shuffled over to hover directly above the grave, taking off his glasses and sliding them under his scarf onto the neckline of his cloak. He struggled for words, but…
“You know, Flowery… if, if it weren’t for… Maybe you’re right,” he muttered as his voice began to waver. “Maybe, in another world, we really could have been friends.”
He paused to wipe his tears, trying his damn best to smile despite the turmoil in his heart.
“We’re going to defy the prophecy. Not just for the world, but… in your memory, too. This wasn’t supposed to be your end of the story.”
Nodding to himself, Ralsei finally began to bury Flowery—but not without hesitating one more time.
“…You really are an idiot, you know that?”
Leaving no room for even silence to fill the air, he stopped hesitating and instead began to lay a thin layer of soil over Flowery’s body. He thought he heard Susie mumble to herself, but he tried to pay it no mind; instead, he continued to replace the dirt in the hole until he felt there was enough, and then looked to Susie, extending his hand for the seed.
“Huh?” Susie said, eyes widening. “You need something?”
“The seed,” Ralsei answered, looking away from Susie.
It hurt too much to look at her right now. He wished he could do more, but… at the end, he was just a Darkner, powerless to stop anything. Powerless in the face of the prophecy.
But he’d try anyway, wouldn’t he?
“Oh, uh, here,” Susie replied as she dropped the seed in Ralsei’s hand with a surprising amount of care.
“You think it’ll, like, grow?”
“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?”
Ralsei’s claws were becoming caked in dirt, but it didn’t matter. Right now, he was laying Flowery to rest, and that was the top priority out of anything he could be spending his time doing. He wasn’t much of a gardener—only to grow herbs and vegetables for the meals he cooked Kris and Susie—but the care he put into planting the seed, cupping it perfectly in the soil and patting it firmly in place, it was clear he knew enough to do Flowery justice.
It was all he could do. In the spare time he had between tending to Castle Town and praying for something, anything, to change, he researched how to… well, the manuals he could get his hands on called it disposal, but he needed to know how to bury Flowery properly. To plant any seeds he might have left behind with the love and care they deserved. He didn’t like the guy, but… he deserved respect on his name.
When he finally finished putting the last of the dirt back, flattening it with the help of his shovel, Ralsei got up and stepped back, dusting off his cloak. Jeez, this was dirty work… but he didn’t mind it. Staring at his feet, still unable to look Susie in the eyes, his mind began to race—only to be interrupted by a subtle pop. Caught off-guard, he directed his gaze towards the sound, and…
From the soil covering Flowery’s grave, where the seed had been planted… A single, golden flower bloomed, stem stronger than any plant Ralsei had ever seen before.
Then another. And another.
Before he knew it, the entire field behind the TV studio was covered in golden blossoms the same colour as Flowery’s hair, swaying gently in the nonexistent breeze. They seemed… happy. It was strange to say about something that couldn’t speak or emote like the rest of the folks in Castle Town, and yet Ralsei knew, deep within his heart, that those flowers were happier than anyone could have begun to imagine. They were alive.
“Whoa, holy crap,” Susie blurted out at the sight, pointing at the original flower. “You think he still had some magic laying around, or…?”
“I think… I think it’s his latent dream,” Ralsei speculated, putting his glasses back on after wiping the tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Nothing is stronger than a flower’s dream. If I had to guess, this must be how his dream took shape after, um… his passing.”
“Dude, I’m not a baby,” Susie quipped with a shaky grin. “You can say he died, y’know.”
“Haha, right…!”
Ralsei couldn’t help but smile. That was the Susie he knew and loved! She still seemed conflicted about it all, but… even if just for now, it was like the storm had lifted. They’d done what they could, and… perhaps, burial was the closure they both desperately needed. Perhaps, the garden of golden flowers that laid before them was the closure they both desperately needed. He wanted to think more, but—
“I’m gonna go find Lancer and play upstairs with him and Queen. You wanna come with?” Susie asked, barely looking over her shoulder to motion towards herself before beginning to jog off towards the castle. “Last one there’s a rotten egg!”
“Hey, wait, that’s not fair…!” Ralsei cried, floating off as fast as he could. As he did, he thought, if just for a moment, that he hallucinated something in the air, stopping him in his tracks and turning him back around towards the newfound flower field:
“You’ve got this, princess.”
