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April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
— The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot
For the first five years, he calls them his Gast Flowers. He has no other name for them, but he knows that Gast went away, and his chest got tighter and tighter, and in the fall the flowers bloomed.
They are all he has left of him. He hides the blossoms, and he strangles his coughing, and he does not let Hojo see.
It is easy. So long as he performs perfectly, Hojo does not care what he hides in his lungs.
When he is outside of the testing times, he may read what he likes. He learns the names of flowers while mako drips from the bag, into his IV line. Gast left Clematis within him.
When fall ends, the flowers fade, and he feels the climbing vines go dormant in his lungs. He drinks extra water, and hopes that they take what they need.
It is a relief, each time they bloom again. It is what he has left. What Gast left him.
He knows the true name for it now. Hanahaki sounds bitter and cruel. He does not speak it aloud. He knows the flowers are no gift. They are a disease.
He cultivates them anyway. He keeps his chest bare for the sunlight. He stands outside when it rains. He gathers the blooms when they escape him whole. He presses them in books to dry.
The military does not allow it. Shinra has him record a PSA. The coughing of flowers is dangerous. It will kill you. Report to medical and they will cut them out. He speaks the words from lungs filled with vines, which perhaps make it harder to breathe, but have not killed him yet. He carries his flowers with both pride and grief.
He watches the Troopers, gagging on rose petals, be pulled away for the ‘treatment.’ He watches them come back happier. He does not envy them. He wants to shake them. To tell them ‘blooming season is the worst, but it will fade. Water them in spring, and give them warmth in fall, and hold on through the winter, and the blossoms will give you comfort.
He says nothing. No one can ever know.
Genesis leaves in the spring, and the Clematis should not be blooming. He starts coughing anyway. He identifies the new petals as Zinnia
Angeal is quiet. Angeal’s student is confused.
Angeal leaves too.
Mint climbs up his throat. It hides the scent of blood, he hopes.
The Zinnia comes in two colors. Then three. He coughs in his room for hours.
They have both turned on him.
The zinnia withers inside him. He can feel it rot, replaced with sprigs of bitter wormwood.
When they try to send him on the mission, he has to refuse. He cannot breathe. Blooming season is the worst, he tells himself, though wormwood and mint do not bloom, and will not calm. He forces himself into the sun. He waits for his beloved Gast flowers to bloom.
They send Zack instead.
Zack doesn’t speak to him for days. He finds out the details from a mission report. But he already knew from the silence.
The summer is beginning. Something new blooms.
Sephiroth presses the flowers and herbs after rinsing his blood away and patting them dry. He layers them in his overfilled books. Years of flowers are pressed between the pages. Clematis flowers and wormwood and mint, and the flower that joins them is Adonis.
They strangle together inside him. Their roots are deep. They threaten him daily.
He goes on missions outside of Midgar to make sure they have sun. He drinks water. He tries to keep them warm.
They are all he has left.
“You’re sick, aren’t you.” Says Zack, almost a year later.
Spring is edging into summer, and he finds that the Zinnia inside him was not as dead as he thought. He welcomed it back, but now its flowers edge into the blooming of the Adonis, and it is hard to breathe. It is hard to choke back until he is alone. He still finds wormroot behind his molars most days. He has grown used to the taste of blood and mint and wormwood and petals.
“I am fine.” Says Sephiroth even as he wonders if he could reach down his throat to prune the offending flowers back, just for the season.
He has run out of space in his books.
In fall, the flowers settle. Just his beloved Gast Flowers once more. Even the mint subsides. He has grown used to the wormwood.
Soon it will be winter, and he will breathe easy.
Zack brings someone to him. A trooper, a no one, but Zack likes him, so Sephiroth is polite. He has nothing left but Zack and his flowers.
“Cloud, sir.” The trooper says when Zack waves him on. He pulls off his helmet. Lets loose wild hair and blue eyes. “Cloud Strife.”
Sephiroth does not have to try hard to be polite.
Cloud is wonderful.
“How did you even meet him?” Sephiroth asks Zack, aiming for idyll curiosity. Winter at last, and he takes slow, deep breaths. The roots creek inside him.
“Oh, I dunno.” Zack laughs. “Some of us actually talk to people.”
He cannot tell if it is wormwood that tastes bitter. He rarely tastes anything else these days.
“Oh, nice!” Says Cloud, pausing by one of the huge glass tubes in the Shinra building, looking in at the flowers. “It’s good to see some color around here, right sir?”
Sephiroth follows his gaze. Frowning down at the flowers.
“Hyacinths,” he identifies. “They’re supposed to bloom in the springtime.”
“Huh,” says Cloud, glancing around. “I suppose it doesn’t much matter when you’re inside the building all the time. I know how you feel, little guys. I can’t even tell day from night half the time in here.”
Sephiroth chuckles.
It rattles in his chest.
“Are you alright?” Sephiroth says awkwardly, watching Cloud shake.
It was close. Not as close as it could have been, but close enough to shake the trooper. Enough to give him a glimpse of mortality. Too much. Too close .
“I’m okay.” Cloud says, nodding to himself even as he shivers.
“Would you like—”
The offer dies on Sephiroth’s tongue. Zack sprints past him. Locks Cloud in a hug.
“Spike, you’re supposed to stay out of the monster’s mouth!” He is scolding, loud and warm and bright and worried. “You all in one piece?”
“Y-yeah,” Cloud says, taking a steadier breath, pressing into Zack’s arms. “Sephiroth had me.”
Zack glances back at him. His expression is strange. Sephiroth pretends not to see it. Swallows his invitation.
“I see you’re in good hands.” He says, as cordially as he can, and nods to them both before walking away.
He can feel Zack’s eyes on his back till he turns the corner.
Sephiroth slips to the nearest bathroom. Swallows his gag reflex. Slips his fingers into his mouth. Something is growing. A late wormwood. An early mint. He doesn’t know.
The petal he pulls free is rounded and yellow.
He has never grown yellow flowers before.
Even winter is no longer safe.
He coughs in his bed that night, trying to sleep, and yellow petals escape his lips. He gives up on sleeping. Turns on his lamp. Studies the petals. Opens his flower identification field guide.
He has read the book back to front, but he must have read rights past Eranthis Winter Aconite beforehand.
He rinses the petals. They are a beautiful yellow. Like…
He closes his eyes. He stands in front of the mirror. He drinks a glass of water slowly, and feels the squeeze of his garden in his lungs.
The first full bloom of Winter Aconite surprises him. Its leaves are sharp in his throat. The petals soft and sweet. He cannot escape how tired he is.
It is still attached to its stem. He fills a glass with water and sets it in the window. It is bright against the black and green city he is drowning in.
He goes to work, and silently thanks Cloud for his gift. No one has ever given him flowers and stayed before.
He is well practiced. He has had flowers growing in his chest longer than he lived without them. He goes through his days swallowing discomfort. His cold silences are as often to control his breathing as to intimidate those around him. It is just accepted of him.
The winter drags on. He grows tired. He doesn’t know why.
“You’re sick, aren’t you.” Says Zack again, and Sephiroth brushes past him in the hall.
He can't answer. His mouth is full of petals. He will have to spit them somewhere.
When spring returns, Cloud’s flowers will go dormant, and Angeal and Genesis’s Zinneas will grow, and their mint, and their wormwood will join them, and remain through summer with the Adonis. In autumn, Gast’s Clematis will come home and bloom again.
He will need more space to keep them. He fills his drawers with dried flowers and leaves. He cannot bring himself to throw them away.
Above all else, he tells himself. Above all else, keep Cloud. Above all else.
The petals are acrid on his tongue. He staggers. Reaches out. Grips the corner where the hallway turns. There is no one before him.
He covers his mouth.
He coughs.
Spring must be close. Young mint leaves appear in his hand along with the sweet yellow flowers he so adores.
“What?”
Sephiroth freezes. Closes his throat. Refuses to accept the next cough. Refuses. No. He can just—
“Sephiroth?”
He crams the petals into the pocket of his jacket. Straightens his back. HIs chest aches. He will need to give them sun. He will need to drink more water. He will need to keep them warm. Gast. His friends. Cloud.
“Go home, Zack.” He says.
His mouth feels numb around the words.
He falls.
He is in his apartment. He is certain. His apartment smells familiar. Mint and flowers and wormwood.
“Um, that one...” says a soft voice from the next room. “The book says it’s Zinnia. It says there are different meanings for different colors?”
“He’s got, like, five colors.”
“It says that a mix of colors is ‘memory of absent friends.’ Does he have absent friends?”
“Fuck.”
Sephiroth closes his eyes. Clenches his teeth. Feels the horror of being discovered strangle him as the flowers never could.
They’ll take them away from him. They’ll take them away, and he’ll come back like those troopers did. Empty and smiling. He’ll forget the pain.
He doesn’t want to forget the pain. It’s all he has.Pain, and Zack, and—
“Can you love, like, a bunch of different people?” Cloud asks in the other room, disbelief in his voice.
“I didn’t think Sephiroth could love anyone.” Zack replies.
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. Run, he tells himself. Run. Find a sunny place. Care for your garden. Leave it all behind.
Zack, says the rest of him. Cloud.
“How can you say that?” Cloud’s voice objects, raised higher than it had been. “What’s he ever done to you? You said he was your friend!”
“He is,” Zack says. “I’m not— I’m not trying to be mean, I just… Genuinely didn’t know, Spike. He doesn’t show it. He doesn’t show anything.”
“Well…” Cloud pauses. Sephiroth stares at the ceiling. Waiting for the knife. Waiting to lose the last of his flowers.
“Looking at all this,” Cloud continues. “Can you blame him?”
Sephiroth closes his eyes. Bites his lip to strangle down the cough. To strangle down his love.
That’s what it is. Hanahaki. Gast’s flowers. Love. Gruesome, flowering, growing, dying love.
“What’s this one?” Zack asks at last.
Cloud sighs. There’s the sound of someone flicking through pages quickly. He must have found Sephiroth’s markings.
“It’s Clematis. Filial love.”
“Filial?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t bring a dictionary.”
“This one?”
“It’s, uh… Eranthis—”
Sephiroth gets out of bed. Pulls open the door to the main room. Finds his drawers open. His books raided. His friends sitting in the middle of the room.
Zack’s hand on the delicate dried Winter Aconite.
“Get out.” Sephiroth says, walking over. Yanking the flower out of his hand. He doesn’t look at Cloud.
“What?” Zack replies, sharp and angry. “Get out? Get out? You pass out and I drag you home, and find this , and you expect—”
“This says Winter Aconite is toxic.” Cloud says.
Sephiroth looks to him. Despite himself. He shouldn’t have. Cloud is so… So…
Cloud’s eyes are so blue, and he’s looking up at him with worry and confusion.
“Are you coughing these?” Cloud asks, turning the book, pointing to the page. “If they’re in your bloodstream we have to get you down to—”
“The wormwood is toxic too.” Sephiroth tells him before he can catch himself, before he can deny it. “It is always fine in the end.”
“How long has this been going on?” Zack snaps. And then, “what do you think you’re doing hiding it?”
“What am I doing?” Sephiroth asks, cold as ice, feeling the dried flower crumble under his fingers as he clenches it too tight. “Me. I am doing what I always have. It is everyone else who keeps leaving.”
His eyes trace over the book. To his precious, disturbed flowers. The evidence that it had happened. That they were there. That it’s real. It was real. He never shows it like he is supposed to, and it was never enough for anyone, but it is real.
He walks past them. To the drawer of Adonis. He closes it carefully. Then the Zinnia, and the Clematis, and the mint and wormwood, dried and tangled together, bitter and sweet. He only hesitates over the Winter Aconite. Toxic, Cloud says, and yet it was the only one to live. The only one still breathing. He closes his eyes. He swallows back the petals. Feels the scrape of roots in his throat. In his lungs.
“Who are they for?” Cloud asks softly.
“Genesis.” Zack says. “Angeal.”
Sephiroth tucks his chin.
“Yes.” He says, because it is good to hear their voices, and it is right that someone should know. “The Adonis and Zinnia. The wormwood and mint as well I believe. And a man I knew once is... It is nothing. They wax and wane as the seasons pass. The disease is not what Shinra says it is.”
“Who are these, though?” Cloud asks, lifting a yellow flower. It is fresher than the others, but broken. The one Sephiroth shoved in his pocket before. There are still bloodstains on the stem. He wants to snatch it away from Cloud’s fingers. He wants to crush it. To deny it.
He just stands by the drawers and stares at Cloud and the flower he had given him. So sweet, so bright.
“Oh.” Zack whispers. And then “oh” again.
“They wax and wane.” Sephiroth says again. “Aconite is an early flower. It will settle as the Zinnias bloom.”
“No,” says Zack. “It won’t. We’re going to medical right now. I would have taken you there right away if I had—”
“You would take them from me.” Sephiroth whispers, wounded beyond all sense. Of course he would. Of course. He knows that.
“They’re killing you!”
“I love them.” Sephiroth says. Softer than he means to. Defensive. He stands between Zack and his flowers. Between his friend who stayed and the ones he lost.
“They’re dead.” Zack says.
“He’s not.” Sephiroth’s eyes trace down to Cloud despite himself. He finds the trooper blushing. Beet red, startled, worried.
“Me?” Cloud whispers, still holding the flower.
It matches his hair.
“You have to.” Zack tells him.
“I won’t.” Sephiroth replies.
“You barely know me!” Cloud objects, and the tension in the room falls flat and empty. A breath released. A bond broken.
Sephiroth looks away.
“I did not want you to know.” He says, as gently as he can. “It is not your responsibility.”
“That you’re dying because of me?”
“He’s not.” Zack says quickly. “He’s not, he’s dying because he’s too wrapped up in feeling sorry for himself to—”
“Do not speak to me like that!” Sephiroth snaps back, wondering if it is desperation, or fear, or the wormwood roots he feels, tightening all around him. “You have no idea!”
“How could I have an idea?” Zack replies, flinging his arms wide. “You never told me!”
“No one has ever not loved you back.” Sephiroth accuses, sharp and angry and wounded. His eyes hurt, and his head hurts, and he is so tired and he just wants them gone. He wants to surround himself in his flowers and stand in the sunlight, and watch the seasons change marked in his blood.
There is silence after he speaks, and he takes it as his due. Turns to the window. Puts a hand over his chest.
“They loved you.” Zack insists softly. “They did.”
Sephiroth closes his eyes.
“Maybe not the way you wanted, but I know at least that Angeal did. He always worried about you.”
“Perhaps he should have considered that before joining the people trying to kill me.”
“He tried to kill me too.” Zack objects.
“Excuse me?” Cloud says, standing slowly.
Sephiroth blinks. Inhales.
“Yes?”
“I don’t think it’s fair.” Cloud says. “That you decide who cares for you and who doesn’t.”
“You didn’t even know them.” Sephiroth’s eyes scan the horizon of Midgar. How far would he have to run to ensure they couldn’t find him?
“I know me.” Cloud steps forward. Over books in socked feet. Up to the window. Looks up at Sephiroth like a challenge.
Sephiroth can’t resist looking back.
“Why did you decide it’s unrequited?” Cloud looks angry. Looks hurt. “Why did you decide I would hurt you?”
“It is not your job to protect me.” Sephiroth tells him, confused by his response. By his objection.
“So I don’t get to decide whether I like you?” Cloud pushes forward. Shoves Sephiroth’s shoulder openly. Not an attack, but angry nonetheless. “I don’t get to tell you what I want?”
“You’re my subordinate.”
“You’d rather choke on flowers than talk to me?” Cloud appears undeterred. If anything he’s getting angrier. He is so small, and so sweet, but he is not afraid of Sephiroth. Not a bit.
“I—” Sephiroth glances to Zack for help. Is surprised when he gets it.
“I mean,” Zack says, “like you said, Spike, it looks like he’s got a lot more practice of one than the—”
“Shut up!” Cloud snaps, and Sephiroth takes half a step back despite himself. “When did it start?”
“What?”
“Your first flowers! How long ago?”
“I don’t… I was a child.”
Silence for a moment. Cloud’s rage seems to simmer, then cool. He lifts a hand. Sets it over Sephiroth’s chest.
It feels cold on his burning skin. He is staring. Sephiroth wants to explain.
“They were all that was left.” He says, and hates how it sounds. How desperate. “It was all he left me.”
“So you didn’t tell anyone.” Zack fills in.
“They’d have cut him out. I could handle it.”
“But?” Cloud prompts softly.
“But…” Sephiroth can hardly breathe. Soon it will be spring and he will strangle on the grief.
“Angeal,” he whispers. “Genesis. They taught me what a friend was and then they were…”
“Gone,” Zack supplies.
“Yes.” Sephiroth whispers. “The flowers… They keep them here.”
“It’s not fair.” Cloud says, and his voice is so kind.
“I’m sorry.” Sephiroth replies.
“You were afraid.” Cloud whispers.
Sephiroth clenches his eyes shut. He feels cornered. Trapped.
“Seph?” Zack’s voice.
“If you left me,” Sephiroth whispers, “it would strangle me to death. I didn’t want that put on you. You are the only ones who haven’t…”
He swallows. He’s not supposed to put this on them. He’s tried so hard not to put this on them.
“They will not cut out the others without cutting you away too.” He whispers to Cloud, and hopes he understands. “And I do not want them to cut the others away.”
“But they hurt you.”
“Yes.” Sephiroth whispers. “It helps me remember them.”
“It doesn’t though!” Zack objects, stepping forward, pressing in closer. A hand gripping Sephiroth’s arm. “It doesn’t. It helps you remember missing them. Losing them. Not Angeal’s cooking, or Genesis’s weird poetry thing, or sparring with them, or talking to them.”
“If they cut them out I’ll forget it all.”
“Do you even remember it now?”
Sephiroth falls silent. He is too tired. He can’t explain. He can’t lose them. His flowers. He couldn’t…
“Were you okay before me?” Cloud asks softly.
“Don’t.” Sephiroth says. “You owe me nothing, and have no guilt in this. I would not trade you for anything.”
Cloud huffs out a sigh. Crosses his arms. “So dramatic.” He complains. “I just wanted to know if you did alright before the, uh, whatever. The yellow one.”
“I… Yes. It was manageable. It will be manageable again once I acclimate.”
“So how about finding out if it’s unrequited before choking yourself on toxic flowers?” Cloud suggests, lifting his eyebrows in challenge. “Or don’t I get a say in whether I like you or not.”
“You’re under duress.” Sephiroth says. “You fear for my safety.”
“So many excuses!” Cloud’s hand finds his cheek. Bold. Bolder than anyone has ever been with him before. Zack straightens up close by, ready to step in.
“Ask me.” Cloud tells him.
Sephiroth swallows. Fears the answer. The inevitable rejection. Fears Zack’s anger and denial. Fears drowning in the petals of all he could not save.
“Would you consider me?” Sephiroth asks. “Even if you did not know all of this?”
Cloud laughs. Softly. It’s like a dagger. Then he says, “I can’t tell you how often I daydreamed about you saying something like that.”
Sephiroth has no response. He stands there while Cloud pulls his head down and stands on his tiptoes and presses a kiss to his pale cheek.
Zack makes tea. Sephiroth sits with Cloud.
Cloud is awkward. He admits about posters, and magazines, and hero worship. Admits idolization, and borderline obsession, and shows them his Silver Elite membership. He says he felt stupid in high school for not having Hanahaki disease over it. That half the reason he decided to come here was so that he would meet Sephiroth— the Sephiroth— and see if he was really irreparable in love.
“But nothing happened.” Cloud says with a shrug. “And I figured ‘it’s probably because you can’t really love someone you don’t know,’ so I asked Zack to introduce us— sorry Zack.”
“It’s cool, I knew.” Zack chuckles, passing Sephiroth warm tea.
It soothes the ache in his chest. It feels like something is uprooting.
“So,” Sephiroth says slowly. “You might?”
“Hm.” Cloud flushes. Glances away. Smiles. “I’d like to try.”
Sephiroth lets his garden wither. Slowly. By degrees.
Cloud finds him at home, choking on one flower or another, and takes the petals from his limp hands, and asks him about Genesis. About what he loved most about him. About what he misses.
The Zinnia don’t rot. They just don’t flower as much.
When Sephiroth drags an Adonis out of his throat, he tells Cloud without prompting. About Angeal’s cooking, and his honor, and his dreams. About the little games they played, and the way he spoke and moved. The way he was gentle. The way he worried.
Cloud asks why it hurt so badly, and Sephiroth tells him. Tells him all he can. Again and again. Then he always takes Cloud out to dinner after, because he doesn’t want to be Cloud’s job. He wants to be worth his time.
The fourth time it happens, he realizes that he can’t taste wormwood anymore.
The mint flourishes. Sephiroth doesn’t mind, and Cloud tells him it tastes nice, when they kiss. It means Warmth of Feeling. It means Let’s be Friends again.
He keeps Gast’s flowers too. They are the only ones he cannot share with Cloud, and Cloud accepts it with solemn understanding. Kisses Sephiroth softly over his chest when the flowers bloom. Helps him press the best ones, and helps him cut down on the number he keeps.
Maybe one day, Sephiroth tells himself.
The Winter Aconite never blooms again.