Work Text:
Niki’s fingers fumble with the key as she grips the doorknob of the flower shop, missing the lock twice before fitting it in properly.
It’s managed to stay standing, all this time. Even the Community House has been destroyed - again, though Niki can’t imagine it’ll cause half as much consequence - and it feels like some sort of testament in comparison.
Or maybe no one cared enough about it to tear it down, she’s not quite sure.
The door creaks open like an ancient being, as though a lack of oil in its hinges speaks to some sort of sprawling story; it doesn’t, they just never bothered to fix it. It hasn’t even been that long.
Recent history feels like the distant past, but it’s always been that way, ever since Niki took her first step into L’manberg. She’s watched a nation grow around a small sapling and crumble down around the same, the shop is an ephemeral thing in comparison.
An alarmingly thick layer of dust covers every inch of the building, coating her fingertip in fuzz as she swipes it along the countertop.
Wilbur wouldn’t have liked this, Niki thinks.
Not the abandonment, he’d actually always gotten along fine with that. Nearly everything else.
He wouldn’t have liked that it serves no real purpose, allium and poppy and rose lining the darkened oak outside. He wouldn’t have liked that it’s on Dream’s land.
He wouldn’t have liked that it’s not a singularity meant for expansion, instead standing as a broken-off chunk of an abandoned way of life.
Somewhere, there’s a girl in a rainbow sweater in front of a store that’ll never see much use.
“Hey,” a familiar voice says from just behind her. Niki turns around to see Puffy standing there, the same as ever, but also not at all.
She’s a constant, Puffy is. A rock, a level head, the most-different thing about her is the scarlet coat across her shoulders and even that isn’t particularly out of the ordinary. Tinted frames still sit on the bridge of her nose and she moves them up to nestle in the wool of her hair as she peers at Niki.
Niki smiles at her. “Hello.”
There’s scrutiny in Puffy’s gaze. Not judgment, not so cruel, but she’s clearly sizing Niki up. Questioning the pink hair and blue cloak and netherite armor, only to come to conclusions moments later. Niki lets it happen, lacing her fingers together and leaning back.
“Where have you been?” Puffy asks, finally.
Hesitation knots and unravels in Niki’s stomach as she goes back and forth briefly; wanting to be honest, but only to a certain extent. Her life’s not the type to talk about in public anymore, long gone are the days of a harbor-side cell, feeding an ungrateful cabinet of saltwater men.
“I’ve been working,” she says, wringing the words dry. “Kind of far away.”
Puffy bobs her head. “Is it hard?”
Of course it’s hard. It’s hard for Niki to wake up every morning and wonder what side of history she was born to be on and if this is it. If she’s doing the right thing for the most people; if she’ll ever be able to do something harmless again and not have to wonder which one of her footfalls will trigger a trap.
It’s also so incredibly easy. To hand Ranboo a warm mug and encourage him to speak up at the next meeting. To lock eyes with Technoblade across a table and know that her voice will be heard.
To not have to look over her shoulder all the time, confident in the knowledge that at least one person will always have her back.
“It’s good,” Niki replies, aware of the ambiguity of it but not being able to offer anything more. “It’s good work.”
Metal clicks against metal as Puffy shifts and the buttons on her coat clatter. “That’s good,” she says, with a faint smile.
“How have you been?”
“Fine, y’know,” Puffy shrugs. “I uh, adopted a kid though.”
Gentle laughter erupts out of Niki. “You what?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Puffy’s laughter interweaves with her own and fills the empty storefront. “His name’s Foolish, I’m his papa.”
“You’re always doing that aren’t you?”
“What, becoming a father?”
“I meant,” Niki stresses, “having complicated relationships with your kids.”
Puffy pauses and Niki wonders for a second if she’s gone too far, if iron bar and blackstone is a fresh wound, but Puffy resets quickly and rolls her eyes, resting against the side wall.
She does look drained, but not any more than she did at the start, and not so much that it’s obvious. It’s in the set of her shoulders, something that wasn’t there when they first met.
Her expression is stuck at ‘carefully neutral,’ like she’s weighing her thoughts and they’ve come out of the scale even. She coughs lightly.
“Speaking of... complicated relationships.”
“Oh no,” Niki groans.
Puffy huffs. “Should I not go there?”
“We were gonna get there eventually.” Hands pressing against smooth stone, Niki lifts herself up onto the countertop, crossing her legs as they dangle over the edge.
Silence worms its way in between them, pulls taut like a fraying thread, threatens to bend and break what’s already fragile.
It lingers uncomfortably until finally, Puffy, brave as ever - Niki’s only seen her scared once and it was while clutching a ring - is the one to shatter it.
“Why did we break up?” she questions.
Niki lifts a shoulder in a half-full shrug. “We didn’t.”
“You know what I mean.”
“We just,” Niki struggles to pinpoint the words in her vocabulary, floating stars of mismatched lines and slopes, “didn’t work."
Puffy shakes her head slowly; out of disagreement or something else, it’s hard to tell. “What changed?”
You, Niki wants to say. Me. Everything.
Love came fast and easy when Niki first arrived. Came with a pseudo-family to fall back on and a man she trusted with everything she had and the hours she spent sewing a flag for what would become nothing.
Destruction came easier after it burned, vitriol spat at Quackity’s feet under Schlatt’s presidency, Fundy’s familiar inferno across her palms as she, too, set ablaze a symbol of the past she’s tried and failed to forget.
Somewhere, there’s a girl that'll only ever exist in pictures. A blonde with a hopeful grin and a crisp lavender revolutionary uniform.
“Nothing changed,” she says instead. “Not really.”
“Were we just always bad then?” Puffy demands.
“No!” Niki bites her lip. “No,” she repeats, quieter. “We were good.”
“We obviously weren’t good enough.” Exasperation rises in the rasp of Puffy’s voice when she argues. “Karl and them went through the same stuff we did, but they’re still fine.”
Something grows and glitters in one of Niki’s intercostal spaces - a small, bitter diamond, worthless in its rattle across her bones - at the mention of Karl as an example of good.
She, for one, would argue that he hasn’t gone through what they have. At all. Especially not what she has.
Not the man who sold her city out to the enemy, not the man who is currently building a country on top of what was meant to be her escape.
Niki breathes in deeply and sets the thought aside to deal with later. There’s some quiet relief, not in the knowledge that her home is being invaded for the nth time, but in her newfound ability to put out the flames nestled in her stomach. They used to consume her entirely.
“You know why they work?” Niki suggests. “Because they are what each other needs.”
Puffy raises an eyebrow, an is-this-really-your-rebuttal and act of indignance in one small motion, but Niki raises a hand in return, in pause, in protest.
“You are whole, you are enough,” she says gently. “But I needed you to just be there and you couldn't do that for me.”
“I needed you too,” Puffy objects.
“I know.”
“Then what do you mean?”
Through the smudged glass of the tall windows, Niki can picture a version of herself that didn’t find solace, who burnt the little shop to the ground before trying to make any sort of amends. The kind of person to step forward carelessly, crushing petals without regard for their roots or anything else, any person who might’ve found them beautiful.
“I’m not blaming you," she promises, a different Niki than that one, but also any Puffy’s ever known, “it’s just like... like trying to plant a sunflower in the rainforest.”
Puffy tilts her head. “It’d never grow.”
Niki hums in affirmation. “But neither of them are any less for it.”
Hardy things, Sunflowers can outlast despairing drought, but they still need light and warmth and open space to flourish. Rainforests are all heavy downpour and thick canopy; bathed in darkness, they contain multitudes in their understory.
Somewhere, there’s two people - fresh with scars from different kinds of loss and looking for something new - on a first date.
Niki swings her legs as Puffy purses her lips and they remain in vaguely-more-comfortable-than-before silence. The ambiance is alright; it’s cozy in the shop, even devoid of actual flora.
All of the main area is much warmer than Niki’s used to nowadays, having adjusted to ice and harsh wind, but the bricks - rarely used, she can’t remember why they went with them - are a good insulator and Niki’s distantly pondering bringing up their use to Techno when she remembers what she specifically was going to seek out Puffy for.
Niki rifles around in her satchel. “I have something for you.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been baking,” she explains, pulling out a square tub.
Puffy stares blankly. “What is it?”
“It’s an opera.” Niki pries the lid off carefully to reveal a rectangular cake. A sitting triple entendre. She gives Puffy a wry smile. “I followed the recipe, start to finish.”
Their fingertips kiss as Niki hands it forward and Puffy reaches out to take it as if on instinct. She tilts it a little, analyzing it like she’s just been asked a question and the answer is written in the chocolate glaze.
It’d been fun to make, a challenge in Techno’s understocked and ill-prepared kitchen. He clearly hadn’t planned for someone to ask if they could use it, but to be fair, Niki hadn’t thought she’d ever want to.
To work with the Syndicate is something entirely new.
She felt powerful on their first mission, a venture to Tubbo’s land to the east, her voice ringing across snow with no one trying to stop it, but she felt just as powerful hunched over next to a stove, Ranboo’s curious gaze beside her.
Nemesis and Niki meet there, on equal footing, with fire in her lungs and a hearth in her heart.
“Niki,” Puffy says abruptly, voice brittle.
She sets the lid back down and looks up with red-rimmed eyes, a tiny pearl slipping down her cheek. She doesn’t move to wipe it away, like it’ll disappear if she ignores it.
Like whatever happened to them and their flowers will happen to her tears too; like they’ll be gone by the time she stops to notice.
“Puffy?” Niki echoes softly.
The corners of Puffy’s lips tip upward, something bright and vivid and caught behind a conflicting curtain of emotion.
“I’m breaking up with you.”
Niki can almost feel the way her ribs squeeze shut, the key to her heart’s door turning in its lock. She can almost feel gentle rain pitter-patter down onto delicate ray florets. She can almost feel their worn rope snap in two.
Almost, but not quite. All Niki can really feel is the way her nose prickles and her eyes burn and the usual fatigue flits around her body like a gossamer wing
She hops down from her perch and is in front of Puffy in two steps, having gathered her in her arms in a third.
“It was about time,” Niki murmurs, her voice cracking as she leans her head on Puffy’s shoulder. Underneath her cheek, it shakes, ever so slightly.
“Who gets to keep the store?” Puffy’s kidding, but it comes out choked and flat and Niki holds her tighter for a second before letting go.
“We can split it.”
Carefully lifting the container she's held off to the side, Puffy offers up the opera. “This too?”
Niki looks over at the clock on the wall, its hands still in steady rhythm.
Phil said that he wanted to talk to her about something when she got back, but she hadn’t given him a time to expect her by. Her time is hers now, no longer owed to anyone, no longer used only for blurry nights of building and the low hum of anger spilled onto scribbled diary pages.
Niki is more than that, again.
She works, she lives, she is allowed to spend an hour with cake and a friend.
“Sure.”