Chapter Text
One hundred years of rebirth was suffering enough. Yet he still had to have a double curse.
Hanahaki wasn't something he was unfamiliar with. After all, he's already lived through over thirty years of it. Though not necessarily all at once.
Tommy was cursed with living through one hundred years of hacking up lilies that grew in his lungs. White and pink petals tainted by dark blood, stirring in his throat until it all came out in a vicious choke.
The only way he could break this curse early was if he managed to finally have someone love him back. It wasn't romantic. It wasn't sweet. It was painful and cruel and incredibly disappointing.
Sweet smiles and soft words lost all meaning when the lilies spilled from his lips and suffocated him.
It had never been romantic love. Instead, Tommy was after the pursuit of making his family love him. Of having a caring home. It seemed so very simple, but it seemed that all along he had just been naive. His family never loved him. It was clear as day.
The first appearance of the lilies had been when he was lost somewhere deep in the forest. Crows cawed above his head and distantly he could hear running water. What he couldn't hear was the footsteps approaching him.
"Oh you poor boy," She called out, voice singed in spite.
"Poor thing doesn't know who loves him."
He had only been a boy. Barely six in age. He only stared at the witch who moved to place her palm against his cheek almost lovingly.
"Such a naive thing doesn't deserve all those lies."
Her thumb rubbed circles into the skin, before pinching his cheek roughly.
"One hundred years of lilies. They call those one hundred years of love after all. But to you, it'll be opening your eyes,"
The words made no sense to him then, but meant everything now.
"One hundred years of knowing."
Knowledge was a curse he decided. He had now been fourteen for the third time. His biological family, though sweet and kind to him in interaction, never really loved him. He knew from the petals in the snow below him. He'd been trying everything in his power to make them love him. Cleaning up, hunting, sewing up the holes in his brothers' clothes. But after everything he still coughed on flowers.
Now that he was fourteen he deemed that this life was most definitely a bust.
All he had to do now was wait then. Wait until flowers grew far too much and choked him out.
He briefly considered offing himself manually, but shuddered at the thought. He wasn't that hopeless. Not yet. Maybe when he reached the mental age of fifty he'd be willing.
Something else about this whole affair was that by the time he reached fifteen the flowers would run their course. He hasn't necessarily grown in mental age or maturity in that department, never having to even experience adulthood. Sure, he came out of the womb a bit more knowledgeable than most babies and progressively remembered his past lives throughout his toddler years, but he wasn't old.
His fifteenth birthday would be in four months.
Maybe that's what led him to wander the snow coated woods, shivering along the way and leaving a trail of petals from his lungs.
Four months to make someone love you wasn't enough. He was going to die again.
Hesitantly, he stepped towards the frozen lake. It wasn't suicide if it was an accident right? How painful would this even be?
Would it ever compare to suffocating to flowers?
His thoughts rattled in his head, before his brain was rudely interrupted by something landing on his face.
His nose twitched and his hand darted to grab the offending object, finding it was merely a black feather that was blown by the wind. A crow was out here somewhere.
Taking it as sign enough, he turned his back to the lake and walked home.