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It was Quackity’s first marriage that taught him love is supposed to hurt.
He’d been deeply in love with the avatar of strength and charisma. Sharp face, charming smile, proud pair of ram’s horns on his head—it was so easy to fall heads over heels.
And they married quick. In a courthouse they exchanged their wedding vows while stifling drunken giggles. They kissed passionately, in public, with no care for the judgement of others. They rose to power together. And Quackity was so sure that they were in love.
Love meant safety and freedom from the flower curse. It meant for a bright future.
But weeks after the wedding, Quackity coughed up dahlia petals. They were dark burgundy, the color of wine too often spilled on the table, staining carpets and clothes.
The scene is forever etched in his mind.
Quackity coughs. His husband grabs him by the collar of his shirt and yanks him upwards. Schlatt’s breath is sharp with whiskey, his complexion ruddy, his eyes bloodshot. They’d bickered before about the drinking—Quackity knew his husband had a problem. He never imagined that as Schlatt’s ego grew, so would his drunken rage.
“Are you fuckin’ cheating on me? You whore, why the fuck did I ever want to marry you!”
Quackity claws at his throat as he takes in ragged breaths. He wants to scream, ‘They’re for you! This is how much I love you—I’d die for you! Don’t do this to me!’. But his mouth is clogged with a web of roots, and he can only choke.
He’s dropped on the ground, and he keels over. More slimy petals spray across the floor. Quackity’s eyes water. From the coughing fits or from tears, he’s not so sure.
In the days that followed Schlatt stayed sober, and Quackity’s lungs stayed clear.
He accepted the pattern. Dance around eggshells, fuck up, fight, spend the night hacking his lungs up and tasting dirt. The cycle of love. Doomed to suffer for being inadequate, never good enough.
Other members of Manburg crudely called him Schlatt’s bitch. They weren’t wrong. Pleasing Schlatt was a matter of survival. He’d pathetically hold out the petals to show his husband the symbol of his devotion and follow his every whim.
Until he finally had enough.
When Schlatt begins tearing down the white house, Quackity feels another bloom take root in his throat.
Schlatt barely spares him a glance as Quackity chokes. Instead, he just hurls more insults, demands that Quackity ‘get to fuckin’ work!’ with a crazed gleam in his eyes.
The pickaxe shakes in Quackity’s hands. He’d given Schlatt his loyalty, his body, his heart, and it’s still not enough. Not enough to spare him from the flower curse.
The white house is all he has left.
He doesn’t want to love Schlatt anymore.
He doesn’t want to die.
He drops the tool and reaches down his throat with his fingers. They quickly grow slick with bile and spit, and he gags. With a harsh tug he pulls out the dahlia by its thick stem. His flesh tears and his throat bleeds as deep-seeded roots are torn free.
He hacks up blood and residual dirt and petals. But the flower is wet and clutched in his hand. He lets it drop and crushes it under his heel.
With no remorse or sorrow he nocks an arrow and shoots his husband through the heart.
He’s free.
Never one to learn his lesson (after all, Quackity is a stubborn man, not even the Blade himself could force him to compromise), he fell in love again.
Karl and Sapnap quickly became his sun, moon, and stars.
Every night, Quackity slept afraid he was going to be violently awoken by a bouquet blooming in his chest. But every morning, he woke to soft laughter and sunlit smiles.
Their first fight was over something stupid. Quackity can’t even remember what it was about; the only thing that mattered was what had followed.
Quackity kneels over the toilet bowl. A bead of sweat trails down his temple. He braces himself for the agony. What will it be this time? Something with thorns, like a rose? Or maybe a lily, with its broad, thick petals, taking up his entire airway.
But nothing comes. His brows knit together, confused. The blossom should’ve taken root by now. He’d pissed Karl off to the point of shouting, and Sapnap, angered at them both, walked out. A bad day was enough to trigger it in his last relationship. Was something wrong?
Someone knocks on the bathroom door.
“Hey Q?” Karl’s voice is soft.
Quackity startles, scrambling out his pathetic position on the floor and to his feet. “…What?”
“Can I come in?”
He checks himself in the mirror. His face is a little splotchy, but he doesn’t look too dreadful. He can keep his pride intact. “Okay.”
The door opens, and Karl shuffles in sheepishly. “I wanted to say I was sorry, for raising my voice like that. Sapnap’s talking a walk to cool off, literally.” He forces a small laugh.
Quackity feels himself melt. Downturned eyes, rosy cheeks, gentle smile—he could never stay angry at Karl’s kind face. It’s one of the few things that can tame his stubborn pride. “…’M sorry too. I was such an ass.”
Karl just nods. He takes each of Quackity’s hands in his own. “Y’know, Sapnap and I fought sometimes back when it was just the two of us. Especially during the pet wars.”
“Really?” Do they know? What blossoms they damn each other to choke on?
“Yeah! So I just don’t want you to think it’s your fault—we were all being dicks. We’ve all got big personalities and we’re living in unstable times. It’s something to work through together.”
He speaks of it so casually. Quackity’s eyebrows knit together, and he squeezes Karl’s hands tighter. “And… You didn’t get sick?”
Karl tilts his head. “What do you mean?”
“It’s… Never mind.” Ah, of course. Normal couples don’t hurt each other like that– It was only Quackity and his ex-husband. He looks away, ashamed and feeling broken, tainted, by his past.
Karl rubs his thumb over Quackity’s knuckles. “I love you. And again, I’m sorry.”
And Quackity believes him. “I love you too,” he says, a promise to never bring his partners that sort of pain.
His beloved fiancés had tricked him into thinking maybe love doesn’t hurt.
But alone in Las Nevadas, Quackity is in agony. Even though he breathes easy, he still aches from how much he misses them. He feels it in his stomach, his head, and his heart.
He holds onto a small thread of hope that they’ll come back to him. He doesn’t care if he’ll look like a sniveling wimp for taking them back. He wants nothing more than to feel the embrace of their arms again.
He daydreams, looks over his shoulder and every time is disappointed not to see a friendly face.
But he doesn’t give up. The flower curse hadn’t come for him. He’s comforted thinking that maybe they are still out there, thinking of him, loving him.
Until one morning he keels over the toilet and retches hard. And violet petals float up in the pool of water and stomach acid.
He smiles bitterly. Forget-me-nots. What a gentle death sentence. Petite flowers with delicate stems, perhaps one of the least painful to have lodged in one’s throat.
They’re supposed to symbolize true love. Karl had talked about having them as part of the wedding decorations.
What a joke.
Quackity writes a list of the pros and cons of curing his problems. To suffocate or not to suffocate.
The list quickly grows one-sided as Quackity’s devotion to Las Nevadas grows clear. He’s built something larger than himself, something he needs to protect. It’s deciding between a legacy and a kind of love he was never cut out for.
The flowers need to go.
He approaches Sam and wordlessly shows him the latest bundle that he’d coughed up.
“Where do I need to go to get this shit out me?” he rasps. Ripping out by hand isn’t ideal—the removal of the dahlia left him with residual scarring and difficulty breathing that plagued him for months. He needs a doctor.
Sam’s eyes widen, and his mouth parts. It’s the most emotion Quackity’s seen on the hybrid since before he became the warden. The look on his face has Quackity reeling—he’s not something to be pitied. Not some whelp who’s sad that his feelings aren’t returned.
“Don’t fucking look at me like I’m some kicked puppy,” he snarls. “It’s not going to matter anymore.” It’s what he tells himself. It doesn’t matter; Karl and Sapnap already left him. This is only confirmation of what he’d known for months.
Sam swallows hard. He shakes the emotion off his face and says, “I know someone.”
For some reason Quackity is having doubts. He hates how old memories flood his mind. He can’t shake the mirages of Sapnap. Of Karl.
He remembers late night movie marathons and aiming trick shots with leftover popcorn kernels. He remembers being a menace to dining establishments and getting kicked out of McPuffy’s for public indecency (because how could they resist exchanging kisses to go with their midnight munchies?) He remembers watching the sunset over the construction of El Rapids, casting everything in warm amber, and daydreaming together about the day they’d finally get married.
He coughs violently. Ponk places a hand on his chest, pushing him back into the bed. The clinic is sterile and bright with fluorescent lights. It’s private place, tucked away in the corner of the city. Quackity will be damned if anyone outside his inner circle discovers his ailment.
Ponk lays out their instruments on the side table. Scalpel, forceps, pliers… Quackity’s stomach drops, feeling oddly reminded of the tools he uses when he visits the prison.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” he asks, voice wavering.
Ponk frowns, “I’ve done this before, yes.”
Curiosity pricks at him. “Who?”
They just shake their head. “Are you ready? It won’t be comfortable.”
Quackity grits his teeth. It’s time to say goodbye, for his country’s sake, and his own. “Get it over with.”
Quackity wakes with a sore throat, but otherwise… He inhales deeply. Breathing fresh air has never been so easy.
He thanks Ponk and compensates them well for the work. Ponk offers to preserve the flowers that’d been removed, but Quackity only shakes his head. Sentimentality is worthless to him.
There’s a final thing to take care of before he can move on for good.
In the drawer by his bedside, he takes the small wooden box and pulls out two bands of gold. He stares at the rings, no longer feeling any attachment toward them. They’re nothing but a symbol of a disease that nearly took his life.
They won’t be hidden in a chest or tucked away lovingly on a string around his neck this time.
He makes a brief trip to the Nether and tosses them into a lava lake. It’s unceremonious, and they’re swallowed up in an instant. A few drops of lava splatter in the air and a couple of striders quirk their heads in curiosity, but otherwise, life continues as usual.
Feeling nothing, Quackity returns to work.
Sapnap knows he’s a dead man when yellow marigolds join the garden in his chest. Yellow and violet. Complimentary colors, meant to pair together. It’s fitting. Even in the end of it all, his beloved fiancés belong together with him.
He coughs again, hacking up stems coated in blood. Weakly, he stumbles to the bathroom, flips on the sink, and runs the excrement under cool water. The flower is mostly intact. It’s a little bruised on the ends of some petals, but otherwise beautiful.
It joins the forget-me-nots in the vase by the window.
Dream had warned him that attachments would make him weak. If only he could see Sapnap now, collecting the very thing that’s damning him. He could remove them, but that would be giving up. And he can’t give up on the promise they’d made the day they exchanged rings.
He remembers the last time he spoke to Karl. His fiancé had been frantic, running out their home and mumbling ‘I’m sorry there’s something I have to do I will fix this I promise I won’t forget I’ll be back I just need more TIME’. Sapnap scoured the library and all of Kinoko Kingdom for him, but Karl had seemingly vanished.
He remembers the last time he saw Quackity, in the aftermath of the final disc confrontation. In their parting words they expressed a shared want for a place where the three of them can be safe together, after the power vacuum left by Dream’s imprisonment and L’Manburg’s destruction meant for an uncertain future. Sapnap wishes he’d come to Kinoko Kingdom. He wants to think it’s safe enough, good enough, for them.
There will be a lapse where he can breathe steady enough to walk for longer than minutes at a time. A brighter day will come, and he can set off to right what’s gone so wrong. Flowers be damned, Sapnap still believes in them.
Days pass and George finds him still in his bed. He’d look like he’d be dreaming, if only he weren’t so cold.