Work Text:
Botanist is tired.
She's always tired, in one way or another. Whether she's having another migraine, her muscles ache from being on her feet all day, her back hurts from poor posture, or if her thoughts aren't being kind to her.
Tired may as well be part of her personality. A personality as sunny as the cheap, blonde dye she’d gotten for her hair. At least her hair was cute, even if her eye bags weren’t.
The migraines are definitely an inconvenience though, considering that she works in sunlight for a majority of the day. Gleaming Greenery's gardens weren't going to photosynthesize on their own, after all.
( She shudders at the store name, as she briefly recalls telling her grandfather to reconsider. Unfortunately, he didn't see the problem, thinking the alliteration was clever. She has to suppress a groan everytime she orders furniture and fertilizer, which was harder to do in person than over the phone. )
Initially, she hated the idea of having to sell the flowers, fruits, vegetables, and herbs she'd worked so many days and nights to grow. She watered them each day, making sure to give them more or less water depending on the shade of their stems. She adjusted their positions so they could get more sun or shade, depending on how their leaves looked. She plucked out the first signs of weeds, tried different fertilizers, even changed pots so their growth could be more comfortable.
She worked her hands cracked, dry, and scarred just to make sure each of her creations could flourish. Selling them away to some sniveling kids who would kill them in a week, or to her peers who would treat them as trophies and not living organisms, felt cruel.
But she knows plants don't live forever. She just wants to make their lifespan as nice as it can be, with how disgusting the air around her feels. ( Whether that was from the carbon dioxide or her chronic fear rearing it's familiar, ugly head again is anyone's guess. )
That, and bills need to be paid. Rent isn't cheap.
Just keep caring for the plants, trimming what doesn’t belong, help any customers who come in and swallow the fear and guilt until they dissolve in her throat. Then coping mechanisms. Rinse and repeat.
( Because life is insanity, apparently. )
Anything that’ll distract from the mess of overgrown vines and thorns that keep prodding at her brain will work. Poison ivy plants spreading from the back of her head until it’s all she can see in front of her, sun spots that shouldn’t be there, blocking out the rest of the world she needs to focus on. A future she needs to keep working towards.
A future that feels like it keeps falling farther and farther out of her reach. A future she keeps running towards, yet she doesn’t know which choices will get her there faster. Her legs ache, her knees feel as though they’ll give any second, but if she stops, she won’t get the results she wants. Results she needs.
Each choice she makes is either a step towards or a step away from the life she wants. Every wrong choice is going to become more horrible mold in her mind she needs to spray on a daily basis, and at this point, she’s running low on pesticides. And yet, her nerves still light up with anxiety when thinking about possibilities.
Possibilities she can’t risk.
She tries to put the pieces together, trying desperately to find a path to follow that’ll hopefully kill off the toxins that keep threatening to pull her back to the past. She doesn’t want to look back. She doesn’t want to fall down that hole, full of rotting sewage wounds she hadn’t properly looked at in years. Wounds that were probably infected at this point.
Like an endless, dark abyss of horrid thoughts that melted into a puddle around her, surrounding her.
Horrid, hostile thoughts rushing through her head all at once like running water. TV static that drowned out any coherent thinking she could’ve mustered as her thoughts grew more erratic, as the noise got louder.
And louder.
And louder.
And louder.
Painful memories playing out of order like a tape that kept skipping between scenes, distorted voices of people she wanted to forget echoing in her head. Their voices bouncing off the walls of her mind, making her curl in on herself in an attempt to escape from the sheer amount of noise.
Her stomach sinks, like a bag of rocks descending into the murky depths of the ocean. Her heart feels so heavy, it may as well be one of the rocks that descends and shrivels up under pressure. Pieces of herself she tried so hard to preserve becoming particles within the ocean. She would disappear.
Another corpse in the circle of life. Nobody would notice, or care.
She can feel herself becoming engulfed in the darkness that threatened to consume her. To swallow her whole until not a trace of her was left.
Sorrow, anguish, despondence, anger, bitterness, hopelessness, desperation.
It was all a mess of the saddest colors she’d ever seen. Colors she couldn’t wash or rub off her skin. Colors that burned like acid. Colors that made her sob and wail in pure, blood-curdling agony that threatened to rip her core to shreds if she couldn’t be rid of the poison that flooded through her mind, her blood, and her soul.
As the tears burned her cheeks, she tries to steady her breathing.
In for 4, hold for 5, exhale for 6.
Repeat the process.
As she feels the pure, cold oxygen from the air purifier fill her lungs, her body slowly soothes. She straightens her back, no longer cowering into herself. She relaxes the muscles in her face that tried to shrink her away from her stress. She can feel her chest rise and fall in deep, even breaths.
She’s safe, she’s here.
But nobody else is.
Most of this grounding routine was done on her own, nobody around to hold her hand. To her comfort, and her chagrin.
Yet, everytime she considers going somewhere, to someone outside of her own fragmented mind, she stops herself.
What was the point in interacting with people outside of formalities anymore? She knew what the outcome was going to be. 9 times out of 10, it was one of two things:
1) The person would think she was too quiet, too nitpicky, and they would take her on as some personal repair project. She didn't need to be fixed, she works on herself nearly everyday.
2) The person would sneer at her physical features, and attack her either verbally or physically. She didn't need to get into another fight, and then take the blame for defending herself. ( And have to apologize to her father and grandparents for the umpteenth time over a fight she didn't even start. A fight she wasn't even looking for. )
She's tired of being on the defense, but that's what she has to be every time she steps out of the door of her apartment. Every time she buttons her cardigan, she makes sure most of her body is covered so she has a shield of some sort, in case anyone tries to touch her. ( Her sharp reflexes helped in that regard. She was nothing if not attuned to her surroundings, even if she's not attuned to people. )
Her only drawback is her energy. It's either too little energy, or it's the wrong kind of energy.
Energy that saps her of any motivation or willpower to even sit up in bed, much less walk to the kitchen and heat up breakfast after her grandmother left a note telling her that there were belgian waffles in the fridge. The smell is so nice, and yet her stomach growls at her, glaring at her. Her bones ache at the idea of moving for a few more minutes, even though the lack of sustenance in her body at that point is what’s causing said ache. The craving is there, and the waffles are so sweet, yet the craving shackles her in place until she has to muster an inkling of energy to eat. It still doesn’t make sense to her.
Or energy that leaves her agitated, pure spite running through every artery and vein in her body. She moves without thinking, doing without stopping to consider why. She doesn’t know what she needs to be doing, but she needs to be doing something. A productivity that granted temporary ease, only to be replaced with restlessness. What now? What next? She needs to look forward more, after all. And sitting and doing nothing may as well feel like sitting on burning coal.
Neither of those extremes are ideal to her. So she has a few ways to remedy this.
Maybe she'll refill her travel mug with some more matcha or gyokuro tea. ( Maybe some sencha tea, if her grandfather hasn't gone through the whole pack yet. Her whole household loves tea, but the best kind of tea depends on who you ask. )
As she sips the warm drink, the liquid soothes her tense muscles, like a calming melody running through her body as she brings herself back down to Earth. She reminds herself that Earth is her favorite place to be, even if she doesn't like most of the customers she has to put up with. She reminds herself that peace starts within herself, above all else. The only way the world around her remains somewhat peaceful is if she keeps her cool.
And well, call it an unpopular opinion, but she's a fan of bittersweet things. Not just because she found comfort in sadness, but because the melon-like taste reminded her that she'd return back to nature someday.
Return back home, a home away from the hell that was the loud noise of the city and the overworked business people. Away from the bullshit that was property taxes and into the trees and meadows that reminded her why Earth was her favorite planet, despite the gawking eyes that would look at her like she'd spoken nonsense.
It wasn't nonsense to her. The crisp winds that she could taste on her skin as the oxygen ran through her hair, the sounds of symphonies from songbirds, the morning sun waking the glory flowers to blossom for the new day, the smell of mountains that reminded her of the heights this planet could reach.
The sheer amount of life that this planet holds could never be replicated in any other atmosphere. They would only be hollow husks of their predecessor, trying to imitate a landscape that it would never be able to fully grasp. A standard too impossibly high to ever reach.
Another remedy, when it's too hot to drink some ryokuro or matcha, and the ice machine at home isn't working, is for her to distract herself with hobbies.
Most days she's busy with pulling out weeds, fertilizing flowers, and buying stock for the shop, on top of daily talent-related tasks, like monitoring water quality, and picking up trash on the beach and in the oceans. She's been trying to warn people about environmental concerns all the while, only for her numerous essays-- that she'd spent all-nighters on, running purely on spite and caffeinated black tea-- to fall on willfully closed eyes. She doesn't get paid enough for this.
She'd rather pick up and annotate another novel she's been meaning to finish. When restlessness leaves her unable to focus on the words painted into the pages, audiobooks or lo-fi music while she finishes tasks will do. ( Truth be told, she's a sucker for fantasy and sci-fi. She'll say that it simply amuses her as a botanist, to watch the characters try to pseudoscience their way out of a conflict, but... she can't deny the comradery charm of some of those stories. )
And well, collecting seashells had its perks.
The idea of being a mermaid is one that brings her a special kind of content, albeit a self-indulgent one. Sitting in the sun and singing softly to anyone who would listen. Maybe someone pretty, someone who would love her voice and look at her like she was the sun. A warm, soothing presence in their noisy life.
Being loved didn’t sound bad, actually. Even if she could only dream of it.