Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Once upon a time, there grew a little golden flower in a place where the sun never reached.
This little golden flower had grown tired of the world.

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This little golden flower had lived many lives.
In some lives, it had befriended everyone. In some lives, it had killed everyone.

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It had lived through every possible outcome that existed.
It seemed like there was nothing left in life for the little golden flower to experience.

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It was like living an empty existence, so the flower didn’t want to live anymore.
But it didn’t want to die either.

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One day, the flower experienced something it never imagined it would again.
Another human fell.

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Their soul was a brilliant yellow color.
It burned bright and strong. It was almost blinding to the flower.

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The flower felt shock at first.
But then the familiar feeling of nothingness followed soon after.

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The flower laughed, the sound a repulsive and hollow emptiness, at the wide-eyed human as they awoke on a patch of gold.
So even the universe had grown bored of the repetition as well – now it would make the flower suffer by reminding it of what it had lost.

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A Soul - powerful and intense. Irreplaceable. Infinite.
Painfully close, but forever out of reach.

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The human finally got to their feet, confused but unafraid.
The flower silently wondered how long they would last here in the land of monsters.

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The human made their way to the beginning of their end - to the start of the Ruins; where nothing but their own ruin lay.
The flower lingered for a moment, out of sight, before turning away.

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It didn't matter to the flower.
Even if the flower wanted it to matter, the absence of a Soul made it incapable.

It simply couldn't care.

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Then, a word was uttered.
The human had somehow noticed the little flower.

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"Howdy!"
They had a carefree voice.

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The way the human seemed so untroubled by their situation – the way they still had the ability to smile as they did despite it -
It made the flower feel a small pang of almost something.

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The flower chose to remain silent as it watched the human approach, their steps confident.
“Gosh, I can’t believe I’m talkin’ to a flower right now.”

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After a moment, the human stooped down before it, their gaze wide and curious.
“What kinda flower are you anyways? Sunflowers don’t have faces where I come from.”

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“Humans also don’t go around talking to flowers randomly where you come from.”
The human laughed, disregarding the flower’s pointed words with a shrug.

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“Yeah, but one look 'round tells me that this ain’t where I come from.”
They gestured to the enclosed space that surrounded both them and the flower.

“Hoping you could tell me where this is, actually.”

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The flower weighed its options.
It could leave, burrow into the ground and try to find a new way to live through this meaningless cycle, forget this encounter ever happened -

Or.

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It realized it could die a horrible, painful death by continuing to interact with this human;
It could get petals plucked one by one by one until there was nothing left, nothing but its roots that would wither and fade into ash – it could get its stems crushed and its leaves torn apart like paper and burnt until no trace remained -

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But that’s what the resets were for.

And besides, that tiny rush of something returned as the flower took in the grinning human, and then past the human and looked into their bright, beating Soul.

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The flower thought that this might have been what Hope would have felt like.