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The pair of you pearl into a sunflower field, the sound of an explosion echoing behind you.
There’s some sort of symbolism there, you think. Despite what you say, what you’ve said in the past you still see the flower as yours - others do as well. There’s five named sunflowers in your e-chest. All bar one are gifts. The final one is named from home.
You can see the remains of the worldeater in the distance as you glance back at the island, and some emotion you don’t want to name hits you hard in the chest.
Instead -
“Well - that was -” you laugh giddily, hysterically, something, holding Paddy’s hands and briefly pressing your head against hers. “Well. Possibly worst case scenario that - woops -” You collapse into laughter again - oh Deli, of course it had to be her who died - then turn away from your teammate to throw another pearl, further into the field. There’s so many sunflowers. It’s so -
The first flowers you’d placed in your second home had been sunflowers. You hadn’t wanted to leave your house in the centre of the field, but you couldn’t continue, not knowing that every day when you woke there would be more holes in the wood, damaged foundations and just - being alone was bad enough. You couldn’t cope with yet another reminder of how little people cared for you.
The next had been wildflowers, then white tulips, then alliums - more and more and more until the place was filled with colour. You’d still missed the sky.
It was never quite enough, that place.
It was more of a home than your house in the field - people actually visited you there, let you grab their hand and drag them through the halls, explored the rooms, told you how pretty it was.
It still wasn’t… at the end of the day, everyone left. Back to their own teams, their own homes - and you were left here, with only the fireflies for company.
You abandoned it the same day you lost your first home, two days after you and Paddy spoke in an ice cave and left as teammates.
You abandoned it the same day you found a worldeater being built above your sunflower field and was somehow left alone alone alone -
When you found it, you had debated going up to the surface, screaming at them to acknowledge you, but…
This was done in silence.
This was done without word, without speech, without justification and -
You would not beg to be looked at.
The thought made you sick - you couldn’t even bring yourself to stand from the boat, just sat there shaking until Death Valley finally left. You’re not sure why it scared you so much.
You didn’t think about your home till later, when you were far far away and alone again. Then your thoughts were filled with it, TNT falling on the delicate flowers, being torn apart and scattered into ashes, drifting into the pond and disintegrating into nothing - you’d built that pond yourself, a dip in the landscape carved out by hand, your few pufferfish remaining from spawn gently placed into the water. Dead now, or soon, you guessed.
Since that day, you've tried not to think about it.
It’s - too much. Too big. Too much damage to really recover from, though you can laugh and smile the same it’s still - how do you move on from something of this magnitude? How do you move on from the feeling that nobody sees you, that you don’t exist enough to be acknowledged even while they’re tearing you to shreds?
A long time ago, you and Seri slowly sank to the bottom of a flooded crater at spawn, and Seri wrote: Betty let me tell you this. I love you.
And you couldn’t do much but flinch, the water around you keeping you stationary.
Doesn’t feel much like love, you replied, dull.
You still hadn’t visited the crater yet, but the maps Void had shared with the group had been enough. You couldn’t decide whether the tightness in your throat was from holding your breath or from holding back tears Seri wouldn’t even see.
You’d made this pond, filled up a crater block by block and placed flowers around the edges - lilacs and roses, nothing with meaning. It made it a little easier to crawl out, wincing at the feeling of water draining out of the parts of your body that weren’t watertight - you wondered if the metal parts of you could rust. You probably wouldn’t live long enough to find out.
You watched Seri leave, still sitting on the bank, among the flowers. You stared long after it, but your gaze soon drifted to the sunflowers inside the park.
They didn’t make you smile to look at anymore, and that’s a thought you don’t want to acknowledge. They didn’t feel right but nothing about this did and -
You don’t talk about it, but the feeling lingers.
Paddy gave you a sunflower named I love you one day, and that - there’s nothing but love when you look at it. But it didn’t feel like yours.
There were three other sunflowers in your e-chest. From Sin, Nara, Ace. On bad days, when you rifled through your sentimentals shulker in the hopes the things hidden inside would remind you of brighter times, they still brought a smile to your face.
It’s - there were memories, good memories, there, but -
It’s a hard feeling to describe. A sense of unmooring, drifting. What are you, without this? It’s just a flower, but it’s also -
It’s also a connection.
You found out about Harmony’s plan while checking on the library, leafing through the books, and you stopped in the map room as Sin’s words started to hit you. You didn’t mean to pause here, but as you looked at the empty space on the floor where the map should be and thought - well. You knew this was all too good to last.
“What about people like me and Paddy, with a base outside the 3k? That’s - gone then. With your plan.”
“Guess you should have made it public!”
For a long, long second, you were smelling smoke again, smoke and pollen and - you couldn’t do that again. You couldn’t.
It’s - it didn’t take you long to work out why Sin spoke to you the way she did. There was love in the cruelty, and you know him too well to misunderstand it as anything but.
Still, later that day, at an impromptu meeting in the middle of nowhere, you placed an orange tulip by your chair.
Arch showed you the tunnels a couple of days later - it reminded you of your home, of the crater, but there was no sickly pollen scent in the air. The rubble under your feet was different, too - not just deepslate instead of stone, but - you hadn’t really registered, before, the petals in between the crushed rock. There’s no colour in the caves beyond the neon green of the creepers, the occasional patch of moss.
It was - empty.
You rescued a single axolotl and brought it back to the Leylines with you. It was - nothing, against all of this, but - for a single moment you locked eyes with the tiny creature and knew you couldn’t leave it behind to die.
You don’t know if it’s still there. You hope it is.
Often, there are flowers in your dreams. Often, there are flowers in your thoughts - you were working on making the cave outside your base greener when you told Cog you were planning to leave your unofficial allies.
There’s a bitterness, but also a grief to it. You can’t blame them, not really. But you couldn’t stay.
You’ve told Paddy you want to make a garden somewhere in the cave. There’s a specific colour scheme you want, a collection of flowers in your e-chest waiting for you to have the time to work on it properly.
There was love in that group, despite everything. There were people who loved you, and people you loved in return. The day after you decided to leave, you started making them an island in the sky. It was meant almost as a gift, a meaningful goodbye. You thought a lot about flowers, before settling on cherry blossoms and wildflowers.
There were people in that group who loved you, and you chose a location that spoke of grief - next to a worldeater that ran away, the first day you saw the wreckage that once was your home. It’s a reminder and it’s a warning - you have hurt me, if accidentally, and now I will hurt you intentionally.
No one comments on it, and the meeting goes ahead.
When it is time you and Paddy pearl away into a sunflower field, an explosion in your wake.
Ace’s cut off scream echoes in your ears as you spin, briefly, to see two figures hit the water. Then you turn back to your teammate, saying something meaningless, interspersed with laughter.
It doesn’t feel real, almost, but you both keep running regardless.
Later, you’re standing on a beach at Paddy’s side, one hand holding hers and the other brushing sunflower petals from your clothes. There’s pollen smeared across you both, and - you laugh, again - it’s both because of success, you’re free, you’re done, things have changed, but also - for the first time in a long while, you don’t feel like flinching when you see that colour.