Love is a killer. It is a garden that grows wild and unchecked. Love is a killer - angst, readerxnoctis, unrequited love, hanahaki, choking, body horror, reader death
It starts with a ticklish fluttering in your chest. On exertion, in the heat of battle, you find there’s a strange sensation that makes your breathing feel… Odd.
It’s hard on the road, Eos not being hospitable as it once was, training in the kingsglaive hadn’t prepared you for the sheer exhaustion of being on the road, of no place to call home or to lay down your sword besides a small tent with your-
Well you didn’t know what they were exactly. Friends most certainly. After so long of fighting beside the quartet you couldn’t strictly say that you were a professional kingsgard. That had gone right out of the window of the Regalia after the first few days.
Before the fall of Insomnia.
After that it was more. A strange thing you couldn’t describe, a beast more intimate than friends, less intimate than a lover.
Prompto found home in your arms one night, crying about the family who had certainly perished in the downfall, though you were certain he was crying more about the family that they could and should have been rather than what they actually were. His tears stained your shoulder, cold and wet away from the fireside. Away from the others who he feared would mock him. As the only woman in the team he found it easier to just be, and so he was.
Gladio, who had trained you from rookie to a hardened kingsglaive, had changed toward you. It was odd to be treated like a little sister in a way, concern and double checks during fights and training, yet to also be drilled as the soldier that you were. It was what he needed, you think, until he gets the message from his little Iris that she’s fine, waiting and safe for him. That doesn’t stop him from ruffling your hair in a way he never did as he trained you.
Maybe the most unchanged is Ignis, though there is a solemness to him that only you catch in the early morning light of dawn. His bare fingers as he begins the day seem so vulnerable as he starts preparing breakfast for a still sleeping crowd. You’re there beside him, brewing much needed coffee, and you hear the fits and starts of his voice, trying to say his worries and his hopes and fears. Maybe eventually he’ll get the words out, but your silence and listening ear does more good than you would ever know. He can be vulnerable, be scared, when he is ready. And that’s fine.
The tickling, fluttering and strange, creeps along your lungs and enters your throat slowly, deceptively.
A single breath and something is caught in your windpipe, struggling against the air as you cough from the back of your chocobo.
You nod, mouth shut, at Noctis, fist closed around the soft and delicate thing that had fell past your lips and in to your open hand. When Noctis turns and rides on you open your hand and huff a laugh.
Of course, it had to be, didn’t it?
Hanahaki doesn’t progress on its own. This much you remember, and now you know is true.
When Noctis meets Umbra you smile at the familiar sight. You’d seen the two meet enough, book exchanged between the two, the only bridge to the far away Lady Lunafreya. As you linger in the background watching the smile that spreads your King’s lips, the sharp stab of roots dig in to the walls of your lungs.
Love like this is deep rooted, you suppose.
It causes a constriction that has your breath seize midway, coming out in a painful wheeze that has Gladio turning to you.
You’re looking up at the sky passing by in the back of the regalia when you hear Prompto ask this of Noct. The conversation happens over you, with both either side of you as Gladio sits up front with a quiet Ignis.
“What about?” Is Noct’s reply after a moment of consideration. You hear the weight behind his words, practically asking him to pick one of the multitude of things that he has rights to be nervous about.
Just two guys, shooting the shit as though the world isn’t on the doorstep of Armageddon. The thought would make you smile if you couldn’t taste that telltale perfume of Sylleblossom on the back of your tongue almost permanently these days.
“Well yeah, it’s a big deal prom.”
After that first petal you hadn’t seen anything, almost like a warning of what had already taken root. A warning to prune away at your heart, at the love planted there that grew every day for someone promised away to another.
“What about seeing Lady Luna?”
Would you see the day, you wondered, as you watched white clouds pass by at a leisurely pace despite the cruising speed of the Regalia. You wondered if your killing plant would grow forever on your grave like they said it did for victims of the disease.
You feel a bud unfurl near your heart bending to seek the sun.
Under the light of the myriad of stars that are scattered across the sky you watch the embers of the dying camp fire drift up to meet its brothers.
You bring your gaze back down, not realising how lost in non-thought you were. “Hmm?”
“It’s your turn ______.” The wry smile Noctis sends your way, looking less weighed down by the fate of the world than he has in a while, has you sighing when he looks back to his phone, the petals slowly filling your lungs flutter in unison, quivering with your aching heart.
“Right,” you wheeze out, “Sorry.”
It happens in the worst place.
Somehow, with your rotten luck, you’d been split from the others along with Prompto, which at least was a saving grace. Misery loved company and you’d rather have not been alone in the gods forsaken ancient place.
You dispatch the last monster, thankfully the daemons had gone for the more troublesome and powerful prey, when your lungs give a lurch and seize, like a car stalling.
the clatter of your sword hitting the floor captures Prompto’s attention immediately, the distressing wheezing and gasping that manages to escape through the stems that crowd your lungs make him panic.
You sway, dizzy at the lack of oxygen as you gag on seemingly nothing, grabbing his arm as you stumble to your knees and vomit.
Beautiful deep blue petals fall in a cascade. Gruesomely some stick together, spit and blood from ravaged lungs pasting them to one another.
Prompto can’t do anything but watch as your body purges the petals that are obviously well on their way to killing you. His voice is quiet and childish as he breathes out your name, all at once a fearful and hopeful question that you’re alright, that what he’s seeing isn’t what he’s seeing at all.
You look up at him, wet down your cheeks and smeared across your lips in gruesome vulnerability.
“You can’t tell him Prom. You can’t.”
To think things would be fine after that and you could continue on as normal was foolish.
Prompto sent you varying sad, worried, and downright torn looks so regularly that it as obvious something was happening.
You had reached the end of the road, you supposed.
Fighting was… Impossible. You couldn’t hold your own, keep up well enough to hide any more. And ever since Costlemark the Sylleblossoms would grow and twist in your lungs without prompting. No thoughts of Noctis summoned the pain any more. It was a constant burning in your lungs now. Constant tickling fluttering that had you wanting to dig in to your chest and pull the damned thing up by the roots.
That said, his smiles, and now concerned gaze, only made it worse.
“I’m slowing you down.”, you breathed quietly. Your pallor and demeanour had paled and wilted, this much was obvious to your friends.
Prompto said nothing, only looked at the floor of the camp rock as you stood ready to leave. Ignis cleared his throat, “Perhaps if we took a proper rest for a while, you could recuperate.”
“I don’t think that would cut it Iggy.” The rattle in your chest wasn’t missed by anyone, as ominous and worrying as it was it was loud to match.
“Let us take you somewhere at least, you can’t just wander off along the road.” Gladio was frowning, arms folded across his chest and you smiled sadly.
“I can hitchhike, ‘s no probl’m.” The urge to cough was becoming unbearable, but you couldn’t, not now, not in front of them. You had to go.
They needed a clean cut. Like pruning a rosebush.
“Bye, guys.” You turned, bag slung to rest on your shoulder when a strong hand gripped it and pulled it back.
“No, you don’t get to bail on us when you’re not well. Whatever your hiding, we’re a team, we’re your friends. We want to help, so don’t push us away!” You closed your eyes in pain as Noctis’ voice sent the sylleblossoms pushing up your oesophagus to find their light of day,
“Noct, I don’t think-“ Prompto says, apprehension lacing his words.
There’s a dizziness creeping in to your senses.
“No, Prom, I think you know and I don’t think you should keep it to yourself any more.” Noctis is still talking to your turned back.
“It’s her choice Noctis.” You can hear the pleading in his voice that you turn around and tell them all about the love that planted itself in your treacherous heart, the little gestures and smiles that sent the thing sprouting and rushing up and up and up, about the impossible hope that you might be loved back.
The impossible hope that it wouldn’t be unrequited.
But you don’t have the breath or heart for that any more.
The world is darker, your gaze unfocused as you start to sway and bring a hand up to your mouth to instinctively cover the coughs that send petals past your lips.
Your name is exclaimed behind you as you fall to your knees, lips slowly turning blue like the petals that cling to them. Each breath sending more petals pouring out.
Arms wrap around your shoulder as you start to topple to the side as the darkness of the world closes in on you.
“______- no!” You hear gasps at the sight of the petals that are pressed against your cheeks and neck, blood spattered over them like dew, “Who is it? Who is it?!”
Noctis has you in his arms and though it does little to assuage the crawling stems and overflowing petals your heart hurts less as you look up at his face as he looks between his friends.
Prompto doesn’t need to answer, his grim face looks back at Noctis, whose eyes steadily turn purple in the face of his fear.
Your hand haltingly reaches up to caress his cheek, and in the back of your mind you mourn that this will be the last time you see him and he’s crying. He looks back at you, frowning and searching your eyes for something you’re not too sure of.
“Sor-ry…” His hand catches yours as it begins to fall, and he holds it against his wet cheek, leaning in to it like it’s precious.
Like maybe you’re precious too, is the last thought that crosses your mind, as the darkness collapses in on your vision.
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